Is Trump Afraid of Bad Bunny? (feat. Pablo Torre)

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1:01Monitoring plans start affordably at around $1 a day. 60-day satisfaction guarantee or your money back named Best Home Security System by US News and World Report. Five years in a row. Ranked number one in customer service among home security providers by both Newsweek and USA Today. And right now our listeners can get 50% off their new Simply Safe system with a professional monitoring in their first month free at simplysafe.com slash crooked. That's simplysafe.com slash crooked. There's no safe like Simply Safe. Hey, Lovator Leave Listeners. It's me, the titular John Lovett. Here to tell you that I'm coming back to Washington, DC for Lovator Leave It Live at the Lincoln Theatre on April 23rd. That's right. Spring in DC is all about cherry blossoms and Lovator Leave It bringing you a stack lineup of guests. That's what makes it America's number one late night gay live comedy political podcast. We're so excited to be back in DC. It's a tradition now that we come around the time of the car response and even though the car response center really no longer has comedians. Probably there's going to be some kind of a magician or a mind mind-melder. Yes, a magician.

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3:03The Tacoma and Tundra are engineered to endure season after season mile after mile. So drive one home today. Visit toyota.com or stop by your local Toyota dealer to find out more Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to Pate of America. I'm Tommy Vittor. Happy Super Bowl Sunday everyone. Special shout out to Drake May Christian Gonzalez. I believe our loyal listeners. Today I want to talk with you guys about the merging of sports, money and politics. Specifically, the many ways that Donald Trump uses sports for political gain. That includes the recent explosion of sports gambling, the way it's overtaken professional leagues, our culture and even influenced political campaigns.

4:04We are going to cover Trump's relationship with the NFL and its billionaire owners. We're going to explain his embrace of FIFA and the world cup and the enormous PR value that Donald Trump gets from his friendship with ultimate fighting championship CEO Dana White. Then we're going to explain why gambling, especially sports gambling, has become ubiquitous in this country, and how the Trump administration and the Trump family are profiting off of it and fighting against regulations that might protect consumers. Finally, we're going to talk about Riley Gaines, the former NCAA swimmer turned anti-trans activist. As listeners know, Republicans have weaponized the issue of trans athletes in sports, but there are some very, very important context that has been left out of this debate that I think will certainly make you rethink the motives of everyone pushing this narrative. So my guess today for all of this is Pablo Torre. Pablo is an old school muck raker, a great sports writer, a podcast host who is best known today for his truly excellent show, Pablo Torre finds out. I really, I just cannot recommend the show enough.

5:05He does rigorous reporting, deep dive investigations, into real fraud, wrongdoing, like very important issues, but then also just tons of fun stuff. His recent episode is talking with Sir Mixellot of Baby Got Backfain. Where else are you going to find that kind of range? Speaking of great content, thank you for listening to this episode. But if you want to help us grow what we're doing here at Crooked Media, please consider becoming a subscriber. It is truly the number one thing you can do to help us as an independent progressive media company. We're trying to get bigger. We're trying to do more. We're trying to cover more issues. We are creating a whole bunch of subscription content. There's Potsave America, only friends, which is basically like Potsave America, but behind a paywall, so it's a little bit looser. There's ad-free episodes. There's other great bonus stuff. Crooked.com slash friends. It'll tell you all the different ways you can subscribe. We're grateful, you don't have to. But it really is the number one thing you could do to help us grow as a company and just do more and to push back on all the right wing crap that is out there in the media ecosystem. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Pablo Torre.

6:06All right, Pablo, I'm very excited to talk with you about how Trump uses sports for propaganda value. His connections with the leagues, his friendships with these billionaire franchise owners, how gambling is taking over our society and much, much more. But first, I just think we need to establish whether Trump knows ball. Now like you, I'm an investigative journalist at heart. So I brought some receipts. So I'm going to play a clip for you that Pablo has not heard yet. Let's watch. Also, can we stop pretending Donald Trump knows ball? It's like a weird thing where they're like, man, he loves sports. He doesn't know anything about sports. Every time a team comes a visit to the White House, he's like, and you must be the guy who catches. Look at these guys. Big guys. Black guys. And to a tag of Aliah, the quarterback who is really, he's been fantastic. When he's not injured, he's great. He's got to stay healthy.

7:08Okay. So Pablo, that was a, that was comedian Shane Gillis. For the folks at home, that was comedian Shane Gillis at the SB awards at the ESPN's annual award show. Then you heard President Trump trying to pronounce the name of the Miami dolphins. Quarterback Pablo did Trump nail to his name and does he know ball your thoughts. There has never been a more obvious line read of a word you've never said or heard before than that. I was once, I remember going to, going, when I was in high school, we did the grapes of wrath. And like weeks into the book, one of my classmates was like, so this guy, Tom Joed. And I was like, okay, so you just have been sleeping this entire time. It reminds me of like trying to say more is, and you've never actually heard anyone say more is before, but it's Tungo Veloa and now clearly mangled. There are lots of ways that Trump reveals himself to not know anything about sports while wearing the costume of basically being a white guy who loves athletes, which is not the same as sports knowledge, by the way.

8:12Oh, correct. He is, he is somebody who always will talk about that like kickoff rule he hates on truth social. He's always talking about how they've like wussified the kickoff and stuff. He has some go-to's. He's like that guy who has half a take and he won't stop giving the take. And then when he meets whatever his aid I don't know who would do this for him, Tommy. You could give me the White House expertise better than anyone, I guess. But like some kid had to be like, so he's got no, he's got no about Tungo Veloa. He's injured a lot and his name is Tungo Veloa and Trump's like got it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, someone just needed to write that out phonetically for him and have him practice it one time because it's a hard name when you look at it, but right, Tungo Veloa, it's not that hard when he said it a couple times. He's correct about the concussion. So we're going to give him medium ball knower. We'll get into the history of Trump and the NFL because in the NFL space he probably has the most actual knowledge. But real quick, same question for Vice President JD Vance.

9:14So in August of 2025, Pablo, I was watching Fox News as I always do. I saw this interview of JD Vance Live. This was with Will Kane. It was a softball interview and Kane tried to end with some banter about the upcoming Ohio State Texas football game because JD Vance pretends to be a Buckeyes fan and Will Kane is a real longhorns fan. Let's watch. I looked at the line yesterday and I think Ohio State were 12 point dogs to Texas. No, your favorite. I believe you're favored by three. You're at home. You're number two. Okay, we got to look. Okay, I thought I I we get somebody sent me somebody sent me a lot. That's what I said because we're at we're in Columbus. Pablo, would any real Buckeyes fan think that number three ranked Ohio State would be a 12 point underdog at home to Texas? Who was number one, but 12 points, a lot of points. I just feel like JD Vance is secretly listening to the shins and writing in his live journal and does it want to perform masculinity anymore

10:16but he has to and he's bad at it. And you knew when he was at the donut counter, by the way. And he was like, so let's talk about this donut. It's like, no, that's where you talk about sports, man. This is some sports stuff. Get in the cab, talk about sports, go to any store, talk about sports, he cannot talk about sports. And like there's probably a lot of people listening who don't like sports, but for a lot of us, it is a social glue that helps stick together uncomfortable situations, right? Like my kid just went to a new school. I'm meeting lots of new parents. The thing that I've been able to connect with a bunch of the moms and dads about is sports, the Patriots, the Lakers, we're in LA. Like that's what we talk about. It's a way to just briefly connect with someone and find some common ground. And he's like, it's just an, it's like a space alien talking about football. And I should say that like my perspective as a guy who clearly did not play any professional sport of any kind, let alone college sport of any kind, is that sports has been the passport for me to connect to all sorts of people who are nothing like me. And that's the magic of it.

11:18So it's okay. And in fact, like I try to live my life and make this show that I make for people who don't like sports. And the whole premise is you might actually like things that sports connects to. And that's enough. But it's the stolen valor, Tommy. It's the stolen valor of we are the sports iest administration you've ever seen. And it's those two guys. And that offends me. It offends me too. Okay, so this episode is dropping on Super Bowl Sunday. I will be cheering for the New England Patriots who most of the country hates, along with the fan base. The Patriots, look, they brought me great joy over the last few decades of my life. But sadly, Pablo, politics has crept into my relationship with the Patriots. So most recently, it's Bob Kraft, the Patriots owner. He's buddies with Donald Trump. Kraft attended the Melania documentary premiere at the soon-to-be-shuttered Kennedy Center. Recently, there's also on top of that,

12:18the NFL leadership has embraced Donald Trump. Trump went to the Super Bowl last year. NFL Commissioner Roger Godell like did an event at the White House a couple months ago. How would you characterize in sort of broader terms Trump's relationship with kind of the NFL and the business of football? He has always respected it. As a country club, he was not allowed into. And so that is a genuine thirst that we're seeing, detecting in all of these relationships. But again, like self-interest and a desire to be in the club does not mean that you love the game. And it's interesting with Belicec, too. By the way, not to go right to Belicec. Your boy taught me. But remember that letter? Yeah. And Brady, but like there was the letter from... They were like pen pals, like literal pen pals. They were reading these things out in public. Brady, of course, is somebody who had in the early days

13:18when we were so innocent, the MAGA had in his locker. It had to answer questions about it. Because that at that point was glaring. His relationship with sports, though, and football in particular, is through the perspective of somebody who tried to buy the Buffalo Bills and couldn't. And now because of that, he decided to eventually be the president. And so there is a take here that if only Trump was an NFL owner and not the president, we would be living very, very different lives. I think people listening probably think you're kidding. Trump really was one of like the three final bitters for the Bills in 2014. In 2016, he told the Associated Press that if he had purchased an NFL team, he probably would not have run for president. The quote was, if I bought that team, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. God damn it, Buffalo. It was John Bon Jovi. It was Donald Trump and the guys who actually bought the Buffalo Bills. And either of the other two scenarios, Bon Jovi and Trump, I'd like to roll the dice up.

14:21I just like to see what would have happened at that point. It has to be better than what we're seeing right now. Yeah, for the Bills franchise, for the fans, for the country. For everybody. Trump was also the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl. He's not going to go this year. He told the New York Post that it was too far away, which is crazy. I mean, like Mar-a-Lago is three hours away. Santa Clara is like six. Like you can do it. You got your first flight. Saudi Arabia is a direct flight, man. You don't get it. Yeah, that's right. It's really an easy flight. Yeah, he flew, yeah, flew to Budapest for no reason. He's also not attending the Olympics opening ceremony this week. I'm genuinely surprised by his absence that these events, because I agree with you. Like, I don't think Trump really likes sports per se. Like, I don't think he has ESPN on in the background. I think he loves the stage provided to him by these events and these games and the PR value. There's been some speculation that maybe he doesn't want to go because Bad Bunny is performing a halftime show as Bad Bunny that maybe he might get booed. Do you have a theory for why he's kind of skipping? My theory is that Trump loves, of course, the attention.

15:22I remember when I was at ESPN, I actually interviewed Donald Trump because he was at that point just Donald Trump. I was co-hosting Dan Libertard's radio show. And Donald Trump at that point is just 2015-ish. Donald Trump at that point was just a caller. Like, he actually is a great sports radio call-in guest. And to be clear, you don't need to know I think about sports to be great at that job. Donald Trump actually, I believe, was calling into Dan Libertard's radio show because he thought it was Dan Libertard's television show on ESPN, highly questionable, and just never took the time to discern the difference. And so we thought he was on television. But anyway, I remember asking him about, and I remember he was telling us like, Tom Brady should sue the NFL for $250,000 because it deflate gate and all this stuff. So he likes being sports adjacent. But the thing that keeps happening when he shows up at games and this happened at the National Championship Games happened at the US Open, this happens at all these things, is that he also, because sports are fundamentally

16:22a populist exercise in so far as a lot of people are in a room together, he does get booed. And I think the risk of bad bunny being somebody who dares to say words in Spanish, plus a bunch of people in the Bay Area, who might boo him. I think that's enough for him to say, I don't want to look bad. I think that's the only theory that I really can land on at that point. Yeah, me too. I mean, the last Super Bowl they'd attended was in New Orleans. So it's like Southern super expensive event to get into. So lots of rich people. And he was sort of at the peak of his cultural cachet after the election. So I think it made sense to go there. There were still some scattered booze. The bad bunny thing, we should just dispense with this. There is this suggestion in the media that bad bunny was selected to perform at the halftime show as some sort of political statement by the NFL that is patently absurd. Like bad bunny is a massive artist. And it is quite clear to me that the NFL is trying to reach out to his audience and try to get them to like football.

17:24No, it's like purely an economic decision. Yeah, Tony Cornheiser of the Late Great Washington Post Sports Department used to quote Donald Meyer, the former NBC executive to me all the time. The answer to all your questions is money. And this is the God, the NFL worships. They do not give a shit about politics. I hate to break it to you, even though they put and racism in the end zone. They didn't really care about ending racism. No. What they're trying to do is expand their audience. And so look, the bad bunny thing reminds me because of his streaming numbers and because that is an audience, a demographic that they're trying to export the NFL to in the way they're trying to export it to Brazil and Spain and all these other places all around the world. They see the world as a risk board for Roger Goodell to conquer. That's why they want access to it. What's funny is that when Mike Johnson is being interviewed and he's like, I've never even heard of bad bunny. At that point, beyond just making fun of like, what is on Mike Johnson's, you know, iPhone?

18:24I think you know. What is, it's the app covenantized, I believe, that he regulates his pornography with his older son. But it's also, I think, a lack of recognition of the polling on this is very obvious. There is a parallel to the Minnesota stuff. It's like, that stuff is polling terribly. And bad bunny, in a parallel way, is so deeply popular with normies that are just Spanish speakers as well as just normal music fans. And they don't get it. Like, they should be so good Trump's administration at this point at like, stressing out popularity. And weirdly, the entity that is the best at it happens to be the NFL, which is the last monocultural institution we have left. And they're still like, you know what? We don't really get it. It's like, maybe trust the one thing that's popular anymore. That's right. That's what, yeah, the NFL is doing bad bunny. Then the Republican sort of infrastructure is doing like their own halftime show with Kid Rock. And it's like, guys, this is not going to work for you.

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20:30They even offer a 120-night sleep trial and a limited lifetime warranty. Go to helixleap.com slash crooked. For 27% off site wide, that's helixleap.com slash crooked for 27% off site wide. This offer is exclusive for Pots of America listeners. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout. So they know we sent you helixleap.com slash crooked. Pots of America is brought to you by Zbiotics pre alcohol. Let's face it after a night with drinks. I do not bounce back the next day like I used to. I sometimes have to make a choice. I can either have a great night or a great next day. That is until I found pre alcohol. Zbiotics pre alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's the buildup of this byproduct, not dehydration. That's to blame for rough days after drinking. Pre alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre alcohol your first drink of the night drink responsibly and then you'll feel your best tomorrow.

21:32I just went on a trip with some friends to London. There were a couple pub beers involved. I made sure. Kind today call it over there. I packed as many Zbiotics as I could possibly fit into my suitcase because it makes such a difference. I basically won't have a drink now without having a Zbiotic first. It's that important to me. It makes me feel that much better the next day. I highly recommend it. Just get one six back. Give it a shot to see if it works for you. If not, they'll get your money back. Ready to try it? Go to zbiotics.com slash crooked. You'll get 15% off your first order when you use code crooked at checkout. Plus, it's backed by 100% money back guarantee. So there's no risk. Subscriptions are also available for maximum consistency. Remember, head to zbiotics.com slash crooked and use the code crooked at checkout for 15% off. Speaking of cynical calls to end racism. So in 2016, Colin Kaepernick, then the San Francisco 49ers quarterback sat and then later took a knee during the national anthem. This was his way of just protesting racism

22:33and police brutality. His protest, though, was quickly swept into our politics and twisted into something else. And Trump was tweeting that players that kneeled during the anthem should be fired later Kaepernick was just essentially blackballed from the NFL. Obviously, that was not the first or last time that race and racism was an issue in sports or in the NFL. But when you look back at that moment, I'm curious how you think that inflection point kind of changed the way the NFL interacted with sports and politicians going forward. Yeah, I mean, it's, I think, the clearest embodiment of the pendulum that swung 2016 to 2020 when there was actual pressure that was being enacted upon sports and mainstream institutions that they responded to. And now here we are with the pendulum swinging all the way back. My first memory, because I remember, you know, this is Trump saying, I remember talking about this on ESPN all the time, Trump saying, get these sons of bitches off the fields. You know, and it's one of his early indications

23:36that maybe this guy wasn't really here for the first amendment. Maybe not here for the Constitution. My reaction at the time is even more sort of acute now, which is it's so quaint what Kaepernick actually was doing. He was kneeling and staying silent. He was very silent, almost problematically silent. I remember people being like, could you please talk more? And no, he was like, this is what I'm going to do. He was recommended to do it actually by a vet, a former member of the military who was like, this is the most respectful way to do this. And now when you look back, it's like classic nonviolent as respectful as can be kneeling during the ceremony of the anthem, which is don't fraught, of course, military industrial complex tradition. But nonetheless, it was the thing that kind of made sports go crazy. And crazy in the sense of, I can't believe we got a deal with this. This is being the people who wanted him and us and me to stick to sports.

24:37And then crazy year when it came to we can never, we can never abide by wokeism ever again. And it's just crazy that we watch what's happening again in Minnesota. And the version that these woke tarts enacted upon them was they kneeled. Like, that's the juxtaposition. Yeah. Yeah, how dare you politicize the anthem as we fly us a squadron of F-16 and B-2 bombers over the stadium. That's some stealth. Some stealth fighter shots, you know. Um, but so it's not just the NFL. The Trump is sort of like found a marriage of convenience with when it comes to sports. He is now fully embraced soccer, especially the FIFA World Cup, which will be in North America this year. He's now very tight seemingly with FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who's his own ball of wax that we could get into. But he Infantino has gone all in on kissing Trump's ass, which folks have seen in the form of him creating the FIFA Peace Prize. So we could give it to Trump to make his ego feel better by not getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

25:38Um, but I think Trump's closest relationship in the sports world is probably with ultimate fighting championship CEO Dana White. They've been buddies for like 20 some odd years. White endorsed Trump. He spoke at the RNC. He spoke at Trump's election night rally. He's been very present. Um, and White has allowed UFC events to be used as just pure propaganda by Trump. So here's one example. This is a clip of Trump walking into a UFC event with Dana White back in April of 2025. And making the entrance right now to a standing ovation, the 47th president of the United States of America, like by the UFC CEO Dana White and others, Donald J. Trump. Is there anybody else that has a talking? No, there's been a fighter. He has no why yet. So music, Kid Rock starts playing. He had one of them to double in through with him. He always gets the walk out.

26:40It's like a free record. It's made of it. Give him the walk out. People love it. Thank you. Brian, what he longs is, fixed martial arts, right? I mean, he talks about watching these quite nights when he is not in the building. Very, uh, very subtle commentary there. So Trump's going to be hosting a UFC fight at the White House later this year. Pablo, how important you think this relationship between Trump and the UFC was for him in terms of like reaching young males, basically. MMA is such a big part of the story that I think has gone underrated. In MMA, by the way, you get noted ESPN commentator and the dean of MMA commentary and analysis, Joe Rogan. Yep. That's where he is, right? So, okay, already you're like, beginning to piece together what's happening here. The manosphere, such as it exists, which is to say, a bunch of dudes who work typically, a political, if not anti-political, which is to say all these comedians who you'll also see, like ringside, who have podcasts, who have these demographics that are heavily male,

27:45who basically are anti-authority, who also, frankly, just want to say words that they used to be able to say in high school. Right. And I went to an all-boys Catholic school. I remember exactly what that felt like, how edgy it felt. They just want to say those things. That's the main political platform. I want to watch mixed martial arts and grow out and laugh at things that I'm not supposed to laugh at. And Trump's friendship with Dana White, who spoke at not one RNC and not two RNC's, but at least three, while also claiming to be not political. That's how he is mentally, cognitively, threading the needle. Of like, no, no, no, this is a culture thing. This is like a sports thing. But of course, for Trump, whether he intended it this way or not, it is the ultimate in political image laundering, because he's just one of the guys. He's one of the guys at the fight that you want to hang out with. And Dana White, in terms of what his actual compass is, as a businessman, as a human,

28:47is abhorrent. And I don't say that because I'm against the UFC or MMA. I'm here for the consensual concussions, right? I covered boxing, love boxing. I'm here for the violence of football and all that stuff. I'm not fainting on to a couch somewhere because of it. I'm just saying that this is a guy who says that he is a first amendment absolutist, much like a lot of the names that I've alluded to in this very sort of like answer that I'm giving you. And at the same time, he is somebody who will ardently, ardently regulate the speech of people who dare to speak out against him and also this administration. It's that perfect hypocrisy of the Constitution for me, but not for the. It's the total verifiable dishonesty of a guy who wants the cosplay as I'm here for free speech unless it threatens my business, which is exactly what the UFC has been doing. Yeah, and I just don't think from a political perspective, you can overstate the value of being

29:48a candidate like that, walking into an arena, getting universal cheers from the people in the room, and the people at home are hearing you get fluffed for 45 seconds by the commentators because you're so great and you're just like them and you just love the fighting. Like I just like I'm very skeptical that Donald Trump goes home at night and watches UFC matches. I think he probably has Fox News on and just watches cable most of the time, but like they're happy to sell that fiction because it's a symbiotic business relationship. Yeah, I mean, look, you alluded to the FIFA stuff before. This is all the same thing. This is the equivalent of Dana White constructing for him that golden spinning like Pimp My Ride trophy that Johnny and Fantino did and he let him keep at the White House. There, there is almost like an Egyptian pharaoh dynamic. It's like here's your gold, here's your freckin sense, here is your mer, here are your here are the things you can be buried with and it's UFC walkouts and gold trophies and that's that's why he does it. But the reason they do it

30:51is because it's good for business and it's bad, unfortunately, for the rest of us. Yeah, and I think the honestly the biggest business of it of them all is FIFA and the World Cup. I mean, that will be watched by multi billions of people around the world. One quick thing on FIFA before we get to gambling though, I wanted to play this because it drove me crazy. So last year FIFA, they did their World Cup draw ceremony at the Kennedy Center in DC. That's when everybody sort of figured out who they're going to be playing when. Trump attended and he said this at that ceremony. When you look at what has happened to football in the United States, again, soccer in the United States, we seem to never call it that because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that's called football. But when you think about it, shouldn't it really be called? I mean, this is football. There's no question about we have to come up with another name for the first time. Yeah. It really doesn't make sense when you think about it. It's really football. Pablo, how is that not career ending? Imagine if I mentioned Barack Obama said that

31:52six years of Fox News coverage a decade. It really is. It really is. Yeah, Barack would have needed to wear like a Matthew Lesko question mark suit to get that level of just like what are I mean, the I've long said that the most un-American position that you can have is to go against the NFL in 2026. It reveals you ostensibly to be disconnected from the monoculture as a politician and what normal everyday Americans like the most statistically. Right. Trump in the clip you just played is this enduring reminder that his performance of what it means to be a dude is unique. No one else can do that. I dare say that whatever he has in his credibility of like you know maybe and maybe here's a theory. Maybe it's just the relentless signaling of abject racism. There's just no doubt that he's really still on the side of

32:58like you know the real America. But my God like and he's also like doing a bad sign felt unintentionally. Yeah. I think he genuinely had that thought and was like this is a good take and it's what's the deal with football that that was the take. Yeah, you park on a driveway. You drive on for this is so stupid. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break but I have an exciting tour announcement. Love it or leave it. It's coming to Washington DC on April 23rd at the Lincoln Theater. We know that you folks in DC have been through a lot. You got Trump goons taking over your city. You got snow everywhere that's turning into concrete apparently. You deserve a night of amazing world-class comedy and I hope you get that. But in the meantime go see John Luffett. I'm just kidding. I'm reading this. I didn't write this copy. Take it to Ron Sale now. Grab them at crick-a-dot-com slash events. Podsave America is brought to you by Wilde Alaskan Company. You know when you're buying seafood

34:00so it's a little tricky. Is this a good store for seafood? Is it going to taste really fresh? When am I getting? Now you have no more problems with Wilde Alaskan Company. It is that standing. It is the best way to get Wilde Cod perfectly portioned nutrient-dense seafood delivered directly to your door. Trust me you have not tasted fish this good. Love Wilde Alaskan. Got some tuna from there. Got some salmon and it is just it is really really tasty and and sort of easy to cook. Wilde Alaskan is 100% Wilde Cod never farmed. This means there are no antibiotics, GMOs, or additives. Just clean real fish that support healthy oceans and fishing communities. Their fish is frozen off the boat to like in taste, texture, and nutrients like omega-3s. Wilde Cod from Alaska every order supports sustainable harvesting practices and your membership delivers flexible shipments, expert tips, and truly feel good seafood. If you're not completely satisfied with your first box, Wilde Alaskan Company will give you a full refund. No questions asked. No risk. Just high quality seafood. Not all fish are the same.

35:04Get seafood you can trust. Go to wildealaskan.com slash crooked for $35 off your first box of premium Wilde Cod seafood. That's wildealaskan.com slash crooked for $35 off your first order. Thanks to Wilde Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode. Pots of America is brought to you by Cook Unity. Cook Unity makes eating well, effortless, and rewarding, delivering chef-crafted meals straight to your door so you save time on planning and cooking while enjoying exceptional quality and value in every bite. Explore Cook Unity's February menus and discover how chefs are redefining seasonal eating through food that nourishes, fuels, and inspires. I have been a Cook Unity subscriber for, I don't know, three, four years now, long before they ever advertised on our show and I love it. I cook Unity almost every night for dinner. It's great because every week there are just like so many choices. I think there's like over 300 meals and they're always adding new meals, different chefs, and great variety of food. You get it once a week. You heat it up for a couple

36:08of minutes or you can put it in the oven for like 10 to 15 minutes and it's like you're eating at a restaurant. It's great. There are over 25 plus diets and cuisines so you can always match your cravings with your wellness goals. Commitment-free subscriptions start as low as $11 a meal. That's the other thing. It's really affordable. You can also skip deliveries, pause, or cancel any time. Taste, comfort, and craftsmanship in every bite from the award-winning chefs behind Cook Unity. Just go to cookunity.com slash crooked or enter code crooked before check out to get 50% off your first order. That's 50% off your first order by using code crooked or going to cookunity.com slash crooked. All right. Let's talk about gambling. Sports gambling has been around for a long time, right? But until recently, there was friction in the process. Back in the day, you had to have a bookie. You maybe had to drop off and pick up actual cash or you had to be at a casino or a town somewhere in Vegas or something like where gambling was legal. Then in 2018, the Supreme Court

37:10passes. There's a ruling that changes everything. Suddenly, a bunch of states are just bum-rushing to legalize gambling. Now, in a lot of places, placing a bet is as easy as sending a text. You can instantly place bets on your phone. You can live bet. You don't have to bet on the outcome of a game. You can bet on fractional events within the game. I want to get to the event contracts piece of this in a second. Can you help listeners understand the impact of that explosion of sports betting in the headspinning way that it's been embraced by leagues that once banded essentially? The first thing, one of the first things that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver did when he took over in 2014 as the head of this sport was right. It was a solo byline in the New York Times and op-ed that said we should legalize sports gambling. It was radical then and now in retrospect, it looks like this turning point. I go back to that because in 2014, up until that point, the cardinal mortal existential sin that you could do in sports was gambling. Pete Rose

38:15has been relegated until Trump posthumously pardons him, which is not a joke and an actual thing he has threatened to do. He has been banished to baseball hell. He cannot be in the hall of fame. The black sock scandal, all of this stuff. It's just obviously a way to compromise the integrity of a product and a cultural heirloom that relies upon us trusting that what we're watching has competitive integrity, that it is not fixed or manipulated. But when that op-ed was written and now to fast forward to what you just described, which is the opening of the official floodgates, it went from, I'm going to get my guy, my bookie, to take my bet to, here is a cheesecake factory, thick menu of items. So it used to be like, who's going to win or lose, the point spread, the outcome of games. And now, the institution of the prop bet means that you can bet on things as obscure as unders, which is to say, will obscure Toronto Raptor, John Tay Porter hit the under,

39:17underperform on the predicted total of rebounds in a given game, which is a thing that is so specific as a micro bet that it only would be taken by people who are fixing the game and manipulating it in order to profit off of it. Because why would anyone have interest in it? And of course, that is actually what happened. And that got John Tay Porter banned for life from the NBA and started this whole federal investigation into it. So it's just a radical expansion of what is bettable. And therefore, a radical expansion of potential conflicts of interest in which players now have the ability or their specific proxies have the ability to profit off of things that don't even require you, Tommy, to throw the game. Just suck for a period of time. It's a remarkable and dangerous thing to institute. Yeah, I mean, you just have to fake an injury, right? And play yourself out of a game before you hit eight points or whatever the over was. Yeah, I think what you're just just a double stamp this, it's such an important point because I think most people

40:20like have no problem with betting on the outcome of the Super Bowl, right? Like that's fun. Sure. We'll do it. I have no problem. I've bet on props. I bet on like the over under on the national anthem. But to your point, like the Cheesecake Factory approach of the number of things you can bet on. And then you can parlay them together to create higher and higher odds. And we are just not the the numeracy in the United States is not so great. And people don't realize that they are just going to get fleeced over and over and over again. And at the same time, like all the addictive kind of like data science used to make us all on our phones all of the time is being applied to these gambling sites. And so like it just it feels like we are watching a generation, especially of young men get addicted to these gambling apps at the same time. They are like going deeper into debt and having mental health crises. And it's like a massive problem that's I think under discussed. Yeah. And I want the science. I want the research. I think about this kind of like how I thought about the concussion crisis in the NFL in a weird way where it was like

41:23look, I am tempted now to stop watching football. But if you do the science diligently enough such that the participants have disclosure and they're told here are the risks here are the harms. I think about how in Europe, if you buy cigarettes, they put on the box like here are the faces of death, right? Do you want this? If you still want to sign up for a consensual possible addiction, cool. Go with God. Let's federally regulate it. And we can make that work. But I think what's happening is that it happens so quickly. The legalization happens so quickly with this internet era cell phone casino in your pocket dynamic that people are still just catching up to what's actually scientifically on the table. And so I am not saying we should ban federally gambling. I am saying that we need to be very open and transparent about here's what's happening very often to men in America. And we should tell them that this is what they're risking if this

42:27is what the science is suggesting. Yeah, there's needs to go more disclosure of the harms. And then the more even more recent iteration of gambling involves something called event contract. So there are these companies, the Kelsey and Polly market. And basically, these services now allow you to bet on outcomes. Even stuff like Will of Venezuela and dictator be deposed by the end of the month. That is the thing that actually happened. Someone made a lot of money. That person will probably be investigated, but I guess we'll find out. So these companies, they're even more lightly regulated by the government or at least by this administration. And they have hired folks like Donald Trump, Jr. to be their advisors. You did an amazing episode on all of this with a guy named James Sirwicky that I highly recommend if folks want to go deeper. But can you just give us like the 101 and what the hell in event contract is in how this new form of gambling has exploded but is powered again by sports. How dare you call it gambling? These are right. Sorry. This is actually the legal question, right? So the CFTC, which ostensibly used to regulate

43:27commodity trading, they have now decided that actually under this administration, actually, we have oversight over these event contracts. And so an event contract in a prediction market, like Callishy, like Polly Market is, you can bet, you can, excuse me, buy an event contract, which is basically yes or no question. Will Caroline Levitt finish her press briefing in under 65 minutes? That was a real event contract. There is also now evidence that you can watch of Caroline Levitt stopping short, like seconds short of 65 minutes exactly. Really weird. And that paid out, right? And so the Donald Trump Jr. part of it is really instructive because Donald Trump Jr. is on the board of both Callishy and Polly Market, which are these billion dollar prediction markets. Seems like a complex one. Okay. Just just how dare you. This is just a guy who loves forecasting in this sort of like rigorous data driven way. But it's interesting because

44:30realistically, the prediction market, as Jim Sirwicky, wisdom of crowds that was his book in 04, told me, it is an interesting and useful way to predict some things. The election in 2024, prediction markets were all over that. There is value to that as an instrument of forecasting reality. The Donald Trump Jr. thing, though, reminds us that there are networks of people with access to information. And now take the John T. Porter example from before, a hyper-specific micro bet that no one would have interest in except for people with inside information. Now there is not a cheesecake factory thick menu. There is an infinite list of bet truly infinite list of bets you bet on anything. And in that way, the question that not enough people are asking is who knows more about this than me? And do they stand a profit if they have a

45:32person on the inside? And so that's why Carolyn Levin is not merely a funny coincidence, but like a deeply disturbing hypothetical example if she, in fact, did share this information ahead of time. And it's also something that is, I would say, destructive to the ability that we have as American citizens to trust in anything that we are witnessing. So what happened to sports? We can't trust whether this has integrity. Is this person genuinely incompetent? Or are they fixing a game? This is now true of anything happening in our administration. And the only reason you should feel good about it, I guess, is if you think this administration is a type of administration to be so, so buttoned up on not compromising principle in exchange for money. In that case, then maybe you trust their ability to take care of us in that way. What I think is realistically happening is that they're doing the opposite. And the people who are losing money are the retail investors. And

46:33that is something that we're not even, we haven't even begun to measure what they are winning and what the rest of us are losing. Yeah, I mean, with these event contracts, like you're not betting against the house, there's another individual on the other side of that event contract. So if the person you're betting against is in a special forces and know they're about to take out Maduro, they have insider information and they're about to clean your clock. It is remarkable, Pablo. I mean, like I was thinking back back to my time and government recently and the number of kind of like sensitive meetings you end up in with like market sensitive information about, you know, the financial crisis or the bank bailout. And then we see this email from a guy named Peter Mendelssohn who is then a top aid to Tony Blair, where he is giving readouts of the Eurozone debt crisis response to Jeffrey Epstein before they are public, right? And you're like, holy shit. Like when I was in government, the idea of talking about something like that is just unheard of because I'm just like, it's unethical, it's wrong. I'll go to jail, but this guy's just forwarding emails. But now the point you're making is that like now that you can just bet on anything with insider information,

47:37it creates this whole new avenue of profit making and risk. And just for folks to know like the CFTC is just far less onerous of a regulator than the SEC or bank regulators. There's more discretion in how you comply. It's smaller. There's fewer staffer than the SEC. There's fewer enforcement actions. Generally, it's why the crypto people love the CFTC. So it's just sort of like, this is where they all want this to be housed, all the industry folks, because they think it'll be the wild wild west. And at the same time, like social media has decided that in the political space, prediction markets are better than forecasting elections and polling. And like there are some examples, I think at the presidential level, that you mentioned where prediction markets have been on two things. But there's also instances in like, you know, Senate races or lower level elections where you can kind of juice those markets with one or two big bets and kind of change the narrative around an election in a way that I think we just haven't really explored yet. No. And so two things, the CFTC, I was just talking to somebody used to work there today,

48:41because I've been trying to understand this, continue to understand this more. And it's very disturbing how so many of the people, not just responsible for enforcement at the CFTC, but we're like the true believers over there in terms of like, let's regulate things civilly and let's make sure that we can deter market manipulation and all that stuff, even if it doesn't rise to the level of criminality. It seems very clear to a lot of former CFTC employees that this is all happening. And I was just listening to the head of the CFTC now under this administration be so outwardly pro crypto pro prediction market stuff that it seems to be of a piece with the business dealings that we've been describing now this whole this whole episode. The second thing that which you're just referred to is a prediction market because we are not numerate as as humans, right? None of us like we we are also people who like like to use these heuristics to guide our understanding of like what seems normal. And so a prediction market to your point an election

49:45is a really good example of this like if you spend a lot of money to move a prediction market for any given race, there is now an expectation that has changed. If this applies now and which by the way it can be better and more value added than just buying political ads, right? That's why you might do it is to change the narrative of like he's still in it, right? It's not over yet. But the other thing that happens is when everything is bettable like this, you can change the expectations for every governmental action, including forward invasions, including whether we're going to prosecute a nice officer, right? It's just like we are the whole thing of like our perpetual numbness to horror. Humans are so good at normalizing insane conditions. The pandemic taught us that just we all know it. This is is that but on for loco. It's it's it's just like we are turning to

50:48these fixable manipulatable markets to tell us whether we should expect something and people with money get to decide in an unregulated way. That is a fucking nightmare. Yep. And the lot of innocent people are going to be the ones who get fleeced. Pate of America is brought to by horror frames. Horror frames is the answer to every gifting moment. Got my parents an horror frame for this last Christmas. They love it. They had had one of these kind of frames like years and years ago. Got an horror frame for them and it is like the easiest one to use. It looks great. When you walk into the house and you see it in a frame, you can't even tell that it's an horror frame. It looks like it was kind of actual physical photo. And the best part is every time we take any pictures of the kids, all we have to do is just upload them to the app and our phones and it goes right onto my parents horror frames so they

51:48absolutely love it. It's very easy to set up. It takes about two minutes to set up a frame using the horror app. You have complete control over who has access to your frame and the horror app lets you share photos more securely than with email, which many other digital frames require. And every frame comes packaged in a premium gift box with no price tag. Horror frames the perfect gift every time named number one by wire cutter. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting horror frames.com for a limited time. listeners can get $35 off their best-selling carver-matte frame with code crooked. That's a-u-r-a frames.com promo code crooked. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout terms and conditions apply. Hey, love it or leave it listeners. It's me the titular john love it here to tell you that I'm coming back to Washington DC for love to leave it live at the Lincoln Theatre on April 23rd. That's right. Spring and DC is all about cherry blossoms and love to leave it bringing you a stack lineup of guests. That's what makes it America's number one late night gay live comedy political podcast. We're so excited to be back to DC. It's a tradition now that we come around the time

52:49of the car response and or even though the car response center really no longer has comedians. Probably there's going to be some kind of a magician or a mind mind-melder. Yes, a magician. Yeah, I'm a mentalist. A mentalist. Because I guess Trump wouldn't know. And Trump's also going. Yeah, yeah, that's in there. Yeah, it'll be there. Yeah, there's there's there's a man. There's a mental case and then and Trump is also going. That's how it is. Tickets won't last long. They're so I'm pretty fast. So get yours now while you still can at crooked.com slash events. Very excited for the DC show. Got some big guests. I'm pretty exciting, maybe. Crooked.com slash events. Finally, I'm jumping around a little bit here. But yeah, the listeners of this show are probably well aware of how Republicans, you know, led by Trump have just demagogued the issue of trans athletes in sports. The leading spokesperson for that effort has been a woman named Riley Gaines. She was a swimmer at the University of Kentucky. And then in 2022, she tied for fifth place against another transgender swimmer named Leah Thomas. And so ever since Riley Gaines has made advocating

53:52against trans athletes her like life's work. And you did a bunch of reporting on Riley Gaines. I think provides really important context that you don't hear very often because it shows kind of the evolution of her rhetoric and also how these attacks that she is making have become about much, much more than sports fairness. And I've gone to a really cruel dishonest gross place. So can you just like kind of walk us through what your episode on this was about? Yeah. So the trans athlete issue has been one of the biggest political winners for this administration. And it is rooted again in a lack of let alone numeracy, but certainly honesty and reality. And I say that because in general to zoom out quickly for a second, there are so few trans athletes that exist. So the president of the NCAA Charlie Baker was asked in Congress how many of them are there. And he said there are less than 10. Okay. So the odds of

54:53you having a near fatal run in with ice is greater than your daughter competing in a meaningfully concerning way with a trans person. But this issue was of course ran on. It was advertised. And it worked. I've been hearing the term all over the place that this is an 80-20 issue. We win this 80% of the time. The lips lose it. And I would say that that is not inaccurate because no one really knows how to talk about this stuff because there is like this competitive equity concern. And there is a scientific argument there which we should have. Again, we should have a scientific argument. Are there advantages by going through male puberty? Yes. Can they be regulated through hormone suppression? Yes, but. And in that, yes, but there is a useful debate about rules. The Riley Gaines story is not a debate about rules. She would like you to think it is. There are Republicans, the Trump administration, which has her front and center dressed in all white as their

55:54banning trans athletes by the president's pen would love you to think that this is about protecting women and girls. It isn't. This is a story. If you go through the evolution of Riley Gaines, the character of somebody who had to tie for fifth place with a trans female swimmer, the Atomis, who is really good at swimming. And the issue is that Riley Gaines objections went from, I have problems with the rules, but I don't blame Leah to a series of interviews on Fox news with the daily wire with Clay Travis in which she was, and you can hear this happen on tape. I'm not just saying this as a matter of editorial interpretation. You can hear her be prodded into taking a harder line on how mad she should be. And so it's ramping up. It's ramping up. And what she ends up doing is alleging that Leah Thomas, this swimmer she competed against, is actually a

57:01predator who is committing a version of sexual assault. This is a criminal concern is what Riley Gaines is arguing. And parallel to the rhetoric being radicalized are, according to the reporting we did with Mother Jones, Madison Paulie, an excellent reporter who helped us tell the story with documents are payments coming in from a range of conservative activists that are creating the Riley Gaines leadership center and they're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for her to be front and center on this winning political issue because it's working. And it's getting so divorced from where it started and from what the evidence has ever suggested that Riley Gaines is arguing with Simone Biles, who was, I mean, and I cannot stress this enough, an actual victim of sexual violence sexual assault by Larry Nasser who committed the largest sexual assault scandal in American sports history. This was the doctor of the USA women's gymnastics team Michigan state.

58:02And Riley Gaines is telling on Twitter, Simone Biles, basically, how dare you talk about your issue, your trauma, but dismiss mine. And she posts parallel photos of Leah Thomas and Larry Nasser and the testimonies and stuff. It's a port. And the kicker, Tommy, I'll speed it up because I'm just, I'm just doing the whole episode for you now. No, no, no, no, no, it's a really important context it really is. The kicker is this entire time Riley gains his teammates at the University of Kentucky are watching this happen and we spoke to several of them on tape in fact in the episode we have one particular teammate who went on tape and the thing that Riley gains almost never talks about has never spoken words with her mouth about on camera despite all these interviews is the fact that the person she has called in her book her best friend the person who was the head coach of their swim team at Kentucky this guy Lars Jørgensen was himself somebody

59:10who sexually assaulted several of her teammates allegedly these are court cases these are documented these are alleged by those women and so not only is it the dishonesty of the rhetoric it's the actual substitution of real event happening over here let's get that out of here and replace it with this trumped up fake thing while ignoring the actual victims who I was on this team with and so one of the quotes from one of her teammates is basically how can I give a shit about Riley gains I'm paraphrasing here how can I give a shit about Riley gains talking about trans athletes when our head coach raped one of our teammates like that's how on the nose some of this stuff is and that's the story that Fox News does not want you to know about yeah and I just I think it's such important context because it's like a lot of your reporting I mean you're following the money here you are playing receipts and the evolution of her commentary on these issues and then

1:00:13you are getting at where look a lot of attacks on the LGBT community over decades have ended in this place which is the not remotely subtle suggestion that all gay lesbian or trans people are actually predators or after children or want to do harm to people in some way right this is like it always ends in a place that is not about fairness on the playing field that ends in a place that is a totally dishonest gross attack that is alleging that a crime was committed where there is actually zero evidence and as you just said in fact it seems like Riley gains has it been ignoring the crime committed by one of her own friends well and you put it in those ways and it and it makes me also want to clarify there is a problem in locker rooms all across America when it comes to female athletes and the problem is the men who are around them it's not the trans athletes though that they say all these biological men it's them it's the dudes who are coaching

1:01:14yeah that is a concern very often and this is real and it should be reported on and it's very telling that that's not of a concern at all to the same people who are truly profiting off of a minority group that is so vanishingly small that no one wants to stand up for yeah well well said uh final question a dumb one a short one this is nothing to do with politics it's just something I saw uh the athletic has reported the ski jumpers at the Olympics are injecting their penises with high uh loronic acid to fly farther the world anti-doping agency is investigating is that real how does that work why would injecting your penis with something make you fly farther if you're a ski jumper this makes no sense to me how dare you question the wisdom of once again men uh this is real oh no no like so we did a whole episode in investigation you you Tommy have been traumatized by spy gate to flake gate all the ways in which your patriots

1:02:16have obviously been exposed as rank cheaters that should not be rooted for by anybody in America with conscience uh many are saying uh god damn it the the gate that we reported on was crotch gate because in ski jumping which is an Olympic sport that's happening now and we did a whole deep dive out of the physics of ski jumping is you emphasize how big your penises for this reason they 3d scan you in order to measure what your suit can be allowed to be how big your suit can be and because the edges are so small and therefore big people who have more fabric on the suit have a performance advantage and so it used to be back in my day this candle was people were so there's a literal video we obtained of like people with a sewing machine creating a bigger crotch but these guys are like what if I told you that we could make the

1:03:16measurements actually reflect the size of our temporarily enormous penises and I got to say I did not see that one coming Pablo this is why ever a bunch of what listen to your show a public Tory finds out nobody has ranged like you uh you cover the waterfront it is you don't have to like sports to enjoy the show it's amazing stories that come from sports it's deep dive investigations it's really fun rumps about my fam former coach Bill Bella check who was 73 and is 24 maybe 25 year old girlfriend now but who's counting but who's counting not bill not bill that's forgotten so I highly recommend the show I highly I'm so grateful for you spending this hour with me to release on Super Bowl Sunday this feels like the perfect way to lead into it so thank you again anytime I can be your sports correspondent whenever you need I have a feeling that there'll be more penis related issues amen amen aren't they all thanks buddy thanks dude thank you for listening this episode and spending maybe part of your Super Bowl Sunday with me and Pablo quick

1:04:20programming note so we're going to be back on Tuesday but it'll be out a little bit later than normal because we are going to be in Australia or New Zealand or somewhere where the time zone is so different it breaks my brain so things will be a little bit off but not that much off but a little bit off I just can't do maths I can't really explain it to you but just don't freak out if you don't see it in the morning it'll come out if you want to listen to Pots of America ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts go to Cricket.com slash friends to subscribe on supercasts substack youtube or apple podcasts also please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricket Pots of America is a cricket media production our producer is Saul Rubin our associate producer is Ferris Safari Austin Fisher is our senior producer Reed Churland is our executive editor Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics the show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglon in Charlotte Landis Matt DeGroat is our head of production Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant thanks to our digital team Elijah Cohn Hayley Jones Ben Heffkoat Mia Kellman Kierel

1:05:25Pellevive David Tolls and Ryan Young our production staff is proudly unionized with the writer's Guild of America East Hey love it or leave it listeners it's me the titular john love it here to tell you that I'm coming back to Washington DC for love it or leave it live at the Lincoln theater on April 23rd that's right spring in DC is all about cherry blossoms and love it or leave it bringing you a stack lineup of guests that's what makes it America's number one late night gay live comedy political podcast we're so excited to be back to you see it's a tradition now that we come around the time of the car response and or even though the car response center really no longer has comedians that believe there's going to be some kind of a magician or a mind mind-meldor yes a magician yeah I'm a mentalist a mentalist uh because I guess Trump wouldn't know it's also going yeah yeah yeah that's it yeah it'll be there yeah there's there's there's a there's a mental case and then Trump is also going that's not it tickets won't last long there's someone pretty fast so get

1:06:28yours now while you still can at crooked dot com slash events very excited for the DC show got some big guests some pretty exciting babies crooked dot com slash events