228. The Corruption Scandal That Has Finally Spooked Trump

Two top Trump allies have been caught working for a Russia-backed government on the other side of the world, with the midterms less than 30 days away. Corruption caddy in Trump's world isn't new, but for once he isn't doubling down. He's rattled, scared, and he's finally realized he's got an image problem. Speaking of scandals, some particularly kinky photos of a New York Democratic candidate running for the House have been leaked. Their warning, they're more shocking than you think, but even more shocking has been the candidate's response. Does it present a bold new playbook for other politicians? But first we're going to start with Mayor Mamdani here in New York and the firestorm that has been caused by his statement around the anniversary of October the 7th. This episode is brought to you by eToro. A tariff, a spending plan, a regulatory change, it can all start just as the first line of a speech. But it sets in motion things that can reach far beyond Washington and unfold for years to come. That's right, Cady. Markets move on expectations, not just events. Investors are constantly weighing what a decision could mean for companies, sectors, and the wider economy. So eToro is an investing platform where you can access a wide range of markets and explore how political and economic developments could affect them. We could also learn from the global community of investors and see how people around the world are interpreting the same news. As with all investing, your capital is at risk. See eToro.com forward slash TripUS for full terms. Welcome to the Rest is Politics US. I'm Cady Kaye. And I'm Efidi Scaramucci. Okay. Anthony, we're in New York midway through our tour. It's very nice to be here with you. The tour is going well, right? It's nice to be here. Yeah. Welcome to Team SkyBridge. We're rattling around North America, eating my way through different cities. I don't know if that's a good thing, Cady. This one doesn't eat, by the way. She's very disciplined. Unfortunately, I am very undisciplined when it comes to eating. Well, it's because you order food, you know, in New York, and it comes enough food for about 10 people. Well, that's true. That's the problem. But while we have been here, of course, yesterday was October the 7th, the anniversary of the attacks in Israel. And I want to talk a little bit about Mayor Mamdani because he had a rough ride during the course of that day. He put out that long ex post in which he said initially, it was a tragic day, of course, for Israel. He was thinking of the victims of the attacks. But then he probably spent, and I think this is why he got in so much trouble, he spent one paragraph on Israel and then a very long paragraph or two paragraphs on the plight of the Palestinians, calling it genocide, accusing the Israelis of war crimes. That caused a huge amount of anger among some Jewish voters here in New York. But then at the end of the day, Mamdani also went to a vigil organized by some Jewish voters to commemorate the attacks of October the 7th and remember those Israelis who had died. And he was harassed by pro-Palestinian protesters at that vigil who were yelling at him, what about the Palestinians and you're a traitor. And you could see on his face, Anthony, that he had not been expecting that. And he looked kind of ashen faced and had to be sort of whisked away afterwards and didn't stop and chat to people. It was an indication for me first of a mayor who has a politician who's been at the top of his game, finally meeting a hurdle. It seems to me like that was the first kind of real hurdle that he met, but also of the incredibly tricky nature of the politics around all of this here in this city. But I think it's a bigger thing, actually, because it's not just the politics between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It's the politics of American tribalism. And it's something, you know, from the media like I know podcasters that they are very strident to the right. They'll only say right leaning things, super hard right. And guess what? They don't even believe that. They don't even ask him, why are you doing that? They say, well, that galvanizes and attracts my support base and it's good for my advertising revenues. And by the way, some of that is also happening on the left. And so on Donnie's now caught in this situation where he can't please everybody, you know, like what he would like to be is sympathetic to the plight of the victims of the attack on October 7th. These were people in Israel. Some of them were, frankly, American citizens that died at that music festival, and he would like to be sympathetic to them. Understandably, flip side is, I think what's going on in Gaza, I've said this, it's a full on humanitarian crisis and it has not been handled well. People can be upset with me. I don't think you're anti-Semitic to suggest that a government has handled something improperly. It's just the matter of fact. But in our world right now, Catty, you can't split the baby on anything. And that makes me very, very worried for our political future because how are you going to get a healing reform based person? So Mondani to me, I say positive things about him. You would be blown away at the visceral reaction I get from some of my Jewish friends here on Wall Street who are locked in at Fox News and think Mondani is a, you know, top of the pyramid anti-Semite. I do not see him that way. But then again, I'm not Jewish, so I don't know. I'm just making the point that we are so polarized now that a guy like Mondani who is speaking a healing message for both sides is getting both sides upset. Yeah, and I think it is also an indication of the way, as soon as he put out that post yesterday, and I know that you were hearing from people, you know, in New York City and the Jewish community who were super unhappy with it, how Fox News jumps on that. In a way, the issue is one thing, but what they want to do is try and attack Mondani. And they did that relentlessly yesterday after he put out that ex post. I think the mayor had probably anticipated some of that. He knows the domestic politics of this issue, and he's been very fervently in the camp of the pro-Palestinian movement and calling it a genocide, calling it war crimes. In many other countries, I think now that is what many politicians are doing. But here in America, that is still seen as controversial. So he calls it that. And then he goes to this Jewish vigil in the evening, and that's where I think he was a little surprised. I mean, he looked at, I haven't spoken to the mayor, obviously, but he looked a little taken aback by the vehemence with which these protesters were attacking him specifically saying that he was a traitor to their cause. I mean, you're right. It's probably a no-win situation for him, and he's been on one side, and now he's trying to reach out to Jewish voters. He has to do that. They are part of his community. Yeah, he's got three million Jews that live here in the city of New York. But go ahead. But they aren't happy either. Be his political advisor for a second. How do you advise him? What would you say? Because there's no baby splitting in America. You can't be on both sides of any issue in America anymore. You know, I think probably for the mayor, what he has done well is govern the city effectively. Things like the free opera tickets for New York residents. Things like the free World Cup tickets for New York residents. Focus on the potholes. I remember one mayor, a Democratic mayor of a Republican city, saying to me a while ago, there are no Democratic potholes, there are no Republican potholes, there are only potholes in America. I would get him back to, now you got past October the 7th, that was a rough day for him. I think he has to get back to governing and governing effectively. The more you can show results, I'm turning up with Donald Trump in order to address housing issues. If he can actually get results on that low-income housing, I think that would be the kind of way that he gets over this sort of hurdle. Leave some of the more tricky political stuff behind and get on with governing the city. This is not a formal survey, it's not a statistical survey, but you and I were at the Gramercy Theater last night, about 500 people, and the feeling in the room was it was good for the mayor to meet with Donald Trump. Would you say that that was the feeling in the room? Yes. And so why do you think that that was the feeling in the room? What's the rational sentiment behind that? Because I think it was a meet, some politicians have not got away with that on the left. Hakeem Jeffries met with Jared Kushner and got slammed over it. And there was a sense of, well, why are you meeting with him? And Dani was very clear about why he was meeting. He wanted specific things. He wanted that specific tract of housing development to go ahead. And I think if you can meet saying, I'm getting a deliverable from that. He also got one of the Columbia University students who had been picked up by ICE released after that meeting. I think if you can get deliverables, people will accept a lot of that. He also got a security clearance. He got his own security clearance. That's a process thing. But if he can get the housing, that would be much better. They had him stalled on that because of his, quote unquote, democratic socialist stuff. Trump cleared that for him. So a couple of things there, okay. The people of New York, my opinion, will give him credit for pragmatism. The people in New York do not like Donald Trump. I mean, Donald Trump is, you know, he gets eviscerated here. And he so much wants them to love him. Yeah, but he didn't pay his bills here. So nobody likes that. You know, the contractors complain about him. The plumbers complain about him. You've heard stories from me where he knocks a few painter friends of mine out of business because he said, oh, no, just 10 cents on the dollar or I'll stick my legal team on you. So Trump thinks that that's cute and that's smart, but it's created a high level of hatred here in this city for him. But the mayor needs him on certain things at the federal level. And I was impressed last night about the pragmatism of that. It's not a Israeli-Palestinian issue. It's a much hotter issue. But I guess my question to you is, are there places in the government where these people can compromise with each other? Probably not a month before a midterm election. I mean, but I think what you will see is if we see a crop of centrist Democrats elected in red-leaning states, you could start to see a little bit more compromise. That's what American politics needs, right? The people who are blue dogs in red states or centrist Republicans in blue states. And that's what's almost been entirely squeezed out of American politics. And you probably need more of that just before we get on to the next subject, because it is such a fascinating subject. More corruption in the White House. One thing we asked the people at the Gramercy last night here in New York is whether they thought Mamdani, had he been born in the United States, could win a U.S. presidential election. I was really surprised by how few people thought he could. It was just a handful of people thought he could win. Okay, but I wasn't surprised because I raised my hand and said he couldn't. And the reason why is the woke stuff and the Democratic socialist stuff from a cultural perspective here in the United States doesn't work. You know, there was a Brit last night that came up to me after our event and said, you know, Margaret Thatcher is treated like she's righter than Attila the Hun. But her policies inside of the United Kingdom in the 1980s was just left of Bernie Sanders. I had free health care, I free this and free that. And so Thatcher, despite her quote unquote conservatism, was running the government in a, I guess, a bicameral, bipartisan sort of a way with certain things like the National Health Service. And we don't have that here. And it's part of this culture. You know, you're not going to change that culture overnight. And so Mondani represents to this culture, a hard left politician. It's the same way AOC, despite her charisma and her talent and her work ethic, she's in the same category. But politics is shifting here. You're seeing in opinion polls, socialism becoming less of a taboo than it ever has been. It enjoys some level of popularity now in a way that it didn't. And you and I have discussed this, a candidate like Abdul El-Sayed, who is campaigning on Medicare for all in this environment where people are so angry about health care and the cost of health care. There is more of a discussion, more of a reception. Will that happen in our lifetime, Katie Kay? I don't know that it will happen in our lifetime. But the discussion is happening in a way that it wasn't during Barack Obama. He tried to raise this as an issue and suggested it and he got slammed and shut down and dropped it straight away. So I just think there is some political shift in the country because of the income inequality, because of the cost of things, because of the cost of health care. Some of the policies that 10 years ago even might have been unacceptable are now out there for discussion in the political space. I agree with all that. So let's talk about corruption, because there's a story that has broken through the New York Times of two of Trump's political advisers, James Blair and Chris Lassivetta, who have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars through a Washington-based law firm to provide counsel on voting issues to a pro-Russian government in the Balkans. They were there in this self-governing territory in Bosnia-Herzegovina just this weekend. When the story blew up in the New York Times, Trump got mad. He posted on Truth Social that he was going to terminate them immediately, did his classic Trump thing of Chris Lassivetta and James Blair. I don't really even know them, even though they've worked for him for a long time and are largely credited with having won him the 2024 election in many ways. And now they find themselves in that classic Washington situation where they have no friends and nobody's coming out in support of them. But what is interesting about this is that there have been so many instances of people making money out of the Trump gravy train. I mean, it's happening time and again at the moment. And yet these are the two men that Trump came out in public and distanced himself from. Why? Well, he's doing that because he's pissed about the polling numbers. And he's doing that because people are showing him the numbers related to corruption and the distrust of the government, which is why he's putting out on Truth Social that he barely knows these people. But this is a little bit of a trivia question. Who ran Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2024? Oh, that would be Susie Wiles and a gentleman by the name of Chris Lasavita. So the fact that he's saying that he barely knows the guy is unbelievable. That is a trait of Trump's, isn't it? Yeah, I barely know him, barely know him. No, no. When he was attacking me in 2019, he said he barely knew me. I said, OK, he barely knew me. So how did I become the executive transition committee chairperson? How did I become the White House communications director if he barely knew me? You know, J.D.'s in trouble when he says he barely knows J.D. That'll be the one he tries to pull off before the 2028 election campaign. Well, I'm surprised he hasn't said he barely knows Don Jr. And one of these other people, you know, I mean, this is this is what he does. But, Cady, he's in a little bit of trouble, though. No, I mean, as as a political leader, this level of unpopularity is unprecedented in modern political polling for presidents. I mean, you tell me a president that has been less popular than Donald Trump going into a midterm. His approval ratings are 10 points lower than Bill Clinton's were in his midterms, where he suffered great losses and 10 points lower than Barack Obama's were in his midterms in 2018 when he got shellacked. And lower than George W. Bush in 06. His approval ratings are chronically bad at the moment. And I think lashing out as he has done on Truth Social, and let's see if he actually does anything with James Blair and Chris Lassiter over this is a reflection of the problems that he is in. He has been frustrated for months at the midterm strategy. These guys going to the Balkans at this stage just a few weeks before the election makes it look like the optics are not great because it makes it look like they're focused on some party out in the Balkans and not actually focused on the US midterm elections. And I think that's probably some of why he's frustrated. I just want to ask you this question because where is the counter-narrative from the Democrats? You know, I was with one of my old bosses. Won't mention his name. He'll get mad at me. Eighty-eight-year-old guy has been in Democratic Party politics for 65 years and said to me, Democratic National Party, Democratic National Committee. Let me tell you something. Bob Strauss, you remember the legendary Bob Strauss? He said, Bob Strauss said to me in 1973, there's no such thing as a Democratic National Party. Okay, and it's completely splintered. And here we are in 2026. It's the exact same thing. So what is the threaded? Cohesive narrative for the Democrats because they could have these guys on the run, but I don't feel that they do. So tell me what some push back on me. Tell me I'm wrong. And tell me what the cohesive narrative is. But if I'm right, tell me what the cohesive narrative should be. Some okay. So some of this in a midterm elections is not about having one national candidate who has a national message. Actually, you are more likely to win a Senate race in Alaska. If you are talking about Alaskan issues, which is why Mary Paltola, the Democratic candidate is ahead because she hasn't nationalized this election. She's talking about fishing, right? She's talking about energy issues. She's talking about what the people of Alaska care about. She's talking about Alaska first as she calls it. And I think that model in the midterms is actually probably more helpful for Democrats at the moment than running on a national message. Yes, of course, they're all hammering the issue of affordability and they're all pinning it on Donald Trump. And I think that actually is a message that seems to be working. The University of Chicago asked a super smart question last week in a focus group. And the question was this the economy is bad. Do you blame Donald Trump's policies for the state of the economy? Or do you think the economy is bad because of factors outside the White House is control 65% of respondents blamed Donald Trump for the policies that have got us into this position the tariffs and the Iran war. I think some of that is reflective of fairly disciplined Democratic Party messaging Chuck Schumer love him or hate him and think it's time for him to move off the political stage because he's not exactly a spring chicken anymore has actually done a pretty good job. He's a total spring chicken. He's only like 78 years old. Oh, yeah. He's a spring chicken. I forgot that. He's barely out of college. He's younger than Grassley. I mean just get his career started. Just beginning guys. He's gonna be here for a while, but I think he's actually done a pretty good job of picking the right candidates for the right States and not in a way that is with one overarching message because you've got to stay state focus. I would I'm going to give I'm going to give Senator Schumer credit for that if he wins the Senate and he returns to the majority leadership as a result of that he will deserve all the credit for that and I think this is a very big message for the Democrats. I get it. There's a lot of energy with Democratic Socialism and I get you I get the populism and there were a few young kids in that audience last night when I said should the Democrats go further to the left there were a few young kids that did this the rest of the audience not so much which was basically the sweet spot of my personal demographics 75 95 they were not they were like no don't do that all those 75 to 95 year old women. Love you. Okay, before we wrap this up. I have one question for you. Usually the ones over 90, but that's fine. So Chris less to take it back to Chris Lassiter and James Blair. They are controlling this huge big pack MAGA Inc, which has hundreds of millions of dollars in it and their job is to run ads to help the Republican Party win the midterm elections so far. Would you say that the MAGA Inc funded ads are actually doing any good to help the GOP or actually should they stay off in the Balkans and help some other country and their pro-Russian government because they might be more useful doing that well for two guys that don't know Donald Trump. They know enough about Donald Trump to know that he only wants the ads to be about him and that's the problem and that's the problem and that's the problem. So that's the irony of the whole thing. He barely knows these guys even though Lassiter was the co-chair of his campaign in 2024. And by the way, Lassiter was offered a job in the White House as was Jason Miller and others that worked on James Blair was in the White House for a while. Yeah, but but he wanted to work in the White House. He wants to make money. Yeah, you know, I don't listen. I get the racket. I don't begrudge people making money but you you gotta be inside of the hashtags of legitimacy and legality. That's the only thing I'm saying. Well, and also what is interesting about this case is that nobody is talking about the fact that they were working for a pro-russian party in a pro-russian enclave of the Balkans that doesn't even seem to come up. It's just about the corruption caddy. I'm going to ask you a question is the American president of the United States pro-russian. He seems to be doing a whole load of things that make Vladimir Putin happy. So the answer to the question is yes, the American president is pro-russian. So why would it be a surprise at the American president's former co-campaign manager is working on pro-russian issues? Maybe not that much which is why it's not getting a huge amount of attention here because that's the issue guy and that and that is where the the smoke is coming out of the White House, you know where there's smoke there's fire these guys love the Russians and you know again people could be mad at me for saying this but you go down Putin's checklist Trump hits every single one of the things that somebody like Vladimir Putin would want from the American president. Okay, I'm going to take a break and we'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by the Financial Times. If you want to know what's going on, okay in a way that's way deeper than you can get just from superficial discussion. You got to go to the FT and I have and I think I told you this. I've been an F maybe a three-decade subscriber now to the FT and yes, I'm old-fashioned caddy. I have that pinkish salmon paper in front of me every morning looking through what's important to the FT editors because if it's important to the FT editors, it's going to be important to you in your life, your business and your understanding of the world. I particularly love my friend Ed loose. He's a Washington columnist. He has such smart columns. He's very well connected in Washington calls up Donald Trump frequently. He's got a great piece this week Scott Besson's wobbly house. He described Scott Besson as the Pete Hegseth of the Treasury definitely worth a read for the why it's the Financial Times visit ft.com slash trip us to read more see our latest offers and decide which subscription is right for you. You're either all in on this model. Maybe you're building with another you're either speed or is it security you're either custom or are you ready to use or your AWS AI with hundreds of models ready to use agent speed and security built in you don't have to pick a side you can have them all how will AI revolutionize your business AWS AI is how Welcome back. So it is time to talk about sex on the rest is politics us. We knew we were going to get here Anthony. I mean, it's two and a half years. It's been a while. We at least have one special sex. I mean kind of amazing that we have not had a sex scandal yet. Really? What is going on with this fetish model? Aka Chris Galant tell us Chris Galant is a Black Hawk pilot in the Army National Guard a former air traffic controller. He's running for the US House of Representatives as a Democrat in New York's first congressional district in many ways. He is a poster child for the kind of person that the Democrats want to run. He has photos of himself shooting guns at Target practice. He's been in the military. He's openly gay, but super buff works out a lot. Last month. The New York Post revealed that Mr. Galant appeared in varying degrees of undress in promotional photos for a company called Mr. S leather, which is a San Francisco fetish brand and those photographs you can find them online guys. One of them shows him in a cage wearing a harness blah blah blah another shit. Anyway, find the photos. I'm going to gloss over the British accent is fantastic. But I'm going to read some quotes here. You do it in my accent. Okay, because the guy is a New Yorker all my friends know I'm kinky. I make Christian Gray look like amateur hour. This is why this is an interesting story because Mr. Galant now these photos have come out there and somebody has revived them. He says yes. Okay. First of all, he comes out and says it's political hit job, but then very quickly. He clearly has a sort of different course on his strategy and decides to lean into this. And then his campaign of now put out a photograph him wearing a kind of very tight black t-shirt that seems to be in Vogue amongst Democratic candidates outside is always wearing a very tight black t-shirt at the moment seems to be something about they think biceps are going to win them the election anyway, and he's leaning into it and saying make politics sexy again and saying I yeah, I am kinky all my friends know I'm kinky. My mom is proud of me. The Daily Show said it better than anybody else. The Daily Show said he he's getting his ass beaten but not in the polls, but he's actually getting his ass beaten also in the polls. He is getting his ass beat now end of 2025. There was one pole showing him about this segment for me. She doesn't laugh at this shit. I mean, I think this stuff is very funny. It's great. It's a great story. You find a great story. I think you know, I mean, this is probably the most delicious thing that we've talked about. So so he is horrified in the beginning. Yeah, then he rotates into gay Kim Kardashian. Yes. That's he said it could be my Kim Kardashian moment, right? Okay. So and so what happens here? Now the Polly market has a meta 82% that he's going to get his ass kicked. I know Lolo de he's a he's a vet. He's in the one of the reddest districts in New York Suffolk County District 1 which starts, you know in Suffolk and goes all the way out to Montauk Point. And so John Avalon got crushed in this race, you know, John, I know John I used to work with Mayor Giuliani with John Avalon. He's a good guy got crushed. Let me just say one of the quick thing Lolo de has 3.3 million dollars on hand Kardashian Galant a hundred and seventy two thousand dollars. Yeah, what do you think is going to happen? So look, I think a Republican was probably always going to win this race. The Polly markets have it at what 8219 the Lolo de wins as you say a Democrat tried to take him on there before and failed and a Republican has run won. This is a very conservative district. There was a poll last December showing Lolo de and Galant much closer something like 4138. I'm not sure. I believe that poll or think it's particularly relevant because that seems like a very hard district for Democrats to flip. I do think there are going to be some New York districts that Democrats flip that they lost in the last big midterm elections in 2022 people like Mike Lawler may lose his seat who's a Republican and they were the people who helped win the Republicans the house, but here's the thing for Chris Galant. We are talking about him. Would we have been talking about Mr. Galant if it were not for these photographs and he recognizes that he said my most difficult thing was always going to get my name out. There's definitely been a name recognition increase on the world stage. So if what he wants to do is get people talking about him, he's done it. Anthony. I don't know if that's why he did these photos. I think that was to make a little bit of student money, but there's so many things to react to here, but I want to I want to say something about the word again. Okay, make America great again. He's wearing a t-shirt make politics sexy again. So it's just hard for me to understand that Democrats are using the word again because it's the Donald Trump word which actually started with Ronald Reagan. You know, there's speeches were Ronald Reagan said make America great again. And so they keep using this word and it's just weird that Trump has this overarching influence on all things political if I were a Democratic strategist or Democratic candidate, I probably wouldn't be using that word because it's weirdly tied back to Donald Trump. Isn't that part of Galant's and this is interesting for Democrats when they are fielding candidates that in some ways break stereotypes that are leaning into kind of MAGA adjacent cultural stuff the you know, the macho working out the pictures of him shooting target practice. And of course, he doesn't just like shoot target practice and miss the target which is what you or I would do. He shoots target practice makes a joke and says, oh, I'm just trying to learn to get better at something and then hits a whole load of bullseyes because yeah, guess what? He's a Black Hawk pilot in the Army National Guard. I mean this guy knows what he's doing and I think Democrats are trying to lean into that tough guy image gun-toting ex-military. I don't know that it's necessarily going to work is actually I think they're probably ignoring a working class that looks more Hispanic and female and works in a care home honestly, but they are consciously Graham Plattner was part of that El Sayed has some of that. I want to explain something to people was just like obscure about the way our elections work. Neither of these two candidates actually live in the district. You say because of what does that mean? Okay. Well that district is sort of Eastern Long Island. These guys sort of live in the western part of Suffolk County. And so you can't even use the carpetbagger line on either of them because they're both carpetbaggers, right? But this is an obscure fact, but I just want to point it out to everybody. You just have to reside in the state to run in any of the state's congressional districts. And so these two interestingly enough live in the second district, but they're both running in the first district. So I don't know. I I find that we have very obscure and very weird guidelines and laws here in terms of residency requirements and things like that and La Lota is going to win this race handily. And even though he's a Republican, they're still going to lose the house, but this is not a seat. They're going to lose caddy, no matter how many fetish pictures we see between now and election day. Okay, it is 2026. You are now crystal ball gazer of American politics. Have we reached the stage in the year of our Lord 2026 where it is helpful or harmful to have photographs of yourself out there dressed in kinky fetish gear? It's probably weirdly helpful. Because what these guys need is name recognition and this is something that Donald Trump understood the number number one thing you need to win a political could be Chuck Schumer's issue. I mean, you know, he clearly is having a little bit of a struggle because there are younger Democrats who think he's too old for the political scene and he needs to change his image. You want him to become a fetish model? Is that what you're trying to say? You're like your own Ed McMahon. She's like she says the joke and then she laughs at the joke. Look at her laughing away. Okay, listen, I'm such an awful thought. Okay, I just have to say that you can fake this one. You had Donald Trump or Chuck Schumer in fetish modeling. My guess it would hurt the two of them may not hurt this guy, but he's not going to win. No, you know, who knows? I don't know if he's a good candidate or not, but it could be the kind of thing that were he to run somewhere else carry on in politics. I think you're right. We have reached the stage where there are going to be a ton of young politicians who come up from Millennial era Gen Z era who are going to have things in their background that are on social media photographs in that are on some website somewhere and they are going to be far more tolerant of this and you're already hearing some of the voters say this look everybody has stuff in their background that's going to come out there you went from candidate Bill Clinton. Smoking marijuana, but not inhaling it. Okay, couldn't admit that he smoked marijuana at Oxford to fetish modeling. Well, and here's the difference Bill Clinton was not well-behaved when it came to all of the issues of sex. We know that there are credible allegations against him of abuse from some of these women. So he was not well-behaved but that was an era where it was not out there on social media. There were not the photographs of him with these other women in person. And they were brought to him in hotel rooms by his security detail. And so you didn't see it. Now you see it. So would he have survived in an age of social media? Well, I wonder actually that's a very good question. I'm not sure he would have survived as long as he did. Well Gallant, will he run again? Gallant is going going gone or is he going to run again? I'm going to say Gallant loses this time around but somebody that understands the communications environment is prepared to take a risk has the balls to lean into this rather than lean away from it is somebody who probably has some kind of a political future in this communications environment and we want to bring you an update on another big story this week that we covered in our members only episode convicted murderer Krista Pike is now up and awake after her botched execution by lethal injection in Tennessee. It's just so much to discuss around this. It's a shocking story. We did it all in our members episode. So sign up to hear that at the rest is politics us.com. Goodbye. Thank you for listening everybody. We will be back with more for our members next week. Bye guys. The great game strategic struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess Prime Minister. With high confidence. It was Russian holding the Russians accountable as well. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people and the Kremlin is playing Alex got to ask yourself you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing. We would need to understand the policy context all the relevant context will be structured as a framework today disseminated into an operation order or Fraggle Fraggle that says to kill the president of Russia. Yes. News from Goulhanger who is going to be able to pull this off. An audio drama journey like no other men like Duffy. They are our most valuable weapon devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller where Britain plays its strongest. 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