Transcript: America This Week, Episode 70, January 05, 2024

Walter and Matt return from the holidays to discuss Claudine Gay's resignation, Trump's ballot battle, and Anton Chekhov's The Lady with the Dog

Matt Taibbi: All right. Welcome to America This Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: Walter, how was your holiday?

Walter Kirn: My holiday was splendid in a way that my life usually isn’t. On New Year’s Eve, I was the guest of Fontainebleau Hotel in Las Vegas along with my wife, and we were able to join in a kind of celebration that I thought had passed from this earth. There were truffles in baskets, black truffles, the size of golf balls. It was actually like the driving range where you get a bucket of balls, except you got a bucket of truffles at this party.

Matt Taibbi: Wow.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. They made risotto. I’d never seen a whole truffle before. They’re like lumps of coal.

Matt Taibbi: Let alone a bucket of them.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. And the thief in me, there’s a thief in all of us I like to think, saw these buckets of truffles and just wanted to liberate a single one. But I was sure that the Vegas security net was as tight as ever, so I didn’t get grabby.

Matt Taibbi: Oh, that’s true. Because the eye in the sky. You’d end up in a back room with Robert De Niro breaking your hand bones with a hammer, right?

Walter Kirn: Yeah. Or worse, Joe Pesci.

Matt Taibbi: Joe Pesci, yeah, exactly. With a pen, yeah.

Walter Kirn: But I was able to see the fireworks of the Las Vegas Strip from the top of the tallest building in Nevada, the tallest habitable building. There’s a tower in Las Vegas that’s taller that doesn’t have rooms, the Stratosphere. But Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck were in attendance at the same party.

Matt Taibbi: Wow.

Walter Kirn: I was able to glimpse their love from afar.

Matt Taibbi: Did it have an aura? Was it visible?

Walter Kirn: It was visible in the form of many security guards. Here’s what it takes to be a Hollywood a-lister. You can have a ring of security guards at a party where everybody else is pretty fancy. It’s been preselected. There was a private elevator. You had to have wristbands. So there aren’t any paparazzi or anyone to molest you, but still you’re ringed by however many glowering guards. And behind that group of guards, you party as though you are just a regular person, as though you don’t notice the fact that no one else can come near you except those who have been pre-approved to come past the perimeter. So I gawked rather like I would at the penguin exhibit to see how they were doing back there. He was in a white suit.

Matt Taibbi: I wonder, is that to keep people from approaching or is that a real security issue? Or is it a status symbol?

Walter Kirn: It’s definitely a status symbol. I don’t think there was anyone who, as I say, posed much of a threat. It kept me from approaching, I’ll tell you that. I didn’t want to have to give a password or go through whatever frisking was necessary to advance 12 inches across that barrier. But it was a Vegas party in style. There was caviar, not just truffles. There was a hidden room where sushi was dispensed, sushi that you could not have obtained legally in any other way.