Hello and welcome to the board podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday. So we've got Bill Crystal. Bill, I am in California on an undisclosed, well, I guess it's a disclosed, but a secret mission.

Some of my projects will come out in a month or two.

And I'm just thrilled that I was far away from Camp Pendleton while I was out here.

Because to celebrate the Marine Corps' 250th anniversary, they were doing an artillery shell

live fire demonstration. It wasn't really a great idea. Gavin Newsom said it wasn't a good idea.

Gavin Newsom shut down the highway over the objective, the defense department said that wasn't needed.

Nothing to worry about interstate five. I shut down about a 17-mile stretch. Gavin's instincts were right on that because the fragments of the shell, the shrapnel,

fell on the highway, landed on the California Highway Patrol and a motorcycle that was

part of J.D. Vance's protective detail.

And the, you know, here we are.

We have shrapnel raining from the sky because I think Pete Higgs-eth and J.D. Vance wanted to put on a much-eismos show. I got a text from a young friend who served in the Marine Corps and mortar platoon commander who actually says, I mean, he doesn't know the details. What happened obviously so. But his sense is, I mean, overhead artillery fire, that is not something you mess around with. And they were told not, you know, that's not like your fun thing to just play with. It can go awry. It can go a little short or a little long and really hurt people. So I'm glad no one was hurt. But, yeah, heck, Seth, and, I mean, it's all performative, right? I mean, God forbid, they should actually follow safety protocols in terms of unleashing artillery,

you know, in a highly populated area of Southern California.

It is a clown show.

More on the military stuff at a minute, but obviously we should start with No Kings.

Because of my aforementioned trip out here previously scheduled, I was flying during the New Orleans No Kings protests. So I didn't get to go. My family was there in my absentia they were representing. It seemed like you were out and about McLean. Many of my colleagues were out and about. You wrote about it for morning shots. Give us a dispatch. It was great. I mean, it was what I was at the earlier one in June and McLean and I thought there were three or four times as many people. At this one, obviously, else around the country, there were more people and getting seven million people, just that fact, that's a huge number. Maybe the largest protest, I guess, or political demonstration in U.S. history or very close to it. And so, A, that just, it was a huge success. I mean, you try these things and would have fallen short at the true number.

That would have been, you could imagine, the media, Trump world reaction to that.

I'd say the atmosphere was joyful and fun and upbeat, which was great in this political era that we're living through, a nice break, a nice change.

But I was struck talking to people, and, you know, we've lived in a nice break a nice change but what i was struck talking to

people and you know we've lived in a long long time and so many people we you know knew slightly

susan knew you know through non-political circumstances also met a woman who i didn't recognize

but she had hosted me 20 years ago she was head of the local local county Republican club and I had spoken to it.

And there we both were. And she's the one who had decided to put it on social media about.

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