April 9, 2026 • 50 mins
John Ellis sits down with journalist John Heilemann for a sharp, fast-moving tour of a volatile geopolitical moment. They unpack a fragile Iran ceasefire, the limits of “madman theory” diplomacy, and the reputational damage to U.S. power abroad. The conversation widens to domestic fallout: Trump’s political erosion, GOP anxiety, and surprising Democratic gains in special elections. Along the way, they dissect elite decision-making, media narratives, and the vacuum of big ideas in American politics.
Hosted by John Ellis
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Hello and welcome back to the News Items Podcast.
I'm John Ellis.
I am the founder and editor oftwo Substack newsletters.
One is called News Items, theother is called Political News
Items.
You can find them both atnews-items.com.
We have a very special guesttoday, my friend John Heileman.
(00:20):
John is the best-selling authorof two great books about
American presidential politics.
The first entitled Game Change,which chronicled the 2008
presidential election.
The second, Double Down, whichchronicled the 2012 presidential
election.
I highly recommend both books.
I think Game Change became a HBOmovie or something, right?
SPEAKER_01 (00:44):
Most certainly did.
It won tons of Emmy Awards andGolemmy Awards.
And a Peabody and all kinds ofthings, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (00:50):
Well, I have to finish your intro, which is uh
John is also a former staffwriter for New York magazine,
for Wired magazine, the NewYorker magazine, and The
Economist.
He's also a national affairsanalyst for NBC News and MSNBC,
and the creator and host of theEmmy-nominated docuseries, The
Circus.
(01:10):
John offers political reportingand analysis in the Sunday
edition of Tuck's The Best andthe Brightest.
John, thank you very much forjoining me today.
SPEAKER_01 (01:20):
And this is a great place to be.
And thank you for that kindintroduction.
And you read it just like I readit.
Well done.
SPEAKER_00 (01:26):
So let's I mean, we we were going to do this podcast
yesterday, and we thought, well,maybe we should wait a day.
Thank God.
SPEAKER_01 (01:33):
Thank God we decided to hold off for a day, John.
With talk about like what likeuh what would have been the
audio equivalent of a birdcagerap.
You know, what if what do theycall it?
Fish wrap.
SPEAKER_00 (01:44):
Fish rap.
SPEAKER_01 (01:45):
The audio equivalent of fish rap or the lining of a
birdcage, right?
That that's basically what thatpodcast would have been.
Now, this one may not be nobetter, but that one uh
certainly would have been thosethings.
Overtaken by events in a bigway.
SPEAKER_00 (01:55):
Indeed.
So we start with the good news,which is destruction of a
civilization was averted, and aceasefire obviously is devoutly
to be wished under anycircumstances.
The bad news is this appears tobe a humiliating defeat for the
United States.
What's your view of this?
SPEAKER_01 (02:13):
Well, I mean, I think first of all, I guess two
things.
One is, John, I think, you know,I'm I'm with Tim Snyder about
this.
I think, you know, even thoughwe didn't destroy Iran as a
civilization, or somethingslightly short of that, like
cripple it in a profoundlydamaging humanitarian way for
months and months and months, aswould have been possible if
Trump decided to take out thepower grid there.
(02:34):
I do think that like when anAmerican president, for the
first time in our history, andhopefully the last, you know,
comes out and openly threatensnot just a war crime but
genocide, you know, on paper,writes that down, so to speak,
on paper, on digital paper,commits that to something that
will live in the archivesforever.
I think you cross the line thatyou never can really come back
from.
I mean, on some level, thenotion of the United States as
(02:55):
an exceptional country as theshining city on the hill is in
some way eroded by that.
And I don't think it's like youcan just be like, ah, you know,
Trump was just kidding.
I do think there's uh lastingdamage where the rest of the
world looks at Americadifferently.
And then there's the question Ithink you're raising, which is,
you know, Trump has tacoed alot.
And in a lot of cases, Trump'stacos have been, you know,
exactly what you wanted to havefor lunch, right?
(03:15):
I mean, he's back to he's tacoedon things that would have been
damaging to the world economy orwould have, in this case, would
have been damaging to all kindsof things.
And so they're, you know, I'mnot obviously this is the
preferred outcome.
Um we were all praying for himto taco.
And yet, you know, when you'vegone that far, you have laid a
lot of credibility on the line.
And at some point, people aroundthe world start laughing at you.
(03:35):
And the the notion of himtacoing becomes more of a laugh
line than it already is.
And I do think that, you know,there's I mean, the Iranians are
laughing at us in state mediaand other places.
And the the 10-point plan thatthey put forward that Trump said
was a good basis for a startingpoint, a good basis for a
starting point for negotiationsof a lasting peace, you know,
has things in it like Irancontinues to control the Strait
(03:57):
of Hormuz and they go continueto have a nuclear program.
I mean, the idea that thatsuddenly something that they put
something forward that was asubstantive step towards what
Trump says he wants, althoughTrump has said he wants almost
so many different things, it'shard to know what he really
wants.
I mean, I think Trump looks likea fool on the world stage a lot
in the last 14 months, but thishas got to be the one that is
the most glaring example of athing where he's damaged the the
(04:19):
credibility of the United Statesand has damaged our interests
around the world by by making athreat that he clearly, I guess,
never had any intention of goingthrough with.
SPEAKER_00 (04:26):
It's interesting.
There's uh Janon uh Ganesh has acolumn today in which he
discusses the madman theory thatRichard Nixon talked about back
in the in his, I guess, firstterm.
Um and the madman theory is thathe's so crazy you don't know
what he's gonna do, so you backoff.
Janon make the point that Nixondid that privately.
(04:46):
He conveyed that message wasconveyed by Kissinger to the
North Vietnamese, and theVietnamese didn't pay any
attention to it, but it didn'thappen publicly, and so the
climb down, you know, wassecret.
It it was unknown on the publicstage.
This one, it's it's right outthere.
It uh I am I am potentiallylunatic enough to blow your
(05:07):
civilization back to the StoneAge, and then he climbs down.
It just has to do enormousdamage, doesn't it?
To US standing, if you will.
SPEAKER_01 (05:16):
I think so.
And also look, the madman theoryis a theory that that has a lot
of problems with it to beginwith.
But if you accept it on its ownterms, it only is functional if
the madman behavior is adeviation from the norm.
If you're constantly being amadman, you're no longer really
using the madman approach as atactic or a strategy.
You're become the boy the boythat cried wolf, which is what,
(05:38):
you know, which I it feels likenow in these 14 months, again,
we can make a very long list ofthings that Trump has threatened
and then pulled back at the lastminute, um, uh or imposed,
tariffs he's imposed and thenpulled back when the markets
have reacted badly.
And at some point, people juststop taking you seriously.
I mean, the madman theory, ifit's going to work, only works
if you have a period in whichthe madman is behaving wholly
rationally and then suddenly hecomes out and starts acting like
(06:00):
a nut, or privately, as you justsaid, John.
He suddenly, privately, evenmore powerfully, where the
insiders of the administrationsay, you know, our boss, who
used to be, uh, like Nixon, aforeign policy genius, has
suddenly gone off the rails.
And, you know, then you canconvey that to your adversaries
convincingly.
You can imagine it might work,but Trump's whole thing is in
public.
You know, there's not everythingthat happens with Trump in
(06:23):
public is also what's happeningin private.
And and the public nature of themadman behavior does, you know,
reduce even the theoreticalefficacy of the madman strategy,
I would think.
And I do think, as I said asecond ago, I just don't think
that either our enemies or ourallies have not profoundly
changed their views of theUnited States and its power and
(06:44):
this administration over thecourse of the last 14 or 15
months.
But really, it we've hit atipping point, I think, with
this.
SPEAKER_00 (06:49):
Aaron Powell David Sanger had a tough piece today
in the New York Times, and hepointed out that nukes, no
change on the strait, bigchange.
Iran basically controls it now.
Regime change zero, which is tosay the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard Corps, which was themuscle and the fact of Iranian
(07:11):
governance, is still in powerand still probably stronger than
ever.
I want to ask you about do youhave a sense of where the new
concern has that been alleviatedat all, or is it just that we've
re-obliterated it and so it'lltake them a long time to find
it, so to speak?
SPEAKER_01 (07:29):
Aaron Powell I mean, I I sort of thought there was
again trying to track all thethings that Trump has said about
the war in these four or fiveweeks that we've been at war now
is very hard to do because therehave been so many and so many of
them at odds with each other.
But I sort of took it for I sortof think the baseline now is
when Trump said the other daythat they may still have some
enriched uranium, but it'sburied so far beneath in the
ground that we don't have toworry about it.
And I think that was Trump's wayof kind of trying to write that
(07:51):
off as a concern.
When people went to him andsaid, you know, actually tried
to get the rich uranium.
We don't know where it is.
It's gonna be an incrediblyrisky and costly mission to go
in and get it.
And I think that's one placewhere some rational signals
reached him.
And so he made up some maybe itis buried beneath the earth so
deeply that we can't get it.
But I also think that wasTrump's way of signaling that
that's no longer on his list ofthings he cares about.
(08:11):
And and he hasn't, I don't thinkhe's changed on that subject
since then when he uttered thosewords.
So I'm gonna I'm gonna stickwith that as where the
administration is on this, whichis I think the right place to
be, because I think you and Iwould probably agree.
Trying to go in there and do anextraction uh mission to find
and extract the the the nuclearfissile, the enriched uranium, I
should say, would be hairy.
(08:32):
I mean, on the base ofeverything that I know.
And I think you're you'realready now you're in boots on
the ground territory and you'regonna take uh casualties and
deaths if you do that mission, Ithink.
And uh and no one wants to seethat.
SPEAKER_00 (08:42):
Yeah.
I mean, uh in in that case, youwould actually have to build a
runway.
So if you bring in, you know,Bob's construction company to to
put down some tarmac.
It just it seemed impossible tothink about.
But the strait is obviously thething, right?
And Trump, if I read thiscorrectly this morning, I've
(09:03):
been reading so much I'm notsure that I have it exactly
right.
But apparently Trump said orintimated that the strait could
become a kind of joint venturebetween the Iranians and the
U.S., and that that would ensurefree passage.
He also said that this wholeceasefire is dependent upon free
(09:26):
and safe passage through thestrait.
But the big fact is before wewent in, there was free and safe
passage through the strait, andnow there's not.
Isn't that just an a completehumiliation for the U.S.
or or am I overreacting?
unknown (09:44):
Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
SPEAKER_01 (09:44):
Well I think it's the most vivid sign of the fact
that the war, uh that we are notwinning the war.
I mean, on some level, right?
I mean, there's uh there are alot of ways you can make that
argument, but but certainly thenotion that that I think the
bare the bare facts, you know,if we strip away everything
else, John, we we look at it, wesay, well, first of all, 40
years, every foreign policyexpert who knew anything about
Iran said, don't get in a warwith Iran, because they will
(10:06):
close the close those tradebefore moves.
Republican, Democrat, militaryall said this is a very, very
high likely uh likelihood, veryhigh probability.
And Trump ignored that.
I know we're gonna talk aboutthe Maggie and Swan piece, but
you know, you see it in thatstory of how we got to the war.
Uh, the piece in the New YorkTimes by Maggie Haberman and
Jonathan Swan.
And Trump basically kind of, youknow, thinking as always he
knows better than everybody,sort of looked at Dan Cain and
(10:28):
others and said, nah, they won'tclose the strait.
They will capitulate.
We'll bomb them so hard thatthey will, you know, be, they
will be at our mercy at thatpoint.
So he ignored the advice, notjust of his own people, but the
advice of 40 years of bipartisanmilitary strategic consensus.
And now the global economy isprofoundly messed up and not
(10:50):
just as reflected in the highgas prices and high diesel
prices that we see right now,but in a way that even if this
war ended magically tomorrow andthe strait opened immediately,
you're gonna still see supplychain impacts that are gonna go
on for months.
And the gas prices are not gonnacome down for months.
And if you're thinking about thepolitical implications of all
this, it's still gonna be a boxthat Republicans are gonna be
(11:11):
very finding impossible to getout of in the midterm.
So all of that wasself-inflicted.
And so what we get from a, if wesuccessfully, we have a
ceasefire and we eventually getto a permanent ceasefire, we get
to go back to the status quoante on the fundamental thing
that's really uh that that Iranhas leverage and that we knew in
advance they would have leverageon.
So I just I think it's it's aanother, it's another sign to
(11:34):
the world that the United Statesunder Donald Trump is not
thinking clearly about strategyand about why it got into this
war in the first place, that itdidn't really have a clear set
of goals, clear and achievableset of goals, or a clear and
achievable way of getting outwithout all of what we've seen
over the course of the last fiveweeks, and we'll see for some
(11:54):
number of weeks and months intothe future.
SPEAKER_00 (11:56):
Aaron Ross Powell I want to ask you, I suspect that
a number of people who listen tothis podcast might not have seen
Maggie and uh John MaggieHaberman and John Swann's piece
uh in posted yesterday and intoday's paper.
But what was your take on thepiece?
And I was amazed by thereporting.
I was literally inside the room.
(12:18):
And there are only you know,there are like eight suspects as
the leak, and I think four ofthe suspects are are obvious to
all.
But what did you make of thepiece?
SPEAKER_01 (12:27):
Aaron Ross Powell Well, just to say first, you
know, this is they this theyflag in the piece that this is
um drawn from reporting thatthey're doing for a forthcoming
book that's, I believe, out inJune called Regime Change.
And I think everyone inWashington and certainly
everyone in the administrationis on tender hooks waiting for
that piece because those two arereally extraordinarily good
reporters.
And the piece has, you know, afew things that I think because
(12:47):
it's the New York Times, the twoof them don't embroider very
much or or opinionize, orthere's not a lot of what some
would call analysis in thepiece.
It's basically just like here'sa factual but deeply reported
account of how Trump got to war.
And the things that stood out tome, first of all, the opening
scene of Bibi Netanyahu in thein the sit room with all of his
(13:10):
war cabinet projected behind himon video, essentially making the
case to Trump for war.
John, I don't know about you.
You you've known, uh you've beenaround politics for longer than
me, but we've both been aroundfor a pretty long time.
I've now asked like a dozenpeople in various
administrations whether they'veever heard of a foreign leader
in the sit room, doing a meetingin the sit room with the
president, sitting opposite himat the table with the president,
(13:31):
not at the end of the tablerunning the meeting, but the two
sitting like in a co-equal way.
No one I know says they've everheard of that before.
Cannot think of an example inthe past.
That's an extraordinary thing.
And for anybody who is of theview, and there are many, some
of them like hardcoreanti-Semites, and some of them
not, anybody of the view thatIsrael was critical to getting
us into this war and that BB wasleading Trump, maybe not by the
(13:54):
nose, as you would put itcolorfully, but leading him into
this, making the arguments thatultimately persuaded him to go
to war and had an outsized rolein getting us into this war, you
will read this piece and youwill say that is that those are
there's evidence of that thatcomes that blares through in
this reporting.
And the second thing I'd say isthat the people around Donald
Trump, by the time you get tothe end of the piece at the
senior level, Susie Wiles, MarcoRubio, John Ratcliffe, Dan Cain,
(14:18):
the White House counsel, all ofthem had profound reservations
about going into launching a warin Iran.
All of them.
Either they're ambivalent oropenly against, or not openly,
but privately against it.
And none of them, except for JDVance, the only exception to
this, but the none of thoseother people ever come out and
just say to Trump, Mr.
President, I think this is a badidea.
(14:38):
No.
And that's the model of how wewant White Houses to work, is
that there's a truth tellersomewhere inside the White House
who's willing to sit down withthe president and say, Mr.
President, I think you've gotthe wrong end of the stick here.
Here's here's why I think.
You're obviously free todisregard my opinion.
You're the president, you makethe decisions, I will do
whatever you say.
But let me make the clear casefor why I think this is going to
be a problem or a disaster orwhatever.
(14:59):
None of them say that.
All of them, according to thepiece, all of them are thinking
that in the kind of, I guess,about eight days that are
reported in this piece at theend of February, between like
20, February 21st, I think itstarts with the BB meeting and
ends on the 28th with the withthe actual war beginning.
I think that's rather, you know,rather not surprising.
If you've ever watched a cabinetmeeting, sycophancy is the order
of the day.
(15:19):
And so the fact that in inprivate they're maybe not quite
so sycophantic, but ultimatelydeferential and afraid to speak
their minds in front of Trump isnot surprising.
But still, in a case where waris what we're talking about, um,
it's hugely problematic thatmore of them were not willing to
be honest with Trump.
And I think that's the picture,kind of the collective picture.
The other thing is the pictureof Trump that it paints, which
(15:39):
is of someone who came into thatmeeting at the on the 21st,
already inclined to go to war,already kind of joined at the
hip with Bibi Netanyahu, muchmore hawkish than a lot of the
people in the America, firstpart of the MAGA movement,
whatever, thought that he was,and what you would have thought
on the basis of 10 years of hisrhetoric, he was much more
hawkish.
He had really decided he wantedto do this.
He more or less listens to whenthe various advisors lay out
(16:02):
pros and cons, he more or lessdismisses the cons and only
hears the pros.
And we've seen this in thepresident before, you know,
where he hears what he wants tohear.
And that also comes through verystrongly in this, that like
pretty much there was not reallya moment of doubt.
Trump says sounds good when Bibimakes his case.
And basically on the day that welaunched the war, he's still
essentially saying sounds good,and kind of ignoring any of the
(16:23):
warnings and cautions thatpeople did raise in the room,
even if half-heartedly.
SPEAKER_00 (16:27):
Just to go back to the ceasefire for a second.
Today, the east-west pipeline inSaudi Arabia, which uh gets oil
from point A to point B,avoiding uh the Strait of
Hormuz, was hit by a drone.
We don't know the extent of thedamage, but given that oil was
flowing through it and giventhat it was hit by a drone, we
(16:50):
can have some idea that it wasnot an easily fixed problem.
Then we also have Israelpounding Beirut with the ongoing
offensive operations or whateveryou want to call them by Israel
into Lebanon.
Is this a ceasefire that willallow you that's built to last,
(17:11):
John?
No, well, it's a sort of we havea ceasefire, US Iran, but we'll
allow all this other stuff to goon.
Right.
Well, and is that aren't theHouthis now involved too?
SPEAKER_01 (17:21):
Didn't we didn't we see some action by the Hoodis
today?
SPEAKER_00 (17:24):
Yeah.
Yeah.
The Houtis are are this sort ofIranian secret weapon because
they're you know, the Gulf ofOman and the Red Sea are
obviously important for the flowof oil and liquid natural gas.
And the Hooties have proventheir ability to uh well, again
and again, have proven theirability to make it treacherous
enough that insurance companiesdon't want to underwrite the
(17:45):
individual tank.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01 (17:46):
Well, and have been quite quiet to a lot of people's
surprise through the conduct ofthe war.
There's been kind of like thethe dog that has embarked has
been the Hooties, but they'vebeen in the background because
of their ability, as you say, tolike shut down the Red Sea.
And so how active is it?
Are we entering a new phase inwhich the Hooties are more
active than they had beenpreviously?
I, you know, all the proxies arestill, you're saying, yeah, that
that there's signs one day afterthis historic ceasefire, there's
(18:08):
a that a lot of the proxies anda lot of the peripheral
conflict, like in Beirut,peripheral but still deadly, uh,
is still going on.
What's your over-under on howlong you think the ceasefire
holds, even in its in its kindof threadbare sort of gossamer
form that we have it now?
What do you think the overunderon that is?
SPEAKER_00 (18:23):
Well, I just don't think that you know, if the core
uh condition is that uh there befree and safe passage through uh
the strait, if some kind ofjoint venture between the U.S.
and Iran enables that, then Idon't think Trump cares about
anything else.
But how you sell that the U.S.
electorate is is another matter.
(18:45):
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01 (18:45):
Totally different kettle of fish.
I I just think, I mean, I'll bestunned if we get to two weeks
from now.
And what we have seen is theceasefire, again, even if in its
most threadbare form, holdingand we're on some kind of a of a
predictable and rational pathtowards uh a final resolution.
I'll be stunned.
I'm not saying it won't happen.
I hope it does on some level.
(19:07):
I've you know, I hope it does.
I'm not I'd be really surprisedif that were the case.
It does not this does not seemto be a ceasefire, a ceasefire
that's built to last.
SPEAKER_00 (19:13):
Yeah, I mean, uh it does seem like that the Trump
view of it is that the US-Iranceasefire is standalone, and
that the proxy Israel terroristgroups, whatever, that's that's
that's not part of the deal.
And I don't know.
I mean, if you're blowing up theEast-West pipeline, that's
(19:35):
that's kind of a hard positionto maintain.
But on the other hand, I do notI have heard this from our
friend at the New York Times anumber of times, which is Trump
doesn't care about what you knowyou and I think about proxies,
you know, fighting during aceasefire.
He he's as you know, able tojust keep his mind focused on
what's what supports his view ofthings.
(19:58):
And as long as the Iran-USceasefire holds and that we're
not attacking one another,proxies are doing the attacking,
then he'll say that's a win, Iguess.
Yes.
SPEAKER_01 (20:11):
We don't know.
I mean, I have I haveoccasionally said to our friend
the New York Times and otherswho are deep inside the Trump
inside Trump's brain, reportingon it or trying to influence it.
I've often said, you know, Trumpis a mollusk, basically.
He's just like a very he's likea very, very simple organism who
kind of moves in in, you know,towards towards the water or
(20:31):
away from the water.
And every time I use thatmetaphor, they laugh and kind of
say, yeah, it's basically aboutright.
SPEAKER_00 (20:36):
A mollusk.
Yeah.
I'm gonna have to make that thetitle of this podcast.
So anyway, we have this and it'splaying out.
And of course, it's playing outin analysis and commentary and
reaction from all over.
And I'm particularly interestedin your view on how Republicans
and uh right-wing media uh areinterpreting this.
(20:58):
Have you heard or readcommentary that's of interest
that we should be aware of thatyou think is important?
SPEAKER_01 (21:06):
I have not done my taking my daily acid bath,
diving into the right-wing feverswamps today, John.
But you know, I don't imaginethat uh the Meghan Kellys and
the Candace Owenses and the andthe Tucker Carlsons are going to
look upon what uh happened lastnight as a reason to turn back
towards being happy with DonaldTrump.
I mean, they like Trump, whowent pretty far out of his skis
(21:29):
by threatening to end Iraniancivilization.
These are people who were sayingthings literally 24 hours ago,
like Trump should be impeached,Trump should have the 25th
Amendment invoked, Trump haslost his mind.
In a weird way, it's harder forthem to walk back from those
positions, given the way they'vebeen for the past 10 years, than
it is for Trump to walk awayfrom his threat to annihilate
(21:51):
the Iranians.
And and I think also not only isit hard for them to back away,
but I also think that all ofthose people now see something
we can talk more about if youwant, but you know, is That
Trump has gone over, I think,the point of no return in terms
of his public approval.
And, you know, you see this inevery administration, especially
in second terms, where whetherit's George W.
Bush after a Katrina or whetherit's Biden, who was not a
(22:14):
second-term president,effectively felt like one, but
this happened to him after thebotched withdrawal from
Afghanistan, where you hit apoint and the country is like,
I'm done with you.
And enough things have happenednow that we've seen not only
that independence are whollyabandoned, the president and his
project, and so many of thepolicies he's advocated, and so
(22:35):
many of the things that havehappened, and so many of the
promises he's broken have beenso core to his political
identity and to his promises inthe 2024 election.
Independence are gone andthey're not coming back.
And you're starting to see thisdata, not at the crude level of
how many Republicans or MAGARepublicans support the Iran
war, but in terms of whatthey're actually saying about
(22:56):
Trump on specific issues, theirtrust in him on handling the
economy, on prices, on nationalsecurity, on even on things like
immigration.
You're starting to see erosion,not just again, not just on
those issues, but also at theand not just in the media sphere
of mega media, but actual, forthe first time, actual erosion
and cracks in the coalitionamong his base.
Again, you know, we've seen thisbefore.
(23:18):
And it's tempting to say that alot of the, you know, laws of
physics and politics have beenrepealed in some way by Donald
Trump.
But I look at the trajectory ofhis numbers and they really look
a lot.
You could, you could lay, youcould overlay these numbers on
George W.
Bush in early 2005.
And the numbers are, thetracking of those numbers is
(23:39):
very, very, very similar.
They are on basically on aboutthe same level of dissent.
And I think it's going to bevery hard for him to turn that
back around.
And the reason I raise that isthat Meghan Kelly, Candace
Owens, Ataka Carlson, even LauraIngram on Fox News, who was the
first person I've ever heard onFox suggest publicly that Donald
Trump may not have the mentalcapacity to understand the
dimensions of the war in Iran.
(24:01):
She came right out and said thaton prime time last week.
Those people, they see thewriting on the wall.
And some of them want to run forpresident in 2028.
And some of them just want tobe, want to like leave the ship
before it sinks.
But I don't think there's muchthat's going to change that's
going to make them be like, gotto get back on board the Trump
train.
I just think we're like, that'sanother part of the downward
spiral, is that, you know, aspeople's self-political and
(24:21):
personal self-interests are nowstarting to take them away from
Trump rather than towards Trump.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00 (24:25):
I think of Trump as Biden with the base in that he
was elected by a very narrowmargin, which he interpreted as
permission to initiate dramaticuh change.
And in order to be a successfulpresident, at some level you
have to have the permission ofthe electorate to go forward.
Trump keeps saying he waselected by a huge landslide.
(24:47):
He behaves that way.
And now he's finding out that,you know, instead of trying to
expand his base, he is taken theentire administration basically
has been devoted to the base,which has driven, roughly
speaking, 60% of the electorateaway.
I agree with you.
I think it's at a point of of noreturn.
(25:07):
And I think this, the TacoTuesday, is his equivalent to
Biden's botched uh departurefrom Afghanistan, which I I
think people forget just howdevastating the uh the
Afghanistan exit was for Biden.
I mean, it was the beginning ofthe end.
SPEAKER_01 (25:25):
Well, right.
And and and I would say, John,that what you just said is all
correct except I'd add oneproviso, which is that in Trump
1.0, he definitely governed onlyfor the base rather than trying
to add.
He tried to deepen.
And as we know, although he lostto Joe Biden in 2020, he did get
8 million more votes than he gotin 2016.
(25:46):
He actually, they actually wentout and found a bunch of Trump
voters who hadn't voted in 2016.
They did that with enormousskill and they did something a
lot of us thought wasimpossible.
Rather than expanding, they wentdeeper.
Okay.
I would say the war, thehandling of Jeffrey Epstein, the
the obvious signs of corruptionand personal enrichment and his
focus on those things, like hispublic focus on things like the
(26:07):
ballroom and so on, those thingsare antithetical to the to the
MAGA base.
I mean, the MAGA base is wasanti-war.
I mean, believed when Trump saidover and over again that he was
never going to start any moreendless wars and certainly not
any more in ventures in theMiddle East.
They believed that he was goingto bring Jeffrey Epstein and
that the administration, withthe help of Cash Patella, Dan
Bungino, was going to bringJeffrey Epstein and his uh whole
(26:30):
cabal of predatory elites, theythought mostly Democrats, but it
turns out to be everybody, ofpredatory elites out.
They thought he was going tolower prices.
They didn't, I don't think verymany people in the MAGA base
were like that, I really thoughtthrough they were like
pro-tariff.
They were just like Trump'sgoing to get a handle on the
economy.
And then the self-enrichmentthing.
I think what's happened to Trumpis that he's now on the wrong
side of the most powerful thingin our politics, which is left
(26:53):
and right, which is that left,right, center.
Everybody fucking hatespoliticians.
They hate anybody who looks likea politician.
They think they're all the same,different flavors of the same
thing.
And that you see these focusgroups people are doing in swing
states now, and people are justlike, I fucking hate
Republicans, I hate Democrats, Iwant somebody who will actually
fight for me.
I want someone who is like, whounderstands what suffering is,
(27:15):
right?
This populist anger that yousee.
All of those things, war,Epstein betrayal, and the
self-enrichment and the focus onall the gold in the White House
and all that stuff, is reallythat's not playing to the base.
That's that's the contributingfactor.
Trump looks to a lot of thosepeople like just another
politician now.
And that's the one thing youcould never say about Trump for
a decade, that he was justanother politician.
(27:37):
Hate him, love him, whatever.
He wasn't just anotherpolitician, he looks like just
another politician now.
SPEAKER_00 (27:42):
Yeah.
I uh had access to some, I guessyou would call it, private uh
research that was done by agroup on behalf of uh now
Governor Spanberg in Virginia,but the research was done in
September, and there were threefindings.
One, that por portion of theelectorate could vote either
way, was in a very foul mood.
(28:04):
Uh it viewed the politicalsystem as thoroughly corrupt and
indifferent to their concerns,and that their resolution uh or
their preferred outcome would beto throw out whoever was in
power as far out the window asthey possibly could.
And I think that that, you know,it was Virginia, but I don't
think it's any different inLouisiana or California, for
(28:26):
that matter.
SPEAKER_01 (28:27):
I mean, I don't want to go too far afield here, but
you're a person who's uh who'sfamiliar with New England.
And, you know, there's there'sthe only explanation for Graham
Blatner, not just beating JanetMills right now.
Latsa's leading her, but byhealthy double-digits margins of
the Democratic primary is thething you just described.
You know, he's got all kinds ofproblems, you know, all the
(28:49):
normal playbook of bring out allthe stuff, the Appo, talk about
all the stuff that he's done.
He's got the bad tattoo, he saidterrible things on Reddit or
whatever.
It's like all those things arenot, he's getting his greed is
growing the more that Mills runsthose ads against him.
And I'm not like a stand for anypolitician.
It's not like I'm like, oh, youknow, Grant Platiner is a
savior.
I'm just saying that what'sdriving the dynamics in Maine on
(29:12):
the Democratic side and willprobably make Graham Platiner
ultimately lead him to win thatrace and crush Susan Collins in
the general election, is thestuff we're talking about here,
is that dynamic that theSpamberger people saw.
And that you're seeing is the isthe dynamic that the people in
Spamberger's camp are seeing,and that we're seeing play out
in different ways in all ofthese places that aren't the
deepest red or the deepest blueplaces in the country.
(29:35):
If you're anywhere where thereare median voters around right
now, those dynamics are in playand they are looking for
candidates.
You know, Dan Osborne, DanOsborne could win the Nebraska
Senate race, you know?
It's that kind of candidatewho's like a mechanic, you know.
People who are like people go,oh, I get that guy.
He understands me, and he's notpart of the system.
It's, you know, we've seen thisimpulse in our politics for a
(29:57):
while.
It's not new, but now it's likethe dominant impulse in our
politics for people who are whoare who occupy a very large and
very crucial swath of theelectorate in a bunch of really
crucial states.
SPEAKER_00 (30:06):
Aaron Powell I have a theory about the 2026 and 2028
elections.
Give it to me.
I want to hear that.
Which is that uh oppositionresearch will help the candidate
who's targeted.
And the Platiner case beingnumber one, they dump all this
Appo on them, they run all thesame ads and so on and so forth,
and his numbers increase.
SPEAKER_01 (30:29):
It's about the form factor because the thing is the
opposition research leads topolitical ads that look like
political ads.
And that's part of what thesepeople who are deciding the
elections hate.
SPEAKER_00 (30:38):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (30:38):
It's not even there's probably some way that a
piece of Appo or something thatsome candidate did that was
really terrible could still taketheir campaign down.
But you're not going to takethat person down by finding
something deep in their past andthen running a negative ad
against it that looks likeeverybody has seen before.
That just looks like politics topeople.
And they're like, you know, fuckthat.
SPEAKER_00 (30:59):
Yeah, we had here in our neighborhood, meaning the
New York metro area, uh, we hadthe New York New Jersey
gubernatorial campaign in 2025.
And so we had the local news, sowe had the all of the ads.
And I would say that 90% of themwere negative.
And so my new theory of ofcampaign advertising is that you
(31:22):
say all of the messages you'regoing to hear from my opponent
are negative.
They're probably true, but thisis what I believe.
SPEAKER_01 (31:30):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, yeah, I think that's Ithink the the value of those
negative spots just traditionaltraditionally produced and
traditionally aired, normalbroadcast or cable negative
spots, the value of those is ishas never been lower and may in
fact be uh the opposite of whatthe people who are paying for
them think they're having.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00 (31:49):
And yet it's interesting because the
political consulting class seemsto think that it's the only
thing that works.
SPEAKER_01 (31:55):
Well, it's the only way they get paid.
SPEAKER_00 (31:56):
So they're Well, I understand that part.
So speaking of politicalreactions, we had two special
elections last night, one in adeep red congressional district
to fill the seat that's recentlyopened up by the departure of
Marjorie Taylor Green.
The other was a state uh SupremeCourt election in Wisconsin,
(32:17):
which those elections have beenvery interesting going back to,
I don't know, 2011 or 2012 whenthere was a special.
And then margins back then werevery close, 51, 49.
I remember doing election nighton one of those state, I guess
it was 2013 or whatever.
(32:37):
And it was, you know, it was, wewere up till four o'clock in the
morning, and it was it was notdecided until then.
This one, and the most recentones have been 10 points,
basically, eight or ten points.
Uh but this one was 20 points.
And so you can say, well, yes,you know, the mega people don't
vote, and you know, and theDemocrats were all stirred up,
(32:58):
so they all vote.
And I think that gets you to 10points, but it doesn't get you
to 20.
Is that your take?
SPEAKER_01 (33:05):
That's my take.
I mean, Chris Taylor, who wonthat Wisconsin Supreme Court
race, you know, you think back,we had a Supreme Court race just
a year ago.
It was the one that Elon Muskinvested heavily in and made
himself injected himselfpersonally in.
And you can make whatever youwill of that, but uh a 10-point
shift from from from 10 to from11 to 21, sort of a 20, a
(33:27):
10-point shift in the course ofa year to the left in Wisconsin,
which, you know, as you know,purple state, like as purple as
any state there is in thecountry right now.
And some of the closest marginsin our presidential elections,
the last three electionsrunning, you don't like laugh
that off.
You also don't laugh off whathappened in in the Georgia race,
right?
Where, you know, mathematicallyspeaking, it's even more bullish
(33:47):
for Democrats.
You know, Marjorie Taylor Greenwon that race by 29 points in
2024.
Trump won it by 37 in 2024.
And the Republican nominee downthere who won the race, Clay
Fuller, won it by 12.
So that's a 25-point shifttowards Democrats based on
Trump's margin in one of thereddest districts in the
country.
I mean, that is not a type ofplace where you can put anything
(34:07):
down to basically a bluedistrict.
And John, I would say all ofthat can only be understood set
against the context of this ishappening in every special
election at every level thatDemocrats are competing in over
the course of the last 15months.
There's not an exception wherethere hasn't been a double-digit
swing in a special election atany level in the course of the
(34:30):
time that Donald Trump's beenback in office for the second
time.
And, you know, one uh shift likethat is uh maybe an outlier.
Two, you know, if you're highenough, it could be an outlier.
But like all of them, includingthe 2025 off-year elections, it
is the thing that I think of allthe things that Republicans on
the Hill are terrified about.
It's that more than anything inthe poll numbers, you know, gas
(34:53):
prices is one very big flashing,you know, red sign for them.
But the other is looking atactual Democratic performance in
actual special elections overthe course and off-year
elections over the course of thelast 14 months, because that has
been the most predictable, themost reliable indicator of where
you're headed.
And right now, not only areDemocrats crushing it, but
they're crushing it by more andmore the deeper we get.
(35:15):
And again, to my point earlierabout Trump reaching the point
of no return, what is it that aswe sit here right now on
Wednesday, April 8th, what isit, John, that you would point
to that Republicans can dobetween now and November to
alter in a fundamental way thepolitics that are gonna be the
objective, data-driven,empirical reality that are gonna
drive the political dynamicsgoing in November?
(35:36):
What can they do?
What's gonna happen?
What piece of legislation dothey pass?
What happens that they can makethe whole political environment
shift against what we've seenfor the last 14 months?
And I'm saying that not in atone of like um celebration.
I'm just saying this is whyRepublicans are scared shitless
right now.
And this is why people areretiring at a record pace, and
this is why people all havebasically assumed that now
(35:57):
Democrats are gonna win thehouse.
And the only question is by howmany pickups there are gonna be.
I know you were, you know, youtalked to your friend Charlie
Cook about the structural limitson that, reasonable points that
Charlie made, but there's stillonly a debate about how many
seats it's gonna be.
There's no one who's saying, Allright, go, yeah, you know,
Republicans can pull thisaround.
And then the next question isare Democrats now potentially,
potentially the slight favoriteto retake the Senate, which is a
(36:20):
conversation you couldn't havehad six months ago.
You know, no one would have saidthat.
You would have said you need topull an inside straight or a
double bank shot for that tohappen.
And now people are like, eh,it's a coin flip.
That's incredible.
SPEAKER_00 (36:30):
Yeah, the prediction markets are 52, yes, 48, no, I
guess the last time I looked.
So there you go.
SPEAKER_01 (36:36):
And that and look, you know, it's not surprising.
Donald Trump is is, again, putaside all of his personal
things.
The policies they're running onare extraordinarily unpopular,
like just one by one.
There's not a thing that Trumphas done in 14 months that's
been net positive.
Not I don't think you could finda single thing of any
consequence that he's done whereit's had a net positive polling
(36:56):
margin in the across thecountry.
So, you know, that's where we'reheaded.
SPEAKER_00 (37:00):
I think I think he does does get credit for uh
shutting down the border.
SPEAKER_01 (37:03):
Shutting down the border.
True.
Fact.
Although his immigration ratingsare net negative.
So if you look at the largerquestion.
SPEAKER_00 (37:09):
That's more ICE related than it is.
Uh I mean uh but the midtermelections by definition are for
the party in power a holdingaction, right?
You you're not gonna w you'renot gonna gain, although Clinton
did in 1998, but that was theresult of really, or at least
partially result of 1994 beingsuch an enormous.
(37:31):
So it's a holding action.
And if you if you're looking forhistorical parallels, you'd say,
okay, Reagan passes the t uh taxcut in 1981, the recession
follows, and the tax cuts don'treally get there in time for the
midterms.
And so John Deerdorf and DougBailey come up with this
campaign, which is stay thecourse, it's coming, right?
Hang in there with us.
(37:53):
And remarkably, in five Senateraces that were decided by a
total of 75,000 votes, theRepublicans held the Senate.
An amazing, amazing, amazinglyeffective campaign.
I just don't think it's even inthe thought bubble of anyone in
the Trump administration thatthey could run a stay the course
(38:14):
campaign.
They only know aggression.
Uh they have no idea of holdingaction or clever defense or
whatever.
And so they'll keep going andgoing and going, it seems to me,
and they'll just drive more andmore people to the polls to say,
stop doing this.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (38:31):
I think that's that seems right to me.
I love that this is the maybethe only podcast I could ever go
on where the host would citeDoug Bailey and Dan Deerdorf.
Trevor Burrus, Dan Deerdorf?
Dan, right?
John John Deerdorf.
John Deerdorf and Doug Bailey,and have the expectation that
that both the guest andeverybody in the audience would
know who he was talking about.
That's a fantastic thing.
SPEAKER_00 (38:50):
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
Well, amongst our growingaudience, I expect most of them
to.
SPEAKER_01 (38:54):
Well, you know, Doug Bailey, you know, Doug Bailey,
creator of the hotline, talkabout an avatar of uh an avatar
of political media.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00 (39:00):
He offered me the job of editing it, which I
foolishly turned down becausethat then became whatever.
But we'll find let's wrap upwith everybody talks about whoa,
the Republicans are awful, butthe Democratic brand, quote
unquote, is even worse.
What do you make of that?
SPEAKER_01 (39:16):
Aaron Powell Well, it's partly about it's A, it's
true.
And and it's a thing that I willthat I get into fights with all
the time with Democrats, becausethey're always like, you know,
everything's fine.
You know, I and you know,they're like, well, we had this
crisis, you know, after comingout of the 2024 presidential
election, boy, you know, theDemocratic brand is really in
trouble and we really need tofigure out, reinvent the party.
(39:37):
Uh, and then you you get thisrun of special election
victories and Trump's, you know,declining numbers and everything
else that we were just talkingabout.
And you know, these Democratssay, yeah, it's okay, we're
fine.
Like all we need is a you know agood midterm election,
everything's gonna be back.
Man, people hate the Democrats.
I mean, people, people, thenumber there, the party's the
polling has, I think they haveabout a 24% approval rating for
the party on the whole.
(39:58):
You know, they're they aregetting buoyed enormously by
Trump's extraordinary and theRepublicans' extraordinary
unpopularity.
But on the questions of theirattributes, what people think
they believe in, who they thinkthey're fighting for, what they
think about their ideas for thefuture, the party is in serious
trouble.
People like David Plough are outthere kind of saying, guys,
don't, you know, don't be getseduced by the notion that
(40:21):
everything is fine here in theHouse of Blue because Trump is
so horrible in terms of publicapproval.
I think, you know, you raisedthe thing.
It's a very rare thing for Johnfor me to speak to a male
American in their 20s or even30s who has any time whatsoever
with the Democratic Party.
I mean, the gender thing at thewith young voters is
extraordinarily, extraordinarilystark.
(40:42):
And, you know, they've lost theexcept for there's a kind of a
left, a far-left exception here,but it's, you know, the party is
not the party of young peopleanymore.
It's not the party of theworking class anymore.
And it is, again, because ofTrump's extraordinarily
unpopular deportation policies.
Democrats are inheriting a lotof these Hispanic voters who
voted for Trump in 2024 orRepublican in 2024 and now are
(41:03):
regretting that vote becausethey didn't take Trump seriously
on mass deportation.
But are those now reliable?
The lesson of that is not thatHispanics are now, you know,
coming back home and thatthey're not now reliable parts
of the Democratic coalitionagain.
You know, the lesson of that isthat they, like everybody else,
or or like many, many people atleast, are free agents in the
electorate and need to be foughtfor.
(41:23):
And I'm shocked as we sit herethat in the course of the last
14 or 15 months, I haven't seenmore of um, I don't mean like
some organized, you know,democratic interest groups
getting together and have awitherless state hand-wringing
about the state of the party.
I'm just amazed that of allthese guys who are running for
president, that no one has comeout with a kind of, you know,
vision that makes sense, thatkind of tries to say we are in
(41:46):
the 21st century and the scalesof the challenge, the scale of
the challenges that face thecountry are extraordinary and
existential.
Let's start with, you know, theeconomy and talk about AI and
talk about climate and talkabout the way the world has
changed and talk about stuffthat has everybody in the
country that I talk to,especially young people,
bewildered, scared, uncertain,and feeling like powerless,
(42:06):
right?
Whatever you want to say aboutGavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, all
the rest of these guys.
It's like nobody's out theresaying I have an agenda and a
policy agenda married to avision and an ideological, if
you want to call it that, anideological construct that's
like, here is the big vision tomeet the challenges of the 21st
century.
In a way, Trump's popularity,people get so mad at me on the
(42:29):
left when I say this, but MAGAis not a big idea, but it's a
big swing.
You know, implicit in MAGA is anotion of like the world is
going to shit and everything'sout of control.
And here's how we're gonna fixit.
We're gonna go back to the1950s, right?
That's a big idea.
What Bernie and AlexanderOcasio-Cortez and Zora Mamdani,
again, whatever you, I'm nottaking a side here.
(42:49):
I'm not trying to say I like alltheir policies.
They have a big idea too.
They're they're, and that's whyso many young people are turned
on by the left in a way wehaven't seen in a long time.
They at least are swinging forthe fences.
Trump is swinging for thefences.
The Democrats who are runningfor president, so far, no one's
swinging for the fences.
There, no one's in that way.
And I don't think the Democraticbrand can be rehabilitated until
(43:10):
some ones start to do that,start to lay out an agenda and a
set of ideas that feel likethey're commensurate with the
scale of what we're facing.
SPEAKER_00 (43:17):
Yeah.
One of the most interestingpieces of polling I've seen in
the last, I don't know, sixmonths is prominent figures
Gallopassed the electorate, alarge, a large body, a large uh
sample size, who they viewedfavorably and unfavorably
amongst well-known people.
Pope Leo was number one andnumber two, but with the only
net positive rating was BernieSanders.
(43:39):
Everybody else was underwater, Ithought was really interesting
and telling.
Um I guess we have to uh uhfinish with one last question,
which is who's gonna deliver thespeech that really addresses
what's happened in the lastmonth on the Democratic side?
Isn't this a huge opportunityfor somebody to step up?
(44:00):
Up and say, we can't we can't wecan't go down this road anymore,
and this is why and this is whatwe should do.
SPEAKER_01 (44:06):
Aaron Powell I don't know the answer.
So if the question is, is that ahuge opportunity?
I think it is and it isn't, inthe sense that because Democrats
have no power and can't reallychange the trajectory of the
war, you're basically giving aspeech that's just a speech, and
you don't really can't reallypropose a remedy.
And so there's a little bit of aimpotence problem with just
giving a speech about it.
(44:26):
I do think that it's it still issomething that whether it's in
the next month or or down theline, is going to need to get
folded into some of thesecandidates and leaders.
I want to say STEM speechesbecause that kind of diminishes
it, but into how they frame likewhat has gone wrong in the
country and what this moment isand what it requires.
I do, lastly, I think that Ithink at the moment, consistent
(44:49):
with what I said a second ago,where I said Democrats were kind
of had thought that the partywas in crisis, then the brand
was in crisis, and then they sawTrump start his so far
inexorable decline in politicalsupport and public approval and
decided that everything was fineon the Democratic side.
This is the same sort of thing.
There's a little bit of anattitude of like, why should we
(45:10):
get in the way if everythingDonald Trump is doing is just
administering moreself-inflicted harm?
You know, this guy's shootinghimself in the foot day after
day after day.
Why do we want to be in theheadlines at all?
Just let him keep administeringthese wounds to himself.
And I see the logic of that.
I mean, it's not a crazy logicto stay out of the guy's way as
he's as he's harming himself.
But I also think you're rightthat I don't know, again,
(45:31):
whether it's um this month, Ithink the general thing that
you're saying, I think, isright, which is that Democrats
who aspire to lead the countryand lead the party, you know,
are gonna need to have this bepart of, you know, the analysis
of where we are that they'regonna push off of when they try
to build their vision for wherethey want to take us.
SPEAKER_00 (45:51):
Final question, which is one we ask of all our
guests.
What's the best book you've readin the last year, and what's the
best movie you've seen in thelast year?
That's a really good question.
SPEAKER_01 (46:01):
I this is gonna be the most, like maybe predictable
answer uh that you could givebecause it won best picture, but
I do think One Battle AfterAnother was an incredible film.
And I love Sinners.
I think both those movies werefantastic.
And I love the ambition of them.
I love the scale of them.
I love the politics that theywere so explicitly, not wholly
explicitly, but prettyexplicitly political.
(46:21):
I love the gamble that the bigstudios took on them.
Um I liked, I really loved thatthat they were as good as they
were.
Um something we don't seeanymore, like grown-up movies
with big budgets uh addressingserious themes by artists
getting rewarded at the boxoffice and then uh by the
academy.
So I'm a big fan of both ofthose movies.
I'll tell you what the the bookthat I most want to read right
(46:43):
now, um, because that would behard for me to think about
what's the best book I read lastyear, but the book I'm most
excited to read is the newMichael Pollan, because I heard
him do a really fantasticinterview with uh Ezra Klein on
his podcast about his book isabout consciousness.
Uh, it's sort of like a sequelto the last Michael Pollan book
about psychedelics, um whichEzra said, I think somewhat
tummy-in-cheek, but like thisfirst, the last book was a book
(47:06):
about psychedelics, a book aboutconsciousness.
Masquerading is a book aboutpsychedelics, and this book is
really a book aboutpsychedelics, masquerading is a
book about consciousness.
But if you listen to Pollen talkabout the five years he spent
with not just all the mostimportant scientists who rely on
and are exploring materialistanswers to the question like,
(47:26):
what is consciousness and howdoes it work?
Literally the thing that all ofus have the most experience with
of anything on planet Earth andthat none of us can really
understand, which isconsciousness.
That he spent five years talkingto all the brain scientists and
all the people who think thatconsciousness comes out of the
brain.
And then also with all of thisnew kind of expanding field of
people who are like, no, no,consciousness is not doesn't
(47:48):
come arise out of the brain.
Consciousness comes from outhere somewhere, and the brain is
the is the thing that channelsconsciousness and and interprets
it.
And he doesn't come down, hesays, I love this.
I love Michael Pollins sayingthat he'd spent five years uh
researching this book and thathe knows less about the topic at
the end of five years than hedid when he started, but that
the but that the journey wasstill worth, was totally worth
(48:09):
taking.
And listening to him talk aboutit was super fascinating.
And I think probably for someonelike you who is really
interested in neuroscience, um,it's not a neuroscience book,
but the larger question ofconsciousness, again, what is
it?
Where does it come from?
How does it work?
Why is it the way it is?
You know, it's one of the greatmysteries of of of life.
And uh and I don't think there'sanybody better in the
journalistic tradition who'sable to tackle that than Pollen.
SPEAKER_00 (48:32):
I do have one final question, which is I think a
couple of years ago we we didone of these, and there were two
gigantic dogs in the background.
Uh, do you still have thosedogs?
SPEAKER_01 (48:42):
Both of those dogs, they were both two in a in a
chain of Great Danes that I'veowned in my life.
One of them was uh Fife Dog, andthe other was his younger
brother Dizza.
Both of them have passed,unfortunately.
Fife some years ago during thepandemic, and Dizza just last
October, having had a wonderfullife, but reaching the not
unusual Great Dane expirationdate of when he was about seven,
(49:02):
almost turning to eight.
So they are both no longer withme.
I miss them both desperately.
And I now have in my domicilewith my uh beloved girlfriend
two dogs, one of whom was hers,holy, that I that came into my
life, whose name is uh Bill Billthe Bassett.
And Bill is a is a is a bat is abasset hound named Bill.
That's right.
Bill Murray Goodman is his name.
(49:24):
Um, and he is like a super,super charismatic and super
handsome basset.
And then we adopted a rescue umabout a year and a half ago, who
is a pit mix, who's a lunatic.
I mean, absolutely one of themost lunatic dogs I've ever met,
but also one of the most, one ofthe sweetest dogs I've ever met.
Containing her and getting herthrough her puppyhood is a
(49:44):
challenge, but man is she, isshe cute?
And man is she energetic, andman is she is she a lover.
Um, and that's Maba Staples.
Mabis Staples, a goodmanheilman, so um, we have Maba
Staples and and Bill Murray uhin the house.
And and the next one that comesin will be a great dame puppy,
John.
So we'll have three at somepoint, and people will be like,
you guys are fucking nuts, andwe'll say, speaking.
SPEAKER_00 (50:04):
We've uh we've taken exactly one hour of your time.
Thank you very much for doingthis, John.
It was terrific, as always.
And we will catch up, I hope,either just before the midterms
or just after.
SPEAKER_01 (50:16):
Awesome.
Good to see you, bro.
SPEAKER_00 (50:18):
Take care.
Hello and welcome back to the News Items Podcast.
I'm John Ellis.
I am the founder and editor oftwo Substack newsletters.
One is called News Items, theother is called Political News
Items.
You can find them both atnews-items.com.
We have a very special guesttoday, my friend John Heileman.
(00:20):
John is the best-selling authorof two great books about
American presidential politics.
The first entitled Game Change,which chronicled the 2008
presidential election.
The second, Double Down, whichchronicled the 2012 presidential
election.
I highly recommend both books.
I think Game Change became a HBOmovie or something, right?
SPEAKER_01 (00:44):
Most certainly did.
It won tons of Emmy Awards andGolemmy Awards.
And a Peabody and all kinds ofthings, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (00:50):
Well, I have to finish your intro, which is uh
John is also a former staffwriter for New York magazine,
for Wired magazine, the NewYorker magazine, and The
Economist.
He's also a national affairsanalyst for NBC News and MSNBC,
and the creator and host of theEmmy-nominated docuseries, The
Circus.
(01:10):
John offers political reportingand analysis in the Sunday
edition of Tuck's The Best andthe Brightest.
John, thank you very much forjoining me today.
SPEAKER_01 (01:20):
And this is a great place to be.
And thank you for that kindintroduction.
And you read it just like I readit.
Well done.
SPEAKER_00 (01:26):
So let's I mean, we we were going to do this podcast
yesterday, and we thought, well,maybe we should wait a day.
Thank God.
SPEAKER_01 (01:33):
Thank God we decided to hold off for a day, John.
With talk about like what likeuh what would have been the
audio equivalent of a birdcagerap.
You know, what if what do theycall it?
Fish wrap.
SPEAKER_00 (01:44):
Fish rap.
SPEAKER_01 (01:45):
The audio equivalent of fish rap or the lining of a
birdcage, right?
That that's basically what thatpodcast would have been.
Now, this one may not be nobetter, but that one uh
certainly would have been thosethings.
Overtaken by events in a bigway.
SPEAKER_00 (01:55):
Indeed.
So we start with the good news,which is destruction of a
civilization was averted, and aceasefire obviously is devoutly
to be wished under anycircumstances.
The bad news is this appears tobe a humiliating defeat for the
United States.
What's your view of this?
SPEAKER_01 (02:13):
Well, I mean, I think first of all, I guess two
things.
One is, John, I think, you know,I'm I'm with Tim Snyder about
this.
I think, you know, even thoughwe didn't destroy Iran as a
civilization, or somethingslightly short of that, like
cripple it in a profoundlydamaging humanitarian way for
months and months and months, aswould have been possible if
Trump decided to take out thepower grid there.
(02:34):
I do think that like when anAmerican president, for the
first time in our history, andhopefully the last, you know,
comes out and openly threatensnot just a war crime but
genocide, you know, on paper,writes that down, so to speak,
on paper, on digital paper,commits that to something that
will live in the archivesforever.
I think you cross the line thatyou never can really come back
from.
I mean, on some level, thenotion of the United States as
(02:55):
an exceptional country as theshining city on the hill is in
some way eroded by that.
And I don't think it's like youcan just be like, ah, you know,
Trump was just kidding.
I do think there's uh lastingdamage where the rest of the
world looks at Americadifferently.
And then there's the question Ithink you're raising, which is,
you know, Trump has tacoed alot.
And in a lot of cases, Trump'stacos have been, you know,
exactly what you wanted to havefor lunch, right?
(03:15):
I mean, he's back to he's tacoedon things that would have been
damaging to the world economy orwould have, in this case, would
have been damaging to all kindsof things.
And so they're, you know, I'mnot obviously this is the
preferred outcome.
Um we were all praying for himto taco.
And yet, you know, when you'vegone that far, you have laid a
lot of credibility on the line.
And at some point, people aroundthe world start laughing at you.
(03:35):
And the the notion of himtacoing becomes more of a laugh
line than it already is.
And I do think that, you know,there's I mean, the Iranians are
laughing at us in state mediaand other places.
And the the 10-point plan thatthey put forward that Trump said
was a good basis for a startingpoint, a good basis for a
starting point for negotiationsof a lasting peace, you know,
has things in it like Irancontinues to control the Strait
(03:57):
of Hormuz and they go continueto have a nuclear program.
I mean, the idea that thatsuddenly something that they put
something forward that was asubstantive step towards what
Trump says he wants, althoughTrump has said he wants almost
so many different things, it'shard to know what he really
wants.
I mean, I think Trump looks likea fool on the world stage a lot
in the last 14 months, but thishas got to be the one that is
the most glaring example of athing where he's damaged the the
(04:19):
credibility of the United Statesand has damaged our interests
around the world by by making athreat that he clearly, I guess,
never had any intention of goingthrough with.
SPEAKER_00 (04:26):
It's interesting.
There's uh Janon uh Ganesh has acolumn today in which he
discusses the madman theory thatRichard Nixon talked about back
in the in his, I guess, firstterm.
Um and the madman theory is thathe's so crazy you don't know
what he's gonna do, so you backoff.
Janon make the point that Nixondid that privately.
(04:46):
He conveyed that message wasconveyed by Kissinger to the
North Vietnamese, and theVietnamese didn't pay any
attention to it, but it didn'thappen publicly, and so the
climb down, you know, wassecret.
It it was unknown on the publicstage.
This one, it's it's right outthere.
It uh I am I am potentiallylunatic enough to blow your
(05:07):
civilization back to the StoneAge, and then he climbs down.
It just has to do enormousdamage, doesn't it?
To US standing, if you will.
SPEAKER_01 (05:16):
I think so.
And also look, the madman theoryis a theory that that has a lot
of problems with it to beginwith.
But if you accept it on its ownterms, it only is functional if
the madman behavior is adeviation from the norm.
If you're constantly being amadman, you're no longer really
using the madman approach as atactic or a strategy.
You're become the boy the boythat cried wolf, which is what,
(05:38):
you know, which I it feels likenow in these 14 months, again,
we can make a very long list ofthings that Trump has threatened
and then pulled back at the lastminute, um, uh or imposed,
tariffs he's imposed and thenpulled back when the markets
have reacted badly.
And at some point, people juststop taking you seriously.
I mean, the madman theory, ifit's going to work, only works
if you have a period in whichthe madman is behaving wholly
rationally and then suddenly hecomes out and starts acting like
(06:00):
a nut, or privately, as you justsaid, John.
He suddenly, privately, evenmore powerfully, where the
insiders of the administrationsay, you know, our boss, who
used to be, uh, like Nixon, aforeign policy genius, has
suddenly gone off the rails.
And, you know, then you canconvey that to your adversaries
convincingly.
You can imagine it might work,but Trump's whole thing is in
public.
You know, there's not everythingthat happens with Trump in
(06:23):
public is also what's happeningin private.
And and the public nature of themadman behavior does, you know,
reduce even the theoreticalefficacy of the madman strategy,
I would think.
And I do think, as I said asecond ago, I just don't think
that either our enemies or ourallies have not profoundly
changed their views of theUnited States and its power and
(06:44):
this administration over thecourse of the last 14 or 15
months.
But really, it we've hit atipping point, I think, with
this.
SPEAKER_00 (06:49):
Aaron Powell David Sanger had a tough piece today
in the New York Times, and hepointed out that nukes, no
change on the strait, bigchange.
Iran basically controls it now.
Regime change zero, which is tosay the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard Corps, which was themuscle and the fact of Iranian
(07:11):
governance, is still in powerand still probably stronger than
ever.
I want to ask you about do youhave a sense of where the new
concern has that been alleviatedat all, or is it just that we've
re-obliterated it and so it'lltake them a long time to find
it, so to speak?
SPEAKER_01 (07:29):
Aaron Powell I mean, I I sort of thought there was
again trying to track all thethings that Trump has said about
the war in these four or fiveweeks that we've been at war now
is very hard to do because therehave been so many and so many of
them at odds with each other.
But I sort of took it for I sortof think the baseline now is
when Trump said the other daythat they may still have some
enriched uranium, but it'sburied so far beneath in the
ground that we don't have toworry about it.
And I think that was Trump's wayof kind of trying to write that
(07:51):
off as a concern.
When people went to him andsaid, you know, actually tried
to get the rich uranium.
We don't know where it is.
It's gonna be an incrediblyrisky and costly mission to go
in and get it.
And I think that's one placewhere some rational signals
reached him.
And so he made up some maybe itis buried beneath the earth so
deeply that we can't get it.
But I also think that wasTrump's way of signaling that
that's no longer on his list ofthings he cares about.
(08:11):
And and he hasn't, I don't thinkhe's changed on that subject
since then when he uttered thosewords.
So I'm gonna I'm gonna stickwith that as where the
administration is on this, whichis I think the right place to
be, because I think you and Iwould probably agree.
Trying to go in there and do anextraction uh mission to find
and extract the the the nuclearfissile, the enriched uranium, I
should say, would be hairy.
(08:32):
I mean, on the base ofeverything that I know.
And I think you're you'realready now you're in boots on
the ground territory and you'regonna take uh casualties and
deaths if you do that mission, Ithink.
And uh and no one wants to seethat.
SPEAKER_00 (08:42):
Yeah.
I mean, uh in in that case, youwould actually have to build a
runway.
So if you bring in, you know,Bob's construction company to to
put down some tarmac.
It just it seemed impossible tothink about.
But the strait is obviously thething, right?
And Trump, if I read thiscorrectly this morning, I've
(09:03):
been reading so much I'm notsure that I have it exactly
right.
But apparently Trump said orintimated that the strait could
become a kind of joint venturebetween the Iranians and the
U.S., and that that would ensurefree passage.
He also said that this wholeceasefire is dependent upon free
(09:26):
and safe passage through thestrait.
But the big fact is before wewent in, there was free and safe
passage through the strait, andnow there's not.
Isn't that just an a completehumiliation for the U.S.
or or am I overreacting?
unknown (09:44):
Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
SPEAKER_01 (09:44):
Well I think it's the most vivid sign of the fact
that the war, uh that we are notwinning the war.
I mean, on some level, right?
I mean, there's uh there are alot of ways you can make that
argument, but but certainly thenotion that that I think the
bare the bare facts, you know,if we strip away everything
else, John, we we look at it, wesay, well, first of all, 40
years, every foreign policyexpert who knew anything about
Iran said, don't get in a warwith Iran, because they will
(10:06):
close the close those tradebefore moves.
Republican, Democrat, militaryall said this is a very, very
high likely uh likelihood, veryhigh probability.
And Trump ignored that.
I know we're gonna talk aboutthe Maggie and Swan piece, but
you know, you see it in thatstory of how we got to the war.
Uh, the piece in the New YorkTimes by Maggie Haberman and
Jonathan Swan.
And Trump basically kind of, youknow, thinking as always he
knows better than everybody,sort of looked at Dan Cain and
(10:28):
others and said, nah, they won'tclose the strait.
They will capitulate.
We'll bomb them so hard thatthey will, you know, be, they
will be at our mercy at thatpoint.
So he ignored the advice, notjust of his own people, but the
advice of 40 years of bipartisanmilitary strategic consensus.
And now the global economy isprofoundly messed up and not
(10:50):
just as reflected in the highgas prices and high diesel
prices that we see right now,but in a way that even if this
war ended magically tomorrow andthe strait opened immediately,
you're gonna still see supplychain impacts that are gonna go
on for months.
And the gas prices are not gonnacome down for months.
And if you're thinking about thepolitical implications of all
this, it's still gonna be a boxthat Republicans are gonna be
(11:11):
very finding impossible to getout of in the midterm.
So all of that wasself-inflicted.
And so what we get from a, if wesuccessfully, we have a
ceasefire and we eventually getto a permanent ceasefire, we get
to go back to the status quoante on the fundamental thing
that's really uh that that Iranhas leverage and that we knew in
advance they would have leverageon.
So I just I think it's it's aanother, it's another sign to
(11:34):
the world that the United Statesunder Donald Trump is not
thinking clearly about strategyand about why it got into this
war in the first place, that itdidn't really have a clear set
of goals, clear and achievableset of goals, or a clear and
achievable way of getting outwithout all of what we've seen
over the course of the last fiveweeks, and we'll see for some
(11:54):
number of weeks and months intothe future.
SPEAKER_00 (11:56):
Aaron Ross Powell I want to ask you, I suspect that
a number of people who listen tothis podcast might not have seen
Maggie and uh John MaggieHaberman and John Swann's piece
uh in posted yesterday and intoday's paper.
But what was your take on thepiece?
And I was amazed by thereporting.
I was literally inside the room.
(12:18):
And there are only you know,there are like eight suspects as
the leak, and I think four ofthe suspects are are obvious to
all.
But what did you make of thepiece?
SPEAKER_01 (12:27):
Aaron Ross Powell Well, just to say first, you
know, this is they this theyflag in the piece that this is
um drawn from reporting thatthey're doing for a forthcoming
book that's, I believe, out inJune called Regime Change.
And I think everyone inWashington and certainly
everyone in the administrationis on tender hooks waiting for
that piece because those two arereally extraordinarily good
reporters.
And the piece has, you know, afew things that I think because
(12:47):
it's the New York Times, the twoof them don't embroider very
much or or opinionize, orthere's not a lot of what some
would call analysis in thepiece.
It's basically just like here'sa factual but deeply reported
account of how Trump got to war.
And the things that stood out tome, first of all, the opening
scene of Bibi Netanyahu in thein the sit room with all of his
(13:10):
war cabinet projected behind himon video, essentially making the
case to Trump for war.
John, I don't know about you.
You you've known, uh you've beenaround politics for longer than
me, but we've both been aroundfor a pretty long time.
I've now asked like a dozenpeople in various
administrations whether they'veever heard of a foreign leader
in the sit room, doing a meetingin the sit room with the
president, sitting opposite himat the table with the president,
(13:31):
not at the end of the tablerunning the meeting, but the two
sitting like in a co-equal way.
No one I know says they've everheard of that before.
Cannot think of an example inthe past.
That's an extraordinary thing.
And for anybody who is of theview, and there are many, some
of them like hardcoreanti-Semites, and some of them
not, anybody of the view thatIsrael was critical to getting
us into this war and that BB wasleading Trump, maybe not by the
(13:54):
nose, as you would put itcolorfully, but leading him into
this, making the arguments thatultimately persuaded him to go
to war and had an outsized rolein getting us into this war, you
will read this piece and youwill say that is that those are
there's evidence of that thatcomes that blares through in
this reporting.
And the second thing I'd say isthat the people around Donald
Trump, by the time you get tothe end of the piece at the
senior level, Susie Wiles, MarcoRubio, John Ratcliffe, Dan Cain,
(14:18):
the White House counsel, all ofthem had profound reservations
about going into launching a warin Iran.
All of them.
Either they're ambivalent oropenly against, or not openly,
but privately against it.
And none of them, except for JDVance, the only exception to
this, but the none of thoseother people ever come out and
just say to Trump, Mr.
President, I think this is a badidea.
(14:38):
No.
And that's the model of how wewant White Houses to work, is
that there's a truth tellersomewhere inside the White House
who's willing to sit down withthe president and say, Mr.
President, I think you've gotthe wrong end of the stick here.
Here's here's why I think.
You're obviously free todisregard my opinion.
You're the president, you makethe decisions, I will do
whatever you say.
But let me make the clear casefor why I think this is going to
be a problem or a disaster orwhatever.
(14:59):
None of them say that.
All of them, according to thepiece, all of them are thinking
that in the kind of, I guess,about eight days that are
reported in this piece at theend of February, between like
20, February 21st, I think itstarts with the BB meeting and
ends on the 28th with the withthe actual war beginning.
I think that's rather, you know,rather not surprising.
If you've ever watched a cabinetmeeting, sycophancy is the order
of the day.
(15:19):
And so the fact that in inprivate they're maybe not quite
so sycophantic, but ultimatelydeferential and afraid to speak
their minds in front of Trump isnot surprising.
But still, in a case where waris what we're talking about, um,
it's hugely problematic thatmore of them were not willing to
be honest with Trump.
And I think that's the picture,kind of the collective picture.
The other thing is the pictureof Trump that it paints, which
(15:39):
is of someone who came into thatmeeting at the on the 21st,
already inclined to go to war,already kind of joined at the
hip with Bibi Netanyahu, muchmore hawkish than a lot of the
people in the America, firstpart of the MAGA movement,
whatever, thought that he was,and what you would have thought
on the basis of 10 years of hisrhetoric, he was much more
hawkish.
He had really decided he wantedto do this.
He more or less listens to whenthe various advisors lay out
(16:02):
pros and cons, he more or lessdismisses the cons and only
hears the pros.
And we've seen this in thepresident before, you know,
where he hears what he wants tohear.
And that also comes through verystrongly in this, that like
pretty much there was not reallya moment of doubt.
Trump says sounds good when Bibimakes his case.
And basically on the day that welaunched the war, he's still
essentially saying sounds good,and kind of ignoring any of the
(16:23):
warnings and cautions thatpeople did raise in the room,
even if half-heartedly.
SPEAKER_00 (16:27):
Just to go back to the ceasefire for a second.
Today, the east-west pipeline inSaudi Arabia, which uh gets oil
from point A to point B,avoiding uh the Strait of
Hormuz, was hit by a drone.
We don't know the extent of thedamage, but given that oil was
flowing through it and giventhat it was hit by a drone, we
(16:50):
can have some idea that it wasnot an easily fixed problem.
Then we also have Israelpounding Beirut with the ongoing
offensive operations or whateveryou want to call them by Israel
into Lebanon.
Is this a ceasefire that willallow you that's built to last,
(17:11):
John?
No, well, it's a sort of we havea ceasefire, US Iran, but we'll
allow all this other stuff to goon.
Right.
Well, and is that aren't theHouthis now involved too?
SPEAKER_01 (17:21):
Didn't we didn't we see some action by the Hoodis
today?
SPEAKER_00 (17:24):
Yeah.
Yeah.
The Houtis are are this sort ofIranian secret weapon because
they're you know, the Gulf ofOman and the Red Sea are
obviously important for the flowof oil and liquid natural gas.
And the Hooties have proventheir ability to uh well, again
and again, have proven theirability to make it treacherous
enough that insurance companiesdon't want to underwrite the
(17:45):
individual tank.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01 (17:46):
Well, and have been quite quiet to a lot of people's
surprise through the conduct ofthe war.
There's been kind of like thethe dog that has embarked has
been the Hooties, but they'vebeen in the background because
of their ability, as you say, tolike shut down the Red Sea.
And so how active is it?
Are we entering a new phase inwhich the Hooties are more
active than they had beenpreviously?
I, you know, all the proxies arestill, you're saying, yeah, that
that there's signs one day afterthis historic ceasefire, there's
(18:08):
a that a lot of the proxies anda lot of the peripheral
conflict, like in Beirut,peripheral but still deadly, uh,
is still going on.
What's your over-under on howlong you think the ceasefire
holds, even in its in its kindof threadbare sort of gossamer
form that we have it now?
What do you think the overunderon that is?
SPEAKER_00 (18:23):
Well, I just don't think that you know, if the core
uh condition is that uh there befree and safe passage through uh
the strait, if some kind ofjoint venture between the U.S.
and Iran enables that, then Idon't think Trump cares about
anything else.
But how you sell that the U.S.
electorate is is another matter.
(18:45):
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01 (18:45):
Totally different kettle of fish.
I I just think, I mean, I'll bestunned if we get to two weeks
from now.
And what we have seen is theceasefire, again, even if in its
most threadbare form, holdingand we're on some kind of a of a
predictable and rational pathtowards uh a final resolution.
I'll be stunned.
I'm not saying it won't happen.
I hope it does on some level.
(19:07):
I've you know, I hope it does.
I'm not I'd be really surprisedif that were the case.
It does not this does not seemto be a ceasefire, a ceasefire
that's built to last.
SPEAKER_00 (19:13):
Yeah, I mean, uh it does seem like that the Trump
view of it is that the US-Iranceasefire is standalone, and
that the proxy Israel terroristgroups, whatever, that's that's
that's not part of the deal.
And I don't know.
I mean, if you're blowing up theEast-West pipeline, that's
(19:35):
that's kind of a hard positionto maintain.
But on the other hand, I do notI have heard this from our
friend at the New York Times anumber of times, which is Trump
doesn't care about what you knowyou and I think about proxies,
you know, fighting during aceasefire.
He he's as you know, able tojust keep his mind focused on
what's what supports his view ofthings.
(19:58):
And as long as the Iran-USceasefire holds and that we're
not attacking one another,proxies are doing the attacking,
then he'll say that's a win, Iguess.
Yes.
SPEAKER_01 (20:11):
We don't know.
I mean, I have I haveoccasionally said to our friend
the New York Times and otherswho are deep inside the Trump
inside Trump's brain, reportingon it or trying to influence it.
I've often said, you know, Trumpis a mollusk, basically.
He's just like a very he's likea very, very simple organism who
kind of moves in in, you know,towards towards the water or
(20:31):
away from the water.
And every time I use thatmetaphor, they laugh and kind of
say, yeah, it's basically aboutright.
SPEAKER_00 (20:36):
A mollusk.
Yeah.
I'm gonna have to make that thetitle of this podcast.
So anyway, we have this and it'splaying out.
And of course, it's playing outin analysis and commentary and
reaction from all over.
And I'm particularly interestedin your view on how Republicans
and uh right-wing media uh areinterpreting this.
(20:58):
Have you heard or readcommentary that's of interest
that we should be aware of thatyou think is important?
SPEAKER_01 (21:06):
I have not done my taking my daily acid bath,
diving into the right-wing feverswamps today, John.
But you know, I don't imaginethat uh the Meghan Kellys and
the Candace Owenses and the andthe Tucker Carlsons are going to
look upon what uh happened lastnight as a reason to turn back
towards being happy with DonaldTrump.
I mean, they like Trump, whowent pretty far out of his skis
(21:29):
by threatening to end Iraniancivilization.
These are people who were sayingthings literally 24 hours ago,
like Trump should be impeached,Trump should have the 25th
Amendment invoked, Trump haslost his mind.
In a weird way, it's harder forthem to walk back from those
positions, given the way they'vebeen for the past 10 years, than
it is for Trump to walk awayfrom his threat to annihilate
(21:51):
the Iranians.
And and I think also not only isit hard for them to back away,
but I also think that all ofthose people now see something
we can talk more about if youwant, but you know, is That
Trump has gone over, I think,the point of no return in terms
of his public approval.
And, you know, you see this inevery administration, especially
in second terms, where whetherit's George W.
Bush after a Katrina or whetherit's Biden, who was not a
(22:14):
second-term president,effectively felt like one, but
this happened to him after thebotched withdrawal from
Afghanistan, where you hit apoint and the country is like,
I'm done with you.
And enough things have happenednow that we've seen not only
that independence are whollyabandoned, the president and his
project, and so many of thepolicies he's advocated, and so
(22:35):
many of the things that havehappened, and so many of the
promises he's broken have beenso core to his political
identity and to his promises inthe 2024 election.
Independence are gone andthey're not coming back.
And you're starting to see thisdata, not at the crude level of
how many Republicans or MAGARepublicans support the Iran
war, but in terms of whatthey're actually saying about
(22:56):
Trump on specific issues, theirtrust in him on handling the
economy, on prices, on nationalsecurity, on even on things like
immigration.
You're starting to see erosion,not just again, not just on
those issues, but also at theand not just in the media sphere
of mega media, but actual, forthe first time, actual erosion
and cracks in the coalitionamong his base.
Again, you know, we've seen thisbefore.
(23:18):
And it's tempting to say that alot of the, you know, laws of
physics and politics have beenrepealed in some way by Donald
Trump.
But I look at the trajectory ofhis numbers and they really look
a lot.
You could, you could lay, youcould overlay these numbers on
George W.
Bush in early 2005.
And the numbers are, thetracking of those numbers is
(23:39):
very, very, very similar.
They are on basically on aboutthe same level of dissent.
And I think it's going to bevery hard for him to turn that
back around.
And the reason I raise that isthat Meghan Kelly, Candace
Owens, Ataka Carlson, even LauraIngram on Fox News, who was the
first person I've ever heard onFox suggest publicly that Donald
Trump may not have the mentalcapacity to understand the
dimensions of the war in Iran.
(24:01):
She came right out and said thaton prime time last week.
Those people, they see thewriting on the wall.
And some of them want to run forpresident in 2028.
And some of them just want tobe, want to like leave the ship
before it sinks.
But I don't think there's muchthat's going to change that's
going to make them be like, gotto get back on board the Trump
train.
I just think we're like, that'sanother part of the downward
spiral, is that, you know, aspeople's self-political and
(24:21):
personal self-interests are nowstarting to take them away from
Trump rather than towards Trump.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00 (24:25):
I think of Trump as Biden with the base in that he
was elected by a very narrowmargin, which he interpreted as
permission to initiate dramaticuh change.
And in order to be a successfulpresident, at some level you
have to have the permission ofthe electorate to go forward.
Trump keeps saying he waselected by a huge landslide.
(24:47):
He behaves that way.
And now he's finding out that,you know, instead of trying to
expand his base, he is taken theentire administration basically
has been devoted to the base,which has driven, roughly
speaking, 60% of the electorateaway.
I agree with you.
I think it's at a point of of noreturn.
(25:07):
And I think this, the TacoTuesday, is his equivalent to
Biden's botched uh departurefrom Afghanistan, which I I
think people forget just howdevastating the uh the
Afghanistan exit was for Biden.
I mean, it was the beginning ofthe end.
SPEAKER_01 (25:25):
Well, right.
And and and I would say, John,that what you just said is all
correct except I'd add oneproviso, which is that in Trump
1.0, he definitely governed onlyfor the base rather than trying
to add.
He tried to deepen.
And as we know, although he lostto Joe Biden in 2020, he did get
8 million more votes than he gotin 2016.
(25:46):
He actually, they actually wentout and found a bunch of Trump
voters who hadn't voted in 2016.
They did that with enormousskill and they did something a
lot of us thought wasimpossible.
Rather than expanding, they wentdeeper.
Okay.
I would say the war, thehandling of Jeffrey Epstein, the
the obvious signs of corruptionand personal enrichment and his
focus on those things, like hispublic focus on things like the
(26:07):
ballroom and so on, those thingsare antithetical to the to the
MAGA base.
I mean, the MAGA base is wasanti-war.
I mean, believed when Trump saidover and over again that he was
never going to start any moreendless wars and certainly not
any more in ventures in theMiddle East.
They believed that he was goingto bring Jeffrey Epstein and
that the administration, withthe help of Cash Patella, Dan
Bungino, was going to bringJeffrey Epstein and his uh whole
(26:30):
cabal of predatory elites, theythought mostly Democrats, but it
turns out to be everybody, ofpredatory elites out.
They thought he was going tolower prices.
They didn't, I don't think verymany people in the MAGA base
were like that, I really thoughtthrough they were like
pro-tariff.
They were just like Trump'sgoing to get a handle on the
economy.
And then the self-enrichmentthing.
I think what's happened to Trumpis that he's now on the wrong
side of the most powerful thingin our politics, which is left
(26:53):
and right, which is that left,right, center.
Everybody fucking hatespoliticians.
They hate anybody who looks likea politician.
They think they're all the same,different flavors of the same
thing.
And that you see these focusgroups people are doing in swing
states now, and people are justlike, I fucking hate
Republicans, I hate Democrats, Iwant somebody who will actually
fight for me.
I want someone who is like, whounderstands what suffering is,
(27:15):
right?
This populist anger that yousee.
All of those things, war,Epstein betrayal, and the
self-enrichment and the focus onall the gold in the White House
and all that stuff, is reallythat's not playing to the base.
That's that's the contributingfactor.
Trump looks to a lot of thosepeople like just another
politician now.
And that's the one thing youcould never say about Trump for
a decade, that he was justanother politician.
(27:37):
Hate him, love him, whatever.
He wasn't just anotherpolitician, he looks like just
another politician now.
SPEAKER_00 (27:42):
Yeah.
I uh had access to some, I guessyou would call it, private uh
research that was done by agroup on behalf of uh now
Governor Spanberg in Virginia,but the research was done in
September, and there were threefindings.
One, that por portion of theelectorate could vote either
way, was in a very foul mood.
(28:04):
Uh it viewed the politicalsystem as thoroughly corrupt and
indifferent to their concerns,and that their resolution uh or
their preferred outcome would beto throw out whoever was in
power as far out the window asthey possibly could.
And I think that that, you know,it was Virginia, but I don't
think it's any different inLouisiana or California, for
(28:26):
that matter.
SPEAKER_01 (28:27):
I mean, I don't want to go too far afield here, but
you're a person who's uh who'sfamiliar with New England.
And, you know, there's there'sthe only explanation for Graham
Blatner, not just beating JanetMills right now.
Latsa's leading her, but byhealthy double-digits margins of
the Democratic primary is thething you just described.
You know, he's got all kinds ofproblems, you know, all the
(28:49):
normal playbook of bring out allthe stuff, the Appo, talk about
all the stuff that he's done.
He's got the bad tattoo, he saidterrible things on Reddit or
whatever.
It's like all those things arenot, he's getting his greed is
growing the more that Mills runsthose ads against him.
And I'm not like a stand for anypolitician.
It's not like I'm like, oh, youknow, Grant Platiner is a
savior.
I'm just saying that what'sdriving the dynamics in Maine on
(29:12):
the Democratic side and willprobably make Graham Platiner
ultimately lead him to win thatrace and crush Susan Collins in
the general election, is thestuff we're talking about here,
is that dynamic that theSpamberger people saw.
And that you're seeing is the isthe dynamic that the people in
Spamberger's camp are seeing,and that we're seeing play out
in different ways in all ofthese places that aren't the
deepest red or the deepest blueplaces in the country.
(29:35):
If you're anywhere where thereare median voters around right
now, those dynamics are in playand they are looking for
candidates.
You know, Dan Osborne, DanOsborne could win the Nebraska
Senate race, you know?
It's that kind of candidatewho's like a mechanic, you know.
People who are like people go,oh, I get that guy.
He understands me, and he's notpart of the system.
It's, you know, we've seen thisimpulse in our politics for a
(29:57):
while.
It's not new, but now it's likethe dominant impulse in our
politics for people who are whoare who occupy a very large and
very crucial swath of theelectorate in a bunch of really
crucial states.
SPEAKER_00 (30:06):
Aaron Powell I have a theory about the 2026 and 2028
elections.
Give it to me.
I want to hear that.
Which is that uh oppositionresearch will help the candidate
who's targeted.
And the Platiner case beingnumber one, they dump all this
Appo on them, they run all thesame ads and so on and so forth,
and his numbers increase.
SPEAKER_01 (30:29):
It's about the form factor because the thing is the
opposition research leads topolitical ads that look like
political ads.
And that's part of what thesepeople who are deciding the
elections hate.
SPEAKER_00 (30:38):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (30:38):
It's not even there's probably some way that a
piece of Appo or something thatsome candidate did that was
really terrible could still taketheir campaign down.
But you're not going to takethat person down by finding
something deep in their past andthen running a negative ad
against it that looks likeeverybody has seen before.
That just looks like politics topeople.
And they're like, you know, fuckthat.
SPEAKER_00 (30:59):
Yeah, we had here in our neighborhood, meaning the
New York metro area, uh, we hadthe New York New Jersey
gubernatorial campaign in 2025.
And so we had the local news, sowe had the all of the ads.
And I would say that 90% of themwere negative.
And so my new theory of ofcampaign advertising is that you
(31:22):
say all of the messages you'regoing to hear from my opponent
are negative.
They're probably true, but thisis what I believe.
SPEAKER_01 (31:30):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, yeah, I think that's Ithink the the value of those
negative spots just traditionaltraditionally produced and
traditionally aired, normalbroadcast or cable negative
spots, the value of those is ishas never been lower and may in
fact be uh the opposite of whatthe people who are paying for
them think they're having.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00 (31:49):
And yet it's interesting because the
political consulting class seemsto think that it's the only
thing that works.
SPEAKER_01 (31:55):
Well, it's the only way they get paid.
SPEAKER_00 (31:56):
So they're Well, I understand that part.
So speaking of politicalreactions, we had two special
elections last night, one in adeep red congressional district
to fill the seat that's recentlyopened up by the departure of
Marjorie Taylor Green.
The other was a state uh SupremeCourt election in Wisconsin,
(32:17):
which those elections have beenvery interesting going back to,
I don't know, 2011 or 2012 whenthere was a special.
And then margins back then werevery close, 51, 49.
I remember doing election nighton one of those state, I guess
it was 2013 or whatever.
(32:37):
And it was, you know, it was, wewere up till four o'clock in the
morning, and it was it was notdecided until then.
This one, and the most recentones have been 10 points,
basically, eight or ten points.
Uh but this one was 20 points.
And so you can say, well, yes,you know, the mega people don't
vote, and you know, and theDemocrats were all stirred up,
(32:58):
so they all vote.
And I think that gets you to 10points, but it doesn't get you
to 20.
Is that your take?
SPEAKER_01 (33:05):
That's my take.
I mean, Chris Taylor, who wonthat Wisconsin Supreme Court
race, you know, you think back,we had a Supreme Court race just
a year ago.
It was the one that Elon Muskinvested heavily in and made
himself injected himselfpersonally in.
And you can make whatever youwill of that, but uh a 10-point
shift from from from 10 to from11 to 21, sort of a 20, a
(33:27):
10-point shift in the course ofa year to the left in Wisconsin,
which, you know, as you know,purple state, like as purple as
any state there is in thecountry right now.
And some of the closest marginsin our presidential elections,
the last three electionsrunning, you don't like laugh
that off.
You also don't laugh off whathappened in in the Georgia race,
right?
Where, you know, mathematicallyspeaking, it's even more bullish
(33:47):
for Democrats.
You know, Marjorie Taylor Greenwon that race by 29 points in
2024.
Trump won it by 37 in 2024.
And the Republican nominee downthere who won the race, Clay
Fuller, won it by 12.
So that's a 25-point shifttowards Democrats based on
Trump's margin in one of thereddest districts in the
country.
I mean, that is not a type ofplace where you can put anything
(34:07):
down to basically a bluedistrict.
And John, I would say all ofthat can only be understood set
against the context of this ishappening in every special
election at every level thatDemocrats are competing in over
the course of the last 15months.
There's not an exception wherethere hasn't been a double-digit
swing in a special election atany level in the course of the
(34:30):
time that Donald Trump's beenback in office for the second
time.
And, you know, one uh shift likethat is uh maybe an outlier.
Two, you know, if you're highenough, it could be an outlier.
But like all of them, includingthe 2025 off-year elections, it
is the thing that I think of allthe things that Republicans on
the Hill are terrified about.
It's that more than anything inthe poll numbers, you know, gas
(34:53):
prices is one very big flashing,you know, red sign for them.
But the other is looking atactual Democratic performance in
actual special elections overthe course and off-year
elections over the course of thelast 14 months, because that has
been the most predictable, themost reliable indicator of where
you're headed.
And right now, not only areDemocrats crushing it, but
they're crushing it by more andmore the deeper we get.
(35:15):
And again, to my point earlierabout Trump reaching the point
of no return, what is it that aswe sit here right now on
Wednesday, April 8th, what isit, John, that you would point
to that Republicans can dobetween now and November to
alter in a fundamental way thepolitics that are gonna be the
objective, data-driven,empirical reality that are gonna
drive the political dynamicsgoing in November?
(35:36):
What can they do?
What's gonna happen?
What piece of legislation dothey pass?
What happens that they can makethe whole political environment
shift against what we've seenfor the last 14 months?
And I'm saying that not in atone of like um celebration.
I'm just saying this is whyRepublicans are scared shitless
right now.
And this is why people areretiring at a record pace, and
this is why people all havebasically assumed that now
(35:57):
Democrats are gonna win thehouse.
And the only question is by howmany pickups there are gonna be.
I know you were, you know, youtalked to your friend Charlie
Cook about the structural limitson that, reasonable points that
Charlie made, but there's stillonly a debate about how many
seats it's gonna be.
There's no one who's saying, Allright, go, yeah, you know,
Republicans can pull thisaround.
And then the next question isare Democrats now potentially,
potentially the slight favoriteto retake the Senate, which is a
(36:20):
conversation you couldn't havehad six months ago.
You know, no one would have saidthat.
You would have said you need topull an inside straight or a
double bank shot for that tohappen.
And now people are like, eh,it's a coin flip.
That's incredible.
SPEAKER_00 (36:30):
Yeah, the prediction markets are 52, yes, 48, no, I
guess the last time I looked.
So there you go.
SPEAKER_01 (36:36):
And that and look, you know, it's not surprising.
Donald Trump is is, again, putaside all of his personal
things.
The policies they're running onare extraordinarily unpopular,
like just one by one.
There's not a thing that Trumphas done in 14 months that's
been net positive.
Not I don't think you could finda single thing of any
consequence that he's done whereit's had a net positive polling
(36:56):
margin in the across thecountry.
So, you know, that's where we'reheaded.
SPEAKER_00 (37:00):
I think I think he does does get credit for uh
shutting down the border.
SPEAKER_01 (37:03):
Shutting down the border.
True.
Fact.
Although his immigration ratingsare net negative.
So if you look at the largerquestion.
SPEAKER_00 (37:09):
That's more ICE related than it is.
Uh I mean uh but the midtermelections by definition are for
the party in power a holdingaction, right?
You you're not gonna w you'renot gonna gain, although Clinton
did in 1998, but that was theresult of really, or at least
partially result of 1994 beingsuch an enormous.
(37:31):
So it's a holding action.
And if you if you're looking forhistorical parallels, you'd say,
okay, Reagan passes the t uh taxcut in 1981, the recession
follows, and the tax cuts don'treally get there in time for the
midterms.
And so John Deerdorf and DougBailey come up with this
campaign, which is stay thecourse, it's coming, right?
Hang in there with us.
(37:53):
And remarkably, in five Senateraces that were decided by a
total of 75,000 votes, theRepublicans held the Senate.
An amazing, amazing, amazinglyeffective campaign.
I just don't think it's even inthe thought bubble of anyone in
the Trump administration thatthey could run a stay the course
(38:14):
campaign.
They only know aggression.
Uh they have no idea of holdingaction or clever defense or
whatever.
And so they'll keep going andgoing and going, it seems to me,
and they'll just drive more andmore people to the polls to say,
stop doing this.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (38:31):
I think that's that seems right to me.
I love that this is the maybethe only podcast I could ever go
on where the host would citeDoug Bailey and Dan Deerdorf.
Trevor Burrus, Dan Deerdorf?
Dan, right?
John John Deerdorf.
John Deerdorf and Doug Bailey,and have the expectation that
that both the guest andeverybody in the audience would
know who he was talking about.
That's a fantastic thing.
SPEAKER_00 (38:50):
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
Well, amongst our growingaudience, I expect most of them
to.
SPEAKER_01 (38:54):
Well, you know, Doug Bailey, you know, Doug Bailey,
creator of the hotline, talkabout an avatar of uh an avatar
of political media.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00 (39:00):
He offered me the job of editing it, which I
foolishly turned down becausethat then became whatever.
But we'll find let's wrap upwith everybody talks about whoa,
the Republicans are awful, butthe Democratic brand, quote
unquote, is even worse.
What do you make of that?
SPEAKER_01 (39:16):
Aaron Powell Well, it's partly about it's A, it's
true.
And and it's a thing that I willthat I get into fights with all
the time with Democrats, becausethey're always like, you know,
everything's fine.
You know, I and you know,they're like, well, we had this
crisis, you know, after comingout of the 2024 presidential
election, boy, you know, theDemocratic brand is really in
trouble and we really need tofigure out, reinvent the party.
(39:37):
Uh, and then you you get thisrun of special election
victories and Trump's, you know,declining numbers and everything
else that we were just talkingabout.
And you know, these Democratssay, yeah, it's okay, we're
fine.
Like all we need is a you know agood midterm election,
everything's gonna be back.
Man, people hate the Democrats.
I mean, people, people, thenumber there, the party's the
polling has, I think they haveabout a 24% approval rating for
the party on the whole.
(39:58):
You know, they're they aregetting buoyed enormously by
Trump's extraordinary and theRepublicans' extraordinary
unpopularity.
But on the questions of theirattributes, what people think
they believe in, who they thinkthey're fighting for, what they
think about their ideas for thefuture, the party is in serious
trouble.
People like David Plough are outthere kind of saying, guys,
don't, you know, don't be getseduced by the notion that
(40:21):
everything is fine here in theHouse of Blue because Trump is
so horrible in terms of publicapproval.
I think, you know, you raisedthe thing.
It's a very rare thing for Johnfor me to speak to a male
American in their 20s or even30s who has any time whatsoever
with the Democratic Party.
I mean, the gender thing at thewith young voters is
extraordinarily, extraordinarilystark.
(40:42):
And, you know, they've lost theexcept for there's a kind of a
left, a far-left exception here,but it's, you know, the party is
not the party of young peopleanymore.
It's not the party of theworking class anymore.
And it is, again, because ofTrump's extraordinarily
unpopular deportation policies.
Democrats are inheriting a lotof these Hispanic voters who
voted for Trump in 2024 orRepublican in 2024 and now are
(41:03):
regretting that vote becausethey didn't take Trump seriously
on mass deportation.
But are those now reliable?
The lesson of that is not thatHispanics are now, you know,
coming back home and thatthey're not now reliable parts
of the Democratic coalitionagain.
You know, the lesson of that isthat they, like everybody else,
or or like many, many people atleast, are free agents in the
electorate and need to be foughtfor.
(41:23):
And I'm shocked as we sit herethat in the course of the last
14 or 15 months, I haven't seenmore of um, I don't mean like
some organized, you know,democratic interest groups
getting together and have awitherless state hand-wringing
about the state of the party.
I'm just amazed that of allthese guys who are running for
president, that no one has comeout with a kind of, you know,
vision that makes sense, thatkind of tries to say we are in
(41:46):
the 21st century and the scalesof the challenge, the scale of
the challenges that face thecountry are extraordinary and
existential.
Let's start with, you know, theeconomy and talk about AI and
talk about climate and talkabout the way the world has
changed and talk about stuffthat has everybody in the
country that I talk to,especially young people,
bewildered, scared, uncertain,and feeling like powerless,
(42:06):
right?
Whatever you want to say aboutGavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, all
the rest of these guys.
It's like nobody's out theresaying I have an agenda and a
policy agenda married to avision and an ideological, if
you want to call it that, anideological construct that's
like, here is the big vision tomeet the challenges of the 21st
century.
In a way, Trump's popularity,people get so mad at me on the
(42:29):
left when I say this, but MAGAis not a big idea, but it's a
big swing.
You know, implicit in MAGA is anotion of like the world is
going to shit and everything'sout of control.
And here's how we're gonna fixit.
We're gonna go back to the1950s, right?
That's a big idea.
What Bernie and AlexanderOcasio-Cortez and Zora Mamdani,
again, whatever you, I'm nottaking a side here.
(42:49):
I'm not trying to say I like alltheir policies.
They have a big idea too.
They're they're, and that's whyso many young people are turned
on by the left in a way wehaven't seen in a long time.
They at least are swinging forthe fences.
Trump is swinging for thefences.
The Democrats who are runningfor president, so far, no one's
swinging for the fences.
There, no one's in that way.
And I don't think the Democraticbrand can be rehabilitated until
(43:10):
some ones start to do that,start to lay out an agenda and a
set of ideas that feel likethey're commensurate with the
scale of what we're facing.
SPEAKER_00 (43:17):
Yeah.
One of the most interestingpieces of polling I've seen in
the last, I don't know, sixmonths is prominent figures
Gallopassed the electorate, alarge, a large body, a large uh
sample size, who they viewedfavorably and unfavorably
amongst well-known people.
Pope Leo was number one andnumber two, but with the only
net positive rating was BernieSanders.
(43:39):
Everybody else was underwater, Ithought was really interesting
and telling.
Um I guess we have to uh uhfinish with one last question,
which is who's gonna deliver thespeech that really addresses
what's happened in the lastmonth on the Democratic side?
Isn't this a huge opportunityfor somebody to step up?
(44:00):
Up and say, we can't we can't wecan't go down this road anymore,
and this is why and this is whatwe should do.
SPEAKER_01 (44:06):
Aaron Powell I don't know the answer.
So if the question is, is that ahuge opportunity?
I think it is and it isn't, inthe sense that because Democrats
have no power and can't reallychange the trajectory of the
war, you're basically giving aspeech that's just a speech, and
you don't really can't reallypropose a remedy.
And so there's a little bit of aimpotence problem with just
giving a speech about it.
(44:26):
I do think that it's it still issomething that whether it's in
the next month or or down theline, is going to need to get
folded into some of thesecandidates and leaders.
I want to say STEM speechesbecause that kind of diminishes
it, but into how they frame likewhat has gone wrong in the
country and what this moment isand what it requires.
I do, lastly, I think that Ithink at the moment, consistent
(44:49):
with what I said a second ago,where I said Democrats were kind
of had thought that the partywas in crisis, then the brand
was in crisis, and then they sawTrump start his so far
inexorable decline in politicalsupport and public approval and
decided that everything was fineon the Democratic side.
This is the same sort of thing.
There's a little bit of anattitude of like, why should we
(45:10):
get in the way if everythingDonald Trump is doing is just
administering moreself-inflicted harm?
You know, this guy's shootinghimself in the foot day after
day after day.
Why do we want to be in theheadlines at all?
Just let him keep administeringthese wounds to himself.
And I see the logic of that.
I mean, it's not a crazy logicto stay out of the guy's way as
he's as he's harming himself.
But I also think you're rightthat I don't know, again,
(45:31):
whether it's um this month, Ithink the general thing that
you're saying, I think, isright, which is that Democrats
who aspire to lead the countryand lead the party, you know,
are gonna need to have this bepart of, you know, the analysis
of where we are that they'regonna push off of when they try
to build their vision for wherethey want to take us.
SPEAKER_00 (45:51):
Final question, which is one we ask of all our
guests.
What's the best book you've readin the last year, and what's the
best movie you've seen in thelast year?
That's a really good question.
SPEAKER_01 (46:01):
I this is gonna be the most, like maybe predictable
answer uh that you could givebecause it won best picture, but
I do think One Battle AfterAnother was an incredible film.
And I love Sinners.
I think both those movies werefantastic.
And I love the ambition of them.
I love the scale of them.
I love the politics that theywere so explicitly, not wholly
explicitly, but prettyexplicitly political.
(46:21):
I love the gamble that the bigstudios took on them.
Um I liked, I really loved thatthat they were as good as they
were.
Um something we don't seeanymore, like grown-up movies
with big budgets uh addressingserious themes by artists
getting rewarded at the boxoffice and then uh by the
academy.
So I'm a big fan of both ofthose movies.
I'll tell you what the the bookthat I most want to read right
(46:43):
now, um, because that would behard for me to think about
what's the best book I read lastyear, but the book I'm most
excited to read is the newMichael Pollan, because I heard
him do a really fantasticinterview with uh Ezra Klein on
his podcast about his book isabout consciousness.
Uh, it's sort of like a sequelto the last Michael Pollan book
about psychedelics, um whichEzra said, I think somewhat
tummy-in-cheek, but like thisfirst, the last book was a book
(47:06):
about psychedelics, a book aboutconsciousness.
Masquerading is a book aboutpsychedelics, and this book is
really a book aboutpsychedelics, masquerading is a
book about consciousness.
But if you listen to Pollen talkabout the five years he spent
with not just all the mostimportant scientists who rely on
and are exploring materialistanswers to the question like,
(47:26):
what is consciousness and howdoes it work?
Literally the thing that all ofus have the most experience with
of anything on planet Earth andthat none of us can really
understand, which isconsciousness.
That he spent five years talkingto all the brain scientists and
all the people who think thatconsciousness comes out of the
brain.
And then also with all of thisnew kind of expanding field of
people who are like, no, no,consciousness is not doesn't
(47:48):
come arise out of the brain.
Consciousness comes from outhere somewhere, and the brain is
the is the thing that channelsconsciousness and and interprets
it.
And he doesn't come down, hesays, I love this.
I love Michael Pollins sayingthat he'd spent five years uh
researching this book and thathe knows less about the topic at
the end of five years than hedid when he started, but that
the but that the journey wasstill worth, was totally worth
(48:09):
taking.
And listening to him talk aboutit was super fascinating.
And I think probably for someonelike you who is really
interested in neuroscience, um,it's not a neuroscience book,
but the larger question ofconsciousness, again, what is
it?
Where does it come from?
How does it work?
Why is it the way it is?
You know, it's one of the greatmysteries of of of life.
And uh and I don't think there'sanybody better in the
journalistic tradition who'sable to tackle that than Pollen.
SPEAKER_00 (48:32):
I do have one final question, which is I think a
couple of years ago we we didone of these, and there were two
gigantic dogs in the background.
Uh, do you still have thosedogs?
SPEAKER_01 (48:42):
Both of those dogs, they were both two in a in a
chain of Great Danes that I'veowned in my life.
One of them was uh Fife Dog, andthe other was his younger
brother Dizza.
Both of them have passed,unfortunately.
Fife some years ago during thepandemic, and Dizza just last
October, having had a wonderfullife, but reaching the not
unusual Great Dane expirationdate of when he was about seven,
(49:02):
almost turning to eight.
So they are both no longer withme.
I miss them both desperately.
And I now have in my domicilewith my uh beloved girlfriend
two dogs, one of whom was hers,holy, that I that came into my
life, whose name is uh Bill Billthe Bassett.
And Bill is a is a is a bat is abasset hound named Bill.
That's right.
Bill Murray Goodman is his name.
(49:24):
Um, and he is like a super,super charismatic and super
handsome basset.
And then we adopted a rescue umabout a year and a half ago, who
is a pit mix, who's a lunatic.
I mean, absolutely one of themost lunatic dogs I've ever met,
but also one of the most, one ofthe sweetest dogs I've ever met.
Containing her and getting herthrough her puppyhood is a
(49:44):
challenge, but man is she, isshe cute?
And man is she energetic, andman is she is she a lover.
Um, and that's Maba Staples.
Mabis Staples, a goodmanheilman, so um, we have Maba
Staples and and Bill Murray uhin the house.
And and the next one that comesin will be a great dame puppy,
John.
So we'll have three at somepoint, and people will be like,
you guys are fucking nuts, andwe'll say, speaking.
SPEAKER_00 (50:04):
We've uh we've taken exactly one hour of your time.
Thank you very much for doingthis, John.
It was terrific, as always.
And we will catch up, I hope,either just before the midterms
or just after.
SPEAKER_01 (50:16):
Awesome.
Good to see you, bro.
SPEAKER_00 (50:18):
Take care.
Popular Podcasts
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.