Sam Stein: This Is the Country They Want

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Speaker 11 Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
By the time y'all hear this, I will be flying over the Atlantic with a wine and a novel.

Speaker 11 So if you need one more hour with my dulcet tones in your ears before a one-week reprieve, head on over to the next level feed on your podcast, have a choice, because yesterday's show was like, was an absolute banger, I do have to say.

Speaker 11 So make sure you're catching the next level every Wednesday. One other programming note that's very sweet.

Speaker 11 I received a very grateful message from the folks at MANA, which is a food relief organization Nick Kristoff recommended our listeners donate to on last Friday's episode.

Speaker 11 Apparently there was an outpouring of financial support following the show. So thanks so much to all of you.
I really appreciate this community and we'll re-up.

Speaker 11 There were a couple of other organizations Nick shouted out as well and we'll put those in the show notes of this podcast. You know what else we're going to put in the show notes of this podcast?

Speaker 11 A couple playlists for you for the week. The Bulwark podcast playlist of all the outro songs that I play.
It's like coming up on 10,000 followers, which is kind of crazy.

Speaker 11 And I also, speaking of bangers, My 4th of July playlist is really the best thing out there. So we'll give you those two things for you as well.
As for this this show, it's my favorite guest.

Speaker 11 Oh, stop. But he had some summer vacation tech difficulties.

Speaker 11 So it's Sam Stein as an emergency substitute. What a treat.
Managing editor of this year Bullwork. How are you doing, Sam Stein?

Speaker 12 I'm actually regretting doing this.

Speaker 11 It sounds like you are podcasting while also editing the Morning Shots newsletter by Bill Crystal. And you said something interesting to me the other day about how younger Sam

Speaker 11 would have thought about being Bill Crystal's newsletter editor. And And I just kind of wanted to explore that a little bit more.
You know, how are you processing that these days?

Speaker 11 How's that experience for you?

Speaker 12 Well, I didn't realize I was going on the couch at 7:30 a.m.

Speaker 12 It's interesting.

Speaker 12 Do you want the honest assessment?

Speaker 11 I want just full. This is the ethos of this podcast is radical candor.

Speaker 12 It's been kind of out of body at times.

Speaker 12 I literally, I do remember like 2006, 2007 HuffPost

Speaker 12 saying Bill Crystal is the devil.

Speaker 11 Like, I was like, Bill Crystal is the devil.

Speaker 12 Like, I cannot believe he did this to our country and got us into Iraq. And so, things change, obviously.

Speaker 12 Obviously, we're, you know, there are some overriding principles that have brought us together. And also, it is, I will say this:

Speaker 12 God, I don't want to get in trouble for this, but he's a lovely man. Like, he's just genuine.

Speaker 11 What you're getting in trouble for with that?

Speaker 12 You know, the lefties online who still hold grudges. Bill's a great guy.
And also, you know,

Speaker 12 the truth about this stuff is also, and I've kind of discovered this a long time ago, but ever more so now, you know, so much of what we do nowadays in communication is just online and bomb throwing, and you never actually talk to the person.

Speaker 12 And when you do actually talk to the person and get to know the person and realize they're a human being, it radically changes your perceptions of them for obvious reasons.

Speaker 12 And I used to do this thing, and I'll shut up after this, but I used to do this thing, I don't do it anymore, where someone on Twitter would like be harassing me and saying like horrible, nasty things.

Speaker 12 And I would try to find their actual, these are like, not like total bots, but like real people.

Speaker 11 Not like John Podhoritz, but like actual people, like normal people.

Speaker 12 I would find their phone number and I would call them up and I would say, hey, I just want to talk about like why you think I'm the scum of the earth.

Speaker 12 Like, can we, can we, can we like, oh yeah, I would do it once a month. And I would just be like, you know,

Speaker 12 in this tweet I saw of yours, you like call me like the dumbest human being since, you know, whatever. Like, can you explain why you feel that way? I just like do that.

Speaker 12 And like almost every single time with a few exceptions, person would be like, oh, shit, man, I didn't mean that. I didn't realize you would see that.
And like, let me take that down.

Speaker 12 And I'd be like, no, no, keep it up. It's important.
Like, just keep it up, but like, let's talk about it.

Speaker 11 Did anybody say, fuck you, K-word?

Speaker 12 Oh, yeah. I got a lot.
Well, I would try to avoid the anti-Semitic ones because those people are lost. But I would definitely have some people who'd be like, how the fuck did you get my number?

Speaker 12 Like, don't ever call me again.

Speaker 11 But more often than not, it was people who realize that you're a human yeah and bill's kind of more than human though he's kind of super human no bill's amazing bill's bill's the best and um you know would i like him to stick on topic for the newsletter every now and then yeah of course but uh you don't you don't like his newsletters where he does imaginary voice of donald trump and he like writes a screenplay while i may not appreciate the artistry of them our subscribers do because metric-wise they're great do you see yours do you see the same trajectory for you with like jd vance do you think you'll be editing his newsletter in eight years, or do you think there's kind of a red line on this principle?

Speaker 12 I'm happy to edit J.D. Vance if he wants to send it to the bulwark.

Speaker 12 I think it'd be an interesting thought experiment.

Speaker 11 I am not.

Speaker 11 You addicted J.D. Vance.
Okay, so you do the morning newsletter talks about the news, so we'll start with the most important news of the day. Yeah.

Speaker 11 Diddy was acquitted on racketeering and sex trafficking charges. People were smothering themselves with baby oil outside the courthouse.

Speaker 12 Yeah, Bill's actually writing on this one. He was there with the baby oil.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 First person, Is they're doing a freak off.

Speaker 12 Yeah, he's saying, what was the, what was the thing they were saying? It's not a... What was it? It's not Rico.
It's Frico. Frico.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it's not Rico. It's Frico.
So it's you, Andrew Egger, and Bill kind of just rubbing each other with baby oil.

Speaker 12 Yeah, and we have a, we're actually doing a YouTube component for this as well. So stay tuned.

Speaker 13 All right.

Speaker 11 I'm really sad to miss that one. I'm in Madrid.
The actual news, the big whatever bill, it was late last night, so that's why Sam is punchy. He was staying up to watch it.

Speaker 11 There were some Republican House members that were showing some spine. They were like, Mike Johnson, you cannot bully us.
We are going to hold out on this vote for the rule to proceed.

Speaker 11 A very principled matter. Several of them didn't.
One actually ended up doing it. I'll talk about him in a second.
In the end, they did the same thing they always do. All of them ended up folding.

Speaker 11 That vote was like to pass it so they could vote on it. And so the actual vote will be today on the substance of the bill, but it's done.
It's a fait accompli at this point.

Speaker 11 So talk talk about

Speaker 11 what you make about that whole story. What's your top takeaway?

Speaker 12 I never thought they were going to hold out. I don't think you did either.
I mean, I just seem performative. It is kind of funny the contortions that they make.

Speaker 12 It was like right beforehand, they're like, we're going to vote for this, but not today. We just not, we need a day.
We're not going to do it today. And the speaker would be wise.

Speaker 11 My friend Chip Roy, the goldfish, was like,

Speaker 11 he had narrowed his complaints to one thing, and it was like, I just don't think I can do it unless the green energy subsidy program has a one-year moratorium.

Speaker 11 It's like, that's really where you're going to hold the line on this bill, the chip.

Speaker 11 It seems like you should just shut up and just vote for it at this point.

Speaker 12 What's funny to me is that they just continue to draw lines in the sand that they know they're just going to flagrantly violate. Like, Don Bacon, 500 billion Medicaid cuts is my red line.

Speaker 12 I know it wasn't. You voted for a trillion.

Speaker 12 The one that killed me was, it was David Valadeo uh in california who like three days ago this is a tough one for me because he was one of the impeachers i know the only two left i know well i mean

Speaker 12 sorry but like you can't put out a statement three days ago being like i will never vote for the senate version i'm a no and then like three days later be like all right I'm printed out yes.

Speaker 12 I guess if I had a piece of advice, I would tell them or whoever is doing comms for them to like, don't do red lines.

Speaker 12 Like you're gonna cross them like you should know this by now i was waiting for victoria my favorite is victoria sparks like she's just the best ukrainian immigrant kind of

Speaker 12 people should google her her voice is interesting if you don't know her you're always going into the superficial and i want to stay elevated i apologize she always has like the most hilarious twists and and and last night it was like i will not vote for the rule but i will vote for final passage which made no sense whatsoever and then of course she ended up voting for the rule these people are spineless obviously, and they don't really have any principles other than we need to like get something done for Trump.

Speaker 12 I actually thought the most interesting tweet about this came from the Trump Rapid Response account when right before they were voting and they were like trying to get everyone ginned up about it.

Speaker 12 And I think that I don't have it in front of me, but the tweet again was like, let's go, Republicans, beat the like crooked Democrats.

Speaker 12 And it's like, that sort of encapsulated everything for me, which is like, nothing about the bill was like worth pitching in that moment for them.

Speaker 12 It wasn't like, hey, let's extend the tax cuts or let's fund ICE. It's like, we need to shove it in the face of crooked Democrats who have nothing to do with this at all.
Like they're not involved.

Speaker 12 You don't need their votes. But it's all about scoring victories and making Democrats look bad.
And it's a hard way to legislate.

Speaker 12 And we can get into the sort of more substance matters because I was intrigued by this idea, like the J.D.

Speaker 12 Vance stuff about Mnucha and the fact that he seems to not be all on board all of the bill, but loves the immigration stuff.

Speaker 12 And then, of course, Elon Musk stuff where he hates the the bill it's like i i'm stealing chate here but like that is really interesting that the two sort of

Speaker 12 tentpoles of the new republican ideology don't like what's in this bill

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Speaker 11 I do want to get into the substance too, but this is why we have people on the couch for a second. The insight in that Trubbery Response tweet was right.

Speaker 11 The other exchange on social media that I thought was very telling was a little tiff.

Speaker 11 I was more of a one-way tiff because I don't know if Don cares, but between retiring Republican Congressman Don Bacon and fellow podcast host Jon Favreau over the Medicaid situation. I missed it.

Speaker 11 Don, yeah, okay. So, Don is like also Brian Tyler Cohen, BTC of YouTube fame, is also involved in this.
BTC sends an initial tweet that basically just says, hey, this is Don Bacon.

Speaker 11 If he votes for the bill, X number of his constituents will lose access to health care. And then it's a picture of Don Bacon looking smug.
So kind of an aggressive tweet, but not so bad.

Speaker 11 I mean, it was substantive. Don replies, some liberals hate work.
What?

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Like,

Speaker 11 then he kind of goes on, some liberals don't value work. He's like, this bill is going to create work requirements for healthy adults.

Speaker 11 And like Favreau kind of replies with some actual substance here about how, well, like, that's about 3% of the people that are on Medicaid that who can work but aren't.

Speaker 11 You know, this bill is going to result in healthcare being lost for people that are not able-bodied, childless adults, which is who Don was trying to focus on.

Speaker 11 And less interesting than the kind of boring back and forth on the details for me

Speaker 11 was just that like Don is a retiring congressman. He could do whatever he wants.

Speaker 11 And you could imagine him being mad at the Senate for jamming him when he said he had a red line. Like you could imagine him being mad, right? He said he had the red line.

Speaker 11 He could be mad at his Senate colleagues. You could imagine him, you know, being mad at Trump that he has to retire because of how stupid politics has gotten.

Speaker 11 You could imagine him like being mad at himself. And instead, he's going to lash out at liberals on Twitter.

Speaker 12 So you're suggesting it's self-soothing, right?

Speaker 12 Yeah. He needs to find a way to tell himself that what he did was right when he knows what he did was wrong.
And yeah, I think that's the case for a lot of these people.

Speaker 12 But I also think like,

Speaker 11 I don't know.

Speaker 12 Is our politics attracting these people who just don't give a shit about the actual principles of the the legislation. And maybe I think that's a problem.

Speaker 12 And I just found I found this whole process to be dumbfounding.

Speaker 12 I mean, it's so arbitrary. Like, what are we doing? Like, why did we have to do this by July 4th?

Speaker 11 Yeah, they keep saying we have to do it because taxes are going to go up on people. Like, not till, not till next year.

Speaker 12 No,

Speaker 11 we have half the year to figure this out.

Speaker 12 It's crazy. I mean,

Speaker 12 if there was a deadline, it was about the debt ceiling, but that's in August and maybe September. They could have figured it out.
And they just decided, well, no, we have to do this.

Speaker 12 And I don't think if you put like truth serum in them, I don't think that they would say this bill is good. I don't even think they would say this bill is better than the status quo.

Speaker 12 I think a lot of them would say this bill like kind of screws things up in a way that is really obviously problematic.

Speaker 12 I mean, the best policy anecdote about how stupid this whole bill is is what they did to SNAP.

Speaker 12 So the food relief program, they created this insane incentive just to win over Murkowski's vote.

Speaker 12 They created this insane incentive incentive where if you're a state who has a horrible error rate in administering this program, you actually get financial relief.

Speaker 12 You get the feds to cover the full SNAP benefits. And so states are now going to say, okay, we're kind of at the cusp.
Should we

Speaker 12 make our administration more efficient or should we just worsen it and hand out benefits to more people erroneously? And they're incentivized to do the wrong thing.

Speaker 12 I just find that like, in what world would you want legislation passed that way? But it goes back to your point, which is they need to self-soothe and they need to say, well, it's great for Trump.

Speaker 12 It's great for Republicans. And I think mainly it's bad for Democrats that we get a win.

Speaker 11 Like literally the only substantive, like I said, Dan Crinch, I make this point, others, like argument about the merits of the bill being better than the status quo is that the Trump tax cuts will expire.

Speaker 11 There'll be a massive tax increase. But again, like that is not like, so in their view, that's better than the status quo, but you could have just done that.
You could have just stopped the, right?

Speaker 11 Like there are plenty of other options. There was one Republican, I mentioned this earlier, that did oppose this and did something that I've been asking Republicans to do for a while.

Speaker 11 So I want to at least mention it. It's Brian Fitzpatrick out of Pennsylvania.

Speaker 11 He wrote a letter earlier in the day that said he wanted to express his concerns with the letters to Trump with reporting that the U.S. is withholding defense material already pledged to Ukraine.

Speaker 11 Among those.

Speaker 11 was the Pac-3 Patriots that is protecting Ukraine from the missiles that they're getting bombarded with right now, and essentially says,

Speaker 11 We need to resolve this if I'm going to vote for this bill. And me and Bill have been asking for this for a while.

Speaker 11 It's just like, there are a lot of Republicans that wear the Ukraine pin, but it's like, okay, well, why don't you use this for leverage the way that the conservatives do for spending or whatever?

Speaker 11 Brian Fitzchaker actually does it, and then he runs away and they can't find him. That's like a video of him running through the basement,

Speaker 11 running through the tunnels of Congress. So I don't know.
I would have walked out with my chest puffed after doing that if I was Brian Fitzegger, but that's okay. That's more of a style.

Speaker 11 Oh no, I like it.

Speaker 11 I'm fine, be bitch.

Speaker 11 Hiding in the coat closet.

Speaker 12 Turning my phone on in silence.

Speaker 11 It's a DND.

Speaker 11 So anyway, that's good.

Speaker 11 But, you know, it's just, again, it's one guy. And he only needed two other guys to do it.

Speaker 11 They could have killed it.

Speaker 12 It's crazy because there's so many things that these guys claim they want to like,

Speaker 12 you know, effectuate and that they need leverage for. And this is the one opportunity really that they have.
I don't really know what else they're going to do legislatively.

Speaker 12 And like they could have done, you know, who used leverage pretty well? Lisa Murkowski. Yeah.

Speaker 11 She did.

Speaker 12 She did. And like, it's hilarious to me that, I mean, I didn't like how she did it.
And I thought it was kind of ridiculous, the end sum, but like,

Speaker 12 it's kind of surprising that more people weren't like, you know what, let's band together.

Speaker 12 Five Ukraine supporters could have banded together and been like, we will not vote for this bill unless you put like those weapons back.

Speaker 12 And Brian Fitzpatrick was the the only one of them you know plenty of people with universities who are getting like stiffed by the federal government of research funds could have been like we are not going to vote for this bill unless you you know turn the spigots back on

Speaker 11 and they just basically handed all their leverage to Trump because what they were they're fearful of a primary or something you probably risked a primary on this bill if you were like the one person that was the final right it's a collective action problem right yeah but like David Valadeo in a top, who you mentioned earlier, the guy who's in California.

Speaker 11 So it's a jungle primary. It's a top two.

Speaker 11 They've tried to primary him for the right ever since

Speaker 11 he voted to impeach Trump.

Speaker 11 He could have survived voting against this bill. There are other people that could have survived.

Speaker 12 Well, he might still, as we record this, it's eight o'clock. We haven't really seen the final vote.
He voted for the rule.

Speaker 11 You're generous. You're generous.
I'm sorry. Once you voted for the rule, it's over for me.

Speaker 11 You can't sell me on, well, I voted for the rule, but I voted against final passage, John Kerry. Okay, whatever.
We're not going to do that.

Speaker 12 He was for it before he was against it.

Speaker 11 Oh, that doesn't count. All right.

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Speaker 11 So you mentioned earlier the JD stuff. We talked about this earlier in the week, that it is worth just riveting on a little bit more since he's like double and tripled down on it.

Speaker 11 He sends this tweet where it's like, everything else in this bill is immaterial.

Speaker 12 Do you say minutes or immaterial?

Speaker 11 Immaterial.

Speaker 11 Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 11 Immaterial was one of the words. It might have been immaterial.
Minutiae. I don't have it in front of me.
Immaterial, except for the ICE funds.

Speaker 11 And the interesting thing here is he continued digging in on that and I got into a Twitter war with Matt Iglesias on this topic. Yeah, that was

Speaker 11 amazing. And this number comes out here from Ian Bremer today.
When you just kind of put in context

Speaker 11 how much the immigration funding is. Once this bill passes, the funding for ICE, our domestic police force now, immigration police force, is

Speaker 11 greater than

Speaker 11 the amount of funding for all but like the top 10 militaries in the world.

Speaker 11 The ICE funding, the ICE budget at 37.5 billion is greater than Israel's defense budget at 30.5 billion.

Speaker 11 Really?

Speaker 11 That's what's needed? And we did this on the next level a little bit as far as the there's no judges, you know, we're not funding any judges, immigration judges. Right.

Speaker 12 So we're just going to fund these massive detention centers and more contractors to like wear masks and hassle people like that's that's what we're doing yes that's what we're doing i mean it's very obvious it's you know it's very obvious that that's this this is the country that they want right i mean i think in addition to jd vance's tweet and tiff with glaciers which is just like i don't know maybe if i were vice president i probably would not spend my time that way.

Speaker 12 But I thought the other thing was like Trump deciding like, you know what, all this shit's going going down with this bill.

Speaker 12 I'm going to just hop on a plane and go to Alligator Alcatraz and like check out this Everglades prison that we set up.

Speaker 12 And there's like, you know, they were like taking photo shoots and they brought along Benny Johnson for some, you know,

Speaker 12 sizzle reel footage. And it was just like the celebration of the creation of a immigration police state.
is really remarkable. They get off on this stuff.
They really do. And

Speaker 12 we're going to to have militarized huge portions of our

Speaker 12 cities, I suspect. We're going to have people in cages.
We're going to have mass deportation ramped up from even where it is right now. And I take J.D.

Speaker 12 Vance very seriously, literally, not just figuratively or whatever the fuck the phrase is, when he says that this is the main thing in the bill for him.

Speaker 12 You know, I really do think this is Stephen Miller's administration. I think they're totally focused on this stuff.
They believe in it.

Speaker 12 They think that throwing immigrants out of the country is is going to unlock jobs. It's going to unlock the welfare state to make sure it's more stable.

Speaker 12 It's going to give people more benefits because immigrants are draining our benefits. All this bullshit.
I think they really do believe it.

Speaker 11 Yeah. It was a wild press comment.
I'm not going to punish people with it, but Trump gave like a rambling three-minute long.

Speaker 11 Did you watch this like answer to how long people are going to stay in these detention centers?

Speaker 11 And it's like, I mean, A, his mental acuity doesn't seem quite there, but he's also just like kind of going on about how there's going to be a connection of camps. And

Speaker 11 to me, it seemed less, some people were sharing it as like how ominous this is that he like he wants these people to stay indefinitely in internment camps. And that's, that is ominous.

Speaker 11 I like interpreted it as like, A, like you said, he gets off on this stuff and he is, and he wasn't all there. And he was like losing this train of thought and kept kind of rambling about it.

Speaker 11 But so he does that. And then Ron DeSanctimonius' spokesperson, you know, was kind of replying to the backlash to this, I noticed.
And she was like, essentially, this is misinformation.

Speaker 11 We're not going to keep people here indefinitely in alligator, Alcatraz. We're going to be sending them back to their home country immediately.
And I just don't think that people

Speaker 11 who are not deeply involved in the immigration system

Speaker 11 can really process what that means and what that looks like. Because they keep going back to this whole like, well, Obama deported a lot of people, Obama deported a lot of people.

Speaker 11 It is such a misnomer because those numbers are all people coming across the border and then going right back around. A, people aren't coming to the border right now.

Speaker 11 But if they were, they weren't being sent then to the Everglades to then be deported, right? Like they're being kept on the border. Right.

Speaker 11 So the people that are going to the fucking Everglades camp and to all these other prison camps that they're going to start to build are people from the interior of the U.S.

Speaker 11 And their plan, I guess, is then to take the Cuban guy that died in their custody and instead of leaving him in alligator alcatraz, I guess their stated plan is that they're just going to send him without a judge or with some fake judge, you know, fake like militarized police, just straight to some country he hasn't been in for half a century.

Speaker 11 Like that's, that is literally their plan.

Speaker 12 Yeah, 100%. And I think you made a really important point, which is, yes, deportitions under Obama were high.

Speaker 12 They did it because, one, I think Obama actually did believe in enforcement more than people recognize, but also two, they were trying to get buy-in for immigration reform from Republicans, and they thought that would get it to them.

Speaker 12 But also, to your point, a lot of people cross the border, they're sent back, they turn around, they try to cross the border again. They get sent back.
That kind of juices the numbers.

Speaker 12 In this case, that's two.

Speaker 11 Yeah, that's two right there, right?

Speaker 12 It's like repeat offenders. In this case, this is a lot of this isn't, well, almost all of it now because we have no border crossings is in tier enforcement.
I forget who I was talking to.

Speaker 12 Maybe it was Edgar, but just the way the Overton window has shifted on this stuff.

Speaker 12 I mean, Trump 1.0 is famous for, you know, public recoiling at images of kids in cages. Like, that was the defining moment of when people turned on his immigration policy.

Speaker 12 Trump 2.0 is they are going down with paparazzi, political paparazzi, to show you the cages they've built.

Speaker 11 With branded hats and shirts.

Speaker 12 With branded hats and fun alligators and, you know, the dehumanization of it all is,

Speaker 12 it's sad, honestly.

Speaker 12 We've gotten to a really dark place where we treat people. like we're treating people now.

Speaker 12 And I'm sure Trisha McLaughlin will say, well, they all have these, every single one of them has a horrible record that we can't see. Yes, I'm sure.

Speaker 11 It was like the Cuban guy that died. You know, he had a drug arrest in 1984 in Miami.

Speaker 11 I was like, oh, somebody was doing drugs in Miami in 1984. Oh, really? Breaking news.

Speaker 12 That's a shock to the system. We should have been deported back then.
No, it's crazy.

Speaker 12 They come up with, you didn't see his social media posts where he threw up a peace sign that looked like an MS-13 symbol.

Speaker 11 It's like, come on, man. Speaking of the social media posts, I just got a text this morning from one of my friends who I'm meeting on my holiday.

Speaker 11 And he said he's already, you know, talking to foreigners and about why they aren't coming to America.

Speaker 11 I could guess. Yeah, right.
Right.

Speaker 11 But like the social media thing, I don't know if it's really like sunk in with people, like the degree to which like people that are coming in on travel visas now, like they're being asked to look through their phones.

Speaker 11 Oh, yeah. Like they're going, again.
It isn't, it is like you're going to an authoritarian state.

Speaker 11 You know, like when I land in Spain, you know, after the red eye, like they're not not going to be like, hey, Tim, have you said anything mean about the Catalonian party?

Speaker 11 Like, you know, before you come in,

Speaker 11 is there any memes about like where you make bass separatist leaders look like they have a fat face? It's like, no, that's not what's happening. But that, like, that is, it's a small thing.

Speaker 11 Like, when you combine it with the interior enforcement and with the fear,

Speaker 11 like, it paints a picture that I just think things are going to look worse than a lot of people realize by next year. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 12 Also, I don't think it's that small thing. I think

Speaker 12 we'll see what the numbers end up showing, but just think about like the downstream ripple effects, even economically, from this. Less tourism, less international business.

Speaker 12 I mean, Adrian had a piece for us about like the Latino music industry. The concert venues are just getting.

Speaker 12 absolutely shredded because no one wants to no one wants to show up at a Latino music festival because they think ice ICE will come down and raid them like right legit they don't want to do it artists aren't coming here because they can't get their visas satisfied I mean and you might say well

Speaker 12 is that like profoundly impactful and

Speaker 11 yeah like if

Speaker 11 it's a profoundly we are coming up I'm going to end with some uh some you know uh you know patriotic pains to uh to the American spirit to the American Declaration yeah yeah like even if it's not that a big of a deal to you practically whether or not you're going to have a big, a bad bunny concert here in the country, it like is extremely impactful about what the spirit of the country and what the country is supposed to be about and whether you want to be able to live in a free country if there are people that decide

Speaker 11 they can't sing their songs here because they're race.

Speaker 12 Yeah. And then you think about like, well, Every music venue has vendors who need customers.

Speaker 12 They have surrounding restaurants and shops that need clientele. I mean, just the ripple effects of it all.
And then you get to like, well,

Speaker 12 the farming industry, the hotel industry, and I know he's trying to create carve-outs for that, but they're not showing up. They might not believe there's carve-outs yet.

Speaker 12 And that's just like this, that's just like the surface level stuff. I mean, think about it under the surface.

Speaker 12 And then you get into a place where the country is closed off, the economy kind of slows down, and culturally we're so homogeneous that we become less and less recognizable.

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Speaker 11 I want to talk about the econ stuff because you mentioned it. Our man, friend of the pod, Stan Voyger over at AEI, was posting that the U.S.

Speaker 11 will fall to net zero immigration or below this year as a result of everything we're talking about.

Speaker 11 And so, what that means practically is that the country only needs to create 10 to 40,000 jobs per month to keep unemployment at 4.2%.

Speaker 11 So, on one level, you're like, okay, well, unemployment won't be spiking like it was in the Great Recession. That's good.
On the other hand, this is a picture of a country that is stagnant.

Speaker 11 You know, you're slashing public sector jobs across the board, and we're not bringing any new people into the country.

Speaker 11 And as is the great stagnation, I thought that's what Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen were fighting against, but that's what we're doing.

Speaker 12 When you get to a place where

Speaker 12 you just don't have people coming into the country to do more work, to pay into our social insurance programs, to pay taxes, even if they're not citizens, and they do this.

Speaker 12 They don't get the benefits. They pay into it.
But also to be customers, to buy things, to generate economic growth.

Speaker 12 Sure, we can have, you know, our unemployment rate's going to be fine because we're going to have a lot of open jobs and very few people, or fewer people, I should say, able to fill them.

Speaker 12 So, yeah, we'll have a fairly low unemployment rate. But, you know, Joe Biden had a fairly low unemployment rate, right?

Speaker 12 And inflation really sucked. And, you know, I'm not saying we're going to have inflation here, but my point is, unemployment rate does not always mean, you know, good economic vibes.

Speaker 12 And I think we're going to be in a place where, you know, economic growth seems like it's going to be real close to stagnant. We'll see.
Maybe these tax extending the tax cuts will help us.

Speaker 11 Hey.

Speaker 11 And it is true that they're doing the tax cuts. Like I got a text yesterday from somebody who's on Medicaid.
They're like, how screwed am I?

Speaker 11 And it's like, well, these fuckers are like extending the tax cuts and funding the private prisons immediately. Right.
And they're cutting health care in a year and a half. Right.

Speaker 11 So, you know, it takes time for all this stuff to sort of seep through the entire economy.

Speaker 12 Yeah. I wish I had the data in front of me.
I think Cohen told me some stuff is going to get triggered earlier than that. But I think mostly the pain is coming

Speaker 12 down the pike past the midterms.

Speaker 11 The 2027 side of things. Yeah.
And that's the Josh Hawley argument that

Speaker 11 this will ever happen. We'll fix it before 2027.

Speaker 11 we'll just give you your tax cuts which i'm sure uh ron johnson is very uh excited about we covered the ukraine weapons thing i just have one other thing on it like

Speaker 11 the story is kind of weird i like have you i know you've been kind of deep in in bbb world but have you been following this yeah so what happened the cold what's his name ridge cold

Speaker 11 who is

Speaker 11 the guy

Speaker 11 yeah who is the you know kind of jd van stand-in in the uh in the pentagon you know kind of more of the nationalist america first doesn't want to do stuff.

Speaker 12 I guess my theory of the case is like, was Rubio not like looped in on this?

Speaker 12 That's kind of what I want to know about because I don't really understand how they could just, it seems like it just came out of nowhere.

Speaker 12 And the second thing is, if you're Zelensky, right, like you just cut this minerals deal with Trump, you've you've literally conspicuously said thank you. every single time you meet with him.

Speaker 12 You tweet thank you every time because you know that that's what they demand. You had a fairly smashing success with the drones, but the Russians are still pounding you.

Speaker 12 There's not much more you can do to win over the favor of the administration.

Speaker 12 And for, you know, a bureaucrat at the Pentagon to then suddenly decide, you know what, we're going to hold these weapons, that's got to be incredibly deflating.

Speaker 12 Obviously, it's frightening too for the country.

Speaker 11 You know, I don't know.

Speaker 12 It just seems like Trump just doesn't care for Ukraine. He just wants to get the Russians to a point of yes so that he can end the war.

Speaker 11 Yeah. So Keith Kellogg, this guy, the uh, yeah, he was, you know, at the NSC in the first Trump.
Trans,

Speaker 11 right? Yeah, yeah. There's an advisor.
And he, so he currently serves as Trump's envoy for Ukraine. And he is

Speaker 11 like pretty MAGA as far as the generals are concerned. But like on the right side, from my perspective,

Speaker 11 well, I mean, from just the accurate perspective, since they were

Speaker 11 on the moral perspective, you know, since they were invaded, he's been good on the Ukraine issue. So he's Trump's special envoy to Ukraine.

Speaker 11 So the story is out there, like you're mentioning, about how the weapons aren't going there.

Speaker 11 People are saying Bridge Colby, you know, put a stop on these weapons being sent there. Kellogg's daughter,

Speaker 11 Megan Mobbs, who is at, you know, one of these foundations, is like tweeting about how, like, this isn't true. This is fake news.
Like, this is people leaking stuff to try to advance an agenda.

Speaker 11 And there are other people out there saying that Trump didn't even know about this.

Speaker 12 That's what I was getting at. Like, did they not, did Ruby on no business, Trump not know about this? Are they just like allowing this dude to just decide on a whim?

Speaker 12 Hey, we're not going to do this anymore. Like, is there not a process here? Also, it is true.
It's been confirmed by about 15 outlets.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it kind of seems like no is the answer. And they're happy to have the, you know, fog of war element out there because it, I, I don't know.
Trump seems totally schizophrenic on this.

Speaker 11 I know the popular thing on the resistance YouTube is to be like, Trump is Krasnoff. And he was, or he's been a Russian asset since 1983, or the time when a Russian hooker peed on his face.

Speaker 11 And I don't know.

Speaker 11 I would say there's not a 0% chance of that, maybe 1%. That's possible.
But to me,

Speaker 11 it seems more just like Trump is just like, Trump likes Putin because Putin sucks up to him. Putin helped him win.
Putin's been on his side.

Speaker 11 But then he gets annoyed with Putin sometimes because he doesn't do exactly what he wants. And, you know what I mean?

Speaker 11 He's like, he's a little bit, he has an instinctive tendency towards the strong man. First of all, like, he's been kind of schizophrenic on it.

Speaker 12 The rumor was that the hooker peed on the bed, not on his face. Let's not exaggerate, okay?

Speaker 11 I thought the rumor was the hooker peed on the other hooker. There are two hookers.
They're peeing on each other. He was watching.

Speaker 12 I think they just peed on the bed.

Speaker 11 We got a positive.

Speaker 11 Why would they just pee on the bed? Clearly, you've never been to a freak off, Sam.

Speaker 11 What would be the sexual

Speaker 12 interest there?

Speaker 11 She just pee pee on the bed like it was a toilet, like just pop a squad on top of the pillow?

Speaker 12 I've been to my share of ditty parties. Do not question my credentials on this, okay? No, I think we're gonna have to go back to the dossier and fix your pee.

Speaker 11 I'm pretty sure it would be one hooker peeing on another hooker. That would be the turn on, I would think.

Speaker 12 See, this is why you should have had From on because he could have

Speaker 12 I don't think From would have gone down this path.

Speaker 11 What were we talking about?

Speaker 12 Oh, Trump.

Speaker 11 Is he a Russian asset? I don't know.

Speaker 12 He's not. I don't think so.
But I think he's talking about Hugo Penny. I think he does.
I think he does like, I think he's partial to Putin, though.

Speaker 12 I mean, isn't that very evident that he kind of approaches him?

Speaker 11 Of course that's very evident. I guess my point is like this.
Part of the reason, I guess I'm trying to say that like he doesn't want to make the final decision that I'm abandoning Ukraine.

Speaker 12 He doesn't want to make any tough decisions.

Speaker 11 Yeah, he wants it to be like, you know, all of these little cuts and like slowly but surely the Ukrainians lose access to our weapons.

Speaker 11 But then he can like kind of say to people that he wants to that, like, oh, he was the first one to do it.

Speaker 12 What's the end game then for him?

Speaker 11 What's I don't like? I think he hopes that they that the Ukrainians just give Russia some land and we get our minerals and he gets the Nobel Peace Prize.

Speaker 11 I think that's I think that's the end gate for him.

Speaker 12 I don't doubt that. He's obsessed with the Nobel Peace Prize.
Like he's so weird.

Speaker 11 I thought he didn't like the elites.

Speaker 12 Well, no, he's the most obvious.

Speaker 12 He so wants to be considered among the elites. I mean, it's such a driver of him.
He just feels like totally disrespected by that class that he needs to join it.

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Speaker 11 Speaking of Russian assets, I've got one piece of audio I do want to play for you. Okay.
An interesting story. Candace Owens, one of my competitors in the podcast space.

Speaker 11 She, have we, we've talked about this. Have you and I talked about this? Her obsession with the fact that Brigitte Macrone is a man?

Speaker 12 Oh my God. You have, yes, I'm yes, I'm obsessed with this, but you're also going to be stepping on Will Summer, who has got original reporting coming down the pike on this one.

Speaker 11 I'm not stepping on it. I'm excited to hear the original reporting.

Speaker 12 I don't want to give away too much.

Speaker 11 Candace, for listeners who

Speaker 11 have not really fully engaged or glazed over when I bring this up, Candace Owens isn't obsessed

Speaker 11 with the question of Brigitte Macrone being a man, like at the level of me being obsessed with Nuggets or something. Like she has done a full documentary on it.

Speaker 11 Like if you go to the YouTube page, it's like about as likely that it's about this as any other issue. I mean, she has just totally embraced it as her cause celeb.

Speaker 11 And so she got, according to her,

Speaker 11 got a phone call from the president about this. And I want to play the audio.

Speaker 17 President Donald J. Trump.

Speaker 8 He is calling me.

Speaker 20 He tells me that Emmanuel Macron is requesting to his face I stop speaking about his wife. I said to him, you know, respectfully, Mr.
President, it's not my fault that he married someone with a penis.

Speaker 11 Could that be real?

Speaker 11 I think it's real. I think it's real.

Speaker 11 I think Donald Trump called Candace Owens and was like, I need you to do me a solid with Emmanuel Macrone and stop talking about whether his wife is secretly trans.

Speaker 12 Again, I don't want to get ahead of our colleagues.

Speaker 11 How can you not get out of the reporting? It's our show. When is it going to come out? When's the newsletter coming out?

Speaker 12 It's supposed to come out today.

Speaker 11 Great. This podcast comes out at three o'clock.

Speaker 11 You're keeping a secret. No, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 11 Subscribe to the bulwark, people. This is where you get the

Speaker 12 there's two things. So so Will has a newsletter today that's not the Candace owned thing.
He has a newsletter today that is so ridiculous. And this one I'm fine teasing because

Speaker 12 it will be out, I think, by the time this podcast. His newsletter today is about this report that Cash Patel sent to Chuck Grassley about Chinese election interference in 2020.

Speaker 12 It's supposed to be this groundbreaking report, and it turns out that the source of

Speaker 12 the stuff that the FBI was investigating back in 2020 also may have pushed the rumor that the Chinese had built a bunch of underground tunnels in America to spread the COVID virus and that the issue of passing around fake IDs was also an internet hoax that this person found.

Speaker 12 So clearly not the bombshell, but Truck Grassley ran with it anyway. That's his newsletter today.

Speaker 12 In addition to that, he has a story come out of this Canis Owen stuff. I will say this.

Speaker 12 I think based on what Will has told me that it is likely true that Trump called her.

Speaker 11 Do you think Trump thinks it's true?

Speaker 12 I don't know what Trump thinks about her allegations.

Speaker 12 I do know that Macron, according to Will, Macron, has publicly talked about this, where it's like this woman, this commenter, needs to stop. And it's just so ridiculous.
Like

Speaker 12 if ever there was a symbol of like how far we've fallen, the fact that like Candace Owens is fucking around with geopolitical affairs and like has the president, two presidents, two heads of state, like kind of needing to respond to her absurd anti-trans commentary.

Speaker 12 Is

Speaker 12 I don't know, man, we're in trouble.

Speaker 11 It's hard for me to also disentangle. So maybe this is what we'll look forward to in Will Summers' newsletter, which I won't read till July 14th because I'm going now

Speaker 11 blackout. But

Speaker 11 like

Speaker 11 her claim is that the peace in Ukraine was hinging on this in some way

Speaker 11 and that

Speaker 11 and that Macron needed her to stop as part of, I don't know, maybe a negotiation with Putin.

Speaker 12 I like that you try to make some sense.

Speaker 12 That's what you're here for, yeah.

Speaker 11 It's strange. The white nationalist affinity for Candace is another thing that, I don't know, it's hard for me to wrap my head around.

Speaker 12 That one's easy to wrap around for me, but I won't get into it.

Speaker 11 Come on. The husband?

Speaker 12 No, I think that

Speaker 11 she's black.

Speaker 12 They like the fact that

Speaker 12 she kind of echoes what they say.

Speaker 11 Interesting.

Speaker 11 A friend once asked me if I would rather my daughter grow up to be Candace Owens or a stripper. Oh, my God.

Speaker 11 How would you feel that one?

Speaker 11 Would you rather be aware of that? Would you rather your child grow up to be a conspiracy theorist, MAGA commentator, or

Speaker 11 a stripper?

Speaker 12 I can't believe someone asked you this.

Speaker 12 How drunk were you guys?

Speaker 11 Her house was.

Speaker 11 I don't know, probably both. Yeah.

Speaker 11 What are we supposed to chat about? It's a fucking tough world out there. Which one would you go with?

Speaker 11 I have a very serious class.

Speaker 12 What are the options?

Speaker 11 Your child,

Speaker 11 your child.

Speaker 11 Yeah, go to a white nationalist podcaster or

Speaker 11 a stripper, like a Chippendales person.

Speaker 12 Yeah, because

Speaker 12 I have boys. Chippendales.
I definitely Chippendale.

Speaker 11 Yeah, not even a close call. This person was outraged at me, actually, when I made that suggestion.

Speaker 11 It didn't even take me as long as you. I was like, are you fucking kidding me? A stripper, amazing, great, great life, whatever.
I don't know.

Speaker 11 Have you seen Enora? She seems awesome. Yeah, I would way rather be Inora's one.
That's a great life.

Speaker 11 Well, she really struck gold there.

Speaker 11 Enora went through some issues, but she, I don't want to spoil it for people. Great movie.

Speaker 11 Okay. We're going to close with some seriousness.
Are you ready? This would have been better with David Frum, but we're going to do it with you.

Speaker 11 The whole pod would have been better, really, but that's okay.

Speaker 11 You pod with the guests that you have. That is the fourth.

Speaker 11 Whoa.

Speaker 11 Okay.

Speaker 11 Deep colour. This is the 4th of July podcast.

Speaker 11 As a former Republican, well, I guess, let me ask you this first. Does the patriotism of the bulwark make you uncomfortable as part of your

Speaker 11 transition here?

Speaker 11 That made me uncomfortable. The jingoism.

Speaker 12 The jingoism. We're not jingoistic now.
We're patriotic.

Speaker 11 I think we're... We have some traits.
I don't know.

Speaker 12 No, of course not. I love this country.

Speaker 11 Okay, I do too. So, unfortunately, during campaigns, I would read to the staffers from the letter from Thomas Jefferson to Roger Waiteman on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration.

Speaker 11 You familiar with that letter? Fucking loser.

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 11 It's fucking, it's really something. It's truly a banger.
If you want, I mean, obviously, when you read it, you start to

Speaker 11 think about maybe

Speaker 11 the elements in which Thomas Jefferson did not live up to this message of the letter. Even still, it says a lot about what we're trying to be.

Speaker 11 So I'm going to read a part to you right now, and I would like to get your reaction. Are you ready? Okay.

Speaker 12 Do I need to get some tissues ready?

Speaker 11 If you want to, it's up to you. I mean,

Speaker 11 I've had made several people cry on this podcast recently. So it could happen to you.
He's talking about what the Fourth of July should mean.

Speaker 11 I think he dies the next Fourth of July.

Speaker 11 He says to Waitman, May it be to the world what I believe it will be, to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all, the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

Speaker 11 The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred ready to ride them legitimately. These are the grounds of hope for others.

Speaker 11 For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollection of these rights and an undiminished devotion to them.

Speaker 11 Do you feel like this 4th of July, we are going to forever refresh our recollection of the rights of the Declaration? Do you see that spirit in the country right now, Samuel? No.

Speaker 11 No, I don't.

Speaker 12 It's a difficult time to be in here.

Speaker 12 You know, I don't want to be too negative about things, but I think you have to be realistic that we're in a bad spot. I guess the thing that really

Speaker 12 gets me is

Speaker 12 what we're doing to migrant communities.

Speaker 12 And I just find that to be like not in the spirit of what that jefferson letter represented i don't want to be too like uh i don't know what the word is but i i find the discourse in in the way that we're conducting the like political conversations that we're having with each other to be really depressing too i i don't know if like that's historically you know different than any other time.

Speaker 12 I'm sure that, you know, we're not beating each other with canes. I know that's always the thing that they say.

Speaker 12 But like, I do find like people are just nasty to each other in a way that I find really unfortunate. And I think like we

Speaker 12 basically have forgotten how to learn to talk to each other. It's pretty bad.

Speaker 11 Yeah. I just looked at this and I did a separate thing.
People should go check out the Borg Takes feed if you want, if you want to really cry.

Speaker 11 I did a separate thing on the Kilmar Brego-Garcia lawsuit where he makes a lot of allegations about what happened in Sukkot and to him.

Speaker 11 And, you know, who knows exactly what the truth is of it, but he paints an extremely bleak picture.

Speaker 11 And to me, when I think about the letter, and the most distressing thing to me about all of it is no matter, like

Speaker 11 there was something to be said for the fact that we were flawed, we fucked up, we did Abu Ghraib, we didn't let Jews in after World War II, Thomas Jefferson fathered a slave's kid, like, right?

Speaker 11 Like, it was not that we were a perfect country, but like that there was an aspiration that was like, we are going to try to do this, not just for us, but for people who wanted to come here.

Speaker 11 And Jefferson's telling for people around the world, like that these are grounds for hope for others, that we will, that they can also be blessed with these rights.

Speaker 11 And now, like, the thing to me that is the most disheartening

Speaker 11 is

Speaker 11 that

Speaker 11 with Trump, they've dispensed even with the notion that we should aim for this, right? That it's like, actually, who gives a fuck

Speaker 11 if others have saddles on their back?

Speaker 12 It's a virtue to go after those people with Trump. Yeah.

Speaker 11 And and it's a virtue and it's and you're you're mocked actually like in his speech in the middle east you're mocked if you say that we want these rights for others right like not not just like oh we don't want regime chain wars or whatever but like to even express the view that the u.s should want and encourage people to have you know the rights and the blessings of the declaration is now something that is derided and to me that is the sad part about this fourth of july that's a really interesting point it's a really interesting point like we to even think that way makes you either you know unrealistic or or naive yeah and it's you know

Speaker 11 that is it kind of saps you of any sort of sense of idealism and it just reduces you to their level uh of cynicism and that is actually pretty pretty sad i won't be reduced i will be half a world away though um on this fourth of july congrats um thank you so much you guys survived the week without me do you think you can do it think you'll be okay Will I be replaced when I come back, do you think?

Speaker 11 You'll live? No. Will your life be better or worse without me next week, do you think, Sam?

Speaker 12 I'll probably have to do more takes, but I think that's going to be okay. I'll be all right.
I'm going to make it.

Speaker 11 All right.

Speaker 11 Do you have any vacations planned? No.

Speaker 12 August. God, I got to get out of town.

Speaker 11 I'm

Speaker 11 going to do it. All right.
And I owe your wife one. So, you know, we'll cover for you.
Thank you for coming in this morning

Speaker 11 for an early call. I appreciate you very much.
Everybody else, we'll be back here July 14th with Sam's favorite neoconservative, Bill Crystal, for Bill Crystal Mondays.

Speaker 11 And we'll see you all then. Enjoy the break.
Bye.

Speaker 11 I would like to leave this city.

Speaker 11 This old town doesn't smell too pretty. And

Speaker 11 I can feel the warning signs running around my mind.

Speaker 11 And when I leave this island, I put myself into a soul asylum.

Speaker 11 Cause I can feel the warm insides running around my mind.

Speaker 11 So here I go,

Speaker 11 still scratching around in the same old home.

Speaker 11 My body feels young, but my mind is very old.

Speaker 11 So, what do you say?

Speaker 11 You can't give me the dreams in your mind anyway.

Speaker 11 Half the world away.

Speaker 11 Half the world away.

Speaker 11 Half the world away.

Speaker 11 I've been lost, I've been found, but I don't feel bad.

Speaker 11 And when I leave this planet,

Speaker 11 you know I'd stay, but I just can't stand it. And

Speaker 11 I can feel the warning signs running around my mind.

Speaker 11 And if I could leave this spirit, I'd find me a mole and I'll live in it. And

Speaker 11 I can feel the warning signs running around my mind.

Speaker 11 Here I go.

Speaker 11 I'm still scratching around in the same old home.

Speaker 11 My body feels young, but my mind is very old.

Speaker 11 So, what do you say?

Speaker 11 You can't give me the dreams that are mine anyway.

Speaker 11 Half the world away.

Speaker 11 Half the world away.

Speaker 11 Half the world away.

Speaker 11 I've been lost, I've been found, but I don't feel down.

Speaker 11 No, I don't feel down.

Speaker 11 No, I don't feel down

Speaker 11 Don't feel down

Speaker 11 Don't feel down

Speaker 11 Don't feel down

Speaker 11 Don't feel down

Speaker 11 The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 11 She'd throw things, wander, and started hoarding.

Speaker 15 Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard, but then we found out she had something called agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease. And that was a different kind of difficult.

Speaker 15 So we asked her doctor for more help.

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Speaker 15 I'm glad her doctor recommended Rick Sulti.

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