Election Profit Makers · Jon Kimball & David Rees

Episode 348: Space Smells Like Something Burning

September 30, 2025·54 min·4 clips

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth tells generals to stop being fat and declares the 'war on warriors' is over.

John sounds wiped out. David treats coffee like a small ritual object, then says the week in the United States is terrible, and the show more or less proves him right. The opening banter gives way to Pete Hegseth gathering generals for what sounds like a fitness lecture. It is funny for a second, because Pentagon authority wearing gym-coach clothes is a strange sight. Then the joke starts to rot. The hosts move into budgets, aid, and the ugly little trick where blocked aid can vanish if enough time passes. That bothers them less as procedure than as a separation-of-powers fight. From there, Fox News seeps into everything. Their argument is blunt: status does not make anyone immune to propaganda. Supreme Court justices can live inside the same warped loop as everybody else, only with much more power. Alito and Clarence Thomas get named. So do their spouses: Alito's wife and the flag, Thomas's wife and January 6th. It all becomes one nasty picture of institutions taking conspiracy politics into the walls. The word they keep coming back to is crazy. Donald Trump, Hegseth, Kash Patel, and the Court end up in the same bleak comic chain, and the punchline is that the chain is real. David keeps landing on the same disbelief: so much of this is happening because of Trump. That makes the system feel absurd, frightening, and very American. The ending backs away from dread with Patreon plugs, stickers, Discord, prediction questions, skyline requests, bird recordings, and a simple wish that listeners make it through the week.

As heard by us

A sick-day episode turns into a sharp, furious look at fitness talk, Fox News distortion, and Trump-era power.

The episode opens with John fighting a cold, then pivots into a blistering take on Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, gathering generals and lecturing them about physical fitness.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For when the news feels absurd enough to need coffee and profanity.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Election Profit Makers