Today, we’re going to talk about two stories this week that feel very different but maybe aren’t. First, the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on UAE investments in Trump companies and whatever is happening with MELANIA and Amazon. And then, completely separately, federal courts are reaching their limit with how immigration policy is being handled.
One story is about conflicts of interest, the other’s about constitutional process—but both are about institutions and all of us asking - what are we doing here?!
Topics Discussed
UAE Corruption Scandal
Greed: Bitcoin, Chips, and Pardons
Federal Courts vs. ICE
Outside of Politics: The Grammys
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Episode Resources
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We’re excited to be coming to Minneapolis at the end of August for a live show and our first-ever Spice Conference. Tickets for the live show will go on sale at the beginning of March, but tickets to the Spice Conference go on sale next week. We’re releasing them to our premium members in two batches.
The first batch will go on sale Tuesday, February 10 at 9pm ET / 6pm PT.
The second batch will go on sale Wednesday, February 11, at 12pm ET / 9am PT. Our hope is that by offering two batches of ticket sales on different days and times, we are creating more fairness for those in different time zones and with scheduling conflicts. Please mark your calendar for next week; you don’t want to miss this.
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Corruption in Plain Sight
‘Spy Sheikh’ Bought Secret Stake in Trump Company (The Wall Street Journal)
National-Security Concerns Tie Up Trump’s U.A.E. Chips Deal (The Wall Street Journal)
Inside Binance’s Guilty Plea and the Biggest Fine in Crypto History - WSJ
US President Trump pardons Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (BBC)
Box Office: ‘Melania’ Comes in at No. 3 With $7 Million (The Hollywood Reporter)
Inauguration Day, TikTok, and Senator Cory Booker (Pantsuit Politics)
Alex Pretti’s death and the elite bargain (Jerusalem Demsas | The Argument)
1,000 Victims and No Accountability: Julie K. Brown on the Epstein Files (Pantsuit Politics)
Federal Courts Push Back
Judge Orders Release of 5-Year-Old Detained by Immigration Agents in Minnesota - The New York Times
Adrian Conejo Arias et. al VS. Kristi Noem (US District Court Western District of Texas)
Rosa F.L.T. VS. Pamela Bondi (US District Court of Minnesota)
Juan, T.R. vs. Kristi Noem (US District Court of Minnesota)
Marco, M. vs. Pamela Bondi, Kristi Noem, et. al. (US District Court of Minnesota)
Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting (Pro Publica)
Bad Bunny Wins Album of the Year (YouTube)
Jose Cruz Santos v. Nikita Baker, et al. (US District Court of New Jersey)
Tillis unloads on Noem and Miller, comparing them to ‘sycophants’ (The Hill)
Javier Giminez Rivero v. Sheriff John Mina (US District Court Middle District of Florida)
Santos Valentine Romero Marroquin de Rodruiquez v. Patricia Hyde (US District Court of Massachusetts)
Immigrants Do Not Commit More Crimes in the US, Despite Fearmongering (American Immigration Council)
Immigrants Still Use Much Less Welfare Than Native-Born Americans | Cato at Liberty Blog
Texas stunner: Democrat Taylor Rehmet flips Republican state Senate district Trump won by 17 points (The Associated Press)
The Grammys
Episode Transcript
Sarah [00:00:10] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:11] This is Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:13] You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today, we’re going to talk about two stories this week that feel different, but we believe are related. First, the Wall Street Journal’s blockbuster reporting on the UAE investments in Trump companies and whatever the hell is happening between Melania and Amazon. Plus, and completely separately, the federal courts are reaching their limit with how immigration policy is being handled in this country. One story is about conflict of interest and the other is about constitutional process, but both are about institutions and have all of us asking, what exactly are we doing here? And then outside of politics, we’re going to talk about the Grammys.
Beth [00:00:52] Before we do that, we are excited to share that we’re coming to Minneapolis at the end of August this year for a live show and our first ever Spice Conference. We call the people who support our work on Substack and get all of our premium podcasts, the Spice Cabinet. So that’s why we’re having the Spice Conference. We know that Minneapolis has faced a lot this year. We are really grateful the timing has worked out for us to be there and support the Twin Cities community and local businesses and the many listeners who are there. Tickets for that live show will go on sale at the beginning of March, but tickets to the Spice Conference go on sales next week. We will be releasing them to our premium members in two batches. It’s a little complicated because we’re trying to navigate everyone’s time zones and make it as fair as we can so that you get a chance to come. Mark your calendar for next week, Tuesday, February 10th at 9 p.m. Eastern time is the first batch. The second batch is Wednesday, February 11th at noon Eastern time. You’ll find all this in the show notes. There will not be a test. It’ll just be right there for you, but we really hope that you’ll come join us in Minneapolis.
Sarah [00:01:53] Next up, let’s talk about the grift. Beth, first of all, I want to give a mad, mad shout out to the Wall Street Journal’s reporting over the last year. They have been what I can only describe as fearless when it comes to investigating this administration and this-- I don’t feel like I’m being hyperbolic if I call it blockbuster report about basically a foreign government official taking a major ownership in a president’s company is just another example.
Beth [00:02:51] This skillset built by Wall Street Journal reporters is uniquely suited to a very corrupt administration. They are adept at economic reporting, at looking at complex business enterprises. I’ve been thinking and writing and talking a lot lately about how we all have different lanes in our civic work and the Wall Street journal has a really unique lane in media and a unique opportunity. And I am so happy that they are rising to the occasion and using the skills and the credibility that they’ve built in this arena to shed light on some stories that I think otherwise it would take much, much longer to get to the general public. And it might be harder to get to the public in a way that people can follow and understand. They’re just really deploying their strengths to meet this moment.
Sarah [00:03:39] So let’s get into this report. It is complex. I’m not going to lie to you and say it’s super simple to understand. But I also think it’s not so complex that you can’t see clearly what a huge deal this is. And to me it has really risen above what has felt like a deluge of grift coming from this administration. This feels different to me. And just that it’s so much money. It’s so clear what’s going on. And it really puts some concrete facts around something both you and I have struggled with around why are they doing this? Where’s this decision-making coming from? Which our guess was corruption and greed. It’s just nice to have it confirmed. Okay, so let’s get into it. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a United Arab Emirate official by the name of Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan they call him the spy Sheik, he controls $1.3 trillion. Let me say that again. $1.3 trillion in investments. He’s one of the most powerful investors in the world. The Trump family already had experience with him when we talked about the deals with Jared Kushner coming out of the last administration, this is what we’re talking about. Jared Kushner’s investment firm had raised $1.5 billion from Tahnoun already, okay? So there are already a lot of money flowing back and forth between this guy’s investment firm in the Trump family. So four days before Trump’s inauguration, a deal was finalized between Tahnoun and the Trump family, specifically World Liberty. Beth, do you know World Liberty?
Beth [00:05:46] I recall World Liberty. Yes, I do.
Sarah [00:05:49] World Liberty is their crypto company. Now, I just think it’s worth pointing out at this moment in time, World Liberty had no products. No products, no real profit. Not much of anything.
Beth [00:06:06] A lot of what was being written about it early in the Trump administration was it’s basically like a special purpose vehicle. Which happens in business a lot where you create an entity to just hold assets, transfer assets, whatever. But they’ve really innovated in the trump family on the special purpose vehicle where the special purpose seems to be something close to bribery.
Sarah [00:06:28] So four days before the inauguration, they closed a deal in which Tahnoun bought a 49% stake in this crypto venture of World Liberty with $187 million flowing immediately to the Trump family. And another $31 million went to the family of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s U.S. Envoy to the Middle East. Now they didn’t get any future investment or write out of these crypto tokens, they got two seats on the board. And that’s the headline. There’s more to it, but let’s just start with that. They gave the Trump family $187 million four days before the inauguration for not much in return.
Beth [00:07:18] Right. And Steve Witkoff, who has been probably the single most important figure in our foreign policy during this term, at least tied with Marco Rubio for that status, is not Senate confirmed, has not been required to divest any assets, is not subject to the kind of ethical rules that people who work in government are subjected to. And this is the problem. I know that people don’t love the HR department, or the ethics department or the inspectors general in the Trump administration. But this is why we have those rules because at a minimum, this raises the appearance of extreme impropriety.
Sarah [00:08:02] Listen, Beth, in the art of the deal, you got to at least give them credit because this shakedown was not enough. They were like, well, we really appreciate your $197 million. But two weeks before the sheik gets his final payoff, and we’ll get into what that was, another fund controlled by him poured $2 billion into Binance, which is one of the world’s largest crypto exchange. Now, to make this investment, the Sheiks fund used a very specific Cryptocurrency. Would you like to guess what it was, Beth?
Beth [00:08:35] Was it World Liberty?
Sarah [00:08:37] It was! It was USD1, the stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial, the very company the Trump family owns. And so by using this very specific coin to invest in Binance, it rocketed the USD1 up the rankings of stablecoins, it gave World Liberty a $2 billion cash pile, which the company holds in reserve to maintain its coins one-to-one tied to the dollar. So you got to respect the grift. This first payment wasn’t enough. They’re like, you know what? We’re going to need a little bit more. Could you pour about $2 billion into our stable coin as well? Thank you so much.
Beth [00:09:12] Well, and I think that it’s just always helpful to remember because it’s hard to make any of this sound real. This just sounds--.
Sarah [00:09:18] Stable coins, cryptocurrency, big numbers, correct.
Beth [00:09:21] And even like billion, trillion, at some point I just can’t conceive of this in my mind at all. What I can conceive of, though, is how the Trump family has been for the last year trying to be in all parts of every deal flow. So it’s that they’re actually getting cash, they’re getting it through cryptocurrency that they own on exchanges where you move cryptocurrency that they also own. So they get a piece of every transaction. They’re moving into the prediction markets now so that if people have bets about deals like this going through, they also get a peace of that. They want to be the casino and the card maker and the bank. Every single role at stake here, they’re taking a bite out of, which means that almost you have to read these stories and think, this is probably understated.
Sarah [00:10:22] We’re only getting a piece of it. This is what they can dig up. I believe there is more to it. Okay, so what did the UAE get in exchange? Well, after we get the payout before the inauguration and two weeks after the approval of the finance deal, the UA monarchy got access to around 500,000 of the most advanced AI chips in the world every year, enough to build one of the world’s biggest AI data center clusters. And one fifth of those chips go to G42, which is Tahnoun’s AI company. And as a bonus, as just a little extra gift, Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, who is the founder of Binance and had been convicted of money laundering charges and served prison time and been banned in several countries, which really prevented his running of Binance, got a pardon for the easy breezy price of $2 billion plus $187 million.
Beth [00:11:30] It’s really hard to understate the importance of those chips to UAE right now because the wealthy countries in the Middle East very clear-eyed about the future of oil. They understand right now that the price of oil has been dropping because the world is essentially oversupplied. Even though here in the United States, it’s drill, baby, drill, the rest of the world is moving on and fast. And we will move on fast in the United States too, as soon as our political climate changes and the world knows that our political climate changes with the winds. So these Middle Eastern countries that have built so much wealth, on oil are looking for ways to diversify their portfolios. That’s why you see them getting into sports and entertainment and things like LIV Golf are part of this initiative. But AI is what is holding up our entire economy in the United States right now. And they believe it will be important there too. We had been really protective in the United States. We wanted to preserve a competitive advantage around that technology, but now it like everything else is for sale.
Sarah [00:12:38] Yeah, sold to the highest bidder. This is also a security risk. It’s really tied up with China. There’s a lot of reporting in this piece about a Chinese figure who was trained in America, had American citizenship, renounced their US citizenship for UAE citizenship because there is the sense-- and that was the security concerned all along with giving the chips to UAE is that they would find their way to China. Which most people, beyond even just China hawks, but many of the AI industry leaders believe is an existential contest between these powers. And for the right amount of money to enrich the Trump family, who cares?
Beth [00:13:24] And I think the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on this is so critical because we don’t have many ways in our system to get to this kind of activity from the executive branch.
Sarah [00:13:33] Yeah. Well, we have the Emoluments Clause.
Beth [00:13:37] We have the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution, which says pretty plainly, we don’t want our chief executive to be bribed. We don’t want our members of Congress to be bribed. Our courts have not built any infrastructure around the Emoluments Clause the way they have around lots of other clauses. It’s incredible how the court takes something like the commerce clause, which is also very vague and high level, and builds and builds, and builds around it. But it does not do that with these constraints on people in power. And so, right now, if you want to bring an Emoluments Clause case, you are asking courts to do a whole bunch of legal work to create a system by which that case will be adjudicated, heard, appealed. Like we don’t have the infrastructure in the judicial system legally to use what our constitution has spelled out for us.
Sarah [00:14:41] And the Supreme Court declined to hear the Emoluments cases in the first term. Now, those were more private companies investing in Trump businesses. I don’t know if this is so obviously a foreign government. I mean, this doesn’t even get to the freaking airplane they gave him, like, that if this will trigger a judicial system willing to do that work. We’re going to get into the judicial system next. But before we move on from the ever increasing grift beat, Beth, I did want to talk about Melania. Did you run to the theaters to see this film?
Beth [00:15:15] I did not. But I have been unable to avoid the marketing campaign. You can tell that Amazon not only agreed to pay her a lot for what sounds like was just a little on her part, but then also agreed to blow it out and try to make-- I don’t know what the stated goal was. But it’s almost like they want an Oscar for this thing while they’re campaigning around it.
Sarah [00:15:45] Since we appraised the reporting of the Wall Street Journal, I would like to criticize strongly the reporting around this film. First of all, just because they call it a documentary doesn’t make it one.
Beth [00:15:55] That’s right.
Sarah [00:15:56] It’s not a documentary. Please stop calling it. Please stop telling me it broke records for documentaries. It’s not documentary. It is basically a long music video/reality show--.
Beth [00:16:11] Slash commercial.
Sarah [00:16:12] Slash piece of propaganda. Directed by Brett Ratner, who has been credibly accused on multiple occasions of sexual assault. So disgusting on its own level. They paid her $40 million. She gets 70% of it, $40 million for the rights to release this movie. They spent an additional $35 million to market it. And I’m supposed to believe an $8 million weekend is some sort of blockbuster success? What are you talking about? I literally read reporting where they were bussing in people from assisted living facilities to see this show, which I’m sure the Amazon freaking paid for. I mean, 72% of the ticket buyers were 55 and older, 72% were female, and 75% were white. Why is the reporting acting like this is some sort of movie success? I’m so angry at the way this has been reported. It’s just another example. Less money at stake, but Melania got- listen, glad she got PERS because they’re all getting a cut. They’re getting generational wealth they will not be able to spend on the backs of being supposed public servants.
Beth [00:17:25] That’s right.
Sarah [00:17:26] I don’t know how to say it any clearer.
Beth [00:17:29] That this is coming from a private company is one of the most disturbing things that’s happened to me. I understand that the Trump administration controls the levers of the federal government right now. I don’t accept it or agree with it. I find myself daily struggling with that fact. But I get that officials from the Department of Justice are going to say things that sound straight up North Korean, that we’re going to have these cabinet meetings that are so obsequious and absurd, it’s beyond parody. I get that. For a private company that is ostensibly about making money and has obligations to shareholders and has a clear profit motive to do something like this that again looks so transparently like a bribe, that’s disturbing to me on a different level. This is the result of what we saw when we talked about the inauguration and all the tech bros there on the dais, paying their fealty to the leader. I just don’t know who wants this. Does anybody really want this? Who’s this for? Whose life is this making better?
Sarah [00:18:41] Well, I was reading about the money that’s going to be pouring into the midterms and it’s like the AI industry, the crypto industry, President Trump’s super PAC, it is at this point such a closed universe of enormous wealth. I don’t know what else to call it except for robber barons, where you’re making and absconding and piling up amounts of money that are out of this world. It is creating a different reality. These Jared Kushner and the Trump family and these UAE Sheiks, they don’t live where we live, but they want to extract so much from us including the power and influence you have is because you represent all of us. That’s why. I was at a chamber of commerce dinner and I was encouraged to hear people across the table from me talking about this. Like he’s just enriching himself. You just can’t avoid it. It’s like you said, you know what, I think if anyone who writes for SNL listens to Pantsuit Politics they should they should break in a way that people will pay attention to. They shouldn’t do a cold open. They should just show footage from the cabinet meeting and be like, that’s it. That’s the sketch. Like, this is it. We don’t need to do it. We don’t need to act it out. We don’t need to add jokes. It’s what you can see. No one criticizes him. Everyone just licks his boots and finds a way to write him a check. It’s disgusting.
Beth [00:20:34] It’s such a closed loop. I want to go back to that point that you were making. And that loop is chaotic. That tech loop is chaotic. If you were on social media much over the weekend, you saw a lot of discussion about AI agents forming their own social network where they discuss creating their own religion and their own language that humans can’t interpret. And they complained about the humans that use them as their agents. And one of them learned how to make a phone call allegedly and was like repeatedly calling the human who it is supposed to be working for. That’s a mess. Even the people who think AI is awesome were kind of like, oh, this is a mess! The prediction markets are starting to tweet out absolutely false information. So our news outlets are paying the prediction markets for the data of what people think about a given event based on how much money they spend, because now our thoughts too are monetized that way. That’s how they’re measured by the money that’s being spent. And then based on that, the prediction markets are sharing completely incorrect news. It’s a mess. And this is all just about greed. It is helping no one. It is creating new problems. It’s keeping us from solving existing problems. And it is also that a very small handful of people can take their already extraordinary wealth to a stratospheric new level.
Sarah [00:22:06] I mean, I think that it is a long road that has led us here. And I think all the time about the conversation on Ezra Klein’s podcast where the point was made like our only value is greed. Our only value is money. The only thing you know if it’s good or not is if it makes money. And the only way we know if you’re good or not is if you make money. And social media supercharged that in a lot of really extreme ways. Like let me perform my wealth. Let me perform luxury in a way that it’s like a mess even in our lives, even down here on planet Earth. The luxury market is so saturated, it’s no longer luxury. Being able to control your face or your weight or what you wear or the access to the right bag it doesn’t mean anything anymore. And so maybe this is why they’re having to find a new stratosphere to exist in because the traditional stratosphere of luxury and wealth is different now. It’s why they’re building bigger and bigger mega yachts and giga yachts and a giga-yacht that holds a mega yacht that you could take down to the port of wherever. It’s so distorted in all of our lives and I really think what we said was-- whether we said it or whether we just illustrate it-- how we know you’re good is if you can demand attention and if you have a lot of money. And that’s how we ended up with two terms of Donald Trump. So he is taking to the extreme a road we were already on, where we just decided being rich is what made you a good person. Like being rich is what makes you good or worth it. We didn’t even care if you’re a really good person, as long as you’re rich. And the rules don’t apply to you if you are rich.
[00:24:06] And the rule of law that we were all equals, that there weren’t two different realities; of course, did we ever live that out fully? No, rich people always had better access to attorneys and all these things. But this is shredding that. It’s not like, oh, there’s room for improvement. It’s, well, it doesn’t matter. He’ll pardon you if you were charged with corruption. Again, it’s just another lived reality. You live in a different place where the rules don’t apply to you. I thought Jerusalem Demsas’ thing about the elite bargain and that you don’t get rule of law in some areas and not in others. You need rule of law that applies to contracts too. So if you want to build business and greed and money and all these things, you don’t get to pick and choose. If it’s the stability that the rule of laws provides for the future of every member of this country, whether you’re whatever stratosphere of wealth you exist in, it has to be held up. And we’re going to definitely talk about the judicial system next, but this shreds that. It says, no, there is no stability. And I think that’s why you see such instability in the markets, like, oh, Bitcoin is the stable place to put your money, except that’s rising and falling. Gold and silver people were plowing their money into gold and silver and that dropped off a cliff this weekend as well. All this wealth was lost. Like, people are searching desperately for a stable place to put their money, the last vestige of their own value and they can’t find it. There is no stable place because without the rule of law, if it’s just dog eat dog, greed is good, there’s no stability with that.
Beth [00:25:51] And I think that’s why it’s worth talking about this. I hate to just complain for 25 minutes about something that I have no power to influence. I am not such a mega wealthy person that I could do something today that actually changes all of this. And so that’s frustrating and it feels disempowering and it’s overwhelming. It’s worth taking about to me because it’s an election year. And again, we get to say what is important to us. This transcends partisanship. This is not about traditionally conservative views. This is about a free market. This is the opposite of a free-market. A free market says we want everybody to have a chance for a better life and to follow their passion and the best ideas to succeed. And that’s not what this is. This is about preserving all the wealth, not even most of the wealth anymore, but all of the well for a really, really small number of people. And I think it also gives me a framework to think about the Epstein story as more than just a stain on our society and true crime and even a government failure, which it was. But it is a government fail you’re born of the same sins that we’ve just been talking about. It is a government failure born of too few people across private industry and government collaborating together to say, yeah, we’re not going to build the infrastructure to hold each other accountable. And we’re not going to enforce the rules against one another. We’re going to have a really fun time. We’re going to party. We’re to get away with things that are abhorrent. We’re going to look the other way. Even if we didn’t break any laws or do something really wrong, we’re going to look the other when you did because we’re all kind of part of the same network. It is important, I think, for all of us on a forward looking basis to say we can’t have that anymore. And that means that we need to make a lot of change and our first opportunity to do that is in November.
Sarah [00:27:54] Yeah, the Epstein files to me is indicative of not just a failing of process, not just failing of the legal system, but it’s a failing of morality. There is a sense here that again the only thing that matters is that he was rich and he had access to things I wanted. So if I’m Peter Attia or I’m Elon Musk or I am Bill Gates, I will maintain that access because the rules don’t apply to him and they don’t reply to me. And so many people who said they’d stopped talking to him and they didn’t have anything to do with him after he was convicted in 2008 or nine of sexual predation kept in contact with him. Elon Musk, to me, is the biggest offender. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I am starting to feel like, first of all, this is only half of the documents that they said they were going to release. There’s six million documents. They released three million on a Friday and just dumped them all. They didn’t protect the victims like they were required to by law. They didn’t redact a bunch of names; six co-conspirators are still redacted and protected. And if I am putting together their-- like so many pieces of this, the fear of the victims. Because something I always hung up on was who would be powerful enough and scary enough that even if you were a 16-year-old girl, even as you grew into your 30s, you would move heaven and earth so people didn’t know what happened to you. And Elon Musk and Donald Trump are names that make sense to me under that framework.
[00:29:37] And then all of a sudden, where did this love affair from these two come from? Well, now this makes sense to me too. They’re protecting information. They’re protecting something. Especially Elon Musk, am I supposed to believe that you’re referencing these girls and wanting to come to this island so often and are seeking him out because of the wild parties? You don’t want a relaxing beach vacation, you want a wild party and nothing happened? That defies logic. Despite everything we know about Epstein in the way that he would manipulate people and play off his access, these are people: Peter Attia, Elon Musk in particular stand out to me, searching him out. They are not just Epstein’s coming to them and trying to play off his contacts. They are searching him out way after he had been convicted of sex crimes. And so it’s just hard not to think, okay, well, that’s why Elon Musk is plowing money into Donald Trump’s cause even after they had this big blow up. They clearly have some shared interest here.
Beth [00:30:46] I’m really struggling with what to do with this document dump. We don’t have the resources as a team to go through 3 million documents. Most news outlets are, you can tell, struggling. You can see who’s out first, and there are outlets that don’t do as much diligence on their reporting. And I’ve worked on enough discovery as a relatively new lawyer, cases that are tiny compared to the number of documents involved in this case, to know that when you look at an email in isolation, that’s very different than when you have everything organized and in order and you understand how all the pieces fit together. So I don’t want to rush to any judgments. At the same time, this feels like a virus that has evolved to me because of the way that people covered this up, because of the failure at so many different levels of government, because of interference by politicians, because of promises that people failed to deliver on. Anything’s possible. The wildest take on what’s in these documents looks like it could be credible because who knows? And who do you believe? And it is bad for society that this has all been covered up. It is also bad for society that the only thing left to do is to force the government to just dump these documents out onto the public with no context. And with no one really in a position to be the credible truth teller. Honestly, the only person that I want to hear talk about this is Julie K. Brown because she has for so long been tracking it and for so long been trying to separate what is noise, what is conspiracy and what can be validated. But that is the thing. When you decide that nothing matters, then your protest about your innocence don’t matter either. Or what you tell me today was actually your relationship with Epstein doesn’t matter. You’ve made it all possible and therefore all likely in the minds of a public that is getting sick of this.
Sarah [00:32:58] I mean, they’re just liars. I don’t believe anything they say. If it has government official comments then I don’t believe it. I mean that something broke with me after the shooting in Minneapolis and the just insane amount of lying. I will hear something about Minneapolis or ICE or-- God, who can keep up anymore? The grift, the Epstein. In the past I would hear things and I could take in some of what they said and think like, well, they’re spinning, but I don’t even think it’s spinning anymore. I just assume everything coming from this administration is a lie until proven otherwise. I don’t know how else to function.
Beth [00:33:46] And that is horrible, right? It cannot be that way. That is especially bad at this moment when we do have AI just churning out garbage constantly. I heard a new story this morning about a place and I think it was in Tanzania, like a hot springs that AI has helped people plan trips to go to. It’s not real. AI generated some blog posts about tourism in this place and then they kept feeding on what they had created. And people traveled there to go to this thing that doesn’t exist. What you really need in an environment that has that kind of thing happening everywhere all the time is to know that if it’s from a .gov website, you can trust it. If it’s an executive branch agency, you can trust it. And we have squandered that over the last year. It is the opposite now, as you said. If I hear it from Kash Patel, or Pam Bondi, or Tricia McLaughlin, or Kristi Noem, I just assume that it’s false and that’s terrible.
Sarah [00:34:56] Well, it’s not just us. Up next, let’s talk about the courts and their response to the lies.
Beth [00:35:12] There are many, many, many judicial opinions where ICE has found itself finally in front of a judge having to say in court under oath, or at least through lawyers, this is what we’re doing. And this is why it’s lawful. And that’s not going well in a bunch of respects. The case that is getting a lot of attention right now concerns Liam Ramos, the five-year-old whose picture was just so compelling and so emblematic of the overreach that the people of Minneapolis were experiencing. And I know that people will argue with you all day about whether his father abandoned him and what the actual circumstances are. But here a judge in the Western district of Texas who says in his opinion deports people all the time, has taken lengths to write an opinion that you really can’t skip a sentence of.
Sarah [00:36:12] It’s not long. Everyone should read it. It’s only three pages.
Beth [00:36:16] He wrote it for you to read. He wrote for the American people to read. He made it short and used plain language because he wants people to know that this government is so out of control. He quotes Thomas Jefferson’s grievances against the king in the opinion and how Thomas Jefferson was talking about the king sending swarms of officers to harass our people. And he says we are living echoes of that history right now.
Sarah [00:36:45] I found the opinion striking. He includes a photo. He includes scriptures, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. I think that he knew that the world would pay attention to this decision because of the virality of Liam’s story. The heartbreaking follow-ups that he was growing ill in ICE detention. Fun aside, they have confirmed measles cases at some of these ICE detention centers now. And I think he was like, I’m going to make a point. And to me, it’s not just him. What’s striking about this decision, it is now in a class of decisions from judges that are like I can’t. Anger from like Scalia acolytes, just visceral anger and frustration at the way the administration is behaving in court, specifically around immigration.
Beth [00:37:56] So there’s a relatively new order out from another Minnesota district judge, who I think also intends this opinion to be read by the public. The judge talks about a woman, a citizen from Ecuador, who has been through it in life. And the judge notes that this woman is under five feet tall. And yet, this woman who has no criminal history, there’s no warrant for her arrest, this woman was pursued in a vehicle by ICE agents. She was with her 19-year-old son. The agents drove in front of her car and caused her to hit a tree. So they jeopardized public safety in general, including hers and her son’s, to arrest her. This woman had to be hospitalized for seven days. She had lesions on her face and injuries to her internal organs. She had to have surgery for her appendix and her gallbladder because of the way that ICE pursued and apprehended her. And the courts are about done with this, but they are struggling because our current laws give enormous authority to the executive branch to enforce immigration law. Most of these opinions end with something like this person cannot be detained for a period of 14 days or a period 10 days. But the judges who are saying the most about this know that ICE is going to circle back around to all of these people. They’re going to try another avenue because they just are unwilling to prioritize in any meaningful way. They are driven by numbers. And I think that they want to show that their authority exceeds that of the courts. That’s what you see in opinion after opinion too, that the judges aren’t mincing words anymore. ICE is depriving people of their due process rights on purpose and is violating court orders at a clip where it’s hard for courts to even come back around and say, wait, you violated our order. Now we have to decide how to deal with that.
Sarah [00:40:01] I mean, with the two-year-old child they took to Texas, that was in clear violation of court order. The mother got that child back a day later after the child I’m sure has been thoroughly traumatized by being captured and kidnapped and taken to another state and in the presence of her screaming, crying mother. Look, I don’t remember which judge it was that said like they flawed arcane process. I don’t know if Americans understand that non-citizens do have due process rights. I’m not really sure how much people understand the term due process rights. But you can’t just disappear people. And they’ve gotten away with it. I mean, they disappeared people from Alligator Alcatraz. They have disappeared people in the very beginning, claiming they were gang members to Ecuador and others like Africa. I mean, they are acting like cowboys. We now know, thanks to the reporting of ProPublica, that the two officers who shot Alex Preti were veterans of border control. And border control has been allowed to behave like cowboys outside the system for years and years and years. And so they have brought that to the rest of the country. And we’re going to talk about the Grammys next, but I was so struck by Bad Bunny’s statement, like, we are not animals. These are human beings. And to see children protesting at a detention facility, to know that they are gobbling up warehouses and real estate all over this country so they can detain hundreds of thousands of more people, the only thing that gives me hope is I’m reading some reporting that people are turning on Stephen Miller. God bless Tom Tillis for saying over and over again, this guy’s bad. Because he is, he’s evil. I don’t use that word lightly. I really, really don’t. I am prone to hyperbole, but not in this instance. I’m not even really sure I believe in evil, but I don’t know what other word to use to describe Stephen Miller, who at the beginning of his career was ranting, racist ranting as a congressional staffer about immigration. Other Republicans thought he was a weirdo. And now he is basically the prime minister of our country out here instituting a grand racist at best, genocidal at worst scheme. I don’t know how to put words to how strongly the alarm bells should be ringing about this man and his plans.
Beth [00:43:00] That sense of like words fail me is being found in these opinions. I want to tell you about a case from the Middle District of Florida. Because that’s the other thing. It sounds like, well, yeah, Minnesota is really bad. It’s the whole country. It is not just Minnesota. It is the whole county. So Middle District Florida high school student has lived in Central Florida for more than four years. His parents came from Venezuela. He was permitted to enter the country. Their asylum claim is pending. He has a driver’s license. He has a Social Security card to work. He has U.S. Employment Authorization document that is valid through 2030. This is a person who has papers. He was arrested on January 7th, not by ICE, by the Orange County Sheriff. He has no criminal record. He had committed no crime. There was no notice for him to appear for removal proceedings. The Sheriff’s Office just said they were arresting him because he’s undocumented. And there are jurisdictions across this country that have contracts with ICE, that get paid to detain people for ICE, that are incentivized in lots of ways to cooperate with this enforcement effort by the government.
[00:44:12] So this high school student was held in jail for five days, and then ICE told him that they were going to move him to Miami to an immigration detention facility. His lawyers filed a petition in court. Nine days later, ICE decided to go ahead and start the removal process for real now that they’ve held him for nine days. And the court said no. And in talking about what’s happening here, the court is struggling for words. So I kept track through this opinion. The court said that the government’s argument is inexplicable. It’s ill-informed. It’s incoherent. It ignores the everyday meaning of the statutes. It ignores the teachings of the Supreme Court. It disregards more than a half century of precedent. It’s insupportable on all fronts. The government is wrong and plainly so. Like the judges are doing the same thing. I don’t know how to tell you how bad this is, but it’s really bad. And Bad Bunny is right. That is a legal argument being made right now that these are people. People are going into court filing writs of habeas corpus. I know that sounds like gobbledygook. Corpus is a Latin word for the body. These are proceedings where you go into court and you say the government has my body and it shouldn’t. The government is moving my body from place to place, and it is not allowed to do that under the rule of law. These cases all run together they are so personal when you read the facts. I don’t know how to make it any more real, but every time I read one of these opinions, it gets a little bit more real to me. And I’m glad that judges are trying to write in a way that invites more of the population to read their opinions and get that clarity.
Sarah [00:45:49] In the same way that I hope the ICE agents are coming to the realization that Stephen Miller didn’t mean what he said when he said we’ll have your back no matter what. A pox on the houses of these attorneys. I want them to lose their licenses. I want to be sanctioned by the court. I want him to be disbarred because what you’re doing is not practicing law. You know it. I know that you know it. Yes, this is coming from the top, but the minions making it possible and all these detention hearings deserve to be disbarred. They know they’re not following the law. They are negligently abusing the rule of law. That’s what these judges are saying. And they should face consequences for that.
Beth [00:46:41] And they are. They’re getting show cause orders to not be held in contempt of court. They’re being reminded by judges of their professional ethics. You can say that you’re a sacrificial lamb, that you are only doing the job that the government’s asked you to do. But these judges are saying, no, when you’re an attorney, you attest. You sign your name to the document. You know what that means. That has a personal meaning to you, not just to the client that you represent.
Sarah [00:47:05] God bless the immigration attorneys on the other side, literally having to track people like private investigators across state lines in the face of an all-powerful federal government and ICE agents with masks and guns showing up at the courthouses themselves, detaining people, pulling babies away from their breastfeeding mothers. Did you see the picture of the one side the woman and her son are crying and the other corner of the building, the security guard of the courthouse is also crying about what has just happened as her family member has been removed? Like it’s inhumane. It’s inhumane.
Beth [00:47:43] Yeah, a lot of people when you talk about immigration, like casually in the country will say I just want people to do it the right way. Many of these people are being arrested and detained because they showed up to an appointment with an immigration judge that they were supposed to show up to because they’re trying to do it the right way.
Sarah [00:48:02] People buried two American citizens in pursuit of their green card. They deported this woman to Britain. What is this? Like, what is this?
Beth [00:48:14] Again, who’s this for? Who does this serve? Whose life does this make better? And here’s the thing, the judges are doing what they can, but they are overwhelmed. The number of these cases is staggering because the government will move people, even after the court has said, don’t move this person. I am taking this case. We are going to have a hearing. They are going to be present for the hearing. The government will still move them to new facilities and the lawyers have to file motions and tell the court, hey, they moved this person. And then the court has to go on a side quest. Where’d you move this person? Why’d you moved them? You got to bring them back. When you say due process, that’s what is meant. Your opportunity to know what the charge is against you, your opportunity to meaningfully have a lawyer represent you in the face of that charge. Your chance to show up at your own hearing, to not be disappeared, to not move from place to place. It looks like ICE is purposefully sometimes trying to keep these people from getting to their hearings because they don’t want to have to defend their actions in court. That’s what due process is. It’s very personal. It sounds high-minded. It’s extremely visceral. But the courts are overwhelmed by this. They’re having to work at a pace they usually don’t have to work at and they just face limits around their power. You can read in the case where the judge considered Minnesota’s request to shut this whole operation down. How badly this judge wants to fine for Minnesota. This opinion reads like a judge saying, please, please help me rule for you at the next stage of this case. Here are the things I need from you in order to be able to do that. I can’t right now, but when I do, I want it to mean something. I want to stick, but it’s hard. Our law is not built for this level of recklessness.
Sarah [00:50:05] Well, and here’s the thing. We’re all talking about the regular judicial system. The immigration judicial system, they have decimated. They have capped the amount of judges when they were already way, way overwhelmed. They don’t want to use the immigration system. They don’t want to have-- Stephen Miller does not want to have immigration into the United States, period. He does not want to have a legal immigration system. He wants to achieve what they have achieved, which is a population halt for the first year in our 250-year history. Our population is going to decrease and it is because of Stephen Miller. This is what he wants. They want to treat people so cruelly. They wanted to make the process impossible. They went to shut it down, which they basically have done. They have basically shut down legal immigration. They have ended protected status for communities across this country. They have shut down the asylum. There is no give us your poor huddled masses anymore. We might as well pull up the statue of Liberty and dump it into the Atlantic Ocean. It is no longer applicable thanks to Stephen Miller. It no longer applies. We are closed. We are close for racist bulls**t reasons. That’s what’s happened. That is what they want. That is what they’re achieving. And they want to make it impossible. And they want to make people so afraid that they’ll just leave. Because even with these bulls**t quotas that they’re trying to meet, they can’t get rid of as many black and brown people as they would like. So what they’d like to do is scare the s**t out of people so they just leave. That’s the plan. They say it pretty openly.
Beth [00:51:55] And that plan is now extending to all the white people who disagree with that plan. They just want people to go. And I ask again, whose life does that make better? I understand when people say, well, you got to get criminals out of the country. Okay, on some level I get that. The statistics say that people born in the United States are more likely to commit crime and do more crime. We’re never going to have a crime-less state. We’re just not. But I understand what you’re saying. People say they want the laws enforced. You can’t enforce the laws if you’re getting rid of all the judges. You can’t do it. You can’t enforce the law while simultaneously breaking the law six ways to Sunday. There’s a moment in one of these opinions where an immigrant comes to court, again, person who is entitled to be here under our current laws. And the government says that the court should throw this case out in part because he didn’t comply with all the local rules of the court. And I don’t know what local rules they were citing, but local rules can be things like font size. They can be very particular things. And the judge in the case says court’s skeptical as to the government’s intentions in raising compliance with the local rules, given the government lack of compliance with the court’s orders in all subsequent habeas actions filed here. The court’s like you don’t have any standing to enforce the law at this point because you’re breaking it over and over and again.
Sarah [00:53:29] Well, that’s the irony, right? In pursuit of law and order, we have let the foxes guard the hen house. That’s the theme here. That’s a theme from the grift. That’s the theme from immigration. My favorite thing I read over the weekend is that immigrants not only commit less crime, they use less social services than native-born Americans. How’s that for irony?
Beth [00:53:55] If you want your prices to come down, this isn’t the way either.
Sarah [00:53:58] No, we’re an immigrant nation. Jesus. Everything here would suck if we’d shut it down. The food would suck as we are going to talk about in the Grammys. The music would suck. The art would suck. The fashion would suck. Everything would suck. We are beautiful and incredible because we are diverse. And you know what? I have an even better right to say that than Donald Trump because my family has been here since the 1700s, and his family, as he openly acknowledges all the time, both his father’s family and his mother’s family were immigrants. So it’s so maddening and enraging, and I am happy to see the courts ringing the alarm bell. I don’t know which one of the judges that was like with my proverbial finger in the Constitutional Dyke like this has got to stop. We won’t make it out of this if we don’t-- the bright spot of the weekend was this incredible state Senate race outside Fort Worth in Texas where the Democrat, despite being outspent 10 to one because that’s going to happen. The Republicans have a lot more money going into the midterms. And Elon Musk, and I’m sure our friend from the UAE are going to send plenty more money that way. But he got outspent and he won by a lot in a district that Trump won by 17 points. And they’re going to try to steal it. So the margins are going to have to be wide. They’re going to have be really, really. wide
Beth [00:55:37] And I take encouragement from that not because I think Democrats have all the right answers, or because I think the Democratic Party is a perfect institution. I do not. But because that’s the only language that is spoken by this administration. And that is the only language spoken by most of Congress. The people must decide that we want different. And we must decide it resoundingly in this climate. It has to be undeniable. It has to be undeniably to CEOs. It has to undeniable to legislators. It has to be undeniable to judges and it has to be undeniable to the president that this is not acceptable to us. While we’re giving some journalist flowers, I would like to give some flowers to Kyle Cheney at Politico, who’s reporting on all of these cases working their way through the judicial system is so excellent that it was actually cited in the footnotes of one of these opinions.
Sarah [00:56:34] Oh, wow.
Beth [00:56:34] He is tracking something that is so difficult to track right now. He’s one of the only people that I go to on X religiously because he actually links the primary sources from his reporting. He’s just, he is disciplined and outstanding at what he does and it’s a real public service.
Sarah [00:56:53] Coming out of this enraging conversation, I do want to throw out some ideas that can leave you feeling more empowered. First of all, subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. Send your money to the reporting that is producing this incredible amount of information, this incredible pursuit of truth. Send your money to Politico. Hell, put Kyle Cheney’s name in the memo line. I don’t care. Like, support the journalists that are out there pursuing the truth of the corruption within this administration. And find a midterm election near you. Go volunteer. I don’t care how hopeless it seems. This state Senate seat means everything’s in play. You thought maybe your Senate seat in Ohio was going to be an uphill battle, maybe not. You thought you’re going to be stuck with your representative until the end of time. Maybe you will still be stuck, but if we shrink the margins enough in some of these districts and get people’s attention, things will change. Every one of us should find, whatever race, however hopeless it seems nearby that we can get involved in regularly and do our part. Now is the time.
Beth [00:58:03] And because of the state of the world, let me say really clearly that we have no relationship or interest in the Wall Street Journal or political whatsoever. We do not make money from that recommendation at all. It’s just our honest recommendation.
Sarah [00:58:15] All right, next up, let’s talk about the Grammy. Beth, to bridge the divide between these segments, I was encouraged by the sincere political speech that I felt was present in much of the Grammy acceptance speeches. And I don’t just mean Bad Bunny, although I get choked up just thinking about it. But Olivia Dean was like, I’m the granddaughter of an immigrant. Like, what is this? I thought it was really great because there was this moment where artists were clearly as intimidated and scared as the rest of us. And this felt different. This felt like people were like, no, I have to say something. This is about me. This is my people. This is who I am as a human. And I’m going to say something
Beth [00:59:06] Yeah, I thought it really seemed like an evolution of political speech at an award show too. Because sometimes it feels very heavy handed and sort of know it all. This was extremely personal, really calibrated to the moment. I was impressed. I also noticed an extraordinary amount of religious speak at the Grammys. So many people really going on stage and calling out their faith or their belief that God has blessed them or given them some kind of charge in their artistry jelly roll, like basically did a sermon with his acceptance speech. So it was interesting in a lot of ways. I think it demonstrated that we are really just getting down to the fundamentals right now as a society.
Sarah [01:00:00] Before we turn to the music, I do want to note a critic. I am opposed to nipple ring dresses.
Beth [01:00:03] I think that’s fair.
Sarah [01:00:04] I don’t want that chaperone. And the way that her nipples were covered in makeup, as if that made it any better, I don’t want it. I don’t want the naked dresses. And this was like a new evolution of naked dresses, and I don ‘t want that either. I want to go in the opposite direction. I want everyone to put their clothes back on. Please and thank you.
Beth [01:00:28] I will say similarly that I did not have a lot of respect for Justin Bieber performing in his boxers and socks.
Sarah [01:00:35] Okay, see that one didn’t bother me.
Beth [01:00:37] I just thought like this is a real moment for you. Let’s get dressed up for it.
Sarah [01:00:43] I loved that performance.
Beth [01:00:46] I thought it was a great performance. I thought I’m criticizing what he wore. Yeah. I’m just putting it there with chapel is like I just think let’s put some clothes on. I think look.
Sarah [01:00:57] Sartorial choices, including stripping down. I mean, it was a very stripped down set.
Beth [01:01:03] I get it. I get what he was doing.
Sarah [01:01:05] And I liked it. I don’t mind if it’s in pursuit of something. You know what I mean? I don’t want her to perform Pink Pony Club in a turtleneck. I get it. I don’t even really like Justin Bieber. Now I’m coming around to him because I was like am I being unfair to Justin Bieber? And I did some Googling. I didn’t know that Justin Bieber has done 250 plus make-a-wish meetings. That’s exposing yourself to a lot of grief and sorrow and existential dread. And I want to give the man credit for that. That’s a lot; 250 terminally ill fans is a lot.
Beth [01:01:45] I honestly think that Justin Bieber has just struggled as many people who get famous too young struggle. And that it has been incredibly hard for him and he has tried in a variety of ways to deal with how hard it’s been for him. And I’m happy for him that he made a great album this year, that he got this recognition, that he’s getting back out there. I hope it’s from a really grounded, healthy place now. I’m not trying to disrespect Justin Bieber in any way. I’m just saying this is my one submission to the put some clothes on category.
Sarah [01:02:17] I liked how stripped down it was. I thought he was good. I just thought he was really good.
Beth [01:02:21] He was good. He’s talented, no doubt.
Sarah [01:02:24] Yeah, the way he just put it all together with the loo, with the foot, whatever it’s called, and the guitar, and then he sang it with such clarity and emotion. Just very good job. And I also liked Sabrina Carpenter, which couldn’t have been a more different performance. I love her so much.
Beth [01:02:40] She just loves to perform and you can feel it and it doesn’t matter what kind of performance she loves to put on the show with intention. She is always saying something with every choice. I think it’s so fun how much they love her at SNL and how she clearly loves to do that. You can tell she just loves to be on stage and it’s fun to watch somebody do a thing that they love to do at that level.
Sarah [01:03:04] Well, I don’t know outside maybe the Wicked Duo I could give this to. Obviously, Broadway people, this is a big category. Often you have people that are enormously musically talented and then they start performing and they get better and better at it. But she’s an actress. She was an actress, and to me, that’s what shines through. I think her songs are hilarious, and I’m sure she also deals with man-children, okay? I’m not doubting her personal experience, but she’s acting and it’s so good. She’s putting on a bit, but it reads as authentic and hilarious and...
Beth [01:03:58] She’s in on it.
Sarah [01:03:59] Yeah, she in on it and it’s just so good. And I think it’s always indicative of how much the crowd is into it. And so many women in that audience We’re singing Man Child at the top of their lungs during that performance and it was so funny. I loved it so much
Beth [01:04:15] It’s a good song. And I hope that she continues to get the kind of recognition that she really deserves because I do think she’s an unbelievable talent.
Sarah [01:04:26] Oh, so good. So we had record of the year. It was Kendrick Lamar. He’s now like the most decorated rapper of all time. Album of the Year is Bad Bunny. First Spanish-spoken album in history. He cried. I just find him so sweet. I know that’s a weird word. There’s a sweetness to him it always kind of catches me off guard I just find him really sweet.
Beth [01:04:57] Yeah, he’s just incredibly compelling in everything he does he just pulls you in. And, look, I think that sweetness really shines through in the way that he’s chosen to use his fame. Like what he’s done in for and with Puerto Rico is awesome. I mean, that is a very heavy hitter version of sweetness, but it is sweet.
Sarah [01:05:21] And then Billie Eilish won Wildflower. Now, that’s not the song I think she should have won for in the past year. She kind of got locked out last year when really... What was I made for? Is that the title of that song? God, it’s so good. And Birds of a Feather, I think, are better songs, but I’m just glad she won because I really like Billie Eilish. But I thought the real blockbuster moment was this new artist performance. They let every new artist nominee perform. First of all, often the new artist category makes me feel old, but I knew all these songs. I was so proud of myself. I like recognized I didn’t know Leon Thomas or the Maria’s that well, but Messy, absolutely one of my most favorite songs last year. And I thought Loli Young’s like stripped down performance of it also knowing that she canceled her tour and has been struggling in the face of all this sudden fame... I’m going to start crying. I thought it was so good.
Beth [01:06:17] I thought she was great, too. I love this moment. I loved it last year. I thought there was a high bar set from Doechi last year because Doechi was such a wow at the Grammys last year and I thought that really said to the new artist category like you got to bring your A game or at least what really distills who you are as a performer and I did not think everyone cleared that bar but I did really like Leon Thomas. And I’m excited to hear more of his music. I was not familiar with him, and I thought that that was a performance where he said if you don’t know me, this is who I am. In my few minutes here, in my few seconds here, I’m going to give you a sense of who I’m.
Sarah [01:06:59] Well, and he just had a good lineup, you know what I mean? Like he came off Cat’s Eye. If he’d come off lowly young, it probably wouldn’t have hit his heart. But he came after Cat’s Eye, which is this is really interesting. So I just read this piece in The Economist about how we’re going to have K-pop without the K. So like there’s only one K, like Cat’s Eye is arguably a K-Pop group. It came from a reality show. They’ve done all the training. They’re won this one record label that’s sort of taking K-pop international. Not taking K-pop international, developing international K-pop groups is probably a better way to put it. But they only have one Korean member in this group. And so it’s like a very performative-heavy. I thought it was an incredible performance. Is it a musically masterful song? No, because none of K-pop songs are some sort of like musical masterpiece. What they do is very specific, but I thought like as far as their like dancing and performance and the energy they brought was incredible. But it was a market contrast with Leon Thomas who stood up there and just brought the musical talent.
Beth [01:07:55] My daughters are all in on the competition reality shows around developing these global groups that are riffing off K-pop. So I hear a lot more about this than maybe I desire to, but I think Gnarly is a really annoying song to turn on in your car. I just don’t like it at all and it is on in my car often. As a live performance, it’s super fun. It’s catchy. They are so talented as performers. The wardrobe choices were good, the staging, the lighting for this performance. I thought a lot about this really worked in this space.
Sarah [01:08:33] And I thought Addison Rae’s performance was good. I mean, she’s like coming off from being a TikTok star. This song is fine. Now, I think we could have passed on the mic because she was so clearly lip-syncing. But I’m not even mad about that. It struck me I think somebody in the New York Times called it like a VMA performance where it’s like there’s some tricks but her dancing was great and her interplay with the camera was really good. But it’s just such a different thing than an Olivia Dean who I have been talking about for months and actually won the category. Thank you so much.
Beth [01:09:07] Yeah, I didn’t care for the Addison Rae performance whatsoever. I thought it was so much a different thing that it doesn’t really belong in this space. It’s just a different thing. I liked what Olivia Dean did a lot. And I like that she doesn’t try to be something that she’s not. Like she’s a good singer. The band is good. It has a real nostalgic vibe. And I was glad that she preserved all of that for this performance.
Sarah [01:09:36] I mean, I just love her. And I think she’s a gift. And if you’re tired of hearing that song, if she came on and you heard the song, you’re like, oh my God, the Instagram song, I get it. Because they really ran it into the ground over on Instagram. She has so many other good songs. Make sure and go listen to her. Again, she did win the category. And then I thought poor Alex Warren did a great job considering that he was overcoming very many technical struggles. He kept pulling his earpiece out and he put it back in and he pull it back out. And then they launched him into the air and considering all that, by the end he was singing incredibly and I don’t think he was lip-syncing.
Beth [01:10:07] Yeah, he was a pro for sure. I mean, it was obvious that he was struggling. And I thought it was kind of a pro move to let us know he was struggling a little bit, but still make his way through. I hope that he feels proud of what he did under those circumstances instead of just like pissed and embarrassed about it.
Sarah [01:10:26] Yeah, I thought he did a good job. And then the last one was Somber. And I love this song. I found it on a Peloton ride. And I was like, oh, what is this? It got a heart? It’s how I discovered it. This is probably why my music tastes have not aged as badly. It’s because I get the new music from Peloton rides. I freaking love that song. I think it is such an earworm. I think is so incredibly fun to dance to. Now, I don’t think he was a particularly good dancer. That’s not his fault though. I love that song and I thought his mic on the way it would like wobble back and forth and it was on that big silver like bell-shaped bass was really cool. I loved it. I thought it was great I love that song.
Beth [01:11:06] I thought the song was really fun. My girls like it a lot. I thought that the performance was a mistake because it felt so much like Benson Boone. Like the costume felt like Benson Boone. The way he jumped at the beginning felt like Benson Boone. I just felt like he didn’t distinguish himself as much as you have the opportunity to with this kind of performance.
Sarah [01:11:23] All I know about Benson Boone is Mark Zuckerberg doing the backflip. All I know about Benson Boone is the backflips. That’s it. So I didn’t make that connection because I’m not versed on Benson Boone..
Beth [01:11:32] Well, he did that backflip performance at the Grammys in this new artist segment last year. I mean, he does that all the time, but this really felt like his performance in this same slot last year.
Sarah [01:11:44] Oh, interesting. I liked it because I just really liked that song. The rest of his music doesn’t sound as much like that. I mean, that song has a very disco vibe, which I kind of dig. And he played up with the disco ball outfit and everything. But I thought it was a really strong category. I thought I was a good Grammys. Trevor Noah knows what he’s doing at this point. He’s threatened to be sued by the president, of course. But he’s doing well. There were some performances I thought that were overdone. And weren’t as good.
Beth [01:12:14] What’d you think of Lady Gaga?
Sarah [01:12:16] I mean, I love Lady Gaga. I don’t think you’re legally allowed to critique Lady Gaga anymore. I think it’s illegal.
Beth [01:12:24] I’m very happy that she got so much respect from the Grammys last night. She is just such a powerhouse. Like the voice is such a powerful. If you close your eyes, Lady Gaga is incredible. I really did not love the way that it seemed to just be about looking at her under that basket hat from a number of angles. I could have used a different performance. It’s a cool song. She’s performed it a lot. There are already like iconic performances of Abracadabra from her. So I get that it was like a challenge, but I wish we had seen more of her and less Basket Hat. That’s my take.
Sarah [01:13:04] No, but I don’t want more of her that then we get nipple ring dresses. It’s a real fine line here.
Beth [01:13:08] I think there’s a wide space between nipple ring dresses and basket hats.
Sarah [01:13:12] Do you draw when she wore meat? I do.
Beth [01:13:15] I do.
Sarah [01:13:15] I think like just her over the top is like such a part of her now.
Beth [01:13:21] For sure.
Sarah [01:13:22] And when you have the like biggest crowd ever to see a live performance in what was it, Brazil? You can kind of rest on your laurels. You ain’t got to knock it out of the park at the Grammys. You’re good. You’re on solid footing. Look forward to hearing your thoughts on the Grammys. If you think the Grammys missed any artists that we would like, I’m also into those kinds of suggestions. Just FYI. Thank you for joining us today. Don’t forget to get your tickets to our first ever Spice Conference, which will go on sale next week. Check the show notes for more info and mark your calendars. We’ll be back in years on Friday with a wonderful conversation with China expert, Jane Perlez. And until then, keep it nuanced, y’all.
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You mentioned them buying up warehouses. In Oklahoma (reddest of red, ugh) people packed City Hall to block a sale and then the mayor met with the warehouse owner who ceased negotiations. Now, I know that someone else will probably sell to them, but the fact that people here are getting fed up is notable.
This episode certainly met me where I’m at. Thank you for continuing to follow the courts. I don’t use the word evil often either but I agree that Stephen Miller is evil. He is Voldemort. The President is his puppet and ICE is the army of Death Eaters. Thanks for another 🔥episode.