Improvisational Theater
Two guys, one tweet
It was not a week ago that FBI Director Kash Patel appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast at exactly the time Elon Musk was suffering a major dopamine crash (His Ketamine use disorder was brought to public attention, so like any good junkie he went cold turkey to prove a point—he will relapse later) and flaming Donald Trump with since-deleted tweets. Here’s what it looked and sounded like. Transcript from 1:28:09 to 1:30:29.
Producer: Since we’re talking about fake news, this is going to come up, since it’s been going on since we’ve been recording here…
Joe Rogan: Uh oh.
Producer: …Elon and Trump seem to be in a bit of a spat, Joe. If you check the tweet that Elon just put out, a little bit ago.
Joe Rogan: [Reading the tweet] Time to drop the really big bomb: Donald Trump is in the Eptstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day.
Jesus Christ!
Kash Patel: I’m not participating in any of that conversation between Elon and Trump.
Joe Rogan: What is he…Have a nice day? DJT? Someone should take his phone away.
Producer: They’re going back and forth about different things.
Joe Rogan: Yeah.
Kash Patel: Listen…
Joe Rogan: Well, he said he was disappointed in Elon.
Producer: Yeah, when he told him to leave.
Joe Rogan: Jesus Christ, that is a crazy thing to say. How does he know? Does he know that Donald Trump is in the Epstein files? Does he have access to the Epstein files?
Kash Patel: I’m just—I don’t know how he would—but I’m just staying out of the Trump/Elon thing. That’s way outside my lane.
Joe Rogan: What the fuck are they doing?
Kash Patel: That’s uh, I know my lane, and that ain’t it.
Joe Rogan: I just don’t—I mean—I understand he owns Twitter; I think it’s bad for your mental health. I think posting things public all day and arguing with people all day is bad for ya.
Kash Patel: Well, you raise a great point. Sorry to cut you off.
Joe Rogan: Go ahead.
Kash Patel: Half of what we have to respond to are, is the Click Army on social media.
Joe Rogan: Right. And fifty percent of that, plus, is bots.
Kash Patel: Fifty percent of that, plus, is bots, but let’s take the other fifty percent of that. It’s just constantly pushing out information to sell t-shirts, or subscriptions, or whatever—’Listen to my show’—and then people are like, “Hey, FBI, why aren’t you looking at this thing in Oklahoma?” And I’m like, because it’s fake; I don’t have time for that.
Joe Rogan: Right.
Kash Patel: And, and, and so, to your point, on like, social media does have a great use in terms of [mean]—So, the reason Dan and I don’t do a lot of media is because we’re the FBI. Let our work speak for itself.
Joe Rogan: Right.
Kash Patel: But we have to find the right balance of going to do media and posting on social media the things we are doing and [keepo-keepeeah] keeping people updated. And so that’s the delicate balance we’re trying. But what I’m learning is no matter what you do, it, it, it doesn’t matter. It’s going to just completely not make everyone happy. And there’s no solve for that, in terms of how the FBI operates, but at the same time, the FBI won’t be thwarted by that. We’re gonna keep going.
The head of the FBI knows his “lane,” and it is to stay out of Trump’s affairs. He also knows that he’s subordinate to the Richest Guy in the World. We will not be seeing any investigation of illegal drug use by a major government contractor, regardless of the information having come from a White House insider. That story was leaked for personal shaming purposes only.
Just as telling was Patel’s sorry attempt to redirect the subject. He was smart enough not to continue talking about the tweet, but his choice to bitch about the internet came out as a jumble of contradictory thoughts.
He complains about advertising—including ads for podcasts. He offers one example of something about Oklahoma (Timothy McVeigh’s bombing?) as a source of unfair criticism of the FBI and a waste of his precious time. He states without irony—while on one of the nation’s top three podcasts—that he and his assistant director do not have time to do media. He wraps up the redirection with a long-winded recognition that you cannot please everyone.
You see, Kash just wants to keep people happy. As he sits there, across from the guy who made his celebrity bones watching people drink horse semen, Kash knows he is playing to an audience of one.
That’s why Kash audibly declared his non-involvement, past, present, or future, in Donald Trump’s affairs, why he dissolved into unrehearsed ruminations on social media, and why he wrapped it up with a progress report on how he’s been handling media since he took the gig.
There is a fair degree of competence required to serve in the Trump administration, but it has nothing to do with the particulars of any given job. Kash Patel gave us a C-level example of it, and in Trump World, that’s good enough for you to show up to work the next day.