Rob your your your sound is a little sharp, crackly.
My two. Hold on.
So I'm going to turn the game down.
How about this probably better? Right? Just better?
That sounds good.
Yeah, just turn the game down. That's all I had to do.
Okay, you turned down the game.
Just turn down the game.
I'm very violent and the mos better. Well it's twelve days before the election, and this is block culture and I'm John Podhorns in New York with an interesting introduction of Rob Long in Princeton, New Jersey.
I was here last time I was here. The last block shows.
You know, I'm just getting I'm just getting used to it. I'm just getting used to the idea of you in Princeton, New Jersey.
I believe me. I have I have some thoughts. We should talk about Princeton.
New Jersey. Okay, I would I would like to have And but as ever as he has been since the mid nineties. Jonah Goldberg in Washington, d C.
Hi, Jonah, Hey, John, who were you before the mid nineties? Has been he's been since the mid nineties.
Jonah Goldberg, You moved to Washington.
The early nineties, early nineties.
I came back in Prague, visited my girlfriend who was going to law school here and basically never left DC.
So there we go. You know, swamp Rob, You know that Jonah and I, Sariatum. I think I eight or nine years before Jonah lived in the same apartment building in in Adams Morgan, Is that right? We did eighteen forty three? Mint would place you right? Yeah.
Did you find any weird stuff, Jonah when you moved in, any kind of weird And.
I don't think we lived in the same apartment.
But the usual stain unusual, same story.
That was amazing to me was that I had been living in New York, living in this dump in Times Square in nineteen eighty three, paying I don't know, four hundred dollars a month or something, sharing the apartment with my friend Todd Lindberg. And then I got this job in Washington that paid the princely sum of I don't know what, it paid, like thirty five thousand dollars a year, which was like more money than I had ever thought
I would ever make. So I could rent an apartment for five hundred and fifty dollars and I go to this building and it's a duplex. When you go down the stairs and there's the living room is downstairs and the bedroom was upstairs. And I was like, I'm.
Rich, I'm rich.
I have I have two levels. I living in a place with a with a with a hot plate, yeah, and a half and a half fridge in a tenement on West forty sixth Street. I have. I have hit the lottery.
You have and you can take should we repair upstairs for DJ just Stief's You could say that if you had people exactly know.
But it was sort of like one of these New York parochial New York experiences where you go anywhere else in the country and it's like, oh, you don't have to spend sixty percent of your income on rent.
Now, my wife, my wife's absolute favorite real estate porn thing is what like what a million dollars gets you or whatever it is in the or the New York Times, And like, you know, in New York City, it's a refrigerator box with insulation and.
Theoria it's an eight room Gothic mansion.
Well, have you ever watched My Dream Lottery Home on HGTV. So this is a show. The concept of it is people win the lottery and then they're going to buy the house of their of their dreams. And so the guy who is covered in tattoos, the host, takes them to see three different places. And so sometimes they have a lot of lottery money. Sometimes they've wont you know, like half a million dollars. Sometimes they have one hundred,
two hundred thousand dollars something like that. And he takes them there in you know, North Carolina, Florida, Maine, wherever. And it's always like, okay, and here is blue Bonnet Castle. You know, they give names to these houses. And it's like, how much do you think this house goes for? And it's like got eight bedrooms and three acres I don't know, and this and that, and it's like, I don't know two hundred and ninety thousand dollars. And then the guy says, well,
actually it's two hundred and seventy eight thousand dollars. And I'm like, I couldn't get a bathroom for two hundred and seventy eight thousand dollars where I live like your.
You also you require a certain opulence from your bathroom.
To be fair, you have my bathroom. You've seen you've been to my house for dinner.
Rob I scrupulously avoided the bathroom. I have to be honest with you. I made a point not to not to.
I don't want, I don't want.
I have a very I have a wonderful image of you.
I have a sense of.
Your your incredible nobility.
I don't want to see your lot people, people who I really admire and I like, whose bathrooms I do not want to see, and yours is one of them.
Nineteen o eight, apartment building bathrooms were tended not to be. Yeah, opulent would not be a word I would use.
Okay, Well, I'm experiencing this firsthand, as you know. I'm as you mentioned, I recently moved to Princeton, New Jersey, and it's it's a disconcerting. It's a disconcertingly lovely place. It's weird. It's a it is like, you know, it's lovely, but it's you walk around it and it's like Stepford. It really is like Stepford, but Stepford if it was done you know, by a DEI person, Because everything like it's Richard Scary's Dei.
Everything. Everything is a landing eye.
People walking with ice cream cones and their families, multicultural, there's seeks and turbans, and there's like a bunch of like Africans and two shiki's.
And other people wandering around, and everyon's got their dog. It's the most pleasant.
It's the place where, if you if you put it this way, you know in colleges, where they have to take you know, they take that picture and the picture is absurdly multicultural, and you think the catalog Princeton, you.
Don't need to arrange that.
It's just it's just happening naturally in the little town in front of the upscale stores. And Prince is one of those places where if you see a disheveled, kind of shabby looking old person mumbling, your first question is I wonder what they teach.
There? You go. So, I have been on college tour now for months with my twelfth grader. So I have seen colleges.
All and you mean your twelfth grade age child, not like your blood boy or anything.
Right, he's not going to.
Set his blood boy you very much like he worked at a nonprofit something like that.
Yes, yes, he is all shiny and chrome.
Anyway, you said you'd said you said you'd educate me.
Shut up your orange juice.
So and had been on college tours with my daughter who is now in her third year Williams. And so I've now seen I don't know, you guys, Jonah like speaks at colleges all the time, so he's probably seen colleges. I haven't seen that many in my life, but I've now seen all these schools up and down the Eastern Sea ward. I think Princeton is the most strikingly beautiful
of them all. It's definitely okay. I mean I I don't know that there is anything quite comparable to it outside of Oxford and Cambridge.
Well, just to be just to be yeah accurate, like I'm at the seminary, so I'm at the Princeton Sements Prince of Theological Semony across the street.
They were.
They began as the same university, your same institution, as all these places did, and then they sort of gradually one became secular and one became theological. The the so there they have the same some of the buildings have the same names on put it that way, it's like just the same people gave the same building. The Prince of Theological Seminary campus is the boiled down.
Beautiful version.
Just there's no straining as anything that's smaller and they have tripled down somehow on.
The only way I can describe.
It is pharmaceutical ad quality trees. It's a it's a pharmaceutical ad quality bottom right now.
It's like insane.
And so you're walking, you're walking to class and it's like this giant red tree and or giant orange tree. And in the spring it's I was here in the spring or late spring, and it's this beautiful glush jungle and you just think this is I mean, I don't think it's wasted on my classmates, because my classmates are here for a big purpose and there and they're they're graduateudents.
But I think it's definitely wasted on the undergraduates.
They to wander around Princeton University campus and they.
They they really should be.
I mean, like anything else here, I'm sound like an old man, which is not for the first time of this podcast. They really should appreciate what they have, and I don't think they do.
Okay, can I can I speak to this because my daughter who is twenty and goes to Williams which is in the northwestern the northwestern corner of Massachusetts right where.
Right Williams very pretty right.
So she daily is like she calls me and says, this is the most beautiful day I've ever seen. She sends a photograph of a turning tree or something like that. So I don't know that it's necessarily the case that the kids are not experiencing the beauty. At least I
have one who certainly does. I want to tell you guys about my quickly about my visit to Brown, which I had never seen with my daughter, because Brown also a very beautiful and interesting campus because it is it kind of precedes the city that was built up around it, so it's kind of integrated into the neighborhood of Providence in a way that I don't quite know that other
campuses are that I'm aware of. So you're kind of in the city and you're on campus, and it kind of there are different quads and different crossing the streets, and so it's it's very striking. But two things about
the visit to Brown. One, we go in for the tour and they have an information session before the tour, and the first big slide at the tour of Brown is a land acknowledgment, and they tell you that they worked very, very hard in the land acknowledgment acknowledging that the land that Brown sits on is the land of the Narragansett Indians or I'm sorry, I'm suppose I'm not supposed to say Indian, and that they acknowledge the land and they and you know, I was reading this and
I was thinking, you know, if you really want to go with the land acknowledgement, why don't you give it back? Just give it back. You know, skid More, which is in Saratoga Springs, actually bought an entire h you know, like thousands of acres in the mid sixties and build a new campus somewhere on land that had purchased. So if Brown is so concerned about the asappropriation of land from the narragans It's it could just you could just
give it back. It's got a huge downland. It could just go buy stuff, tear build a new campus and give it back to the Narraganza Indians.
Or buy new parts of land and give that to them. I mean, maybe they'd like something fresh.
Right. Yeah, I'm just saying, like, you know, the acknowledgment's a little chintzy because that couldn't afford to give it back.
It's sort of like, you know, it's sort of like driving around in a car with a sign that says this is stolen property exactly.
So that was number one.
Number Well, I would saying, can we just.
Maybe they should just I mean, I don't think they need to give it back, but I think they should just change it from atlant acknowledgment to a you know, a land hat.
Tip, the land hat tip. You'd like to give a hat tip to the.
Land ht colon maragans it Academic communities may just a lands a land citation.
Yes. The second landing I'll tell you about is walking around campus with one of these very enthusiastic campus guides who tells you that this is really super exciting and this site on the campus is really instagrammable if you
want to take your picture, it's really instagrammable. It's the first time I've actually heard someone use the word instagrammable and ironically or maybe even actually spoken but again saying this is very instagrammable over here like that, but passing by the Ruth Simmons squad, who Simmons being the someone who was President Brown for like eighteen years, first African American to be president of an Ivy League University apparently produced a report on Brown's shameful reliance on money that
had been earned from the slave trade. Right, and you are, now, as a Brown student, obliged to read the Ruth Simmons report before you come to school. And then I guess, you know, you know, beat yourself with a palm frond or whatever for the sin of going to the school that was built on the back again once again. They could give it back, or they could, you know, if they want to pay reparations. They got an endowment, go go pay reparations. Like I I, that's not my business
the private institution. But walking through the Ruth Simmons Quad, there is a sign and the sign has an arrow pointing to the symbolic slave garden.
What wow.
I don't know if you know this, but you know, can be quite hard to cultivate, but apparently symbolic slaves are really delicious.
Yeah, well, you want to eat local, you gotta or.
Or or they bloom, you know, they bloom in interesting ways. You know, maybe in the spring you have to plant them now, let them let them sort of get through the tough winter. The symbolic slave garden. I don't know, what it's symbolic. I didn't get to go into it
because we were passing by, not going through. But so the symbolic slave garden the acknowledgment both indicate a level of virtue signaling that I think is typifies why Donald Trump they win the election in twelve days and that's all I got for you.
I like that.
I think that it's the symbolic. It's a symbolic garden for a symbolic feeling.
Yeah, the symbolic how does it modify the slave for the gardener? Not? I know, That's what I'm saying. A garden is either real or I suppose you could have The Garden of Eden is presumably symbolic.
Yeah, I'm gonna say the garden of symbolic slaves really creepy, extra vibe Mary.
It's sort of like Poultergeist. It's like, you build this garden, what did you do with the what did you do with the people?
I would just like to talk to the person who who had to dig it and planted, who I I think probably has a tenuous connection to the studies at Brown and it probably is more often than not appalled at what he or she sees.
Brown would be if it was an unpaid intern.
Yeah, of course. First, if I were really really going to go politically and correct, I could say that, you know, in the garden, they grow a lot of corn, but we call it maize. Right. So but in terms of beautiful colleges, it's it's pretty beautiful. I'm Colgate, Yeah, up State New York, stunningly beautiful.
Well, I mean, I mean, if if a college campus is not beautiful in mid to late October, don't go well.
I mean New England, a New England college campus that's over one hundred and fifty years old. If it's not pretty, they should just shut it down.
Yeah. Yeah.
It kind of reminds me like whenever I would visit my daughter in summer camp. She went to summer camp in Maine, and it's like this very camp Walden. It's like where the parent Trap original camp was, and it's over one hundred years old, and every time I visit it, I would always be like, you know, the best real estate advice you can get is, if you're buying real estate, do it one hundred years ago.
Yeah, because like it is really just a fantastic piece a land. And if you but you can't can't do that today.
And like, but all those college campuses, I mean, I I used to do a lot more college speaking, so I've been to like Boden and all those kinds of things.
All of them.
Are are super pretty. I can't say that all of them. I don't want to speak with too broad a brush, but I can't say that all of the students at all of those kinds of schools are all equally impressive. I think there's a lot more variation than, certainly than some of those schools would like you to discuss.
So it's not like Lake Wobbegone Right, where all the children are above average.
Like that is that I would always say.
Lived experience, I would.
I would also say that despite their youth, uh many, if not most, of the students at those campuses are not attractive enough to be there in that setting.
They are not pharma pharmacological ad quality.
They are notesthtically pleasing. They are not. They are not, and it's too bad.
They So they are not Ryan O'Neill and Ali McGrath.
No, they need to dress better, they need to spend a little bit more time, you know, just put themselves together before they leave the dorm or wherever they're they're staying, or they're you know, they're polycule.
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how the young people live, but they It does.
Seem to me that just walking down I live, I live a little bit from a from a. I mean, I'm walking through a universal, big university campus every day. You know, hey, come on, look at the look at the trees and the buildings. Don't you think you need to step it up a little bit?
Just I would just like to say, that's the important point. Jonah, this is you. You bring up an important point, which is it? I'm not I don't focus on on on the on the women or the girls or what they're wearing, because I'm not struck by it. What I'm struck by is this is the sartorial style of the male upper future leader of America between the ages of like eighteen and twenty two. Now, I dressed like crap in college. I'm not going to tell you otherwise. I bought clothing
at the Woolworths in the Hyde Park shopping center. I would buy flannel shirts that cost seven dollars, you know, when I needed clothing and that sort of thing I mean and jeans. I'm not praising my own forty five year old look back in the late seventies and early eighties,
but they really do all look like their seven. And the mail this thing about the thing going around in marking the anniversary of October seventh, and people are saying in Israel that, you know, one of the things that happened on October seventh when the Nova Music the massacre at the Nova Music Fessel happened, is that way fewer people died that might have died otherwise, because all the kids who were at the Nova Music Festival were veterans, had been in the IDF and knew how to defend
themselves and had training. And there's an astonishing story about the kid who was in a shelter with Hirsch goolber poland the one who was just executed was one of the six executed in September. And this kid's name was Honor, and they they were in a he and Hirschgelberg and others were in this shelter and Hamas kept throwing in opening the door and throwing in a hand grenade, and this kid, Honor would pick up the hand grenade, open
the door, and throw it back out at them. And this happened seven times until Hamas realized that they were not going to succeed.
Seven times the seven times wisn took. I mean, you think that after the first time they would have figured it out, but I guess they weren't just sending their best.
But get this kid. So this kid was level heading a kid. I don't know how old he was, twenty twenty one, but he had been through this experience, right. So all these nova they were there at a rave basically right, but they were had been through the Israeli military and they are now in the Israeli military now. And I have this this kind of weird feeling experience. It's like you walk around these campuses and I wasn't in the military. I wasn't you know, I wasn't conscripted.
I'm not talking about that, but man, there is an age there is some kind of age life gap that is very disheartening, it seems to me when you're talking about it.
I'll tell you so like, we're not going to say where my daughter goes to school, because there are bad people in the world.
But and they let me know it, but my daughter goes to a prestigious liberal arts college and her in Helsinki, you can say it. You know, she got hit hard by COVID.
You know, so, like navigating social life in college is a thing for everybody, but like particularly her cohort that got kind of screwed out of their last year of
high school and all that. And she's telling me about the kids and like how to and she's asking me for like advice about social stuff, and but like two boys in her dorm had emotional support dogs and not like I don't mean like they spotted their seizures or anything like that, right, I mean like just straight up they feel anxiety and they need emotionals wortrud And I'm
not trying to make too much light of that. But like I was like, sweetie, and then she had all the other stories like that, and I was like, look, honey, I want to be helpful as I can and giving you advice in all this.
But when I went to.
College, if you needed an emotional support dog to get through the night, you would got would have gotten mercilessly made fun of, even if everyone liked your dog. And I went to an all women's college, and the idea that like I like, so like is what passes for acceptable levels of sensitivity? I mean, like the number of stories my daughter had when she first went to school about boys complaining constantly about hurt feelings for the mildest
of criticisms. Will It's just really kind of remarkable and I and that's something that I think is very new in our experience. Like I just don't and I don't know if it's receded post COVID in a certain way, but it's definitely a thing.
Mm.
Well, here's what I don't see on campus. Then, now that I'm the glob campus correspondent, I feel like I could say this, I don't see a lot of you are Princeton stringer, I am, Yet I don't see I don't see a lot of protests here. I mean, I see there's kids walking around, a few have the CAFIA, and you know, there's a lot of free Palestinas in that.
But it also feels to me a little bit like it's embedded now in the sort of university apparatus that there's a lot of posters for teachings and conversations and all that stuff, and not so much dialogue. Not peom Be screaming on the quad, which I mean is actually kind of good. It kind of in a way, it's sort of like I think everybody kind of woke up.
I hope anyway around here.
This is not I am very nervous that this is the calm before the storm. But go ahead, Jones.
But yeah, I was just gonna say, I mean, I don't want to trigger John to start talking about anti Israel protests on college campuses, but I do think like Columbia is a special case. And as they talked about a lot on the commentary podcasts at the time, part of the problem was Columbia's on the subway line, and you had a lot of outside horrible people coming and it was just sort of so Columbia was on a special case. There a couple of other schools that were
special cases. But I think one of the incredible screw ups of a lot of elite schools was that they liked the coverage to a certain extent that the whole campus was overwhelmed with protests when in reality, like I know for a fact that like at UCLA or USC or USA I can't remember which, the area that was like super protesting was like you know, a half acre that was cordoned off, and everyone else kind of walked
around it for the most part. At I have a friend whose kid is at Notre Dame, and like, Notre Dame handled all that stuff very well. But the end of that Protestant is like, oh, yeah, they're doing that from one to four over the but like the cameras, yeah, make it look like, you know, campus in flames, kind of yeah. And I think it's so many of these
sort of aging boomer type administrators. They're so invested in the idea that protest is part of the campus experience, part of the educational experience, that they they wanted to highlight it like it was a new friggin gym.
Also, I feel like.
They it was exciting to them to to like watch this happen again to validate all of their legitimate misgivings of a have any about the sixties, which was a complete loser decade, And if you're an overworked graduate student, it's like irresistible not to want to cancel class and exams for this. But I still maintain my point, which is I feel like people woke up after that long the way you might wake up after a night out with drinks, and I think we've all had that experience.
So I got to tell you about this game changing product that I used before a night out with drinks.
It's called z biotics pre alcohol.
Let's face it, after a night with drinks, I don't back the next day like I used to, So I have to make a choice either can you have a great night or a great next day? So, but there now is a surefire way to wake up feeling fresh after a night of drinking, and it's.
With z biotics pre alcohol. Pre alcohol is.
The world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here is how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut, and it's this byproduct. It's not the hydri it's dehydration, or eat an apple, eat a banana.
No, it's not.
It's this byproduct that is what's to blame for your rough next day. And pre alcohol produces an enzyme that breaks down this by product. So just remember to make z biotics your first drink of the night and to drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow and I have been doing I haven't done it in a while because I have to.
Work every day with school.
A school is really hard. But last weekend and this is coming, I'm going to a wedding on Friday. I'm actually officiating at a wedding and officially officiating at a wedding on Friday, so I'm not going to be in robes. I haven't been ordained, but you know anyway, and I will on I will on Friday morning be drinking tomorrow morning, be drinking my z biotics I guarantee you. So go to zbiotics dot com slash glob to learn more and get fifteen percent off your first order when you use.
Glop at checkout.
That's z by hold, I just just lost my place there. Go to z biotics dot com slash glob to learn more and get a fifteen percent off your first order when you use glop at checkout. Z Biotics remember is backed by a one hundred percent money back guarantees, so if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they refund your money,
no questions ask. That is a real guarantee. So remember to head to zbiotics dot com slash glop use the code glop at checkout for fifteen percent off, and we thank Zbiotics for sponsoring the glob podcast and our good Next Mornings and for being such a loyal advertiser here.
Okay, so I want to go to speculate. Now, twelve days the election, a couple of things have happened on campus that seemed to be morphing the protests into something a little different. There have been a couple of occupations of buildings on campus. So this did happen once at Columbia in the spring, right at Hamilton Hall got occupied. But at the University of Minnesota there was building occupied, and I think at some other college in California building
was occupied. That this is what's really relevant of the nineteen sixties, when college campus radicals occupied administration buildings, moved into the president's office, you know that kind of thing. That was a big trope. So twelve days from now, let us say Trump wins the twenty twenty four election, this would not be the anti semitism outbreak tests that
I am now talking about. But having been marinated in that and trained in it for a year, and having had this capacity to learn how to disrupt, I don't know what's going to happen. Because the president Wesleyan has a piece in Slate today yesterday today saying, I don't like this Michael Roth, who is a terrible person and a terrible college president, terrible public intellectual in every possible way. I don't like this viewpoint neutrality stuff. I don't like it.
I don't like viewpoint neutrality because.
I can't tell from the rants yet.
No, he's saying, he's saying that I don't terrible person because JD.
Vance and and Donald Trump are evil and they want to just destroy free expression in the university, and we need activism more than ever. So the president of Wesleyan is now essentially implicitly calling for campus protest against an election result that he doesn't like. And that's a It's not that he's that's a small school and in northern Connecticut. So maybe that's not really going to be it's not
a harbinger of things to come. But I don't know what's going to happen in this country if Trump wins between now and January twentieth, and I don't think it could be very not pretty. And so I'm just speculating that the very not prettiness may start on campuses and explode outward from there, because that's because there has been a kind of a prologue to that in twenty twenty three early twenty four.
But to use your language, I think not prettiness is baked into the cake. No matter who wins it just where does it manifest itself?
Right? But right? Well, so the not prettiness. If Paris wins, we at least have a dry run of that, right, which is claims of fraud, stupid electoral lawsuits. Trump winning also given the rhetoric that is going to be dominating the discussions over the next two weeks since Kamala Harris's Cilly decided to go with the he's a fascist and is going to destroy democracy as we know it. That's
her closing message. Apparently they've decided that all the other stuff isn't working and this may be the one thing that works. So maybe she'll win and then it won't really, But if he wins and America is over, then the use of violence against the Blues brother the use of excessive violence against the Blues Brothers has been approved by the establishment somehow, right, I mean, what are you going
to do? If Trump wins, you are you are. Basically it's nineteen thirty three and the Reichstag fire is coming, and what do you you know if you went back in time and knew the Reichstag fire was coming, what would you do. That's what a lot of people in this country are going to be thinking. I don't I don't know. I had no way to game it out. Yeah, No, am I being hystero.
I don't mean I don't know. I mean a little to me, A little bit, I guess it. I mean I might. You're my priors that I was.
Appalled by the post twenty twenty election behavior of the president, the then president. I felt it's disqualifying for him. I was not a fan to begin with, so it's your you know, you can get.
Me on that.
And he was terrible.
January sixth was terrible, but it was you know, it wasn't a game of capture the flag where they had got If that guy with the horns had gotten in, had gotten the Golden Gabble, well he would have been.
The President of the United States by definite. Like it's not what it is, right, So it's like I I bad, and then they'll be bad, and then they're gonna be fine.
He's sat the iron throwne right, the goblet, Mike Pence is iron throne.
I know, so all that's possible. But maybe I'm a Pollyanna. I you know, I think I think it's going to be horrible for those of us who don't like this kind of thing to live through. I think the next four years of a Trump presidency is going to be repellent and grotesque in a way that the Kamala Harris for presidency will be in some way grimly deliciously satisfying, because she's so awful and so incompetent. But I I I don't think it's going to be the end of anything.
Maybe it'll burn itself out. Maybe you got to have it. I don't know, But to me, it doesn't seem like it's going to be the end of anything.
The end of anything, as a question is other people are going to think it's the not a bunch of people on either side are going to think it's the end of everything, and therefore they they will be activated to do could be activated to do radical and extreme things.
Mm hmmm, I mean I think that's that's baked in no matter what, and and you know, the only thing that gives me solace is knowing that Donald Trump is capable of the kind of sober, responsible rhetorical restraint that can reassure people in times of excess that we've come to expect from him.
No, I mean like the I mean I.
Like all of us.
We think and talk about this stuff a lot. I mean, maybe maybe not Rob because he's still doing the big ats, but POT and I do, and I float above these questions.
Yeah, I flowed.
I'm sorry. I float above your little questions. I got to say.
I think if I was going purely by my own mental health and my own satisfaction and my own best interest reputationally and professionally, it would be better for Trump to win, because then I would get to say I told you so for four years. And if Harris wins, which I think would be better for the country, I'll
just be honest and I think better for conservatism. But my life will be pretty friggin miserable because people will be like, you wanted this, this is what you wanted, You got what you wanted, and and so look, I think she'll be a failed, mediocre. Most likely scenarios shes gonna be a failed, mediocre president and that would actually be good for the Republican Party and good for conservatism and better than you know, the worst case scenarios but Trump.
But like.
I agree with Rob, I mean, when you're talking about like must get the Golden gabble, Count reminds me of James the Second and the Glorious Revolution. He takes the seal of the Realm, the seal, the Seal of the King right, the seal of the Goblet, and he throws it in the river and he's like, ah, yeah, yeah, and then they go to get in and what was it, William or whatever it says, to make a new seal.
I was trying to explain this.
I was explaining this to my son that for some reason, you know this famously or notoriously or whatever, the most complicated period in history has been a judge to be the period of the false Dmitries that followed the death and the Terrible Yeah, because in I think the space of seven years, so there were like one hundred and fifty six different pretenders to the throne, all of whom claimed that they were Ivan's son Dimitri, and there was because it was whatever century was sixteenth, fifteenth.
I don't know how how how could you know.
Literally, how could you know that somebody wasn't There were no photographs.
I really have to know.
Only about twelve people had to know, right, I mean right right, And if you were like you sitting around in your ste or you're like the steps, or you're like eating dirt or something or boiling harble bark tee, didn't really matter who was the legitimate air well, that's right, But.
That's what one of the reasons. So there were I don't know there were there were two pokes around one hundred changes of government. Because nobody actually knew who anybody was. There was no way you could say, I'm Henry the Eighth. How do you know he wasn't Henry the Eighth?
I am, I am?
I mean unless yeah, exactly. So that's the seal thing, right, that that was the that was that was James, That was James the second, not really understanding that we had progressed beyond that kind of thing into Yes, the fact is that the seal was not the The seal was not.
It wasn't a magic sister that.
Yeah, it was Calimber.
Yeah, that guy was going to get rubber stamping.
Its hard, flying in ponds, handing out swords. Well, that is.
For a proper moist and bince is what it was. I have to say that that that that does bring I cannot believe I'm asking this. Oh wait, I cannot believe I'm.
Asking this question.
I have a very very interesting question to ask and before I do, I just want to talk a little bit about Shopify. I don't know if you know Shopify. I know Shopify as.
A customer of Shopify.
In fact, if you look at the blurred behind me image of a circular bookshelf, I saw advertised on Instagram and I needed it for my all my books because you don't have many books now and I need to buy my desk. I bought it and it's a Shopify. They use Shopify, and boy are they selling these things
like hotcake chopafy. As a customer is excellent and that is my real endorsement shop of I if you are selling something, so it is if you're a customer, it is the simplest, easiest way to order directly from your place of advertising. And if you are a shop owner or you are selling something on the web or on Instagram. You need Shopify. You upgrade your business. You get the same checkout everyone has.
With Shopify.
You sign up for one dollar per month trial period at shopify dot com slash glop all lowercase. If you are a seller, you go to shopify dot com slash glop and you can upgrade your selling and your sales operation today. And as a customer, I can tell you it is fantastic. A happy customer is a repeat customer, as everybody who sells anything else shopify dot com slash glop. Go there, and we thank Shopify for sponsoring the Glop Podcast.
We also thank Shopify for helping the people who make this awesome circular bookcase able to sell them to people like me.
Here's my question. Tell us his life.
Is, or politics, or contemporary culture, or contemporary politics, or even the Great Republic of the United States. Is it more like Game of Thrones? Or is it more like money?
Python and the Holy Grail.
Well, and John is laughing, but I'm sort of semi serious.
You mean life right now? Or do you mean like on this mortal coil, perous time?
Existence?
The nature of existence? I think I think my theory is that it is right now, like the Holy Grail. And if we were back then, in the time of the two Popes or the twenty seven Victors or whatever it is, it would smell worse, but it would still feel a little like the Holy Grail.
I would like to think that it was, of course the Holy Grail. I would not want to live in the world of Game of Thrones, and I do not think, in fact that we live in the world of Game of Thrones. I don't even think that in the worst parts of the world that they live in the world of Game of Thrones, because that's not how power struggles work in the twenty first century. The kinds of things that are portrayed in Game of Thrones are since they were in fact reflective of the Wars of the Roses.
That's what George R. Maarten was basing Game of Thrones on. Power has a different kind of valence. The way people legitimize their authority has a different method, and we live in a different and it's not that funny unless Tyrian is speaking, it's really not that funny. And of course in Monty Python you do have the Holy Hand Graandy of Antioch, you have Timny Enchanter, you have the French guys with the on the on the castle top, you know, like every five minutes.
You get yeah, some funny, I have another theory, but I want to hear killing you.
Yeah, okay, So I disagree because I look, I love Montypython on the Holy Grail. The problem with thinking that life, if we were around back then, we would think it's more like that than Game of Thrones is that part of the joke of Moneypython on the whole Holy Grail
is that the violence isn't taken really seriously. But in real life, like when people are cutting off your arm, you know they are killing your kids, the crucifying people, the humor washes away really really quickly, and different parts of your brain kick in.
And you call what Twitter did a Laura Lumer exactly.
And so I think the.
I do think that the world operates closer to the way Game of Thrones does, particularly in the bad parts of the world, less so in the United States. I think that liberal democratic capitalism was the great invention that got us out of the zero sum Game of Thrones
way of looking at power and politics and economics. And the problem is is that our brains are wired to want to live more in a Game of Thrones world than the world that we live in, and so you have Jabbroni's and Jackwads and Poltroons all over the place who are always fantasizing about how that they were a Roman general in the Roman Empire and not thinking about how they were probably they probably would have been a slave who died young, thinking that we need to restore
that old way of organizing things. And someone should write a about how that kind of choice is like pretty much suicidal. But it really it spells like the Suicide.
Of the West.
Yeah, something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting.
I guess what I say, but I would just kind I just I guess what I would say. Is the
only I mean, yes, one is comedy, one isn't. But the only difference is that in the Game of Thrones world, or even in the world of history when you're reading it, there's not they're not those moments of spectacular clumsy incompetence because it all kind of makes sense, right, because it can't not make sense because it's you're living in the future that this this past event brought out, So that that is the part of the of the comedy, part
the holy grail. Part that I think is interesting is that we do live in a time where we were watching incompetence happen that will kind of be justified or rectified or airbrushed or in some way ignored or memory hold. In fifty sixty seventy hundred years, you forget all sorts of mistakes that people made, and we just don't keep
track of them. I mean, but since we brought it up, I mean you should have brought up there is that there is a story this week that you know that that corroborated I think by by John Kelly, he was chief of staff for President Trump. He President Trump said he want.
He wished he had those.
He wish he had Hitler's generals because they were loyal, And I thought, well, that's a very strange thing. They were yes man, and they gave they told you what you wanted to hear, and you eventually shot yourself to death in a bunker.
Like that.
Seems like a guy who doesn't quite get the history. How that story ended as that tried to kill ye.
Yes, yes, generals and colonels. That was one number two. Yes, you ended up So I wish he had them too, well, I mean to us, The Kelly story suggests a paucity of understanding about history on the part of Donald Trump that I know, I know comes as a great shock too, because you know that Donald Trump is a student of history. For example, there were five families and to Talia was a pimp yea and Tony soprano.
No, always gloried. That was always a glorified crew.
Yeah, okay. So my interpretation of this entire John Kelly story is that Trump decided Trump's Trump's personal perversity is a desire constantly to keep everybody who is in his ambit off kilter and off balance and in a state of dizziness and confusion. And he intuits what it is that is the worst thing that he could say to somebody to see how they are going to react and respond to him. And the fact that mostly they just go along and don't say anything is part of his
power over them. And I think he said to John Kelly something like, you suck. I need a German, I need a Nazi general. What kind of crappy general are you? Was like, I'm saying this to you, okay, now are you going to quit? As every second that you stay in my company? After I say this to you, I own your.
Ass that I have humility is true, way, which is true.
I'm here to save America from you. That's why I'm staying.
Yeah, I mean LBJ would drag you into the bathroom while he said on the toilet. That is about I mean, you gotta.
Talk about a land acknowledgement to LBJ. You got to give him a little bit of a hat tip for that.
That was.
He shows And I've never done that. I've I mean, I I have, I mean, I I don't have.
The math.
Even Chuck Laurie wouldn't make you do that.
And he's really he's a fantastically spectacular and successful showrunner. And he would even he would say, you know, just give me five minutes, just give me. You know what, Why don't you guys just wait in the office.
I'll be right back. Well, you know, I have a friend who worked for John McLaughlin. I think, Uh, it's it's past time where we can speak ill of John McLaughlin. Uh.
One of his favorite things to do was they had a bullpen at the McLaughlin Group. Were all the producers and associate producers and you know, writers and researchers, whatever had their desks all facing each other, and and what McLaughlin would do was use the intercom system on his
phone and bellow into it. JM needs coco, meaning he needed his hot chocolate, but he never designated the person he wanted to bring him hot chocolate because he liked the humiliation of everybody looking at each other, like in the prison yard, being like are you going to do it this time? Or are you going to do it this time? And uh, And I think there is something to that about Donald Trump too. It's like the thing
I always remember. It's the tiniest example, but was the first interview that he and Mike Pence did after he picked Mike Pence. And at one point Trump just turns to Mike Pence and says, it's okay, you can answer, like answer the question that the interviewer asking. And it was such a yeah kind of like, well, okay, little Timmy, it's your turn.
Now you can go ahead and do it.
There was a great story about showrunner of a couple of hit shows and she is stuck on a rewrite and she doesn't know what she got to write. It's something she's not quite sure what she wants to do. She's got to write a couple episodes.
I think.
I'm not quite sure where she was, but she was a little under the gun. She decided she wanted to focus.
So she went to.
Some fancy hotel in Las Vegas where they had a you could get a suite. We had its own pool on the pool deck, and so she got one of there. She brought her assistant in an adjoining room or something.
It got to the morning, they had breakfast and they went out into the pool when the shade was there still was a tree putting shade on the pool where the pool was, and so she would lay about in the pool a little in the sun, little in the shade, while the assistant, who was a larger, plump young woman, would have to sit there in this desert sun baking.
While she wrote down every pitch.
And at one point the showrunner floating lazily as I imagine, maybe even drinking a muggerite or something in her floating chair, she said, it's okay, if you want to put your feet in the water, it's okay, just don't get the keyboard wet.
My favorite humiliation story involves an actress whom I will not name, because she is still living, though she is a very elderly and has become someone that no one will work with any longer, despite having been enormously world famous fifty years ago. At some point in the nineteen nineties, this actress became the star of a sitcom, and as Rob knows, I was a TV critic. Rob went there. There's an an annual event called the TV Critics Press Tour where people I Okay, I didn't say it, you said it.
Well, I got to think that a story. I got to add to this.
Okay, anyway, she's starting a sitcom.
I'm if you're listening, you did some wonderful work. We were big fans. Thank you for thank you for being a glop fan. Say anyway, go ahead, John, I'm sorry.
Sitcom And she comes to do her panel at the press tour where people are there to interview her and the showrunner and stuff like that. And she arrives at this at the Universal City. Sheardon and has to use the bathroom, and the publicist who has been CBS publicist who has been there's job it is to squire her around, bring her in, take her through the hotel, take her to the Okay, uh, Faye down away says, I have to go to the bathroom. So uh, they go into
the bathroom. She shows her in the bathroom and uh, my friend, the publicist, is standing outside waiting for her to come out of the bathroom. Ah or is it going to wait outside? Then Fay says, no, come in the bathroom, come in, come in with come in, not not a into a not into an individual bathroom, into a you know, hotel ballroom bathroom with lots of stalls
and stuff. And so my friend is standing outside the stall and then Faye opens the door and says, I need you to come in, And my friend says, what do you mean. She says, well, I'm in a very very tight dress and I need you to wipe me. I can't if I reach around, I might tear the scene under my arm. So I need you to wipe me. And my friend who left the business that long after, like, really wonderful.
Your friend left the business that moment.
I got to be in his head, in her, in her, in her spirit, just like John Kelly left public service the minute that Trump said I want you know, you should be in Nazi general And she in fact had to fulfill the band aid of her job, and yeah, wipe another person's.
But a star. She was a star. That's another person who's not their toddler who you're potty training. Yes, yeah, yes, and even then I can can't we outsource this?
Yes? Yes, So when you read stories about this star in her behavior and there was actually a very good documentary about her being a monster that she participates in that's on HBO Max. Anyway, I wasn't going.
I will say she was in the show you're talking about. Was the show I forget the name of it was she did?
No, she was like she was the age.
Played the literary the grandee literary agent to Rob Bob Yurick, who was an author and he had moved to a small town and he was a novelists. He was like a Stephen King or John Grisham something like that, hugely successful novels. She was the eighth of the editor or the agent that she was always trying to get him to finish his book. And uh, and so it was like that was the story and they did all this, all of this like testing for it because everybody loves
Bob Yurick. Robert Yuick was a genuine TV star and the show was just tanking, and no one could figure out why. And then they really tested and they focus grouped it, and they just discover that the reason that the show wasn't working is because everybody universally hated hated Fade down Away so much they didn't want to watch the show.
And so they were trying.
The studio doing it was trying desperately to come up with numbers that made her look better. So they did is they they actually did. They did a bunch of different episodes, but one episode they tested was basically a fool proof episode where you her character somehow, somehow encounters or takes possession of, or now take care of a box of puppies, like twelve adorable lab puppies running around
in a big crate and Fade down Away. And they tested the episode to see if they could bring Fade Downaway's numbers up, because obviously, you know you're surrounded by puppies that you're going to expire good feelings. And the story is that the guy that the research, the vice priad of research for the studio, was left the focus group and the tabulation room and the showrunners were there.
They said, how'd she do and he says, shook his head.
He said, wait, they didn't like her with the puppies, and then they said and then he said, no, they also didn't like the puppies. It's the first time in show business that she brought down the puppies.
I just looked it up. The show was called it had to be You, It had to be You, And you know, to get fade down away to do a sitcom, it's a huge amount of money. Like this was Oscar winning actress, right, Like he's.
Great, I mean it was great. By the way, she's great.
He is a great actress. Not really somebody want on a sitcom, but a pretty great actress.
And it's so great that she was on Mommy, that she was John Crawford and Mommy dearst right, I.
Mean, according to according to the documentary, that is what destroyed her career because she was so convincing as this psychotic monster that nobody ever liked her.
Again connected with that role. Your friend could write up that story with like called.
They canceled her series after four episodes. They they filmed nine, did not air five and it has it has vanished into the ether.
And vanished into the ether, but you know what has not vanished into the ether?
What is that?
I'll tell you what has it? Your metabolism, John has not vanished into the ether. It's still there. And I want to tell you about Lumen. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath and on the app it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs. It gives you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, workout, sleep, and
even stress management. It's actually really simple. All you do is you breathe into your Lumen first thing in the morning. It's just a small thing. It's like a looks like a sharpie, and you'll know what's going on with your metabolism, whether you're burning or whether you're bretting.
Mosty fats or carbs.
And then Lumen gives you a personalized nutrition plan for that day based on your measurements that morning. You can also breathe into it before or after workouts or meals, so you know exactly what's going on in your body in real time, and Lumen will give you tips to keep you on top of your health gain. They set us one I've been using it, and I've been upgrading
it too, like I'm now a customer of Lumen. It's actually really really great and it kind of reminds you me that I either I sometimes I need to eat in the morning, or what I need to do is you have some protein rather than another doughnut. It is a great way to measure metabolism, and metabolism is your body's engine. It's how your body turns the food you
eat into fuel that keeps you going. And because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does, optimal metabolic health translates to a bunch of great benefits, including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleep, all those things. Luman gives you recommendations to improve your metabolic health every day, twice three times a day,
whenever you feel you need it. So if you want to take the next step and improving your health, go to lumen dot me slash glop to get fifteen percent off your lumen that's Lumen lume en dot me. It's emmy slash glop for fifteen percent off your purchase. We thank Luman for sponsoring this podcast and also are sponsoring our Good metabolic health.
Hey, I got an on brand and relevant to the conversation topic for glad you're talking about canceled shows. The other night, my wife and I were watching the We just caught the tail end of Tropic Thunder, which we do not have to talk about again. We've talked about many times, but I had mentioned about. I mentioned to her the Ben Stiller Show, which famously got canceled before it got an Emmy for Best Comedy Show, and and she'd never seen it. I had not watched all of them.
I only watched a few of them, but like again thirty years ago, because it was like ninety one ninety two when that show came out, and so we bought it on iTunes or whatever, like twelve bucks of the whole season and.
The pilot.
The second episode much more hit or mis but the pilot is really pretty amazing. And the It's also such a time capsule thing because you know, Stiller's about my age, you know, somewhere around there and.
A little older maybe, and.
Uh, all of his cultural reference points are clearly and entirely the product of someone who grew up watching the TV shows that we did, right, I mean, the the most brilliant bit in it is they keep doing this sort of like behind the music thing with Bono and Bono is you know right, and they keep and they go to his agent and you guys remember who played his agent and Rubin Kincaid, and he's telling these stories about how he booked them bar Mitzvahs and they cut
to Bono at the bar Mitza and it's really well done. And then like they sell out and they do Lucky Charms. You two is the pitch band form Lucky Charms and the ad is really really funny. But like the the thing, I guess he had a recurring bit like this on the on Satay Live where, but he does this whole spoof on Cape Fear the Robert the Genera Cape Fear, where it's Eddie Munster released from prison who's pissed that
his show is canceled, and it's really well done. I mean Eddie Munster playing Robert de Niro and Cape Fear was really well done.
That show was so good and it has this kind of astonishing cast, so it's him. It was a sketch comedy show but so it was like SNL but it was half an hour long and everything was filmed so that so that it's more like he and Peel later or something like that, so you could actually refine it, you know, and edit it and stuff like that. Him, Andy Dick, Janine Garofo, Bob Odenkirk, who ends up you know, twenty five years later, is thirty years later in Betterhole, Saul,
and I can't remember a couple of other people. The thing that I remember that was so brilliant was remember the discussions of TV violence And it was so late early nineties Nightline there were always like panel discussions at TV violence and vulgarity on TV. After Tipper Gore made a whole thing and there was a they did a parody of Alf, and Alf is a sock puppet, literally a sock puppet called Skank. So it's like, oh, Skank, you're such a scaley wag and then just a sock
is like, you shut your stinking track. That was his catch, trains, you got your stinking trap. And then so it turns out Alf is being played by an actor named Thurston Howell the Third or something like that, who is a sock puppet but has glasses. And so when he goes on Nightline to defend himself against the idea that he
is lowering the standards of American culture. Speaks in a voice like this, but has has a sock puppet with glasses, and he's like fighting the head of Action for children's television, and the person on action says at some point, you shut your stinking trap, and then he and then the sock puppet with glasses like no, you shoot your stinking cry yelling at each other.
It was so skank surreal, right, Well, a mister show the show that Bob Odenkirk did David Cross maybe I'm just remember that was Bob Odenkirk played it in the Ben Stiller's show.
I can't remember.
Uh, they did a bizarre parody of Lassie, except Lassie the dog was played by Bob Odenkirk. I think is Bob Odenkirk who was playing Charles Manson. And so the idea was that Charles Manson was the family pet. And they would say, Manson, Manson, where's Timmy.
Timmy, He's well, he's gonna die.
I would like do that laughter thing that he's in the well, and then oh Manson. It was just it was bananas, but it was pretty funny, you know.
What's interesting, so and then we can sort of. I was just gonna say, I've been watching a lot of the new season of broadcast television.
Wow, it's amazing thing to even here, you see.
Because there have been three or four shows that looked mildly intriguing.
To me which I started watching because, yeah, discuss Kathy Baker is Matt Locke.
That is a good show. Kathy basis right, Kathy Baker another good actress who should be on something. But there's a show called High Potential, which stars Caitlin Olsen from It's All in Philadelphia as a as a sort of genius who becomes a police sort of consultant. That's a procedural. But there is the single most bosire show. It's pretty good, it's not great, show called Brilliant Minds, the same show. These are all like house derivatives, genius person with strange
qualities that makes them socially inept. So this is Zachary Quinto from Heroes essentially playing Oliver Sachs at a hospital in the Bronx, and you know is able to diagnose
things because he's so brilliant. But there's a show called Doctor Odyssey and it's Ryan Murphew's this one man TV studio, right, who made Glee and then he made Get whatever that show is about plastic surgery, and now his bread and butter is making constantly making shows for Netflix about the Menendez brothers, about Jeffrey Dahmer, right, that that's his big thing, or these fictionalized murder stories. But this show is called Doctor Odyssey, and it is a combination of the Love
Boat and Gray's Anatomy, and so it's this. Every week is a cruise with Don Johnson as the captain and Jeremy Jackson as the doctor. And he's got two nurses, and that's the entire cast, is the four of them. And then one week is the plastic surgery cruise, one week is the wellness cruise, one week is something else. And if you go on this, these guys on the ship in the forty eight minutes of the episode are performing appendectomies, they're performing cancer surgeries, they're doing they're doing
like their brilliant diagnoses of people having strange diseases. You do not want to go. We have all been on cruises. I've been on several, and you've been on way more than I have. We've been on these cruise ships. There are more. It turns out there are morgues they're performing, they're cryogenic chambers. They're performing twelve hour surgeries below decks. I'm not quite sure. The show is a huge. Apparently it is getting like eleven twelve million viewers once they
add in the streaming services. So it's a huge hit. And it is so bananas, and you've watched, like I've watched watching it with myself, I watched like four episodes up. It is like it is like watching something on shrooms. They are and then in fact, in an episode, they're in the middle of a hurricane, the Wellness crew on the Wellness cruise and someone has gives slip these sistant captain psilocybin.
Uh, well, psilocybin ahead.
Psilocybin, excuse me, And so as they're trying to navigate this hurricane, the co captain is like high on shrooms on the deck and it's forty eight minutes and they basically do a huge surgery on somebody and then the show is over. And so I think, you know what net network television is like going down the tubes. Everyone says it's not going to exist in interesting five years.
But somehow they seem now to have decided that a they want to have a cop show or some kind of straw or doctor show in which everything is wrapped up in the first.
Is done but for GM and you know, uh, Chrysler except for Chrysler got better after Competition is good.
Competition is good. They just need to get their head. And speaking of yes, please watchable shows.
Any segment will work. I want to talk to you about ag one. I've talked to you about ag one a lot. I want to continue to talk to you about ag one. Ag One helps you build a healthy morning routine. In just sixty seconds. You can get your daily dose of vitamins, minerals and pre and probiotics, adaptogens and more in one drink.
That's why I've been.
Drinking ag one for I don't know, twenty fifteen years, A long time. I heard about it in the Tim Ferris podcast. I drink it in I don't drink it into the morning. I drink it sort of in the afternoons, and I like, like afternoon picked me up. It has replaced my cup of coffee and I have never been happier. Ag one is made with bioavailable ingredients that.
Actually work with your body.
It helps fill nutrient gaps and supports your gut for a healthy digestion. Just one daily scoop provides whole body benefits like gut, immune and stress support. So start with AG one and notice the difference for yourself. It's a great first step to investing in your health, and that's why they've been a proud partner of mine and this podcast for so long. Try AG one and get a free bottle of Vitamin D three K two, which is
apparently we're all we all need. We don't get enough for that, and five free AG one travel packs with your first purchase at drinkag one dot com slash glop. If you're like me, the travel packs will be how you get your AG one that is a forty eight dollars value. It is for free if you go to drink ag one. That's drink the word AG two letters AG one the number one dot com slash glob check it out. We thank ag one for sponsoring the Glove podcast.
For so long.
They're a loyal advertiser, and also for making a terrific product.
All right, so do we have anything to recommend to anybody. I'm not really recommending Doctor Odyssey. I can recommend Matt Locke. I can also kind of recommend the show El Smith, which is on CBS, which is about a kind of again a brilliant lawyer who is a consultant for the police department. This is now a new thing where you're not really a cop, but you're kind of a cop, and you're sort of a cop.
Well they had to do that because cops had some pr cops were bad.
Yeah, cops are bad, so you can be a cop, Jason. Yeah, cop adjacent. I like else with because it seems to be filmed all over my neighborhood and full of stage on New York show. Very enjoyable. But anyway, so there is weird stuff to watch. But I uh, I I don't. I don't know.
I got something to recommend. I mean, I don't. I mean, as you know, I don't.
I don't recommend a lot of pop culture. But I've just been reading this great book and I can't put it down. It's Athanasius on the Incarnation, and it's just really kind of fun, interesting take, unique take on that whole thing. So I recommend, my recommend you the CBS shows very very more tasteful than you actually want. But but I you, I know that some great stuff on broadcast, I know. But I'm just saying, if you're if you're if you're looking for something else, something a little different
but still fun. Athanasius on The Incarnation he had a creed, right, Yeah, they all did.
Yeah, it was more like a mono. It was brand, had a personal brand.
A video game like Assassin's Creed like.
The Yeah, he had a personal brand.
John, Okay, there we go.
It's like a rule of a creed. Yeah, fair enough.
Okay, Well, so that's a that's an excellent recommendation. I think the last time we were on, I recommended the iLiads. So you're just trying to trump me here as it worked, Yes, as it were. Can I point out that Kamala Harris the other day said that, uh, Donald Trump's policies would exasperate inflation?
True? Now is that is that good like a yogism?
Or is that bad? Like like the incredible malapropism?
Well, we all want to exasperate inflation. It does sound like does I won't say what it sounds like, but you.
Know, Jonah, you said that you think it would be better for America. I Trump, if Harris wins and all that, and I'm not gonna I don't even.
We're not going to do this now. I wrap it up here, but I do want to.
Say that of all the candidates who have ever run for office, now that Harris has come out of hiding and is giving interviews relatively constantly in the last couple of weeks, of all the candidates that have that have run for higher office, she is one of them, and I believe may go down in history if she wins as our dumbest president. I was going through the presidents in the nineteenth century. We had some very mediocre president.
But they were they were educated, had education.
They like new three languages. They sat around translating things from the Greek to amuse themselves.
I mean, like literally the iliot or something, right.
Yeah, yeah, at night, to keep himself, you know, to keep himself coming.
It's not a good translation though, it's really.
Well yeah, yeah, you know, you're a little too literal anyway. But I mean, like you go through the history of the American presidency, and there were terrible presidents at her big disasters and failures and all that, but I I think she's kind of dumb and and I I really That's where I'm going with this.
Okay, So I look, I agree with you. I think she's a bad candidate, would not be a very good president. But I'm honestly curious about this because I think, you know, we hear constantly about how this or that or whatever is already priced into Trump.
Yeah.
Do you think there is an academic or IQ type test that if you sat both Harris and Trump down right now and had them take that, Harris wouldn't outscore Trump a p history, math whatever like. Do you think that there is a test and she look and she you know, she failed to bar the first or second time, right, I mean, I'm not saying she's super smart, But do you think there is some sort of objective metric about knowledge or intelligence that Trump would do better on?
Yes, what like an IQ test?
You think? Yes? Yes, I don't. I don't think so.
I I think he's very dumb, I really do. I think he has a cunning, lizard brain, cunning and all that kind of stuff, and he may have been, you know, smarter ones you watch it in his interviews in the nineteen eighties, and all that. But like, I think he's affirmatively a dumb person, and he has bullied people into like thinking there's a genius there that, and there is a kind of genius there.
Okay, so you're so you're saying there's a genius there.
Yeah.
No, Look, I'm saying there's a cunning there is longer than she. So he if you gave her some, if you gave them I'm kind of general knowledge exam. He would have eighteen years on her to know things that she she doesn't know.
No, do you think he she think You think she'd be worse on like twentieth century history, You think she'd be worse on?
Yes, I don't, don't. I was not familiar with Rommel.
He wants Rommel. That's selling John Kelly, he wants Rommel.
No, no, no, no, if you read the actual.
Object, I know, I know, I'm joking. I'm joking.
If you do, if you read the exchange, that's not what happened. He wanted German generals, and.
He saw Pat, and everybody saw Pat, and Kelly brought up Rommel. Robel, you magnificent bastard. I read your book. That's what it is.
I think their scores would be both bad. But I think that Kamala Harris would beat Trump on most objective knowledge tests, and that kind.
Of thing becomes a law. Yeah.
And whether you whether you can whether you could use the US military to strike US civilians, that's another one of the probably passed the California bar I think that's one of them.
I think it's a question hold on.
Just just to be fair, Anderson Cooper asked her how she was going to get legislation through the House, and she said, we need to look at the filibuster. That literally happened.
Yeah, but that's I mean, that's not the House.
But she's a filibuster has a simple majority, so you're asking how a bill becomes law. She failed that test on national television. You asked me the question, I win.
That speaks to her being a bad politician. I don't think that if she sat down, she would actually make that mistake. As a former US.
Senator, I don't know anyway. I do think that she's she went to the eighty seventh rank law school in the United States. I am not a big ranking person, but that's not good after college.
For somebodyho's not a big ranking person.
You sound like, Look, I have very few affirmative defenses of Kamala Harris other than the fact that she's not Donald Trump.
Yeah, okay, fair enough. I am not And you know I'm not defending Donald Trump, but I do I am saying you're saying, you're saying that we already had the dumbest president in history in Donald Trump, according to Yum okay, and you're but you're now saying that if Trump wins, he would he would continue in that got mold ha. He would still be the dumbest person today because she's smarter than he is. Yeah.
Look, it's sort of like when we're talking about stuff within the margin of error.
Okay, fair enough, I just.
I don't even look, I'm not even I just think it's startling how pedestrian a candidate she is.
I just like I I you know, she that's all.
Like.
I keep thinking she can't be as bad at this as she is, and then she gives another interview and she's worse than the one she did before. So they knew what they were doing when they weren't letting her be interviewed.
Although I have a little push could win, so I generally agree, But like her best moment in like the Brett Baer interview, which did not go great for her, also did not matter nearly as much as everybody freaking out on either side of that thought at the time.
But when she gets angry, she's actually better right when she the softball interviews where like And that's why I thought Anderson Cooper was remarkably effective, because he just sort of asked these very seemingly banal questions and just sort of handed them to her like a cotton puff and said.
Do whatever you want with this, and she didn't do very well often.
Anyway. Uh.
I think they're both just doing their best and they're having a on out there, and that's the most important thing. I wish they could both win. I I think that we should give it to them both. That'd be great sitcom.
That's somebody pitched.
A Yeah, somebody pitched. Yesterday.
I saw on Twitter that the two women who have who sued successfully sued Rudy Giuliani and are now they're liquidating all of his assets, including his apartment. They should live there with him. That should be the sho butler.
Well, with that commonality, I think we're not going to top that so I think we should we should call, we should uh reconvene. I think our next conversation will happen after the election, So either we'll be in bunkers or we will not be in bunkers, and we'll see where we are.
Then it's all gonna be fine.
People belove.
England.
W