Joe Trippi

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Looks like we got it going here all right?

Speaker 2 (00:05):
We are live, Hey, Trippy.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
How you doing? Is?

Speaker 2 (00:08):
I pour myself a cup of tea?

Speaker 1 (00:10):
I'm doing all right.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
I wish I had a cup of tea preparation. See you,
you worry about stuff like sounding and looking okay. I
just coming here with it.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
I don't look okay at all, but I was gonna.
I didn't say you did.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
I said you worry about it.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Well, that's why I worry about it. Anyway. How are
you doing? Man?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Good interesting week. I feel like we've gotten off of
I know we got some more stuff on Charlie Kirks
to talk about, but I feel like we're actually talking
about some other stuff, which I appreciate because there are
other things happening.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
There's a lot happening, but Kimmel for one.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably we're going to start.
We do have a bunch of fun questions that actually
this is a first for us, but I think we
have some production quality. We actually have slides with questions
from some of our Lincoln Square and that Trippy showsteners
and subscribers. We're going to get to some of these today.
And I know, as if you've listened to how we

(01:06):
attempt to do the podcast or any of our other lives.
We sometimes meander, but I think this will be kind
of fun. Joe, getting to the whole Kimmel situation. I
want your broad thoughts on it, but just framing it
from Russ's question here, any legal or political remedy for
Trump's assault on the First Amendment? Why do I feel

(01:26):
so hopeless? Let's come back to that second half in
a minute.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
But first, Joe, No, first, don't feel hopeless. That's exactly
what they want you to feel. They want you to
feel exhausted. They want to exhaust the opposition. They want
to numb people and get them to stop fighting. So
you know, is there any legal or political remedy? It's
for people to stand up. And you're starting to see

(01:50):
this other night night Joe, hosts and others are stepping
up and calling this out. I think this is gonna
it's getting a little This is one of those things
that's breaking through because breaking through all the noise, because
it created such noise and so many voices now asking
these kinds of questions, and and I think more than anything, uh,

(02:14):
it's again we keep saying this it's get loud, be
in protest at the protests, be peaceful, non violent, which
we'll be getting into, I for sure with other questions.
But millions of Americans have to stand up and say no,
the First Amendment matters, and you can't do this now.

(02:37):
I mean some you also. The other thing is to
is to to uh to do things like stop watching
any of these stations that bow to this uh and
start encouraging the ones that stand up to stand up
and stand with them. I mean one of the things

(02:58):
I think that it's gonna it has to there has
to be even economic boycotts of this stuff. Uh. And
it's not just peaceful protests, but stop buying from people
who are bowing to dear leader.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
And uh.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
And and that's what's happened here. I mean, ABC was
we can do this the hard way way or the
easy way. They didn't pick the hard way. They did
it the easy way. They just collapse just case.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Well, and that's that's been them for whether you're a
big university or a law firm or other networks. I mean,
they they have consistently and again this is these are
there are business decisions here that they are making and
I'm not excusing it. I'm just saying they're looking after
their long term economic health, so we should probably as
consumers be doing the same thing, and which, by the way,

(03:52):
will hit them in the bottom line. I do want
to just point out just so people really understand how
nuts this is. So Sinclair, which man, we talked about
this on the pod years ago, but Sinclair is the
incredibly conservative media conglomerate that owns a bunch of local
news stations and like literally they have their anchors reading scripts,

(04:13):
like pre written scripts that come from the incredibly conservative
mothership Sinclair, and I believe Next Star, which is the
other really big one. They are trying to deny that
they do that, by the way, but that's yeah, well okay,
well then you see and I want to see the
media matters guys, and we should probably have some one
of them on the show. But someone did a really

(04:33):
good mashup where they showed like two hundred and something
Sinclair people all reading the same thing and sink and
it was like exactly a remarkable coincidence at bast.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, because it doesn't come from one high at all.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Right, right, But so okay, the big thing here is
they have a merger in front of the FCC right now.
They want to go buy They have like a six
billion dollar deal right now to go buy a bunch more.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
That is the yeah, and that's that's next.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Star is trying to buy by Tenyan, that is in
front of the FCC. They were very clearly threatened and
they decided based on because they want that deal to
go through, to do this. That's what this comes down to.
It is really remarkable. I mean then you look at
like Disney, Disney's trying to buy ESPN.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
They're just saying they do this. The Jimmy Kimmel think
because of bad ratings. Well look, bad ratings, Okay, you
don't do it three days a day after the guy that,
hey we could do this the hard way or the
easy way. Oh ratings. We got to get rid of
Jimmy Kimmel. It's like ridiculous. No one's going to fall
for that. The reality is this is you are now

(05:44):
in a place I think Alex you were. You were
getting to this where they own X, they own Fox,
they now own CBS and Frankly Sinclair and next all
these things that they own and now they're they're literally
beating ABC and anybody else into submission by the threat

(06:06):
of pulling their license. We are freedom of the press
is at the First Amendment is at stake, and it's
the reason. There's a reason it's the first Amendment, because
that's the one that that makes government accountable and calls
out the government. That's the first place they want to eradicate,

(06:29):
and they are doing it. It's time for every American
to stand up and again the Democratic Party has to
stop thinking of itself as a party and start thinking
of itself as leading an opposition movement to what's happening
in this country.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Right Well, I should say I think it was ABC,
ESPN Larity and they're trying to buy the NFL network
and chunks of the NFL, which is in front of
Trump too. So you start seeing the very clear quid
pro quod is correcting myself there. I mean, do you
do see where this is going? I mean, getting getting
back to the question that has suddenly vanished off our

(07:10):
screen that I'm trying to remember the first half.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Of, but.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Thank you to our producer for that one. But the
legal political remedy, this this gets to Trump's m O.
Trump just goes and does shit and then waits for
someone to stop them. And in this case, there's a
lot we need to do before it gets to the courts,
Like yes, ultimately this will be adjudicate bed the courts, who,

(07:34):
by the way, are somewhat sick.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
There we go.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Now I can see myself and the question. But right,
so Joe, your things like going public, boycotting stuff, making
these corporations feel the pain, so that there are other
incentives here so that when these corporations are waiting, because
this might take eighteen months, this might take two years.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Even if somebody took took this to the court, we
know what's going to happen. That's going to take ages
to go through the system. It'll be appealed if the
Trump administration loses it or the FCC loses it. How
are this going wherever the suit is filed, and it

(08:16):
will take forever. Meanwhile, the threats and the bullying and
the costs go up, by the way, costs for everything
are still going up. He hasn't done anything about that
either in this you know, Uh, this is at some
point the question of hopelessness. No, you have enormous we

(08:39):
the people have enormous power. We have to start using
it and stop waiting for anybody else to save us.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
I think that is a good place to look at
another question, which will eventually Okay, so I do want
to hit the this is I just thought this one
was kind of fun, Joe. Was there any kind of
conspiracy behind the Charlie Kirk assassination? I think not, but

(09:10):
I do think they are using as an excuse to
a whole bunch of things.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
No, No, I mean I think this is the question,
is you know now that it happened, Is there you know,
is there some kind of you know, conspiracy to use
it for political purposes to do what they already had
planned in terms of First Amendment and all these other things.

(09:34):
That's not a conspiracy. That's who they are. They They
have been marching on this for decades, for this moment
to create, to move for to take absolute power, and
as with anything else, they'll use anything to do it.
Where instead of just all of us, you'd think we

(09:59):
could at a place in the country where we'd all
be able to agree that political violence is just is wrong,
no matter where it comes from nowhere, and no matter
who's attacked. Political violence is wrong, must be condemned and
we should never accept it. Period. But of course it
doesn't matter who else says that. Trump will say that

(10:23):
it was you know that. What's what's crazy is the
the guy who says that the press is the is
the enemy of the people, is the same guy saying
you can't you know, declaring that we shouldn't be uh
that that that it's the Democrat saying that that the

(10:46):
enemy of that. It's everybody else is the I mean,
it's it's just this convoluted thing that makes no sense.
But that's all the confused people make you exhausted and
to make you feel hopeless. And the reality is no,
They've been doing this for a long long time and
they are going to keep using everything they can to

(11:08):
particularly now with social networks, you know, being able with
the algorithms to push that divide to get you know,
it's the liberals who are the are the big extremeist
terrorists on the planet, all that stuff. It doesn't matter
who or what people have, yeah, you know, have a

(11:38):
I think a the smear of anybody for one person
doing something that should be condemned is is is disgusting,
but they're doing it and they'll continue to do it.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
So let's let's go to another one. This is one
I really wanted to get to, which again feeds to
all this so Elizabeth wanted to know based on basically
his approvals lowest I wrote about this week his on
trippy Takes, which everyone should go check out in the
three two one, which is back we're doing better at
cross promoting a little bit. But basically his approval rating,

(12:21):
depending on where you look, are pretty much everywhere you look,
is lower than it's ever been.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
And crucially it's.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
In the thirties now, not the forties, not the not
close to fifty. It's thirty seven, thirty eight, thirty nine.
And the things that are dragging him down are yeah,
I would say on the ice stuff, but the economy
and inflation mostly especially by the way, with Latino voters
and a lot of the voting blocks that again we
get under the hood on our show and stuff we write,

(12:49):
so I won't belabor that point. Does it matter? And
Joe saw I saw one. I saw one very specific
Fox pull that had him a little triggered this week
that I think does really matter.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Well, yeah, that that Fox poll has the Trump basically
saying that on the economy, it asked whether the economy's
bet under Trump is better or worse, and this is
a Fox News poll, so thirty thought it's better, fifty
two percent say it's worth So a majority of Americans

(13:24):
in the in the Fox News poll say the economies
and this is people fifty two percent of them say
the economy has gotten worse under Trump. Not surprising because
the prices that he said he was going to lower
on day one have increased. Everything is going up and
still going up, and a lot of people rightly blame

(13:48):
tariffs for that. And I think there's even some bigger
numbers on the tariff question, uh in a lot of
polls right now. But the one that it still stands
out to me is the one we've been talking about
for the past, the Zogby poll question asking people if
they're ashamed of their Trump's their president, which for two
or three polls was a majority of Americans saying that.

(14:14):
I think it's drifted down a little bit into the
high forties recently, but that question was first asked during
the Clinton Lewinsky scandal. That's when he first started asking it,
and Trump has surpassed every president for more Americans saying
they're ashamed that he's their president. So I mean that

(14:37):
we've seen a lot of indications in the pulling that independence.
Even independents who were leaning Republican are now steadfastly not
in the Republican corner, not with MAGA, not with Trump.
And doesn't mean they're all going to vote for Democrats,
but they're they're up in the air in a way

(14:59):
they narrat haven't been in India the past cycle. So
not even in the twenty twenty cycle. With that Biden
was able to win some of those.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
I mean keep in mind, I mean, yes, but on
the economic issue specifically, if fifty two percent say it's
getting worse than eighteen percent say the same, remember a
lot of that eighteen percent. Actually I'm more interested in that,
and for a lot of ways in that eighteen percent
because a lot of people thought the economy was terrible

(15:29):
before he took office already, right, So if they say
it's the same and they already were feeling bad about it,
it's not they're still feeling bad. So it's not like
this is a forty eight to fifty two issue. This
is a lot closer to like thirty thirty five to
sixty five seventy. Then you start adding up all the
other numbers. Right, we only added like twenty two thousand

(15:50):
jobs in August, lost jobs earlier in the summer in June.
Costs are up. CPI numbers are up.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
It's it's bad. Yeah, no in consumer sentiment keeps is
still now. The market keeps going up, and but you
know that's the market's never been an indicator of how
the economy is actually doing. You know, they'll they'll, you know,

(16:19):
we'll see. My own view is the economy is going
to continue to get worse and prices are going to
continue to go up. And one thing we do know,
even with the FED lowering interest rates, the reason they
didn't want to lower interest rates was because they're worried
about inflation being higher than the two percent they want.

(16:41):
Lowering interest rates because of the bad jobs market, which
is what's essentially happening here, only increases the chances that
prices will. You know that that they've taken their foot
offs lowering inflation. So the odds I think the as
overwhelmingly are now that prices are going to go up,

(17:04):
and we know that the people that are hurt, I
mean today middle and lower income Americans are having a
tougher time making it. They couldn't make it with the prices.
I mean, this is exactly what you pointed to, Alex
in terms of the going into twenty twenty four, they're
not feeling any better. At eighteen points that think it's

(17:26):
the same and the fifty two points that think it's
gotten worse. They were in a lot of pain then
they're in a lot of pain now, and unfortunately because
of a lot of Trump's policies, not just terrors, but
the impact his deportations are having on agriculture prices from people.

(17:46):
You know, farmers are losing their livelihoods because the crops
are in, they can't harvest their crops. So I just
don't think I think those numbers are like to get worse.
And it's significant that a Fox News poll has even
if you just look at it from the fifty two

(18:08):
worst and the thirty better, even that's a twenty two
point underwater kind of problem, even if you leave the
sames out.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
So we have one more fun one and I'm curious
where you're going to take this. I think this is
from Steven. What's the thing about this Trump administration that
surprised you the most. I can't say a lot of
things have surprised me that much. I can think of
a few, But Joe, what do you got on this one?

Speaker 1 (18:36):
No, the only actually, the only surprise for me is
that they've been so out in the open, blatant about it.
I thought they'd be doing a lot of these things
more quietly, you know, and and and sort of gradually,
you know, sort of a gradient. They're not. This is
all out grab for absolute power. They're not highing it.

(19:02):
And the thing that allows an authoritarian to pull this
off is not that there's no opposition. It's that the
opposition is sort of fractured, doesn't recognize the grab fast enough,

(19:24):
and it happens so gradually that democracy just dies before
anybody realizes it. What's what's surprising me actually is as
open as they've been about it, the question is when
will America stand up? Will the American people wake up
in time? And I think that's where the Democratic Party

(19:50):
has to mobilize and literally mobilize the American people. And
and you know, put three lanterns in the uh, you know,
one of by land, two if by sea, three if
from within, and we are literally being Uh, somebody's got

(20:11):
to sound that alarm and get the American people to
be visible to say out loud, no, we this is
too far. We won't allow this to happen. Otherwise it'll
just become more gradual sliding. Uh. And it's not so
gradual anymore. I mean you have the you know, the
easy way or the hard way, and the next day

(20:33):
a major network caves again. And it's happened repeatedly. You've
seen it with law firms, You've seen it with corporations,
You're now seeing it with it and with the First Amendment.
That's that. Once that's gone, I mean, they will have
every network in this country vowing to dear leader and

(20:58):
pumping his prop again and into the next election. That's
not that's not a democracy anymore. That's that's orbone. That's
there's a lot of places.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
Yeah, I think to your point, I think the biggest
surprise I've seen has Look, we're already at people are
estimating somewhere north of sixty percent of Project twenty twenty
five has already been implemented and completed. And I think
the biggest surprise to me is how so many of
the institutions or so many of the kind of the

(21:33):
leadership of the Democratic Party is still acting like this
is business as usual and not realizing. Joe, to your
point earlier, how you say, we need to realize we're
at the forefront of a movement or an opposition movement,
and like the institutions that we're talking about that a
lot of people are counting on saving them are either

(21:53):
being hollowed out or suborned as we speak, like they
they ain't coming.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
No, but that's not that's not how it works. It's
it's this is government of buying for the people. Okay.
So the thing here is to realize the institutions will
snap back if we demand it. In other words, if
if millions of Americans were protesting this, where would would

(22:21):
the Supreme Court? What's going to bring the Supreme Court?
What do they what do they fear here? Right now?
They all fear him, every one of these court companies,
every one of the the the obviously every single Republican
in office fears Donald Trump and being purged by him

(22:41):
at the courts. Uh, you know, he ignores it. We're
still looking at maybe the TikTok thing. Well, finally, after
the Supreme Court said no, it had to be banned,
that the law was real. It keeps getting kicked down.
Now Allison and and Trump uh uh uh sinc ephants
are are buying it. Uh. You know, it'll be another

(23:03):
network to put you know, make TikTok wasn't all that
great anyway with the Chinese. Now now it'll be another
ex So the point here is we are using all
these things, we are participating in them. If if if
millions of Americans were out there, Democrats would find the

(23:26):
members would find their voice. Even the Republicans. If millions
of Americans we're standing up right now, the Republicans in
office would be would fear what's their defeat. By the way,
that's already happening to some extent because we're speaking in polls. Well,
stop speaking in polls and stop doing start doing. Because

(23:51):
what happened was is they saw independence move away in
their pulling as they saw these numbers on the economy,
on immigration, that the only thing he's above water on
is crime and barely that When they saw this, they realize, wait,
we got to speed this grab up. We got to

(24:13):
speed it up because we can't wait till twenty twenty six.
Because these guys might beat us. That people are starting
to answer polls the wrong way. Well, the problem with
that is that's what got you Texas redistricting those five
district That's so what you're seeing now is them speeding

(24:34):
up the grab. They're now going to rig the districts
so that they can't lose the House there. They are
demanding that these that the First Amendment be pulled down
and that your license to broadcast be pulled if you

(24:54):
don't agree with the president and what he wants. And
now they're bond more, they're merging networks, they're buying TikTok.
So you're going to have all of these organizations, these
with the ability to communicate the president's message that won't

(25:17):
disagree with him because they don't want their license pulled
by dear leader. No, it's us, Stop watching it, stop buying,
show up, be visible, and yes, we need to do

(25:38):
all of this before November of twenty twenty six. And
it will be if this is if we're going to
defeat this, it will be by a massive wave in
that election. But it's got to start building now. And
it asked us take this stuff on, Joe.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
I think that's a pretty good place for us to
wrap today. Anything else you want to get off your chest?

Speaker 1 (26:01):
No, it's a but look the hopelessness thing, that's that's
what they want. They want hopelessness. They want people to
be exhausted, and they want you to be in fear,
and you need to use all that to fight back.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
All right, Well, thanks everybody, We'll see you next week,
same time. And we did just drop a new Trippy
show today with James tall Rico. Super fun listen and
if you haven't checked out our episode with Tom Swazi
from Tuesday, you should check that one out too.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yeah, there's a head on.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
Over to Trippy Takes for some of our writing.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
But what's really interesting about those two guys is they're
so both of them are trying to find a center,
a voice for the Democratic Party, and the two interviews
couldn't be more different. It was really interesting to listen
to both of them. And yeah, Trippy's take and keep
listening and following the Lincoln Square. Thanks a lot, everybody,