Charlie Sykes

“Trump turns out he could have always paid those people, moved some money around, and is paying them. Now there are a lot of other people who are not being paid. Now ICE, of course, they're being paid because this is the Trump administration. But and, you know, $220,000,000 for Kristi Noem to do horseback riding videos. But here we are. We've got Congress fighting with itself.”

“On the one hand, he is into this he's got this fetish for authoritarian aesthetics. On the other hand, he remains this thin skinned little boy who actually hates being laughed at and actually fears being laughed at more than just about anything else, which is why he and Melania almost immediately pivoted to, we are just outraged. We are victims of Jimmy Kimmel telling a joke about us again.”

“Lizzy Graham, not content with that, comes out and says, we're gonna have the taxpayers pay for most of all of this. And everybody even Republicans are going, wait. Wait. The ballroom the Bunker Ballroom was supposed to be paid for with private donations. And now, you know, Lindsey Graham, you know, Donald Trump's chief most enthusiastic desperate fluffer, comes forward and says, no. We we need to stick the taxpayers with the tab for all of that.”

“When you think of all the things that were cut by the world's richest man, you know, whether it was, you know, funding for AIDS research, and, by the way, AIDS is making a a resurgence around the world. You know, I I know it it's hyperbole sometimes to say, well, people will die because of x, y, and z. In this particular case, Molly, people will die. They are dying. They have died as a result of because we wanted to say.”

“But then he said, and the Vietnam War, I would have won that very easily. This is the war that that he where he dodged the draft claiming that he had bone spurs. He die he and, you know, when he he said that his avoiding of venereal disease was his personal Vietnam, and now he's saying he would have won. This is a man who is so deeply, deeply unserious about all of this.”

“We're seeing AI interviews now. I am meeting young people who are like Jody. I applied for a 150 jobs. I didn't meet anybody in the process, and the only interviews I had were AI interviews. So then you get, like, a three, two, one prompt, like, or in a, you know, camera booth or something, and you record your answer. Nobody's gonna watch that video. Your answer is analyzed and crunched by the AI and then sent to the hiring company.”

“Here is what I think you want in a career, and here is what I think we wanna teach young people to find. I think you wanna pair a craft with a need. A craft is a special skill that you have some expertise, something you do really well that other people don't know how to do. Another thing is that your craft protects you. Because, listen, the job market is cruel. We can be fired at any time. But your craft is yours. It can't be taken away from you.”

“This pursuit of a so called golden ticket, I understand. This is the time when everybody's craving stability. It's a scary time. You know, who could blame a young person, especially a young person from a less privileged economic background who's like, I want the surest, steadiest thing around? The problem is that without risk, we get nowhere. And so even though it sounds like counterintuitive advice, I think we have to warn people that running towards the supposedly safe thing might actually end up being inhibiting.”

“Trump hates any kind of clean energy, and so he is using hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to pay off the leases for these wind farms because he hates clean energy. And when we have brownouts this summer and when those enormous AI data centers make it completely impossible for any of us to have power to run our computers or etcetera, etcetera. We will have Donald Trump's canceling wind farms.”

“And this, I feel like, is such a great metaphor for Trumpism. Right? You have all Republicans, and they can't legislate themselves out of a fucking paper bag. I was worried that we might cruise into a midterm with $2 gas and Republicans passing legislation, but two, we're cruising into it with $4 gas and Republicans just completely committing seppuku once again.”

“I think we found out yesterday that Donald Trump is almost as obsessed with Jimmy Kimmel as he is with his bunker ballroom. On the one hand, he is into this he's got this fetish for authoritarian aesthetics. On the other hand, he remains this thin skinned little boy who actually hates being laughed at and actually fears being laughed at more than just about anything else.”

“Can we just call out the utter hypocrisy of Donald Trump who claims that he was the free speech president? Remember how free speech was a big thing? Do you remember when the entire right was devoted to fighting against cancel culture? They get into power, and what do they do? They have their own cancel culture, and he has gone into overdrive in trying to shut up critics, telling people not to say various things, using the cudgels of government like Brendan Carr to go after folks.”

“Lindsey Graham, not content with that, comes out and says, we're gonna have the taxpayers pay for most of all of this. And everybody even the Republicans are going, wait. The ballroom the Bunker Ballroom was supposed to be paid for with private donations. And now Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump's chief most enthusiastic, desperate fluffer, comes forward and says, no. We need to stick the taxpayers with the tab for all of that.”

“Did you when when when Donald Trump called into the little squawk box the other day and somebody had given Rashida how long wars were, and he's reading it well. World War one was this long, and World War two was this long. And I've only been at this for five months. But then he said, and the Vietnam War, I would have won that very easily. This is the war that he where he dodged the draft claiming that he had bone spurs.”

“I think you wanna pair a craft with a need. A craft is a special skill that you have some expertise, something you do really well that other people don't know how to do. Your craft protects you. Because, listen, the job market is cruel. We can be fired at any time. But your craft is yours. It can't be taken away from you. It prevents you from being treated as disposable or interchangeable.”