Hot Chicks, Wings, and the Liquidation Sale of America
Diabolical Lies
Katie Gatti Tassin & Caro Claire Burke
4.8 • 607 Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2025
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this conversation…
What does it mean to “run the government like a business” in America today? In today’s episode, we scrutinize the fetishization of “efficiency” and the American businessman, the role this valorization played in the ascendancy of our current “leaders,” and what everyone’s getting wrong about how business is done in America today—through the lens of a recent bombshell report that “breastaurant” Hooters is filing for bankruptcy.
Got questions? [email protected].
References in the Episode
“Is Hooters Really Rebranding Because Millennials ‘Aren’t That Into Boobs’ Anymore? Here’s What We Know So Far,” the important, hard-hitting journalism you’ve come to expect from Peter Thiel’s favorite beach read, Evie Magazine
“The decline and fall of Hooters,” by Kara Kennedy in The New Statesman
“Hooters in Talks for Potential Bankruptcy in Coming Months,” by Eliza Ronalds-Hannon and Reshmi Basu for Bloomberg UK
“Chanticleer Holdings and Hooters Ring NASDAQ Closing Bell,” a 2012 Hooters press release
“Prison food is the latest target in a campaign to divest holdings,” by Fola Akinnibi for The Los Angeles Times, because nothing says American dream quite like the ROI on mass incarceration
“PE Firms Rebrand Prison Healthcare Companies, But Care Issues Continue,” by Syed Hamza Sohail for HIT Consultant
The Private Equity Stakeholder Project’s report on HIG Capital and Wellpath, and the 1,395 times the “Correct Care Solutions” subsidiary was sued in federal court
“PE-Backed Prison Health-Care Firm Wellpath Declares Bankruptcy” by Dorothy Ma for Bloomberg
“H.I.G. Capital’s Companies Mired in Regulatory and Headline Risk,” by Eileen O’Grady for the Private Equity Stakeholder Project
“H.I.G. Capital puts Hooters up for sale,” by Luisa Beltran for PE Hub in 2015
“H.I.G. calls off ‘Hooters of America’ auction,” by Luisa Beltran for PE Hub approximately 10 minutes later lol
“H.I.G.-backed Hooters of America seeks a buyer: sources,” by Luisa Beltran for PE Hub in 2018
“New Owners of Hooters Plan to Expand Less Offensive Spinoff, Hoots” by Greg Morabito for Eater
“Hooters of America sold to 2 private equity firms,” by Julie Littman for Restaurant Dive
“Hooters of America Announces Closing of $70 Million Term Loan Facility,” from Stephen Brown on Business Wire
“How the Financialization of America Hurt Workers and the Economy,” by Michael Collins for IndustryWeek
“The Apprentice, Intro Season 1, Donald Trump,” which is nothing short of an absolute fucking trip to the reality television universe where this man truly shined and should’ve stayed
Marjorie Taylor Greene being generally confused about how the government is supposed to work pt. 359235
“Trump seeks to run government like a business, for better or worse,” by Brett Samuels for The Hill, which contains some of the bleakest quotes known to science
“DOGE is causing the very problem it claims to be solving,” by Shannon Arvizu for The Hill
“Trump Quietly Plans to Liquidate Public Lands to Finance His Sovereign Wealth Fund,” by Mark Haggerty and Jenny Rowland-Shea for the Center for American Progress
Ronald Reagan contradicting himself for 41 seconds
“How Ronald Reagan Tried to Shrink Government Spending” by Christopher Klein for History
usaspending.gov, a literal line by line accounting of where we spend money
“Americans voted for Trump, but don’t support his agenda,” by G. Elliott Morris for ABC News
“What DOGE is Doing Across the Federal Government,” by Nik Popli for Time
fiscaldata.treasury.gov, where you can learn about the national debt
“How Much Is the National Debt? What Are the Different Measures Used?” from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Today's episode of Diabolical Lies was brought to you by Ronald Reagan's acting career, |
| 0:06.1 | the unflagging commitment of humanity's relentless love of boobs, |
| 0:11.3 | NBC's team of development executives who decided that a real estate nepo baby needed his own reality television show in 2004, |
| 0:19.1 | the 300 unused Photoshop licenses that Elon Musk canceled to fix the |
| 0:24.0 | deficit, and the reptiles and skin suits running the largest private equity firms in America. |
| 0:30.4 | Yeha! |
| 0:31.4 | Yeha! |
| 0:33.2 | Caroline, before we get started today, should we do a little bit of housekeeping about how our |
| 0:38.8 | paid subscribers are going to get to pick the topic of our upcoming episode? Yeah, so we've |
| 0:44.7 | spoken in the past about the process that we take to decide what topics we're going to cover |
| 0:48.9 | and how for each diabolical lies episode. It is very intensive and it usually involves a lot of conversations |
| 0:55.7 | and chaotic nine-minute voice memos between Katie and I. And so we thought that from time to time, |
| 1:00.8 | we would bring you guys in on that fun. So I am about to get started on our next paid subscriber |
| 1:05.3 | episode and we are going to let you guys choose what we're going to talk about. I have three |
| 1:09.8 | pretty spicy topics that I'm |
| 1:11.8 | interested in dissecting for, you know, two plus hours, the way that we like to do it. And so if you |
| 1:17.5 | are a paid substack subscriber, you can click on this episode post and you will see an option to vote |
| 1:22.4 | on the topic that you're most excited for us to cover. You'll also obviously have this post in |
| 1:26.8 | your email. |
| 1:31.7 | And now is a good time to remind everyone how the two different paid subscriber options work. |
| 1:36.0 | There is the Apple paid subscriber option, which you just subscribe to via the podcast app. |
| 1:40.9 | That gives you access to the audio only. And then if you want to join the community, if you want to engage in the chats, if you want to see the comments, if you want to watch our live AMAs, if you want to do all that jazz, and also from time to time, choose |
... |
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