00:03 JVL Hello everyone, this is JBL here with my best friend Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark. 00:10 We are A, coming to you quite late on Friday. 00:13 Normally we do this thing at like 7 o'clock in the morning. 00:16 Couldn't make that happen today, sorry. 00:17 And B, we're coming to you about a minute and a half after watching the 00:25 cell phone video taken by the shooter who killed the woman in Minneapolis, the unarmed woman, Renee good, uh, two days ago. 00:41 Um, and, uh, I, 00:45 This is one of those moments where I'm sorry, we're just going to have to be very real with you. 00:50 You are getting unfiltered reactions of the two of us. 00:57 And Sarah, do you want to go first? 01:01 Sarah Longwell I don't know, man. 01:02 I was trying to decide. 01:03 You know, I asked you before we started, like, should we do this? 01:09 Because I am just so angry watching this. 01:16 And part of what is... 01:17 Okay, there is two different layers of the anger. 01:23 There is the incident itself, which should never have happened... 01:29 And I can't help but thinking, you know, when somebody who is here illegally kills an American, one of the things that people say that totally makes sense to me is they say, well, this is sort of a double tragedy in the sense that that person wasn't supposed to be here. 01:48 And now this person's dead, right? 01:51 And that makes sense. 01:54 That is how I feel about this ice shooting. 01:56 They shouldn't have been there. 01:59 There is no reason for them to have been there. 02:04 They are going into communities. 02:06 JVL The reason is to trigger the libs. 02:07 Sarah Longwell Yeah, they're going into communities. 02:10 And they are making them less safe. 02:16 So that's one layer of it. 02:18 It was an entirely avoidable tragedy. 02:23 That is happening because Donald Trump is building this paramilitary force that is in the streets of America's neighborhoods. 02:35 Just and look, I still it's like unclear to me what they were doing there in the first place, but. 02:42 The new footage. 02:44 To me, and this is sort of gets to the second layer of the anger, which is that they are lying about all of it. 02:52 Like J.D. 02:53 Vance. 02:54 So J.D. 02:54 Vance takes that video. 02:57 Okay. 02:58 And he says, watch this as hard as it is. 03:01 Many of you have been told this law enforcement officer wasn't hit by a car, wasn't being harassed and murdered an innocent woman. 03:07 The reality is that his life was endangered and he fired in self-defense. 03:12 And so then, even though I've watched this video now a thousand times, I watched it over and over again because it makes it to me. 03:23 And I'm really trying to check myself. 03:27 Because this is clearly turning into a Rorschach test, right? 03:30 Or it feels like it is. 03:32 But like a lot of people on the right, Eric Erickson, you know, whatever, they're all just saying, oh, well, this makes it clear he was hit by the car. 03:43 And that's not what it makes clear. 03:46 It's not clear at all. 03:47 To me, it's clear he dropped his cell phone because what he was doing was walking around her car filming it. 03:54 Right. 03:54 There's like these it's the way you see these tense interactions now and where people are filming each other. 04:01 Right. 04:01 So he's got his cell phone out. 04:03 And to me, giving this straight on camera view shows is it's so clear she is trying to get around him. 04:11 Like she is trying to get out of there. 04:15 And she's trying to get away because the other guy is coming screaming, get out of the fucking car and grabbing at the door handle. 04:22 JVL Which is a thing that a professional police does, right? 04:26 Sarah Longwell That cannot be the way police approach people. 04:30 JVL Oh, it is. 04:31 Oh, it is. 04:32 Sarah Longwell Yeah, I know, I know, I know. 04:33 And then he shoots her three times. 04:37 So here's the thing, if the car hit him, what we're hearing, what they say is that- If the car hit him, then he was no longer in danger, right? 04:44 If the car hit him, how's he standing there shooting her? 04:48 JVL And again- 04:49 Sarah Longwell He's not locked down by the car. 04:51 JVL He drops his cell phone. 04:52 He is no longer in danger, right? 04:53 That is an event which has happened, and he is no longer in danger. 04:58 It's... 05:00 Sarah Longwell But it is... 05:01 It's J.D. 05:02 Vance and the administration lying about it. 05:05 She is having an interaction with him. 05:08 Her last words were... That's fine, dude. 05:11 JVL I'm not mad at you. 05:12 Sarah Longwell It's fine, dude. 05:13 I'm not mad at you. 05:14 She is saying to him in a way that is... 05:18 It is, and it is her, her partner is having words with this guy where she's like, Hey big boy, why don't you go get some lunch? 05:26 Uh, like it's not a, it's not a pleasant exchange, but it is also not like a threatening exchange. 05:34 JVL Right. 05:35 Sarah Longwell Like by any stretch of the imagination. 05:36 JVL We're going to kill you or like it is a, you know, they're there to troll and trigger the people in that neighborhood and the people in that neighborhood are there saying, we do not appreciate you being here. 05:49 That's what that is. 05:51 Sarah Longwell Can I tell you, actually, so there's the part where they're lying. 05:55 There's no part of this where they called her a domestic terrorist right out of the gate. 06:02 Donald Trump said he watched the video and couldn't believe that ICE agent was still alive. 06:07 JVL He said he ran him over. 06:09 Sarah Longwell It is complete and utter. 06:12 It's gaslighting. 06:13 Normally, right, we've got the words. 06:16 I keep not having the words. 06:19 Because the lie is so clear. 06:21 It's sort of like the election being stolen with the way they changed the website around January 6th. 06:26 This entire week has been our government lying to us about what is happening. 06:32 Now, if the government, if Trump or Kristi Noem had been responsible and said, we are reviewing this, we will come back and talk about it. 06:41 This is a tragedy. 06:42 That would be one thing. 06:44 But they immediately smeared her as a domestic terrorist. 06:48 I think I'll just give you my third thing, actually. 06:50 And this is not really about Trump or the incident. 06:55 There is a category of people, Matt Walsh and a lot of these right wingers that keep calling her like a lesbian, liberal, whatever. 07:07 And they keep throwing the lesbian in there. 07:11 because they're trying to other her, their fear is that people will watch this and say, oh, that just looks, that's clearly not somebody that ISIS needs to go get. 07:22 Like that is a woman who looks, and this is, this is like, this is like unfair, right? 07:30 Because I think that, 07:34 There's no doubt that part of their fear is they shot like a 37-year-old white woman that they are very afraid is going to engender more than your average level of sympathy. 07:48 Because people are more likely to be like, I could have been me with the stuffed animal in my. 07:54 And so they want to use the lesbian stuff to be like, no, no, she's not like you. 07:57 She's a radical leftist lesbian, guys, because, you know, because then you can use the lesbian to code it more left and to make her sound radical, to make her sound other. 08:08 No, she's just an American who saw this thing taking place. 08:12 She was dropping her kid off at school. 08:15 And so she rolls up to see it, and there's all these people standing around, and they're all arguing with ICE about the fact that they're in these... You can hear it. 08:22 There's all these surrounding people doing it. 08:25 And what did they do? 08:27 She starts to leave it. 08:29 And look... 08:30 a different world should she have not tried to leave like i like probably like probably not like this is an imperfect situation but absolutely under no circumstances should he have unloaded three bullets into her anybody can see that it is completely clear they are making up if that is too much danger for him then he's in the wrong fucking line of work 08:59 JVL And, you know, I am sorry. 09:04 But if having a 37-year-old unarmed person pull away from you while you're, you know, Ron DeSantis passed a whole law that he's saying people should be allowed to do what this woman did. 09:16 You know, when people are threatening you and surrounding your car, you have the right to leave. 09:22 If his, if this coward is so, 09:26 so delicate that he believes his life was being threatened in that, then he literally has no business being an officer. 09:33 Your risk tolerance has to be higher than that. 09:35 I'm sorry. 09:38 Sarah Longwell This is a policy choice because it is a policy choice. 09:42 You can see them everywhere. 09:43 The recruiting that they're doing, they're just trying to hire as many hostile people as they can and then giving them much less training than a normal officer and then putting them out on the streets in these highly incendiary situations that Americans clearly, many Americans clearly don't want them there. 10:03 And then they escalate it like this. 10:07 This is, I am, I don't even know why we're podcasting. 10:10 I want to go out, I want to go out in the street. 10:13 JVL Not doing it in red states. 10:14 Notice that, right? 10:15 You don't have ICE all over Oklahoma. 10:21 I guess they don't have any illegals in Oklahoma. 10:23 No, this is, this is like pre-Civil War shit. 10:26 There is a reason that these, these teams of massed government agents are being dispatched to democratically populated areas and democratic governed states. 10:38 And it has nothing to do with rounding up illegal immigrants. 10:43 It is an attempt to... 10:44 Sarah Longwell Securing the border is what's popular. 10:47 You want to secure the border? 10:48 Tell those ICE agents to go down to the border. 10:52 JVL That's not what their job actually is. 10:53 Roaming through America's streets. 10:56 Their job is to harass and hurt and punish the bad people, meaning people who didn't vote for Donald Trump. 11:06 That's what this all is. 11:10 This is like bloody Kansas shit. 11:12 Um, and it's a, I don't, 11:20 I am more of a anti-police hawk than you are. 11:25 Yeah. 11:25 But it is, to my mind, the worse, the more serious problem is the reaction after the fact. 11:35 I mean, I am open to the idea that in a split-second encounter, anybody, even somebody who is very well-intentioned and well-trained, can make a terrible mistake that leaves somebody dead. 11:46 That happens. 11:50 In the same way that, like, you know, there are bad people. 11:54 Bad people sometimes become licensed physicians. 11:58 Bad people sometimes become priests, right? 12:00 And go on to do bad things and crimes. 12:03 That is something we have to all live with. 12:06 The really disturbing thing is when it turns out that the institutions around them cover it up or enable it. 12:11 Sarah Longwell Yes. 12:11 JVL Yes. 12:12 And the institutional response to this at every single level, from the guys right there, just sort of holstering his side, you know, like nobody there is like, holy shit, what have we done? 12:26 Crosstalk He calls her a fucking bitch. 12:29 He shoots her and then calls her a fucking bitch. 12:33 JVL Is that a dispassionate law enforcement officer? 12:34 Is that some guy who was just getting his rocks off on showing her who's boss, right? 12:41 To the spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, to the Secretary of Homeland Security herself, who, again, just lied. 12:50 I could go pull up her statement for you if you want, but it just bears no... 12:57 Sarah Longwell No, Christine Noem's initial statement is outrageous. 13:02 It is outrageous. 13:04 It's an outrageous lie. 13:06 JVL I'll pull it up while we're talking. 13:07 Sarah Longwell Everything about it is a lie from top to bottom. 13:11 Why would we believe their account of this? 13:15 Not to mention, you can see it with their own eyes. 13:16 JVL Here's Christine. 13:17 Ice officers were attempting to push out their vehicle from being stuck in the snow. 13:22 The stuck in the snow is my editorial thing here. 13:24 And a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run over and ram them with her vehicle. 13:31 That is not... That's not what happened. 13:33 That is absolutely nothing to do with what we have all seen. 13:39 President of the United States is lying. 13:41 And then the FBI... 13:44 is attempting to impede an investigation on this and prevent accountability, uh, by refusing to allow the Minnesota state board, which, you know, tracks police police, uh, post shooting investigations from being involved in the investigation. 14:03 And I just don't know how to, I don't know how to read that as anything other than a regime, which 14:15 which is either okay with or is actively in favor with having its paramilitary groups kill opposition citizens. 14:22 I mean, you might as well be in the Philippines, right, under Duterte or something. 14:26 I mean, it's not quite that bad yet, but they aren't done hiring. 14:30 Because that's the, again, accidents happen, mistakes happen. 14:37 But this reaction says it's not an accident. 14:39 It's not a mistake. 14:40 It's the policy outcome they want. 14:43 And they're going to keep acting to make more of this possible. 14:46 We had another two people were shot in Portland yesterday on Thursday. 14:51 Sarah Longwell But it also lacks all the humanity of an incident like this. 14:56 Like if you if if I'm a cop. 15:00 And I get really angry, even if I, and I felt threatened by the car, you know, turning out and going, or I wanted to stop it from going. 15:11 And I overreact and I shoot another human being in the face. 15:18 My reaction is to hit my knees and to say, oh, oh my God. 15:24 Like I just took a life. 15:29 And this guy, first of all, he flees the scene. 15:33 He gets in a car and leaves. 15:34 They're not staying there to talk to people. 15:37 His buddies are staying there making sure she doesn't get help from the doctors who are begging to help at the time. 15:45 Yep. 15:45 Like, the lack of humanity. 15:49 Look, I... 15:52 When Charlie Kirk was murdered, we were real clear that... 15:57 we would breach no celebration of Charlie Kirk's murder. 16:05 And there were no institutional Democrats that I can remember at all who did anything other than offer condolences, who did anything other than call for de-escalation. 16:18 Not only are... 16:22 like like big republican voices are celebrating this death or saying you know fuck around and find out oh your life was meaningless way to die just just kyle rittenhouse all over again kyle but kyle rittenhouse was tweeting like haha maybe i should go there like yep what is happening to people it's a death cult 16:44 JVL So I wrote yesterday about Ashley Babbitt, and I think the difference in the reaction to Ashley Babbitt here is really instructive. 16:55 And, I mean, beginning with Trump himself, the institutional reaction on the right to Ashley Babbitt's killing was that it was a tragedy. 17:12 which I agree with, and that it was totally illegitimate for the law enforcement officers on scene to use force against her, that she was doing nothing wrong, that she was not a threat to anybody. 17:27 And I mean, if this is the standard for the use of deadly force, what we see here, then my question is, how many people should have been shot by the police on January 6th? 17:42 Sarah Longwell But we all at the time commended. 17:43 Thousands of them. 17:45 We commended the police officers on January 6th for not escalating more than they did. 17:49 It would have been a bloodbath. 17:51 JVL Right. 17:51 Sarah Longwell They took beatings instead of opening fire on the people that were coming in. 17:56 JVL Yes. 17:58 But the one person who they did open fire on, Ashley Babbitt, then the right views as a martyr who was absolutely not. 18:07 And this isn't, this isn't hypocrisy. 18:11 Because hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue when you share a set of beliefs and values. 18:20 That's not what this is. 18:20 They have a different set of beliefs and values. 18:24 And theirs is that violence against their enemies is appropriate and acceptable. 18:34 Full stop. 18:36 Whether that violence is being is is agents of the state who are their allies waging against unarmed civilians or whether it is civilian allies of theirs waging against hostile agents of the state. 18:50 And. 18:53 I. Hmm. 18:59 I don't know how dark we want to go on this. 19:03 Do you want to go any darker? 19:04 Sarah Longwell I mean, the only other thought I was having, just in terms of how much things have changed, you know, one of the sort of tenets of limited government conservatism that we were raised on was not to be anti-cop, but it certainly was to be suspicious of government power. 19:26 right? 19:27 Except for cops. 19:28 JVL Suspicious of teachers, public school teachers, suspicious of the IRS. 19:33 It's only the people who have guns and are allowed to kill you. 19:35 Sarah Longwell Well, that's not how I felt. 19:36 That is not how I felt. 19:38 I felt like we should be skeptical, uh, of state power. 19:45 Doesn't mean hostile to it. 19:46 We just, as free American citizens, uh, 19:53 we should be sensitive to its overreaches into our ability to live freely. 20:01 And the way that the right is just like wrapping its arms around this paramilitary force that are all masked up, swearing at people, like thugs roaming the streets. 20:14 They don't even, they don't even look like police officers. 20:18 Yeah. 20:18 They don't look like people who are trained well, like the way that they're walking around, the way that they're carrying their firearms. 20:28 JVL They look like Middle Eastern or South American paramilitaries. 20:33 Sarah Longwell Yeah, only less well trained. 20:35 JVL And can you imagine if we didn't have video of this thing? 20:42 Can you imagine if it was just... 20:44 eyewitness bystanders giving their version of events versus the official version of events from ICE agents. 20:51 Can you imagine what that world would look like? 20:55 Sarah Longwell But this is the part that I'm struggling with so much is that it makes you feel like you're taking crazy pills to watch the video and have them tell you something completely as different is happening than what is happening. 21:14 Crosstalk Mm-hmm. 21:16 Sarah Longwell Because even if you wanted to take your frame by frame and try to say, like, oh, he got bumped by this car, which, by the way, I don't think is true. 21:28 Like, I don't think it's true. 21:30 JVL And also, if it were true, getting bumped on the side by a car is not life-threatening, and no reasonable person could interpret it to be life-threatening. 21:42 This is right. 21:42 I mean, it is life threatening to be in front of a car going 35 miles an hour, like, you know, with its bumper at you. 21:49 But if you are to the side of a car moving at like two miles an hour and it glances off of you, that is not life threatening. 21:56 And if your judgment is that it is life threatening, then you shouldn't be a police officer because you don't have the judgment for the job. 22:05 Yeah, like this is this is literally the basis of the job is you need to be able to make these distinctions. 22:13 Sorry. 22:15 Go ahead. 22:15 No, I don't know. 22:16 Sarah Longwell I mean, we are reacting just sort of like in real, real time. 22:19 So it's sorry that we're casting about, but I just, this should be like, it's, it's the way that people are trying to take something that we can all see with our own eyes, just like January 6th. 22:32 and tell us that our eyes are lying to us, tell us that what we are seeing is different than the thing we are seeing, making it fit a narrative that they want it to fit, even though we can all tell it doesn't, and all the people that are repeating it, all the people that are repeating it. 22:48 And they are saying with the same level of certainty that we are saying right now that something different happened. 22:55 But you know what? 22:56 Forget Twitter. 22:57 This is the official government response. 23:00 The president of the United States 23:03 And they are lying to us about what happened and what we can see with our eyes. 23:09 Yep. 23:09 So... Fucking JD Vance. 23:12 What a liar. 23:14 JVL How interested are you in full legal accountability should the opposition party ever retake, control the executive branch? 23:23 Are you sort of in a... Because I got to tell you, one of my many worries, I have many worries, but one of them is like... 23:32 You wind up being able to undo the shackles of this regime, and you wind up getting a Democratic president sworn in in 2029, and their reaction is, 23:46 got to fix kitchen table issues. 23:48 We really need to expand healthcare access and we've got to broaden out, you know, Medicare for all who want it is, is our top priority. 23:56 And, and anybody who says, I don't know, I think we ought to put a whole lot of people from the previous regime in jail. 24:02 at every level uh if you tell me you can't do it to the guy who is the sitting president that's fine if you tell me you can't do it to uh jd vance or christy noem fine but uh i want people combing through every single piece of video that was shot over the course of this this time and finding every law enforcement officer who like jaywalked or crossed the street wrong 24:30 and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. 24:32 I don't care what it costs. 24:33 I don't care how backward looking it is. 24:35 You have to establish a penalty for this so that if we wind up in this situation again, people don't think that they just get to do it for free. 24:45 Sarah Longwell Yeah. 24:46 JVL I think that's right. 24:47 There's no constituency for that. 24:48 Sarah Longwell But that is it's you and me. 24:51 Well, here's the thing is, I do think the accountability should be Christie. 24:55 No, I do think it should be these officials. 24:58 They are creating these circumstances. 25:01 I don't want I don't want it to what happened in January 6th. 25:04 Like it was a mistake that they only prosecuted the people who were fooled by Trump's lies. 25:14 And not Trump himself. 25:19 Not the person who told them the lies. 25:21 JVL I agree. 25:22 But I want them all. 25:24 I want them all prosecuted. 25:25 I want to ask you an extra dark question. 25:29 I stumbled upon a thing from Matt Walsh talking about why the Venezuela operation was good. 25:40 Sarah Longwell This guy is just a font of asinine commentary. 25:44 Some of the most ghoulish, heartless commentary there is. 25:48 JVL All right, here he is. 25:48 Sarah Longwell Good job, Ben Shapiro. 25:50 JVL If some shitty little tin pot third world dictator is harming our country or interfering with our national interests, we should do exactly what Trump did to Maduro. 25:59 Why not? 26:01 International law is fake and gay. 26:04 The only international law is that big and powerful countries get to do what they want. 26:08 It has been that way since the dawn of civilization. 26:11 It will always be that way. 26:18 Okay. 26:18 Uh, we have heard the same thing from Stephen Miller. 26:22 Stephen Miller explained the president's actions in, in virtually the same way that, uh, the only thing that matters is power. 26:30 International laws don't matter. 26:33 Sarah Longwell Glad it's gay. 26:35 JVL Great. 26:36 So why doesn't that apply to domestic law too? 26:43 If that is your mindset and your worldview is that the rules-based voter is fake and gay, why would a law that says that you've lost an election 26:58 not be fake and gay if the answer is, well, we control all the guys with guns, so we're strong right now and you're weak. 27:07 No, I see what you're saying. 27:08 If the idea is it's might makes right and everything is the law of the jungle, then why is that limited only to international relations? 27:17 But they take an enlightenment view of the rationality and the supremacy of law at home. 27:22 Don't worry, friends. 27:23 Don't worry. 27:25 Really? 27:26 We believe that? 27:27 Sarah Longwell I mean, first of all, to some degree, just, like, you have to consider the source of this. 27:32 Like, these are bad, bad people for whom... 27:36 I mean, you can take their comments to their logical conclusion and you will reach an incredibly bad place because their comments are absurd. 27:44 And, like, what... 27:46 what am I supposed to do here? 27:47 Sit and try to explain to Matt Walsh, why the international based order has protected Americans for decades and decades. 27:57 And it has made the world a safer, more prosperous place that allows us to do commerce internationally. 28:04 And like that international cooperation is part of like, I can understand. 28:11 I can understand. 28:16 This is different than the arguments of, which I think are both still untrue, but they're not like, you know, America's getting taken advantage of by NATO. 28:27 Okay. 28:28 Is a different thing than NATO shouldn't exist in international cooperation and laws are stupid. 28:35 JVL And gay. 28:37 I mean, but like also gay. 28:40 Sarah Longwell I don't know. 28:41 I don't want to take Matt Walsh's thing seriously, except his lesbian, his radical lesbian protecting the Somalis whose life was useless does have 72,000 likes last time or like when I came across it, which means 72,000 people said, yeah, I like that. 29:02 JVL Well, so I mentioned this not because I think we should spend time arguing with it. 29:09 I actually just want to accept it as true that all that matters is what the guys with guns do. 29:17 And so it does seem to me that 29:20 Democrats in positions of power ought to be spending a lot of time speaking with the guys with guns and trying to make them understand that, uh, if push comes to shove and they find themselves not on the wrong, not on the right side of the constitution, uh, 29:36 then they better fucking win because if they lose, the law will come for them. 29:41 It just seems pretty important to me that, uh, some of that go on in the background. 29:45 This is one of the reasons I was so worked up over the Pete heads, Seth, bringing all the generals together and doing his purges and stuff, because I think that's actually where we're headed. 29:53 Like at some point, there's going to be a moment when the joint chiefs and senior officers are forced to decide whether or not they're going to enforce the constitution or not. 30:04 Sarah Longwell Uh, I do agree with this. 30:08 Like I always, when I do agree with you, I tend to like take it up to 80%, but I would certainly at no point try to talk you out of the notion. 30:16 I do think it seems pretty clear to me. 30:19 Trump is trying to build a police force out of ice, which is now the largest law enforcement branch in the world. 30:30 that he is trying to build an army of untrained thugs who are responsive to him. 30:36 Crosstalk Mm-hmm. 30:40 Sarah Longwell And I do think it is one of the scariest things I have ever seen. 30:42 And we shouldn't underreact to what is happening. 30:46 JVL The funny part of it is that this is exactly what all of the Second Amendment crazy people throughout the 80s, 90s, and aughts were always warning about. 30:58 They're like, we got to have all of our guns because the government could have masked agents running around trying to disrupt our lives. 31:04 And now we actually get that, and these people love it. 31:10 because it's their side because it's their side yeah as i said talk to me about hypocrisy do you want to talk about venezuela fascism i do i want to talk i want to talk briefly about uh machado and her giving her saying she was she was she's going to meet with trump and she wants to give him her peace prize did you catch that today yeah i did i caught it so i i want to give trump 31:34 credit for something. 31:36 When he said that Machado couldn't be installed as leader because she didn't have the respect and the authority, he was right, actually. 31:49 Sarah Longwell Oh, yeah? 31:50 JVL Yeah. 31:53 Because, again, all that matters is what the guys with guns do. 31:56 And the Venezuelan military and police forces are basically all Chavez loyalists and Maduro loyalists. 32:05 And so had we removed Maduro and then said, uh, Ms. Machado, you're not president of Venezuela. 32:12 None of them are going to, there'll just be another coup in five minutes. 32:15 So putting Machado in charge of the country would have required the United States putting boots on the ground in Venezuela and fixing the country. 32:26 Trump just didn't want to say that out loud, right? 32:27 He just wanted to do his thing and didn't want to. 32:30 And I find it, 32:33 sad and pathetic that Machado thinks that she's going to be able to just beg and beg and beg and humiliate herself enough to get Trump to, to help her. 32:50 Like I, I just, 32:52 I don't know. 32:53 I do not follow this woman closely. 32:55 And at some level, I understand that leaders have to be willing to set aside their own self-respect and do what is necessary for their people. 33:04 This is what Vladimir Zelinsky has done time and time again. 33:08 But also at some point, maybe you have to understand that like, I don't know, you need to retain some self-respect. 33:20 Sarah Longwell Well, at some point you need to realize he's not going to give you what you want. 33:23 Right. 33:24 And start fighting back a different way. 33:27 JVL Right. 33:27 Because what she wants would require American military intervention on the ground. 33:34 Yeah. 33:34 Because the Venezuelan military would have to be at least put under control, possibly... 33:40 de-Nazi-fied or de-Maduro-fied, probably you'd have to rebuild it basically from the ground up in such a way that they would be loyal to democratic process and not loyal to the Maduro government and, uh, and Rodriguez. 33:55 And so she just, she isn't going to get what she wants. 34:00 And, uh, but I dunno, I'm sort of excited to see her humiliate herself and give them the peace prize though. 34:07 Are you? 34:08 Sarah Longwell Um, no, I would like to see her like realize that whoever told her, Hey, Trump is so transactional. 34:17 He desperately wants this peace prize. 34:18 This is how you get him to do what you want. 34:21 Uh, I would like her to realize that that isn't going to happen and that she needs to try a different tack and that that tack probably should be, um, saying that Donald Trump has, uh, enabled, uh, 34:36 the, uh, thugs who are running Venezuela, they are now doing it under the umbrella of protection of America. 34:47 Yeah. 34:47 And condemn us for it. 34:50 JVL That'd be pretty hot. 34:52 Do you have other Venezuela thoughts? 34:54 Sarah Longwell I mean, only that, um, you know, I did a, I was doing a take with Andrew yesterday on the polling, um, and, uh, 35:06 JVL Oh, wait, you mean our Andrew Egger? 35:09 Sarah Longwell Yes. 35:09 No, I don't mean Andrew Weissman. 35:10 JVL I did another thing with Andrew Weissman, too. 35:12 I watched the Andrew Weissman, the Illegal News, by the way. 35:14 It was a fantastic episode. 35:16 Sarah Longwell He's so good. 35:18 JVL I mean, he's fine. 35:19 You did a great job. 35:20 He is so good. 35:21 Sarah Longwell He's so good. 35:22 JVL It was a very, very good episode. 35:24 Sarah Longwell Um, he was the general counsel to the FBI. 35:27 And so his, like he used to defend them and their actions. 35:32 And so he is in a position to know. 35:34 Um, I think the main thing when I was talking to Andrew Edgar though, about the polling, he was remarking on the fact that, uh, 35:42 a significant number of Republicans who had previously been of the belief that they wanted nothing to do with a regime change in Venezuela now suddenly say it's good because Donald Trump did it. 35:56 And this is like JBL bait. 35:58 It's like, look, they're just going to do what he says, no fixed principles. 36:02 And I think that is true to some degree. 36:04 Now, I think, though, he is getting marks from people who think it is a smash and grab job. 36:08 who think that, oh, well, he just went in there, he took out a bad guy, and that's fine. 36:15 Donald Trump is telling you, right now, we're going to be there for a very long time. 36:22 And I think that bodes very poorly from a public opinion standpoint. 36:29 Nobody wants to be there for a very long time. 36:33 JVL They'll just be sitting off the coast, dropping bombs. 36:35 Sarah Longwell Yeah, we're just running Venezuela now. 36:38 JVL I mean, running, I think, honestly, I think the most likely outcome is that Rodriguez is able to hold on at least for a little while. 36:49 And then the guy who runs the interior ministry eventually takes over. 36:52 Is that a brother? 36:55 No, he's the president of the legislature. 36:58 Um, the, the guy who runs the interior ministry runs basically their, their internal police force. 37:05 Um, and, uh, they're able to give Trump, you know, they'll do what Maduro didn't, which is they'll just pay Trump, right? 37:16 That's, this is Maduro's big mistake is only real sin in turn. 37:21 Sorry. 37:22 He's a terrible monster. 37:23 I don't mean that. 37:24 I mean, the reason he is in jail now is not because he was a monster and he broke all the laws. 37:29 It's because he didn't pay Trump. 37:31 Right. 37:31 And the people believe him are not going to have that. 37:36 They're not going to make that mistake. 37:38 And so it'll be fine. 37:40 Venice, they'll go along to get along. 37:42 They'll pay whatever needs to be paid. 37:45 It's usually pretty hard. 37:45 It's just protection money. 37:46 It's all just protection money. 37:48 Sarah Longwell Yeah. 37:49 It's usually pretty hard to really knock the spirit out of me. 37:54 Like to really put me in the slough of despond with you because I like to think about the ways in which we have agency, what we can do to solve it. 38:03 Like I'm just always in a kind of like, okay, fix it mode. 38:07 And maybe this was just wrong. 38:09 I just shouldn't have gotten on a podcast already as upset as I was. 38:13 I should have let myself get worked up into it and come from a neutral place. 38:16 But instead I am as... 38:21 The way that they did the January 6th stuff by putting up a website in which a section on why Mike Pence failed. 38:32 A section on Ashley Babbitt as a hero. 38:35 JVL They didn't hide January 6th. 38:37 They put a lantern on it. 38:39 Did you know that Ashley Babbitt had a knife on her? 38:42 I did not know that until I went deep on her this week. 38:46 I don't remember that. 38:47 She had a tactical knife in her pocket. 38:51 Sarah Longwell They were breaking in. 38:52 They were breaking. 38:54 She was the reason she got shot is because she was the lead person trying to break into the chamber. 39:00 JVL They didn't instruct her to get back. 39:01 They didn't curse at her, though. 39:03 The officers on site didn't call her a fucking bitch or anything like that. 39:07 Yeah. 39:08 It's weird. 39:09 Sarah Longwell And they're saying she is a hero. 39:12 JVL They're not saying it's not even five million dollars, paid her family five million dollars in wrongful death, awarded her full military honors because she was not a domestic terrorist and she was not. 39:23 No, no police officer in that situation could reasonably infer that their life was in danger. 39:31 Not like, you know, when you're next to a car and they they've gotten away with it. 39:39 They've gotten away with all of it. 39:42 Can I give you my big fear? 39:43 Another big fear? 39:44 We're just doing all of it here. 39:45 Why not? 39:46 Yeah. 39:47 I'm worried they're going to get away with it on Greenland, too. 39:51 I am concerned that they are going to pressure Greenland and Denmark, and Denmark is going to decide, ugh, we... 40:06 Let's just give it to them. 40:08 The next Democrat will give it back to us. 40:11 And this way we can get through the next three years. 40:14 We just can't get into a shooting war with America. 40:18 And I think that that is probably the wrong way to go about it. 40:26 I think they should make him invade Greenland. 40:28 Sarah Longwell Yeah, I don't think. 40:29 And I think they will. 40:31 I actually I have I have like more confidence in everybody else now than I do us because Denmark. 40:40 I don't know. 40:41 JVL What if what if Trump says to them, if you don't give us Greenland, I'm going to cut off all U.S. weapon sales to Europe. 40:54 Sarah Longwell I still think they say no because I think Europe will back them. 40:59 JVL But Europe needs the weapons sales because they need to arm Ukraine, right? 41:03 If U.S. cuts off weapons sales, what that means is that Ukraine gets overrun. 41:07 I don't know, man. 41:08 Sarah Longwell I think everybody's got to be making plans to do stuff without America. 41:13 JVL Sure should, right? 41:17 Yeah. 41:18 Yeah, I hope they make us invade. 41:21 Like, the world should see what we are. 41:23 Sarah Longwell I mean, I hope they just say no and that we drop it and that there is enough of a polling or a public opinion. 41:31 This is why, you know, when I think about permission structures, this is why the people on Twitter who are thought leaders, who jumped within five seconds... 41:45 And the government, like when they all lied to their followers, they're trying to give them permission to say, like, this is all fine. 41:55 They need to see a public response to this. 42:00 There needs to be a public backlash to this. 42:02 JVL I mean, what is it? 42:11 Like, I mean, you know, we got the jobs numbers today too. 42:14 We haven't talked about that. 42:15 It's really bad. 42:15 Let's talk about it real quick. 42:16 The economy's bad. 42:18 Kevin Hassett. 42:20 Kevin, did you see Kevin Hassett was asked about this? 42:22 I did. 42:22 And he was like, we still have to fix Bureau of Labor Statistics. 42:27 His answer is, yeah, these job numbers. 42:29 No, no, it's all fine. 42:31 Don't worry. 42:31 It's just bad numbers. 42:33 Bad numbers. 42:33 Sarah Longwell Well, they're trying to. 42:34 So because the unemployment rate... 42:38 went down slightly they're claiming victory even though the already low projection for jobs numbers was missed and they continue to revise previous months down and manufacturing each month is losing jobs despite the fact that that is specifically the named reason why the tariffs are supposed to be there um we're making so many iphones in america now sarah how is that possible i know uh the 43:08 The thing that I was wondering about, and I don't know if you have any, um, this is where I am. 43:12 Not only am I not a lawyer, I'm very much not an economist, but the unemployment rate dropping actually seems to be possibly because first of all, it didn't drop by, drop by like a point, like not a, not a, like a percentage zero point, uh, like Oh one. 43:31 Um, 43:33 But isn't that either because people are dropping out of the labor force or because we've deported or had leave a significant number of our labor force? 43:42 JVL So it's probably people dropping out of labor force. 43:45 And because we're going to have a net population decline, I think, over the last 12 months, first time in a long time. 43:53 And so with that, it means you are as population declines, average age of population goes up. 44:03 And so as your average age of population goes up, you have a whole bunch of people who leave the labor force actuarially because they're retirement age. 44:11 And so my guess is that that is what is going on, right? 44:13 So as the population strengths, overall age population, median age ticks up, fewer people in labor force would be my guess. 44:21 Because again, also the people you're deporting, you have to understand, right? 44:24 The immigrant community lowers our median age, which is a good thing because you need to lower the median age in order to keep your entitlement programs sustainable. 44:33 As if anybody cares about this shit anymore. 44:37 So that's another reason why deporting people is problematic because you increase the average age and you put a bigger strain on social services and Medicare, Social Security, which is great. 44:52 Sarah Longwell Here's the one thing I would tell you as a bright spot because I'm trying to look for one. 44:57 JVL Hit me. 44:59 Sarah Longwell You should listen to the focus group this Saturday. 45:03 For those of you who skip it, because you cannot take what the voters are saying. 45:06 We do a bunch of swing voters, Trump voters. 45:11 They are not feeling good about where things are going. 45:16 And the tone has shifted. 45:18 We are seeing a marked shift in what people are saying. 45:24 JVL Who's your guest? 45:26 Sarah Longwell Chait, John Chait. 45:28 Oh, John Chait. 45:29 JVL Yeah. 45:29 Sarah Longwell We had to cut the part where I told him he was my second favorite, Jonathan, after Jonathan Cohn. 45:34 And the producer had to remind me that that's your name. 45:38 Because I was like, Jonathan, who calls him Jonathan? 45:41 JVL That's great. 45:42 I write behind John Chait. 45:44 I don't just write behind Cohn, which I could live with because he's so nice. 45:48 He's so nice. 45:49 Sarah Longwell He is nice. 45:51 JVL You don't rank behind them. 45:53 Sarah Longwell It's worse than that. 45:55 I forgot your Christian name. 45:59 JVL It's okay. 45:59 Sarah Longwell You are, of course, my favorite, Jonathan. 46:02 Of all the Jonathans that exist, you're my favorite. 46:06 JVL All right, let's close with something nice. 46:09 Unless you had anything else to talk about in the real world. 46:11 Do you have something nice? 46:12 Sarah Longwell I do. 46:13 Oh, great. 46:14 JVL I saw a movie this week that is... 46:21 Absolutely the best movie I've seen in at least a year. 46:25 Sarah Longwell Tell me. 46:26 JVL It is the new Knives Out movie. 46:28 Sarah Longwell Oh, I saw it. 46:29 Yeah. 46:30 JVL You saw it, Wake Up Dead Man? 46:31 Sarah Longwell Yeah. 46:32 JVL So I don't know how this hits you, not being Catholic. 46:37 Sarah Longwell not being Catholic. 46:38 JVL Uh, but I thought it was the greatest Catholic movie ever made probably. 46:42 And unbelievably awesome. 46:46 It's a great murder mystery. 46:47 It immediately goes to my top couple of murder mysteries. 46:50 Uh, I love murder mysteries. 46:52 I think they don't often work as films. 46:54 Uh, Gosford park. 46:56 They're like better as books, better as books, but some, I mean, when they work at Gosford park is, do you like Gosford park? 47:02 Sarah Longwell Yeah, I liked it, but I haven't seen it in so long. 47:05 JVL Oh, I love that movie so much. 47:07 Oh, I love that movie so much. 47:09 Sarah Longwell Maggie Smith is so good in it. 47:11 Maggie Smith's good in everything. 47:13 JVL She is. 47:14 Uh, 47:15 great dame great dame maggie smith she's in my favorite movie of all time the prime of miss gene brody a prime of miss gene brody yeah yeah it's a black and white um it's not it's a color i know i know it's a bit uh but i loved wake up dead man so much i can't even tell you okay well tell me why you liked it so much i also thought it was one of the funniest movies i've ever seen and 47:39 Sarah Longwell So the guy who plays the priest, the good priest, but also the guy who plays the bad priest, Josh Brolin. 47:46 Because I watched Goonies with my kids recently. 47:48 And his resurgence as a great, serious actor has been a real gift for all of us. 47:57 He is great in the Knives Out movie. 48:00 But the young priest... 48:02 who was, he played Prince Charles in The Crown, young Prince Charles in The Crown, and so I'd seen him before, and he's in like a couple other movies right now. 48:10 JVL He's hot. 48:10 That's the only, I saw him in Challengers, the Zendaya movie, and he was awesome in that movie too. 48:14 Sarah Longwell Who is he in Challengers? 48:17 JVL You know, there's the two guys who are the best friends. 48:19 He's one of the guys? 48:21 Yeah, he's one of the two best friends. 48:22 He's the one who doesn't make it. 48:23 He's the one who is sort of grinding it out on the... 48:26 Sarah Longwell I gotta go back and look at that. 48:27 I don't remember him from that. 48:29 He's wonderful in this movie. 48:32 Oh, I can't tell you why because then I'll spoil it. 48:36 So no spoilers. 48:37 Okay. 48:38 People should go watch it. 48:40 It's great fun. 48:41 Uh... 48:42 JVL I thought also, I mean, it's more than great fun. 48:45 It's, it's also deeply Catholic. 48:49 The most beautiful movie I've ever seen about the Catholic faith. 48:54 Did that hit you that way too? 48:55 Or no? 48:56 Sarah Longwell I don't know that I took a big spiritual lesson from the film. 49:05 I did think one of the best parts for describing what religion can be to people is actually, it's barely even a line. 49:12 It's not even a thing. 49:14 It's when he says, it's not this, it's this. 49:18 When he's making his appeal to the other priests after he did, in fact, punch somebody. 49:26 um but him him talking about what faith can do i see where you're going now i'm as i'm thinking about it you're right that i was not deeply embedded in the faith lesson of it uh i was like who did this i can't figure it out uh but it is um and in fact he remains oh again i can't without spoiling it um yes as i was lost in the whodunit part of it um 49:58 It is difficult until you know the ending, I think, to sufficiently appreciate the religious aspects of it. 50:08 And so while it was happening, I don't think I was able to take as much of it in. 50:12 JVL I mean, so one of the reasons I loved it so much is because I don't think you can truly appreciate the Catholic Church anymore. 50:24 without like fully acknowledging all of its problems. 50:29 Right. 50:30 And so this is why a lot of like Catholic propaganda or Catholic apologetics, uh, to me, just don't work for me because it's just all the sweet stuff with none of the, none of the bad stuff. 50:42 This has, you know, 50:44 All the bad stuff in it, too. 50:45 Not all the bad stuff, but a lot of the bad stuff in it, too. 50:49 And you have to understand that that is there and it exists in order to be able to love the good stuff. 50:58 Because otherwise, you don't actually love the good stuff. 51:00 You barely know anything about it. 51:02 Sarah Longwell Well, Glenn Close also delivered. 51:06 So great to have Glenn Close. 51:07 She just gets better the older she gets. 51:11 JVL I have a controversial opinion about Glenn Close. 51:13 Sarah Longwell What is it? 51:15 I'll punch you through the camera. 51:19 JVL So I would say our generation of American actresses, so I have like a, you know, being a theater kid and growing up with a bunch of people who went into the arts, um, our generation of American actresses grew up in the cult of Meryl Streep, being Meryl Streep as the great American actress. 51:38 Okay. 51:38 I think Glenn Close is actually the great American actress of that generation. 51:43 I think she's better than Streep. 51:45 Sarah Longwell Well, now you've forced a difficult choice. 51:49 JVL I'm not saying Meryl Streep isn't great. 51:51 Sarah Longwell I don't want to choose between that level of greatness. 51:54 JVL But I'm saying that if you have to put one of them at the top of the heap for their generation of American actresses, for me, it's Clint Close. 52:05 Sarah Longwell Well, I think that's a perfectly good take because she is outstanding. 52:11 JVL Amazing. 52:12 Sarah Longwell And some of the stuff she has done... 52:15 Yeah, I watch Damages. 52:17 I watch Damages just because of her. 52:19 Yeah. 52:20 What an anti-hero. 52:23 JVL Okay. 52:24 No. 52:24 No. 52:25 Sarah Longwell She's just a bad guy? 52:26 JVL She's not the hero of Damages. 52:28 My God. 52:29 She's just a bad guy. 52:30 She just demands excellence. 52:32 Look, I'm sorry. 52:33 She demands excellence from her lawyers. 52:34 Isn't she the hero? 52:35 Sarah Longwell They all work better when I throw drumsticks at their head. 52:39 Crosstalk Oh, my God. 52:40 Sarah. 52:42 Sarah Longwell Tara is a hero's journey. 52:51 JVL We got to laughter. 52:53 Yeah. 52:53 Let's end it there. 52:54 All right. 52:56 Hey, best friend. 52:58 Do you want to say the line? 52:59 Sarah Longwell Keep the faith, buddy. 53:00 JVL Can we say the line? 53:01 Are we even allowed to say the line anymore? 53:03 Crosstalk Yeah. 53:04 Rebecca, take us home.