Tim Miller is Ready to Fight Fire with Fire

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Is our hat pro-democracy?

Probably not, right?

If you're going to try to reach the Doc Rivers people, you know what I mean?

Like that we're talking about, the disengaged 20-something.

If I was somebody that was thinking about running in 2028, which I'm not, that would be what I'd be spending most of my time thinking about right now.

Like, and not all the other stuff.

Like, what is on the hat?

By every measure available to us, every way we ask our viewers who they want more of, the answer comes through loud and clear.

It's our next guest.

The best people with Nicole Wallace is where you have found yourself.

And the best person this week is Tim Miller.

Tim Miller, thank you for being here.

What's up?

Did you know that?

Did you?

No, I did not know that.

Nobody at the suits never tell me anything about my Q score.

I mean, this may be like a, this may be leaked classified information, but I know it to be true, corroborated.

Well, I love to hear that.

I appreciate the

viewers.

And it's true, at least anecdotally, this is not math, but.

you know, on the street or at Whole Foods or whatever, the kids basketball game, if somebody's like, hey, I love watching you, the next words are always with Nicole Nicole every time.

It's never, you know, no offense to any of the others.

Let's dive in right there.

I mean, I loved your description of the Manosphere and the different layers of the Trump coalition.

Tell me, tell me right now, we're sort of maybe in the second inning of the Epstein story.

So like for where we are right now, how would you define the Trump coalition?

Yeah, I mean, look, he has this core base of support that everybody always talks about because it's so visible, right?

So in our face, they go to the rallies, you know, they're trolls and our mentions, right?

And so, you know,

and it's been the key to his political power, right?

So there's always like this, I feel like we're on, it's like, oh, is something, is this going to break through at the base?

Is this going to crack them?

And I just am kind of of the working view that nothing is ever going to crack them and that, you know, we're going to be decades from now, we're going to be in old folks' home together, Nicole.

And there's going to be people out long after Trump's pass.

There'll be people with little, you know, down the hallway with little, you know, venerations to him.

And like, I just think that's, that's just unfortunately like our reality.

So I don't even, it's, you know, whatever.

It's important to hear them and know what's happening with them, but like, that's not where the crack could be, right?

And, and I think that the credit, the, there are two other kind of groups that we talk about.

One is, I do think that there is kind of an evolving, like, mutated mega, right?

That is younger, you know, and that, that they listen to Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson's podcast.

And I think some of those folks have some doubts.

You know, I don't know.

Did you watch any of the Mehdi Hassan thing where he was like Mehdi Hassan versus 20 far-right conservatives?

It's called Jubilee.

And

it's like fight porn.

It's like argument porn.

Anyway, and Mehdi goes on and they found like these 20 kids who define themselves as far-right conservatives.

You're saying you don't care about the Constitution, but actually you do because you quite like the Second Amendment.

You just don't like the bits that you disagree with.

Can I just be clear on that?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

I'm more than willing to amend it and include it.

Whenever it's in your favor.

Yeah, absolutely.

So can Democrats do the same when they're in office?

No, absolutely not.

Because you you don't believe in democracy.

No, I don't.

Absolutely not.

What do you believe in?

Autocracy.

You're a little bit more than a far-right Republican.

Hey, what can I say?

I think you can say I'm a fascist.

Yeah, I am.

It was funny.

A couple of times they said they didn't vote for Trump because they're not part of the Trump base.

They're spinning off into a whole new world that's even scarier.

And we can maybe talk about that.

So that's a pretty small group.

The main group that I think is important to think about in this whole Epstein Epstein case is

like the folks that listen to Joe Rogan, as you mentioned, these sort of manosphere guys who aren't ideological.

They're not, many of them vote for Democrats.

They're not Christians.

They're not weekly churchgoers in any meaningful sense, right?

Like

they got attracted to Trump because he was like a finger in the eye to the establishment.

They liked the anti-woke stuff, right?

Like those guys.

And they were very important to him because for every one of us, you and me, he lost Nicole.

Like he picked up one of them, right?

Like that kind of offset his losses with these college-educated suburban types.

And so they're important.

And here's the thing about them.

A lot of liberals want to like look at them and say they're bad, wag their finger at them and stuff.

But if you listen to their interviews, like if you listen to Rogan with that, I'm going to butcher his name, the guy from Texas, James Tallaraico, right?

If you listen to that, Rogan, you can tell, right?

And this Theo Vaughn lately talked, talking about Gaza, these guys don't want to be evil.

They're not Stephen Miller, right?

Like

they might say things inappropriately and they might, you know, do things that you would tell your teenage son that you wish they wouldn't do, right?

Like, you know, they're not perfect men, but like, they don't want to be evil.

They're not on board with the just like randomly killing the poorest children in the world and like sending like masked men, grabbing people on the off the streets.

And they also.

really believe that something weird happened with Jeffrey Epstein and that people should get to the bottom of it.

And they're bad that people are covering it up.

And so I think that Trump is very vulnerable with like that part of, you know, whether you called it his base or his coalition, probably better, his coalition.

And like, you're really seeing the cracks develop on that over the past couple of weeks.

Well, I agree with you.

And I think there's, I've started listening to, I mean, I, I've, I've covered Joe Rogan initially reluctantly, um,

now more with wonder.

And mostly because of his power in, in, in the culture and in the space.

And he seems to have landed in a place where he's flirting with the reality that cruelty isn't manly.

And he's one of the earliest defectors on rounding up people at work.

It's actually one of the lowest polled deportations that Trump does.

I think over 80, I know over 80% of Americans in a Pew Poll said they didn't want people deported who have a job.

It's even higher if they're married to someone or

they have American-born kids.

I think it's like 85 and 90%.

But people with jobs were not supposed to be in the minds of some of the coalition.

Again, not MAGA.

I think MAGA was for throwing everybody out.

We're not supposed to be targeted.

They were supposed to go for the worst to worst.

And I wonder what your thoughts are about the arbiters of Trump over Harris, who are now on board and culpable, responsible for putting together a winning coalition for Donald Trump that is engaged in some of the most cruel and sadistic practices, especially when it comes to deportations.

Yeah.

And it's depressing, right?

Because it's like, it was easy for all of us to see that it was going to be the financing.

They had it on the placards, you know, and Stephen Miller, and it was part of the plan last time.

They did the child separations.

We already did all this once before.

They did the Muzzle bin.

And so it's like,

you know, they were, they, they, I don't, I even know sometimes that we give too much credit to like the strategists.

Like, I don't even really know if it was strategy.

I was just kind of yeah, gut instinct.

It was just like it was this combination of, you know, Stephen Miller was able to animate, you know, that nativist base, which is real and there are a lot of people.

And, and they kind of glommed onto it, these other guys who like were attracted to this for various other things, whether it was like macho signaling or that they didn't like that they felt like white men were being, you know, pushed aside because of diverse, like, you know, and there are a million things you could say.

And so it's, it's annoying that like so quickly so many of them are like, whoa, we didn't sign up for this when like, in fact, they did sign up for this, you know, but I just, I, I think that like, we are what we are.

And like politically speaking, I just think it's important for the Democrats to recognize that like a lot of these guys were voting for them 10 years ago.

You know, some of them are too young to vote.

And a lot of them are don't,

you know, it's not human nature.

Like it is aberrant that Stephen Miller self-identifies as a bad person.

Like, I really think he does.

I think Stephen Miller likes being the villain.

Like, I really do.

It's his brand.

Yeah.

That's not normal.

Like a lot of people don't like that.

And I think it'd be a huge mistake to just be like, oh, screw you guys.

Like you signed up for this.

You knew it.

Like now you're trying to like save face.

I think that they might have gotten snowed and that they thought,

you know, and that they really don't see themselves as bad people.

And that the worse Trump is,

the more they're like, I don't know.

And maybe that doesn't mean they're ever Democrats.

Maybe it just means that they're like, I'm going to go back to like focusing on Epstein and MMA and other weird people.

And the pyramids.

They're into the pyramids.

The

Who built the pyramids?

Why can't we build the pyramids anymore?

That's great.

Talk about the pyramids.

Hang out.

That's great.

That's a safe place for you.

It's amazing.

I mean, I mean, let's put a pin in the Democrats for a second.

I want to, I feel like you understand this piece of the coalition.

And I feel like this is.

This is, if you start reverse engineering how the pro-democracy movement starts winning elections in decisive ways so that we're not like teetering on the edge of autocracy and democracy every two to four years,

it feels like engaging the people who wanted the ambient noise in my house.

Welcome, welcome

to the Wallace House.

Should we bring along the house?

Oh, I think that's why she's best.

We'll bring her up for a guest appearance in a minute.

But I wonder how you would reverse engineer the piece of it that attracted them because it was anti-elitism.

It was feeling parented during COVID, right?

I mean, there were people that didn't want to be told what to take in terms of a vaccine.

They didn't want to be told to wear a mask.

They didn't want to be be told to stay at home.

There's a whole unprocessed piece of rage and grief over COVID that neither party has dealt with.

And then there's sort of the rejection of political correctness, which is so old and tired.

I didn't realize how much of it was still in the system.

But if you reverse engineer that, who do you see on the Democratic side that doesn't have those problems politically?

I kind of feel like it has to be somebody.

that just wasn't involved in all those fights, right?

And so it's not as if they were maybe on the side of the bros in the fights but they just were out on the sidelines altogether i just think about this nicole i mean as weird as this moment is like there's some things that have just been true for a while in our politics and i think that maybe we in the pro-democracy movement and the democratic party certainly like just didn't embrace the lessons enough but like you go back and with the exception of w basically who york foot you go back to clinton 92 what was clinton's appeal he was like totally outside of the democratic establishment world he's governor from our different okay Obama, like, might seem like an establishment guy now, but he comes up.

He's this weird name.

He was against the Iraq war.

And he was outside.

He was going against Clinton, you know, and then Trump, obviously, right?

And then kind of Biden wins sort of by accident this weird way.

And then Trump wins again.

What were people telling us this whole time?

Sarah Longaller says about the focus groups.

What do people say always?

It's like, I don't want a typical politician.

I don't want the establishment.

I think that they, you know, don't have my best interests in heart.

Some of that's not fair.

And we can go win that fight.

You know, we can go fight that fight.

But like reality is just what it is.

And I think that people want

have been, American people have been telling us over and over again that they don't want the same old.

They want somebody that's going to shake things up.

And I think by providing Clinton and then Biden and then Biden's vice president, you know, it just felt very status quo and people didn't want status quo.

And so I kind of feel like, you know, I don't know.

I'm just picking a name out of the hat, but like Wesmore, you know, is the governor of Maryland is outside of that.

Like he was governor a little bit during that time he's not in those fights he's kind of a guy's guy he can talk about how he didn't think that some of this stuff was silly and some of it wasn't right like yeah i i or maybe somebody else i don't know i just like you leave somebody out of you start naming names but i just think like a fresh person that can come in and say look i I have some good tricks about how the Democrats were doing things.

I mean, I really don't like Trump.

And I think that, look, he told you, he sold you a bill of goods and he said he was outsider.

And then what did he do?

He protected billionaire pedophiles and gave a tax cut to the rich, right?

Like that's an easy talking point.

So, I, to me, it's like, I look at the Bill Clinton and Obama models as like, both of those people came out of basically nowhere.

I mean, Obama was a senator for two years.

Yeah.

You know, Clinton was a governor of a small state.

And to your point, they conquered something, right?

So Obama conquers the Clinton machine.

And so you're not telling a story of how you're strong.

You've shown it.

And Trump is not, because I mean, I still think that the old thing about politics, that people want someone who is a strong leader and understands their their problems.

And in a way that everyone has been blind to, they see Trump that way.

They see all the bully, his base sees the bullying as strength.

And they see that the, they perceive the media and elites to hate him and they, they, they align themselves with him.

And that's why the gold toilets and the supermodel wife and the jet have never hurt him politically because they see him as as sort of rating high on those two axes of political measure.

Do you think those measures still hold?

I do.

Yeah.

And I think that, and it's also,

and again, again, it's weird that I hate to be to use the, I feel like vibes is such an overword used word these days, but like

he gave off the vibe of to them of like signaling that he cared about them with the stupid stunts, the stuff that we look at.

I'm like, come on, it's like he's at McDonald's and like, whatever, but like he's at the round, and he's with the, and he says, I'm going after those guys.

And, you know, and even though he didn't do any of it, like the, the feeling was that he was more on the side of the regular guy.

And it's hard to, you know,

you can say you are if you're a Democrat, right?

But like, even, and you can be earnest, right?

I can think of a lot of really earnest Democrats who are in Washington, who care about policy, who care about regular people, but they go out and they say, you know, I want to raise the minimum wage and I care about, here's a white paper for how to help people, but they give off an energy of, well, no, you're just kind of a typical politician, right?

And that's silly.

And like, should that be how our politics works?

Probably not, but it is.

And so I just think that's the challenge, right?

How do you like recapture that feeling of, you know, another way of saying I care about you is by saying, like, I'm going to fight the things that are preventing you from living the kind of life that you wish, right?

Like, I'm going to, I'm going to be on your side, right?

I'm going to be on your side.

And you can't be on Washington's side and on their side, right?

And like, that has like been this challenge.

And at some point, it's, it's part of it is because Trump's been such an attacker all that it's like natural and right to want to defend it, right?

To say, wait a minute, the FBI is not corrupt.

Our democratic system isn't corrupt, right?

Like our, you know, whatever.

And so you find yourself always defending these things that people don't feel are serving them.

It is, it's tougher than it sounds like, but I just think that's like the big challenge for reaching these people is just credibly feeling like you're on their side against, you know, whatever are the forces that are, that have, that have.

been favoring people that have access or people that are well off.

We'll be right back with more of my conversation with fan favorite Tim Miller.

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I feel like you have articulated why.

Not taking our eye off the human beings impacted by the deportations matters.

You say it's being done in our name as Americans, regardless of who we voted for, it is being done in our name.

And you could lay that over USAID, right?

Our name, the United States of America, was on all those bags of food and meals ready to eat and the rice and the peanut paste.

But on deportations specifically, if you play this forward, what is the message that you take to the country in four years about how to clear our name?

Yeah.

It's another tough one, right?

Because you have to balance these things at the same time, which is people were upset about the number of people coming to the country and how haphazard it was.

And you could see it in cities.

I mean, I always say, like, whenever a Democrat tries to dismiss it to me, and I'm like as liberal on immigration as I can get.

I mean, I'm just totally like a statue of liberty.

Give us your tired, you're poor person.

Like, that's

when I was a Republican.

That was always my view.

That was a lot of Republicans' views back then.

Yeah, I think that was George Bush's view.

I mean, in his heart, he believed in amnesty.

But, like, you know, my family's in Denver, and you can see it in Denver, like on the street.

Like, there were so many Venezuelan asylum,

you know, asking to wash windows and stuff, right?

Like it was mean, and you can see it in schools, right?

If you, if you go to public schools in certain neighborhoods, you're like, oh, the number of young people who don't speak English coming to the schools was becoming a burden, right?

So

some of that was real, right?

So the crafts need to simultaneously say, okay, we learned our lesson.

This is real.

We want to have, you know, we're going to deal with this.

But also, we need to take back what is America about America and what is our human, what is, and our shared humanity.

And nobody wants us to become a immigration police state.

Well, a few people, and Stephen Miller does, but like

that now, circling back to these bros, I do think that resonates with a broad part of the country, right?

Like, we want to have laws, we want to have rules, but we don't want to be a police state where masked men are grabbing people off the street like this is China or Stalin's Russia.

Like, that's not what people want.

And I think also, I was talking to Chris Murphy about this this morning.

Also, when it comes to USAID stuff, yeah, it's not that popular of an issue, but on a basic level, it's like, can we just do a little bit with our,

you know, blessings as a country to make sure that the most vulnerable three-year-olds in the world don't starve?

Can we just offer a little bit like this, like this last budget that we cut 100 million from UNICEF and put in 300 million to secure Mar-a-Laco?

It's like, can we balance that out?

Can we spend as much money on security for our elites in this country as we do making sure that the poorest kids in the world don't starve?

And can we make sure that people fleeing oppression and who want to come here and who do it the right way can get here and not be afraid that they're going to be nabbed out of their workplace by some guy in a mask and put in the back of a van and sent to the Everglades to be tormented by Ron DeSantis?

I think that you can kind of do this in a patriotic kind of American way.

Like we, you know, people get really sick of we are better than this because it kind of has demonstrated maybe we're not better than this, but like we aspire to be like, and we can be.

And people should have the ability to leave, live free.

And we don't, there's almost like a don't tread on me element to this, you know?

And I, I don't know, all of that is a little bit of a ramble, but like there's, there's something in all of that that I think would resonate.

with people beyond the folks who voted for combo.

There are other folks that do still believe that.

And I think that's honestly going to be the big fight because I think no matter what happens next with the Republicans, they're going to be nationalist, closed borders.

Like that's where the party's moving, blood and soil, USA.

and so you got to fight that with a different vision of what what the american flag is right something that's a little bit more about everybody's rights you know to to be to live free without fear of the masked men it's sort of the old like new hampshire republican um strain right in the primary to win there it's it's it's like a different kind of republican than you have to appeal to in iowa right and it's it's it's sort of that which which isn't really anywhere in the republican party anymore i mean they want to leave measles unchecked they want to mix the soda themselves and and and people you know like i'm i'm for a healthier food supply but you don't have to take a measles shot and you are going to prescribe what's in all the food i mean there's no intellectual consistency and i wonder what piece of that is on is on us as people with with platforms yeah i mean some of it and i think our challenge that i sometimes i think about a lot as somebody with a platform is like

okay

how do you get to you know,

how can you either say something in a way or go on to us or go into a space where you can reach people that are, you know, that are that would want to hear that message, that are open to hearing that message, right?

It's not about going to argue with on some MAGA platform with some guy, you know, performative arguing.

It's not that.

It's about how do you reach people that are open to hearing that message that just either weren't hearing it or weren't hearing it the right way or it didn't, you know, it didn't break through to them.

Because like, that is the big challenge that we face, right?

Like, is that our polarization now has gotten based around like education level and engagement level, right?

And so, it's like, okay, well, we can scream it to a blue in the face to the people that are already kind of in our bubble.

And I think the challenge is less about breaking into the other bubble.

Like I said, I think that they've got a lock on it, but it's getting to people that are less engaged.

I don't know.

And that's what I think about what you're doing now.

Like, I think,

like, I've been listening to some of your other ones and like the Doc Rivers one lands with me because it's like that world, that conversation was interesting.

Cause it's like, who is he talking to?

Like, he's coaching, like, the NBA players are so young now because like they're only in college for a year, like these really, really young guys, like way closer to your son's age than to mine.

You know what I mean?

Like, the guys that Doc Rivers are coaching, right?

And, you know, he was talking about how they checked out, but like, that's a group.

It's mostly black

guys,

you know, like that's a group that

we should be able to resonate with all this.

Like they don't want a police state.

Like they don't want, you know, like they don't care, you know, they don't want, they're not caught up in all the MAGA, you know, signaling, but they weren't, they didn't feel engaged by whatever the pro-democracy movement was offering.

Right.

And I think that, like, thinking about reaching those groups feel much more attainable than like thinking about how to reach whoever's listening to Charlie Kirk or whatever, you know?

Yeah.

And I even think about, you know, pro-democracy suggests that the other side is anti.

And if you haven't successfully convinced enough people, you're just shouting into the void.

I, I, you know, I even grapple with my descriptors.

Like, what are we, right?

We're ex-Republicans who vote for Democrats because the Republicans have been corrupted and it's under the umbrella of pro-democracy.

But I don't, is that what we should be calling ourselves?

Yeah, maybe not.

I mean,

honestly, maybe not.

And, um, and in part because also like back to the corners, I know, this is the other thing I was just, I have Chris Murphy on the mind because I think he's been so good on all this.

And we're just talking to him.

And it's like, we didn't really come up with an answer to this, but he was talking about how the Democrats have to fight fire with fire more, which is something I agree with, right?

Which means at times, you know, maybe not being as respectful to the traditional norms.

I feel like just the redistricting thing is one example.

It's supposed to happen every 10 years, but if the Republicans do it, then the Democrats should do it too.

Okay.

I agree with that.

Like the Democrats do need to be more aggressive.

The threat is very real.

On the other hand, if you're calling yourself the pro-democracy movement and then simultaneously you're arguing, well, we might need to cut a few corners here to combat it.

Then are you under, then are, then are you making yourself seem like a hypocrite, right?

I actually, I think that's a really tough question.

I don't know.

And I think that kind of whoever emerges as a, and I think that that's, there's no rush to find someone to emerge

to lead the kind of opposition to Trump.

I might need to kind of define the coalition in a way that's a little bit different.

I mean, say what you want about Trump.

He's good at the hat.

You know, I don't, I really, I keep defining the make America great again, America first.

Like,

it's

graspable in a way that pro-democracy kind of isn't.

And I, like, my biggest worry going into the election, I just, I always come back to this.

I was interviewing James Carville like three weeks out, and his, the documentary was coming out about him.

And they went back to the old whiteboard about what the three things were for Bill Clinton, change versus more of the same, et cetera.

It's the economy stupid.

And I was like, what's Kamala's three things?

And I don't think anybody knew, right?

I got, you know, everybody could have come up with different stuff.

Nothing against Kamala.

I thought she ran a pretty good campaign in a tough environment.

But I do think that's a problem, right?

Like, is our hat pro-democracy?

Probably not, right?

If you're going to try to reach the Doc Rivers people, you know what I mean?

Like that we're talking about, the disengaged 20-something.

If I was somebody that was thinking about running in 2028, which I'm not, that would be what I'd be spending most of my time thinking about right now.

Like, and not all the other stuff.

Like, what is on the hat?

Like, what is the what is on the chalkboard?

You know, like, what is something that's graspable that cobbles this whole thing together?

What is your pre-political Tim Miller story?

What's the Tim Miller story?

The baby Tim Miller story.

There kind of isn't a pre-political Tim Miller.

I was, I just loved it from the start in ways that probably ended up getting me into trouble as I got into the book.

But like, I remember I was in, so we moved to Denver when I was in fifth grade.

So it would have been the Clinton, on the Clinton elections, Clinton Bush.

And I bet my grandmother, who's my parents weren't really into politics, but my dad's mother really was.

And she is a big Republican.

And she was like, it's going to, she loved George H.W.

Bush.

And I was like, you know, I don't know.

I had the, I had the insight of a fifth grader who doesn't know anything, you know, and I was just like, I don't know.

The other guy with the, the, the saxophone looks cooler.

And I think he's going to be, I think he's going to win, actually.

And so we bet one dollar.

We moved to Denver during the election.

And then when Clinton won, she sent me my dollar.

I remember like I had it in my room.

And I just, I don't know, there's something about the competition of it.

I always liked sports where I was a little, I was a late bloomer, so I was never good at sports as a kid.

And so it kind of got like, it scratched my competition itch.

But, you know, and I started volunteering for Bill Owens when I was like 15 and a half and had a learner's permit and looked 12.

Like I literally, I literally didn't grow facial hair until I was 19.

I grew in college.

It's the weirdest thing about me.

Like if I meet somebody from middle school that I haven't seen in years, they'll be like, you're tall is their response to me.

Cause like in eighth grade, I was like five, four.

Like I grew.

So anyway, and so when I was interning for Bill Owens back then, who was running for governor of Colorado, like people would ask me, like, are you Bill's nephew?

Like, who's your dad?

Like, you know, they refuse back to me.

I was like, ridiculous that this child is like working on the campaign.

And so, anyway, there really isn't a pre-political me.

I was into that part of it from, you know, like middle school.

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So when I started in politics, I applied for a job with a Democrat and a Republican in California.

I just wanted to be in the arena.

I just wanted to be in the game.

Was it Republicans for you or was it politics?

Yeah,

it was politics and it was Republicans for me, but kind of in a soft way.

I mean, like, it's like so quaint, like the things that got me into being Republicans.

Like, I literally, the dems of my life will like roll their eyes to see this.

But, like, I liked the idea that we were a shining city on a hill and people wanted to come here and America.

Like, that was what drew me to the Republican stuff.

Like, I have a distinct remember of being in high school and being so mad at Clinton over Ellian Gonzalez, you know, and just being like, that poor boy, like, wanted to come.

And I kind of like, to be honest, I I need, I tell the story.

I need to go back and read the details because I kind of don't remember all of the particulars of it.

But it's like, but I, but to me, it was like a morality story, kind of like the El Salvador thing.

It was like, this boy was fleeing communism and wanted to come here.

And like, we sent jack booted thugs in to get him.

Like, no, like wrong, like with, with, with, with weapons?

No, like, that's not America.

Sent him up to Cuba.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was like, that's not America.

So it was that.

All that said, though, you know, my neighbor was friends with Bill Owens, which is how I got that job you know i was always a moderate republican from the start i mean i literally in that first campaign in 2000 i was i've told john kasich this when i see him at the msmc green room and i was like i was for kasich you know i was for mccain i was for yeah and so like i you know had had things been different right like had my neighbor been

you know, a consultant for some conservative Democrat, which there were at that time in Colorado, like quite a few, Ben Nighthorse Campbell or something,

maybe I would have gone that, you know what I mean?

I would have just gone up that route because it did quickly become about like, I like the politics, I like the campaigns, I like the, and I think that did end up getting me into trouble.

But I just think that's very common in our era a little bit, which is so different now, obviously.

Well, but it's the oldest story, right?

It's you're looking for your tribe, you're looking for community, you're looking for your people.

And I think we both found that in Republican.

politics.

And it's what, I mean, I think you write about heartbreak, which is what I felt when Trump took took over the party and I saw it literally fracture my friend group.

I mean, Trump 1.0 had a ton of, you know, normal Republicans in it.

There were normal Republicans that I knew at the Justice Department, lots of them, all of them interested in telling some members of the press how they were protecting, you know, the rule of law in 1.0.

In the White House, there were normal, formerly normal.

At the Pentagon, there were normal people.

I mean, what's so, I think, difficult to articulate is how far from anyone normal the second administration is.

There's no one that would have ever had a job in, and that's the point.

So I'm not even insulting these people, right?

This is the point.

They wouldn't have wanted a job.

They wouldn't have wanted a job, right?

But the idea of sort of belonging, I think is what I wanted out of politics and what I got out of politics.

I think what you create and I think what you build, and I think this is special about you, but also atmospheric at everyone at the bulwark is a new community.

And I wonder if you, if that was intentional or if you feel that, or if you feel how powerful people's connection is to you.

Yeah, I do feel it.

And it's really true, just really quick as it decided about the community thing and something to be conscious of in our new communities that we're building is you kind of.

Part of community and belonging is that like you want to belong so that you project stuff onto people.

Like way before Trump, my first disappointing moment of being like, I don't know, maybe this Republican community isn't right for me was I was kind of under the impression that everybody was faking it on gay marriage.

I don't know what made me do this.

I think it was part of my coming out process, but I literally went and pulled the office.

I just went to everybody in the McCain 2008 office in Iowa.

So it was probably a little different headquarters, a little more liberal, but in Iowa.

And I was like, are you for gay marriage?

And it was one out of 20.

or something like that.

And in my head, I was kind of like, I assumed it was going to be 18 out of 20.

So you project things onto people

that you want.

So anyway, back to the denial community.

I do i do feel it and i appreciate it and i think that like it's some of what was intentional initially because you know i don't and this is not like whatever a great charity or whatever like one thing that i did just because i felt like i needed to do it was if somebody came to me that like worked at the rnc or somewhere and during that period between 2016 and 2020 and was like i need out like i can't support this stuff anymore like i was running an underground railroad out of that baby like we were we were hiring people and sarah Sarah, I had Sarah Longwell who's good, who does a bunch of other stuff outside of the bulwark.

I had her hiring people for stuff and other friends.

And, you know, and I did, I felt that.

And like I said to her, I was like, we need to do that, like include people that, that are part of our initial group of expats like in this.

And now hear from people a lot of times, young, particularly young people that were like.

I'm on campus and I don't really feel like I'm a Democrat yet, but like these Magazine Republicans are crazy.

And, you know, I'd always give them free subscriptions, right?

Like, you know, come and do it.

And like, you come to the events, you can come.

And so we did try to create that initial group, but it's sort of like has ballooned so far beyond that.

And I wish I could say that like I consciously tried to like cultivate a community with people because we have a ton of people who are far left Democrats and they like to hear, they kind of like it when I say something they don't like because they're like, okay, good, this is normal.

Actually, I can disagree with this guy that I listen to and not think he's a bad person and vice versa.

And then we have a ton of like center left Democrats who think that maybe the party's a little gone a little kooky in certain areas, but like are mostly, you know, pro-democracy, so to speak, liberal.

And so, and we go to our events,

it is like you can just feel it on people, just like the relief when they talk to you.

Like, they're so excited to like meet other people and talk and hang out everywhere after, and new friends are meeting.

And, and so, it is palpable that it's more than just like a media outlet where like you go to see your favorite podcaster and then you go home, right?

It's not that like it's very much a hangout and and and and you know, maybe not everybody's aligned on everything politically, but there's this common thread.

And that I think I built kind of organically.

I, I, I don't know.

Maybe I did something or Sarah did something that I don't, but it wasn't like we had a meeting about it.

You know, it did kind of develop.

Is your daughter aware of what, what, what you do or does she sort of stay out?

I don't know.

I need advice from you on this, on having a 13-year-old, because

she's pretty checked out, I think, for a seven-year-old of a person like this, like on unfamiliar.

Like, I don't, we don't really talk about it, like around her.

I don't really talk about it to her.

I don't have, no offense, like cable on, right?

Like I'm listening to stuff.

Like I listen to, yeah, I listen to the show.

It's like, I'll listen, like if I'm not on, I'll listen to what you guys do in my ears, you know, and like I'll kind of parent and listen and cook and listen.

You know what I mean?

But it's not on.

So she's not getting ambient.

Trump talk.

Right.

And so, you know, when we took down the Kamala sign, she asked why, you know, we told her.

When the Trump toys thing happened, I did have a moment of weakness when he said kids shouldn't have more than three toys.

I told her about that.

I'm like, I'm going to indoctrinate you.

Kids only need two dollars.

Two dollars.

I'm going to indoctrinate you on that.

So she asked, for folks who don't know, my daughter's black, is adopted.

My husband just told me before I came on here, she was like, she asked me about Black History Month today and why there's Black History Month.

It's like some of that, you know, that stuff you just start to.

absorb and take in.

And so I'm going to, you know, increasingly kind of have to talk to her about it.

And it was really one of the sad things about this Trump win.

There are a million of them.

So this one's kind of stupid and selfish.

But I was like, had he lost, she wouldn't have really had to know about it.

Like she would have known about it in the way that it's history, like in the way that I know about George Wallace or whatever.

You know what I mean?

Like now, like, she'll be 11 when it's over, God willing.

And that, you know, that's, so we're going to have to deal with that.

I don't know.

How do you deal with it?

So when COVID started and I was anchoring from here, from home, we turned off all the TVs and we kind of never turned them back on.

And my son, you know, by 13, you kind of go from never talking about it and thinking they don't know anything to they open their mouth.

And even though you've told them nothing, you realize they know everything.

And I'll project all of his prerogatives and privacy, but they, they're good at sifting through what's bullshit.

And so I would say, you know, at one level, don't worry.

But at the other, I would, I would, there's so much history, right?

To teach a young kid, you know, my, my son had all of the who was books.

And, you know, by the time you make it through all of the history, you can sort of put this moment.

You know,

I'd say you have time, but never lie to her, would be my only advice.

That's good advice.

It's good advice for parenting and podcasting.

I want to ask you if any of your interviews that you conducted changed you?

Oh, man, changed me.

Having a black daughter, I just, I grew up in Denver.

Like, I just, I didn't know any black people really, like, meaningfully, like, except that I played basketball.

You know what I mean?

Like, I just didn't know any black people.

I grew up in suburban Denver and there weren't that many black people at my college.

And then I worked in Republican politics.

You know what I mean?

I was just like, I didn't have a ton of black people in my life until recently.

And so when I am interviewing folks, whether it's Bakari Sellers or Eddie Glaude or Tanahasi Coates, like I'm always like trying to do kind of what we're doing now, it's just like talk politics, business.

And at the end, I just like, I kind of want to pick their brain about like parenting.

And what was it like for you as a kid?

And how did you learn about racial discrimination?

And like, what, like, how did you process it?

And, you know, so I think back to those interviews as ones that like will stand a post-Trump test of time with me.

And like, think about something Bakari said to me once.

I asked him about like parenting advice for a young girl.

He's got, he's got a bunch of kids.

And

he was like, I'm going to get like choked up talking about it.

He's like, you know, I just talked to my daughter about how her lips are beautiful and perfect and how her hair is beautiful and perfect perfect, and how, like, she, you know what I mean?

And, like, I'd have to go back and like, listen to get the exact quotes right, but

just like that very basic, fundamental stuff that is just like not something that like my parents had to think about.

It's the stuff that hits you as a person where you're, you're not the interviewer, you've lost all control and, and you realize that's the beauty of it.

And for me, it's Esther Salis, whose

job, you know, cost her son his life, the judge who's

someone was murdered.

I think about him every day.

I have, I have her son's Daniel's picture on my desk.

And I think, I mean, I always, I don't always ask that, but I wanted to ask you that because I think you're that person for so many people.

I mean, they, they feel like you're talking to them.

And it always comes from a place of being open to being moved by other people.

And so I love that answer.

I appreciate that.

That challenges me, though, you know, to think about what kind of other guests I can have that would fulfill that need because you do get into a a rut, you know, like you can get into a rut.

Like I'm your rut.

So I don't know.

Maybe you're going to give me a break for a week and bring in more, bring in more and add he has, you know?

I mean, in my, my theory of the, of the case, though, is that the show I pitched to Phil Griffin, he said, what would your show be?

I said, it would be the conversation at the next table when you're on a blind date and you're shushing the guy because you want to listen to that table.

Like that's the show.

And you, you help us.

You help us realize that every single day.

That's a good show.

That's right.

Tim Miller, you're not just the best guest.

You're one of the best people.

Thank you so much for doing this.

Thank you so much, Nicole.

I appreciate you so much.

We'll be seeing you soon.

I know.

We'll keep it going.

Thank you, my friend.

Bye.

Thank you so much for listening to the best people.

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