You Do Not Have to Hand It To Andrew Schulz

Something shocking, unprecedented, and completely unforeseeable happened this week: Donald Trump appeared on Andrew Schulz’s podcast. 

Schulz and his co-hosts Akaash Singh, Mark Gagnon, and Alexx Media spoke with the former president for almost 90 minutes, giving him ample opportunities to soften (lie about) his stances on abortion and immigration, name his “favorite African-American” (Elon Musk), rant about “the Russian hoax,” and regurgitate various claims about election fraud in 2020. They also earned headlines—and clips from the Harris campaign—for a bit where Schulz supposedly laughed in Trump’s face after the latter explained that he is “basically a truthful person.” 

As Sean McCarthy argued in The Daily Beast, the moment represented a blunder by the Trump campaign, the hustler getting hustled:

Schulz slow-rolled the former president, lulling Trump into a false sense of security by skirting pretty much anything resembling a policy question for the first 50 minutes or so of their conversation. Instead, he opened by asking Trump about his kids, how he felt about surviving an assassination attempt, and joking about Trump’s speaking style, which Trump claimed was more intentional “weaving” than absent minded rambling.

But after Trump signaled to his handler that he’d like to keep talking past the hour-mark, he began to let his guard down. And that’s where Schulz began treating Trump more like a front-row audience member than a former president.

It was all in the last 25 minutes where Schulz zinged Trump about where’s Pence now and where he laughed in Trump’s face when he claimed to be “basically a truthful person.” It was where he got Trump to crack by suggesting he’d want to keep abortion legal for the sake of his college-age son, Barron, where Schulz emphasized the need for IVF in allowing his wife to carry their first child, and finally where the comedian poked a massive hole in Trump’s campaign slogan.

This all strikes me as a massive misreading of both Trump—who obviously was not sincerely suggesting a change in his stance on abortion—and of Schulz, a massive Trump fan whose audience is full of the same. Almost a decade into Trump’s stranglehold on American discourse, I’d hope it might finally be clear that his followers don’t see it as a gaffe when he acknowledges his own lax relationship with the truth; rather, they see him flexing his own power. I hate to break it to the Harris campaign, but that wasn’t Schulz laughing at Trump, it was Schulz laughing with Trump. 

Don’t believe me? In a Patreon-only episode released on Friday, Schulz’s cohosts discussed the Trump interview. Schulz himself was absent, but I’ve seen enough of this podcast to feel confident that he’d share Singh’s and Gagnon’s views. (As you may have gathered from past discussions of this podcast, Media tends to be a… not exactly woke, but maybe less anti-woke foil to the other three.) Here’s what they said:

Media: He's a lot sharper than I thought he was. 

Singh: Oh, that guy's so— 

Media: He's sharp. He knows exactly what he's doing. It's not, he's not this aloof, just like, "Oh, I happen to say funny things." He knows when he's being funny. But he just stays straight-faced, which makes it even funnier. So it's like, I was really impressed by that. But yeah, it's like he lies—he just lies so much. And then makes it seem like, "Hey, I'm truthful." Or "basically truthful." 

Gagnon: He weaves. You got that word in there.

Singh: Weave was a great way to—to ramble. What a funny brand for rambling. Like that was brilliant.

Media: He lies, lies, lies. And then says, oh, the other side tries to demify [sic] me. 

Gagnon: But what politician doesn't lie, though? That's my thing.

Media: Yes, but just don't try to make it seem like, "I'm holier than thou." When you do this thing.

Gagnon: When you're running for president, you gotta lie.

Singh: Can I ask you a question? Actual question. Don't they all do that? To Mark's point.

Media: I don't feel that the other side makes as egregious lies as the ones he does.

Singh: Maybe that's it. Because they all—nobody ever says, "Hey, we lie too, they lie more." Trump did say, "I'm basically truthful." Which kind is—it's a massive admission. 

Media: It's an admission. And that was a really funny moment. You can even tell he like—"basically true." Like he, he stumbled and he—

Singh: It takes an honest guy to admit that, though, if you think about it. You know what I mean?

Gagnon: That is so honest. Because that's how I feel about me. I'm like, I'm basically truthful. 

Singh: Yeah. 

Gagnon: Yeah. I'll lie every now and then. I'm basically—

Singh: Yeah, I'm basically truthful.

Media: Shut up, don't humanize it. 

Gagnon: Don't you feel that way, though, about you? 

Media: Oh, I lie. 

Singh: Yeah, Al is an absolute liar. And look, you don't have to vote for him. And I don't know that I would vote for him. [Mark] Cuban—still my favorite interview—and Cuban made some really strong points that I was like, oh yeah, even if I did vote, I don't know if I'd vote for this guy. But I completely understand why people vote for him. And I understand—him as a guy is like, I like this guy. I would love to have him on again, win or lose. He's fucking smart, warm.

Media: I can see why people vote for him. Something that really bothered me was when the leader of the KKK endorsed him and Trump didn't disavow. 

Singh: I wish we had time to get to that. [Ed. note: they did.]

Media: That's something that bothers me. 'Cause I'm like, come on, you know what he stands for and you're like, having his people and that group of votes is more important than showing the rest of the country that you don't align yourself with racists. So that's like the one of the biggest issues where it's like, okay, if you're willing to go to those lengths just for votes, what else are you willing to do? And I don't like that.

Do you see what I mean? To these guys—and to their audience, it’s safe to say—the “basically truthful” moment was evidence of what an honest guy Trump is. They like him! As with Colin Jost in 2015 and Theo Von one month ago, they were totally suckered. Here’s Singh explaining that he thinks Trump’s a good person:

Singh: He's a good guy, but just the rhetoric—and I don't know if he's trying to get votes or if he's just free-styling and he's getting riled up and he's a comic and then he says shit too far and then it becomes a thing because of the gravity of the position—

Gagnon: I think it's kind of that.

Singh: And that's what I was like—if you can just please tamp that down, I feel like your presidency would not be that crazy.

Gagnon: Yeah. I mean, policy-wise like, I don't know. Like I've said, I don't really think policy-wise he was that bad as president.

Singh: Can't you imagine Schulz, if he's losing a debate, just being like, “They're eating dogs.” Can't you just see that happen? I can see that. 

Gagnon: I think every human being on earth could see it and be like, yeah, I get it. Like, I've been there. Like, I've been like, you've been in an argument with your girl and you're like, yeah, but you never clean. And you're like, what? Like it was like insane.

Singh: We all said some shit we regret to our girls.

Gagnon: Yeah, exactly. He just said it in a presidential debate and it's like, oh, okay.

Singh: Yeah. So that was—but as a guy I was like, I like the guy. It's not even a fucking question. I like the guy. 

I think this is a revealing glimpse into the attitude many comedians have towards Trump: they see him as one of their own. In their eyes, he operates by the same basic rules as a comedian, or at least comedians of their ilk, where the language one uses onstage cannot be judged according to the typical rules of morality or even logic: these are words as means to an end, not words as vessels of meaning. He's just doing crowd-work.

To put it a little more bluntly, these people are very stupid and dangerous. They have no concept of speech as something that might inspire action, let alone speech as something that represents a person’s character. It’s no wonder they see a kindred spirit in someone else who’s very stupid and dangerous, and it’s no wonder they can barely even comprehend the impact of Trump’s policy goals (or even his past policy achievements). What makes them such dangerous propagandists is that they have no idea they are propagandists: this is all just fun and games for them, with no bearing on reality. You do not, I hate to say, have to hand it to them—

Singh: Next up, we gotta get—yo, Kamala. What's up, dude? We got a Black person. We got an Indian person. Whichever identity you're claiming at the moment, we here.

Gagnon: White also. 

Media: That's not gonna help her. Come on. 

Singh: She ain't subscribed to the Patreon, dude. You think she's proud to the Patreon? Do you think she subscribed to the Patreon?

Media: Maybe one of her people.

Singh: Do you think that was a conversation for Kamala or just a nice little joke?

Media: I think that was a reach-out to Kamala directly.

Gagnon: There's cops that listen to the show. 

Media: Yeah, you have the Indian-Indian connect, right?

Singh: No, she's not Indian, dog. That's what's so funny about Trump saying, "I didn't know she was Black," is Indians always felt that way about her Indian-ness, as far as I knew. We were like, when the fuck did you get Indian?When you started running for vice president, or president, and now all of a sudden you're Indian?

Media: I didn't know she was Indian until it got brought up. I just thought she was a light-skinned black lady. 

Gagnon: Oh, wow.

In other news, Tim Dillon took some time out of his latest Patreon episode, with comedian Ray Kump, to chastise Chappell Roan over recent comments she made about her refusal to endorse a presidential candidate:

Dillon: This is what I mean about these people. Here's the thing, it's just like, "I think it's important," like, bitch, you don't think we've done this? You don't think we've tried this? Like, "I think it's important that we question things and learn about issues." It's like, bitch, you don't think we've all tried this? This country is on—it's the 11th hour, it's about to be over, you don't think anyone's tried to learn about the issue? You think that's what the fuck it is? You dumb cunt. You think that's what is? That people just need to learn about the fucking issues? "I think that's how we move forward." Is that how we move forward?

Kump: I think maybe we just don't do war.

Dillon: But it's just one of those things where you listen to her and you go, the audacity of someone who's that young to go, "If we all just learned a little bit and question things, maybe," and you're like, do you think you're the first person to suggest learning and asking questions?

Kump: America is like that fucking guy who gets divorced. Your friend gets divorced and he starts dating an 18-year-old and she just tries to chime in at a dinner party and you're like, can you shut this bitch up?

Dillon: Shut this bitch up.

How weird… these guys are all about questioning things when it comes to, say, 9/11 or vaccines or gender-affirming care… but something about Chappell Roan using that language really upsets them… I wonder what it could be. 

I enjoyed Charlie Hankin’s new animated short “Intelligence Community.” Check it out: