Isaac Saul: The Mind-Blowing Self-Dealing in the Oval Office

looking for the never trump outrage of the day, but is in the market for podcast and wants to learn more,

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“somebody because that's how we, you know, grow and expand the audience here, tell new people learn about us.”

I'm excited to report to you guys, we have more audio downloads last month in April than we've ever had in the history of the podcast. I think downtrump fucking up the economy probably gets a little bit of a assist on that, but I think it's mostly y'all for spreading the word and so I'm just super grateful for that and I'm always looking for opportunities kind of bring in new people and I think that yesterday's pod might do that for a certain type of listener. That's for today's show,

Isaac Saul. I think especially the most hyper-engaged and aware and news-watching obsessives among the listeners, his outlet tangled this is probably not for you and that's fine, that's cool. But what he's offering, I think, is something really valuable to people who are maybe reachable in the Donald Trump orbit, not the red hat people, but the people that maybe went along with him for whatever because they were upset with inflation. And I get this questions and parents,

which is like, hey, I've got a mag a person in my life, which of your things should I send them to him. And it's like my hair is so unfire and like I'm bulging without rage over Donald Trump

“that I'm not sure that like that is the service that I'm providing on his podcast, like that's why”

I go into his Morgan. That's why I'm going to, that's why I'm uping my schedule going on other mag outlets because I know how to make the pitch to those people, but I don't think this podcast

is that pitch, but Isaac's newsletter might be. So if you're listening to the first little bit

and you're thinking about this guy, I got it now, if I need, you know, to hear the best arguments from the right and the left, I hear that, but there might be something in your life that does. And so that's kind of why I wanted to bring this to you. In addition to the fact that his corruption piece was such a banger. And I think, I think it's the best piece that's been written about the Trumpian corruption in the entire second term. So I hope you enjoy this show. One more thing,

I got an update on LA. I told you I was working on something fun. We have a resistance content creator

“extravaganza coming for you in Los Angeles. My man Van Lathan is going to be there,”

fellow Louisiana. It's the first person I asked. I'm so excited to get Van there. My girl Jane

Coastan, who you all love will be there. My girl Aaron Gloria Ryan will be there. My guy Brian Tyler Cohen, who I did inside the right with on YouTube, he'll be there. Jennifer, I'll also be there, whatever. So come on, get your tickets. The board.com/eventsLA, May 21st, for also in San Diego, May 20th. I'm resagging to do something different in San Diego that you guys are also going to like. And lastly, I'm doing favors if you're watching this on YouTube right now. Subscribe to the

feed. Benny Johnson is beating me. This is unacceptable. Okay. We've got to catch him. All right, subscribe to the feed. And if you're just listening to this on audio and you're not really a bulwark YouTube listener, just go in there and click the subscribe button, get us the points. You know, it's just a little solid. You can do it for me. All right. That's it. Appreciate you all so much. Up next. Isaac Sol of Tanglemaids.

Hello and welcome to the board podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller, delighted to welcome to the show, a politics reporter and founder and executive editor of Tangled News and independent non-partisan media organization. It's Isaac Sol, but your ex-account is like Sol. We like Isaac. You know, the the people who know me well call me like the sort of formal business reporting stuff I go by Isaac. So whatever you're comfortable with, man. All right, maybe I'll

earn it by the end of the show. We'll see how it goes. I got to tell you, I was first exposed to and I had seen like you saw in social media, but I could first really kind of locked in on what you were doing at Tangled News when there's that list of American life episodes. Nice. And I was like, there's this fam, a couple. It's like an older couple and one was anti-trap one was pro-trap and they both are eating your newsletter and it was kind of helping them come together

and bridge, get outside of their various bubbles where they're getting news. And I remember listening

story came out this week, I was like, why don't I ever have fun? And then I went back and looked at

it and I was like, that, that this American life episode aired November 1st, 2024. Yeah, it's almost a year now. So my other shit, some other shit came out about that week

“that I think distracted me from having these big picture cameras. So for folks who haven't listened”

to it, why don't you just give them a little backstory on what you're trying to do with the newsletter? Yeah, for sure. I mean, the quick Genesis story for me is I grew up in Bux County, Pennsylvania, which people who are political obsessives know, purple county in a swing state, whichever way Bux goes, Pennsylvania usually goes, whichever way Pennsylvania goes, the election goes, the presidential election. So I just grew up around a lot of political diversity and when I got

into the media space, I realized that there wasn't great representation in the mainstream press. Something a lot of people obviously know now. I mean, it's changed. It's more balanced now that used to be. And also that people were just in information silos and Republicans read news that affirm their views, liberals read news that affirm their views. And I tried to create this kind of big, tent media organization as a political moderate myself where I could bring Republicans and

Democrats under one roof and kind of have a shared space for them. The dialogue, consume media, they trust, have a news organization that can go to that they believe as fair and honest and transparent regardless of what their political views are. And so we have a format where we wait into really big divisive topics. And then we share the best arguments we can find from the right, share the best arguments we can find from the left. And then someone from our team typically me, pens, our own little

mini editorial, we do some of our own independent analysis about the story. And the format's been a hit. We've just we got some traction on Substack. I eventually started hiring people things took off. We now have a team of 12 people mostly editorial. And we're able to do a lot more, you know podcasts and YouTube stuff too. And we're bringing in people from across the political spectrum. 500,000 people on our mailing list who are trying to get outside the kind of crazy

algorithmic bubble we all live in who want to understand the other side's arguments. And I hope we're willing to change their minds a little bit. So that this American life story is about a couple where I actually convinced the Trump voting husband that the 2020 election wasn't stolen, which was something no other media organization he consumed had done. And I did it by kind of leveling with my audience and even way and talking to them and actually going through the allegations

and explaining why they were bullshit basically, but not being kind of sending about it. And he

“trusted me. And so he changed his mind, which was a really rewarding experience. And I think it's just”

like that kind of stuff that has earned trust with people from across the political spectrum for us. I just listen to some Louisiana MAGA focus groups and January 6 came up and well, you've got some more expansion and growth to do. I guess we're going to win over more guy, more people like that guy to what actually happened there. I'm not going to pretend like everything is let every day. It's radical candy is important on the podcast. But I do like to tune in on like he does a

spirit airline saying this week. And I was like, I was trying to hash through, you know, it was like, obviously the Democratic politicians were blaming what was happening under Trump. But the gas prices, there's something to that. Some of the, and we're like the free market right wing guys were blaming the blocking of the merger under Lena Con, during the Biden administration. And it's kind of funny

to read your breakdown or you could head both of those. And then you're like, here's what the

industry experts say. And it's kind of like not really. I like both of those things contributed at some level. But like people who like really know the airline industry, you know, we're pointing to other stuff. And I like examples like that. And I like going to the newsletter when I just want to hear like, what is the best argument coming from the pro Trump side on something? I like these like to engage with the best argument instead of the stupidest one. But I see on social media,

I do wonder how you deal with that, though, because there's some issues that come up down on Trump in particular, you know, hangs aside out to dry quite a lot. And so like how do you deal with it when there's like not really any good arguments for what Trump is is pushing. Are you still

“like trying to find, you know, the most strained best one or how do you navigate that?”

Yeah, look, I mean, I think there's a lot of people out there who have sort of started to carve out this kind of intellectual Trumpism space where they will go to bat for him, typically how they do it or what I see is Trump will say something and they will interpret what he's saying in a particular way that they can formulate a strong argument around. And because the president is who he is, it's hard to know what's real policy, what's a real threat, what, you know, what happens on

truth social, often translates into the real world. And sometimes it doesn't. So, you know, I think there's there's so much room and it's so complicated and layered. My perspective is there are a lot of really smart people who I know, who I trust, who's work I read, who I think are, you know, independent

option over whoever Democrats can produce. And I'm interested in their perspectives, even when

“I think Trump like that. But people like Andrew McCarthy at National Review or in CAS, I mean,”

there's loads of writers out there who I think make arguments that are compelling to me or move my position on things, you know, in the narrow sense, I would say honestly, the, in my experience from doing this work, the argument is rarely sort of centered around this kind of baseline fact. Sometimes it happens, but the analogy I use is like, it's raining outside. We're not arguing about whether it's raining or not that often. We're usually arguing about what the rain means,

you know, for one person, they come outside, their hair gets wet, they spend an hour doing their makeup, their pissed off about that. For another person, they come outside, they realize they

forgot to water the garden. It's raining great news. I don't have to do that chore later. It's

done. It's off my plate. Same event, really different experience for two different people. And I would say 90% of the time, hour discourse and arguments are kind of in that space about what the thing means. And it's less about this really alternate facts, alternate reality perspective. You know, that's been my experience doing the work. The people that you're talking about that make intellectually defensible arguments for what something the Trump is doing and like the narrow set,

like my issue with it often times is it's like they make these arguments that are very blinkert, that they're like, you know, within like this narrow confine of things, like this is a good point, but that like ignores the broader picture about it, like whether the fact that like you know, Trump was lying about it or like Trump doesn't actually, or there's the corrupt element to it where to get your corruption article is the main point of the show. But like that is

“that I think the tough part to like sometimes this pun is unintended disentangle, right, which is”

like are they are we arguing just about like the impact of this tariff or on the beef industry or like, okay, I'm sure they're pro and kind of arguments to that. But like if the tariffs are legal and if they're if they're he's doing them to corrupt ends, I just kind of like who cares if the like the narrow policy makes sense. Like how do you how do you deal with that kind of situation? I think that's the biggest issue I see with Trump pro Trump defenses.

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the really nice things about our format and something that distinguishes us from a lot of other people who try and do this work, the sort of nonpartisan we're going to elevate different arguments is we give ourselves space to call those kinds of like logical fallacies out in this little editorial that we write every day. So you'll see in my take when I write that in every day's newsletter or do it on the podcast, I'm often addressing the arguments that

were publishing and trying to call some balls and strikes about what I find reasonable and what I find unreasonable and I think my experience which has been really interesting was, you know, during the Biden administration our news letter was super popular with a lot of conservatives because I think it's the press's job to be adversarial and I was writing a lot of adversarial things.

I was one of the first, you know, politics writers and opinion columnists who was coming out

saying that Biden did not seem fit for the job in 2021, 2022 and I got skewered by my liberal readers, many of whom canceled subscriptions and left, I think I ultimately was sort of justified and not perspective. The administration switch, Trump came in, he started doing a bunch of crazy stuff, I started criticizing him for how insane some of his presidency has been and then all my conservative matter readers are getting upset and pissed off and canceling and unsubscribing.

And so, you know, the North Star for me is like, I'm going to be honest in that space about what I actually feel and what I think that's the promise I'm making with my readers. I'm not on your team, my perspective is one of six or seven you're going to read in the newsletter, you can kind of take it or not use it to sort of form your opinion. I hope and I hope it adds something to you. But, you know, I'm not trying to be the ultimate objective on mission truth say or I'm just trying

to be a fair-minded writer and political analyst who's judging this stuff from a place where like, I am genuinely nonpartisan, I don't play for the blues, I don't play for the reds and I think a

“lot of people like me are not very happy with this administration. I mean, all you have to do is go”

look at Trump's numbers with independence right now. They're totally underwater. I would count myself among those independence who's not happy with this presidency and I'm transparent about that with my audience. Does it make you despair that can't all the cancellations that your mission is hopeless? Do some days we lay up at night looking at the sea link? Yeah, I appreciate what would you say radical candor? I mean, there are days where that's that is

real for me, you know, like I publish a piece and I feel like I did it in the most honest fair-minded way possible and it ends up hissing a bunch of people off and they leave and it's hard to process

lot of people who are really interested in this product and you know, when I'm having tough days, I remind myself, I'm running a media outfit with 12 full-time employees and over 500,000 people

on our mailing lists and a half million downloads on our pockets every month and like,

there is an audience here, they care, they pay for the work, they support us, they're politically diverse and that gives me a lot of faith in the country and I, you know, my optimistic take is

“I don't know if we've hit rock bottom yet but I think we're getting there and I think we're pretty”

close and I think the people that I talked to in my day-to-day life, the maga friends I have, the, you know, progressive, like queer, Brooklyn friends I have, whatever they're on opposite sides of the political spectrum and they all feel exhausted by the way the system is working right now, they're not energized, they're not stoked about the country, they're not optimistic, they're like this sucks, it sucks and they feel it and I think that's an opening for some

genuine change in the discourse and the way we process media and news so I do feel like there's

an opportunity there and you guys are taking advantage of it, I mean the same way we are trying to think, so I'm hopeful. My only disagreement with you is I kind of, I think we need the Hubble telescope to see the bottom still, I think we got a ways to go, yeah, it's a little bit more pessimistic than you know in that but what the last thing I just, my last glaze of what you're doing is it's

“important to say because people here I think might hear this and be like, well that just sounds like”

the both sides journalism that I got away from to get into independent journalism and to me like the fact that you have the editorial take at the end is a key difference like my main complaint with the both sides journalism that we get from a lot of the DC publications is it's like

they know that something is a scandal or whatever and so like I'm going to write this story about

the scandal but in order to be fair I have to quote like some bad faith asshole explaining why it's not a scandal and sometimes I have to do it they won't even put their name on it and I'll be like an anonymous Republican source you know said this is actually you know this shit smell is great actually and you can eat it it's nutritious and like they put it in the thing and it's like that is anti-truth actually right like that is an assault on truth to do that right and and I

think that like trying to find the best arguments for other side with that explaining hey you know

“here's where I don't think I think that misses the mark I do think that's a different animal indeed”

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blinds for you in the comfort of your home just set up an appointment you get a free no obligation quote the same day for like me and not into the DIY thing that's an understatement I can't I can't do anything and I'm I'm helpless I would not I would be the last person that you would want as your as your bull or teammate on survivor so if you're like me three-day blinds can help they'll just do it all for you and right now you get quality window treatments that fit your budget with three-day blinds

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just been most of the podcast on that but I'm talking about a Ron really quick especially in the context of what you're doing we have this like total fog of bullshit that's happening out there right now about the war and it's like kind of impots I can make sure job really almost impossible to try to tell and you know Axius has predicted like 13 of the last zero agreements and like they haven't reported coming out every morning at eight o'clock it's like we got a source telling us that

that deals right around the corner and then you know somebody from Iran you don't even know

this is not true the American Satan is going to lose right and it's like you can't trust anybody that's talking there's no reliable narrator in the whole conversation and you know Brett there like was like I talked to the president yesterday that this report on the serious fox show he's like he says that we're gonna get a deal within a week and like we've been saying that for nine weeks you know so eventually that'll be true I guess but in the meantime how are you kind of like

navigating and of like waiting through all of that yeah I mean something that I've taken to doing

“that I think is really grounding is just going back in time a little bit and reminding our readers”

what's been said at basically every stage of the conflict and I think the I mean the craziest thing

to me is I mean the president had a literal national address to the country where he told everybody things were going to be wrapped up in two or three weeks that was now almost two months ago and and it just nothing happened not only did nothing happen but two or three weeks later we were even becoming even more engaged in this sort of we're going to open up the shirt of Formus that was open before this whole thing started so I am like you extremely skeptical of all

these weeks I mean I think the administration clearly senses that this is a political loser you know we see Marco Rubio coming out and saying that this operations over and they're moving on to this new operations we got a couple of other couple of audio clips on this front point

“we just listen to those now and then you can find out on the other side the operation epic fury”

is concluded we achieved the objectives of that operation I'm not going to you know we're not cheering for an additional situation to occur we would prefer the path of peace but thank you Secretary Hexaf last week where hours or so Iran's part of us we've heard of Iran it's going to ask you more directly is the ceasefire over no the ceasefire is not over

ultimately this is a separated distinct project and we expected there would be some some

churn some churn yeah yeah I mean this is you know I said this on X yesterday I think that might be the first time I ever called it X and not Twitter the use of the word or wellian has been so overused that it now has lost all of its meaning and when there are moments like this where it's so applicable where they're just I mean Hexaf is answering a direct question about the fact that we are currently exchanging fire with Iranian forces and just says the ceasefire is on

this is a separate project I mean like we have to be discerning enough here to just say come on this

“is bullshit and and that's what I would say to my audience and my readers is just they can't just”

declare that a conflict is done while we're actively engaged in the conflict and one of the

core things that we need to happen now because we're all experiencing this here in the states is this oil shock is we need to free up the straight-of-war moves which again was open before the war started and there's simply no way Trump is walking away from the table without that whatever you think of Trump he is politically shrewd enough to know that if he goes in in November with gas prices $5 a gallon he's going to get obliterated and and they have to do something about that so

I don't think we're close to being done with this I think my fear the way that I sort of talked about it early on was my fear was that we would have an ambient war this kind of conflict that was background noise where every few weeks there'd be some huge flare-up some news story meanwhile were pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into it every month and then it goes on for two years with the occasional troop death and lots of money spent and not much progress and we seem to

be heading that way right now like they are trying to make it this thing that's not the center story that's happening in the background and I hope Americans are keen to it because the to me the ambient war is really the big threat between the rubio and hanks have clips if you combine them we were like so close from somebody in the administration doing the to walk the road of peace sometimes we need to be ready to climb the mountain of conflict line from in the loop like

where they're right there like they're like literally right there like they're just kind of dancing around doing a direct quote from a spoof movie mocking politicians to do this it's just like the whole thing is insane yeah the conflict is on hearing rubio say that like we want them to choose the path of peace it's hard not to just see the images of Tehran on fire that we were all watching on Twitter you know in the early days of the war it's like that we did not choose the path of peace

we chose the path of force and now we're in it and you guys have to figure out how to get us out of it but they they're just refraining the whole thing yeah they were negotiating and I don't like this

had to do this because you wanted the path of peace like they were they were working on a negotiation

“I used sent maybe you should have sent people who understood what they're talking about instead of”

out of rural real estate agents and the son of law who is getting two billion from their biggest

geopolitical foe maybe they shouldn't have been the point people on that negotiation before you decided to start the war but like they decided to start it I guess they've convinced themselves of the I kind of are who knows what they need to do but that they're like you know you can almost see the power point it's like phase one of the war is over like now we've moved on to phase two and it's like no man it's the same war I get the same war and they don't they don't know how to get us out

this is the reality and you know we talked about this a lot with a rush yesterday so I don't think we need to the labor of the point you know nobody likes to think about what happens when the worst happens I definitely don't but the hunt to virus is out there now so you know it starts to rattle around with the old nagging from time to time and when that happens put that anxiety to work and do something useful like a state planning trust and will offers affordable attorney design

estate plans online that you can create in this little is 30 minutes 30 minutes that's right as I've mentioned before I like to live my life in such a way that I just I wipe out the stuff I don't have to do as it don't don't want to do as much you know there are obligations you talked to your children about them so things you just have to do that you don't want to do but as much as possible I can minimize that minimize the paperwork minimize folding and ironing

“it's not for everybody that's how I like to do things and so the idea of a state planning that's a lot of”

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go read the whole thing if they want it's basically a comprehensive breakdown of all the corruption on the administration and we're I was going to go through it a little bit but the framing of it I think is important you start by saying this for some reason the real story we're living through now the one where Trump's kids are funneling money directly to their family fortunate while the US government hands out favors in return just doesn't seem to get any traction with the

“public after you in the evidence of the first 15 months of Trump's second term I believe protest is”

profiting off the office and making foreign policy decisions based on business interests to a level

we've never seen or even conceived before like this is just obviously true and we'll go through

the examples but I'm wondering what your takeaway was for why why that is getting the attention that maybe it might have in the past why an article like this did get so much traction because of the birth of coverage from the mainstream outlets my working thesis I think is that opponents of the president who who want to make this a story are literally overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that's happening on a daily basis which honestly I don't blame them for because it it's hard

to pick one thing and make that the focus of the critique of the administration I was trying to write a whole comprehensive roundup of this story and I had a guide and a Google Doc I've been building out for over a year and tracking all of these stories really closely and even with that kind of focus somebody asked me like which is the story that kind of blows your mind the most so that you feel like is most emblematic of this and it's like my brain malfunctions because I don't know

which one to pick so many of them are so astonishing and I think if you are a critic of the president that's a challenge in terms of just the really baseline political messaging question and then if

you're a supporter of the president I think the reality is you don't hear about a lot of these stories

I mean they show up in the New York Times maybe the Wall Street Journal does some reporting maybe they go viral among you know critics of the president on social media but we are really still in this information silo and the reason that I know that is because when I publish this piece some of the top comments on the article were from Trump voters who are my readers who were saying things like I hadn't heard about 90% of these like I just literally hadn't heard

about them and I think that is a big big problem that the sort of you know democratic left-wing independent messaging machine has is they are really not reaching a lot of the people who need to hear this stuff the most because I think there are you know not all of them maybe not even half of them but if a quarter of Trump supporters were in sense enough by some of this stuff

on the sand for future presidents they might be standing up and speaking out but right now I just

“don't think these stories are reaching them and I think it's evidence by the fact that we're all”

just kind of in these algorithmic silos right now yeah the hot phrase for this while back was epistemic closure people were talking about this lot media circles and then like I kind of felt the epistemic closure got so bad the people just stopped talking about this is I do think the one asymmetry feel free to screw me on this between the bubbles of the left and the right is that the left bubble is is real but a lot of people that like consume MSNL or consume a left-wing YouTube feed

like are also reading the New York Times or watching the nightly news or watching mainstream out like it's part of their it's part of their diet that maybe a little bit less of that now but like they're you know for the most part just being at the broad brush liberal voters are like not seeing what fox is saying you're not seeing like big critics are saying but like there's seeing what these mainstream outlets are saying in the mainstream outlets we're covering the

Hunter Biden scandal recovering the various ways that the Biden administration did wrong stuff and they really broke a lot of stories about the Biden administration the people that are in the right bubble like there's no version of that like literally the Brett Bayer show is the closest thing to catch the straight news maybe and you know he's not covering this stuff at all that creates a

“challenge I think and like that asymmetry I do think is real I wonder what you make about”

yeah no I think I think it is there is asymmetry there I mean I don't think that's an unfair critique of kind of the media ecosystems and how we're operating and then I mean I also think in this current political environment the reverse was almost true you know in the middle of obama's term but I think liberals are much more skeptical of their own party than Republicans are of their own like the the Democratic infighting hasn't come to a head in a big way because they're

the minority party and they don't have any power right now but it is going to and there is a lot of disagreement there and I think Republicans are kind of on the other side of that interparty war and Trump won and he has sort of gotten everybody to bend the knee and so there's just way less skepticism and internal criticism toward him or toward the administration people of this what criticism are might maga voters seeing of Trump well it's absteen files

in a run war and that's because like Tucker can this right like right they're right big right wing outlets that have broken with him on those things right so they they are seeing now some critiques of him but just like not this stuff you know because you know because that hasn't really

broken through yet in those places or maybe you'd never will yeah which is interesting to me I mean

I do think you know somebody like Steve Bannon comes to mind the kind of more room mentality

“who key I mean I don't know I literally don't know what to make him I mean I know reporters”

have talked and I've never interviewed him I've never sat down. I talked to Steve a lot so so fire I'm just we I'd be curious what you think I mean like someone like Steve Bannon built his career on being this incredibly salient critic of the swampiness of DC and now the most corrupt, slimy, conservative politicians are getting free passes for fraud, defrauding their donors all these kinds of things Trump is partying these people they're making

all these very to me over quit pro-co deals and he doesn't seem to give a shit and I don't understand that so I'd be curious like what do you think his frame for this is because he's somebody I would expect to be talking about this on his show. I can feel this one this is my area of expertise I got from this one I can Bannon has a worldview that is coherent and it's global like he likes right-wing populism he wants to go after the whatever by partisan elite establishment

that he believes to be corrupt and there's some antisemitism here but like in the bank you know the bank or the big banks and you know all that like that's Steve and he wants to overthrow that establishment and he wants to support anybody that is in service of that and Donald Trump in for a while was in service of that for him and so when Donald Trump does stuff that goes away from that from a policy standpoint he will occasionally like pop on my liking they've talked

about some of the wrong work stuff and other issues the problem is what comes to this what we're

talking about the corruption well Steve's corrupt and like needed a pardon and might need one again in the future like personally like he's he screwed over donors like he had people donate to build the wall thing that he talked about like that's just just happened sorry and like his friends

still is influenced like he can't be in the system and go after you know I call the mega establishment corrupt because that undermines the whole program like what replaces that mega establishment then

right and so you see and it was the same thing with January 6 always like I always said about Steve like

he has this Cheshire cat grin that he gives when he talks about the 2020 election and the Trump third term like he's like genuine about his worldview 78% of the time and then like 22% of the time he's full of shit because he feels like he has to be full of shit to be in service of the other

“78 that's what's happening with Steve that's interesting I mean yeah I guess it's hard for me to”

accept that the sort of populism is so foe that this wouldn't be the kind of thing that incenses him because accept it baby yeah I mean I mean yeah and like again it's I try not to be too judgmental about people that never sat in a room with and gotten a ridon and I and I don't know him and but when I listen to some of this stuff that he talks about on his show and this is true of Tucker too and it was true of Trump in 2016 it's like for me personally where I'm holding politically

they say things wrong nodding my head I'm like hell yeah I agree with you and then I watch them go become the thing that they said they were fighting and it's like I want to rip my hair out and being one of the people who's not fighting on a band because yeah being one of the people is willing to say this I love this this is great and then oh no these guys are doing the thing they said they're fighting puts me in this really narrow band of people who are willing to

on one hand say I supported this and then on the other hand say it's clear they don't actually give a shit about this anymore and now I'm really frustrated by it and there's it's hard to get

people to come with me on that journey which is tough or maybe never did come just come all the way

to the dark side of the force let's run through the corruption that you mentioned a lot of it's stuff our listeners are going to be familiar with so we don't I it's a useful document

“to do it can go read because it's a lot of just one-on-one Trump corruption stuff I think that we”

can kind of gloss over we just did a full episode on crypto so from the crypto corruption knowing the audience kind of gets the just to put Trump is doing like what was the thing that you discovered that was that like shot you the most I would say one of the things was that Melania Trump was also in it on the crypto the meme coin the shit coin which I actually do know until I didn't remember and really processed until I went back through my notes and I just

linked out to some article about that that there was kind of this I mean a genuine all in from the family of like we have this window leading up to the inauguration and around the hype of Trump coming back to office to just make as much money as possible that it wasn't just sort of Trump doing this but it sort of had this much more organized and focused field that was one thing I

would say the second was what's happened with the world liberty financial stuff since Trump went out

“and part in Justin Sun who is now suing the Trump family which I didn't know until I went to go”

look up what the latest on the story was because he's saying that they a tried to force him into investing in their stable coin that he didn't want to invest in and b they weren't letting himself hundreds of millions of dollars worth of this token that he had basically bought in an effort to get the SEC to back off the investigation which in my opinion they transparently did and I'm like oh my god I literally don't know who the bad guy is here like I don't it's like it's like yeah

it's a competition of slime that I'm not sure but that's great I did it's very it's a classic story about like dealing with the devil it's just like Justin Sun and it was anti-classically pro quo with Justin Sun was under investigation for his crypto criming he puts money into the Trump coin the Trump administration stops investigating him then he tries to cash out and the Trump people running the Trump coin are like no sorry like you're locked in here with us actually

we're not going to do with you the I'll just add the other one to that sort of related to the world liberty financial stuff that just paints a perfect picture of what you just said the dealing with the devil is that I didn't know this but the Trump administration had sanctions a month before this I was going to bring this one up this was this was the one I didn't know sorry didn't know last fall the Trump administration announces a criminal charges against this trans

national criminal syndicate for stealing billions of dollars from Americans with these online scams the bullshit phone scams and internet scams that you get and then a month later two of the guys that it sanctioned involved in that criminal syndicate who partnered with the Trump family's crypto company I mean this is like there's it's just well chef's case there's nothing more perfect to sort of paint the picture of the relationship between the government and Trump and how he's

and then also the fact that this company is so unseemly that they're hiring people that the Trump administration is also sanctioning for trans national crimes I mean it's yeah for skin and the Wall Street Journal report this is not like some Twitter theory this is like this it is in a very well-sourced Wall Street Journal report I mean it's yeah it's really hard to wrap your head around and we've talked about the shakedanoon case this is the UAE guy that buys into the

“Trump stable coin I think I've already cracked myself once but I do I'm going to do it again”

just it's a funny correction when I first saw this story I was describing them on the podcast as of the shake like it was like a total that's actually his name shake so anyway uh what it's worth I'd read the story so I knew this happened but like when you laid it all out we know that they put

in whatever 500 billion into the Trump's coin but as part of that transaction there was a 187

million upfront payment to Trump family entities before the inauguration so that was just I just a straight 187 million dollar bribe from the this Thai ranking UAE official that then we go into do other deals with I that is totally insane who's operating a 1.5 trillion dollar sovereign wealth fund that he's like I mean effectively in control of and then we basically undid a national security block that was stopping the UAE from getting 500,000 events in the video AI chips which by the way

“you know the the block was there for a reason which is we're not totally confident about what”

a country like the UAE is going to do with them and also this gives us this kind of competitive advantage so they got what they paid for I mean everybody if you've been paying attention to the news

at all you know that this kind of massive AI race is a really critical economic and national

security race that's happening all across the globe and for these guys this kind of investment a half billion dollars is worth it to get access to that market and they got what they paid for which is the craziest part it's just like it transparently worked for them and this was the thing that you know Jared Kushner said point to an example of us ever doing something that wasn't an America's interest I'm like there's tons of examples like we are in a war right now that many of

Trump's own voters don't support that Americans clearly don't want based on the polling and you

“guys are taking billions of dollars from the arch regional nemesis of the country that we are at”

war with like that is a problem we're selling fighter jets to Saudi Arabia F-35 fighter jets that the Pentagon says we should not be selling to them at the same time that Saudi Arabia is giving the Trump family money and landing deals with the Trump family for reports and hosting events at Trump family properties like that is a problem you know there's a whole list in this story about all these things that the Trump administration or the Trump sons have done since

Trump has come back into office this term with these people that you know maybe Saudi Arabia is better than Iran sure I can grant that but this is not you know well now it's a not NATO ally according to Trump but up until this second term this was not the kind of people that we were just trusting blindly or handing these sorts of tools or arms over to and all this sudden we are so things have changed in a really meaningful way and the Trump family's profiting from it which it's crazy

so here's one example of a story from yesterday it just kind of relates to all this like we don't know if it's related like this is why before Trump we had rules about this but family getting into business with foreign countries and why you know there were norms and rules and laws are around this that they're breaking like you mentioned obviously we know that the Kushner is getting

the $2 billion for his fund from Saudi there's also Trump tower Jeddah the real estate properties

as you mentioned Saudi so the Gulf tournament so there's properties the story yesterday is that Trump did an abrupt U-turn on project freedom the plan to open the straight of hormones after pushback from Saudi Saudi was unhappy they're doing it because Iran was indicating that they were going to you know fire whatever drones or missiles at that Saudi they did at UAE and Saudi was like no we either need to be war on or war off right we don't want you guys to be

doing this project freedom while we're getting attacked and Trump backed down at Saudi's request is the report from NBC is that related to the corruption I don't know but how can you know again no punitive how can you just entangle all that right like wood Trump listen as much to the request of a country if they weren't putting so much money into his families pockets maybe

you kind of just gravitate towards the outcomes razor and I think okay there there's definitely a

relationship here that's benefiting Saudi Arabia more than it might benefit another regional power in the area well the American people by the way the American people are they from opening the straight if that's if they were really going to do that I'm questionable the project freedom could have successfully done that but the American people have benefited from that and so that should probably be a person concerned not what your business partners in Saudi want and this is where the

fuel tea to Trump from Republicans in Congress comes into play is you know for for all the ways that Congress can be ineffective one of the things that Congress is actually pretty good at and has power to do is request documents subpoena people make people testify publicly made people answer questions about the decision making process how certain things came down and Democrats notoriously are not a very good minority party Republicans are much better being a minority party that sort of

forces concessions and forces these kinds of hearings and brings these things to the public's attention

“so Democrats are kind of you know scrambling and I think not doing a good job of making these”

stories you know salient for the public but you would just take a few Republicans to stand up and say I have some questions about this and I'd like to bring Jared Kushner before Congress to hear him say some questions about it but they won't do it why have you touched it's free

what it's like we have a guy who is the son-in-law of the president operating multi-billion dollar

funds with investments from a country a leaders of a country that he is at the negotiating table with as a non-US representative because he purportedly doesn't actually have a job with the US government though he's also the special envoy for peace or whatever and he's negotiating an end to this war that is not ending as our chief representative and we don't have any visibility and any of that he doesn't answer any questions he doesn't you know he doesn't answer anybody's request

except the president's apparently and maybe he's been sitting on his own background as a senior American. He does have one person that he talks to. It is it's pretty remarkable the situation that

“we find ourselves in and as I said in the piece I think what's especially frustrating is the scandal”

that people like me were writing about and chasing for four years under the Biden administration was that Hunter Biden took fifty thousand dollars a month from some Ukrainian energy company and they maybe might have been potentially trying to organize some business deal for after Joe Biden was Vice President and out of office in a private citizen to make a few million bucks and we were I think rightfully up in arms a bit and had some questions about that and we're worried about

what that situation meant and now we have something on a scale like orders of magnitude larger much more blatant with a president who's in office and the conflicts of interest are way more alive and the same people who love my writing about that and we're opening every email and interested in learning more about those potential scandals don't seem to care at all about this

and I think that's the thing that I find really frustrating. Hey man and I always use the Clinton

Google initiative example also like that that was I thought a legitimate scandal like she was the secretary of state or husband was running around the world getting money from people that had big interest before our government and like that just was a bad look and we don't know whether influence policy like policy should be independent from your personal interest but the thing is that money was going to a charity those going to like mosquito nets in Africa for something like this

money is going to Donald Trump Jr. it's personal wallet at his family and like in the new hotels they want to build and they're you know safari's they want to go on where they kill big animals

“so like that's that's what the money's going to. I don't know when this episode's going to come out”

but I'm writing about this tomorrow okay so the piece will be live by by by Friday afternoon but I'm writing about this and we're spying me a bunch of criticism and feedback that I got about the initial corruption piece and one of the most common pieces of feedback was well it's well established that Clinton was lining her pockets with the Clinton foundation I'm like actually that's not well established they weren't really lining their pockets getting rich from the Clinton

foundation what was a scandal and what was there was a bunch of reporting about was that Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State had this foundation on the side that was taking money from people who clearly wanted access to her and there was something that was scandalous about this and one of the most concrete examples was that a big donor to the Clinton foundation ended up getting this like not even an ambassador ship just this like very obscure post for some you know foreign

embassy position and I'm like today right now I didn't even mention in my piece the fact

dollars to his campaign like it is so far down the table. Son of a dad is actually the ambassador to

“France. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jack the good point. Yeah. Who's a criminal? Yeah. We got pardoned. Yeah.”

And like and that literally was not in a 6,000 word piece I wrote about all the things like it didn't make it in because it was insignificant compared to the other stuff I was talking about. So that's just like a great window and to how the overton window has moved and how much our expectations of these politicians have changed. This takes me back to the asymmetry and you're talking about the people you have readers can free frustrated with the readers who are excited to read about the Hunter Biden

scandal aren't excited to read about the Trump scandals that's human nature ostensibly media outlets have obligations. So we talked about the Hunter Biden scandal on this podcast. The mainstream media covered the Hunter Biden scandal extensively. This is not only is this step not being covered on Fox,

the opposite. You plan this out in the piece. Eric Trump got a 24 million billion. I don't know

who knows. Some a lot of big money, a big contract from the government. Our taxpayers company that Trump is involved with Eric Trump's involved with got money from us in the government contract. He goes on to Fox News and here is how that that contract is discussed. And the company's chief strategy advisor Eric Trump president Trump's on congratulations to you both. Thank you so much for being here. Congratulations. He's getting congratulated for taking money. Yeah. I mean it's remarkable.

“Again, it was I believe there was a $24 million contract from the Pentagon. And then as I was writing”

about that exchange and how disorienting it was to see that moment on national television, another story came out from Bloomberg about the U.S. Air Force landing a contract with a drone company that the Trump sons are also backing and involved in an invested in. And the U.S. Air Force is now buying an undisclosed number of these interceptor drones from this company. It's like that's the waterfall of stuff that's so hard to keep up with that it's hard to know which one to

make a story. And it's like any one of them in a different era that we lived in two years ago would have been a month long scandal that everybody was talking about not stopping. I mean, we got stories about Hunter Biden selling his artwork because the art sucked and he was obviously taking money from people who wanted access to the family. The Trump kids are doing pentagon contracts

“selling drones with companies they're invested in. Like it is crazy to imagine the Kazakhstan mining”

contest in mining. Yeah. They're doing tungsten mining. It's like what? Yeah. I mean, it's they're turning over every stone to find ways to sort of interweave these contracts, these government contracts with their business interests or these government relationships or their business interests. And you know, it's worth saying here Trump has talked about this on the record. I mean, he gave an interview to the New York Times where he just said straight up, we tried to separate

the businesses during the first term and nobody cared that we did. So I'm not even trying that.

Yeah. I mean, he's it's not like they're denied. I mean, this is like some of his supporters have sort of denied that the facts of the article I put forward are true and I'm like Trump is not denying this just to be clear. The president saying that they tried nobody cared so now they're not they're not they're not trying they're just doing whatever they want. So it's not even a reasonable ground to stand on a say like, oh, these are all concocted scandals. It's like the

president is saying overtly that they're just guardrails off because they tried the first term and nobody gave them any credit for it. People can tell us my value is getting higher and higher. I like my blood pressure is skyrocketing. Let's go through all these examples. I'm getting so so matter and matter. You didn't interview with folks over a breaking points about this was last year interview. And like one of the things you mentioned was, well, you know,

there's also just the scandal related to all of the use of their hotels and resorts for government purposes. You're like, that's the one thing I'm like, I guess he's a business man. He owns these

hotels. I guess I should use those. I was railing about this all in the first term. I was like,

I find this insane. And like, they were like, there was a trip in Scotland where they made Mike Pence go from one side to the other to stay at his resort in Dunebag. So they've been just doing nickel and dining scamming this whole time along with this. But anyway, the other thing that was mentioned that interview, I thought was funny. The Sega said to you, because I felt the same way. The one thing in your article that not only did I not know about, but like there was not even

a familiarity ring in my mind about this is apparently the Trump organization has also launched Trump mobile, a branded phone. Sega also know this. I'm like, if we don't know that we're following

plan. The organization doesn't manage the phone or provide the cell service, but it's tied into

“some other right wing thing, liberty, phone service. Yeah, the thing I didn't mention in the piece,”

actually, about the Trump mobile stuff. And actually, I wish I had mentioned it to Sagar when I was on breaking points is that the phone launched in June of 2025, this custom gold T1 phone that

was supposed to ship an August, but the people who placed $100 pre-order, they haven't, they never

got their phone. And yeah, this USA today article was from April. So it was a month ago. But the company's last social media post was on August 27. So on April 6, months after they had sold all these plans and sold all these phones, the Trump organization filed this trademark application for a mobile phone plan service, the 47 plan. And it's, you know, after the verge reported that the FCC certified this smart phone under the trade name T1 in January. So it's like the FCC's

involved and clearing the way for them to roll this phone out that's going to be this. It's like, yeah, again, the FCC is clearing a scam. Yeah, the FCC would be investigating this. Yeah, he created this fake thing. People paid for it. They didn't get the product that they paid for. Like, that's like Trump University. It's like all of his other schemes of the private sector. Like, there should be oversight and investigation of this. Instead, that's the opposite. They're

green lighting it. He's just fucking people over the president. Yeah, and it's, um, you know, what I talked about in the piece is like, it is bizarre to be operating this environment where it feels like everybody's just kind of under some spell that I can't break to make them care, not everybody. The people that I want to care about this. Here's my theory. It's a little different than

you. It's really into the spell. I'd like to hear it. Yeah. The second win, even people that are opposed

to Trump, a lot of them are just like, whatever, I guess people wanted it, right? The people that are opponents of Trump or skeptics even or or a quick challenge, they all accept that he's a scam artist, right? Like so that so we're back to the asymmetry. Like there's like one group of people that like he's an obvious scam artist. He's been a scam artist his whole life. You know, he's been a liar his whole life. He's been enriching himself off of, uh, you know, either grips or lies.

There's entire life. And we all knew it. And the people elected him. So it's like dog bites man. President is doing a grift. We knew it. Like this is what this is the type of person we got. And then there's another group of people that are like, he's this great business man. We love him. I'm in an epistemically closed environment where I'm not getting any other information about him.

“And, you know, maybe the stuff will matter if their life gets worse. And to me, I think that's the”

one hopeful thing. Mona Sharon wrote about this for us this morning. Her headlight is Trump's corruption is going to sink him. I'm not quite as optimistic as Mona, but I do wonder if like that latter group. Like this stuff starts to come potent with them if they feel their economic prospects fading. Like if they are suffering, then it's like, you know, that they're like, yeah, it's kind of part of the deal. There's this wicked nod deal. It's like Trump's going to take

a little bit off the top as long as I'm doing good. That's that's cool. But maybe that's my that's my silver lining. Do you think that there's anything there? Yeah, I would say the sort of parallel is what just happened in Hungary with with Victor Orban. And, you know, I think there are a lot of sort of Western lenses put on that where it was like, oh, this, you know, objection to the, the, the, the the erosion of democracy and hungry. And when you read a lot of people who write about

hungry for a living and people who are like, you know, Hungarian-focused reporters, what they were all saying was, it wasn't this big objection to Orban's right-wing policies. It was that he was corrupt. The people knew he was corrupt and their economic fortunes were not

“getting better and they just got tired of it. And I think like that parallel could translate here”

where, you know, the, what is Trump doing to democracy stuff isn't necessarily going to resonate. But the idea of is Trump actually self-dealing and is he doing that while my economic fortunes are not improving? That sort of one plus one, I think, is a big problem for him. And we're seeing, I mean, I haven't seen a ton of polling about people's views of him and self-dealing and corruption stuff. But his economic numbers are the worst they've ever been across these two terms right now.

So, you know, I do think people are the one, one half of that is here already, which is people are not happy with how the economy has been under him, which is really distinct from what happened in the

first term. So, you know, obviously, hopefully, he's not going to run for a third time. So,

his electoral prospects are not really at issue here, but the Republican parties in trouble

arrangements and Trump podcast. The list is so long. I haven't even mentioned all the partens. I encourage you to go look at the partens section of the piece because it is, it's mine bugling. But maybe just for the sake of the audio audience. Why don't you just tell the story of Trevor

“Milton, who you you single down as, as the most outrageous of all of the corrupt partens that he's done?”

Yeah. Trevor Milton is a guy who donated $1.8 million to Trump's campaign. His reelection

fund going into the 2024 race. And he was found guilty of securities and wire fraud. And what he did is sort of this notorious, you, there's actually, you could go find the YouTube video online. But he basically went to investors with a story about this functional truck his company had developed. And basically everything he said about the truck was a lie. And the thing that sort of became what he was known for was that he showed investors video footage of this truck driving on the

“road. And it came out after the fact that he had actually rolled the truck down a hill in order”

to make it look like it was operational and functional when the engine didn't actually work in the mechanics of the truck didn't actually work. And after his conviction, he owed $676 million in restitution to the people he defrauded. Trump pardoned him and wiped that restitution out. So not only did he get him out of jail and get him off from his crimes, the victims of the fraud, hundreds of millions of dollars of people who invested in this company, don't get their money back. And the

hook here is that Milton's defense attorney was attorney general, Pam Bondi's brother. And Trump

got asked about the pardon. And he first said, I've never heard of the guy, which is just like stop

and pause there for a moment, either he's telling the truth and he just pardon a guy who he didn't even take the time, you know, the most powerful unchecked thing he can do is pardon people. And he didn't even take the time to read five minutes about his crime. So he's saying, I don't even know the guy or he's lying, which he probably is. And then he's lying about the fact he doesn't know the guy, but then he adds, they say the thing that he did wrong was he was one of the first people that

supported a gentleman named Donald Trump for president. So his perspective and somebody probably told him, the guy's a huge supporter of your presidency. He donated my New Year campaign. He was one of your original supporters. We should let him out. Trump says yes. And in pardoning him, he basically

lets him off the hook for this $676 million he owed people. It's, I mean, that's about as

it reaches as it gets, you know, I part in this guy who I don't know because he was one of my first

“supporters. And that's what he did wrong. And he got attacked for that. It's, it's, I mean, yeah,”

it's hard to find the words, really. Pitch forks now. I'm going to throw it out if we don't end the podcast. So I'm just going to end it there. Pitch forks now. That's Isaac's all. Once again, it's Tango News. Go check it out or send it to the person in your life that you think my benefit from it. I appreciate you coming on the show, man. And let's stay in touch, all right. Thanks for having me, Tim. Stay well. All right. Everybody else, we back tomorrow with one of my

phase. It's going to be another banger. So we'll see you all then, peace. The board podcast is brought to you. Thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate Producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Loots, an audio engineering in editing by Jason Brown.