1099: Donald Trump, Empath in Chief

24:17Because what she's describing I think is just accurate about what he's been doing. And I do think that like part of this is like democratic legitimacy is hard to measure, but it is real. And so he had like, I think there's a, you can blur your eyes and say there was a mandate to go after the border. There was a, there was even an anti-woke mandate. He talked about that a lot on the campaign trail. There wasn't one to like fuck up the national parks and get rid of a bunch of like, you know, land management jobs and a bunch of other stuff that is tear gas one year olds, right? Not something that was a mandate or to like put on tariffs.

24:55They're going to raise goods, prices for goods and hurt businesses that do a lot of exporting or any business that relies on any kind of goods that are coming in from abroad. And because he doesn't have a mandate to do those things, a like you're seeing this in all the polling, but B, it also leads to a bunch of other weather, right? Like he's more there's more likely to be leaks from inside of these agencies. There's more likely to be judges willing to stand in his way. Like there's just a bunch of more likely you have members of Congress speak out against it. There's just like the fact that he is more and more unpopular and what he is trying to do is so unpopular is grinding the gears down.

25:29So even on the places where he's trying to do things that like he might have had some kind of claim to a mandate for, like everything is getting harder because he has pursued this agenda that nobody really wanted, even in his own base. Did you guys see the story over the weekend about Trump's new passion project. What's this one? The Wall Street Journal reported that they're trying to figure out what to do with all the dirt from the East Wing renovation. Someone suggested they make a big mound on the ellipse to better see the UFC fight that's coming up there. Oh, I didn't see that part. But then Doug Burgum said, no, sir, what if we bring it over to this golf course over some nearby and we can refurbish the golf course?

26:04So Trump's new passion is redeveloping DC golf courses. Yeah. The people, populace. You mentioned the AP poll. There's also like an NBC News poll over the weekend, overall approval, 4258. The two groups that show the largest drop in strong support for the president since April, those who identify as Republicans and in particular, those who identify as MAGA Republicans, still highest with those voters. But he was 78 percent approval with those voters in April. And now he's at 70 percent. That's an eight point drop. It's the biggest drop of any group. They also ask people in all these polls, do you identify yourself as a MAGA Republican or a regular Republican?

26:43And it used to be MAGA Republican by, you know, 10, 20, 30 points. And now it's 50-50 among Republicans. MAGA Republican versus regular Republican. Yeah, I would say my, I saw that and I thought, well, is that an actual difference or is that just a brand distinction? Right. Because does Trump's, does MAGA leave, MAGA leaves its residue on the Republican Party? Because that's also what's happening is you see like the Vances and the Gnomes. all of them are also jockeying for what a post-Trump world will look like. And for some of them, it is not moving anywhere towards some kind of old school republicanism.

27:12It's like it's no going out there being like, I told the president we're going to get every darn immigrant out of this country. So they're all kind of jockeying for the what the future will be. But right now, it looks a lot like MAGA just without Trump. MTG says, I'm not MAGA, I'm America first. And that's an interesting. And I do think that's going to be the split because MAGA is so identified with Trump and America first has overlap, but not the same. There's also plenty of MAGA infighting these days that doesn't involve Trump. Most recently, the feud that Candace Owens started by spreading some truly batshit conspiracies about Charlie Kirk's assassination.

27:45Owens has implied that Israel was involved in the murder, that French assassins hired by the Macrons were involved and are also now trying to kill her. That is what happened. And that Kirk was even, quote, betrayed by the leadership of Turning Point USA, going so far as to criticize Erica Kirk, his widow, for not responding to Candace's crazy conspiracy theories. So right-wing influencers from Ben Shapiro to Nick Fuentes have gone hard at Candace over this. Erica Kirk herself has publicly and quite pointedly asked Candace Owens to stop. And on Sunday night, she announced that she would be meeting privately with Candace on Monday and that, quote, public discussions, live streams and tweets are on hold until after this meeting.

28:28Boo. Tommy, thoughts on how much this insanity matters? I think MKUltra made an appearance, too. Really? Actually, a few times, if we're being honest. I think I actually think this does matter. I think it gets at a couple of things. First, it's like how how viable and effective is Turning Point USA going to be going forward? because this is an organization that Charlie Kirk, whether you like him or you hate him, he built this thing based on his vision. He had a ton of big donors, but like he created an organization that was very impactful. Um, and his death created a vacuum and it's not clear yet whether Erica Kirk can carry the mantle and keep it as politically powerful in part, in part, because of these attacks.

29:07Um, then there's also just like, I think this infighting is just consuming the MAGA media world and they're not talking about whatever Trump wants to talk about, like how bad Democrats are, you know, the things he's doing. And the majority of it is Candace Owens. And for those who don't know, she was at TPUSA, then went to PragerU for a while, then was at the Daily Wire where they fired her for being anti-Semitic and now she's on her own. And she does huge numbers. Like her, I looked at some of her recent live streams, they were getting like 1.5 million, 2 million people on YouTube. Yeah. She's regularly like a top 10 podcast.

29:38So like a ton of people watch this stuff and they believe it. And you're right. Like she was focused on Brigitte Macron being a man. Then she went to Charlie Kirk assassination world. Those two conspiracies converged at one point and the French were behind both of them. But there was always an Israeli in there because, you know, you got to work in some Jewish people somehow. But I do think like this has become like this all consuming thing and it's spiraling out of control. Like now there's like Tucker versus Nick Fuentes and Heritage versus Tucker and Tim Pool's mad and his beanies all askew because he's mad at Candace.

30:09Do you guys know why the French and Israelis are supposedly, or supposedly were part of killing, were in on killing Charlie Kirk and might now wanna kill Candace? I think the French were trying to kill Candace to silence her about her regime-Macron conspiracy theory. And I think they took out Charlie to get to her was the suggestion. Yeah, not also, but they're in cahoots with the people that work at Turning Point USA. I would just say, you know, whatever the kind of cathedral of logic candace is building i'm not super interested in entering not a strong foundation but i will say it like just you know jd vance is going on and on about you know how it's actually immigrants that are causing anti-semitism in this country and then you see somebody like candace owens getting like kind of a million people watching coming from deep inside the house yeah and just like this is like the the most extreme voices like there's the most Most extreme voices gain a bigger audience, but also being extreme either by self-selection or by algorithm that exposes you to more extreme things.

31:13And all of that pulls you further and further online and more and more outside of the real world, whether you're a content producer like Candace Owens or the president of the United States or a content receiver. In the end result, it's a bunch of people that are just sort of completely divorced from everyday life. And that may get a lot of interesting eyeballs and get a lot of people that also maybe feel alienated. But also for everybody else, you see a Candace something like who the fuck would believe that? Or you see J.D. Vance blame it all on sort of like an ethnic import. Well, that doesn't comport with with reality.

31:42Or Trump says this crazy thing about about about Rob Reiner. It's like, God, what kind of a fucking maniac would say something like that? Well, it's people whose brains are broken by in one way or another the Internet. And Candace isn't just like for political obsessives. You know, it's not just like a show about politics. Like she was really into the Justin Baldoni, Blake Lively world. So like people who come for that stuff are then getting like the crazy French conspiracy theories, the TPUSAs of the right wing politics. So that's why she's got this really big reach and impact. Yeah. Cultural entertainment on ramp to politics for Candace Owens.

32:18And what's funny to do, like they're all like this. There's one path that leads you to Candace Owens. But there is this sort of natural cycle with with a bunch of different. like if you start watching videos about the pyramids the pyramids you will eventually not to it won't take too long get to videos about how the pyramids were built by aliens and actually it's tied to atlantis like there is a kind of natural honing that happens and it leads you down these paths to eventually you get to some kind of the jews usually them usually us where it ends up so uh interested to see how that meeting goes with uh erica kirk and candace I'm sure we'll get a full readout and that the readout will be uncontested by both sides.

32:57Can you imagine how weird and uncomfortable this is? Like, Erica Kirk has been through hell. Her husband was assassinated on live TV. Now she has to go have a meeting with this person who is not subtly suggesting that she might have been behind it. And is like, like, Candace, by the way, is not the only one who's just really attacking Erica Kirk in some pretty gross ways, too. So this has got to be, I don't know, just awful. It also speaks to just like, this is a person that has gained a lot of influence in part because until they had the wrong enemies, they were embraced by a lot of figures on the right.

33:28Not a lot of people calling for big tete-a-tetes when they were going after the Macrons. That's right, right, that's right.

33:41Ponte of America is brought to you by Helix. It's getting cold out there. Nobody wants to get out of bed. You just want to lay there all day and your cozy, cozy blankets and your cozy, cozy mattress and watch some TV. That's why you need a new Helix mattress. You spend more time on that thing than you do anywhere else. Sleep is even more important during sick season, during cold and flu season, at times like this. And that's why Helix mattress is the best. It was the most awarded mattress brand. They got EGOT over there at Helix. It was tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. The Helix offers a variety of mattresses designed to fit your sleep needs.

34:17How will you know which Helix mattress works best for you and your body? You take the Helix Sleep Quiz. Easiest quiz you've ever taken. It matches you with the perfect mattress based on your personal preferences, making it easy to find a mattress that fits your sleep needs. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door with free shipping in the U.S. Rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. The Happy with Helix guarantee offers a risk-free, customer-first experience designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. They even offer a 120-night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty.

34:47Go to helixsleep.com slash crooked for 20 % off site wide. That's helixsleep.com slash crooked for 20 % off site wide. Make sure you enter our show name into the post-purchase survey so they know we sent you helixsleep.com slash crooked.

35:05So you may have missed it. We sure did. but the Democratic National Committee's annual winter meetings were held in L.A. on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I guess our invite got lost in the mail. I don't know. Party leaders were here. Oh, and you sat down with J.B. Pritzker stopped by. Yeah, we saw him on his way. He let us know. He made a drop by. Anyway, the party leaders were here, and as Politico reported, quote, for the first time in a long time, the mood was warm. Optimism coursed through the hotel ballrooms. Is that what that was? Taking a hit of optimism. I was gonna say, we got good weather out here.

35:38What actual business is transacted at these meetings? I've never been clear to me. I don't know. I think it's just go, you go, you mingle, you talk. Rules and bylaw votes, I don't know. Couple of that acknowledgements. Yeah. I was thinking about this, I don't think I've ever been to a DNC meeting. I don't know if that's a me problem. Just maybe my job. I went once with Obama in like, oh seven. Like that first one. Yeah, I might've gone in DC, like some random hotel. Yeah, when he was first thinking about running. I don't know what else is going on. When he was first thinking about breaking his promise.

36:10Anyway, the whole thing led to a predictable series of speculative stories. One was an Axios piece about how Kamala Harris, who spoke on Friday night, is, quote, working to keep another White House campaign viable based on the fact that she's trying out some new applause lines and extended her book tour. Another, also from Axios, featured anonymous advisors to potential 2028 contenders, acknowledging that Gavin Newsom is the current frontrunner and discussing their plans to highlight his past scandals and paint him as too liberal. wow it really feels like 2028 is kicking into high gear what do you guys make of the Kamala story uh I would say it was pretty thin uh the the evidence that she's like the the headline said gearing up for a run but the actual article said gearing up for keeping her options open to run and then you got to think that if your goal was running for president you would stop the book tour not extend it based on I think the reaction to the book tour so far which I don't think has been very good for her.

37:02So yeah, the evidence in quotes was she added stops to her book tour. She went to a DNC meeting down the street from her house. Ken Martin made a quip that Doug could be the first gentleman someday, not just the second gentleman, and that there are some new lines in her stump speech. And so that's pretty thin. I'm imagining the narrative if Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic Party nominee, refused to go to a DNC meeting in her hometown. That was my first thought. Probably wouldn't pretty bad for her. Now, I'm not like trying to hate on Alex Thompson here, because I do think there is a world where this kind of story gets written because a bunch of advisors are like off the record.

37:35She's keeping her options open here. And he strings together a story kind of based on available evidence. That's politically kind of a smart thing to do, right? If people think you're running for president, you get invited to speak. People write down what you say in the newspaper. They talk about you on the Sunday shows. Now, if I were an advisor to Kamala Harris, I would be like, ignore that crap, but let's figure out, like, let's lay the foundation for what you want to run on and do as president, because I still think that is lacking. Like she was obviously put in a bad position by Joe Biden, both, you know, with their record, but also with 107 days to run a campaign.

38:09But I think if you were to ask most voters, like, what would Kamala do? What's her big thing? Most of them would not know. And just to use an imperfect example, like I worked for John Edwards in 2004, and then we ran against him. And we know a lot about his big thing. Like, you know, he decided to make 2008 about ending poverty, universal health care, attacking corporate power and attacking like shitty trade deals. Like he was like a populist before Bernie made it cool. And he was anti Washington. I think she needs to like fix this problem pretty quickly so that people know like, oh, this is her identity.

38:40This is her lane if she runs. Yeah. The the new rhetoric that's that she trotted out that they were treating is like kind of a big deal. it was um the quotes they used were like both parties have failed to hold the public's trust harris said people are done with the status quo and they're ready to break things to force change we cannot afford to be nostalgic for a flawed system that failed so many and that she added arguing that president trump is a quote symptom of a bigger problem i don't read a speech from october 2024 what is supposed to not add new lines well those are just like but this is the this is why what you just said was really important to me is that like the edwards stuff was like very specific poverty issue.

39:19You know, saying that both parties have failed to hold the public's trust is like a all you need to do to say that is just reflect the current polling and punditry that's out there. It's like the next question is, OK, then what are the Democrats done to not hold the public's trust like specifically? You know, right. That's like so like in that story, one of the one of the proof points that she might run for president, she's going on Jimmy Kimmel this week. And if Jimmy Kimmel were to say, where's the Democratic Party gone wrong? Like maybe she has a good answer. But to be honest, what I expect right now is just a word's out.

39:48That's what I would expect because I just have not seen her lay out any kind of a specific point of view. Yeah. I was hoping for a little more. I listened to her. I haven't listened to too many of her book events, but I listened to the one with Tim in Nashville. And it was just, you know, she's funny, got some good applause. But it was just like, you just want, like, okay, what's your, how do you see the country? Where do you see the country going? What do you care about right now? You know, I do think back to the piece, like one piece of evidence in the piece that I do think is legitimate is expanding the book tour to go to South Carolina and to and she's been doing a lot of southern states.

40:22Yeah. And she talked about this on some other podcast, too, that she they were going to go to like the regular cities that you go to on a bookstore. But she really wanted to go to a whole bunch of different places in the south. And I do think that is that that is her and her campaign being like, OK, she wants to be strong with the black vote. She's going to South Carolina thinking that it's still going to be in the early state lineup. So, you know, I guess that warrants the peace to me, the South Carolina thing. But not as much the rhetoric. That's smart. Or the meeting that's in her backyard.

40:51When she shows up at like a party dinner in New Hampshire, that's when I'll be like, okay. Yeah, that's the big one. You guys think Newsom's earned the frontrunner spot? And the ire of the contenders who think they're going to take him down with his liberal record? I'm a front runner. I would say he's done the most to make himself the anti-Trump figure in the Democratic Party. I don't think anybody's done as much as him to kind of take that spot. And he's tried things that I think have not made him necessarily the person everybody thinks should be the candidate. But he's definitely assuaged a lot of...

41:22I think there are a lot of people that are or were skeptical of Gavin Newsom that are less skeptical today than they were a year ago. Yeah. I think he's done more to improve his image with the base of the Democratic Party than anyone else by a landslide. And some of it is like the tone and the tweets and kind of the silly stuff that people see on the internet, but mostly it's his willingness to use the power he currently has as governor of California to advance the Democratic Party's interests and fight Trump. Like the biggest piece of that is Prop 50 and redistricting. We would be fucked right now if not for getting those five seats.

41:53But also he was the highest ranking American official to go to the UN cop meeting in Brazil a couple of weeks back to talk about climate change. I think that was like a very savvy move. It was one that was planned about a year ago, I think, but it was great timing. Now, like it hasn't all been smooth sailing, like the early days of the podcast rollout with Charlie Kirk, with Steve Bannon, like that didn't go over well, but he's course corrected and adjusted. Yeah. They listed in the piece, the different areas that, that opponents are thinking about in terms of how to like make the case against him.

42:22And, you know, they have like old scandals, they have French laundry and that kind of stuff. I'm like, you know, I don't expect that to be as effective for someone like him who has first of all the way the media information environment is now but like everyone knows about those scandals he owns them he talks about them i think him doing the podcast and him just being out there so much much like it did with trump and many politicians since trump actually helps him get through that kind of stuff i think the biggest weakness for me at least is sort of the he's a liberal from california and i don't think this is necessarily specific to just Gavin Newsom himself.

43:00I think any governor of California for the last eight years is going to have to answer for a lot of very, very liberal legislation, even if it's not their responsibility as governor, but it's just been through the legislature and it's been passed and there's this city ordinance and that, and he's going to have to own the housing stuff and affordability and all that kind of stuff. And he's been good on a lot of it, but like your record are still your record. And, you know, hearing him defend it on Ezra's pod. He just sat down with Ezra Klein last week. He has answers for everything. But over the course of a campaign, I think that's going to be the test for him, whether he can...

43:35Yeah. You look at the contrast between... So we would say Newsom, you have Pritzker, you have Josh Shapiro, right? These are all sitting governors, potential presidential candidates, and they have just very different profiles. Josh Shapiro has just a much smaller one right now. And maybe that's a political strategy. Maybe that's a consequence of governing a purple state in which you are working with a legislature that's much more divided. You have, I think, Pritzker, who comes from a liberal state, but has kind of defined a smaller set of issues with which he's kind of picked some big fights with Trump.

44:09But I agree. Like, I think it's funny because there's the attacks from the left that, oh, he's been bad on homeless people or that he's thrown trans people under the bus. And I do think he'll have an easier time talking about that than he will be, say, like healthcare for undocumented people. I also sort of, I can't tell yet if it's going to be like a, you're voting with your heart or your head election, right? Like 2008 was like, people were fired up after 06. We felt good. We thought we could win. They voted with their hearts for Barack Obama, even with considerable kind of concerns about electability.

44:402020 was a vote with your head. Like Joe Biden is the most electable. Let's get this guy in there. We got to beat Trump. I don't know where the headspace we're all gonna be in in 2027 and eight? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I guess you could argue that Obama won, part of the reason he won the primaries, he successfully prosecuted the electability argument against Hillary and Iowa. So like maybe it's both, but yeah, it's a good question. How was J.B. Pritzker? I'm 10 minutes into that one. I haven't listened to the whole thing. It was really interesting talking to Pritzker because I do just, he has a, like a, and I said this to his face, like if you would have told me that this was like one of the richest human beings in America and the richest person in public office, like that would be surprising because that's not how he carries himself.

45:26He has a much more, I don't know, like just not what comes to mind. And it was an interesting conversation about how he does come from all this privilege, but that he was shaped by a lot of loss when he was a kid and the tension there. But he has something that I think a lot of Democrats don't have, which is similar to Obama, which is a feeling like they could just walk away yeah right like he doesn't have that like i don't know i've been planning this since i was seven years old kind of a thing uh like if he loses he'll just go to vegas and yeah just push it off over yeah yeah yeah i i popped in the the conference room when he was waiting there just shot the shit for a minute about like the bears and chicago weather and he just he seems like a completely normal guy he also looks like to your point about being a very, very rich guy, but not reading that way.

46:10Like even his suits look like a guy who has lost 20 pounds and not gone to a tailor, right? Which is not a very rich guy move. Like normally you just get that stuff brought in, trim it up a bit. But yeah, it was a good conversation. I think people should check it out. I mean, one thing he said that I thought was interesting just about the future of the Democratic Party was because we didn't have a primary in 2024, we really didn't get the like vision shaping that would have happened if you were switching between candidates and a midterm election usually just isn't that right like you might have a set of proposals you're all rallying behind but for the most part it's a um it's a anti-incumbent message and so all of this sort of like what do we stand for we don't know what we stand for like that is a real feeling people have but in part it's just because we never had that big debate in which one person's vision becomes the thing we call us around yeah that's that's that's right all right last thing before we get to Tommy's conversation with Jake Tapper.

47:05We all know the media business is in rough shape right now, especially the news business. Well, Jeff Bezos' Washington Post has decided to make a big bet on AI-generated podcasts. Uh-oh. Which the Post has dubbed, quote, your personal podcast, in which users of the paper's mobile app can, quote, shape their own briefing, select their topics, set their lengths, pick their hosts, and soon even ask questions using our Ask the Post AI technology, end quote. The rollout's been a bit shaky. to put it mildly, with Semaphore's Max Taney reporting that the paper's journalists are frustrated with the feature's error-riddled episodes and fictional quotes, and that the post went live with it even after internal tests revealed that the AI-generated scripts failed to pass editorial standards two-thirds of the time.

47:52Gotta work out those kinks, huh? Yeah, it's a lot of errors. Yeah, this to me is a good example of a lot of times what we describe as the threat of AI is actually the threat of the people in charge of the AI. Because if you had a journalist whose hit rate was 30%, you would say, oh, you gotta go do some more practice. You gotta get some more reps, but we're gonna put this on the website. But for whatever reason, because AI is this sort of magical future box, somehow you're allowed to just sort of roll it out and hope for the best and put the word beta over the top and treat people to something that has like an incredible inaccuracy rate.

48:27And like AI can be a great tool. It can be a harmful tool. It can be a parasite. But this is people choosing to put AI out there into the world before it is ready, before it makes sense, before it is worthy of the institution. Open AI says, join the club. We're all doing it. Yeah, I don't like what this idea means for me personally or for us at this table or Crooked Media. I love the idea behind the product. If I could be a subscriber to the New York Times or the Washington Post, tell it what I like, and then every morning have a bespoke, I guess, AI-generated podcast. that kind of summarizes for me all the stories I would be most interested in.

49:03That is a really cool idea. Is that a podcast? I don't know. It's more like an AI generated voice reading me an article, which I think the New Yorker is doing. And that shit works. And I love that, by the way. That's actually a useful additional feature, right? Because it's not something you would do, right? They don't have somebody read, but like - Well, that's such a lower lift from a technological standpoint, right? Because you can't fuck that up because it's just a voice reading the text. Yeah, it's a fuzzy line. Now, some of the errors they referenced were like mispronunciations, which, boy, if that's a problem, don't listen to my shows.

49:30But, you know, it's a fuzzy line between like, what's a podcast? What is AI? What is going to kind of eat into all of our brain share, right? I mean, we were talking about this with the Warner Brothers Discovery, like the way that, you know, some of these companies now, like if you're Netflix, you view TikTok as your primary competitor, because it's just about aggregate, you know, leisure time people have. And I worry about this for other podcast creators, but not right now. But see, I have a, like, I agree with you actually, right? Like if you said that to me, like, oh, you know, I would love like for my 20 minute drive in the morning, oh, there's like a 20 minute product.

50:02It walks me through the biggest stories of the day. It like all, it helps me like prep based on real journalism from real people that are being paid, that are working on the paper. Like that all makes sense to me. And then I think, well, if the daily didn't exist, right? Like if the daily didn't exist in the New York Times made this, we think, oh, wow, that's a great product. But human beings using the capacity for imagination, creativity, make a product that That takes the newspaper's work and makes something interesting and new and special. And I do worry about the shortcut of AI to synthesize and aggregate when often what is most needed is something you couldn't describe because someone creative had to invent it.

50:42Yeah, I think about it as I would tell myself that this would be great and I'd want to listen to my 20 minutes of vegetables, which is like going to get the news of the day and just the news. but in practice when i got in the car i still want to hear people joking around about the news and just talking like humans about and having a conversation um then just hear the the reading of the news hey fingers crossed voice no like i was just thinking about it because i'm like we have value right like like the random ai voice that's just spreading out knowing it's ai versus like jane doing what a day um you know on my commute it's like that's not a competition Right.

51:20And it's all, but also too, like all of these AI, this kind of an AI product is predicated on a world in which most things are made by people. And this is a synthesis of that human work, right? Like it all, like - You still need the journalist at some point. Definitely. Well, that's what I mean. It's like the like - Which is good news, right? For now. But that's why it's about, it's about what the people are making and not what the computer is doing. It's the tool user, not the tool a lot of the time. Get back to work, Jeff Bezos. Yeah, he's a tool. All right. When we come back, Tommy's conversation.

51:49with Jake Tapper.

51:59Pods of America is brought to you by Quince. Cold mornings, holiday plans, this is when I need my wardrobe to just work. That's why I'm all about Quince. They make it easy to look sharp, feel good, and find gifts that last. From Mongolian cashmere sweaters to Italian wool coats, Quince pieces are crafted from premium materials and are built to hold up without the luxury markup. Quince makes the essentials every guy needs. Mongolian cashmere sweaters for 50 bucks, Italian wool coats that look and feel like designers, and denim and chinos that fit just right. Their outerwear lineup is no joke. They got down jackets, wool top coats, and leather styles that are built to last.

52:32Each piece is made from premium materials by trusted factories that meet rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. By cutting out middlemen and traditional markups, Quince delivers the same quality as luxury brands at a fraction of the price. It's everything you actually want to wear, built to hold up season after season. I got to tell you guys, I was doing some holiday shopping yesterday. Not only did I go to the Quince website myself and pick up like two or three things. I'm not going to say what they are because the people who are getting them might be listening. But also, you know when you Google like best gift for mom or whatever?

53:02Yeah, they even have a little tab. It's like a holiday gifting option, a whole layout of great options. Get your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handed with Quince. Don't wait. Go to Quince.com slash crooked for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. So congrats, Canada. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash crooked. Free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash crooked.

53:28Joining me today is CNN's lead DC anchor and chief Washington correspondent and the author of the new book, which I'm holding up right here for our YouTube viewers, Race Against Terror, Chasing an Al-Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War. Jake Tapper, welcome back to the pod, buddy. Good to see you. It's great to be here. Great to see you again. please send my regards to all the others, Favs and Love It or Leave It, Fife and all the others. I'll tell everybody hello. And congrats on the book, by the way. I was texting you yesterday that it's fascinating. It's an amazing story. And it deeply triggered me because it brought me back to all these incredibly important and contentious counterterrorism debates from the early Obama days that I want to get into in just a minute.

54:09But first, I have to ask you about the corporate media elephant in the room. Paramount and Netflix are waging a battle to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. CNN's fate will be determined by that process in some form or fashion. President Trump weighed in on all of this the other day. Here's a clip. I just think that the people that have run CNN into the ground, by the way, nobody watches, very few people watch. I don't think they should be entrusted with running CNN any longer. So I think any deal should it should be guaranteed and certain that CNN is part of it or sold separately. But I don't think the people that are running that company right now and running CNN, which is a very dishonest group of people, I don't think that should be allowed to continue.

54:55I think CNN should be sold along with everything else. Typically kind and generous media criticism from our president. So, Jake, I know you can't comment on merger talks, but I'm just curious what it's like for you and your team and everybody in the newsroom who are used to covering the story to now be a part of the story. Well, let me just bring it back to a moment that I'm sure you remember in October 2009 when the Obama White House was declaring Fox News not a legitimate news organization. And I, in a gaggle, asked White House Communications Director, or was he Press Secretary? Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, why is it appropriate for any White House to say any credentialed media organization is not legitimate.

55:39And I got and still get to this day a lot of crap from the left about that as if I'm defending Fox, which I'm not. I'm defending the principle of should a White House be not criticizing a story or criticizing a particular anchor or whatever, but just labeling an entire media organization not legitimate. And what that was, and I think it was just Anita Dunn and Robert Gibbs, I think Anita was the communications director at the time, is so small compared to what President Trump is currently doing in terms of not only labeling one channel fake news or illegitimate or whatever, But like everyone, except for the most flattering, obsequious channels and coverage, and now weighing in on a potential merger that his Justice Department and the FCC and others are supposed to objectively assess.

56:50I don't think the FCC has a role if it's what Netflix wants to do because the FCC doesn't cover Netflix and Netflix is buying studios and a stream or not any TV. But be that as it may, it's just all unprecedented. And as with everything in this era where President Trump says and does things that would cause huge outcry from Republicans and conservative media if it were done by Obama or Biden or whatever, President, whoever, Newsom, AOC, whatever, these precedents are being set. and it's like speak now you know as they say at weddings speak now or forever hold your peace like this is the time for conservatives to say that's not appropriate it's not appropriate for a president to put his thumb on the scale and and just in terms of our coverage what is dishonest what specifically is dishonest that daniel dale guy like honestly as we know president trump thinks that coverage that isn't flattering is fake.

57:53He has said before in the past that polls that show him trailing are fake. So, you know, it's never fun to be the story. That's not what we like to do. We like to cover stories, not be part of the story. But I mean, I just think it's... And one other thing I'll just say, Tommy, is that the paramount deal, for people who don't understand, And Netflix is just trying to buy the studios and the streamer. They're not trying to buy the cable news channels. We would be spun off into our own thing called Discovery Global. But Paramount wants to buy everything. That's why President Trump wants that, because he wants new management at CNN.

58:37Paramount, that is doing the deal that President Trump presumably is in favor of, their money is not just their money. It is also coming from the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and perhaps most alarmingly, the Saudis' public investment fund. And the Emiratis and the Qataris, yep. Yeah, and you could talk about foreign ownership, and that's one subject. But beyond that, I mean, it is interesting because conservatives have for years been decrying Al Jazeera as like terrorist news because they're out of Qatar and et cetera, et cetera. Qatari money to buy CNN. Nobody has a word of objection on the right.

59:22But beyond that, we know what MBS, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, thinks about independent journalism or critical journalism because he has had a journalist killed, according to the CIA. Not a big fan. Killed. Yeah. Jamal Khashoggi. So all of this is a longer answer than you wanted. Now, all of this is part of this situation. And again, to my friends on the right, speak now or forever hold your peace, because like everything I've ever seen covering politics is a president gets a new toy of an expanded presidential power and the next president takes it and goes wild. Bush did drones.

1:00:03Obama went crazy with drones. Now Trump is using the same justification to go after drug traffickers. It's all just, it keeps going and going and going and going and going. So, I mean, I don't want to get into the, you know, the drones, obviously. We'll get there. We'll get there in a minute. I want to ask you about drones. And I look, I agree with you. And by the way, Jared Kushner, I think he's got like$5 billion under management at his firm, Affinity Partners. I think 99 % of it is from foreign entities, all the same ones you just mentioned. So he's just a pass-through for them. He gets to invest their money in an investment these sovereign wealth funds would already be in and then takes a fee.

1:00:42So why is he there? Clearly, there's someone thinks he's one way to grease this deal and get the political support they need from the administration to make it happen. And I should note that Paramount says that they would be non-governing partners. that presumes that the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Qataris are giving$24 billion out of the goodness of their hearts. They don't want to impact whether or not I can say in a broadcast that is seen internationally that MBS ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, according to the CIA. They have no opinion on that. They want to give$24 billion and they don't want to permit me from saying that, which is true.

1:01:21According to the CIA, MBS had Jamal Khashoggi, an American resident, killed and butchered. Like, okay, you can believe that if you want. Yeah, I find it very unlikely that any sovereign wealth fund is going to spend$24 billion without, or sorry,$12 million, whatever it is, without some sort of string attached. But you're right. Look, it's unprecedented times with this merger, unprecedented times, even before this for the media generally. I want to ask you about some of that. I mean, back in October, the Pentagon press corps essentially just staged a walkout of the building because Pete Hegseth and his team, the secretary of defense, demanded that they sign some document outlining this whole series of new rules, including one that basically prohibited the act of reporting.

1:02:06Could you just help listeners understand the impact of a policy like that on journalists like yourself kind of day to day? So I did a vertical video that lays out in detail what exactly this list was, this list of demands. But basically it was opening the door to the Pentagon being able to label a journalist who reports anything they don't like a security risk. And it would criminalize not just the handing over by anybody in the Pentagon of classified information, but basically anything, any information not approved, not previously approved by the Pentagon. And I mean, one of the things that's, there are two things that are very interesting about this.

1:02:56One, they have replaced all those actual journalists with a bunch of sycophantic partisans who are just there to make Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump look good, which is not what journalism is. And second of all, this move, Like if you listen to what Hegseth says and his spokesperson, Sean Parnell, they're saying, oh, we need to do this to prevent classified information from being reported, which makes us weaker, et cetera, et cetera. Pete Hegseth, the inspector general of the Pentagon, said that his disclosure of pending attack information. literally put pilots at risk. That's what the inspector general report that he said, you know, completely exonerated him, which it did not.

1:03:41That's what it did. So, like, if he can point to something that we in the media irresponsibly shared that put pilots at risk, I'd love to see it. But I can point to something that he did that put pilots at risk. So it's all just, again, I hope that the people on the right who are accepting this are excited for, you know, the next Democratic press secretary of the Pentagon to do the same thing. Yeah. And like only allow in the most sycophantic coverage. And yes, of course, that means that, you know, whatever Mike Lindell media, MyPillow Media leaves and like we get in some like left wing version of the same thing.

1:04:25Sign me up, baby. I'll be there. I'm just kidding. Are they even good pillows? I don't know if they're good pillows. No, what is kind of I find funny about this in the near term, Jake, is that all these this like sycophantic group of influencers went to the Pentagon. They all took photos from the same cubicle and said it was like some Washington, Dan Lamont at the Washington Post cubicle. But they were doing this. They were doing this like preening right at the moment when the actual Pentagon press corps was breaking blockbuster stories about these boat strikes off the coast of Venezuela. So these guys look like complete fucking idiots.

1:04:57Now, in the long term, we don't really know exactly how bad these restrictions will be for Pentagon reporters. Does it mean they won't be allowed in the building? Will they not be allowed to travel with the Secretary of Defense? Will they not be allowed in military installations around the world? Will they not be allowed to cover international conferences, you know, the Munich Security Forum or like whatever? So I think over time, it really will sort of erode and ship away at their ability to do the job. It's a big deal. So I will just say, just to toot my own horn and CNN's own horn, last week, a reporter named Zach Cohen and I, CNN reporter Zach Cohen and I, we broke the story of what was in the Inspector General report about Hegseth a day before it was released.

1:05:37Over Signalgate. Yeah, for Signalgate. And, you know, and that was just a clean kill. We just, you know, whatever. And there's not one of those people in the Pentagon Press Corps or whatever they are, the Pentagon. Fluffers. Yeah. Not one of them even came close. And whether you like Hegseth or not, that is news. Let's say you love Pete Hegseth, you know? Yep. And you wanted to put the nicest spin on it. You could, you know, like Hegseth did. But the point is they didn't even do that because they can't even do that because they're not breaking any stories. Right. They're not journalists. I mean, there also have been some kind of less draconian but impactful changes to media access at the White House.

1:06:17The short version is the media. The White House changed the process for deciding who attends these smaller events. They're called pooled press events. Now, more often than not, you have events at the Oval Office. Includes a bunch of more sycophantic, overly partisan questioners, dudes like Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend. What do you think the impact of those changes has been over the last several months? I have less of an issue of expanding the press pool to include new media, quote unquote. I mean, you know, people want to ask. This doesn't outrage me. You know, I have seen good journalism in unlikely places.

1:07:01I have seen good journalism in partisan places. I mean, the Free Beacon and the Daily Caller. And I mean, there are a bunch of right wing sites that I've read actual breaking news stories in. So that doesn't concern me. I know a lot of them were already part of the press pool and had been added during the Obama years. But but beyond that, like that just that doesn't it's the exclusion of people that bothers me more than the inclusion. Yeah. Like stripping out the wires, preventing the AP from entering the Oval Office for months and months. Stuff like that. Look, Caroline Levitt, whatever people think about her, she does.

1:07:36And President Trump, whatever people think about him, they take questions from the legacy media. They do. And so if they want to expand the circle, that doesn't really bother me. It's the exclusion that bothers me. When you see Secretary Hegseth or Attorney General Bondi, they only do interviews, generally speaking. There are a couple exceptions here and there. But let's just stick with Hegseth. Secretary Hegsif, I've only seen him taking questions from Fox, period. He doesn't do press conferences, generally speaking, and when he does an interview, it's only with Fox. To me, that doesn't demonstrate strength.

1:08:15To me, that doesn't demonstrate confidence. If I only agreed to do interviews with, you know, pro Jake people on a book tour, then that would be that would, I think, be indicative of of me being scared. Yeah, I mean, it's literally his former employer, too. It looks ridiculous. All right, Jake, so the book is called, I got it right here, Race Against Terror. You trace the story of the prosecution of this one al-Qaeda terrorist and what it tells us about the broader war on terror. I want to dig into this, but can you just start, like, how'd you find this story? Why did you, how'd you get onto this beat?

1:08:53so um i hadn't written a non-fiction book in a while i wrote the outpost about afghanistan came out in 2012 i'm sure you remember um i i keep alluding to this but i was the white house correspondent for abc news in obama's first term and tommy was the national security council spokesman so like i just for people who don't know uh so like i would deal with tommy and Favs and everybody else. And so I wrote The Outpost in 2012, as you remember, and I hadn't written it. And that book was so meaningful to me and it was such a powerful experience. There was just nothing that interested me as much. And that book, I was inspired by the fact that my son Jack, who's now 16, he'd been born October 2nd, 2009.

1:09:38And The Outpost that I wrote about had the deadly attack with 400 insurgents, you know, attacking 50 American soldiers. The next day, October 3rd, 2009. And there was something profound in the moment of holding my son and watching TV and hearing about eight American sons taken from this earth that set me on this path to try to find out what happened. Fast forward to Jack's 13th birthday in 2022. We're out doing paintball. Nice. Do you smoke a teenager? no i i had in previous years participated but then one time i i shot one of his kit one of his friends and he and the kid got really upset like a mom i stopped i stopped participating that's good advice for me so yeah just don't you let let uh let let your little boy uh just play do not get involved got it because uh yeah that was very controversial um so he the kid's fine just so anybody out there worried about it.

1:10:37It was paintball. It was not actual shooting. He did, you know, he did one of this kid, you know, he did. He thought I was too close anyway. Got it. So I'm having this paintball party. It's October 2022. And because it's so far away, I had like refreshments and pizza for the grownups as well as the kids. So the grownups could just come, drop their kid off, hang out for a couple hours, then leave instead of having to drive all the way back and forth, back and forth. And one of the dads comes up to me and he starts talking to me and he says, hey, I know so-and-so from the outpost. I said, oh, great.

1:11:08And I said, like, you know, that book was really tough to write because the Pentagon keeps such shitty records and they're so reluctant to share anything. And he said, tell me about it. And then he starts telling me this incredible story. He's an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn. He gets a phone call. It's 2011. It's during the Arab Spring. And on one of these refugee boats full of Tunisians and Libyans is this guy who walks up to an Italian who is in charge of the boat and asks for water. The guy notices he has a bullet scar and says, how'd you get that? He said, I got it fighting Americans in Afghanistan.

1:11:44I'm with Al Qaeda. And they detain him. And then they call the Americans and say, have you ever heard of this guy? He claims he's killed Americans in Afghanistan. And they call the FBI and the FBI calls this dad that I'm talking to at this Party, Dave Bittkauer. And Dave Bittkauer tells me this incredible story about they fly there, they hear his confession in Italy. And then because it's the Obama era and Gitmo is not taking in any new people and the Italians wouldn't have turned him over anyway. At that point, Europe was just so fed up with how the Americans were doing the war on terror. They wouldn't turn over anybody if they were going to Gitmo or doing a military or going to be subject to a military tribunal.

1:12:27So the only option was take him and prosecute him in the US in a criminal court, which is what Obama wanted to do. He wanted to try terrorists in criminal courts. And this was a big sticking point. And anyway, they had to prove this case. That's the thing. And so the story that Bitcower told me was all about the sleuthing, all about like, how do we prove this? How do we prove that this guy who claims he killed Americans in Afghanistan in the early days of the war on terror, 2002, 2003. How do we prove that he did this? And he just told me this unbelievable story about the clues and the evidence.

1:13:05And then that's how this book came about. I just thought it was just fascinating story. It ended up also being about the war on terror from Bush to Obama to Trump. And what are the best tools? Is it good to, is it, you know, criminal courts the best place or whatever? and also allowed me to revisit this era of, you know, that I had covered. But when you're in the middle of it, you don't see it as clearly as, you know, 10 years later, which is why you got so mad when you were reading the book about like the response from the public, not just Republicans, the public to you want to bring terrorists to the country to prosecute them.

1:13:48And the response was as if they were like superhuman and we're going to bust out of prison and kill everybody with lasers coming out of their fingers. And I had completely forgotten all. We lost our fucking minds. This is such an important topic, I think. First of all, let's talk about this question of whether the courts, the Article 3 courts, the U.S. judicial system can be used as a tool to prosecute terrorists. Because for a long time it was. And then Republicans just demagogued the shit out of it. And now it's kind of like off the table. Because, again, just to wind back the tape, you kind of alluded to this.

1:14:18initially Obama comes in and makes this big decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9-11 hijackers in a court in New York. And there's a huge political blowback. There's the kind of, there's legitimate security risks. There's legitimate fear, but there's a lot of just like kind of insanity. Like you were saying that Jake, like these guys are like, you literally get a bust out of a prison and kill people in Manhattan. And ultimately Obama was forced to shift the trial from the U.S. court systems to a military commission at Gitmo in 2011 because the writing was just on the political wall.

1:14:50And so you and I are talking today, December 11th, 2025, KSM hasn't even gone to trial yet. These cases are still struck and they're in pretrial proceedings still. There's no end of those pretrial proceedings in sight. And yet, Jake, there's no like discussion about this or political fallout over a decision that delayed justice for these individuals and for everyone impacted by 9-11. And it's just kind of like not discussed. Yeah, no, I agree. One of the reasons that this happened in this book, I mean, again, one of the things that was interesting about writing this book is just like, you really get a sense of just the unrelenting nature of terrorism, just like, because it's like, oh, and then this guy happened.

1:15:34And then Zazie was going to blow up the subways. And then, you know, and it's just like, man, to be in charge of protecting Americans, whether Bush or Obama or Trump, like what a weight on you to like have to like constantly like all they have to they only have to succeed once. Right. So one of the cases that I had completely forgotten had to do with a guy named Galani. This is in the book. Galani was the first and I believe to this day only terrorist from Gitmo tried in a criminal court. He was the only one taken from Gitmo tried in a criminal court. He was picked up after 9-11. He was tried for his role in the 1998 embassy bombings.

1:16:20And what happened during that trial was that the judge excluded the key witness because the prosecutors had only learned about his name from Galani being tortured by the CIA. Right, right. Or enhanced interrogation, whatever people want to call it. I'm just using torture colloquially. It was torture. So that eliminated a witness. And so that jury in Manhattan, then U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara under Obama, acquitted Galani of 284 out of 285 charges. They convicted him on one. And so he did go to prison. But the idea that he almost walked scared the shit out of everybody in the Obama administration and the Justice Department and, you know, whatever.

1:17:13And like in the national security apparatus, they thought, oh my God, this has real consequences. And that was one of the most instrumental actions or happenings in terms of why the Gitmo is still open and those guys still haven't gone to trial. Yeah. And just bigger picture. I mean, the book reminded me of those early years, the Obama administration and how terrifying it was. Like, look, there's a lot of commentary now about drone strikes. There's criticism of them, especially the volume of drone strikes. And a lot of that I frankly agree with. But I also think that people do forget, like you said, how many very serious terrorist incidents or near misses there were during that time.

1:17:56For example, there was 2009. There was the Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdul-Muttalib, who only because of user error basically failed to bring down a plane over Detroit. There were the attempted subway bombings that you mentioned. There was Najib Al-Azazi and his buddies were going to blow up the subway. There was the Times Square bomber. They just chickened down, by the way. I think we were following them, right? Yes. The FBI was following them. But then somebody screwed up on the George Washington Bridge and let him in. And let him go. And then he disappeared in Manhattan. And like, if he, he, he could have done what he was going to do and blow up these subways, him and his two accomplices.

1:18:28At the end of the day, they just got spooked and went back to Denver. Yep. It was the near miss disaster. There was a Times Square guy, Faisal Shahzad, which is similar, like see something, say something, right? Like that some, like, you know, someone being very vendor was like, Hey, this looks weird. Call the cops. And so I bring that up, Jake, because, again, when I look back at the totality of the war on terror, it is a catastrophic failure, abject failure. The Taliban are running Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda is not defeated, not even close. It's in more places that just change its name and metastasize.

1:19:00But there also hasn't been another 9-11 style attack. Yeah, I don't know. You can say it's a total thing. This is the nuance I want to get. It's like there hasn't been another 9-11. There aren't as many near misses. And you have to at least partly credit counterterrorism efforts, including drones and other military efforts for that. So I like what what what did you where did you land on, you know, kind of the war on terror's efficacy after writing this? Well, the good news is, as a journalist, I don't actually have to land anywhere. I could just like report what is true. But I will say this. First of all, it's funny that you talk about like wanting to remind people of how terrifying it was, because I was thinking about this interview last night.

1:19:39uh in bed and i was thinking about um i should confess how terrified i was after 9-11 me too because unless you because a lot of your listeners are either too young well yeah a lot of your listeners are too young to remember 9-11 or or even have been alive during 9-11 and let me just say like i remember having a con a i remember having lunch with my girlfriend at the time sarah feinberg who you know and mike feldman uh who you know yep and i remember like i was just a complete nihilist like a month or two after 9-11 i was just like what's the point we're all gonna die anyway yeah like i the it was a traumatic event for the american people my dad worked at a company called marsh mclennan uh they were on like the 100th floor of the second tower i think they lost 358 employees um thank god my father wasn't there he wasn't one that i don't think even worked in that building but it like you know i was still one of those kids walking around campus like trying to figure out what the fuck was going on not able to reach anybody right it was absolutely were you a kenyan at that time yeah i was a kenyan i was sitting in the middle of ohio like boy i've never been happier to be in the middle of nowhere and like rural ohio right but but yeah i was here i was here in dc and we were being attacked yeah i mean it was crazy so like i i just the only reason I say this is because people need to, it's such an important part of this story, how scared everybody was.

1:21:05And when I say everybody, I mean, everybody, I mean, like people in the middle of like Kansas were convinced that Al Qaeda was going to come and poison their water supply. Like it was so traumatic. I mean, I imagine it must've been what like Pearl Harbor was like, just like, oh my God, like we're not safe. Or Israel after October 7th, right? Like try to put yourself in their shoes. Yeah, exactly. So that's an important part of it. So to, to, I don't want to belittle how scared people were by the idea of bringing terrorists to the United States. It's just that we're, we have, it's just different now.

1:21:43Like Trump, to his credit, although I don't even know if he knows the debate about this, but like they are going, They are trying to try the second foreign terrorist in a criminal court for killing U.S. service members abroad. Jafar is this Pakistani who's part of ISIS Khorasan, who was part of the Abbey Gate bombing in 2021. Oh, right. Yep. And he and Trump announced during the address to the joint session of Congress that Jafar is coming to the United States. He's here. He's in Virginia. He's a few miles away from me. And he's going to be tried in a criminal court. um i know i don't know whether trump and sebastian gorka and all the others know that this was a very controversial thing to do if they had tried to do it in 2011 oh god lindsey graham would have lit himself on fire in front of the white house yes exactly i mean like people not just lindsey graham chuck schumer yep michael bloomberg like people were scared so that is you know that's an important part of this story yeah i totally so where did i land i landed that, well, I don't actually have to have a position, is the truth.

1:22:48Like, is it better to do the military tribunals? Is it better to do criminal court? I mean, I guess, you know, if the case can be tried in criminal court, those cases have proved effective. More than 300 terrorists have been convicted and put in prison. And, you know, hypothetically, if Spengool, this particular terrorist that I write about, if he had been picked up in 2007 instead of 2011 and he had been sent to Gitmo, what do I think would have happened? I mean, it's it's you know, it's entirely speculative, but I think it's entirely possible that he would have been freed because after a while in the effort to clear Gitmo, somebody would have said, well, we don't have any evidence.

1:23:32He just confessed to this that we don't we have nothing. And since there wouldn't have been the investigation that the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of New York did and all the sleuthing that I write about in the book, maybe they would have let him free. And then maybe he would have gone and killed as many Americans as possible, which is his life's goal. Right. So I don't know. But there's also the problem that war is not law enforcement. and the merging or the morphing or the blending or whatever, that's where, I mean, it's not crazy that the Bush people came up with, you know, enemy combatants and everything they did.

1:24:15Like, it's not out of nowhere. You know, this is all of a sudden, like, it's not, they're waging war on us uh in a way that is not they don't abide by the laws of warfare so how are we supposed to address it is it a criminal do we come up with new case law i mean i understand why it all happened yeah i just i just think at the end of the day like it was effective to lock up spin goal and try him in a criminal court yeah look i i've i've empathy for the fear i've empathy for how hard the choices are i just like i find the politics of it so frustrating because like there's just decades and decades of like established case law and processes for trying and putting in jail terrorists and demagoguery is the thing also it's like when you anything that we do in the media or any questions anybody has on capitol hill about whether you know this extrajudicial killing of drug dealers drug traffickers or you know which trump is calling narco terrorists is legal or right or effective immediately the argument like oh you're on the side of the terrorists it's like yeah it's juvenile charles cook um uh who writes for the national review wrote an entire column about this like it was very clever and very well done but yes i'm on the side of the drug dealers yeah you know it's just along those lines i mean come on can we have can we be adults here for a second it's absurd and so like you know to these bigger points.

1:25:47I mean, look, I think a lot of Trump's appeal in both elections was he ran against the Iraq war. He ran against nation building abroad. He ran against regime change wars abroad and like the mistakes from the war on terror. But now, as you said, the administration is murdering people in boats off the coast of Venezuela. Well, I didn't say they were murdered. I said they're murdering people. There's this slow moving regime change campaign to push out Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, that included, we're talking on again, Wednesday, December 11th on Tuesday, the day before, U.S. Special Forces captured a tanker off the coast of Venezuela.

1:26:22And I just keep watching this news. I'm like, what is happening here? Who is driving this? What are the Republicans you talk to say about this sudden thirst for, I don't know, this new Monroe Doctrine in Latin America, where I guess we're just the emperor of all these countries? So I don't know that the seizure of the oil tanker belongs in the same bucket because Beth sanner who used to as you know um a pretty straight shooter who used to work in the director of national intelligence office i think she was deputy um she was on my show yesterday and she said that she really just sees that seizure in the same light that she sees other seizures of other oil tankers in countries that are sanctioned by the united states whether it's the iranians or others and apparently this operation they had a warrant yeah uh that the the you know there was actually they papered it right and they yeah and they look they did some things right like i texted some friends who worked on venezuela policy and i was like how is this not an act of war and they were like well you know actually it wasn't coming into the port it was leaving so that they're not blockading the country no one knows where the vessel is flagged so there's all these like technical ways it didn't have the venezuelan flag which is a law of law of c you have to have the you have to be flagged and but in practice it's a ghost chip like i mean right i But in practice, the U.S.

1:27:40just stole a Venezuelan tanker, right? Like at least full of Venezuelan oil. OK, not to justify it, but I think that this has been done in previous administrations, including Democratic administrations, not of Venezuelan, but of Iranian tankers. And I think that, again, I'm not justifying it, but I do think that there is, as you say, they papered it. There is a legal argument. It wasn't just like out of nowhere. So but that said, so let me just differentiate that. Let's just remove that for one second. And again, I'm not defending it. I'm just saying, like, I think it's different. The idea of what the United States is doing when it comes to attacking, killing individuals on these boats.

1:28:23First of all, we should make it clear. Neither of us are in favor of drug traffickers. And neither of us think that, like, members of drug cartels are good people. But that said, like, these people on the boats, this is not El Chapo. These are not like the brain trust. These are not the, this is not the commander. It's not the general. It's not the colonel. It's not the major. These are the privates. These are the people at the bottom of the totem pole that you put in a boat and you send them to like go to Suriname and drop off all this cocaine. Fishermen doing another job often. And the cocaine is important also because what's killing Americans is by and large opioids, which we make ourselves, and fentanyl, which is basically the ingredients are coming from China, and they're not going to Venezuela.

1:29:10So, you know, when you ask Republicans about this, they're likely to say it's all fungible, it's all drug lords, it's all the same thing. But this idea that the only reason why it's significant beyond the conceptual idea of, like, well, they're all drug lords and all drugs are bad is because the argument, the legal argument is for all the strikes forget the second strike you know the double tap or whatever for all the strikes the legal argument is they are killing americans with drugs therefore they're uh they're terrorists and therefore we can kill them right they're attacking and obviously yeah and and and you know you can have tremendous sympathy and think that we should be doing more about the war on drugs etc etc and also say it's not really the same thing as 9-11 is it no it's insane.

1:29:58The whole policy is insane and illegal. And by the way, it's not the cocaine. It's not the cocaine that is killing people in the thousands. It's the fentanyl. I think that someone is going to get prosecuted for this. It probably won't be Hegseth or people at the top because Trump will pardon them. But Hegseth in that team is putting US service members in the position of committing daily war crimes. And it's awful. And it's just hard to watch. Final question for you, Jake. Your last book, Original Sin, which you wrote with Alex Thompson from Axios, made a lot of waves. It was about President Biden, his age and decline, and the ways that people around him prevented the disclosure of that decline.

1:30:37I've noticed that the Biden people didn't - Some of your fellow podcasters were in the book. Favreau was a character who weighed in seeing some of that debilitated performance. Oh, I was at that event. Yeah, I was at that event too is rough. So I have noticed, um, the Biden people didn't love your book. Um, Biden's offenders didn't love your book. I've noticed that every time like Donald Trump stumbles or slips up or falls asleep, you often get attacked and kind of tagged in these tweets. Sometimes they tag me cause they associate us as friends or us, you know, because the positive America said that the debate went badly for Biden.

1:31:11We're bad now. How do you think the media is handling kind of these growing instances of Trump falling asleep in meetings or maybe seeming like he's losing a step? Like, when is it a critical mass that it becomes bookworthy, right? For example. So it's a great question. I mean, we cover it all the time on my show, all the time. And I think that is that is to a large degree, because we saw what happened with Biden. And while we covered it, we didn't cover it. Maybe we didn't ask as many questions as we should have at the time. And I think it is a legitimate question for any president of any age, but particular anybody who is like in the range of being an octogenarian, right?

1:31:54We cover it all the time. Now, I didn't write a book about Joe Biden's missteps. Alex and I wrote a book about an unprecedented event happening, which was Joe Biden having such a horrible performance at a presidential debate where his only job was to convince people he was up to the task of being president for another four years. His performance being so bad that people thought, oh my God, should he drop out of the race? His not being able to do anything to disprove him, which is like a really important part of this because, you know, we're all sympathetic to the idea that like anybody in public life can have a bad day, a bad performance, especially if you're tired.

1:32:38The question wasn't even about the performance of the debate, although it was unprecedentedly horrible. It was that he wasn't able to go out any time in the following weeks and make any Democrats feel or sufficient numbers of Democrats feel better that he could do this job. And frankly, I understand that there are a lot of people out there who think I would take President Biden in a coma over Donald Trump. I understand that. First of all, it's not up to individual people who already love Biden. It was up to a bunch of swing voters in like seven key states. And they didn't feel that way. But beyond that, I don't know anybody who thinks that he could be president right now and all the way through 2029 in his current state.

1:33:29If you see him speak, if you see him walking, like I feel bad for him. Oh, he's fighting cancer too. Yeah. He's got some real medical challenges. Beyond the cancer, and obviously we wish him well, and I hope he lives to be 100. But I don't know anybody who thinks today that he is able to be president until 2029, which was the argument. So we were covering, and then basically he was chased out of the race by Democrats, not by me, but by Democrats who thought, oh my God. And they saw of the polling that suggested that not only was Joe Biden going to lose hugely, but, you know, they were going to lose states that Democrats hadn't lost in a long time, like Minnesota and New Mexico and Colorado and Virginia and New Hampshire.

1:34:15So that's what we covered. It wasn't like, oh, look at all these examples of Joe Biden being old. What we covered was like, should he have run for re-election and why did they hide what they hid um and and that's what and it was just about the story of biden being chased out of the race because of that in terms of what we cover about trump i i mean i literally cover it all the time like literally yesterday uh i covered that crazy truth social rant when he was mad at the new york times for covering his aging and he called it sedition or treasonous and he attacked the appearance of the woman the journalist that was a few weeks before yeah sorry i mean like lost track of my crazy truth social screen yeah no it's tough to keep them straight but but i mean we covered i covered it on social media and i also covered it on my show um and like i do i cover it no i know i agree i just see the tweets i assume you see the tweets too and it's sort of like i don't i don't is the truth because I have quality filters up because I've just for years, it's just to be completely candid, like.

1:35:26And a lot of it was started during the Trump years, the first Trump years, when if you were Jewish, you know, the Nazis would come at you. Fun. And so those filters were up. And then after October 7th, a lot of the Hamas sympathizers would come for you. So I don't see most of it is the truth, but I'm aware that it's out there. And I'll just say, like, I cover it all the time. Yeah. And if people. So I don't really I don't take the criticism very seriously because I do cover it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I see you covering it. Jake, thank you for doing the show. The book is called Race Against Terror. Everyone should pick up a copy.

1:36:04Give it a read. It's really an incredible story of this one individual case. but what it tells us about a couple decades of a war on terror policy that I guess the story is yet to be written. But great to see you, buddy. Thank you for doing the show. Thank you so much, Tommy. Say hi to everybody else. I will.

1:36:24That's our show for today. Thanks to Jake for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review. That helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illick-Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer.

1:36:57Reed Churlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Carol Pellaviv, David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

1:37:28Bye. We'll be right back.