But what happened next? How did they actually find rescue?

So we were adrift for just under four hours.

It doesn't sound like much, does it? But in the water that was that cold, then we lost more than half of the people in our raft.

So I think initially just the cold water shock, the actual shock of hitting.

um the water killed some of our crewmates didn't realize that at the time and then later on the hypothermia had set in and people slipped away and bizarre that you don't even realize that of course it started to get dark not long after we abandoned ship so you couldn't see very clearly what was going on and i was slipping towards hypothermia as well myself i was up to my waist and this water and trying to keep myself busy we didn't have a survival suit so trying to keep myself busy trying to keep myself up out of the water as much as I could and the time had just slowly gone by and then one of my crewmates called me and he said can you help me please and I thought oh I can't do it another time I've got to crawl across the raft to help him fix the doors down because we had to do it together and these flaps the doors of the raft kept on blowing open And so I crawled across the raft one more time and then a gust of wind ripped the doors out of my hand and I saw a light.

And I thought, I'm imagining.

And then the swell moved and the light was gone and then it came back again and I saw a light and I thought, no, no, I can see a light.

So Matt went on to name his daughter Camilla after the ship and crew that saved his life.

Yeah.

I remember what it felt like in 2006, and that vibe, that zeitgeist, uh, I think it- it's very similar.

And, uh, look, yeah, you have a Republican president who has really just run this country into a ditch.

I think there's an opportunity to send a message to him.

Could be about gas prices, but as someone who cares about the Republican Party, and I don't wanna sound naive, but hopes to someday bring it, start to at least bring it back to the, kind of the Reagan conservatism.

I also think there's an opportunity here because for the first time, Joe, I'm seeing elected Republicans scrubbing Donald Trump from their websites.

I'm seeing elected Republicans criticizing him over, you know, murdering people with ICE, killing Americans in the streets and, and, uh, you know, over the war in Iran, which he promised not to do.

If you're a Republican running in one of these swing districts or a state that's suddenly close that shouldn't be, what is your case right now?

Yeah

... felt like in 2006.

And that vibe, that zeitgeist, uh, I think it- it's very similar.

And, uh, look, yeah, you have a Republican president who has really just run this country into a ditch.

I think there's an opportunity to send a message to him.

Could be about gas prices.

But as someone who cares about the Republican Party, and I don't wanna sound naive, but hopes to someday bring it, start to at least bring it back to the, kind of the Reagan conservatism.

If you're a Republican running in one of these swing districts or a state that's suddenly close that shouldn't be, what is your case right now?

What do you make of it?

I believe it is real for three reasons.

And I do think, just like people are skeptical if the walls are actually closing in on Trump, people are skeptical.

Are these polls, these horse race polls and these congressional states, are they right? There's a good reason to be skeptical because we've seen a lot of poll misses.

And if you miss by a couple points on all these races, that's the difference between a huge wave and a huge disappointing night.

I believe that this is real for basically three reasons.

Number one, history, you know, forget the polls.

See full terms at mintmobile.com.

[laughs]

Affordability is really the key, and that hits so many different parts of the Trump coalition.

I mean, I think Hispanics are very interested and worried about ICE, but also hit, like the rest of us, by affordability.

Donald Trump has alienated these podcast bros, the sort of the young men, the gamers, who were part of that 2024 coalition.

A, a variety of reasons.

I mean, I think the Epstein files started it off, uh, with them, but it's everything.

It's ICE, it's affordability.

And, um, I wonder if you could talk about sort of how, unlike a normal politician, he did actually promise things that were almost undoable.

But how much of a challenge is that? And how do you look at that? And what do you try to do to keep it fresh year by year so that those hardcore gamers are like, ah, this is worth playing and it's not just the same old deal?

Yeah, I think it's interesting with NASCAR because on the surface, it probably feels pretty basic to, like you say, other NFL fans or other league fans.

But as you guys know, digging into the actual sport with what goes on at the race teams and... with drivers moving around and career mode and all these things, it's, it's super, super complicated.

So as you said, 25 is sort of the, if you equate it to building a house terms that was building the foundation, right? It's, it's a pretty basic experience, um, in career mode, but where we want to go is sort of this five or six year plan where there is all of those other elements with silly season and drivers moving around and these really sort of more complex, um, story mode elements.

Right.

And so 26 is a step in that direction.

And so the big thing for this year is dynamic track.

What was that like working with those guys?

[laughs] I mean, how did your feelings change about him in that first term of Trump?

I think that Rubio very early on realized, uh, uh, I think that he was shocked that he, uh, not only that he lost the primary, uh, for president, the 2016 primary, but that Trump went on to win.

A lot of us were.

Uh, so I think it really created a, uh, almost an identity crisis for a lot of us, and it, it chastened us.

Like, maybe we don't quite understand this party.

Maybe we don't quite understand this country, and that led to, like, a lot of soul-searching.

I mean, you know, think of it this way.

For the Rubio fans, like, does he get credit for adult in the room, or should he be blamed because there seems to be fewer adults in the room?

What should Democrats do?

I think Democrats should demand that he get out.

And if he doesn't get out of the race, they should withdraw all support and they should have a write-in campaign against Susan Collins.

Because, you know, look, He is, I think, credibly accused.

Of course, he denies these allegations.

These are very serious allegations.

But there have been so many of these scandals that, frankly, would have been disqualifying for a normal politician during a normal time anyway.

Finish your thought.

They just can't get him interested in the idea that occupies the minds of most Americans, which is life is too expensive right now

nowThat's right, Willie.

I mean, let's, let's be clear.

In 2024, if you had to boil it down to one reason that Donald Trump won, it was inflation.

Things cost too much.

There was a perception that Joe Biden, uh, had let this thing get away, and that Donald Trump would restore the great economy of 2019.

Affordability was the issue, and Donald Trump pledged on day one, prices will come down.

The question will be, I guess, as you say though, Vance, Rubio, or potentially an outsider, somebody else like you just mentioned, what's your sense, forget the president for a moment, but among conservatives about who they would prefer? Is it Rubio or is it Vance?

So

they've got an army sort of shadowing them and one blocking their way.

And at one point they decide to have a negotiation and the French do the very chivalric thing of saying, you know, name a date and a place and we'll meet you there and we'll have a fight.

And Henry's like, yep, absolutely no problem.

How about here? And on this date, we'll march over there and we'll go and have a fight over there, sure.

So the French are like, yeah, follow us.

You're in France.

This

"I just got this." [laughs]

Yeah.

So there is a bunch of them, um, who sort of lay this plot to kill Henry IV at a tournament at Windsor, but he gets wind of it.

So their, their plan is to kill Henry and restore Richard.

Henry gets wind of it, has all of these men arrested, um, and then we get the news coming from Pontefract that on the 14th of February 1400, Happy Valentine's Day, uh, Richard dies.

And that's, that's the bare facts that we get in the sources.

So there's been lots and lots of speculation after that, but it... there's no real evidence to back up that speculation, but the speculation is that he starved to death.

[laughs]

Yeah.

... you know, stick a fork in him, he's done." I think that attitude would be unwise, because as you mentioned, he's still the president.

He's still very powerful.

On the other hand, I think this past year, the bigger problem, um, among the, uh, the so-called resistance, certainly Democrats, but also, like, whether you're a never-Trump conservative or, or whatever, if you're an anti-Trump person, the bigger problem, I think, was sort of an inferiority complex in the sense that Trump was omnipotent and unstoppable.

And I think that there was a lot of fear.

I think that that becomes almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you think he's unstoppable, he is.

... no.

Right.

But we have known all along this is a narcissist with nuclear codes.

And so if you voted for him, I don't think you should be all that shocked that he said this or did this.

I do think it's part of his MO.

But Joe, as you mentioned, there's also the hypocrisy, right? I mean, not that long ago, we saw, uh, Charlie Kirk's murder and, uh, I think there was outrage that people were going online and- and mocking this, taking an opportunity to score political points and JD Vance went on Charlie Kirk's podcast and said, "If you see someone, um, you know, celebrating Charlie's death, push back, you know, call them out." And then he said, "Don't just do that.

Call their employer." Well, I don't know who we're gonna call to report Donald Trump.

(laughs) I guess we're his employer and maybe that's part of the problem is that his employers have elected him now twice.

And Matt Lewis, before you go, uh, final thoughts this morning.

Where are we, uh, almost, or I guess a little over 200 days into the Trump administration?

So since this is not my first rodeo, Jamie, I anticipated that we might, for a third time, I think it's my third appearance, we've, we've talked about this the first two.

So I, I broke it down.

Uh, as you know, the conservative movement used t- used to consider itself a three-legged stool.

So there was national security conservatives, social conservatives, and there were fiscal conservatives, right? And so with Trump, I break it down a little differently.

Uh, I, I look at the sort of the, the economy, the fiscal con- fiscal, economic side of Trump.

Uh, I do look at foreign policy and national security.

If Barack Obama or George W. Bush or Bill Clinton or Joe Biden did this, would you be okay? Would you be cheering it on? And is the concern primarily because it's someone who has done things that, uh, tried to overthrow the government in the past?

The headline, "July 2025 is when the Trump era started to end." Explain it.

Well, look, I- I think that Donald Trump, uh, it took, it took about a decade since he came down the escalator, it took six months into his second term, I think he became a lame duck.

Now, obviously, he technically became a lame duck on January 21st or whenever he was inaugurated, but I think in the public imagination, and certainly in the minds of some of his supporters, and I'm talking now about kind of the elite opinion leaders and influencers, they now view Donald Trump as a lame duck.

And what that means is, they're now starting to think about their post-Trump careers, right? So if you're gonna run for office, someday, we can now imagine that Trump is someday no longer going to be president, so you start jockeying for position.

You start positioning yourself, whether you're a podcaster and you wanna be a top YouTuber who has stood against the deep state, uh, or whether you wanna actually succeed him, uh, as the standard-bearer.

And I think that this is a very significant shift, um, that, to view him as no longer the, uh, sort of indisputable leader who is, uh, omnipotent.

(laughs) And I think you can see it when you look at, like Pablo was talking about, right? There's some people in the MAGA base, like the Charlie Kirks, who I think are gonna fall in line, but there are other folks, uh, the Andrew Schultzes of the world, the- the Theo Vons, some of these- these podcasters who were only kind of loosely affiliated with MAGA anyway, they value, uh-...

Where do you see this going?

Make some noise if you care about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

(Crowd cheering)

Even for them, the about-face here, breathtaking.

No, it really is, right? Think of all the things that Donald Trump has done that could have turned off his base, right? Stormy Daniels might have elicited a backlash from evangelicals.

It actually didn't, right? Uh, attacking John McCain, a POW, might have turned off some national security military, you know, veterans.

Really didn't.

Um, bombing Iran might have permanently alienated the America First isolationists, you know.

They, they, they sent off some mean tweets.

something's definitely

different.

Right.

And Donald Trump, look, he created this monster.

He.

You know, he's launched his modern political career based off of the birther conspiracy theory.

He obviously perpetuated the QAnon controversies, which I think are adjacent to the Jeffrey Epstein story.

I don't believe that.

Is that what this feels like to you? What's behind this assault on higher education from the administration? And if we're applying litmus tests of, "Is this conservative? Is this not?" in the way that we were talking about the reconciliation bill, what do you make of this piece, the way that the administration is going after Ivy League schools like Harvard?

Right.

Well, I would say long before Trump, you know, there was a sense amongst conservatives that the commanding heights of, of culture were dominated by liberals, progressives, and by the left, and that eh- culture is more important than politics, and therefore, if the left is driving academia, if the left is driving Hollywood, the movies we watch, the music we listen to, the things our children, young people are taught, then eventually, this long march, they win, right? Because that's how you take over.

You take over the culture first, uh, and then eventually, uh, you have the elites, everybody else falls into play.

That's sort of what mainstream conservatives have long feared.

I think with Donald Trump, there's an added aspect to it, which is, he likes to pick his enemies.

And what he wants to do is pick people, uh, that are unpopular in the populist sense.

Um, you know, why, why do Republicans not care?

He's been critical of this.

Well, so this, first of all, on one hand, I feel like we have to welcome converts or people who are at least being intellectually honest today.

On the other hand, this really pisses me off.

OK, because everything Donald Trump is doing was utterly predictable.

I mean, not the details, but he was always for tariffs.

Hell, he said during the election that he was going to use tariffs to pay for child care and to restore the auto industry.

I forgot about that.

do that, yeah.