Automated Transcript
Ivan:
[0:00]
| Talk again for a little bit.
|
Sam:
[0:02]
| Yo, yo, yo, yo.
|
Ivan:
[0:04]
| I'm only hearing you on my left headphone.
|
Sam:
[0:07]
| That's lovely.
|
Ivan:
[0:10]
| Now I can only hear you on the right one.
|
Sam:
[0:13]
| Oh, is that better?
|
Ivan:
[0:14]
| Keep talking.
|
Sam:
[0:17]
| Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I am listing it.
|
Ivan:
[0:23]
| Okay, it's okay now. Okay, it's okay now.
|
Sam:
[0:26]
| It's okay now? Okay, let me... Close that. Get it out of my way. Okay. Ready to go?
|
Ivan:
[0:38]
| Sure.
|
Sam:
[0:39]
| Okay. Here we go. Bum, bum, bum.
|
Ivan:
[0:45]
| Bum, bum, bum.
|
Sam:
[0:46]
| Transcription by CastingWords welcome to curmudgeon's corner for saturday april 11th 2026 it's just after 17 utc as we're starting to record i'm sam matery vodbo is here whoa see i successfully did that in like one breath without any pauses aloha hello yvonne hola yes hola hola i'm.
|
Ivan:
[1:31]
| Trying to see that you know because hola and all i don't they don't really sound that different between portuguese and spanish they're spelled differently.
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Sam:
[1:41]
| Well you know from what you were saying i was just noticing like aloha is not that far off either no it's not you know you know, And for that matter, like, hello has an H in it as well. Although one piece of trivia, did you know this? That hello was not actually used regularly as a greeting until it was decided to use as a way to identify that you'd picked up the phone.
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Ivan:
[2:09]
| In English.
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Sam:
[2:11]
| Like, literally, like, when they first invented the telephone, and you know they were looking for like you know alexander graham bell and all those people who were involved in making the telephone like realized they needed a way to acknowledge, that in fact you had picked up the phone and we're now listening on the other side, and they they chose hello and it became popularized before that it was not a common greeting that's.
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Ivan:
[2:44]
| Very interesting that's very interesting sometimes how technology impacts communication and how we interact.
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Sam:
[2:50]
| Yeah and i forget i looked up what i looked up what people used before and i forget now well i don't remember anymore.
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Ivan:
[2:58]
| Oh fuck well oh come on.
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Sam:
[3:04]
| Ah
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Ivan:
[3:04]
| Now i gotta look this up so.
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Sam:
[3:06]
| What did people say and now you're gonna find out that everything thing i said about hello is bullshit good day good day how.
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Ivan:
[3:14]
| Do you do.
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Sam:
[3:16]
| And it was an alteration of hollow as well.
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Ivan:
[3:20]
| God save you.
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Sam:
[3:22]
| Before the telephone, here's from the Wikipedia entry for hello. Early uses. Hello with that spelling was used in publications in the U.S. as early as the 1826 edition of the Norwich Courier. Another early use was 1833 in a book about Davy Crockett.
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Ivan:
[3:44]
| I see that, Alexander. Graham Bell also has suggested maybe ahoy!
|
Sam:
[3:49]
| Yes. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, hello is an alteration of hallo or holo, which came from Old High German. But telephone. Before the telephone, verbal greetings often involved a time of day, such as good morning. When the telephone began connecting people in different time zones, greetings without time gained popularity. Thomas Edison is credited with popularizing hulo as a telephone greeting. In previous decades, Hula had been used as an exclamation of surprise, used early on by Charles Dickens in 1850, and halloo was shouted at ferryboat operators by people who wanted to catch a ride. According to one account, halloo was the first word Edison yelled into his ship phonograph when he discovered recorded sound in 1877. Shortly after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, He answered calls by saying, ahoy, ahoy, borrowing the term used on ships. There is no evidence that greeting caught on. Edison suggested hello on August 15th, 1877 in a letter to the president of Pittsburgh's Central District and Printing Telegraph Company. And they have the text of it. Friend David, I do not think we shall need a call bell as hello can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. What do you think, Edison? There you go. The origins of hello.
|
Ivan:
[5:14]
| You know, I have this issue with my wife and the phones as we talk a lot, okay, where I always have to be the one that hangs up.
|
Sam:
[5:30]
| Yes.
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Ivan:
[5:31]
| She does this thing where the conversation ended and say, I'm going to, I'm going to, I don't know. I don't have my hand near the end button.
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Sam:
[5:40]
| Right.
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Ivan:
[5:40]
| All right. and she will just okay bye bye and not hang up and so even if i'm in the most awkward, you know moment you know that i can't really reach it easily i have to go reach it because she won't she won't hit the end button.
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Sam:
[5:58]
| I have definitely been in situations where both my wife and i have said goodbye and neither one of us is hanging up uh now usually like you know i i think this happens to me most often in the car because like i have to remember what the right button to do to hang up in the car is and i know like using carplay big red button looks just like the one on the phone and there's also a button on my steering wheel but i have to think about it because it doesn't come second nature but even when it's on like, my actual phone and it's actually in my hand i have invariably left the phone app and i am somewhere else and so i also have to think about okay what's the right way to hang up and i believe one of the buttons might do it and like i i often also like i try to do it with the button on my headphones because i have the the air pod maxes or whatever they're called by.
|
Ivan:
[6:59]
| The way i i have found because of the situation. You can tell Siri to hang out.
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Sam:
[7:03]
| Yeah, no, I know you can do that as well. But like with my headphones, when I hit the button, I invariably end up muting myself instead of hanging up, which does not do the job.
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Ivan:
[7:14]
| That doesn't do the job, no.
|
Sam:
[7:16]
| You know, and on the phone, it's just like where, I'm often sitting there figuring out what to do and then the other person hangs up. But again, like I'm actually on the physical phone much more rarely than you are. Like, you know, it does happen. Like, you know, I had, let me check. There were phone calls yesterday. There were phone calls yesterday.
|
Ivan:
[7:40]
| Ah.
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Sam:
[7:43]
| Two.
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Ivan:
[7:44]
| Well, that's two calls. Okay.
|
Sam:
[7:47]
| Two phone calls yesterday. One was indeed to my wife. An incoming phone call from my wife. Let's see, how long was it? Three minutes. And then I had an incoming call from a pharmacy to tell me, you know, they needed some information for a new prescription. That was two minutes. Those were the two calls yesterday. So five minutes on the phone yesterday.
|
Ivan:
[8:10]
| I had six calls yesterday. Let's see, the day before I had more. I had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 calls on Thursday. Then I had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 9 on Wednesday No, 10 on Wednesday, So, yeah, I am on the, and that doesn't count, like, Zoom calls.
|
Sam:
[8:38]
| Right, right, right. Because only the actual phone.
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Ivan:
[8:40]
| No, no, no, but I'm not talking about, what I mean is, occasionally, intra-company, if somebody wants to call me intra-company, they will call me on Zoom because we don't have physical phones anymore.
|
Sam:
[8:56]
| Right, right, of course.
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Ivan:
[8:56]
| OK, for the most part. But but everybody's on Zoom. And so they will make a call to you for a one, you know, for what normally would have been a phone call to Zoom, you know.
|
Sam:
[9:09]
| Understood.
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Ivan:
[9:09]
| That's.
|
Sam:
[9:11]
| I've mentioned I mentioned before, by the way, also, whenever whenever I'm looking for the phone app, I use it infrequently enough that I do not have it on any of my screens on my phone. Like I have to either like type in P-H-O-N-E or go to the app library to find the phone app when I need it. Like I just don't have it on the default screens because I use it so infrequently.
|
Ivan:
[9:37]
| Okay, but you see, you're saying that you had two calls yesterday. I am sure that that is more times that you used other things on your home screen.
|
Sam:
[9:49]
| Well, I sort them by the amount of screen time they had. Yeah. And first of all, that was only five minutes total between them. So that's pretty low anyway. But also, like I said, I don't leave it up. So it doesn't count as screen time the whole time I'm on the phone anyway. yeah.
|
Ivan:
[10:06]
| But but that's you see you see but that's a terrible metric for a phone call because the reality is i don't think that it really counts a lot of the time that you spent talking as screen time.
|
Sam:
[10:21]
| Well right it only counts when i'm pretty sure it doesn't you're right so so let let me let me see i'm i'm only going to look at yesterday i usually look at a whole app when i do this but Let's see where where the phone came in. Blue Sky, two hours and seven minutes. TikTok, one hour and 24 minutes. Safari, one hour and one minute. Eyecatcher, 44 minutes. Slack, 43 minutes. Random.org, 34 minutes. messages 27 minutes mail 26 minutes linkedin 21 minutes pushover 15 minutes let's see i'm going to skip down a little we got blah blah camera 10 minutes music nine minutes the mcdonald's app six minutes messenger five minutes all of these are ahead of phone phone actual screen time one minute way way way down yeah so it it doesn't so it doesn't earn its spot on my yeah because right because.
|
Ivan:
[11:26]
| Because your your usual daddy well.
|
Sam:
[11:30]
| And also i'll say like you know let me say this as well both calls both calls were ones where people called me and i answered so i didn't even need to find the app in those cases here so it's even rarer This is how I'm going to tell you that.
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Ivan:
[11:47]
| Your method for organize this is, is bad. Okay. Because for example, even though I use the phone app that often, yes, according to my screen time report, it says that my screen time would be two minutes, which means that I would put it like, you know, somewhere, you know, buried when it doesn't make any sense because it's, you know, You know, actually, I was looking at today, yesterday, 12 minutes, which would put it well below all these others. OK, and that doesn't make any sense because I really spent I know I had some calls that were 45 minutes long.
|
Sam:
[12:32]
| Well, you know, if you wanted to properly order your phone by my method, then you would keep that damn phone app up the whole time you're on the call.
|
Ivan:
[12:41]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[12:41]
| I mean, otherwise you're not really paying attention to the person you're talking to, are you? You're not staring at the little...
|
Ivan:
[12:47]
| It's not a video call!
|
Sam:
[12:49]
| I know, but like if you're doing something else, you're clearly dividing your attention. You should be staring at the timer that's telling you how long you've been on the call.
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Ivan:
[12:59]
| If I've got the damn phone on my ear, I can't be looking at other stuff.
|
Sam:
[13:07]
| Wait, you actually use your phone holding it to your face?
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Ivan:
[13:10]
| Yes!
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Sam:
[13:10]
| Oh, I only use it on headphones. I would never. Like, oh, I have done it.
|
Ivan:
[13:17]
| Well, fuck.
|
Sam:
[13:17]
| Under duress. I've held the phone up to my ear when my headphones were not handy. But I hate it. I do not prefer it. Like, I move to headphones as quickly as I possibly can. Like, if I'm on the phone, the phone is in my hand and I am looking at the screen. The question is only, what am I looking at?
|
Ivan:
[13:35]
| I hate all of you. All of you. I hate you all.
|
Sam:
[13:40]
| Uh-huh. Okay, Yvonne. So, oh, the plan for the show as usual, we're talking about stuff like this for the first segment. Probably I'll do a couple movies before we're done, and then we'll do more newsy stuff in our second and possibly third segments, like depending on how we split things up. So Yvonne, did you have something else in mind for this first segment, or do you want to continue to talk phone habits?
|
Ivan:
[14:08]
| Do I have something in mind? I don't know. I don't remember what the fuck I had in mind.
|
Sam:
[14:14]
| If you have to think about it, you don't already have something in mind.
|
Ivan:
[14:17]
| No, I do think, no, no, I do. I thought that maybe I did have something else in mind, but I think I got derailed. And now I lost what the fuck I was going to say.
|
Sam:
[14:31]
| Oh, such a shame. You know, there's a trick to, you know, write notes. You know, you could have a little thing where your notes.
|
Ivan:
[14:39]
| Notes, you know, I have so many notes. I have so many things. I do so many things. I'm just, you know, I. Well, the one thing I was going to listen, I. I still haven't solved this. OK, in my head. OK, I bumped into this guy while I was traveling to San Juan on Monday.
|
Sam:
[15:03]
| Mm hmm.
|
Ivan:
[15:05]
| And he seemed familiar, but I'm not sure where I've met him. He's an older gentleman. One thing that grabbed my attention, this is a curious thing.
|
Sam:
[15:20]
| Okay?
|
Ivan:
[15:22]
| He looked familiar. Not sure from where I've met him. And I think that I also look familiar to him because he was very cold. He wound up sitting right beside me. The one curious thing that I notice is like sometimes, you know, people carry certain things that you know that that me having been a traveler, traveled, you know, a lot and been in the travel. I mean, and having actually worked in travel business, I saw that his bag was he had an interesting little briefcase. That was an Amex travel related services bag.
|
Sam:
[15:58]
| OK.
|
Ivan:
[15:59]
| And the thing is that those are not, unless you're a guy that's been on Amex travel events or stuff, it's not a very common bag. I just found it curious. Okay. Started talking to him. He's very nice. You know, just had a brief chat with him. But then it happens that when I'm on the return flight, I get on the plane for the return.
|
Sam:
[16:24]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[16:25]
| And this time I had been upgraded. And the other one I flew down in coach, he's boarding the same flight, too. OK, for their turn flight. And so he goes, hey, again. But he goes, well, this time you're in first class. I'm like, well, yeah, well, sorry. So anyway, when I get there, I had taken a I had taken a larger bag this week. So I checked it. So I got to go to baggage claim and he's there. So he said, so we started chatting, OK, or a little bit. And he was asking me where he actually he lives in Puerto Rico, but his kids are in Florida. And so he was coming over to babysit for his kids this weekend. He's been traveling back and forth because, whatever. And I was telling him, no, I live over here and I was down for work.
|
Sam:
[17:13]
| Just one thing.
|
Ivan:
[17:14]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[17:15]
| I know people have reflected this as a thing that triggers certain people. So just to point out.
|
Ivan:
[17:21]
| Which is?
|
Sam:
[17:23]
| Well, if it is your own child, it is not babysitting.
|
Ivan:
[17:27]
| Oh, no, no, no. No, he was babysitting his, you know, his kids were going to go do something and he was going to babysit the grandkids. Yes.
|
Sam:
[17:36]
| Okay. I guess that's okay. I thought you said kids.
|
Ivan:
[17:39]
| He was babysitting. No, no, no. He was babysitting for his grandkids.
|
Sam:
[17:42]
| He was babysitting for his kids.
|
Ivan:
[17:44]
| For his kids, his grandkids.
|
Sam:
[17:46]
| The people he was babysitting were not his kids. It was his grandkids.
|
Ivan:
[17:50]
| It was his grandkids.
|
Sam:
[17:51]
| You did say it was an older gentleman. So I was thinking, you know, you're babysitting the middle-aged man sitting there on the couch. No, no, no.
|
Ivan:
[17:56]
| No, no, he's going to, he came over to do babysitting for the, you know, for his grandkids. Okay. So, you know, I spent time that, you know, they've had events and whatever. So he's traveling back and forth. So, but, but it turns out that, you know, he, he, okay. One thing is that he is related to the former governor. Okay. Of Puerto Rico. To one of the former governors. Okay. and he is also a partner in the largest law firm in Puerto Rico. But I'm still, and I saw his profile in what cases. I'm still not sure exactly from where we have met. It may have been, I'm thinking that it may have been in court.
|
Sam:
[18:44]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[18:46]
| But this was in the 90s, okay? So there may have been a legal case.
|
Sam:
[18:51]
| Like in court in an adversarial situation with him?
|
Ivan:
[18:54]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[18:55]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[18:57]
| Yes. That may have been it. Because I saw in his profile who he represented, and I realized, But it wasn't adversarial in a way. It's like, oh, my God. Look, he represented a company. I represented our company, our company.
|
Ivan:
[19:16]
| Whatever, you know, it's just, you know, it wasn't such a it wasn't adversarial in the way of like you're suing somebody that you, you know, that you, you know, like we're not suing Donald Trump because he's building a ballroom or something now. There's an issue. You go to court. It is what it is. But but that may have been it. But I'm still like a little bit curious. I did. I do have his email and stuff or whatever. I'm going to email him just to say I or whatever or whatnot. I'll go, uh, uh, I'll go see, you know, take some time and grab a cup of coffee with them in San Juan next time I'm around. But I just thought it was curious that, you know, sometimes I've done this. It's just that, that, you know, we both were on the same flight, you know, coming and going, which has happened to me on several times. I keep, I keep always bumping into people at airports.
|
Ivan:
[20:06]
| I've mentioned this before. It's just, I, I'm at the airport and I'm like, oh, Hey, you know, whatever, you know, You know, I realized that I had once, I had an employee, and he said, no, come on. You know, he's saying, you know so many people. I'm like, no, no, I really don't know that many people. So as we're going through the airport, I swear to God, I think three different people said hi to me at the airport, including somebody on our flight. And he looks at me, I'm like, okay, fine, fine. Okay, I know more people than I thought I did. Okay, fine, fine, fine. Okay? Right.
|
Ivan:
[20:47]
| Oh. So anyway, so that was like my thing for this week.
|
Sam:
[20:53]
| That's your story? Exciting story. One of those small world kind of thingies.
|
Ivan:
[21:00]
| Yeah, it's just small world. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[21:02]
| Yeah, the one I remember most of that was when I was on a business. No, I wasn't on a business. I think I was on my random trip. I was on my random trip that I went to England on while I was working at Merrill Lynch. And, like, I bumped into somebody from work at Heathrow. from work in new jersey i'm like what are you doing here you know so we chatted for a few minutes and then moved on you know but okay i guess it's time for movies movies i'm knocking two off the list as usual today and interestingly enough like these two are both i think smaller movies this time around smaller movies okay and and i will say these two are also movies such that when they when i i listed them as okay these are the next two to talk about i had to bring up the wikipedia pages to even remember what the hell they were so that should tell you something about my thoughts on these movies to begin with movie number one the killer from 2023 killer any bring any bell whatsoever no no.
|
Ivan:
[22:23]
| Idea never heard of it.
|
Sam:
[22:24]
| Okay so apparently this was i i guess it was a netflix movie, And it was at a bunch of film festivals and stuff like that, too. I don't know. Anyway, here is the beginning of the plot from Wikipedia as usual. First couple paragraphs.
|
Sam:
[22:45]
| A professional hitman, known only as The Killer, stakes out a Parisian hotel room. He prepares to use a sniper rifle to kill a target who will check into the hotel room at an unknown time.
|
Sam:
[22:58]
| While waiting for the target, he eats, practices yoga, listens to music, exclusively the Smiths, and talks on the phone with his handler, Eddie Hodges, who is an attorney and his former university law professor. The target arrives with a dominatrix, and the killer shoots but misses, accidentally shooting the dominatrix. The killer flees, evading the police and disposing of his equipment. He then flies to the United States. The killer returns to his hideout in the Dominican Republic to find out it has been broken into and his girlfriend Magdala attacked. She is in the ICU of a hospital with her brother Marcus watching over her. Marcus says that Magdala was interrogated and tortured by two assassins, but managed to injure one of them and escape. The killer tracks down Leo, the taxi driver who drove the assassins to the killer's home. Leo identifies one of the assassins, a strong man with a limp leg, nicknamed The Brute, and a woman who resembles a Q-tip known as The Expert. The killer shoots Leo dead and seeks to track down the assassins, dot, dot, dot, continue, continue, continue. The rest of the plot revolves around him trying to find the people who were trying to get him and his girlfriend because he messed up the assassination, as well as potentially following up on the original assassination that he messed up.
|
Ivan:
[24:25]
| So, question. How did you wind up watching this movie? It was not on the AFI list or whatever. I, like...
|
Sam:
[24:34]
| You know, I have no idea how things get added to my list anymore. I used to always, whenever I added things to the list, also note an origin.
|
Ivan:
[24:44]
| Yeah, but I stopped doing that years ago. But you have no idea. But it was on your list.
|
Sam:
[24:50]
| It was on my list. So what happened is basically the summary is at some point, somewhere, somehow.
|
Ivan:
[24:59]
| Someone said, hey, the killer. And so, okay, list.
|
Sam:
[25:03]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[25:04]
| That's it.
|
Sam:
[25:04]
| Yeah, exactly. So either I saw something, I saw like a social media post or something from somebody who said they liked it, or I saw a clip of it on TikTok, or I heard it mentioned on a podcast, or whatever. Whatever. Yeah, so I have no idea which of those sources were this, but it got on the list. And apparently, you know, I'm looking, it won some film festival type awards, Venice International Film Festival, Hollywood Music and Media Awards, Las Vegas Film Critics Society. I mean, we're not talking Oscars or anything. It was nominated for a bunch of those things. Sorry, it won a couple of little things. You know, and here's the thing. As I was reminded of it, reading this, I'm like, I remember it was fine. It was fine. Definitely, like, we're talking thumb sideways territory, not, like, thumb straight up. Maybe a little bit up of sideways.
|
Ivan:
[26:03]
| It actually had good reviews online, I just saw.
|
Sam:
[26:06]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[26:07]
| So you only went to thumb sideways, but according to the critics.
|
Sam:
[26:12]
| The main thing that leaves me at a thumb sideways.
|
Ivan:
[26:15]
| 85% Rotten Tomatoes.
|
Sam:
[26:17]
| Yeah, no, I hear you. Look, here's the thing. The main thing that leaves me there is a year later, and it is like a week and a half short of being a year after I watched this movie, I didn't remember it.
|
Ivan:
[26:30]
| Ah, okay, well, that would do it. Okay, yeah, I'm with, yeah, yeah, yeah, it wasn't memorable, okay? Yeah, that makes sense.
|
Sam:
[26:37]
| I mean, like, right.
|
Ivan:
[26:38]
| Because I've had those, I agree.
|
Sam:
[26:40]
| I mean, as I read the thing, I'm like remembering it. I'm like, oh, okay. It was, it was, it was an okay movie. I, you know, I mean, it had some of the sort of, you know, violence with no repercussions thing that, you know, if you actually think about it a bit, it bugs you. I mean, the main character is a hitman. He kills multiple people over the course of the movie, including multiple innocents, you know? So, you know, he's not super sympathetic and he's kind of cold about things. But, you know, it was fine. It was fine. But because it wasn't memorable, like a really good movie. If you mention a movie that I loved, I'm going to be like, oh, yeah, that was awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had movies like that.
|
Ivan:
[27:31]
| I realize that.
|
Sam:
[27:32]
| If I really hated it, I'm also going to remember it because I really hated the damn thing. Right.
|
Ivan:
[27:37]
| But, but, but, but this was like, you know, obviously you were entertained for a little bit, but not enough that it held a place in your memory that you were like, yeah, I get it. Yeah, exactly.
|
Sam:
[27:51]
| Exactly. Okay. So the next movie and my immediate thing is exactly the same thing for this fucking movie. Okay. You know, this was Sound of My Voice from 2011.
|
Ivan:
[28:09]
| Fuck another movie I never heard of.
|
Sam:
[28:11]
| And it was also like one of these film festival things, I guess. It premiered at Sundance. So, you know, that kind of movie. I'll give you the plot of it.
|
Sam:
[28:27]
| Okay, read the beginning of the plot again. In Los Angeles, substitute teacher Peter Aitken and his girlfriend, aspiring writer Lorna Michelson, are making a documentary about a secretive cult. Their goal is to expose its leader, a mysterious woman named Maggie, as a fraud. After being deemed ready, Peter and Lorna are instructed to shower thoroughly and dress in white surgical gowns. They are then driven blindfolded to a secret basement location. There, they are received by Klaus, with whom they perform an intricate, practiced handshake. Inside, they join eight other members to meet Maggie, who uses an oxygen tank. She explains that the strict hygiene protocols are necessary to protect her from her severe illness. I'll read one more paragraph. Maggie claims she is a time traveler from the year 2054. She describes a future of war and famine and says she has returned to select a group to prepare for the coming hardships. Maggie leads the group through intense psychological exercises, but she never definitively proves or disproves her extraordinary story. Her charisma is powerful, and both Peter and Lorna find their skepticism wavering. Lorna grows concerned as Peter, who was initially the most adamant about exposing Maggie, seems to be falling under her spell. Dot, dot, dot.
|
Ivan:
[29:55]
| Dot, dot, dot.
|
Sam:
[29:57]
| Dot, dot, dot.
|
Ivan:
[29:58]
| We just offended an entire demographic with that dot, dot, dot.
|
Sam:
[30:02]
| I know. I used dot, dot, dot in something the other day, too. And I thought about it as I used it. And I'm like, you know, I hear there's a whole demographic who thinks this is passive-aggressive. And I'm like, fuck it. I'm doing it anyway.
|
Ivan:
[30:17]
| Yeah, I'm with you on that one.
|
Sam:
[30:19]
| Yeah. So, anyway. Like I said, same damn thing. When I think back on this, it was okay. It was interesting. I don't regret spending the 85 minutes in this case on it. Quite short. Yeah, it was short. But I didn't remember it. I didn't remember it without being reminded of it by going and digging it up. And by digging it up, by looking it up on Wikipedia, right?
|
Ivan:
[30:50]
| So you didn't use a shovel.
|
Sam:
[30:52]
| I did not use a shovel. No, no shovel in this case. I did not bury this thing. And, you know, it was fine. It was, it also apparently closed, it premiered at Sundance. It closed South by Southwest, whatever. It was a fine movie, some sideways, maybe slightly more than sideways, like up a little tiny bit, but not particularly memorable. It was just sort of, it was a thing. It did its thing. And that's it. That's all I got.
|
Ivan:
[31:30]
| And it did its thing.
|
Sam:
[31:31]
| I will mention, I'm not going to do a full review of this, but I did last weekend see Project Hail Mary. Big thumbs up. Or if you know the movie, thumbs down.
|
Ivan:
[31:43]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[31:44]
| But multiple big thumbs up. Good movie. It was a good movie.
|
Ivan:
[31:49]
| You're, you're, you're, you're spoilers! Spoilers!
|
Sam:
[31:53]
| No, that was, that's my only spoiler. I'll talk about it when I get to it in order in a year and a half or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[31:59]
| I might, I might try to go watch it tonight. Maybe.
|
Sam:
[32:03]
| Okay. It was good. It was good. Yeah. That's all I got. Ready for a break?
|
Ivan:
[32:09]
| Ready for a break.
|
Sam:
[32:10]
| Ready for a break. Oh, one, one more movie note that I'll get this one in order eventually too, but I'm not even going to mention the name of it. but a week or two ago we Alex and I watched a movie that you know it was sort of slow plotting clearly an indie movie it it had some good you know okay ratings on various things I liked the movie bottom line I would I will eventually give it a thumbs up but while we were finishing the movie while the credits were up Brandy who'd only watched part only been in a room for part of the movie, looked it up and found out that the budget for that movie was $7,000.
|
Ivan:
[32:57]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[32:58]
| Now that is a budget movie.
|
Ivan:
[33:01]
| That's a budget movie. That's for sure.
|
Sam:
[33:03]
| But it was still like, I, I would not have guessed that the budget was $7,000. I mean, it's not like it was a big special effects movie or anything like that. So I wouldn't have thought it was super expensive, but 7,000 is like, you know, it's like okay then why the hell am i not making a movie you know that could be my new career skills oh oh skills well fuck that's not fair, skills creativity what the hell exactly god damn it ah okay, Okay, here's a break. Wait. Okay, here we go.
|
Sam:
[34:26]
| And here we are. And I will point out once again that he has been posting again. He posted a video. Let's see. Let me make sure. Two days ago, one month ago, two months ago, three months ago, three months ago, three months ago, four months ago. And last night, he finished putting together one that I see is not published yet. He was probably exporting it while we slept last night. So I imagine there'll be another one out soon. Now, these are all still videos that were recorded when he was seven years old. But, you know, they're being posted now.
|
Ivan:
[35:01]
| He's only behind, like what?
|
Sam:
[35:03]
| Nine years.
|
Ivan:
[35:04]
| That's what I was going to say, like about a decade? Yeah.
|
Sam:
[35:06]
| He's currently posting videos that were recorded February of 2017, to be specific.
|
Ivan:
[35:16]
| Like father, like son.
|
Sam:
[35:18]
| Yes. Someday I will catch up on things too. Okay, so newsy stuff, Yvonne. Where do we want to start today?
|
Ivan:
[35:27]
| Oh, fuck me.
|
Sam:
[35:28]
| Okay. Oh, while you think about it, one correction that I should have mentioned during the movie segment. During my review of Lawrence of Arabia, I mentioned that he was in touch. One of the people he was working with was Faisal. And I'd made a comment about Faisal being related to the ruling family of Saudi Arabia. And you said, yes, that rules to this day. No. Actually, Faisal ended up king of Iraq.
|
Ivan:
[36:09]
| But they were still related, though. I had looked that up. They were still related anyway.
|
Sam:
[36:15]
| No, but they're potentially related. But what I had said was this guy ended up the first king of Saudi Arabia. He did not. He ended up the first king of Iraq. And the House of Saud is, of course, the ones in Saudi Arabia. He was King Faisal, who was in Iraq, and their family, I guess, was in charge until Saddam and those folks took over.
|
Ivan:
[36:38]
| Okay, but my understanding is because there was a King Faisal of Saudi Arabia that they were related. Okay? As a matter of fact, I just pulled it up on Wikipedia. That's why I didn't correct you, because I had looked it up. And there was.
|
Sam:
[36:53]
| A— This Faisal of Saudi Arabia from 1964 to 1973.
|
Ivan:
[36:56]
| And they were related.
|
Sam:
[36:58]
| But it was not the Faisal family that was the ruling family of Saudi Arabia.
|
Ivan:
[37:04]
| No. Yeah, it's a different family, but they are related.
|
Sam:
[37:08]
| Yes. I mean, even Faisal of Saudi Arabia is Faisal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. He was part of the House of Saud, whereas the other Faisal was the one who ended up king of Iraq and was the companion of Lawrence of Arabia.
|
Ivan:
[37:27]
| But they are related, so you weren't completely incorrect.
|
Sam:
[37:36]
| Thank you for the generosity there. I still felt it needed a correction. Okay. Go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[37:43]
| No, I mean, yeah, it's a good clarification, but you weren't completely off base. They were related. Okay.
|
Sam:
[37:50]
| In the same way that, like, all of the royal houses of Europe were related because they were all interbred.
|
Ivan:
[37:59]
| That still counts.
|
Sam:
[38:01]
| Yeah. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[38:02]
| I mean, what are you going to say?
|
Sam:
[38:04]
| So if I had said Queen Elizabeth was queen of Germany, close enough because— No.
|
Ivan:
[38:10]
| No, no, no, no, no, no. That his family wound up— No, because what you said is that the family was the one that became, you know, ruled Saudi Arabia for many— for still to today is not incorrect because they were a family. Because, distant, whatever, yes. Yeah, and not distant.
|
Sam:
[38:33]
| Not super distant. Okay, fine. No, not super distant. No, no. Yeah, like, I mean, Queen Elizabeth married a Prince of Greece. So, you know, they're all good. They're all, as we said, they're all interbred.
|
Ivan:
[38:50]
| Yeah, they're all interbred. So anyway.
|
Sam:
[38:52]
| Which, you know, at certain points in history reached the point of actual inbreeding, but we don't have to go there right now. Except I just did.
|
Ivan:
[39:01]
| So anyway what.
|
Sam:
[39:03]
| Are we doing.
|
Ivan:
[39:03]
| Well since you went to the middle east yes hey sam how's our peace peace and victory and in the in the middle east working out well we are now we should.
|
Sam:
[39:16]
| Start the whole thing of a peace deal happened after our last conversation so.
|
Ivan:
[39:22]
| Is there a peace deal I've...
|
Sam:
[39:26]
| Well, look, here's the thing. Despite, like... Okay, so... Back up, there was an announcement of a peace deal from Donald Trump that the Iranians said, yes, there was. And then it turned out that there was nothing in writing. And the two sides disagreed about what was in it. And there were then violations on all sides. Right. The Iranians hit things, the Americans hit things, the Israelis hit things. But nevertheless, all of the sides are acting as if there's something still in place. And supposedly, as we're recording, there should be more negotiations going on. That's what I read.
|
Ivan:
[40:18]
| They said, U.S., Pakistan, Iran, and Pakistan hold ceasefire talks in Islamabad. Right.
|
Sam:
[40:29]
| Yeah. And so, like, we're hanging on to the fiction that there was a ceasefire this last week in order to facilitate additional talks, which I guess that's not bad. Like, diplomacy is good. But one of the key features that the American administration was saying was part of it was the straits would be open. They're not open. Traffic is actually down from the moment that the announcement was made about this peace thing. I mean, it was not high to begin with. There were like four ships before. Now there's two or whatever that made it through. And they're all ones that are negotiating with Iran and paying tolls. And, you know, the Iranians were convinced, as were the Pakistanis, by the way, that part of the deal was Israel would stop hammering Lebanon. And there have been extensive additional attacks in Lebanon. Lots and lots of civilians killed, by the way, there, too. Apparently, I saw one stat. There have been more civilians killed in Lebanon by the Israeli attacks this week than when that explosion happened in Beirut a few years back.
|
Ivan:
[41:46]
| So, um... Is this an unmitigated victory?
|
Sam:
[41:53]
| Oh, yes. Well, both Iran and the U.S. say it is. So if they both agree that it's an unmitigated victory, it must be, right?
|
Ivan:
[42:03]
| God. I see.
|
Sam:
[42:06]
| No, I mean, bottom line, whenever you try to push on specifics, what the Iranians think they agreed to and what the Americans think they agreed to are not even close to resembling each other, and both include elements that the other side says they're unwilling to negotiate on. So, well...
|
Ivan:
[42:29]
| It is this. This is about the worst victory ever. I have never seen anybody claim victory over a worse ever outcome. Because the United States gained absolutely nothing. Neither did Israel, for that matter. Other than we killed a whole bunch of people, destroyed a whole bunch of things.
|
Sam:
[43:02]
| Other than, come on, isn't that enough? I.
|
Ivan:
[43:06]
| Mean and killing all those people did not actually, do anything positive for anybody right I mean if you're going.
|
Sam:
[43:21]
| On the did we strengthen you said did not do anything positive to anybody sanctions were lifted on the Russians sanctions were lifted on the Iranians that the Iranians have more control over the Straits of Hormuz than they have ever. I don't see how you can say this had no positive effects for anybody, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[43:43]
| Well, okay, correct. The Iranians actually, as far as I can tell, all the gains that you could plausibly really chalk up are for the Iranians.
|
Sam:
[43:54]
| And Russians.
|
Ivan:
[43:55]
| And Russians.
|
Sam:
[43:57]
| I'm sure that's what everyone wanted, right?
|
Ivan:
[44:00]
| Apparently. I'm sure that's what Trump wanted. I mean, it seems.
|
Sam:
[44:05]
| Well, and Netanyahu got to delay his trial slightly longer. Apparently, one of the things is, apparently, the trial is set to resume whenever a ceasefire goes into effect. So there's a little bit of an incentive there.
|
Ivan:
[44:20]
| Gee! No wonder he's not going to stop bombing anybody. He's never stopping. Oh, are trials not going to resume until the bombing stops? Okay, great. Who else can I bomb? They checked my Rolodex to see anybody I haven't bombed. I'm sure Netanyahu probably still maybe has a Rolodex.
|
Sam:
[44:43]
| Probably. There you go. No, the whole thing's an unmitigated disaster. And every once in a while, I see little clips here and there of people in the administration doing their little spin to try to talk about it in a positive way. And it's just sad. Pitiful, sad, upsetting. I don't know the right words, but it's not... It's not helpful. I don't know. Look, they're in there. And apparently one of the things that was leaked, presumably by Vance himself, is that Vance was the most consistent person saying, this is a bad idea. We shouldn't do it. And now he's leading the team to do these negotiations. And specifically, apparently, because the Iranians requested him. So, by the way, we are now determining who our negotiators are because Iran requested it. Now, the rest of the team is still that Whitcock guy and Jared Kushner.
|
Ivan:
[45:52]
| Ah, yeah, Kush. Good old Kush.
|
Sam:
[45:55]
| Who has no formal role, apparently, but he's still part of the three key negotiators on the American side.
|
Ivan:
[46:02]
| But we still keep thinking we're still consenting this clown.
|
Sam:
[46:05]
| And, of course, as I call all kinds of business entanglements that are affected by all this as well.
|
Ivan:
[46:11]
| I'm sure that that doesn't impact any of his decisions whatsoever.
|
Sam:
[46:15]
| No.
|
Ivan:
[46:16]
| Everything done in the best interest of the United States of America.
|
Sam:
[46:21]
| But look, on the whole, I'd rather they be having a pretend ceasefire while they're still all shooting at each other and negotiating. than not.
|
Ivan:
[46:33]
| This is just so insane. The whole thing. I mean, one day he threatened the complete annihilation of a civilization.
|
Sam:
[46:44]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[46:45]
| Because this happened this week!
|
Sam:
[46:47]
| Which everybody interpreted as he's threatening to use nukes.
|
Ivan:
[46:52]
| And the next day, we have a ceasefire.
|
Sam:
[46:54]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[46:55]
| By the way, one thing that I was— And then the next day after that.
|
Sam:
[46:59]
| By the way, he's threatening to resume attacks if they don't X-Y-Z.
|
Ivan:
[47:02]
| And he's going back and forth. Yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[47:04]
| It swings like a mad pendulum.
|
Ivan:
[47:07]
| Pendulum, yeah.
|
Sam:
[47:08]
| Yeah, not even a regular pendulum, like one of those double pendulums with chaotic motion.
|
Ivan:
[47:12]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The ones that crash into each other, yes.
|
Sam:
[47:16]
| Well, no, no. You've got one pendulum attached to the bottom of another pendulum.
|
Ivan:
[47:20]
| It's a standard— Where they have these little balls.
|
Sam:
[47:23]
| No, no, not a Newton's cradle. Not a Newton's cradle.
|
Ivan:
[47:26]
| Okay, okay.
|
Sam:
[47:27]
| No, a double pendulum. It's a classic thing. You have one pendulum and then another pendulum attached to the bottom of that one. And then when you swing it, it very critically has, it moves into chaotic motion very quickly. It's not predictable. It's all following the standard laws of physics, but it's so sensitive to initial conditions that within a few seconds, it's completely unpredictable where that thing's going to be.
|
Ivan:
[47:50]
| Excellent.
|
Sam:
[47:51]
| Um that.
|
Ivan:
[47:52]
| Is the perfect metaphor for this.
|
Sam:
[47:54]
| But anyway he's, i i still there and and you have you have maga fragmenting over this as well and the reason i bring that up now.
|
Ivan:
[48:08]
| Well fragmenting look there he went on truth social and torched, His biggest champions, like all of them.
|
Sam:
[48:20]
| Well, people who used to be his biggest champions, but torched them. Yeah, no. And part of what they were saying, like, which one was it? One of the former Fox News blondes said.
|
Ivan:
[48:37]
| Megyn Kelly?
|
Sam:
[48:38]
| It was probably Megyn Kelly who said something about, and people talk about 3D chess. Give me a break, right? There's no 3D fucking chess involved here. This is somebody who fundamentally does not know what the fuck he is doing and has gotten by his entire goddamn life by just pushing through things by the force of will. finally encountering a situation well it happened with covet as well but now encountering another situation where he can't just bully his way through and get to a solution he expects everything you know we we joke about the in two weeks in two weeks in two weeks because that's the longest time frame his mind can comprehend okay and he can't think anything past that amount and and in In this case, I've said before, and I know certain people push back on this, but the man has had, you know, I am not a diagnostician who could say this in anything, but from everything I can see and from people talking about the symptoms, he could have been diagnosed with a variety of mental illnesses since he was a young man. Okay? And over time, as he ages.
|
Ivan:
[50:01]
| They're getting— They've improved, right?
|
Sam:
[50:03]
| Oh, yes. He's grown out of them. Yes! No. And this is the malignant narcissism. This is—, Look, he's getting worse. He is getting worse.
|
Ivan:
[50:17]
| So much worse.
|
Sam:
[50:18]
| And maybe you can't technically call it dementia because that's a very specific thing. I don't know, although I see people arguing he meets some of those symptoms as well. But regardless, the issues he has had with how he relates to the rest of the universe are getting worse and getting worse rapidly, whatever name you put on it. Whether it's a mental illness, whether it's dementia, whether it's just a personality trait, whatever the fuck it is, it's getting worse. And at this point, it really looks like the way his administration works right now is that he goes around randomly posting things on his social network whenever the thought enters his mind. And then his whole administration races to catch up, try to justify whatever he was saying, and try to do something that somewhat resembles it. And that's how things work. There is no coherent plan coming from anywhere, at least not the places where Donald Trump is paying attention. In places where Donald Trump is not paying attention, underlings like Stephen Miller or whoever are absolutely ruthlessly following some plan that they are smart enough to know and execute in the long term.
|
Sam:
[51:39]
| But when Donald Trump is specifically paying attention to something, it's everybody sort of racing to catch up and make sense of the madman's ravings and base policy on it. And it's because nobody's willing to tell him no. Apparently, J.D. Vance is trying to say, I tried. I tried. But in the end, he was like, I think this is a bad idea, sir, but I'll support you all the way if that's what you decide. So, which I guess vice presidents do that. I mean, that's part of a vice president's role. But still. Yeah. You know, and I think, I mean, at the rate it's getting worse, I feel like at some point it's going to be undeniable. Like, I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[52:30]
| But the economy is booming.
|
Sam:
[52:32]
| Can we really last two and a half more years if this continues to get worse? Or hell, even if it stays just like it is right now?
|
Ivan:
[52:40]
| No!
|
Sam:
[52:41]
| I mean, I guess we don't have a lot of choice, but.
|
Ivan:
[52:45]
| Well, can we last it? Well, not without a lot of, with potentially some really serious catastrophes happening along the way.
|
Sam:
[52:56]
| Right. Like, and this reminds me of one of the YouTubers that Alex is watching all the time is Dr. Mike. I don't know if you guys are familiar with him. But anyway, he did a thing where he was reacting to memes a while back. I don't know. He watches old videos. But one of the memes was somebody saying, I have to word it correctly, you don't need a parachute to jump out of an airplane. You need a parachute to jump out of an airplane twice.
|
Ivan:
[53:27]
| That's very true. It's correct. It's very true. By the way, there have been people that have survived.
|
Sam:
[53:34]
| I know. There have been people who have survived.
|
Ivan:
[53:35]
| Without a parachute. But it's not likely.
|
Sam:
[53:39]
| I think there's a Wikipedia page with a list of them. Just to tell you how unfrequent it is.
|
Ivan:
[53:45]
| Yeah, it's not, you know, well, it's not like a lot of people do try frequently to jump out of an airplane without a parachute either.
|
Sam:
[53:53]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[53:54]
| So that's not a, you know, it's not a thing.
|
Sam:
[53:58]
| Not a regular thing anyway. That was related to you saying, well, can we last two and a half years? We can last two and a half years. It's a question of what the consequences are. Right. you know and, I mean, and at some point, I don't know, like people have suggested things like, can we do like a Truman show thing for him? Build him a fake Oval Office, let him sit there, make decisions. And the ballroom.
|
Ivan:
[54:29]
| And the ballroom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The ballroom.
|
Sam:
[54:31]
| Well, people have suggested like the ballroom is basically a thing that the rest of the administration is giving him in order to keep his attention on something that doesn't matter. The arch, too.
|
Ivan:
[54:46]
| The arch. And he wants to paint the building by the White House because he thinks it looks ugly. And I guess, look, I will admit that considering all the terrible things, if we can keep him focused on that bullshit, then that's much better for the country than anything else. Fine. Let him fucking play with his toys. Okay, great. You know, let's not go to war with somebody else.
|
Sam:
[55:15]
| We can knock him all down after he's dead.
|
Ivan:
[55:18]
| Exactly. Let's not, you know, maybe he won't set more tariffs. I've noticed he hasn't talked about tariffs in a while.
|
Sam:
[55:25]
| He got bored.
|
Ivan:
[55:26]
| Yeah, he got bored. And, you know, so that's over on the side. You know, yeah, let him, you know, I don't know, fucking build whatever the fuck he wants. Okay. You know, so that way you could just leave us all alone.
|
Sam:
[55:41]
| Mm hmm. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[55:44]
| But Melania was out there running cover for him this week.
|
Sam:
[55:46]
| Sam. Oh, yeah. Moving on to Melania? Wait. Before Melania... Okay. Let's move on to Melania. I was going to go back to the MAGA people splintering off, but let's do Melania.
|
Ivan:
[55:56]
| But Melania decided to run cover for him, Sam, this week, where she decided for some fucking reason to go stand on a podium and I issued some bizarre Epstein denial that nobody was asking for.
|
Sam:
[56:15]
| Right. Yeah, she said she wasn't involved in any way in something, something, victim, something. She said she wasn't a victim and she wasn't a co-conspirator and she didn't know him very well or Maxwell. And any accusations against her are completely and totally false, leading everybody to go, oh, which accusations were those? Let's dig back into them. And people also pointed out, by the way, that with Iran going on and with everything else going on—, The whole Epstein stuff had faded from the headlines. People weren't really talking about it as much. And so she helped us out with that to bring it back.
|
Ivan:
[57:01]
| But as far as I can see, okay, so I think that where, I don't know why, because I guess this had been building traction around. There is this thing where there is this quote from this Michael Wolff book. of Michael Wolff in August 2025. There's a new book, this new book called Entitled to Rise and Fall of the House of York. It contains a passage in which Epstein is quoted where he said he had sex with Melania a full year before Donald Trump commended the relationship with Melania.
|
Sam:
[57:39]
| Yes. Here's the thing with that, though. You're right. It had been percolating. I think we even mentioned that on this show a few months ago. like the the whole and this book was out like a year ago and that's what i'm saying and that was actually a whole thing about it because it had this paragraph in it it was apparently in the first printing only the first 60 000 copies or so of the book then melania sued the publisher they took it out of all subsequent versions of this book that were that were printed okay, so this was a thing there was back and forth it was talked about it was one of the things that people have talked about is like oh well it looks like.
|
Ivan:
[58:25]
| There must be something big coming out, which is why she said this, right?
|
Sam:
[58:30]
| Well, here's the two things. One, this was old, so maybe it was going to percolate back up again. But people had heard this rumor before. The second that has been coming in the last day since she did this is there is this woman who Melania was friends with for 20 years.
|
Ivan:
[58:51]
| Oh, right. Who got deported.
|
Sam:
[58:54]
| Who got deported because her husband, by the way, who is still involved in administration, he's with J.D. Vance in Islamabad right now.
|
Ivan:
[59:05]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[59:06]
| This woman's ex-husband, I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong.
|
Ivan:
[59:09]
| Yes, yes, yes, yes.
|
Sam:
[59:10]
| But he had a messy divorce and child custody thing with this woman who was Melania's friend. and apparently her husband asked Donald to help make sure she was deported. She was indeed deported. And now she's mad at Donald and Melania and is busy over on X Twitter, threatening to expose everything. And she's not afraid of Melania and she's going to tell all the secrets. And one of those secrets was apparently corroborating this Michael Wolff stuff, but there might be more. Because the rumor that was out there, by the way, more so than just that paragraph, just to flesh it out a little bit, what the uncorroborated rumor mill was saying was that not only was Melania with Epstein first, but Epstein specifically trafficked Melania.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:09]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:00:10]
| And was shopping her out to wealthy men as essentially, you know, a high-priced prostitute. And then, you know, eventually Donald Trump bought her to keep her. You know, and that's the story here. That's the rumor mill. Now, is it corroborated in any way by facts that anybody can prove? No. Which is why the mainstream media wasn't like...
|
Ivan:
[1:00:38]
| Okay, corroborated, you know, is it 100%? No.
|
Sam:
[1:00:43]
| There was not proof.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:44]
| But there is, well, it's not, there is a whole bunch of circumstantial stuff around it.
|
Sam:
[1:00:50]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:51]
| That leads you, that could make you draw that conclusion because... First of all, it seems that this guy who was the ex-husband is the guy that sponsored her visa for her to come over to the United States in the first place.
|
Sam:
[1:01:03]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:04]
| Together with this other woman. Okay. Amanda Ungaro. Her name is. I'm sorry. I shouldn't call her. Just, you know, dismiss her.
|
Sam:
[1:01:11]
| That woman.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:11]
| Say that. That was not nice. And so he's the one that brought her on these visas. These visas that they used. Epstein was using these Einstein visas. of people with extraordinary ability or something or whatever. So he was exploiting those visas to bring these women over. And the guy who was sponsoring the visas is this guy, Mr. Zampoli, who was an Italian-American dual citizen. So this guy is the guy that brought over Melania, using the visas that Epstein was using to traffic women. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:01:57]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:58]
| I mean, so this whole thing isn't just based on conjecture and, and, But Amanda, who this guy, all of a sudden, I guess, was causing her trouble. And he decided, hey, let me get her deported. Which the one thing that I'm still like stunned is if they were married, should have been eligible to have gotten like permanent residence and even citizenship. Because that's usually the first step that you do if you get married to a U.S. citizen. Somehow she didn't get the paperwork.
|
Sam:
[1:02:29]
| Is he a citizen?
|
Ivan:
[1:02:30]
| Yes. He's a dual citizen.
|
Sam:
[1:02:33]
| Okay. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:33]
| And so somehow she wasn't able to do that. Not sure why. OK. And then, you know, I mean, she has a child who seems to be a U.S. citizen as well. And that's why I get an important because it's trying to keep custody. This guy winds up getting her deported. OK. Now, some people are arguing maybe it was possible that Steele would have been deported. But I think that she had actually far more arguments than most people to argue for her not being deported.
|
Sam:
[1:03:06]
| OK, well, and let's just throw this out here, too. These are not poor people. Like, I'm sure she's got like best lawyers and blah, blah, blah. And generally speaking, they're not a universal rule. But if you are rich enough, you're not going to be deported.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:25]
| Correct. But somehow, she wound up being deported anyway. You know, I'm looking at this. Sampoli ran this company called ID Model Management at the time. And then he was purchasing Elite Model Management, which Epstein, with Epstein, but the deal never went through. So they were using these model management companies, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:03:49]
| Which Trump was neck deep in as well, by the way, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:03:53]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:03:53]
| He had his own model management stuff. And basically, what seemingly, and again, not proven in the way that we work in a court of law, like all these model management agencies dealing with underage models, it was all trafficking.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:12]
| It was all trafficking. It was all trafficking. By the way, if you fuck somebody, does that count as like you're not friends with them and you don't know them? I guess it's possible.
|
Sam:
[1:04:24]
| It's absolutely possible.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:25]
| I mean, if you're, that's true. I mean, I guess if you were being, okay, the thing is that if you're, you know, if you're being, you know, basically pimped out as a prostitute, then the answer is maybe a yes.
|
Sam:
[1:04:39]
| Yeah, she didn't say she didn't have sex with Epstein. She said she didn't have a relationship.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:44]
| She said she didn't have a, right, she didn't have a relationship with him, which could be absolutely correct.
|
Sam:
[1:04:48]
| Now, of course, there are lots of pictures of them together, but that also is not necessarily a relationship. You know, if you're a prominent person and you go to lots of parties or whatever, there are pictures with you with lots of people.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:01]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:05:02]
| That's true. Pick any random politician. They're going to have pictures with people that are unsavory. Automatically. There's no way not to, right? Because part of their job is go out and shake hands and stuff. Now, Melania wasn't the politician, but she was still a prominent, semi-famous person, now quite famous person.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:21]
| Okay, but of course, Melania's saying that she doesn't know them very well, right?
|
Sam:
[1:05:24]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:24]
| Okay? All right, here's an email that was in the Epstein files, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:05:28]
| She specifically mentioned this email in her statement, saying it was casual, like, polite email.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:35]
| Huh? Sweet pea, thanks for your message. Actually, well, let me see. Well, hold on. Where's the original? No, no, no. Okay. Actually, plans have changed again, and now I'm on my way back to New York. I leave again on Friday, so I still do not think I have time to see you, sadly. I will try and call the, okay? Her message is, how are you? Nice story about J.E. in New York mag. You look great on the picture. I know you're very busy flying all over the world. How is Palm Beach? I cannot wait to go down. Give me a call when you're back in New York. Have a great time. Love, Melania. Of course, this sounds like completely the exchange between two people who absolutely have no idea that each other exists.
|
Sam:
[1:06:20]
| Right. Yeah. And look, a lot of this stuff, you mentioned how they're circumstantial things and blah, blah, blah. That's one of the, you know, we talked about like a big failing on the Epstein stuff over the last few decades has simply been no follow up to actually dig in and find the kind of evidence that would do something. And so, yeah, we're left with all kinds of circumstantial stuff. And this is one of the things, by the way, I saw there was a reporter who was assigned there at MS Now, I think. I saw a video by them. I didn't read the article they wrote about this. But if you remember a couple months ago, making the circles on social media was this guy who did an interview, a long interview. He claimed to have been a male person who was also trafficked. by Epstein to a whole bunch of people. He named a whole bunch of names. He mentioned an interaction with a friend of his who was female who was trafficked to Donald Trump. He mentioned some specific acts and all kinds of really purient detail of really serious accusations.
|
Sam:
[1:07:38]
| But all of it was stuff where he's telling a story, but there's no proof of any of it. And it's all a long time ago, there was a journalist at MS Now who spent like two months trying to dig into this guy's story and basically found nothing to back up anything that the guy said, plus a bunch of things that didn't quite add up. And so this is why, like, you know, when you talk about, hey, These rumors end up going through social media and, you know, they label the people on the left who, like, incredulously believe all of this as Blue Anon, comparing them to QAnon. They're just, oh, all this stuff must be true.
|
Sam:
[1:08:25]
| The press doesn't immediately pick up and talk about that because they have due diligence to do. They are working for big corporations who are going to get sued if they say something that turns out to be false. So they actually sent this reporter out for two months to follow it up. And basically, it's looking like that one guy, probably bullshit. OK. And of all of these other things in the, you know, that we've heard in the Epstein files, some of them might be true. Some of them might not be true. The problem is that over and over again, it looks like what happened is it was dismissed out of hand and not actually investigated at all. And there are enough of these that are similar enough to things that we do know that happened that at the very least, it would have been worth digging into them and actually doing that investigation. Now, I think this one reporter was talking about this one. I would not be surprised if there are other reporters doing the same kind of deep dive into a bunch of these other allegations with no corroboration that are in the Epstein files that have been reported so far to try to get that corroboration. But we don't have it to the point where any of these reporters is willing to go public with it. Look, if any of them did.
|
Sam:
[1:09:50]
| They'd be going for it. This is a career-making move. Like, if you find the actual evidence that could nail, like, Donald Trump on one of these things that was incontrovertible, you know, your career is made.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:05]
| Sam, but there's one issue with this in terms of reporting, okay? Look, deep investigative reporting, okay, over the last 20 years takes money, and it's been the number of institutions that do that has significantly been reduced.
|
Sam:
[1:10:24]
| Okay? And a lot of them right now are trying to keep their heads down so they don't get, like, repercussions from the Trump administration on things like mergers and acquisitions and other business things as well. So they're not necessarily, you know, like CBS News under Barry Weiss is not going to fund a massive investigation into this stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:50]
| No, but, you know, I mean, the one outlet out of all the damn outlets, and I guess it's because this was a Florida story. Miami Herald? Was Miami Herald. They're the only one that went and dug into this in fucking sufficient detail to finally nail Epstein, for God's sakes. Okay? And it took years.
|
Sam:
[1:11:16]
| Okay, of work. And the primary reporter on that was Julie K. Brown. I heard an interview with her a week or two ago. She's chasing a whole bunch of other leads right now, too, that are follow-ups on this. But she said explicitly, like, I can't say anything right now because I don't have it all yet. I have to, if I'm going to say anything, I have to cross all the T's and dot all the I's and make sure I have my facts incontrovertible. I can't, like, be reporting some random-ass rumor. I have to be able to prove this shit or my editors will not let me publish it. It would be irresponsible of me to talk about it. And I would get sued into oblivion if I did this without the proper due diligence. And that's what all the decent reporters should do. And frankly, that's what law enforcement should do as well. They shouldn't be talking about these things in public before they have proof. And, you know, the feds, the feds are hopeless right now, of course, because they're not.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:23]
| Yeah, that's that's not they're not to do anything.
|
Sam:
[1:12:25]
| But various states should be digging into this crap right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:29]
| You know, the one thing one thing about about this is that, like I mentioned, look, she you know, she it took her years to do that first report.
|
Sam:
[1:12:39]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:40]
| I mean, this full cache of Epstein files only was released not that long ago. OK, right.
|
Sam:
[1:12:47]
| And there's still battle over the fact that it's not all released, actually.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:50]
| And it's not all released. The reality is that the type of digging that, took for her to get to the point where she could, as she mentioned, go and like give you a full corroborated story that her editors will publish is going to take a while. And the reality is that we're here because the feds, unfortunately, for a long time, and this was under both administrations, unfortunately, did not do their job in this. They didn't. And so now all of a sudden, you've got somebody that's starting off information that was only released a couple of months ago, trying to catch up on shit that should have happened over the past five years, six years.
|
Sam:
[1:13:37]
| Or longer. I mean, some of the things that are reported here go back 20, 30 years.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:43]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:13:44]
| You know, and that's part of the problem, too. is like, you know, getting incontrovertible evidence of some of these, the types of crimes we're talking about. It's difficult to get the right evidence, even if it happened last week. You know, if it happened 25 years ago, It's really tough. You know, people who are involved are dead. People who are involved don't remember. They've scattered to the winds. You know, if it's like, oh, well, you could ask the doorman at that, at the venue where this happened. Well, who the fuck was the doorman at some random venue 25 years ago on a date that you can only pinpoint down to the year? Yeah. Maybe the season.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:32]
| Right. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:14:34]
| You know, how, how do you dig into that? And just finding that one connection saying, oh, the doorman saw me to find that doorman might take you a year by itself. And then you finally get him and he's like, are you kidding? I don't remember.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:50]
| Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:14:51]
| And then you go on to the next week.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:56]
| So melania did a great job of like uh of of of you know i guess if you wanted to take the focus off the iran war then this was a great job by melania right okay but what i mean the only thing in my head when people you know that, When people do this, the only thing that explains it.
|
Sam:
[1:15:28]
| Is they're trying to get ahead of something.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:30]
| Well, it's that they're trying to get ahead of something that they know is coming true. No. Well, they also know it's true.
|
Sam:
[1:15:40]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:42]
| Because most people, when it's something like false, usually what you want to do, the last thing you want to do is give it. Eric, if you don't know if it's going to come out or not, you probably, you know, it's just whatever. So usually this is the shit that guilty people do.
|
Sam:
[1:16:03]
| So I was thinking of maybe doing this in the next segment, but it's such a natural transition. We mentioned how hard it is to sometimes prove these type of allegations. But then we have Representative Swalwell in California. So he was, this week, first one woman and then three more, so a total of four so far, and apparently there are more out there, accusing him of sexual harassment, in one case rape, and basically saying, you know, taking advantage of drunk women, all kinds of stuff, all kinds of accusations.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:40]
| So his poll numbers are up, right?
|
Sam:
[1:16:43]
| I'm not sure.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:44]
| Oh, wait, he's not a Republican.
|
Sam:
[1:16:45]
| Yeah. Well, look, here's the thing. unlike what we're talking about here apparently there is an extensive trail of text messages snapchats all kinds of other stuff that basically the women involved provided these to reporters and were like here you go here's the evidence of him sending unsolicited nudes harassing text messages what is the.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:15]
| Thing with the fuck Guys sending this, you know, I was just, there's somebody that I follow online and they were talking about how on their dating profile, you know, they keep getting guys sending unsolicited dick pics. And I'm like, I'm trying to figure out, Sam. I went and I asked the question rhetorically I'm like, I'm sorry can anybody point to me to any evidence whatsoever that sending an unsolicited, actually works in any way to get a woman to be interested in you because I don't think it's ever I mean it's like hey if you're telling me hey maybe 80 percent of the time it works 20 percent okay fine but I don't think that it even works like one percent of the time I don't I don't I don't understand why these fucking people think that this is, you know, like, hey, this will work. I'll send a picture of my, of my junk.
|
Sam:
[1:18:26]
| And, and, and the key here, to be clear, being unsolicited.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:32]
| Entirely different, entirely different. Totally different. If you're like, you know, solicited, that's a whole different story.
|
Sam:
[1:18:40]
| If you're doing, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:42]
| Exchanging things back and forth with your partner. Yeah, that's a totally different thing.
|
Sam:
[1:18:46]
| Totally different thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:47]
| But we're talking unsolicited ones.
|
Sam:
[1:18:49]
| Yes. Just, hey, I saw you in the grocery store. Yes. Yes. It seems ill-advised in the best of situations.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:03]
| That's in the best of situations. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:19:08]
| Anyway, apparently there's a long evidentiary trail against Swalwell. Everybody's already turned. Has he formally said he's dropped out yet? Swalwell. Swalwell?
|
Ivan:
[1:19:20]
| I can't pronounce his name either.
|
Sam:
[1:19:22]
| Anyway, has he officially dropped out yet? I mean, everybody's basically abandoned him.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:27]
| I mean, if he's not. Well, this is a joke. If he hasn't dropped out, he's. Yeah, you're right. Swalwell.
|
Sam:
[1:19:34]
| Swalwell. Swalwell.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:36]
| Good news. Just get riddance. At least we don't have to fucking pronounce his name.
|
Sam:
[1:19:42]
| One less person in the California gubernatorial primary, which is why, you know, look, he's in the House.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:50]
| By the way, Donald Trump, good news, decided to help the Democrats.
|
Sam:
[1:19:56]
| With what this time?
|
Ivan:
[1:19:57]
| He endorsed one, just one of the Republican candidates. Okay. You know, because the concern was that we were going to get two GOP guys and maybe at the top. Yeah. I mean, we still need more Democrats to help us out. Right. But Donald decided to help us out by endorsing one of the guys.
|
Sam:
[1:20:20]
| Right. Now, Swalwell was polling at the top of the pack for Democrats, but there's still an incredibly split field on the Democratic side. Him leaving will hopefully help. If his support ends up going mostly to one person, if it further splits, then we still need Democrats to drop out, even beyond Swalwell. We need more Democrats to drop out in California before this stupid election. When's the stupid primary there? It's soon, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:20:47]
| I don't remember. It's a California governor.
|
Sam:
[1:20:52]
| Yeah, you find it.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:53]
| Primary date is on. Well, it's, it's actually, it's June 2nd.
|
Sam:
[1:21:01]
| Okay. We got a little bit.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:02]
| We got, we got a little bit of waste. We got a little bit of waste.
|
Sam:
[1:21:05]
| A little bit.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:06]
| We got almost 50 days. It's a good amount of days. We got 50 days. It's not like next week. No. Not like, yeah. We got some time.
|
Sam:
[1:21:17]
| Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:20]
| Sam, just to clarify.
|
Sam:
[1:21:22]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:23]
| I never want an unsolicited dick pic from you.
|
Sam:
[1:21:27]
| Oh, man. I was just preparing that on my phone for you.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:34]
| Oh, I'm clarifying now. You're clarifying now. Never. No. and make a note just in case.
|
Sam:
[1:21:42]
| Just in case.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:43]
| Yeah, make a note.
|
Sam:
[1:21:44]
| Would you like to request any other body parts?
|
Ivan:
[1:21:48]
| No. No body part pictures of you. Okay, let me be clear. I don't want any fucking body part pictures of you. At all.
|
Sam:
[1:21:59]
| Okay. I, I, I, I, I...
|
Ivan:
[1:22:03]
| Take that off the to-do list.
|
Sam:
[1:22:05]
| I may accidentally sometimes send my face.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:11]
| We'll have to deal with that.
|
Sam:
[1:22:13]
| Okay. I know it is disturbing to look at.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:18]
| But, but you know, we, we could, we could probably deal with, with a face.
|
Sam:
[1:22:23]
| Okay. Yeah. Okay. Shall, shall we take a break and wrap up any other things after the break?
|
Ivan:
[1:22:31]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:22:33]
| Okay. Here we go. Break, break, break, break, There you go. You know, in the first segment, we were saying it lacked the skills and creativity to do a movie, but listen to that.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:34]
| Oh, man, that is an epic sound production.
|
Sam:
[1:23:38]
| Epic.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:39]
| Epic.
|
Sam:
[1:23:39]
| I mean, I don't see why people aren't banging my door down at this very moment to sign me for massive reporting contracts.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:48]
| Yes, yes, yes, of course.
|
Sam:
[1:23:49]
| I could be the next Taylor Swift. i i could even wear the outfits that'd be interesting you know i i can do the stadium tour you're shorter i think the glittery outfit and let me see how tall are you five slightly less than 510 between 5'9 and 510 closer to 510 than 5'9 but you know taylor swift is well Well.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:17]
| Actually, she's 5'11". So, yeah, you're a little bit shorter than she is.
|
Sam:
[1:24:21]
| Yeah, that's okay. So the clothes will be a little baggy.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:25]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:24:25]
| Well, no, probably not. But, you know... no i have a feeling she might you know be taller but also thinner yeah maybe a.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:36]
| Fitter yes yes.
|
Sam:
[1:24:38]
| You know i i don't know i could do it i could do it actually i probably couldn't like if you look at what she did on that tour like the shows were three and a half hours long insanely physical, let alone the i can't sing part you know and have no rhythm or musical talent just the three hours.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:58]
| Of physically gyrating on a stage you probably like by minute but by minute three you see sam all of a sudden just collapse on the ground okay.
|
Sam:
[1:25:09]
| I'm done in fact is it on my youtube channel or my tiktok it's on my youtube channel alex made me post a video where i was doing exactly that i was i was dancing to like some song that was on the tv and it was like a It was a few minutes long. It was the Hamster Dance song, if you remember Hamster Dance.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:30]
| Oh, okay.
|
Sam:
[1:25:31]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I danced for that until the song ended, and then I collapsed at the end.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:36]
| Yeah, it makes sense. And he posted a video. Dancing is a pretty intensely physical activity, okay? It definitely, I'll tell you what, like when my wife asked me to go and like do sometimes like salsa and merengue dancing, you know, do a couple of songs and I'm like, look, I need a break. I mean, they're, you know, they're pretty intense, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:25:59]
| Yeah, no, it's, yeah, no. Anyway. Okay. So with those images out of our minds forever, hopefully.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:10]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:26:10]
| I guess it's my turn. We talked about Iran. Okay. Yeah, I briefly talked about how unhinged Donald Trump seems to be. That has led to increased talk over the last couple weeks of, well, what are the options to get rid of him? Now, let me state up front, The bottom line is there aren't any realistic ones, okay? Not at the moment.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:43]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:26:43]
| You know, other than he has a health issue and drops dead or something like that, which, you know, or, you know, things we're not going to talk about on here as well. But, you know, in terms of, like, people are talking about impeachment. People are talking about the 25th Amendment. People are talking about, you know, a couple other more creative options. But let's talk about the—look, fundamentally, the math just doesn't math. I mean, impeachment takes a majority in the House and a supermajority in the Senate.
|
Sam:
[1:27:20]
| There's—the Democrats are still in the minority in both. And there's absolutely—even though we've got MAGA splintering and we've got some Republicans shaking their heads, We've got absolutely no indication whatsoever that we've got any Republicans willing to be the ones to walk the plank and vote for a Trump impeachment. Now, you can argue whether or not the Democrats should try things anyway and let the Republicans stop it. And then the 25th, you need the vice president, you need more than half the cabinet, and you need supermajorities in both the House and the Senate, assuming the president objects.
|
Sam:
[1:28:06]
| Like, if the president doesn't object, you can just do it with the cabinet. Like, this is what it's designed for. President is in a coma. So the vice president and half of the cabinet vote to invoke the 25th, and the vice president becomes acting president while the president remains in a coma. That's what it's meant for. But if the president is able to object, and you know damn well sure Donald Trump would object if J.D. Vance attempted a coup, then it has to go to Congress. Right. For it to be sustained over the president's objections, there's actually a whole procedure. It has to go back and forth a couple times. But the bottom line at the end is you need a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:50]
| It's not realistic right now. There's no realistic option to get rid of them right now.
|
Sam:
[1:28:55]
| There's nothing there. And, you know, people have mentioned another alternative, which would be to deny funding to the White House to physically make it impossible for Donald Trump to operate. Yvonne on our Slack was like, turn off the air conditioning in the summer in Washington in the White House.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:15]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:29:16]
| That'll smoke him out. Look.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:18]
| That'll give him a heart attack eventually.
|
Sam:
[1:29:20]
| Yes. The bottom line is that. You know, even that, like, you'd have to do it in the right timing in the budget cycle. You still need some Republican support, most likely. If you hit just the right time in the cycle, you might be able to block it the same way they did the government shutdown. But most likely, you couldn't tailor it that narrowly. You'd have to do a government shutdown. But you notice, even in the government shutdowns, the White House stays open, or most of it does. I mean, you know, the fact that White House had a lot of shut things shut down during a government shutdown was actually exactly what started the Monica Lewinsky scandal, by the way. Yeah. Because she was bringing him pizza or food or something like that anyway, because the normal people who did it weren't available because of the shutdown. Right. Anyway, the even then he would he would they wouldn't actually do that. So, you know, you shut down funding to the White House, he's still going to keep operating. Worst case scenario, he does it all from Mar-a-Lago. You know, none of these scenarios are realistic in any way, certainly not right now, with Republicans in control of both the House and the Senate.
|
Sam:
[1:30:41]
| Now, there are a couple Democratic congressmen who've already, who've introduced articles of impeachment anyway. But just to point out, that level of impeachment effort happens every single presidential cycle. There's always some...
|
Sam:
[1:30:58]
| Independent congressperson who introduces the resolution and it goes absolutely nowhere. It's probably happened to every president in the last hundred years. I haven't fact-checked that, but it's not uncommon. Where somebody introduces a resolution, it dies, goes nowhere, doesn't go to committee, doesn't get a vote, nothing happens. And that's what's going to happen to these. You could say, do a couple of those, get it on the record, doesn't do anything. But there's no leadership very much doesn't want to do it, sees it as a waste of time. And I would agree right now, as long as you've got the minority, it's definitely a waste of time. If Democrats end up with a majority in both the House and the Senate, then maybe it's worth going through the performative actions to further highlight whatever wrongdoing you're highlighting. maybe. I think even that's arguable. But you got to go into it knowing he will be acquitted at the end. He will be acquitted at the end. So you have to have a plan that gets a positive impact out of that anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:32:16]
| Because you just don't have enough Republicans who would ever go on the other direction no matter what the charges not right now no not right now now i mean i guess we could i mean what happened with nixon is eventually there was a weight of evidence that his own party viewed him as a liability and decided to go against him right and now what we've said over and over again is you know, Trump passed the Nixon line of wrongdoing practically on the day he was sworn in in 2017. You know, and Republicans haven't cared and haven't cared and haven't cared and haven't cared. But there is a difference now that could accelerate, which is he is a lame duck. His overall popularity in the party is dropping and dropping quickly. The question is not anything about the specific acts he may or may not have done. It's about, is he a political liability or are they still afraid of him? Up to this point, they are still afraid of him.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:28]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:33:28]
| And among Republicans, I mean, his approval rating is down among Republicans, but it's still positive.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:37]
| I'm looking at the timeline on Nixon's reelection and how far along after his reelection did it take for him to resign.
|
Sam:
[1:33:46]
| Yep.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:47]
| And it was August 74. So he was reinaugurated January 73, and he resigned in August 1974. So it was even before that midterm.
|
Sam:
[1:34:00]
| Right. It would be the equivalent of this August.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:03]
| Right. And, of course, I'm assuming that they thought, well, the House was Democrat. So that was, you know, that's not even an issue.
|
Sam:
[1:34:15]
| It was the Senate that mattered, too.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:16]
| It was the Senate that mattered. I'm wondering if they were, like, pretty much expecting a wipeout in the Senate, given what the hell was going on. And so, in his head, the calculations were, you know, either I get out ahead of this or I'm going to, you know... get killed anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:34:34]
| Well, the difference, the important difference for Donald Trump and Richard Nixon, and I've said this before, but it's been a while. Richard Nixon had a sense of shame.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:46]
| Yeah, he did.
|
Sam:
[1:34:48]
| Richard Nixon did all the bad things, but when he was caught, he was like, you know like he had a sense of shame and he had a sense of what's good for the party what's good for the country all of this kind of stuff donald trump has none of that none of it you know i i feel like you know i i i have trouble imagining a scenario no he has no trump would result he has.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:21]
| Absolutely no shame.
|
Sam:
[1:35:22]
| Donald trump would not resign even if he was facing uh the the impeachment and yeah because like.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:29]
| You met like you mentioned what has been donald trump's mo he just power try.
|
Sam:
[1:35:35]
| You know tries to bullshit and.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:37]
| Power through yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:35:39]
| And so like you could see that i mean we know he didn't resign he's been impeached twice he was acquitted twice he fought through them let's say you had the well I mean the second.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:51]
| Impeachment was after he.
|
Sam:
[1:35:52]
| I know I know but he still yes he still fought the impeachment blah blah blah but yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:58]
| But he couldn't he couldn't resign at that.
|
Sam:
[1:36:00]
| Moment he was out of office well he could have he could have he could have resigned in a week and a half between January 6th and January 20th.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:09]
| Oh okay yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:36:10]
| He couldn't I mean it was before the impeachment went through but you know whatever her.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:17]
| But look, the fact that we couldn't even impeach him then.
|
Sam:
[1:36:21]
| No, we could impeach him. We couldn't convict him.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:24]
| No, no, no, no, no. We couldn't successfully. Yeah, but we couldn't convict him.
|
Sam:
[1:36:28]
| We couldn't convict him even then. Although, you know, I feel like McConnell was close. And if McConnell had gone the other way, maybe. But anyway, it didn't happen. But even in the scenario where the Republican Senate goes against him, And it's going to be a hundred to zero blowout in favor of impeaching Donald Trump, which, by the way, no way, no way that would ever happen. But let's say in some scenario that actually happens. Donald Trump probably still wouldn't resign. They'd wait until they dragged him out of the White House.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:02]
| By the way, Trump now has complained that he doesn't get the he's not getting enough credit that and somehow the Washington Post was comparing that to Biden not getting enough credit. Well, let me be clear about this. You two fucking clowns.
|
Sam:
[1:37:14]
| Credit for I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:15]
| If he wants credit. Exactly. What does he want? He wants credit for the inflation. OK, I'll give him more credit for the fucking rising inflation. What's credit for the economy that's looking like shit? I'll give him more credit for that, too. Yes. OK. hey, yeah, you deserve all the credit for all that shit, you fucking idiot.
|
Sam:
[1:37:31]
| Yes. I mean, I guess he did leave the White House on January 20th at the end of the first term under his own power. I was expecting them to have to drag him out then.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:45]
| But, you know. So that's what we're giving him credit for.
|
Sam:
[1:37:48]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:48]
| The fact that we didn't have to drag him out.
|
Sam:
[1:37:50]
| I was back to the other thing. But, yes, no, I don't know. All of these talks, I still think the most likely thing at this point is health issues determine this rather than anything else. I mean, because they are getting worse. They are clearly getting worse, both health and mental issues. And maybe we see something before the end of the term. But honestly, the most likely thing is he serves out this term. You know? It's just, we have to live through it. Okay, enough of that.
|
Sam:
[1:38:32]
| Two more things to mention, and these are both quick things, I think, and then we can wrap it up. We had more elections this week. The Democrats once again overperformed. The two big ones were a judicial seat in Minnesota. I'm getting that right, right? It was Minnesota, where the Democrats got an additional liberal seat. I guess it's technically not a partisan position, but they got another liberal on the Minnesota Supreme Court and furthered their majority. And there's a 10-year term involved, so they'll be in there past the 2030 redistricting, so it's fairly significant. And Marjorie Taylor Greene's seat. A Republican did win the seat.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:21]
| But by a well.
|
Sam:
[1:39:26]
| It wasn't quite close.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:29]
| No but it was a much narrower margin than any of them.
|
Sam:
[1:39:33]
| They won by something like 10.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:35]
| Or 12 11 points 10 to.
|
Sam:
[1:39:38]
| 12 I was close.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:39]
| But MTG had won by 34 points yes.
|
Sam:
[1:39:44]
| And I believe Donald Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:46]
| Even more than that yeah that's a deep red seat It all of a sudden narrowed to 11 points.
|
Sam:
[1:39:53]
| Right. And that's the pattern everywhere, and it's continued. So I just thought I'd note that for this week's elections, this week's special elections.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:02]
| And Artemis landed, and we didn't kill four astronauts.
|
Sam:
[1:40:04]
| And that was going to be my last name, Artemis landed.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:06]
| We didn't manage to kill four astronauts, so go us.
|
Sam:
[1:40:10]
| No one died. It landed.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:13]
| Everything went.
|
Sam:
[1:40:13]
| I saw someone list basically the two biggest things that went wrong. in this whole thing where the toilet had to be plunged, you know, had some issues.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:28]
| They had to troubleshoot the toilet.
|
Sam:
[1:40:30]
| They had to troubleshoot the toilet a few times, apparently, not just once. But so they, before they do Artemis 3, they're apparently going to have to work on the toilet side.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:39]
| On that toilet.
|
Sam:
[1:40:39]
| Okay. And two, after they landed, the radio didn't work properly. The little walkie-talkie or whatever the hell they were using.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:47]
| Yeah, the radio didn't work properly. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:40:48]
| You know and so they had to do some relaying and i guess and i guess that you know they they gave uh oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:56]
| No no wait wait wait we forgot.
|
Sam:
[1:40:58]
| Uh outlook oh yes outlook outlook malfunctioned as well yes outlook.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:04]
| Malfunctioned as well.
|
Sam:
[1:41:05]
| Very good i mean that's not bad that that is a and you know i saw, more people being actively excited about this than i actually expected i expected most people my wife.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:21]
| Was glued following this mission which i i mean yeah she was glued to it from beginning to end yes.
|
Sam:
[1:41:30]
| Yeah honestly what i see the tracker hey i mean she.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:35]
| Was watched entire splashdown until the astronauts got you know you know went.
|
Sam:
[1:41:41]
| To the.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:41]
| Med bay yeah she was so into it yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:41:45]
| Yeah no like i keep trying to say um i was expecting it to be everybody saying you know we did this 50 years ago what's the big deal you know we're finally catching up with 50 years ago but then people were excited um none.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:02]
| Of them were alive when i had.
|
Sam:
[1:42:03]
| More than 50 years the the equivalent mission was Apollo 8.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:09]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:42:11]
| What was the date of Apollo 8? 1978.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:16]
| No, Apollo 8 was 1968.
|
Sam:
[1:42:18]
| Yeah, you're right. 1968.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:21]
| December 1968.
|
Sam:
[1:42:23]
| Yeah, so, you know, more than 50. More than 50, but, you know, here we are, and we still have to figure out what's next. We've talked a couple weeks ago about, like, the landers are nowhere near, you know, the SpaceX lander is nowhere near ready. So, you know, but we're on the way, I guess. So good thing. And I saw like, you know, not only were lots of space scientists on the socials, like really excited and posting about how they were excited and stuff like that. I saw like kindergarten classes and stuff like that. You mentioned your wife, you know, I watched the takeoff and the landing and some of the clips in between. And, you know, there are good pictures that came out of this that were, you know, exciting, exciting pictures. And some of them taken on iPhone, by the way, which was, which was fun. You know, but it was a nice, good news event. And everyone was happy. And yeah, and they landed successfully, which is good. I was nervous. I was nervous. I was more nervous about takeoff than landing, but should have been nervous about both. But they pulled it off without a hitch. So good on them. I think that's it, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:48]
| All right. Let's call it a show.
|
Sam:
[1:43:51]
| Call it a show. A-show. Should we rename it? No more Curmudgeon's Corner. It's now A-show.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:57]
| A-show.
|
Sam:
[1:43:58]
| A-show.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:59]
| A-show.
|
Sam:
[1:44:02]
| Anyway, go to curmudgeon-corner.com. Check out all the stuff. You can find our archives. You can find all the ways to contact us, etc. Transcripts, stuff. And importantly, our Patreon, where you can give us money. at various levels we will send you a postcard we'll send you a mug we'll mention you on the show we will ring a bell all that kind of stuff and ding.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:33]
| Ding ding ding.
|
Sam:
[1:44:34]
| Ding ding ding and and super important at two dollars a month or more or if you just ask us we will invite you there to we will invite you to the curmudgeon's chorus slack where yvonne and i and a variety of other people are chatting throughout the week, sharing links, all that kind of stuff. So, Yvonne, what is a highlight from the Curmudgeons Corner Slack that would make people salivate and really be upset that they are not in there and want to join it that we have not talked about on the show?
|
Ivan:
[1:45:08]
| I had a couple of like tidbits here. One is a story that said that Elon Musk claims he's a 3,000-year-old time traveling alien who is trying to return to his home planet.
|
Sam:
[1:45:23]
| Okay. Jay?
|
Ivan:
[1:45:26]
| And the next one, which is, there's a story I shared, and then we try to understand why Sam was unhappy at his previous employer. When a guy shared the story saying, former Amazon VP says being nice at work can hurt your career.
|
Sam:
[1:45:45]
| I am nodding. I am nodding in silence for those who can't see me because you're just listening.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:53]
| Yeah. Nice.
|
Sam:
[1:45:57]
| So anyway, at one point early in my Amazon career, I was having lunch with someone who later on to this current day, as far as I'm aware, is like a senior VP fairly high up in the company. But at the time I was talking to them and they directly told me, you have to get, you have to get mean to get ahead here lovely at at the time they were fairly low ranked now they're very high ranked and yes they were right they were right and i did notice that that individual person seemed to get meaner over time as they rate rose in rank yeah you had to have a certain level of ruthlessness.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:51]
| Well, oh, well, oh.
|
Sam:
[1:46:54]
| Well. And with that happy, exciting note, it is time for us to say goodbye. So thank you, everybody, for listening another week. We'll talk to you again next time. In the meantime, stay safe, stay happy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Have fun, not too much fun, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:14]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:47:46]
| Okay, that's it. I'm hitting stop. Later, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:50]
| All right. Stopping. Stopping. Stopping. Stopping.
| |
|
