S2 Ep1026: Michael Steele: Your Voice Matters

Transcript

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Speaker 46 Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast.

Speaker 25 I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Speaker 22 He's back.

Speaker 32 He was the former chair of the Republican National Committee.

Speaker 26 He's hosted the Michael Steele podcast, which we're distributing here at the Bulwark.

Speaker 51 But beginning Monday, May 5th, Michael and his fellow panelists, Simone Sanders Townsend and Alicia Menendez will move to prime time, co-host the 7 p.m.

Speaker 47 Eastern Hour on MSNBC.

Speaker 51 You're going prime time, baby, Deion Sanders.

Speaker 55 Prime, baby.

Speaker 56 Looking forward to it.

Speaker 57 It's a lot of fun.

Speaker 58 And I'm glad to be in this conversation with you, as always.

Speaker 62 You're one of my fave people out there.

Speaker 70 And so I'm just glad to be able to come on and shoot the breeze with you and celebrate the this new chapter that's coming up on May 5th I'm excited about it man it's gonna be a lot of fun talk to me about prime time you could you have a new support team now you got getting you on a Zempek you have your own personal makeup artist like what's the difference with prime how do things change when you're primetime like all I asked for was someone who could put some hair on my head that was

Speaker 79 I need more hair for prime time so and the response was just grow out what's left and you can do a comb over okay I was like but afros don't comb over that well.

Speaker 82 So it's just, you know, I don't know how that works.

Speaker 86 No, we've got, look, we've got a great team, being our executive producer, Kyle Griffin, and the production team around him, the writers, all of that.

Speaker 87 A big portion of that transitions with us to the prime time hour.

Speaker 79 Yeah, the support is a little bit different. It's a different game.

Speaker 89 You've got more hands that are part of making the product, which is good.

Speaker 77 And because, you know, look, certainly for

Speaker 93 Spinco MSNBC, everyone's familiar with, you know, sort of the standalone entity now that will be the new version of MSNBC.

Speaker 75 They're building a wonderful brand, exciting new programming.

Speaker 88 It started with our effort on the weekend from 8 to 10 in the morning, Saturday and Sundays, and is now kind of grown out to this opportunity in prime time, but it's also helped transform how other shows are looking.

Speaker 62 So it's been really, really fun, man, to sort of be sort of the experimental project that works out really well and that is sort of

Speaker 96 an example of some exciting things to come.

Speaker 98 And so I'm looking forward to May 5th and 7 o'clock and, you know, bringing the heat as I want to do.

Speaker 70 All right, well, let's bring the heat.

Speaker 9 I'm looking forward to it too, because I'll be able to see you more.

Speaker 24 The 7 a.m. Saturday Central Time hour isn't really kind of how we do things in New Orleans.

Speaker 47 So, you know, I'll get to see you more at dinner time than I did.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I was going to say, right?

Speaker 102 Folks, 7 a.m., Tim's just coming in.

Speaker 99 He's not going to be watching TV.

Speaker 103 Yeah, not checking out Alicia Menendez's takes at 7 a.m. on Saturday.

Speaker 47 That's for a different demo.

Speaker 24 All right.

Speaker 104 Well, you're Catholic, right?

Speaker 105 You went to Archbishop Carroll, Catholic schoolboy.

Speaker 51 Thought he might maybe could have been Pope at one point.

Speaker 50 Any thoughts on the Pope's passing, possibly because of the smug hot air coming out of J.D.

Speaker 109 Vance the day before?

Speaker 72 I won't even, I had so many of my friends go say to me, really?

Speaker 78 His last official visit?

Speaker 81 Are you serious?

Speaker 60 You know, I've been very reflective of this pope for a lot of reasons because

Speaker 112 everyone really wanted to reduce his papacy to, you know, right versus left, conservative versus liberal.

Speaker 68 And yes, you could argue, oh, he was progressive on immigration.

Speaker 116 Well, I don't know if my reading of the Bible and the words of Christ around the Beatitudes or what the Lord gave Moses in the Ten Commandments would be considered progressive.

Speaker 102 I think it's just kind of common sense.

Speaker 118 Loving your neighbor as yourself, that's progressive.

Speaker 120 And if that's progressive, what does it say about being a conservative?

Speaker 75 That I don't love my neighbor, that I don't give a shit about the immigrant, that I don't care about what happens to my fellow man and woman?

Speaker 99 You just can't put him in that box.

Speaker 123 Because I think what the Pope was trying to do was say, look, at the core of everything that we do should be love

Speaker 119 it should inform how we approach the world and

Speaker 113 the challenges we have are resolved if we see the humanity of our fellow traveler it's been really a reflective moment uh for me you know i was former i was an augustinian seminarian spent three years in a monastery uh roughly and and so

Speaker 15 that also i had this in my memory somewhere i knew that you had flirted at the priesthood, but I don't think that three years in a seminary was, or in a monastery rather, was something I was familiar with.

Speaker 103 Give us a little more color on that.

Speaker 100 Yeah, so I entered the Augustinian Order, Order of St.

Speaker 68 Augustine, after I graduated from Hopkins.

Speaker 58 And that August, I went up to Villanova and

Speaker 75 joined the...

Speaker 126 the men there for my first year.

Speaker 62 While I was at Villanova, I taught at one of our high schools, Malvern Prep, and then went up to Massachusetts for my novitiate and spent time up there preparing for Simple Vows.

Speaker 65 And

Speaker 99 that was the journey.

Speaker 114 And then I left right before Simple Vows because I felt God was calling me to move in a different direction and to take

Speaker 61 what I learned in that time and apply it to this, what I've been doing since.

Speaker 111 It is actually, Tim, informed how I served as lieutenant governor, informed how I served as RNC chairman in a very political position, that part of my Christian values should direct and help me navigate through some very sticky political stuff.

Speaker 83 And it did.

Speaker 64 I have a whole different view of how I look at people.

Speaker 57 I used to tell people after I cussed them out, I'd say, you know, this could have been a lot worse because

Speaker 62 I spent three years in a seminary, this went a lot better than it otherwise would have.

Speaker 65 And they'd just look at me like, okay, whatever.

Speaker 30 This could have been confession.

Speaker 108 I could have been, you know, giving you 10 Hail Marys, 10 Our Fathers.

Speaker 104 You know, you could have.

Speaker 45 It could have been really painful. Yeah.

Speaker 72 All you need is, all right, start praying.

Speaker 139 But yeah, man, it's a very important time for us.

Speaker 86 The church is going to go through a transition.

Speaker 90 You know, the

Speaker 58 who's in, who's out horse race of the election of the next pope is going to ensue after the funeral, if not before.

Speaker 57 But I think the legacy of this pope is going to be a profound one.

Speaker 59 And given that he selected and put in place a significant majority of the cardinals who will be electing his successor, they're not going to necessarily look for a similar type or, you know, the next version of Francis.

Speaker 77 But I think some of the things that he, the qualities he led with, they're going to realize are important.

Speaker 58 And hopefully the Holy Spirit will lead them to choose the person who will best reflect this time and is best needed for these times.

Speaker 52 I love hearing you talk about that.

Speaker 34 I can, you know, the Catholic schoolboy, you know, you can hear the other Catholic schoolboy and the kind of the language that is used.

Speaker 26 It's funny.

Speaker 15 The J.D.

Speaker 142 Vance of it all, you know, as an adult convert to respect everybody's religious journey, but it reminds me, there's this great meme that I, that I saw that really resonated with me, listening to you versus listening to J.D.

Speaker 36 Vance, I want to share with you.

Speaker 54 It's every lifelong Catholic I've ever met is like, I think we're supposed to give this food to poor people.

Speaker 108 And every adult convert to Catholicism is like, the Archon of Constantinople's epistle on the Pentecostine rites of the Eucharist clearly states that women shouldn't have driver's licenses.

Speaker 42 It is really true. Just like the

Speaker 143 overstatement, like the rhetoric is for, you know, the Archbishop Carroll Catholic versus the adult convert, J.D.

Speaker 145 Vance Catholic, is

Speaker 121 a little different.

Speaker 81 It's a little bit different.

Speaker 76 That is so well put.

Speaker 130 Exactly.

Speaker 58 Look, you know, it's, I always kind of marvel, and it's true, I guess, for a lot of folks who convert to a new faith that they have a certain zeal about it, that those of us who were born into the faith, baptized in the faith at a young age, grew up with it.

Speaker 67 You know, that zeal is there.

Speaker 88 It just manifests itself differently.

Speaker 85 And it's less rhetorical.

Speaker 66 It's less full-on public display, but it is in the works when you think about the charities you give to, the people you support, the programs that you advocate for, putting your children in Catholic school, if that option is available.

Speaker 62 I mean, all the little things that we do, it really kind of reminds me, Tim, of, you know, the lessons at the beginning of Lent.

Speaker 58 What is the first thing the Lord tells us?

Speaker 115 Do not, you know, wear, you know, the ashes and sackcloth.

Speaker 59 Do not show the world how you pray.

Speaker 116 You know, sit there with your prayer book walking.

Speaker 146 You know, you remain humble in your faith.

Speaker 59 You remain humble in your journey, but you do the works that we are asked to do, which start with loving your neighbor as yourself, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and providing for the Samaritan that you meet in your journey.

Speaker 62 And, you know, what bothers me a lot with today's fascist Christians, or Christo-fascism, or Christian nationalism, is that it forgets that the man they purportedly follow, Jesus Christ, was himself a refugee,

Speaker 67 was himself a migrant who fled the oppression of a government that wanted to kill him

Speaker 114 and went to a little place called Bethlehem where he was born.

Speaker 69 And if the government of Bethlehem looked at Mary and Joseph as they entered the gates and said, Who the hell are you?

Speaker 146 What are you doing here?

Speaker 81 Get the hell out. I'm sorry.

Speaker 27 I'm pretty sure that Pontius Pilate is the hero of the Easter story. It's been a while since I've been in Catholic school, but I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 47 Just a quick aside on all that,

Speaker 47 one of our past sponsors of this podcast is the Jesuit Refugee Service, which is a great charity to support on this front in town of the Jesuit Pope and

Speaker 13 the Michael Steele spirit of the lessons of the Christmas story and the Easter story, rather than the send them to a hole in El Salvador lesson, which

Speaker 47 I think I must have missed that week.

Speaker 82 I missed that week too.

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Speaker 14 I want to get back to the immigration stuff in a second, but I was trying to think where,

Speaker 47 you know, which of all the crazy stuff happened in the administration do I want to start with with Michael Steele?

Speaker 9 And I saw a draft of something Sam Stein's working on for today, which is just a list of all the things they've messed up.

Speaker 14 And I think this is a good place to start, right?

Speaker 32 Because we have a lot of ideological differences with what's happening with the administration.

Speaker 109 But even if you wanted mega-nationalism, it has just been a shit show of unbelievable proportions.

Speaker 47 The Albrego Garcia thing they admit was wrong.

Speaker 71 Yeah.

Speaker 147 Harvard, the letter they said that was sent by accident.

Speaker 35 That was in a story over the weekend.

Speaker 142 The signal chat was a mistake.

Speaker 24 The tariff formula had a math mistake.

Speaker 32 According to the economist, they cited the Doge cuts that they made and then pulled back and then made them pull back.

Speaker 107 And then Elon's in Nova Office saying, well, you're not going to get bat a thousand percent. They sent out an email accidentally outing the names of the CIA hires, the new CIA hires.

Speaker 104 I mean,

Speaker 141 these are just screw-ups.

Speaker 47 Like, this is just a comedy of heirs by a bunch of amateurs that are not up for it. So I thought maybe that'd be a good place to start and letting you go with it where you wanted.

Speaker 77 It is a good place to start because I think you just insulted the amateurs out there.

Speaker 64 And the reason I think you did is because even an amateur has a working understanding of what the job is and what the limitations and requirements of the job are, right?

Speaker 77 They overperform because they don't want to make the mistake, right?

Speaker 112 So, you know, we've all had that experience as amateurs at something very early in our careers or, you know, bringing someone in who's new to the work we're doing.

Speaker 110 These folks generally don't like government.

Speaker 125 They don't like the people who serve in government.

Speaker 95 And what is the big lie, Tim, is they don't like the people who rely on the service of government.

Speaker 59 Because that last part is the sticky part.

Speaker 77 Because what they're now seeing in town halls and red districts, in protests across the nation, is that the American people, for all of their concerns and maybe even lack of trust with some aspects of government, still rely on it, still need it.

Speaker 139 They understand what Social Security is there for because they've paid into it.

Speaker 77 They understand why Medicaid is important because their mother, their father, their grandparent, or themselves otherwise wouldn't get the health care that they need.

Speaker 66 They understand what the Department of Education at the federal level is there for.

Speaker 100 They recognize that the states absolutely control the outcome of educational training and programs, et cetera.

Speaker 124 But they also appreciate the fact that their special ed kid gets a little extra help from the the federal government to get to stay a certain pace, to learn and to graduate and to try to become a productive person in our society.

Speaker 139 So they understand these things.

Speaker 127 The fact that the problem now with the MAGA folks inside the government who just wants to go in like, you know, Elon Musk with the buzzsaw, just go in and start cutting and tearing and then go, oops, didn't mean to hit that.

Speaker 118 Oh, wow, I didn't know that was there.

Speaker 112 That's That's important.

Speaker 66 They're now hearing from the very people they thought would be standing out there cheering them.

Speaker 92 And they're not because they're wrong.

Speaker 79 And what we're seeing now, particularly in this space with Obrego Garcia,

Speaker 57 is: I don't care, Tim.

Speaker 114 I don't give a damn if Obrego Garcia is the head of MS-13.

Speaker 103 They'd have some evidence if he was the head.

Speaker 8 Right.

Speaker 139 And I don't give a damn if he's Mother Teresa.

Speaker 94 But what I do give a damn about is that if our criminal justice system wants to pull him in, that A, to your point, they have the evidence.

Speaker 62 And B, he's allowed the due process to confront that evidence and to attest to his innocence or whatever.

Speaker 79 But that process is important because if you strip that away for Obrego Garcia, Tim Miller, Michael Steele, Jane Doe, John Doe are next.

Speaker 102 And we know

Speaker 102 that's the end game.

Speaker 8 Why?

Speaker 123 Go back to the last point I made, because they fundamentally don't like the people

Speaker 58 that the government is there to serve.

Speaker 89 And they want to create a space in which the only folks around them and in their orbit are blind loyalists who at any moment they can kick to the curb, but until that moment occurs, will do whatever they want them to do.

Speaker 122 And that's not how the country was built.

Speaker 108 It's interesting that you went there.

Speaker 108 Michael, I was going to save this for later, but it's just so on the nose that you kind of understand the threats and the process and the concerns about what is happening with due process in this country.

Speaker 54 Because yesterday on Fox, Will Kane is one of the new Fox himbos.

Speaker 47 He had Maxwell Frost on. Frost was live from San Salvador and good on him and a couple other Democrats who are continuing to push on this.
There's a group that went down there.

Speaker 48 But Frost brought up what you just brought up, right?

Speaker 54 The fact that Trump has said that what the next group he wants to send El Salvador are U.S.

Speaker 31 citizens, he wants to send them to Sukkot.

Speaker 47 And after he brought this up, some hilarity ensued. So, I want to play for people that exchange with Will Kane and then Will Kane's attempted cleanup.

Speaker 19 So, it'll be two clips back to back. Let's listen.

Speaker 172 Do you have that in front of you? I've not seen that statement. Can you please quote where that comes from that he would like to deport American citizens?

Speaker 173 He said it in the Oval Office. He said he wants to go for homegrown snacks, people born and raised in in the United States that isn't.

Speaker 172 Do you have anything

Speaker 172 besides your words on that?

Speaker 8 I have not seen that.

Speaker 172 After years of very fine people, among other hoaxes, I'm suspicious of any Democrat quoting President Trump in full context.

Speaker 172 And I make no apologies, none, on not being able to know or recall that specific clip because it doesn't reinforce my fever dream handmaid's tale vision of America, where Lily, who reads the bulwark on the Upper West Side, is about to be deported right after Kilmar Brego Garcia.

Speaker 174 Sorry, Will, but Lily that reads the bulwark, you know, actually is aware of what the President of the United States says.

Speaker 29 So like Lily that Reads the Bulwark is aware of the news.

Speaker 81 You know, I know you're supposed to be a news anchor, so that is a gap between

Speaker 8 you and Lily out there.

Speaker 23 And Lily doesn't think she's going next. She thinks that the American citizens who Trump thinks or accuses of being a criminal are going next.
And that is the fucking risk here, right, Chairman?

Speaker 114 That's exactly the risk.

Speaker 18 And we're all at risk.

Speaker 78 Look, the thing that's in the way,

Speaker 171 the thing that is in the way of everything Donald Trump wants to do, or more to the point, the people around him want to do, the Steve Millers, et cetera, is the Constitution.

Speaker 67 It's not the regulations on fluoride.

Speaker 125 It's not whether or not you fund USAID.

Speaker 64 It's not whether or not this department or that department is large or or small, has one person or a thousand people.

Speaker 102 It is the Constitution.

Speaker 118 Because if you did not have that,

Speaker 57 the rest of this doesn't matter.

Speaker 72 It doesn't matter. If we did not have that, Michael Steele and Tim Miller would not be on this mic right now.

Speaker 168 Because there would have been jackbooted thugs coming to his location and mine to shut it down.

Speaker 78 That's what this is about.

Speaker 57 And it's not hyperbole.

Speaker 57 And Fox can level up stupid to sit behind a desk in front of a camera and sit there and go, oh, well, you know, I'm not going to make any excuse or apologize for not knowing something.

Speaker 56 Shut the hell up.

Speaker 83 Why are you there?

Speaker 56 You're pushing out the same level of stupid

Speaker 56 that has infected the political process.

Speaker 123 But you know what?

Speaker 87 That's okay.

Speaker 176 Why?

Speaker 102 Because the Constitution allows you to do it.

Speaker 176 And if it wasn't there, guess what?

Speaker 168 There would be someone to come take you off the air.

Speaker 56 So that's what this boils down to.

Speaker 94 And I just wish people, and you know, to a certain extent, from going back to my rant about two months ago, where I kind of lost my shit and just kind of said, Simone asked me, she said, well, what do you want people to do?

Speaker 120 I just said, I want them to give a damn.

Speaker 84 I want them to show they care about what's happening to the country, that these people don't like them, don't want them, and is doing everything they can to make their lives miserable deliberately.

Speaker 94 And it's nice to see now people taking to the streets more, expressing more directly their concerns, showing up at town halls, even creating town halls they know their member is not going to come to.

Speaker 77 So the next step, folks,

Speaker 94 is to unelect those who are not in service to the American people,

Speaker 122 who are not in service to the concerns that you have.

Speaker 64 We are no longer in the land of $7 cartons of egg.

Speaker 83 We're beyond that.

Speaker 58 In fact, it was never really about that.

Speaker 64 If you're honest, people, come on, just be honest.

Speaker 116 You know what?

Speaker 58 It really was about the $7 egg.

Speaker 57 You know why? Because you took a vacation that summer and you could have saved up the money for the eggs in the fall, right?

Speaker 64 We know what 2024 was like for most people.

Speaker 45 It was okay.

Speaker 120 But there were other things that were going on that really pissed you off.

Speaker 122 And that's respectable.

Speaker 68 And that should have been addressed by the Democrats.

Speaker 82 And it wasn't.

Speaker 71 Okay.

Speaker 58 So now you have the power to address those things more directly with your elected officials.

Speaker 125 And the fact that if you hold a town hall and they don't show up, or if they come and stand in front of you with arrogance and disdain for the fact that you are concerned about a Brego Garcia because you know he represents you and your rights, if you're concerned about that and that congressman isn't, that congressman no longer should have a job.

Speaker 122 That's what the power of our Constitution allows.

Speaker 118 That's why we, the people, Tim, are the most important words in our founding documents because these men, as flawed and at times failing as they were, wrote something unlike anything written politically, except the Magna Carta, which first established the rights of the common man, right?

Speaker 56 Allows you, allows you to be the government,

Speaker 178 not the institutions, and certainly not Donald Trump.

Speaker 57 Donald Trump is a modern-day King George, and we know how that story ended. And as we come up on our 250th, we need to remember that.

Speaker 42 This is a lot of the importance, just put a finer point on what you're saying, of like of acting now to stall or slow this, to speak out against it now, because they are going to push as far as they can.

Speaker 108 This is like the element of all this, right?

Speaker 54 That it's like, it's not about the details of Brigo Garcia, because it's like, okay, well, had they just gotten away with sending three planes to El Salvador and, you know, the New York Times wrote one article about it and a couple immigration lawyers filed some, you know, complaints, and I yelled about it on the Bulwark podcast, and then nobody cared, and they moved on the next day.

Speaker 15 Then there would have been another plane, and another plane wouldn't have been, shout out Lily from the Upper West Side.

Speaker 179 It wouldn't have been Lily, but it would have been, you know, criminals or people accused of criminals.

Speaker 71 But we're not too far away from getting to Chris Krebs. Right.

Speaker 50 And you can't tell me that Chris Krebs.

Speaker 131 American citizen that is a political opponent of Donald Trump isn't on that list, maybe not for El Salvador, but for being targeted for criminal actions by this government because they're already doing that.

Speaker 39 They're already trying to do that.

Speaker 50 The president signed an executive order specifically targeting a political foe.

Speaker 22 So, like, you have to gum up the works right now to slow this because we can't stop this process because you got elected, but you can slow it now.

Speaker 108 You can fight back against it.

Speaker 52 And then you get to the midterms.

Speaker 141 Right.

Speaker 26 Like, that's, there are just a lot of steps in this process.

Speaker 104 And this is where we are now.

Speaker 85 There are a lot of steps in the process.

Speaker 67 And you put your finger on an essential feature of that, and that is understanding what the process is, because you know that in the moment, your voice is the most important asset we have.

Speaker 68 And that's why the protest matters.

Speaker 75 That's why when you're looking at the number of people coming out and engaging, it does rattle this White House.

Speaker 69 It certainly rattles the members of Congress.

Speaker 66 And then they're now caught between loyalty to their base.

Speaker 112 all right that elected them in their primary and thereby loyalty to Trump or loyalty to their service and the people in the community writ large.

Speaker 118 I love the way you put it.

Speaker 100 If you just had Tim on his mic every week, sort of saying, Hey, y'all, they taking people away, they putting them on planes, and a newspaper writing one story, and everybody else is kind of going, there goes those two going at it again, right?

Speaker 110 Yeah.

Speaker 72 When we wake up with the knock at the door, we're going going to be wondering, well, how the hell did we get here?

Speaker 79 Well, Tim was on a mic telling you about for the last year this was coming.

Speaker 178 But that's not where we are.

Speaker 74 What's happened is there are a lot of Tim Millers out there.

Speaker 57 There are a lot of Michael Steele's out there.

Speaker 45 There are a lot of Miles Taylors and Krebs out there, people who are finding ways to resist either after being fired from their job by Elon Musk, now coming back and suing them, holding them accountable for their action.

Speaker 103 Or running for office in some some of those cases.

Speaker 167 We did an article on that.

Speaker 103 It's a couple of the five people

Speaker 13 going to run for office.

Speaker 83 Talk about that.

Speaker 119 A lot of federal employees now are like, okay, y'all want to play? Let's play.

Speaker 5 No, that's great.

Speaker 70 It's something that I've been when people are like, what can I do?

Speaker 147 What can I do? Well, not everybody's going to run for Congress, right?

Speaker 25 But encourage some, you know, you got somebody in your life, somebody in your network, somebody you can support, right?

Speaker 131 Because I do think that getting more people in the field is like a critical part of this right now.

Speaker 166 I mean, this goes back to what you were doing in 2010 at the RT, right?

Speaker 28 It's like, you can't win if you're not playing.

Speaker 26 I'm going to get get to the economy in a second, but if things keep going the way it looks, you know, there are going to be some areas where Democrats haven't won in a while, that they could have a chance to win if they got somebody that is on the field with a story, with a narrative that's talking about how they want to fix things for their fellow,

Speaker 37 you know, whatever state you're in, Iowans, rather than, you know, being whatever strident ideologues about the whole thing.

Speaker 87 I said this in 2020, repeated it in 24, but in 26, it is going to be enormously more important than those two periods.

Speaker 64 They have to overwhelm the ballot box with their vote.

Speaker 58 I said this on the weekend, a number of weeks now in a row, and I will keep saying this to understand.

Speaker 86 I think you appreciate this.

Speaker 129 I know you appreciate this, what the end game is here. The end game is not 2028.

Speaker 58 The end game is 2026.

Speaker 113 Because in 2026, Republicans know, and certainly MAGA Republicans around Trump know that they could very well lose the House.

Speaker 136 They don't want to lose the House.

Speaker 113 You lose the house, and then all of a sudden, everything else for the next two years becomes that much harder to do.

Speaker 129 Now you'll have a Democratic-controlled Congress that will be hauling people's ass to their committees, demanding information, doing investigations, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 115 And they don't want that.

Speaker 136 They don't need that noise from within Washington. They don't need that resistance from Capitol Hill.

Speaker 60 So it's imperative that they keep the House, right?

Speaker 136 So when the president issues an executive order reconfiguring our elections, understand folks, this is not about 2028. This is about 2026.

Speaker 58 Part two of that, to get to part one, is, okay,

Speaker 67 how do we safeguard?

Speaker 88 Well, let's see, a little thing called the Insurrection Act.

Speaker 57 If you've noticed, there have been stories now popping up here and there, very much as you just described, you know, Tim is on his mic, the New York Times does one thing, and everybody else moves on.

Speaker 136 Well, there are stories now that people need to pay attention to about folks inside the White House because they can't help themselves, they talk too much, talking about a strategy around the Insurrection Act.

Speaker 58 That's why I keep warning people when you protest, behave yourselves. Don't get caught up in stupid, right?

Speaker 88 Don't get drawn into confrontation, number one.

Speaker 75 And for organizers to police your people.

Speaker 93 In other words, have a better understanding of who's out on the streets with you, because they will send people infiltrate.

Speaker 57 They always project, Tim.

Speaker 28 You know that.

Speaker 66 Oh, yeah, look at it.

Speaker 170 They paid these Democrats to come to the town hall.

Speaker 171 No, they didn't.

Speaker 110 Because

Speaker 110 if they paid them, then what's the problem?

Speaker 168 Then why don't you pretend you're a Democrat, get paid, and expose it?

Speaker 8 Right?

Speaker 41 I haven't seen any of that yet.

Speaker 72 I haven't seen any of that because it doesn't exist.

Speaker 178 But when you have a large gathering of protesters, I can put people in there and mix it up and cause a fight.

Speaker 58 And then guess what?

Speaker 89 Then Trump Trump said, oh, see,

Speaker 79 look at the violence. Look at all that violence.

Speaker 16 And he invokes the Insurrection Act to, quote, put down the violence and protect the virginity of this great nation.

Speaker 171 And so we need to be mindful of what the end game is here.

Speaker 64 And the end game is always the ballot box. Why?

Speaker 67 Because it is the essential power of we the people.

Speaker 36 Be mindful of it.

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 24 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 153 When is the right time for Zinn?

Speaker 162 From the to-do list right in front of you to the distant goal only you can see.

Speaker 164 With Zen, you don't just find freedom.

Speaker 153 You keep finding it again and again.

Speaker 165 Learn more at zen.com.

Speaker 24 Somehow we're 30 minutes in here.

Speaker 108 We haven't even talked about

Speaker 108 our blow-dried Secretary of Defense.

Speaker 37 Secretary of Defense as we speak. Who knows?

Speaker 9 He was on Fox and Friends this morning doing some damage control.

Speaker 47 blaming the deep state for coming after him.

Speaker 174 It's an interesting deep state, you know, that when the deep state includes somebody that you hired to run your public affairs department, it's a longtime friend of yours and a longtime supporter of Donald Trump's, and then he writes an article about how you're a complete disaster and

Speaker 29 Trump needs to move on for you to save his presidency.

Speaker 81 That's an intriguing deep state.

Speaker 6 That's not the kind of deep state that I, that I know.

Speaker 83 Not the kind of deep state I know, no.

Speaker 108 But anyway, what have you made of what's happened with the Secretary of Defense?

Speaker 104 He's a joke.

Speaker 85 He's just proving exactly why there should have been more concerns and alarms about him when his name was proposed.

Speaker 85 You know, whether it's, you know, oh, everybody focused on Matt Gates, and I knew this was going to happen.

Speaker 123 Everybody focused on Matt Gates.

Speaker 57 And so everyone that seems less offensive than Matt Gaetz.

Speaker 77 And so, well, at least it's not Matt Gates.

Speaker 64 Yeah, but it's actually worse.

Speaker 108 All right. It was obvious at the time, actually, also.

Speaker 78 It's just obvious at the time, whether it's Secretary of Defense, whether it's the Attorney General Pam Bondi, whether it's the National Security Advisor, who it doesn't matter.

Speaker 60 All of these people are cut out of the same cesspool of stupid.

Speaker 57 And so I'm not surprised, and nor is anybody else surprised.

Speaker 170 No one in Washington is surprised by this.

Speaker 55 No one.

Speaker 51 They might have been surprised it took three months.

Speaker 41 They might have thought he could last a year or three months.

Speaker 8 Really?

Speaker 174 I didn't, but I mean, maybe some of those Republicans on the Senate that confirmed him thought they were buying themselves a year.

Speaker 141 I mean, what are you doing if you're John Cornyn or Mike Rounds or Roger Wicker, like confirming a complete ass clown

Speaker 24 to be to run the U.S. military?

Speaker 34 And it just boggled the mind that they, and so I do think they must have convinced themselves that, I don't know, he'd have good, who the fuck knows what they convinced themselves of, but did they really think that April 22, that it would be one fiscal quarter before he would have totally, you know, imploded?

Speaker 135 He is a complete incompetent.

Speaker 168 He is a weekend talk show host.

Speaker 78 And as a weekend talk talk show host, I can at least say I ran a government.

Speaker 84 I co-host.

Speaker 22 I ran a national party.

Speaker 74 Yeah, as a co-host. I ran a national party.

Speaker 170 I did some stuff before I got to that job, right?

Speaker 101 You were in a monastery.

Speaker 101 You weren't having an affair with a married woman while your baby mama was at home, while you were still in divorce proceedings with the other woman. You know, you were in a monastery.

Speaker 8 So like, there are some differences.

Speaker 45 That's too much work.

Speaker 73 That's way too much work.

Speaker 102 There's too many things to keep track of in that situation and i look i did no i that's way too much work but it wasn't too much work for him

Speaker 62 and what sad to him it was too much work for the united states senate republicans to tell the president send us somebody else we can do better than this because our the defense of our nation is paramount and so now as we see

Speaker 120 He's the one. Here's the thing.

Speaker 118 He wants to blame the deep state. He wants to blame people who are out here lying on him.

Speaker 110 He wants to blame people who are, you know, speaking in secret about him.

Speaker 180 What are they doing?

Speaker 119 They're speaking about stuff you did.

Speaker 104 They're not lying.

Speaker 120 Was it your phone?

Speaker 120 Was it your wife in the chat?

Speaker 84 Was it your brother in the chat?

Speaker 64 Was it your lawyer?

Speaker 45 What the hell is your personal lawyer? What's that about?

Speaker 8 Right?

Speaker 171 Oh, look, we're about to bomb Yemen.

Speaker 146 What do you think,

Speaker 75 honey? Phil Hegseth,

Speaker 70 you got two cents?

Speaker 144 Phil, you got two cents.

Speaker 56 You know,

Speaker 94 I don't even know what he does at DH, at the Department of Homeland Security.

Speaker 57 I don't think he knows what he does there.

Speaker 67 But the reality of it is, no, it was you, baby.

Speaker 73 And it's just, it is just this whole thing.

Speaker 113 My mom used to tell me when I was a kid, whenever I did something, she'd ask me, well, did you do it?

Speaker 115 And I go,

Speaker 8 kinda, kinda,

Speaker 8 yeah, kind of.

Speaker 123 And she would always tell me, there is no such thing.

Speaker 84 You either did or you didn't.

Speaker 139 You can't half-step your responsibility in something.

Speaker 58 And you certainly can't do it at this level, where as a grown-ass man, your first recourse is not to stand up and go, you know what, that was the damnest, dumbest thing I should have known better as Secretary of Defense to put that conversation on an unsecured phone, given the proximity I am to those who want to steal that information, right?

Speaker 122 I should have known better.

Speaker 56 Mr.

Speaker 180 President, I apologize, right?

Speaker 110 You don't apologize to us.

Speaker 72 Apologize to the president. He's the one who hired your dumbass.

Speaker 45 So that's fine, right?

Speaker 123 But the reality of it is you take responsibility.

Speaker 176 But no one in this administration wants to take responsibility for anything.

Speaker 78 They always seek to blame someone else.

Speaker 175 It's someone else's fault that they're so incompetent.

Speaker 78 It's someone else's fault that they're so blind and stupid.

Speaker 123 It's someone else's fault that they don't know what they're doing, that they're in a job over their head, that you pick a man to head up the health department of the country, and he's sitting there telling people autism is

Speaker 118 not what science has told us it's been for the last 30 years.

Speaker 125 And everybody's like, okay.

Speaker 108 It all comes from the top.

Speaker 49 Right.

Speaker 147 Like, I know you know this. We'll just put it.

Speaker 20 We'll just say it out loud, right?

Speaker 43 It's like Donald Trump never took responsibility for anything in his life.

Speaker 174 He went bankrupt a million times.

Speaker 20 He had a fake name.

Speaker 182 He'd call the New York Post with his fake name to talk about how good his sexual prowess was with the women that he was cheating on his wife with because they weren't going to brag on the sexual prowess.

Speaker 43 You know, he just, he doesn't, like, this is just, so it just, it all stems from that.

Speaker 153 When is the right time for Zin?

Speaker 164 With Zen, you don't just find freedom, you keep finding it again and again.

Speaker 8 Warning.

Speaker 150 This product contains nicotine.

Speaker 31 The economic situation is really bad.

Speaker 103 People listening to this have become awake to it, but I don't know if regular folks have.

Speaker 131 This is the Wall Street Journal.

Speaker 37 This is not some woke, liberal, lefty economist here. The Wall Street Journal yesterday.

Speaker 32 The Dow Jones shed almost 1,000 points on Monday and is headed for its worst April performance since the Great Depression.

Speaker 47 The S ⁇ P 500's performance since Inauguration Day is now the worst for any president up to this point and data going back to 1928.

Speaker 51 And it's all self-inflicted.

Speaker 53 None of this had anything to do with economic conditions or a pandemic or whatever.

Speaker 47 You know, a bubble popped that was, you know, the housing market, like this is all completely self-inflicted because we have a total imbecile running the government, just hammering himself in the dick over and over again.

Speaker 167 And my question for you, Michael, is like we've had economy experts on to talk about that.

Speaker 104 So, what I wanted to get your take on, what you're an expert on, is where are the business advocacy groups shouting about this?

Speaker 109 You dealt with this.

Speaker 70 Back in 2008, Obama, there are things I didn't like about Obamacare, but like Obama tries to pass Obamacare to get health care to more people.

Speaker 22 And all these advocacy groups, the Chamber of Commerce, Infarm, and all these guys are out there screaming bloody murder.

Speaker 12 This is socialism.

Speaker 141 This is communism.

Speaker 75 And meanwhile, Obama oversaw kind of a stagnant but slightly growing economy that was like basically directionally fine, could have been better, could have been worse.

Speaker 23 Trump is

Speaker 178 single-handedly like ruining our country's economic status globally.

Speaker 72 And all these guys are just quiet.

Speaker 22 They're still sucking up to him.

Speaker 106 Like, what has explained that to me?

Speaker 117 It is one of the more depressing and

Speaker 68 just frustrating aspects of this.

Speaker 170 A lot of it stems from the fact that they don't want to be a target.

Speaker 113 What Trump has done to law firms, what he's done to other groups and individuals, how he's clearly identified his little billionaires' boys club of favorites.

Speaker 95 They want to be a part of that.

Speaker 113 They don't want to be on the outside of Donald Trump's favor.

Speaker 90 I don't get it.

Speaker 75 I've yet to understand what the magnetism is, and I don't even understand what the threat is because the strength is in their numbers.

Speaker 126 These are the men and and women who are part of the infrastructure of our economy.

Speaker 67 They are the ones who are at the center of wealth creation, job creation, the movement of the markets.

Speaker 125 How do we know that?

Speaker 136 Because we've seen when they decide to act in unison, for example, the bond market responds, right?

Speaker 129 Which is a combination of both domestic and international engagement in that space.

Speaker 95 Trump will correct his course.

Speaker 75 So I don't know what they want out of this other than to become wealthier than they are.

Speaker 170 They want the tax cuts to be kept in place.

Speaker 56 I don't know.

Speaker 3 Some of these guys have lost like 25, 30% of their stock wealth.

Speaker 106 Like, what happened?

Speaker 43 I didn't go to business school, but I can do basic math.

Speaker 107 A 2% tax cut on the corporate tax rate does not make up for losing 20% of the value of your company.

Speaker 8 Like, what are you doing?

Speaker 8 Speak up.

Speaker 38 But here's the rub on this:

Speaker 125 it is not the billionaire boys

Speaker 64 or the millionaire mamas that are going to drive this part of the conversation.

Speaker 88 It is the little shop owner who's had her corner in her community for 10, 15 years, who can no longer afford to buy the inventory

Speaker 128 for her company because it's gone up 150%.

Speaker 87 It's gone up 25%.

Speaker 68 There's a point where they cannot pass that cost on to the consumer and they close.

Speaker 95 They go out of business.

Speaker 93 That's part one.

Speaker 68 Part two, to the extent that they can and do pass that cost on to the consumer.

Speaker 69 And I'm just telling everybody, you don't have to listen to me and Tim.

Speaker 84 You don't have to believe a damn word we're saying.

Speaker 171 Just pick up an item in your house and look on the bottom and see, oh,

Speaker 146 made in China.

Speaker 146 Made in China.

Speaker 166 Picking up a stapler for audio listeners.

Speaker 72 I'm sorry, yes. Yeah, I forgot.

Speaker 8 We're doing both. That's okay.
I picked up

Speaker 102 a tape container,

Speaker 178 a stapler, and now the remote control for my television.

Speaker 104 Oh,

Speaker 146 made in China.

Speaker 28 Look at goodness.

Speaker 24 There are a lot of people out there clamoring for jobs, screwing in a little screw on the back of that remote control.

Speaker 24 You know, they just want to sit there all day and screw in a little screw on the back of a remote control.

Speaker 108 There's a lot of demand out there for those jobs in America.

Speaker 78 That's our economy.

Speaker 175 We are a consumer-based economy.

Speaker 123 Yes, we want manufacturing in this country, but they're not going to manufacture this remote control here in this country because there's not a U.S.

Speaker 79 company that's going to stand up the cost to do that.

Speaker 83 Businesses have looked and moved globally.

Speaker 67 And that integration is important.

Speaker 123 Why? Because we are at the leading edge of it. Everybody wants to be like us.

Speaker 78 They want to sell us products.

Speaker 119 They want us to sell them stuff to the extent that we do.

Speaker 178 But what Trump has done is created this lie that somehow all of manufacturing, everything that we have is manufactured here.

Speaker 56 That's just not going to happen, folks.

Speaker 102 It just isn't.

Speaker 78 And if it does, this stapler that I spent $8.99 for, it's going to cost me $28 or $30 or $40

Speaker 117 because

Speaker 119 that's the cost of having it done here.

Speaker 57 We forget the labor costs. We forget the production costs, the cost of materials, all these things.

Speaker 132 So if it's a manufacturer, if I can go to Tim, who is

Speaker 55 in France, who is the one who creates the screws to go into my equipment, and he's doing the cheaper than I can get down the street somewhere else, guess what I'm going to do?

Speaker 76 I'm going to go to Tim.

Speaker 176 I'm going to go to where the cost is cheaper to me because it stays cheaper for you.

Speaker 94 So when you break that, which is what Trump is trying to do,

Speaker 178 The downward impact is not on the millionaire mamas and the billionaire boys.

Speaker 94 It's on the mom and pop operation in your neighborhood who has to close down, will not be hiring your kid this summer, will raise its prices.

Speaker 123 So now everything you're buying in that community is going to cost you more.

Speaker 5 And who's going to be held accountable for that?

Speaker 55 You're going to blame Joe Biden for that?

Speaker 122 Because that's what Donald Trump wants you to do.

Speaker 123 He wants you to blame Joe Biden.

Speaker 78 Joe Biden gave us the worst economy in the history of the world.

Speaker 83 No, he didn't.

Speaker 120 No, he didn't.

Speaker 58 You're giving us the worst economy in the history of the world.

Speaker 118 And how do we know that?

Speaker 85 Because the world markets are telling us that.

Speaker 64 That's why the bond market did

Speaker 113 what it's done.

Speaker 170 That's why the DAO is doing what it's doing.

Speaker 133 And for those of you who are in the market, go look at that 401k.

Speaker 93 How much did you lose yesterday?

Speaker 20 Or don't.

Speaker 19 Or don't. You don't.

Speaker 9 Just trust me. It doesn't look crazy.

Speaker 81 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 48 this is why the business guys and the small business, this is why they got to speak up to it. Can't just be activists, right? Like back to your point from earlier, man.

Speaker 106 It's like you have power.

Speaker 6 Everybody can't be cowering in this this right now it is easy for trump to point at the whatever gaza protesters on campus and be like those liberals are bad people or the black lives matter protesters or those you know black folks are coming for your job like if people who are in charge of capital in charge of human capital or money are speaking up and being like this guy is a disaster he's ruining everything he's going to hear that and it's a lot harder for him to demonize that person and say it's like a woke lefty so anyway i would like to hear more from our friends in the business world who are losing a lot of money I would too.

Speaker 100 I would too.

Speaker 97 It would be nice to have them actually stand on the side of the American consumer, to stand on the side of the American small business owner.

Speaker 8 We can all create a space in which markets work that lead to fair trade.

Speaker 58 And look, bottom line, we know China is a piece of shit when it comes to this space. No one's defending China.

Speaker 93 No one's excusing China.

Speaker 113 And they need to pay a price.

Speaker 93 That's not what Trump is doing.

Speaker 169 He's going after our friend.

Speaker 102 Here's the thing: he puts a tariff on an island of penguins.

Speaker 84 Okay, yeah, y'all heard me.

Speaker 72 Y'all heard what I said.

Speaker 58 I ain't making this up just for you, Fox folks out there, not making it up.

Speaker 45 It's true.

Speaker 77 He put a tariff on an island of penguins, but he can't put a tariff on Russia.

Speaker 57 And so don't give me this, oh, well,

Speaker 92 they have sanctions.

Speaker 66 And that's no, we still do about $3 billion plus of trade with Russia, right?

Speaker 67 So, but they were not on that list the reality of it is

Speaker 131 the only plan here is to disrupt the market and to try to grab control of the fed are you concerned about his control of the fed tim because i know i am extremely extreme and if you talk to the smart people on the finance folks you know not the business guys who have been who have been silent and who just wanted to be able to say the r-word again or whatever but like you know the smart analysts um there that's like the top worry right now if that happens i'll just put it you know put it straight up.

Speaker 3 If that happens, the collapse that we've seen so far in the market, it will be like a picnic.

Speaker 16 It will be,

Speaker 88 you can't even begin to imagine the bottom falling out the way it would if Donald Trump fires the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, if he somehow keeps him in place, but then wrestles control of the Fed in some other way.

Speaker 95 You really need to appreciate what that means and why an independent Fed, which has been the bane of both Republicans and Democratic presidents in the past, right?

Speaker 79 This is nothing new,

Speaker 93 but they are that through line in our economy because they represent an essential ingredient in our economy, which is the bond market, which is the value of the dollar, which is collapsing, et cetera.

Speaker 60 So be mindful of what could happen.

Speaker 7 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what what we can be at our best.

Speaker 36 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 153 When is the right time for Zinn?

Speaker 157 Why bring Zinn along for for the ride?

Speaker 164 With Zin, you don't just find freedom.

Speaker 163 You keep finding it.

Speaker 160 Again and again.

Speaker 167 While we're down here in the darkness, I got one more dark story.

Speaker 26 I've mentioned this in passing, but I haven't really covered it.

Speaker 145 And I just, before I lose you, I feel like it's worth talking about because NBC did a big, big story on this.

Speaker 47 I'm going to just read a little bit from it.

Speaker 26 A groundbreaking microscope at Harvard Medical School could lead to breakthroughs in cancer detection and research.

Speaker 32 That seems pretty important.

Speaker 26 The scientists that developed the computer scripts to read the images

Speaker 54 on this microscope has been in an immigration detention center for two months, putting these crucial scientific advancements at risk.

Speaker 107 The scientist, the 30-year-old Russian-born Kana Petrova, worked at Harvard's renowned Kirschner lab until she was arrested at Boston airport in mid-February.

Speaker 182 She had some frog embryos, I guess, that she did not declare on her form.

Speaker 167 She's now being held down here in Monroe, Louisiana, at an ICE detention center and is fighting deportation back to Russia, even though she's spoken out about the war in Ukraine.

Speaker 107 I'm not a foreigner who comes in, who's a scientist who has embryos.

Speaker 182 So I was curious: like, what is the usual punishment for something like this?

Speaker 166 And here's what it is: the Border Patrol typically imposes a fine, a forfeiture of the items.

Speaker 47 So, you know, the government would get the frog embryos, and then you get a $500 fine.

Speaker 37 That's how things were up until three months ago.

Speaker 9 Instead, we're holding this woman in a detention center in Louisiana for two months, even though she is like the critical scientist for important cancer research.

Speaker 37 And this is insanity.

Speaker 128 This is the future if we don't stop it. This is the tip of the iceberg.

Speaker 86 We've already begun to see the impact

Speaker 86 by the Doge idiots going in to the Department of Health, you know, the national research centers, certainly now the assault on universities.

Speaker 95 The brain drain that's going to happen, Tim,

Speaker 87 is going to be staggering.

Speaker 137 Where once we were the place that the elite thinkers, researchers wanted to come to because we have the facilities unfettered.

Speaker 85 right?

Speaker 92 Access, the freedom to do and pursue that research.

Speaker 51 There's no commissar commissar looking over your shoulder.

Speaker 18 Exactly.

Speaker 127 And we're now stripping that bear and stripping it away.

Speaker 113 So, where do they go?

Speaker 58 They won't come here.

Speaker 68 When you have someone like this young woman, yeah, made a mistake, had frog embryos.

Speaker 95 You just described what would usually happen.

Speaker 91 They would take the frog embryos, which are being researched on behalf of the government anyway.

Speaker 111 Okay, so they just give them back to the government.

Speaker 8 It wasn't fentanyl.

Speaker 60 You know, it's not like she's like right now sneaking in drugs like she's doing science research you know it's frog eggs frog eggs and she's in a detention center because probably because they're trying to figure out if the russians want her back

Speaker 119 and they want to placate the russians and give her so that's what that's all about and that's our future in terms of the impact at our universities, the impact at our research centers like, you know, MIT and the Naval Research Lab, where I worked for many years actually with frogs and really

Speaker 49 look at you everything comes you just had such a life journey you know you're in the monastery studying frog embryos you're literally

Speaker 58 it was olfactory so it was developing equipment that could protect soldiers in the field from smells that they couldn't smell from from dangerous poisons.

Speaker 110 But yeah, dude, I mean, that's what we do.

Speaker 119 That's what our government supports.

Speaker 79 That's why, you know, we have STEM programs.

Speaker 83 What are we doing now?

Speaker 133 What we're doing now, what do you think is going to happen

Speaker 45 at our university homegrown towns?

Speaker 119 What do we do with STEM programs when we're cutting off that kind of research?

Speaker 180 When we're not facilitating or paying for or providing grants and support for that research, if you've developed the tools, whether it's equipment or medicine or whatever, to identify pre-cancerous cells

Speaker 176 and you're going to lock up the person who's doing that research because they had frog eggs at the airport

Speaker 45 for two months

Speaker 176 that's why i use the word stupid so much because this is so stupid fascism

Speaker 49 stupid stupid fascism like it's not even like so yeah like a good nazi a good nazi would take this woman and like put her her to work, you know, and put her to work, you know?

Speaker 41 And then so then you could go to the people and say, hey, I solve cancer while you're, you know, sending people, your political enemies to El Salvador.

Speaker 43 I don't want to send them good ideas.

Speaker 58 They say when you see things, you know, with a hammer, everything's a nail and you just want to crush it. And that's what they want to do.

Speaker 122 So look, our universities are trying some at least finding a way to stand their ground.

Speaker 59 We need more universities aligned with Harvard, whether you are in the crosshairs now or not, because you will be.

Speaker 75 If you have any level of research at your institution, if you have any students of foreign origin, they're all subject to this.

Speaker 118 Now, even U.S.

Speaker 126 students who go abroad

Speaker 68 and then try to come back.

Speaker 79 because of their last name or the university they're at.

Speaker 170 I know of stories of people being held up trying to come back into the country who are U.S.

Speaker 79 citizens. That's a concern.

Speaker 57 So this is not just a one-way travel.

Speaker 139 This is both ways.

Speaker 113 You know, it's not just the foreign-born student or individual who wants to come here or is here, but the U.S.

Speaker 137 citizens who are born here, who are engaged in certain research, in certain types of government actions that they don't like.

Speaker 138 They're also subject to this.

Speaker 132 So I just think all of these for me are warning signs.

Speaker 58 And how we heed them, Tim, is going to be very, very important because the America that Trump wants in our 251st year is not the America I think that the founders tried to create and has sustained us for 250.

Speaker 53 That would be a beautiful place to end, but I just have a little dessert for you.

Speaker 18 Yes. I like dessert.

Speaker 25 Are you familiar with Ulta Beauty? Ulta Beauty Supply Store?

Speaker 26 Do you know about it?

Speaker 8 Educate.

Speaker 50 Now that you're in prime time, Michael,

Speaker 37 you're going to have to learn about some of this stuff.

Speaker 15 You're going to have to learn about skincare.

Speaker 81 Okay. All right.

Speaker 8 You're in prime time.

Speaker 46 You might consider the Ulta Beauty Spice.

Speaker 15 So you can just go there, get some new face moisturizers.

Speaker 107 We got a sponsor, One Skin.

Speaker 47 I'm giving them

Speaker 46 free airtime right now.

Speaker 107 You use something, you know, straight men a lot of times don't know about this.

Speaker 119 Well, you know, I got to keep it so it don't crack, baby.

Speaker 8 Come on, man. Exactly.

Speaker 105 Exactly.

Speaker 47 Well, you got some advantages on that front with the melanin that I don't have.

Speaker 5 So I had to learn a little earlier.

Speaker 12 But Nancy Mace, our friend, she was in an Ulta

Speaker 57 and she sent this tweet yesterday.

Speaker 80 Uh-oh. Whether it's a locker room, a bathroom, or the face wash aisle at Ulta, no man has the right to invade our spaces.

Speaker 46 And let me tell you, Nancy, that fucking face wash aisle at Ulta is my space as much as yours.

Speaker 47 And if you ever treat me like you treated this man that I'm about to play the audio of, you don't know what's coming to you.

Speaker 167 Let's listen to Nancy Mace in an Ulta over the weekend.

Speaker 184 You know what? Because you people on the left are crazy.

Speaker 184 You're absolutely fucking crazy. I'm absolutely fucking crazy.
You're right. And

Speaker 184 get out of my face. You're insane.
Goodbye. You're insane.
Fuck you. You're going to fuck me.

Speaker 81 You're going to be voted out so fast this year.

Speaker 184 I can't wait for you to fucking fight. I'm not.
I won by so much.

Speaker 105 You're a disgrace to the state. That's what you are.
You're a disgrace. I asked you a simple question, and you just go on this tirade and tell me, fuck you.

Speaker 81 Yeah, fuck you.

Speaker 184 Disgusting. Get out of my face.

Speaker 3 He was having none of it.

Speaker 79 She was having none of it, but it exposed what a pathetic, useless servant to the people of her district she is.

Speaker 57 And again, this is why you unelect them, because you're not going to hold this woman up as an example to your daughter, are you?

Speaker 83 Really?

Speaker 75 You want your 14-year-old daughter to emulate that behavior

Speaker 67 when she's in a situation where

Speaker 146 instead of showing maturity and respect for listening, And even if there's a disagreement saying, you know, we disagree and I appreciate your position, but, right, oh, fuck you.

Speaker 119 That's your response.

Speaker 72 That's your intelligent response as a member of the United States Congress.

Speaker 177 You know, well, the people of her district should

Speaker 64 also say those two words at the ballot box next November because that's the only way you change it. I'm sorry, there's nothing to brag about with that.

Speaker 113 There's nothing cool about what Nancy did there.

Speaker 84 There's nothing, you know, oh, she owned that lib.

Speaker 83 That's all bullshit.

Speaker 118 And you know it is.

Speaker 92 It's trite.

Speaker 57 It's immature.

Speaker 94 It's performative.

Speaker 170 And it's beneath the office in which you've bestowed her the privilege of serving in.

Speaker 79 So, like all privileges, it should be taken away.

Speaker 132 And it should be given to someone who at least have a modicum of respect for the people in the district.

Speaker 112 in which you live, including yourself.

Speaker 123 So she, if that's what you want to level up, South Carolina, then you're just showing the lack of respect you have for yourself.

Speaker 84 Because remember, our public officials are an extension of you, because you do the one thing that everybody around the world envies.

Speaker 94 You get to go into a ballot box and freely elect them to represent you.

Speaker 94 So, if that's what you are,

Speaker 138 that's what you get.

Speaker 5 Amen. And

Speaker 35 Ulta is a space for all of us, okay, of every gender identity.

Speaker 24 Michael Steele, I don't know.

Speaker 108 I'm like imagining an alternate universe where you were on the path to becoming pope, going down that monastery path.

Speaker 20 Every Calbolic could have been pope, you know? Who knows?

Speaker 39 Who knows?

Speaker 43 We had our first Latin pope, our first Jesuit.

Speaker 179 It could have been, you could have been the first.

Speaker 8 Could have been a brother from the first American.

Speaker 3 Anyway, thank you so much.

Speaker 171 Good luck in the new show.

Speaker 84 May 5th.

Speaker 43 That's in prime time.

Speaker 24 Check them out with Licia Menendez and Simone Sanders Townsend.

Speaker 145 Thank you for the time, my friend.

Speaker 47 And we'll be talking to you.

Speaker 118 Love it, brother.

Speaker 58 You take care, man. Be good.

Speaker 53 Everybody else, we'll see you back here tomorrow. Peace.

Speaker 53 Please don't ask

Speaker 53 how I'm doing.

Speaker 53 Draining come from hotel showers

Speaker 53 Hoping for the hours

Speaker 53 to pass a little faster

Speaker 53 Please don't laugh, only half of what I said

Speaker 53 was a joke.

Speaker 53 Every Catholic knows he could have been Pope

Speaker 53 Kalua shooter,

Speaker 53 D-U-I scooter

Speaker 53 with a rolling start on the hill.

Speaker 53 This morning's trying to kill me.

Speaker 53 This morning wants to kill me.

Speaker 53 And you know I love my tears.

Speaker 53 But all I really want

Speaker 53 to see

Speaker 53 is see you need me.

Speaker 48 The Bullard podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 181 I've been out here a while.

Speaker 150 Cast up to cast, and nothing's biting.

Speaker 185 That's fishing for you.

Speaker 181 And honestly, that's what online fishing is like for hackers too, when Cisco Duo's on watch.

Speaker 185 With duo's end-to-end fishing resistance, the waters always stay calm.

Speaker 181 No ripples, no splashes, just a hook that never gets a bite.

Speaker 185 Cisco Duo, fishing season is over.

Speaker 181 Learn more at duo.com.

Speaker 186 This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 40 This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturists with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 120 Hey, Bowen, it's gift season.

Speaker 187 Stressing me out. Why are the people I love so hard to shop for?

Speaker 186 Probably because they only make boring gift guides that are totally uninspired. Except for the guide we made.

Speaker 13 In partnership with Marshalls, where premium gifts meet incredible value, it's giving gifts.

Speaker 186 With categories like best gifts for the mom whose idea of a sensible walking shoe is a stiletto.

Speaker 187 Or best gifts for me that were so thoughtful I really shouldn't have.

Speaker 186 Check out the guide on marshalls.com and gift the good stuff at Marshalls.

Speaker 188 This is Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart podcast. Hi, darlings.
I have a little seasonal secret to share. It's the the new Kalua Duncan Caramel Swirl.

Speaker 188 Kahlua, the beloved coffee liqueur, and Duncan, the beloved coffee destination, paired up to create a treat that is perfect for the holidays. So, go ahead, treat yourself.
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Speaker 189 Must be 21 or older to purchase. Drink responsibly.
Kahlua Caramel Swirl Cream Liqueur, 16% Alcohol by Volume 32 Proof. Copyright 2025, imported by the Kahlua Company, New York, New York.

S2 Ep1026: Michael Steele: Your Voice Matters

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