TACO Tuesday

Hello and welcome to the Sleep Political Gabb Fest.

April 9th, 2026, the Taco Tuesday edition.

I am David Plotts of CityCast.

I'm in Washington, D.C. from the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law School

Emily Bazzalan and New Haven.

Hello, Emily.

So I'm all mixed up because it's actually Thursday, but I did get your joke.

She's been good.

I'm glad I'm one of the hosts of the show.

God be extremely basic joke.

It started the show.

Hi, how'd you happy?

I was like, which joke is she talking about?

Surely she can't be talking about Taco Tuesday.

It's the only one.

It is Thursday, everybody.

Yes, it is.

It is.

Where we are it's Thursday.

From New York City, of course, that's John Dickerson.

John has a new AI model trained exclusively on American historical texts, presidential

speeches, congressional debates, the works of Grant and Frederick Douglass, everything pre-World

War I.

John, I noticed that you named it Hickory, which I think is a cool name for a model, but

I guess it's some echo of Andrew Jackson's old Hickory nickname, which I thought was

politically, I thought that was kind of a Trumpian choice.

Well, you got to go, you got to try to expand your market in this new day and age.

Yeah.

I played with, I played with Hickory.

It was better than Groc.

It was less Nazi because it didn't know that Nazis exist.

Yeah, it didn't boost the trail of tears.

It didn't suggest that the trail of tears was a real wonderful thing.

No, I mean, I did.

I asked it actually for a fine, help finding a flight to San Francisco and it recommended a

steamer through what it called the newly opened Panama Canal.

And so I thought that was like, it needs, it needs where I love what you're doing with

it, but it needs, well, yeah, I know.

Well, we're going to get it up into the 21st century sometime Q2.

Okay.

This week on the gap fest, Trump starts the week threatening to destroy Iran, ends it with

an abject ceasefire, will the ceasefire hold?

Where do we stand on the Iran War?

And who are the groipers and what do they want?

We're going to talk to Antonia Hitchens about her disturbing New Yorker article about the

racist anti-Semitic nihilistic wing of the young Republicans.

And then Texas is preparing to mandate Bible stories and biblical lessons in public schools.

Is that okay?

Plus, of course, we're going to have cocktail chatter.

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So unlike Emily, I was aware of what was going on on Tuesday.

That's unfair.

My statement that today is Thursday.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

But Tuesday was a really, Tuesday was a crazy day.

I know it was crazy for you.

Everyone I was talking to was sort of checking in.

It was like, will he do it?

What's happening?

Has anything happened?

And we were all anticipating what might happen at 8 p.m. when when President Trump self-imposed

deadline on the Iranians to open the straight of our moves.

What end?

And he promised a civilizational erasure.

He, of course, you've probably read this.

He said, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.

He had welcomed Easter Sunday in with this Jolly message.

Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell.

Just watch.

Praise be to Allah.

And of course, at the last minute, it did become Taco Tuesday as Trump and the Iranians

agreed to some kind of two-week ceasefire that was broken by the Pakistanis.

One, that the two parties that are party to the ceasefire, or I guess three, maybe Israel

being a party to it, seem to disagree entirely on what it means.

So John, as we stand here on Thursday morning, is it clear at all what the terms of the

ceasefire are?

Is there a ceasefire?

And where does it leave this strange, misbegotten war?

Yeah.

There is a reduction in the amount of killing going on or potential for killing, at least

with respect to the Iranian and American relationship.

But one of the reasons you're questioning whether there's a really a ceasefire is because

Israeli action in Lebanon, which includes, I believe, the most miscelled fire, the most

military action in Lebanon came post-agreement.

And the Iranians are saying, wait a minute, this is not the part of the deal.

And they said they would shut down the straight of hormones again because they saw this as

a breach of the agreement.

These administrations, or various people say, no, it wasn't part of the agreement.

And then what about, so that's kind of a side thing, except it's not so much of a side

thing because if this, in fact, undoes the agreement, you never get to the terms of the

actual agreement.

The terms of the actual agreement, of course, are very far apart, right?

The Iranians want to keep the nuclear material.

They want to be able to run a toll gate on the straight of hormones.

But one wag put it as an Iatola gate.

And the president says, no, they're going to give up their nuclear material.

And there's been regime change, which, of course, there hasn't been.

So, you know, the only good news is that he didn't unleash whatever he was threatening

to unleash.

And then there's the question of whether he was really ever threatening to do it.

But the reason everybody was so much on edge is that when you are, when you engage in

and sustained hyperbole misinformation and general, and generally remove the constraints

of language on the presidency, anything could have happened on Tuesday.

And that's why everybody was nervous.

And the fact that the massive attack didn't happen, we should talk about like the residue

and residual danger of that kind of language in the world.

Yeah, let's go to that, Emily, why were people so unsettled by these threats of Trump?

Well, they violate international law.

I mean, threatening civilian destruction of infrastructure, but also just of people in

that way that would have been a huge war crime.

This is war, of course, that the United States began.

And I think also I thought a lot about the military, presumably they would have carried

out these orders, but that would have been itself like a terrible blow to them.

And you know, like just mark on our history and to ask the troops and all the people they

work for to take part in such an action would have itself really just like changed the

face of how we think about the American military, both domestically and internationally.

And so I think those words did a lot of damage, even though yes, it is far better that Trump

did not carry out this threat.

You know, one of the things that has been eating at me all along is the, you know, when

he first issued that statement, you read David on Easter, I tried to think, okay, what are

all the possible ways you could take this?

So, you know, one is just he's mad.

That's it, full stop, totally unhinged.

The other is this is the mad man theory, which is you use a crazy threat to, you know,

shape the negotiations going on.

Well, you better, you better see to our wishes because there's a good guy with back here

with the knife in his teeth, he's going to go nuts.

And then there's like just improvising in the moment, which is neither theory.

It's sort of halfway between mad man and mad man theory.

And you know, the thing of it is that whatever the strategy behind it was or wasn't, the

president has, and the secretary of defense have been relentlessly saying that the US is

winning in a historical fashion.

If you have one in a historical fashion, you don't need to talk about wiping out civilizations.

I mean, or if you are talking about wiping out civilizations, then it's just absolute

cruelty, right?

It's a cage match.

The guy is knocked out, never going to get up again and you're winding up to kick him

in the head.

So like either of those two options by the terms of the war as the administration has

been framing it, spoke of kind of unhingedness and not unhingedness that was a part of a strategy.

I wonder when the history of this is written, whether there will be interesting discussion

about the the in eternal military debates, whether in fact we had generals or commanders

who were reluctant to carry out these orders.

I don't we don't know at this point how close we got to actually carrying out any of these

attacks, whether that was ever really on the table, whether there were battle plans

for it or not.

But like, you know, I can imagine this is a military that has not been too reluctant to

carry out what seemed to be fairly unlawful orders from President Trump as relate to

taking up boats in the Caribbean, for example.

But I part of me, like a lot of me wants to think that order to bomb a desalination

plant, the US military would find a way not to do that.

I want to believe that because it is it's so obviously wicked.

I hope so, but I think it would have gotten confusing because they are allowed to bomb

desalination plans if the military is using them.

Like there's a lot of ways that you can kind of push the envelope and fudge things and

it's just not a position to put them in, right?

Like this is not what we should be doing with them, forcing them into these difficult positions

with international law and with our own code of conduct for the military.

Yeah, no, of course not.

So if the war ends here, Emily, which I think it might well be over effectively because

it is Trump for all that this is a two-week ceasefire and so forth.

Like has no real strong incentive to go back to war.

It's been very unpopular.

It's not clear they can achieve their strategic aims, the threats to the world economy at

the Strait of Hormuz are devastating and from Scott, I find a way to get out of that,

I believe.

So if the war ends here, what has each side gained and lost?

Yeah, I mean, right.

So Trump is talking yesterday or the day before, I think Wednesday about preventing

imminent harm to the American people.

Well, since there was never any imminent harm, like we can check that off the list.

And I think you're right.

Check that off the list as an achievement.

In other words, you can't achieve something you had before the war started.

Precisely.

Reopening the Strait of Hormuz, if that is in fact happening and I am still confused about

that, maybe it'll be clear by the time listeners hear this.

Also something that pre-existed the war, it was open.

I think it could completely be right that we've reached the point where what this is really

about is face, saving face for both sides, right?

So Trump needs to be able to claim victory.

They'll be able to say, and it's true that they've degraded Iran's military capabilities

in important ways, like significant ways, lots of missiles, etc.

I got blown up.

And I kind of think that's it on the American side.

And then on the Iranian side, as you also said, the regime continues and that will be

their victory and they still have whatever uranium materials they had before, it seems,

at least at the moment.

And what I'm confused about is how the world is going to figure out what to do about

the Strait of Hormuz, because Iran can't afford to give up its leverage.

Like that leverage saved it, I think.

And yet the idea that you're going to have, what did you say, like an Iatola gate or

an Iatola toll on the Strait of Hormuz going forward, like how's everybody supposed to

agree to that?

But I mean, there's such an easy compromise.

I mean, even I could negotiate this, even Jared can negotiate this.

They give up the taking a toll and they're going to get sanctions lifted.

They're going to be back in the community of nations and that's the settlement.

It's like basically they get, they go back to status quo anti, which is the Strait of

Hormuz as an international shipping channel, which it is.

And then they get all these benefits, which is that their economy is allowed to participate

in the world in ways that we've stopped them from participating.

So it's like a real win for them.

Yeah, the war gave them leverage they didn't have before or showed that they could use it

effectively.

And now that gives them leverage and negotiations to get things that they want.

I mean, the ultimate question is what happens to the nuclear stockpiles.

The notion of regime changes is silly in the sense that effectively the question we're

asking is, are the people in charge more or less hard line than they were before?

And will they have an inclination to behave in a hard line way in a way that either affects

the United States or its allies?

And that all seems totally possible.

I mean, I mean, I do it today.

But the hardliners are in charge.

So I don't, you know, this becomes a, it's now a semantic game really about what victory,

again, the president has yet again declared victory.

So if he's declared victory, as you were going, as you were saying, David, it feels like

this truth will hold because the president wants to be done with it.

Because once you've declared victory, why do you need to keep bombing again?

Right?

I mean, it's really shocking.

We've spent all this money.

We've spent munitions.

We've severely damaged our credibility in the world thanks to Trump's genocidal threats.

We've not particularly achieved any strategic aim, the degradation of the military, I think

is something, but it's not as really a strategic aim.

And our alliances are weaker and our enemies are stronger.

And the enemy we were fighting against suddenly has discovered, it has this massive amount

of leverage that it didn't know before.

That didn't realize how powerful that leverage was before because it's exercised it.

And I don't know.

It's shit.

Like what a humiliating, what a humiliating experience this has been for everyone.

Because it was.

Because it was.

Because it was.

One of the things you learned from the extraordinary reporting by Maggie Haberman and

Joe Svon.

Oh, yeah.

Let's talk about that.

I mean, this is extraordinary work.

But what you learned from that is that a threat was not imminent.

You know, the key question, I mean, if you want to boil it all down, was the threat

imminent and was war the only response to it.

And you read Haberman and Svon and the intelligence did not say that things were going to go as

they ended up going and basically a President Trump sort of made a gut call based on some

misunderstandings of the way things would go.

And now he's being faced with them.

But as people look back on this and think was this necessary, that reporting certainly

doesn't suggest that there was a there was a lot of people other than the President who

thought this was necessary.

And also this image emerges of Israel of Netanyahu, BB Netanyahu.

The Prime Minister are really like leading Trump by the nose.

I mean, this is not, I mean, another party to all of this is Israel, right?

I mean, Israel is basically trying to at least right now occupy a Southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah and anyone associated with them.

And the United States basically seems like Trump let the United States get used in this

particular campaign in a way that's like very uncomfortable and feeding into all kinds

of conspiracies about Israel, about Jews.

Like it is super unhelpful.

And that is an element of what's happening, which is we're going to talk about this

little bit later as we talk to Antonio Hitchens about her groupers piece.

But this is of course a narrative of the kind of far, the anti-Semitic wing of the Republican

party, which says we're letting Israel control what we do.

And we're letting Jews control what we do.

And this story that Maggie Heyberman, we referred to it with Maggie Heyberman and John

Husswan have in the New York Times, which seems to be an excerpt from a book about how

why we went to war.

This story certainly is really confirmation of a lot of what the conspiracists, what Joe

Kent, the guy who resigned from the National Security Council was saying, which is that

this is being driven by Israel.

And no one except JD Vance within the administration appears to have stood up and said, look, this

is not maybe a great idea.

And nobody in the administration has said, here are the ways these things could go wrong,

which is also fairly shocking.

Well they said, I thought they did in the briefings, say there were the ways that things

could go wrong.

And he just, President Trump just blew them all off.

Fair, fair.

From their reporting, it sounded like Dan Kane, right, the chief of staff was presenting,

well, it could this could happen, that could happen in this way that you could kind of

latch on to whatever you wanted to hear.

The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

Thank you.

One other thing, just one side, quick side note is, what if JD Vance in his unsuccessful

opposition to the, to the adventure in Iran, what if that becomes his best selling point

as a presidential candidate for why you should be elected, but he won't ever be able to

use it?

Yeah, it's really funny and it's interesting.

Yeah, also, I mean, he then said, I'll support you if you do it, right?

I mean, that's what you do.

Well, that's what you do.

Limited amount of, I know.

That's your job.

I have no beef with that.

Like his job is to oppose it in the room and then to go and represent it out.

That is how organizations work.

It's called disagree and commit.

Like that's what you do.

Okay.

Well, let me repeat this.

It will be difficult for JD Vance to distance himself from the Trump administration if it

is super unpopular when he has running for president in 2028 because he is the Trump administration.

Yeah.

Well, and while he's running against Marco Rubio, it's interesting how each of them

has attempted distance themselves.

Do you think, John, actually just finished this topic up with, do you think assuming the

Trump declares victory and goes home, which feels like what he's desperately trying to

do, do you think there is a long-term political cost to the Iran War?

There will be certainly some lag in any prices coming down.

Oil prices are going to stay up and the prices of all these things that are affected by oil,

which is everything are going to be bumped up because of this, because of this spoke

constrictor of swallowing a deer problem at the straight-up hormones.

But do you think that assuming prices eventually settle back down that Trump bears a cost for

this?

I think, well, there's the political cost and then there's the embedded cost when you make

fun of Aala on Easter.

How many loan wolves do you piss off by doing that?

I mean, and also, and or how many other future terrorists have you created by taking this

action, which again, if the calculus was this was the only way these objectives could be

achieved and that the threat was imminent, then you bear those costs.

But as the math gets done, if the president is unable to convince the country as he has

so far that this was necessary and that the threat was imminent, then the worry about

those costs looms larger in that in that conversation.

But politically, what's the chief claim against him?

He took his eye off the ball, which was dealing with prices and the US economy.

So this is another way in which he took his eye off the ball.

The short-term pain you could imagine, okay, gas prices go down and and he'll say it's

quite useful for him to say, you know, the economy was doing great, then we went and

took care of business.

It gave us a little rumble, but now gas prices are going down, which means the economy is

doing great again.

Problem is the economy is not going to be great.

Growth is super-enemic.

The manufacturing renaissance that was supposed to occur has not occurred in the way that it

needs to, which is to say manufacturing jobs are down significantly.

Blue collar jobs have not increased as the times had a great piece about today.

The labor participation rate has fallen for a variety of reasons.

In the areas that affect people's real lives, which is to say healthcare education and

housing are all up faster than regular inflation, which means wages aren't keeping up.

I mean, there's a lot of ways in which the economy is not doing great.

So if the narrative that will be damaging for Republicans is, hey, you took your eye off

the ball and the one thing you did on the economy ended up taxing people through import taxes,

this is more fodder for the eye off the ball.

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We're now joined by Antonia Hitchens, who has just published a deeply unsettling piece

in the New Yorker, how the internet fringe infiltrated Republican politics.

It's a profile of the groipers, the racist, anti-Semitic, nihilistic, extremely online

movement that's arguably the most dominant force, so the most energetic force in young right-wing

politics.

Antonia, welcome to the gavvest.

What is a gripper and how is a gripper different from someone who is maga, if they are different?

So the definition of gripper, I think, if you ask them, they would say they were lovers

of Jesus Christ and peace and that anybody can be a gripper.

If you ask somebody in Washington, DC, they might say it's a kind of person who favors

removing the Jews from the maga contingency and from also kind of making sure that we

go back so that women don't vote and that life resembles something closer to America,

but it was a majority white country populated by Anglo-Saxon peoples exclusively.

But most recently, it's become kind of the youth insurgency within maga that's trying

to kind of drag Trump to a more extreme and more radical place after they feel like he's

kind of gone back on many of his campaign promises and essentially to them looks like

a weak liberal president who's not willing to be the Caesar that America needs.

Yeah, so I just want to say something about both the terrific reporting in this piece

and also I felt like you did such a good job of presenting what people were saying and

having a kind of restrained tone that allowed the facts to speak for themselves that made

the piece stronger.

And one thing I was thinking about is like, at one point compare being a gripper to being

punk.

And I think what you're talking about is like going to some radical extreme where you're

like rebelling against your parents, right?

You're the youth, you're telling the grownups what's what.

And you're taking a stand that is delicious and valuable because it's forbidden in some

way.

And then it seemed like over and over again in the gripper world, it's going after

Jews and thinking in terms of these conspiracy theories about Jews, which obviously are so

familiar over time and really making this like rooting out Jewish influence and talking

about Jewish power as like the way that you prove your filthy to this group.

And I kind of get it.

It's like the last taboo that you're kicking over somehow like, you know, being racist

in a traditional way against black people or other people of color doesn't quite cut

it.

But there is just something so striking about it because this has been a taboo in American

politics.

And I wonder, you know, obviously like it's such a strong theme because you're returning

to it over and over again.

And I just wonder, you know, what your thoughts were about why this is the thing that they

have latched on to.

Trump had already undone so many of the taboos that I think other generations might not have

been accustomed to.

And so for the kind of zoomer generation of starting it, you know, when they were 11 years

old, Trump was the president already, I think all of this energy that was misdirected for

them in kind of imagining that they would have a president who they could still feel transgressive

and supporting.

Suddenly, it was very normal to kind of say the sorts of things Trump says on stage all

the time or in his cabinet meetings.

And so it's almost like in a different period of time they would have been like the golf table

or the jock table or kind of a more traditional like cafeteria identity, which now is all directed

into online political extremism in this very kind of, we're joking, but we're not joking

way.

That I think also comes from perhaps overtorking in their reaction to what felt like this

overriding sanctimoniousness of the Biden era where, you know, we were flying the trans

flag at embassies in Africa.

And I think they felt very much like they were part of this world that felt so unfamiliar

to them and as kind of a cope for a lack of agency, you know, a lot of a lot of energy is directed

toward what Nick Fuentes would call organized jury or kind of other pernicious forces in American

life that I think especially online or became kind of fun to joke about.

But what I was at first really struck by was when you meet people in the real world in

2025 doing Nazi cosplay, it's just, it's very jarring because it's often not that funny,

but I think it's funny online.

And so you have these, I even observed in the group of groupers I was often with, like,

it was very awkward for them with each other in person because they were used to being online.

Are they pleasant in person?

I mean, are they personally horrible to be around?

Are they just like, you know, nice to dogs and neighbors?

But when they're in person, they're just like regular and you wouldn't,

you wouldn't clock them for being an anti-Semitic Hitler sympathizer.

I think until you realize that people are wearing Hugo Boss to kind of emulate the brown shirts,

it's like, couldn't be a nicer group of people.

Probably the most Holocaust jokes that I've heard in an Applebee's.

But again, kind of in the energy of a Trump rally where super nice people

want good things for the country, but often takes on this other kind of tenor that is very much

not aligned with much of the things they're pitching, which, you know, sometimes would involve, like,

we have to get rid of so many people that we almost need to do like internal deportations,

but then they're all just at an Applebee's having a great time and its kids going with their parents.

And there's a very kind of earnest, almost, I don't know, kind of like 1950s picket fence idea

of America and going back to like everyone just picking oranges and being white that I think

when they get together and talk about it is not meant to seem threatening,

is certainly not meant to seem violent or really anything beyond like a shared fun fantasy,

like meeting up to play a board game almost.

So I guess when I'm trying to figure out, Antonia, is how big is the Goth table to mix

cafeteria and the Applebee's and maybe that's maybe not mixing, maybe it's perfect, which is that,

you know, politics before Donald Trump there were, or when Trump came along, people would say,

oh, well, it's like with goldwater, like the burchers were behind goldwater, but he never went

anywhere and McGovern, like the super hippies are behind him, but he got slaughtered in the general

election. And then Trump comes along and he plays footsie with David Duke, he even, you know,

even Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan call him out for sort of playing footsie with some of these forces.

It now seems like the forces are much more out in the open in part because of your reporting.

So are they, is it a, is it still a relatively small table who is just being quoted now,

or is the table getting a lot bigger and the jox table is flirting with going over and sitting

with them for a little while? I think that it's definitely become incorporated so seamlessly

into MAGA. And as I say in my piece, there's such an aversion to the kind of moralistic gatekeeping

that I think would be required in order to say, you know, you can be a MAGA as long as you

aren't going to make Holocaust jokes. I mean, I think the question of what it would mean now to

draw a line between groipers and MAGA, I think, became almost like this farcical thing to try to

have a specific boundary around because I think for the most part, if you talk to people in

Washington, there's a sense of frustration with Trump in terms of whether it was kind of not

keeping the promise of no new wars, whether it's the focus on so-called mass deportations that

they think has been kind of radically left behind, whether it's still being willing to give H1Bs

to Chinese students, or even letting kind of the normal coziness of politics and business carry on

as one might have suspected it would. I think all of those kind of America first positions

that now are kind of delineated from MAGA, which has become kind of to them this scam that has

done nothing that they imagined it would, to share those positions you would theoretically be

seen as a grouper, whether it means that you are a grouper in the sense of you want to elect Gavin

Newsom because you think JD Vance shouldn't have an Indian wife and because you think that

the Republicans are so corrupted by Zionism that you have to kind of break and go with the Democrats.

I don't think most young Republican staffers are actually taking it in that kind of conceptually

direction, but I think they agree with the critiques that even the kind of sillier

elements of the faction might advance on the internet. And I think it's also a kind of brain rot that

just once it becomes popularized. Now it's it's so normal to discuss ideas on that conceptual

plane that there's really no going back unless something changes massively and I'm not sure what

that would look like. Are they punks in the sense that they don't want to be part of the institutions?

Because a lot of punks ended up just sort of and a lot of hippies who were similarly anti-institutional

to end it up kind of joining the institutions. Do you think that the grouper's are

fundamentally a group that can only exist in opposition and outside and complaining? Or if they

you know if they all could they could get grouper backed senators they'd be very happy about it.

It's funny because it's a very oppositional kind of doom, doom spiral force, but at the same time

is predicated on the assumption that it's meant to overtake the institutions from within.

And so I think what that looks like in person is probably a lot of staffers wearing a suit from

J. Crew and essentially being normal and working in any number of political offices, but holding on

to slightly more radical views than their boss might and imagining that in 10 years

they'll be more in charge and kind of moving that proverbial over to the window in that way.

I think the ones that you meet kind of in real life who are doing a Hitler salute are much more

part of an online subculture that has brought them into electoral politics, which otherwise

wouldn't interest them, but it is kind of an amazing mobilizing force for young people who are

bored and who don't want to do kind of traditional things like door knocking as you got to go and be

in a big group and kind of share these transgressive ideas, which in some cases are more

vacuous than they are hate driven. There was a point at which someone was telling me, oh, it's

cool to be phylo-Semitic now because everyone's anti-Semitic. And so I think sometimes when we

speak about it like this, it's hard to stay ahead of the bigotry.

Exactly. Especially when so many people online are being, you know, they're taking money from

lobbyists through a back door to be racist, to get clicks. I think there is a real emptiness to it

that made it hard at first to kind of really conceive of it as a dangerous force, so much as like

an indication of the brain rot of the internet and what it's done to our society. But I think some

of them, yeah, do have, they have big plans for 2036, but I wouldn't, I hesitate to say the country

would really go in that direction because many of the ideas are ultimately quite unpopular and

boomers that are rally don't understand the Holocaust jokes.

Although Emily, if I can just jump in here, how then did you see JD Vance when he talked about

Pearl clutching when those college Republicans were caught essentially engaging in all of this

behavior? They obviously think he's a part of the problem, but he sees them and this idea of never

wanting to be on the side of the moralizing. So where does he fit in this, in this world?

I think as a shrewd politician who's willing to understand that he might need any number of people

to make up his future constituency, he was hesitant to kind of come to America first and say,

if you listen to Nick Fuentes and if you say nasty things about my wife, we don't want you in

the Republican Party. I think he had the moment to be the kind of buckly of that conference and to

say the party is meant to be about something else and I'm not going to condone this, but instead he

said, you know, I'm not going to engage in these pointless purity tests and Trump didn't build

a great coalition by doing things like condemning anti-Semitism or whatever it might be the next day.

And I think that to me, I thought the groipers would respect that and think, you know, that's cool,

but I think they see through a kind of, there's an emptiness to being willing to let anyone into

your coalition and they think that he's captured by the Andy Christ and Peter Teal and they have

questions about if he's backed by the CIA, the non-whiteness of his children is a huge problem and so

it is kind of entertaining to see the extent to which like a politician can completely debase

himself to bring in the most kind of vile elements of the coalition. I mean, not that all of them are

vile, but I think traditionally there would have just been kind of a no-brainer to say like,

we disavow this even if it was a completely empty statement, but he's very online and he's

much younger than Trump and so I think he wanted to kind of be cool and to bring them along and

I'm curious to see whether anyone will really go for that or just kind of cast him out and move on

without him. Yeah, that's pretty interesting that like maybe it's just not an appetite, he can

satiate, right? Just the fact of Usha Vance and his kids is going to make it impossible.

I don't know if this is, I'll just try the Santonia, I don't know if you've thought about this.

I was thinking as I was reading about the horseshoe and whether there's a version of this on the left

and what it would be. I mean, the way that people on the far left talk about Zionism can also

bleed into anti-Semitism, I think without I don't want to take off the table, the importance of

being able to criticize Israel and its government, but I don't know, I wonder if you thought about

that at all. Like is there a way in which youth on various parts of the political spectrum?

Like is something about the online influence that makes it pushes it into these more like radical

places? I think that there's definitely a feeling that younger people haven't, they're not going to

be brought along with the same platitudes that politicians were kind of used to being able to

rely on. And so whether it's Israel or Zionism or something else, there's often, I think,

if you look at a candidate like James Fishback, I think he's a complete con artist and basically

running for governor to outrun his own problems. And a year ago had totally different views,

but just the fact that he speaks in a normal register and will make kind of the comment you might

hear in a bar about, you know, Israel has too much influence in American politics these days.

I think there's such a hunger for that, that the first person to kind of acknowledge the

massive opening ends up getting all of these people who then have to also sign up for like

the really weird parts of the political platform, which are sort of, you know, women not being able to

vote. But if the left could find their own kind of way to take up these kind of ways of going

about politics, which I think, you know, some people compared Fishback to Mamdani or even to Obama

in 2008, I think the tone much more obviously than the platform, but there was clearly an

acknowledgement that that kind of politics was, you know, Trump had done it, but no one else really

had been able to take it up yet. So, I think he's running in the repul, who's sorry? No, no, you're fine.

Yeah, he's running as a Republican, but the things that he's pitching really have very little

to do with the kind of traditional left-right paradigm. It's much more kind of a platform of

like things that are popular online with an age group. Antonio, we're going to let you go, but actually,

I mean, I use final question privilege to you have a one word answer. What percent of Republicans

under 30, if you had to guess are groipers? I don't want to disappoint you, but I'm hesitant.

It feels like saying who's going to win an election. So, I don't want to do statistics, but I would

say many more than you probably would think. And if Rod Drere were on your show, he would say a lot,

but I don't want to give a number. But I think it's a very popular political platform,

even for those who I think would say that aspects of it are totally absurd and dead end.

Antonio Hitchens wrote how the Internet fringed infiltrated Republican politics in the New York

Earth's a fantastic piece. Check it out. Antonio, thanks for coming on the Gaffest.

Thank you so much for having me. It was really, really fun to talk to you guys.

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The Texas State Board of Education has been meeting this week, and its very conservative

majority will likely adopt one of two proposals to inject Bible readings into the state public

school curriculum. The board has already put Bible readings into an alternative state curriculum,

called the Bluebonnet curriculum, which is not required for school districts. But this would put

Bible readings into everything. The proposals could involve adding the Golden Rule to kindergarten

curriculum to Jonah. You have Jonah in seventh grade. You might read the book of Job alongside the

comedy in 12th grade, which is that's a pretty good that's a pretty good parent. It's a nice pairing.

You'd have Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I have a dream speech read next to the eight Beatitudes from

the Book of Matthew. Emily, let's start with, is this legal? Why or why not? What is the current

jurisprudence? No, I don't think this is constitutional. First of all, we have a first amendment,

which is supposed to separate church from state, and this seems to cross that line. Also,

last year, the Supreme Court decided this case called Mahmoud versus Taylor, which we talked about,

in which the school district was requiring the teaching of certain LGBT books in the regular

modern language curriculum. The key thing that the court found was not okay, was that the district

wasn't allowing an opt-out for parents. The books weren't just like on the shelves. They were

being taught, and the school district have first said that parents for religious reasons could take

their kids out of the class, but then said, no, everyone has to sit here. That, the Supreme Court

said, is a violation of the establishment clause in the first amendment. I think if Texas does

adopt this curriculum, you can expect a stream of parents asking for opt-outs, so their kids don't

have to listen to this religious instruction. The problem with this is not incorporating the

Bible into the curriculum. It's having it be required, and having it be the only set of religious

tax that kids are learning about, and the way that it's presented, when kindergarteners, I think,

are learning the golden rule. They're only learning the golden rule, right? I mean, every major

faith has something like the golden rule that's like, be good to other people, all of us. But the way

they're learning it, it's only the golden rule, with citations from the book of Matthew and

Leviticus. Then the way that the lesson plan unfolded, according to the news accounts we are

reading, Jesus said that the golden rule sums up all of the important teachings from scripture.

So when everything do unto others as you would have done unto you, I mean, that just really sounds

like Sunday school. It does not sound like, oh, this is one way to think about morality or ethics,

and here are these other ways as well. John? No, no, no, no, no, I was-

I mean, we're about to get into a fight, so I'm just waiting. I'm just waiting for John to-

Oh, no, my only point is that, man, once you start introducing people to the be attitudes,

you never know what's next. I mean, if they start saying that blessed be the poor,

it does create some conflict. We've heard more about putting the 10 commandments in schools

than we have the be attitudes, because the be attitudes cause some complexity when it comes to the,

what I would say is the Christian nationalist power is right kind of worldview, because it holds

exactly the opposite worldview. And so that's just one sort of theological side-road to this that

doesn't have to do with the central claim about whether or not this is- whether or not this is

worthy to have in schools, which I believe David is going to now make the case for.

Yeah, I mean, so obviously it is- the other complaints are that there are no books from other

religious traditions. Emily mentioned that. Also, these curriculum, the provost curriculum,

would diminish the number of black and Hispanic writers, and also very much lean heavily into

kind of patriotic and uncritical view of American history. All the things that we've heard coming

out of the Trump administration broadly and out of conservatives. I think liberals become

deeply annoying when they make a big deal out of this. The Bible is the most foundational work

of literature for this country. And ironically, even though- because it wasn't written in English,

it is the most foundational work of English language literature. And the stories that would be taught

in Texas are profoundly important as literature and morality. And when you act like America,

doesn't have this incredibly strong Christian tradition that shapes- yes, it is a religious

tradition, but is a tradition that entirely shapes how the nation comes to be, exists, drives,

like what it is that almost everyone has experienced in their lives. You sound kind of luloo.

And it doesn't mean that there aren't key elements of other traditions in American culture.

Like, we are Emily, you and I are Jewish. There's a stream of Jewish culture in America and

Islam and Buddhism. But it is just a fact, the overwhelming majority of Americans for almost all

of American history have come out of a Christian tradition guided by the stories, language and

stories of the Bible as the foundational text. And of course, kids should know what's in it. And

of course, it should be taught. And of course, we should talk about the moral lessons of it. It is-

it is, I completely agree with the Christian conservatives on this. This is cultural literacy in

America and to discount it and to kind of keep kids away from it. I think it's just like it's

stupid. And I understand there will be an evangelical element to this. I absolutely understand that an

evangelical element of the Bible is going to be shoved down the throats of a lot of kids in Texas

who are not Christian or who do not subscribe to or not themselves attach the Bible. I get that.

That is going to be an element. But I also think it is really important for the cultural

literacy of everyone in this country to understand what the Bible is, what it is contributed and how

those stories in fact shaped the thinking of the people who made the country and the thinking of

the people who lead the country today. And I just don't have- I don't even have any problem with it at

all. Ha, but I feel like there are ways that you can incorporate the Bible as, you know, in a kind of

anthropological way. Like here's a text that's been really influential and here's how. And it's

possible that elements of this curriculum do that. I really think that is different from presenting

the golden rule in kindergarten as the one moral yardstick that the world's religions have to offer

and starting with like Jesus said. And this is the way it is. Like I- why does the Bible have to be

presented as the only text and as a kind of street jacket for how we think about where fundamental

goodness and morality comes from? Like that is the part that feels coercive to me and that you're not

giving only- It is coercive. I agree it's coercive. Well, so this is not what public schools for.

There are one third of the kids in Texas are not a Christian. And even if that number was much

lower, the idea of the first amendment and our separation of church and state is that they don't

have to sit in public school that they are entitled to go to for free. The only- the right, like this is

they're right and that they're going to have to listen and be force-fed as if like the only

answer is this answer. That is not right. Yeah, you know, this is- it's interesting because you talk

to people from our parents generation. This is- They had this all the time. And I think it was

and I truly think it was fine. I don't think it was fine. I do think it was fine. I think it was

fine. I think, you know, did it make Jews and Muslims who went to public school in the 1950s feel

othered? Yeah, it did. Yes, it definitely did. But is it- Is it like an important part of kind of

telling people what the American story is to acknowledge that this country has an extremely,

extremely strong Christian tradition and it is really important to- Couldn't you frame it?

Couldn't you- it isn't the solution to frame it that way which is that this country you live in

was founded on a certain set of ideals and one of the central ones is this. But if it's put in that

context that seems slightly different than here's the way to lead a good life and there is one

person who can tell you how to do it and here is that person. And it's- Right, I don't think- I mean,

I think it's interesting to see how this will manifest. It doesn't feel to me like as I read

the descriptions of it. I'm sure where they want to take it is it's a straight jacket. This is the

only text. Yeah. But it's- it doesn't feel- it feels like it is- we are now making this one of the

texts that is really a key part of this but you know the divine comedy is in here too and- and- a lot

of other- a lot of other books are you know we're still reading Emily Dickinson. We're reading

Iron Rand. They're reading Iron Rand as well. So it's not all- it's not all Christianity. So I

I guess I'm not- I guess I'm not at the they have made this- they haven't made it a Christian

school curriculum. That is not where they've taken it. Again, as I said like it's probably where they

want to take it but I think it is- it is sort of saying we need to add this thing has been subtracted.

We've left a vacuum in the story that we're telling about America and the story we're telling

about where our language and our morality and our history comes from like it and and we're

gonna- we're saying that that whole needs to be filled in right now because because you can't-

you can't tell the story of America without telling the Christian story of America.

One other thing we should notice that the precursor system which was not mandatory but which

put in measures to make it so that you know teachers would teach it the blue bonnet curriculum

was had tons of religious errors. I mean by which you know religious scholars said this isn't right

and also was clearly slanted towards a kind of evangelical Protestant Christianity which means

it's not just your Muslims and your- and those of other faiths, Jews, etc. It was that Catholics

and Orthodox Christians and mainland Protestants wouldn't have necessarily recognized that as their

own Christianity which has its own right problems. I mean I- what I'm all I'm really arguing for

here is pluralism right like that is what seems like a problem. This is not pluralistic to say

that we are only gonna teach this one religious text we're gonna do it here we're gonna start in

kindergarten we're gonna keep going we're gonna feed you this lesson that like this is the answer

this is the better answer this is the world religion that we are gonna hold up as a paradigm that

is what is troubling to me. I'm more or less with you on that Emily but I do think that a pluralism

that tries to kind of actually reflect what America and American history and American literature

represents is like 90% the Christian Bible and 10% it's like probably 95% the Christian Bible

but you're talking about this horrible terms right yeah but you're not saying well I don't know

maybe you are like the the move that matters to me is like yes of course you're right about

influence and you know the and and in a good way like we can honor that that's great I'm talking

about whether you're presenting it as better as the answer not as historical fact that is like

here we're tracing these historical influences which like goodness knows I was a religious history

major in college like I voluntarily signed up for all this and think it's really interesting I love

studying it in all its dimensions but you want to also think about how other face approach

morality and truth and law and all these things like you want to weave in Islam and Buddhism and

other ways of thinking because kids should not be presenting you shouldn't present kids with like

that's anyway in Sunday school great but this is not Sunday school I also this is happening in a

context which is not just a context of Texas but I mean one of the extraordinary things that happened

over the weekend was this was the use by the Secretary of Defense to describe the extraordinarily

heroic and amazing rescue of the downed I guess he wasn't the pilot he was the he was the yes the

downed airman on the F 15 E in the resurrection story so hexath said you know he was shot down

on a Friday good Friday and then he went into a cave which you know as anybody knows is Jesus

is buried in a cave the the stone is rolled away and then hexath went on and said you know he

was flown out as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday so I mean not to put too fine a point on it

but I mean he's comparing the airman to the Prince of Peace right slightly different missions

but the point is that when you have a Secretary of Defense who is saying that people should pray

for the for victory in the Middle East in the name of Jesus Christ you have a very strong case

being made that not only is this a Christian nation but that basically God is on our side and what

we say hour we don't mean all mankind we mean like the administration that is in office and that's

that's obviously taking things away too far and so you can in that context this is more than just

like learning something that's an important part of the American right right no that's that's

fair point it is it is infected American life and these guys are trying to shove it down our throat

and I also like Emily I was like like laughing as I was thinking that they should teach Islam

you know the the teeth like can you imagine if that this Texas State Board of Education was like

oh let's teach the principles of Islam like if they added that imagine what their version of Islam

would be it would be it would be a horror they right there is that but right yes I mean I

I mean I I and I will say I mean I'm sure I've said there's a hundred times when we've talked about

that I I'm a Jewish person who went to a Christian private school and so part of my what I'm talking

about is it is clearly colored by my own experience I'm going to a gentle Christian private school

and just feeling like okay they're shoving these lessons down my throat but whatever that's

I'm glad to learn I became I'm have a deep education in the Bible and in Christianity that I wouldn't

have had and I appreciate that because I think it gives me a perspective on the world that is

that is a useful one a perspective on this nation that is useful

gentle gentle

yeah there's that's that's all fine but that's your experience of being

other and it's not a universal experience of being other and you know another and we've

talked about this a little bit but this is all part of this question of whether this curriculum

allows for what a lot of educators I think this is useful talk about as mirrors and windows right

kids need windows into other cultures and they need mirrors in the literature they read in the

lessons they get in school where they see themselves and it just seems like Texas is really really

not providing a whole lot of mirrors for kids who are not like white Christian kids right I mean when

you excise a lot of black and Latino writers from the curriculum you know god forbid having any

queer representation and you also have this like Jesus said kind of way of talking about the

Bible you're that's just like a disservice to kids who need to see themselves in the curriculum

and in school reflected back in a way that maybe wasn't true for you I mean it also wasn't true

for me I didn't mind being other either but that like that's probably because we were getting

so much from other rich sources at home elsewhere that like it just didn't hit us that way but

it's not well maybe a why can't you assume that other people are getting that from so many rich

sources in their families and their communities I mean like I'm not sure about every child I just

don't think every child has that experience and I also but I also don't think it's a job of the

public school to cope to be like the provide exactly what every individual child needs because

their family and community life is not providing exactly what it needs. Okay but I cannot believe

that you are really arguing for no mirrors in school because like you think every kid is getting

everything they need outside of school like that's I don't know that's taking our experience I'm now

identifying with you perhaps wrongly and like I'm imagining that it's everybody's experience like

that just can't be your mirror I'm mirroring you Emily yeah exactly I just like there are people have

different we know this from literature like there's lots of literature about kids being alienated

school and wrestling with that and having trouble with it and like that's something that schools

should be very aware of and trying to address in how they build this curriculum it is important

that parents can opt out for their kids which I really think they can after a mouthful of versus

Taylor but I don't think it's enough. I'm glad we talked about that yeah really glad we talked

about that that is good let us go to cocktail chatter uh when you've you've you've just read a great

Bible story and it's time after reading your great Bible story to have a stiff drink because

bad that was a disturbing Bible story what are you going to be chattering about John? I'm going to be

chattering about a lecture that was delivered in New York on Wednesday um by Kristen Hawks who

is a professor of anthropology at the University of Utah and Hawks is an architect of the grandmother

hypothesis which is basically and this lecture explored how basically the the grandmothers are

responsible basically post reproductive women are responsible for the big brains we have that have

allowed us to become who we who we are as civilized humans because they were the ones who provided

the reliable food source and weaned children which ultimately selected for increased longevity

and the social traits that have defined our species so um it's uh it's sort of a grandmother at the

center of evolution not the muscular hunter-gatherer going out and slaying the you know buffalo

Emily what's my turn yeah you're you're gonna be a grandmother soon I I mean I don't mean that

I don't mean that I don't mean I just mean like you also are providing big brains you're providing

big brains I didn't mean it I would be happy to but I'm not sure that's quite in the cards yet uh

I saw a movie over the weekend which I totally recommend if you guys seen the secret agent um this

like oh my god fun like but also deep movie about Brazil in the 1970s and uh Wagner Moira is the

star of it I thought he was amazing um and then there's this character um this older woman who's

running this like sort of refuge for people who are being pursued by the state um she was totally

fabulous as well it just there is so much going on in this movie it's sort of absurdist it has

its magical realism moments I really enjoyed my husband looked up some of the history um there's

this um hairy leg parading through the movie in this absurdist way that actually was like a real thing

um in Brazil and there's so much about the kind of the partial repression of this quasi-authoritarian

regime and its cruelty but also about all the ways in which people are just ignoring it and all

the like fun sexuality of carnival in Brazil is part of it anyway I really like this movie the

secret agent did you did you find it and David did you watch it as well truthfully Maria and I got

half an hour through and we're both like not liking us and we stopped watching oh my god I'm shocked

we also had a more tepid uh response to it and I tried to rescue our response by wondering whether the

whether the movie is better thought of as an experiential you are the movie itself creates the

atmosphere in other words it doesn't just show you it and it doesn't just tell you about what was

what life was like but it creates an experience where you are responding to the film in the way uh

that is supposed to be a vocative of what it was like to live in that period at that time and if

that's so because it was it's a little keepshoff balance it's the hero like the narratives don't

line up the way you're used to them lining up the heroes and the villains are all kind of

it gets confused it's off it keeps you on like on edge in a way that I thought oh well maybe that's

it's genius and I'm just too unsophisticated to discover that and suddenly I emerge as the

discerning sophisticated critic yes well it's your Christian it's your Christian education that

has done this for you definitely that's true or my quaker education well they're Christians too um I

don't know David go finish it I'm literal minded I'm literal I don't actually now that John describes

that I that is an experience I don't I don't like you're like that is a movie is giving you the experience

that that you feel in the movie that is it's a thing that makes me because usually it makes you feel

claustrophobic or you're like the movie is making movie is claustrophobic it's making you feel claustrophobic

and that I don't like that so uh but all right all right for our more relaxed chill fun listeners

we recommend it I recommend it David just not John sounds like he is on the fence uh I

chattering first of all during New York times was crushing it this weekendly I I had about

four different chatters and each one was a New York time story so that amazing investigation of

is uh this the creator of Bitcoin by John Kerry Rue the Maggi Haverman Jonathan Swan

piece on the Iran War and and then I my actual chatter is about this wonderful interview this

morning very heart-wraiting interview that Ross Douthet has with Ben Sass Ben Sass is the former

sender from Nebraska who has end stage pancreatic cancer and a whole bunch of other

metastasized cancers that aren't even the pancreatic cancer and he's dying and he's just taught he's

has a podcast um and I think it's podcast is called not dead yet uh and I think that's what it's called

and it's just a really lovely interview with an extremely thoughtful humane person who has

who's trying to use his death to explain what his what death is like and what his life has been like

and uh what he's gone through and it's just it's really beautiful so I recommend listening to Ross uh

talk to Ben Sass and also uh I admire your um being open to that I just like

maybe it says something about me being like I I don't gain I don't for a nanosecond

I think you're probably exactly right and I but I just I don't have the uh I guess maybe I think

because I think about death all the time I don't know that I have the personal courage to like

to listen all the way through well I read it actually I don't know how to listen I read I read

I read that interview so I will listen um other other quickly also in podcasts that you should

listen to maybe maybe not quite as much is uh so I have this other podcast now called your city

could be better where I'm talking to people about ways that their cities um things their cities are

doing that are cool or could be better and I have a great conversation this week with um the host

of our city cast Portland Claudia Meza about the concept of the night mayor that's mayor of the night

that cities have which is a person who is responsible for the businesses of the night uh like clubs

restaurants um what it's where you know noise regulations where you park uh and it's it's a thing

that started in Europe Europe has nightmares and now it's come to America it's just a really really

interesting public policy concept um so I recommend that listeners you have got chatters for us uh

please keep them coming email us at gabfestattslate.com we've got a whole message great listener

stacked up and this one comes from a Larry in California my chatter is an amazing story about how a man

used AI to save his dog's life Paul Cunningham a tech guy in australia with no science background

had a dog rosy that was diagnosed with cancer and given months to live chemo wasn't working

so Paul discussed the issue with chat GPT and then spent three thousand dollars to sequence rosy's

tumor DNA then using a google AI product called alpha fold and with the help of researchers at the

University of New South Wales he manufactured a custom mRNA vaccine designed specifically for

rosy's cancer she got her first shot in december and a second one in january and by mid-march

her tumor had shrunk 75% and a dog who could barely move was jumping fences and chasing rabbits

researchers called it the first personalized cancer vaccine ever made for a dog and raises the

obvious question if we can do this for a dog when can we do this for humans I've been a gabfest

listener since the beginning so getting to come on and chatter for you is a total bucket list

moment for me keep up the great work thank you that's wonderful and we're not the only

podcast that's late to listen to this week Karen feeding has an episode called robots in the

classroom which is about AI's creep into education the news about AI replacing teachers

Melania Trump laying out a vision of having a humanoid educator in classrooms

I feel like Melania Trump is a little bit like a humanoid um anyway check out Karen and feeding

that is all for our episode this week we also have a bonus episode in your feed we're going to be

talking about the FEMA official who was mocked this week for having said that he had been transported

into a waffle house in Rome Georgia and whether he deserved to be mocked for that that is only

for slate plus members that was a great discussion we i'm taping this after we had the discussion

great discussion really if I were a slate plus member I would enjoy it and if I were in a slate

plus member I would want to join to become a slate plus member so I could get to listen to that

and you can do that by subscribing to slate plus directly from the political gapfest show page on

apple podcast and Spotify or visit slate.com slash gavfest plus to get access wherever you listen

quick correction here from us last week we talked about the astronauts on Artemis

two going around the moon and we referred to the dark side of the moon we should have said the

far side of the moon sorry everybody but in that period in the interim period they've now gone

further from the earth than any other humans have ever which is neat

that's our show for today the political gapfest is produced by me to pour zuki our researcher is

Emily ditto or a theme music despite they might be giants Ben Richmond is senior director for podcast

operations me a low bell is executive producer for slate podcast Hillary fri is editor in chief of slate

for Emily vassalon and john diggers and i've given lots thanks for listening we will talk to you next week

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