00:00:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova.

00:00:31
Speaker 2: And I'm Nate Silver. Today on the show, it's a politics focused episode. We're going to talk about the story we think we have to talk about, at least a little bit, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the conservative influencer, a tragic and scary event, and we're going to carefully have a little bit of a heart to heart about it, and then we're going to talk about more pedestrian politics, talk about the potential looming government shut down in Washington and what both parties might be strategizing about for that.

00:01:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this is going to be an interesting episode, a really interesting conversation. And also for our listener, this is going to be the first week where we are going to a twice weekly schedule of Risky Business, so we will now be in your feed twice a week. And yeah, we hope you enjoy that, and we'd love to hear your feedback about how you think it's going. On that note, Nate, let's turn too. You know what is I think on the I mean on the more serious side of topics period, but in terms of the types of things we talk about at Risky Business. It's definitely on the very serious end of that, which is the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And you had actually met Charlie, right, Nate.

00:01:49
Speaker 2: I never met Charlie.

00:01:50
Speaker 1: No.

00:01:50
Speaker 2: I think he sent me a DM once and invited me on his show when it said something that riled up Democrats, and I ignore most invites if we're being honest, it was nothing personal. But yeah, I'm sure. Look, I wrote a piece at my sub stack about this, which is kind of how, you know, you don't have to say anything. Why don't people just kind of be more restrained? And maybe we're violating that here. I'm not sure. Look, I do think that there is I called it like an implicit fraternity, I guess a slightly gendered term, but an ocur about like people who comment about politics for a living right and people who are in the public eye and obviously you go on Twitter or Blue Sky whatever else. Right, there's a lot of debate about what type of political citizen Charlie Kirk was. But but still, when somebody is assassinate and I mean, you know, I spoke at a in an open public forum in ames Ioweat. I was at university two days after Kirk was killed, So I mean, it's not not in my head to be looking out at the crowd. And you know, when you get the weird questions later after the show, it's like, Okay, what's going on here? And you know, I mean, I don't know. I've certainly gotten death threats before. But but I mean, Charlie Kirk is also a little bit hard to characterize, right. I was struggling with whether to call him an activist or an organizer or a provocateur, or an intellectual or a media personality, right or what exactly. I'm not sure it is actually a perfectly comparable figure on the left, because the left and right are asymmetric, but like someone who was very influential right, who kind of like bridged the gap between when he was friends I think, just not friendly, but I think Trump would call him a friend with Trump himself right, and had like a quite large audience.

00:03:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think whatever we call him, Nate. What I would like to stress is he was someone who exercised his First Amendment right incredibly well, eloquently and freely, as he should have been able to do. And I do want to stress a truly important point, which is that we can't conflate speech violence right like people love to say that, oh, speech can be violence. No violence is violence. Whether or not you agree with Charlie Kirk or you disagree with him, he was practicing free speech. He was engaging in debate. And that's something that you know, we should be doing in a democracy, right. We should be talking to people we agree with, we should be talking to people we disagree with, we should be having conversations. That's the backbone of critical thinking, that's the backbone of progress, that's a backbone of society. And the fact that someone can be assassinated for exercising free speech is something that should absolutely never happen. And as you say, nay, you were doing an event right afterwards, and it definitely I think as someone you know we both do public events, we both do public speaking, I think it changes your kind of risk calculus, risk framing when you see, oh my god, have we gotten to the point in a society where people think that this is okay, that this is a legitimate response, that if I disagree with someone, you know, violence is okay.

00:05:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's also a chilling absolutely right, huge chilling people with what they say and also whether they get invited. I mean, one case with some questionable similarities, but Sam and Reshti was attacked at a big festival in rural New York a couple of years ago. There was a flat blaw against him, and I suppose that was of a chilly partly fulfilled, right, and.

00:05:39
Speaker 1: He almost died. By the way, he was incredibly lucky to survive. People thought he was going to die. He has lost vision and what I it was. You know, it was a very very close call, but that could have very easily gone the other way.

00:05:49
Speaker 2: But you know, part of the joy, I guess of doing an event in a community, particularly a smaller community, is that the doors are open, right, you know, I have have you been to a political convention like the Democratic Republican convention before?

00:06:03
Speaker 1: I never have, No.

00:06:05
Speaker 2: I mean, the security is incredible, Like it takes an hour to get in there, it takes twenty minutes to get out of there, right there is it's very cumbersome and in some ways it's like not very conducive to political protests or political speech, right, And of course parties that want to suppress political protests often use threats of violence as an excuse to say, Okay, we don't want you people protesting about Gaza or Bernie Sanders or whatever else in the convention halls, so we can't let you in for security reasons. But yeah, I mean, look, in some ways, there's not that much to say about if you don't know him, about Charlie Kirk, the you know what I mean, Like I don't there's this whole game about like using this as a positioning exercise for where people fit into the discourse. And I don't know. It's I was fucking shot like on a university. Get this in cold blood, right, It's like you know, I mean, I you know, no one even has the pretense anymore of Oh, let's quote unquote not politicize this. And by definition, although there's a little bit of ambiguity still, and like the shooter's motivations, I wouldn't say that much necessarily, but some right, by definition, and an assassination is a a political act, right, And you know, I think this is becoming more common. There's something to beat about that fact, right, But like, you know, I don't know. I mean, it was just last year when when Trump cat shot and I'm going to be a little joking about it because he survived, and that was kind of the mood about it, right, he had that that, you know, I had just busted out of a tournament poker tournament Balted's poker. I'm like, Maria, I won't see you for dinner because I busted out, and I think somebody just shut Trump. But immediately it was clear that Trump hadn't survived and had this triumphant moment, and so it was almost you know, I was kind of out wandering around on the strip getting a sad little dinner with the other people who busted out, and people there were kind of excited, right, It's like, oh, that's cool, he survived, right, And that kind of detracted from the magnitude of what that event had been and how scary that could have been. And I think you're you're seeing now, yeah, what happens when you create somebody who can be a martyr potentially.

00:08:30
Speaker 1: And I'll go a step further, and Nate, I think that that was a precursor to another moment that people made light of, which was the December assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare. Right where people actually made Luigima Joon into kind of this hero, right folk hero, like, yes, you went after the bad guys, and we talked about it on the pod back then, where like, holy shit, guys, this is a horrible reaction, like this is not what you should be I don't care what you think about you know, healthcare in America or what you think about United or all of these things. This is not the answer, right violence that like, this is not okay, This is never something to be celebrated, and yet people were celebrating it. So I think that we've seen kind of this progression that in some ways has led us to this moment where you think, oh, you know, first of all, this is the right way to solve it, and secondly, like I could even be a hero right for killing someone who you know, people disagreed with or thought they did something bad. And it's just so profoundly fucked up to think in those terms and to think that this is just something you do. Right. This is why we have society, This is why we have laws, This is why we have norms of behavior, This is why we live, you know, in a civilization and not in the wild West, where the way that you solve things was to duke it out with guns.

00:09:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, look the way I kind of look at civilization. Like again, it's amazing that you're in New York and it's a city of eight billion people and everyone has different objectives on their mind, and there is lots of petty crime from day to day and other things, and yet the kind of center holds, right, But the center holds I think some narrowly right where you have a lot of I'm going to confuse centrifugal and centripetal. Right, you have a lot of forces pulling out into chaos. Then you have forces holding people together, including policing, including common decency, including common sense, right, and kind of everything in between, and like it might not take that much for things to fall out of equilibrium. And maybe and maybe social media is that. And you know, I don't think things have calmed down very much on Twitter, right, I've covered a lot of news stories and like five days no matter what the story is of things not calming down, it's a little unusual, right. You know, you also have people who are getting fired for saying thoughtless or I was gonna say un pc which is I mean, I think it is kind of like a political correctness issue, right if people fired for saying things that in some cases are I think stupid and tone.

00:11:13
Speaker 1: Deaf, but like still a fireable effects, like yeah, look in.

00:11:18
Speaker 2: Some of them. You know, Matthew Dowd is my former ABC News colleague, and I think Matthew Dowd's a lowheart and an idiot, But I think you should be fired for being a low heart and an idiot in general about almost every issue that he weighs in on, and not on a short preparation TV hit when it wasn't clear what had happened about saying Okay, well, this guy was kind of encouraging what I mean. You know, I don't think his comment is correct, but it's also like it's within the realm of free speech that I think Charlie Kirk is relatively not hit theocritical about free speech and would have wanted right to support absolutely absolutely.

00:11:58
Speaker 1: And this goes back to what you said at the beginning night, which I think we should just stress a little bit more, which is the chilling effect of this right, the effect that this has on free speech more broadly, on what both feel like they can and can't say, and the fact that there are now these like very strong repercussions for rights that you should have right and even going a step further. So there was a piece in New York Times that pointed out that defend Secretary Pete Hegseth had said that the agency was monitoring and tracking any military personnel who celebrated or mocked Kirk's death, and Christopher Landau, the Deputy Secretary of State, said that the administration would be stripping visas from any individuals who celebrated Kirk's death. So you know, this is like it's going further and further right from oh, you might be fired to you might have your visa taken away, and I've I mean, that's frightening. Everything about this moment is frightening. I want to also point out something that you mentioned about New York and like the fact that New York functions and sometimes you think, oh, how precarious is that? There's actually a lot of work in psychology that shows that it is quite precarious. Right, Social norms are per careus, that norms of behavior are precarious, that we are often kind of walking on a razor's edge where it can go in one direction or another, depending on what prominent people say, you know, depending on what people think that these things do shift and can shift very rapidly. So I think we should just remember that, you know, social norms that we take for granted, we shouldn't take for granted they they do need to be protected, or we might end up devolving, which is what I think we're witnessing right now speaking about, you know, the increased political violence security, I think this is a good moment to shift gears a little bit and talk about the potential government shut down and funding because one of the things that is happening is that the White House has requested fifty eight million dollars in security funding for both the executive and the judicial branches after Charlie Kirk's assassination. And this is basically they're trying to insert this as part of the stop gap bill to prevent a government shutdown, which is looming on October first. So this is clearly something that is being used. I don't know if it's being used as a pretext or if this is actually something that they should be doing, but it's interesting that this is making its way from something that happened last week to something that is a key provision in a bill that can prevent the shutting down of the government, which, by the way, night, I feel like we have an impending government shutdown. So frequently these days.

00:15:05
Speaker 2: Should I get a quick background or for I have a story place down? So like in the spring, was it March or whatever? In the spring, Republicans had to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open. People thought that bill might get stimied in the House with the gup he has a very narrow majority, and they passed it party line vote, I think, with one exception on each side. It went to the Senate, where for that type of legislation the filibuster is still under the rules of the Senate. So ultimately Democrats debated to shut down. Public commentators debate a shutdown. I actually wrote a post I guess it was after they didn't, after Schumer had conceded it was about to concede, saying Democrats should have had a shutdown. I thought it was good opportunity. I thought they could highlight dough spending cuts and take advantage of Elam Musk's on popularity. But Schumer and what was it, you know, seven or so other Democrats voted for cloture to and a filibuster, and so therefore the bill passed. However, that resolution was for six months, and it expires at the end of this month, September. Say, thirty first, I think this how many days this is? Had?

00:16:07
Speaker 1: Have?

00:16:08
Speaker 2: Thirty September thirtieth.

00:16:11
Speaker 1: I remember night. I think I told you about my little uh the little thing that you can use.

00:16:17
Speaker 2: I know, yeah, you know. September feels like a thirty one though, right, it's a pretty fucking important month. September might be the best month.

00:16:24
Speaker 1: It is an important month. It's such a great weather month, back to school month. I love September. But it's a thirty day month. Unfortunately, good things never last night, good things.

00:16:33
Speaker 2: Never last Okay, uh, sorry I lost Okay, So anyway, this time though, it's Democrats October one.

00:16:41
Speaker 1: October one is when the government would shut down.

00:16:44
Speaker 2: This time though, it's Democrats who seem to want to shut down. So Chuck Schumer indicated late last week that he had canvassed his caucus and they are inclined.

00:16:55
Speaker 1: That sounds really inappropriate. Well, you canvass my caucus. Sorry, sorry, guys, this is important. Oh all right, So he'd canvassed his caucus.

00:17:06
Speaker 2: Yes, and there was appetite in the credit caucus to make demands. I suppose about healthcare, they want to extend Obamacare subsidies in Medicaid and restore Medicaid cuts that were made in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act not my term for it, the official piece they have the legislation. And meanwhile, lots of center and left of center commentators, from as Reclined to Robert Wright to everybody else's been saying, yeah, we need a fight. Democrats can't concede to this, although they don't really agree on the whys or the what's exactly right, but there's agreement that something must be done. That Schumer was so much of a pushover last time that this is one of the few points Democrats have leverage. I when you want to cash that in for like a big media moment or for actual concessions, that you have to it's time to do something.

00:17:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that Schumer learned his lesson a little too well from the last time, when he got such horrible coverage, such horrible press for making the deal right where he said, look, I'm just I'm doing what needs to be done, and he came off looking terrible. But I think that the other strategic moment, and I'm not writing a piece about this night, so please, you know, feel free to chime in, is I think that Democrats are seeing this as a moment where they can really start creating kind of new messaging for mid term elections and for you know, for presidential elections moving forward, to say that, you know, we are the true party that's protecting the people. Right. The reason that we're doing this is we want you to have your healthcare, your medicare. We want it not to be cut. You know, we want all of these benefits that are being lost with rural communities for the working man of America. We want to protect this and that's what we're trying to fight for. And I think that's also part of the messaging and part of the things that they are trying to make sure get changed in the reconciliation before the bill moves forward.

00:19:03
Speaker 2: I mean, there are different theories, right, I mean, look, partly it's like are yousing there with like the chest tern slugs zugs wing. I don't know how to say it, and yeah, I.

00:19:12
Speaker 1: Have read it, but let's explain it. Because my familiarity is very passing, to the point where I too, Nate, do not know how to pronounce it.

00:19:22
Speaker 2: It's a situation where every move you make is worse than no move, right, that you would prefer that it was your opponent's turn. And like so, like let's say Democrats supplied the votes for the Continuing Resolution, I mean, you know, and try to de escalate this. I mean you know, I mean they would look like pushovers. Schumer in particular. I mean, first of all, he is up for reelection, not next year, but in twenty twenty eight. You have a lot of people coming after Schumer. Right, there are lots of you know, to state obvious names, AOC she doesn't run for president, for example, or Zaren who knows, right, can't be president because he was born U gone it, but he could run for Senate, right, But a lot of talented and all the MSNBC loving Democrats. Right, But there's gonna be a lot of demand for Chuck Schumer's seat, right, and as well as if he survives electorally, then maybe his role as majority leader and so he kind of I think has to do something right. And the kind of Ezra Cline argument is that if you supply votes for this continuing resolution. Are you not tacitly endorsing this government that you say is authoritarian and acting in bad faith and corrupt even before you get to the fact that they are evscerating a lot of priorities that Democrats hold deer and I kind of buy that. I kind of buy that as a default in politics, that doing the thing that you believe in and or is consistent with your overall messaging. Right. I think that's worthwhile, and we've seen I think repeatedly that like Democrats, sometimes the rhetoric exceeds that they're actually willing to do. Right. I think we've talked about so many times, don't have to draw on it anymore. I think if they have really regarded Trump two point zero was an essential threat, they might have thought more carefully about about how fit Biden was to run for a second term. They might have thought more carefully about whe Kamala Harris was the optimal person to replace him, and so to sound whatever, might have thought more carefully about We've been through all that on this program before, Right, But like you know, so, I support the notion that like put your money where your mouth is. On the other hand, there's like not really a good endgame for democrats here. I don't think it's not clear what endgame they want, right, because on the one hand, I think that Ezra Calase is more like we just want to have change the narrative, change the discords. And by the way, Trumps approval rating is not really moving very much, right, So like it's like not like he's in some stings. It's about a net negative seven negative eight, right, So it's like, you know whatever, forty three percent approved, fifty one percent disapprove, somewhere in that range, right, And it's not really moved. It has not moved because of Jeffrey Epstein. That has not moved because of of of whatever scandals there are. Right, we don't have any data yet. We'll be affected by the Charlie Kirk the first segment, right, But like it did seem to move for tariffs about three months ago or excuse me, six months ago during Liberation Day was a big drop in April, and it's been steady since then. And so like, you know, there is a notion of increasing variants for democrats, I think, and kind of changing the discourse, changing the dialogue. But you know, here's the issue. I mean, if you offer a deal on healthcare, the problem is it's kind of a deal that like might be good for the GOP, you know what I mean, where like all these swing state representatives might say, yeah, actually, I'm pretty uncomfortable with these Medicaid cuts, right, and Okay, I'll take the I'll take the deal, right.

00:23:03
Speaker 1: You know.

00:23:03
Speaker 2: I don't know if Trump would sign it, but.

00:23:04
Speaker 1: Like now, I think I think some of the biggest losses in medical coverage are happening in states like Arizona. We're somewhere around like three hundred thousand people are set to lose coverage under the big beautiful bill come October first, of changes aren't made, and Arizona is obviously a state that's you know, very important for Republicans, so there are I think this is a this is an issue that could be bipartisan in the sense that it's something that Democrats care about, but it's actually something that can help Republicans. And I think that if they're thinking about if the GOP is thinking of midterm elections, right, if they're thinking about, okay, which seats are up, then they might start realizing, hey, like if this bill passes as is right. If these cuts actually pass, if all of my constituents suddenly realize that, oops, like where's my medical coverage? Like what just happened? Maybe I'm not going to get reelected, Like maybe I'm not going to look at as good. And you wonder why they didn't think about this before when they were passing the big, beautiful bill, but you'd be I've been shocked at how many people have been like, oh, well, I didn't really read that part of it, you know, I didn't really I didn't really realize that that was in here. And I'm like, wait, I'm sorry, what, Like, isn't that your entire job? Or you have aids to do it and to summarize it for you so that you don't have to read it, but like, come on, like what kind of a.

00:24:35
Speaker 2: If we talked about the change to the text treatment of gambling laws, right, that also.

00:24:38
Speaker 1: Was kind of in so we actually we actually haven't talked about that on the show.

00:24:43
Speaker 2: So I think that's that's something that we call Until gambling conductions are fully restored, I will not be there's authoritarian.

00:24:52
Speaker 1: Menace and we'll be back right after this.

00:25:14
Speaker 2: You know what I would do if I were shimmer, what would you do? I would demand concessions on tariffs, little little funky interesting more So, there are a couple of reasons, right. One is that, I mean, look, Republicans people, congressmen are stupid, right, so like the fact that like this would be they're fucking stupid, Like why aren't you going to Congress if you had, like honestly, like why are you in Congress if you had like real talent to contribute? I know, I guess I know some Congress when I take I take that back.

00:25:45
Speaker 1: But like Nate, Nate, Nate, okay, and my co host has gone on the record that has say that congressmen are.

00:25:55
Speaker 2: If I ever testify, no, but like I mean, okay, yeah, just take the deal. It's a good deal. It's the Luca Docich trade. Like, let me just take the deal. You're gonna get something that like it will actually soft in Trump's image and help you be re elected. Right, And Democrats can say, oh, we held up, we were so tough. Right, It's like, okay, deal, it's done.

00:26:17
Speaker 1: But now talk about tariffs. Why do we think that they should also be pushing for tariffs?

00:26:21
Speaker 2: So for one thing, like again, I do am a buyer of the EZRA argument that like, you might want to pick something that is more abnormal, and the terrorists are abnormal, both in the sense that we haven't had these tariffs almost one hundred years and the fact that, like, you know, you're abrogating Congress's role to regulate taxes and collection of spending in BacT. The case will be litigated by the Supreme Court, so it might become a point eventually. But like, but like you know, I think that is more of a pain point between Trump and the GOP. I think highlighting, you know, the economic news is worthwhile for Democrats. We've had bad jobs reports lately. We also had a revision that covered Biden's last year and Trump's first half year, right where like, actually we've been overestimating the number of jobs that were created. Maybe a little bit easier to understand now. People were fed up economy last year. But but like, I think terrorists are a better pain point. I think I think they're a hard deal for the GOP to take. They're the one issue that's improven to hurt Trump's popularity, and they get a little bit at the lack of at the extra legs, shall we say, constitutionality, right, not respecting traditional norms where it's like you could have the healthcare fight with Mitt Romney or Nikki Haley as you're as your president, right.

00:27:36
Speaker 1: So you're saying that they should pick something that is that really seems to be out of the ordinary, that is like something that we're it's I don't know if out of them, but like that has surpassed all of the norms and is really.

00:27:52
Speaker 2: It's it's hard because like if you laundry live, I mean the thing, you know, a lot of things that are out of the ordinary, are totally non germane to budgeting, are obscure, or are unpopular, right, I mean, like you.

00:28:09
Speaker 1: Know, but Tariff's is something that can be a point around which you can actually coalesce, and it is something that is more i wouldn't say popular, but more in the popular mind because there are these downstream effects that are starting to be felt by the way. We haven't really talked about, you know, the FED that much on the show, but this is all tied up right with the FED rate cuts, you know what's going to be happening there, Like this is a much broader conversation.

00:28:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean, look if you had things like, Okay, well, Trump shouldn't fire try to fire Lisa Cook, one of the chairmen on the board of the Federal Reserve. Sure, women, right, it seems like this mortgage stuff has been trumped up in her case, or he shouldn't have fire to the BLS commissiony like, those things might appeal to someone like me, but they're pretty freaking esoteric to like the average person. Whereas terraffs, you have a little bit of everything right. You have a message about how the economy is not doing very well, you have a message about like Trump overstepping his bounds, and that still gives you a legible cause to find this is one of the most unpopular things that he's done.

00:29:17
Speaker 1: Do you think that they would have a shot if they actually pushed the tariff stuff? Because I think you're absolutely right, like, this is genuinely unpopular, and before it was passed, a lot of Republicans were like, whoa, whoa, wo he's not actually going to do this, right, we know that this is terrible. It's terrible economics, terrible policy, terrible for the country, terrible for all of this. But then everyone just completely fell in line. As with everything basically that Trump has done and stood behind him. So what do we do You actually think that this is plausible that they could win on this.

00:29:48
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not sure you want to win, you know what I mean. I mean, look, at some point they shutdown will end, right And by the way, the way it might end Democrats be prepared for this, right is, Republicans might say, Okay, we are going to get rid of the filibuster for passing bugetary leixlation as they've already gotten rid of it, or Democrats in some cases too, for almost everything, right, I mean, just this past week, Republicans plan to change the Senate rules to make it easier to like nominate Trump appointees in batches, right, And so if you're not gonna like have it for that stuff, and I who fucking cares about the nothing the budget stuff isn't important, but like it's such a thin ree that like, okay, look, you have a trifecta, you run the government, pass your fucking bill, right, you got to change the rules. Don't respect rules in the first place, right, who cares about the fucking filibuster? And by the way, we're not gonna use a filibuster, We're happing to win back a triffecta in Congress in twenty twenty eight. We're not gonna use aucking filibuster, right, There's gonna be so much damage that you did that we're gonna have to have a day one agenda of getting all this stuff undone. Now it sound like Evin Newsommer something like that, right, But like, yeah, the endgame is that probably Republicans nuke the filibuster and then pass their bill and Democrats have this comprotational moment. Maybe it goes well, maybe it goes not so well, right, but like it, you know, changes the vibe at a time when the vibe is I would argue, not going that great for Democrats.

00:31:06
Speaker 1: So let me ask a very naive question, because I think it's one that people kind of reflexively don't even think to ask. Why, you know, why are we always talking about, like trying to avoid a government shutdown? What actually happens if this doesn't happen and the government shuts down? How does that affect us?

00:31:26
Speaker 2: Right?

00:31:26
Speaker 1: Do we? How bad is it? How bad is it so?

00:31:30
Speaker 2: Services that are deemed in essential can get shut down? I mean examples people point to is national parks can get shut down that you have less tsa staffing, for example, government facilities of different types of clothes, certain types of checks don't go out. I mean, now you also.

00:31:44
Speaker 1: Basically the same shits that's already happening.

00:31:48
Speaker 2: Why like the doge pinging it to doge, right, because then they want to turn a bunch of stuff off and see what happened. I guess kind of opt of like throw a bunch of shit the well, it's like, turn a bunch of switches off and see what breaks.

00:32:01
Speaker 1: And so a lot of stuff started breaking.

00:32:03
Speaker 2: Any shutdowns would have been disguised in that, you know here. I mean, look, Trump will have a lot of power to to determine to both interpret the rules liberally Yen color outside the lines quite a bit, right, and I think he will in ways that could be advantageous to him. I mean, this is kind of one of the you know, friend of the pod Matt Glassman wrote a post about how actually this is probably a bad idea of the shutdown because like, when you're not the party in power, you don't have a lot of power, right, and like the advantage of like you need to use the poker tern, you're kind of always in position if you're right, you get to see. And also this has been telegraphed, right, you know, Republicans are aware. They can read the New York Times too, they can read Ezra's piece, and they can read what Chuck Schumer says to the Washington Post. And I'm sure they've prepped messaging and a strategy and and that makes it harder.

00:32:52
Speaker 1: But like, but yeah, yeah, no, I think I think these are all all important things to consider. I think this is an interesting take. Let's see, let's see what ends up happening, and if we end up using tariffs as well. I do think that even though it's good for Republicans, I'm glad that the Democrats are pushing for healthcare as well, because that's also pretty damn important. But let's get tariffs in there. I think that's a great idea and hopefully we can avoid the more serious consequences of a shutdown. On that note, Nate, are you are you going to be playing any poker doing anything interesting in those lines this week? Or are we are we just all politics now? For now?

00:33:35
Speaker 2: I think I'm coming to the napt in Vegas and November. No, this is going to be like a I do finely. The AMPT like a four month break in between poker tournaments I play. I play Cash Influence twice a month. But yeah, I'll be I'll be fresh for that, Maria, I'll put it like that.

00:33:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will also be fresh for the napt in November, the Poker Stares event that I'll be playing, and we stay tuned, guys, we might end up doing a risky business meetup at that point, so we'll we'll let you know if we have plans of that.

00:34:05
Speaker 2: And a reminder, there will be a new episode in the feed on Saturday. Having two episodes a week now, and like Saturdays, I feel like Saturday is a good day to listen to podcasts. No one has fucking episodes on Saturdays. Right, you're jogging, you're doing a little drive out in Hudson Valley or what else. You're gardening, Right, you got a lot of time on your hands. No fucking new episodes on Saturday. But we're gonna have this episode on Saturday. It's an interview with Ellie Honig about his new book, When You Come at the King, which is all about special counsels and what it takes to prosecute the president.

00:34:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, and from here on out, you can expect that double drop schedule from us every single week. So now you know what you're going to be doing Saturday morning. Congratulations everyone, I'm so glad. Congratulations be a part of your routine. Let us know what you think of the show. Reach out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot Fm. Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova and.

00:35:02
Speaker 2: By me Nate Silver. The show was a cool production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by I at Carter. Our associate producer is Sonia Gerwit Lydia, Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.

00:35:21
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please rate and review us so other people can find us too, But once again, only if you like us. We don't want those bad reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in.