Tommy Vietor: Trump's Security State

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Speaker 37 Hello and welcome to the Bulwark podcast.

Speaker 38 I'm your host, Tim Miller. I am Punchy.
I was up early.

Speaker 26 I've had a lot of caffeine.

Speaker 41 We're taping late, and we've got a troublemaker with us.

Speaker 42 He was a graduate of Kenyon College.

Speaker 45 He was the van driver for then Senator Obama in 2007.

Speaker 9 And now he's the co-host of a couple of podcasts called Pod Save America and Pod Save the World.

Speaker 28 It's Tommy Vitar. What's up, man?

Speaker 49 Buddy, great to see you. You and I were both up early.
Me because my children were tripping away in the nanette. You, because you were covering an FBI raid.

Speaker 22 Yeah, we're covering the FBI raid, but it's important to bring that to you, you know, because I want you to be prepared for the podcast.

Speaker 52 I texted you.

Speaker 53 Let's pull this up.

Speaker 30 Let's actually get a time stamp on this.

Speaker 16 I texted you this morning with a link to the news that we were breaking at the bulwark about John Bolton's house being raided at 6:32 Central, 4:32 Pacific.

Speaker 5 You replied within 10 minutes. Yeah, it was not clear.

Speaker 54 What was happening with that? I was up.

Speaker 49 I was making coffee. I just, sometimes you're awake and you just gotta, you gotta just power through.

Speaker 60 Your podcast needs a new, like a sleep aid sponsor of some kind.

Speaker 48 Yes.

Speaker 3 That is way too early.

Speaker 33 All right.

Speaker 20 Well, the news referenced Donald Trump's

Speaker 12 national security advisor from his first term, the man with the mustache, John Bolton.

Speaker 29 His house was raided this morning, first

Speaker 17 reported right here by the bulwark.

Speaker 30 Our friend Ben Wittis was on site, later confirmed by the New York Post and others, more, you know, more regime-friendly outlets that it was an FBI raid.

Speaker 41 In fact, he was being targeted for

Speaker 40 national security concerns, they say.

Speaker 3 It was a national security probe.

Speaker 56 I believe it was ABC, has, and Benny Johnson, another crack reporter, has that it's related to the classified documents issue from 2020, where he put some classified material in his book.

Speaker 17 Maybe that hadn't been approved through the process.

Speaker 48 I don't know if that's the kind of thing that merits a home raid, but I was wondering what your reactions were bright and early this morning.

Speaker 49 Yeah, I I mean, my first reaction is if you're watching this and you're not a subscriber to the Bulwark on YouTube, do so because these guys are on the scene with breaking news.

Speaker 49 That's why you need to support independent media. Thank you.
They're telling you stories no one else is.

Speaker 49 So subscribe to the Bulwark on YouTube and also become a Bulwark Plus subscriber because you want to get lots of great content. I'm serious.
I'm actually dead serious. I'm not kissing your ass.

Speaker 49 It's like the Bulwark's doing awesome work. I love all the journalists you guys have added to the roster.

Speaker 49 I'm like literally begging you for contact information for like Will Summer every other day or somebody on the team. So anyway, we're doing our best.
Done with that part.

Speaker 75 You're doing okay, too.

Speaker 64 It makes me uncomfortable because I usually make fun of you when I talk about your outlets. I know.

Speaker 72 There's like an asymmetry. But on the actual news.

Speaker 49 I'm feeling up. It is, first of all, so this is a case probably from 2020.
Yeah. And

Speaker 49 they had to execute a search warrant five years later. That's what happened here.
This was the urgent matter we're talking about.

Speaker 49 This information that John Bolton has is so dangerous that it might get leaked into the world, even though we think it might have already been in his book that they needed to raid his house and the cash patel had to tweet about it.

Speaker 49 That's what we're led to believe.

Speaker 22 And the Pam Bondi tweeted about it with the statement, America's safety isn't negotiable.

Speaker 63 America's safety was at threat, I guess, if there was not a dawn raid of John Bolton's home for five-year-old material.

Speaker 49 Also, Tim, look, John Bolton, I don't agree with his politics. He could be kind of a prick.
Seems like a smart guy.

Speaker 49 Do you think that Bolton, knowing this case was still looming in the background, seeing Donald Trump get re-elected, wouldn't like bust out the shredder? I would have.

Speaker 5 I mean, that's the more nefarious version.

Speaker 50 It's good to know that you're shredding documents tight, but I, oh, yeah.

Speaker 40 You know, John Bolton's lawyer couldn't have worked with their lawyers and they said, okay, hey, you know, we think you might have some documents.

Speaker 10 That's how this stuff is worked out usually.

Speaker 66 Like,

Speaker 32 cause, you know, they'll all do the what about Mar-a-Lago stuff.

Speaker 18 The reason why Mar-a-Lago was raided because they went.

Speaker 10 through that normal process.

Speaker 69 The Biden administration asked them for materials.

Speaker 30 They said that they would give it.

Speaker 65 They didn't. They stonewalled them.

Speaker 21 Then they were caught lying about the fact that they weren't giving the materials.

Speaker 30 They refused to give them.

Speaker 80 And, you know, then eventually, you know, they raided Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 15 Like, this was not, by all accounts, not that, right?

Speaker 75 Like, this was a situation that was kind of adjudicated actually five years ago.

Speaker 77 And now they felt like, you know, it's just hard to think about any even fake rationale for this other than we're trying to intimidate regime opponents.

Speaker 63 And this one was an opportunity since there was already an open investigation into it.

Speaker 49 Yeah.

Speaker 49 And like in the Mar-a-Lago case, these classified documents were sitting in a room like next to the shitter at a club that we know had been penetrated by like Chinese spies a couple of times and it's full of foreign nationals and anyone who wants can buy their way in and get access to Trump.

Speaker 49 So there was a real kind of national security concern, these documents sitting around.

Speaker 6 Lots of people going through cougars, Chinese spies, anybody, anybody else.

Speaker 82 You know, to your point about John Bolton being a prick, I don't know that he's having a lot of parties.

Speaker 9 Like the Georgetown Cocktail Party circuit didn't really roll through John Bolton's house.

Speaker 60 No.

Speaker 83 I think he was kind of a private man.

Speaker 49 And until recently, he had a security detail who might prevent these kind of espionage matters from happening at his house, but then Donald Trump got rid of that.

Speaker 49 So, you know, lots of layers to this thing. I wonder, Tim, if this isn't like the book was published, right?

Speaker 49 So to the extent the Trump administration was worried about classified information being in the book, I don't believe that they were. I think they just thought the book was going to be embarrassing.

Speaker 49 That ship has sailed.

Speaker 49 I wonder if it wasn't just kind of handwritten notes, because just for listeners, like if you're in a classified meeting and you take notes, those notes are considered classified.

Speaker 49 Now, John Bolton would have gone through a process with the various intelligence agencies to clear everything he wrote before he published it, but maybe they're saying the notes were shouldn't have been.

Speaker 24 So how did that work?

Speaker 77 So like after you were the van driver, you did rise to being, you know, spokesman for the national security team for President Obama.

Speaker 30 So you like, I've not, I've not been in those meetings. Like what happens?

Speaker 63 Like you're taking notes, you come out,

Speaker 9 is there a dude with a burn bag there asking to confiscate your notes?

Speaker 71 Is it a trust system, honor system?

Speaker 49 No, it's entirely a trust system.

Speaker 49 I mean, well, there's some documents that are so sensitive that they are given to you at the meeting and then taken back by, you know, the various like CIA person there.

Speaker 49 Frankly, those are the kinds of documents we saw at Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 49 Like if you look back at the photos, some of those cover pages with like bright red with stripes, like those are intelligence products that came out of the NSA or the CIA or someplace that are code word sensitivity, which means it's not like not even top secret.

Speaker 49 It's another layer above that where you have to be read into the compartment to be allowed to have access to this information.

Speaker 49 But if you're John Bolton and you just walk into a national security meeting with your little binder or your little notebook and you're just writing stuff down, like that just goes and sits in your office.

Speaker 49 But when you leave, none of that comes with you. When you go home.
Unless you get it cleared. Yeah.
When you go home at night or when you leave the administration. Got it.

Speaker 77 We do have to rely on Benny Johnson for our reports now.

Speaker 56 It's like, it's like Men in Black, the real news is in the National Enquirer.

Speaker 77 It is widely known that Bolton mishandled and took classified information for use in his book after he failed to get approval for publication.

Speaker 81 The raid of his residence comes after investigation.

Speaker 10 So that's.

Speaker 6 and they're not even claiming it's something else.

Speaker 49 No. No.

Speaker 77 So I mean, this is like facially absurd that his house needed to be raided over this.

Speaker 70 I'm wondering what your thoughts are about just like

Speaker 72 the degree of alarm about kind of the broader chilling effect.

Speaker 88 Like, do you, like, are you seeing this as like very bad one-off targeting of

Speaker 54 somebody that spoke out against Trump or kind of a first blow in what a broader campaign that they're going to be trying to look into?

Speaker 49 Feels like a first blow. I mean, listen, I think that Donald Trump has a very specific list of enemies.
Cash Patel helpfully laid out a lot of them for us in his book, I believe.

Speaker 49 And if I were someone who testified against Trump

Speaker 49 as part of the January 6th Committee or something, this would send a chill up my spine.

Speaker 49 And, you know, maybe it's not classified information, but we're also going after people at the Fed for mortgage fraud.

Speaker 49 I mean, they're finding some novel ways right now to punish any perceived enemies.

Speaker 78 Do you hear from people?

Speaker 80 There are a lot of careers in the national security world, and I guess it's been a minute since you were in there. I mean, there were the big, bold names that they're now targeting, right?

Speaker 76 People that are on Cash Patel's enemies list.

Speaker 56 And then, subordinate to that, they're like people that worked on these investigations who are basically being run out of these institutions.

Speaker 33 They're not being investigated, but they're being pushed out of their jobs.

Speaker 81 And then, like, there's kind of another category of people who've just sort of been around who are career experts who maybe were there you worked with and then stayed through Trump One and stayed through Biden and stayed through.

Speaker 92 You know, have you heard from any like what the what the feeling is among people that have been sort of involved in all this?

Speaker 49 Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of fear. It's worth saying that the punishment is also extended to stripping of security clearances.

Speaker 49 And to your point, like initially it was like John Brennan, kind of high-profile names, but Tulsi Gabber just did like 35, 36 more people recently.

Speaker 49 It all came out via, I believe, a letter tweeted by Laura Loomer.

Speaker 8 I think this is how this was disclosed.

Speaker 49 And it included people who hadn't had a clearance since like 2021, who are like, okay, you're you're stripping away something I no longer have.

Speaker 49 So I do think like that kind of stuff does send a chill down the spine of anyone at the CIA or the State Department or the intelligence community.

Speaker 49 I mean, there was a report that Tulsi Grabbard was trying to gather together all the sort of internal intelligence community messaging systems data so they could search it for like, I guess, leakers or loyalty or something.

Speaker 49 I mean, can you imagine a worse idea than pulling together a database of the most sensitive conversations ever had by the intelligence community so the Chinese could come find it?

Speaker 54 Yeah. So I pay Grok to

Speaker 93 scrub that.

Speaker 41 Grok that, you know, just two minutes ago declared itself a neo-Nazi.

Speaker 25 I guess the other context here is sort of on the potential next steps.

Speaker 56 Like, do you think your former boss, Barack Obama, is shaking in his boots right now?

Speaker 49 I'm guessing, no.

Speaker 49 I think the Supreme Court has.

Speaker 49 led him to believe that he has brought immunity thanks to Donald Trump. I understand he's a former president.
I think he's not totally following the George W.

Speaker 49 Bush model of like sitting out of politics completely. He's campaigning around elections and stuff.

Speaker 49 I do wish the Obama office response to that whole thing had just been like, man, whatever's in the Epstein files must have been bad, period, send, you know, like. like play ball a little more, right?

Speaker 49 Like we should not pretend this is on the level.

Speaker 32 No, it's not on the level.

Speaker 70 And that's, and I took, we talked about this a little bit earlier this week, but like, how do you navigate that balance between like, there's some absurdity in this and like it's clownish it's ridiculous for like the attorney general to talk about how this raid was like necessary for america's safety their threats of obama against obama are clownish for sure and then like on the other hand i mean a lot of these guys are clowns and you covered it for pods of the world like erdogan's kind of a clown orban's kind of a clown right and like you get into this place where

Speaker 95 people

Speaker 19 they're scary clowns people get afraid right it has like real ramifications on the choices people make and their careers and lives and like what they're willing to do for the country, right?

Speaker 65 Like, how do you sort of navigate that?

Speaker 49 Yeah, the guy in it was ripping arms off of little kids and stuff and, you know, steering all the boats float.

Speaker 49 I think you guys, I don't want to go full JVL on you, but I think you guys brought in some of the necessary historical perspective here, which is like Hitler was viewed as a clown.

Speaker 49 Mussolini was kind of a buffoon. Like, you can be a buffoon and an evil buffoon and use the tools of government in truly evil ways.
So, like, I'm not saying Trump is Hitler.

Speaker 49 I think we all sound silly if we jump right to that.

Speaker 97 Well, like Erdogan, like, I don't know.

Speaker 23 I don't want the country to become Turkey either.

Speaker 30 Like, there's a lot of bad steps between us and Nazi Germany.

Speaker 49 Yeah, or Venezuela, right? Like, Maduro is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he's clinging to power for a very long time. And so I think it is very concerning.

Speaker 49 I think once the power of the state is enormous, and Donald Trump has filled this administration with a bunch of people who have been thinking for a long time about creative ways to use that power to punish Trump's enemies and their own enemies.

Speaker 49 And that's what makes me a little worried because, you know, Tim, you know, you and I both have gone a few rounds with Dan Bongino and his former iteration as a Twitter troll.

Speaker 54 With Cat and Cash?

Speaker 49 Yeah, with Minecraft head and as a podcaster. And, you know, the other day when I saw that he was layered and now there's a co-co-deputy director of the FBI, I found that quite funny.

Speaker 49 And I tweeted, making fun of him. And I was like, should I tag this guy or not? Because he could make one call and make my life a lot more complicated.
But I did because I'm reckless and stupid.

Speaker 49 But I think about it.

Speaker 98 No, because you have courage. You're reckless, stupid, courage.

Speaker 93 No, but like, that's, that's what, like, these are kinds of questions that we weren't asking in this country before.

Speaker 85 You know what I mean?

Speaker 29 Like, back when we were on other sides and you were working at Obama's NSC, and I was like trolling you or Liz or anybody.

Speaker 30 Like, I wasn't like, ooh, I'm worried.

Speaker 25 I'm really worried that John Brennan might come after me now.

Speaker 15 Like, if I said, you know, like, just the fact that that thought crosses your mind as a change.

Speaker 30 I don't know, man. I don't, I did my rant on Monday about the distractions and you bring up the Epstein thing.

Speaker 25 It's easy to make the joke.

Speaker 48 Like, I don't think that John Bolton was on the Epstein list.

Speaker 39 I don't think that's his cup of tea.

Speaker 62 I think he has some other, I think John Bolton has some other vices.

Speaker 18 So I think it's easy to bring up the distraction joke.

Speaker 59 But to me, it's like this is the core of their program.

Speaker 91 Like, I mean, maybe a secondary benefit of this is it gets Epstein out of the news.

Speaker 53 But like, the core of their program is revenge and consolidation of power.

Speaker 30 Correct.

Speaker 65 And I don't want people to lose sight of that, I guess, is my main message.

Speaker 49 Yeah, I agree with you completely.

Speaker 49 Like, I think during that two weeks of sort of fever-pitched conversation about the Epstein files, when Donald Trump kept hitting the Barack Obama did treason button, that was a clear effort at distraction.

Speaker 49 But Donald Trump sending troops to the street, like that is his core message. That is something he wants to talk about.
It's law and order. Dems are wimps.
I'm cleaning up the cities.

Speaker 49 Let's fight about it.

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

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

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

Speaker 9 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 15 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 12 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

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

Speaker 28 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 31 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 33 Learn more at MS.now.

Speaker 9 To that point, troops in the streets.

Speaker 39 This has come across an AP.

Speaker 30 We've got a lot of breaking news today, real news.

Speaker 23 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the National Guard troops patrolling the streets of Washington will be armed.

Speaker 95 Good.

Speaker 46 That announced was that today, and they've been kind of discussing that.

Speaker 69 National Guard troops include troops from a bunch of red states, including my state, Louisiana, has sent 135 guys there because we don't have anything better for them to do during hurricane season than sit outside the shake shack at Union Station.

Speaker 91 I mean, what do you make of

Speaker 77 the threat assessment with the DC takeover, military takeover?

Speaker 49 I find it chilling. I mean, I view this from a perspective of someone who lives in Los Angeles, and we had our own made-up troop deployment for a very long time.

Speaker 49 And I remember talking to Gavin Newsom about it, and he was so pissed off because these were National Guard members from California who were taken off duty to like prevent wildfires or do things that really mattered.

Speaker 49 And suddenly we're just like kind of sleeping in random buildings in Washington, D.C. to deal with protests that had gone away like three weeks earlier.

Speaker 49 They're doing perimeter service around like park rates, random government buildings. Yeah.
And so I look at the D.C. thing and like I can squint at it.
And

Speaker 49 on one way, I just see like, you know, the political fight he wants to pick, right? Which is Dems are weak on crime and he's going to clean up the city and come at me, bro, if you disagree.

Speaker 49 But then I look at it a different way and I'm like, is this, you know, like just kind of paving the way for martial law? Or, you know, January 6th, 2.0?

Speaker 49 Like, and the fact that all these other governors are so horny to get in on the deal and they want to send their National Guard guys to Washington is

Speaker 49 pretty gross. And look, also, most of these National Guard men and women, they don't want to fucking be there.
They don't want to be doing this.

Speaker 38 They have jobs and families.

Speaker 49 They're humans. Yeah.

Speaker 38 You know, we're in back to school time.

Speaker 98 You're taking these folks away. Like, what if they're a single parent, which is true in some of these cases, right?

Speaker 62 Like, it's like they got to go find child care now and they're going sitting on the fucking mall, yeah, you know, in DC.

Speaker 53 It's crazy.

Speaker 44 Your point about the Red State governors being horny for this, like, that's to me the alarming part is, like, they're horny for it.

Speaker 59 Nothing has happened.

Speaker 78 Yeah.

Speaker 98 Like, literally, like, the pretext for this was nothing, essentially. Like, big balls.

Speaker 33 No, Mr.

Speaker 49 Balls got manhandled.

Speaker 49 Big Balls was manhandled in DuPont Circle, which has never happened before.

Speaker 38 Big Balls got knocked around on 14th Street.

Speaker 53 And it's like, not great. I'm not for that.
That's bad.

Speaker 6 Like, the cops arrested the guys that did it.

Speaker 12 The comps were like there on the scene in five minutes.

Speaker 38 It wasn't like there there was this, you know, it wasn't like the police weren't doing their job.

Speaker 44 It was bad that this happened.

Speaker 39 It wasn't like police are.

Speaker 78 So that was the pretext for this.

Speaker 91 You know, man, a lot of bad shit can happen between now and 2028.

Speaker 32 If these guys are sending in the troops because Big Balls got manhandled, like what is going to happen if there are actual riots in one of these cities?

Speaker 29 What's going to happen if there is, you know, other unrest, right?

Speaker 49 Yes, I'm very worried about that. I mean, there's a lot of conversation you hear these days about like, why aren't there protests?

Speaker 49 You know, where did all the, where did all the people so worried about Gaza go who are protesting under Biden and who are not now?

Speaker 49 And it's like, well, now there is a real threat of deportation or having your visa remote or being arrested or beaten up by some ICE guy and thrown into some

Speaker 49 administrative purgatory for God knows how long before you can get out. And Timmy, the thing I think about, too, is, you know,

Speaker 49 it would be nice if we lived in a world where if something bad happened on Donald Trump's watch, he would get blamed for it.

Speaker 49 But I think, you know, we have a lot of evidence to suggest that's not what will happen. And if there were a terrorist attack, I think his approval would people would rally around

Speaker 49 toughness and God knows what he would do. So, yes, I worry a lot about that.

Speaker 76 Yes, terrorist attack, right?

Speaker 56 Like, I mean, that's what's your message to like your dumb candidate buddies a call because I like I make fun of the consultant speak and the caution, you know, and I think they deserve to be made fun of at times.

Speaker 63 I also understand like the notion of like

Speaker 50 we don't want to have our hair on fire about this stuff in dc we want to demonstrate we care about crime people too people care about crime people don't want crime running rampant in dc

Speaker 15 so i should caveat my comments on this by saying i want a secure border and i want crime and i am against crime in dc too

Speaker 49 like is that the right approach do you think or not i mean i just think there's an honest answer that

Speaker 49 that you can yeah you can go to, which is, I care about crime too, but the way you deal with crime in a city like Washington is not to deploy the U.S.

Speaker 49 military who have absolutely no training in law enforcement. Like, this is self-evidently crazy.
They're in the wrong places. They're not in high-crime neighborhoods.
They're sitting at Union Station.

Speaker 49 They're guarding the salad bar at the Sparrow. It's a joke, right? Like, call out what he's doing as a stunt, which clearly it is.
It's not a distraction, but it's a stunt.

Speaker 49 It's not designed to actually solve a problem. It's to get a story about the problem.

Speaker 54 Yeah.

Speaker 13 The stunt is one route.

Speaker 36 Another route is to talk talk about it as if it is a massive scheme by the federal government and the jackbooted thugs to take away your rights.

Speaker 63 And one person that's been on that beat is a guy named Tim Dylan.

Speaker 96 I know that you listen to.

Speaker 56 Tim Dylan is a

Speaker 43 call him a MAGA comedian is probably wrong, but kind of a culturally conservative comedian that has some MAGA tendencies at times.

Speaker 15 He had dinner.

Speaker 49 He pinned down. He had dinner with J.D.

Speaker 69 Vance recently. So

Speaker 93 his show has been interesting the last couple of weeks.

Speaker 96 I know you've been monitoring like I have.

Speaker 48 I want to play one clip from him earlier this week.

Speaker 49 They've already got the cops on the street that are, I mean, that are not cops or that are the military.

Speaker 112 They've already got the National Guard on the street. They already have all your information in D.C.

Speaker 112 And now they just get to decide what is and isn't over the line. That should scare everybody.
You're fucking nuts, dude. If this doesn't scare you, you're nuts.

Speaker 112 All of these things that Alex Jones, you know, and I've had Alex on, I like Alex, but all these these things that Alex Jones was like worried about when I listened to him in the late 90s, early 2000s are coming to fruition.

Speaker 112 Military in the street, the FEMA camp, the tech

Speaker 112 company that monitors everything, the surveillance. This is all of that.

Speaker 75 Take out the aside about how he has to talk about how he likes Alex.

Speaker 79 It's kind of like how I talk about you when I'm on other podcasts.

Speaker 42 If I'm disagreeing with something, you say, no, I like Tommy.

Speaker 84 It's okay. I like it.

Speaker 60 We have some disagreements over the years, but I like

Speaker 75 so he has to caveat that he likes Alex.

Speaker 30 But if you take the Alex out,

Speaker 8 couldn't a Democratic senator have said that?

Speaker 49 Yeah, look, I think voices like Tim Dylan are really important because there is a crossover between the audience that listens to Tim and Alex Jones and Joe Rogan.

Speaker 49 And I think it kind of, he's helping you sort the difference, which is Alex Jones actually wants the FEMA camps in service of keeping liberals out of power, right?

Speaker 49 Like there's an authoritarian tendency there. Tim Dylan is like, this is not what we signed up for.
I didn't want like ICE agents rampaging around cities.

Speaker 49 I listened to that whole episode this morning, Tim, like in preparation for this.

Speaker 30 You had a lot of time.

Speaker 49 I had a lot of time this morning. He's this whole bit about how like, what are you podcasters doing that will stand the test of time? And he goes, fascism, welcoming in fascism, which is really funny.

Speaker 49 And then he did a whole bit about people getting fired at La Quinta hotels because of automation and their only job left is to join ICE.

Speaker 49 So then everyone in the country joins ICE and there's one immigrant family left and we all try to deport them and then we deport each other so that Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel can divide up the world.

Speaker 49 Like, he is calling out the game and calling out the bullshit.

Speaker 49 And a friend of mine, who is like an avid reader of the Joe Rogan Reddit and kind of understanding that world, sent me this incredible video, which I actually pitched to your guy, Will Summer.

Speaker 53 I don't know if he'll do anything with it.

Speaker 49 There was an hour and a half takedown of Rogan's show and how it has evolved and gone from like a normal comedian who is sort of poking holes at power and worried about things in the world to like someone who is constantly welcoming welcoming on the worst politicians, the worst tech people, and kind of a part of the problem because they feed his paranoia.

Speaker 114 I saw some of this.

Speaker 30 It's very long.

Speaker 77 This video is very long. Someone else sent this to me.

Speaker 64 Yeah, I watched a couple minutes of it.

Speaker 88 Yeah.

Speaker 63 We'll put it in the show notes for if somebody wants to really nerd out this weekend, you got nothing better to do.

Speaker 66 I'll grab it. I watch for things like this.

Speaker 49 I think it's really interesting when someone like a Tucker Carlson is calling out Trump for, you know, for bombing Iran, or someone like Tim Dylan is calling out Trump for this ICE FEMA overreach stuff.

Speaker 66 Yeah.

Speaker 62 I want to just go back to the substance of Tim Dylan's critique here, though, for a sec, because

Speaker 13 one thing I've been wrestling with, which is

Speaker 114 kind of this pickle the Democrats are in, which is like

Speaker 42 nobody, not nobody, but only a minority of the country, a significant minority of the country is happy with how things are going, happy with the institutions, wants them protected, right?

Speaker 63 Like, if those are the only people voting for you, like, you're not going to win a lot of elections outside the Northeast, or if people feel pretty happy with society up there,

Speaker 89 your homeland. Love it.

Speaker 46 So what the Democrats need is candidates that can channel outsider credentials and themselves take on the mantle of going after power, going after the things that people don't think that they like.

Speaker 72 Obama was, I think, benefited by this, A, by just his identity, but also the Iraq War, right?

Speaker 56 Had this way to be an outsider, even, you know, and kind of channel some outsider cred.

Speaker 56 And Democrats haven't really been able to to do that the last three presidential cycles, right?

Speaker 46 It's very much been we're defending institutions for good reason, right?

Speaker 24 Because Donald Trump is attacking these fucking institutions.

Speaker 30 He's being a dick about it, and like, and it's causing real harm.

Speaker 17 And so that puts Democrats in this bind where they're like, well, no, but, you know, the FBI is doing some good things, you know?

Speaker 93 And like, the Democrats were having found themselves in this position, right?

Speaker 41 Always defending these institutions.

Speaker 13 That argument by Tim Dillon there, there could, there's no reason that couldn't come from like a libertarian left Democrat or like even a leftist kind of Democrat that's making the attack that's going out there.

Speaker 30 Like, these guys are the ones that are consolidating power.

Speaker 56 These guys are the ones that are turning the fucking military and the FBI into a bunch of jackbooted thugs.

Speaker 77 And with Palantir, they're stealing your data and they're giving shit away to the big tech executives that go to Washington.

Speaker 29 Like that is a coherent outsider-y message that a Democrat could give.

Speaker 85 And I don't know who the right vessel is for that, but I don't know.

Speaker 55 What do you make of that?

Speaker 86 The Tim Dillon Democrat.

Speaker 49 I think that there's a real opportunity with like the Tim Dillon, Joe Rogan world to peel off some of those voters or at least disenchant them with Donald Trump.

Speaker 49 Because you're right, Obama ran against Washington.

Speaker 49 I mean, he had been a senator for like 30 seconds, but he ran on the Iraq War, but also ran against Hillary Clinton, who was like the avatar of all things, Washington, right?

Speaker 49 But I do think what you're talking about, like there is a ton of space for exactly the kind of message you're talking about, which is like, hey, have you guys heard of Palantir?

Speaker 49 Are you good with them consolidating all of our data into one giant database so they can track everything we do? That seems crazy to me.

Speaker 42 The guy that started is currently doing four different sessions on the nature of the Antichrist, which is a little concerning.

Speaker 49 Yeah, when you love your job, it's not work. So he's doing that.
The Department of Homeland Security was a mistake. It is too big.
It is sprawling. It is an insane organization.

Speaker 49 You could run on breaking it up and more limited government. Some Republicans will pick up pieces of this, like, you know, Tom Massey, Rand Paul, et cetera.

Speaker 49 But there should be a reform message in there for Democrats.

Speaker 53 I don't know.

Speaker 53 Yeah.

Speaker 54 I mean, shit,

Speaker 98 there were Democrats like this when we were growing.

Speaker 30 I mean, they were the ones I didn't like, you know, because they're going after the Bush security state over this.

Speaker 23 But go after the fucking Trump security state.

Speaker 3 Like, I think that that's a totally legit message.

Speaker 6 Anyway, okay, there we go.

Speaker 49 Look, abolish ICE was an overreach. Anytime you say, like, we should abolish something, I think you lead people to say, well, what do we replace it with, right?

Speaker 49 And we've seen that with abolish the police, et cetera. But picking out strands to attack ICE on is so, it seems to be so obvious to me.

Speaker 49 Like, why are these guys wearing masks we should pass a federal law where they can't wear masks it seems like there's so many little things we could do like that

Speaker 40 oh Canada hey y'all we're going on tour this fall we're going up north I demanded it I wanted to support our Canadian listeners and friends being attacked by this administration so we're gonna do the whole deal mounties Tim Hortons maple syrup

Speaker 40 I'm gonna be drinking Seagrams on stage is Seagram's Canadian anymore I said that in the last episode and and I think they might have been bought by a multinational corporation.

Speaker 69 Anyway, I'm going to have a Canadian cocktail on stage.

Speaker 62 You guys can tell me what I should do.

Speaker 85 And

Speaker 39 yeah, we get to all be an allyship

Speaker 77 against our terrible mega president.

Speaker 40 So come check out me, Sarah Longwell, Canada's favorite, Sam Stein.

Speaker 15 We're going to be in Toronto in September. Want to see you there, especially if you're Canadian, but if you're American, you want to go support our friends up north and come hang?

Speaker 70 Would like to see you too.

Speaker 27 If you aren't up for stamping your passport, you can catch me, Sarah, and JVL in DC or New York City in October as well.

Speaker 40 Anyone can grab tickets or more information now at thebulwark.com slash events.

Speaker 15 They didn't tell me to tell you this in the ad read, but since you're a friend, since I'm looking up for you, I'm letting you know that I was looking at the pre-sales.

Speaker 50 That Toronto ticket's going to be a hot ticket, baby.

Speaker 15 So if you want to go to Toronto, I'd jump on that now.

Speaker 77 You should jump on all of them now, but Toronto in particular.

Speaker 50 Take a look at your schedule, see if you can make it.

Speaker 77 Hope to see you in Toronto.

Speaker 9 Once again, it's thebulwark.com/slash events.

Speaker 26 Another news item today: Alligator Alcatraz.

Speaker 1 We've got a ruling.

Speaker 54 Some good news. Something happened.

Speaker 17 Good.

Speaker 2 A federal judge that was last night had a ruling prohibiting state and federal officials from bringing new detainees to the Everglades detention camp.

Speaker 32 The ruling demanded that the state begin dismantling elements of the facility, including temporary fencing, lighting fixtures, and generators, among other equipment, within 60 days.

Speaker 28 I was reading the Washington Post story on this.

Speaker 48 One thing, and I knew it was bad, but I guess I just didn't realize the extent of it.

Speaker 57 The site had no electricity.

Speaker 49 Yes, I saw this too.

Speaker 57 Yeah, so everything had to be powered by generators, including portable air conditioners, drinking and bathing water, clean water, had to be trucked in.

Speaker 8 Sewage trucked out. And sewage trucked out.
Like, what in the fuck? Why?

Speaker 32 In the middle of the Everglades?

Speaker 93 Like, this isn't, I don't know.

Speaker 57 I was just like imagining the 2035 like AI Netflix movie about this and like the scenes of the guys whose job it is to take the sewage out of Alligator Alcatraz through the fucking Everglades with alligators jumping at them.

Speaker 21 Like

Speaker 13 this is this is absolutely insane and insane.

Speaker 6 And again, I think goes you could you could see a Tim Dillon-type voice crew like making fun of this and mocking this.

Speaker 53 But what do you make of that news?

Speaker 49 Well, so I look, obviously Alligator Alcatraz closing is good news. I mean, it was just an abomination.

Speaker 76 And I assume we should say that they will appeal.

Speaker 88 The DeSantis, the sanctimonious freaks say that they're going to appeal this.

Speaker 49 They will appeal. If we were a two-close, I think it was a good thing.
I did wonder reading the story, Tim. I mean, look, I know there's a little bit of Republican DNA still left inside you.

Speaker 49 There's like a little piece of you that wants to go to a cracker barrel right now and throw a trash can through the window because you're mad about their logo. I do.
What did you make of this quote?

Speaker 49 This brutal detention center was burning a hole in the fabric of life that supports our most iconic wetland and a whole host of endangered species, from majestic Florida panthers to wizened wood storks, said this person from the environmental group.

Speaker 22 I mean, I do a lot of shit talking about the environmentalists on here because I still have, you know, I do still have some things here.

Speaker 91 And

Speaker 25 I do have a natural instinct to not care about the wizened wood stork.

Speaker 10 That said,

Speaker 23 one cheer for the environmentalists.

Speaker 15 And environmental NIMBYism kind of finally does something.

Speaker 5 After they took some strays yesterday, on yesterday's pod, they were the leaders on this, on this.

Speaker 31 I also had this, though, like the Everglades, even Republicans like Jeb and even DeSantis, actually, before this fucking, you know, stunt,

Speaker 41 it was sort of like how Colorado Republicans, when I was growing up, like, have like a little bit of a green streak because you wanted to protect the mountains.

Speaker 46 You were like an outdoorsman, you wanted to do skiing and hiking and right, all that sort of stuff.

Speaker 87 Florida, like Republicans, like the Everglades was like a point of pride, right?

Speaker 32 It was like where they went, you know, took their kids and stuff.

Speaker 15 And so there was like Everglade restoration was like a thing.

Speaker 56 And so, I don't know, man.

Speaker 25 I just, like, even down there, I would have thought that there might have been some blowback to this, but that I think that was an elite, I think it was like all these other things.

Speaker 11 I think it was an elite Republican thing, and most of the regular Republicans in Florida were like, Yeah, give me my, give me my alligator Alcatraz hat.

Speaker 45 Give me my alligator hat.

Speaker 5 We chomping them migrants, you know.

Speaker 49 I don't know, Benny Johnson, one of these. Yeah, no, I'm with you.
I know some Republicans who are kind of like conservation Republicans, right?

Speaker 49 They want clean water and you do a hunting and fishing, et cetera.

Speaker 53 Seven of those out there.

Speaker 8 Yeah, there's a couple left.

Speaker 49 Yeah, I didn't realize that alligator Alcatraz had been built on a runway for this abandoned airport project.

Speaker 49 It was supposed to be the biggest airport in the world, but it was blocked by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas on environmental grounds.

Speaker 49 So I guess there is some history and some DNA of this whole facility being blocked because it's just an environmental disaster. But yeah, I mean, look, this is, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 49 I heard you talking about feeling like DeSantis is sort of in a nadir at the moment in terms of his political wins and losses. And hopefully this kind of adds to that downward slope.

Speaker 24 Hopefully so.

Speaker 17 what about just a broader how about this fight like just as a political question like so maybe this gets shut down right they're building another camp right somewhere else in florida we're building some here in louisiana you know and this is this is boon times to the private prison industry yep i just i do feel like this is like do people like that in the micro they do but i do feel like it's something that can be

Speaker 49 campaigned against or is that i don't know what do you think i have had the same thought and hope which is that this is overreach and that when you're branding prisons like they're they're Ron's gonna move all these people maybe to another old prison in North Florida that they're now calling deportation depot when all these things are like branded and they're selling merch and Benny Johnson's doing live streams there

Speaker 49 some people like the merch I went to a Matt Gates event in the Panhandle last summer as part of the you know service journalism I do for y'all of you there were definitely some people there that would have been and some children actually even that would have been wearing the merch so like there are some people out there, but I think it's like a 35-40%, or maybe there's 60% who's sort of like, I don't know, I like, I do think we should deport the murderers, but like, do we don't have to like torture them?

Speaker 49 We don't have to like let them get eaten by alligators. And I don't think we should deport the really nice woman who, you know, like sells fruit down the street or whatever.

Speaker 53 I think a lot of people are offended by that.

Speaker 47 And does America want to be known for like our gleaming camps?

Speaker 97 No. That's just another thing.

Speaker 93 I just, I don't think like there are people also still have this pride.

Speaker 25 It's like, okay, well, what, what are the big programs that are happening right now in the the Trump administration?

Speaker 41 It's like we've got data centers that are taking up a huge amount of electricity, rising people's electricity costs.

Speaker 20 So we've got these huge data centers and huge deportation camps.

Speaker 51 Like, that's what we're building.

Speaker 56 It's time to build, Mark Andreessen said, like, that is what we're building now.

Speaker 15 Deportation camps and data centers.

Speaker 53 Is that no?

Speaker 15 That's not the sign to me of like a particularly healthy society.

Speaker 49 No, and it's, it's just weird. And also, I saw you make this point to our good friend Dean Kane.
Oh, yeah, Dean. Our population is shrinking for the first time in God knows how long.

Speaker 49 Aren't we like down like 1.5 million people this year because of all the deportations? Like, that's not a healthy thing. That's not a club we want to be in.

Speaker 49 You made the point that you see that in places like Syria more often than the United States.

Speaker 96 Yeah.

Speaker 19 Dean's ability to move his face is also shrinking.

Speaker 2 He has a limited, he has a limited range of motion in his face.

Speaker 49 Also, one thing on that. I saw you, you called him out for being an actor.
He got very sensitive about you saying that he was an untrained actor who wanted to be an ICE agent.

Speaker 49 And at one point, he asserted that he was also also an NFL player. But I believe he was a guy who went to Princeton who showed up at an NFL camp and got hurt and then never actually played.

Speaker 49 I think you got to make the 53 roster to be an NFL player, Dean.

Speaker 51 A little fact check for you there.

Speaker 49 I'm just saying, look, I could never sniff the field, but I'm just saying, Dean.

Speaker 19 What was your high school sport, Tony?

Speaker 49 Football, lacrosse.

Speaker 62 Football? So Kenyon, was there any Kenyon didn't have a football squad or

Speaker 49 Kenyon had a football team. The coach tried to recruit me, and I told him that I was small and slow and I didn't want to play.

Speaker 89 And in truth, you just kind of wanted to get high instead.

Speaker 36 Uh-huh.

Speaker 49 Yeah, we didn't. And we had fallball for lacrosse, it was a lot more fun.

Speaker 54 Yeah, yeah, you know, Keggie. Sarah was there.

Speaker 49 Sarah was more of a softball haven.

Speaker 53 Yeah, I mean, Sarah's like her build is a little bit more athletic.

Speaker 54 She's a good player.

Speaker 36 I think she's a good player. Yeah.

Speaker 29 All right.

Speaker 54 What else did I have on our list?

Speaker 45 I had something else on alligator algorithms.

Speaker 75 I felt like I had something else to talk about, but we got way late.

Speaker 84 All right. Let's talk about the Democrats a little bit.

Speaker 47 What your governor is, Gavin Newsome.

Speaker 15 There's been a lot of

Speaker 53 Gavin Newsome

Speaker 26 Agenisti, what's that word?

Speaker 32 Agony.

Speaker 68 Over here.

Speaker 93 We're sort of like, I guess you got to hand it to him.

Speaker 38 It's working.

Speaker 47 It's working.

Speaker 97 And I guess I don't know what I mean when I say it's working.

Speaker 42 Is it working? Like, is it convincing anybody?

Speaker 28 I don't know.

Speaker 80 Is it working in the sense that like he's giving Democrats and Democratic aligned and anti-Trump aligned people something to rally around and something to feel good about?

Speaker 72 And like, is it breaking through outside of our little political obsessive bubbles?

Speaker 49 like the answer to all that is like obviously yes and the answer to the narrow question of what he's doing on the gerrymandering part is like everyone agrees is is right and good so i don't know if we need to spend any time on that but like the broader political strategy what do you think about that well i think the fact that there is so much conversation about like a twitter shtick tells you a lot about how desperate democrats are for like something for anything right because i think my reaction was probably similar to yours like i saw those tweets i'm like initially I winced a bit, but then they got better and better.

Speaker 49 And unfortunately,

Speaker 6 there's some funny ones.

Speaker 49 There's some legitimately funny ones. And unfortunately, I'm...

Speaker 91 Tommy Loren toilet.

Speaker 45 That's good material.

Speaker 1 That's good material.

Speaker 90 There's just no two ways about it.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 49 And look, Tim, like you, I am unfortunately reverse polarized. So when I saw Dana Perino and all the Fox News hosts getting mad about it, I enjoyed that.
Truthfully, I don't really read most of them.

Speaker 49 Like, I think it's a fun tactic to get attention. He's clearly like meeting the moment.
You see all this polling, the Democrats want to fight her. And I think this is giving them that.

Speaker 49 I suspect he won't be doing this bit in like six months, nine months.

Speaker 49 I could be wrong, but I do think there's a broader thing he's doing, Tim, that's really smart, which is you see Gavin Newsom on progressive media channels all the time.

Speaker 49 He's talking to Brian Tyler Cohn. He's talking to the Midas Touch folks.
He's talking to us. And that is really smart because this is what Trump did.
Trump built up those shows.

Speaker 49 He went on those shows all the time. He helped them build their channels.
He built relationships with their audience. And that has to be a long game thing.
You can't just do that around elections.

Speaker 49 I just like do one interview with like Adam Mockler or, you know, or the bulwark. Like, you got to be on talking to those folks all the time.

Speaker 49 And that's something I'm really glad to see him doing because every once in a while, there'll be like an op-ed from some former Biden digital person about how Democrats don't have media infrastructure and need to work on it.

Speaker 60 I'm clarity catching strays now.

Speaker 49 Well, you guys had four years to like to try to help and nurture these things and you didn't do it.

Speaker 50 So so like i agree with the observation but it's great to see gavin newsom kind of putting some skin in the game yeah that is a good observation i agree and i do you know it's tough sometimes because you see him out there on the on the circuit and not everybody is bringing the high quality material you and brian tower cohen are

Speaker 33 um there are some some of these shows he's on i'm like okay i don't know um not my cup of tea per se but let a thousand flowers bloom you know the neck boys have an audience too i don't know if we do need to build up to biden dead enders but that's a personal personal thing and uh so i think that it's good that he's doing that here's my worry and this is more of an existential worry i worry it's working too well i worry that he is that it's working too well and that he is he cements himself as the person that is fighting trump and that it's hard it gets hard to dislodge him and that he brings out and and i don't I don't actually mean this as a judgment on Gavin because I think the strategy is good.

Speaker 63 I mean it kind of a judgment on all of us as humans.

Speaker 86 We're all fallen.

Speaker 15 We're all sinners, Tommy.

Speaker 17 I called you John, like Megan Kelly did.

Speaker 10 We're all sinners.

Speaker 56 I worry that, like, it brings out the worst in everybody, and everybody gets so excited, and our nipples get so hard, you know, that like Tommy Lorraine is being called a toilet that

Speaker 80 it kind of

Speaker 25 the snowball starts rolling down the hill and it turns into an avalanche and it can't be stopped.

Speaker 63 And like, we're living in this forever.

Speaker 49 Is your concern one of tone and just like coarsening of the culture, or is this your concern that Gavin's going to be the nominee and you think that's bad?

Speaker 45 Both. I kind of both.

Speaker 63 A little bit that Gavin is that I worry a little bit about that because I think that there are some issues that he would have reaching out to like people in that Barack Obama got to vote for in Pennsylvania, for example.

Speaker 94 But yeah, coarsening is the wrong word.

Speaker 61 I'm coarse. I don't mind coarse.

Speaker 30 It's more just like that, I don't know, man.

Speaker 25 I guess I want a fighter, but it would be nice to be able to have somebody that also fights for something that is a little bit aspirational and that the fighting is not just, I'm the best at swirlying people.

Speaker 1 Because I love swirlying MAGA.

Speaker 81 I love it.

Speaker 32 Great.

Speaker 32 It's good.

Speaker 79 I don't think it's bad.

Speaker 30 I'm not worried about correcting the culture.

Speaker 73 I just, as an end in itself, it is pretty corrupting, though.

Speaker 49 See, here, I guess where I disagree with you is I think we are swirlying MAGA in service of getting attention to this redistricting fight. And I think that is valuable.

Speaker 49 And I feel like there is actually an end game to this silly bullshit.

Speaker 49 And to the longer-term concern that, like, I don't know, like, I heard you and JVL, I think, talking about this. Like, is this going to cement this guy as the Democratic frontrunner and the nominee?

Speaker 49 I just would like to give you some advice. I heard you give Democrats several months ago when they were talking, they were all worried about, should we talk about immigration?

Speaker 49 Should we be pivoting to Medicaid cuts? And it's like, it's just so far away. God knows what we're going to be talking about in two months.
Like,

Speaker 49 I'm so happy that Gavin's out there punching away.

Speaker 49 And I do think, I hope that we'll see some Democrats see what he's doing, see the attention he's getting, see the growth on his socials, the people Googling him, and be like, all right, I got to get in the game more.

Speaker 49 I got to show people something.

Speaker 66 I agree with that.

Speaker 76 I needed this pep talk. Thank you, Tommy.

Speaker 66 I agree with that.

Speaker 13 The more fucking Democrats should get in the game on this.

Speaker 30 And that would assuage my concerns about Gavin, you know, monopolizing the playing field.

Speaker 51 Not everybody needs to do the all-caps tweets.

Speaker 12 He's done a great job with that, but like the concept is there.

Speaker 28 Yes. Get fucking pissed.

Speaker 64 You know, throw some fast.

Speaker 113 Make it interesting. Like, look, I look, Andy Bashir seems like great.

Speaker 49 He's an incredible record. His approval in Kentucky is astounding.
He's a good-looking guy.

Speaker 49 He's got a great family, but it's like he's got to break through somehow and solve this last mile problem of having other Democrats hear who the fuck he is if he wants to run for president.

Speaker 25 We've talked a little bit about kind of the Dem brand like challenges, issues.

Speaker 25 The thing that I'm the most wrapped around the axe on is like how to break through outside of like this narrow blue wall path to victory and this, like, which gets you 52 senators at most and you know, 290 electoral votes at most.

Speaker 29 Like, how do you make Iowa a swing state again?

Speaker 30 You know, there's a pull out yesterday, Sherry Brown down 50, 44, whatever.

Speaker 98 It's way too early.

Speaker 9 But, like, just how do you think about this challenge of how Democrats can kind of get out of their

Speaker 65 the narrow audience that they're reaching right now?

Speaker 54 Relatively narrow.

Speaker 49 So, a few thoughts. First of all, I kind of think we got a chance in Iowa this year.
Rob Sand is a great gubernatorial candidate. He's one statewide.

Speaker 9 He's like Raja Doppelganker.

Speaker 49 He has a far more chiseled jawline, but I appreciate the compliment. But he's a guy who hunts and he fishes and he's authentic and he's from Iowa and he's one.

Speaker 49 He's an auditor and it's got an interesting background. And then Nathan Sage is kind of like filling the space of

Speaker 49 a little more,

Speaker 49 I think, lefty, blue collar union voice there so maybe we have a chance i know i'm maybe i'm probably totally wrong iowa could be totally gone but i i tend to view that politics as just a giant pendulum that is constantly swinging and when i see chris ruffo flipping out about the cracker barrel logo i start to think boy this pendulum is swung way too far back

Speaker 49 we're going to talk about it but people i think people are going to start to find that shit annoying and i think i don't want to jump us to the 2028 primaries or start talking about presidential politics yet, but I do think that is the process that gets you attention from the media that allows you to deliver a message more compellingly.

Speaker 49 So once people start getting into that game, I do think it will help us have some fighters that actually get covered.

Speaker 56 If I've offered to you the working theories out there for how Democrats could appeal better to some of the demos who they've lost ground with, you have the group out there that is absolutely adamant that it needs to be a populist leftist.

Speaker 77 uh economic populism is the only path you have a group out there that is absolutely adamant that the dems need to hippie punch the left like that they're just too got too far to the left on progressive issues whether it be trans or guns or whatever you've got our abundance friends who think democrats just should govern better I think there's a little bit of truth to all those, but like my personal pet issue is I just think that like the vibes of the candidates have gotten really bad.

Speaker 56 I think you need to find better can't like the vibes need to be totally different with the candidates themselves.

Speaker 70 Like is really the recruitment is about as big a problem as anything.

Speaker 53 Yeah.

Speaker 17 Taking those four, or you're welcome to nominate a fifth.

Speaker 98 Like,

Speaker 73 where do you think is the secret sauce?

Speaker 49 I think

Speaker 49 I would probably pick little bits from each, but I do think like if I were to have to pick one, I would look populist, economic, focus on kitchen table stuff.

Speaker 88 You fucking lib.

Speaker 48 I'm delayed.

Speaker 49 Well, that doesn't mean you have to be like the furthest left populist economic kind of guy, but I do think like a relentless focus on that message is what helped Zoran Mandani.

Speaker 49 And I think what's this guy's name in Maine who just announced who seems pretty cool?

Speaker 12 Graham Planter.

Speaker 17 Graham Planter, right?

Speaker 49 Like that, his announcement video is like him on, you know, his oyster boat, right? Just talking about economic concerns.

Speaker 62 What did you think about him saying the word oligarchy and that?

Speaker 48 Didn't love it.

Speaker 84 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 49 All right. Didn't love it.

Speaker 49 I'm not part of the third way.

Speaker 49 They released a long manifesto today, which is like a reverse unabomber. It's just a bunch of words you're not allowed to say.

Speaker 49 This apparently is based on no polling or specific research, it's just things these guys don't like.

Speaker 45 And by the way, I didn't like a lot of them. One of my favorite ones was the third one.

Speaker 25 It's like, stop saying small D democracy.

Speaker 37 And I was like, I will not allow that because it makes for so many good jokes.

Speaker 93 Every time Lovett says small D democracy,

Speaker 1 it's a free whack for me.

Speaker 15 So please continue saying small D democracy.

Speaker 18 But they have some other things out there.

Speaker 41 Cisgender they don't like.

Speaker 16 BIPOC. I'm not really a huge fan of of BIPOC myself.

Speaker 41 Incarcerated people.

Speaker 93 Anyway, subverting norms.

Speaker 6 Why aren't we allowed to say subverting norms?

Speaker 5 Overton window, we're not even allowed to say.

Speaker 93 Why can't we say Overton window, third way?

Speaker 41 I like Overton Window.

Speaker 91 Don't dumb me down.

Speaker 49 It was a lot of jargon. It felt like a list.

Speaker 49 Were you triggered? No, it just seemed like a list from a bunch of oversists.

Speaker 49 It was a list from a bunch of overly online centrists that they could use to tell a bunch of overly online lefties to shut the fuck up, which, like, that's fine.

Speaker 49 Put it out there, but like, there's no data backing this. Like, yes, talk like a human being, be yourself.
Like, you know, don't, I didn't like the word oligarchy either. That was the only thing that

Speaker 49 bumped me, except the,

Speaker 49 I agree with you on the guitar riff. I'm going to talk to people who made that ad.
I don't like that guitar riff.

Speaker 97 Please, do you know the people that made the ad?

Speaker 82 Yes. Please tell them.
It's all love.

Speaker 2 It's all love.

Speaker 66 You know, great ad, good message.

Speaker 22 They're doing good work.

Speaker 42 I've got to go fucking crazy if I hear the same guitar riff that's been in every Democratic ad for like three cycles now.

Speaker 40 Literally, it's my second shout out to him.

Speaker 30 I got, I, I, I can find you somebody.

Speaker 54 I got pals that do this.

Speaker 15 We can, we can do other guitar riffs.

Speaker 49 There are other centering better music.

Speaker 36 We're holding space for better music.

Speaker 54 Those are other words we're talking about.

Speaker 41 So you're on the economic populist left stuff.

Speaker 27 All right.

Speaker 12 Well, while we burnish your credentials.

Speaker 49 Can I just say, though, I agree with you, like that, I think candidate ID and just people who are interesting and compelling that you like, like that, they're inextricably linked.

Speaker 49 Zoran Mumdomni is a guy who talks about populist stuff, but he's also super compelling, like charming, interesting, great at making videos, great at talking to people.

Speaker 49 Like, you can't disaggregate those two.

Speaker 33 No, he's a good hanging.

Speaker 55 He was a good hanging on the green drum, even you know, even after I give him some shit.

Speaker 99 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 104 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 106 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 101 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 104 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 110 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center, that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 111 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

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

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

Speaker 9 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 15 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 3 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust.

Speaker 20 MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 23 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 28 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 31 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 33 Learn more at MS.now.

Speaker 66 All right, while we're, you know, burnishing your shitload credentials, let's talk a little bit about Gaza.

Speaker 72 There's a Washington Post story this morning about, I guess, a UN report, a global authority on hunger.

Speaker 15 It says famine has been officially confirmed in the Gaza City region and is projected to spread within weeks to two more population centers in the wider Gaza Strip.

Speaker 70 You guys made some noise recently over on your pod talking about how Dems need to talk differently about this, which,

Speaker 30 well, why don't you just talk about it? Where do you think things are?

Speaker 49 The sort of broader points about the war in Gaza or U.S. relations with Israel generally? Both.
Or both.

Speaker 36 Let's go.

Speaker 49 I think

Speaker 49 Democrats and a lot of elected officials, when they talk about the U.S.-Israel relations, are using talking points that were drafted by someone in the 1980s, maybe on a typewriter.

Speaker 49 They are very dusty, and we need to evolve them.

Speaker 15 By someone, that's not an anti-Semitic dog whistle, though.

Speaker 77 You're just saying that that person happened to live 40 years ago.

Speaker 8 You're not saying that it happened.

Speaker 32 We're not trying to buy Harry Rosenstein.

Speaker 49 I'm saying that, like, we are, Joe Biden used to do this all the time. He would talk about the Israel of Golden Mayer and this sort of like bastion of freedom and democracy in the Middle East.

Speaker 49 And if it didn't exist, we'd have to create it. When the reality is, since 2009, it has been Bibi Netanyahu's government.

Speaker 49 And he stayed in power by including in his governing coalition increasingly radical,

Speaker 49 in fact, terrorists supporting like extremist individuals, like Itmar Ben-Gavir, the security minister, Smotrich, the finance minister.

Speaker 49 And I think Democrats, the reality of the makeup of this Israeli government is something that I think is really hard for a lot of people to come to terms with because they either have an emotional attachment to Israel or they have this, you know, belief from decades of just sort of like affinity between cultural or whatever it might be.

Speaker 49 And I think there's a couple of things happening right now that are actually crises.

Speaker 49 Like there's the crisis of the war in Gaza, which has been going on for nearly two years, and the starvation that's happening there, but also like the Israelis are about to escalate the war in Gaza.

Speaker 49 And then in the West Bank, you not only have like these rampaging settlers, like leading pogroms through villages and like driving Palestinians out and killing them, including American citizens, by the way, but you have this ongoing constant construction of settlements that is carving up the West Bank in such a way that there is no hope of a two-state solution.

Speaker 49 In fact, at this point, there basically isn't because there's no contiguous territory that could be a Palestinian state.

Speaker 49 And so the hope is like, let's just acknowledge reality and talk about things as they are, not as they were 20, 30 years ago or as we wished they would be.

Speaker 49 And let's also just be honest that like groups like AIPAC are not, they don't support Democrats. They support candidates in primaries to take out progressive Democrats.

Speaker 114 I was with you up to the very last sentence.

Speaker 62 I think that like just being awake to what is the reality on the ground in Gaza is necessary to being able to talk about this in a way that is honest.

Speaker 57 Right.

Speaker 15 Like, and I think, and I saw you getting with some folks, there have been a lot of folks that were big critics of Israel immediately after October 7th, like even really before the war was being fought, you know, who are now saying, oh, well, now you guys are coming around our point of view and whatever.

Speaker 65 I guess, you know, you can try to wave the bloody shirt or something if you want.

Speaker 2 But like, you know, where we are now,

Speaker 3 there's no plan, right?

Speaker 48 Like, like, and Israel said, and the plan is basically to ethnically cleanse Gaza Strip.

Speaker 49 Like, they're sending people to South Sudan.

Speaker 32 Right. They're saying people to South Sudan.

Speaker 2 So, like, that's where it is.

Speaker 82 Like, so if it was another thing, we're like, we're going after Hamas, and then we're going to figure out, you know, we have a plan to extricate ourselves.

Speaker 33 Like, that's not what has happened.

Speaker 56 So, we are, we are, and it's really, it sucks.

Speaker 72 It's really sad. And I just think that, like, to your point, like being clear about the situation as it actually lies with the situation, I think it is necessary to be able to talk about it.

Speaker 13 Now, I I find the APAC thing very strange.

Speaker 44 This is like not just related to APAC.

Speaker 51 It's like related to all this sort of stuff.

Speaker 72 I feel like it's a lot of people that don't actually pay attention to politics, understand politics that closely, that feel like APAC is more powerful than it is.

Speaker 20 All of these donor stories, it's like we're in the post-Citizens United world, it's like...

Speaker 1 Like the fact that you took $20,000 from people on a board or whatever, I don't fucking know, man.

Speaker 56 Sometimes I feel like they're like made into this all-powerful boogeyman in a way that makes me a little uncomfortable.

Speaker 49 No, I don't think they're anything close to an all-powerful boogeyman. And I think actually what you've seen over the last six to 12 months has

Speaker 49 shown kind of stark terms that they're not. I do think you see a lot of policing of policy and speech by various groups in this space.

Speaker 49 Like Jonathan Greenblatt from the ADL wrote a New York Post op-ed where he called me an anti-Semite because I said Bibi Net Yahoo dragged Donald Trump into the war with Iran.

Speaker 49 And I think like 10 years ago, that kind of thing would have like

Speaker 49 really stung and worried me. But now I think like you hear those kind of attacks so often and they're so cynical and they're in such bad faith that the power is wearing off.

Speaker 49 I think what frustrates me about AIPAC is they do have a party line

Speaker 49 and that party line includes like bullshit like the U.S. and Israel should never disagree in public.
We should deal with our disagreements behind closed doors.

Speaker 49 I'm like, well, you know who that really helps? Bibi Netanyahu, who never gets criticized from America in public. And, you know, so so I think that that's kind of the stuff I'm talking about there.

Speaker 49 And then in terms of like that tweet that got all the lefties mad at me, Tim, basically I said, like, I saw a bunch of people tweeting, like, you know, fuck you if you're, you know, just now coming around to thinking what's happening in Gaza is bad or a genocide or what have you.

Speaker 49 And I just think like my brain is always wired to think in terms of a democratic strategist and like, how do we build the biggest coalition to tackle a problem?

Speaker 49 And I think if we're scolding people for agreeing with us, that is unbelievably stupid and we shouldn't do it.

Speaker 49 That doesn't mean there shouldn't be accountability at some point for politicians who voted in certain ways that we disagree with.

Speaker 49 But like in my mind, I always have like a 70-year-old Jewish grandma in, you know, in New York who is like a deep emotional connection to Israel, is a big liberal, cares deeply about Israel, and has watched this war over the last, you know, 22 months and is increasingly horrified.

Speaker 49 And I want that person to be part of this coalition, even if she won't agree that it is a genocide, right?

Speaker 49 Even if that is a bridge too far for her, given the connection of that term to the Holocaust, right? But we want that person marching, rallying, voting, calling Congress.

Speaker 49 Like, and that's my whole point.

Speaker 30 Yeah, and saying we don't want people to fucking starve.

Speaker 49 Yeah, we don't want to starve people.

Speaker 55 You don't want that person. You want that person?

Speaker 25 We don't want kids starving.

Speaker 86 What we don't want is, you know, anti-anti-starvation reporting by the people at the free press, you know, talking about how, you know, we really can't talk about the malnourished boys because they also had other, you know, their arms were blown off.

Speaker 49 So the free press, they wrote this piece.

Speaker 49 I think it was 12 examples they found of malnourished children who have been featured in photos and western news reports where those kids also had pre-existing conditions.

Speaker 49 And, like, look, on one level, more context and reporting is fine. It's great.

Speaker 49 But, like, some of the examples they used were CNN failed to mention that this one kid who looked emaciated had part of his skull blown off by an Israeli shell from shrapnel.

Speaker 49 I was like, I'm sorry, what point do you think that is making about this war?

Speaker 49 And it's just clearly like, this is the free press going after various mainstream organizations in a really cynical way to suggest suggest that they are overplaying or manufacturing reports of famine or starvation.

Speaker 49 And it is bullshit. And I know, like, the other thing, Tim, that never gets talked about is the Israeli government will not let reporters go into Gaza and report from the ground without an IDF minder.

Speaker 49 It would be much easier for the New York Times to fact-check stories if they had people on the ground, but they're left like trying to call the mom of some kid.

Speaker 49 And like, they can't, what are they going to do? Call a hospital that's been bombed to try to get records? Like, come on.

Speaker 49 It's a challenging reporting environment you can't admit that maybe the iranian bombing didn't go quite as bad as you thought it was going to um it didn't no i i don't think it's over yet though i just i don't think this is it's important though we question our priors okay oh no i'm i'm agreeing with you on the gaza stuff so it was important that i threw out there a little neocon chom no i well i think it's look it did it lead to world war three no i think the war ended for just I'm like giving a real answer to the kind of a funny question.

Speaker 49 I do think the war ended because we basically were about to run out of interceptor missiles for a lot of the missile defense programs. And the Israelis were like, all right, it's time to stand down.

Speaker 49 And the Iranians were ready to stand down too. I just don't think this is over.
I don't think the 12-day war is going to be how this thing ends. I think there's going to be more conflict.

Speaker 99 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 100 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 106 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 101 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 104 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 110 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center, that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 111 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

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

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

Speaker 9 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 15 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 12 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 23 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 28 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 31 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 33 Learn more at MS.now.

Speaker 93 We have a few laughs we have to get to.

Speaker 41 We're running out of time, but I do, I know, before we get to laughs, I just want to really quick check in on your feelings.

Speaker 17 I don't know, man.

Speaker 94 I range between like anger.

Speaker 69 I get a lot of anger sometimes, mostly on the immigration stuff.

Speaker 38 Little bouts of sadness, little bouts of sadness.

Speaker 19 But like the thing that worries me the most is I self-identify.

Speaker 98 We'll do a little therapy talk. Sorry, third way.

Speaker 15 We're going to do a little therapy talk here as I self, you know, as I look internally is I'm getting kind of numb, I think.

Speaker 88 Yeah.

Speaker 80 I'm self-identifying is getting kind of numb, and I don't like that.

Speaker 72 So I don't know. How does that strike you?

Speaker 49 Yeah, I think that's a lot.

Speaker 49 I feel that way a lot. There's clearly the White House's strategy is to do something outrageous every single day so that they can drive the narrative.

Speaker 49 And there are definitely times where I'm like, what's he doing at the Kennedy Center or the Smithsonian? Like, do I have to read about that?

Speaker 49 It gets exhausting. And that's their goal, right? It is to exhaust us.
I'm sort of like you. I think the story, the more specific the story or the thing, the more outraged I am.

Speaker 49 Like the story of Andri

Speaker 49 Hernandez-Romero getting rendered to El Salvador, like seeing the photos of him crying for his mother, his head being shaved, knowing he did nothing, knowing the horrors they would inflict on him, like you feel that in your soul and you can't shake it.

Speaker 49 I feel the same way about some of the images and videos you see out of Gaza. And to just know that we're like funding this and funneling arms to bomb these kids,

Speaker 49 it can break you if you really think about it. But like the day-to-day of Trump, like I too am, it's easy to feel numb.
It's constant.

Speaker 52 Do you fight it, though?

Speaker 25 Or do you embrace the

Speaker 88 embrace the numbness with mid-afternoon cocktails and gummies?

Speaker 49 It's more of an edible.

Speaker 49 And it's not always

Speaker 49 post-bedtime, yeah. California's sober.
I tend to find that like

Speaker 49 if I learn about it, if I dig into something, if I learn about it, then I start to care about it more. If I just sort of like, I need to let this one go, then

Speaker 49 I'm numb.

Speaker 74 Self-care?

Speaker 49 Self-care.

Speaker 54 A little doing a little self-care.

Speaker 49 Letting a few stories go.

Speaker 15 Do you have any advice for people on this?

Speaker 49 I think my advice would be you don't have to read all the news, like sincerely.

Speaker 49 That was like, remember 2017, 2018? I do think that was a feeling that kind of resist libs had. It's like, I'm going to read all the news.
I'm going to watch all the panels.

Speaker 49 And I don't know that that's good for us.

Speaker 82 I give that advice too.

Speaker 92 I'm like, take a break from my show.

Speaker 77 If you're a daily listener, we appreciate you.

Speaker 98 But take a fucking break. Yeah, take a break from my show for a day or two.

Speaker 92 That's fine. That's okay.

Speaker 54 Like, well, I'll download it.

Speaker 27 You'll survive.

Speaker 30 also though just an equal balance to that for me like how i want to take a break at times and people should take a break for their own you know to find things are more fulfilling is i don't want him to take away the things that i care about like don't let you know what i mean like not to be whatever corny but like don't take don't let him take your anger and sadness or passion or care away like that i worry about that almost as much sometimes where it's just like fuck i don't know i i you know the things that i used to really care about and feel passionate about, it's just, it's hard to.

Speaker 80 And so while simultaneously I want to break from the crazy, I also don't want to numb myself to not care about things that matter.

Speaker 53 Does that resonate with you at all?

Speaker 49 100%. And

Speaker 49 I find it kind of playing out in some specific places. Like climate change, still a pretty big problem.

Speaker 49 Feels like we're rolling back all the things we did to stop it. I have two little kids.
I have a two-year-old and a one-year-old.

Speaker 49 I really worry about what planet they are going to inherit because of us it's easy when you start to think about it you go to a dark place it's completely demoralizing it's like kind of nihilistic but yeah i don't want to like lose that passion and sort of feeling and motivation to like actually do something about it even if it's outside of government all right we're gonna we're gonna end with a laugh or two laughs it's a tweet from byron donald you've talked about cracker brew quite a bit and i don't want you to be a smug coastal liberal okay smug coastal liberal agnostic i'm assuming you're agnostic i don't know i haven't asked lately but uh was is Congressman Brian Donaldson.

Speaker 32 I think he was going to run for governor of Florida or already is maybe.

Speaker 10 He says this.

Speaker 30 In college, I worked at Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee.

Speaker 91 I even gave my life.

Speaker 54 I'm sorry.

Speaker 23 I even gave my life to Christ in their parking lot.

Speaker 54 What?

Speaker 23 Their logo was iconic, and their unique restaurants were a picture of American culture.

Speaker 5 You really just snuck that one in there.

Speaker 93 I gave my life to Christ in the parking lot.

Speaker 45 Cool.

Speaker 44 I love that.

Speaker 21 And we all have places where we did, you know, you know, have memories.

Speaker 91 I remember where I did my first communion and all that. But

Speaker 32 what do you think happened in the parking lot?

Speaker 49 Do we think that's a euphemism for like I got a hand job? That's where my head went.

Speaker 8 Am I wrong?

Speaker 36 I don't know.

Speaker 27 I was thinking maybe he was so fucked up.

Speaker 22 like on drugs in the Cracker Barrel parking lot that like he crashed out and he decided that day like he hit rock bottom and that day he decided that he was going to find Jesus, which I hope.

Speaker 69 I hope that is true, and that he found he found something that served him.

Speaker 54 I don't know.

Speaker 16 We need to learn more. I've got follow-up questions about that.

Speaker 49 Yeah, I guess

Speaker 49 I was never a Cracker Barrel guy. I think I've probably been once or twice.
My

Speaker 49 memory of it is that it sucks and that I don't care. And I can't believe people are talking about this.
I'd love to go back to yelling about Sidney Sweeney because at least that was entertaining.

Speaker 60 You like talking about Sidney Sweeney's.

Speaker 84 I do know why.

Speaker 41 No why you like those photos come across the screen.

Speaker 19 Liberal men still can like jugs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, here's the thing: the old Cracker Barrel logo was great.

Speaker 6 I wasn't a big Cracker Barrel man myself either.

Speaker 27 The logo was great.

Speaker 11 The place had a vibe.

Speaker 32 Bill Crystal, the old sage in the Slack, correctly pointed out something I did not know, which was that it was always phony, you know.

Speaker 65 Cracker Barrel was founded in 1970 as like a fake old thing.

Speaker 56 Like, it's not like this thing that's been here since 19th, you know.

Speaker 36 So,

Speaker 54 whatever.

Speaker 32 It had a good vibe.

Speaker 12 It was good branding. They fucked it up.

Speaker 33 The ad wizards are terrible.

Speaker 80 The whole, you know, marketing trend towards minimalism is totally bad and wrong.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 64 I concur with that.

Speaker 11 I don't know what it has to do with Woke or what it has to do with Byron Donalds' path towards redemption in the Lord Jesus, but I do think it was a bad change.

Speaker 49 Look, I'm thrilled for Byron that he found God.

Speaker 49 Me too. I found it at a Waffle House one time.

Speaker 14 I mean, he hasn't really shown, I guess I should just say, he hasn't really shown a lot of Jesus-like behavior

Speaker 44 over the past few years.

Speaker 17 I mean, he is representing a state that has alligator alcatraz, which we just were discussing, where like we have people who did nothing wrong who are in a fucking hellhole in the middle of the Everglades where they have to have clean water shipped in.

Speaker 53 So, anyway, I don't really think Jesus probably would have been before that.

Speaker 54 I don't speak for him, but anyway, I do like whatever.

Speaker 49 You never know where Jesus, you know, he shows up in his shorts.

Speaker 49 So, Tim, here's the political question I want to ask you:

Speaker 49 Am I being sanguine about feeling like the absurd woke attacks have lost some of their luster because there was a time when people like us would mock Kid Rock, you know, machine gunning a bunch of bug lights, but then it became a huge thing and a bunch of you know MAGA crazies like really harmed the stock price for a long time.

Speaker 49 And I think it scared corporations right into like it plowed a lot of ground to get to where we are now, which is where like, you know, Donald Trump will try to sue you for a billion dollars if you have a DEI program.

Speaker 49 But like when I see Chris Ruffo tweeting about the Cracker Barrel logo, I do wonder if they've jumped the shark a little bit and if people are going to be like, come on, man, this is so fucking stupid.

Speaker 76 I think so. I think we're past peak woke and past peak woke lash.

Speaker 72 And I think that's a good thing.

Speaker 30 We have one more laugh ahead that breaking news, Donald Trump Jr.

Speaker 62 has just tweeted.

Speaker 77 Someone's going to have to explain why George Conway was already at John Bolton's house at the crack of dawn.

Speaker 15 So I guess Donald Trump Jr.

Speaker 20 was watching our live stream. Nice.

Speaker 22 I will, I guess, say to Donald Trump Jr.

Speaker 77 that like George Conway showed up like an hour after the Fed showed up and he lives five minutes away.

Speaker 63 So you don't really need a crack investigative team to figure out how he did did that.

Speaker 22 Yeah, he was like, he lived on the street right.

Speaker 49 He's like, I was at my apartment in Bethesda. It's not that big of a town.

Speaker 60 They're in Bethesda together.

Speaker 45 Great. All right.
Last thing.

Speaker 15 It's a long clip, so I think we'll have to play it in two parts.

Speaker 30 Alex Jones, aforementioned Alex Jones, has some concerns about his president that I'd like to share with you.

Speaker 116 Trump has got great genetics.

Speaker 110 He's tough.

Speaker 116 And if he takes care of himself,

Speaker 116 he can make it through these years and then after.

Speaker 116 But if he doesn't, he's going to have,

Speaker 116 I predict Trump is going to have some type of collapse within the next 12 months at the current trajectory. And so I'm going to be talking about that today.
He's got extremely swollen ankles.

Speaker 45 So he's going to, a collapse is coming in the next 12 months for Trump.

Speaker 49 Did you watch this whole segment, by the way?

Speaker 30 I've got more. Okay.

Speaker 86 More is to come.

Speaker 41 First, I want to know if you have any thoughts about the collapse coming in the next 12 months.

Speaker 49 It sounds exciting.

Speaker 66 First of all, I'm thrilled to hear it.

Speaker 29 Alex jones is ahead of the curve probably on all things biden's health unfortunately that's true you should probably admit that good point you should probably admit that maybe alex jones really has his eye on elderly deterioration watch out trump fans a collapse coming next 12 months all right i was most intrigued and i gotta say tommy

Speaker 30 You hate to hand it to Alex Jones, but the man is a talent.

Speaker 29 I mean, we're here in the broadcasting space.

Speaker 28 And when you listen to this next clip and what this guy's doing, he's just, he's on another level.

Speaker 75 And you do have to credit him for that.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 30 The main piece of evidence as referenced there for that Donald Trump will collapse in the next 12 months that Alex Jones provides is his cankles.

Speaker 86 Let's listen.

Speaker 116 If you pull up the ankles from Alaska, they're straight on shot.

Speaker 54 They are big.

Speaker 116 They are swollen.

Speaker 36 They are like

Speaker 36 really big.

Speaker 116 My neck's 19 and a half inches.

Speaker 49 His ankles look like they're about a big neck.

Speaker 116 15 inches around.

Speaker 116 That's not a good sign for the heart and the rest of the body because the rest of them, he's lost weight. He's not that fat.

Speaker 116 So

Speaker 116 that's not good.

Speaker 116 For anybody that you've known that's having heart problems,

Speaker 116 that's not good right there.

Speaker 8 Okay.

Speaker 8 Okay.

Speaker 8 They're getting bigger and bigger.

Speaker 22 Oh, someone make a TikTok audio out of that. That is good.

Speaker 1 The tankles are getting fucking thick.

Speaker 49 The bigger and bigger. So, Tim, this is like a 25-minute, 30-minute segment.
Did you watch all of it by any chance?

Speaker 39 I caught eight minutes.

Speaker 49 I watched all of it on 2x.

Speaker 49 It starts with this genuinely concerned rant about Trump's health, and he's begging his staff to let him get enough sleep and all this shit.

Speaker 49 And it's like, look, we all know that Donald Trump is like, he goes to the golf course and he dicks around and he watches Fox News all day, but the guy does seem to never sleep, right?

Speaker 49 Like he's tweeting at 3 a.m. He's doing Fox phoners on the way back from Alaska.
It's like, it's not terrible advice.

Speaker 49 Then it goes into, but it's all predicated off this Fox and Friends interview where Trump makes a joke about how he wants to get into heaven, right?

Speaker 49 He wants to stop the war in Ukraine to save some lives to get into heaven. And then Alex Jones makes this super intense call for Trump to submit himself to Christ.

Speaker 8 Did you get to this person?

Speaker 36 Really?

Speaker 49 It's crazy, man. It gets really, really intense.

Speaker 32 They should go to a cracker barrel parking lot together.

Speaker 113 They should go. Yes.

Speaker 49 Yes, Byron, you're there. And then at the end, it's like he plays this clip of Trump calling Netanyahu and himself a war hero.

Speaker 49 And he starts yelling at Trump and Netanyahu, saying neither of them are war heroes. It is like this is just to your point about Alex being

Speaker 49 a talented broadcaster. This is a ranging segment that starts with cankles and ends in Netanyahu.

Speaker 36 Oh boy.

Speaker 115 Well, those cankles are getting thicker and thicker.

Speaker 30 Let's zoom in on those bad boys for the YouTube crowd.

Speaker 27 Tommy, Vitor, what a show.

Speaker 47 Thank you for doing this with me.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 38 I hope that

Speaker 29 your ankles stay thin and that your heart stays healthy, my friend.

Speaker 54 They're good.

Speaker 49 They're good. Thank you.
Please, let's keep George Conway out of the clink.

Speaker 41 Everybody, have a wonderful weekend. We'll see you back here on Monday with Bill Crystal.

Speaker 45 Peace.

Speaker 95 Ancient of chaos.

Speaker 95 Angel of death.

Speaker 95 One of three ancient fates.

Speaker 95 playing with your scissors again.

Speaker 95 How lucky are we

Speaker 95 to have so much to lose?

Speaker 95 Now don't

Speaker 95 move

Speaker 95 when I tell you what to do.

Speaker 95 Pull me by the ankles to the edge of the bed.

Speaker 95 And take me like you do in your dreams.

Speaker 95 I'm not gonna stop you, I'm not gonna stop you this time, baby.

Speaker 95 I want you to show me what you mean.

Speaker 95 And help me with the crossword in the morning.

Speaker 95 You are gonna make me team.

Speaker 95 Gonna ask me how did

Speaker 95 I

Speaker 95 sleep.

Speaker 58 The Bullark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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