S2 Ep1057: Rahm Emanuel: Trump Is a Chump

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All right.

Hey, everybody.

I have an announcement.

If you're in DC on Friday, we are now doing a rally outside the Supreme Court in support of Andree before the fundraisers.

It'll be five o'clock outside the Supreme Court.

Go to thebork.com slash events.

Our buddies at Crooked will be there.

Sarah's going to be there.

A bunch of other folks.

And, you know, we wanted to maximize as much attention as we could just to make sure that folks are aware that there are people out there that still care about these Venezuelans that have been sent to a fucking gulag in El Salvador for no reason.

So, come out if you're in the DC Metro, five o'clock outside the Supreme Court.

There are a handful of tickets left.

If you want to come to that fundraiser, you better get that ticket right now because it's going to sell out probably today.

So, I appreciate you guys.

Up next, I have a long interview because it was good, man.

It was good.

I just had to keep it rolling.

All right.

So, we've got a marathon with Ram Emanuel.

I hope you guys enjoyed as much as I did.

Stick around for that.

Hello and welcome to the Bullworld Podcast.

I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Delighted to welcome today, for his first time, a guy whose former titles include Congressman, White House Chief of Staff, Mayor, Chair of the Driple C,

Ambassador to Japan.

You figured it out.

It's Ram Emmanuel.

What's up, Rambo?

How are you doing, man?

I'm good.

Not to be a jerk, but I thought I'd start right where I want to begin.

You left two titles off.

Okay, great.

Which titles are you?

I don't know.

You're not the only person.

Everybody seems to forget these two.

I was caucus chair for the Democrats when we took the majority.

Yeah, I got it.

Cactus caucus.

And the second thing is I was senior advisor for policy and strategy for President Clinton.

We really shouldn't have forgot Bill Clinton.

The Clinton title seems to have kind of statute of limitations phased out.

I guess that's probably right.

I think we could learn some things from that era.

How old were you then when you had that job?

First, 32 when I entered the White House, 31 when I entered the campaign.

32, you're a young man.

If you look back on that now,

what do you think about that era?

As with the wise and grays, do you have any reflections on the Clinton years?

Oh, yeah.

I saw President Clinton three weeks ago.

We had about an hour together.

And also HRC.

Catch up on Politics.

Yeah, it was the most formative period of time for me politically, foundational, I would say.

And when you look back at, I mean, you look at today's standards, I mean, I think about the fact that we couldn't get an attorney general based

on forgetting to pay taxes for the help at the House, for MAID and otherwise.

And you look at some of the not only cabinet members today, you look at what the president is doing, a fundraiser, you look at the congressional hearings over the Lincoln bedroom, you look at a crypto fundraiser at the White House, an investor meeting.

I mean, it's so that's one standard I look at, what started an impeachment over, you know, with Monica Lewiski.

But on the other hand, I look at the balanced budget, a formative I remember, and it's been informative to me when I negotiated the children's health insurance program with Bruce Reed and Gene Sperling.

I led the effort taking on the NRA for both a Brady Building assault weapon ban.

And it's always striked me, now

this is therapy, so I'm just going to get off my fist.

People, Bill Clinton was a small boar president.

I don't know.

Balancing the budget, small.

Passing the assault weapon ban against the NRA, small.

Taking on the insurance companies against 10 million children without health care, small.

First president to do anything on climate change, the Kyoto Accords.

And then, I think appropriately, we can get into this if you want, expanded NATO that included Poland, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic.

So Hungary was maybe your miss in retrospect, but the principle was good.

You couldn't see that far ahead.

Some people would think America was a miss right now, if that was the standard.

You've already taken me a different than I wanted to start.

But I'm curious now.

You said you saw HRC and Bill last week.

What's their level of depression?

Are they depressed?

Are they down?

Are they listening to this podcast and getting more and more bleak by the day about their outlook on the future?

No, I mean, Bill Clinton embodied Never Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.

He's angry about the fact that we're thinking about yesterday and keep thinking about yesterday's.

Like two things.

You remember in 1992, he ran the theme song was Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.

When he goes to Oklahoma immediately after the bombing, 1995,

at this, what was then the service and it became a religious service, he said, we will be with you as many tomorrows as it takes to rebuild.

He was always both optimistic, hopeful for a kid from Hope, Arkansas, and future-oriented.

And in 1996, re-elect, the theme, and I think appropriately, was a bridge to the 21st century.

Well, okay.

so then HRC has got to be depressed.

Someone's got to be depressed in that house.

You got to bring balance in a relationship, you know?

There's a lot to be upset about.

First of all, I'm very careful about ever saying anything about my conversations.

I would not use depressed as the adjective.

Let's just say that and I'll leave it there.

Okay.

I'm very careful.

I never talked about relationships.

Fair enough.

I would never want that when I was mayor and I didn't or ambassador and I wouldn't want it.

And I don't do it to any of the three presidents I worked for.

Maybe I'll invite HRC on and see if she wants to come and chat about her feelings

so we can just hear from the source.

I want to get into you and the Democratic stuff for most of the pod, but we do have some new stuff we got to talk about first.

We got the big ugly over on the hill, whatever we're calling it, the reconciliation bill.

Elon yesterday put this out on his social platform.

I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore.

This massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.

Shame on those who voted for it.

You know you did wrong.

It will massively increase increase the gigantic budget deficit $2.5 trillion.

I guess you got to hand it to Elon on one.

So what do you make of the bill and of this kind of conversation happening among those guys?

Well, I'm going to just talk to you about, I mean, where I'm at.

Sure.

One,

there's a lot of people in the party that say, oh, the Democrats don't fight, don't fight.

Well, you don't have a gavel and you don't have the bully pulpit.

But what you can do is win in 2026, and it's framing up for a win because I think Democrats in the country are very energized, and independents are two to one against the incumbent party.

And the incumbent party is not exactly energized.

And historically, when Trump's not on the ballot, they don't energize.

They don't vote like they did when he is.

In my view, this bill structures exactly where you want that campaign.

It's tax cuts for the wealthy and health care cuts for the many.

I have advocated, and I'll say it here: I would do a press conference with a big portrait of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, everybody that went to the inaugural, right on the left side of the podium.

On the right side, I'd have 40 kids.

And the reason 40 is because 40% of all American children say get their health care from Medicaid chips, the Children's Health Insurance Program.

And I would say, why do these billionaires get millions and millions of dollars in new tax cuts and these kids can't get a right to see their pediatrician?

Make it simple.

And that is exactly what this bill achieves.

It cuts health care for working middle-class families and their children, and it gives tax cuts to billionaires that wouldn't even see it.

The only people these billionaires see, the only money their billionaire see is what their accountant tells them.

They don't even know what they have.

They don't know what their worth is.

And the idea that you're giving everybody that attended that inaugural for President Trump a tax cut worth billions and billions and billions of dollars, and kids cannot see their pediatrician.

And that is a fact of life, and the Republicans keep trying to run, hide, camouflage exactly what they're doing.

And, you know, the bill's going to chase them right down, and they're going to be roadkill for it.

What are they doing?

Can you steel man their point?

I honestly don't even understand who likes this bill or what the case is for it.

Well,

the president referred to it as one big beautiful bill.

I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

It's the official name, actually.

It's in the eye of the beholder.

And my view is he should go see an eye doctor because this is not by anything.

Every day that people...

This isn't the Melania of bills.

No, I wouldn't call her that.

She's more beautiful this bill.

And

this is the ultimate sausage making, and it has nothing to do with economics.

It has everything.

We've got to score a victory.

And really, the crux of this is eviscerating health care for middle-class and working-middle-class families and a

literally throwing out of the helicopter cash to billionaires.

That is what's going on.

Make no doubts about it.

And the more and more, not only the public learns, the more and and more the members who voted for it learn, the more they're trying to run away from it.

And it will find you even when you're hiding, even when you're wearing camouflage, and you will be roadkill for this.

And they know it.

And now they're trying to do everything they can to

say, walk away from this.

And what's going to, now I'm going to get into, that's the political side of it or the public communication side.

I saw today, Senator Thune, was saying, well, we're going to, because there's no Republican senator that cares about the salt, the tax deduction for local government.

And you got a bunch of Republicans in the House who went off and said, oh, I got a $40,000 salt deduction.

And that was a high watermark.

And now they're going to have to sell, if they want to stand by it, all these cuts because there's nobody in the Senate that cares about what they care about.

Couldn't happen to a better group of the three monkeys.

And I refer to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

That's how you refer to the Republican congressional wing of the party, the three monkeys.

What do you make about the debt debt point that Elon was bringing up?

And you already mentioned the Clinton years balanced budget stuff.

I do think sometimes when I have Democrats on the pod, they're hanging their hat on the great fiscal responsibility work that they did back when Michael Jordan was winning championships.

So it's been quite a minute since the Democrats are really doing really well on that front.

But is this a moment to use that, do you think?

If I may, it's your podcast.

It's your

world.

Let's hash it out.

The only two presidents since 1992 that actually

did anything from a fiscal restraint standpoint.

Bill Clinton obviously balanced the budget three years ago.

The surplus was so good.

Alan Greensbank gave a blank check and a green light for Washington to go spend, and they spent, they did.

But also President Barack Obama.

He had a force down his throat after the stimulus and after the Republicans won the House.

In all due respect,

I would say to you, if you wanted to after the financial meltdown to try to do spinach economics, it would have created the depression that we were all trying to avoid.

But the person that gets lost in this, this will show you my bipartisan, this is a moment of bipartisan.

No, I mean, he paid a political price for this, but George Herbert Walker Bush, 41, and Bill Clinton deserves a lot of credit, a lot of leadership.

We did both through the first budget and then the balanced budget, the 93 budget of President Clinton.

But President Bush, when he agreed to what Senator Mitchell wanted in the 1990s, raising revenue,

set the foundation that Bill Clinton and the Democrats in both 93 and then bipartisan wise in 97 with the balanced budget actually built on.

And that's created the economic balanced budget for three years.

Plus, the economy was growing at an unprecedented rate because of the introduction of both the internet.

Certain things were happening in the private sector that complemented the public sector.

And the person that gets lost in all the no, we are better fiscal stewards.

No, we don't.

George Bush paid a political price, 41.

I can't say that about 43, but 41 paid a massive political price because he broke a pledge from 88 when he said, read my lips.

You're not going to get fiscal discipline and put America's fiscal house on a trajectory that's just called stable to, I wouldn't say living with means, but stable and manageable without taxes and specifically taxes on the very well-to-do.

Just not.

And everybody that says you can do it is deceiving and lying to you.

And that's and that's the example.

Barack Obama raised taxes on the wealthy.

Bill Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy.

Barack Obama, Bill Clinton cut taxes for working lower class.

George Bush raised taxes and all three times and did other things to spending.

I'm not going to play O and B director, but

did things to spend.

But yes, the curve right.

Yeah, at least I actually believe, I actually we have proof that we did it.

But you're not going to get there.

And we got to stop.

We got to actually level with the American people about that.

And it's going to be hard because we've been living for the last, including what happened under President Biden, we've been having deficits as if we're fighting a war, and there's no war to show for it, and we're not making a lot of progress that way.

So you were the point man in 06 when the Democrats took the House.

Point guard.

You're the John Paxton of 06 effort to get Nancy Pelosi into the speakership.

I have a quick quiz for you, and then I want to learn some lessons.

I was on the other side of you in that one.

We almost nabbed you in Iowa 3.

Do you remember the Iowa 3 race?

Can you pull it?

Is that Nagels?

No, it's Boswell.

Boswell, yeah.

Boswell.

I had Jeff Lamberti.

Yeah.

We almost snuck you.

It was the second closest one.

It was my first time.

Wasn't that 52.48?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We'll pull it up here to see if that's right.

That sounds about right to me.

I think it was like a 3.7% spread.

It wasn't exactly a full four, but keep going.

That was a great race.

So what do you learn from that for these guys now?

Like, what do you tell tell Hakeem, if he calls you, about what they should be doing this time?

So there's a couple of things.

Obviously, it goes without saying, as a guy who started in Polish, raise money, money, money, money.

Okay.

But on the thematics, don't make it harder than it is.

Run against, as I laid out in this thing, the three C's, corruption, cruelty, and chaos.

It's a referendum on them and the rubber stamp Republican Congress

and using the tax cuts for the wealthy and the health care cuts for the many.

That's the prism.

Second, below that, picking your districts.

I would have two categories, any district, Donald Trump won 55 or less.

Recruit, have a surfboard or surfer in that district.

And we'll come back to what kind of surfer and what kind of bailing suit they're wearing, et cetera.

Then I'd have a category, kind of 56.

And I haven't seen all the districts and based on, you know, media buy, et cetera, but I would go 56 to 59.

Let's just call it that category because you're early and you're going to see whether this wave peters out or grows.

But the makings of the wave, which I believe, are there.

You're going to also have to study and rip apart what's going on in Virginia specifically in 2025 and understand it.

Third, this is very important data.

Nobody's really paid attention to this.

To me, this was very, very revealing last week.

Mr.

Volpe did some focus groups, et cetera, among working men.

Stupidly, the Democrats are spending $20 million trying to understand.

It tells you how stupid we are.

It's as stupid as what the Republicans did on Hispanics, et cetera, after, yeah.

So I was there for that one.

Yeah, I bet you.

That's like, so here's the thing.

He does the study, but in there is the roadmap.

And the issue that works with 18 to 35-year-old men most potently

is the fact that the Republicans were cutting veterans' benefits.

And it really drove them, like, you know, like no other issue, not minimum wage, that drove them.

Pause.

In Florida, in the special election, the day that we had both Wisconsin and the two specials, I harped on this.

Didn't know why, but it was in Escambia County where Pensacola is, there's 14% veterans.

The national average is six, so it's more than double.

Donald Trump wins that district in 2024 by 19%.

The Democrats in this special win Escambia County, Pensacola, by plus three.

So that's a 22-point swing.

Then, when you look at this data by Volpa, it tells you that veterans and the cuts that both Elon Musk and the Republicans are pushing is a huge opportunity to start a dialogue with young men, working men of all ethnicities and races.

Pause.

Recruitment.

We did this by gut in 06.

Now you have the data.

Both 06, 08, and 2018 and 2022 recruit heavily veterans.

Unbelievable.

Because I've always said the messenger was part of the message.

And, you know, whether you're in the Air Force, whether you're in the national security, whether you're, and it doesn't have to be male, as both Abigail in Virginia is showing you, the senator,

Alyssa, doesn't, but that profile calms down a set of cultural barriers.

where the rest of the democratic message and character gets heard.

And so to me,

rubber stamp, corruption is core and center.

This bill, hang it around their neck, make them choke on it, and then have a bunch of people that look at and help communicate that we're a safe set of hands.

Then the last and final,

spend all your time on them.

It's not about us.

Us is the recruitment.

Build the case.

And if I said, if there's a lesson out of 06, when I first did the first website ever, and I did the house that Tom Delay built, and it was a website about all the corruption and everything.

Everybody kind of like, this is a gimmick, da-da-da-da.

But by the time 16 months played out, Bob Ney, Duke Cunningham, Ren Z,

the house that Tom Delayed.

Mark Foley was one that fucked us.

I just looked.

It was 51-47.

You were pretty close.

Yeah, that was

tied until that Mark Foley.

Yeah, well, started diddling the pages.

You weren't tied.

You broke our momentum.

And then Foley kind of goes with his, no, no.

You weren't tied.

Anyway, fast forward, somewhere in the spring of 2026, early summer, I would lay out a six in 2026.

The last time there was a minimum wage, the number one issue in 6 and 06 was raising the minimum wage.

And that was the last time it ever got raised.

So I would have referendum, referendum, referendum.

Here's what we'll do if we get the keys to the car.

Six months.

Don't make it hard.

And what I would say to the Democrats, which I know how caucuses develop, don't have a bad case of the for reals.

This is not about now.

They don't sit there and sit there and spend hours and hours about the comma.

Well, what is the income group?

Shut up.

Six in 2026.

I don't want to get.

This is the problem.

The Democrats have a horrible degenerative gene that think they're actually when they're in the minority, they're governing.

No.

It's on them.

It's a referendum on them.

They are the rubber stamp.

And then you just have to be a safe set of hands.

Not experts.

I'm with you on all that.

The recruiting thing is so important.

It's something that anytime a Democrat calls me, I'm like, find people who didn't go to fucking college or who went to college and did poorly there, or who talk like a normal person talks.

I'm so sick of having valedictorians being every Democratic candidate.

It's like, oh, wait, we recruited the one person who was from this district, but then moved to New York to work at the hedge fund and then came home to run for.

No.

Here's what I would tell you.

I remember when I was bringing the candidates up to the caucus in 2005, you know, somebody that was an Air Force pilot, somebody that was, you know, worked in the intelligence agency, and without naming names, because the member is still a member, I remember she grabbed me by the hand and says, these aren't Democrats.

I said, the big change we made in 2006.

The candidate you recruited did not have to fit the Washington standard.

Washington had to be flexible enough to fit the district standard.

We changed the priority.

And we opened up, no, again, you had Iraq, that horrible, horrendous war, and people were done.

And you had people in these swing districts, they're purplish, lean, slight red, that the profile of a person out of national security, small business, football player, sheriff,

they opened up a segment of voters.

that were just waiting but hadn't voted Democratic.

And I just said, well, let me just, and I remember telling the member, I said, one, they're going to vote for Nancy Pelosi.

Two, they're committed to the 6-06.

That's better than half the caucus today.

So I said, get off my back.

Yeah.

And I, you know, so obviously I've allowed insults to be forgotten.

Yeah, clearly.

I know.

You've pulled something from the 90s already.

Do you feel like Hakeem's been doing well?

What did you have agreed for him?

So far?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I thought the vote he pulled everybody in.

Look, in the many respects, and this is a bad sign of what's happened on redistricting, the Democrats today, and again, I'm showing obviously going back to Bill Clinton, the Democrats today, geographically, ideologically, etc.,

are more of a unified whole than when you had

people from all parts of the country and all parts of the literally.

So, from that perspective, Hakeems had a ability to consolidate them and find a way to keep them unified.

Nobody broke ranks like on this big beautiful abomination.

Part of it's because it was so shitty.

I mean, even Jared Golden is like the most moderate.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, no, no, good.

No, I'm with you.

It's good.

That could be, yeah, it was crappy.

Yeah.

Okay.

They probably could have put together a bill that would have gotten Jared Golden.

And instead, he said it's the worst bill he's ever seen.

So look, I mean, you can't blame him for making good politics out of that, Hakeem.

That's what leadership is.

Now, and also, you used early on, I want to correct Paxton was part of a team.

So you got to put your team out there, and Hakeem is the great leader, but he's got to have a team that knows how to recruit, how to raise money, knows how to message, et cetera.

And don't make the message-making a sausage-making process.

It's not legislating.

Message is about communicating to people, persuading them who are not yeses to become yeses.

The one thing that we have right now: Elon Musk and the president are the gift that keeps on giving.

In America, you have an incredibly energized Democratic base.

So

a half the battle is already taken care of.

Now we got to get from 47 to 51.

Our lives now are on that 4%.

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Just really quick, two other things on the Trump administration.

He spoke up this about China.

Yeah, how come I knew the number on the Boswell race 5147 slightly better than you who are living and breathing?

I have responsibility for 50 of these races.

This is what it's the answer, right?

Did you try to get it?

This is the answer to that question, Ron.

It's when you look back on your life, you know,

there are different kinds of people in this world, and there are some people that look back and have negative views on how things have gone, and

they remember the worst things.

Like, apparently, you remember the meanest thing somebody said about you in 1997.

For me, I look back and I remember the fively.

I kind of spin things to myself.

It's like motivated reasoning, and I'm like, we only lost that race by three, right?

That was closer when we thought, no, we lost by four and a half.

You know, I look back and I bump myself up a point and a half in the memory.

Yeah, the truth is, the number there, 51, 40, is closer, yeah.

So, anyway, keep going.

Not bad.

I'm just being a jerk.

No, let's do it.

I'm going to be a jerk here in a sec.

But we got some Trump stuff.

Yeah.

He put this bleed out this morning.

Oh, I didn't see it.

I like President Xi of China, always have, and always will, but he is very tough, all caps, and extremely hard to make a deal with.

That's kind of a beta tweet for me, but you were Japanese ambassador, so this is kind of a point.

I was U.S.

Ambassador Japan.

U.S.

Ambassador Japan, yes.

Thank you for correcting me.

I was was not representing Japan.

Okay, well, you know, okay, we're going to have to get into the semantics here, okay, Ron.

I think people are following.

But as part of that, obviously, in a lot of conversations about the right way for us to counter China, how do you think the Trump administration is doing on that score?

So, one thing out of the bat, every government does profiles of the other leaders.

Now, not all the countries in the world, but trust me, there's a profile of President Trump in every country, foreign ministry, et cetera.

Donald Trump, the headline of his profile, Donald Trump is a chump.

That's the profile.

That's the story and the headline.

They know it.

That's why he got under his skin about tobacco, et cetera.

He is desperate, desperate to get on the phone with G.

And G knows it and is going to string him along because he's a chump.

And I used to say this to Bill Clinton going back to the balanced budget because at night, he'd take a phone call and he would

not give away the start, but he was much more malleable than we were at the negotiator so i called him and i in the morning i said look i spent two hours of every morning cleaning up what you gave away at night so here's the deal you want to get to a yes the other side's got to know you can live with a no and if you can't communicate that

i'm putting a play school phone on your on your nightstand that's it i'm not letting you do this anymore i said i spent the last week from 8 a.m to 10 30 cleaning up I said so the other side has to know at the end of the day you're comfortable like on welfare you vetoed two, you finally got some.

They got to know you're comfortable with a no.

You can live in your skin.

And if you can't communicate that, call me.

I'll talk to you.

But don't call them.

You're the no, man.

No, no.

We'll say a couple other things.

But I think going now fast forward, first of all, the Chinese will not put Xi

in a moment.

because they've already realized the president was deceptive about the conversation they had that never happened.

They saw Zelensky, they saw South Africa leaders, they've seen other things.

They don't think he's very that he announced certain things on conversations with Putin that also are not true.

So they are not going to put Xi in there.

And if they do do eventually,

in the end of the day, America will have to give away the store before they get on the phone.

This is going to be the most expensive calling card we've ever had.

And the president is not a good negotiator.

Contrary to his vision, we have six bankrupt businesses.

He gives away the store before he gets to the table.

He doesn't hold anything back.

He's desperate for a press release.

And I keep saying this on the substance, and you got to know the substance.

If you wanted to increase manufacturing jobs, we had 500,000 manufacturing jobs in America on day one with a help wand on sign.

Fill those.

You now, we're supposed to be adding manufacturing, and the auto industry is saying we're going to close.

We're actually going backwards under Donald Trump's tariffs.

And G's sitting there and saying, I'm just going to keep squeezing and squeezing and squeezing.

And he's going to walk out because Trump's a chump.

And that's what's happening.

And the other problem is, if you're going to confront China, now you can do a grade on the export controls we negotiated.

But on the technology that China hated, the export controls, we had Japan, Korea, the Dutch, and Taiwan.

The big five were aligned.

Problem with Donald Trump, he's pissed off.

all our allies.

Nobody is going to stand with the United States.

So we're on this solo flight when we had literally a full plane.

Europe was confronting China, both militarily, strategically, politically, economically.

They were aligned on us on the fighting their coercion, et cetera.

Not to leave Australia out, but on the chip side, I was doing the export control.

Now, Japan just saw what we just did to them on the tariffs on steel after the nip on thing.

They're going to sit there and look at the bonds that the treasury notes were offering.

Our biggest foreign purchaser, they're not going to go, not to the level they used to.

This is the most, like everything Donald Trump does, he's impulsive, never thought through

the next move.

Whatever you want to say about China, and I don't overinflate them because Xi has made plenty of mistakes, busting the real estate bubble, busting

this municipality bubble, attacking the private sector in the area.

We had China on their back foot.

President Trump has gotten given them a get out of jail card, and Xi is now running all over us.

And Donald Trump looks as weak as he is.

I want to ask you just take off the politics strategy hat for a second.

What should the Democrats be talking about?

What's the right thing to talk about?

I just want to get inside

your bones, your blood pressure, your feelings.

We're at June 4th now, so we're almost at six months, almost halfway through the first year.

You know what tomorrow is, don't you?

June 5th.

Is that meaningful to me?

Well, it's meaningful to me.

It's my anniversary.

It's my anniversary.

Yeah, 32 years.

We're coming up on on your anniversary.

You were 15 minutes early for your first date, I learned, in the green room.

She deserves combat pay.

She does.

I'm getting a taste of it right now.

What's the thing that has fucking pissed you off the most about the first five months here?

What has like really pissed you off?

Like made your blood boil, made your wife annoyed that you were ranting about it to her and had her say, Grom, I get it.

I do think that Donald Trump

Look, no president has a perfect hand handed off.

He had an economy that was growing.

He had the respect around the world.

We had the world kind of organized around our areas.

And he has fundamentally set America back in the world.

That's one.

And here at home, he has exacerbated this kind of what I call hunger games politics, pitting American against American.

Look, I would say this.

When I was ambassador, I learned a lot about Japan, learned a lot about China, learned a lot about the Indo-Pacific stuff I did not know.

It was a great experience.

Actually, being away, I learned a lot about America.

Being able to see it from a distance rather just be in the scrum of the match.

And we have incredible, incredible strengths.

And I'll just tell you my one conclusion: there's nothing China does that scares me.

There's the stuff here at home that worries me about the future.

And Donald Trump is not just stylistically, et cetera, substantively pitting American against American.

And I am furious at this moment in time, historically, he could actually

do something that pushes America into the future and makes it more for the working families of this country and the middle class of this country.

And he has pissed it away.

Now, is it recoupable?

America is an unbelievably resilient country.

But he has pissed it away.

And I can do that whether it's on the universities and research side.

I can do it as whether it's on the tax bill that he has.

Everywhere you go, he took this moment and he could have gone this way you know with that famous when you get to a fork in the road take it yogi bear and he's taken every time the wrong road in that fork

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This conversation makes me want to do the quote about how America will never be destroyed from the outside.

If we lose, it'll be because we destroyed ourselves.

But that's actually a fake Abraham Lincoln quote.

That's not a real one.

But it's whoever made up the fake quote.

Let's give it to Mark Twain.

We'll give it to Mark Twain.

Yeah, he's not here.

Let's give it to Twain.

All right.

I want to get into Democratic Strategy Talk, and I've been watching some of your interviews.

I want to play the audio of one, you have one particular group of people within the coalition that you're mad at, and

I want to listen to you podcasts.

Here's my view.

You have a Yeti cup.

You fund WBZ NPR.

Sit down, listen, and say you're sorry.

And I include myself in the same mistakes.

If you have a Yeti cup, be quiet.

Sit in the corner and listen.

Stop talking.

I have a podcast, Ron.

You're going to make me sit in the cuck chair with my Yeti cup and stop talking.

I'm not allowed to talk now just because I drink out of a lovely Yeti cup that keeps my water cool.

First of all, when you tweeted that after I said that, my daughter, who's now on her Navy ship out in the Indo-Pacific,

sent me your tweet.

So I want to, first, and if my memory served me correctly, it's the same Yeti cup.

So you're doing

one.

I only have one.

Yeah.

We're not gratuitous over here, Ram.

Okay, I don't have seven Yetis.

I just have my one pink Yeti cup.

My daughter has one.

I want to say one thing.

I was doing an interview with the editorial page at the New York Times, et cetera, off the record.

And I said the same thing.

If you have a Yeti cup, shut up.

You have something to learn.

Sit in the corner and actually take notes, etc.

What is my swag when I leave?

A Yeti Cup.

A Yeti Cup with the New York Times logo on it.

Yeah, I do.

I say that.

And I'm really tired.

The party used to be a big tech party.

And

like everything, the college educated,

very smart, very sophisticated, know how the world works.

The Aspen Institute attending, Brookings scholarship attendees and readers of all the journals, sitting around telling everybody how to live their lives.

And they were coastal, et cetera.

Now I'm doing this from Chicago, the third coast in America.

You guys have run this car straight into a wall, sit down, shut up, and actually you have a moment to learn something and stop telling people how to live their lives because you don't know squat.

And nobody's had the balls to tell you that.

And I just did.

Maybe it's the Stanley Cup people that are the real problem.

It's the Stanley Cup that's in vogue right now.

That's what all the.

That's what they're doing.

There's a lot of real Americans drinking out of Yeti cups, you know, out there hunting.

But I take your point.

My question is, okay, you're appealing to me with this.

Shut up, you coastal libs, telling people what words that they need to use and stop doing that and start actually trying to be responsive to people's lives.

Amen.

Okay, but then now what?

And I'll tell you why.

Fundamentally, and this relates to politics, and we should be, the moment the American dream becomes unaffordable is exactly when our politics become unstable.

You want to strengthen democracy?

Strengthen the American dream.

That break, both, and I put it on the Iraq war, which was built on a lie.

I put it on the liar loans from the financial sector and the elite who are responsible never even think they had anything to do with it.

Destroying people's livelihoods.

Give people a chance to buy their first home.

Give them a chance when their doctor says you need this health care that they don't have to spend six hours on a phone with some insurance bureaucrat arguing about whether the doctor's medication and or

recommendations are going to be paid for.

Stop making them take money out of their 401k to cover their paycheck that doesn't go far enough.

And to me, we, and I say this we meaning Washington and everybody involved in this, should have a moment of self-reflection and realize you're on the coast.

Your kids are fine, but that's not good enough.

It's not the American dream if only 10% of the children in America get access to it.

The other 90%.

And the system is rigged on behalf of your children and my children.

It is.

They're going to succeed.

I got three great kids.

They all went not just to good schools.

They're morally and ethically, I think, grounded.

Two are in the armed service, one full-time.

One is a reservist.

The other one works also in the national security space on the things we're not allowed to say called climate change.

And in the end of the day, I think Amy and I were on the we did what we were supposed to do as parents and our kids were going to be okay.

But you can't be content just because your kids are okay.

That's the responsibility you have if you're in public life that other kids, other families aren't.

And so to me, I do think these Yeti drinking, hiking, Aspen Institute punks should just shut up.

Stop telling people how to live their lives and listen to the anguish.

And I'll give you one experience.

I told Amy this.

We started this thing called Chicago Star Scholarship, first city to do it.

You get a B average and earn that in high school.

We made community college transportation and community college books free.

Three years, use it, lose it.

And I said, you should come when we announce this, Amy.

I want you to see this.

I done like this.

I started it in 2014.

Anyway, 2016, we had three more years.

She came in the 2019 one.

And parents would come up to you, hug you with tears in their eyes.

It's a Trump story.

Why?

No, no, no.

Mr.

Emmanuel.

No, no, no, no.

Sir,

I want you to do me a favor.

This is the Eddie Cup art.

Shut up and learn something.

Okay.

I'm listening.

Because you gave them a chance that they didn't have to pick which child went to college because they didn't have enough money for both.

You helped them, that free community college, you helped them not thinking about a second job or a second mortgage.

And to them, this one thing, their child earned it with a B average.

We didn't just give it.

It made a world of difference in their lives and a world of difference where they weren't failing as a parent.

And Amy saw it.

I remember on our ride home.

She was saying, that was the most powerful thing I've seen in your tenure.

And it always struck me.

And I...

Some of the kids did a book for me, etc.

Their own stories.

And then we did this thing called Chicago Star Plus, which is if you kept your B average in community college, all the universities in the Chicago area gave you 20 to 50% off years three and four.

It made a fundamental difference.

Things that I and Amy could do for Zach, Alana, and Leida, parents sat up at night not knowing whether they could do it for their two children or three children.

And the American Dream put them in this unprecedented, untenable situation.

Which kid goes to college and which doesn't?

Which of us are going to take a second job?

And to me, you can't be content if your kids are fine.

And I really then, you and I both work in politics.

You go back in our politics, forget Donald Trump, put him aside for a second.

It becomes unstable

and it becomes rickety

exactly when each successive year

Washington stands on the sidelines as long as their kids are okay.

And I put this on both parties.

But other people's, you know, housing becomes unaffordable.

College people turn themselves into pretzels for their kids.

The 401k is no longer a savings account, but it's a basically buy now, pay later type of deal.

It's crazy.

And healthcare, most importantly, I remember my father on Thursday nights was on call, dinner conversations, he was taking the phone.

He never spent any time as a doctor arguing with an insurance company about whether this young child could get this procedure and today the dream has basically turned into a nightmare so so take that yeti cup take that yeti cup and put it where the sun doesn't shine okay i'm happy with my yeti cup the i agree with i agree with like 80 of what you said and i totally agree with what you said about my kids your kids being fine so that's a be average yeah no that's pretty good uh it's a be average you can get to the community college i don't mean to minimize i don't want to minimize at all how important that that experience was for those kids because it really was.

And I think that's a great program.

Here's the problem.

The other kids in their community college class are the ones that the Democrats are losing ground with.

How do you actually get to these people?

Because you say like, oh, Trump doesn't actually give a fuck about any of them.

Like, let's just be honest.

He doesn't.

And yet, those are the types of voters across all races that are moving towards Trump and away from the Democrats.

Obviously, at an individual level, there are a lot of people that are going through hard times, but at a group level, actually,

like things are not worse meaningfully now than they were in 1995 when Clinton was elected.

They're not.

Okay.

So why are they right, but I mean, when Clinton was in there, not the year he was elected.

So what?

What is the problem?

Why can't you reach them?

Let me do two things.

One is, beyond the Chicago Star, one of the other things, and I wrote about this multiple times, we're the first city and only city, and only no state's done this.

You could not get your high school diploma.

unless you showed us a letter of acceptance from college, community college, a branch of the armed forces, or a a vocational school.

So not just your children, my children had a post-high school plan.

We made it universal across the city.

Every race, every income, every gender, everything.

99.4% compliance.

So that's number one.

Well, you're going to not graduate and stop.

You're going to think about tomorrow.

Your kids think about tomorrow.

There's a lot of kids in the city of Chicago and across this country that they don't have a four-year horizon.

They barely make a four-week horizon.

And we're going to change that horizon.

And we're going to start believing in yourself.

Now, to the core question, why do Democrats have a problem?

Because we're punks.

And we talk like, not only talk like punks, we talk down to people, we get caught up in a set of issues that aren't relevant.

Think about all this about transgender and sports, et cetera.

There's hundreds of thousands of NCA athletes.

And there's...

10 transgender athletes in sports.

This is crazy.

As I said, in education, we have the worst reading scores and math scores in 30 years, and we're arguing about bathrooms and locker rooms and not the classrooms.

I bet that's part of the reason why you're losing with those voters, though.

It's not you're not talking about it.

The Republicans are talking about it, and the Democrats didn't have a good answer to it.

That's why they're losing with the voters.

Well, the answer is to be honest about it.

No, we're not going to talk about the child trying to figure out the pronoun, and that's a legitimate issue.

We're going to talk about the rest of the class that doesn't know what a pronoun is.

And we're going to make sure the classroom is the focus of our education policy, not the name of the school, and not whether you get it bathroom access.

And we're going to return to the core issue.

Now take an example out of Mississippi.

They're leading the country in reading scores.

Why?

Because they're fundamentally focused on attendance, reading, what I call my art program.

A for attendance, R for reading, and T for the truth.

We're going to have to tell parents exactly where your kids are.

And here's my thing is that across a whole, and the reason Bill Clinton and Barack Obama won, they were culturally in the mainstream.

We look like we're culturally on the extreme,

we're off sides, out of bounds.

And we have to get back to being and understanding where people live their lives, how they live their lives, and stop telling them how wrong they are.

What's a specific example of a cultural issue where you think the Democrats are out of bounds with the mainstream, that they should be back?

I'll give you three.

One is on the whole issue of pronouns, et cetera.

Two, using and being told Latinx when it didn't even resonate with Latino voters.

They're immigrants.

They see themselves as okay.

Number three, Bill Clinton ran on 100,000 community police officers.

My uncle was a cop in Chicago.

We talked about defunding the police.

And then when you say stop it, they say, well, it doesn't mean that.

Well, then don't use the English language.

Because usually when people say something, it's to communicate something.

And I'll just give you those three cultural issues.

I mean, I could go on and on, but to me, we were caught on a set of issues and didn't anchor ourselves, not just in the kitchen table,

in this metaphoric notion that the only thing you talk about at the kitchen table are your bills.

You also talk about who your kids' friends are, what they're watching on social media, what's happening at the homeless encampment that's down the block from your house.

We were totally AWOL.

Only thing we wanted to say was the only issues, and they're core, is the cost of living.

But if you're trying to be a respected party that doesn't lose demographic groups, you have to be anchored.

Now, let me give you one other piece in this, I want to get this point across because I think it's really important for the party.

We've decided our politics is identity politics, and we're losing ground with quote-unquote African-American Hispanic folks.

And Asians.

And everybody except white people and black ladies, actually.

That's one.

So one.

We went backwards and we decided to anchor our politics because if you do identity, the other side gets to do identity.

I'm going to break the news to the Democrats.

The other side has more identity than you do.

Just do the math.

That's number one.

So it's a bad

premise to your politics.

Number two is an example of that.

Joe Biden was the first president to ever walk a picket line.

And we went backwards with working families.

Most progressive president, most progressive, since Lyndon Johnson's or Truman, from a Democratic side.

There's just no doubt about that.

Yet our party decides to run down Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, both get elected, re-elected, both win the Midwest and win Ohio.

And we went backwards.

And we're not ready to assess whether the way we're approaching this is fundamentally, from a theoretical case, flawed.

And we approach politics like, okay, let's go down this punch list.

Here's what this group needs here.

And then we're sitting like, and we treat the American people like we're Margaret Mead.

And look, look, they have thumbs.

Who knew?

Politics is not anthropology, for God's sakes.

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all right i'm going to throw two theories at you one that is mine and one that is coming from other factions of the party so i agree with everything you said about the three issues the pronouns like putting you know if you are i'd hate to pick on elizabeth warren because plenty of people did it but i just remember her that she did it she put she her in her bio it's like we know yet that you're trying to be respectful but like we know it's kind of it's weird and insulting actually so so so did a number of other people yeah so i yeah so i i don't mean to pick on her Many did.

That one stuck out in my mind.

The cops, I agree with you on all that.

You know who else agrees with you on all that?

Joe Biden, right?

Joe Biden was not saying, hi, I'm Joe Biden, I'm he, him.

He wouldn't know what that means.

He didn't use Latinx, and he was also one of the most pro-cop presidents ever.

The problem was that the party's brand didn't improve because he couldn't fucking talk about it.

He couldn't explain it.

He wasn't a good communicator.

He was too old.

And do you look back at that and say, man, maybe the problem was we just needed somebody with Joe Biden's views on all those issues, but someone who could actually communicate it to the country in 2025?

Yeah.

24.

Yes.

Let me also say one other example that you didn't point.

In his last state of the union, President Biden,

last state of the union,

when he went off script

and everybody said, look, watch.

He said illegal immigrants.

The next day, because a bunch of Washington 202 area code jerks

yelled at him, he said, I meant undocumented.

That was the slowest pitch over the plate.

Had he done his moment like Bill Clinton did, like Barack Obama did on their different issues, or Jack Kennedy did,

had he said, look, man, they're immigrants, cross the border illegally, illegal immigrants.

You use whatever, undocumented, whatever you want.

I'm going to say illegal immigrants.

End of story.

He would have shown what people want from a president.

Nobody thinks you deserve to go into the Oval Office if a group in Washington can stare you down because they don't think you can stare down G or Putin.

Chris Reed was in there.

You were mentioning him from the 1990s.

Like, I don't understand.

How did they let that happen?

You were ambassador to Japan.

How did you let this happen?

Joe Biden got co-opted.

Well, it's all your people.

You could have come home and been like, man, we got to save the country.

Why didn't any of the adults who knew better, why didn't any of the adults do better protect him or help him?

Or why didn't they push him out and put somebody in who could do it?

Let me say this.

I do appreciate that you decided that at 7,900 miles in Tokyo at the embassy, it was my response.

No, it's okay.

Somebody had to do something, man.

Donald Trump got a second term.

I was at, we were all out here.

I was saying it, where was Bruce Reed?

Where were these people?

Where was Steve Rickshetti?

Why weren't they like, no, fuck you to

these kids that are trying to make you change the way you talk?

No.

This is a fair.

Or why weren't they saying, hey, President Biden, you can't do this.

Let's find someone else who can do it.

It is 100%

fair.

100%.

Look, one thing I know about the White House, that Oval Office is seductive, and that White House is insular.

And that's what happened.

They decided to put a barrier around, and he decided he made a decision, didn't want to hear anything else about it.

And it's wrong.

And the country, forget the party, country's more important, paying a massive price for this arrogance.

No doubt about it.

That's something we agree on.

Listen, but I want to say something on Joe Biden.

I saw Joe Biden, my first assignment in 1993 was I was assigned by President Clinton to work with Senator Biden on both the Brady Bill and then the Violence Against Women Act and Assault Weapon Act.

And I did that from the White West Wing.

He did it from the Senate.

Our offices were next to each other when I was chief of staff and he was vice president.

We worked together on finding the votes for,

I can tell you a funny anecdote about finding Arlen Specter, but finding the votes for President Obama's stimulus bill, his budget, and for the health care.

and working with the remaining 14 Democrats in the House, Catholics from the Midwest who didn't want to support Obamacare.

And he and I worked it.

And then I worked with him when I was 7,900 miles away in Tokyo.

And he was a different person in each of those stages, no doubt about it.

And it doesn't take a genius.

And he made a decision, and the staff protected him on that decision, and we're paying a massive price for it.

And anybody who can say that otherwise, it's full of crap.

And but I also think everybody's rewriting history.

This was the most discussed issue for two years.

Yeah, trust me.

Yeah,

this was not a national security.

We're going to brief the president on his PDP at 8 a.m.

in the morning.

If everybody thinks this was a secret, it was your subscription to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, Des Moines Register, name any social media.

It was the most, it wasn't a day that went by that.

It wasn't discussed.

Our listeners were so annoyed, they changed that on our front of our fan pages on Reddit, they changed the

image of the podcast to Joe Biden is old to kind of troll us about how much we talked about it.

So I hear you.

I want to get back in the end of the day, you know, this is

now you can sit here and do all the bloodletting on that.

A couple of your pals in that little circle deserve some bloodletting.

We've got a few more wounds I'd like to put in them.

Okay.

But my theme, you messed up.

We got 2026.

You got to focus.

Yep.

Hey, it's Charlie Pooth doing a sound check with the Bic four color pen.

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Zen Rewards unlocks access to exclusive experiences, promotions, and perks you won't find anywhere else.

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So you can always find something for your next adventure.

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I want to go do a different thing.

I've been throwing pitches down the middle of the plate.

You've been knocking them out for the bulwark audience.

You know, maybe the cultural stuff, they went a little bit too far.

Democrats

should be more aggressive.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Strike the word maybe.

Strike the word maybe.

Okay, you're in my wheelhouse on this, right?

Democrats should talk more normal, recruit more regular folks, like care about working class people, education.

They should talk about it.

All right.

There's a whole nother group of the party, though, that's out there,

including some of our listeners that say that's not it at all, actually.

And the problem is the neoliberal economic order and that for the Democrats to get working class people back, it doesn't have anything to do with Latinx, but it has to do with populist economics and that the Democrats should go to the path of Bernie and AOC and that's the way you get people back.

What do you think about that?

Well, I got like seven things I want to say.

One is which was it the peace or the prosperity you were most upset about?

Okay?

The greatest amount of jobs, greatest amount of growth, greatest amount of respect for the United States.

Go pull up the stories in 1999 where America was the, it was sort of the unit went from a bipolar world to a unipolar unipolar world.

Okay.

And

working class people were voting Democratic.

Not only that, he won Ohio two times.

Okay, so give me a break, and then I can say that about Barack Obama, go through all the demographic politics.

So, and whatever you want to say about the Republicans, when they have a president, they're loyal.

Democrats trash Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

They just happened to be the first two Democrats to be both elected and re-elected since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

One double the size, triple the size of the earned income tax credit, one of the most progressive pieces of the tax code.

The other one decided to get children's health insurance for 10 million children that had no health care.

And they did it when the Congress was in the other party's hands.

Give me a break.

And they weren't perfect.

They're human beings.

They got a lot more right than wrong.

They left the tax code more progressive than the day they found it.

Both of them.

And they both did major things on climate change, health care, retirement security.

Okay, now

the system is rigged

against the middle class, and it's rigged against their children's access to that dream.

That we agree with the critique.

But the idea that you don't, that somehow

culture is not part of this story,

one

fact, Bill Clinton, 40% of his advertising wasn't the economy stupid.

It was and welfare as we know it.

After Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dekakis, being a new Democrat was crux.

And the 40%, the most dominant issue in his advertising in the presidential campaign was on the cultural plane.

Let alone through all the policies, children's health insurance, welfare, minimum wage, et cetera.

Guess what?

We actually reduced child poverty from the day he walked in and continued down the downpath.

Now, number two,

in that vein,

how you address what I think, as I said earlier, and I continue to believe, is the North Star for the Democratic Party is the American dream, is owning that home, getting starting on your building a family and building something.

That to me is the core piece of this.

But the idea that you could ignore this other stuff and just scream louder, here's your program.

The last four years

showed you

you said just three questions ago in the back.

Joe Biden did most supportive of the police.

There was a Joe Biden, a senator, et cetera, that was kind of grounded in what I call Scrat and Joe.

I think in the White House, they abandoned the Scrat and Joe, and he became a Senate Washington Joe.

I think that was a fundamental problem.

And I would say that the idea that you think families across the country don't want to know whether, I don't mean to use shorthand, but whether it was welfare as we know it, 100,000 community police officers, what it was called, and shorthand sister soldier, or Jack Kennedy going to Texas and saying, I'm not going to take direction from the Pope, but I'm going to be a president who is Catholic, not a Catholic president, and Barack Obama saying it's easy to father a child, but it's hard to be its dad, and being honest about that, showing that you had the courage and strength to speak honestly about some values issues.

If you think people are only their wallet, and they are principally driven by costs, et cetera, but somehow

their value system and their interest in what their kids are watching on social media or accessing on so much doesn't matter to them then you again are drinking from a Yeti cup okay and

that set of issues

like what I talked about recruiting veterans

because you are grounded in mainstream values with exactly the struggles and challenges look as a parent of three now grown kids We did certain things to make sure our kids were buffered against what was happening in the world world around.

Parents today feel they can't protect their kids from what they're seeing on social media.

They can't protect their kids from what's going on at schools, etc.

You should be empathetic to that and address that.

And we don't.

We think it's a nuisance.

That's why recent immigrants are walking away from us.

That's what we talk about immigrants not as immigrants, as people of color.

No.

Today's Hispanic voters from Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, guess what?

They're the new Italians, the new Irish, the new Jews.

No, but we talk to them as people of color.

That's how we want to view them.

That's not how they view themselves.

They view themselves.

They came to this country because they believe in America.

They don't hate America.

They believe in America.

And they want their kids to be part of America.

That shouldn't be so hard from a party built.

on an immigrant foundation to understand.

So it does sound like you're looking for AOC 2028.

It doesn't sound like that's your point.

Look, I think the critique of a system that's rigged, as I let me go this way, people want their children to have a shot at the American dream, and right now they get the shaft.

That's not wrong.

Now, what are the policies to address that?

We'll work on that.

I'm not sure I agree with everything.

She's not going to agree with everything I say.

I'm not going to agree with everything she says.

But the

analysis of what the problem is, we have consensus.

The idea that you just screen only one set of issues, try to ignore this over here because it's not good for us, they pick that up.

Voters are pretty smart.

We're already over, but I just have, can we go wrap it really quick?

I have a couple of things I just really want to pick your brain on, really quick.

Okay.

Because I heard you talking, Kara Swisher, about the party's North Star.

I've been asking Democrats, what's on the party's hat?

You know, like, I don't think that anybody, if you asked 100 top Democrats what Hillary's main message was, what Biden's main message was, what Harris's main message was, I don't think anybody could, I think you'd get 98 different answers.

Maybe the Biden 2020, maybe not returned, you know, there might have been.

Hillary said, I'm with her, which is like, no, she's with you.

The focus should have been on them, not on her.

Yeah, what's on the hat?

You got a hat for the Democrats or a North Star?

Yeah.

So that's what Bill Clinton always said.

When he said, you work hard, play by the rules, raise your kids to know right from wrong.

I'm with you.

If you work for a living, you're going to have a government that works for you.

You famously cursed a lot in private, but I learned when we talked off air that you don't curse on TV or on Twitter, which I respect.

I like.

You never have.

You're well raised.

My mother wishes that I had that instilled in me.

She tried very hard, and I apologize to her.

So I'll cuss for you right now.

If you could tell one person to fuck off right now, who would you say it to?

The entire bulwark staff.

No.

No, you have to do something that deserves that.

There's nobody right now that's grinding your gears that you just want to put your finger in their chest and say, F you, J.D.

Vance.

Well, here's the thing.

It's a complicated answer because I feel about it towards the president, but I have a lot of respect for the office and the presidency, and I wouldn't do that.

So I'm conflicted, to be honest.

I'm serious about that.

I could do it for his son.

He hasn't been elected to anything.

Because you don't have to have any respect.

He didn't do anything.

Well, I would put something else around the adjectives of

the word you use to the sons, given that, I mean...

I'm shocked at the chutzpah of this family, that's translated, the gall of this family to be making money the the way they're making, as if public service is about private gain.

And I think that's going to come back to Honka because I think the Americans fundamentally know that's wrong.

I have a lot of people I would put in that list, some in my party, but I am very angry about what the president's doing to this country.

But I have respect for the office, so I wouldn't say it.

But I would say a lot of other things that would communicate exactly that sentiment.

Do you have a creative curse?

Do you have one that you want to share?

A favorite one that you can share on there?

A stand-in?

Do you have a go-to stand-in?

What I would use is

either Hebrew or Yiddish.

I would, you know, you're a schmuck.

Okay.

And since I can't say you don't know what that is, I bet you.

I got a schmuck.

I got a schmuck.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's what I would probably do.

That's how I would get the goods through customs.

Last thing.

You're not going to like this one, but I'm just going to do it.

You're obviously thinking about running.

Why not just do it?

Why not just throw your hat in the ring?

Why not just say it?

F it.

See what happens.

Why not just do it?

It's a different world than it was in the old days.

Why not just do it?

That's fair, but you've never run for office, have you?

No, God, no.

Okay.

I've run six times, one, six.

Okay.

One is I have a responsibility to think that I have something that nobody else has, both talent-wise, idea-wise.

I'm spending, well, everybody else, not everybody else, but a lot of people in the party are spending time on that end of the pool fighting Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.

He's all in our brain.

I'm going to spend my time.

Here's what I would do on education, art, attendance, reading, reading the truth.

Here's what I would do on national service.

Here's what I would do on national security.

And I'm going to flush out how to fight for America, not just how to fight Donald Trump.

And if I think I got something that nobody else has to say, I'll make that jump.

And I'll do it at the right time for both me, my candidacy, because I think that matters.

And rather than just, you go, just do it.

Yeah, of course I'm thinking about it.

But as a person who consults,

you would know that you have to pick your time.

But you did.

You would have to pick your time because timing matters.

You have to pick your message.

And the time is wrong now.

Here's my free consulting.

I think you're probably right about that.

But here's one thing.

Probably.

I think it is different.

Here's the one thing that's really different than the 2007 primary that Obama ran in or the 92 one, which is that people just want to hear what you really think.

You think I, but let me ask you a question.

Do I look shy to you?

You don't.

Okay.

You don't, but you still have to deprogram yourself a little bit.

You are still the Driple C chair.

There's still these old habits.

You asked me these questions.

And it's just like, that's that'd be my advice.

It's just let it loose.

Let it rip, man.

Let it rip.

Just let it rip.

I just, I think that we're in a world that people like that.

How much did people pay you for your advice?

Too much based on my track record.

So this is free.

I'm giving you this advice for free.

I'll take it.

I'll take it in stock.

All right, brother.

Thank you for coming on the show, man.

I really appreciate it.

It's so good to meet you.

Do me one favor before I go.

Of course, yeah, anytime.

Okay, because my daughter is on a ship and she's out in the Indo-Pacific.

I'll just leave it there.

Yeah,

and since you she was the first one to say, Dad, here he flipped you off with his Yeti cup.

Can you do that, Yeti Cup?

Oh, my God, you social media that

oh, by the way, in the groom, these are pearls.

I warn, you know why?

It's embarrassing.

I'm gonna tell you the embarrassing reason I'm in pearls because I was on TikTok and I was noticing that the 20-year-old boys were wearing pearls, and I was like, That is, I was like, that's cool.

If I start doing that, there'll be no other 40-year-old doing it, and so I'll be unique.

And so, I just stole it.

I have no good reason, I just stole it from the kids.

You have two things: one, you got to say, happy anniversary, Amy.

We're sorry for you.

And two, Alana, we're really proud of what you're doing.

Go.

That's my request.

Amy, happy anniversary to you.

I don't know how you did it with this guy.

I only had an hour and 10 minutes, and I'm sick of him already.

Alana, gosh, thank God you're doing something good in this world.

And I appreciate you that you're out there serving this country while I'm here, just

clapping my jaw.

And I just want to say, cheers to you.

You drink that Yeti cup out there on that ship.

You keep your dad in line.

I appreciate you.

Your dad can be an asshole, but you're a great American.

Cheers.

I love you, brother.

Thanks so much, Jeram Emmanuel.

We'll be back tomorrow with another edition of the Bullwork podcast.

I will see you all then.

Peace.

Check it in twice.

Gonna find out.

snaughty or nice

coming in soon

to the theater near you.

The end of the end,

the end of Great Blue.

It's coming you.

The Bullor Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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