Transcript:
Daniella Gibbs Léger: Hey everyone. Welcome back to “The Tent,” your place for politics, policy, and progress. I’m Daniella Gibbs Léger.
Colin Seeberger: And I’m Colin Seeberger. Daniella, we’re both wearing red today.
Gibbs Léger: Yes, we are. Could it be to symbolize all the blood in the water in the “White Lotus” finale, perhaps?
Seeberger: Oh, I see what you did there. I see what you did there.
To be honest, I was like, “What do I wear?” this morning because we have decided to go apparently three months back, and we’re in the thick of winter. Because it was like 26 degrees when I woke up this morning.
Gibbs Léger: It was so cold. And folks, it was 80 degrees on Saturday.
Gibbs Léger: So this is rude and obnoxious.
Seeberger: Not cool. Not cool. Well I’m sure we’ll talk more about the finale of “The White Lotus” in a little bit, but in the meantime, I heard you had a great conversation this week.
Gibbs Léger: I did, Colin. I got to speak with María Teresa Kumar about Trump’s economic and immigration policies, how they’re landing with Latino voters, and what Democrats might do to win back Latino Americans heading into the midterms.
Seeberger: I can’t wait to hear it. But first, we’ve got to get to some news.
Gibbs Léger: We sure do, Colin. Now, we’ve talked about some of Trump’s dumpster-fire tariff plans last week, but it’s quickly becoming apparent just how quickly that fire may spread. It’s rare for a president to announce that he’s going to tank the economy and destroy people’s savings in a Rose Garden ceremony, but that might just be what we witnessed last week on so-called “Liberation Day.” It felt more like recession day to me. And it appears awfully likely that our economy is free falling into a “Trump slump.”
So let’s be clear about what Trump announced last week: His tariffs will add 2.3 percentage points to inflation this year and will cost Americans nearly $4,000 per household, according to the Yale Budget Lab. Global markets are all over the place as a result of Trump’s reckless trade plans. Economists are deeply concerned that we could be headed for stagflation or a recession. Goldman Sachs has said if Trump goes through with most of the trade deficit tariff plans he has promised to do on Wednesday at midnight, the outcome will be that they will predict a recession.
That is terrifying. We are going to see prices go up on all sorts of imported goods, including many that can’t be feasibly grown or made in the United States at a scale needed to satisfy domestic demand. And that is really an important point here.
Seeberger: But Trump’s out there this afternoon saying that we can make iPhones in America!
Seeberger: Sure, if you want them to cost $20,000, right?
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. So Americans can expect to pay more for groceries, shoes, clothing, household necessities, auto parts, and recreational items. A new CAP [Center for American Progress] analysis found that an SUV made in Mexico this year could cost nearly $8,000 more because of Trump’s tariffs.
Estimates say that the price of an iPhone could go up over $1,000, and that was before Trump increased his tariff threat to 104 percent on China unless they caved to his demands. It is just the perfect example of how there are no winners in the president’s trade wars. And even some of Donald Trump’s own backers, like Wall Street mogul Bill Ackman, have said this week, the threat of Trump’s tariffs could result in an “economic nuclear winter.” Sounds not good.
Gibbs Léger: Ben Shapiro last week said that tariffs will impose hundreds of billions of new taxes on consumers. This is probably the only time you will ever hear me say that I agree with these two individuals.
Seeberger: I think that’s right.
Gibbs Léger: All of this devastation, both to our national economy and to economies worldwide, is being caused by one man. And it’s astounding to me when you look back at American history and the previous events that have caused economic disasters—Black Monday, the beginning of the Great Recession, the economic sell-off during the beginning of the COVID[-19] pandemic—these are triggered by external events, not one person. And now Republicans are giving their dear leader, Donald Trump, permission to wreck as much havoc as these historic catastrophes in a fraction of the time.
We’ve got to talk more about Republicans up on Capitol Hill because they’re the ones with the authority to reign Trump in. They hold the power of the purse and they have an obligation to remind the president that they should be the ones calling the shots when it comes to America’s tariff policies, not the president. They don’t seem too interested in tapping the brakes, though.
Seeberger: They sure don’t, Daniella. And I mean, you just listen to lawmakers like Sen. Joni Ernst (R) of Iowa, Sen. Roger Marshall (R) of Kansas, and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) of Alaska who have all expressed support for these tariffs, or even people like Sen. Steve Daines (R) of Montana—who claims he’s warned the Trump administration of how these tariffs would harm farmers, but has done nothing to stop them from going into effect.
All of these folks are going to face reelection next year, so good luck on the campaign trail when you’re talking to people about what’s going on in their lives. And what makes this even more tragic is how much these lawmakers’ constituents could stand to lose from these trade wars.
Montana, Iowa, and Kansas are major agricultural exporters. Iowa is the second-largest exporter in the country, sending out over $13.5 billion worth of goods in 2023. Alaska, meanwhile, shares a border with Canada spanning over 1,500 miles, which will make Trump’s trade war with them particularly devastating. How are they supposed to get their goods to market in nearby Canada?
Seeberger: These lawmakers are behaving as if their actions have no consequences for their constituents. Do they really not think that their constituents are going to settle for saying, “Oh, hey, let’s put our arms up in the air, and we don’t have any authority to help you or control the situation,” when they have the ability to fight Trump’s attempt to unilaterally devastate the very people that they serve?
You’ll hear some of them pay lip service to this idea that Trump’s tariffs are just a negotiating tactic. But his administration has been consistent in their inconsistency.
One second they say, “Oh, this is all about bringing revenue into the country.” The next second, this is, “Oh, we’re getting people to the negotiating table.” And then it’s, “Oh, this is about fentanyl,” or, “This is about the president wanting to poke an adversary in the eye,” right? I mean, they’re literally all over the place, and they can’t seem to decide within their own team whether this is a real policy or a scheme to bring, like I said, countries to the negotiating table. Contrary to what Trump might say, it can’t be all of those things at once, right?
And regardless, it’s going to raise prices, which are going to hurt everyday Americans. Also I don’t know that I can trust the word of anyone who downplays the effects of these tariffs and the impact that they’re going to have on everyday Americans. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this past weekend—a billionaire, I might add—was on a Sunday show and said that retirees would be just fine if the markets crashed and their savings were wiped out.
Gibbs Léger: How out of touch can you be?
Seeberger: Truly! I mean, that’s blatant insanity. Many folks are terrified right now that their lifetime of savings and putting aside a nest egg to be able to retire with dignity is vanishing in the matter of a few days or weeks, right?
On Tuesday of this week, senior Democratic leaders in the House thankfully announced a new joint resolution to repeal Trump’s tariffs announced on April 2. And now, we need congressional Republicans to step up and support this legislation.
Because really, at the end of the day, it’s about protecting those seniors. It’s about protecting the farmers we were just discussing. It’s about protecting vulnerable Americans across the board who can’t afford to pay more.
Gibbs Léger: That’s exactly right, Colin. But even as these Republicans are failing to hold the administration accountable for tariffs and the inflation that they’ll cause, these same lawmakers are considering a tax giveaway for the wealthy that will actually add to inflation, according to experts like Moody’s.
Now I know we all remember how much Republicans lamented rising inflation just a few years ago. So the fact that they’re now pushing policies that will drive up the very inflation the last administration got under control is outrageous. Their plans for reconciliation this year would enact a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans and Donald Trump’s donors, while creating a fiscal catastrophe for regular Americans like you and me.
Donald Trump wants to stick the middle class with the bill so the top 1 percent in this country can get $1 trillion in additional tax breaks. You can bet this will drive up inflation. Yale Budget Lab estimates that permanently increasing the deficit by the amount needed to extend these wealthy tax giveaways would cost $1,250 per family—and nearly double that for mortgage holders.
Seeberger: I mean, the numbers are staggering here, Daniella. I’d also like to point out that they’re just pretending that this bill—which should cost over $4.5 trillion to extend—that it just costs nothing.
Seeberger: Oh, “It’s current policy, so it can’t cost us a thing,” right? Just ludicrous. But I’ve got to say, I think both of these policies together are really why we’re seeing the president’s economic approval rating is cratering. New numbers came out this morning from Navigator, showed that the president was down double digits, largely driven by his reckless tariffs policies as well as opposition to these tax breaks to the rich that you were talking about.
They’re using smoke and mirrors and swapping definitions to make it seem like this bill won’t cost anything, there’s never any losers, right? And it’s also why they’re getting called out by some folks on Capitol Hill. You’ve seen congressmen like Chip Roy (R-TX) called their math “fairy dust.” Congressman David Schweikert (D) of Arizona said it’s intellectual and economic fraud and called it “crap.” Even the right-leaning Cato Institute’s director of Budget Policy rightly called the move a “gimmick,” right?
The list goes on and on. You can’t argue with facts. Making Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy permanent would make our debt problem 50 percent worse, and that’s coming from the independent, nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
For a party that rants and raves about inflation and the debt ceiling and who is fiscally responsible, MAGA Republicans are showing us that their policies are only going to make all of those problems worse. And it’s going to come at our expense.
Gibbs Léger: Very depressing to think about Colin.
Seeberger: It sure is. And with that, that is all the time we have for today. If there’s anything you’d like us to cover on the pod, hit us up on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky, and Threads @TheTentPod. That’s @TheTentPod.
Gibbs Léger: And stick around for my interview with María Teresa Kumar in just a beat.
Gibbs Léger: María Teresa Kumar is the founding president and CEO of Voto Latino. She’s also an Emmy-nominated MSNBC contributor. Under her leadership, Voto Latino has registered almost 2 million voters. She started her career as a legislative aide for California Congressman and Democratic Caucus Chair at Vic Fazio (D).
María Teresa, thank you so much for joining us on “The Tent.”
María Teresa Kumar: I’m absolutely thrilled to be here. Thank you.
Kumar: And it’s great to see you in the studio.
Gibbs Léger: So obviously Trump’s tariffs are top of mind for everybody this week. We’ve seen countless economists crunching the numbers on how this latest round will increase inflation, raise prices, and hurt everyone from seniors to farmers.
So I’m curious for your thoughts here as a political strategist. Are Trump’s priorities good for the economy and the middle-class voters he says he’s fighting for? How do you think everyday Americans will react to these tariffs as they roll out?
Kumar: Well, this is what’s really wild. You mentioned Vic Fazio, and he was my first boss on the hill. And my portfolio under Vic was trade and tariffs and all of this stuff. And I’m having flashbacks. In the late nineties, what we were trying to do was be the leaders in trade policy globally.
And by doing so, not only were we able to help set prices, but we were the leaders in making sure that any trade deal that we were involved in had environmental standards, had human rights standards. That we were the beginning of this era where we recognized that if Mexico did widgets really well and we assembled them here very well, then that was actually going to drive down the cost for all consumers.
And what Trump is doing across his policies—whether we’re talking about trade, whether we’re talking about how he’s reimagined globalization, or the lack thereof—he’s really taking policies of the late 1800s and early 1900s. And it’s as if his education just abruptly stopped and went off a cliff.
And so one of the biggest challenges we’re going to see with this idea of “trust me” is that he just doesn’t have the interest or curiosity of modernization and actually meeting us where we are. If you recall, under his first administration, he was going after Japan. And then he realized, “oh, actually we like the Japanese. Let’s go after China.”
Kumar: Right? He’s actually not current.
And sadly, all of these tariffs are just a major tax on the American people. And I can tell you that one of the number one reasons why Latinos shifted to Trump the last election was because prices were so high, and the vote was a cry for help. And what we’re seeing among the American public—whether we’re talking about farmers, whether we’re talking about Wall Street, whether we’re talking about someone in retail trying to make ends meet every day—they haven’t felt the brunt yet of what this taxation means. And this idea that he can get up and go for the weekend to go golfing—it’s very Marie Antoinette of him, of “let them eat cake.”
Gibbs Léger: That was very bizarre. And I imagine it’s going to make its way to some ads at some point.
This administration has been lawless in a number of ways, including snatching people off the street and sending them out of the country without due process. 60 Minutes shared a stunning report over the weekend showing that 75 percent of Venezuelans who’ve been sent to El Salvador’s “mega-prisons from” the U.S. have no criminal record whatsoever.
Now on a personal level, I’m curious how this moment has felt for you and others in the Latino community. This is stuff we’ve never really seen in America in my lifetime.
Kumar: No, but again, it goes back to a policy that we saw in the late 1930s, right? Every policy that we’re hearing that relates to the othering of Americans and the othering of people that are here trying to make it because there was some promise, right? The stories that we’re hearing coming out of the prison in El Salvador is utterly disgusting.
This idea that we can actually make a contract with someone and pay them to house innocent people—but even if it was someone that was allegedly a gang member, we are not going by our rules and our Constitution of due process for every single person. And shame on us that we’re allowing it.
The stories that we’re starting to hear are excruciating painful. And it’s on our watch and our taxpayer money. We are now hearing that university students that are here completely—because there’s always this talk of, “Well, you have to do right by the law”—well even those young people are getting their visas pulled.
The young woman in Massachusetts who simply penned an op-ed—it made worldwide sensations because it was her getting basically stopped by the equivalent of a Gestapo. And there’s no reason in America that free speech should be barred. If anything, it’s a pillar of our democracy. And there will be folks that say, “Well, you know, they’re students here, and they should know better because they’re international.”
Actually, the reason people come to study in the United States is to better understand all facets of our culture and our democracy so that they can have the strength to organize against the tyrannies of their government. And what we are doing is that we’re actually telling Americans and our allies that that is not a place for them here.
And that is, I think—I would say a pock on our house. Because it prevents young people to really understand what democracy means so, again, they can export it and organize against tyranny, right?
Gibbs Léger: It’s like this administration has no concept of the term “soft power” at all.
So we’ve seen the courts diverge when it comes to these cases. As of this recording, the Supreme Court has paused the deadline on Monday to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, someone who was mistakenly deported after lower court judges said the government needed to return him to United States earlier this week. On Monday, they also allowed the Trump administration to use an 18th-century law, the Alien Enemies Act, to enforce rapid removals of many immigrants from this country for now.
I’m curious for the role you think we will see the courts play when it comes to their most extreme immigration plans. Do you think they’ll be effective in reining in what has seemed like quite illegal actions? And is there a world in which the court is an animating issue for voters in the next election, like what we saw in the 2022 midterms?
Kumar: You know, you just mentioned these two cases that head to the Supreme Court, and what I found most striking were the dissenters. Amy Coney Barrett very much—who was appointed by Trump—dissented fiercely, saying that these laws are reminiscent of our past when we created internment camps for Americans who happened to be Japanese. And she asked in her dissent, “Have we learned nothing?”
The fact that the conservative judge is raising that flag and saying that we’re on the precipice of a constitutional crisis, more or less, should really make every single American, regardless of political stripes, stand up and figure out how to organize quickly.
Right now, there’s several conversations happening behind closed doors in Washington among individuals that were Republican, independent, libertarian, Democratic, and the one concern was—and optimism, really—was that the courts were going to stand the ground. They were the ones that were going to be able to ensure that there was no overreach by this administration.
And what we’re seeing is a weakening of that resolve. So you have federal cases that are by the American people and by the law, and then you have the Supreme Court being wishy-washy and moving the goalpost. And so ensuring that every single American maintains our agency as citizens, it is our job to make sure that we are calling, we’re attending town halls—congressional town halls and our Senate town halls. Because now, the brunt of this protest and ensuring that they don’t keep crossing lines is going to have to be on every single American citizen holding their members of Congress and the Senate accountable.
Gibbs Léger: Yes, yes. And I think people are buoyed by what they saw over the weekend—not just here in D.C., but all across the country in red states, blue states, red cities: people speaking up and saying, “This is not OK.”
Shifting gears a bit, we’ve heard so much about the shifts in Latino voters’ political leanings during the last election. You just talked about it.
So I’m curious, from both your work in the field and any polling that you’re tracking or conducting, how are Latino voters responding to Trump’s terms so far? And how do they view Republican plans to pass massive tax cuts for the wealthy while slashing Medicaid and other services that some members of the Latino community rely on?
Kumar: My team, we just concluded 10 days of focus groups. And one of the biggest charges that we did was, what did the right do right? And it’s a yearlong study on what’s the efficacy of the messaging that the Republicans are doing. Because it’s really not their policy, right? It’s definitely their messaging.
And one of the things that we did was not only look at the traditional polling and focus groups of folks that voted Democratic both elections and those who switched parties. That’s usually where the analysis ends. We took it a step further and we also looked at the Trump and Biden voter that sat it out in 2024.
And we did that because we started seeing certain patterns of the voters, even among the Democratic base, who stayed with the Democrats. And it was true for the people that switched parties. All of them are at the front lines, more or less, of economic vulnerability. Everything has to go perfectly right every single day in the lives of these voters because one hiccup can take them down the spiral of homelessness, lack of health care, lack of child care, sickness. I mean, just living on that brink.
And what we heard over and over again is, “We voted or didn’t vote or tried to vote one more time for the Democrats, but the system is really failing us. We don’t see upward mobility.” We had a young man last year that was part of our focus group, 22 years old. Baggage claim carrier in Phoenix, Arizona. By every matrix, he was doing it right. And he, in passing, mentioned that housing was too much. And we dug in, like, “Well, when housing is too much for you, what exactly are you trying to tell us?” He’s like, “Well, my housing is so expensive that I have to figure out if I can afford one meal or two meals a day.” Twenty-two years old.
It was the very first time that we saw in the last election that 18- to 29-year-old Latinos, mostly single, 35 percent of them had to go on government assistance, and 22 percent of them had to find a second job. These are issues often associated with a single mother, not a 22-year-old. And so, one of the things that we have to remind ourselves—because I know that, especially for the progressive movement, you’ll hear, “Well, they’re getting what they paid for, and that’s what they voted for.”
No, it was almost as if people were casting a ballot to win the lotto. And what I mean by that is they needed to change their lot in life because so many millions of Americans are hanging by a thread. It was almost like they were throwing a pebble into the well and saying, “I hope this works.”
And so I do think that what we’re seeing with the tariffs, with immigration, the threatening Social Security, pulling back on access to insulin and inhalers—is an opportunity for the Democratic party to fill that void, remind people it’s not normal. But also, be authentic and frank in saying that the systems of the past were not working, and that’s OK.
You don’t take a sledgehammer to the [U.S.] Department of Education. You say: The Department of Education, when it was created, was created in the last century to address the issues of the last century. But now, we have an opportunity to modernize the Department of Education for this century.
And I think that if we start embracing that innovation and recognizing that there is a role for public servants in our institutions, that we can continue to thrive as a country. But we have to acknowledge the deficiencies that have led us here.
Gibbs Léger: Well you really answered my next question, which was going to be that I think that Democrats are sort of at a turning point here, and they have an opportunity to really respond to the harms that are coming out of this administration.
So I’ll just give you an opportunity to expand more, if you have other thoughts about policies and messages that Democrats should be focusing on in order to win back this community—or make inroads.
Kumar: Yeah, well they haven’t lost. It’s more of, “you haven’t done anything for me lately”—in a big way. People take for granted that the reason that our economy right after the pandemic was booming, why we were the nation to recover the fastest, was because you had a caste system in the United States called essential workers who didn’t have the luxury of saying, “Actually, I’m going to stay home.”
Those essential workers were disproportionately Latino, disproportionately undocumented, who lost loved ones. There’s about a quarter million Latino children—who are American kids, for the most part—who are orphans because they lost their parent during the pandemic. They’re disproportionately straddled with preexisting conditions as a result of COVID[-19], who never fully recovered economically, but were so gracious and patriotic enough that allowed us to do so.
And now it’s an opportunity for the Democratic Party to recognize that their base voter is the working class that they haven’t abandoned, but they have to acknowledge where the faults have been.
But if you were to ask me what I would say to the Democratic leadership right now—whether it’s Sen. [Chuck] Schumer (D-NY) or [Rep. Hakeem] Jeffries (D-NY)—every single night after the president has come out with his executive orders and his shenanigans, we should have a democratic response—every single day—that says, “This is what happened to you today—X, Y, and Z—and this is how we’re thinking of addressing it.” Because we are in a propaganda warfare in the likes that we’ve never seen.
And imagine if they did that. Then, at least the majority of Americans will say, “Actually there is an option outside of the Republicans, and that option is a viable one.” Because if you were to ask me what my concern is looking into 2026, is that the voters that were soft in 2020 trying to give the system a chance, they’re going to opt out.
The fact that a third of registered voters in the last election opted out because they didn’t see a resolution to their needs by either party—that’s the greatest threat to our democracy, that that base will grow.
Gibbs Léger: Right, exactly.
Kumar: That’s opportunity, right? It’s like, address that. We can address that.
Gibbs Léger: And that’s what was going to be my last question, is that there seems to be this opportunity ahead of Democrats and progressives. You look at what happened in Wisconsin and even the movements in Florida, right? There could be some momentum that’s building here.
So leave our listeners with your last piece of advice, taking what has been going on for the past two weeks, and how do we continue that momentum into 2026?
Kumar: I’m actually going to take us into the time machine of 2018.
Gibbs Léger: OK, let’s go.
Kumar: And in the time machine of the 2018, we had tens of thousands of Americans who decided that they were going to run for office. They had never run for office, but they occupied everything from state legislatures, city councils, all the way to Congress. In 2018, we had, as a result, the most diverse Congress in our nation’s history—the most women, the most African Americans, the most Latino, the most Islamic, the most Native Americans, the most veterans, the most young people. It was one of the youngest classes since the 1970s.
And that body got together and produced 400 pieces of legislation that spoke to our values, that were truly transformative. That laid the blueprint for when Biden came into office, and he put a lot of those blueprints together—whether we’re talking about the CHIPS Act and investing in our environment; whether we talked about child care, ensuring that even the CHIPS Act had childcare provisions in it; lowering of insulin; creating an Office of Gun Reform at the White House; all the way on down.
And we passed really big legislation, but it’s because Americans protested, registered, voted, organized, and ran themselves for office. Our democracy is only as good as our nurture. Our nurture is literally our vote, bearing witness and taking action. And I appreciate that we are living through a very difficult moment—but even in this moment, we are the ones that are dictating the rules of the game, here and abroad.
And we have to get out of the head space that we don’t have agency. Because if anything, we are an incredibly creative, innovative population, and we have to get back to our roots. Because how you fight in this moment is by standing up, rolling up your sleeves, organizing your friends, and I’d encourage your audience to consider running for office.
Gibbs Léger: All right. Well those are some great words to end on. María Teresa, I want to thank you so much for joining us on “The Tent,” and thank you for all the work that you and your organization do.
Kumar: Such a pleasure. Hope to see you soon.
Kumar: Thank you so much for having us.
Gibbs Léger: Well, that’s going to do it for us folks. Be sure to go back and check out previous episodes. But before we go, we got a lot to talk about, Colin.
Gibbs Léger: All right, let’s just get March Madness out of the way.
Seeberger: We are wearing red, but unfortunately the Cougars, poor Houston, did not pull through.
Gibbs Léger: Poor Houston. I mean, I guess I should just be happy that Duke didn’t win. So I will let that console me even though I almost won my bracket.
Seeberger: Well, speaking of Duke, Daniella—
Gibbs Léger: Good segue, Colin.
Seeberger: I try. We have to unpack the season finale of “The White Lotus.”
Gibbs Léger: Oh my goodness.
Gibbs Léger: It was so good. Obviously, spoiler alert, because we’re talking about this.
Gibbs Léger: I was like, if these writers kill off Lochlan, I am going to riot.
Seeberger: I would be right there with you.
Gibbs Léger: Oh my goodness. I was like, “No, not the baby. Leave him alone!”
Seeberger: Adore that kid.
Gibbs Léger: I adore him. Yes, I know he’s got a lot of issues that he’s going to need to work out in lots of therapy.
Seeberger: He’s a pleaser, Daniella.
Gibbs Léger: He is a pleaser. I was like, dude, what do you say? Oh my God.
Seeberger: Oh my God. Yes. That was wild.
Gibbs Léger: That was wild. Can I say, the most unexpected thing for me was becoming a Saxon fan? Here we are.
Seeberger: I mean, he was definitely for a particular palette early on in the season.
Seeberger: But yeah, he finished strong.
Seeberger: And I love the attachment that he ended up developing with Chelsea throughout the closing episodes and loved how he, oh, picked up a book?
Gibbs Léger: And kept reading it?
Seeberger: And kept reading.
Gibbs Léger: And I was like—that look though that he gave?
Gibbs Léger: I know. When he saw them reunite on the beach?
Gibbs Léger: I was like, an Emmy for those tears.
Seeberger: Yes, he has talent. He’s not just a pretty face.
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. So that’s a nepo baby I can get behind. He’s talented.
Seeberger: We have to talk about the Ratliffs.
Gibbs Léger: I mean, if she doesn’t win all the Emmys and just all the awards.
Gibbs Léger: Just amazing.
Gibbs Léger: So, so good. And for people who maybe aren’t familiar with the variations of Southern accents, just like people from the Northern part of the country all sound different, people from the South all sound different. And when I talked to my friends who grew up in Raleigh, Durham, we’re like, “Yeah, she got it.”
Gibbs Léger: “No! Tsunami!” It is definitely a wealthy—
Gibbs Léger: It is who they are.
Gibbs Léger: Wealthy, white Southerners.
Gibbs Léger: And I thought she played it so well, to be a funny but unlikable person.
Gibbs Léger: Like, yeah. She was amazing.
Gibbs Léger: Piper. Listen, you know what? Piper was going through it.
Gibbs Léger: And I think her realizing that she was actually the person that her mother said she was all along was really, really hard for her.
Gibbs Léger: And she realized that like, “Oh, I need organic food, and I perhaps need air conditioning. So maybe a year at this monastery is not the one for me.”
Seeberger: Maybe this isn’t for me.
Seeberger: Yeah. And I also loved how she was like, “Lochlan, let me make my own mistakes. Don’t do this. Don’t do this.”
Gibbs Léger: It was really good. And then, I know we have to wrap, but like, Mook is the villain of this season for me.
Seeberger: A thousand percent.
Seeberger: She’s terrible.
Gibbs Léger: How dare she?
Seeberger: She’s terrible.
Gibbs Léger: Like, Gaitok is a wonderful, delightful human being who’s just trying to make a living, and he’s not good enough for her?
Gibbs Léger: OK. Then leave him alone. But then like, to make him feel bad about it?
Seeberger: Yeah, it was nasty.
Gibbs Léger: It was nasty work.
Seeberger: Last thing, just because we can’t talk about this and not talk about Belinda.
Seeberger: So I thought, speaking of Gaitok and Belinda, I loved the fact that they both basically betrayed their true selves in the finale. I was like, yes, all of them have faults!
Seeberger: And all of them are going to have to leave Thailand with that on their brains and figure out how they move forward from here.
Gibbs Léger: I think that’s true. Although I will say, Belinda never promised that man that they were going to go into business together.
Seeberger: That is true. She did not.
Gibbs Léger: Whereas Tanya did.
Gibbs Léger: Yes. But I felt bad for him.
Seeberger: But taking that blood money? Come on.
Gibbs Léger: I know. I know. Oh, and for those of you who are new fans of Walton Goggins, welcome aboard the train. There is plenty of room for you.
Gibbs Léger: We love him.
Gibbs Léger: Love, love, love. All right. That is going to do it for us this week. Be sure and take care of yourselves because I am suffering from allergies, and I’m sure you are, too.
Seeberger: It’s nuts out there.
Gibbs Léger: It really is. Take care, and we will talk to you next week.
Gibbs Léger: “The Tent” is a podcast from the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It’s hosted by me, Daniella Gibbs Léger, and co-hosted by Colin Seeberger. Erin Phillips is our lead producer, Kelly McCoy is our supervising producer, Mishka Espey is our booking producer, and Muggs Leone is our digital producer. Hai Phan, Olivia Mowry, and Toni Pandolfo are our video team.
Views expressed by guests of “The Tent” are their own, and interviews are not endorsements of a guest’s perspectives. You can find us on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.