Hey, everybody. Welcome to the McCrack Podcast. I'm Jared Yates-Sexton, fresh off a trip to the West Coast to hang out with my buddy Nick Houselman, had a great time, clanging, banging by the pool, seeing what Phoenix, Arizona had to offer. Nick, I could have had a better time.

Well, it was, it was necessary to actually be in the same room with you. And I got to tell you, the book signing podcast episode went really, really well, too. People seemed to like it. But I think that there was something going on there just being in the same room with you, too. That was amazing. And by the way, thank you to all of the loyal listeners who showed up to the LA

Tems Book Festival, who showed up at the Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix, Arizona. Thank you,

by the way, to Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix, Arizona. What a wonderful time. Great

conversations, great people. It was so, it made my heart so full, Nick. It made me feel complete.

It made me feel so good to hang out with my friend, to meet all of these people and endure all of

their kindnesses. Thank you to everybody. Wonderful. Yeah, a perfect buddy road trip. I agree.

And I wish that we could have live streamed it. Tons that we talked about. I wish could have made the podcast, some stuff that couldn't have made the podcast. We got a full show today. We are back in our domains. We're taking care of business. TCOB in, as I like to say. Listen, we're checking in on Tucker Carlson. We're looking at Josh Holly talking about masculinity.

We're talking about the presidential field, which is just wild at this point.

And we got a special from the New York Times and friend of the pod, Maureen Dowd.

Before we do any of it, Nick, I got breaking news, bud.

There is another Chinese balloon coming over the American heartland are you okay do you feel threatened do you feel cold war mania how's this making you feel um how does it make me feel knowing

that china is i guess you know because it's so weird why they're even doing it they can spy on us

every other way they would ever want to um so I don't know. Maybe I'll go out and do some sunbathing and see what happens. You're not going to pull a J.D. Vance and go grab a semi-automatic and put on some boots that you've never worn and make sure that somebody takes a picture of you with social media. Like you're going to shoot the thing out of the sky? Yeah, I will not do that because remember, if you do shoot the bullets up in the air, they come back down. I mean, listen, it's the story as old as time. I'll tell you why China is doing this because they can. That's why they're doing it. And because it is, I'm sorry, but it's, it has to be enjoyable to

poke people like this. It has to be a lot of fun. They're, they're mapping the lands. They're

freaking the Americans out. They're, they're just having a great time. This is what's happening.

Mission accomplished. Mission accomplished, everybody. On that note, speaking of mission accomplished,

we are going to check back in to the wild saga of Tucker Carlson, of course, getting booted off Fox News. There are some interesting new revelations that have come out in the past few days.

But before we dive into that, Tucker made an appearance on social media, put out his own video that I think, and we'll talk about it in a second, gives us a glimpse into exactly where he is headed.

Good evening. It's Tucker Carlson. One of the first things you realize when you step outside the noise for a few days is how many genuinely nice people there are in this country, kind and decent people, people who really

care about what's true and a bunch of hilarious people also, a lot of those. It's got to be the

majority of the population, even now. So that's heartening. The other thing you notice when you take a

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