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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Friday, April 24th, I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show who wants you to know that President Donald Trump did not just have the Department of Justice reclassify recreational marijuana. The story is more complicated than that. So whatever you were thinking about doing, just don’t. [music break] On today’s show, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin screams on Fox News. And it’s time to wrap up the Iran war now that condom prices are about to skyrocket. But let’s start with Tucker Carlson and MAGA apologies. Earlier this week, we mentioned that Carlson said sorry for supporting Trump. Carlson’s unexpected confession came out of a conversation with his brother on his podcast, The Tucker Carlson Show. During the episode, Buckley Carlson, a former Trump speechwriter explained how his view of Trump changed when Trump started disrespecting his supporters. Here he is speaking from Trump’s perspective. 

[clip of Buckley Carlson] If you’re insisting upon transparency and the things, you’re insisting upon me making good on the promises that I made to you in this you know relationship that we have, I promise you something, you vote me into office so I can effectuate the change that you voted for, then uh if you’re an insisting upon that, then you’re a flippin’ kook and I don’t need you. 

Jane Coaston: It’s true, Trump has broken a lot of his promises to his supporters, and then he’s insulted them for being upset. But hang on a second. See, I listened to the entire two-hour episode, and what struck me was that Tucker wasn’t apologizing for supporting someone who has acted in profoundly evil ways. Instead, Carlson was apologizing because he wanted Trump to do a whole host of other evil things, like cutting off the COVID vaccine. 

[clip of Tucker Carlson] It’s just killed too many people and it made too many women infertile and that’s just the most evil thing ever. And it’s still on the schedule and this is so immoral. It’s hard to believe this is even happening, but um he did exactly the same thing. Again, it’s my fault for not being like, whoa, that’s a red line, I can’t cross it. 

Jane Coaston: In other words, Tucker is disappointed Trump didn’t do what he wanted. And that’s what gets me about the Trump regret we’re seeing right now, whether it’s from Alex Jones or former Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. I keep wondering, which part of Trump do they regret? And what if what they really want is Trump but worse. Tim Miller is a writer-at-large for The Bulwark and host of The Bulwark Podcast. He recently wrote that Democrats should open the tent to people who supported Trump, but regret it now. We talked about what that would mean in practice. Tim, welcome back to What a Day. 

Tim Miller: It’s good to be here, girl. 

Jane Coaston: So Tucker Carlson made headlines this week with sort of an apology on his podcast apologizing for quote, “misleading people by supporting Trump.” What if anything surprised you about this? 

Tim Miller: I think that just how far he was willing to go was definitely noteworthy. I have a lot of issues with the strange new respects people have for Tucker. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Tim Miller: Which we can get to in a second. 

Jane Coaston: I I think that’s important. 

Tim Miller: But I do think it’s noteworthy that he didn’t just say, you know, this was a bad decision by Trump, like the MAGA mindset was right, but you know he got sent the wrong way by his neocon advisors. Like that’s more, that’s Tucker’s, that’s been his MO for a little bit now. Um, instead he went all the way to like, I, I feel regret. Uh, I have, I am tormented by this. Now I don’t believe that he’s actually tormented by it, that’s all a show. But like for even for him to say that is like a level of acknowledgement of error that goes beyond what we’ve seen from basically everybody else in MAGA world except MTG. 

Jane Coaston: I was struck by your piece, which I want you to talk a little bit about, which was talking about, you know, hey, Democrats take yes for an answer from America firsters. And so first, I want to hear your kind of elevator pitch for that piece. 

Tim Miller: The case that I’m trying to make in the piece is that um there there are only two parties in the country and there are a lot of bigots and cranks in the country. And we went through a period of time where they were like decently evenly divided between the parties. The Republicans maybe had an edge, but a lot the anti-vax conspiracists were on the left. Uh for a long time.

Jane Coaston: Yeah, but crunchy people used to be like Dems. 

Tim Miller: Right. 

Jane Coaston: That used to be like Ralph Nader’s people 

Tim Miller: Yeah. And so Trump ended up benefiting from, I think I’m stealing this from somebody, so I apologize, who, but like a crank alignment. Like he took all of the lefty cranks, all the Robert F. Kennedy people, the Tulsi people, the Joe Rogans who voted for Obama, and united them under his tent. And that has yielded a very bad result for the country, I think that we can all agree. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Tim Miller: Since that was where his political power was based upon. And so my contention is only that I think it’s okay to try to win over people that have conspiratorial or even wrong views, not by appealing to those particular views, but finding other areas of commonality. And I think this is important to talk about now, because a lot of the cranks are mad at Trump over two things. One, no accountability for Epstein co-conspirators and no transparency in the Epstein files, and the stupid war in Iran. And I just want to say that the cranks are right about that. And they don’t believe that the democratic party or democratic leaders, uh, are on their side on those issues, even though they are. And so I do think that it would be smart for democratic politicians and, and, and aligned commentators and such to engage with those folks in good faith and be like, yeah, no, your grievances about these dumb wars are right. Uh, the, our party, like, we’re not going to do this. We’ve learned like Trump. Trump made a promise, he betrayed you, and we need to go a different direction. 

Jane Coaston: I think that my question is when you say take yes for an answer. 

Tim Miller: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: What what do we mean here? 

Tim Miller: I’m just trying to encourage an idea of saying, hey, you know, it doesn’t mean, I like to rub people’s face in it. I like to dunk on people. It doesn’t mean you have to be a perfect person at all times, but just generally speaking, if people are like, you know, I got fooled by this guy. I’m interested in hearing what you have to offer. Then say, okay, great. Let’s let’s talk about it. Let’s, let’s see if we can find an area of common ground. Like if it was just a mindset of welcoming versus a mindset of, you know saying burn the witch. Like, that is the mindset part. On the policy side, again I think that a lot of these voters that Democrats lost were these low trust voters. Like, they did not trust the institutions of government, you know, for good reason, in a lot cases. They did not like the decision making around the wars, um you know, they do not like the massive security state, you know, they don’t like the government mandates for some better some worse. And I think that Democrats now can can take this opportunity and say, hey, for the last ten years, you’ve seen us as the man, you know, that was defending all of these big institutions and you were rebelling against us by going along with this bozo. Now, like, can we reposition ourselves by saying, no, they’re in charge of all of this. Like, they are doing all the shit that Alex Jones warned about. 

Jane Coaston: Right. Exactly. 

Tim Miller: Go listen to an Alex Jones podcast from 20 years ago. And it’s like, that’s Palantir. Palantir is doing what all of the right-wing cranks warned about, that’s them now. That’s MAGA. 

Jane Coaston: And Alex Jones loves Palantir. He did a whole episode of like, I don’t understand why you’re nervous about a thing named after a thing from Lord of the Rings that can see everything that you can do. 

Tim Miller: Yeah, so anyway, I just think that, are you going to win over all those people? Of course not, but are there people out there that can be won back to the Democrats in ways in which Democrats can make cases that I just think that they should be making anyway, which is kind of separating the party brand away from the kind of stagnated establishment that people aren’t happy with, particularly in areas of, you know, war. 

Jane Coaston: How do you think Democrats can move past the temptation to basically want to hold people accountable, which again, you just said, like you like dunking, I like dunkking, I also, I never forget anything. There are certain like manosphere people who’ve been talking currently about the war where I’m like, I know what you were doing in 2013. I remember, I have not for the North remembers. How do think that we can move pass that as a party and as kind of individuals with platforms? 

Tim Miller: Well, the first part of the question is easy. It’s not easy because they haven’t done it, but the answer is a little bit less nuanced, uh which is that Democrats should start running against the MAGA establishment, you know, and Democrats should distance themselves from the corporate elite and the military elite that have got us into these disasters. And Trump has made it very easy. If the Democrats will decide to walk through the door, he’s opened the door to letting the Democrats take back the anti-establishment mandel. They just got to walk though it. And some of them are hesitant to do it. You kind of see it sometimes. They’re like, well, you know, the Ayatollah was bad and uh you know, [?]– 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. 

Tim Miller: We do get some growth out of the tech companies. And it’s just like, no, no. Just go after the corrupt MAGA establishment and the corrupt tech establishment and do it forcefully. And, and, you know, the details can work themselves out on the back end. So that’s like, just like the smart political thing to do. How to deal with this question of like being morally superior and having that turn people off. And I just, people, um, I know even my, my listeners, I hear this from folks, like, they don’t like to hear this, which is just like Democrats, like liberals can be kind of annoying and, and they’re like, this isn’t, this shouldn’t be that big of a deal. It’s like who cares that you got annoyed by somebody, you know or that you know, the school sent home a pamphlet that, you know, had, you know, some unnecessarily, uh, you know, revised like versions of the things that you feel comfortable with about history or race or gender or whatever. And it’s like, and it’s like, well, it matters because when you’re in a democracy, like anything that people care about, like what matters to them is what matters, not what matters, you know, in a hierarchy of needs, right, or in a hierarchy of what’s the most important things are for for society. And so I just think that like reframing the mindset from Democratic politicians to be like Democratic politicians are responsible for what they say and do, not for what every supporter says or does, or not for what every podcast host that they go on says or says or does. And like this culture of like purity testing and finger wagging just doesn’t do any good. 

Jane Coaston: What does that mean going forward? Because in 2028, there needs to be an affirmative message. There needs to an affirmative message that is not, wow, that all sucked. We just reversed everything that just happened. There needs to be a like, and here’s what we do moving forward. How do we include those people, the America first people, the people who were like, I really like this guy and then he disappointed me. How do we include them alongside our good friend resistance moms who were right the whole time?

Tim Miller: Yeah. I think it’s again, going back to areas of common interest and, and having a clear focused message on no, no, really, I’m going to be serious about going after corruption and no really we’re going to stop having our government be for sale by the tech billionaires. I think the resistance moms agree with that and the America firsters agree with that. And those folks exist in the world and they voted for Democrats before and they voted for Trump. And I think that they would be open to a message from a Democrat who is passionate about kind of an anti-corruption, anti-stupid war message. I’m sure there are a couple of other things. I think it’s an economic populism, just more like demonstrating that we’re going to care about the economic interests of these voters. And I, in those buckets, like that’s all stuff that they all agree with. The devil ends up being the details. You know do you end up turning those voters off because of some random cultural hot button issue that comes up? Yeah, it’s possible. But it’s worth the try. It’s worth the effort. And um and I think that in the past we’ve seen that it has yielded results. 

Jane Coaston: Tim, as always, thanks so much for joining me. 

Tim Miller: Thank you, Jane. Let’s do it again soon. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Tim Miller, a podcaster and commentator at the Bulwark. We’ll link to his piece in the show notes. Don’t go anywhere, any of you, because everyone is welcome here. We will get to more of the news in a moment. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

Jane Coaston: Joining me is Crooked’s news editor, Greg Walters, to talk about the big stories. Hey Greg.

Greg Walters: Hello Jane. 

Jane Coaston: Greg, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has been hitting the ground running since he was confirmed. And by running, I mean, screaming on television. 

Greg Walters: Always my favorite way to wake up to the news. 

Jane Coaston: Just wait, uh here’s Mullin on Fox News reacting to comments from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on the Senate floor. 

[clip of Chuck Schumer] Adding $140 billion to an agency that nobody, to two two two groups, Border Patrol and ICE, that nobody respects in this country. 

[clip of Markwayne Mullin] Chuck Schumer, no one respects you. The definition of a lying scumbag politician, that is you. You would be the definition if you googled you right now. You’re for open borders and you’re for the criminals running amok in our cities. And for you to say that is so disrespectful to the law enforcement that is out there protecting you. 

Greg Walters: It sounds like Fox News trying to interview a blowtorch. Uh. I mean, where to start with all this? First of all, DHS remains jammed in the longest government shutdown in history. And apparently the big plan to get their funding back is not be super nice to Congress. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, I think Mullin’s plan is to just be louder than Kristi Noem was and have worse hair. 

Greg Walters: And you know, maybe that’s worth a shot. Uh. Who knows what’ll work. But in any case, we all know Trump has a special fondness for loud men who talk too much on television, which brings me to another recent development. So on Wednesday night, I was out having dinner with Matt Berg, Crooked’s D.C. correspondent, and we saw this headline pop up on our phones. The Secretary of the Navy, John Phelan is out. 

Jane Coaston: Now, Greg, I don’t know about you, and I have never run the Navy, but ousting the Navy secretary in the middle of an intense naval operation doesn’t feel great. 

Greg Walters: Not super great. I mean, this isn’t the kind of thing you typically wanna see in the middle of a war. Uh. But then there’s the next beat. Things are taking a very Trumpy turn. The new guy, assuming the role as acting secretary, is Hung Cao, and oh boy. 

Jane Coaston: Greg, is he a real one? 

Greg Walters: He’s a real one by certain MAGA standards. Yeah, something like that. In an interview in 2023, he had some thoughts that were giving Salem witch hunt vibes.

[clip of Hung Cao] There’s a place um in Monterey, California called Lovers Point. 

[clip of unnamed interviewer] Yeah. 

[clip of Hung Cao] The original name was Lovers of Christ Point, but now it’s become, they took out the Christ, it’s Lovers point, and it’s really, Monterey is a very dark place now. 

[clip of unnamed interviewer] Yeah. 

[clip of Hung Cao] A lot of witchcraft and the–

[clip of unnamed interviewer] Right. 

[clip of Hung Cao] –the Wiccan community has really taken over there, and we can’t let that happen in Virginia. 

Greg Walters: We can’t let that happen in Virginia, Jane. 

Jane Coaston: Mm hmm. Wicca has no home here in Virginia. 

Greg Walters: Well in any case, to be clear, that claim was quickly debunked by local press. An outlet called Monterey County Now concluded, quote, “Monterey and Pacific Grove are not overrun in darkness, and they are not cursed. The only thing cursed is Cao’s campaign, as long as he keeps going around making weird claims.” 

Jane Coaston: I mean, as far as I know, Monterey is only overrun by one thing, and that’s otters. And I love otters! 

Greg Walters: An otter never put a hex on anybody who didn’t deserve it. 

Jane Coaston: I’ve been saying this for years. Now, in a continuing series I call Things I Never Thought I’d Say, the oil shortage caused by the Iran War is having consequences for everyone, including people who use condoms. You heard me. Condoms. Here is the BBC explaining how Trump’s ego war is about to ruin your sex life. 

[clip of unnamed BBC news reporter] The world’s biggest condom maker, Carex, which produces more than five billion condoms each year– 

Jane Coaston: [laughing]. British people saying condom, condom.

[clip of unnamed BBC news reporter] –supplying brands like Durex and Trojan, says it will raise its prices by up to 30% or more. Why? Because of disruption caused by the Iran wars. Carex relies on materials derived from oil, including ammonia, which is used to preserve latex and silicone-based lubricants. Carex’s chief executive, [?], said demand for condoms has risen about 30% this year. He told Bloomberg that in bad times, the need to use condoms is even more because you’re uncertain with your future, whether you’d still have a job next year. 

Greg Walters: Okay. 

Jane Coaston: Okay. 

Greg Walters: Why is it this news sounds even weirder and more dystopian in that British accent? 

Jane Coaston: I don’t know, and I don’t know why saying condom in a British accent is so funny. But you know point still stands. This is weird. 

Greg Walters: Look, you know things have gotten truly weird when Trump’s war accidentally blows up our nation’s supply of condoms. I mean, what’s next? What is next, Jane? Beer pong? Glow sticks? Are bong prices about to shoot through the roof? 

Jane Coaston: If this hits the glitter economy, we will never hear the end of it. As always, thanks for hanging out, Greg. 

Greg Walters: Good to see you, Jane. 

Jane Coaston: And that’s the news. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you liked the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, don’t look inside the wrappings of ancient mummies, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how archeologists unwrapped a 1600 year old Egyptian mummy and found a fragment of the Iliad, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston. And look, I’m sure this is very exciting for those archeologists, but obviously that fragment is cursed. And this will all lead to us being haunted by super ghosts who will also recite poetry. And we can’t have that. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. Our show is produced by Caitlin Plummer, Emily Fohr, Erica Morrison, and Adriene Hill. Our team includes Hayley Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Case, and Desmond Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdock and Jordan Cantor. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.