S2 Ep1030: Bill Kristol: Creepy and Wrong

Speaker 2 We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

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Speaker 45 Hello, and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast.

Speaker 20 I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Speaker 3 Hope everyone's doing well.

Speaker 45 It's great seeing some of y'all at a Jazz Fest.

Speaker 46 I was doing my best to chat you up, also monitoring. two under 10 girls.
They were having a good time. Many snowballs.

Speaker 47 We very much enjoyed Heim.

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Speaker 52 So I'm excited.

Speaker 33 JVL, the Chicago event's our biggest venue ever.

Speaker 55 And JVL did not think that we could sell it out.

Speaker 56 He was very concerned, as is JVL's want.

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Speaker 54 Let's see in Chicago or Nashville.

Speaker 48 Lastly, while I'm plugging stuff, FY Pod, which is the Gen Z show I'm doing with Cam Kowski, it's kind of hitting its stride.

Speaker 64 You get a bumpy start when you're talking to 23-year-olds, you know, doing a generational divide.

Speaker 51 But I think the last few episodes have been great. We have a new YouTube page.

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Speaker 60 All right.

Speaker 68 Today's show.

Speaker 50 We've got terrible Trump polls, election in Canada, a bunch of other stuff. And it's Monday.
So I'm here with editor-at-large Bill Crystal. What's up, Bill?

Speaker 42 Nothing much. Well, a lot, I guess.

Speaker 42 What's the right answer to that? What's up is a better question than how you doing, which is my standing. How are you doing? My standing, which is a very bad question for this moment.

Speaker 42 These people, maybe we've discussed this before. People say, I'm doing fine.
And then they feel bad that, well, but the country's in such bad shape. I'm not really doing fine.

Speaker 42 But then they don't want to get into a whole disquisition and answer to how you're doing. What's up? Is a good question.

Speaker 35 What's up for you?

Speaker 62 Is that you're at the Luigi Mangione Hilton in New York right now.

Speaker 70 That's what's up for you.

Speaker 42 I am at the New York Hilton, which I've, you know, stayed out occasionally. I'm giving a talk here later, so they're putting me up here.

Speaker 42 But I used to go to board meetings one block from here, so I'm very, very familiar with the entrance to this Hilton.

Speaker 42 It's slightly weird getting out of a cab last night and walking just around the corner to exact

Speaker 42 spot where

Speaker 42 the ceo was gunned down yeah just keep your head on a swivel all right coming in and out

Speaker 61 the uh i i guess uh we have tons of trump stuff talk about in american news but uh i just very briefly uh voters are going to the polls right now as we speak in canada question about whether to give interim prime minister mark carney a full four-year term or give the conservative party and Pierre Polyev a turn at the wheel.

Speaker 62 It looked like it was going to be all Pierre until the trade war. And,

Speaker 69 man, the polls don't look good for the Conservatives right now.

Speaker 51 We'll see how things go.

Speaker 54 Do you have a brief thought on what's happening up north?

Speaker 42 No, it would be, and there's something kind of wonderful about Trump electing a liberal up north in Canada, having picked this pointless fight with them and with Trudeau in particular.

Speaker 42 He did, I guess, I don't know if Trudeau was going to run anyway. He might have forced Trudeau out of the race, not force, but maybe helped induce Trudeau not to run for re-election.

Speaker 42 But a new face on the liberal

Speaker 42 line, I guess he's the favorite. What are you following it more closely than I am?

Speaker 7 Yeah, I mean, it's been wild.

Speaker 57 If you just look at kind of the prediction markets, like it went from a, you know, like the charts just like the lines just totally intersect as one is going up and the other's going down.

Speaker 80 Carney's done quite well.

Speaker 70 And I think

Speaker 51 it goes a little bit to our, you know, this, the 2028. That's why I'm so loath to do like hot stove guessing about Democrats 2028.
People are capable of rising to moments or falling.

Speaker 79 You might not have thought that, you know, Mark Carney is like basically a technocratic globalist you know boring policy operative you know gets kind of thrust into this and did quite well you know kind of rallying the animal spirits of the canadians the moose the moose spirits of the canadians and you know kind of rose to the moment not sure if you would have maybe thought that that would have happened and um has been pretty tough on Trump.

Speaker 33 There are some reports about

Speaker 79 threats related to the bond market.

Speaker 84 And

Speaker 63 I mean, really kind of given as good as he's gotten from Trump, at least so far.

Speaker 61 So I think that's kind of the main takeaway. We'll see.

Speaker 79 I mean,

Speaker 55 I do not claim to be the Steve Cornack of Canada.

Speaker 85 So, you know, it's possible they'll surprise me tonight.

Speaker 42 But as you say, that's such a good reminder that the idiocy of taking a snapshot of the present and projecting it into the future three months, let alone three and what are, what it would be in our case, three and three-quarter years to an election.

Speaker 42 I mean, politics is a... motion picture, if you want to think of it this way, not a snapshot.

Speaker 42 And it's a motion picture with a lot of surprises and random events happening and contingencies, unlike a motion picture, which only has a director trying to make it tie it all together.

Speaker 42 You know, politics can go in any which direction. So I couldn't agree more.
I mean, it's a good reminder.

Speaker 42 That plus the immigration issue here, I think, in the way that's backfired on Trump are two very useful reminders of not looking at a poll and saying, oh my God, this is what's going to happen.

Speaker 42 And as we said,

Speaker 42 in a month, let alone a year, you know?

Speaker 19 Yeah. Amen to that.

Speaker 62 All right.

Speaker 63 Well, speaking of the polls locally,

Speaker 31 everybody, I guess, decided to do a poll pegged to the 100-day mark, which we're coming up on here this week.

Speaker 49 And so CNN gave Trump a 41% job approval rating, down seven points from two months ago.

Speaker 50 ABC has them at 39%, down six points from February.

Speaker 33 New York Times, Sienna had them at 42% approval, 54% disapproval, with 45% strongly disapproving.

Speaker 60 So a greater strongly disapproved number than total approval.

Speaker 62 I did a little video on this over the weekend.

Speaker 78 There's some like element of this where I'm like, ugh, do I have to care about these polls like right now?

Speaker 55 You know, having just been through what we went through in 2024 and it's kind of like, who cares?

Speaker 71 That's kind of the one way to look at it.

Speaker 85 And I understand why people might want to be like, okay, let's focus on the actual policies over the polls.

Speaker 62 On the other hand, I do think there's an intersection here, and he's not there yet.

Speaker 26 You know, if the numbers start to get low enough, that is going to change the behavior of people on the hill, of the businesses that are, you know, sucking up to him, of the colleges, of the law firms.

Speaker 61 Like, it does matter in that sense. So I don't know.

Speaker 54 You wrote about it for morning shots this morning.

Speaker 83 What do you make of the terrible Trump polls?

Speaker 42 Yeah, similar to you in that I don't like obsessing on polls, especially when you're polling approval, which is sort of interesting in a vague way, but it's not like polling an election where it might tell you what's going to happen in six weeks or something like that.

Speaker 42 But it does matter because it does capture public sentiment. Public sentiment in a democracy matters.

Speaker 42 Maybe it matters too much these days in the sense that people forget they're supposed to lead occasionally and not simply mirror public sentiment, but it is what it is.

Speaker 42 And public sentiment is maybe even more powerful than it once was, though I guess it's always been pretty powerful.

Speaker 42 And look, I mean, here's the way to, I think, see that it matters is what would things feel like in politics today at the end of the first hundred days if Trump were at 55% approval or 50% approval, which is not out of the question.

Speaker 42 Most presidents have been around there, right?

Speaker 38 And honestly, he probably would be there if he just had done nothing.

Speaker 78 Right. Right.

Speaker 52 Like, like if he had just done, you know, or just done like a few little things, you know what I mean?

Speaker 42 Conventional sort of. Yeah.
No, because people kind of, I mean, he got 50% of the vote. What would they think about it would be this?

Speaker 42 And a few percent of the others who voted against him sort of would still like to see the country do well and therefore maybe to approve of what he's done, be pleasantly surprised.

Speaker 42 No one seems to have been pleasantly surprised. Some percentage of voters, not a small, if you look at those three polls, what are the approvals of 39, 41, 42? So let's just call it 42.

Speaker 42 I mean, that means what, 7, 8% have been pleasantly, unpleasantly surprised by his job performance, assuming if you voted for him, you kind of thought you might approve of him.

Speaker 42 So that's a pretty big number, 8% out of that 50,

Speaker 42 deserting him for now. It doesn't mean they would vote for a Democrat.

Speaker 42 Doesn't mean they're, though the one poll had a congressional, the Democrats up three and whatever that's worth in the congressional race.

Speaker 42 So I do think it matters, and it matters because it affects everyone. It affects business leaders, university presidents, judges.

Speaker 42 They're not supposed to be affected, but of course they are a little bit affected.

Speaker 42 And members of Congress, the other elected officials we have in America, who have not been exactly rising to the occasion.

Speaker 42 And I think the chances of them rising to the occasion are not overwhelmingly good, but they're a lot better than they would be if you were at 50 or 55%.

Speaker 46 I mean, I think that there's just no doubt about all of that.

Speaker 2 Nobody here is looking for courage from the folks on the Hill at this point.

Speaker 47 Like that's a silly thing to wish for at this point.

Speaker 92 But

Speaker 76 eventually, like this, the calculus, the practical calculus might become different.

Speaker 61 And I think that's the question.

Speaker 27 I mean, I think a lot of this is tied to the economic stuff.

Speaker 88 And we're going to go deep on the economy and tomorrow's pod but just like the top level you're just seeing some things from over the weekend i think are worth mentioning kind of how they intersect with all this you know there's this new seattle times story about how there are no ships in the port april isn't even over yet and kind of in a strange way that the march numbers i guess of ships were up and the theory on that is people are thinking that the tariff uncertainty people were like trying to get the material into the country as quickly as possible so we'll see but um A former ship worker gave this great quote to the Seattle Times.

Speaker 49 Give me a break. There's no container ships.

Speaker 62 What more do you need?

Speaker 93 And took a picture of it.

Speaker 51 I saw Larry Summers was on with

Speaker 67 the Trump Tech Bro podcast, fighting with those guys. And

Speaker 87 he basically said, look, we're a couple of weeks away, like mid to late May, from consumers being able to see real changes, either with regards to some empty shelves or prices going up.

Speaker 54 Already you're seeing prices going up if you're a consumer that uses Timu or Shine.

Speaker 50 That wasn't really me ever, but I've seen some screenshots on the internet

Speaker 64 of the prices of those high-quality goods coming straight from China to you are going up.

Speaker 80 So that's like the fundamental element of this, I think, right, Bill?

Speaker 42 Right. I mean, reality, I mean, another way of saying it is the polls are interesting, but reality is even more important than the polls.

Speaker 42 And people are driven somewhat by reality, at least, even these days.

Speaker 42 And if we go into a, have a combination from inflation and recession, which looks quite possible, yeah, that matters a lot, I think. I mean, reality blurs over into perception, obviously.

Speaker 42 So on immigration, I mean, the kind of incredible overreach of his immigration policies is a reality that people are seeing and don't like, but also they don't like it.

Speaker 42 The economic side is the most kind of pure reality-driven. It is, you know, people really see the prices, they see their cousin gets laid off or something.

Speaker 42 Some of these other policies, it's a blur between, you know, what they're doing, which has real effects. And incidentally, immigration has real effects on the economy, too.

Speaker 42 The collapse, the cutting off of immigration and deterring of immigration and tourism, probably underrated as another downside on the economy.

Speaker 42 But then also, so this people have the sense of what kind of country are we living in, you know, if this kind of stuff is happening.

Speaker 62 Well, you know, and we've been talking about the travel.

Speaker 88 Those numbers are already down.

Speaker 84 That's going to impact.

Speaker 72 So this is where this stuff does intersect.

Speaker 49 All this stuff intersects, right?

Speaker 88 Like that is going to be reality for people that live, particularly in communities that are powered by tourism, right, and hospitality, like mine.

Speaker 49 You know, Adrian Kerski, our colleague, got a focus group of Latino Trump voters where a lot of them were kind of expressing like unhappiness.

Speaker 34 He said he was just going to get rid of the bad guys.

Speaker 50 Know that there's a point of this.

Speaker 39 It just makes you want to give a deep sigh and be like, you know,

Speaker 46 did anyone listen?

Speaker 48 No, I guess

Speaker 72 it's intersecting there.

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Speaker 87 I want to get to your conversation with Ryan Goodman, which looks kind of bigger picture about Trump versus the courts.

Speaker 79 But I like the one new kind of immigration story that was getting a lot of attention over the weekend that intersects with our life down here in Louisiana is there have been two cases of U.S.

Speaker 77 citizen children who were deported to Honduras here.

Speaker 60 One was born in Baton Rouge, a two-year-old.

Speaker 88 The other one was a pair of siblings, four and seven-year-old.

Speaker 77 They were born outside of New Orleans.

Speaker 57 The Honduran mothers, in the former case, the girl's father was trying to keep the child in the country and filing with the courts.

Speaker 49 And the courts just said, essentially, like, well, no, the mother said she wanted to keep her.

Speaker 79 And, like, but you don't know.

Speaker 61 There was no hearing.

Speaker 93 They just, you know, rushed them out of the country.

Speaker 60 The lawyer in the case of the four and seven-year-old was, again, trying to keep them in the country.

Speaker 60 One of them, I think, has an illness and they're concerned about medical treatment here versus in Honduras.

Speaker 61 So again,

Speaker 73 it's like the deport rapists is popular.

Speaker 33 Everyone's for that.

Speaker 112 Deporting people, even honestly, more popular than I would like.

Speaker 70 Deporting people that came in illegally but haven't committed any crimes.

Speaker 80 Deporting people that are born here, children.

Speaker 77 Deporting people that came legally through a refugee status or not deporting people, sending them to a fucking torture prison instead of just deporting them.

Speaker 90 These things are not that popular.

Speaker 50 And you're seeing it intersect with the poll numbers.

Speaker 93 But I know you and Ryan talked about the situation with the Honduran girls.

Speaker 79 Any other thoughts on that?

Speaker 42 Well, no, and also just to add to your point, the way in which it it is done matters some. So they seem to have deported a woman who's married to someone who's in the Coast Guard.

Speaker 42 She does seem to be undocumented. She came and overstayed, I think, and hasn't yet corrected that, though she might have, and she might have corrected it.

Speaker 42 And I think if you're married to an American, maybe it's pretty easy to get some kind of temporary status. I'm not too sure about that.

Speaker 42 And they could simply tell her, hey, you need to do this, or we're going to ask you to leave. But they don't do that.

Speaker 42 They go and seize her from a naval base, kind of amazingly, from the house she and her husband, and I think a child, were about to rent. I mean, so she wasn't like in hiding.

Speaker 42 She wasn't, you know, evading anything. She's in a U.S.
government property. That's how they found her because they read her name through some records.

Speaker 42 And instead of kind of going to her and letting her fix her status or saying, look, I'm sorry, we're getting tough these days, even if you're married to someone serving in the Coast Guard, a little crazy, honestly, but even if you're married to someone serving in the Coast Guard, you have to leave.

Speaker 42 leave within a week. She's not going to flee, right? She's married to a guy who's in the Coast Guard.
But no, there's none of that.

Speaker 42 It's the same with the judge in Milwaukee, which is a ridiculous case. Ryan discussed it at some length on the show we did yesterday, Ryan Goodman.
It was really excellent.

Speaker 42 But again, you can certainly tell her, look, we think we've got an indictment on you. You need to come and show up and we'll process you, just like they processed Trump when he showed up, right?

Speaker 42 And there's a photo and all this. They seize her at 8 a.m.
outside her courthouse and Cash Patel and Pam Bondi tweet about it and come on.

Speaker 42 Pam Bondi goes a fox about it. And it's all demonstrative.
And some of that, maybe. Maybe some of the megabase likes that.
And maybe it deters, I don't know.

Speaker 42 It has a deterrent effect on other people or something. It shows how tough they are.
I think most people look at that and think they've shut down the border.

Speaker 42 We need to maybe do some things about the people who are, the undocumented people who are here in the country, especially if they're not being peaceful and law-abiding.

Speaker 42 But maybe many people would say I wouldn't, but we have to do something. you know, get rid of some of them, even if they have been peaceful and law-abiding.
But do it in a civilized way.

Speaker 42 And that's where the snatching of the students on the street and so forth, wearing the masks, the ICE agents in the masks and so forth, It's just creepy, really.

Speaker 42 And it's bad. I mean, it's wrong.

Speaker 42 Also, I want to make clear, but it's not just a matter of optics, but it is also not what people want their government to be doing unless they need to do it because they're seizing some dangerous criminal or something.

Speaker 61 And it feels un-American, to your point.

Speaker 58 It's just like, why?

Speaker 46 Like, what? We're going to seize a woman on a military base?

Speaker 48 It's like, you're not going to just send her a letter, right?

Speaker 82 Like, it's all these, like, oh, Tim and Bill, the Globalists are defending the open borders illegals.

Speaker 16 And I'm like, no, I just, like, can we treat people with respect in a free country?

Speaker 92 This woman, did she hurt, harm anybody? Did she, has she hurt anybody?

Speaker 33 She's married to somebody that's serving the country.

Speaker 50 Can we just, if you're really adamant that we have to get this person out of the country, can we just do it in a way that allows them to do so?

Speaker 22 Right.

Speaker 15 And it's just like, you know, if you're like, well, Donald Trump got arrested and stuff was like, we did, you know, judges showed a lot of discretion for Donald Trump over the course of his four different indictments.

Speaker 62 He wasn't.

Speaker 71 held in a prison.

Speaker 40 We didn't send him to El Salvador, you know, maybe in retrospect.

Speaker 90 So, So, you know, that's the whole, that's the thing about this that angers people.

Speaker 22 The other thing is it has this whiff of, and obviously it's way more serious than this, but part of the reason it might rub people the wrong way, why it's worth documented, it's it has this whiff of like, have you ever lived in a community where like at the end of the month, everyone's getting speeding tickets because the cops have a, you know, the cops have a quota they need to get through, you know, or a parking ticket?

Speaker 81 Like it has this whiff of that, right?

Speaker 69 Where these like mid and low level ICE people like feel like, okay, well, I'm getting in trouble from fucking creepy Stephen Miller because we haven't nabbed enough people.

Speaker 29 And it's like, okay, the only person that we've identified is this lady

Speaker 89 on the military base because we know where she, right?

Speaker 34 Like it does have this element.

Speaker 35 And I think that is also something that people just don't really like.

Speaker 62 Don't really like. That's just not

Speaker 47 the kind of relationship that Americans.

Speaker 93 want to have with their government. It's maybe more comfortable in other places.

Speaker 85 I don't know.

Speaker 33 Did Ryan have any other thoughts?

Speaker 112 You're You're referencing.

Speaker 62 We do a build as a bulwark on Sunday on Substack.

Speaker 61 And

Speaker 60 Ryan's over at just security. And you did kind of get a more broad update on the Trump versus the courts fights.

Speaker 85 Anything else of note from that combo?

Speaker 42 I mean, Ryan's so great because he gives you the really great kind of overview.

Speaker 42 And then, but he gives you all kinds of fascinating details about various cases, the Wisconsin case, the immigration cases. That's what we focused on.

Speaker 42 I thought the most interesting part, perhaps, of the discussion was the latter part where I asked him, well, how much does all this have a cumulative effect on the judges?

Speaker 42 And there's been so much dissembling and deception, really, and evasion on the part of government lawyers at this point, that he does think that's going to have an effect.

Speaker 42 And he thinks it's legitimate that it had an effect. He explained there's a doctrine.
In normal times, you will rely on government witnesses.

Speaker 42 If there's an FBI affidavit, you kind of assume for purposes for now at the trial, you don't convict the person, but for charging and for holding the person, perhaps you assume you don't require eight witnesses to the FBI affidavit itself, right?

Speaker 42 You know, it's kind of an infinite regress at that point. You have to have some reliance or assurance that people are telling you the truth, especially officers of the court.

Speaker 42 He thinks that they don't have, and it's very clear from the judges, that they do think they've been deceived in multiple different jurisdictions on multiple different cases.

Speaker 42 And he does think that that generally will predispose courts all the way up to the Supreme Court. And he thinks we're seeing some of this already, not to give the...

Speaker 42 government the benefit of the doubt. And I don't mean that again in some sort of like, oh, that's just judges being cute or something.

Speaker 42 Judges do have to make actual decisions based on kind of what they think is more likely to be the case often in terms of these intermediate stages of temporary restraining orders and so forth.

Speaker 42 And he thinks they're not going to give this administration, and they shouldn't give this administration the benefit of the doubt because of how they've behaved.

Speaker 42 And again, this is a good example of what you said at the beginning.

Speaker 42 If they had been a normal, so to speak, you know, normal justice robbery pursuing kind of right-wing policies, but doing so in an appropriate and respectful of the court way that's respectful of the court, they'd be in one place.

Speaker 42 But they've really just couldn't resist or didn't want to resist pushing the envelope and showing real disdain for the courts.

Speaker 42 And of course, in this case, they really don't think the courts shouldn't be involved.

Speaker 42 They just think they should have the right to run the entire immigration policy, enforce the Alien Enemies Act without anyone having any other say and without any due process.

Speaker 42 They pretty much said that in court. That's got to rub judges the wrong way.
And I think it probably rubs a lot of Americans the wrong way.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is also true.

Speaker 46 And

Speaker 59 we should do another legal deep dive soon because, unlike all the Doge cases, you know, there's something in Law Affair this morning about just all the ways that the government has been lying essentially in their filings about what Doge is and what its role was, you know, in order to kind of protect it from the traditional oversight that federal employees have that would harm its ability to act and

Speaker 60 some of the broad ways they have.

Speaker 92 And they've lost a bunch of these cases.

Speaker 89 It's hard to kind of keep track of all of them, but like the Voice of America, you know, shutting down the Voice of America, that got over, that's on stay now.

Speaker 11 So I don't know what we're rooting for there.

Speaker 6 Do we, do we, don't, don't we want them to shut down the voice of America so Carrie Lake can be out of a job and then we can get create a new one later?

Speaker 62 I don't know.

Speaker 8 Anyway, but like all the great people that work at Voice of America, we don't want to lose their jobs.

Speaker 29 So, um, and we talked about this at the time when they were doing all these firings.

Speaker 61 Like, they're going to lose all like so many of these cases, right?

Speaker 71 And it's going to end up costing more.

Speaker 55 But I do wonder, I don't know if there was any other kind of bigger picture thoughts that

Speaker 91 Ryan had on that side of things.

Speaker 42 Aaron Powell, Jr.: Mostly what we've seen so far are temporary restraining orders or permanent injunctions, which is one-step more serious. Obviously, it's permanent instead of temporary.

Speaker 42 We haven't seen much decided on the merits yet at all. And he thinks that's a real question mark.

Speaker 42 I mean, the administration, the government will make arguments for why they have this discretion to do this. Maybe they didn't do it quite in the right way.
Thus, there was a stay.

Speaker 42 And some of these things, like the Alien Enemies Act, will actually get to the Supreme Court on the merits, presumably.

Speaker 42 Can you invoke an act that was passed in 1798, clearly intended for war or for invasion, used only in American history in times of war or invasion?

Speaker 42 Can you say that we're at war with, in effect, with Venezuela, because there's a Venezuela gang of Venezuelans, of immigrants from Venezuela who are operating in the U.S., a gang of 1,000 people, maybe, not a very well-organized gang, actually, it turns out, though pretty brutal at times.

Speaker 42 Isn't that law enforcement not alien enemies? I mean, we haven't gotten to that kind of more fundamental question either. So, an awful lot coming in the Supreme Court.

Speaker 42 You know, we saw that 7-2 decision, that emergency decision a week ago. And he thinks that is indicative of something.

Speaker 42 The seven of the justices just think we need to send a signal that they cannot just, you know, end-run courts and dissemble to courts and pretend that

Speaker 42 they don't have to go through due process in executing their policies.

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Speaker 62 I want to talk about a couple stories that are out this morning that I'm lumping together under the headline of hubris.

Speaker 57 There's the degree of hubris in both of these stories from the Trump administration and their friends is so astonishing.

Speaker 47 But one's from the Atlantic, which includes an interview with Trump.

Speaker 90 One's from Semaphore about these private chat messages that top tech Titans and Trump officials have been have been communicating on for a few years now.

Speaker 49 On the Atlantic story, I'm just going to say out front, I do nothing but praise The Atlantic on here.

Speaker 115 It's like the official podcast of the Atlantic magazine.

Speaker 50 We have so many Atlantic guests, but I just tell listeners to probably go ahead and skip this story for their blood pressure.

Speaker 82 It's like it's about the Trump comeback, something we all lived.

Speaker 15 I'm pretty familiar with it.

Speaker 62 I was thinking about losing my breakfast about halfway through it this this morning, so I don't want that on any of you.

Speaker 32 But the takeaway here is

Speaker 87 essentially that Trump, Trump says to them, I run the country and the world, and it's about how he's having more fun now.

Speaker 54 Just overall, it's almost like this time capsule because the story kind of goes back through like the election to now.

Speaker 62 And to me, my only positive takeaway from it was just how different things feel now.

Speaker 89 Like that this, like this Trump comeback story, and these guys were all bragging about it.

Speaker 11 And, you know, they're quoting quoting people that are talking about how Trump bent the whole world over, you know, and they're just all bowing to him.

Speaker 70 And now it's kind of like,

Speaker 33 I felt like that lasted about a minute.

Speaker 62 So I don't know if you had a chance to glance at it, but that was my takeaway.

Speaker 42 I didn't, but

Speaker 42 that's why I'm looking contented and not having come close to having, you know, as you say, been unable to eat breakfast.

Speaker 42 I mean, Trump himself, however, still seems to be pretty full of hubris, don't you think? I mean, I think his explanation of the tariff, someone pointed this out, maybe this was in the bulwark.

Speaker 42 I can't remember which piece it was. The way he thinks of it is we're running a giant, he's running a giant store, and he sets a fair price.

Speaker 114 No, this was the time interview.

Speaker 62 He said this in that lengthy Time interview.

Speaker 42 But then someone commented on it. I really captured that part, which I skimmed over, but hadn't really thought about it.
I mean, what kind of way is that of thinking about economics?

Speaker 42 Most people think, you know, you're running a store and you set prices. but you have to compete with other stores and you have to get consumers to want to buy things at this price.

Speaker 42 He thinks that the U.S. is so powerful and he is so powerful as president of the U.S.
that we just tell people, well, here's the price, take it or leave it.

Speaker 42 Now, we are powerful and we can sometimes do it, take it or leave it, right? Because we have so much clout in economic terms and also in political and military terms.

Speaker 42 But basically, he's discovering, I think we're unfortunately to discover as the economy slows down and goes into recession, that we can't quite say take it and leave it and that people can go, auto plants can build their factories elsewhere.

Speaker 42 We're seeing some of that, right? As opposed to the U.S. So to avoid the insane U.S.

Speaker 42 tariffs going both in and out, and we can see that people can choose not to travel to the U.S., they can choose to travel elsewhere.

Speaker 42 And it's not, you know, the laws of economics don't disappear because Trump is hubristic.

Speaker 70 I think maybe Trump sees us as a department store, kind of like the only ones he's ever been into.

Speaker 115 Like, he's the fancy department store in New York.

Speaker 45 We're like, we're like a Bergdorf-Goodman, and people are going to buy from Bergdorfs,

Speaker 87 you know, no matter what the prices are.

Speaker 45 And I can sexually assault women in the dressing room of the Bergdorfs if I want, because I'm a star and they let me do it.

Speaker 55 And it's like so moronic the way that he thinks about all this.

Speaker 59 I mean, it's state management of the economy.

Speaker 1 I mean, like, really, it's central planning would be another way to put this.

Speaker 19 Like, I run the store and I get to plan everything, you know, which I know that the Republicans are very happy to call Kamala communist.

Speaker 93 Communist Kamala is coming in because she's going to raise the top tax rate by 2%, maybe, if she can get it through the Republican Senate.

Speaker 37 And it's like, Trump is now wanting to centrally manage the the economy like it's a department store.

Speaker 15 And the free market Republicans on the Hill are like, you know, the most we can get out of them is a grumble to CNN from Don Bacon before he retires.

Speaker 42 Well, maybe the poll changes some of the grumbling to louder complaining. And ultimately, and this is what I say in the morning shots, I mean, does it lead to actions?

Speaker 42 I mean, does Don Bacon say, I'm not voting for an appropriations bill for an omnibus or CR or full-year appropriations bill unless it has aid for Ukraine?

Speaker 42 And do other four members of the the House say that? Do four senators say, I'm sorry, we can't be doing some of these things on immigration or on a million other issues.

Speaker 42 Incidentally, obviously, tarot is a case where Congress has literally delegated the power to the president and could take it back. So I don't know.
I mean, the grumbling is better than nothing.

Speaker 42 Yelling would be better than grumbling. And acting would be best of all.

Speaker 75 Yeah, acting would be nice.

Speaker 69 We'll see how that goes.

Speaker 50 We did get a tweet from Grassley.

Speaker 112 over the weekend on the Russia stuff.

Speaker 61 I even went a little hot at the senator from Iowa, but whatever.

Speaker 79 You know, he's like, I've seen enough enough killing of innocent Ukrainian women and children.

Speaker 54 President Trump, please put the toughest sanctions on Putin.

Speaker 66 You have to see from clear evidence that he's a playing America as a Patsy.

Speaker 33 I guess it's good that he's tweeting that, but it's like, and he's in the Senate.

Speaker 82 I guess Trump met with Zelensky.

Speaker 66 There's that kind of striking photo from the Pope's funeral.

Speaker 74 And so, you know, there's some kind of discussion that Rubio and some others were, I guess, talking with the Ukrainians at a level they hadn't been.

Speaker 51 So maybe we'll get some change.

Speaker 117 But like,

Speaker 7 they just need 67 votes.

Speaker 81 Like they just need 67 votes in the Senate.

Speaker 66 If Grassley is against him, if Grassley wants the toughest sanctions on Putin, like that would mean that he just needs to get Jon Thune and 18 other Republicans.

Speaker 81 You would think that those people exist if like you just gave them truth serum.

Speaker 60 You know, if it was a secret ballot, you would have the numbers there.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 62 I don't know. That's just an option to Senator Grassley.

Speaker 42 And the way politics works is if you introduce legislation and start debating it, maybe you start off with 57 votes, but maybe people start thinking, gee, this is kind of indefensible.

Speaker 42 The position I'm now kind of might they're asking me to take on the other side, and you get to 67 votes, right? Again, it's the dynamics of politics that no one is taking advantage of.

Speaker 42 Democrats who have much less power, they're better, but they haven't still been doing a great job, I would say, of taking advantage of the sort of dynamic elements of politics.

Speaker 42 I do think maybe this is unfair. I haven't seen the whole interview, but Schumer, I guess, had an interview, was on TV yesterday, didn't he?

Speaker 42 And he said something about, I've sent a very strong letter with eight very strong points to Trump. And it really, I mean, it's maybe unfair.

Speaker 42 Maybe this one sentence or two sentences are surrounded by eight minutes of excellence, you know, Schumer saying what they're doing and trying to do.

Speaker 42 But that sentence or two by itself is not good, right? He's sending a strong letter.

Speaker 42 There are 47 Democrats in the Senate. He's the head of the, they can do quite a lot more than send a strong letter with eight strong points, I think.

Speaker 82 They could.

Speaker 58 And this was the one frustrating point I had with Corey Booker, who I thought was pretty good on Thursday's pod, where we got into a little bit of a back and forth on this, where can't you just pressure these guys directly?

Speaker 75 And these are your colleagues, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 81 Like, if you're just, if you're a Democratic senator looking for an idea, I don't know.

Speaker 118 Why don't you just show up to Chuck Grassley's office this morning and say, you know, and say, hey, like,

Speaker 75 I've got a bill right here that's on it that says we're going to pass the toughest sanctions on Putin.

Speaker 81 Let's try to, how many Republicans do you think we can get to sign this?

Speaker 3 Like, start going door to door.

Speaker 81 And again, that's gimmicky. Is it actually going to work?

Speaker 45 Is it just going to backfire and piss them off?

Speaker 26 I don't know.

Speaker 15 I guess my point is the I'm worried about it's going to backfire and piss them off thing.

Speaker 77 It feels like we're just way past that, right?

Speaker 45 It's like these guys aren't going to do anything.

Speaker 65 So to me, it's like, what's the worst that can happen from that?

Speaker 62 It feels gimmicky and then nothing happens.

Speaker 33 Well, nothing's happening now.

Speaker 7 And you're at least getting attention for it and putting pressure on them.

Speaker 42 As you say, the worst that happens is the status quo.

Speaker 42 And as they can do it out in the country as well, obviously, as you know, in the Senate office building, that is to say Corey Booker can go across the river to Pennsylvania, in his neighboring state there from New Jersey, and go see Dave McCormick or go do a town hall in.

Speaker 42 Pennsylvania and say that you have a senator who's in the past been quite tough on Russia, served in the Bush, I guess, Defense Department, right?

Speaker 42 If I'm not mistaken, and has said some things on the stump that are very pro-Ukraine. And why don't you get him to do something here in Pennsylvania?

Speaker 42 So, I mean, you could, now that's not senatorial courtesy. They don't go into each other's states and beat them up.
I don't know. It's a bit of a crisis of democracy, too.

Speaker 42 So maybe they should let some of the usual, you know, courtesies.

Speaker 15 Yeah. I mean, there are a million other things to do, obviously.

Speaker 27 And so, you know, there's only limited time, but we could do something.

Speaker 50 And we're just throwing out an idea.

Speaker 78 Now you mentioned Pennsylvania.

Speaker 75 122,000 Ukrainians in Pennsylvania, you know, and Democrats could go there.

Speaker 78 I saw John Fetterman, by the way, paling around with Dave McCormick at Selena Zito's book party over the weekend.

Speaker 7 Okay, whatever.

Speaker 52 You say that you're, if the, if the rationale for doing that is that you want to create bipartisan relationships so you can pass stuff.

Speaker 64 Ostensibly, both Dave McCormick and John Fetterman, in addition to wanting to fetzelina Zito, also want the Ukrainians to be protected.

Speaker 62 That's been both of their positions in the past.

Speaker 115 Why not have events with Ukrainians in Pennsylvania and invite Dave McCormick to come? And if he doesn't come, shame him.

Speaker 29 There is a limit of creative thinking on all of this, I think.

Speaker 26 And it's like, oh, what more can we do?

Speaker 112 I don't know.

Speaker 22 Call me up. I've got some ideas.

Speaker 42 That's a good one.

Speaker 6 They should call you up.

Speaker 81 Actually, don't call me.

Speaker 62 Don't call me. You can listen, but I'm giving you my good ideas right now.
I'm not a consultant anymore.

Speaker 42 You'll accept a few emails, won't you,

Speaker 42 to the bulwark?

Speaker 11 Yeah, I guess. I guess.

Speaker 2 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 4 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 5 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to.

Speaker 8 and what we can be at our best.

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Speaker 92 I didn't even get to the semaphore story.

Speaker 2 You got me riled up.

Speaker 62 Nothing gets me more riled up than these fucking Dave McCormick doing nothing.

Speaker 71 Fucking Dave McCormick having a book party.

Speaker 83 Give me a break.

Speaker 78 What was the other thing we're going to talk about?

Speaker 88 Oh, the semaphore story.

Speaker 93 This is also going to keep my blood pressure high.

Speaker 16 So people should read this one.

Speaker 12 It might also upset you, but it's kind of in a funny way.

Speaker 50 It's called The Group Chats That Changed America.

Speaker 68 It's a series of big tech gazillionaires.

Speaker 11 It's kind of like the germs of how we got to this dystopia.

Speaker 6 Was you had these guys like Mark Andreessen, David Balsacks, you know, these other Peter Thiel and some of his acolytes, you know, basically set up these signal and WhatsApp chats with influential Republicans.

Speaker 49 Ben Shapiro is on one of them, and

Speaker 33 Republican policy people, Chris Ruffo.

Speaker 51 If you don't know any of these names, God bless you.

Speaker 61 Just continue on in blissful ignorance.

Speaker 48 But anyway, Andreessen said that these chats is what helped produce our natural vibe shift.

Speaker 61 Andreessen was the person that was writing about how America was this coiled spring waiting to be unleashed by some good free market policies.

Speaker 51 They said these chats are the single most important place in where the realignment towards Donald Trump was shaped from Silicon Valley.

Speaker 87 The smartest, most sophisticated Trump supporters in the nation were in these chats.

Speaker 15 These guys are all bragging about how important these chats are and how it changed everything.

Speaker 79 And like, here we are, and we have

Speaker 24 the most smooth-brained economic policy imaginable being implemented in the first three months after these fucking smarties, masters of the universe, thought that they were taking over the U.S.

Speaker 51 government.

Speaker 87 That is, it's a truly remarkable chain of affairs.

Speaker 79 I don't know, Bill, did you get to enjoy this article, or are you just enjoying my read out of it right now?

Speaker 42 I'm really enjoying your read out of it and your indignation and your anger, which are both totally righteous and justified.

Speaker 42 And also, I thought all this Trump stuff was coming from, you know, people who had unfortunately lost jobs because of free trade and were, you know, victims of globalism. Seems like these guys think

Speaker 42 all their stuff is coming from themselves, from these billionaires, and some of whom helped Musk buy Twitter and turn it into X and make it a biased platform and also put pressure in other ways, I think, on other businesses to go along with Trump and

Speaker 42 so forth.

Speaker 42 So maybe there's a little, maybe the whole Trump thing, if we, are we allowed to say that maybe it was a little more top-down or a little less organic middle America than a lot of people have wanted to say than Selena Zito.

Speaker 5 Where are the forgotten men? Yeah, how are they?

Speaker 42 There are a lot of them in the Trump cabinet. You got to say that.

Speaker 42 You just look at the Trump cabinet and you think, you know, he really went out of his way to find some, you know, working-class guys who would really pay the price for globalization.

Speaker 42 You know, you look at those guys and they've had a rough time, those people in the Trump cabinet for the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years.

Speaker 79 How do you think the shipbuilders, the workers on the docks are doing right now as the ships don't come in?

Speaker 82 You know, it's the big big reindustrialization policy.

Speaker 42 Yeah, has anyone in the Trump administration even expressed a moment of concern or sympathy for them?

Speaker 42 Even I mean, they're not only like wildly wealthy jackasses, they're also wildly wealthy, unempathetic jackasses, which I guess maybe that's part of the package.

Speaker 70 Yeah, we haven't seen much shame yet from the big organizers of this or any humility from the people that thought it was going to be so easy to co-opt Donald Trump and then

Speaker 51 make our AI golden age come through their fucking techno-fascist policies.

Speaker 62 But I don't know, maybe it'll come through if the markets get worse.

Speaker 50 The Senofor article did have this screenshot for the Aegis, which I do have to share.

Speaker 2 Ben writes this.

Speaker 32 One of the chats broke down because David Balsacks, excuse me, he wrote Sachs, but we have to use our bulwark style.

Speaker 67 Because David Balsacks accused the people of having TDS.

Speaker 62 Brian Goldberg, another founder, replied, I'm not sure we have TDS.

Speaker 12 I think we Republicans who supported Trump are seeing that it's a failed administration.

Speaker 46 The next line is a little note that says Tucker Carlson leaves the chat.

Speaker 42 It's like

Speaker 67 there are a handful of the second tier, like VC guys who are like, I didn't sign up for this.

Speaker 68 Like, I didn't sign up for fucking my stock tanking, you know, because you guys are like putting 145%

Speaker 81 tariffs on China, which wasn't, that was never part of the plan. Nobody told me about that.

Speaker 42 so anyway that's if it wasn't for all the suffering that would be pretty enjoyable the you know the infighting if only they could have known that trump was enamored of tariffs and

Speaker 42 of course and wasn't going to listen to the grown-ups in the room why would one have thought that you know yeah i mean brian gobert could have just listened to us rather than listening to the all-in podcast and he would have been much more clear-eyed about what was coming but uh it's still nice to see the infighting

Speaker 3 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, these words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 8 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 10 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 16 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

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Speaker 24 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 33 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

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Speaker 50 There's a Matt Iglesias article this morning that I think is really important.

Speaker 63 And I feel a little bit like I was...

Speaker 58 I was wrapped on the knuckles a little bit by Matt Iglesias unintentionally because I had, it was unintentional, because I had Betto on the Pod Friday.

Speaker 54 And I love Betto.

Speaker 86 So, you know, I just, I maybe had Betto colored glasses, but I asked asked him about running again because he just kind of sounded like somebody that was going to run again.

Speaker 61 I interviewed him back in August.

Speaker 55 He didn't really sound like that.

Speaker 90 It was kind of a tongue-in-cheek question, really.

Speaker 59 I didn't think that he was thinking about it.

Speaker 62 24 hours later, he was asked by a local reporter the same question, and like his answer was notably non-Sherman-esque, right?

Speaker 79 To a point where the Texas reporters are starting to think maybe Betto might be run per Senate.

Speaker 79 And had I thought that, maybe my questions would have been a little bit different, just about being practical in running for these sort of Senate seats.

Speaker 61 And And Iglesias just basically writes about this, which is like for the Democrats to be able to take the Senate and have any sort of policy passed, like to be able to get 51 Senate votes, like you need to win in a place like Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Florida, Alaska, Kansas, in the 26 and 28 cycles.

Speaker 3 And if you look at those states, I mean, Kamala did worse in those states than Trump did in places like New Mexico or New Jersey.

Speaker 16 And so it's a big task.

Speaker 92 It's a tall task to win in those states.

Speaker 33 And Iglesias is basically arguing that the Democrats don't seem that serious about finding answers to that conundrum, right?

Speaker 112 And there are a couple potential ones.

Speaker 92 You know, there is, we're in a Great Depression, and so, you know, we get lucky.

Speaker 49 The Republicans put up a terrible candidate like Roy Moore.

Speaker 78 And so the Democrats get lucky.

Speaker 79 Like, those are the two, you didn't have a plan, but it worked out anyway.

Speaker 14 Options.

Speaker 89 He floats the Dan Osborne option.

Speaker 93 He's this independent, kind of populist, independent kind of guy that sort of mixes like Bernieism with cultural conservatism.

Speaker 46 This is not my type of candidate at all, but I'm open to that.

Speaker 61 Maybe that's the right, maybe that's the winning path.

Speaker 62 There's also more of a...

Speaker 81 you know, bulwark accommodating type path, right?

Speaker 117 That's like, you know, where, you know, you distance from Democrats on issues like energy production and, you know, whatever.

Speaker 2 So my point is not that I want to like prescribe what the right answer is, but like it is important in spaces like this to have like real conversations about it.

Speaker 62 And just to like say, oh, we're just going to run somebody who's going to run as a median Democrat and hope that we're in a Great Depression.

Speaker 20 Like that doesn't seem like a plan.

Speaker 62 So anyway, that's my summary of that.

Speaker 79 I don't know if you have any deep thoughts on it.

Speaker 42 No, I think it's a very good piece. I mean, I think he's right to think about this and not to just give up on 26 and 28 from the Senate.
That's really a disastrous thing.

Speaker 42 If there's some tiny, some small chance of winning the Senate in 26, you could avert a lot of bad things in 27, 2027, 2028. So it's worth really going for.

Speaker 42 I think he slightly overstates, and that does, though, indeed. He seems to imply you need to have a whole rebranding of the Democratic Party.

Speaker 42 That's hard to do over a year and a half when there's no one in charge of it anyway, and it's just kind of a bunch of people running around.

Speaker 42 saying what they believe, basically. I think there are two things you can do.
And it's really, I'm thinking of 2006 here where the Democrats

Speaker 42 had massive gains in the off-year election. The two things are, one, we've already discussed, drive Trump's numbers down.
The single best predictor of off-year performance is the president's approval.

Speaker 42 And if he's at 34 and you get a wave, or 36 even maybe, and you get a wave election, then it does bring a lot of people in in states that are, you know, minus eight and minus 10, not a lot, some people in in those states.

Speaker 42 And you don't even have to have spectacular candidates. That's one.
And two, as Rahm Emmanuel did in 2006, you know, recruit candidates who are good for the states and localities they're running in.

Speaker 42 And if you can get that combination, I don't think you need to have a whole redefinition of the Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries-led party. And, you know, governors will do what governors will do.

Speaker 42 And some of them will be like Newsom, and some of them will be like Shapiro, and others, you know, will be like Pritzker. And maybe you can shape that tad at the margins.

Speaker 42 But I think those two things, recruiting good candidates and driving Trump's numbers down, are very, I don't know if they're achievable goals, but they're very concrete goals.

Speaker 42 I mean, they're goals you can work on achieving, right? They're not like fanciful. You can actually go to states and districts and say, who is a reasonable candidate here?

Speaker 42 Who might fit the district or state a little better than the natural, the state assembly person from some blue dot in a red state who's otherwise just going to naturally win the nomination, you know, and lose.

Speaker 42 And secondly, and above all, I come back to driving Patron Stumpers down. Everything's so nationalized.
It's going to be about checking Trump.

Speaker 42 Why would you vote Democratic in 2026 if you're a marginal, you know, unless you're a loyal Democrat? You want to stop Trump. It's like 2018 in that respect.

Speaker 42 And there, you just need to get his number. You need to get the, increase the number of people who want to stop Trump.

Speaker 42 Then maybe you lose a couple of the percent of them at the end of the day because they kind of look at the Democrat and they think, ooh, a little too left-wing for me.

Speaker 42 But if that number is big enough, you can afford to lose those last 2% and still be at 51, right? So the most doable thing is to knock Trump's numbers down as much as possible.

Speaker 30 I agree with that, that that's the most doable thing.

Speaker 78 I also just think, look, this is, I'll give free advice here because I, like I said, I don't like being being a consultant anymore.

Speaker 60 You know, over the last years, I know you do, I get calls from people who like runner in Red State, run around Louisiana.

Speaker 66 Like, what do you think?

Speaker 65 What do you think?

Speaker 25 And I always say to them, like, what is a cultural issue where you disagree with the Democratic Party on?

Speaker 40 I literally don't care what it is.

Speaker 7 Right.

Speaker 42 It doesn't matter what it is, I think, actually, in a weird way.

Speaker 61 And frankly, it doesn't matter what it is, right?

Speaker 16 Pick one and don't just kind of like mention it a little bit.

Speaker 77 Like, talk about it a lot.

Speaker 7 Don't talk about it quite as much.

Speaker 118 You talk about how terrible Donald Trump has been for working class people and veterans, et cetera.

Speaker 75 Like, that's their most important job.

Speaker 87 But maybe the second most thing you should talk about is whatever this cultural issue is, where you are more in line with the people of Texas or Iowa or Louisiana than you are with Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer.

Speaker 118 And like, that doesn't feel like it should be that hard, but it is.

Speaker 92 Like, there's a lot of pressure not to do that.

Speaker 8 You don't, you know, the rubber chicken circuit, the people don't want to hear that, right?

Speaker 37 Like, and will that even work?

Speaker 9 I don't know, right?

Speaker 62 Like, I'm not, this is not a guaranteed path to victory in a red state.

Speaker 85 It's very hard to win as a Democrat in a red state.

Speaker 33 But to me, it just feels like an ante

Speaker 87 of like both giving people an anti-Trump choice and giving them the choice of somebody that feels like they're from that state, that feels like on some level they connect with the people of that state more than they connect with national democrats.

Speaker 88 And even then, it's an uphill slog, but like just running as a generic is tough and it's not going to do it.

Speaker 115 And as much as I love Fetto, even he would say that.

Speaker 92 I mean, like, the grassroots stuff that he's doing is all super important and people should do it.

Speaker 93 And I love that Fetto's doing it.

Speaker 62 But like, that is another thing that's necessary but not sufficient.

Speaker 51 You know, because even he said it in the interview, it's like, you know, this might not pay off this grassroots thing in 26 or 28 or 30, but eventually it will.

Speaker 61 And so great, do that.

Speaker 59 But like, you know, if you're talking about 2026, like it's not going to be door knocking that's going to be the solution by itself. You got to do those other things.

Speaker 42 And in addition to picking an issue, which I totally agree with, guns is an obvious one where they're not going to pass any gun control legislation in the next, during a Trump presidency in 27, 28 either.

Speaker 42 So, I mean, if you're a pro-gun control, you're not going to, I think you can vote for someone who says, I'm not quite with you on gun control.

Speaker 42 So, you know, it's not going to matter in the next two or four years, probably. And I think the same is true on a bunch of other issues.
There are also biography matters.

Speaker 42 I mean, Rahm recruited in 06, but also in 2018. No one recruited anyone in 2018, actually, at 2017.
People just showed up.

Speaker 42 Abigail Spanberger showed up, and Mikey Sherrill showed up, and former intelligence officers and former military retired veterans showed up, and culturally moderate types showed up, and they did well.

Speaker 42 So, again, I think the bio plus the finding an issue or two to distinguish yourself can go pretty far.

Speaker 15 All right. Final thing, we'll end with an attaboy.
Well, you mentioned Pritzker. I got two ad-boys.

Speaker 54 I don't have the audio of Pritzker, but Pritzker was on fire over the weekend.

Speaker 60 So, you know, that's something to monitor.

Speaker 74 He's talking about how he's never been the type of person to be a big protest person.

Speaker 60 And this is the moment for mass protests, if there ever was one.

Speaker 51 So, me and JB are aligned on that.

Speaker 15 But, my actual ad-a-boy I want to close with was

Speaker 35 the last minute of 60 minutes, which was, I think, pretty bold for Scott Pelley to do this on-air live.

Speaker 33 So in case you guys missed it, let's listen.

Speaker 119 Bill resigned Tuesday. It was hard on him and hard on us.

Speaker 42 But he did it for us and you.

Speaker 119 Stories we've pursued for 57 years are often controversial. Lately, the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration.
Bill made sure they were accurate and fair. He was tough that way.

Speaker 119 But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it.
Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways.

Speaker 119 None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires. No one here is happy about it.
But in resigning, Bill proved one thing.

Speaker 119 He was the right person to lead 60 Minutes all along.

Speaker 80 Not bad.

Speaker 42 Pretty powerful. Yeah.

Speaker 9 It's nice.

Speaker 59 See, guys, you can do it.

Speaker 75 Everybody can do it.

Speaker 81 Scott Pelley can do it. You can do it.

Speaker 14 These guys aren't that scary.

Speaker 16 Anyway, Bill Crystal, we'll see you back here next Monday.

Speaker 3 Canadians will be watching your election results tonight.

Speaker 15 And everybody else, we'll see you back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bullwork podcast.

Speaker 63 Peace.

Speaker 63 get out of the situation.

Speaker 63 Walking in the streetlight, thinking about last time.

Speaker 42 This time I said I would do this right, said I would never break this promise.

Speaker 42 But now I'm back to counting all of us. We cannot be friends.
Can't not pretend that it makes sense.

Speaker 42 We cannot be friends. Cannot pretend that it makes sense.

Speaker 42 Cause now I'm in it.

Speaker 42 But I've been trying to find my way back for a minute.

Speaker 42 Damn, I'm in it.

Speaker 42 And I've been trying to find my way back for a minute.

Speaker 42 Working all the face in my house, I'm alone in my head.

Speaker 42 But I wish you were in my bed. Can't get a feet on myself.
Gotta change the situation.

Speaker 42 Told me that I shouldn't give in, give up. Told me that I shouldn't fight for a fight.

Speaker 42 Told me I shouldn't not think about. Cause we cannot be friends.

Speaker 42 Cannot pretend that it makes sense.

Speaker 42 Cause now I'm in it.

Speaker 42 But I've been trying to find my way back for a minute.

Speaker 42 Damn, I'm in it.

Speaker 42 And I've been trying to find my way back for a minute.

Speaker 42 Cause now I'm in it.

Speaker 42 And I've been trying to find my way back for a minute.

Speaker 42 And the rain keeps coming down. I wanna see it.

Speaker 42 And I can't hear it.

Speaker 42 I feel like I can't feel it.

Speaker 14 The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 120 This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culture Eastas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. Get ready for your next TV obsession, All's Fair.

Speaker 120 Starring Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, Nisi Nash-Betts, Tayana Taylor, with Sarah Poulson, and Glenn Close. A team of fierce female divorce attorneys leave a male-dominated firm to start their own.

Speaker 120 Filled with scandalous secrets and shifting allegiances both in the courtroom and within their own ranks, these ladies know that lawyers are a girl's best friend.

Speaker 120 Don't miss All's Fair, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

Speaker 42 Ah,

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