S2 Ep999: Sam Stein: How Do You Negotiate with Nihilists?

Hello and welcome to the VORG podcast. We're coming at you from Washington, D.C.
So I'm here in the studio between two ferns with managing editor Sam Stein. We are actually between two ferns.
We are. It's nice.
I like it. It's very quick.
It's pretty good. We're going to start a little wonky.
We're going to do some Capitol Hill machinations talk and so I promise

for the listeners out there in real America, outside the Beltway, who don't care about reconciliation and cloture votes, that I have candy for them coming at the end. But we have to do this.
Before we get to the budget, we got Congressman Jimmy Gomez up in segment two. So I hope everybody sticks around for that as well.
As I mentioned on yesterday's podcast, there was a kind of a quasi-CR. They're trying to call it a continuing resolution where they're continuing the Biden budget with some changes.
Some serious changes. Yeah.
They're in a plus-op funding for the military, deeply cut funding to Washington, D.C. They're cutting some other discretionary funding.
Elon isn't even listening to the fund, isn't even responsive to what they actually are passing anyway. This passed the House with one Democrat, Jared Golden, voting for it, but otherwise on a party-line vote.
It now goes to the Senate, and it's a pretty complicated situation, actually, for the Senate. And as the person who's been,est do something democrats stop them fuck them up do everything you can the senate calculus is like not actually that clear are you having a change of heart no no i think that i we're about to talk about it but i i'm just saying up to top that i think that it's it's it's a complicated calculus because the republicans do have the pass this if there's no filibuster.
So the Democrats have to decide are we going to filibuster this? Are we going to block this from even coming up for a vote? Rand Paul, I believe, is a no. So Republicans need eight Democrats to say yes in order for this to pass.
They need eight Democrats to say eight Democrats to say yes to cloture. This is why it would be annoying, right? Let's just assume that they are going to treat cloture as the end-all, be-all vote, right? So they need eight Democrats.
And it is a tough one. I feel like I go back and forth on this.
Yesterday I was thinking about how if the goal here for Elon and Trump is to quite literally shave the government down to its studs and fire a bunch of people and reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy as much as possible, then this would help them do it, right? You would basically furlough all the non-essential employees. Russ Vought would be in charge of figuring out who's essential.
And then if the government were refunded, I'm sure they have some crazy ways of making sure that those furloughed employees don't come back. And if they do, that they don't give them pay.
And what kind of outcome is that? Is that a good outcome for Democrats? I don't know. Now, on the flip side, I'll just say on the flip side, and I've talked to a few people about this, it's like.
Who have you talked to? I can't tell you that. Well, I'll tell you one on the record, but I'll just say this one is anonymous.
But I raise this concerns that I just said to a pretty senior Democrat. This person responds, it's certainly possible and a real concern, but they're going to pull this stuff over and over and over again.
Do we continually get run over and hope we can get to 2026 with a House majority? I just fear that we are setting a terrible precedent and the Senate will never stand up to him. It's all fucking terrible.
And they are trying to destroy the city I call home, that being Washington, D.C. That's a little emotional at the end.
I mean, it might seem emotional, but, and look, I'm obviously a resident, right? But a billion dollars ripped from D.C. budget.
It is insane. They're talking, there's rumors rampant that schools are going to, like, have to take huge, huge cuts.
Like, we're talking about $150 million cut in the education. Leasing cuts? I thought this was the law and order part.
Yeah, and Trump was supposed to make this the golden capital city and all that stuff and i will say in inside dc it feels like we are uh being subjected to an invading country it does and and this is like this would gut the city now they probably love that shit they think they're probably like oh that's great like you get what you deserve um but i can't even fathom doing something in the reverse right where Democrats would go in and be like, you know what? We're really going to screw over, name your random town in Mississippi. I don't know.
Like, it would be insane. And people would be like, you are heartless and that's totally impossible.
And everybody would be on their high horse. Yeah, how dare you sneer down to these people.
On all the panels, just like looking down on the Democrats are targeting these red state Americans.

So not to divert it into the D.C. story, but

that's the calculus Democrats

have right now. The D.C.
thing is kind of like

any time a new president comes in, it's kind of like an invading

army comes into the country. I mean, the whole city

does change, but these guys actually want to kill.

Yeah, they want to kill it.

This is Sherman.

Okay, so

part of the reason why the calculus is a little tough is because if you just put on the inverse, like the Republicans can hold government shutdowns over Democrats' heads. They haven't really done it to much effect.
And I was talking to – I think I can betray this one. He didn't tell me he was on the record.
But he's been pretty public on this. I was talking to Brendan Buck, who was Paul Ryan's old guy, yesterday, and he's like, look, man, our team never got anything out of these government shutdown threats.
He was always a loser for us. And even in their case, in the Republican case, in those moments where they're trying to threaten Obama or Biden with shutdowns.
Like, it was kind of a win-win for them, not politically but like substantively, right? They're like, oh, you shut down the government. Okay, great.
We don't like the government anyway, right? And so the Democrats are in the different, like they don't have as much leverage as Republicans do because Democrats don't want Russ Moe to be able to shut everything down, right? So there is that like... Well, how do you negotiate with a you negotiate with a nihilist? That's the issue.
And what are you actually trying to extract? Let's say in theory they got some sort of promise that Elon Musk wouldn't meddle in some agencies or something like that. Do you really think Elon's going to abide by it? He's already pushing the boundaries of the law, if not overstepping them on multiple fronts.
So there's quite literally nothing they can put on paper that would make Democrats totally confident that they've solved the situation. What are you holding out for? This is how I break that down.
I'm going to try to answer that question for you. As I see the Senate Democrats' calculus, they basically have three options.
They have accelerationism. What's that? Do you know the phrase accelerationism? I can guess.
The this is a this would be a noble version of accelerationism i guess but the racist kind of like there's a group of a subset of the of the white nationalists that like want a race war so they're you know because i think the quicker we get to civil war the better yeah the quicker we get to civil war in the country the better so there's accelerationism which is like basically saying fuck it no fuck you you're going to shut down the government anyway you're already shutting the government down let's do it go for it let's see what the american people think right about your governance and and i'm i'm you you won't be surprised to hear sympathetic to acceleration not you right yeah i know let's get on there is there is then limp objection which is option two which is you know basically the paddle version of this. That's where they are.
Yeah, which is where they are. Which is basically saying, like, okay, we're going to kind of object to this.
We'll cut you a deal when we vote for cloture if you let us vote against some other thing. It'll be too complicated for anybody to explain.
We'll all say we voted no because we all will vote no. Because you can't – I guess let's start here.
You can't vote yes yes on this fucking thing if you're a democrat like there's no way to just say straight yes i i am a yes on on codifying the doge cuts i'm a yes on cutting dc by a billion i mean i i'm i'm letting donald trump do what he wants and putting my name on the on the bill you can't say yes i don't you you can. You can maybe cut a deal where they get to vote on it and they get to pass it 53 to 47.
So that's the limp objection path. Limp objection.
And then there's just the accommodation path. Ben, Ben, take it.
Yeah, which was basically, and Hickenlooper flipped on this, I've seen, but Hickenlooper presented the accommodationist case yesterday, which was basically what you just said, which is like, it's the best of two terrible options.

I don't want to shut the government down and give them even more power to fire people.

There's already enough pain, right?

So accommodation, limp objection, and acceleration.

I'm putting all my money that they do limp objection.

There is just no universe where I – I will say there's the one thing that is, and I don't think they appreciate it is how palpable the anger will be over this. I mean, people are really, I was texting with, um, Howard Dean, ex DNC chair.
Um, he, I mean, he said like, this is the quote, uh, you can't, uh, this, uh, we were talking about shunningunning the government and what would happen and having to bring people back and how it's possible that they just won't and he said that can be negotiated out and Trump will get the blame for all the crap he does the GOP strategy is just a gun to the head of the American people and we should not follow along with it I don't plan to support any democrat who does we can primary incumbents too i mean there's like they they want people are pissed oh yeah and and like i think they don't even care it's not so much they know the outcomes are shit like they're they know that it's shit either way their point is that if you don't show a fight you're just gonna get rolled time and time again uh and that there are very few venues to fight this is like literally one of like a handful of venues that they're going to get and if on the first one they go with what is it objection obviously the second combination yeah bend over and take it yeah that's going to be bad and i you would imagine that that's like the kind of formula for we were talking about this a while back but like a democratic style tea party yeah i want to make the case for accelerationism from a political standpoint just political not policy okay um and i don't think again i would love to come here and do as i was as i do on planes i listen to the mega podcast that's what i do that too yeah so i was listening to bannon and i was thinking to myself does that make the plane ride go faster or slower i was prepping this podcast i was like what would bannon to what wwbd uh i think that's actually a worthy thing to way to operate yeah and um and the reality is that they he would right now be sitting in my shoes with this mic going to the mattresses, being like, zero votes, zero quarter for anyone that gives a vote. We must stop anybody that gives a vote.
Patriots, sign up with me right now. We have the banner of heaven on our side.
Okay. Well, first of all, you need at least three more college shirts.
I have to get shirts on. You got two, but only one of them is college.
That's true. You need that.
Okay. And so there's something.
Here's the thing. Again, just politically, there's something to all that.
Right. And here would be my political case and why I kind of fall down, I think, more meekly than that on the side of accelerationism.
If there's limp objection, I'm for meek accelerationism, which is like, i don't actually think the democrats will get blamed the democrats will get blamed in dc and will be blamed among super nerds but if you are out there a regular american yeah and fucking the stock market is crashing like there's no no real progress on any of the foreign stuff that trump said that he was going to make. The prices are higher.
People are being fired all around you. You can't call for your Social Security help.
You can't go to the national parks. I think that's great.
Are you going to really blame the – and you're like Donald Trump is the president. I don't know what the cloture is.
Like Donald Trump said he'd fix everything. He's deal maker it's all fucking chaos i think it hurts trump i i i don't disagree with that i think it hurts democrats among elite thinkers and fart sniffers on the excellent corridor but i think it probably hurts republicans everywhere i don't disagree that what you're describing here was popularized uh in the great 90s movie speed okay hostage.
Shoot the hostage. And in this case, and I don't literally mean shoot people, sorry.
If you're listening, this is a reference to the movie Speed. Okay.
People in Canada, I know you're mad at me. In this case, the hostage is federal employees.
And you've spent six weeks being like, what are you fucking doing to our government? You're firing all these people. It's horrible.
And then you turn around and you're like, sorry, but we've got to go because we need the chaos. That's shooting the hostage.
But in terms of the politics, I actually think you're right, which is, I mean, the real criticism of Trump right now is that everything is just so chaotic. And that just extends from the government to the economy to world fairs.
And this doesn't help matters. But the hostage is pretty pricey.
Yeah. All right.
So I'm a no. I think it's tough.
I think it's tougher than it seems. You want to raw dog this thing, basically.
I do want to raw dog this thing. And I got to tell you, it's interesting.
It's not just one last thing on this because people are so fucking sick of culture talk i'm sure listening but um i i've spoken to two house democrats who are like not tim like not like the flamethrowers like listeners probably haven't even heard of either of them honestly um normal middle of the caucus house democrats who are pretty you know just institutionalist type people and I was put to both of them yesterday what would you do if you're in the Senate they're like fuck it no and it's easy for them to say but I'm just saying I think that's telling you if the voters are mad there's frustration not just among the voters you've talked me into it let's it all right have you ever wanted to learn more about wine but can't figure out where to start or when you do start it just feels like too much our next partner naked wines has changed the game for learning about wine without having to take a whole class about it this podcast is sponsored by naked wines naked wines is a service that directly connects you to the world's finest independent winemakers so you can get award-winning wine delivered straight to your door. Use our code THEBULWARK for both the code and password at nakedwines.com and get their incredible deal of six bottles for just $39.99.
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Thank you. Pete Buttigieg not running for Senate in Michigan.
There's an interesting, though, line and why in the Politico story. I can't remember the reporter that wrote that, but it wasn't exclusive.
And they wrote that it was based on a belief that it would be exceedingly difficult to run successive campaigns in 2026 and 2028. would the 2028 campaign do so you're not supposed to admit that you're running for president like that isn't the rule that you can't you know show any ambition whatsoever there are no rules anyway in trump 2.0 so pete's running for president gotcha seems like it seems like pete's running for president i'm just uh i just you know we shouldn't do 2028 hot stove in March 2025, so I just want three sentences from you on his liability.
We've had three 2028 hot stove items in the past 24 hours. What are the other ones? Rom.
And Bannon. And Bannon.
Bannon. All three reported by Politico.
Okay. Appropriate on brand.
I worked for Politico. How many sentences?

Two sentences on this.

Is he viable as a 2028 person?

Oh, God.

Do we really have to do this?

Just two sentences.

The world is fucking falling apart.

I know.

It's on two sentences.

Is he viable?

Sure.

I don't know.

I love Pete.

I like Pete.

I think, you know, ultimately, really, who knows what the world looks like.

But, you know, young, technocratic, smart, can talk. Yeah.
Here's this big challenge for the next three years. He's gay.
I don't know if that's a good thing or bad. It's a little bit of a challenge.
We love and honor the gays here on this podcast, of course. The main challenge is the Democrats' big problem is with working class people and people don't pay that close of attention to politics.
Does being able to speak Norwegian help with those voters? I don't know. There was a gag.
I forget who said it. It's like the old line in primary politics is there's always somebody in the beer lane and the wine lane.
And Pete was running in the champagne lane. Highest education voters.
And so the Democrats are struggling at the beer lane,

I don't know.

I think it's going to be tough to run for 2020 in the champagne lane.

He's more of like a craft cocktail lane.

I love myself a craft cocktail.

Exactly.

Exactly.

There it is.

Who the hell knows.

He's got the Boulevardier crowd.

All right.

Who the hell knows what 2028 looks like.

All right.

We're going to get serious.

I've ignored the story this week to the dismay of some listeners. Yeah, too hot.
Well, also, there's just fucking a lot happening. But I shouldn't have ignored it.
JBL wrote a great triad on it, and that's the – Mona's got a great piece on it this morning, too. I'm about to read from it.
Mahmoud Khalil, am I pronouncing his name right? He's a prominent Palestinian activist. He was organizing one of the main Columbia University protests after Israel started attacking Gaza after Hamas attacked Israel.
He's an ICE detention facility right now in my home state of Louisiana. And he just had a procedural hearing in New York, and the result was he's still in detention in Louisiana.
Mona Charan writes this morning for The Bulwark. I think this sums it up pretty good.
This is the lead. Mahmoud Khalil could have been cooked up in a lab to offend, no worse, to disgust me.
And yet, despite temptation, I cannot endorse what the Trump administration is doing to him. What do you think about what's happened with Mahmoud Khalil? I think Moana summarized it pretty well.

I find myself increasingly disturbed by this story.

The facts are Mahmoud Khalil is a green card holder.

He's not a citizen, but he has some rights.

His wife is a citizen. She's eight months pregnant.
What was done to him actually is totally legal. Let's just, I've looked into this.
No, no. Totally legal? Isn't it? No, the Secretary of State has incredible, and this is the problem.
The problem is the law. The secretary has incredible discretion to do things like this.

And I just want to be clear about that.

Even though that is legal, as I read law, if you are not bothered by the idea that the government will come in to a college campus, detain someone for an association in speech they don't like, and then force deportation proceedings against that person, then frankly, you should not hold yourself up as someone who believes in free speech, because that is a very chilling use of government authority. The other side of it is that if you believe that Mahmoud Khalil is a despicable human being who shouldn't be having the associations he does with the Columbia University Apartheid Divest movement, if you believe that everything he stands for is abhorrent, maybe the worst thing to do is what you're doing right now, which is you're turning him into essentially a martyr.
And the Trump administration is acting both grotesquely, in my opinion, and idiotically because they're going to turn this guy into a martyr. And it betrays a sort of insecurity on their part, as I see it.
Like if you can't handle- Maybe a malice. A malice and an insecurity.
If you can't handle this guy on a college campus and just figure out a way to just argue with him and make him insignificant, if you're threatened by this, then you're not as strong as you're portrayed to be. That's how I come down on this thing.
I want to go to the law. Here's the law with regards to a green-colored holder.
It says this. An alien whose presence or activities in the United States, the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States to be deported.
It goes on to say, though, that they should not be deported for actions that would be lawful within the United States unless the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien's presence would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.
That's it. I mean, if you read that, and again, I've talked to some immigration people on this, it's so vague and it's so open-ended that essentially Mark Roby just needs to say, I've made a determination.
And in this case, there was a lot of, initially it was like, well, did ICE do this? And then they were like, no, no, no, no, no. Marco Rubio did this, and they did that deliberately.
And then on top of that, and I think you pointed to this, they gave a quote to the free press, I want to say, where they were like, we didn't determine that he broke any laws. Right.
And everyone was like, holy shit. Like, what the? And they didn't have to.
They didn't have to. And the problem is that's a really dangerous law or lack of laws, I should say.
No. I think it's clearly grotesque.
It's clearly chilling. It's also, again, like, these weren't active kind of protests, right? It also doesn't even make – like even if you agree – like even if we're in the middle of the – if you're in the middle of the Columbia protests, you're worried it's going to expand.
You know what I mean? Like but there's no fig leaf even here. Like this is like literally just we are going to punish somebody.
We want to send a signal that this type of speech is not welcome here. So the issue here is they had these encampments.
They were intimidating Jewish students. And the university was not doing a good enough job making sure that those Jewish students didn't feel harassed or threatened.
And I understand that. There are multiple ways to effectuate a different outcome than to take someone literally off the campus and then move them across the country to an ICE detention center.
It's just to say this. It's just ludicrous to send this fucking person to Louisiana to put them in an ICE detention center.
Even if you agree, even if you're in the whatever, radical, if you're in the MAGA right wing of this and you're like, this guy should be kicked out. I'm very happy that he shouldn't have a green card anymore.
Putting him in an ICE detention center across the country is a ridiculous thing to do. And again, it's an effort to intimidate.
It's an effort to silence. It's an effort to punish this person.
And police political action. And I get it.
And look, the thing is he's an easy target, right? Like you and I are probably on a 30 side of a 30-70 issue because here's a guy who's saying things that are essentially sympathetic to the Hamas cause. And I'm not sympathetic to Hamas, obviously.
This is a fight I'm sure they chose. But if you believe in free speech, the test of it is not in easy cases.
The test of it is in hard cases. And you have to be willing to say, this guy has abhorrent views.
I disagree with them.

I find them repulsive. He needs to be disciplined by the school, but he has the right to speech, and he has the right to protest, and I will not impede on that right.
And what they've done is the exact opposite. They've used the instruments of the state to go onto a college campus, the so-called campus culture warriors or anti-campus cancel culture.

And they've used the instruments of the state to go onto a college campus the so-called campus culture warriors or anti-campus cancel culture yeah and they've done gone and done it and it's crazy to me i've been heartened i guess by a few mega figures who've been like this is too much like ann culture well they're my yeah she might have some different motivations that's true she's not that great on the jew. That's a good point.
But, you know, and I think – I'm more interested. I actually don't care about the MAGA figures.
I'm more interested in the Rogans and my boy Theo Vaughn and, like, all the other free speech gut bros out in, you know, California that were acting like – like the fact that they could not say faggots. Ben Shapiro made a big deal about getting protested at college campuses when he was invited to do speeches and how his speeches were canceled because the insecure, whatever you want to call them, students on the school didn't like hearing bad things from him yeah where's he yeah it goes both ways buddy and they all just acted like the the biggest threat to free speech in the world is if a social media platform like deleted their post where they you know called somebody a fucking slur right like that like and that that was this big threat to free speech it's a big threat to free speech like they couldn't post about their fucking horse pills that they pretended were fixing covid nobody came to their door while their wife was pregnant and was like oh we're gonna take you away and send you to louisiana of all places of all fucking places like nobody did that to any like the the biden

administration with which their great crime was like some mid-level biden staffer emailing facebook being like could you kindly take down this post that has totally wrong information about covid that was the threat to free speech that like caused this entire movement of supposed free speech warriors to like rise up and pro and and and mark zuckerberg is in the white house this is a new era of free speech meanwhile mark zuckerberg's fucking cutting deals with the chinese and not saying a damn thing about this guy that's in prison so anyway i actually just to be candid just to close the loop on this i have no idea what this person has actually said so i don't really want to weigh in on what kind of person he is. The protests that he was organizing had some signs and had some people involved in them that were fucking despicable.
I don't know. My point is it doesn't matter.
At least with regards to the detention of this person. I would say the only thing I would say is if you believed that he was materially supporting Hamas, for instance, or that he was pushing her, then bring it up in a different venue and file some sort of lawsuit against the guy for supporting terrorism.
Do that. Yeah.
If they have, you know, whatever. If there's some evidence that he was communicating with organizers on the ground in Gaza that are Hamas.
Charge him. Yeah.
Charge him. Or then just strip his green card, right? Like I'm – again, the one area where this is like – there really isn't any area where this is gray.
But like the one area that makes it complicated is that, again, he's like born in Syria. He's a Syrian, Palestinian, Algerian citizen.
The British gave him security clearance for some reason. I couldn't quite figure out why.
And, and so it's like, okay, if you have somebody like that, that has a green card, that's here legally, that is communicating with a foreign terrorist group. And like the, and the foreign terrorist group wants him to do the protests here and wants them to be violent or whatever, because they think that helps their PR aims, then fucking take his green card and he can go home to Syria or Algeria or wherever he lived most recently.
I would be totally fine with that. That is not what this is.
No, and they're not asserting that.

And that's the issue that people have is that if you have something that you can charge them with,

then charge them with it.

But they haven't.

We walked into the office this morning, and you know it's a Sarah Longwell office

when at the front there there's a Wall Street Journal just kind of sitting there.

It's just a free Wall Street Journal at the front.

Wow.

So I picked that up, looked at a couple headlines headlines okay ceo frustrations with trump over trade mount in private in private uh here's another here's another one american consumers have had a lot to fret about so far this year between never-ending tariff headlines stubborn inflation and fresh fears about a recession these concerns seem to be hitting spending by both rich and poor across necessities and luxuries all at once. So consumer confidence is down.
Consumer spending is down. CEO frustrations are up in private.
Seems bad. Yeah.
We're good, depending on how you look at it. Oh, yeah.
Shoot the hostage. Accelerationism.
It's not good. But it's sort of like hilarious to me in a sick, twisted way that they're like befuddled that this could possibly happen.
The most predictable thing in the world happened, happened? You're doing the tariffs? I didn't expect the tariffs. The man that bankrupted 13 companies is bankrupting America? Yeah, it's like, what? You didn't say anything about tariffs.
And then he's so – it's so chaotic. Every day is like a different – and it's not – he's treating it like a reality show.
And I know like Howard Lutnick's out there like the sort of emcee of the reality show. Tune in next week.
But it's not fun or productive or really particularly good for the country and you know you've made this point and i think it's the right one which is like if the tariffs were so fucking good do them like just let them go let it rip like why do we keep pulling back like let's just let it we have kind of a lot of them out there it's been so chaotic i can't keep track of them i know it's hard. It's hard to keep track of them.
Which ones have we put? Are we tariffing people right now? We're tariffing Europe. Okay, yeah.
On steel and aluminum. Good.
Get them. And they're tariffing us back.
Good. We have tariffs on China, which is kind of a bipartisan issue.
But that is – but here's the thing. The rate, it's at a higher number than during the Trump first term.
Okay. So like – but we kept the tariffs from the Trump first term

because Biden didn't get rid of them.

And now we've added on top of that a 20% tariff,

which is greater than the one from the first term.

So very significant tariffs on China, some on the EU,

and a lot of uncertainty with the Canada-Mexico stuff.

I don't know.

I say go further.

Let's just tariff everybody.

I do too, and he's fucking backed into a corner. My favorite story about all this so far has been Jamie Dimon.
I hate these fucking guys so much. These guys, I hate them worse than the MAGA people.
Give me 435 Steve Bannon's in the Congress over fucking one Jamie Dimon. You have a soft spot for Bannon.
Sure, that's a good point. Give me 435 Candace.
No, no, no, no. Give me 435.
I've got to think about who it would be. Alright, maybe not.
But at least the MAGA people are genuine. Diamond, this has kind of gotten missed because Diamond's suck up to the Trump administration was not quite as like, you know, totally fawning as all the tech bros.
But sometime in January after the inauguration, he's like, everybody's got to calm down about the tariffs. Oh, right.
You know, he did a whole like, we can, you know, Scott Besson's in there. People need to chill out.
The economy did great the first time under Trump. America is resilient.
We got all of this. We're in good hands here, everybody.
Calm down. It was yesterday, I believe, or maybe two days ago, during the earnings call.
Diamond's like, we're seeing some pretty big issues with the tariffs as far as the impact on the business. And the banking sector is going to be the one that gets hit the worst.
And from an accelerationism perspective, don't hate it. Let it rip.
Scott Besson didn't stop all this? Scott Besson is a disaster. Scott Besson has been a disaster.
I'm amazed at how ineffectual. The person that has looked the best and the missus.
Bring them back. I forgot her name.
What was her name? Louise Linton. Bring back Louise.
What's she up to? They're going to Fort Knox to check the gold. She was there.
The white gloves holding the money. I miss her.
Bring backise lindon mnuchin was was pretty good okay um i do have sympathy for the public sector employees i want to grab you you uh started a tip line for us um and i want to just get some you know what you've been hearing on the tip line for people though that were not aware of the tip line what is it again oh god the ballpark.com slash. It's thebolark.com slash tips.
I knew that. I was just setting you up.
I forget it every time, but it's there. And we've been hearing from a lot of public sector employees and also private sector employees whose businesses are being affected by this because we live in a fucking complex economy these days.
We can't roll things back to the 1850s. Yeah, the Puma thing was really a telling thing.
And just so people understand, Puma, the shoe wear, athletic wear company, cutting 500 jobs globally. And one of the decks that we saw for the reasons why had to do with what they called Hispanic hibernation, just basically Hispanics completely freaked out about the deportations and literally not going out and walking around and shopping.
And that was what they said. The tip line's been really...
Also the tariffs they mentioned. They did mention the tariffs.
Yeah, so that goes without saying. The tip line's been really incredible.
And for those who've written in, thank you. You've helped us tell some

really good stories. Look, I think the 30,000 foot takeaway from the tip line is this.
There's been an incredible trauma inflicted upon people. And every day we get stories of like really tragic stories, honestly, of people being like, you know, I'm a vet.
I've worked for, you know, the Department of Veteran Affairs or DOD or whatever for, you know, two decades.

My wife's also a government employee. She's a park ranger or whatever.
We both lost our jobs. And, like, what am I going to do? What can I do? Like, there's no recourse.
It was just that. Then we get, like, the ridiculous stuff, which is, like, we got a tip the other day.
I was like, here's a memo that Pam Bondi just issued.

This is a real thing.

It was a memo from the desk of the attorney general.

And people got it were like, oh, boy, this has got to be serious.

And it was like, following President Trump's bold action,

we will be outlawing paper straws at the DOJ.

I was like, are you fucking serious?

No, no, it was.

It announced their new task force, Just Doge. Oh, yeah.
Just Doge. That was one that came in yesterday.
It was like, we are working with Doge, and we've created a task force, Justice Doge, but we're calling it Just Doge. And the person who sent me was like, these fucking classes.
They must spend so much time on this stuff. You've also gotten a lot from the research community.
Because that's a lot. That's a little less of a one-to-one than somebody who's losing their job.
But it's like, you know, man, if you're doing research for. Oh, this is tragic.
Yeah. I mean, basically, people who either work at NIH or at universities who depend on NIH funding.
And it is just like the pullback is unreal. And we're going to.
This is one of those things where you know it's happening, but five years down the line, it's going to be really apparent because universities have basically stopped hiring big ones because they just don't know if these indirect cost caps are going to come in. And then the NIH people are basically being forced to wait on whether their research grants are going to be even considered because there's been a communication pause.
So we get these tips and people are just saying, there's supposed to be a review session for my grant, it just got canceled, check out this website, and I don't know if I can just subsist on no money for the next three months until they consider it. These are the best and the brightest in our country trying to do great scientific research.
They need the federal government because the private sector won't fund this type of stuff. It's long shot success rates, but important to take those shots.
And they're just going to have to figure out whether to even leave the field or try to find some other country that might fund them. Yeah.
I had two tips recently. One came from the tip line, which I have to anonymize, but they were doing healthy growing of local produce and no pesticides all that sort of stuff and selling it to the schools part of a program where instead of getting your fruits and veggies from some fucking big truck that comes from the other side of the country it's like a local farmer does it you would think this would be in the maha yeah it's very mile house yeah this would be about as maha as you get but no no maha is going to steak and shake and having beef tallow fries and a coke we have a while we cut the funding for the dudes and dudettes that are that are growing local organic produce and giving it to the school children that's what they're fucking.
That's number one. Number two is...
That's incredible. That's so stupid.
Why are we doing that? It's so stupid. Here's the other one.
This was not from the tip line. This was from...
I'm just going to... You're going to laugh at me.
This was unintentional. I did not mean to be nosy.
Everybody has to be careful on a plane. I'm on the plane here last night.
Listening to your MAGA podcast. I'm listening to Vannon.
Listening to Patrick Bet David. And I turn left and I look at this guy at his computer.
I didn't mean to read his computer, but the MAGA, the word MAGA just jumped out at me. And so I was like, okay.
So I did the thing you're not supposed to do, which is like I read the text that he was sending on this computer. And it was some guy that works for an organization coming to D.C.
to beg for money. And the text said basically, I mean, I didn't quote it because I didn't ask permission to look at his computer.
But it was essentially, I found a woman that works for us with a southern accent who I think will better appeal to the MAGA types that we're going to need to convince to give us the funding. And it's just like, this shit is happening everywhere.
You know what I mean? That is dystopia. She fits the part.

She fits the part.

Oh, my God. We found a blonde from Alabama.

Speaking of Alabama, I told people that we'd have fun at the end.

That wasn't fun?

With the podcast.

We're not done?

Real fun.

Oh, no, we're not done.

All right.

We've got.

Wait, can I just say about Steak and Shake?

Yeah.

We hired Will Sommer.

If people don't know Will, he's great.

He was on the pod this week. Oh, yeah, yeah, of course.
He was on Tuesday's pod. Don't pretend like you.
I saw a clip of it. He's got a hilarious steak and shake story coming for Friday's Morning Shots.
It's so good. I can't give it all away, but it's really good.
Subscribe to boy.com. We got some new steak and shake content.
This has been brutal. Since you didn't listen to Tuesday's pod, I can repeat it to you.
This has been brutal for me because I grew up in St. Louis.
I moved to Denver in middle school. Steak and Shake was like our celebratory meal.
And I got a good report card. Not really.
But still, I have like nostalgic memories. So it hurts.
Okay. Fine.
We got to close the pod. I'm in trouble.
We're going to be late um we have a potpourri of tommy tuberville clips oh yes we're gonna listen to three tommy tuberville all of them are from from yesterday okay this is just a three three clips from a single interview i mean this guy is touching all the bases before you did before i'm excited for this but what you should have done is you should have just read it to me and said, guess the real Tommy Tupperville. We are going to respond to each one at a time and do a brief reaction to each clip, and then I'm going to have you rank which one's best to worst, or the most Tommy to the least Tommy.
Okay, most to the least. Okay, let's do it.
But when it comes to protesters, we've got to make sure we treat all of them the same. Send them to jail.
Free speech is great, but hateful, hate, free speech is not what we need in these universities. And they don't need to be doing things that they're preaching from Hamas about anti-sentimentism.
We got to treat all protesters the same. Send them to jail.
Send them to jail. Send them all to jail.
All right. And then the next sentence, the next thing is, I believe in free speech.
Do you know what words mean? Words have meaning. Antonin Scalia wrote about this.
This is when conservatives were conservative. Words have meaning.
Yeah, okay. Let's play the second one.
I'm going to rank these. Send to jail is a great line.
People don't realize and understand is every state has their own Department of Education. It's not like we're not going to have a department of education, but every state, you know, I'm from the South.
We have a different way of life in terms of education. We educate our kids in different curriculums.
Everybody should do their own thing. Okay.
Now, I just, to put a point on that one, in the South, we educate our kids on different curriculums. Everybody should do their own thing.
There's a generous way to interpret that, and then there'd be a less generous. Very ungenerous.
There'd be a very ungenerous way about the different groups that get educated in different segments. We have different curriculums for different people.
Tommy. In the South.
So that's the education plan. Let's listen to number three.
And Trump's tariffs making America great again. It's a great strategy.
If somebody's finally doing something out of the White House, President Trump, that is, that says you have to take an action in another time. Is that an eagle? Yeah.
No pain, no gain. That's what we used to tell our football players.
There's going to be some pain with tariffs. But tariffs got us back as the strongest economy in the world when President Trump was in the first time.
He knows what he's doing. No pain, no gain.
He knows what he's doing. Does he know what he's doing? I don't think so.
I don't think he knows what he's doing. Sam, what do you think? I mean, the most Tommy.
The most Tommy's obviously sent them all to Jake. I can't really top that.

The no pain, no gain.

That's Auburn Tommy.

Yeah, that's real.

No pain, no gain is so cliched.

I got to go.

I got to think that's a lot.

The separate but equal schools.

The separate but equal schools.

The sort of, we had it really good back in the 50s when we had our own curriculums.

Yeah, that was real.

That's real South Tommy right there.

This guy, I mean, he's sort of a gem in a way, but not maybe meant for the Senate. I mean, send them all to jail would have been a more funny and less alarming quote if it wasn't for the fact that we're sending protesters to jail.
Right, exactly. But he's not enough.
We got to treat them all equally. Send them all to jail.
I hope that Glenn Greenwald. I think Tommy also probably appreciated the J6 Bardens, too.
Yeah. Send those people back from jail.
I hope the Glenn Greenwalds and the other big free speech warriors are happy about what they got, what they signed up for. Who could have predicted this? Last thing.
Yeah. That was supposed to be the last thing.
But you're in real time with Bill Maher this weekend. I am.
Big, have on that before you have how many times like seven you haven't watched him i don't know well this makes up for me not seeing how many times this will be my fourth fourth time how'd you how'd you do the other three times first time i was super nervous uh and it's nervous it's nerve-wracking yeah um and and uh it showed um i do kind of have a memory of a sweaty Sam. A sweaty Sam? I was on Bill Maher somewhere.
Oh, boy, Bill. I was working on my jokes, didn't really land.
And then the second and third time was good. Actually, one of the times I was on with Bill Crystal, and I think that was the second time, and we came out there, and Bill Maher was doing this big dialogue about Dick Cheney and how terrible Dick Cheney was.
And then he came to the panel, and I was like, that really hurt Bill Kristol's feelings. And we went from there.
I don't know if Bill Kristol remembers that. And then the third time, there was this weird joke, and I remember this very well.
He had some monologue about how a bee ejaculating into a flower, and it was just grotesque. And we just kind of ruminated on that for a while.
And I was like, this show is different. It's a different show.
It's hard to prepare for. You have, you're going to have a big job though.
That's putting any pressure on you for number four. Yeah, because Bill and your co-panelist Batya.
Batya. Batya is these are very these are people that speaking of free of free speech well we're going to be talking about big free speech advocate bachia was a big it was a trump supporter and a big free speech advocate free there were basically two things that really motivate bachia she is upset about the democrats assault on free speech and she also thinks that elite democrats just don't care about the working man anymore do not not care about the working people.
And so, you know, sometimes you play it a little cool for school, but you've got to kind of buck up here because you've got to fucking, you've got to go to war. It's like, oh, yeah? Oh, yeah? Well, how's the working man's president? How's the free speech president doing, botcha? How's the working man free speech president? Are people's paychecks going further? Are we building things here? You want me to adopt your personality for Bill Maher.
No. I just want you to step.
You want me to have a little more verve, a little more punch. Yeah, I just want you to take it to work.
I have my own ways of doing these things. Okay, have you prepped any lines? No own uh ways of doing these okay have you prepped any lines do you want to run any lines right now i was told there's a piece of advice that someone told me uh which is if you prep lines for that show you'll you'll fail yeah okay all right so we'll do we're gonna do one role pleasure okay i'm botcha you're botcha sam these liberal elites they just don't it.
They just don't get it. All they care about now is just the deep state.
It's Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C.
is where all the money is. The richest people in the world are all in McLean, and they're all out there, and they're all going to each other's parties, drinking Cosmos, and they don't care about real people anymore.
Correct. You better do better than that.
You better do better than that. Sam Stein.
Everybody else. What day is today? It's Thursday.
I got to do this podcast again tomorrow. Oh, it might be out a little late tomorrow because my daughter is Hermes in the school play.
Oh, nice. So we'll be taping the play or I'll be going to the play.
I was running lines with her just like I was with you. She did better than you.
I hope so. There's a little timidity

and I'm trying to turn her into

the biggest ham in the play.

That's going to be amazing.

We'll see how it goes.

Congratulations.

Everybody else, stick around.

If it's a little late tomorrow, that's okay.

You can wait an hour for me.

Up next in segment two, we've got Congressman Jimmy Gomez

from California. Stick around for that.
All right, and we're back. He's representing California's 34th district on the east side of LA.

It's Congressman Jimmy Gomez.

Good to meet you.

How are you doing, Congressman?

Nice to meet you.

I'm doing well.

You know, I've noticed on social media you've been getting a little spicy out there,

and I'm looking for more spice from the Dems.

And so I'm just wondering, biggest picture, what's your take on the kind of best messaging

and strategy right now for the party pushing back on Trump and Musk? I think the best messaging is an economic message. This guy is making things more expensive out across the country when it comes to grocery prices, when it comes to housing prices, when it comes to anything you can think of.
He's just making it worse. So I think we need to stick to that message.
This is a guy who said he was going to lower grocery prices on day one, and he hasn't done that. He's actually made things worse.
So I tell people you've got to focus on where people are at, and that's that people are still struggling. Inflation prices, although there were reported that they came in lower, but people don't have confidence.
That's why consumer confidence is down. Prices are up.
The economic outlook is you're seeing a big flashing red light of a potential recession. So we got to talk about where people are at.
That's groceries. That's childcare.
That's just the bread and butter stuff. And we have to stay focused.
Right now, people are all. That's groceries, that's child care, that's just the bread and butter stuff.

And we have to stay focused. Right now, people are all over the place, but we always have to

take it back to an economic message, plain and simple. And people are pissed because,

you know, if you're working multiple jobs to make ends meet and this guy is making it harder,

of course they're going to be angry because there's uncertainty, they're scared, they have to take care of their kids. They have to take care of their parents.
So economic message all the way. I'm with you on an economic message being powerful and compelling.
And frankly, it was an issue for the Dems in the last election. That said, sometimes it's hard to break through, right? Just like talking about kitchen table issues.
So, I mean, how can you talk about it in a way that gets through to people? Is it a contrast with Musk? Is it, I don't know, you tell me. Yeah, partly first is Democrats have to be relatable, right? Like, people have to know you're a person.
Are you a person? I'm a person. And I'm a working class person.
You know, my background is, you know, kid of immigrants, fucking went to a community college, worked shitty jobs, you that. People have to feel that.
And I've been recording on social media more videos about just grocery shopping because I help with the grocery shopping every week to show people, hey, I know what's going on because I see it every day. I don't have to read the statistics.
I don't have to read the economic indicators. I can tell you because I see people in the grocery store look comparison shopping.
You know, like, oh, is this cheaper or is this cheaper? How can I make the dollar stretch? And Democrats are sometimes terrible at really kind of being relatable. And that's where people need to focus.
but here's the thing, be authentic like if you're not comfortable doing the Kendrick Lamar

viral dance, don't do it

if you're a bookworm, be the bookworm. If you're the person that throws the F-bomb once in a while, do that.
But be relatable, especially when it comes to how working people are struggling to get by. And that breaks through.
Yeah. What were the shitty jobs you did? what didn't i do uh when i was growing up i had a couple paper routes who didn't though i uh mowed lawns in high school i worked at a grocery store and i was handed like they're like they handed me to the meat department to clean up the meat department so my one of my jobs was to break down all the equipment

scrape all the all the beef and all the meat and put it into scrape it into these big giant bone barrels and then these bone barrels were sold to i don't know if it was hot dog companies or or dog they're sold to somebody but it's just all this the scraps of the meat and then i would spray everything down. So every day I would leave smelling like hot, putrid beef.
So that was one of my terrible jobs. That's enough to make me a vegetarian there, Congressman.
Back to the Elon thing in the Congress. And I do think I hear you on the kitchen table stuff.
They're giving you a lot of opportunity by the fact that Trump, selling the richest man in the world's car on the lawn there. They want to extend the tax cuts for people, even if they're making a billion dollars.
Is there either a policy or just rhetorical contrast there, you know, with using Elon as a peg? Oh, no, there's a huge contrast. And that's kind of what we have to talk about it.
Make it relatable, though, and then then talk about policy because if they can't relate to you they they close down uh the public closes their ears they don't want to pay attention if they feel like oh you get it then you can talk about that and there's a huge contrast right the tax cuts that they want to give to the billionaires and the ultra wealthy at the expense of medicaid you know healthcare and food assistance, that kind of stuff. Oh, yeah.
And Trump, when it comes to only listening to people who are billionaires, he doesn't listen to the person on the street. He listens to the CEO of a car company who tells him, hey, you're going to cost this $20 billion over 10 years if you go along with these tariffs.
So that's the contrast, that he doesn't listen to the average person or the working man and woman. He listens to billionaires.
And then it doesn't matter if it even goes against his own values. You brought up selling the Teslas on the White House lawn.
Who do they think buys Teslas? It's not the drill baby drill crowd or the MAGA crowd. It's the left who cares about climate change.
It is insane about everything kind of he's doing, but the contrast is there. It's a billionaire establishment that's taking root in DC, and the people that are going to pay for it are doctors, firefighters, working men and women, people that clean your streets, take care of your kids.
So we've got to make it stick, but we also have to meet people where they're at. You said this with the budget you voted against.
So we're taping this on Wednesday because I'm headed to D.C. So some of the Senate budget negotiations might have changed by the time this airs Thursday.
But you wrote, House Republicans' temporary funding bill hurts the economy, veterans, families, and gives Trump and Elon unchecked power to impose dumb tariffs, raising prices for everyone. I'm a no.
Obviously, this passed with only one Democratic vote. This heads to the Senate.
Because of the way the Senate works, they're going to need seven Democrats if they want to pass it. What do you say to your colleagues in the Senate as they're looking at this shit sandwich that they sent across Capitol Hill? They got to man up, right? Stop just talking the talk about, oh, I'm going to oppose Musk and Trump.
The way you do it is do you vote no or not? Do you actually use the only power you have? We all know that the Senate is a supermajority and they need two-thirds vote. So if those senators capitulate, they're setting up the long play for the Republicans to pass their massive tax cut.
That's what it's about. Their number one priority is a massive tax cut that cuts taxes for the rich, the ultra wealthy, the billionaires, the corporations, while gutting a lot of our programs that people rely on.
This CR sets up that play. And if they don't stop them now, it makes it easier for them to score a touchdown against the American people.
What do you say to the Democrats and others like, you know, watchers that are worried about this and say that if the Democrats oppose this in the Senate, leads to a government shutdown, that allows Elon Musk and Russ vote to continue to run roughshod over the government and the government shutdown is going to cause real pain for people. Maybe the Democrats take some blame.
I wouldn't give the Democrats any blame, but unfortunately, the Bullock podcast doesn't get to decide who's to blame. There are other people out there.
So what do you say to people that are worried about that, about both the real pain that a shutdown would cause and also the political pain potentially for Democrats? These are legislative terrorists. And when you give them to them once, they're going to keep doing it over and over and over again.

The ransom right now is you don't do what we say and cut this funding, we're going to shut down the government.

But that ransom gets higher and higher and higher.

And in order to basically break that, you have to show them that if they want to pass it, they have to do it on their own votes. And if they can't do it on their own votes, especially when it comes to the Senate, they have to negotiate.
But this is for a long-term direction of our country. And if we don't stop them now, it gets harder and harder down the line.
I'm with you on that. I don't know, though.
I think that there's going to be some weak knees over there in the Senate. We'll see how it goes.
It is the Senate. I wanted to ask you about Democrat struggles with

Hispanic voters there in the Senate. We'll see how it goes.
It is the Senate.

I wanted to ask you about Democrats

struggles with Hispanic voters

in particular, but also Asian voters. Your district

is a huge majority, Hispanic

and Asian voters. I think it's only like 10%

white voters. Harris lost

13 points

versus Biden on net

in your district.

Obviously, she still won overwhelmingly. It's LA, but that's a huge drop, you know, and, you know, if you kind of project that out across the country, it explains a lot of, you know, why Trump won.
And, and I think that's a big red flag for Democrats. I mean, I hear what you say about being relatable, but are there policy things like what you're in the district.
What is it that would have caused the Democrats to lose such ground with mostly Hispanic, Asian, and other voters of color? Great question. This has been occurring over numerous cycles.
I know my consultant and different people, including myself, tried to warn the Democratic Party, you're losing Latinos, you're losing minorities, you need to start talking about these issues. But people always think, oh, they're part of our base, they're part of our base.
But when you stop talking to people about the issues that are first and foremost on their mind, you lose them. And when it comes to Latinos, when it comes to, I would say, even working class whites, it's a lot about affordability.
We weren't really doing anything when it came to housing issues. We weren't doing anything to child care.
And that's what they care about. They care about, like, these folks, I would have consultants at the same time show me polling and they're like, hey, Latinos care about climate change.
And I would have to remind them all, yes, they care about climate change, and they're

glad we're doing it, but it's not the main issue that they're going to vote on. Not if it means they're paying 20 more bucks at the pump every time they go.
Yeah, exactly. So it's like, I've had this discussion with consultants.
Oh, they declare about pro-choice, so we're just going to do one message about being pro-choice, And I'm like, yes, but their first issue is my kid is not going to be able to buy a house in the same community that I live in. We can't afford rent.
We're barely making it, especially when it comes to groceries. You have to talk about issues that they care about first, right? And it's not saying that they don't care about the environment.
Latinos are some of the most pro-environment people around, right? You know, they have a sour cream jar with chili in it, right? They use stuff over and over and over again. It's in our nature when it comes to being pro-environment.
But when people are struggling and you're not talking about that, that's when you lose them.

And that's where I'm like, you can do it all.

You can still fight for the environment, protect the women's right to choose. But when you talk to the Latino community or communities are struggling, you got to say, okay, what's the issue that's first and foremost on your mind? It's a hierarchy of need, right? It's like, if I can't afford food, I don't have a place to live, then this other stuff, I can't focus on that.
So the policies that I want to do, housing and childcare, these two pillars. And economists have said that they're costing so much that they're bending down the GDP growth of our economy, right? It's bending it down.
This was last year. Trump is now doing more damage than those costs.
But if you want to kind of tackle the economy and affordability issues, you got to do that. Housing is now, Americans are rent burdened across the board, 30% of income towards rent.
Childcare, 26%. And this is based on a pre-tax income.
So you have 60% of a family's income going to two things. Well, shit, no wonder why they can't get by.
So we have to have an agenda that meets the moment. And that agenda is creating a housing boom that we haven't seen since World War II, when the troops were coming home.
We're building too slow, too small, and too expensive. We got to break out of that.
So we got to tackle these problems at the federal level, but we also have to tackle it in the blue cities and the blue states that make building and construction too slow, too small, and too expensive. So we have to provide that message because people care about housing and they care about raising their kids.
And guess where most of working class people have their wealth? In their home. You're speaking my language on this stuff.
I mean, I'm hooting you from the cheap seats on getting rid of red tape, making it easier to build, building more. I'm with you on all that.
And I think that makes a big difference. There are other folks there though that would say that that sure the economic stuff has hurt democrats but also some of these cultural issues the democrats went you know a little overboard on the left whether it's immigration whether it's crime whether it's lgbtq i mean i'm i'm gay i'm with the democrats on most of these uh most of these issues maybe not all of them some of the crime stuff got a little kooky butooky.
But what do you say to that, that maybe it's less about the economic stuff and more about some of the cultural issues where Democrats maybe got a little out of step with some of the working class voters?

No, when it comes to LGBT issues, for me, it's personal.

I have a gay brother.

When he came out, my mom was not a hardcore Catholic, wasn't, wasn't very accepting time. She's like, now she stays the night over at their house, right? So it's kind of like people can change.
But when people are suffering economically, the cultural arguments become more relevant. When they're not suffering economically, they become less relevant.
And at the same time, I would say in the Latino community, almost like somebody always has a gay uncle somewhere, right? My brother included. They are a welcoming community, but when you talk to that Latino community, talk to these other communities, you have to focus on the issues that are first and foremost on their mind, right? My mom, she's hardcore Catholic.
She's for choice because she remembers when in the 70s, when I was born and my brother was born, before Roe, the doctor had to ask your husband's permission if you can get your tubes tied, right? Like, they get that kind of stuff. The issues regarding cultural issues become more relevant when people are suffering economically no one's doing anything about it the fires in your district kind of is adjacent to glendale up there i'm just kind of curious how you assess what how the recovery is going and um you know whether you think how you kind of score out the blame game here as everybody's trying to figure out you know how how this got so out of hand there's recovery i'm going on but the devastation was severe like i've never seen anything i took a tour of altadena i didn't because it's the closest to my district when it comes to the the blame like oh we got to just be sober about kind of what happened and how to fix the limit you know the problems right was it not enough firefighters was it not enough water was it not like what happened and where was like that's we can do better right it's not don't blame learn let's learn about the mistakes that occurred and i would say that's just across the board when it comes to governing in democratic cities and democratic states.
Government has to work. Government has to work if you want to continue to push progressive policies.
If you flip on the switch of your light and your light doesn't come on, or you turn the faucet and the water doesn't come out.

Well, you think people are going to care that you're combining climate change? No. So good governance allows you to be more progressive.
It allows you to take bolder chances on these climate change policies, social policies. But if all of a sudden it's just a train wreck, right? If they's like, if they see their neighborhoods are less safe, they're dirtier, they're like, people don't think that necessarily the firefighters or the police officers or the water is going to get, you know, is going to work when you want it to, you're going to have bigger problems.
So the way I kind of see it, and this is what I've been, we need to restore people's faith that government can work. Because government's oftentimes the only way you can solve certain problems.
I can't afford my own fire department or police department or sanitation department or school district. What I have to, what most people have to do, we come together to form a government that works.

So it's counterintuitive, but people definitely need to refocus, refocus on making stuff work.

And then also, is it affordable?

Is it reliable?

That's first and foremost.

All right.

Lastly, I'm annoyed you got Luca.

Just wondering what the vibes are like for the Lakers fans out there. I'm a Nuggets man.
We have beat you in multiple playoffs in a row now, so I'm not scared about it, but I'm fucking annoyed. So I'm just wondering what the Lakers, you seeing more jerseys out there? What are the vibes like? No, people are excited about Luca.
I think that can caught a lot of people by surprise. So I'm kind of like the home of a lot of the teams in L.A.
I have in downtown, you have the Lakers, the Kings. You also have the Dodger Stadium.
So this might be the real golden era of sports in L.A. But I'm excited about Luca.
Dodgers are looking great. I'm like, you know, talking trash to Yankee fans.
People complain that we're buying our way to the World Series. I'm okay with that.
I mean, you kind of are. I'm okay with that.
You're a capitalist. They say the Democrats are socialists.
You're a capitalist, man. If we get you a World Series and if money can do it, you'll do it.
I like that. You've got to win.
Here's the thing. Winning is good.
If you win, you can get to do more things. It's something that applies to sports as it applies to politics.
When you're hot, bet big. When you're cool, pull back.
And we need to get on a hot streak. So that's what i'm pushing but yeah my dodgers uh the lakers and then i think my my wife was telling me that we just required somebody for the the rams that's looking good so we're looking good all right well winning is good nuggets we'll see in the playoffs again this year nuggets in five uh it'll be uh It'll be painful.
But unfortunately, Luke will be there for decades.

He'll probably get us once.

Thanks so much.

Good to meet you.

Congressman Jimmy Gomez.

Really appreciate it.

Everybody else will be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Borg Podcast.

See you all then.

Peace. Peace.

Peace.

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Peace.

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Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

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Peace.

Peace.

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Peace.

Peace.

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Peace.

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Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace. Thank you.
Such a shot I don't wanna play With the mother kids in the sun Since you left me babe It's been a long way down Yeah, you left me babe It's been a long way down But you don't know I'm gonna hurt you yet Ignorance is bliss I'm a happy idiot Waving at cards I'm gonna make my head to the wall Till I feel like nothing at all I'm a happy idiot, to keep my mind on you

I'm stuck in a daze, and I've lost my mind

I don't wanna stay, where the blades are mine

Since you left me, babe, it's been the long way mine Since you left me babe It's damn a long way down Yeah, you left me babe It's damn a long way down So I shut it off So I shut it all off So I shut it off So I shut it all off It's been a long way down But you don't know what hurt you, yeah

In the business of bliss

I'm a happy idiot

Waving at cards

I wanna make my do-off-wise

Till I feel like nothing at all.

I'm a happy idiot

to keep the blood on me.

The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.