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Hey folks,
Jack Cocchiarella joined me again, and this one went completely off the rails in the best possible way.
We started with Donald Trump’s ballroom and some pretty stunning reported safety problems. Then we somehow ended up talking Mitch McConnell, Mamdani, Democratic strategy, the midterms, Hassan Piker, Chicago pizza, our heights, Gavin Newsom’s hair, and whether this show will ever actually get a name.
[00:00:45] We dig into reporting about Trump clashing with his ballroom architect over fire and safety concerns, and why the whole project feels like a metaphor for this administration.
[00:09:42] A joke about pizza somehow leads us straight into Mitch McConnell, aging politicians, Washington’s gerontocracy, and why the institutions around powerful people keep protecting them.
[00:15:02] We get into Zohran Mamdani, Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, Hakeem Jeffries, and a real disagreement about when meeting with people in power is governing, and when it becomes something else.
[00:23:27] With Election Day approaching, we talk about the polls, why Democrats shouldn’t get distracted by culture-war bait, and why none of us should treat favorable numbers as permission to stop doing the work.
[00:29:24] I tell Jack what happened when Newsmax asked me about Hasan Piker, and then the show fully collapses into Liquid Death, height insecurity, Gavin Newsom’s shoes, BDE, and whatever the hell this program has become.
This is politics, strategy, culture, friendship, and an alarming amount of nonsense packed into one conversation. But underneath the chaos is something important: independent media should be able to have real disagreements, laugh at itself, and still stay focused on the fights that actually affect people’s lives. Jack and I are even adding a second show because apparently neither of us knows when to stop talking. If you value independent conversations like this, help us keep building them.
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With urgency,
—Mike
