Ben Stiller: 'Severance,' but Real Life
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Hey, everybody. I know it was a little bleak yesterday, so I got a treat for you and for me. Ben Stiller wanted to come on the pod. We've been DMing. He does a lot of work with refugees and Everything that's in the news with USAID and everything. I was like, man, Joe, come on. We can talk about your work doing that. But then also take a little break, do some Hollywood chat. It wasn't maybe quite as light affair as I wanted, but there are at least some laughs for everybody. So I hope you enjoy it. We're taping this on Tuesday afternoon because I'm headed out to Palm Springs for a book festival for the rest of the week. And so if something happens between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning that wasn't covered here, you'll know why.
But before we get to Ben, I just had a few stray thoughts on some news items. I just wanted to... to share with everybody. The first one is, it's kind of an action item. Tom Malinowski, former Congressman from New Jersey. I think we're going to hopefully have him on the pod here in the next couple of weeks to talk about this at greater length, but he has a really, really great piece in the bulwark that was out on Tuesday morning called five things Dems must do to fight Trump. Now go check that out if you haven't, because it gives a real, an action plan. And I know there are a lot of people that feel like, Maybe lost, including elected Dems and some Dem strategists that I've been talking to. Tom gives some real tangible things folks can do. And reading it, it buoyed me a little bit when I was like, yeah, that's a good idea. That's a good idea. Yeah, this is manageable. I mean, it's bad. All the things Anne was worried about are worth worrying about.
But there are some countervailing influences that the Dems can leverage, including the courts and the people that Biden put on the court recently, but also some strategies from Congress. So hopefully we can talk to Tom about that at greater length. But you should go read the article regardless. Two other just sort of news items I wanted to jump on. On Friday, I guess it was, I gave the plea to Bill Cassidy to do the right thing, my senator here from Louisiana, acknowledging during the plea that I wasn't exactly optimistic, but... I was thinking there was at least a chance, as they might say in Dumb and Dumber, a different aughts comedy from the ones we're going to be discussing on this podcast. I was thinking there was a chance.
Well, there wasn't a chance. Bill Cassidy caved to Trump. Somebody that absolutely knows better, has demonstrated that he knows better when it comes to vaccines, when it comes to public health, agreed to put RFK Jr. a complete quack unqualified conspiracy theorist in charge of the Health and Human Services Department. He got through in committee on a party line vote. Cassidy was the one who could have stopped it. By the time this publishes, you know, we might have a schedule for when the actual floor vote will be. But at this point, it seems pretty clear that RFK is going to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. Similarly, Maybe not 100%, but probably 95% likelihood at this point that Tulsi Gabbard is going to be the Director of National Intelligence.
A total fold on this one. We talked about this a little bit with Anne on the podcast yesterday. But across the board, not just Cassidy, Langford, Susan Collins in the case of Gabbard. Unbelievable. Well, believable, but... You know, unbelievable in the sense of un-fucking-believable Susan Collins. And who else? Todd Young. All are going to say that they're going to vote to confirm Gabbard.
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