Ep 1016: F**k Civility

Episode 1016 puts Tone Policing on trial, tracing the long history of the powerful lecturing the powerless about civility while dodging the actual substance of their protests — from abolitionists to MLK to anti-war marchers, memory-holed by CNN in 2005. Driftglass and Blue Gal revisit David Brooks' unhinged 2005 meltdown over Harry Reid daring to question the Iraq War intelligence, proving that the Tone Police always overreact hardest exactly when someone hits a nerve. That pattern plays out live this week when Jon Ossoff makes one factually accurate remark about Trump's laziness and his aide, Natalie Harp, triggering a Fox News meltdown, a Newt Gingrich tantrum, and a media firestorm that made "Natalie Harp" the most-searched name in Washington. The episode's verdict is simple: until Democrats are out from under MAGA fascism, f**k Courtesy Class.

Links for this episode: 

The Guardian:  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/19/trump-white-house-attacks

2005 NBC Transcript:  https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna9438988

The Hill: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6036115-ossoff-calls-trump-crook/

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You can listen to the professional left wherever you get your podcasts on Netroots Radio or at our website, proleftpod.com, where you can also contribute to this podcast. There's a PayPal button on our website, or you can mail us a letter and/or a contribution at P.O. Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

This is the podcast for the week of August 21st, 2026. It's not safe for work.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Recorded live from the Cornfield Resistance, where? What is this courtesy class? It's the Professional Love Podcast, a subsidiary of PL Strategies, a totally legit polling company, we swear, with Driftglass and Bluegal.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Strategies. You gotta have strategies in there so people will believe that you're an actual polling company.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

That remark will make perfect sense in about 35 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

We've got more about that later.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Yes, we do.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

But today it's courtesy class day here at the Professional Left Podcast. And if you saw the title of this episode, you'd know all about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

I love courtesy class. I love courtesy class.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Yeah. But first, we want to thank all of you for your well-wishes for our 15th wedding anniversary. We had a lovely evening. And while we didn't get a gift-wrapped November blue wave yet, we did get the next best thing. We got an invitation from one of our friends and podcast listeners, actually, uh, to a reception for our next United States Senator, Juliana Stratton.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Yeah. And we were delighted to attend, but not real thrilled with the venue. We've been there before, we've had lunch there before, and you know, when it was just us, it's fine. It was on the second story of an old building, which has been converted to a restaurant, which is a lot of old buildings in Springfield, that had one narrow staircase and one elevator, which is one of those old timey manual freight elevators with both an accordion gate and a drop gate. There's a guy in it actually running it up and down and up and down. And I hadn't seen one of those since I worked the stock room at Sears million years ago in my youth. And the room we were in could have been comfortable for, say, like a party of 20 or 30 on a cool fall evening, but that was not the case. There were more than 100 of us packed in there, maybe, maybe 150. I couldn't count that high. A hot, humid evening, no AC, just a couple of ceiling fans, and the heavy hitters were all there. JB Pritzker was there, Dick Durbin, Tammy Duckworth, Andy Minar, Juliana Stratton, obviously. And Senator Professor Elizabeth Warren was there, who was in town helping to fundraise for local Democrats. And we stayed as long as we could. My beautiful wife braved the crowd to retrieve cold water for the two of us. Did because chivalry is dead. Um I killed it apparently. Uh then we were retreated to a fine dining establishment for an anniversary dinner that was just delightful.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Yeah, and I just I uh am not good on narrow stairs. I'm not good on stairs, period. So I uh Driftglass went and parked the car. I sat down in the lobby of this restaurant to wait for the freight elevator. And uh I said, I'm gonna wait for there were young women. First of all, this this was full of young people.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Yes, it was, to our delight.

SPEAKER_02 3:23

To our delight.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Uh and so I was sitting that the there was a there were two young women in the uh lobby of this restaurant directing traffic, telling people where to go, and one of them was sort of standing by this freight elevator. And uh she would like to and she lacked a clipboard, but it was it was implied. And I said, Yes, I'm gonna use the elevator when my husband parks the car. And she said, Ma'am, uh, Senator Duckworth is gonna use the elevator before you. Oh, yeah. I went, Oh, you bet. Yeah. Uh and she and 14 staffers just whizzed right by me.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Yes, they did.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

And she got in the elevator and went up. Uh, as you probably all of you know, she is in a wheelchair uh most of the time. She does uh walk with uh Grant Canes from time to time, but uh to get around, she's she is fast and very adept. And uh she took, they said, you know, we're gonna take this elevator and own it for about seven minutes. I said that's fine.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

So that's fine.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Worked out.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

And there was a big old ramp out front, um, which we appreciated. We thought, well, that was awfully nice of them to set it just for us, but that wasn't just. And then we realized, oh on the way out, it was uh where they were they were bundling the all the sound equipment out. So I I temporarily joined the band.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

Oh, yeah, you were helping them get the things.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

But otherwise it was delightful and off we went into the evening.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

It was just hot. It was hot up there. It's too damn hot.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

And now let us return to courtesy class.

SPEAKER_02 5:00

What is this courtesy class? So what's inbounds? What's out of bounds? What does it mean when the legacy media starts acting as nothing more than stenographers for the Trump regime's fire hose of lies and slander, and then insists on tone policing the left every time we punch back with facts or some saucy language or facts wrapped in saucy language. And I think we've talked before about the F-word and its use in the old blogosphere days.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Yeah, that was our brand. That was our brand. You knew we weren't part of the establishment because they were not allowed to use words like that.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

In other words, what the fuck is going on here? And make no mistake, it's been going on for a very, very long time. No one is quite sure when the term tone police was coined, but the thing it describes has been happening forever. Uh, every time the powerful are confronted or embarrassed or mocked by the powerless because protests and words are all the weapons they have, the tone police show up to scold the powerless, lecture them that they're doing it wrong while sidestepping the issue of the legitimacy of their protests entirely.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

Abolitionists in the 19th century were often criticized for being too strident and too confrontational against slavery.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Yeah, yeah. And Martin Luther King Jr. criticized moderates who focus more on protests and demonstrations rather than on the injustices that provoked those protests and demonstrations.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Feminist writers from the 19th century to today frequently remarked that women's anger is dismissed as hysterical rather than being addressed as having valid concerns.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Yeah, and and we've all probably had some version of the horrible, incompetent boss who dumps a ridiculous amount of work on you along with impossible deadlines. And when you come up short, well, maybe if you had a better attitude, maybe that was the problem.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

This is how the establishment boxed out the voices of anti-war protesters during the Iraq War. Legitimate criticisms were hand-waved away as the whining of a minority of crazy lefty surrender monkeys.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Yeah. And all those people that do the hand waving, they all still have jobs, don't they? Yes, they do. And about those record-breaking protests from Fairness and Accuracy in Media, September 27, 2005, quote, the disappearing anti-war protests, media shrug-off mass movement against the war. Hundreds of thousands of Americans around the country protested the Iraq war on the weekend of September 24th and 25th, with the largest demonstrations bringing around 100,000 to 300,000 people to Washington, D.C. on Saturday. But if you relied on television for your news, and boy, we remember this vividly, you'd hardly know the protests had happened at all. Cable coverage wasn't much better. CNN, for example, made only passing references to the weekend protests.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

The story continues, quote, to hear CNN's Aaron Brown tell it, the 24-hour cable news channel is somehow unable to cover more than one story at a time. And the national conversation is something that CNN just listens in on rather than helping to determine through its coverage choices. The following day, September 25th, 2005, the network Sunday morning shows had an opportunity to at least reflect on the significance of the anti-war movement, with a panel consisting of three New York Times columnists, New York fucking Times columnists, Tim Russert, mentioned the march briefly in one question to Maureen Dowd, which ended up being about how the anti-war movement might affect Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential chances.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

What about the horse race? What about the controversy? And I personally looked way, way back in my own archives from the Sunday shows. And you know what? I was up and awake and writing about this very show 21 years ago, and almost nothing has changed. Over on Fox News, a guy named Britt Hume was laughing at the very idea that Hurricane Katrina would hurt Bush's reputation long term. Quote, no one will remember Bush for Katrina. After all, who was present during the Jonestown flood or the San Francisco earthquake? Unquote, as if this is some lost bit of arcane Anasasi tribal trivia instead of actual American history.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

I think it's Johnstown flood, not Jonestown. Jonestown was Kool-Aid.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Yeah, that's right. I apologize.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

But because the Fox News business model is people are stupid, people will forget, and our viewers will believe what we tell them to believe.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

So instead, at the time, I opined that in the future, which is where we live now, people would ask, who was president during that awful Iraq fuck-up? You know, that lying drunk who bankrupted the country? Oh, yeah, it was that dopey Bush asshole. Yeah, another Bush. Hey, didn't he fuck up that big hurricane too? Jesus, what sort of lobotomized slunk meat shuds would have given that boil on the ass of democracy the keys to Air Force One and then let him fly into a mountain repeatedly and then re-elect him? So, you know, I was sort of half right. First, yes, Bush would have been remembered by sensible people as the worst president ever, if the same lobotomized slunk meat shuds who gave him two terms hadn't nominated Trump three times and given him two terms. And second, if the aggressive memory holding of the entire Bush administration hadn't begun the minute he left office.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

You will remember that during his presidency, the right talked about W as if he was Buckaroo bonsai, brain surgeon, rock star, physicist, and test pilot, also a good Christian man.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Don't forget.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

But the minute he was out of office, he was off limits. You couldn't talk about him at all. We're not talking about Bush. Bush is gone. Bush is no longer president. Obama is president now, and Obama is terrible.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

He's terrible. Look at all the things, look at all the mess we're in, Obama. Thanks, Obama. Now, the transcript from that show, the Meet the Press Show, still exists, and we're gonna quote from it now. This is back to September 25th, 2005, where we join Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, and Tom Friedman on Meet the Press with Tim Russell. That's the Mo, Curly, and Larry of the New York fucking Times op-ed page. And yes, it was as awful as it sounds, which is why no OG bloggers from those days hold out any hope that the legacy media can possibly be rehabilitated.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

First, there's, yes, Tom Friedman backpedaling furiously away from the Iraq war as fast as possible. You will remember, if you were back alive back then, that in May of 2003, during his interview with Charlie Rose, Friedman loudly defended the U.S. invasion of Iraq by saying American foreign policy was meant to send a message to the region. Well, suck on this.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Yeah. And you might also remember, uh, darling, that Tom Friedman is the is the creator of the Freedman Unit.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

We did an entire podcast on the Friedman Unit. Yes, we did.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

It was always six months away. We were going to have total victory in Iraq.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Give it a few more months. Give it six more months. Give it six more months. Uh, and now we're seeing a repeat of that with the Iran war, but now it's down to weeks or days. Uh the same the same dynamic applies. Well, here is Tom Friedman two years later than that original suck was suck on this quote on Meet the Press. Quote, well, I believe 9-11 truly distorted our politics, Tim. And I give the president and his advisors an opening to take a far hard right agenda. I believe on taxes and other social issues from 9-10, and that was not going anywhere from 9-10 and drove it into a 9-12 world. It put the wind at his back. And Katrina brought that to an end. It put the wind in his face.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

Oh, that's so poetic, Tom Friedman.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Now, this is an excellent example of what the entire legacy media does when they go all in on a Republican president who turns out to be a disaster. Suddenly, all those personal pronouns are out the window. It wasn't I or me anymore. The passive voice returns with a vengeance.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

Yes, 9-11 gave the president unlimited power. Right. Not me.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Not me. Not me. Not us. Not the people up here on this panel. No Suri.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Yeah. Yeah. Friedman continues, quote, well, I think there was a huge amount of projection after 9-11. We really wanted to believe, you know, that the president knew what was going on, had a plan for what was going on, and how to respond to the events of 9-11 and Iraq afterwards. Because in moments of insecurity, that's a very natural thing.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Yes. So much projection going on. So much.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Next up on our list from the same show is Mr. David Brooks, who was at the time working for the New York Times. Quote, George Bush, his administration has spent more on domestic discretionary spending, non-defense spending, twice as much as Bill Clinton, more than Lyndon Johnson. It's not what Republicans expected. I put most of the blame on Congress. Since 9-11, we've had a whole series of cascading authority failures, which wasn't just the failure of the Bush, it was a failure up and down the government bluegill.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

It wasn't just Bush, it was everybody.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

People are impatient and want to reject the president and get to something different, but I wouldn't say it's left right. Oh, or never left right.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

Never left right. Tim Russert says, yeah, but Republicans control both houses of Congress. Hey, just like 2026, Drift Glad.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Well, isn't that wild, Lou gal?

SPEAKER_02 14:57

And the Republican president is fucked up real bad, just like 2026.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

But Democrats are still, and this is quoting Tim Russert, in their fighting for their own projects, unquote.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

How dare they? How dare they? And then Tim Russert reads David Brooks's column back to him, as was the style at the time. Uh it was about how some Democrats believe, quote, the Republicans win because they're simply rougher. So the Democrats must be just as tough in response. They must match Carl Rove blow for blow. Now, other Dems think their defeats come from, quote, policy problems, not from campaign style or message framing. They don't believe that Democrats can win wrapped in their own rage, Bluegal, unquote. Democrats in disarray, just like 2026.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

I know. It's just such a divide, Drift Laz.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

It's very sad. It's so very sad.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

So Russert asks, who's winning that debate within the Democratic Party? Because that's where the problem is in our politics.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

That really is the problem.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

That divided Democratic Party. What did David Brooks say?

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Well, after you, darling. Would you like me to would you like me to read from David Brooks's?

SPEAKER_02 16:15

I would like you to read to me from David Brooks' column.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Mr. Brooks, quote, the haters. You know what? Most Democrats seem to be acting as if the main problem with the country is that the country doesn't hate George Bush enough. And if we only shout louder, they'll hate him more like tourists in Paris who think they'll understand us if we scream a little louder. And to me, it's led to the brain death of the Democratic Party. I don't know where the party stands on Iraq. Hey, call me up, asshole. I will tell you exactly where the party stands. I don't know where it stands on entitlement spending, on issue after issue. I really don't know where the party stands. So we're having, listen carefully now, a joint race to the bottom here between the two parties. Unquote. So you know, both sides.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

It's just like I said, it worked today, Drift Cless. I went, I hear a ringing. Is it a phone? I don't know what it is. What is that thing? I don't know how to do it.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

I can't read anything. I don't know how bills are passed. I know nothing at all. So there we had two of the loudest, most militant, most influential Iraq war pimps staring into the abyss of their own failure. And how do they react? Well, Friedman reacts by absenting himself completely from the disaster. This is the pundit's voice from nowhere. Bush fooled us all. What a shame. Except, of course, that Bush did not bamboozle everyone. There was still a huge and very active protest movement, which, of course, would never ever be invited to bring receipts to the meet the press table and prove these assholes wrong. And Brooks reacts first by just lying, by pretending he has no idea what the Democratic policy proposals are and anything, and then inevitably he blames both sides.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Both sides. Which brings us back to civility and tone policing. Back in April 2003, when David Brooks was writing for the Weekly Standard and triumphantly announced, in April of 2003, mind you, that the Iraq war was over. And Bush had been vindicated in every way. This is how he used his platform to describe the legitimate and, as it turned out, 100% right, anti-war protesters. Quote, finally, there is a dream palace of the American Bush haters. In this dream palace, there is so much contempt for Bush that none is left over for Saddam or for tyranny.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Yeah, we don't care about tyranny, obviously.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

In this dream palace, every story of Republican villainy is believed, and all the windows are shuttered with hate. The Bush haters will grow more vociferous as their numbers shrink.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Even progress in Iraq will not dampen their anger because many, as many people have noted, hatred of Bush and his corporate cronies is all that is left of their leftism. And this hatred is tribal, not ideological. Unquote. It's amazing how many MAGA people hated Bush. We didn't find that out until Trump pointed it out, did we?

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Well, they weren't allowed to say it out loud because that'd be disloyal and that would prove liberals right. But here's David Brooks. Now, back in August of 2006, that's 20 years ago, boys and girls, a full generation ago, when Ned Lamont beat David Brooks's fellow Netanyahu fanboy and Iraq war pimp Joe Lieberman in the free and fair Democratic Senate primary in Connecticut, David Brooks just flipped out. And now he was writing for the New York Times and described the Lamont campaign and anyone who agreed with them that the war had been a mistake as being part of a terrible both sides thingy. Quote, the flamers in the established parties tell themselves that their enemies are so vicious. They have to be vicious too. They rationalize their behavior by insisting that circumstances have forced them to shelve their integrity for the good of the country. They imagine that once they have achieved victory through pulverizing rhetoric, they will return to the moderate and nuanced sensibilities they think they still possess. Unquote. Oh, by the way, that column just goes on and on like that. That's just one paragraph. Brooks just spews this all over the page. It's all both sides.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Well, it really upset him that his friend Joe Lieberman lost his primary.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

And that his war was going into the shitter. And that he looked like an idiot because that's what he is.

SPEAKER_02 20:45

Yeah. But this one, this column from November of 2005, deserves special attention by our courtesy class today. By this time, the war that Bill Kristol said would be over in a matter of weeks, and that Brooke said had already been won, and that don't forget, Dick Cheney said we'd be greeted as liberators.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

In April of 2003 was when Brooke said it had already been won. Had this war had dragged on longer than the entire US involvement in World War I. Two years, seven months, and 19 days and counting. And no WMDs had been found. No bioweapons that we had been told were days away from being loaded onto planes and dispersed and making a mushroom cloud out of the United States of America. No hint of a nuclear program of any kind. Nothing except an armed Iraqi resistance that was getting stronger and more lethal every day. An armed resistance we in the United States of America had created when Coalition Provisional Authority Order No. Paul Bremer. And which told the entire Iraqi army that they no longer had a job or a future under U.S. occupation, but they could keep their guns.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

Yeah. Hundreds of thousands of trained military men told, nope, you have no future here. You've got to be unemployed. Your family's going to starve, go away. And with open weapons pits and explosive depots all over the country.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

And that's what we did. That's what the Bush administration, with the full backing of Brooks and Friedman and all the rest countenanced. So in late 2005, Democratic Senator Harry Reid made the perfectly reasonable point that now that it was undeniable that the intelligence used to justify the war had been wrong, Congress should investigate how the administration used or maybe misused that intel in the run-up to the war. And David Brooks lost his fucking mind. I'm going to quote a portion of this column, but it goes on and on and on. Remember, he's working for the New York Times now, so this is from the Harry DeReed Code.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

Not the Da Vinci Code, the DeReed Code.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Because David Brooks is so funny and knows satire so well.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

This is from November 5th, 2005 in the New York Fucking Times. Quote, Harry Reed sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m., writing important notes in crayon on the outside of envelopes. It's been four weeks since he launched his personal investigation into the Republican plot to manipulate intelligence to trick the American people into believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Reed had heard of the secret GOP cabal bent on global empire, but he had no idea he would find a conspiracy so immense. Reed now knows that as far back as 1998, Carl Rove was beaming microwaves into Bill Clinton's fillings to get him to exaggerate the intelligence on Iraq. Reed now knows that in the late 1990s, Dick Cheney and other Republican officials used fluoridated water in the State Department and other government agencies to brainwash the Clinton administration officials into exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m. writing important notes in crayon on the outside of envelopes. It's been four weeks since he began investigating this conspiracy, and three weeks since he sealed his windows with aluminum foil to ward off the Illuminati. Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m. He knows that now that seven centuries ago, at a secret meeting of the Bilderberg Society, Trilateral Commission, American Enterprise Institute, the six high lords of the secret order of the neocons decided to implant alien life forms into potential democratic officials that could be activated in case there was a need to manipulate intelligence on Iraq. Unquote. That was sick. That was deeply pathetic. And it was positively damp and reeking with shrill desperation.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

Yep. Yep. And we know it seems like it, but this really isn't just about David Brooks. He's just one of the most visible and poisonous leaders of the media tone police. Now, how long how long ago was the Iraq war drift glass?

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Twenty years ago.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

You realize that Sean Hannity still thinks there are weapons of mass destruction and that uh Saddam hid them in Syria. Yeah, along with the Sunday. They haven't been used in 20 years.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Well, you realize that Sean Hannity still has a job.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

And he still has a job.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:22

And he I mean, no, but what I mean is Sean Hannity has said that on the air this year. Yeah.

unknown 25:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

2026. There's no market force at play here. There's no fact.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

There's no downside to him saying something that stupid. No.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Believe me. If if if I had weapons of mass destruction hidden away, I would use them first to take out Fox News. But that's just me. That's why I can't be president.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

Well, you can't, not only can you not be president, you can't be head of the FCC either.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

No, no.

SPEAKER_02 25:54

Because you'd cancel, you'd cancel some licenses right away.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Oh, I would I would tent the whole building like it was full of roaches and just smoke everybody out and then burn it to the ground and then turn the property over to the, I don't know, the NAACP.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

Habitat for humanity.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Uh you may have noticed that Brooks never denied that Republican thugs and mudslingers like Carl Rove and Tom DeLay are moral monsters. Instead, he tried to smother legitimate Democratic opposition to these moral monsters by insisting that somehow Democrats must at all times remain civil and collegial, no matter how toxic and despicable Republicans become. And when Democrats push back in any way that falls outside the tiny, tiny aperture of Beltway Media proved opposition, that's when the tone police arrive, handing out tickets to both sides.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Exactly. And in 2005, David Brooks never denied that the Iraq war was going off the rails and that the intel was obviously wrong. Instead, he went off on an unhinged rant about how crazy Harry Reid was for suggesting that Congress should look into it.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Because the tone police, especially Republican tone police, always have a tell, don't they? You can always figure out how close you've gotten to something they're desperately trying to cover up by how wildly they overreact to basic facts and fairly innocuous comments.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

Oh, so that's where we're headed on this show. Yeah, okay. And to those of us who've been to this rodeo before many times, when we hear the squeak of fainting couches being dragged out of storage by the worst people in the country, we know that's the sound of someone hitting a nerve.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

Which brings us to our marquee subject, ripped from today's headlines, Driftglass. What did John Ossoff say? And when did he say it? Well, he said it this week. And here's the quote quote While the sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our ammunitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar. Unquote.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

First, we have a lollipop for the first person who can find any factual errors in anything Senator Osov said. Nope, no lollipops awarded because no factual errors have been found.

SPEAKER_02 28:54

Second, how did Donald Trump react? With a lame Pee-Wee Herman insult, like a cranky toddler having a sugar crash. Then he bragged about how awesomely he's redecorating the Oval Office because he can't stop.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

He can't stop and he won't stop. Now, the speed and regularity with which Trump and his minions vomit out unhinged bile and lies is as regular as old faithful. And most of it just passes right through the legacy media like shit through a goose. So this seemed like such a minor bit of gratuitous assholery on his part that it would vanish like a fart in a firestorm. Oh, but how wrong that turned out to be.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

This was the reply from Stephen Chung, Trump's director of communications. He's the guy that looks like a drowned man's wrinkly thumb. Quote, John Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics. Instead of denigrating hardworking people serving their country, John John who? Hardworking people serving their country. That's what he said. Okay. John should look deep into his soul and ask himself why he's a miserable person who hates this country. Because he's a radical, extremist democrat.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

Unquote.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

And about that very quote, the Guardian newspaper asks the following quote, even for someone in Trump's orbit where outbursts against political opponents are commonplace, this plumbs new lows. What could possibly have triggered Trump's stoutly built middle-aged communication guru into attacking Ossoff, the handsome, athletic, 39-year-old senator? Unquote. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

And right about then is when the chain reaction kicked off. And God bless Newt Gingrich, Newton Leroy Gam Gingrich, you know, he has a blowjob queen wife number three hat tip ten grain.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

Uh, for cannonballing himself into the middle of it. Remember, this is about a 100% true comment about Trump being bored and not wanting to do the job of being president of the United States. He just wants to do home decor and fly around on his plane, the gold plane, with his number one fan, Natalie Harp. Osoff was mocking Trump's work ethic, not the blonde pilot fish who is his number one fan. But Gingrich never could resist a Republican hate pylon or the headlines. So he put on his high dudgeon hat and got all up in his feelings about what a monster Osoff was for mentioning Natalie Harp in passing as he talked about Trump's laziness and pettiness. This is Newt Gingrich. Quote, John Ossoff owes Natalie Harp a personal apology for having smeared her. If a conservative Republican had attacked a liberal Democrat, working professional woman, the way Ossoff smeared Natalie Harp, well, there would be cries to kick them off the ticket and reject this kind of misogynistic language, diminishing and smearing someone who is simply doing their job. But then Ossoff routinely lies. As the Jewish leaders in Atlanta pointed out recently. And we should accept that he is a profoundly dishonest politician with no sense of honor, unquote, says Newt Gingrich.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

Yeah, who's it it's many, many layers of ridiculous and hypocrisy, considering that all Republicans do is attack and insult and demean democratic working professional women. It's starting at the top. The president of the United States who cannot stand strong women, who despises strong black women, has nothing but contempt for them and says so openly. So in return for his contribution to the conversation, Gingrich was uh spit-roasted on Twitter. Hundreds and hundreds of comments.

SPEAKER_02 32:51

I don't, I'm not on Twitter. So I'm sorry I missed that almost.

SPEAKER_00 32:55

Well, it was reported back to me because the disgraced and adulteress Gingrich, people remember him for what he has always been.

SPEAKER_02 33:03

For having a six and a half year affair, extramarital affair with Callista. Well, and who then became Trump's ambassador to the Vatican.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

Cheating on his dying wife and just all the corruption. Gingrich is just an awful human being, has always been an awful human being. And of course, Gingrich isn't talking to us. He is talking to the 31% of the public who are brain dead mopes who will don't remember anything except what Gingrich tells them. And it wasn't just Gingrich, in no particular order, but altogether as if they had been summoned. Seemingly the whole Fox News zombie army dove right in. Ari Fleischer proved he wasn't dead by shooting off his mouth. And Laura Ingram said this about John Ossoff, and we must emphasize that we are not kidding. She really said this, quote, beneath that pancake bronzer and rouge, we have an ambitious man. That's the most dangerous type of politician out there, unquote.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

I can't. I just can't. Uh remember David Brooks' deranged hissy fit over Harry Reid's very reasonable demand to investigate the failure of Intel in Iraq? Well, this is a lot like that. A nerve has been struck. Something Republicans are desperate to keep quiet has suddenly been shoved center stage. Because all that hysterical attention to Ossoff's innocuous remark, all that demanding to know how dare he ask the Emperor about his new clothes, succeeded only in hanging a big old lantern on who is this Natalie Harp? And why does the mere mention of her name send the right into an Iraq WMD level panic? Driftglass, it was so bad that Melania came back to the White House today.

SPEAKER_00 34:53

Oh no. To do damage control because she's so good at make an appearance.

SPEAKER_02 34:58

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

I'm not dead. I would like to answer your questions. I do not know who this printer person is. And as it's pointed out to me on social media the last couple of days, uh, first of all, Natal Harp has no security claims that anyone knows of.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

No.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

She has no business being in that position. Yes. And secondly, as the person through whom everyone must go to get anything done, that makes her like the second or third most powerful person in the White House.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

And nobody wants to talk about what her relationship is or what her what she brings to the table or anything like that. Um, this is from the Wall Street Journal just two days ago. Quote, how Trump's ever-present executive assistant became the talk of Washington. Natalie Harp, aide-to-president, becomes object of fascination for both left and right. A well-timed text to Harp can unlock access to Trump, giving well-known lobbyists and fringe figures alike an audience with the most powerful man in the world. She has at times ruffled feathers among White House aides. By immediately following through on Trump's directives, you know, his insane ravings, without first checking with the chief of staff, communications office, or the national security team. Unquote.

SPEAKER_02 36:07

Uh-huh. From The Independent today, nasty stories about Natalie Harp were leaked from the White House, Laura Loomer says.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

Yeah. Uh, from the New York Fucking Times today, quote, with all my heart, Natalie Trump's most devoted aide emerges. President Trump's White House aide, Natalie Harp, is always by his side. What exactly does she do? Unquote.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

From the Bezos, Washington Post today, quote, what to know about Natalie Harp, the Trump aide whom Ossoff put in the spotlight.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

From the Rolling Stone today, quote, nothing about Trump and Natalie Harp is normal. Republicans are melting down after John Ossoff commented on the president's strange relationship with his aide, unquote.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

From CNN, quote, meet Natalie Harp, the aide so close to Trump, she once rode in an SUV trunk to accompany him, unquote.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

This is from People Magazine today. People magazine. When was the last time People Magazine got within a thousand miles of anything political and radioactive? Quote, White House correspondents says Trump's doting assistant, Natalie Harp, is like his binky amid scrutiny over the relationship. In their recently released book, journalists Maggie Haverman and Jonathan Swan report that Harp has left the president private notes in, quote, personal spaces, unquote, and then unquote.

SPEAKER_02 37:30

From Brian Stelter of CNN, quote, Google searches for Trump's executive assistant Natalie Harp spiked by 5,000%. News outlets hurried to meet the demand for info by publishing news stories about Harp. Liberal commentators cheered Ossov, while conservative commenters, commentators, excuse me, condemned him. Yesterday on Fox News, a bemused Jesse Waters remarked, This is the first time we have covered Ossov on this show in six years. Unquote. Like it's a brag.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Yeah. Well, it's Jesse Waters. He's none lower than him. On social media, Oliver Willis notes, and this is important, quote, TMZ is now covering Natalie Harp reaching normies who don't care about politics. Why? Because John Ossoff just opened his mouth, unquote.

SPEAKER_02 38:24

All of which put Senator John Ossoff running for re-election in an even brighter spotlight, which he did not waste. So as long as he has your attention. This is from The Hill yesterday. Osoff says Trump is draft dodging crook president at Georgia Town Hall meeting. And this is, again, John Ossoff speaking at a town hall meeting. I don't think anything illustrates the Times more aptly than the draft dodging crook president, who has plunged our nation recklessly into a war he knows not how to end or to win. Tried to imprison this man, Ossoff said, referring to Trump's threat against Senator Mark Kelly and five other lawmakers last year to imprison them for urging service members to ignore lawful or unlawful orders, accusing the lawmakers' message of being seditious behavior from traitors. We should add, Mark Kelly was on stage with him at this town hall. Osoff praised Mark Kelly as someone who embodies American heroism, a decorated combat veteran, naval aviator, astronaut, space shuttle commander, U.S. Senator. Donald Trump tried to lock him up for daring to state in public a fundamental principle of military law.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

So Mark Kelly is actually Buckaroo bonsai.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

Yeah, it's true. The Georgia Democrat called it a privilege to see how he has persevered despite these threats of imprisonment by his own government, garnering applause from the town hall audience.

SPEAKER_00 40:20

Unquote.

SPEAKER_02 40:21

Unquote. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 40:24

But as successful as Senator Osop's one little comment was at making conservative pundits set fire to their own dicks, remember that wherever you find the Democrat pushing back, you're going to find a nest of tone police shaking their scolding fingers and leading the way.

SPEAKER_02 40:40

Yes, this from the Hill. Quote, Democratic strategist David Axelrod on Wednesday criticized recent comments from Senator John Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, about President Trump and his longtime aide Natalie Harp. No one has been more consistently eloquent or incisive in exposing Donald Trump than Osoff. The paragraph from his weekend speech that has gotten so much attention was a brutal takedown. But two words in it with Natalie seem gratuitous and unnecessary. Axarod said in a post on the social platform X, unquote, talk about not reading the room.

SPEAKER_00 41:19

Yeah. No, this is this is Axarod and his generation of political people need to just go away. Yeah. Go back to teaching political science at the University of Chicago and making money off of speaking tours, but please be quiet. And and uh well, never mind. That's a that's a road down which I do not want to travel because much further down the food chain, we find Michael Smirconish interviewing uh um Mark Halprin.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

I didn't believe this when you told me this yesterday.

SPEAKER_00 41:48

Oh, oh the hell I go through for you people.

SPEAKER_02 41:52

You are you listened to this interview.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

I did. Uh, because I didn't believe it. Because just the worst people in the world. But you know what? They're still they're still clinging to the edge of the spotlight. Now, Smirkonish asked Mark Halperin, yes, it's that Mark Halprin, whether Osof's reference was reference to her was sexist, because who else would be a better expert than that?

SPEAKER_02 42:12

Yeah, than the person who dry humped people in the elevator at work, Mark Halperin.

SPEAKER_00 42:18

And in among all the hedging and hemming and qualifying, Halpern said, quote, Ossoff doesn't seem to want to own the implication of what he said, unquote. And, quote, and certainly it's incumbent upon anyone in public life, I'd say particularly a man, to avoid saying things that would appear to denigrate the professionalism of young people, particularly women, given the nature of our society.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

Go to bed with me or I'll get you fired.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

So can I come back on Morning Joan now? Huh? Mika, can I come back on morning Joe?

SPEAKER_02 42:47

You're phrasing the charges against Mark Halprin.

SPEAKER_00 42:51

Mark Halprin.

SPEAKER_02 42:52

Go to bed with me or I'll get you fired is one of them.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

Humpa humpa hump. Yeah. Anyway, he continues in his in his inimitable way. So I think at a minimum he was careless. Was he purposeful in what he did? I assume so, but you can't prove it, unquote. Now remind me again why Halprin was exiled forever from cable news. I've been trying to. Yeah. Why he now works for Megan Kelly, you know.

SPEAKER_02 43:17

Megan Kelly didn't spun for Roger. Did a spin for Roger. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:21

And who is, well, he's she's one of the shouting lunatics out there screaming about John Osluff being off.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

Yeah, yeah, she is.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

Anyway, and finally, this quote from that same interview quote, I appreciate how loyal everyone is to her, and I appreciate the sensitivity to say that again, anyone in public life, anyone in public life, a male U.S. senator, should take a lot more care than he did at a minimum, unquote. So here's the professional left's official position on all of this. Until we pry our country out of the hands of the MAGA fascists, fuck courtesy class.

SPEAKER_02 43:56

Fuck courtesy class, fuck civility.

SPEAKER_00 43:58

Yeah. And fuck.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

This this tone policing of you can't you can't say the words with Natalie and not and get people to just show their asses by saying, Oh, you must mean that he's having an affair with her.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

No, but but you think he is.

SPEAKER_02 44:14

You think he is, you're sure he is.

SPEAKER_00 44:17

And that scares the crap out of you because you'd like to get re-elected.

SPEAKER_02 44:20

Yeah. There's a couple things I want to add to the conversation. Uh there is a woman in the White House who is there with a security clearance, and she has authority, and she has professional experience, and it is her job to be the gate to the Oval Office for the president. And her name is Suzy Wiles.

SPEAKER_01 44:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 44:43

And uh she has clearly been replaced. So the whole point of her taking that job, and and I, you know, I I had going to work for anyone who goes to work for Donald Trump has no sympathy for me whatsoever.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

No, I mean not. None. You're dead.

SPEAKER_02 45:01

But Susie Wiles has experience running things and being a manager and polling and running a campaign and all of those things. And she didn't have to take this job. She could go run a Senate campaign for a Republican and make millions of dollars doing it.

SPEAKER_00 45:20

Or run a company in the private company.

SPEAKER_02 45:21

Or run a company. I mean, she's got Republican cred and she made it a condition of taking this job that she would be the one running access to the Oval Office.

SPEAKER_01 45:35

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 45:36

And now, you know, here comes this Barbie doll from OAN, who used to read Bible verses at the end of her show, unless she was reading a quote from Donald Trump.

SPEAKER_00 45:47

Because you can hardly tell the difference between the people.

SPEAKER_02 45:49

Yeah, and as Donald Trump says, that's how she would end her show. And so, of course, she got hired to be in the White House. No security clearance. She refused to undergo a security clearance. And uh because of her looks, she got re she replaced Susie Wiles as the one who decides who gets to talk to the president.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

In other words, honey, a star is born.

SPEAKER_02 46:12

A star is born. Um, the other thing that that is really the core of John Offsoff's message, and again, I I uh applaud him for understanding the people in his state. He is running in Georgia, yeah, and he has been elected as a Democrat in Georgia. Now it wasn't a runoff and so forth, but he got enough votes in Georgia to be elected, a Jewish Democrat. Think about that. And he he he will be re-elected to that seat because of his hard work. He is one of the hardest working U.S. senators in the country. Uh two Republican mayors in Georgia have endorsed him because he worked to bring home the bacon to their cities, and they could depend on him to listen to them and to get what they needed from Washington. He worked, he listened to his constituents. These are town halls where he is listening to questions from his constituents. That is a thing that a lot of U.S. senators around the country just never do. No. Ever. The other thing about Georgia is the hardcore military aspect of living in Georgia, the number of veterans that live in Georgia.

SPEAKER_01 47:37

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 47:37

And what is happening on the USS Abraham Lincoln right now is at the forefront of their conversations, those vets. And they're listening. When you get messages and interviews with the wives of active servicemen saying conditions on this ship are horrible. It is the worst uh deployment my husband said he has ever been on, and he has been in active war situations. He's been in the military for 19 years, my husband. I've been a naval wife.

SPEAKER_00 48:12

And when Trump is asked about it, he says, No, they haven't been deployed long enough.

SPEAKER_02 48:15

Yeah, not long enough. Right.

SPEAKER_00 48:18

Just lies about it. Lies into their business.

SPEAKER_02 48:20

He has no idea because and then he switches to I want to talk about this ballroom.

SPEAKER_00 48:25

Yeah, let's talk about ballroom. Look at the Novel Office. Look what I've done.

SPEAKER_02 48:28

Also, you know, beautiful. It's gonna be beautiful. The curtains, beautiful. Oh uh he didn't have he didn't have uh any maps of the Strait of Hormuz on his desk, but he did have pictures of maple trees because he's picking the trees. I'm good at picking trees.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

Yeah. Contrast that with Joe Biden, yeah, who never missed an opportunity to thank the military, never missed an opportunity to honor the military, never said it.

SPEAKER_02 48:51

Speech ended with God bless our troops.

SPEAKER_00 48:53

Yeah, whose whose son died from his service in the military. Right. Compare that with Donald Trump, who has nothing but contempt for the military, except when he needs them to pose behind him to make him look like he cares. And John Osoff went right after the draft dodging president. He knows what he's saying.

SPEAKER_02 49:10

Yeah, and the fact that he has no idea how to end or win this war. Right. And that is smart campaigning. It is also moral campaigning. Yep. And uh it the the huge tell was from Republicans and how they react. As many people said in social media, uh, hit dog will holler.

SPEAKER_00 49:29

Well, you read my post today. Then congratulations.

SPEAKER_02 49:32

Yes, I did.

SPEAKER_00 49:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 49:35

I read my husband's blog. That's how we met.

SPEAKER_00 49:37

Every now and then, more than 15 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 49:40

We got married 15 years ago. I'm so lucky to be married to this incredibly smart man.

SPEAKER_00 49:46

I'm so lucky to be married to this lovely and intelligent woman who's smarter than me in in every way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:50

La la la. All right. Well, we we have two more stories before we sign off this week. Uh, from this press release, we alluded to this at the beginning of the show. Press release from Median Strategies. This is the polling firm that came out of nowhere to show Francesca Hong with a 23-point lead over David Crowley in the Wisconsin primary that she ultimately lost.

SPEAKER_00 50:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

Quote, this is the press release. Quote, polling discontinued. Median Strategies has concluded its polling project and will not publish additional polls. All previously published and polling releases have been withdrawn and should not be cited or treated as genuine polling data. Median Strategies was created as a short-term social experiment examining how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification. Thank you for your understanding. Unquote.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

Now, we we chatted about this, and I'm not sure that's not a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 51:10

When you bet on the laziness of the mainstream media, you will always win. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:17

And it was disruptive and it was uh, but you know, on second blush, it's like, you know what these people did? They they made a literal social experiment. Can we publish totally bullshit polls showing the opposite of what is actually happening on the ground and have it get picked up and run with because those that those are good numbers? Let's look at those numbers. We need a lot of numbers. We need to feed the numbers, and these are wild. This this will make the headlines. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And since that's almost all they do anymore, read poll numbers at you, um, some wild left field poll number that makes headlines is going to become the story that they talk about, and maybe the story that campaigns believe.

SPEAKER_02 52:00

Well, and that's the other thing you said to me the other day, which is if you're Francesca Hong and you see this poll, you're gonna print it out and wave it around everywhere. Oh, yeah, and show the inevitability of your campaign to win. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:14

So I'm not sure. Netnet, I think this is a useful thing. It was disruptive and people got mad and so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_02 52:22

Rightfully got mad, I think, but but now they have to do some work.

SPEAKER_00 52:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:26

And they're gonna have to decide and and vet poll numbers and make sure that they're accurate and that they come from somewhere. And the fact is, it's almost impossible to do polling in the age of cell phones. Uh so yeah, that unless you actually have a a staff, which no newspaper or news outlet wants to have, who's walking around and talking to people and getting their some identifier to make sure you're not polling the same person twice. You it takes it takes legwork to do a poll.

SPEAKER_00 52:59

It does. And the only I I believe the only polls anyone cares about are the ones in swing districts where it's close.

SPEAKER_01 53:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:07

Because if it's a it's a if it's an R plus 20 district or D plus 15 district, everyone knows how that's Illinois Senate race. Yeah, exactly. Everyone knows how nobody cares about Juliana Stratton's poll numbers because we know she's gonna win. It's it's it is as close to a foregone conclusion as you can get. But the problem is that because of the way this country has turned itself inside out to accommodate the MAGA morons, yeah, yeah. Now all the polls that might be of interest to anyone are now inside the margin of error.

SPEAKER_01 53:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:36

You know, that nobody knows. And since people are desperate to know the future, um, and and the polls can't tell them that anymore. They're they're they're their crystal ball is cracked. It doesn't work anymore. And if your entire business model is I know shit that's gonna happen and you don't, and I'm gonna tell you, and it fails, what the hell are you and you're only and you know what you're left with? You're left having to talk about issues.

SPEAKER_02 54:01

Yeah, which no one wants to do in the mainstream media.

SPEAKER_00 54:04

And we certainly don't want to do that. Now, in addition to media strategies, folding its tent up and skipping town, this came over our transom earlier today. And it's from an outfit called 50 plus one, which is a quote, website for nonpartisan, data-driven political news and analysis, especially polling aggregation, unquote. And this is from their press release. Quote, we suspended two polsters from 50 plus one for ethics violations. Both polsters appear to have failed to disclose that a campaign paid for their surveys, and one admits to changing voters' responses in favor of the candidate that allegedly paid for the survey.

SPEAKER_01 54:40

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 54:41

Durpa derpa derpa. Today 50 plus one is permanently banning the use of any future data from the Public Sentiment Institute and suspending the use of data from Patriot polling until and unless.

SPEAKER_02 54:53

Patriot polling? I wonder who they work for.

SPEAKER_00 54:55

How can you not trust Patriot polling, Blue Gal? Until and unless they sufficiently respond to our methodological inquiries. We have discovered evidence that suggests both firms conduct surveys for political campaigns without disclosing their clients publicly. All surveys from each pollster that exist in our database at publication will be marked as partisan, as we cannot be confident they were conducted on a nonpartisan basis, as the pollsters claim. Additionally, we are permanently removing from our website all polls released by the Public Sentiment Institute after the company admitted it fabricated vote choice data for selected respondents. This fabrogation appears to have boosted the poll numbers of the political candidate that paid for TPSI for polling services, unquote. So it turns out that advice about trusting polling data is a lot like dating advice from the 1990s. Before you spend the night together, you sh make sure you spend the day together. Oh God. You know, know who these people are. Check into them, do a minimum amount of work for fuck's sake to find out if they're lying to you or not.

SPEAKER_02 56:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:04

Um, second, I wonder if Donald Trump ever paid for a poll that would would show him winning by 30%. Oh, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 56:11

He's he's 100% MAGA. He's 100% MAGA loves me. He loved that.

SPEAKER_02 56:15

He loved that poll.

SPEAKER_00 56:16

And those he loves online polls, too, that are conducted by the sketchiest people in the universe. Now, second, and with far more implications for global peace and stability than anything John Osov ever said, this is Paul Krugman's reaction to Trump slapping around and insulting our allies South Korea in public while publicly cozying up to North Korea. This is Paul Krugman. It's a long column, and uh the link will be in our show notes, quote, a new level of Trumpian evil. North Korea is the worst government on earth. Trump prefers it to the prosperous democracy next door. I know that Donald Trump does something new and terrible every day, sometimes several times a day, yet his betrayal of South Korea in favor of his, quote, very good relationship with Kim Jong-un, unquote, stands out even among his many betrayals. North Korea is, in short, arguably the worst regime on the planet. South Korea is by contrast one of the happiest stories in history. Obviously it's not a utopia because no nation is, but it is a functioning democracy which beat back a former president's attempt to impose martial law, then tried and imprisoned him. Hey, is that the real reason for Trump's hostility? Unquote.

SPEAKER_02 57:27

I'm sure South Korea is letting him hide money there.

SPEAKER_00 57:30

North Korea.

SPEAKER_02 57:31

I'm seeing North Korea. I mean North Korea is letting him.

SPEAKER_00 57:34

Well, and he loves dictators. He loves dictators. This is the most ferociously oppressive communist dictator on earth.

SPEAKER_02 57:42

Not to mention, do they have nukes? We think they do, or they're trying to real hard.

SPEAKER_00 57:46

And and Republicans are running around screaming everyone who would like Medicare for All is a communist while Donald Trump is literally cozy. Yeah. Yep. Yep. So.

SPEAKER_02 57:57

All right. I think that's our show, Driftglass. Each week we post to our Patreon page and website an internet kitty sent in by you, the listeners. Surprise, this week's Internet Kitty is an Australian wallaby named Dumpo. Dumpo was sent in to us by Lance in Australia, who writes, I'm a listener in Australia and I love your podcast. Also, The Bill Show. We love The Bill Show. Also, Bob Seska, we love Bob Seska. Here is a picture of our swamp wallaby named Dumpo. He visits in the evening and is a great eater of freshly poured macropod pellets, which he adores. And uh I didn't put the picture up of the macropod pellets, but if you've ever seen rabbit food, that's what it looks like. And of course, Dumpo eats freshly poured macropod pellets, a member of our international family of freshly poured pet food products and our fake sponsor. Whether you serve Pet Store Perfection or Dollar Store Drek, your marsupial will hop right onto your back porch and demand that the food they eat is only freshly poured.

SPEAKER_03 59:10

Oh my lord, it's freshly poured. That's the flavor they adore. Oh my lord, it's freshly poured. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:26

And you can visit Dumpo, Dumpo's such a sweetie, at our Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash proleftpod, or our website, prolefpod.com. And you can send your internet kitty, dog, fish, wallaby, whatever. Just send us a photo to our email address, prolefpodcast at gmail.com, subject line internet kitties. Where and by the way, proleftpodcast at gmail.com is also where you can write to both of us. Feel free to write us. We love hearing from you. Be aware that if you write to us at any of our addresses, we reserve the right to read your email or U.S. Postal Service, Go Postal Unions, letter on the air, unless you say otherwise.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:11

Yeah, and don't forget our gourmet coffee guideline. Even in this hot weather, if you can afford an espresso-based beverage for yourself, consider buying one for us at patreon.com forward slash prolef pod. This is not charity. This is our job. This is the work we do every week with your help and support. You can also help us by continue to grow by sharing our show on social media. If you love this podcast, introduce it to a friend. They might love it. And thank you so much for helping us spread the word, even unto Australia people. We got listeners in Australia.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:43

I'm looking forward to the next 15 years with you, Drift Glass.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:46

Me too, darling. Me too.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:48

So, Driftclass, how are the internet kitties doing this week?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:51

Well, Blue Gal, the Internet Kitties say if you want to see real tone policing, try walking across a keyboard during a Zoom call.