Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. We're on vacation, but that doesn't mean we don't have an amazing show for you Today. Director Matt Tiernauer stops by to talk some of the hidden political figures who've shaped our politics.
But first we have Viep, executive producer, The One, the Only Date Mandel. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Dave Mandel, Thank you, always happy to come back.
I wanted to have you back because I just love you and think you're so funny, but also more importantly, because I feel like you are both a historian with the White House plumbers and a futurist with VEP.
I didn't know I was a futurist when I was a futurist. You know. I think I may have said to you one time privately. You know, this was a bunch of people sitting in an office in Hollywood thinking up the stupidest thing a president could do, like the worst thing a politician could do. Like here's something no one would ever do. Can you imagine? Can you imagine?
Can you imagine? And then just on a daily basis, and then at some point in the like the true Trump, you know, the four years of Trump, like an hourly basis, just stuff just started coming true. And now I joke with some of the writers in the cast, like every year there are certain things that just happen again, Like every year the daylight saving stuff happens. And that was a big Jonah issue, and it's just it's like we just we celebrate deep stories. You know what I mean,
Joanah is crazy immigration stuff. I mean, just it doesn't stop. So I didn't set out to be a futurist. I swear to God, Yeah it is.
Yeah.
I mean, by the way, that daylight savings time, I would like to point out that the Senate they voted it's actually to stay on standard time I think, and stop savings time.
Well you know about this because you've written about it.
Allow me to be a historian for a second. That idea of Jonah going after daylight savings. And obviously he had his own issues because he didn't know what time it was, which was you know, very Jonah. But for us, that was very much trying to find like the fifty five mile per hour speed limit law. You know what I mean, like to find those little, tiny things that don't make a difference. One could argue it's the modern
day junk fees, you know what I mean. It's trying to find those things that move the dial for the voters, but in the grand scheme of things, perhaps maybe aren't actually as important.
Not a lot.
By the way, I don't like junk fees, but I worry much more about voting rights. You know, I'm not worried that when Trump's going to be a dictator for just a day, there's going to be more junk fees. That's not high on my list of worries. But again, it was just trying to find those sort of things. You know, Reagan did it, Clinton did it, and we
sort of just picked a really stupid one. Only it turned out then, you know, the Concrests and the Senate were very interested in It's so I don't know, no good answer.
Yeah, and also me, but I'm very interested in it too. As it gets it's about to be dark here in about twenty minutes. But no, it's true, and it is a low state. I mean, you know, right now, in this do nothing Congress, as it's called.
I think that's an insult to previous do nothing congresses. I would make that argument. Yeah, at least some of those congresses were trying.
I don't know, but this Congress can't even name post offices.
You know.
The complaint about McCarthy was that all McCarthy was doing was naming post offices. Now we have Speaker Johnson and they're not even naming the post offices anymore.
Well, I think he's allowed to name them, but then he has to let his son know he named them. I'm not sure how that works exactly. Yeah, I mean I'm not sure which son, his regular son or his secret African American son. I'm not sure.
Oh that's right, his secret adopted son.
Yeah. I mean, come on, man, I wouldn't write that on me, you know, like like secret Dutch. So, although I guess now I will. But yeah, someday, some days my new show on Max Secret Adopted Son coming soon.
Yeah, you actually are doing a show on Santos discuss.
I'm not there, it is happening. It's Frank Rich is doing it.
But you will end up working on that.
I'm sure I will help, But god, damn, I need a break, and I just I want better smarter criminals, you know what I mean, Like, I you know, I want, I can't take the gangs that wouldn't shoot straight. The Santos stuff, I don't know, when you start getting into the botox and whatnot, you just kind of go come on, really, I mean, his list looked like someone made this point. It looks like a teenage girl's Christmas list, you know what I mean, like of like where he spent the month on the fans.
Or mass looks like my Christmas. No, I'm just kidding.
The thing with Santos that I was struck by was he got elected not because he was like a brilliant criminal, right, Like I mean with the White House plumbers, you had you know, the wife was working for the CIA the whole time, Right, you had some sort of very and right, wasn't you working for the.
Dorothy was a you know, a former agent and was a damn good agent who.
Was still sort of in it, right, you know, you had people who were really were this was just like a failure at every you know, nobody investigated him, so he got elected.
Well that's that to me is actually the most interesting point. To me, the most interesting point is just the sort of if you will, The New York Times just ignoring it, and wasn't it There was like a small local paper like in Long Island that was sort of shouting to the heavens and no one was paying attention. And by the way, at some point, voters get what they deserve.
I knew. I mean, I know, we work hard to sort of like make that not happen, but at some point you just do sometimes kind of go, this is what you want. And I don't even have an answer. But that's the part of the Santos story I find the most fascinating. And then, of course the Republicans, who basically, you know, what are they down to now one vote with when McCarthy leaves, basically their one death away from possibly.
Because Shila Jackson Lee went back, Yeah.
Yes, that's true, that's true. Yes, you're right, you're right. So but I'm just simply saying, it's like the idea that the Republicans had to do nothing but sort of protect this guy, you know what I mean, and watching him sort of trying to make friends in the Congress. I don't know. That's that's the part of the story, exactly exactly. I want to that's that's the part of it.
I really want to dig into less the drag queen in Brazil and just more him try to make friends and like standing next to people who did not want to be standing next to him but kind of had to. That I find fascinating. Luckily, there's no shortage of hypocrites among the Republican Congress as well. They do nothing or whenever yet right, And I.
Mean they were happy that the MAGA crew was happy to take him in.
Oh, thrilled, thrilled in the grand scheme of things. He's you know, super qualified. I guess, you know, had a lot of credit card numbers. I don't know, you know, right exactly.
He knows how to rip up a lot of people.
My favorite part of that whole story actually was so as they were talking about kick him out, we had a congressman who.
Had been in the Trump administration.
Max Miller, who said that Santos had stolen Max Miller and Max Miller's mother's credit card to take illegal donations from them both. But it turned out that Max Miller was actually had been sort of in trouble for domestic abuse. Of course, so even the person who is coming out against Santos is not without.
Look, I don't have any answers. I'm not an expert, but somehow this is all Hunter Biden's fault. That's what that's the vibe I'm getting from the Republicans.
It was on the laptop.
Yep, this is this is what the Bidens have been doing. This is very clear. Yeah, very becoming very clear to me.
Yes, it's the only answer.
But I interviewed an expert in presidential impeachments and we're talking about this sort of legal whatever, and this will be the first presidential impeachment on vibes.
Just the it's I get an icky feeling. Is that what you mean?
It's just Republicans don't know what, but they know they don't like that guy.
Yeah, as long as it's secretive and behind closed doors, I'm fine with you, you know what I mean?
Yeah, exactly what did they do?
They tried to vote today or yesterday for like the Democrats wanted to put in like something like open and something into the I don't even know the bill about the the coming impeachment, and it was voted down by the Republicans.
Yes, they wanted Hunter Biden to testify, and he said he would testify in an open hearing, and they said no, they only want him behind closed doors.
How dare you want to testify it an open hearing which none of the people that were called to testify for anything against Trump ever showed up for.
Yeah, yeah, I mean the double stand is really infuriating. I mean remember all of those hearings where it was like, Jim Jordan, won't you I mean, Jim Jordan divide a congressional the subpoena. This is the guy who all he does is send out congressional subpoenas and.
They don't care. I mean, you know, we're talking a little bit about you know, history, if you will, And it is just this sense of like, my god, like do you even see yourself? You know, I don't know what to say.
What was it?
John Allen called it like there used to be shame, you know what I mean, It's just like what happened to shame? Like do you hear yourself? Do you see yourself?
So my question is it a gourvi daal thing? Is it the United States of amnesia? Are we just too stupid to remember the last season?
I do think that is a flaw in America, in general that we just sort of I don't know if it's we're too stupid, but we just like to put it to bed. It's like that happened, let's move on, that can never happen again, or that didn't happen, Let's just keep going. But I do think there's a little bit more of what is it, the difference between like, you know, first and second degree murder. There's a lot
more premeditation these days, you know what I mean. I just feel like it's a lot more purposeful, unfortunately, than just stupid. It may be counting on people's stupidity to not remember it, but the people that are trying to do the forgetting, if you will, are far more purposeful and unfortunately just far more sinister. I mean, I don't know,
ku jokes don't seem funny anymore. I don't know, just speaking from a joke standpoint, from a joke writing standpoint, the notion of ha ha, here come armed soldiers to take over it just starts to like, oh wait, maybe I don't know, you know, right, I.
Mean, when it's in the possible realm of possibility, I feel like that does undermine.
Yeah, No, it's when it couldn't happen that it seems funny when it could happen on you know whatever, January seventh. I guess maybe they'll give us a day next time, I don't know, or January twentieth, twenty first, you know, whenever, I don't know, but just a lot less funny. I was laughing. I don't know why this keeps making me laugh.
I just like the idea that Trump will slowly reduce the amount of time that he's willing to be a dick, where he'll just kind of give these different statements and go, I will just be addictated for six hours, you know, Like I like as if like, oh, that's so much better than a day. It's just like, oh my god, I'll just be feurer for six hours.
Come on, right exactly.
But it is this larger question of like how we got here where, Like I didn't like w I mean, I don't know that he was a genius, but he was a you know, he made it through Yale. He I mean, I guess Trump made it through Penn. So forget it. Never mind a bad example.
I mean I'll say this, and it's like I can think of a lot of Republican presidents that I didn't care for, but I didn't hate them with a passion of a thousand suns. And I did not feel like they were trying to I don't know, like that there was a chance, yeah, that they would and there was a chance that they would never leave office, you know
what I mean, or try and pass it on. Well, I guess, you know, George Bush technically did eventually pass the presidency on to his son, but there were elections, or at least they were seemingly elections, you know, So maybe that's not a good example either. But you know what I'm kind of going for, there's just like a true con serence of like we just seem like the
kind of country we used to make fun of. Like it just seems like we're a country, like some weird little country in Europe that like no one like you know, oh my god, you see what they did, you know, and it's just like now it's us. Yeah, that's that's.
The problem there. We're like Lichtenstein, except exactly like that funny.
Some weird little movie of some sort where it's just like, well, now you're the king. Wait what you know.
I think that's a good point, and I do.
I also think that we were always a country that the rest of the world made fun of, So the fact that we've only become worse is probably not a great song.
Not good at all. But I mean, you know, look, there are all these things that we like to ignore, that there are no newspapers, and even there the newspapers that exist, a lot of people don't read them, and where people are getting their news, and all these things work hand in hand. And maybe it was all part of a master plot. Maybe it wasn't. It doesn't really matter. These things all work together.
So it's just kind of like to get us here.
Yeah, the average Trump supporter, the die hard, you know, like like he's the man whatever, the fact that like Donald Trump, and by the way, there are probably a lot of Democrats that don't really care about the average working man, but Trump says it out loud, and it doesn't seem to change people's opinions, you know what I mean. I just that's the part where I just go, I don't get it, and I don't know what else to say.
Yeah, I think we should devote like the rest of our time talking about how much tech bros Have ruined the world.
That's pretty good.
Yeah, well, not political in nature, it is politically adjacent.
After making billions of dollars.
Off us, they have decided now they are going to be the mainstream media discuss.
Obviously, you know, the great defender of free speech, Elon Musk, has now decided that some speech is freer than others. These tech guys, you know, they've always liked to sort of put themselves into this other category. You know, they always were you know, we call them jokingly tech bros. But you know, they always like wanted to pretend like tech was this other thing. And at the end of the day, they're just robber barons and they just want the same things. They want no taxes, They want their
workers to work crazy hours at really terrible price. You know, they just they want everything that the worst guy from the eighteen hundreds wanted, you know, and they but they but this idea that somehow that they don't that it's other because they're doing futuristic stuff. You know, it just it's just absolute fucking bullshit. Just another group of guys. Where why not have twenty billion? Oh, if I've got twenty billion, boy, twenty two billion would be so much
fucking better. Let's just fuck everything up and it fuck everyone over. I mean, that's the part that's just disgusting. I don't know what else to say.
My favorite part about Elon, though, is here is this guy. Right, we have basically been giving tech bros free content because we were told that it was the only way.
Right, you have to give them free you not allow charts.
I mean, I remember my mother writing for the Huffington Post a million years ago and people chastising her and being like, you know, you're not making any money, you're devaluing the currency, right because she would write for it for free, because she'd.
Be on the cover of it. And fast forward right here we are now.
Tech bros have gotten our content for free, and now they're like, we don't actually want a mainstream media at all. We're just going to have you know, the crass and stems, you know, and Tucker Carlson and you know three other guys.
And as of what as of two days ago, Alex Jones now right where Alex is back?
Yeah, But I mean, the media is such a like piddly little business compared to like.
But this is the problem. I mean, Elon Musk, you know, I guess likes to present himself as one of the smartest men in the world. Okay, but bought Twitter basically because he kind of said the wrong thing in some ways, like Stu like almost like drunkenly bought a billion dollar company, has run it into the ground, changed the name of it, destroyed the branding of it, opened it up to just
insane racism and anti semitism. I mean, it's just a day does not go by, and this hasn't happened in years, where just I'm just constantly being attempted to be followed by you know, bots and fake people in a way that you know hadn't gone on in like, you know, six years, seven years. Like just crazy message. But just like I guess where I'm kind of going with this is ram this thing into the ground where it makes no money. He legitimately lost money on it.
Like about twenty billion dollars not.
Like right, but it doesn't matter because his car company and his space company that we are still giving giant tax breaks to made so much money. It not only paid for his fuck ups, but he can like do even more fuck ups. So that is the oil company's just it's now a tech guy and that's the problem.
No, that's right, and I think it's both annoying and also but I mean, I guess the idea is he doesn't want anyone writing anything bad about him.
Right, I guess everything is free until you criticize him. And honestly, if I had the energy, the only postings I would do would be just you know, making fun of him, if I had the time and the energy, Like that, to me is what everyone on Twitter should just be doing, like literally posting nothing but making up stuff about him. And honestly, at some point, I think
it's better to do stuff that's real. But honestly, I would if if I could, if I could command the world, just post fake shit about elon Musk day and night, just date this site. That would be enjoyable. We again, no lesson learned because even if he shut it down tomorrow, but even if he just said Twitter's done, I'm gone,
we're closing the doors, it doesn't work anymore. He wouldn't lose any money, and he'd probably figure out a way to sell all our home addresses or something, or all our addresses to someplace even worse, you know what I mean. So I don't know that's the problem when you can do this and somehow continue to profit. That is our system in a nut shell. Oh God, I've depressed myself. I got to call my therapist. Sorry this damn man.
Now, please come back anytime.
I always love it. I always love coming on saying hi.
Matt Tyrnauer is a director of films like Where Is My Roy Cohen and Valentino The Last Emperor, Welcome Too Fast, pology Matt.
Thank you first.
You've made so many amazing movies.
But I want to talk to you about Roy Cohen because I feel like this all starts with Roy Cone.
Trump. Is this whole shit show? Roy Cohen?
I couldn't agree more. I mean, he's really the Zaleg of our present moment. A few years ago, I put out a movie called Where's My Roy Cone? The title given to me by the former guy who exclaimed when Jeff Sessions wouldn't do his bidding as Attorney General, Where's my Roy Cone? Meaning where's my law breaking, convention busting
mob adjacent attorney slash Attorney General. And the premise of that film was to show people in what Gorvie Dahl used to call the United States of Amnesia, we're just talking about Yes.
In the last interview, I said, is does this relate to the United States of Amnesia?
Exactly? The man who was Bengali to Joe McCarthy was Bengali to Donald Trump. So that type of politics was always brewing, kind of coming up above the surface, occasionally geysering, like in the McCarthy period, going back down, then the John Birch era going back down, and then really it's back with a vengeance. Of course, somebody's gone back down during a bit during the Biden three years, but now we're poised for another big explosion.
I think about Gorephetal, who I knew a little bit when I was a kid, and how he was of that generation of writers, not so different in age, a little bit older than Hitch Chris Brigeons. But those guys really wrote these political pieces that really had a lot of breadth to them. I wonder why we don't have that so much anymore.
Well, I don't think people read fays in the popular press anymore. It's weird because just like the magazine I used to be a magazine journalist at Vanity's Air, and the magazine's really dead. That type of magazine used to be it. You know, that was the great vestige thing, and that as a forum really doesn't exist in that
way anymore because media has become adamized. Of course, people write at length in places like medium and sub stack, and there's wonderful thinking and writing, but it's not in that sort of front and center place anymore where Hitchens or a Vidal or heaven forfend, William F. Buckley could be public figures in public intellectuals and for God's sakes, I mean, those guys were on the Dick Caviat Show and Johnny Carson and MERV Griffin we had public debates. Yeah,
well it was just more focus. I mean, if you're old enough to remember the twilight of the Great Anchorman era, when you had a Walter Cronkite and a John Chancellor and later a broke On, a Jennings and a rather to sort of give you an agreed upon agenda that conformed to an idea of the public trust in media, which was that there were agreed upon facts. I mean, of course sometimes the narratives were wrong, but they were generally think more in the public.
Trust, more right than they are now.
Certainly, and people look to those figures, so there was sort of like a focal point. Now, of course everything to adamize, and we don't need to get into that because it's the Twitter versus the experts, and I think that's the symptom of the present moment in media that we're in. But it, like everything, it's everyone's distracted and strung out, and their cortisol levels are so high because we're all kind of like bobbing our heads up and down to our iPhones and red pilled and blue pilled.
I think of you, doll and a Hitchens and the great public intellectuals of the time, a song tag even they wouldn't command the same type of audience. Of course, they'd be Twitter stars. And what does that get you? I mean your You're a Twitter star, aren't you? I mean, what what do you think your influences compared to a Hitchens?
What kind of question?
Wait, no, no, no, no, no, no, you don't get it. You're on my podcast, buddy, you don't get to ask me. First of all, I'm not going to answer that question, because what is my influence compared to a Hitchin's or more influential? Well, it was rhetorical, but I mean I think I don't know that world doesn't exist anymore.
As someone who is very much a product of that world.
I don't think that tech pro barons are such a great thing because you know, they have a completely narcissistic interest in the mainstream media and the interest in creating their own media, like a sort of in Style magazine for twenty twenty three. Right, they just want sort of adulation.
But I also think that back then, you know, you had this incredible bar to entry, right, you couldn't have you know, they were the people who were part of the media were affluent, they were largely white, they were almost always men. They were you know, they had a very similar worldview, The narratives were very very similar. It was not easy to break in, and it was also
there was not a lot of diversity of thoughts. So I think, like, yes, there was some great writing that happened during that period, and I think about Tom Wolfe's journalism was like some of the best.
Right, all these people are white men.
There are a few women who are allowed to you know, there's a Joan Diddion once in a while, but like you know, they're pretty white and they're pretty male.
So in my mind.
I don't necessarily think that we were so well off then, but I do think what we have now is also very promat.
Yeah, I mean you just outlined the bad part. That was really the bad part. Of course, of course, I mean there's a good part to all of the atomization, of course, but obviously there's there're great danger looms ahead. The media barons before had to adhere to a kind of guardrail, which was the public trust. If you were going to be licensed, you had to be responsible. But
it's a period to that sense that you were talking about. Yeah, of course more diversities better, but managing media companies and the public, the so called public square, the sense of the public trust that the great FCC chairman Newton Minno declared in the sixties, you know, has just littled away.
So what are you working on now?
Politics wise? I'm actually and I think this is the first time this has ever been revealed. I'm doing a document theory about your guest of I think three days ago, James Carvidal.
Yes, he told me, that's right, He actually did tell me a Carvel documentary. How did you get there? And also I am delighted, you.
Know, James has been on the scene for more than thirty years now. It's hard to maintain that level of household name fame for that long and relevance, and I think he's an American original. I thought that would be a great person to focus on. I think he's also a truth teller, and I think he's the one Democrat that can speak to people who are limiting liberals, it seems, which is an incredibly important trait right now in our
present political moment. So it's also a meditation on politics of the last thirty years, at first through his lens as someone who's credited with helping Clinton win the White House, teaching Democrat that they could win again how to win an election, which often is I think something that Democrats
don't really pay heed to. I think people forget that James Carville and Mary Mataline were political media supernovae in the nineties, and I want to go back and look at that moment because they were a bipartisan marriage, absolute superstars, household names, and they really captured the American imagination. I think people were sort of filtering their own marriages through them, and that moment I think is really fascinating to re examine. So it's all wrapped up in this movie I'm doing
on James. I've been following him for approximately two years as he stopped the country. Felt very active, yes, and very relevant. I mean he was the first in Kansas the National Democrat. I think you'd be the only National Democrat to go to Kansas when they were doing the pro choice referendum and that one which was a belt weather.
He actually really is very much part of America. I mean he spends a lot of time right in parts of Louisiana that don't have a Starbucks.
Far from it. I mean he's from a place called Carville, Louisiana, where I filmed with him. I think it was ninety eight percent black when you grew up, and I think it still is almost that ratio. They were the family that kind of had the postal concession there and ran
the general store. Well, I realized I went back there with James, is that I think his empathy and his life's project is to help the marginalize through democratic politics, because he comes from one of the most marginalized communities
in the United States. Yes, he was a white guy in a really poor black part of Louisiana, but he emerged as a pro civil rights political activist who I think learned empathy by seeing all of the disadvantage people with whom he grew up, and he devoted his life to try to correct the wrongs that were embedded in
the economic political system of this country. So that's really the Carville project I've discovered, and that type of progressive Paul politics of that era is something he embodies, and he's the best kind of sound bite strategist and big picture strategists I think that politics has had in probably several generations.
I also it's interesting that I think about, like the Republican equivalent of him, is that like nude Gangridge.
Well, I think at a moment, it was probably Lee.
Atwater, right, Oh, that's a good point.
And Lee Atwater died young, and interestingly Atwater was the mentor of Mary Mattlin, who's James Carbill's wife. So there are a lot of range and coincidental or maybe not so coincidental themes in this that emerge from the politics of that era that prefigures our own. Much like my Morey Cone movie. What I like doing, I like kind of digging out hidden themes or themes that have gone underground in the United States of amnesia, since we're not talk history and no one remembers anything, or we can
google it and then forget it two seconds later. I think that's how I like to address my form, or cut and practice by form, which is the long deep dive cinematically, to be a sort of national reckoning moment of these themes that have haunted us about the twentieth century, and we seem to forget them and then they come up and hit us in the face like a two by four because we're not looking.
Were you able to interview any of the Clintons.
I interviewed Ake Clinton, who was in a presidential situation at one time.
Yeah, and the one probably the most relevant one to that movie, I would think.
Yeah, I think they're both well, actually Hillary hired, I think more or less. I mean, it really was the two for one era of the Clintons at that time. I mean, she was very important in the campaign, and she was a chief strategist in that Campaign's really interesting to kind of go granular and revisit how that campaign worked, because you have to remember, in the early nineties, a lot of really wise people around democratic politics thought there'd never be another Democratic president again.
After Carter.
Yeah, I mean after Jimmy Carter's loss and Walter Mondale's loss and Reagan, you know, Poppy Bush's triumph and as the third term of Ronald Reagan. I think what Bill Clinton and James Carville and the people involved that campaign show was that you could win as a Democrat. And I don't agree with a lot of their politics. Frankly, I'm a little more liberal than those people, but I think that's one of the lessons of Carville that's relevant to this moment is you can't let the perfect be
the enemy of the good. You've got to win election in order to affect change. And I mean when he talks to you on this podcast, he preaches that, and I think it's a really important lesson for us, especially at this time when we have such fractics politics and identitarian politics that is a particular problem in the Democratic Party.
I think James has been the one who's spoken up and just said, look, everyone, let's get a Democrat elected and not faith the ABYSS and the dissolution of the project that the founders kicked off two hundred and fifty years.
Yeah, you definitely have much higher stakes than a sort of normal politics. But that movie, The War Room, Yeah, was one of the great movies about a political campaign.
It was. It's a da Pennebaker film. He's one of my heroes, really, one of the gods of cinema verite filmmaking, which is the type of filmmaking I like to do most. He embedded in the ninety two Little Rock Headquarters. And in that film, if the audience hasn't seen it, you get to see Carville and George Stephanopoulos, who was the communications director at that time before his media career for Bill Clinton. Hear of the campaign and it's a really
interesting fly on the wall. Look at how brilliant they were, and particularly James. It's really James's movie to his vision and what a kind of inspiring visionary character he was. And also, by the way, up from nothing, he was a total failure, James Carville until he was in his I think late forties. He hit it when he was about fifty with that campaign, aren't we all?
Man?
I do think that George Stefanopolis does not age or he was eleven in that movie, maybe both, maybe both. Matt very excited to see that movie, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.