July 1, 2023 • 43 mins
David Roth of Defector joins Justin, they talk about random encounters with Phil Simms and Jim Nantz, among other randomness, plus Roth talks about LIV taking over the PGA Tour and the general grossness of Sportswashing, and how effective it is or isn't
Then Ed Burmila joins the show and discusses Trump's comical documents (alleged, I guess) crimes, and examines what exactly the non-Trump GOP candidates hope to accomplish, and more!
Read Roth's stuff at Defector here
Subscribe to his podcast here
This one too
By Ed's Book here
Check out his podcast here
Ed's Patreon page
Then Ed Burmila joins the show and discusses Trump's comical documents (alleged, I guess) crimes, and examines what exactly the non-Trump GOP candidates hope to accomplish, and more!
Read Roth's stuff at Defector here
Subscribe to his podcast here
This one too
By Ed's Book here
Check out his podcast here
Ed's Patreon page
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Welcome to Overtime. The only radioshow to win six International League batting titles,
took place between nineteen sixty seven andin nineteen seventy three. Look it
up, it's a fact. I'myour host, Justin mcconsack. On today's
program, We're gonna hop right intoit because they've got two fantastic guests,
David Rotha Defector and Ed Burmilla,who's got a well, I guess it's
not a new book out putting.He's got a book out. We talk
(00:29):
about all sorts of other stuff.We're gonna hop right into the show because
the interviews were so good and tookup so much time that I don't have
any time to waste, just likelast week, So let's get right into
it with David Roth of Defector dotCom. Kind of have to join us
here on Overtime from Defector dot com, the Distraction Podcast and the It's Christmastown
(00:50):
podcast, where David Roth, Iguess I should finish introducing him, watches
Hallmark movies and then breaks him downin a manner so thorough. I kind
of fear for your safety sometimes.Raf No, that's fair, that's a
reasonable concern, and I want youto know that it's shared. I don't
plan on altering my behavior at thistime, but you're definitely right to worry
(01:15):
about it. This was like abig week. This is the first time
I mentioned to people. I've beendoing the Hallmark podcast for like three years,
right, but I mentioned on theDistraction last week that I did it
exists, and I think there's alot of people out there that like,
if they knew, they knew.But then people that just listen to like
Me and Drew say peepee and poopooback and forth to each other and talk
about football, like might not haveknown that I had this other secret online
(01:37):
life, and now they know,So I gotta deal with that. I
had mentioned it to you that Ihad heard clips of it, and this
was the first time I listened toan entire episode start to finish, Because
there's a I don't know if youhave this in your podcast listening life,
but I have, like this,this mafia that only exists in my own
head of people whose podcasts I enjoythat in this scenario, they all love
(01:59):
interacting with each other. And inthis case, you have one of those
people on Ryan Nanny of the Shutdownfullcast and I was like, oh,
well, I have I absolutely haveto listen, because you know, the
five families are getting together. Whywouldn't I listen. I love the idea
of that. I mean, thereis there's probably some truth to it.
I don't think I get invited tomost of those parties. Ryan right now
is in this weird life stage wherehe can't due to some choices that he
(02:20):
made. I don't know if thiswill turn into a book for him or
whatever. He just doesn't say noto any podcast that asks him on right,
which makes it seem, you know, less prestigious. Maybe that we
were able to get him. ButI used to work with him several jobs
ago, and he's brilliant and itwas great to have him on, and
I hadn't actually talked it. Thelast time I talked to him in real
life was the day before the SuperBowl that was played in Minneapolis. I
(02:46):
don't remember which one that was.The Eagles won it, but it was.
I think I've blanked that one outof my memory, but go on.
Yeah, So I was there formy old job that's been I've been
doing video stuff. But then Iwas flying home and Ryan, I guess,
was probably there with sp Nation andwas also flying home, and I
thought I saw him in the airport, but I wasn't sure if it was
(03:07):
and I sent him a message onTwitter where I was like, I think
that Phil Sims is sitting across fromme. Is Phil Sims sitting near you?
And that was how I found outthat it was him. He was
like, yeah, that's definitely PhilSimms, because he was on the phone
having a Phil Simsy type conversation inthe airport, and we were like,
oh, neat all right, Andthen we went over and said all to
each other, I don't like goingfor two here. I just don't like
it. The other thing that wasgreat about that trip, Weirdly, that
(03:31):
same flight back, I was onthe airplane with the Broadway star Tova filled
Shoe, who was also in acrazy ex girlfriend. She's just like a
recognizable, you know, sort ofbrassy Broadway character type. So I had
Phil Simms basically talking about like footballand going for two like into the phone,
and then over my shoulder, Ihad a lady whose voice I knew
(03:53):
from, you know, probably havingseen her in Fiddler on the Roof or
something when I was a kid,just talking to probably her agent about like
her experience in Minneapolis and being likethe food is surprisingly fine. That was
just like what's going on here?Man? It was It almost felt glamorous
to me because I don't get totravel for work very much already around notable
(04:14):
people, and then I didn't getto travel at all for like three years,
right, I guess I had to. I had to bank that experience
hang onto it. So my oneof my first travel things after COVID,
well, it was still kind ofCOVID was happening, that we were in
the stage where it was not happeningenough so we could travel, and while
we were also so sick of it, we pretended it was not quite as
(04:34):
bad as it was. I inNew Hampshire there's like four broadcasters, So
I won the Sportscaster the Year forNew Hampshire award like two years in a
row. So the twenty backs HeatAward I didn't get until twenty twenty one.
They had it. They have theseawards in North Carolina. I think
they're going on this this weekend orlast weekend anyway for this year. So
Jim Natz was going into the Hallof Fame that year, and so like
(04:56):
the Hall of Fame presenter gives youyour award, so you walk on the
stage. He goes, hello,I'm Jim Nance, and you know,
I'm like, hey, I'm aguy that is from New Hampshire and I
thought about Techno Bowl a lot lastweek, so we're the same. But
then but the story a Hall ofFamers, that's right, just lapping a
hello friends and just keeping it moving. Just a couple of guys with trophies.
(05:17):
But then so there's an after partyafterwards for everybody, well I say
everybody. It's all like the NewHampshire guy, the Wyoming guy, Bob
Bryan, m Jean decker Off makesan appearance. But all the small state
people get absolutely smashed. So youhave to walk from one building to another
to get to it. And Ijust happened to be walking in the same
group of people as Jim Nance andas as a Hall of Famer he got.
(05:39):
They they give these nice um Louisvilleslugger like silver Louisville sluggers to the
Hall of Famers. So Jim Nanceand I and a few people are walking
across the street and there's there's ahomeless guy that recognizes Jim Nance who's holding
a bat right and asks, youknow, asks all of us for,
you know, for for money,and I didn't haven't I usually give homeless
people money, have any And he'slike it would be too much beeping to
(06:02):
beep out, but he's like,yeah, Jim Nance, I know you
got money. So now, wheneveranybody asked me about Jim Nance, I'm
like, yeah, we walk bya homeless guy together, and Jim Nance
wouldn't him any money? Get abat was very threatening. So Jim Nance
to me. The one Jim Nancestory that I liked. Are you familiar
with his his toast verse breakfast?Yeah? All right? Good at the
(06:24):
breakfast order good. I feel likethis is one that I love scandalizing people
with for our listeners benefit of well, I know that Justin knows what I'm
talking about. Jim Nance orders histoast destroyed. Everywhere he goes, he
orders it burnt on purpose. Hehas a picture, carries a picture of
a burnt piece of toast in hiswallet that he shows to servers and is
(06:45):
like, make it like this becausethat's not even the weirdest thing about Jim
Nance. I think the tie thingis much weirder. I do know he
do you don't know the tie,you must know the tie thing. Right
where he gets at the at theend of the NCAA tournament, he gives
his tie to the player he thoughtwas his favorite player at all. He
gives Yeah, that's much weirder thanthe toast thing. Right. That is
(07:09):
extremely I mean it's presumptuous to theidea of sort of like young man,
like before you go on the NBAfame and riches or you know whatever,
a ten year career in Turkey,grease and the levant, I want you
to have this tie as a tokenof my admiration. I got this at
Coles. It was fifty percent off, Like this is a street value of
(07:30):
forty eight dollars and ninety nine cents, and I think you've earned it.
Oh good, great. I can'tbelieve you hadn't heard that, because this
is great. This is I filethat away. I have a real um,
you know, sort of it's therein my head in place of all
the interesting stuff I read in college, which is not a great deal for
me, but all the weird factoidsabout people that talk about sports on TV
(07:51):
that I like. That is Idon't know, like a third of my
ram storage in my brain is justknowing that like I and Eagle has never
had soup like these all these athing the thing that is a hate soup.
Michael kay Uh doesn't has like neverhad a condiment or hadn't had one
until he had to eat like aketchup packet on the radio and he was
(08:16):
like gagging and unable to stomach it. Like all these guys somehow are able
to get not just well into adulthood, but like own homes, make car
payments, probably on time, wildlysuccessful in the people were talking about,
right, but like somehow al Michael'shas done all that while claiming never to
have eaten a vegetable in his lifethat I did know. He's like,
(08:37):
yeah, I just don't eat vegetables. Play by play guys, and I
guess I can let myself in.This are the weirdest people on earth.
Yes, can you explain? Canyou give me some insight into like what
is there a part of the brainthat you have It's just less pronounced that
makes it so that you're like Iwon't even look at a carrot. I
don't make enemies, I think becauseI'm so much less successful. And the
(08:58):
people were talking about I don't havethose idiosyncrasies. Um, what I think
the weirdest thing I have is Idon't like any hot liquids. Like I
don't like coffee. I don't likeuh, I don't like hot coco,
I don't like I don't I've hadthese things. I just really don't like
them at all. I don't liketea. But it's not like I've never
had like a marshmallow or something likethat, you know, because that's the
(09:20):
thing, it's never had it thingthat sort of when you're going back,
because I've had all kinds of thisstuff. I don't like. You know
that I don't seek out or whatever. But it's not the sort of thing,
well I can just tell you,like I think that like zucchini's pretty
mid It's not the sort of thingwhere I was like, I've never even
heard of it. No one showedit to me, and if they did
show it to me, I pretendedit with something else like that is I
guess that's the thing that separates mefrom the guys getting the whatever, the
(09:43):
Silver Slugger Awards at the National Associationof Broadcasters, that's right, Yes,
the the NSMA Awards, which areevery year and wherever in North Carolina.
The Dave Goran's gonna hate me fornot remembering where they are. But anyway,
we're talking about David Rotha Defector andI actually had something I wanted to
ask you about. But talking aboutrandom things is so much more fun that
I really ate up half our segment. No, Look, did you know
that he's never heard soup? Theseare much more useful things for people to
(10:07):
know. I feel like, canyou say so any other thing we could
talk about? Um? No,I was going to ask him what the
live golf thing, because um,I know you're not like a huge golf
fan, but I feel like youlike talking about this live golf thing,
and I'm just talking about it.I'm fascinated by it because we're gonna get
to the point where all I mean, if we're not there yet, we're
gonna get there soon. We're allsports are owned by the grossest possible uh
(10:31):
entities that there are, And thisis I think this is just like this,
this has gone from I can kindof ignore it to oh, I
think I think now we're at ohstage. And now it just came up
that Cutter is buying a piece ofthe Washington Wizards and the Washington Nationals or
the Commanders or I get, butthat it's that sort of sports group that
ted Leonsis has. So it's Wizardsmostly, but I think also the Caps
(10:54):
and the Mystics are part of it. The Yes, I think that it's
gonna be strange in like five yearsto look back at a time when sovereign
wealth funds didn't have anything to dowith American sports. And it is weird
already that given how shameless American professionalsports are and how sort of low the
(11:16):
bar to entry. I mean,it's like Daniel Snyder kept that team until
such time as he was able tosell it for billions of dollars, Like
there's no limit to how bad youcan be and still be permitted to own
an American sports team. And yetthis one little distinction for the longest time
made it so that only American badguys, and not the sovereign wealth funds
of murderous Petro States, were incharge of our stuff. The thing that
(11:41):
I was thinking about, and Italked about this a little bit on the
American Presstige podcast a couple of weeksago, that there's teams in American Pro
sports that at this point, ifyou're just going by their valuation, are
basically too expensive for any individual tobuy that like the Los Angeles Lakers are
the New York Knicks for instance,or the sort of things where there's not
(12:01):
a person that has sufficient cash onhand to pay for what those teams are
are worth, you know, notionally, and of course that's all it's a
it's a bubble, and you know, there's no way of saying that,
Like you can't like look at theLakers and be like, yeah, they're
definitely worth whatever, thirty billion dollarsor something crazy like that. But we
do know who has that kind ofmoney. We do know that the Saudi
(12:24):
Sovereign Wealth Fund has for instances,my colleague Chris Thompson's pointed out forty seven
billion dollars where to be in cash, it seems like a cash that's there's
other assets underlying it. That's thewalking around money. And so the idea
of like splashing out a couple billionon Live and then you know, or
on the PGA, you know,and sort of like buying their way like
(12:46):
buying pro golf, right, it'snot really something that they would need to
worry about. And this is somethingthat again Chris I think has made some
really good if sort of eddling pointsto this effect at Defector that I'm tempted
always with stuff like this to lookat something like Live as a gambit and
(13:09):
try to figure out what are they? What are they after? And right,
you know, the way that itgets written about here is maybe because
of the fact that we tend tosee America as sort of the protagonist of
reality in the center of the world, is like, what are they What
are they trying to do? Arethey sports washing their reputation? Are they
trying to like make Americans think morefondly of them? Are they trying to
sort of like get into the culturein some sort of positive way. Part
(13:31):
two with Damon Roth of Defector dotCom is coming up next. This is
overtime. Keep it here right,here's part two when Damon Roth of Defector
dot Com. I think it's justgetting a seat at the table, right,
like, oh, like you youown all these things yours because when
the when the World Cup was inCutter last year, you know, that
(13:54):
was an attempt at sports washing,but it had the opposite effect. I
think a lot of people didn't realizeCutter was so gross. Until the World
Cup was there and the little WorldCup icon, people were like, oh,
that's the ghost of all the migrantworkers that making these stadiums, and
that was that. I Cutter's awful. That was their gambit. Although it's
I think the Cutter case is reallyinteresting and I think it's it's telling here.
I was really into covering that whenwhen I was at Espionation with Ryan
(14:16):
and I went to Cutter in liketwenty fourteen, I guess, oh,
wow, or twenty fifteen, andI've got to see, you know,
the very early construction. And Isaw the video that they made that they
presented to FIFA, and like,obviously everybody knows they got the World Cup
because they bribed, which is that'show every World Cup gets awarded. It's
not like Cutters somehow a bad youknow, uniquely bad actor there. But
(14:39):
what was striking about that video tome, beyond the fact that they put
a lot of work into producing it, Like if you saw that, like
seeing it relative to like what Australiaproduced or what the United States produced those
I mean, it was more ofa like a want to have, whereas
Cutter clearly saw it as a youknow, have to have sort of scenario.
But the video's tone was very positive. It was very like, let
(15:01):
us all sit together at the tableof international sport and enjoy together this universal
experience. And then when you getthere, yeah, you find out more
that Cutter is like you can't havebeer, don't hold hands, do not
try us on this. We're veryserious about it, right, And that
I think with Saudi Arabia that likeif there was an attempt, I think
(15:24):
we're sports watching sort of where itmade sense, you know, ten years
ago as a sort of up sortof a public relations exercise or a soft
power gambit to sort of like includeyourself in this community of nations that are
like if not normal. Then likewhen you think of Cutter, now you
think of the World Cup, right. It's just that you don't only think
(15:46):
of the World Cup, as yousaid, you think of the fact that
thousands of Bangladeshi men died needlessly inbuilding these stadiums which are now you know,
just gonna be sitting there be usedagain, right, or at the
very least will never be filled thecapacity again. Sure, And that is
you know, sort of the otherside of it where I think with the
saudis my understanding of what they wereafter with Live and to a certain extent,
(16:10):
what they're after with the PGA,is that they're they're skipping the part
where they pretend to be coming onfriendly. That the goal there is just
basically to say, we have somuch money that you're gonna have to deal
with us, You're gonna have todo or at least that our preferences will
win out because we kind of affordto pay for it. What Chris's point
(16:30):
has been, and I've been thinkingabout this a lot since he made it,
is that maybe they just like golf. There doesn't necessarily need to be
a like that. By assuming thatthere's some sort of geopolitical calculus there were,
Yeah, you had forty seven billiondollars in cash, and you could
(16:51):
spend you know whatever, less thana twentieth of that buying golf, all
of golf. You might do itif you liked golf enough. You know
what, I need a guy namedBrooks in my life. That's what several
guys with the Brooks kind of aura, Yeah, we gotta we gotta get
a Keegan, We need a Brooks. I needed somebody with Patrick read vibes,
preferably Patrick Reid himself. And itis with all of that, it
(17:15):
is, and I think that thisis where it's gonna go. I mean,
it just depends what they're interested in. Like if you look at like
the stuff that they've spent money on, it might be that the Saudi royal
family doesn't care about the NBA andtherefore, uh, you know, American
billionaires will continue to own NBA teams. But you can see it in terms
of what they've spent money on.World Wrestling Entertainment could not air another show
(17:37):
on television the entire rest of thisyear, and the money they've made off
to the shows the Saudi Arabia wouldput him in a profit. Here's what
I was going to ask, becauseI know I don't I don't know if
we've ever talked about this, butbefore I got into like radio and all
that, I was, I wasa professional wrestler, like at the double
A baseball level of professional wrestling,right, Yes, so I know a
few guys that are in the WWEand one of the shows they had over
there, there was a dispute VinceMcMahon over how much the Saudis were supposed
(18:02):
to pay Vince mcmah these are allpage shows, as you reference. And
so they kept the plane full ofwrestlers on the tarmac for about eight hours
and I messaged for one of theguys I know, and I won't say
which one, but I was like, are you a hostage right now?
And he's like, I'm not sure, Like we're just trying to get out
of here. And so that wenta little bit under the radar. And
it wasn't the last year, butthe year before when they had a Formula
(18:23):
one race there, there was amissile attack by rebels on one of the
oil depots, like about three milesfrom the track, and all the all
the all the Formula one drivers werelike, we'd rather not race if there's
gonna be a rebel attack, andSaudi said, yeah, that's fine.
Good luck getting out of here ifthat's what you want to do. Though,
So what's what's the event going tobe with when that goes too far
(18:44):
for the American sports fan, likeif they keep like, I don't know,
like John Daly's John Daly speaks outagainst I don't know, just pulling
his name out of the hat.John Daly somehow is a little too pro
lgbd LBTQ and suddenly John Daly's missinga ring finger is what? What?
What is it going to be?This is why it's a good bet to
go with golf, you know that. I think that we've all so if
(19:06):
Live is like worth anything as becauseI think at this point if that merger
is allowed to go forward, andit's not to me one hundred percent clear
that it's going to, but ifit does, it's going to be like
the thing that Live will have beengood for is proving, uh, what
you can get for a few milliondollars that you know, there's guys that
like Rory McElroy's been very out aboutlike he hates Live. He hates what
(19:29):
it stands for whatever, But that'snot I don't think like a principled human
rights stands. He just thinks itsucks, right, and that's okay.
I mean, and it kind ofdoes like it actually super sucks as far
as I can tell that, likeevery note into the the whatever Phil Nicholson's
stupid team is, the teams areamazing. Chris went to an event at
the Trump Course in Bedminster, NewJersey, and it sounded like the just
(19:52):
carnival of the damned. You know, like nobody's there. The people that
are there are walleyed drunk and don'tknow who anybody is. And at the
whole the whole time you're there,you're like faintly aware of a chain smoker
song playing over a loudspeaker from veryfar away. It's just a very dark
mission of But I guess that's like, you know, again, you can't
(20:15):
account for what the Saudis are into. I think that to a certain extent,
they were trying to like go foryou know, this isn't your dad's
golf. Like it's extreme. It'seighteen rounds shorter, you know, eighteen
hold shorter. But I don't thinkthat I didn't really see a whole lot
of work put into that. Ithink it was just kind of like seeing,
you know, what would stick whenyou threw it at the wall.
(20:37):
Right now, they know that,Like it's basically like you can get whatever
you want for the money, theother stuff nobody cares about, and you
can lose it. We don't haveto make this stupid off licensee of Genesis
game of Golf. We can justgo buy the real golf. Yeah you
don't. Nobody can follow his powerdrive necessary. It's funny challenge yet good
grief. David Roth is with usfrom defector dot com before before letting rough
(21:00):
um on a scale of one toten, one being pretty chill, ten
being freaking out. Where where isyour Mets fandom right now? Dark?
It's like a it's not a number. I mean. The thing for me
is, like we were talking aboutthis before we started recording. So you're
a Socks fan. You're getting bythe numbers more or less the Socks season
(21:21):
that you hope before. Yeah,probably, But I mean it's like you
may have hoped for more, butthey haven't been worse, you know.
And there's stuff that's cool, youknow, like Jarondran fixed his swing and
yeah, yeah, swept the Yankees. Yeah, and like so there's stuff
you can hang your hat on,but it was it. You know,
they're in a process, I guess, and they're not at the end of
(21:41):
it yet, and so you knowyou're sort of gonna wind up with a
team that probably more or less deliverson expectations. Expectations are low and they're
meeting them. Yeah. Right,So the Mets one one hundred one games
last year. They also sucked allthe way down the stretch and left kind
of a bad vibe. I mean, you remember the game that they lost
where they were trying to say thatJoe Musgrove's ears were too red for it
(22:03):
to be natural. They went outin a very mess way, but they
more or less ran it back.They you know, added a Hall of
Famer to the rotation. I couldtell you as a guy that is a
you know, a fan of theteam and also who follows baseball pretty closely,
like there was definitely reason for concernto look at their roster before the
year. But they have a bunchof guys that are you know, delivering
(22:26):
the tenth percentile outcome, you know, and we played based on a half
a season. At this point,they're bad. Like not to say that
they're not gonna get better or whatever, but this is the one thing that
I thought, you know, Ifigured, you know, you pay for
a team that's like a hundred winson paper, and the worst you're gonna
get is eighty five if everything goeswrong. And right now they're on a
(22:48):
seventy eight win pace, and Ithink that they look like a team that
would struggle to win seventy eight gamesmost nights and I you know, I
could tell you how it's going tohappen or how it's happening, but it
would drive me insane, would turnthe radio off. It is really tough.
It is a like as annoying aMets season as I can remember so
(23:11):
far. And that is really reallysaying quite a bit. As someone who
traffics in what Bemani Jones likes tocall recreational sadness, I have a curiosity
about the bets, but I'm notsure even I dislike myself enough to hop
on the train. But I doIsssue luck with all that. Hey,
thanks man, I appreciate it.The good news is there's a lot of
baseball teams this year that like,if I decide to make a strategic pivot
(23:33):
to just watching the Cincinnati Reds forsix weeks, I think that I will
see notable dividends in my mood.There's a lot of cool teams out there
that are like kind of random popup fun teams. Yea, and the
key I think, and then thisis me trying to speak it into existence
here on the radio, is lettingyourself be liberated to make that choice,
(23:55):
as opposed to being stuck watching CarlosCarrasco throw one hundred and five pitches over
four in the third innings for theentire rest of the summer. For your
mind and your ass will follow Rothright, So true, that's a really
profound point. Did you make thatup? I'm going to take credit for
because I don't think anybody remembers theoriginal quote. But David Roths defector dot
com. Find his podcast The Distractionwith Drew McGarry and also it's Christmas Town
(24:17):
on your favorite podcasting app. Thanksfor having on the show. Appreciate it.
Thanks for having me due, appreciateit. Joining us here on overtime
Edward Miller, who's a professor?Are you still a professor? Or am
I just going way back at yourhistory here? Oh, that's way back.
(24:37):
Twenty nineteen was the end of myteaching career in the beginning of my
career as a writer. So it'sbeen an interesting transition, but one that
I'm glad that I made. Rightin twenty nineteen somehow feels like fifty years
ago and also five minutes ago,which is at the same time, right
time was compressed, especially during thepandemic, It's hard to tell if something
was two weeks ago or two yearsago. Well, this is the worst
(25:00):
intro ever. But Edward mill isjoining us the program, and I'm glad
you could be a part of theshow. I really had to be here.
I asked a few weeks here tocome on. You had you a
mini cast about what are all theseGOP candidates doing, which I do want
to get to. But we're recordingthis on Tuesday, and the audio of
Trump uh comically committing crimes was releasedtoday. It was even in my imagination
(25:26):
I pictured Donald Trump stumbling around witha folder that says twenty to life for
looking at these if you're not supposedto, and handing them out to random
people at his office. And it'snot far off from that. As we
the audio has kind of realized.On a scale of you're a student of
historical stupidity, I would say,how dumb is this? On a scale
(25:48):
of one to ten, ed Iwould say, he's Trump is kind of
every defense attorney's worst nightmare, theclient who not only you know, can't
stop committing crimes, but can't shutup. That's how you dig yourself into
a hole. And the whole thingreminds me I'm you know, I'm a
Chicagoan by by you know, temperament, and most of my life I spent
living there. Are ex governor ofIllinois Rob Lakoyevich ended up going to prison,
(26:14):
and he was caught in a verysimilar on tape situation where you know,
the thing that's incredible about it isthat these people are committing crimes and
just there's a total absence of subtletyor subterfuge or anything about it. You
know, Plogoyevich didn't say to hisassistance, you know, hey, did
you take care of that thing?Wink wink that we talked about. He's
just like, so I want tobribe who's offering us the biggest bribe for
(26:36):
this Senate position? You know?And Trump is sort of on the same
level of like there's just a completeabsence of any sort of attempt to be
subtle or anything like that. He'sjust, yeah, here's the crimes I
committed. Who wants to commit somecrimes with me? You know, It's
it's cartoonish how little they have asense of you know, you know,
the just a sense of invulnerability thatthey have that they don't have to even
(27:00):
try to make some sort of attemptto, you know, put a smoke
screen over what they're doing. They'rereally I wouldn't even say supervillains, because
super villains display like some sort ofsmarts and wittedness. They're more like Simpson's
villain caricatures at this point, aren'tthey. Yeah, the thing with Trump
is just a lifetime of getting awaywith everything has left him. You know,
(27:22):
people always try to psychoanalyze the guy. What is Why does he do
this? Why would he be soexplicit about it? If you were Donald
Trump at this point in your life, you might be that explicit about committing
crimes too. You know, you'vecommitted a thousand of them over half a
century, and nothing has ever happenedto this guy. So you could see
the psychology of why you just getused to it? Why cover it up
(27:45):
when you can just go to yourgolf club or your restaurant or whatever and
just brag to people, Hey,look what I took from the White House.
You know I'm not supposed to havethis isn't that funny? You might
be like that too, a littletired of being so careful? Why don't
just different? I think Legoievich wason celebrity apprentice too. If I'm not
mistake, it was after you getout of jail? Was that? I
(28:06):
think that was a Legoievich has donea lot of stuff like that. He's
on several of those services where youcan like pay a former celebrity to send
your dad a birthday video or somethinglike that. Any of it escapes me
right now, but those those sortsof things he's really leaned into just being
a punchline. And why is thisguy famous kind of person? But yeah,
(28:27):
indeed, and if to be clear, if you have not heard the
Trump audio at this point, andfirst of all, what are you doing?
Second of all, there's a pointwhere he literally says, uh,
yeah, you wouldn't believe it.Of course it's this is very top secret.
But take a look at it.Those are those are lines that he
really said. And the debate that'sraging now is not whether or not he's
(28:48):
guilty of this crimes. I thinkwe had a few polycide professors who are
very normally very conservative with their opinionslike this, but one of them said
open and shut, but it wasthe term. But the question is is
he going to serve any time?I think the consensus is probably not.
Yeah, I would agree with that, but we've seen other instances of the
person in Kansas City with almost theexact same scenario is going to do some
(29:14):
actual federal prison time. But wedon't think, I don't think we think
Trump's going to go to an actualprison for this, right. Yeah,
you know, all along I've beenhesitant myself think he's ever going to get
convicted of anything with this situation.Now He's made it so explicit and so
obvious that I'm not certain. Iwouldn't bet my life savings on it at
(29:34):
this point, but I think hemight actually get convicted, which six months
ago I would have told you,no, there's no chance that Jerry's actually
going to convict this guy, buthe has made it difficult not to convict
him at this point. People liketo think of him playing six dimensional chests
or whatever and think, well,maybe this was all part of his grand
(29:55):
strategy to get convicted and then usethat as a way to increase it.
I don't think he thinks that thatstrategically. I don't think his mind works
like that. I think he hasa very little object permanence. I don't
think he's ever thought about or givengreat consideration to anything he's ever said in
his life, and he's certainly notgoing to start now. So the idea
that this is part of some granddesign might help someone write an interesting article
(30:19):
for Harper's or something, you know, in the next couple of months.
But I don't think there's any substanceto that. This is just how he
is. Puts no thought into anything. Where's being with Edward Miller, the
author of Chaotic Neutral How the DemocratsLost their Soul in the Center. You
can also subscribe to his Patreon.Just look for master shut In's on Patreon
(30:40):
or is it I'm sorry, isJina Tacos or master shut Is? Lets
should know this by now so manydifferent online aliases. Yeah, I'm trying
to at this point in my lifejust go by my actual name, which
which seems like the easiest way todo it. But for a while there
there was at least a sense oftrying to maintain some distance between my professional
with my online lives. But Idon't have to anymore, so it's great,
(31:03):
that's right. Yeah, it's Edunleashed, which sounds like an ed
hardy type of things, So Iwon't describe that to you, So you
would you would have done a podcastnot that long ago about basically the premises
what are all these people doing?Because to kind of leap frog off the
the former president will be convicted ofcrimes. He's also probably going to win
the Republican nomination borrowing some sort ofmother nature event. I think. I
(31:26):
don't think even if even if he'ssitting in a jail cell, I can
still do a Buddy Sancy and winthe nomination from prison. Uh, funny
Stancy New England legend, even thoughin New Hampshire, you know, Ryland's
not that far away. But so, what are well? In your opinion,
what are all these people doing?And I, you know, we
have uh, you know, WillHurd is coming into the studio, we
(31:47):
do the morning show. I don'tthink he has a chance to crack one
percent. You know, Perry Johnsonis spending ungodly amounts of money. He's
got a bust in three camera peoplethat he brings into the studio. What
are they doing yet? Well,it seems to me that the you know,
the narrative in twenty twenty two wasthe next presidential nomination for the Republican
(32:10):
Party is going to be dominated bythis Trump versus de Santis battle, sort
of a Republican version of what theDemocrats did in twenty sixteen, where all
of the energy in the party wassubsumed into two candidates. Okay, and
Dasantis's launch has been a comedic disaster. I mean, he has absolutely face
planted. I've never seen a humanbeing with less charisma than Ronda Santis.
(32:35):
And I think a lot of otherRepublicans looked at this opportunity and said,
well, DeSantis is flailing around.His campaign is obviously going nowhere. Trump
or no Trump, something could alwayshappen to Donald Trump to take him out
of the picture. And in thatcase, if DeSantis is not presenting himself
as a viable candidate, someone hasto win the nomination. So you have
(32:57):
a lot of these smaller minor candidateshim Scott's and Nicky Hayley's and things like
that, and they're thinking, it'snot hard for me to raise money.
I can form a campaign committee,I can spend somebody else's money for a
year running for president. And whoknows, Trump goes to jail, Trump
keels over, Trump decides, youknow, to flee the country and not
(33:19):
be you know, run for presidentanymore. In that case, there has
to be somebody ready there to winthe nomination. I think that's the scenario
they're envisioning. DeSantis takes himself outof the picture by being such a just
weird human being that you know,an unlikable human being. Trump is somehow
taken out of the equation, andthen you're left with a field that's essentially
(33:39):
wide open. And at that point, flip a coin, you know,
any of those people could be asyou know, you could make a case
for Chris Christie as easily as youcould for Nicky Haley or whatever. But
it's all presupposing that something takes Trumpout of the picture. I don't think
any of them have any illusions aboutbeating him. Yeah, and I last
(34:00):
he talked about this with Dante Scala, who's a policy professor a period at
the University of New Hampshire, andhe suggested, perhaps some of them,
you know, not everyone that's running, some of them might want to be
Trump's vice president. My counter thatwas, well, Trump's last vice president
did everything Trump wanted him to doexcept for one little thing, and Trump
tried to have the guy lynched infront of the Capitol. So I don't
(34:20):
I don't know that that's a jobposition that has a lot of growth to
it. Now. I don't thinkTrump will select, you know, cabinet
positions from his primary competitors. Youknow, he is somebody who has his
own clique of hangers on. Hehas his own sense of people. He
thinks he can trust many of them. Of course he can't actually trust,
but he thinks he can. Andyou know, the idea that you know,
(34:43):
you know, he's going to runagainst somebody who's going to be harshly
critical of him during the primary raceand then choose that person to be his
vice president it seems very far fetchedme. That's that's a good sort of
traditional political analysis. But Trump inmany ways does not fit into the mold
of you know, try to understand. For example, you know how Bob
Dole, you know, picked hisvice presidential running mate in nineteen ninety six,
(35:06):
who was one of his fearercist competitors. Trump just operates on a different
plane that has nothing to do withthat sort of very rational and reasoned analysis.
But he's not a rational and reasonperson, Ladies and gentlemen, Vice
President Kerry Lake is coming to thelectun We're talking with Ed bur Miller,
the author of Chiantic Neutral, howthe Democrats lost their soul in the center.
I wanted to run a counter likea counter factual by you, just
(35:28):
to see what you thought. You'rethe first person, and I'm gonna not
be the first person that's brought thisup, but you're the first person I've
asked about this. Do you thinkand I'm I'm pretty far to the left.
I get the sense you are aswell. Do you think folks on
the left would take the bargain thatMitt Romney defeats Barack Obama in twenty twelve
(35:49):
so that you then don't get ormaybe you get a lesser version of Donald
Trump and this, you know,this basically fascist wing of the Republican Party.
Would you would you, knowing whatyou know now, would you make
that trade? In hindsight, now, I'm not sure that the Republican Party
is able to get off that.You know, this path is something that
they've been on since the early nineties, and it took him a while to
(36:12):
get there. But after the GeorgeW. Bush presidency, I think exposed
a lot of the hollowness in therhetoric on the right about you know,
worshiping the Constitution and the rule oflaw and everything they've been drifting away from,
as conservative parties around the world havebeen kind of drifting away from.
Well, maybe democracy and elections aren'treally all that important. You know,
(36:36):
what's really important is that the rightpeople eventually end up in charge of the
country, representing the real America.You know, that kind of logic.
That's been something that's building in theRepublican Party for a long time. We
saw the Tea Party movement, whichwas you know, Sarah Palin, who
really was kind of a proto Trumpfigure, couldn't achieve the level of success
he did. But now, Idon't think one Romney victory in two thousand
(37:00):
and twelve where that to have happened, would have radically altered the course the
Republican Party is on. Might havechanged the timeline obviously, you know,
because Rombie would have been their nomineeagain in twenty sixteen. But you know,
this is a direction they've been headingin for a long time. Yeah,
Barack Obama has been in the newsa little bit lately, and I
just I wonder, because I'm aDoric, I wonder sometimes I agree with
(37:22):
you that the Republican Party was onthis path towards you know, kind of
a either a quasi fascist or straightup fascist type of party. But it
seemed like just having a black presidentwith such an accelerant to that for a
lot of folks. I wonder ifif if it just kind of moved up
the timeline, like twenty twenty fiveyears or so. But it's I don't
know, if it's interesting to thinkabout. Yeah, yeah, there's certainly
(37:45):
a streak of nativism in the kindof politics that you know, are central
to what the Republicans do. Nowthat Obama really made it easy to bring
that stuff to the forefront, youknow, just be by nature of who
he is, just by nature ofhis name. You know, it served
as this sort of red meats forpeople who find that kind of politics appealing.
(38:05):
You know, the idea that aman who was born in Hawaii and
lived his entire life all you know, almost his entire life in the United
States was somehow like a foreign usurper. You know, you couldn't have done
that with Hillary Clinton. There wouldhave been other hysteria though. If Hillary
Clinton had won that election set ofBarack Obama, they simply would have taken
the right wing noise machine and tweakedit to you know, That's one thing
(38:28):
Democrats, I think are really slowto understand that there is no appeasing this
thing. Whatever you do, it'sgoing to do what it does, which
is to come up with some sortof hysteria and conspiracy theories and outrage fuel.
And there's no Democrat that you cannominate anywhere who's going to appease that
thing for sure, before let yougo ed And speaking of hysteria, how
(38:52):
long of a shelf life do youthink this gay transpantic has that the it's
lasted a lot longer than I thoughtit would. Amost amongst Republican voters and
right lating folks are it seems tohave seeped in a little bit just to
the general like not care about politicsas much as you and I seem to
(39:12):
public as well. How much ofa shelf life do you think this has
before it runs its course as thegay marriage panicked did about twenty fifty twenty
years ago. It's not going togo away. But I think it's important
to note the disparity between the kindof reactions you get from it on the
right, which are magnified in onlinespaces and on social media. You actually
(39:34):
look at polling about these issues,people A are not that concerned with it.
It's not consuming their lives, andB majorities of people are actually supportive
of the position opposite of what culturewarriors are trying to push. So my
view of that issue is it's anextraordinarily big deal to a subset of the
voting public, But it shouldn't bemistaken just because there's so much noise and
(39:59):
hysteria about in the media and online. We shouldn't make that mistake where we
assume therefore must be a majority position. You know, Pamela Paul of,
you know the New York Times mustbe having her her finger on the pulse
of America. It's not. It'san issue that's a deep concern to them
because it draws readership. It givesthem a built in controversial frame to craft
(40:20):
a story around. But no,it's not going to go away. But
bear in mind what it is whenyou think about whether or not it's going
away. Yeah, it's I thinkit could be tough for my daughter's gain
has a lot of trans friends,so sometimes it could be hard for me
to keep the perspective, you know, when you know someone that's trans and
as you know, has to dealwith this sort of stuff. But yeah,
I think you're right big picture,It's it's not something most Americans they're
(40:42):
like, yeah, just let peoplelive how they want to live. But
it can be tough to get through, right, Absolutely, No. You
know, the people who are directlyimpacted by this kind of rhetoric, obviously
it's making their life a living hellin a lot of ways that I try
to bear in mind that if wewalked around you know, any city you
choose to name, and randomlyak accostedpeople and ask them what they're thinking about
(41:04):
and what's important to them and whatworries them. I wonder how often that
would really come up as an issueto anyone who isn't writing for The Atlantic,
you know. Indeed, the bookis kaok neutral How the Democrats lost
their soul in the Center. Checkout Ed Burmilla on Twitter. Also check
out his Patreon his podcast All theStuff Ed Does. I'm a huge fan
of it. You should be too, Ed. Thanks for being on overtime
(41:25):
today. Thank you very much forhaving me. I appreciate it. Welcome
back to overtime. As always,we're running out a show in the final
segment by thanks to my guest DavidRothamdefector dot com. You can find him
on Twitter at David Jay Roth.Ed Burmilla of course find him on Twitter
at Ed Burmilla. He's on Patreon, I think if you look up Jim
(41:47):
and Tacos or Ed Burmilla or Massfor Shuttings. That's the name of his
podcast, Mass for shut Ins.All his stuff's great, All roth stuff
great, very lucky. These guystake time to come on the program,
and I'm very appreciative of that.Hope your holiday weekends good. By the
time you hear this, I willeither be on the boat to Long Island
or on my way to Long Island. I don't know. I plan on
(42:08):
drinking my body weight in yngling,sitting by my brother in law's pool because
America Baby or something like that.But we will be back with some fresh
content next week. But we gotfor that, I don't know, because
I've headed to Indianapolis for an entireweek, which is a whole different story
in and of itself. Maybe we'llrecord some stuff from Indianapolis and get it
onto the show because through the miracleof technology, we can do that.
(42:30):
But that is going to wrap itup. Remember, as always, kids,
hippies are bad people pretending to begood. Punks are good people pretending
to be bad. I'll see younext week. The Room
Welcome to Overtime. The only radioshow to win six International League batting titles,
took place between nineteen sixty seven andin nineteen seventy three. Look it
up, it's a fact. I'myour host, Justin mcconsack. On today's
program, We're gonna hop right intoit because they've got two fantastic guests,
David Rotha Defector and Ed Burmilla,who's got a well, I guess it's
not a new book out putting.He's got a book out. We talk
(00:29):
about all sorts of other stuff.We're gonna hop right into the show because
the interviews were so good and tookup so much time that I don't have
any time to waste, just likelast week, So let's get right into
it with David Roth of Defector dotCom. Kind of have to join us
here on Overtime from Defector dot com, the Distraction Podcast and the It's Christmastown
(00:50):
podcast, where David Roth, Iguess I should finish introducing him, watches
Hallmark movies and then breaks him downin a manner so thorough. I kind
of fear for your safety sometimes.Raf No, that's fair, that's a
reasonable concern, and I want youto know that it's shared. I don't
plan on altering my behavior at thistime, but you're definitely right to worry
(01:15):
about it. This was like abig week. This is the first time
I mentioned to people. I've beendoing the Hallmark podcast for like three years,
right, but I mentioned on theDistraction last week that I did it
exists, and I think there's alot of people out there that like,
if they knew, they knew.But then people that just listen to like
Me and Drew say peepee and poopooback and forth to each other and talk
about football, like might not haveknown that I had this other secret online
(01:37):
life, and now they know,So I gotta deal with that. I
had mentioned it to you that Ihad heard clips of it, and this
was the first time I listened toan entire episode start to finish, Because
there's a I don't know if youhave this in your podcast listening life,
but I have, like this,this mafia that only exists in my own
head of people whose podcasts I enjoythat in this scenario, they all love
(01:59):
interacting with each other. And inthis case, you have one of those
people on Ryan Nanny of the Shutdownfullcast and I was like, oh,
well, I have I absolutely haveto listen, because you know, the
five families are getting together. Whywouldn't I listen. I love the idea
of that. I mean, thereis there's probably some truth to it.
I don't think I get invited tomost of those parties. Ryan right now
is in this weird life stage wherehe can't due to some choices that he
(02:20):
made. I don't know if thiswill turn into a book for him or
whatever. He just doesn't say noto any podcast that asks him on right,
which makes it seem, you know, less prestigious. Maybe that we
were able to get him. ButI used to work with him several jobs
ago, and he's brilliant and itwas great to have him on, and
I hadn't actually talked it. Thelast time I talked to him in real
life was the day before the SuperBowl that was played in Minneapolis. I
(02:46):
don't remember which one that was.The Eagles won it, but it was.
I think I've blanked that one outof my memory, but go on.
Yeah, So I was there formy old job that's been I've been
doing video stuff. But then Iwas flying home and Ryan, I guess,
was probably there with sp Nation andwas also flying home, and I
thought I saw him in the airport, but I wasn't sure if it was
(03:07):
and I sent him a message onTwitter where I was like, I think
that Phil Sims is sitting across fromme. Is Phil Sims sitting near you?
And that was how I found outthat it was him. He was
like, yeah, that's definitely PhilSimms, because he was on the phone
having a Phil Simsy type conversation inthe airport, and we were like,
oh, neat all right, Andthen we went over and said all to
each other, I don't like goingfor two here. I just don't like
it. The other thing that wasgreat about that trip, Weirdly, that
(03:31):
same flight back, I was onthe airplane with the Broadway star Tova filled
Shoe, who was also in acrazy ex girlfriend. She's just like a
recognizable, you know, sort ofbrassy Broadway character type. So I had
Phil Simms basically talking about like footballand going for two like into the phone,
and then over my shoulder, Ihad a lady whose voice I knew
(03:53):
from, you know, probably havingseen her in Fiddler on the Roof or
something when I was a kid,just talking to probably her agent about like
her experience in Minneapolis and being likethe food is surprisingly fine. That was
just like what's going on here?Man? It was It almost felt glamorous
to me because I don't get totravel for work very much already around notable
(04:14):
people, and then I didn't getto travel at all for like three years,
right, I guess I had to. I had to bank that experience
hang onto it. So my oneof my first travel things after COVID,
well, it was still kind ofCOVID was happening, that we were in
the stage where it was not happeningenough so we could travel, and while
we were also so sick of it, we pretended it was not quite as
(04:34):
bad as it was. I inNew Hampshire there's like four broadcasters, So
I won the Sportscaster the Year forNew Hampshire award like two years in a
row. So the twenty backs HeatAward I didn't get until twenty twenty one.
They had it. They have theseawards in North Carolina. I think
they're going on this this weekend orlast weekend anyway for this year. So
Jim Natz was going into the Hallof Fame that year, and so like
(04:56):
the Hall of Fame presenter gives youyour award, so you walk on the
stage. He goes, hello,I'm Jim Nance, and you know,
I'm like, hey, I'm aguy that is from New Hampshire and I
thought about Techno Bowl a lot lastweek, so we're the same. But
then but the story a Hall ofFamers, that's right, just lapping a
hello friends and just keeping it moving. Just a couple of guys with trophies.
(05:17):
But then so there's an after partyafterwards for everybody, well I say
everybody. It's all like the NewHampshire guy, the Wyoming guy, Bob
Bryan, m Jean decker Off makesan appearance. But all the small state
people get absolutely smashed. So youhave to walk from one building to another
to get to it. And Ijust happened to be walking in the same
group of people as Jim Nance andas as a Hall of Famer he got.
(05:39):
They they give these nice um Louisvilleslugger like silver Louisville sluggers to the
Hall of Famers. So Jim Nanceand I and a few people are walking
across the street and there's there's ahomeless guy that recognizes Jim Nance who's holding
a bat right and asks, youknow, asks all of us for,
you know, for for money,and I didn't haven't I usually give homeless
people money, have any And he'slike it would be too much beeping to
(06:02):
beep out, but he's like,yeah, Jim Nance, I know you
got money. So now, wheneveranybody asked me about Jim Nance, I'm
like, yeah, we walk bya homeless guy together, and Jim Nance
wouldn't him any money? Get abat was very threatening. So Jim Nance
to me. The one Jim Nancestory that I liked. Are you familiar
with his his toast verse breakfast?Yeah? All right? Good at the
(06:24):
breakfast order good. I feel likethis is one that I love scandalizing people
with for our listeners benefit of well, I know that Justin knows what I'm
talking about. Jim Nance orders histoast destroyed. Everywhere he goes, he
orders it burnt on purpose. Hehas a picture, carries a picture of
a burnt piece of toast in hiswallet that he shows to servers and is
(06:45):
like, make it like this becausethat's not even the weirdest thing about Jim
Nance. I think the tie thingis much weirder. I do know he
do you don't know the tie,you must know the tie thing. Right
where he gets at the at theend of the NCAA tournament, he gives
his tie to the player he thoughtwas his favorite player at all. He
gives Yeah, that's much weirder thanthe toast thing. Right. That is
(07:09):
extremely I mean it's presumptuous to theidea of sort of like young man,
like before you go on the NBAfame and riches or you know whatever,
a ten year career in Turkey,grease and the levant, I want you
to have this tie as a tokenof my admiration. I got this at
Coles. It was fifty percent off, Like this is a street value of
(07:30):
forty eight dollars and ninety nine cents, and I think you've earned it.
Oh good, great. I can'tbelieve you hadn't heard that, because this
is great. This is I filethat away. I have a real um,
you know, sort of it's therein my head in place of all
the interesting stuff I read in college, which is not a great deal for
me, but all the weird factoidsabout people that talk about sports on TV
(07:51):
that I like. That is Idon't know, like a third of my
ram storage in my brain is justknowing that like I and Eagle has never
had soup like these all these athing the thing that is a hate soup.
Michael kay Uh doesn't has like neverhad a condiment or hadn't had one
until he had to eat like aketchup packet on the radio and he was
(08:16):
like gagging and unable to stomach it. Like all these guys somehow are able
to get not just well into adulthood, but like own homes, make car
payments, probably on time, wildlysuccessful in the people were talking about,
right, but like somehow al Michael'shas done all that while claiming never to
have eaten a vegetable in his lifethat I did know. He's like,
(08:37):
yeah, I just don't eat vegetables. Play by play guys, and I
guess I can let myself in.This are the weirdest people on earth.
Yes, can you explain? Canyou give me some insight into like what
is there a part of the brainthat you have It's just less pronounced that
makes it so that you're like Iwon't even look at a carrot. I
don't make enemies, I think becauseI'm so much less successful. And the
(08:58):
people were talking about I don't havethose idiosyncrasies. Um, what I think
the weirdest thing I have is Idon't like any hot liquids. Like I
don't like coffee. I don't likeuh, I don't like hot coco,
I don't like I don't I've hadthese things. I just really don't like
them at all. I don't liketea. But it's not like I've never
had like a marshmallow or something likethat, you know, because that's the
(09:20):
thing, it's never had it thingthat sort of when you're going back,
because I've had all kinds of thisstuff. I don't like. You know
that I don't seek out or whatever. But it's not the sort of thing,
well I can just tell you,like I think that like zucchini's pretty
mid It's not the sort of thingwhere I was like, I've never even
heard of it. No one showedit to me, and if they did
show it to me, I pretendedit with something else like that is I
guess that's the thing that separates mefrom the guys getting the whatever, the
(09:43):
Silver Slugger Awards at the National Associationof Broadcasters, that's right, Yes,
the the NSMA Awards, which areevery year and wherever in North Carolina.
The Dave Goran's gonna hate me fornot remembering where they are. But anyway,
we're talking about David Rotha Defector andI actually had something I wanted to
ask you about. But talking aboutrandom things is so much more fun that
I really ate up half our segment. No, Look, did you know
that he's never heard soup? Theseare much more useful things for people to
(10:07):
know. I feel like, canyou say so any other thing we could
talk about? Um? No,I was going to ask him what the
live golf thing, because um,I know you're not like a huge golf
fan, but I feel like youlike talking about this live golf thing,
and I'm just talking about it.I'm fascinated by it because we're gonna get
to the point where all I mean, if we're not there yet, we're
gonna get there soon. We're allsports are owned by the grossest possible uh
(10:31):
entities that there are, And thisis I think this is just like this,
this has gone from I can kindof ignore it to oh, I
think I think now we're at ohstage. And now it just came up
that Cutter is buying a piece ofthe Washington Wizards and the Washington Nationals or
the Commanders or I get, butthat it's that sort of sports group that
ted Leonsis has. So it's Wizardsmostly, but I think also the Caps
(10:54):
and the Mystics are part of it. The Yes, I think that it's
gonna be strange in like five yearsto look back at a time when sovereign
wealth funds didn't have anything to dowith American sports. And it is weird
already that given how shameless American professionalsports are and how sort of low the
(11:16):
bar to entry. I mean,it's like Daniel Snyder kept that team until
such time as he was able tosell it for billions of dollars, Like
there's no limit to how bad youcan be and still be permitted to own
an American sports team. And yetthis one little distinction for the longest time
made it so that only American badguys, and not the sovereign wealth funds
of murderous Petro States, were incharge of our stuff. The thing that
(11:41):
I was thinking about, and Italked about this a little bit on the
American Presstige podcast a couple of weeksago, that there's teams in American Pro
sports that at this point, ifyou're just going by their valuation, are
basically too expensive for any individual tobuy that like the Los Angeles Lakers are
the New York Knicks for instance,or the sort of things where there's not
(12:01):
a person that has sufficient cash onhand to pay for what those teams are
are worth, you know, notionally, and of course that's all it's a
it's a bubble, and you know, there's no way of saying that,
Like you can't like look at theLakers and be like, yeah, they're
definitely worth whatever, thirty billion dollarsor something crazy like that. But we
do know who has that kind ofmoney. We do know that the Saudi
(12:24):
Sovereign Wealth Fund has for instances,my colleague Chris Thompson's pointed out forty seven
billion dollars where to be in cash, it seems like a cash that's there's
other assets underlying it. That's thewalking around money. And so the idea
of like splashing out a couple billionon Live and then you know, or
on the PGA, you know,and sort of like buying their way like
(12:46):
buying pro golf, right, it'snot really something that they would need to
worry about. And this is somethingthat again Chris I think has made some
really good if sort of eddling pointsto this effect at Defector that I'm tempted
always with stuff like this to lookat something like Live as a gambit and
(13:09):
try to figure out what are they? What are they after? And right,
you know, the way that itgets written about here is maybe because
of the fact that we tend tosee America as sort of the protagonist of
reality in the center of the world, is like, what are they What
are they trying to do? Arethey sports washing their reputation? Are they
trying to like make Americans think morefondly of them? Are they trying to
sort of like get into the culturein some sort of positive way. Part
(13:31):
two with Damon Roth of Defector dotCom is coming up next. This is
overtime. Keep it here right,here's part two when Damon Roth of Defector
dot Com. I think it's justgetting a seat at the table, right,
like, oh, like you youown all these things yours because when
the when the World Cup was inCutter last year, you know, that
(13:54):
was an attempt at sports washing,but it had the opposite effect. I
think a lot of people didn't realizeCutter was so gross. Until the World
Cup was there and the little WorldCup icon, people were like, oh,
that's the ghost of all the migrantworkers that making these stadiums, and
that was that. I Cutter's awful. That was their gambit. Although it's
I think the Cutter case is reallyinteresting and I think it's it's telling here.
I was really into covering that whenwhen I was at Espionation with Ryan
(14:16):
and I went to Cutter in liketwenty fourteen, I guess, oh,
wow, or twenty fifteen, andI've got to see, you know,
the very early construction. And Isaw the video that they made that they
presented to FIFA, and like,obviously everybody knows they got the World Cup
because they bribed, which is that'show every World Cup gets awarded. It's
not like Cutters somehow a bad youknow, uniquely bad actor there. But
(14:39):
what was striking about that video tome, beyond the fact that they put
a lot of work into producing it, Like if you saw that, like
seeing it relative to like what Australiaproduced or what the United States produced those
I mean, it was more ofa like a want to have, whereas
Cutter clearly saw it as a youknow, have to have sort of scenario.
But the video's tone was very positive. It was very like, let
(15:01):
us all sit together at the tableof international sport and enjoy together this universal
experience. And then when you getthere, yeah, you find out more
that Cutter is like you can't havebeer, don't hold hands, do not
try us on this. We're veryserious about it, right, And that
I think with Saudi Arabia that likeif there was an attempt, I think
(15:24):
we're sports watching sort of where itmade sense, you know, ten years
ago as a sort of up sortof a public relations exercise or a soft
power gambit to sort of like includeyourself in this community of nations that are
like if not normal. Then likewhen you think of Cutter, now you
think of the World Cup, right. It's just that you don't only think
(15:46):
of the World Cup, as yousaid, you think of the fact that
thousands of Bangladeshi men died needlessly inbuilding these stadiums which are now you know,
just gonna be sitting there be usedagain, right, or at the
very least will never be filled thecapacity again. Sure, And that is
you know, sort of the otherside of it where I think with the
saudis my understanding of what they wereafter with Live and to a certain extent,
(16:10):
what they're after with the PGA,is that they're they're skipping the part
where they pretend to be coming onfriendly. That the goal there is just
basically to say, we have somuch money that you're gonna have to deal
with us, You're gonna have todo or at least that our preferences will
win out because we kind of affordto pay for it. What Chris's point
(16:30):
has been, and I've been thinkingabout this a lot since he made it,
is that maybe they just like golf. There doesn't necessarily need to be
a like that. By assuming thatthere's some sort of geopolitical calculus there were,
Yeah, you had forty seven billiondollars in cash, and you could
(16:51):
spend you know whatever, less thana twentieth of that buying golf, all
of golf. You might do itif you liked golf enough. You know
what, I need a guy namedBrooks in my life. That's what several
guys with the Brooks kind of aura, Yeah, we gotta we gotta get
a Keegan, We need a Brooks. I needed somebody with Patrick read vibes,
preferably Patrick Reid himself. And itis with all of that, it
(17:15):
is, and I think that thisis where it's gonna go. I mean,
it just depends what they're interested in. Like if you look at like
the stuff that they've spent money on, it might be that the Saudi royal
family doesn't care about the NBA andtherefore, uh, you know, American
billionaires will continue to own NBA teams. But you can see it in terms
of what they've spent money on.World Wrestling Entertainment could not air another show
(17:37):
on television the entire rest of thisyear, and the money they've made off
to the shows the Saudi Arabia wouldput him in a profit. Here's what
I was going to ask, becauseI know I don't I don't know if
we've ever talked about this, butbefore I got into like radio and all
that, I was, I wasa professional wrestler, like at the double
A baseball level of professional wrestling,right, Yes, so I know a
few guys that are in the WWEand one of the shows they had over
there, there was a dispute VinceMcMahon over how much the Saudis were supposed
(18:02):
to pay Vince mcmah these are allpage shows, as you reference. And
so they kept the plane full ofwrestlers on the tarmac for about eight hours
and I messaged for one of theguys I know, and I won't say
which one, but I was like, are you a hostage right now?
And he's like, I'm not sure, Like we're just trying to get out
of here. And so that wenta little bit under the radar. And
it wasn't the last year, butthe year before when they had a Formula
(18:23):
one race there, there was amissile attack by rebels on one of the
oil depots, like about three milesfrom the track, and all the all
the all the Formula one drivers werelike, we'd rather not race if there's
gonna be a rebel attack, andSaudi said, yeah, that's fine.
Good luck getting out of here ifthat's what you want to do. Though,
So what's what's the event going tobe with when that goes too far
(18:44):
for the American sports fan, likeif they keep like, I don't know,
like John Daly's John Daly speaks outagainst I don't know, just pulling
his name out of the hat.John Daly somehow is a little too pro
lgbd LBTQ and suddenly John Daly's missinga ring finger is what? What?
What is it going to be?This is why it's a good bet to
go with golf, you know that. I think that we've all so if
(19:06):
Live is like worth anything as becauseI think at this point if that merger
is allowed to go forward, andit's not to me one hundred percent clear
that it's going to, but ifit does, it's going to be like
the thing that Live will have beengood for is proving, uh, what
you can get for a few milliondollars that you know, there's guys that
like Rory McElroy's been very out aboutlike he hates Live. He hates what
(19:29):
it stands for whatever, But that'snot I don't think like a principled human
rights stands. He just thinks itsucks, right, and that's okay.
I mean, and it kind ofdoes like it actually super sucks as far
as I can tell that, likeevery note into the the whatever Phil Nicholson's
stupid team is, the teams areamazing. Chris went to an event at
the Trump Course in Bedminster, NewJersey, and it sounded like the just
(19:52):
carnival of the damned. You know, like nobody's there. The people that
are there are walleyed drunk and don'tknow who anybody is. And at the
whole the whole time you're there,you're like faintly aware of a chain smoker
song playing over a loudspeaker from veryfar away. It's just a very dark
mission of But I guess that's like, you know, again, you can't
(20:15):
account for what the Saudis are into. I think that to a certain extent,
they were trying to like go foryou know, this isn't your dad's
golf. Like it's extreme. It'seighteen rounds shorter, you know, eighteen
hold shorter. But I don't thinkthat I didn't really see a whole lot
of work put into that. Ithink it was just kind of like seeing,
you know, what would stick whenyou threw it at the wall.
(20:37):
Right now, they know that,Like it's basically like you can get whatever
you want for the money, theother stuff nobody cares about, and you
can lose it. We don't haveto make this stupid off licensee of Genesis
game of Golf. We can justgo buy the real golf. Yeah you
don't. Nobody can follow his powerdrive necessary. It's funny challenge yet good
grief. David Roth is with usfrom defector dot com before before letting rough
(21:00):
um on a scale of one toten, one being pretty chill, ten
being freaking out. Where where isyour Mets fandom right now? Dark?
It's like a it's not a number. I mean. The thing for me
is, like we were talking aboutthis before we started recording. So you're
a Socks fan. You're getting bythe numbers more or less the Socks season
(21:21):
that you hope before. Yeah,probably, But I mean it's like you
may have hoped for more, butthey haven't been worse, you know.
And there's stuff that's cool, youknow, like Jarondran fixed his swing and
yeah, yeah, swept the Yankees. Yeah, and like so there's stuff
you can hang your hat on,but it was it. You know,
they're in a process, I guess, and they're not at the end of
(21:41):
it yet, and so you knowyou're sort of gonna wind up with a
team that probably more or less deliverson expectations. Expectations are low and they're
meeting them. Yeah. Right,So the Mets one one hundred one games
last year. They also sucked allthe way down the stretch and left kind
of a bad vibe. I mean, you remember the game that they lost
where they were trying to say thatJoe Musgrove's ears were too red for it
(22:03):
to be natural. They went outin a very mess way, but they
more or less ran it back.They you know, added a Hall of
Famer to the rotation. I couldtell you as a guy that is a
you know, a fan of theteam and also who follows baseball pretty closely,
like there was definitely reason for concernto look at their roster before the
year. But they have a bunchof guys that are you know, delivering
(22:26):
the tenth percentile outcome, you know, and we played based on a half
a season. At this point,they're bad. Like not to say that
they're not gonna get better or whatever, but this is the one thing that
I thought, you know, Ifigured, you know, you pay for
a team that's like a hundred winson paper, and the worst you're gonna
get is eighty five if everything goeswrong. And right now they're on a
(22:48):
seventy eight win pace, and Ithink that they look like a team that
would struggle to win seventy eight gamesmost nights and I you know, I
could tell you how it's going tohappen or how it's happening, but it
would drive me insane, would turnthe radio off. It is really tough.
It is a like as annoying aMets season as I can remember so
(23:11):
far. And that is really reallysaying quite a bit. As someone who
traffics in what Bemani Jones likes tocall recreational sadness, I have a curiosity
about the bets, but I'm notsure even I dislike myself enough to hop
on the train. But I doIsssue luck with all that. Hey,
thanks man, I appreciate it.The good news is there's a lot of
baseball teams this year that like,if I decide to make a strategic pivot
(23:33):
to just watching the Cincinnati Reds forsix weeks, I think that I will
see notable dividends in my mood.There's a lot of cool teams out there
that are like kind of random popup fun teams. Yea, and the
key I think, and then thisis me trying to speak it into existence
here on the radio, is lettingyourself be liberated to make that choice,
(23:55):
as opposed to being stuck watching CarlosCarrasco throw one hundred and five pitches over
four in the third innings for theentire rest of the summer. For your
mind and your ass will follow Rothright, So true, that's a really
profound point. Did you make thatup? I'm going to take credit for
because I don't think anybody remembers theoriginal quote. But David Roths defector dot
com. Find his podcast The Distractionwith Drew McGarry and also it's Christmas Town
(24:17):
on your favorite podcasting app. Thanksfor having on the show. Appreciate it.
Thanks for having me due, appreciateit. Joining us here on overtime
Edward Miller, who's a professor?Are you still a professor? Or am
I just going way back at yourhistory here? Oh, that's way back.
(24:37):
Twenty nineteen was the end of myteaching career in the beginning of my
career as a writer. So it'sbeen an interesting transition, but one that
I'm glad that I made. Rightin twenty nineteen somehow feels like fifty years
ago and also five minutes ago,which is at the same time, right
time was compressed, especially during thepandemic, It's hard to tell if something
was two weeks ago or two yearsago. Well, this is the worst
(25:00):
intro ever. But Edward mill isjoining us the program, and I'm glad
you could be a part of theshow. I really had to be here.
I asked a few weeks here tocome on. You had you a
mini cast about what are all theseGOP candidates doing, which I do want
to get to. But we're recordingthis on Tuesday, and the audio of
Trump uh comically committing crimes was releasedtoday. It was even in my imagination
(25:26):
I pictured Donald Trump stumbling around witha folder that says twenty to life for
looking at these if you're not supposedto, and handing them out to random
people at his office. And it'snot far off from that. As we
the audio has kind of realized.On a scale of you're a student of
historical stupidity, I would say,how dumb is this? On a scale
(25:48):
of one to ten, ed Iwould say, he's Trump is kind of
every defense attorney's worst nightmare, theclient who not only you know, can't
stop committing crimes, but can't shutup. That's how you dig yourself into
a hole. And the whole thingreminds me I'm you know, I'm a
Chicagoan by by you know, temperament, and most of my life I spent
living there. Are ex governor ofIllinois Rob Lakoyevich ended up going to prison,
(26:14):
and he was caught in a verysimilar on tape situation where you know,
the thing that's incredible about it isthat these people are committing crimes and
just there's a total absence of subtletyor subterfuge or anything about it. You
know, Plogoyevich didn't say to hisassistance, you know, hey, did
you take care of that thing?Wink wink that we talked about. He's
just like, so I want tobribe who's offering us the biggest bribe for
(26:36):
this Senate position? You know?And Trump is sort of on the same
level of like there's just a completeabsence of any sort of attempt to be
subtle or anything like that. He'sjust, yeah, here's the crimes I
committed. Who wants to commit somecrimes with me? You know, It's
it's cartoonish how little they have asense of you know, you know,
the just a sense of invulnerability thatthey have that they don't have to even
(27:00):
try to make some sort of attemptto, you know, put a smoke
screen over what they're doing. They'rereally I wouldn't even say supervillains, because
super villains display like some sort ofsmarts and wittedness. They're more like Simpson's
villain caricatures at this point, aren'tthey. Yeah, the thing with Trump
is just a lifetime of getting awaywith everything has left him. You know,
(27:22):
people always try to psychoanalyze the guy. What is Why does he do
this? Why would he be soexplicit about it? If you were Donald
Trump at this point in your life, you might be that explicit about committing
crimes too. You know, you'vecommitted a thousand of them over half a
century, and nothing has ever happenedto this guy. So you could see
the psychology of why you just getused to it? Why cover it up
(27:45):
when you can just go to yourgolf club or your restaurant or whatever and
just brag to people, Hey,look what I took from the White House.
You know I'm not supposed to havethis isn't that funny? You might
be like that too, a littletired of being so careful? Why don't
just different? I think Legoievich wason celebrity apprentice too. If I'm not
mistake, it was after you getout of jail? Was that? I
(28:06):
think that was a Legoievich has donea lot of stuff like that. He's
on several of those services where youcan like pay a former celebrity to send
your dad a birthday video or somethinglike that. Any of it escapes me
right now, but those those sortsof things he's really leaned into just being
a punchline. And why is thisguy famous kind of person? But yeah,
(28:27):
indeed, and if to be clear, if you have not heard the
Trump audio at this point, andfirst of all, what are you doing?
Second of all, there's a pointwhere he literally says, uh,
yeah, you wouldn't believe it.Of course it's this is very top secret.
But take a look at it.Those are those are lines that he
really said. And the debate that'sraging now is not whether or not he's
(28:48):
guilty of this crimes. I thinkwe had a few polycide professors who are
very normally very conservative with their opinionslike this, but one of them said
open and shut, but it wasthe term. But the question is is
he going to serve any time?I think the consensus is probably not.
Yeah, I would agree with that, but we've seen other instances of the
person in Kansas City with almost theexact same scenario is going to do some
(29:14):
actual federal prison time. But wedon't think, I don't think we think
Trump's going to go to an actualprison for this, right. Yeah,
you know, all along I've beenhesitant myself think he's ever going to get
convicted of anything with this situation.Now He's made it so explicit and so
obvious that I'm not certain. Iwouldn't bet my life savings on it at
(29:34):
this point, but I think hemight actually get convicted, which six months
ago I would have told you,no, there's no chance that Jerry's actually
going to convict this guy, buthe has made it difficult not to convict
him at this point. People liketo think of him playing six dimensional chests
or whatever and think, well,maybe this was all part of his grand
(29:55):
strategy to get convicted and then usethat as a way to increase it.
I don't think he thinks that thatstrategically. I don't think his mind works
like that. I think he hasa very little object permanence. I don't
think he's ever thought about or givengreat consideration to anything he's ever said in
his life, and he's certainly notgoing to start now. So the idea
that this is part of some granddesign might help someone write an interesting article
(30:19):
for Harper's or something, you know, in the next couple of months.
But I don't think there's any substanceto that. This is just how he
is. Puts no thought into anything. Where's being with Edward Miller, the
author of Chaotic Neutral How the DemocratsLost their Soul in the Center. You
can also subscribe to his Patreon.Just look for master shut In's on Patreon
(30:40):
or is it I'm sorry, isJina Tacos or master shut Is? Lets
should know this by now so manydifferent online aliases. Yeah, I'm trying
to at this point in my lifejust go by my actual name, which
which seems like the easiest way todo it. But for a while there
there was at least a sense oftrying to maintain some distance between my professional
with my online lives. But Idon't have to anymore, so it's great,
(31:03):
that's right. Yeah, it's Edunleashed, which sounds like an ed
hardy type of things, So Iwon't describe that to you, So you
would you would have done a podcastnot that long ago about basically the premises
what are all these people doing?Because to kind of leap frog off the
the former president will be convicted ofcrimes. He's also probably going to win
the Republican nomination borrowing some sort ofmother nature event. I think. I
(31:26):
don't think even if even if he'ssitting in a jail cell, I can
still do a Buddy Sancy and winthe nomination from prison. Uh, funny
Stancy New England legend, even thoughin New Hampshire, you know, Ryland's
not that far away. But so, what are well? In your opinion,
what are all these people doing?And I, you know, we
have uh, you know, WillHurd is coming into the studio, we
(31:47):
do the morning show. I don'tthink he has a chance to crack one
percent. You know, Perry Johnsonis spending ungodly amounts of money. He's
got a bust in three camera peoplethat he brings into the studio. What
are they doing yet? Well,it seems to me that the you know,
the narrative in twenty twenty two wasthe next presidential nomination for the Republican
(32:10):
Party is going to be dominated bythis Trump versus de Santis battle, sort
of a Republican version of what theDemocrats did in twenty sixteen, where all
of the energy in the party wassubsumed into two candidates. Okay, and
Dasantis's launch has been a comedic disaster. I mean, he has absolutely face
planted. I've never seen a humanbeing with less charisma than Ronda Santis.
(32:35):
And I think a lot of otherRepublicans looked at this opportunity and said,
well, DeSantis is flailing around.His campaign is obviously going nowhere. Trump
or no Trump, something could alwayshappen to Donald Trump to take him out
of the picture. And in thatcase, if DeSantis is not presenting himself
as a viable candidate, someone hasto win the nomination. So you have
(32:57):
a lot of these smaller minor candidateshim Scott's and Nicky Hayley's and things like
that, and they're thinking, it'snot hard for me to raise money.
I can form a campaign committee,I can spend somebody else's money for a
year running for president. And whoknows, Trump goes to jail, Trump
keels over, Trump decides, youknow, to flee the country and not
(33:19):
be you know, run for presidentanymore. In that case, there has
to be somebody ready there to winthe nomination. I think that's the scenario
they're envisioning. DeSantis takes himself outof the picture by being such a just
weird human being that you know,an unlikable human being. Trump is somehow
taken out of the equation, andthen you're left with a field that's essentially
(33:39):
wide open. And at that point, flip a coin, you know,
any of those people could be asyou know, you could make a case
for Chris Christie as easily as youcould for Nicky Haley or whatever. But
it's all presupposing that something takes Trumpout of the picture. I don't think
any of them have any illusions aboutbeating him. Yeah, and I last
(34:00):
he talked about this with Dante Scala, who's a policy professor a period at
the University of New Hampshire, andhe suggested, perhaps some of them,
you know, not everyone that's running, some of them might want to be
Trump's vice president. My counter thatwas, well, Trump's last vice president
did everything Trump wanted him to doexcept for one little thing, and Trump
tried to have the guy lynched infront of the Capitol. So I don't
(34:20):
I don't know that that's a jobposition that has a lot of growth to
it. Now. I don't thinkTrump will select, you know, cabinet
positions from his primary competitors. Youknow, he is somebody who has his
own clique of hangers on. Hehas his own sense of people. He
thinks he can trust many of them. Of course he can't actually trust,
but he thinks he can. Andyou know, the idea that you know,
(34:43):
you know, he's going to runagainst somebody who's going to be harshly
critical of him during the primary raceand then choose that person to be his
vice president it seems very far fetchedme. That's that's a good sort of
traditional political analysis. But Trump inmany ways does not fit into the mold
of you know, try to understand. For example, you know how Bob
Dole, you know, picked hisvice presidential running mate in nineteen ninety six,
(35:06):
who was one of his fearercist competitors. Trump just operates on a different
plane that has nothing to do withthat sort of very rational and reasoned analysis.
But he's not a rational and reasonperson, Ladies and gentlemen, Vice
President Kerry Lake is coming to thelectun We're talking with Ed bur Miller,
the author of Chiantic Neutral, howthe Democrats lost their soul in the center.
I wanted to run a counter likea counter factual by you, just
(35:28):
to see what you thought. You'rethe first person, and I'm gonna not
be the first person that's brought thisup, but you're the first person I've
asked about this. Do you thinkand I'm I'm pretty far to the left.
I get the sense you are aswell. Do you think folks on
the left would take the bargain thatMitt Romney defeats Barack Obama in twenty twelve
(35:49):
so that you then don't get ormaybe you get a lesser version of Donald
Trump and this, you know,this basically fascist wing of the Republican Party.
Would you would you, knowing whatyou know now, would you make
that trade? In hindsight, now, I'm not sure that the Republican Party
is able to get off that.You know, this path is something that
they've been on since the early nineties, and it took him a while to
(36:12):
get there. But after the GeorgeW. Bush presidency, I think exposed
a lot of the hollowness in therhetoric on the right about you know,
worshiping the Constitution and the rule oflaw and everything they've been drifting away from,
as conservative parties around the world havebeen kind of drifting away from.
Well, maybe democracy and elections aren'treally all that important. You know,
(36:36):
what's really important is that the rightpeople eventually end up in charge of the
country, representing the real America.You know, that kind of logic.
That's been something that's building in theRepublican Party for a long time. We
saw the Tea Party movement, whichwas you know, Sarah Palin, who
really was kind of a proto Trumpfigure, couldn't achieve the level of success
he did. But now, Idon't think one Romney victory in two thousand
(37:00):
and twelve where that to have happened, would have radically altered the course the
Republican Party is on. Might havechanged the timeline obviously, you know,
because Rombie would have been their nomineeagain in twenty sixteen. But you know,
this is a direction they've been headingin for a long time. Yeah,
Barack Obama has been in the newsa little bit lately, and I
just I wonder, because I'm aDoric, I wonder sometimes I agree with
(37:22):
you that the Republican Party was onthis path towards you know, kind of
a either a quasi fascist or straightup fascist type of party. But it
seemed like just having a black presidentwith such an accelerant to that for a
lot of folks. I wonder ifif if it just kind of moved up
the timeline, like twenty twenty fiveyears or so. But it's I don't
know, if it's interesting to thinkabout. Yeah, yeah, there's certainly
(37:45):
a streak of nativism in the kindof politics that you know, are central
to what the Republicans do. Nowthat Obama really made it easy to bring
that stuff to the forefront, youknow, just be by nature of who
he is, just by nature ofhis name. You know, it served
as this sort of red meats forpeople who find that kind of politics appealing.
(38:05):
You know, the idea that aman who was born in Hawaii and
lived his entire life all you know, almost his entire life in the United
States was somehow like a foreign usurper. You know, you couldn't have done
that with Hillary Clinton. There wouldhave been other hysteria though. If Hillary
Clinton had won that election set ofBarack Obama, they simply would have taken
the right wing noise machine and tweakedit to you know, That's one thing
(38:28):
Democrats, I think are really slowto understand that there is no appeasing this
thing. Whatever you do, it'sgoing to do what it does, which
is to come up with some sortof hysteria and conspiracy theories and outrage fuel.
And there's no Democrat that you cannominate anywhere who's going to appease that
thing for sure, before let yougo ed And speaking of hysteria, how
(38:52):
long of a shelf life do youthink this gay transpantic has that the it's
lasted a lot longer than I thoughtit would. Amost amongst Republican voters and
right lating folks are it seems tohave seeped in a little bit just to
the general like not care about politicsas much as you and I seem to
(39:12):
public as well. How much ofa shelf life do you think this has
before it runs its course as thegay marriage panicked did about twenty fifty twenty
years ago. It's not going togo away. But I think it's important
to note the disparity between the kindof reactions you get from it on the
right, which are magnified in onlinespaces and on social media. You actually
(39:34):
look at polling about these issues,people A are not that concerned with it.
It's not consuming their lives, andB majorities of people are actually supportive
of the position opposite of what culturewarriors are trying to push. So my
view of that issue is it's anextraordinarily big deal to a subset of the
voting public, But it shouldn't bemistaken just because there's so much noise and
(39:59):
hysteria about in the media and online. We shouldn't make that mistake where we
assume therefore must be a majority position. You know, Pamela Paul of,
you know the New York Times mustbe having her her finger on the pulse
of America. It's not. It'san issue that's a deep concern to them
because it draws readership. It givesthem a built in controversial frame to craft
(40:20):
a story around. But no,it's not going to go away. But
bear in mind what it is whenyou think about whether or not it's going
away. Yeah, it's I thinkit could be tough for my daughter's gain
has a lot of trans friends,so sometimes it could be hard for me
to keep the perspective, you know, when you know someone that's trans and
as you know, has to dealwith this sort of stuff. But yeah,
I think you're right big picture,It's it's not something most Americans they're
(40:42):
like, yeah, just let peoplelive how they want to live. But
it can be tough to get through, right, Absolutely, No. You
know, the people who are directlyimpacted by this kind of rhetoric, obviously
it's making their life a living hellin a lot of ways that I try
to bear in mind that if wewalked around you know, any city you
choose to name, and randomlyak accostedpeople and ask them what they're thinking about
(41:04):
and what's important to them and whatworries them. I wonder how often that
would really come up as an issueto anyone who isn't writing for The Atlantic,
you know. Indeed, the bookis kaok neutral How the Democrats lost
their soul in the Center. Checkout Ed Burmilla on Twitter. Also check
out his Patreon his podcast All theStuff Ed Does. I'm a huge fan
of it. You should be too, Ed. Thanks for being on overtime
(41:25):
today. Thank you very much forhaving me. I appreciate it. Welcome
back to overtime. As always,we're running out a show in the final
segment by thanks to my guest DavidRothamdefector dot com. You can find him
on Twitter at David Jay Roth.Ed Burmilla of course find him on Twitter
at Ed Burmilla. He's on Patreon, I think if you look up Jim
(41:47):
and Tacos or Ed Burmilla or Massfor Shuttings. That's the name of his
podcast, Mass for shut Ins.All his stuff's great, All roth stuff
great, very lucky. These guystake time to come on the program,
and I'm very appreciative of that.Hope your holiday weekends good. By the
time you hear this, I willeither be on the boat to Long Island
or on my way to Long Island. I don't know. I plan on
(42:08):
drinking my body weight in yngling,sitting by my brother in law's pool because
America Baby or something like that.But we will be back with some fresh
content next week. But we gotfor that, I don't know, because
I've headed to Indianapolis for an entireweek, which is a whole different story
in and of itself. Maybe we'llrecord some stuff from Indianapolis and get it
onto the show because through the miracleof technology, we can do that.
(42:30):
But that is going to wrap itup. Remember, as always, kids,
hippies are bad people pretending to begood. Punks are good people pretending
to be bad. I'll see younext week. The Room
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