Ba Da Ba Ba Ba I'm Losin' It!
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I need there needs to be you need to have like a warning system with friends to be like hey am I being am I turning myself into a clown can someone tell me I think the answer just having real friends so who would say that to you yeah I just say that as someone who's like I'm not even I could absolutely see myself going down that path like I could become one of those clown people yeah we know yeah I know you want it do you want us to tell you if yeah okay I always want to be told yeah no you're still good you need a stronger fear of noodles

I will do whatever works. And even some things that don't work. To flee from your own mortality? Uh-huh. To avoid aging? Yeah. She was saying, like, when you're dating someone, your check should be...

Is this a person who could help me through the death of my mother? I think that's totally reasonable. Well, you just don't think that way on a first date. Yeah. Or a third date. But like, you should. Yeah. Yeah.

We're back with Kendra, Hallie, and Sarah. This week, we also have an interview with historian Eric Larson about his book, The Demon of Unrest, about the lead up to the Civil War. For some reason, I felt it was timely. I love this book. I found it to be a fascinating period of time to think about, which is the time basically between Lincoln being elected and inaugurated and the march towards the Civil War and the

what it is like to think about the perspective of the people that were making that Civil War a reality, even though they did not believe and could not predict how bloody and terrible it would turn out to be. And Kendra and I were here. We were into it. I loved it. I started reading the book this weekend. And it's funny because you say period of time. What you did not explain is that it literally goes day by day across multiple locations, which I'm fine with, but...

You said during the interview that you stopped reading Grant's memoirs because you hated the troop movements. And he does, which again, I love this stuff. Eric Larson does describe full-on troop movements from Moultrie to Sumter back to the mainland. But it's much more like a narrative. The Grant memoir, it is...

A mechanical description of various aspects of the war planning. A topic for another day. We've got too much to talk about. Let's get into it. What a weekday. On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned with former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney in the suburbs of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. I certainly have many Republicans who will say to me,

I can't be public. They do worry about a whole range of things, including violence. But they'll do the right thing. And I would just remind people, if you're at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody. And there will be millions of Republicans who do that on November 5th, vote for Vice President Harris.

Imagine doing something and not telling everyone about it immediately. Couldn't be me. Republicans can be moral, but only under the cover of night, like waiting till the cashier turns their back to put money in the tip jar. Makes no sense. The whole point is to do it when they can see it. That's what it's about. It's about the credit. You put the money in and you make a long, sustained eye contact. Big smile. That's for you. You must be a delight to deal with. I am a delight to deal with. I am a delight. I'm a delight. Added Cheney.

Like, if you wouldn't hire somebody to babysit your kids, like, you shouldn't make that guy the president of the United States. I mean, that's, like, pretty basic.

Yeah, that rules out most presents we've had. You think Rutherford B. Hayes knew how to change a diaper? Going forward, though, good rule. And also, by the way, even babysitting is an unnecessarily high bar for Donald Trump. Would you trust Donald Trump not to give your child a peanut butter cookie when you went to the bathroom, even though he has a peanut allergy, was the only piece of information you conveyed to him? Would you trust him not to think she's just being crazy and kids love peanut butter? Now you're using the EpiPen. You never use the EpiPen.

But Donald Trump gave your kid a peanut butter cookie. I guess it's likely that he would just eat the peanut butter cookie. Right. But then he'd wipe his hands on the kid. Like, you'd use your kid as a napkin and then... Yeah, now we got hives. Now it's hives o'clock. Also in Michigan, Maria Shriver had this question for Harris.

You know, everybody I talk to says, you know, I have to turn off the news. I can't read anything. I'm meditating. I'm doing yoga. I'm doing I'm so anxious. I just don't even know. I'm eating gummies, all kinds of things. You know, what are you doing? What are you doing? Not eating gummies.

I gotta say, that sounded like she's eating gummies. Yeah, I thought that's what she said. And then Maria Shriver was arrested backstage. Can I just... It was all fine. That was the most I'm-talking-to-rich-friends-in-New-York-and-LA question I've ever heard. Oh, you're meditating and doing yoga? That was rich person shit. Yeah, the rest of us are going to work. Yeah. I mean, some people are doing yoga. But like...

Are we in Michigan here? We're in Royal Oak, Michigan? Are we meditating and doing yoga? Are the undecideds we need doing... Are they meditating and doing yoga? Michigan, weigh in in the comments. What are you doing in Michigan? No, we're going to work. We're coming home. We're smoking a joint and then we're watching Real Housewives. I think that is what people are doing. That's what you're specifically doing. But I do think this straddles the line. I think it's like how to be relatable and also how to be aspirational to women. Where I think there is something where it's like, okay, well, there...

Maria Shriver is also having to medicate herself through this. I understand that part. I think there is that element to it. Yeah. Wearing a sneaker. Very relatable. It's a cool outfit. I like it. I like that. They like, it's a good, I like this look. I like this group. I like the exactly six people. Yeah.

Meanwhile, in a low energy interview with Dan Bongino on Friday, Trump offered this fresh take on serial rapist Harvey Weinstein. I was so amazed that Harvey Weinstein got schlonged. He got hit as hard as you can get hit because he was sort of the king of the world. Right. And yet he got hit.

Fuck, said Kamala Harris, lowering her head in her hands. That was my closing message. Interesting moment there of a man in decline. He didn't plan to say schlong. No, you could see him hesitate. He searches for the perfect word and that perfect word is schlong. But I think it's more that he couldn't. I think that like we are watching Donald Trump

He said schlonged. I think he couldn't find a better word. Yeah, no, his brain said, I got it. Don't you worry, sir. Schlonged. We got to beat this guy. We're in for four schlong years.

Interestingly, the last time you heard the word schlonged was in 2015 when Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton got schlonged by Obama in the 2008 primary. He then posted this tweet for the ages. When I said that Hillary Clinton got schlonged by Obama, it meant got beaten badly. The media knows this often used word in politics. I wanted to talk about this because this is a reminder that when Trump first ran in 2015, he felt like he had to explain himself a tiny bit.

Like he felt like when he said this, he needed to say, no, no, no. I just meant beaten badly. Don't worry. I wasn't saying something more vulgar than that. No longer is he bound by whatever sense of restriction he felt in this moment. That's gone.

We're thinking about. The 14 other tweets from this specific day are captured at UC Santa Barbara's American Presidency Project. Because it's like, oh, right, they just are capturing documentation from every presidential election. And that's it. That's what we got. It's funny. We're talking about Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs in which he writes movingly about standing up to a confederate and saying...

the importance of standing up for the American flag and that that will sit side by side with, by schlonged, I of course meant. On Saturday, Trump was speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania when he rambled for 12 minutes, 12 minutes about the late Arnold Palmer, eventually getting lost in a reverie about Palmer's genitalia. But Arnold Palmer was all man. And I say that in all due respect to women and I love women.

But this guy, this guy, this is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, oh, my God, that's unbelievable. I had to say it.

Thank you, Mr. Trump. The question was about abortion. What's annoying about all of this is now when I ask for an Al Palmer, some jokester is going to bring me iced tea and lemonade. One of my qualifications for dating is not someone who would help me through a passing of a relative, but was specifically I wanted to be with a man who would never bring up golf or anything related to golf in a conversation. And I really think it...

This is why. Yeah. Golf is bad. Well, I mean, the problem is golf, you know, a case of golf...

You can come down with it later in life. You know, it's something that you can become golf with age. You may not be golf in your 20s, but you can become golf in your 30s or 40s. I think it's actually hard to come down with golf with age because, no, it hurts the back. When you get back into it, it hurts. Have you taken a golf swing lately? Let me guess. No. No.

It was polite of you to even ask that question. Have you ever been to a Topgolf? I haven't been to a Topgolf. I don't hate golf. Travis and I would golf. That's right. During the pandemic, too, we would go golf. How about that? I mean, like three times. I just lost like three points of... Three hits for you. Oh, really? Are there hits left? How many? Negative hits. Are we at the bottom of the...

Arnold Palmer had a huge hog, huh? Well, that's all I needed to hear, said an undecided voter in Pennsylvania. And the hits from Trump kept coming. On Sunday, Trump visited a McDonald's in Feasterville, Pennsylvania, which had been closed for the photo op as he pretended to work at the fry station and pushed his baseless claim that Kamala Harris didn't actually work at McDonald's in college. The best part is when Trump took a good long stare at the fry oil and said, this is what will inevitably kill me.

Trump spent about five minutes making fries, sans hairnet, and then he said this: "We've got the salt on it. Never touches the human hand. Nice and full." "Never touches the human hand. Nice and full."

Said a McDonald's employee. I've never heard it described that way, but sure. Did Trump think they just plunge their hands into the scalding fry bin and scoop them out with burning fingers? Is this guy a fucking gorilla? Is it a man suit? I hate how much this made me want McDonald's, by the way. That's the ultimate testament to McDonald's fries. They can be subjected to this and come out unscathed. I went to McDonald's because of this story yesterday.

And even though I am currently on a miracle weight loss drug, I still managed to get down a McDouble, a hot and spicy McChicken, and a 10-piece nugget meal. I had my normal order on Sunday when I was coming back from Target because this was all. You guys! Looking at this right now, it's 10 a.m. I want fries so bad. Come on! Control yourselves! I got the only thing I ever ordered at McDonald's. It's going to be something crazy. No, it's not. Don't reward them. No, I got a large fry and a large Sprite.

That sounds perfect. You don't get a sandwich? I haven't eaten McDonald's meat. I'm fish filet all the way. I know you're fish filet. I remember when I would go to McDonald's more frequently and I knew that if I got you a fish filet you'd be pleased. Think of me next time you go.

Anyway, no prison can hold my appetite once the idea of McDonald's is introduced. Trump spent 15 minutes at the drive-thru window handing pre-screened drivers bags of food that they hadn't ordered and dodging reporters' questions. Obviously, the drivers had to be pre-screened. Anyone who has worked at the drive-thru

can tell you about the full spectrum of humanity's flaws and mental illnesses that come before you out that window. A person's car is a portal into their secret lives, and your job is to reach out toward that portal time and time again. And then from the other side, imagine you're on your way to work. You pull into a drive-thru for a shame egg McMuffin that you plan to keep between you and God. You come around the corner to pick it up and fuck

Donald Trump pops out of the window. It's a waking nightmare. You might disassociate. You might not trust that you aren't dreaming until you fully alienated yourself from every person who loves you. Seeing Donald Trump in a McDonald's drive-thru window could ruin your fucking life.

Could you imagine? Could you imagine? Like I was thinking about what it would be like to have that, that, that physical form, that shape pop out of the drive-thru window to hand you a bag of food. I think I would scream at the top of my lungs. Like not even like in a self-aware way. I think I would just like, like when, when that, when that studio head finds the, the, the, the horse in his bed, like that kind of, Oh,

Now you crash your car into a tree just to see if you were real. What'd you do? You would crash your car into a tree just to see if you were real. Right, exactly. Like, this can't be happening. You can't eat that food. Like, that's the other thing. Yeah, you don't know. You have to go to the next McDonald's. Because you know he wants to touch it with his human hand. Yeah. It's like he's bringing it up. And like, I don't know what they do at McDonald's normally, but he's not wearing gloves. Well, he doesn't have a hairnet. Yeah. So you know that shit's just falling in there. Yeah, he doesn't have the hat on. I'm not eating it. I'd probably eat it, but I'd feel bad. I'd eat it.

We know. I can't get McDonald's again, right? No, I can't do it. There's definitely another McDonald's around the corner that you can go to. If you do that, we'll take some fries. We're not doing it. I don't want it. We don't have a close one here. You have to drive to... I know where you have to go. It's at La Brea in Santa Monica. It's best to come in... You said that like it's through a Narnia wardrobe. I mean... You don't want to go through the... It's a tough left from...

So it's best to either come around or to take Lexington to make the left to get into the McDonald's or go down Santa Monica, make the right and then the right. I would say hypothetically, if I've got your grants diary of your anyway, even though the drivers were pre-screened, things got dicey when one asked for an extra barbecue sauce and an abortion because you only get one sauce with the four piece.

People don't know that. Of course, the fun of the event couldn't help but make way for the snarling chaos and evil just beneath the apron, as Trump once again refused to say he'd accept the election results. Either way, will you accept the results of the election? Yeah, sure. It's a fair election.

Somehow, as usual, awfulness is even more offensive when spoken through a drive-thru window. The drive-thru window is a place of receiving what you ask for, of what you see is what you get, of the best America has to offer, a place of fairness, a place of truth. The reporter then took the opportunity to ask the Hamburglar if we could trust him around all these juicy, piping hot Big Macs. Another question Trump refused to answer, a question about raising the minimum wage.

Well, I think this. I think these people work hard. They're great. And I just saw something, a process. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing to see. These are great franchises and produce a lot of jobs. And it's great. And great people work in here, too. I'm dodging it.

These are great franchises. He's there at the behest of the owner. Trump as president will break unions, oppose the minimum wage, eliminate the protections against out-of-pocket costs for Obamacare, and pass a national sales tax to pay for tax cuts for billionaires while exploiting working people in every way possible and turning the federal government into a favor factory for his rich friends. But he did put on an apron. And he's wearing it. Will it work?

It's a good picture for him. It's the one time the tie works and matches and it's because you can't see how low it's been hanging. Damn it. It just works. It's a great picture for him. And, you know, the Trump people, their bet is that the picture will work because they think everyone's stupid. That's what they're counting on.

It's like a sick and twisted joke. And you guys all ran out and went to McDonald's after you saw this? No, but I would like to. The pictures were everywhere. And I was sitting at home and I knew I had to go to Target. I knew that there was a McDonald's. It's the Valley. I don't have to go too far. There's just one everywhere.

Yeah, I mean, I didn't want to go to McDonald's because I saw Trump in a McDonald's apron. I wanted to go to McDonald's because I heard the word McDonald's, McDonald's, McDonald's, McDonald's. And fries, specifically. We've got to get Tim Walz in there. We've got to get Kyle. Is it about seeing him scoop the fries, just seeing that many fries? Yeah, it's a lot of fries. You see all the fries, you think, my God, you think abundanza. Just the abundance. If Tim Walz wants to go to like a Five Guys, I will go to Five Guys. I'll go in a second. Five Guys. I love Five Guys. It's the better burger. Five Guys.

They have a nice grilled cheese. Oh. Yeah, well, it's just on the bun. Yeah. Yeah. They do have a good grilled cheese. I don't like the fries that much there. I'm sorry. Oh, I like how much they give you because you don't have to get a large. You can get a small. Yeah, they throw fries in the bag. That's the bargain you make when you go to the Five Guys. But, you know, I'd rather have fewer fries of a fry I prefer. McDonald's. That's just un-American. I'm sorry. Shake Shack. Oh, yeah.

I know what I'm saying is blasphemous. You don't like Shake Shack? Well, I've moved, so I was eating a lot of Shake Shack, and then I rediscovered Five Guys, and I genuinely think Five Guys makes a better product all around. Really? Yeah. Not my position. I respect Five Guys. It's just not my preference. You know why I think the problem is, and I think it's important that we really get into this 14 days before the election, is that for me, Five Guys sits...

in between McDonald's and Shake Shack. Really? Yes. And that, in that I think of five guys as a little bit more of a, um, it's more effort. Yeah.

And if I'm going to do the more effort version, I'd rather go up to Shake Shack. And if I want to do less effort, I'd rather go down to McDonald's. I would put Shake Shack in the middle of McDonald's and Five Guys because I feel like Five Guys is the more effort food. No, but Five Guys is – Shake Shack is – Shake Shack's problem is the price. Shake Shack is a fast food bridge. It's a price. Shake Shack is priced up. And so you end up – like Shake Shack is just – it's a little bit more premium.

And I just if I'm not going premium, I'm going to McDonald's or Taco Bell, to be honest, or being honest, Taco Bell. You know how I feel about Taco Bell. I looked up and all five guys are voting for Jill Stein. So something to keep in mind. Four out of five, five guys. Trump reflected on his McDonald's stop on Monday. You know, you never know about life and you never know what's good, what's bad. You do something. It's going to be great. It's OK. And you do something that's supposed to be OK. This was supposed to be a routine stop.

And it turned into a monster. But it was a beautiful monster. There was a lot of love. Hey, do you ever wonder what it sounds like when a declining maniac tries to wax poetic, but his vocabulary is dropped to about 300 words? That's what it sounds like.

14 days. 14 days, baby. I'm losing it. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba, I'm losing it. Yeah, we can tell. I am losing it. McDonald's said the company does not endorse candidates for elected office, and that remains true in this race for the next president. We are not red or blue. We are golden. Really? Then explain to us how Mayor McCheese has run unopposed 12 times in a row on a platform of sending Grimace back to where he came from. Which is hell. Yeah.

Where I was promised on January 6th. Yeah. Where was Marry Me Cheese on January 6th? He was there. Marry Me Cheese was at the Capitol. Is that a real character? Marry Me Cheese? Yeah, of course he is. Oh, I genuinely didn't. What's the sheriff called? Sheriff Burger? No. Sheriff Burger? Okay, Meredith Marks? What's the cop called? Goddamn. Constable Chicken? There's a bird, right? There's a bird that's like a pilot or something. Really? Yeah, or like some female bird character. Huh.

Is it Officer Big Mac? And is there a girl bird? Did I make that up? I think it's Birdie. I can only think of Grimace and the Burglar. There is a pantheon that they kind of got rid of. He's not the Burglar. He's the Hamburglar. You never showed it to the Burglar. Oh, okay. For breakfast, probably.

Anyway, is Donald Trump a ridiculous clown? Is he a terrifying threat? He is, of course, both at once a balance that Barack Obama attempted to strike during a rally in Nevada over the weekend. Obama highlighted the mistake of dismissing Trump as "inserious." When Donald Trump repeatedly lies or cheats or shows utter disregard for our Constitution or just insults people, people make excuses for it. They say, "Well, he's not serious."

He's not, everything a president says is serious. Mass deportations of immigrants, punishing his enemies, Arnold Palmer's big hog, being shocked you don't touch scalding hot french fries with your bare hands because he never thought about, let alone saw, how his favorite food was delivered to him on a silver tray. He means every word. Obama also called out the inherent danger in Trump's recent looniness, describing his long, word-souled speeches in the town hall where he swayed to music for 39 minutes. You would be worried...

If your grandpa started acting like this, you would. I mean, right? You'd like call up your brother, your cousin or something and be like, hey, have you seen grandpa lately? What are we going to do? But this is coming from somebody who wants unchecked power, wants the most powerful office on earth with the nuclear codes and all that. The point is, we don't, we, we do not need to see what an older generation,

Especially around the bathtub.

As voting began across the country, pundits and podcasters alike rushed to predict the significance of the early vote. Spoiler, we don't know. Nobody knows. There will be no clear answer on who's winning this election until the election is over. And even then, probably not for a few days. Every moment spent trying to decipher ambiguous scraps of data is a moment you could be spending pestering an exhausted mother of three in Lansing, Michigan via phone.

In a bit of good news, Elon Musk's attempt to bump Trump's ground game in Arizona and Nevada might turn out to be a bust. Why? Because his canvassers were faking it. Or as Musk calls it, coming every time. I like that one. Yeah. According to leaked data obtained by The Guardian, up to a quarter of door knocks registered by Musk's America pack in both states were reportedly fake, with canvassers allegedly lying about the number of houses they visited. Also, many of the canvassers appear to have been porn bots. Troubling.

The PAC's internal system flagged 24% of Arizona door knocks and 25% of Nevada door knocks as unusual survey logs. In one example, a canvasser logged home visits while sitting at Guayo's On the Trail restaurant in Globe, Arizona, a half a mile away from the doors he was allegedly knocking. Bad look for democracy, but excellent look for Guayo's incredible happy hour deals. Bottomless chips and salsa for $5.99. I lie about canvassing voters in Arizona, too.

Of course, canvassing for Trump is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Elon Musk's attempt to influence the 2024 presidential election. Last week, Musk announced that he would give away $1 million each day to registered voters in swing states from now until the election. He's like a more sinister Willy Wonka, which is saying something because most of the kids who visited Willy Wonka's factory died horribly.

To enter, voters have to sign Elon's petition pledging to support the first and second amendments. Some experts say Musk's offer may be illegal and constitutes election interference. Yeah, we can't have one billionaire illegally buying elections. It's not fair to the other billionaires and corporations trying to buy it legally.

If I were in one of these swing states, I'd sure as shit sign that pledge. Many of you listening are perhaps eligible. Consider taking that pledge might put you in a position to take a million dollars from the world's richest loser and get the funniest fucking story of your life.

That'd be awesome. Would you sign it if you lived in Pennsylvania? I would. It's a good question. I don't know. I don't... I wouldn't want my name on that for posterity's sake. I would immediately donate it to, like, Planned Parenthood. Yeah. I feel like you have to immediately give it away. You can donate it. And by the way, if you win a million dollars from Elon Musk, you could donate some of it and still feel pretty good about it. How about this? Buy yourself a car as a down payment for a house and hundreds of thousands of dollars for a good cause. That's a great fucking day. It's easier than going on Survivor and losing immediately. Oh. Oh.

Wow. Just didn't expect to. Wow. Didn't expect it. Just a samurai sword to the face. Just sitting here having a nice time. Next thing I know. Ow. It's my job. Lest you forget. Yeah. Lest you forget. Got him.

While Elon Musk might not like being in politics, he sure likes spending his money on it. According to The Guardian, Musk donated $75 million to his America PAC to support Trump in the last three months. He remains the PAC's only donor. Fortunately for our side, Kamala Harris has set a record for fundraising this fall, raising over $1 billion in the three months leading up to September 30th, while Trump has raised less than he did in 2020. Between targeting battleground states and focusing on canvassers, Elon Musk and Donald Trump are essentially running the evil version of the Democratic campaign. If Kamala is Spider-Man...

Elon and Donald are like Green Goblin. Crazy rich villains while we're all out here just missing our uncle. You know?

I think one of the other things that I took from Demon of Unrest that I didn't know anything about. By the way, look, it's happening. Now Kendra's talking about it. I like it. I know. I want to hear what you have to say. Eric Larson, he's a good writer. He makes history really accessible to the masses. It's very important. But there was one of the main protagonists in the story. It's either Ruffin or Hammond. I think it's Ruffin. He was also a scientist.

Because he was a, remember, he studied soil. That was his big thing. He studied soil in order to make crop yields larger. But then, and he was also a very rich plantation owner. And then his side gig was being a rabid secessionist who went from state to state agitating. That's Ruffin. Yeah. And I'm just like, oh, this is the same thing. A person who could just be doing science. Yeah, that's a good point.

Yes. There's a moment. So in the book, there's this guy, Ruffin, Edmund Ruffin? Edmund Ruffin. Edmund Ruffin. He's just a vile, egotistical narcissist who craves attention and praise for pushing success, for pushing, craves attention and praise for pushing the Civil War.

To the point where he goes to the battlefield and rides on a cannon. There's just clearly soldiers who have to manage this old man who's famous, who's come to be part of the battle. And he's 67, so he's very old by 1861 standards. But at one point, he is sleeping nearby a cannon, and a bunch of soldiers set the cannon off, basically deafening him.

And it's very clear, like they fucking hated this guy. And it's just funny to like it's like it. Yeah, it's there's a reason I thought it would be worth talking to Eric Larson because I get it now. So and again, we're not we're not saying these things are the same. Not saying these things are exactly the same or equivalent. But history, history, it's almost like Biden would say, quoting Seamus Heaney. It does rhyme.

Right. I was going to say, it's almost like if we didn't learn from it, it will repeat itself. Yeah. We're really dedicated not learning from it. And even sometimes we learn from it and it repeats itself. Yeah. You know?

It's sort of like if you don't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it. But you're also doomed to repeat it if you learn about it. There's only so much stuff that can happen. Eventually it's got to start repeating. Yeah. Like when we were trying to decide on what color should be the crooked color and we were talking about what brands use which colors and the person that was designing it got pretty annoyed with how circuitous the conversation had become and said, well, yeah, it's tough to choose, but there are only six colors. Yeah. Yeah.

So instead of spending the next two weeks refreshing Twitter and panicking yourself in your group text, how about you volunteer? Knock on doors. Make calls. Get together with your fellow anxious Americans to make an actual difference. Do not sit home and just freak out. Save that for election night. That's why Senator Brian Schott said during our Pod Save America interview, if we do everything we're supposed to do, we will win. And if we do anything we're not supposed to do, we will not. Are we going to win? No one knows. I feel terrified. Correct feeling.

You don't get to feel okay these next two weeks. And if you do, you're just lying to yourself. Because if Donald Trump wins, none of us are anxious enough. And if he loses, it will be because we were awake to the danger. There are two weeks left. If you are listening to this, you can get to a swing state to knock on doors. You can make calls.

You can donate. And at Vote Save America, we are launching a new program. It is called Last Call because the messengers that will make the biggest difference are the ones people know and trust. So we need everyone listening. We need you to think of three people you know who live in a battleground state like Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, or Georgia and make a

Sure, they vote. Scroll through your contacts, find those names, text or call them. Then do that a few more times before Election Day. We are not kidding. The reminders work. And if you don't know anyone in those three states, you definitely know three people who could use a nudge to vote no matter where they live.

If you don't know what to say in those texts, DMs and calls, go to votesaveamerica.com slash vote to see your voting checklist and click last call to get your script to convince three people you know to vote. That's votesaveamerica.com slash vote. And if you do it, email us to tell us how it went with a voice memo and Cricket might play it on an upcoming pod. Everybody knows three people in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona,

North Carolina, text them. They could be an old friend. They could be a college friend. They could be someone you slept with. They could be someone you didn't sleep with. They could be the love of your life and the time you didn't work.

But you think about them every day. You think about them every single day. This is your in. This is it. Two birds, one stone. Speaking of having to do a whole song and dance, Cynthia Erivo took the internet to task for a fan-made Wicked poster, which obscured her character's eyes, a reference to the musical's original poster, as well as an infamous Wicked meme that asked, is your pussy green?

So here we have the movie poster as it was released. It's, uh, inspired by the original, uh, cartoon version for the Broadway show, but they have Ariana a little bit visible and they have Cynthia Erivo a little more visible. You can see your eyes. So then some fan made this alternate poster that obscures the eyes, makes the lips red, like in the original poster covers up a bit more of Ariana's face, like the whisper and also gives Cynthia Erivo more of a smirk. Uh,

Someone also made reference to the fact that on the original Broadway poster, somebody had scrawled graffiti that said, is your pussy green? Which made the rounds many times over the years. Cynthia Erivo saw all this and said...

This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen. Equal to that awful AI of us fighting, equal to people posing the question, is your pussy green? None of this is funny. None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us. Wrote Erivo, the original poster is an illustration. I am a real life human being who chose to look right down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer, because without words, we communicate with our eyes.

Look, she's a theater kid. She's earnest. You don't get vocals like that being ironic or detached. That's for incels and podcast hosts who are incels. It sucks that you have to take yourself this seriously and be a little bit insufferable to be that good at musical theater. But that's the bargain every Broadway star makes with the ghost of Uta Hagen. It's just sort of like, oh, it's not that it's just a fan art.

It's not a big deal. It's the original poster. That's, I didn't, it's the original poster. Ha ha. That's cool. That's the, ha. It is sort of, it is interesting. I feel like musical theater people in, in, I think there is an earnestness that does speak to, that comes out in their talent, but then it does require them to be so humorless about their craft and,

I think I allow it. I think they're allowed to be just mad about everything. I like it. If it helps their talent. Oh, I just I am glad. I am glad. Like, I am glad Zendaya Erivo is just telling us how she feels. And she's not doing anything polished. She's out there. She's out there being herself. Great.

It's nice. I feel like everything is so ironic and detached. And like, if you're younger, it's like, oh, everything's cringe. I like someone being like, I'm just going to tell them how this, you know, how upset I am about this thing that doesn't really matter. I mean, until they're endorsing or not quite endorsing Kamala, then we have to have a whole 15 minute conversation about it. That's fair. Well, that's because the stakes. There's no stakes here. That's why this is fun. The stakes here are zero.

I think it's right that she's outspoken about being upset. I do think it's a very funny thing to be upset about that your fans are engaging with the thing you made and that somehow it hit on you. I love it. I love it. I'm excited for the Wicked musical. I couldn't believe you said that. Yeah, I was really shocked. This PR campaign has been like rough. It's too much. So I only found out yesterday that

There's it's a two part movie that they divided in half. But actually, to me, that's not a bug. That's a feature because the first movie must go till Defying Gravity. And that second act is the first. So who's going to see it? Yeah, I don't know. But that's not my problem. I get to leave on Defying Gravity. And when I saw it the first time I did when I saw Wicked, I saw it when it came to D.C.,

Actually, I saw it. I mentioned this to Senator Jackie Rosen, in fact, because I was interviewing her. And when I saw it with my mother at the Kennedy Center, Harry Reid was in the box next to us. And after Defying Gravity and The Current Comes Down, like I was like crying and like applauding and on my feet. And then I looked to my right and Harry Reid fully asleep, which was awesome. But I didn't know really anything about Wicked when I saw it.

And I don't really remember anything after that Defying Gravity. I don't think anyone does, really. It's no Into the Woods second act. That's true. And finally, during Dua Lipa's rendition of Do You Believe in Life After Love during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Cher joined her on stage and said, I'm Cher, bitch. I'm Cher, bitch.

Wow. Yeah. Unbelievable.

I thought Dua Lipa was doing fine. It was a great live performance. Not just Dua Lipa doing a live show. And you don't realize until you hear Cher singing what Cher singing is like. And you hear that booming tone. That rich voice. And you're like, that is a... How old is she? She's in her 70s? Yeah. Incredible. A very...

Oh, no, it's just going to Italy and be like, oh, I've had Olive Garden. I guess I kind of know what this is. And then having actual pasta, like, oh, no. Dua Lipa is Olive Garden Cher. This is like if you were recording a weekly political podcast and then, bam, Cher walks in and starts podcasting. I bet she's great at it. Yeah. Oh, God, if she had a podcast. How much better would this episode be if Cher walked in right now? So much better. Yeah.

Okay, before we go, I have not been able to stop talking about this book. And now Kendra's reading it and she understands why. So I sat down with Eric Larson to talk about Fort Sumter, January 6th, and what we can all learn from a time in which a group of Americans turned against the country as a result of right-wing and racist propaganda and also the Civil War. You know? So when we come back, my conversation with Eric Larson. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. ♪

Earlier this year, I read a book I haven't stopped thinking about and to my producer's exhaustion talking about. Joining me now is the author of the book, The Demon of Unrest. It's Eric Larson. Eric, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Let's start with this. What is The Demon of Unrest?

So the reason I call it the demon of unrest, I'm taking that actually from a letter written by one of the minor protagonists in the book. And he's commenting on the demon of unrest being unleashed in America in this antebellum period leading up to the Civil War. So political discontent and discord.

And I found that particularly striking because it really is sort of an interesting resonance when you think of a demon running amok in the landscape, stirring up trouble. And so that's why I borrowed that for the title.

So when I when I picked up the book, I just assumed that you had seen the events of January 6th unfold and all the tension and plotting that went into it and then started looking into Fort Sumter as a parallel. But actually, you had begun working on that book.

during the pandemic long before January 6th. Is that right? Right. Well before, essentially a year before January 6th. Just sort of exploring the nature of, well, trying to answer for myself. I mean, how did the American Civil War start? It's a question that occurred to me back when my book tour for a previous book, The Splendid and the Vile, about Churchill got cut in half by the pandemic. And I found myself with a lot of extra time on my hands.

And back in that period, as now, unfortunately, there was a lot of political discord. People were, you know, fringe people were muttering about a contemporary civil war, contemporary secession. I just found myself thinking, well, how did the civil war start? I started looking into it. What happened with January 6th as I watched that unfold?

was that it persuaded me in a very visceral way that this story that I've been working on for a year was not just a story from the distant past. It had a real contemporary resonance. Now, unfortunately, mentioning January 6th, who knew? Who knew that this would be a real flashpoint in America today? But apparently it is.

I got a lovely note from a cordial reader who tore out my author's note and said, January 6th, horseshit. Yeah, well, in reading the book, you write about someone named Edmund Ruffin, who was a fire eater, a very pro-slavery, very anti-union confederate. And

Can you talk about the role? Maybe this isn't the right term. I'm not drawing an exact parallel, but between the role of a form of right wing propaganda about the North and about Lincoln and the role that kind of writing played in exacerbating tensions and leading to the events of the book.

Well, here's the thing. Back in the antebellum period, much as there is today, we talk about echo chambers and people talking to themselves and ramping themselves up into believing things that aren't true.

This was the case back in 1860, 1861, in particular with regard to how the South viewed the advent of Abraham Lincoln. Of course, he was elected November 6, 1860, was not inaugurated until March of 1861.

When he was elected, he made it very clear – prior to his election, he made it very clear that he had no intention of abolishing slavery in states where it already existed, nor was he going to oppose the Fugitive Slave Act, which abolitionists in the North found really atrocious.

So basically his stance was very moderate in terms of slavery. The South would not believe it. They saw him as the antichrist. They came to believe that his one goal was to abolish slavery, which of course to Southerners, Southern planters in particular, was an existentialist threat. So when you talk about propaganda, the South was convincing itself. The South was convincing itself that Abraham Lincoln had one goal in mind, and that is to abolish slavery.

In the North, where abolitionism was on the rise, they saw the South and its protection of the institution of slavery as equally atrocious on errands. So you had this rift that grew ever wider in the course of those months between November 6th, excuse me, and March 4th of 1861, Inauguration Day. I was reading Grant's memoirs

Actually, I was reading them before I read your book, and I got to the part where he was describing in exquisite detail various troop movements, and I got bored. Okay. I love it that you said that you were reading about troop movements and you got bored. I've actually had a lot of people come to me and say, you know, I really didn't really want to read your book because I thought it would be boring. I wanted to wait for the good stuff, which, of course, is the troop movements and the battles. Yeah.

So thank you. Yes. Look, it's very interesting, but it's a lot of logistics. Grant goes into a lot of logistics in that book. But there's one part where he's talking about being in Missouri and the –

The Union forces have just taken Camp Jackson, which was a rebel military installation. And he's on the train and there's a pro-Confederate guy on the train and he's ranting and raving about the North. And he says, things have come to a pretty pass when a free people can't choose their own flag. Where I come from, a man dares to say a word in favor of the Union. We hang him from the limb of the first tree we come to.

He thinks he's in safe space. Grant goes up to him and basically says, I had not seen a single rebel hung yet, nor heard of one. There were plenty of them who ought to be, however. And what Grant says is,

That man was so crestfallen that I believe if I had ordered him to leave the car, he would have gone quietly out saying to himself, more Yankee oppression. And I do not believe I have. I cannot believe how modern that felt, how contemporary that felt. And I'm wondering if in your research for this book,

You're doing all that. You're in all of these documents, these diaries, this source material. And then January 6th happens. And was there some part of you that said, you know what? Maybe this isn't as shocking as I felt. Maybe this is exactly what flows from what I've been looking into. Well, when January 6th unfolded, I mean, I was watching it right here in my office on CNN.

I watched for hours as this thing happened and with just a growing sense of fury, anxiety, shock at what was going on. But also with a sense that, you know, I'd just been through all this, reading these historical documents. You know, some of these things that I had been reading could have been written today. Right.

For example, case in point is that in 1861, the two moments of gravest national concern before the actual start of the Civil War were would the electoral count be certified? Doesn't that sound familiar? And would the inauguration come off with Lincoln surviving? Now, the electoral count back in 1860, they took it a lot more seriously, the potential for disruption of this. There was a gentleman named

Winfield Scott, General Winfield Scott, commanding general of the U.S. Army.

who was a lot of things. I mean, he was ill. He was, you know, six foot four, 350 pounds, ailing in every conceivable way. But one thing he was, was utterly loyal to the Union. And he vowed that nobody was going to interfere with this electoral count. And if they did, he was going to, if anybody did, he was going to strap him to the muzzle of a cannon and fire that cannon and, as he put it, manure the hills of Arlington, Virginia with his body. And,

And he flooded Washington with cavalry, with cannon, with soldiers. And indeed, the electoral count came off fine, although there was an attempt to disrupt it with people trying to get into the Capitol. But with that kind of force, it was obvious that there was not going to be any disruption of the count. So you rely on a lot of original documents, diaries, source material.

But of course, some of the best stories people don't write down. You can't know what they are. You can't always report them because they weren't recorded. But how do you think about that? Right. Because if you're trying to base as much as you can on what people were willing to put to paper, those are accounts that are inherently going to be in some way sanitized.

Well, I don't know. I mean, look, you use the phrase based on, which suggests that, you know, there's partly based on these things, partly not. I'm scrupulous with this book to adhere to.

entirely to the documents that existed at the time. The documents, both government, private, and the diaries and so forth, pretty comprehensive and give a really, really very rich view of how people were thinking and what was happening. Is anything being sanitized? I don't know. If Edmund Ruffin in his 4,000-page diary – he's one of the villains in the book –

If Edmund Ruffin in his 4,000 page diary is not telling us the truth about some aspect of what he's writing about, well, maybe that's true. But boy, he sure gives you a lot to go with. You don't have to worry about the rest. It's funny that you call him a villain because you really try to let their words, let people hang themselves with their own words. But as I'm reading the book, I thought, Eric Larson fucking hates this guy. Is that right?

Well, well phrased, first of all. No, you know, you know, I'm a journalist. I'm a trained journalist. There are two of me. You know, there's one that sits up here. This is the good guy who says, wow, this is this is really this is sad. This is hard. This is awful. And so forth.

This one sits up here and sees this stuff, sees Edmund Ruffin, reads his diary, and is like, wow, this is really good stuff. This is great. Do I hate Ruffin? No, not really. But as you say, I just...

I let him hang himself. I mean, he was a hateful, hateful man. And so I just play out what was in his diary and let him tell us exactly how he was feeling. His hatred, his absolute hatred for Yankees, anything Northern. And just his, even his initial hatred of being a Virginian, that's where he hailed from, because Virginia was not avidly seeking secession in the way that South Carolina was.

Even there, he was like continually complaining about Virginia, Virginia, Virginia. His diary, if you can stand it, is really well worth reading. It's an amazing, amazing document. Like I said, 4,000 pages, very candid pages. When you read that diary, you come away thinking, yeah, Ruffin has bared his soul to me and he is not dissembling about anything. Similarly, may I say to another villain in the book,

Which one? James Henry Hammond from South Carolina, planter and senator, who also left a very detailed diary, sufficiently detailed that he reveals that he had a sexual dalliance with four of his nieces at one time. Yeah. Pretty candid. That's what I actually that was going to be my literally my next question, because that's another villain in this book. And, you know, this is somebody abusing several children.

And, you know, you tell the story from multiple perspectives. You get Edmund Ruffin's perspective, you get James Hammond's perspective, you get Robert Anderson's perspective. He's the Kentucky-born commander at Fort Sumter. And what I thought as I was reading the book is you're telling the stories through these various perspectives and every person in their own mind is a hero of their journey. And yet there is evil here.

These are people participating in contributing to being genuinely evil. And I wonder how you grapple with that in trying to tell this story, because the documents you have about James Hammond are by James Hammond, but he's

committing atrocities inside of his house and telling himself a story about what that looks like. And so how do you strike the line between letting, as you say, being meticulous and scrupulous and using the words that these people put to paper while also recognizing that, you know, in history's lens, like these were monsters?

Right, right. Well, you know, in the case of Hammond, it's pretty clear that that dalliance with four nieces is inexcusable by any standard in any time. If we if we take that off the plate and we talk about other things that he did and other things that he felt wrong.

You really have to view them through the lens of the times. Something that I always have to remind myself is that it is a mistake of the first order to bring modern judgments into play when reading books.

past documents, past diaries and so forth. Again, I make the exception of the sexual indulgence with four nieces. I don't care what era you're in. That's pretty vile. But screenwriters always refer to point of view. And this is something I really try to adhere to is

I'm trying to look at this period. I was trying to look at this period through the eyes of people who existed in that time, what their goals were, what their standards were. I mean, for example, another thing that today we would classify as evil, but back in that era was fairly pretty much the norm among Southern planters.

Senator Hammond has a manual for his overseers to help manage his population of enslaved blacks. And the last portion of that manual is a very detailed, essentially how to guide for how to whip his enslaved laborers. Now today, we are outraged by this. It's absolutely incredible that this happened.

Back in the day, this was the norm, so much a norm that he felt he could actually codify it in his manual. A norm in one part of the country. And yet, obviously, you have abolitionists, white and black, fighting against the practice. Exactly. A norm in the South. But at the same time, and I struggle with this a little because it's funny. I'm supposed to be this sort of, I don't know,

Lefty progressive, but I find myself less a moral relativist. Like you see in this work, the way in which their participation in slavery destroyed their souls, made them made them coarse, egotistical, narcissistic, mean spirited, closed off and ultimately unhappy. I don't want to. Edmund Ruffin's story does not end happily. Right.

right? These are people that were corrupted by something, even though they tried to convince themselves. Spoiler alert. Yes. Yeah. Spoiler alert. Edmund Ruffin. And honestly, I'm sorry. I'm

I was like a little bit like, good. I was satisfied. Like, I was like, I, you may not want to say that you hated that guy. I fucking hated that guy. And, but, but. It was sort of a perverse slow clap moment. Yeah. The zealotry of someone like Edmund Ruffin, the convincing themselves of the righteousness of their cause, the, the, almost the, the, the kind of projection, the way in which they defended their kind of way of life was,

On some level in reading it, you couldn't help but think, I don't know that these people really believe this. I think on some level, there is a way in which they are trying to convince themselves while aware of these horrors. Is there any truth to that?

You know, one of the things that I found particularly fascinating is the advent of the so-called pro-slavery movement, which is a big part, I feel, of what provided fuel for the start of the Civil War. You know, going back to as early as 1800, even Southern planters felt that slavery was, they would refer to it as a necessary evil.

But over time, as slavery began to be perceived as an active evil by the North, by the international community,

In the South, there grew this pro-slavery movement because they couldn't abide this perception of themselves as evil because they kept slaves. So they came up with this rationale, this idea that – and came to really believe it. The pro-slavery movement was very, very effective.

And having the South, it was not meant to persuade the North. It was meant to persuade Southerners that really what they were doing was what they were maintaining in terms of institutional slavery was the best of all worlds for everybody concerned, including the enslaved blacks. That's the really interesting element of their argument. They felt that they were doing these people essentially a favor, right?

by giving them basically, you know, three squares a day, insulating them from the labor market, the substitutes up in the north, protecting them through economic ups and downs. They really came to believe that. And they weren't kidding around. It was not like

They were looking in the mirror in the morning saying, okay, I think this is horrible, but I'm going to propound this view of the pro-slavery ethos. Now, there were people who were very clear-eyed about slavery. One of them is somebody I love in the book, a diarist named Mary Boykin Chestnut, the premier female diarist of the Civil War era.

And she was very conflicted about slavery, and she was not shy about stating that conflict. And I found that very compelling. She's sort of the person who stood there in the murk between North and South. So one point you make throughout the book is this is a group of people motivated by their ideological sentiments, by their belief in this evil institution, by their loyalty to the Union. But

Few could have comprehended that what they were marching towards was the most deadly war in American history. And yet that is what they were marching towards. Right, right. Let's stop there for a second. Because that to me is one of the also very, very fascinating elements of the saga and something that actually I think has a lot of relevance today. Right.

You know, what amazes me is that with this tension, there was the prevailing belief, certainly in the South, was that there would be no civil war. And if there was, there would be so little bloodshed. One guy vowed that he would drink

First of all, there would be so little bloodshed that it would only fill as, quote unquote, a lady's thimble. And another guy vowed that he would eat all the corpses of this civil war because he believed that there would be none. So here is this very interesting situation where people have persuaded themselves that this conflict is not going to lead to a civil war. The civil war ultimately killed the current count. It led to the 750,000 people.

What underscored for me vis-a-vis today, first of all, my takeaway was that, hey, when people say crazy things, take them seriously. When people today start talking about civil war, talking about violence and so forth, take them seriously because they probably mean it.

The other thing that I might take away from my research was that, you know, the inconceivable is always conceivable to someone. Case in point is Edmund Ruffin. He was one of the few people.

In his diary, well actually, sorry, in his really, really bad novel called Anticipations of the Future, he was one of the few who actually saw forward far enough and darkly enough to recognize what a conflict like this would actually do. He envisioned the complete incineration of New York City by Southern forces and

as part of this conflict. And that came, New York was never destroyed in the Civil War, but that volume, that degree of violence comes a lot closer to what ultimately happened than this self-delusion that any civil war would only provide enough blood to fill a lady's thimble.

As you look at this election, there's a lot of people listening to this that feel like they are seeing the kinds of there are Edmund Ruffin's versions of Edmund Ruffin. I'm not making a direct comparison, but there are versions of Edmund Ruffin all around us. People who are are saying the most extreme things, thirsty for blood, wanting the fight, vilifying their enemies. What lessons did you take from that?

of looking at how we kind of went into the Civil War that we could apply now and how we fight back against that kind of tension, how we, I don't know, how you deal with a demon of unrest? So my answer is, I mean, what you do is you try to have a safe and, you know, unthreatened election, and that's the best that you can do. I mean, we're living in troubled times, and, you know, that's no secret to anybody. Yeah.

How this gets resolved, I am not the person to ask. I wrote a book about the start of the American Civil War in 1861, you know, with certainly no anticipation that the events of January 6th would occur. So it's anybody's guess what's going to happen and how to deal with it. Well, you know, well, what help is that? We need you to write something about the future.

Well, I wish I could. I wish I could for it. You know, one of the things that is always tempting when you look at history or historical patterns is that, you know, you maybe delude yourself into thinking that you can see history.

Oh, this is not going to have a good end because we're moving in a direction that historically has not resulted in a very positive outcome. I think, you know, my speculation is that

I think there's tremendous potential for violence in America. I know that the national intelligence, domestic intelligence entities, you know, Homeland Security and the FBI, I know that they are deeply concerned about this happening. And I come back to what I said before is that, you know, when people start talking crazy, when people start talking crazy,

Take them seriously. And I, you know, maybe I'm, maybe I'm alluding here to certain things that a certain individual has said about, you know, locking up Democrats and, and, and, and, and, and so forth. But, you know, take, take, take seriously. Thank you so much for your time. Last question before we let you go, what's the silliest or most surprising or funniest thing you've ever seen in

in a piece of primary documentation that you've been looking into? Oh, I mean, in any book? Yeah, any book. Boy, I'd have to say so often I come across things that actually just make me laugh. And if I can, if they work in the actual primary narrative, they go in the primary narrative. If they don't work in the primary narrative, readers of my books, I think now know enough to know that

They should go to the footnotes because that's where I stick the stories that are particularly funny or particularly offbeat. I mean, one case in the case of Demon of Unrest was this guy. This guy's walking, a congressman, I believe, was walking in the vicinity of the Capitol in Washington on a dark night. This was before the Civil War. He's molested by two guys, one who tries to stab him, stabs him through a...

a folded edition of the Congressional Globe, which is the past version of what we call the Congressional Quarterly. So he isn't hurt by this display. He survives that. He pulls out a gun, shoots one of his attackers, punches another one,

knocks him out and he fights off this group of assailants in a very, very dramatic and very funny way as if you expect him next to have a cannon come out of his coat and blow these guys away. The New York Times wrote a piece about that back in the day that was actually very funny. Now,

So that's we're not talking knee slapper here. I'm sure I could come up with something if I had more time, but that'll do for now. That's enough. I love I love I love that story because these guys think they're going to get away with screwing with this pro Lincoln guy. And he just he just fucks him up.

That's a good way to put it. It's a good way to put it. Totally, totally surprises me. Eric Larson, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciated Demon of Unrest. I really felt like it was a helpful bit of history that resonates with what we're going through right now. And as you said, to take these kinds of people seriously, even if they are not serious people. So, Eric, thank you for your time. Sure, sure.

Thank you. All right. Thank you so much to Eric Larson. That's our show. Thank you to Sarah. Thank you to Hallie. Thank you to Kendra.

We got 14 days. If you haven't signed up yet, go to votesaveamerica.com. Sign up right now. Shots told me this on Pod Save America. They need bodies in Pennsylvania. They need bodies in Wisconsin. They need money in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Texas, a bunch of other places. You can donate to our Senate fund. You can donate to our House fund at Votes Save America. You can sign up for shifts to make calls and knock on doors. Now's the time. Early vote tells you nothing. Polls tell you nothing. Everybody's got to do everything.

See you sluts on Saturday.

Love It or Leave It is a Crooked Media production. It is written and produced by me, John Lovett, and Lee Eisenberg. Kendra James is our executive producer. Chris Lord is our producer. And Kennedy Hill is our associate producer. Hallie Kiefer is our head writer. Sarah Lazarus and Jocelyn Kaufman, Peter Miller, Alan Pierre, Will Miles, and Mohana Del Shiki are our writers.

Evan Sutton is our editor. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis provide audio support. Stephen Colon is our audio engineer. And Milo Kim is our videographer. Our theme song is written and performed by Sure Sure. Thanks to our designer, Bernardo Serna, for creating and running all of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast. And to our digital producers, David Toles, Claudia Shang, Mia Kelman, and Matt DeGroat for filming and editing video each week so you can. ♪

Perfect. And I didn't order lunch. Ah, we're going to McDonald's. No, no, no, no McDonald's. Come on, people.

In a statement released after Trump's visit, I'm going to order a salad. I just don't understand how you can eat the McDonald's. Like, you have to go with him to get the McDonald's. You can't eat McDonald's after it's been transported. I'm fine with that. I'll go. I'm fine with it. We'll all go. We'll all go. But also, yes, you can. We're four and a half minutes from the McDonald's. That's too long. You got to eat it as soon as it comes out. As soon as Trump hands it to you.

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