Share & MMAmerica & Tell with Wyatt Cenac and Tim Miller

Is an (alleged) MMA fighter-in-chief less bad than Evil Barbie on her love plane? Is Washington just performative sadism now? And are you still Stephen A.-curious? Plus: Chuck Lidell's workout room, a re-patriated blankie, Benihana, Huggie Bear, Bernie Sanders as a bouncer, Dean Cain as a football player... and Frank Ocean gossip. • Subscribe to The Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller https://pod.link/1447684472 • Previously on PTFO: The Goalie Who Went to Hell and Back https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjkzNzk0ZDkzZDg3NWNjMjU3MjIyNTlh Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, presented by eBay Live. I am Pablo Torre, and today you're going to find out what this sound is.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Oh, he's eating that ass.

• 0:10Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

• 0:14Speaker 02

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• 0:44Speaker 03

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• 1:16Pablo Torre?

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• 2:00Pablo Torre?

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• 2:16Pablo Torre?

  That's apollo.io.

• 2:24Pablo Torre?

  I last gathered us here because, and you may recall this, because Wyatt was gonna be Stephen A. Smith's campaign manager.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  I don't know that I agree with that. That sounds like fake news.

• 2:36Pablo Torre?

  I mean, we did polling.

• 2:37Speaker 05

  Wyatt was very hostile to Stephen A. Smith 2028.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  That sounds very true.

• 2:41Speaker 05

  As I recall, I was like SAS, slightly curious, not pro at all.

• 2:48Pablo Torre?

  You were Stephen A. curious. That's right.

• 2:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, I just like, I wanna, I just, I just wanna walk this idea around the block a little bit, kick the tires on it. Obviously Wyatt's instinct on that was much more correct than mine. I'm a big enough man to say that. There was no need to kick the tires on it.

• 3:05Pablo Torre?

  And I wish I could take credit for summoning you both back on an emergency podcast level because Stephen A. has declared, I've thought about that presidency thing, and maybe.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  I don't think you're running. Am I right?

• 3:17Speaker 06

  I don't think I'm running either because I gotta give up my money. I can tell you right now, let me put that presidential aspiration to bed from, if I have to give up my money, it's not happening.

• 3:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, I just learned that apparently I would have to give up my money if I became president. Like, that tells you just how unserious the whole thing is, that this is the moment that he just learned that that's part of becoming president.

• 3:44Pablo Torre?

  Tim, did you see the clip? Did you notice the setting and to whom he said this to in his big announcement?

• 3:51Speaker 05

  It was Sean Hannity, correct?

• 3:52Pablo Torre?

  It was on Hangout with Sean Hannity, Sean Hannity's new podcast.

• 3:57Speaker 05

  He's coming into our space.

• 3:59Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say, I was gonna say.

• 4:01Speaker 05

  Hannity's like, I wanna compete in the long-form interview game. And I gotta say, I knew, I got to know Sean a little bit back when I was a Republican 100 years ago. And I just don't think that's his strength. And I think that Stephen A. should probably play to his strength, which is yelling at people on TV. So that's right. He's going, he's like, learned that. I think that Sean will probably learn after like eight episodes of this podcast that he should go back to his strength. You know, which is also demagoguery on television, not long-form conversation.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  You say that, but the thing that I can never forget about Sean Hannity is there was an episode of Hannity where he sat down with Chuck Liddell.

• 4:41Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  And took Chuck Liddell to his home to show him his workout room and grapple with Chuck Liddell.

• 4:51Pablo Torre?

  Chuck is known for this overhead killing knockout punch. Listen, I love you, man. I'm your biggest fan. Last thing I ever wanted, if you hit me, I'm in the hospital.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  And it very much felt like when a child wants to show their parent they're good at soccer. Where it's like, watch me, watch me kick the ball. Chuck, watch me kick the ball. And it's just instead, it's him like just trying like elbow moves on one of those boxing dummies.

• 5:21Pablo Torre?

  Sean Hannity has also made an aesthetic choice to wear a backwards cap.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Yes, right, yeah, yeah.

• 5:29Pablo Torre?

  It's so good.

• 5:47Pablo Torre?

  I wish, by the way, that that was the extent of the MMA we're here to talk about on the show.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  We're here to talk more MMA and you got at least one super expert on MMA. I hope that's you, Tim, because I've never actually.

• 6:04Speaker 05

  I was hoping it was you.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 6:06Speaker 05

  I'm a homosexual. I don't know, I'm thinking about MMA.

• 6:10Pablo Torre?

  Tim, I got.

• 6:11Speaker 05

  Wrestling, gays, gays do kind of like WWE because there's like, there's a camp to it.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 6:19Speaker 05

  Just the pure blood sport without the acting, without the theater element to it.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  There's no gold dust. There's no gold dust that's in MMA.

• 6:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, Mr. Perfect is not in MMA.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  I know enough to be dangerous, I guess. Not an expert, though, no.

• 6:35Pablo Torre?

  Tim, I dare say that mixed martial arts, which is fundamentally a sport in which two men are literally.

• 6:44Pablo Torre?

  Embracing as much as humanly possible.

• 6:46Speaker 05

  In their underpants.

• 6:47Pablo Torre?

  In their underpants. Maybe more within your province than you've ever dreamed.

• 6:52Speaker 05

  Well, I do have to tell you, Peyton Talbot is an MMA.

• 6:56Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 6:57Speaker 05

  There's some rumors that he was in a fling with Frank Ocean. I don't know if that's true.

• 7:01Pablo Torre?

  Oh, boy.

• 7:02Speaker 05

  I don't, I, I, so I don't want to make any accusations or anything.

• 7:05Pablo Torre?

  I like this rumor, though.

• 7:06Speaker 05

  Accusations, I don't want to make any compliments of either of them because it would be a beautiful thing if it were true. But I did do a deep dive on Peyton's social media account after hearing that rumor. And that's pretty good. I can see the appeal.

• 7:17Pablo Torre?

  I can only repeat what Reddit is telling me, which is that they were hanging out on Valentine's Day.

• 7:22Speaker 05

  There you go.

• 7:23Pablo Torre?

  I want to start, Wyatt, with a different example, though, of Tim Miller's experience with physical combat.

• 7:29Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 7:29Pablo Torre?

  I want to walk us there. And so the Kristi Noem thing, let's just start with the big headline and, and then walk us to, to the octagon that Tim Miller entered with a character relevant, Kristi Noem. Sam, if you were to catch people up on, uh, what happened to Kristi Noem, the head of which department and in what context was that department in the news recently?

• 7:54Speaker 05

  Yeah. So Kristi Noem, former governor of South Dakota, became the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. She was a big Donald Trump supporter. She did everything possible to get into his good graces, including whether this was part of getting into his good graces or not. One thing that happened simultaneously to that was she did also get a new face, which was an interesting choice. And so she gets a role in the cabinet as she'd been aspiring to do. She brings along with her Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump's first campaign manager in 2016. Corey, a longtime Trump hanger-on, he got fired from that job as campaign manager originally, but he sticks around.

• 8:36Pablo Torre?

  A big season one character that I forgot until I was like, oh, wait a minute, the Corey Lewandowski thing is happening again with Kristi Noem.

• 8:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's back, season seven. Yeah, he just kind of stayed around the hoop looking for opportunities. And so he gets back in with Kristi Noem. A lot of discussion that they might be having an affair. A lot of rumors about that. She is married. He was at a... A fundraiser being thrown by MAGA donors, it was an addiction awareness fundraiser. It was being thrown by MAGA donors at a Benihana in Las Vegas. And at that Benihana, Corey Lewandowski got hammered, started hitting on one of the wives of one of the big Trump donors. And Christie was also there and Christie was getting mad at him, texting him under the table. And a lot of people were wondering, why does Christie care so much that Corey is behaving poorly towards this other woman?

• 9:28Speaker 05

  And kind of that led down a path towards, towards, I think, some pretty strong feelings that they might be intimate. So they go together, maybe lovers, maybe not, to the Department of Homeland Security, which is, which oversees, among other things, ICE and CBP, the Border Patrol. Among other things includes also the TSA. So if you're annoyed about TSA or the long lines, it's another thing. And why isn't Kristi Noem's remit? It seemed like a pretty good job for her. This was a high priority for Trump, deporting people, immigration and Border Patrol. And yet Christie like went even a little too far for Trump. She was spending a lot of money recklessly. Her and Corey were flying around on like these hundred million dollar jets.

• 10:12Speaker 05

  They spent like $200 million on advertisements about all the work that they were doing, deporting people. Trump gets pissed and he gets, and she gets fired. How's that, is that a good summary?

• 10:22Pablo Torre?

  It's an excellent summary and really before I play some of the tape from what is an increasingly rare sight, which is something like a member of a Trump cabinet answering questions in a meaning.

• 10:37Speaker 05

  From Republicans.

• 10:37Pablo Torre?

  From Republicans in a like beyond the pale, holy this seems bad if she has to do this sort of a way. To me, your estimation, the reason she had to resign, in the pie chart of that, how much of that was American citizens got killed in Minnesota? Versus the stuff that we're gonna really sort of dig into, which is more of the circus element.

• 11:02Speaker 05

  I think American citizens getting killed in Minnesota was like 1% of the reason why she got fired. And I, and I do think it's important that it was 1% not zero, because I think that she was probably on the path to getting fired regardless. But I do think that like the degree of the show that it was in Minnesota, not to, not to make a lot, I mean, you know, killing two people is worse than a show, but like.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  The degree of like, just how it seemed like they didn't have any control over what was happening. I do think that like, kind of led to the spiral that brought all this other stuff that actually made Trump mad to light. And so I think that it was kind of a catalyst for it. But, you know, had she, you know, been minding her Ps and Qs in other ways, not offending Mr. Trump in other ways, she probably could have survived. I mean, Stephen Miller is still there and he was overseeing this immigration action as well. And so I think that what ended up getting her was that Trump doesn't like it when she's like, wait a minute, you're spending $200 million to do ads about yourself and like what you were doing, like what about me? What about Mr. Trump? You know what I mean? And I think that like, like, like she was embarrassing him, which ends up being kind of the bigger issue than the deaths, I would say.

• 12:09Pablo Torre?

  These Q and A's from, from the Kristi Noem hearing in front of Congress, they're worth watching.

• 12:15Speaker 07

  So Secretary Noem, at any time during your tenure as Director of Department of Homeland Security, have you had sexual relations with Corey Lewandowski? Mr. Chairman, I am shocked that we're going down and peddling tabloid garbage in this committee today. Reclaiming my time. And ma'am, one thing that I would tell you is that he is a special government employee who works for the White House. There are thousands of them in the federal government. So reclaiming my time, Secretary, it is okay for you to be offended by the question. It is okay for you to be offended by the question. But it is also a real question. So what I would say to you is that what we do at the Department of Homeland Security, every single day,

• 12:58Speaker 07

  every single day is to protect this country, to make decisions. If someone is asking if you or any federal official is sleeping with their subordinate, that should be the easiest. You should be wanting to answer that question because it is not about your sex life. It is about your judgment. That kind of garbage has been refuted for years.

• 13:17Pablo Torre?

  I think it's very important to always clock when you're watching someone under questioning is, is there a no? At any point in that, are you saying no?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's hard to feel bad for anybody that's like signed up for this, but you gotta kind of feel bad for, I mean, being cheated on for Corey Lewandowski is tough.

• 13:35Pablo Torre?

  That was, I want to, I want to.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  It's not like, it's not like PETA, you know, and it's not like one of the handsomer people of the administration. I mean.

• 13:45Pablo Torre?

  Vehicle at the center of this. I just want to be very clear because there is so much being said. We were talking about these luxury airliners that were allegedly being purchased for a nine-figure amount, that had bedrooms in them that were supposedly being used for deportations. But many were wondering, is this just a [BLEEP] plane for Kristi Noem and Corey?

• 14:09Speaker 05

  Many were wondering that. I don't think that I'm among them because it's an image that I've been trying to avoid thinking about. But they showed during the hearing, I don't know if you have this, they showed a picture of the bed. And I'm like.

• 14:20Pablo Torre?

  Oh, what's the, what's the, what's the aesthetic of, of, of the deportation?

• 14:24Speaker 05

  I would say it's kind of like a, kind of like a Hampton Inn.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Oh, alright.

• 14:29Pablo Torre?

  Imagine a Hampton Inn, but in the sky.

• 14:32Speaker 05

  In the sky, yeah. I would say that was kind of the aesthetic. There was also a controversy, like one of the sub controversies here was that um, Corey and Kristi were mad at one of the pilots because they'd left their special blanket.

• 14:49Pablo Torre?

  Oh, that's right.

• 14:50Speaker 05

  On the plane.

• 14:50Pablo Torre?

  Forgot about the blankie.

• 14:52Speaker 05

  Like, I don't want to, I don't want to know what's going on under that blanket.

• 14:55Pablo Torre?

  We're about to repatriate this blankie.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Wait, it was their special blanket? Or did one of them? Because I feel like that's all the evidence you need. If it's like, it's our shared special blanket.

• 15:10Speaker 05

  No, I think, I feel like that's the smoking gun. Kristi's, I think it was positioned as Corey was upset that, that the secretary did not have her special blanket.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Gotcha, okay.

• 15:21Pablo Torre?

  And the pilot, this US Coast Guard pilot, did get fired subsequent to Blanket Gate, as it became known, for however fleetingly.

• 15:29Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 15:29Pablo Torre?

  It's almost a side concern because we've got to get to the, back to the MMA of it. The side concern was, oh yeah, there was this $200 million plus deal to film these absurd, I mean, absurd is not even doing justice to it, but these ads that Tim was referencing before, for Kristi Noem when she's on horseback absorbing the glory of this country. And the contractor that got this thing was this obscure company that was subcontracted to, Tim, a company that was run by who?

• 16:00Speaker 05

  The husband of Kristi Noem's spokesperson, Trisha McGlaughlin.

• 16:06Pablo Torre?

  Who you may recall from the time that Trisha McGlaughlin gave Pablo Torre Finds Out a quote about the soccer player Jersey Reyes that we reported on, who was, again, insanely and seemingly indefensibly deported to CICAT in El Salvador, in which she insisted, quote, "Jersey Reyes' burrios was not only in the United States illegally, but he has tattoos that are consistent with those indicating Tren de Ragua gang membership. His own social media indicates he is a member of the vicious TDA gang. That all said, DHS intelligence assessments go beyond a single tattoo. We are confident in our findings," end quote. As we reported on that episode, the tattoo that seemed to be one of this vicious gang's famous symbols was, in fact,

• 16:49Pablo Torre?

  a Real Madrid tattoo that lots of people otherwise can't have.

• 16:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, huge Real Madrid fans and the gang culture in Caracas. And these guys were liars all the way down. And so it's good for her to get her comeuppance. And that story that you tied to, I mean, Kristi Noem, like you mentioned that the ads were ridiculous and like her and all of the hats and the horses. But like she also did all the propaganda, such as where she went to CICAT in El Salvador. You'll remember, and she stood in front of this cell filled with like shirtless, we now know, El Salvadorans, because they had kept the Venezuelans in a different part of the prison. But she just stood for these like snuff film style pictures where she was all made up. You know, you hate to do like the focus on the aesthetics, talking about how the woman looks, but like

• 17:37Speaker 05

  this is all she cared about was aesthetics. Like she was trying to do like evil Barbie style aesthetics everywhere. I think that it is totally legitimate to mock that and to take some comfort, even though I don't think that the Trump administration's ICE regime is going to get that much better, but take some comfort in the fact that she at least has been shown the door.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  It is a weird thing, just the sort of social media driven nature of what she was doing. I believe Last Week Tonight did a whole thing on it where you see them arrest these guys, but they actually didn't have grounds to do it. But when you see like another camera's footage, all it is is just them setting up a social media shoot. And it feels, and on some level, there's a part of me where I'm like, Is Donald Trump mad about that? Or is he just mad because she got, she spent 200 million on this? And I'm sure he's like, and now Melania is mad because I only got 70 million for, for her documentary.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Ah, shit, now I'm gonna have to somehow scrounge up another 130 million for somebody to put her in Tomb Raider.

• 18:46Pablo Torre?

  There is, Tim, as always, like, the question of who is the audience that this administration thinks of when they make any decisions? And way too often, the only logical audience I can discern is Twitter, is X.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:59Pablo Torre?

  And it's all these people doing stuff by it for social media explicitly who are looking for the applause from the worst people left online.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary is not supposed to be like a media figure. It's not like that type of job, right? I challenge the audience to conjure a mental image of Jay Johnson, for example, who was Obama's DHS Secretary for four years.

• 19:26Pablo Torre?

  It's the cash Patel in the locker room thing. It's like, this has never been a position that's like-

• 19:31Speaker 01

  You're the FBI director, go after bad guys. Some of the jobs are meant for that. Like Secretary of State does have to speak publicly, you know what I mean? Like, there's certain jobs that are public facing. Like, this is not that. It's a homeland security job, the job's about keeping us safe. And to have like this clownish woman having an affair, like flying around the country, like getting like ridiculous plastic surgery, like taking Cruella De Vil photos in front of immigrants that they have chained. Like, the whole thing was just, was ridiculous.

• 20:02Pablo Torre?

  But before we look ahead to who replaces Kristi Noem, which is a relevant question, I want to look back for a second because the Corey Lewandowski thing that I was alluding to, the physical confrontation thing I was alluding to, Tim. Corey Lewandowski has this caricature of a person who is this sort of goon for Donald Trump. That's how I knew him in season one. It's also how you encountered him, literally.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, now that you've brought this up, Pablo, people are gonna think that my assessment of Cory and Christie is gonna, was personal. And let me tell you, it was not. Okay? This was a very, it was a minor encounter, and I'm a big boy. But I will say, in 2016, during the debates, so before he's president, Donald Trump, the candidate. So it's late during the primary, and I'd worked for Jeb, and then I was working for Nancy Trump's super PAC. And after debates, there's a spin room where the candidates go to, and they talk to the media and try to spin, sometimes candidates, sometimes just their representatives, try to spin like why they did well and why the other people did terrible. And in this case, in 2016, I was following Trump around the spin room, like kind of trolling

• 21:06Speaker 01

  him a little bit, and getting in, inserting myself into the Q and As he was having. He was getting a little annoyed with me. And like, out of my peripheral vision, I saw what I thought was a security guard, like kind of a penis-shaped security guard man, who like came up and got in between me and Trump and like hip-checked me, and then got nose-to-nose with me and started like screaming as really, screaming in my face. And I don't remember what he said, because I was kind of blacked out by the smell of his breath, which was really horrendous. And after it ended, I asked my colleague, I was like, who, who was that? Like, who's, who was that? And they're like, that's Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. Like, I didn't, I didn't recognize him at the time.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  I thought he was just a security guard. And so I think it was telling kind of about the type of campaign Trump had at the beginning, that like the campaign manager, serious job, was also like the heavy in the spin room. So there you go.

• 22:02Pablo Torre?

  This is all really important context, because the question has been, who is in charge of what has been an instrument of state-sponsored violence? And it turns out, okay, lingering around the periphery, perhaps, in the alleged [BLEEP] plane, is that guy, Corey Lewandowski. And so who replaces his alleged girlfriend, Kristi Noem? It is a guy who, I should say, I'd like to introduce via a clip of his own.

• 22:30Pablo Torre?

  Sir, this is a time, this is a place. If you want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults, we can finish it here. Okay, that's fine. Perfect. You want to do it now? I'd love to do it right now. Well, stand your butt up, then. You stand your butt up.

• 22:42Speaker 06

  Oh, stop it. Is that your solution every poll? No, no, sit down. Sorry, Eric. Sit down. Okay. You're a United States senator. Active. Okay. Sit down, please. All right. Can I respond? Hold it, hold it.

• 22:55Pablo Torre?

  Wyatt, could you introduce some of the characters that we just heard there in that scene?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Sure, that was Mark Wayne Mullen. And that was a hearing where he was talking to the head of the Teamsters. And apparently, the head of the Teamsters had said some not-nice things about Mark Wayne Mullen on Twitter. That was not why they were having this hearing. It was not a hearing to present someone-

• 23:21Pablo Torre?

  To litigate Twitter beef?

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, this is what Mark Wayne Mullen chose to use his time to do to challenge the head of the Teamsters, that the two of them could fight. Mark Wayne Mullen then stood up as though he were serious. And then, the fight was stopped by Bernie fucking Sanders. Which tells you just how unserious it was, that they were stopped by the oldest man in the world, who was just like, nope, nope, this isn't happening. And Mark Wayne Mullen, for all the piss and vinegar he had to stand up, was like, you're right, Bernie, let me sit back down. If you were really about it, you would have hopped over that fucking table, and you'd

• 24:04Speaker 01

  have gone and made a fool out of yourself on national television. But you got sat the fuck down by Bernie Sanders.

• 24:13Pablo Torre?

  Mark Wayne Mullen allowed himself to leave more space between himself and the head of the Teamsters than he does between the words Mark and Wayne in his first name.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  McWayne. Um, McWayne! Yeah, I mean, if he had real balls, you know, he would have gone full Will Smith. Like, get down there. Like, don't stand, don't stand up and pretend to fight. Don't do, don't do this nonsense, like fake tough guy nonsense. Real cool, like, let's throw hands. You were, he was never gonna throw down in the middle of a hearing, okay? No. And if he was, then let's fucking see it, all right? It is a little concerning, and I think that's kind of the tie between him and Corey, the like, the types of people that you want in charge of something like Homeland Security, you know, where you have to like, go after bad guys, but also respect the rights of our citizens while you're managing public safety, I don't think you want fucking hot heads. Right? It's not, it's not really a job for hot heads.

• 25:14Pablo Torre?

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• 25:46Speaker 03

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• 26:24Pablo Torre?

  If you were wondering, like, perhaps that's just a bad moment for Mark Wayne. Maybe that's just, you know, he's a hothead, but whatever, that's like one thing. To get a sense of his vibe, here's his campaign ad.

• 26:38Pablo Torre?

  Conservative Mark Wayne Mullen has always been a fighter. He knows the fights worth having. For God, for family, and for country. Mark Wayne Mullen is a Christian, a husband, a father of six, a businessman who gets things done. The radical left is trying to transform our country, and some are afraid of fighting those fights. Mark Wayne, well, he wins the fights.

• 27:01Pablo Torre?

  Mark Wayne Mullen is you don't want to fight with. I'm Mark Wayne Mullen, candidate for Senate, and I approve. This message. That was 2022, and I want to shout out the fact always that we are a sports show here at Pablo Torre Finds Out. And Mark Wayne Mullin is, I believe, and we'll fact check this as I say it. I believe this is the first MMA fighter to have been elected to the United States Senate.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  According to his stats, he is an undefeated fighter who either is 5-0 or 3-0, depending on what sources you look at.

• 27:38Pablo Torre?

  Strong start when you can't quite tell.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  In his late 20s, one of his fights was against a guy who goes by the name of Huggie Bear. And at the time, Huggie Bear was a teenager. So I have a lot of questions around a man in his late 20s who choked out a teenager. But that counts as a victory, I suppose, according to Tapology, which is where I go for all my MMA news. That's Tapology. Yeah. Also, Huggie is spelled like the diapers, not like the character from Starsky and Hutch.

• 28:17Pablo Torre?

  It's an important distinction.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:19Speaker 05

  I think you guys are giving a little bit too much credit. I know that we try to be fair and balanced on Pablo Torre Finds Out, and it's important to just, you know, lay out the facts, go where the investigation finds you, even if it's unappealing. But he's 3-0 in what appears to me to be like a semi-pro MMA league. It's called XFN. It's based in Tulsa. And I don't know, and it kind of feels like somebody like playing in the company softball league, winning three championships, and then running for the Senate and being like, I'm the first senator who was a softball champion.

• 29:00Pablo Torre?

  There is a need for us to clarify here on Pablo Torre Finds Out that we did send requests for comment to Huggie Bear and to Clint Bonds and to Lazaro Amaro, which is an incredible name that somehow finishes third on the medal stand of all the names we've mentioned already. We have not heard from any of them in time for our deadline. But it is worth noting also, Tim, that when it comes to is Mark Wayne Mullin? Fighter, semi-professional combat sports veteran. Somebody who has embellished any part of his resume before. It is worth noting that his status as a military veteran, it seems, has also been under some scrutiny.

• 29:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, Pat Ryan, a former congressman from New York, shout out Pat Ryan, I like him a lot, and he was going off on this because Mullen likes to just sort of, I kind of play cute with talking about like being in war, like he's talking about how he knows the smells of war and all this stuff, when like, this just isn't true, like he hasn't done any of that, and like, I do think, you know, some of the actual veterans got a little annoyed by Senator Mark Wayne Mullen doing a little bit of like stolen valor, pretending like he was, you know, really in the fight overseas when he was not.

• 30:21Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, can you smell war from afar? I guess is a philosophical question.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah, no, that's true, yeah. I'm gonna say no, that's gonna be my, that's gonna be my guess is no.

• 30:34Pablo Torre?

  Does war smell like what Corey Lewandowski's alleged halitosis smells like? In which case, you know, it knows no borders, perhaps.

• 30:43Speaker 05

  And I can't say, because I have not been in war. I can't compare and contrast, you know, the smell of napalm in the morning to the smell of Corey Lewandowski's breath, and importantly, neither can Mark Wayne Mullen, and he kind of pretends to.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, everybody wants to be a soldier, but nobody actually wants to go on the front lines.

• 31:02Pablo Torre?

  And we, as much as this is hilarious in a key undeniable way, it's also [bleep] terrifying that this is who's in charge.

• 31:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a good point, and the playing pretend kind of does matter in this case, because like, in a very real way, a lot of the people that our government is sending into the streets right now to do immigration enforcement are playing pretend.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:26Speaker 05

  We have, you know, former Superman Dean Cain signed up to join ICE, like that's the type of, it's the quality of person that we're.

• 31:32Pablo Torre?

  Former Princeton. Football star Dean Cain, how dare you minimize his sports career?

• 31:37Speaker 05

  And then you have people who've done real work that I don't want to denigrate like on the border at Border Patrol. Like that's a dangerous job. It's a hard job. You're dealing with cartels, but we've been moving people from the border and redeploying them from the border into the interior of the country, into American cities to hassle people. And like now that force like is going to be at the command, basically of the Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, Mark Wayne Mullen, who it seems to me like likes to play pretend violence. So that's, that's a little alarming.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Well, and add to that, for all of those posturers that are on the ground in ICE, they're also wearing masks, which I think if you are someone who likes to posture, there is a freedom behind a mask. Having performed enough and having performed in ways where you're in costumes and things like that. The thing that I feel like a lot of performers know and a lot of actors will talk about is when you are in costume, you can get caught up in the costume and it frees you from things that maybe your better angels would have prevented you from doing.

• 32:47Pablo Torre?

  And so the reason I want to do this topic in general is because, look, we're looking at Iran and we should. We're looking at new theaters of war overseas. But before we leave our country and what's been happening in the rearview, Tim, to sum it all up, what's changing? What has changed in the turnover of the Department of Homeland Security? Given that here are the characters that we've evolved from.

• 33:15Speaker 05

  Very little is changing. I, I think that hopefully some of the performative sadism might be being put on the back burner for a little while. We'll see how that goes. But I, I do, I do think it's like meaningfully different. Greg Bavino, we even talked about who's the short fellow that was like the point person in Minnesota.

• 33:33Pablo Torre?

  Who has like the gas canisters dangling around his neck.

• 33:36Speaker 05

  And he, he was executing a lot of what Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski wanted, which was like really inciting, trying to incite violence and. Pushback in the community and they replaced him with Tom Homan, who is not great. But you know, he's more of kind of just a kind of traditional hardline anti-immigrant operator. Right. So I do think like some of the performative elements of this might go away. We'll see some of the performative elements of Kristi Noem's. You know, again, like we were saying earlier, like the snuff pictures in front of shirtless immigrants. Like, I think that will probably change. Like, the new secretary's facial muscles can move, so that'll be new. But I, I think that like the actual immigration policy will be pretty close to the same.

• 34:20Speaker 05

  And that's pretty, pretty discouraging. And I think that Mark Wayne Mullen will have the same disincentives that Kristi Noem did, which is Stephen Miller and other people in the administration want a lot of deportations to be happening. And so, you know, he's going to want to make sure that his ground troops are getting the numbers or doing the deportations. So I, I think it will maybe be a little bit less inciting, a little bit less kind of

• 34:44Speaker 05

  dark camp or whatever you'd call Kristi Noem, evil camp, but policy wise, a lot of the same.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  There is one other possibility to throw out, which is Mark Wayne Mullen is Cherokee Nation. It could be possible that now as head of Department of Homeland Security, he then goes full Cherokee Nation and says, okay, yeah, I'm kicking everybody else who's out, who's not Native American. And he just goes, he just starts rounding up white guys and it's just like, nope, nope. This is stolen land. You're on stolen land. Get the [bleep] out and.

• 35:23Speaker 05

  All of a sudden, land acknowledgements are happening at the DHS press conferences. Yeah, I don't think that's likely, but.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Probably not.

• 35:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, it'll be interesting to monitor. I think it'd be an interesting plot twist for sure.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Look, my Stephen A. Smith prediction was right. This one I might not be, I might not be on target with.

• 35:41Pablo Torre?

  Well, we have an MMA event to look forward to at the White House, but. Truly, the fact that the president's birthday party is also a UFC event that Dana White is now, this past week, announcing. It's just, Tim, are you even ready for what that is? For what that's going to be?

• 36:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was thinking about this. I was planning what weeks I'm gonna be off the podcast this summer. It's gonna take a little vacation. And I'm like, maybe I should do it around the 4th of July. So I just don't have to think about this. Like, maybe that should be the week I should go dark. Because it's just such, it's so [bleep] ridiculous. I mean, like, really? We're gonna have an MMA fight-

• 36:18Pablo Torre?

  On the lawn.

• 36:19Speaker 05

  -on the White House lawn to celebrate our 250. And it is idiocracy. You know, my judge did have a crystal ball. So, I don't know. But it's real, it's worth monitoring and paying attention to because, like, the MMA culture is very wrapped up in this administration. Right? And like, that whole mindset is. And, you know, Dana White spoke at the convention. All those guys go to MMA fights. And like, watching Cash Patel and Marco and Trump and all these guys sit ringside in their suits. I think that they think it gives them an aura of toughness, right? Like, they really care a lot about this. Like, this machismo, this seeming strong. And I think that's kind of the political side of it.

• 37:09Speaker 03

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• 37:54Speaker 03

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• 38:17Pablo Torre?

  At the end of every episode of Publically Finds Out, Tim Miller and Wyatt Sinak, we go around the table and we say what we found out today. Tim, is there anything that you found out on today's episode?

• 38:26Speaker 05

  I learned a lot about Huggy Bear and I learned about the kind of semi-pro Oklahoma MMA culture that Mark Wayne Mullen came out of, that's aired on Triller, the Bulgarian-based, American television streaming outlet. And I would like to learn a little bit more. I may not understand my country a little bit better. I've learned a little bit, but I think maybe I'd understand my country a little bit better if I learned even more about what was happening on Triller.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  I think the thing I found out is perhaps the person who's best qualified to do anything about border security might have been the bouncer in that Senate hearing, Bernie Sanders. The idea that Bernie Sanders is able to secure the border of a Senate hearing, maybe he's the person, instead of Mark Wayne Mullen, who should be at the top of that candidate list for that job.

• 39:22Pablo Torre?

  Yes, it is, it's just...

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Or he should just be, yeah, we should just have Bernie Sanders bouncing at nightclubs or anywhere where we just need some crowd control. Just have Bernie come in there and just, kind of in his old man way, just throw his hands and be like, "Ah, stop it, stop it. You're a senator."

• 39:49Pablo Torre?

  Just the voice.

• 39:50Speaker 05

  What would your mother think about this?

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. Let him be a referee at hockey fights. "Stop it, stop it." "Literally, you're a senator. That's your team name. And you're a jet. Stop it, both of you." He can wear those big mittens that he likes. "Stop it, both of you, stop it."

• 40:10Pablo Torre?

  What I found out today, in the ongoing research I've been doing since Tim dropped a journalistic bomb on me, is that Frank Ocean did, in fact, apparently eight months ago, post an Instagram story update of rumored boyfriend Payton Talbot in a position in which, again, I'm not here to make subjective assessments, but Wyatt, what would you describe Payton Talbot doing to Felipe Lima in this screenshot that Frank Ocean put on Instagram with a heart emoji next to the crying emoji?

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Oh, he's eating that ass.

• 40:42Pablo Torre?

  That is, that is just objective ass eating.

• 40:48Speaker 05

  Can you send me that picture? I missed that one. I must have been, I must have been before I started following Peyton.

• 41:04Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.

• 41:30Speaker 03

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