Tom Nichols: There’s Something Wrong with the President

Hey everybody, hello and welcome to the board podcast.

Time your host Tim Miller. We are doing it live today. We're doing it live. We have an all hands meeting.

“Thanks for went better than the Iranian all hands meeting.”

A couple months ago. We're all live and well, but I could not take the pod in the morning. And since we're doing it live, I wanted to bring in our resident gas to his temperament, most matches, Bill O'Reilly.

And that is Atlantic ride, our radio free time, Tom Nichols. How you doing? Oh, that, that stinks. But hello, we're doing it live. Doing it live.

Thank you for those with us live on YouTube and sub-stack.

Everybody else will be in your ears a little late today.

And then we're back to our normal schedule tomorrow. We've got a great lineup for us to the week, Tom. We've got a bunch to discuss. We'll do a little music at the end, as is our want. But I kind of wanted to frame up the whole conversation,

just by taking a look at the bleeds that Donald Trump sent on Monday night between 10, 15 p.m. and almost 2 a.m. Luckily, friend of the show, Harry Sussan, kind of summarized each bleep, or 45 of them,

from our totally insane and sleep deprived president. And we're just going to go through a few 10, 15. Accuses, Barack Obama, the tempting a coup. 10, 15 says Obama worked with the CIA to overthrow Trump. 10, 15 reposted, we'd say Obama is a traitor,

and he should be arrested. 10, 22 attacks to minion voting systems. There's been some lawsuits about that. 10, 23, back at Obama.

Accuses him of personally making 120 million

from Obama care. I don't know how that happened. 10, 27, demand center, Mark Kelly resigned. 10, 30 demands Jack Smith be arrested. It's going to lucky for Mark Kelly just resigned for him,

or J.L. for Jack Smith. 10, 30, Obama Clinton, and yesterday's guest, Jim Coney, are guilty of treason. 10, 39 reposted tweet from a maga accounts,

“saying they have secret intel, proven Clinton,”

and Obama committed crimes. 10, 39 reposted a maga tweet, saying Hillary Clinton should be sent to Haiti. I'm going to fast forward. Is there so many 10, 41 acuses of Obama and John Brennan

and Clinton of sedition and treason again? Then he starts posting some like boom repost. 10, 42 is a picture of a man on CCTV footage, knocking over a food, a waiter was carrying. 10, 47, Obama is the most demonic force

that American politics. 10, 49 brings up dominion again. 10, 51 reposted fake Charlie Kirk at count. The claim to Obama blocked Hillary Clinton from being prosecuted 11, 28 claims to senior Democrat,

just testified in her oath at center Adam Schiff. Lead classified information. That true 1113 AM attacks the New York Times for their report on his reflecting pool remodel. So we're in the middle of a war with Iran,

major economic uncertainty, three hours of deranged posting from the President of the United States. You post a lot, but boy. Yeah, I post a lot, but I'm not actually holding the codes to the nuclear arsenal.

And I don't have early morning briefings from the CIA on the condition of the world. And I'm not required to make me major decisions about the fate of billions of human beings. So you'll have to forgive me if I do a little late night posting.

But if that were my dad, you know, I said, and I were watching, you know, my dad or my grandfather posting like this, I'd be out there the next day. Dad, are you okay?

Are you sleeping enough? You know, because then the next day, of course, when there is the actual business of government taking place, you know, he's doing touch-and-goes.

“You know, or the military guys, he's called Snaprolls, you know?”

And, you know, he's just not there. I mean, there's something wrong with the President. I think there's he's having health issues, which is not a usual for man who's almost dangerous. - The neck bruise that's kind of for the hand bruises of movement.

- I mean, I don't think it's a hiccup on his hand. - Sure, I'm not a hiccup. Or, or we don't know, let me, let's be responsible and say, he's walking around with what looks like make-up slather in on his hands.

There's something wrong here. And when I think, you know, it's a fair question to ask American citizens have a reasonable concern about the mental stability of their commander-in-chief. And, but we're not getting those answers

because everything in this White House, you know, when you're reading through those tweets,

no matter, you know, he's the president,

“he's got a second term, he's got complete control”

of Republican Party, everything that he's ever wanted. And yet, he just radiates this paranoid insecurity that he can't stop thinking about Barack Obama. Can't stop thinking about, you know, John Brennan

and Joe Biden, I mean, it's just, it's incredible,

you know, how unbelievably insecure and freaked out this guy is all the time. And, you know, probably being a wait for two in the morning when you're, you know, 79 years old and you're in a demanding job probably isn't helping any of that.

- Yeah, again, we're not doctors sort of be responsible, but I mean, he has demonstrating paranoid delusions. And he appears to have insomnia at least at night. He's just doing a little during the day. It's not really a great like pairing of traits.

Just even putting my Trump trade with syndrome aside, like, you know, in the middle of a hot war, kind of whatever we're calling it, a decrease fire, you wouldn't really want somebody posting paranoid delusions all my long.

I wouldn't think. - Well, you know, and the thing is, of course,

his supporters always say, well, he knows what he's doing.

He's just goofing around and, you know, he's having fun. He puts up tweets about making Venezuela the 51st state, you know, and he knows it's just a joke. And then, of course, someone says, so what was that about?

He goes, no, no, I mean it, you know, the one of the most, I mean, it would be funny if it weren't so terrifying. One of the, one of the most amusing things about the entire Trump era, Trump says something crazy.

His, his supporters get way out on a limb to say, he didn't mean that, that's not what he said. It's a joke. And then the next sound you hear is Trump behind them while they're on that limb going, you know,

sawing it off, I'm saying, no, no, I really meant it. No, I really want to do this. No, I'm not kidding.

“No, I really believe this, and then boom, you know,”

they all fall off that limb. There is, I mean, I don't, I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't know if these are paranoid delusions. But I keep referring back to the book area, and he has delusions, I guess.

Whether he's politically paranoid delusions, I don't know, but like, yeah, I'm not a clinician. He seems to, he seems to think that everybody's not to get him and he believes things that are not true. Let's put it that way.

I keep referring back to this book, "Night of Camp David," that was written in 1965 about by the guys who wrote seven days in May. About a president who, you know, goes like they said, "Dr. Strange Up," goes a little funny in the head, you know.

And wants to take over, you know, all of Europe and form a confederation with the Russians. I mean, it's just this crazy stuff. And the stuff Trump is putting on social media is not here.

It's crazyer than the stuff that was in a book that 50 years ago, 60 years ago was considered a political thriller that was too out and handish to be made into a movie. So that's where we are.

That's, I mean, I keep saying, this is, the guy in the book is president Mark Holland back, and I keep saying, okay, this is, I used to say this is Mark Holland back behavior. This is beyond what's in a book that was written as fiction.

And we, and I don't know what's happened to this country that people just kind of shrug and go, "Eh, what are you going to do?" You know? - Yeah, he is. - I'm teaching now.

I just, I wanted to start there because now we go through some pretty serious matters.

“And I think that thinking about his mental state”

is an important way to contextualize it. Jonathan Swan, our guy over at the New York Times, had this story yesterday. The classified military intelligence assessments from early this month show Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites,

launchers and underground facilities, including the U.S. intel assesses that Iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites that maintained along the street of Hormuz and 90% of Iran's underground missile sites

are partially or fully operational. Relevant for a number of reasons, like number one, that's another thing that either lying to us about or deluded about when he talks about the state of the Iran military. Number two, if that is the intelligence,

he's getting this extreme, we relevant fact for thinking about what comes next. Because if they maintain most of their missile sites on the street of Hormuz, like the idea of going into open it militarily and you tell me

you were the naval war college professor, but seems extremely risky. - Yeah, there are a couple of things occurred to me when I saw that first. It's interesting that the reaction

from the administration is basically who told you that,

And that's a lot of leaking going on apparently,

but I'm guessing this is coming out of the defense and the intelligence communities because they would be the people who would know. And that's really alarming. So the other thing that I immediately thought of is,

well, we've been bombing the piss out of them for two months according to everything we're being told. What are we hitting? What have we been doing for two months if you saw 90% and we've been told over and over again,

they've decimated that they don't have anything left that it's all over that they're scrambling, that they're wandering around in the wreckage, grinding their garments in the smoking ruins. Well, apparently not.

And that's really a serious problem. I mean, this is, you know, even during Vietnam with body counts and, you know, Matt, we weren't getting, there wasn't such a huge delta between what seems to be happening

and what we're being told is happening. As for what happens next, I think, you know, Trump keeps saying, well, well, at this time, this time we're really gonna, you know, it's, well, I mean,

“then if we, what have we been doing for eight weeks?”

Nine weeks, going on nine weeks. I think what happens next is, he gets tired of this and he just, you know, he's apparently some of these reports he's already asking, how do I just

the clear victory and walk away from this? Now, you need to clear a victory. I think if the war ends right now, which it probably has to, unless we really wanna go big and invade Iran

and do something, you know, Vietnam level, then it's a strategic loss for the United States. We are without question worse off than if we had not gone to war at all. That's the, that's the thing that we really are gonna

have to grapple with here. - And I've been actually holding to the government. - Yeah, it's hard to imagine how we even get back to even. - I don't, I don't know, I mean, it's, you know, the Iranians have now, you know,

the Trump administration keeps saying, well, for 47 years, you know, we've been at war. The Iranians agree, they say, yeah, for 40, God years, we've been waiting for this. And now we've proven that we can survive it.

All of that was notional. We've proven that we can close the straight. That was notional. We've proven that we're gonna continue to basically control or exercise some control over the straight.

That was notional. So basically, by going to war, which is often what happens with a war of choice like this, you take hypotheticals and you turn them into realities. What would happen if they survive it?

What would happen if they closed the straight? The straight. And I don't know how we get back to even on this. I think, you know, we keep looking for all these complicated reasons that Trump did this.

He did it for glory. He thought it was gonna be easy. He's looking to put merit badges, you know, on his, you know, he wants, he's like Brezhnev, he wants to have another role in medals on his coat.

And his answer is, well, it's okay that we did this

because now Iran will never get a nuclear weapon.

Iran was not close to a nuclear weapon. No reputable experts, no intelligence agencies. Nobody believed that. I mean, that he wasn't even being told that from his own people.

And they pretty much tell him almost anything he wants to hear. And so, you know, that's his gonna be his fallbacks. Like, yes, get, you saw him yesterday, right? We got, I don't think about the economic situation of the original government.

Oh, good to hear Mr. President, thank you.

“Yeah, let's, look, Tom, here's the thing.”

I was on, I basically had the view you did four weeks ago, right, which was like, he doesn't have any good else. He's bored with us. He doesn't really want to be in a hot war in Iran. He thought it was gonna be easy, like Venezuela and he's just

gonna declare victory and turn around. Like, that's really tough right now to do. I, because you end up with just such an obvious strategic defeat with whatever happens in the straight of four moves. And so, I'm, I'm at least my worry level on the escalation

is a little higher. And there was another report yesterday that the U.S. military

is considering one of the second phase of the more active

part of the war would look like. They would rename it. Operation, Red Shaman, Red Shaman, Red Shaman, Red Shaman. Red Shaman, Red Shaman, Red Shaman, Red Shaman, Red Shaman, Red Shaman, Red Shaman, Red Shaman, Red Shaman, Red Shaman,

I guess we know what the song is today. Peter Gabriel. Although people, my age, Tim have been posting names of the famous 1980s TV show, Sledgehammer about a comedy about a nutball cop who carried a giant gun.

I think that's even more appropriate.

“And so is what I know, is that what I know anyone from that show?”

Yes, you would. And I can't David, his last name escapes me.

recognize him from a lot of other shows.

Yeah, was early in his career.

“And it was really, actually, I recommended to people.”

It was a funny 80s show that didn't catch on because it was kind of like airplane, except like in a cop show kind of thing. Oh, yeah, playing David Rash, maybe that's a good show. Even Rash, that's right, that's a pledge. So, Operation Sledgehammer, because for two reasons,

one, why they care about the war powers, actually, they break every other law. I don't really understand, but, but part of the rationale would be that it would restart their 60 day war powers countdown. The other part of the rationale is just their internal bullshit spin

that they want to be like, "Face, one was a victory." And like, now we are moving on to Operation Sledgehammer. I don't know, there's certainly factions within the administration that want this to be go time. Yeah, I'm going to push back a little bit.

I'm gonna push back a little bit of escalation. Simply because you're right. I mean, we could start another round of bombing. I mean, we'll say, okay, fine, we're going to go in and we're going to bounce the rubble.

And we're going to do this again and you know, blow some stuff up. But I don't, I haven't seen an analysis that suggests that there is short of an invasion, short of seizing things and holding them that that would have any significant change in the strategic situation. I don't, you know, maybe the joy chiefs know something.

I don't, sure they do, but whether that actually changes the equation on the ground and Iran, I don't think so. But the other place I want to push back, you know, you, you said, well, he can't walk out now when it's so obvious that it would be, but we're talking about Donald Trump, Tim.

“We're talking about a guy who manifests things, right?”

Who says, if I say it, it becomes true.

So I, I never underestimate his ability to say, you know what?

True, we want. Let me, let me push back a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit say we didn't win. He says, you know, he does the Jedi hand wave over, over, Magworld and says, these are not the analysts you're looking for. We want. Let's hash this out because I think in almost every other situation,

we would be an agreement, you and I because I do, I fall back on this. I forget, I think I'm stealing it from Lee and Donna, but like, Trump's super power is always that he can like start start to create a problem and then just declare the problem solved. And his, his cultists will go along with him and like we've seen this a million times in the past. But let me just, let's just use one example here, the 2020 election, right?

So the 2020 election he creates this new reality. And I'm going to say, it was this uniquely Trumpian thing. I no matter how much you hate J.D. Vance or Martin Cruz or anybody like nobody else is psychotic enough. So I keep the bit going for that long, right? To be like, no, I'm going to pretend like I won't. I'm going to keep pretending. I'm like, and go and make up new,

“absurd lies every day. Like it's just, it creates a certain, you need to have a certain type of”

psychosis to be able to like do that. And the people went along with it, as you're saying, right? And like, well, I understand why people go along with that, but though the manga people, because they wanted to believe, you know, he was creating a new world that they wanted. And they didn't suffer any consequences except for the handful of people that got arrested of the capital, right? Unless you were one of the people that broke into the capital, like you

didn't suffer any consequences for believing this fabrication. The straight-of-form moves staying closed and becoming an Italian, excuse me, an Iranian toll bridge. Like, and then six dollar gas

to summer. Like, I mean, Trump is pretty powerful and has ability to create worlds, but it's,

that's a pretty tough sell to people that like, that it wasn't him on this one. I just, I mean, sure they'll be in full of cultists that I believe it, but it becomes a very hard sell to people, if the gas prices stay at this high, I'll summer. Well, I don't want to say you're wrong, so I'm just going to say you're right. And I'll just pile on and say this before, I think, as the first time he ever really lost control of something that he couldn't just make go away.

Because domestic stuff, and the odd tariffs, its liberation day, and somebody comes in and says, beef. And he goes, okay, fine, you know, beef tariffs are gone, you know, or whatever it is. This is, he's in a, he's in a war with a large country with a fanatical regime that isn't going to play along. So he has lost control of this situation. So I agree on that completely. I also agree, so many times there are only two things that you couldn't lie to Mac or world about.

Epstein and a foreign war, right? They were, they were willing to just take in, to just submerge themselves in, you know, oceans of bullshit, but not those two things. And Trump has betrayed them

rating is now places I never thought it would be. I mean, 33 percent, you know, it was pretty

remarkable, you know, getting down to kind of an exony in and days, kind of levels.

“With all that said, I think that the complexity of restarting a war and anything,”

then let's, let's be clear what we're talking about. I'm with you that he may well say, Operation Sledgehammer, go. And we fly a bunch of circuits. We drop tons of steel on things. We blow up a lot of stuff. And we come home and we say mission accomplished. And nothing happens. Okay, that could, but to say, I really must change the current situation. That means seizing the straight, seizing car, putting in troops, really making a dedicated effort to topple the regime.

I just don't think he's going to go there. I think he's fed up with it. He's poured with it. He, it

would be, you know, complete outrage and mega world. So, I don't think that's going to happen

on the other hand. You know, I didn't think he would threaten invade Greenland either. So, you know, I'm, I could be wrong, but I want to throw in one more option down the President's been calling it the end word. But before we get to that, we'll leave a little cliffhanger for everybody on the end word. I do need to read the ad. I apologize to board plus members because

“you pay to not have to listen to ads. But we're doing this live. And so it's the only way to do it.”

So, you know, I owe you one if you're a board plus member listening to this ad. Here it is. And then we'll get back with the end word. I'm sure that the people at function health are really thrilled about that cliffhanger and that transition into their ad. I've been paying more attention

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160 lab tests. You can see exactly what's going on. Not guess at all. If something's holding me back, I want to know that's when I actually take care of your performance looks like. And as you guys know, this is Pete mail performance. You're watching right here Tom Nichols and Tim Miller. Check your health the way I do. 160 plus lab tests a year for 365 bucks. Plus the ability to dive deeper into your results through functions connections to platforms you

already use like cloud. Join it. Functionhealth.com/thebullworkerusegiftcode. The board 25 for a 25 buck credit towards your membership. If we're being honest, it's really my husband. It's like looking at the results and comparing it to cloud because he's the one with muscles. All right. That's Tom Nichols. We're back. The end word. I just want to say, getting up there in the Tom Nichols age. As my Greek grandmother used to say, "You son of

my beast." But, yes, the end word. I've got some grades that are all done. Before we go into my catastrophizing, where everybody's going to know, I just want to start. I mean, you, obviously, it's been an area of expertise. Well, there's no greater proliferation. And so just the other element of this that, like, you can tell Trump's looking for what's my out, right? Like, what is something that, you know, I can make seem like a win. And when you ask his press conference yesterday,

he's like, "We just got to get the nuclear. We got to get the nuclear." Nobody wants to hear the end word. They're the nuclear. So, like, what would it actually even look like? I like the X-Phil of the nuclear in Iran? Because they're kind of two sides to the nuclear. In this case, I go, "What's your sense of the state of play on that?" And whether there's any possible face saving option for them? The Iranians could say what they said to us, you know, 10 years ago.

Fine, we won't build an nuclear weapon. Go away. Except that we won't have inspectors. We won't have what we had. You know, I was not a supporter of the, of Jekpo of the Iran deal. Because I felt like it front-loaded too much benefit to the Iranians without requiring to do very much together. I thought it was kind of a basic violation of diplomacy when I want. But once it was in place and working, it was the only game in town. So, what Trump might have to settle for

is a kind of crappier version of the Obama deal with less inspection. Because otherwise, if you're talking about going in and getting a Trump keep calling it the nuclear dust, he's just so odd. I mean, I'm sorry, I've been saying it for 10 years, but he's so odd.

to be here for two days, put it all on the plane, rotting here." I mean, that stuff is buried under

“rubble. It requires special handling. Let me, if I can just take a short digression to him,”

we actually did this in a kind of like this in Kazakhstan, in the Clinton administration where true story guy like opens up a shed and like there's all the, you know, radiation symbols and goes, "Oh, shit. How come nobody knew this was here?" You know, like it was old Soviet nuclear stuff. And who was we in the week there? We the United States got found, we found out from somebody in Kazakhstan that's a guy, you know, like the janitor in double closet and went, "Dikes." And there was

all this leftover nuclear stuff. And so we did this thing called Operation, check me if I'm wrong, folks, what I think was Operation Sapphire. And we fly in with a bit like in the dark, we don't want to make a big deal of this. We don't own Paris, they're government. We're not going to, you know, now this was in a permissive, not wartime situation. And even this where everything was stacked and we knew exactly where it was and it was all wrapped up and ready to go. And this was a dicey

operation where we flew in, put all the stuff on airplanes flew out, you know, turned all the lights off, flew back out in the dark. It was, you know, credit to the Clinton administration. It was right thing to do and they pulled it off and it worked. You're not going to do that here. This is a country where we're with. They're not going to just clear on a space and say,

“"All right, come on and bring the C-130s, you know, build a runway, do whatever you need to do."”

That's not going to happen. Now, if we get to some deal where the ceasefire becomes a, you know, peace agreement. And they say, "Fine, you can come in, you know, over the next, I don't know, six months, whatever it's going to take." But it's not going to happen. We're going to like do a lightning raid and get, you know, thousands of pounds of this stuff, hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of pounds of this stuff and then fly out. So I don't know how that would work if that's

one of the plans they're cooking up because they would have to clear all that rubble, have a place to land, have the machinery, have them and power. It was dicey enough to do it under almost ideal circumstances in Kazakhstan. I don't understand how people are going to do it in a run. I don't know what time the universe is sending me, but I swear to God in the elevator this morning going down to the lobby, I walk in a guy's in there. He's like, "Hey, you're Tim from the board, right?" And I was like,

"Hey, what are you doing in town?" He said, "I'm doing an equilibrium deproforation class here. We're

reviewing what we learned from Kazakhstan." So you see, the second person to discuss all that's

Kazakhstan nuclear case to me today, and I'm like, "I don't know what to make of that, but I don't know it means that there's something that we'll listen." That's the definition of synchronicity. Okay, so now on the other side, we've discussed how Trump is back into a corner. We've discussed how his brain is turning into mush, how he's sundowning. I'm on a scale of 0 to 100. Do you have any level of concern that Trump's just like, "You know what?" I know we said we're going in there to

get their nuclear, but maybe we should just hit a one. If any concern about that? Sure, I've just got a little bit of concern about it. Yeah, sure, I've concerns about that. You know, he doesn't understand this stuff. He doesn't listen when he's brief. He is, as I've written many times, the president of the United States is the sole authority for the use of nuclear weapons. That's it. No one gets to say no to him about this. If he says, "Bring me the football."

You know, it opens up this 40, 45 pound case that he always travels with. He can do that. Now,

normally you would think that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs or the Secretary of Defense, normally would have to be in the room, because they have to, they don't get to counterman as often as they have to authenticate that the person speaking and giving these orders is, in fact, the president. So they're not, they're not there to say, "Yes, I agree." They're there to say, "Yes, this is the right person you're talking to." Could he do that? Sure. Now, would,

“you know, would Pete Heg Seth agree to? Yeah, Pete Heg Seth will do whatever he's told. That's why”

he got the job, because they said, "Well, do whatever he's told to do." Well, other people do it. I don't know. Could they talk him out of it? Probably. I don't think, I know it. Let's, you know, get a grip here. I'm sitting into this. I mean, obviously the Iranian regime is horrible.

the people are horrible. Kaviyak Kaviyak Kaviyak. I'm just saying, like, is a personal matter today. I'm the nuclear question. You know, Trump and BB are a little bit higher on my worry list. Yeah. Well, we actually have nuclear weapons for one thing. But I mean, let me just say that, yes, but I have a concern, but it is in the very tiny, single digits if that. But it is not zero. That's higher than it was like, you know, our entire life before, no, not your entire life.

“Well, not my entire life, you know. But higher than it was for, I think, the 90s, 2000, you know,”

about 30 years, we've gone through where there's not really anywhere that the U.S. was going to drop a new, where there was a number of zero. I never worried. I mean, the greatest worry I had was during the 1980s because things were so tight. But after that, you know, there's, there's a lot of memoir material that came out, for example, after the first Gulf War, and then the second Gulf War, where you just had decision makers, guys like Dick Cheney, you know, nobody's going to

accuse of being, you know, God rest his soul. Nobody's going to say that guy was weak sister. You know, Cheney and Paul and other saying, we're not even going to talk about it. It's off the

table. We're never going to do this. And that's that. Now, you know, the problem is that you have

Trump who has talked about newking hurricanes, you know, and make it so frustrated to say, well,

“for example, I could imagine somebody in this administration because there are some, you know,”

crack pots wandering around the White House, saying things like, well, let's blow one up in the Persian Gulf as a warning. Exactly. You know, kind of like we were worried about Putin doing in the Black Sea, for example, in the early days of Ukraine war. I, I could see somebody, you know, suggesting that, but I would hope that this is where a lot of people of much cooler temperament would come in and say, finally say that say the thing that nobody pierced ever say to this guy,

which is present. It's a really bad idea. And I can't be involved with executing this. Speaking of crazy people walking around the rocking around the White House, you have an article in the Atlantic. You read my mind. It is that is good podcast. It is headline. The Trump counterterrorism strategy is a dangerous joke that is being managed by Gorka. That's a Gorka. Who is a Hungarian

“lunatic? You unscreened it me in a, you know, I guess we're, I guess in the hallway of a conference room,”

various political conference, and he started shouting at me about how I'm an idiot. Not great breath, better than Corey Lewandowski's breath, but his breath was, was smellable from the distance

with which he was shouting at me. Does that hurt? I have never met him, and so I have don't have

that level of intimate detail to share with you. Anyway, I wanted to treat myself. So reading you is usually a treat, but in this case, since you're coming on today, I was like, I'm not going to read it. I know it's about Gorka. I just want to go and blind and I want to hear Tom Nichols give me a tight five on Gorka and the article. It's not really about Gorka. It's about Gorka being signed as the White House, you know, a special assistant to the President for

counterterrorism and all that, you know, waving my hands. He was supposed to produce this thing, a document, the White House counterterrorism strategy. The 2026 counterterrorist strategy was supposed to produce it like a year ago. And what an amount of element per public, a kind of gushing him

about it and saying, is it done? Is it done? Is it done? And finally, he just put out this thing

last week, this kind of half-baked mess that includes, I mean, it's just so stupid and sloppy that I can't even begin to explain to you how bad it is. One of my favorite lines and I did put this in the piece was, it's a principle, I want to get this right, so I'll just read it to you because it was, you know, really, America's new US counterterrorism strategy is driven by the principle that America is our homeland. Okay. Thank you for clearing that. I'll go back to you,

Maddox. That's a kind of email Faber, Faber, Statue, you know, knowledge is good, but there's a lot of this kind of nonsense in there. What it boils down to is this. It's a half-baked, you know, underdone, to play, that basically says all enemies that are left, you know, anarchists, of course he does, does say, you know, big threat is lommist, terrorist, big threat, but the rest of his drug cartels, which is nonsense, not a counterterrorism operation,

you know, drugs are drugs and been around for a long time. This is not terrorism, and radical left transgender anarchists. So, you know, watch out for, yeah, you know, like,

which is just a dry point, but yeah, with like radical left and Antifa, which they capitalize,

“because Antifa comes out of this report as like, you know, a transgender anarchist specter, you know,”

it's like, they're dealing with thruster, specter, or some huge transnational terrorist organization. It's laughable nonsense, except that it's probably what people like Gorka hope is the predicate for going after, you know, every left-wing group, you know, no kings or the SPLC, or whoever they're going to pick, you know, as their targets. Now, I don't think, because the documents, such a hot mess, it's not really actionable in any way, like, there's no set of things

that say, and there's a lot of things in X, Y, and Z. It's kind of like that NSPM7. Docker, those just like, an internal doc talking about how they're going to target these left-wing groups, and like treat them. This was an internal, I mean, this is meant for public consumption. So, you know, it's, I mean, it's just, it's just a complete dog's breakfast of, you know, random,

“it's almost like you took a bunch of terrorism and counterterrorism ideas and terrible”

problems that are going on in the world, drugs, oppression of Christians in Africa, you know, the Charlie Kirk's assassination, and you threw them all on a bag like refrigerator magnets, and then you just put them all up and said, that's our counterterrorism strategy. This is a meeting of the radical left transgender and our guests out there. I'm interested in attending, because that does sound like a fun group. The other, this is, these things are related.

I'm sorry, combing on yesterday. Quick aside, I love that there's a lot of new listeners and viewers to the pod, and so I, I appreciate this. This is not sarcastic at all, but I had a lot of people at the email saying, like, why didn't you ask combing about 2016? I'm still pissed about on about 2016. I bet combing on three times. So, I, I have, so if you're interested in my exchange with him on 2016, you can go, we'll put a link in the show now so you can go back and, and watch my interview

with him where, you know, I also was pretty hurt about Jim Comey's behavior in 2016 and we hashed that out and, you know, we can't do the same interview every podcast, but anyway,

“one of the things I talked to him about was in a, like, there's multiple layers here, right?”

There's their priorities are wrong. You know, they're, they're going after the transgender and our guests, like you mentioned, they're doing support work for immigration enforcement, and they're firing experts, you know, like the Iranian team got fired because they were wrapped up in the Trump documents case because Trump had a lot of war plans and fucking his bathroom in Marlaga. It's like, those people didn't do anything except their job and they got fired.

And, and, you know, Comey is just basically like, look, maybe nothing will happen. I hope nothing

happens, but like the risk is higher. You know, when you take good people and experts whose job it is to find people that want to do harm to America and you fire them or you instead make them, you know, do like drag clean story hour enforcement. Yeah, I mean, you read this document, and it's mercifully, it's pretty short. I mean, it's kind of like, one of the things I pointed out in the, in the piece was the reaction from some other experts.

One of them said it read like it was written by an intern, you know, another said, I would have given it a D+ in my class, but, and, and so it reads like, you know, a night before

a project that some junior, you know, I don't, who never done this before, throw it through

together for class. But, yeah, I mean, it does, it does raise the threat of, are you, are you creating the permiss environment to start saying, anybody we disagree with is, is, is by definition a terrorist. And it's funny, it's funny ironic instead of ha ha, that the report says, for too long, the intelligence community has been weaponized against American citizens, and we're not doing that anymore, like that, you know, I'm reading it going, wow, this is some serious projection going on here.

But, the other problem is, and I thought of this as a former government employee myself, if I got this report, this mess on my desk and they said, you know, and I were like a GS15 at the agency or, you know, the counterterrorism center or something, my question would be, I understand, it's a predicate for doing all these things and forgetting the transgender anarchists and the, you know, and their scuba gear is they come ashore in my hand and all they're going to do, you know,

but what am I supposed to do with this? Like, what am I supposed to do with this report as a

and an occasional contributor to the Atlantic, who's a security expert, Julia said, you know,

these are things that are usually meant to communicate not just to the American public and to the rest of the government, but to state and local governments as well. Like, hey,

“here's the things we're worried about, here's things you should be looking out for,”

here's the stuff we can do together, you know, it's kind of, it's then you work it out in the, uh, what, you know, you know, this wonky term, the interagency process, right? Where you get everybody together and get the CIA and DOD and Treasury and everybody, there's none of that here. So, on the one hand, it's a very threatening document because it's paranoid and weird and just

kind of randomly lists everybody that Trump doesn't like as a terrorist, right? On the other hand,

if you had to work from this document and you open it up and you're at the FBI or the CIA or wherever you'd go, what the, what the, what the Sam hell am I reading here? I want to make supposed to do with it. Uh, and in that sense, I think you can be kind of glad that it was Gorka working on it instead of somebody who might have been more competent, um, because there's just, there's just nothing to pull from it except what a crappy report is. Well, fingers crossed,

nobody wants to terrorize us in the next two and a half years. Um, I wanted to talk about the

“account, I mean, when you're at war with a fanatical Islamist regime, who needs experts?”

Cool. I don't know. It'll be fine. I'm pretty sure. Which draft is that? The uh, we're gonna go deep on economics stuff tomorrow, but I just, I do want to hit a top level discuss Trump's, I don't even want to call it Gaff. Trump's comment yesterday is deeply revealing

comment. Uh, cannot be overlooked. Um, so basically, state of play, we had an inflation report this

morning, which showed that the producer prices have risen, uh, 6% year over year. Um, uh, the road 6% excuse me, you know, it's 4.8% year over year, and you know, which is an increase. And like, and it's more of an increase than we saw from the consumer inflation report. And it's not because usually the consumer inflation report lags, right? Like, this makes sense, right? You know, if you're a producer, if you're, you know, if you're the, if you're a farmer or whatever, um,

and your prices start going up like eventually gets passed down to the consumer. And so the ripple to the rest of the prices down that way. Uh, and so it seems like really bad sign for inflation ahead. Um, bad sign, as we discussed at nausea, about gas prices ahead, uh, Trump yesterday was asked about this, uh, on, uh, on the White House lawn, uh, and as we do in the, on the show, we don't play his voice. So I'll just tell you, uh, the reporter said what extent are Americans,

financial situation motivating you to make a deal and Iran, Trump says not even a little bit. And then he talks a little bit more and then he goes, I don't think about Americans financial situation. Very don't draper. I mean, I imagine if, imagine if Barack Obama or Joe Biden had said, I don't think about your economic situation. I mean, it would be the, the streets around Fox would be a burning moat of oil, um, you know, with with, uh, you know, the people from, um, um,

fury road, you know, banging their spears against the wall. Um, but, uh, and his answer by the way, the, the rest of his answer in fairness to the president was because that way, I don't care because that way, you don't get a nuclear weapon. And that's his answer now for everything. It's like,

“oh, you're going to plan about gas prices. That's how you got a nuclear holocaust. I mean,”

it's sort of like the worst cold war moment from the 50s, maybe, you know, um, now on steroids. Oh, you're going to complain about the price of apples. That's how you get stolen, you know, watching through New York. And, and it's, it's nonsense, um, one thing that's, that's, uh, now, and let me just infernus say, look, when Joe Biden was president, I thought people pitched way too much about inflation because I grew up in the 70s where, you know, inflation was double

digit. That's right. I mean, interest rates were, you know, 18%. All that. So I was like, come on, calm down. There was a, there was a pandemic, post pandemic inflation is everybody knew it was coming. We had a soft landing. The problem for Trump, this inflation is directly traceable to something he did. This is one of the few times that there's ever a moment where you can say, because normally, again, let's be fair to all presidents. Most presidents don't have a lot of control

over things like inflation, the price of gas, other stuff. Right. I mean, and there's a little big macro economic, tectonic plates that shift presidents can try and do what they can do with interest rates and other, you know, little, little knobs that they can argue with Congress

own behavior, because this is directly a straight line. People, even in mega world, can trace

a direct, straight line from decisions, Trump made to things being more expensive. You don't usually get that in a presidential term. Gas is more expensive because Trump went to Warren Iran. Period, that is just how it is. Other items are more expensive because Trump, unlike everyone else who got over this 80 or 90 years ago, still believes that tariffs are a good thing. A direct, straight line. So this is really an interesting moment where, you know, again, I was one of the people,

when Biden was president, I said, look, inflation's not that bad. It's certainly not the 70s. He didn't cause it. There's not much he can do about it. Here, there's no doubt that if you think these levels of inflation are bad, and I think they're, you know, bad, but not grievous at this point,

“then you have to say, look, there is only one per, for once in American history. In postwar”

American history, there's one person to blame because he did obvious things that make things more expensive. And I don't, you know, he just waves his hands and says, doesn't matter.

It wasn't me. I don't know, it's like 80 million Americans to blame actually, or 70 months of this. But they

didn't get the war on this. I will be fair to the Magofoter Tim. They did not pick a war on a run. I thought they were picking the guy that wasn't going to do this. At our meeting today, I demanded the JVL stickers. I don't know why, and enterprising listener has not done this already. I want the picture of JVL pointing at the person that signed you did this. You just want to put them in red state gas stations. It is too good not to do. I'm going to, I'm going to do a little,

I'm going to, I have a little trip plan for June going around Louisiana. And I'm going to do it, and I want to do it. I need the stickers because people need to deal with that. People need to recognize that they did it, they did this. And that's not geopolitics. They didn't vote for that. But they voted for the guy that they didn't believe us, you mean JVL and others said, no, no, he's going to do, I was warning about him trying to attack a run at the end of his last term.

And I took all this static, you know, oh, that's peril. He would never do that. That's crazy.

Because I'm going to piece just before he left office saying, beware, Trump might try to attack a run on his way out the door to see if he can just scrambled the deck and it turns out from people in the administration. Yes, he wasn't in fact thinking about it. We warned everybody about this. I am, I admit, I've gotten like you about that as a cranky old man, now that my age has become an issue here. You know, but I do find myself, you know, when people come on TV and say, boy,

you know, I'm a gas and I just can't fly, I said, wait a minute, did you vote at all? And who did you vote for? And, you know, that's really not a good answer because people suffering

“and their kids, you know, nothing anymore for shoes is not, you know, you have to have some empathy here.”

But on the other hand, I, you know, I greened their meat, so mostly empathy and accountability can go hand in hand. And go together, they can go hand in hand, exactly. You did this. Okay. Well, as a result, we are seeing some people jump off the boat. You mentioned earlier, the Nate Silver, you know, just dropped this morning like his latest average of the polls and Trump said is lowest approval rating ever, lower than after January 6th. And, um, and I think

we got a ways to go, uh, taking it even lower. I kind of hate this, though, Tim, because to say that it took that Americans get more angry about gas prices than a seditious revolt against the Constitution tells you something about how decadent and self absorbed a nation we've become. And so yeah, I know some guys tried to overthrow the Constitution, but I got summer plans. You know, we got a lot of money. We're going to drive down to the floor of Bama. We're going to

drive down to the floor of Bama. We're trying to go to the floor and you know, uh, you know, what, and I was going to go to Orlando on spirit, you know, and I mean, I just, so that

“it bothers me. But on the other hand, if that's what it takes to, I mean, on this, it's not unique”

to Trump voters or even else. Most Americans just don't pay attention to politics until there's actually pain in their lives about something, right, that, you know, their health insurance, the price, a gas, whatever it is. So, um, but I, but I agree, I think there's room to fall. I think here's a

No, I thought it back over here. I've been watching, you know, I've been spending my nights

watching, believe it or not, my new rerun occupation or obsession has been LA law, which has been hilarious, we're going to watch because I lived through the 80s and it's just really funny. But anyway, what do you think the floor is for the hard, I think it's about 25%. I answered you 25 and 30% of people who say, if Donald Trump launches nuclear weapons and melts the earth and we must root through the ashes for canned goods, I'm okay with that. I think it's lower than that.

Yeah, that's encouraging. I think it's lower than that. I don't, I mean,

“look, there's just a lot of people, you have to appreciate that, um, there's, in, in particularly”

the Trump coalition. There are a lot of people that just don't really watch the news. That this is like a cultural thing. I'm sharing an overview, but they do that on purpose. And one thing I've really noticed over the years talking to my friends and family who have been Trumpers, they will, they, they not only don't watch news, they avoid it because of the cognitive dissonance that it causes. Yeah, so they don't watch the news, and then so there's those folks,

and then there's another group of folks who are never really newswaters, Trump bought that brought them in because whatever they, he was famous, so they liked that he gave the people they hate the what for whatever. Oh, kidding, he's in the picture. It's really, it's really, she finally made it apparent on TV. We're live, baby. So my answer is that like, I think that his core base was about

we're at now. Like I always thought as about a third, like 30 to 33%. If nothing catastrophic happened,

but like, you know, if we really are in a position, you know, I've been, you know, going deep on gas analysts and petroleum analysts and stuff, and you know, listening to my odd lots of podcasts to a bunch, and you know, like what if gas gets to seven bucks everywhere? Yeah, but do you think I think that I think we can get lower, baby? I think we can get under control. Okay, but that's a approval, and maybe the thing I'm thinking of is, you know, I always had that floor somewhere on 35%

and as you say, absent some kind of catastrophe, right? But that also, hold on. You know, a lot of the cat has a tendency to turn off the computer when she stands over there. So I could have been gone in like two seconds. Um, hi, Lily, you little brat. So, you know, 35%.

“But will they ever vote for somebody else? Will they vote for Democrats? Now, here's the thing,”

if you start getting down to 20%, you know, 25% approval. I mean, we've never, have we ever seen

lower than 27? Which we just did this, I just googled this on the next level. We caught at the decline. I went to look at what Richard Nixon's approval was after, well, I think it was like 24. I'm going to remember it now, but I think it was like 24. It was in the 20s. So they won't vote for a Democrat, perhaps as some of them have said, and I know, you know, you guys run Sarah once focused groups, and they'll say, I'm not going to vote. Run, just going to, I'm just opting out.

I suspect too, when, like, one of the things that vans and Rubio or the pretenders that the throne, if to worry about later is, um, Trumpism is not portable. It doesn't port. It doesn't, you know, the people who are not involved in the political process will again not be involved in the political

“process. That's partly what happened at 20, I think. But it's just amazing to me, the degree to”

which that it is now calcified, negative partisanship has now calcified at the point of saying, you know, Donald Trump has 25% approval, but that doesn't translate into a win for anybody else. It's just people who say, fine, I'm out. My guy isn't doing well, so I don't want to know, you know, I don't want to know from politics. Um, all right. Uh, really good couple of the things. And we'll end with a little music. The, um, I don't, we were discussing it for, I don't

know there's a bunch to say about China. I just want to acknowledge that Trump is now going with the summit with Xi, Tim Cook is going with him for some reason, Elon Musk. I guess we know the reason. Um, and really the China experts. Like so. Yes. Now, maybe that's false, but one of the things that kind of went past my eyes on acts from from somebody in one of the new sources, the China experts, but you know, who needs those? I thought this was interesting. So they're on

route or maybe getting there around now. The White House had said that the meeting will focus on trade, fentanyl, uh, and the war in Iran, all areas with Trump administration has had little luck getting deals or concessions from China. Uh, notably Beijing hasn't provided any details. Uh, they just said that Trump and Xi will discuss major issues concerning China, US relations, according to one of their spokespeople. I thought that was kind of telling in a way about, uh, to use a Trump phrase who

has the currency or and who is going into this meeting really needing something. I think obviously

domestically as well. But, uh, you know, it seems like it doesn't feel like this meeting's

“having for position of strength for Trump. No. And, you know, one of the things about the old,”

us old Cold War guys, we always said about summons. You don't have a summon unless you have a

reason to have a summon. Like you prep it with a lot of guys at the second and third, you know, tear below the principles. And then you give your principles. Here's the stuff you're going to check hands on and talk about and maybe a couple of things that require a personal touch. But you don't just like blunder over and say, hey, you know, you don't, you don't have the, it's a Joey from friends summit. How are you doing? You know, I mean, come on. You're doing Xi. Yeah, I'm down. And if I were

the Chinese, I would send back. I would tent my fingers and say those are all very, yes, absolutely. We will, we will cut the flow of fentanyl, let's suppose. Absolutely. Um, Iran, we have our concerns. But we understand why, you know, and just wait till Trump feels good enough to say, okay, find no more

“tears. Because that's how people manage him. We've seen this over and over and over again from”

our allies when NATO, when the NATO partners come over and say, you know, switching to another pop culture reference, you know, the twilight zone, so it's good what you did, Anthony. It's good. It's good that you wish the guy into the cornfield, Anthony. You know, until Trump says, okay, find more friends again, our enemy's do it, our friends do it. They, they manage him until they go what they want. My guess is the Chinese are not stupid and they are good at this is that that's what they're going to do.

But I don't think when Trump sits down and says, I want to talk about Iran and fentanyl and try they're going to go. Yeah, whatever. Okay, I know. The last one, this is just a just unbelievable. And there's all the list of the Trump stuff. And I guess the ambition of paired this with, you know, Trump's not the same that he doesn't think about American financial

“situation at all. Well, he obviously is thinking about his own financial situation quite a bit.”

We covered with eyes like saw all the graphs that's happening with his family outside the government. Obviously he's putting his face on everything, the passport, so we have the Triumph, Clark, et cetera. This one might be the most egregious of all. The Justice Department, according to a report, is having internal discussions about settling President Trump's lawsuit against the IRS in the coming days. So maybe when he's in China on the way back, he will,

the U.S. taxpayer will write a check to Donald Trump for his emotional distress of having his astonishing. And it's astonishing to be, you know, the plaintiff and the defendant. You know, I'd like to negotiate over the amount of this settlement. Hang on, you know, switch to

the other chair. How much would you like? Well, several million would be, it's, it's literally

insane. And again, it shows you first how worn down everybody else is at, they just kind of, you know, tight, he exact, the thing is Trump exhaust people, right? I mean, it's just exhausting, you just say fine, you know, whatever, but also the degree to which they have hypocrisy of his supporters, that if any other president did this, he'd be like, "I'm a credit ever done this." Again, there'd be, you know, at least I keep going back to this movie, but you know, they'd be like the guy,

you know, in front of the, the big tractor trailer and, you know, fury road, you know, playing the guitar with the flames, you know, we're going to burn the city down because because it's wrong. And we used to know the difference between right and wrong and not ignore that purely for tribal and partisan reason. The Trump as what Trump said he wasn't taking a salary, those days are gone. We're just right in him checks. We're just, they're just settlements for the taxpayers,

he was writing him checks for his emotional distress, truly insane, double this cost to the ballroom, was that the thing that happened this week, and they are just lining their pocket. Yes, you, yes, you dumb person. I mean, again, something that almost any other, we've just, we have set the bar so low on America's ill tempered juvenile here that when he says to a,

to a, of course, it's always in woman and in this case, a black woman, you know, you dumb person.

That's, you're stupid. That's a stupid, but, no, that's a question about the expenditure of public money, the destruction of one of our national landmarks that you don't happen to own by the way. You are a steward and temporary occupant of that house, but, you know, he does that, never, but he goes, you know, when are you going to do? No, me. I rage. I rage, Tom Nichols, I rage. No, you become too complacent, Tim. I'm tired of it. I've become complacent.

and then you shit town. I've been talking about Uber to not drive around. I was like, I can't drive fast the justice department. I can't see his fucking face on the building. I'm going to stroke out. My child needs me. Okay. I have to, I have to be a parent. Still, she's only in second grade. This is brilliant. All right. Let's end. On yesterday's pod,

I always try to get a cheeky song for the audio listeners at the end, and because we were talking

about cash, but tell us drinking, I went with Uncle Roland in a black dress, because, you know, Saturday night, I was downtown working for the FBI, sitting in a nest of a badman, whiskey bottles filing high, and that's cash, obviously. Well, except for, except bourbon bottles. Yeah, bourbon. I mean, who? Who gives out a bottle of bourbon as their business card? Hi, Hi, Harriet. Here's a cash. Here's a cash with a fucking dollar sign. It is a name.

What a dork. But it may be wonder, and you're the first to come to in this of this era of music. I feel like the gap between long, cool woman and the rest of the Hanley's catalog has to be the biggest gap between the best song and the rest of the catalog of anyone. Is that a fair

assessment? Oh, well, you know, you've come to the, to the right place, you know, annoying,

know it all about all old music. You know, the holly's actually two other songs, of course, the air that I breathe, which was, you know, this song. I don't know, I might have if I heard it, which I was saying. Oh, I'm not saying, no, no, no, it's not karaoke or, but stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop the music, right? And, but also, one of the great guy cry, mushing songs of the early 70s. He ain't heavy. He's my brother. Oh, that's the holly's. Yeah,

man. Okay. Well, there you go. So that's not that far, but that's a great song. Yeah, so, you know, everybody remembers a long, cool woman, but the holly's actually had a string of hits from the mid 60s onward. And then, if my trivia, uh, if my trivia superpowers are not failing me,

“doesn't their lead singer, isn't that Dennis De Young? Doesn't he go on to sticks?”

Where he's going? There's some connection here. I have no idea. All I know is I love long, cool woman in the backress. I know literally nothing about the Graham Nash was in the holly, so apparently, that's true. Oh, yeah, you know, the, the, the family tree of these like groups from the 60s and 70s are, are just so fascinating because you find out that like, you know, they're, that they all share, like superstars that kind of pass through them. Um, it does not look like Dennis De Young

was in the, was it? Oh, I could do both of the original members. The original members were Tony Hicks, Bobby Elliot, Ian Parker, Peter Haworth, uh, as Peter Haworth, Unlead Vocals, and then the,

the Graham Nash. And then we're always Dennis De Young before I can't believe that I have screwed

up a musical trivia issue. Why are Jeopardy champion? I know, I should do so. How do I get in there? You got it in? I feel like I should just, I don't know. I don't know. I bet Jeopardy. I bet Jeopardy doesn't want to hear a thing from me because I've been bitching ever since they, um, overturned the five

“game rule. Um, yeah. You're right about that, I think. Oh, absolutely. I mean, look, the very nice kid,”

some grad student. You just want like 31 games. Yeah. It's good to learn. Well, it's not just boring, but it's unfair to everybody else who walks in. I will tell you quick anecdote, but the time I'd one like two or three games, I'd heard, you know, like gossip from the contestant wranglers that like people didn't want to play me, but that point because it was all in one day. So it was like, you know, because once you're in that groove and you've got the buzzer going and all that,

but also, I think guys like Jeopardy, James, they're, they just ruin the game. It's, everybody goes in. They bounce around the board, looking for daily doubles to make big beds to get far ahead. And, you know, I liked Jeopardy when it was, um, school teachers and postal workers and subway cops, you know, just kind of in a pleasant show of how much they knew, you know, as opposed to the guy who, the, the woman who beat James wrote her master's thesis on Jeopardy.

Oh, bus stop. Yes. I didn't mean to put up bus stop. Bus stop is another good one. I want to stop this up. We're alive. The podcast part of the podcast is over. We're alive on YouTube. And I love this. I just looked at the comments here. Here's a guy out the comments. It's like Nickles are chronically wrong. All caps. And I couldn't tell you, sir.

“Dorks lecturing us about Jeopardy. All right, time. You got anything else you're going to leave us with?”

No, I apologize for the dentist, the young failure, but I did come up with the other hollies. It's, so, um, I hope people will remember that as, even though it doesn't seem possible, I am human.

Tom Nichols, thanks to the board of class members that had to suffer through an ad read.

“Hopefully I made it entertaining for you. Well, we'll be back tomorrow. Regular deal taped.”

It's a double header. Both guests are going to be fun. It's going to be great. Tom Nichols,

we'll see you over the summer. All right. Thanks, Tim. All right. Thanks, everybody.

“We'll see you back here tomorrow. 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 Lutz, an audio engineering in editing by Jason Brown.