Ep. #555: Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Markos Moulitsas, Steve Schmidt

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Start the clock.

Thank you very much.

How are you?

I kiss you all, but you know, there's a virus.

Thank you very much.

Oh, what a crowd.

Thank you.

You're so good to thank you.

Thank you.

You have my utmost appreciation

for, you know, testing and all this stuff.

You had to get, you must have nothing better to do.

I really appreciate you doing this.

I really do.

And you're in a terrific mood.

It must be because it's Valentine's Day weekend.

Are you excited?

Everybody, oh my gosh.

Everyone's in the mood.

Army Hammer told his girlfriend today, I'd eat you all over again.

It was.

But it's hard in lockdown, right?

Valentine's Day.

It's hard to be romantic, yeah.

I said to someone the other day, let me get that refrigerator door for you.

I'm trying to be.

Oh, it's okay.

But I tell you, yeah, we're halfway through February.

I still can't wait for last year to be over.

What the fuck?

I thought this was going to be a better year.

And I tell you,

Valentine's Day, nothing gets you revved up for romance like a solid week of bloody insurrection videos, huh?

Were you watching the impeachment all week?

It's just about ending.

Yeah, impeachment.

The Democrats, of course, laid out a very powerful case that Trump incited a violent insurrection against his own government.

And the Republicans laid out today a very powerful case that they don't give a shit.

That's...

Yeah,

they really don't.

Have you seen their lawyers?

Whoever was, I mean, it's pretty pathetic.

One of them, though, is an observant Jew, although he thinks Trump is innocent, so not that observant.

But some of the, I mean,

the video, they were smart to just show the video, let the tapes do the talking, and there's some amazing stuff there, including a hero, that officer Eugene Goodman, the guy who, you know, he really saved Pelosi and met Romney.

He turned around and got him going the right way.

And Mike Pence, they were going to hang Mike Pence.

And he said, quick, Mr.

Pence, your people are revolting.

And Pence said, no, they're just suffering economic anxiety.

All right.

But here's what I love about this.

Trump fans are still claiming that the people in the video, even though they're wearing Trump hats and Trump shirts and carrying Trump signs and beating on Trump targets with Trump flags, reading Trump tweets, are actually Antifa.

Really, that's their defense.

It wasn't us, it's people dressed up like us, acting like us.

I tell you, that Antifa School for the Performing Arts is one hell of a dramatic college.

They are really good.

Wow.

And this was pretty funny.

It came out today that during the whole impeachment trial, really since Trump's been out of the White House, Melania has spent most of her time at the spa.

Her favorite relaxation passage is the silent treatment.

That's

also

it's the Chinese New Year.

Oh,

wow.

Why are we so excited?

People are like, the Chinese.

Okay, great.

And listen, China's kicking our ass in every way, and they have an unmanned Chinese spacecraft now that is orbiting Mars.

Its mission is to land a rover on the surface and look for signs of ancient life and then cough on it and kill it.

Also, they're not the only ones.

I'll tell you, we're getting America, poor America.

There's a spacecraft now from the United Arab Emirates that's also entered the Mars orbit, and its goal is to make contact with intelligent alien life and make sure the women cover their faces.

That's their goal.

And

our friend Marjorie Taylor Greene.

You know her, right?

She's in the news.

Okay, now this is from the Daily Mail.

I'm only reporting what they're reporting.

They're saying that she cheated.

She

was caught cheating on her husband.

She used to, at the gym, she used to run a gym.

That was her job before she was in Congress.

She ran a fucking gym in Alpharetta, Georgia.

And one of the guys she apparently, allegedly had an affair with was a polyamorous tantric sex guru.

Something tells me that in Alpharetta, Georgia, a tantric sex guru is any man who's heard of the clitoris.

I think that's what that means.

I mean,

please.

Tantric sex guru.

You mean some guy you met on Tinder who fucked you on a yoga mat.

That's what they're talking about.

And but it's currently, it caused a lot of trouble in the home there, for Marjorie Telegram.

The husband found out when she came home one night with Lube on her straitjacket, so that was bad.

And then also the Daily Mail says she was having an affair, not just with the tantric sex guru, but with the manager of the gym.

And, you know, that's bad to have an affair with the gym manager because you're all gung-ho at first, and then after a few weeks, you stop coming.

All right, we got a great show.

We have Steve Smith and Marcos Melises.

But first up, he represents Illinois' 16th congressional district.

Wow, and he's on our show.

He's the founder of the Country First Pact.

Please welcome Adam Kinzinger.

Adam,

how are you, sir?

I'm good.

How are you?

Thank you for doing this show.

I think we all know why you're here.

You are one of 10 Republicans in the House who voted to impeach.

So it's interesting the way our country works now.

We're so tribal.

I bet you right now have a lot of new friends and a lot of new enemies.

Is that true?

Yeah, that is true.

And, you know, it's, you're right.

I think we're picking tribes.

It's kind of like inability to make independent decisions now.

And so when you're one of 10 people that vote to impeach the president and you cross him, you get a lot of the base mad.

But you also see a lot of people that understand, you know, we need a Republican Party that maybe isn't crazy and can actually be

a productive member of a government that has basically two parties.

Right.

When was the last time you think we had that?

Not really.

Look, it's been a while.

I think definitely

since President Trump, we haven't,

but I think it's even really honestly since I've been in politics.

This is my 11th year.

And if you think about it, we have learned, and I can only speak, you know, as a Republican looking at the Republicans, is we've learned that you can get elected on a steady diet of fear.

And so every fundraising email is, send me five bucks to make sure that

Nancy Pelosi doesn't destroy your family.

And it's everything is this diet of fear.

And eventually there's there's no wonder there's real damage done to democracy.

So that's what my whole idea of country first is all about is A, putting the country first before the party, but B, having a little bit of optimism about the future of the greatest country in the world that knows no limits except our own imagination.

I can't get my solar turned on, so I'm not going to argue with you there.

I think we have a few more limits than that.

But anyway, you mentioned family.

I know certain members of your own family, did they not claim that you were now possessed by the devil?

Yeah, so I was over at my parents' house, and out of nowhere, I got a registered letter to my parents' house that same day.

And I read it, and it was just, I mean, two handwritten pages, really tiny letters, really angry, a lot of caps, just saying I'm now in the devil's army because I dared turn against President Trump.

And actually, I'll tell you, I got a second certified letter reiterating that, by the way, about two weeks ago.

But the thing about that is, I'm actually happy I got it because it really woke me up to the level of brainwashing in some people and the understanding they truly believe that they are fighting against the forces of evil just because, you know, the person that they thought was the second coming basically turned out to lose.

Do you believe there is such a thing as a devil?

I do, yeah, absolutely.

I do.

And I think, but I think when you look at it, look,

I was in.

Okay, but then you're talking about brainwashing.

And, you know, I mean, if you believe that there's such a thing as a devil to begin with, aren't we halfway to nonsense right there?

Well, it's what you believe.

But listen, I'll tell you, I was sitting there on Insurrection Day, and I've got to tell you, I felt literally like pure evil coming into the Capitol.

And I've talked to many of the officers, including Officer Fanon, who was the guy that was drugged down the stairs and told to kill him with his own gun.

And he's like, Man, I have never seen people like that.

So I don't care, you know, if you call it evil or not, it was something that was crazing these people to believe that if you go into the Capitol and destroy it, you're somehow doing a service for your country.

So I know you feel, and I'm glad you do, and I wish you the best with this project, that you can reclaim the Republican Party.

But

I'm looking at the numbers, Congressman, and they're not.

You would need a swing of about 40 points.

I mean, Trump wants to start his own party.

33 percent of Republicans are down with that right away.

Another 37 percent say

probably,

maybe.

So only 30 percent

are with Republican Classic.

For you to reclaim the party

Again, I think you would need a swing of about 40 percentage points.

How can you really accomplish that?

So it is Herculean.

And the thing I've looked at it is there has been no counter voice in the party to Donald Trump.

Everybody's been scared.

And that's where I've finally decided just to be extremely bold about it: to say people need to hear the other side of this.

They need to remember that there is a really rich history of the Republican Party.

We can be better.

And so I basically just did a video and put it on countryfirst.com with a one, by the way.

But I did that with the intention of just saying what I wanted to say.

And the reaction was amazing.

We had 20,000, you know, email sign-ups in 24 hours.

And what it showed, it's not just disaffected Republicans, it's independents, and it's even some Democrats that are like, we just want a sane Republican Party.

So all I can do is put it all in the field.

I may fail.

That's okay.

I'm at peace with trying.

But somebody's got to do something.

You're willing to lose your job.

I mean, isn't that the...

That's...

You got to...

You say you've been in Congress 11 years?

Right?

I have, yeah.

Okay.

And you served overseas.

I mean, you've been in worse places, obviously, than Congress, right?

Okay.

Yeah.

Tell me what is so great about this job that people are willing to sell their souls.

Is it just because you get a staff, you're a celebrity?

Is that it?

Because these people, because let's be honest, you don't need any skills to do the Congress.

I'm saying not you, but I'm just saying it's one of the few jobs in America where there's no checks.

All you have to do is get people to vote for you.

You can be the biggest Moron in the world, and and I've interviewed some of them.

And you can get all you need is a clip-on tie and the votes, and you're there.

Why, why, what is it?

Is that really what it is?

They just don't want to give up the job that gives them a kind of a celebrity?

I think it is.

I think some of it is, it's just fear.

But I think it's also you spend your whole life trying to get to Congress.

It's a big deal to get to Congress, and then all of a sudden, when you think that's your terminal job or you're going to go higher, you live in fear of anything you do.

But I'll tell you, Bill, what I've constantly said to people is this.

You know, we, as a military guy myself, and been in the war, is like, if we're going to ask young people to be willing to give their life for the country, you know, how dare we not be willing to give our career for something that may not be just like warfare, but maybe just as important in the future?

Okay.

So,

all right.

So here's your toughest question you're going to get from me.

I don't understand this.

2016,

you watched Trump run.

You said, whoa,

I'm a Republican, but I can't vote for this guy.

You watched him for four years as president.

You didn't vote for him in 2016.

You voted for him in 2020 after you saw what he did as president.

Explain that to me.

And who did you vote for in 2016?

2016, I wrote somebody in.

But look, in 20, if I could go back in time, I wouldn't vote.

I don't even remember now, actually.

So I didn't vote for any of the Tommy Analysts.

No, I really.

But we're doing so well.

That's it.

Come on.

But in 2020.

Say anybody.

Your wife.

Good Rodney.

I wrote you in.

I wrote you in.

Okay, I wrote you in.

But, you know, listen, in 2020,

so you're ashamed of your fictitious write-in vote?

I am now, yes.

But like

in 2020, I'll tell you, if I could go back in time now, I would vote for Joe Biden in a heartbeat.

Because, well, the thing that differentiated a lot for me is after the election and undermining the whole system of the election, is you can even say crazy stuff as president.

When you start to say that the election doesn't work, it's rigged, it's everything, that is step one or step two and three of destroying a constitutional republic.

Right.

Oh, I couldn't agree more.

So,

why

why didn't Nancy Pelosi ask you and Liz Cheney, who also had the guts to stand up, why didn't they ask you to be impeachment managers?

Wouldn't that have been a much, I'm not saying it would have changed the verdict, because of course he's not going to get convicted, but wouldn't that have been a much more

compelling case for the country to watch with two Republicans as impeachment managers?

I think in theory it would be for someone.

You would have taken.

I remember back even.

You would have done it?

Maybe.

I don't know.

Probably, maybe.

I'm going to look.

I don't know.

I never even was asked, so I never even thought about it.

I didn't think it was a possibility.

But listen, during the impeachment vote, you know, I wanted to go down and speak on it, and I asked for time from the Democrats and got a minute, you know, to their credit.

But I always thought that would have made sense if they'd have given some Republicans some time to go down and make the case.

And instead, it was, you know, 45-second speeches.

But there's a lot of politics.

I mean, everybody wants to have their say, and there's limited time and all that.

What do you expect for your next primary fight if you do run again?

Good thing.

It's going to be fun.

I mean, you know, I've been through a lot of primaries and, you know, people always think they can beat me.

And the truth is, you just pay attention to what people want and quit peddling in fear.

People actually react to optimism, fear when it's legit.

I'm scared of COVID, and I'm scared of disunity in this country.

I'm not scared of Democrats.

You know, they're just, they're sometimes.

That's not who you should be scared of.

You should be scared of the Republicans to your right who are going to primarily.

Right?

Sometimes that's what you're saying.

That's what you're scared of.

Right.

That's what I'm saying.

What's going to go on in that fight?

That's not going to be pretty for you.

No, I think a lot of the time it's a paper tiger because, quite honestly, I think Donald Trump becomes less and less relevant every day.

If you go out there and you tell people the truth, I have.

I've had the right come against me in every primary, and I win huge, you know, huge.

And I think it's going to happen again this time.

I'm going to go out and I'm going to fight hard.

And if I lose, I'm at peace, my friend.

All right, good.

If you want me to campaign for you, I'm there.

All right, thank you.

Adam Kissinger, we appreciate you being here.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Hey, how you doing?

All right.

Ah, it's been a while.

He's the founder of the Daily Co's and co-host of the Daily Co's podcast, The Brief.

Marcos Melitsis is back with us after too long.

And he is founder of SES Strategies and MSNBC contributor.

Our friend Steve Schmidt is over here.

Steve, great to see you.

Okay, I'm just going to, I'm not going to make a big deal about this every week, but we introduced this week.

This is my days waiting for solar calendar.

It's now up to 1089.

Show the picture of my shed.

This took three years to build.

Three years to get the permits for that.

So I'll try to hold my

anger at the arrogance of this state.

And just give you the fun fact I read in the paper this week.

When the virus hit Hebei, H-E-B-E-I, is that how you pronounce that city in China?

Anyway, this is soon after it was in Wuhan, China erected entire towns

of prefab housing, and it started the next morning.

Now, I'm not saying we're a dictatorship that can move that fast, but entire towns to quarantine people and three years for that shed.

So, I guess my first question is, it just seems to me that all of our wounds, except for 9-11, which really wasn't mostly our fault,

seem to be self-inflicted.

When you think about electing Trump, when you think about the Iraq war, when you think about the financial meltdown in 2008,

and stuff like this,

we cripple ourselves.

What is it about America that we are so inflicting our own wounds on ourselves?

Well, except for the solar, the other examples you all cited were all Republican presidencies.

So that's a common theme in a lot of these problems.

And it always feels, as a Democrat, and obviously I'm a partisan liberal Democrat, I always feel we're always cleaning up those messes, whether it's the Iraq war mess, whether it's the financial crisis mess, and now, Biden,

the COVID and the almost destruction of our American democracy.

So it is frustrating that once we sort of maybe bring a little bit of normalcy back, Republicans then come back and, or the American people come back, and then elect another Republican.

Now, Steve, are you still a Republican?

Now I'm a registered Democrat.

What?

So now you don't have to argue with that.

But

look,

I was always a moderate Republican, but look, here's what the deal is.

We have a real-life autocratic, fascistic movement in this country that has a floor of 40 percent.

We have 140 members of the House, seven members of the Senate, on January 6th, after a violent insurrection to destabilize the country takes place.

They voted, they stood up and voted in an act of Congress to nullify the results of certified state elections in a country where the states created the Congress and not the other way around, and in doing so, established a new Jim Crow caucus as they sought to wipe out millions of black votes just because

to keep into power the person who lost the election, making him dictator and ending the American Republic.

That's what's happened.

To your point, though, on politics, my politics has evolved over the years, and I don't necessarily look at it, though I'm broadly sympathetic to your point of view on Republicans and presidencies and the disaster.

I think we got a problem of big in this country.

Everywhere, of big, big banks, big tech, big everything, and everywhere you see big, the little guys getting fucked.

And big government.

Right?

Big government.

Look, I mean, Steve.

I did hear you talk against big government for a lot of years.

You couldn't have forgotten.

Of course, look, it's not just the solar calendar.

I mean, we built the Golden State Bridge and the Empire State Building in about nine months each in the 1930s.

I mean, if you tried to do that today, it would take

15 years?

Three years for the shed.

It's insane.

So, okay.

That was interesting what you just said, and I think I agree with all of it.

Let me read you what Joe Biden said about six weeks before the election.

He said: the thing that will fundamentally change with Donald Trump out of the White House, not a joke, that's him saying not a joke, not me,

is you will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends.

How's that epiphany going?

No.

Ten?

No.

I saw one of them.

Yeah, one, yeah.

Well,

okay, but they don't do epiphanies.

I feel like this is a problem with Democrats, always hoping

for something that, you know, it's the Charlie Brown with the football thing.

It just never,

they never come around.

You know, Susan Collins never does the right thing.

You know, Robert Mueller fucks it up.

Right.

Biden has learned, though, and it's actually sounded a lot like people like me for the last 10 years, where most Democrats, including Barack Obama, came in and they defined bipartisanship as working with Mitch McConnell.

And Mitch McConnell could deny those votes and deny that veneer of bipartisanship.

What Joe Biden has come in and said, it's not about

McConnell or any of those other Republicans, it's about the American people.

And the COVID Relief Act that's going through Congress right now has the approval rating of 86 percent.

That includes Republicans and independents.

That is is true bipartisanship.

F, Mitch McConnell,

he doesn't get the decision.

86% at the high number that they want, at the 1.9 trillion.

Do you think they did the impeachment the right way?

Because I think you're always going down a fool's path when you try to link rhetoric, unless it's really explicit, with actions.

And of course, that's what the Republicans are making the case for today.

I mean, it's a terrible case, and of course he is a criminal.

But the crime was denying that he lost the election.

I feel like making it about the riot

was sort of a distraction.

I mean, you can always make similar cases where people, and that's what the Republicans are doing.

And all week long on Fox News, all day show, was the one time he said in his speech on January 6th the word peaceful.

Okay?

I just feel like that's a very hard case to make.

Whereas they had a tape of him with the guy from Georgia saying, find me 11,000 new votes.

They had his voice on tape.

That to me would have been a better.

If you want to try him again, I think that I would have rather have seen the Republicans defend that.

The guy on tape saying, find me 11,000 new votes and I can win this thing.

I can't think of a more smoking-y gun than that.

Look,

these months that took place between Election Day and Inauguration Day are some of the most significant months in this nation's history.

What happened between Election Day and the 6th is faith and belief in American democracy was poisoned premeditatedly and deliberately by the President, by the cynical elites like Josh Hawley and Cruz, the paid liars like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingram.

They poisoned it.

And day by day, like an Exxon Valdez, like a BP deep order horizon, the numbers rose till 82 percent of Republicans said the fairest and freest election in American history was stolen.

We've invented a lot of great things in this country: airplanes, iPhones, ships that can land on the moon and return, penicillin, I say that for Trump,

all of these, all of these, all of these, all of these things.

The greatest thing we've ever invented in this country, bar none, is the peaceful transition of power that was uninterrupted from 1797 until 2020.

And separation of power.

And

that ended.

This process was blood-soaked in the United States of America because of the incitement to violence and insurrection of Donald Trump.

And the reality is

that the more clear it was, the more certain the outcome of that trial was,

the greater the necessity, the greater the moral necessity for it taking place.

Because what will be carved for the ages into the granite of the story of America are the men and women who betrayed their oaths, betrayed their juror oaths, betrayed their country, and allowing a president who sought to be a dictator walk out.

And make no mistake, Donald Trump runs the Republican Party.

That party is an autocratic party.

I love Congressman Kitzinger's courage in standing up.

A requirement to be in Congress ought to be the willingness, Democrat or Republican, to lay down your seat on a matter of principle, but he is in the minority.

The autocrats in that caucus are in the majority.

And anytime you have a coalition of convenience between conservatives and fascists, it is always the fascists who win.

And the first thing they do when they win is dispatch the naive conservatives who in coalition help bring them to power.

And the idea that in 2020 you vote for Donald Trump after he has the blood of hundreds of thousands of Americans on his hands from his lying, his poisoning of our democracy, it is inexplicable.

Inexplicable to me.

But that's what Kitsinger did.

I mean,

I think it's, I think it's, it's just, it's, it's utterly inexplicable.

So you're saying that the party is beyond redemption.

There is no place to meet in the middle with fascist white supremacists,

nationalists

who can't be brought to submit to the power of the power of the people.

Okay, but we can't.

But say we could magically wipe out the Trump Party.

We need another party, right?

We can't have just the Democratic Party because that's what we have in California, and I can't get my solar turned off.

That's the problem, is we do need a loyal opposition.

We used to have a sane one.

We do one.

And again, I'm a liberal Democrat and I loathe everything Republicans stand for.

And And I remember the times when John McCain was the devil and Mitt Romney, holy shit, Mitt Romney, if Mitt Romney wins, what's he going to do to America?

But there was never the sense that if we have a low turnout election, that we're going to lose our democracy.

And that's where we are right now.

Because the next fascist that the Republicans nominate is going to be smarter than Donald Trump.

Donald Trump was a fucking moron.

He announced his plants, everybody.

I'm going to.

I'm going to destroy the Postal Service so you guys can't vote by mail.

So us Democrats were like, okay, we're not going to vote by mail.

And it was easy, but he announced all these.

And you get somebody smart, you get a Putin-like character.

And then we're in real trouble.

And that's what's scary about this.

Josh Hawley, guys were a lot shrewder than Donald Trump.

I've always been confused by this, and I think this is part of the design flaw of progressivism, respectfully.

which is that there's literally no person in America who goes in for a driver's license, a social security card to local government, county government, state government, federal government, walks into that building and walks out and says, I want to put these people I just interacted in in charge of more stuff having to do in my life and give them more money to do with it.

If you want government to deliver services,

and we do need government to deliver services, we should all demand as taxpayers that those services be delivered with ruthless efficiency.

If we're going to have an anti-poverty program that spends billions of dollars for poor kids, we better make it work.

We need accountability, we need metrics, we need smart government.

And there's this idea that I think pervades Washington that it's inherently defensive to say because something costs a lot, there's injury by saying it doesn't work particularly well.

And so

the more progressive you are, the greater the demand for efficiency should be.

I keep saying this, but a lot of this is competence.

You know, we wouldn't even be talking about the Capitol riot if they had guarded the Capitol.

I mean, they shouldn't have gotten in.

I can't believe that

these guys who got in must have been like the dog that caught the car.

You know, they were like, fuck, we're in the building.

You know, they didn't think they were going to get in.

They talk about what if they had gotten Romney?

What if they had gotten Pelosi?

What if they gotten Pence?

What if they didn't get in at all?

I think the most amazing thing about the whole thing is watching the video.

And on the Senate floor, there's a cop who's armed, and a guy bursts in, the QAnon shaman, dressed like a Viking, and he basically talks to him.

I'm watching, shoot him.

Shoot him.

Like, if you burst into the United States, hey, if he was dressed like bin Laden, would you have shot him?

I mean, I just.

Yeah, you talk about competence, and that's a human nature thing, though.

I mean, anybody walking to talk to Conquest and have a really good

thing.

I mean, you can go down the list of customer service table.

And of course, so you have a big institution, obviously you have issues like that.

But are you going to doubt that Fossey and the CDC right now in three weeks of the Biden administration is not a million times more confident than under the United States?

Of course, so there is a difference in confidence.

Of course, I'm glad you mentioned the shaman because he this week was in the news.

He has renounced Trump.

A lot of these insurrectionists, no, it's true.

He, I mean, you have a picture of him.

I mean, he used to look really cool.

Here's.

I mean, that is cool.

I mean, that is a cool look.

Look what he looks like now.

I think he was way better wearing the pelt.

I mean, now he just looks like some asshole's boring you, telling you about how he brews his own beer.

You know, I mean, this is.

But when he was

kind of hot with the shaman thing, I must say, I kind of fell for it.

Well, he was hot there in the shaman world.

He opened shaman wear for men.

I don't know if you know about that, but

and I sent away on,

no,

and you could send away on Amazon, and you know, when you send away for the knockoff stuff I mean I got this

it's not really as good I mean and I got the spear you know

I got the spear too it's just I mean it's like

it was

it's so not as good as the it's like it's like the Beetle wig

of shaman wear.

You know, you don't really look like the Beatles.

Anyway, he said he was wrong about Trump.

We got to him.

I said, what else are you wrong about?

He gave us a little list.

Would you like to hear what else he said?

He said,

I was wrong to think you could micro-dose bath salts.

He was wrong.

He admitted he was wrong about that.

He said, I was wrong when they told me the insurrection was costume only.

He got that wrong.

I was wrong to use gorilla glue to keep the Viking hat on my head.

Ah, see, this guy.

I was wrong to think the way to get respect in prison is to talk about my allergies.

I was wrong to say all those things about Jews before I needed a lawyer.

Oh, yeah.

All right.

So,

hopefully.

All right.

Now let's get back to serious subjects.

Is my hair fucked up?

Oh, I'm.

Oh, sorry.

For the rest of this.

I read this week that the Georgia Senate election, which of course was the crucial one, but it cost eight,

I can't believe this number, $833 billion.

That's almost what the entire national election in 2004, which you ran, right?

Harry Bush?

Yeah.

Okay.

$833 billion.

There's a lot of money slotching around in politics.

I know you've had a rough week with this.

You can say whatever you want here.

I'm not here to prosecute you.

AOC said Lincoln Project, that's your project, which ran a lot of great ads.

Liberals love those ads.

We're in.

She says you were in scam territory.

I don't know.

You know, I like the ads.

Look, I think...

I think that we built the most successful super PAC in American political history.

If that's true, why did he do six percentage points better with Republicans than

when you look at

94 percent of Republican votes and 88 percent the first time?

Why are you making it?

I think that

sometimes you say things at the beginning and they take on the aura of gospel.

We were trying to win the election.

I really didn't give a shit how many Republicans voted for Trump or not.

At the end of the day, one of the determinative groups, which our concentration was most acute on, was independent white men.

And if you look at the delta between the people who voted for Biden and then returned down ticket for Republicans, we play very heavily in that space.

Look, at the end of the day, I'm proud of the fact that we destroyed Donald Trump's and Mike Pence's relationship and took Pence out of public life.

I'm proud of the fact that we decapitated his campaign manager from the campaign because of our ads.

When Donald Trump went out in Tulsa, he talked about for 45 minutes walking down a ramp and drinking water and acting insane.

Since the election, we've helped lead a boycott of corporate America for those 147 seditionists, Microsoft saying we're not going to give them any more money.

I think there's $200 million of cash that corporate America is likely to take out of Republican organizations on the basis of the vote that disenfranchised millions of black votes.

Because every single company in America has made a statement about racial justice.

Every company in America has black employees and black customers.

And they can't ever say, well, I'm pro-Black Lives Matter, but I'm also for disenfranchising my black votes.

And one of the things that's happening in this country right now, as we speak, is a massive disenfranchisement legislative effort that seeks to pull as many votes out of the system before demographic changes can put more voters into it to make certain that the Republicans can get back into power on a minority basis.

We have a real life in 2021 Jim Crow movement that's playing out in Republican legislative states to deny the right to vote.

And so when we look at the totality of what the Lincoln

what the Lincoln Project did in this election, we accumulated billions of views.

We have more followership online than the RNC did.

We built streaming services and podcast services and communications.

And all the money went toward where it should be.

Out of $87 million that was raised by the Lincoln Project, about $63 to $66 million of that money went to voter

contact, into voter contact programs.

Campaigns cost a lot of money.

All of this stuff,

every super PAC operates like this.

And the Lincoln Project did it for a specific reason.

But

where'd the other money go?

The law requires that you make disclosures, but you don't have to disclose subcontractor payments, which is how you protect your staff and all sorts of vendors from the harassment of the Trump people.

I'm a guy who had FBI agents show up at his house to say, you're number 11 on the Trump bomber Caesar Syaks hit list.

I was eight.

Okay.

Right.

You might have been on the first bombing.

I was going to be in the next batch,

but they called

the point is we want to protect our people, infrastructure costs, but we spent 75, 80 percent of total money on voter contact.

So I'm glad you brought up Georgia because it's a really instructive case in a couple of ways.

Just generally speaking, most, if not all, television ads was pissed away money.

None of that changed a single person's mind at the presidential level.

Who's going to see an ad and go, I was going to vote for Trump, and now

we have hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now, here's a really interesting fact, right?

Joe Biden outspent Donald Trump in every single battleground state except one.

And that includes states like...

Iowa and Ohio that weren't even close.

Trump won those easily.

The one state where Trump outspent Biden was Georgia, right?

So this idea that money is a terminative.

But even more importantly, in 2016, Trump won Georgia by five points.

And then he added 360,000 votes in 2020.

So it's 18% increase.

So you think, well, he can't lose, right?

So Joe Biden wins.

How did they do that?

600,000 new votes.

That's over 30% increase, 600,000.

And those weren't, they weren't pulled out by television ads.

They were pulled out by organizations like Stacey Abrams, New Georgia Project, that registered hundreds of thousands of voters.

And you know what her budget is?

You know what?

New Georgia Project's budget was $5 million.

So you're talking about these hundreds of millions of dollars, millions of dollars spent in the election.

She spent $5 million in 2020, registered hundreds of thousands.

That's why we won.

And in 2016, who spent all the money?

Hillary.

It's all pissed away.

Hillary.

Oh, she outspent Trump two to one.

That's what I'm saying.

I'm just confirming what you're saying.

I think money almost works against itself.

I think people see the ad a million times and they go, I am so fucking sick of looking at this one ad.

Fuck this person.

I don't even care if I agree with them.

I am not voting for them.

Which is why the point of the communication has to be to set a narrative.

If you look at what the Trump campaign released and said, this is why we lost.

COVID, all of these issues.

I remember watching before Lincoln project started in December, Elizabeth, I think it was Elizabeth Warren came out of one of the Democratic debates and

she remarked that it was a successful debate because no one talked about Trump and it terrified me.

I believe to the core of my being and will to the day I die, and I think I was right about this, the election was about one thing.

It was about Trump.

The number one issue was Trump.

The next 10 after that were Trump, and the next 3,000 after that.

We took the fight to Donald Trump.

We slugged him in the jaw.

I think we instilled fighting spirit, and I think we were the first group that drew blood on this guy effectively.

Well, actually, Steve, you stole one of my bits almost beat for beat.

Which one?

The ad about Trump being infirm and couldn't put a sentence together.

I'm glad you did.

I mean,

it's not your most original work, right, making that.

His infirmity.

Actually, we were the original.

Do you have anything?

Well, I'm saying it's not the most obvious.

I mean, it's not, it's not like, it's a pretty obvious thing.

Don't make me show both of them.

We did,

do we have that one?

Can we show ours?

Can we show ours?

It's pretty funny.

We did this, and then you did yours about a month later.

If you have it, show it now.

We don't have it.

We don't have it, like I said.

Will you have it sometime in the next five minutes?

What's up?

Okay, well, you know, know, there's a

virus going around for shorthand.

People are pissing away money on ads.

It doesn't mean you don't give.

I mean, I think liberals should definitely focus on those groups on the ground doing the registering in places like Arizona and Georgia and Texas, which is the next state that's going to turn blue.

And believe it or not, people think I'm crazy when I say this.

But Mississippi, demographically, should be a competitive state, but it has a black community that has been disenfranchised and has been kept down.

So this on-the-ground organizing can flip states like Georgia and Arizona.

We would agree, wouldn't we?

I mean, I used to be able to book you two guys on the panel and have you argue, because this is a debate show.

This is one of the few shows that still has people from both sides of the aisle or opinions you may not agree with.

Maybe it's the only show left.

I mean, MSNBC has conservatives like you, but you're only invited to bring the part of you.

that is going to say something that the audience already agrees with.

Would you agree with that, Steve?

For sure.

Well,

you're not going to bring your conservative credentials.

I've sat on a lot of TV sets where you go to break and a lot of reporters pick up their phone and they look at their Twitter feeds.

And the invisible

mob polices what's okay to say, to stay inside the lines.

And we have a profound problem, a crisis of cowardice in this country.

I agree.

Everywhere you look, cowardice.

Now,

the fact that you have someone who incited insurrection, clear as day, 10 Republicans vote to impeach him, which is better than 200 people.

Okay, we know about that.

All of that, but

everywhere you look, cowardice.

Okay, but isn't it also cowardice to not ever say anything on MSNBC that you really believe, except the things that are going to make that audience go, yes, great.

I mean, I watched you and Michael Steele and Rick Wilson and Nicole Wallace for years.

And you have, you are sane conservatives.

I didn't agree with a lot of what you said, but I appreciated that there was a dialogue.

Now

you're just somewhere where you're you're not allowed to

you only can confirm the one true opinion.

It's not just the the on the media side.

I mean I had Chuck Todd on my podcast and he talked about how he's trying to get people to come on and defend Trump to show that side of the question, but they won't go there, right?

They don't want to be challenged.

It's much safer in Fox Newsland or Newsmax or ONN.

So it really, I think, cuts both ways.

I think those shows, at the very least, do want sort of that ideological diversity.

But also,

the problem isn't partisanship.

The problem is people that have given up on the truth.

We can't even argue that the sky is blue anymore.

That's the real problem.

But it is blue, right?

It is blue.

That's the point, right?

And at the end of the day, right,

we have two sides in American politics right now.

There's a pro-democracy side and there's an autocracy side.

And I really don't want to debate tax rates when the question of democracy is on the line.

Right.

And so I think we've seen five years of batshit insanity.

And I think on that network, it's been,

I haven't been engaged in a policy discussion.

on American television since 2015 since he ran on any idea.

I did say something.

Because they don't want to bring it up.

Because you might say something that the audience does not agree with.

Because I think there are more existential issues.

There are, but it's not the only issue.

They're on fucking 24-7.

Yeah, but there's also no Trump ideology.

Other things do come up if you want to bring them up.

They don't want to bring them up.

There's crazy shit going on on the left.

Would you not agree with that?

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Of course, we do.

Listen,

there is a strident, illiberal culture, autocratic on the left that's a mirror

on the Trump right.

When you look at the sewer of Twitter, for example, the

angry left.

I don't, I don't.

But they have a lot of power.

They don't have power.

They certainly have power to disappear people.

They do not run the Democratic Party.

They don't run in.

They are not in power.

But there is a liberalism in American society.

They don't run the Democratic Party.

They affect the way the Democrats make decisions.

So in 2004, you may remember, it was a very close election.

George Bush won by the margin of Ohio.

And there was an entire conspiracy theory on the left that Beebold machines had flipped the vote.

Sound familiar?

And you know, one of the conspiracy theories on the left, on the left, pushing this was Alex Jones.

And there wasn't a single person in authority or people like me in the activism world that took these people seriously.

In fact, I kicked them out of my site, Daily Coast, because they were a cancer on our site.

I think that's true from a matter of power and authority.

But it's also true, I think, to Bill's point, that there is an illiberalism that exists on the far right, a fascist right.

There's an illiberalism that exists on the far left,

where

they have lost touch with a core value of the Enlightenment, of the notion of free speech, free thinking, free ideas, free debate.

And this culturally manifests itself, I think, most acutely in American universities.

And I think we're turning out a generation of kids who have no grit, who have no attachment to reality, that are triggered.

that are sensitive,

that are not prepared in any conceivable way for life.

That's why I said to the congressman, you have a whole bunch of new friends and new enemies, because no one's thinking anymore.

It's just, oh, now he's on the blue team?

Actually, I even think it's more bleak than that.

I don't think he has any new friends.

I don't think any Democrats are about to be a friend.

Oh, he's getting a lot of attaboys.

Yes.

I'm telling you, he could go to the Abbey in West Hollywood and be a hero tonight.

But he shouldn't go to a conservative restaurant.

Okay, it's time for new rules.

Thank you, guys.

That was very good.

New rules.

Murray, before we start sending mental health counselors to respond to 9-01,

I always fuck this up.

I always mix up 9-11 and 9-1-1.

9-1-1 calls instead of police, as many defund the police activists want, let's ensure their safety by giving them some form of protection, like a gun.

And since they must respond in a timely manner, let's also give them a car with a siren.

And to make sure it's known to others that they have legal authority to resolve disturbances, they probably should have a badge.

But by all means, no more police.

Nero, now that Mike Pence is starting a podcast, it has to be sponsored by a dildo company.

Like Doc Johnson Signature Cox.

Because I want to hear Mike Pence go from railing about godlessness straight into Doc Johnson signature cocks are the finest vibrating dual density 12-inch anacanas on the market.

Use the code Pence popcast and tell Doc Mike sent you to receive 20% off your next signature cock

someone must tell me why nobody has ever ever has a near-death experience where they start to go to hell.

It's always up to heaven.

They're always floating toward a white light, never plunging toward a red flame.

And yet hell is the more popular destination.

That's why there's a stairway to heaven, but a highway to hell.

New ruler, the person who filed a lawsuit against Whole Foods because their honey graham crackers are supposed to have more honey than sugar, but were actually found to have more sugar than honey, has to tell me how this became your life's crusade.

Did you watch Aaron Brockovich and think, I'm going to do that, but with crackers?

What do you find out your cookies aren't actually made by elves?

New rule, don't serve fish with the head still on it.

Nobody wants the thing they're eating watching them eating it.

And any guy will tell you, it's after dinner when you want the head with eye contact.

You see?

Oh,

terrible, terrible.

Please, don't encourage me.

And finally, new rule, the next person during this pandemic who says we're all in it together, must work a shift at Grubhub.

Half the country is home in their comfy clothes ordering takeout, and the other half is out in the cold delivering it.

So stop with the in it together bullshit.

We're in this together is the new thank you for your service.

Just something to say to the people doing the dirty work so we can feel better about not doing it ourselves.

And even before the pandemic hit, America was already well into being a gig economy, which sounds kind of hip like you're in a rock band.

Except you're not in a rock band, you're delivering hot chicken, and it doesn't cover your rent.

Even side hustle sounds kind of cool, like you're a private eye who runs drugs, but

really you're an Uber driver who also makes jewelry out of seashells.

You can call it remote work, but what's really remote is any chance of getting health insurance.

What are Uber and Lyft really but Americanized rickshaws?

It's not like it's what anyone wants to do.

No one ever had a friend throw up in their back seat and and said, gosh, I hope someday I can make a career out of this.

But in the gig economy, everyone is a freelancer and finding work is the virtual equivalent of hanging out in the parking lot at Home Depot.

Have a spare room you don't mind strangers fucking in?

Rent it on Airbnb.

Got some old Star Trek stuff from your childhood?

Sell it on eBay and ship it to some 45-year-old guy's mom's house.

Even famous people are not above scrounging for cash on the site Cameo where you can get D-list celebrities to wish you happy birthday or get well soon or tell you a joke.

And then there's OnlyFans,

which last year swelled from 12 million users to 85 million.

Now I'm sure there's some boomers out there saying, Bill, OnlyFans, what the hell is that?

Oh, don't worry, it's just the side hustle your daughter's using to pay off her college debt.

No, don't worry.

It's just a platform where you can share recipes or maybe your poetry.

Yeah, you can do that, but no one does.

It's women showing their vaginas to a webcam so men can masturbate.

I'm sorry, I'm being crude.

What I meant was OnlyFans is a social media site where over a million creators

provide exclusive content to 85 million subscribers

who are masturbating

because apparently that's what our economy revolves around now.

Losers in their weak-old underwear paying poor desperate web girlfriends to fake an orgasm while a toddler cries in the next room.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

According to the website Strip Chat, this kind of thing has become so routine that there's actually now a most popular time of day to take a break from your busy schedule and rub one out.

And that's between three and four in the afternoon, what I call fappy hour.

Jesus, forget Harriet Tubman.

They ought to put this guy on the 20.

I'm looking forward to the day when

OnlyFans merges with Cameo to become Only Cameo,

where you can order those has-been celebs to do freaky shit.

That's when we'll know our economy has hit rock bottom, when you can make Ian Zeering open a bottle of beer with his asshole.

And he does it because, hey, anything for a fan.

I'm afraid Valentine's Day this year will just be another reminder of how brutal this lockdown has been for single people.

Over half of 18 to 34 year olds don't have a steady romantic partner, and they're losing precious dating time.

Women's biological clocks are ticking.

Guys are balding.

In the last 50 years, the share of Americans who live alone has doubled.

Which begs the question, if single people are such a large part of this country now, why do our political and economic policies always still revolve around families?

Just once, I'd like to hear a politician say, I'm Congressman Harry Spooner and I'm not for working families.

I'm for people whose babies ended up in the reservoir tip.

Last week, Mitt Romney literally said this.

He said, American families are facing greater financial strain.

We have not reformed our family support system in nearly decade, three decades, and our changing economy has left millions of families behind.

Now is the time to renew our commitment to families as they take on the most important work any of us will ever do, raising our society's children.

Shut the fuck up.

Does any politician ever get how insulting this is to such a large swath of people?

You like kids and family?

Great, you do you.

But for millions of others, getting a good night's sleep, not sharing the remote or changing dirty diapers, never having to have a relationship talk or listen to a passive-aggressive sigh,

priceless.

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody.

Thank you very much.

That's our show.

I guess we're off next week.

I want to thank Marcos Melichis, Steve Schmidt, and Representative Adam Kissinger.

Yes, we are off next week.

We'll find that tape.

Thank you very much.

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