Ruben Gallego and Zerlina Maxwell: Make Them Own It

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Speaker 4 Hello, and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
We've got a double dose today up in segment two. It's my girls are Lena Maxwell.
But first, he's a U.S.

Speaker 4 Senator representing Arizona. He was previously a U.S.
Congressman. He was deployed to Iraq in 2005 as a Marine infantryman.
His name is Senator Ruben Gallego. How you doing, Senator?

Speaker 7 Hey, good morning.

Speaker 4 Good to see you. We were talking a bit in the green room about my friend Carrie Lake.

Speaker 4 You defeated her in the election in 2024.

Speaker 7 Solidly, yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Bad news for the voice of America, maybe good news for the Senate.

Speaker 4 I wanted to ask you about that, your point about Solidly, because there were several Democrats that won in states where Trump won.

Speaker 4 But if you look at the data, it was mostly because it was people that voted for Trump and then went home. They're Trump-only voters.

Speaker 4 Your state was the one example that was different. You had about 100,000 more votes than Kamala Harris.
And so I do think that your case is kind of an interesting one to study.

Speaker 4 So I'm wondering if you've reflected on that. If you have any theories of the case, was it something about you, something about Kerry, something about Arizona?

Speaker 7 It was a combination of a lot of things. Like, look, we ran a very retail-oriented campaign to begin with.

Speaker 7 Like, we literally were going to baseball games, putting together boxing watch parties, rodeos, reaching out to Latino men, talking, you know, to everyone, talking to Republicans, going to rural Arizona.

Speaker 7 I also think we actually were talking about Arizona and the politics of Arizona, but what was happening there in a realistic manner.

Speaker 7 We were talking about the cost of everything going up and how we need to fix that. And that is a problem.

Speaker 7 And I think that was something that a lot of Arizonans appreciated appreciated because I think they were hearing from some campaigns, like, no, things are good. I'm like, no, they're not.

Speaker 7 But we were also very serious about the border. And we talked about the border in a very serious Arizona way, right? Where we want more border patrol.
We want, you know, bad people to get deported.

Speaker 7 We want immigration reform. We want to protect dreamers.
And we want trade to keep continuing because that's really important to our business in Arizona.

Speaker 7 Versus someone like Carrie Lake, who just talked about the border, what like an East Coast Republican conservative thinks the border is in Arizona, right?

Speaker 7 She would say that, you know, the cartels own the border, the Arizona border. Now, I'm sure on the Mexican side, that does happen,

Speaker 7 but you're telling people, police chiefs in Nogales, in San Luis, U.S.

Speaker 7 citizens, that they're essentially controlled by cartels when they're trying to bring in business or trying to start their families, everything else like that. And then she would go to the border.

Speaker 7 go to the border wall as if it was like the you know the great wall in jerusalem and she'd put her hands up on the border wall

Speaker 7 while wearing a pistol, while packing a pistol, and put this on a commercial. Like, look, in Arizona, we literally send our teenage kids to Mexico for spring break, right?

Speaker 7 We cross that border every day. So, when people started seeing Kerry Lake talking about the border while she was wearing a weapon on her hip, no one could understand what she was trying to do.

Speaker 7 They didn't really match reality. And at the end of the day, that's why, you know, if you look at the exit polling, more people trusted me on the border than they trusted Kerry Lake.

Speaker 7 That didn't happen anywhere else in the country when it comes to Democrats running for Senate.

Speaker 4 That's interesting.

Speaker 4 The immigration politics of this, there's a buzzy article in the New York Times by David Leonhardt this week, where all of the, you know, all the coastal libs are like, whoa, this is interesting.

Speaker 4 Like, they're just learning about something you've been working on. And he wrote about Denmark and met Frederickson, who's kind of a center-left, but pretty left, really.

Speaker 4 It should be left-left for America, but center-left for Europe leader in Denmark.

Speaker 4 And how the key difference between Denmark and these other countries in Europe is that they have taken the immigration challenge very seriously and reduced immigration levels.

Speaker 4 I'm wondering what your kind of thoughts are, if there are any lessons from you and from her or just broadly.

Speaker 7 There are some lessons. I mean, we're not exactly analogous to Denmark.
Our immigration is different. Our assimilation is different.
There's a lot of things here.

Speaker 7 But the fact that Democrats didn't take the border serious for, you know, enough in the eyes of voters deteriorated our ability to talk to working class people and work for working class people.

Speaker 7 We are now out of power. And

Speaker 7 the fact that we hesitated shutting down the border as much as possible when we had hundreds of thousands of people coming to seek asylum.

Speaker 7 And when you talk to Democrats, and it's unfortunate, and some, not all Democrats, because most Democrats actually have a very normal position on the border, it's actually our kind of thought leaders and liberal groups that actually are out of the norm with Democrats.

Speaker 7 Most Democrats, normal Democrats, know, especially Latino tribes, would tell you, I want legal immigration. I want dreamers to be U.S.
citizens.

Speaker 7 I want people that have been here forever that haven't committed a crime to have an opportunity to become U.S. citizens.

Speaker 7 I don't want to see 100,000 people showing up at the border and demanding asylum.

Speaker 7 The thing that we messed up, and the Democrats, you understand, is that instead of saying that,

Speaker 7 when there was attempts to do that, there was huge pushback. I remember one thing.
Do you remember when Kamala Harris said, don't come here? Don't come here?

Speaker 4 Yeah, do not come.

Speaker 7 do not come she got blasted by liberal groups for that and that was the actual right attitude to have yeah and so Because of that, what did we end up doing? We ended up losing.

Speaker 7 The Republicans have a trifecta. They're about to cut Medicaid.

Speaker 7 They're going to gut the poor so they could feed Elon Musk and all his rich buddies because we couldn't get this one aspect down correctly because we were worried about this very small niche group of people that don't even represent the working class Democratic, average working class Democratic vote.

Speaker 7 So we have to figure out what do we want as Democrats? Because we can't have it all.

Speaker 7 We can't have a very, very open border ideology, open immigration ideology, and then also want working class policies to exist and all these other issues. We have to say, like, you know what?

Speaker 7 We're going to be hard when it comes to certain border crossings. We don't want to see 100,000 people coming to the border.
We don't think it's fair that they're abusing the asylum system.

Speaker 7 We do want immigration reform. And guess what? We also want higher standard of living for Americans.
We want, you know, a living wage for Americans. We want to make sure Medicaid is safe.

Speaker 7 We want to make sure we actually have an opportunity to live and retire and truly live the American dream. But we can't have it all because it just doesn't work.
That voter does not exist.

Speaker 4 I want to get back to the budget and the Elon stuff, but just one more thing on this immigration. How do you navigate this now?

Speaker 4 Okay, so that's all looking back. And now you're going forward.
Trump's going to do some stuff that's probably out of step for me and you on policy on immigration. But like, where do you go after?

Speaker 7 Like the Sanctuary City stuff, you know, it's probably gonna be pretty popular on the other hand you know we're sending christian refugees from iran to like camps in panama that's that doesn't you know we're raiding puerto rican restaurants like where how do you fight this fight now the way you fight it is you you talk about it like you don't want to replace chaos in the border with chaos in our streets and that's what trump is doing right now he's like grabbing people supposedly we started with violent criminals and now because they're incidentally they can't they're hard to find and the numbers they were talking about are overexaggerated now they're just trying to find anybody and you're creating chaos to the whole thing.

Speaker 7 And it's inhumane. When it comes to sanctuary cities, look, I'll be honest, sanctuary cities are dumb.
It's a dumb idea. It's a dumb concept, right?

Speaker 7 And any city that has sanctuary city, you should get rid of it and replace it with a real sane process, which is, you know, if you are a person who is illegally in this country and you are reporting a crime, we will not ask your status.

Speaker 7 That's all you have to do, right? That's what the aim of sanctuary cities was at the beginning of this.

Speaker 7 But also, the Republican Republican position saying we're going to gut and take away federal funds from sanctuary cities is also dumb because you're essentially punishing U.S.

Speaker 7 citizens for policy decisions and you're letting the government, big government, decide what is a sanctuary city. It's not like some cities have this like label they just stamp, right?

Speaker 7 So Donald Trump and his cronies and likely Elon Musk are going to decide what is a sanctuary city so they could go and they could take out those federal funds from those cities.

Speaker 7 And guess who they're going to, where that money is gonna end up going? Right back to Elon Musk and his cronies so they could have more and more money.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so that takes us to the budget. So the House Republicans passed last night a non-binding budget outline, essentially, by one vote.

Speaker 4 The outline would slash Medicaid, balloon the debt, would reduce taxes for billionaires and corporations.

Speaker 7 Yeah, Americans would get fucked.

Speaker 4 I guess it's only going to get tougher for them from here. But like, how do you think the Democrats on the Hills should be kind of responding to them as they try try to muddle through this?

Speaker 7 Well, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to do a save Medicaid town halls throughout Arizona, especially in rural Arizona,

Speaker 7 because 30% of Arizonans are on Medicaid. If Medicaid expansion goes away, the rural hospitals will shut down first.

Speaker 7 As a matter of fact, they most likely will shut down because the urban hospitals will find ways to

Speaker 7 save, to bring money in, whatever it is. Rural Arizona will be screwed the most.
If you have an emergency, you're going to have to get kiloed to a trauma center.

Speaker 7 And I know this because when I originally wrote the Medicaid expansion law in Arizona back in 2013,

Speaker 7 the reason we were able to get Republicans to vote for it in Arizona is because rural hospitals were about to shut down.

Speaker 7 And the nearest hospitals for some places were going to be either three-hour drives or, you know, 45-minute flights.

Speaker 7 And so what we need to do is bring this DC Medicaid conversation and we need to bring it home. And we need to remind people what this means.

Speaker 7 Like they're not going Medicaid because there's waste, fraud, and abuse.

Speaker 7 They're going after Medicaid because it's the largest amount of money that they could get that's not Medicare so far, but doesn't mean they won't go after Medicare.

Speaker 7 And it's not military spending, but it's attacking poor people so Elon Musk and his buddies can have their tax cuts. Like, that's what it is.

Speaker 7 It's straight up wealth transfer from the poorest of Americans.

Speaker 7 to the richest, richest of Americans who don't need it, but they're going to cover it up because they know they have so much shame about about what they're doing. And again, this will cause problems.

Speaker 7 This will have hospitals closing down. This is doctors leaving rural communities.
These are people dying because you just don't have

Speaker 7 any kind of insurance. And we're all doing it because, again, somehow the ultra, ultra-rich

Speaker 7 need another, another tax cut, I guess.

Speaker 4 I hear you on getting out of DC, but one DC process question. Should you guys even

Speaker 4 like entertain negotiations with these guys on the budget as long as like Elon is illegally ransacking the government.

Speaker 4 I guess I don't even understand what the rationale would be for you guys to negotiate with them right now.

Speaker 7 First of all, we shouldn't be negotiating yet because this is the Republicans' responsibility to keep the government open. Right.

Speaker 7 When they can't keep the government open, then they could come talk to us. But right now, hey, they just passed a budget resolution on their own.
There's a bunch of budget resolution in the Senate.

Speaker 7 Clearly, they can pass stuff. So it's on them to keep the government open.
Once they fail, then we could then come talk to us. But in the meantime, like this is their, this is on that.

Speaker 7 This is entirely on them. This is their government.
They own it. They break it.
When they want to talk, then we'll talk. But it's not my responsibility.
It's not the Democrats responsibility.

Speaker 7 It's a Republican responsibility to keep the government open.

Speaker 4 You may need to talk to a couple of your colleagues about that, but we're aligned.

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Speaker 4 The veterans, you're a veteran, I want to talk about the treatment of veterans. Nearly 6,000 have been fired across the federal government during this Doge purge.

Speaker 4 We have had some like 22-year-old Berkeley dropout tech like vapors who've gotten jobs. So it's not like we've totally fired everybody.

Speaker 4 A couple of people have gotten jobs, 6,000 veterans have lost jobs. We got Andrew Lennox, one example news that I just saw today.
He's a Marine, yeah. Yeah, right.

Speaker 4 He's working at the Department of Veterans Affairs, 10-year Marine, infantryman, lost his job.

Speaker 4 Wondering what your

Speaker 4 what your take is on all this.

Speaker 7 You know, my take is actually more personal.

Speaker 7 Like my friends that I serve in the war with, some Trump supporters actually, are losing jobs, are threatened to lose jobs are having to write reports what they did last week five things for their job I guess whatever that stupid Elon Musk thing was TPS report yeah TPS report the facts cover uh but the other thing though is that you know it's not just that like this is the most anti-veteran administration that this country has ever seen right 30 of the federal workforce are veterans And so when you're arbitrarily cutting people, you're cutting veterans.

Speaker 7 And there's nothing more important, especially to returning veterans, to avoid severe cases of PTSD, to avoid homelessness, it's to get a job.

Speaker 7 If you get a job right away, the likelihood of you ending up on the streets are very, very slim. And one of the things I saw when I got back from the war, I was infantrymen too.

Speaker 7 My guys and I saw, unfortunately, way too much combat. Those of us that were able to get jobs right away adjusted better.
We still have PTSD, a lot of us.

Speaker 7 And you could have a job, just, you know, because I know there's a lot of stigma out there. You could have a job.

Speaker 7 You could be a really well-adjusted person, you could have a great career, and so have PTSD. But again, it always helps at least start somewhere.
Now,

Speaker 7 what else are we seeing? Veteran crisis hotlines were randomly fired, right? This is something we've been working on as Democrats and Republicans for years.

Speaker 7 For people to know, if you call this number at any time, someone's going to talk to you so we can help you out.

Speaker 7 And Vapor and Big Butts and Big Balls, boys, all those Elon Musk guys, I don't know what their names are, arbitrarily fired these guys because they don't know any better.

Speaker 4 Well, they're veterans of the meme wars.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I'm sure.

Speaker 7 I'm sure they got carplotonal syndrome or whatever, because they know nothing, because they're little boys and they think they know everything because they worked in Silicon Valley.

Speaker 7 They probably just were looking at a line item and didn't, you know, actually look into what that line item actually means. Like, well, you know, that is someone who is on the phone at home.

Speaker 7 I'll give you another good example when it comes to remote working. A lot of veterans do remote work.
Why?

Speaker 7 Well, some of them because they're married to other military personnel and it's easier for them to work remotely and find gainful employment where they are because a lot of times in these areas, there's not much employment for spouses.

Speaker 7 Some of them actually have disabilities.

Speaker 7 By working from home, it allows them to actually be gainfully employed. Now, if they want to, this is another example from one of the guys I serve with.

Speaker 7 If he wants to get state employment and stay at home, now he has to go to his boss and not just say, hey, I have a disability, I have a disability rating.

Speaker 7 He has has to explain to his boss exactly what his disability is, which is PTSD, unfortunately. He's gonna have to go into detail with that.

Speaker 7 And every time he either gets a new boss or gets promoted, he's gonna have to go through that again, telling a stranger his personal health story in order for him to get dispensation for to be able to work from home.

Speaker 7 And the other funny part about that, it's actually not funny, is that I was talking to him. He told me that even if he goes back to work, he doesn't have a desk because they're calling everybody back.

Speaker 7 And so he, you know he's he's in this cash 22 so he is actually now going back to work he is doing a 75 mile commute every day there and back in order for him to keep his job and it's going to affect him mentally and and this is a man that served in combat very difficult very difficult combat and all he wants to do is continue working for the government he's done great work for the government now for 10 years and if he messes up they're going to get rid of him because he's just a line item to these you know tech boys that's efficiency in action there 75 mile drive then not having a desk then my colleague will selber wrote this morning he's an afghan veteran and he's kind of writing about these same issues that you're talking about but saying the democrats like have struggled to like learn how to talk to veterans like have struggled to talk to veterans at least in the kind of like post post fallout from all these wars yes i don't know why i mean i don't have that problem but yeah i agree i think it's weird that we do you do agree with that i mean like he wrote that the veterans and exit polls so this is going to be off a little bit but said that 30%

Speaker 4 went to Trump over Harris. I mean, that's a wide margin.
Like, what do you think explains all that? That wasn't always true.

Speaker 4 I mean, if you go back to the Kerry and even early Obama, you know, talking about the Iraq War and Democrats, I felt like we're much more in tune with veterans' issues.

Speaker 4 Like, what do you think is happening?

Speaker 7 I think, number one, economy. Let's.

Speaker 7 go right there. Veterans are working class.
This last go-around, you know, and I went to a lot of American Legion halls and met with a lot of a lot of veterans.

Speaker 7 They were complaining first about the economy. These young veterans can't buy homes, even though they have access to the VA home loan.

Speaker 7 Jobs aren't going as well for them. Very pissed off about the border situation.
So that's right there. I think also it was a total lie.
And we know it.

Speaker 7 And I tried calling it out that Trump was the anti-war president. Clearly, that wasn't true.
It's never been true. But they bought into it because

Speaker 7 it's something they actually do care about. And I also think that like where we are strong with veterans, we don't emphasize as much as we did.

Speaker 7 Like the president and the vice president passed the PACT Act. That was huge.
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 7 Someone like me, I live next to a burn pit for one month and some of my guys have already died due to burn pit disease. It's awful.
But if it wasn't for Democrats, that doesn't pass.

Speaker 7 And remember, the burn pill decision had been around for a long time. It wasn't until we finally got the trifecta that we overrode the Republicans and passed it.

Speaker 7 And I think the one thing that the Biden-Harris team did not do is just really, really talk about that all the time, right?

Speaker 7 The fact that we just don't own our big wins really, really matters. And that would have been a big one.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that takes me to kind of the other thing I want to talk about.

Speaker 4 There's some frustration out there, I think, among Democratic grassroots, anti-Trump folks in our camp, the anti-Trump coalition broadly.

Speaker 4 The Democrats in this first five weeks have not been turning up the temperature temperature as high as they can on Trump while out of power. I'm wondering what you think about that.

Speaker 4 Like it does feel like there's some communication, you know, because I think both proactive communication, like you're talking about about the PACT Act, but also challenging these guys and drawing attention and not like ceding the battlefield to them on what they're doing.

Speaker 4 What do you think about that? What could you guys be doing different?

Speaker 7 Well, I think, first of all, you got to, before you get into the battlefield, you got to prepare the battlefield.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I think a lot of groups on the the left and the liberal groups, or just in Basett, it's like, go in and fight them. Okay.

Speaker 4 Great.

Speaker 7 The problem is like for the first five weeks, the American public was not there. So you're going to go fight and you're going to have 30% of the people behind you, right?

Speaker 7 Number two, what are you fighting? Right. So what we need to do is be fighting for people to understand that nothing is changing.
Actually, things are getting worse.

Speaker 7 So instead of us talking about USAID, we should be talking about the fact that this president is causing chaos and eggs prices are going up.

Speaker 7 This president is causing chaos and the cost of housing has not gone down.

Speaker 7 Everything that he is doing is going to increase the cost of care, health care, gut Medicaid to give Elon Musk and his rich colonial friends money, right? That's the message that actually wins.

Speaker 7 And I think a lot of our friends and allies, and I get it, I mean,

Speaker 7 I respect them and I feel like, you know, for them because, you know, their heart is in the right place. I think they want us to be fighting Trump.

Speaker 7 but if you don't have the public with you, you're not going to be there. Polling shows right now, by the way, the thing that people are most unhappy about Donald Trump is Elon.

Speaker 7 No, number one is that they don't believe he's doing enough to bring down the cost of living.

Speaker 7 Right. Number two is Elon.
People are more upset about Elon than Donald Trump. And so if you could actually communicate that, bring it home and bring everything home.

Speaker 7 Then that's how you actually have more success.

Speaker 7 Because when we first got here, when we first got in, the American public, including Democrats, by the way, if you pull them, said that we want to give an opportunity to work with Donald Trump.

Speaker 7 If we had just come in and, you know, guns are blazing, I think we would actually have turned off a lot of potential voters. And now I think people are seeing the consequences of Donald Trump.

Speaker 7 And I think also now that we're getting closer. and closer to them seeing the real chaos that's going to come with a CR and with reconciliation, this is when we have to start turning up the heat.

Speaker 7 Like, for example, I'm going to have, I already said this, I'm having, you know, safe Medicaid town halls in Arizona. This is now when, this is the timing for it.

Speaker 4 What about my theory that you got to play a little bit more on Trump's turf? I mean, there's this notion that, like, oh, you got to, I'm here, I hear you.

Speaker 4 You should talk about the economy, you should talk about Medicaid, you should talk about eggs.

Speaker 4 But, like, Elon, you know, the shadow president has multiple baby mamas tweeting about how he's a deadbeat dad right now

Speaker 7 while he's firing veterans and uh and also forcing the government to play for armored electric vehicles that nobody wants like i don't know man if that was happening on the other side i think trump would be talking about it i guess you know what i mean like but trump trump and them have a have a better media ecosystem than we do but we should be talking about donald trump allowing elon musk to like illegally procure vehicles to make him rich right so like that's money that they're taking illegally they went back and illegally changed a line on contract from $400,000 to signed under Biden, made it $400 million, and then backdated it to make it look it was Biden.

Speaker 7 I mean, in any other administration, people are going to jail.

Speaker 7 But more importantly, we have to remind people that this is Elon Musk using government to enrich himselves while he is gutting Medicaid, while the cost of eggs are up.

Speaker 7 Listen, I don't think anyone gives a care about baby mamas unless the baby mamas are helping bring down the cost. So like, let's let's get to focus.
Like, it's just not going to happen.

Speaker 4 You don't have to talk about them. I might talk about them.
You get it,

Speaker 4 that's a broad internet.

Speaker 7 We have so many ways to do this. Like, not everyone has to be on the same page.
Like, yes, like, for some of our allies, yeah. Amen.

Speaker 7 If you want to go after the baby mamas, go after the baby mamas. Like, that's like, it doesn't mean I'm not going after the baby mamas.

Speaker 4 I'm on the side of the baby mamas. I'm going after you for fucking over the baby mamas.

Speaker 7 I want to hit them about the baby mamas, but but again, like, that's that, there's nothing wrong. You like the idea that we all have to have 100% uniform alignment

Speaker 7 is also incorrect.

Speaker 7 Like, I don't think we should be faulting our friends, our activist friends, our friends on the left, our normie Democratic friends that are like attacking on all these other fronts. That's fine.

Speaker 7 Like it's fine. We all should be doing whatever we can right now.

Speaker 8 Greetings for my bath, festive friends.

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Speaker 4 I need to talk to you briefly about crypto. You're the ranking member of the digital assets committee.
I think that you're, well, I guess I'll let you speak for yourself on your view on crypto.

Speaker 4 I'm like apoplectic about what's happening with crypto. And I think that I don't think people understand the degree to the scam that's being run, like with between the Trump coin, Tether.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Tether is this so-called stable coin that people use for money laundering, terror financing, sanctions of agent. North Korea is using it to get money.

Speaker 4 Howard Luttnick, our secretary of commerce, is like a key player, not anymore. He did divest, but his kids are now in Tether.
Trump is this coin. I mean, like, there's, these scams are unbelievable.

Speaker 4 We would not allow these scams in any other industry. So, like, where are you at? Like, how do you balance like credible crypto with investigating these guys?

Speaker 7 Yeah, there's no regulation. So, what we need to do is regulate out these scams, right? Because these scams are problematic.
They are used for, like you said, illegal transactions.

Speaker 7 A lot of them are just pump and dump scams, everything else like that, versus there are some legal and not legal because they're all legal until we put some regulations together, legitimate, you know, cryptocurrency, right?

Speaker 7 And we need to kind of set down the rules of the road so that way it's not abused.

Speaker 7 you're only bringing in and validating really the the real crypto assets versus allowing anybody to put up a meme coin and then selling it and people being taken, right?

Speaker 4 But how are they going to regulate this when the fox is in charge of the hen house here? I mean, Trump is running one of the biggest scams out there. And like now he's appointing people.

Speaker 7 Because there is no regulation. Yeah.
Yeah. That's a problem.
Look, you have to regulate it like you would regulate anything else you sell and trade, right?

Speaker 7 And you have to make sure that the people that are doing it, number one, aren't going to be able, again, to take advantage of consumers, that it will still allow companies to innovate.

Speaker 7 You know, Tether's Tether's not even based in the United States, for example.

Speaker 7 So we want to be able to bring this back, regulate it, make it transparent, and that way we're basically pushing out the bad scams and only regulating what we have here that is what we consider more legitimate and more transparent.

Speaker 7 Much like anything else, like how we regulate banks, right? You know, you can't just start a bank and start taking money in the United States without having going through certain regulations.

Speaker 7 It's the same thing we should be doing with this type of crypto asset, asset, setting down the rules of the road so it's transparent.

Speaker 7 So, when there are abuses, we actually have a way to actually go after the abusers and recover the money of the people that have been scammed.

Speaker 4 Finally, we're going to close. Dems are struggling with bros.
A lot of talk about this. Yes, Dems come on.
And I have a bro talk segment. I want to see how you guys can handle it.

Speaker 4 So, we have a quiz for you. Shenaruben Gallego.

Speaker 4 How bro are you? Can you name one MMA fighter?

Speaker 7 One MA. I'm a boxing guy.
I don't actually do it.

Speaker 4 Okay, name me some boxers.

Speaker 7 Well, I mean, MA fighter is, I mean, Henry Serjudo from Arizona. Boxers,

Speaker 7 the current one I'm really into, David Benavides, and he should eventually go against Canelo for the championship fight. But David is, it was just actually at his match

Speaker 7 last week.

Speaker 4 Do you ever do any gambling on boxing? Is boxing and gambling legal in Arizona?

Speaker 7 I'm sure in Vegas it is, but I play blackjack. I don't do sports gaming.

Speaker 4 Do you hit on 16?

Speaker 7 No, do I hit? Well, it depends what the dealer is showing.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 7 I mean, yeah, if he's got a bus card, no.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 4 All right. That's good.
So, all right. We have, we have a blackjack strategy.
We can name it MS.

Speaker 4 Do you know it? Do you know what Zin is?

Speaker 7 I do know what Zin is.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah. Okay, what is Zen?

Speaker 7 Zin is a nicotine pouch basically dip is what we used to call in the Marine Corps.

Speaker 4 Do you think that bros that want to have coffee-flavored Zin, do you think they should be allowed to, or do you think that the government should regulate that?

Speaker 7 I mean, like, we should regulate how we regulate, regulate, like, you know, spit tobacco. But other than that, no, I don't think we should be like banning people from having Zen using Zen.

Speaker 4 Finally, I just pulled up the Nelk Boys Twitter feed. Here's their most recent tweet.
Aiden Ross goes in on Kendrick versus Drake beef and reveals his relationship with Baron Trump, Baron Misspelled.

Speaker 4 Can you translate that sentence? Do you know what happened in this? Aiden Ross goes in on Kendrick versus Drake beef?

Speaker 7 I don't know who Aiden Ross is, but I mean, the Kendrick and Drake drama is awesome, by the way. And so his put-down at the Super Bowl is probably the ultimate diss in the history of this country.

Speaker 7 You know, I'm on team Kendrick, definitely.

Speaker 7 You have to be. Baron Trump, I'm assuming, took a side or probably tried to flip a freaking meme coin on it.

Speaker 7 But if it's Baron Trump, I'm assuming he actually probably took Drake's side, which would be disgusting. Because

Speaker 7 I think Drake is the loser in this whole thing. And he is definitely not like us.

Speaker 4 Senator Rubenguillego, a wonderful way to end. Please come back to the podcast.
Thank you for joining, and we'll be seeing you soon.

Speaker 7 Gracias. Bye.
All right.

Speaker 4 I'm next, Elena Maxwell.

Speaker 8 Greetings for my bath, festive friends.

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Speaker 4 All right, guys, we are back with Zerlina Maxwell. She's a political analyst, host of Mornings with Zerlina on SiriusXM.

Speaker 4 She has a new substack called the Inner Work Dispatch, which is about working on your mental health. It's something something that I'm working on and doing a poor job of.

Speaker 4 So we'll get to that at the end. But how are you doing, girl?

Speaker 22 I'm all right. I'm hanging in there.
Like I say to most people, I am trying to stay sane.

Speaker 4 That's it. How's that going so far?

Speaker 22 I'm sane. You know, I'm sane, despite all of the reasons why I shouldn't be, I think.

Speaker 4 All right. I don't know.
I think I'm teetering, but we'll get to that at the end.

Speaker 4 We got our first cabinet meeting today. Big news, exciting news.
We're adding people to the cabinet.

Speaker 4 There's a bonus person that is there, the world's richest man, a South African immigrant, Elon Musk, is going to be at the cabinet meeting. Trump just doesn't give a F about this.

Speaker 4 It's like interesting. There was a period of time where people were all like, oh, these guys are going to be fighting.
There's going to be tension. I don't know.
I think he kind of loves it.

Speaker 4 But what's your take on what's going on with that?

Speaker 22 Well, I think he's going to love it until the utility of having Elon Musk there goes away, right? So up until the point where

Speaker 22 somebody explains to him that this is actually hurting his polling or his popularity, I think he loves it because Elon Musk gets all the smoke.

Speaker 22 He gets all of the heat from the public and all of the things that the administration is doing. People are going to blame Elon Musk basically at this point.
And I think it's a little bit nuts.

Speaker 22 Like sometimes I have to take a step back and I'm like.

Speaker 22 The George Soros comparison, if like a Democratic president brought George Soros to a cabinet meeting or like had a, you know, a press of bill in the Oval Office with a left-leaning billionaire you know how would that be taken by the American public but I don't even think that's actually helpful because I think that what we we need to start saying is the richest man in the world is destroying our democracy and cutting programs that benefit regular people so that he can have more money and he already has more money than everybody on the planet earth.

Speaker 22 So imagine you have somebody with more money than all of us taking away health insurance, food, actual programs that people need to survive so that he can be even richer. And that's what's happening.

Speaker 22 I mean, you have him in the cabinet meeting. You had him in the Oval Office.
He's been elected and voted on by zero people. He's been confirmed by no senate.
And yet he's basically the co-president.

Speaker 22 Like, where's J.D. Vance? I don't know.

Speaker 4 He's tweeting. Oh, yeah.
He sent a tweet yesterday about how Donald Trump chooses his words carefully.

Speaker 4 And that's why people that don't like him, you know, the whole thing is just, it's like hard to, J.D.

Speaker 7 Vance is just so ridiculous.

Speaker 4 I'm interested in your take on this, like using your strategist hat, too. Like, do people believe that he wants more money? Like, it's something that I've been working through.

Speaker 4 Like, what is the right way to talk about this? Like, maybe convince people he wants to be the first trillionaire. Maybe he wants to be the first trillionaire.
I don't know.

Speaker 4 Or maybe it's like not actually about money. And what Elon Musk is doing is he wants total control and he wants to be an unelected autocrat that is in charge of you?

Speaker 4 And he does not believe that you have self-determination. He does not believe that people should have a right to choose, you know, what they want for their own government and life.

Speaker 4 Like, he thinks that he should be in charge because he thinks he's the smartest person in the world. I don't know.
Maybe that's like, what do you think lands with people?

Speaker 22 Well, I think him wanting more money, taking away resources from people. I think that resonates.
But I also think you're right.

Speaker 4 I mean, he wants power.

Speaker 22 He wants to be a king. He wants to be in charge.
I mean, he is in charge, right, of his companies. And so he's used to just dictating orders.
I mean, similar, that's a good idea.

Speaker 4 I think he's in charge of huge parts of the government, too, apparently. I mean, like, Trump is a child.
That's what him and Trump have in common, right?

Speaker 22 They like just barking orders at people and having people do what they say.

Speaker 22 And I think that one of the things that's really, really hard for people to really conceptualize in their brain is how much a billion dollars actually is

Speaker 22 and how much money Elon Musk actually has, or at least what he's valued at because of his ownership of Tesla stocks.

Speaker 22 So I think for folks who rely upon government programs, these government agencies that are providing resources for regular folks, like it's hard for them to understand, I think, because it's happening so quickly, the consequences of what Elon Musk is doing.

Speaker 22 And I think maybe if...

Speaker 22 you know, as the strategist, Democrats focused on the impact on people as opposed to even he wants more money, that would help land the message more effectively.

Speaker 4 Well, I'm excited to see how the cabinet meeting goes. You know, in the first one, it was everybody had to talk about how great Mr.
Trump was, sir. Remember that in Trump one point?

Speaker 22 Yes, I'll never forget it.

Speaker 4 Do they go around and praise both of them this time? I don't know.

Speaker 4 I'm waiting with bated breath. Your point about the impact on actual people, on your show,

Speaker 4 you're doing call-ins. You're doing call-ins.
Like you're hearing from people. You're hearing from real folks.
I'm kind of curious what that's like.

Speaker 4 But as part of those conversations, Like you've been posting some clips of people like that that are suffering real consequences from this.

Speaker 4 So like, you know, talk about like what you think the opportunity is there and what the real life impact is from folks you're hearing from.

Speaker 22 Well, right after the election, it was almost like therapy because people were crying. And, you know, I'm not a therapist.
My mother was, but I'm not a therapist. So I was trying,

Speaker 22 even though I'm also emotional and trying to process and I'm traumatized, I'm trying to create a space for people so that they can just like let it out. And it's really, really helpful.

Speaker 22 And I think validating for people to hear from other people all over the country who are also feeling the same exact way. Because a lot of people are like in their own homes, like, I'm losing it.

Speaker 22 I'm, am I going crazy?

Speaker 22 And then when they hear other people on the radio say exactly the same things they're thinking and feeling, it's so reassuring that you're not the only one that it's like, wait, is Elon Musk running the government?

Speaker 22 Right. Like, am I, am I losing my mind? And for other people who are calling in and being like,

Speaker 22 I feel exactly the same way. Like, I am so angry.
There's a lot of anger. So I think after the hurt of the election kind of dissipated, people are now pissed.

Speaker 22 In addition, I had a caller last week call in and say she was one of the CDC employees that lost their job. I mean, it's real for people.

Speaker 22 This isn't, I mean, when they talk about federal workers as if they're not taxpaying Americans and working people with bills just like everybody else, it's very strange.

Speaker 22 This is going to have a profound impact in the economy that we don't even foresee because those federal employees are a part of our economy and they go and shop at businesses and go to restaurants.

Speaker 22 And, you know, they are workers just like everybody else.

Speaker 22 So if you fire millions of people because you want to pay for your tax cuts, that's going to have an impact in the economy that they're not thinking that through.

Speaker 22 Elon Musk doesn't care about that, but Trump should.

Speaker 4 And also, they talk about federal workers, government workers, bureaucrats, like it's just some random person on K-Street in a suit that's like totally replaceable.

Speaker 4 I was mentioning this on yesterday's thing. I don't, maybe I should start doing callers.
I don't know. I pulled this example just out of my ass, right?

Speaker 4 I was like, you know, like, imagine if you're an NIH employee that has expertise in infectious diseases or whatever, and you just got fired because you're a probationary employee and you've got these Republicans that are like, well, whatever, go to a job fair, find another job.

Speaker 4 Like, literally, one of our commenters was like, I'm an NIH employee who's a specialist in gene therapy that got fired. Right.
And it's like that, like putting those actual faces on things.

Speaker 4 I mean, that is a person that I assume an expert in gene therapy. God love you.
We'll be able to find other work because that's like, you know, that kind of specialty.

Speaker 4 But like when you hear from the people that are, that are calling in, like these people have real like expertise that is being lost and they help other people and they have impact on their community.

Speaker 4 And I do think the ripple effect of that is going to be real.

Speaker 22 Right. So it's, there's the economic ripple effect, but then there's also just the loss of the expertise to other places, right?

Speaker 22 Like, people, I've been reading reports about people who are in public health programs basically being like my entire job plan out the window, and what am I going to do?

Speaker 22 Well, those people are going to go to other parts of the world and they're going to bring their medical expertise and their research to other places that are willing to accept them.

Speaker 22 In addition, I was reading yesterday, or maybe it was a TikTok I saw, it was about a medical conference.

Speaker 22 It was about people who specifically specialize in like devices for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Right.

Speaker 22 And that at this conference, all these people are processing the fact that they're going to lose all of their pathways to employment and research because

Speaker 22 it's diversity in terms of hearing. And because the word diversity was in the language.

Speaker 4 Oh, my God. Right.

Speaker 22 Like, it's actually so stupid. So one of the things that is both good and bad is that they are not thinking anything through.
Right. Right.

Speaker 22 Elon Musk isn't thinking anything through, and he has no idea what most of these people in the federal government do.

Speaker 22 It's the example that they fired all the people guarding the nuke, the nukes, and they were like, oops, our bad, you know, and,

Speaker 22 oh, we, we fired all the people that do bird flu. That seems bad, you know, and so I think that there are going to be unforeseen consequences that are going to make them look foolish.

Speaker 22 I hope it doesn't hurt too many people before we fix it, but I don't know. I mean, I feel like COVID should have taught us that these people do not think things through.

Speaker 22 You know, they're going to do the comparative, get rid of the pandemic response unit, and then a pandemic happens. So they're not competent at all.

Speaker 4 No, uh-uh, no. Competence is

Speaker 4 not the key for the current administration.

Speaker 8 Greetings for my bath, festive friends.

Speaker 11 The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money, getting 5% cash back when I pay in four.

Speaker 14 No fees, no interest.

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Speaker 18 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 4 Save the offer in the app.

Speaker 5 N1231, see paypal.com slash promo terms points to your renewed for cash and more paying for subject to terms and approval.

Speaker 21 PayPal Inc. and MLS 910-457.

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Speaker 4 Talk about the Dems. I'm wondering what you think their opportunities are, what their missed opportunity is.
I I mean, I think that it is pretty

Speaker 4 just, it's kind of obvious at this point. Like, the Democrats have struggled and have lost ground with working-class voters.
It was particularly in the 2016 race.

Speaker 4 There was a lot of working-class white voters, everybody focused on, you know, people were taking, you know, going on safaris to diners in Scranton to try to figure out what's going on with working-class white voters.

Speaker 4 But, like, in this last election, it was really across the board, right?

Speaker 4 I mean, except for black women, pretty much, but like working-class voters of every other demographic besides black women went more to Trump than they had, right?

Speaker 4 Not a majority, but like, you know, started to, he gained ground with them. I'm wondering, like, what you think was the cause of that and like what you think Democrats should do about it.

Speaker 22 So, I don't ever like to look at what happened in 2024 and then say, like, this is the problem with Democrats' messaging because it was such a weird election cycle, right?

Speaker 22 You had Kamala Harris come in with 100 days and try to win a whole election, which nobody's ever done. We've never elected a a woman and we've only elected one black person.

Speaker 22 So it was like, you have a lot of the odds stacked against you. With that said, though, I think one of the things that Democrats do every single time is take the wrong message from election results.

Speaker 22 So number one, you lost by 1.5%.

Speaker 22 So why would you be like, oh, to a clown?

Speaker 4 And you didn't lose by 1.5% to Nikki Haley. You lost by 1.5% to a guy that was like, you know, a felon and a clown.

Speaker 22 Listen, I absolutely acknowledge that that is true.

Speaker 22 However, I think that we have to understand that the people that are willing to vote for a clown over Kamala Harris are not going to vote for a Democrat.

Speaker 22 Like there's a lot of people that spend a lot of time trying to win back voters that are never going to vote for a Democrat again. They're not going to vote for a Democrat again.

Speaker 22 I think the focus should be on turning out the people that didn't vote at all. The people, the 50% of people that were like, I just just doesn't matter to me.

Speaker 22 Democracy, I don't, I just don't really care about that that much. But my eggs are really expensive and I'm very frustrated.

Speaker 22 But still, I'm not really convinced that I need to participate at all in elections to save democracy, to do anything. Like, I'm just going to go over here and do what I'm supposed to do in my day.

Speaker 22 I'm not, I don't care about politics. I'm not involved at all.
And so, I don't think Democrats spend enough time trying to reach those people.

Speaker 22 They spend so much time trying to win back folks that I don't think they're going to ever win back.

Speaker 22 They are not going to win back people that, you know, watch all of Trump's rallies through 2016 or in 2024 and weren't offended by any of that, voted for him despite those things, watched him in power for four years, including during COVID, and then voted for him again.

Speaker 22 It's too hard to win back those people

Speaker 22 at the expense of your base. So one of the things that Trump does well is that he's always firing up his base.

Speaker 22 And Democrats are always trying to win the middle as opposed to firing up their own base, which you would be able to capture some of those people who are disengaged because they have the same interests with your base.

Speaker 22 So I think that it's, it's a matter of what you are prioritizing in your message as opposed to a more strategic thing. And it's been my frustration for like at least 15 years.

Speaker 4 I have a little bit of a different view, but before I give my pushback, I want to hear a little more about your view. Like, what, how do you think the Democrats could appeal more to the base?

Speaker 4 I think we're talking mostly about people like black voters that didn't vote, young voters that didn't vote, or like really probably the two groups that we're talking about mostly.

Speaker 4 Like, what do you think they could talk about that it would, in your view, bring more folks from those demographics up?

Speaker 22 It's not even what, it's the mediums they're using to talk to people. So the Democrats are like, we have to fix our message.
I'm like, your message, there's not really,

Speaker 22 you could tweak it, sure. But if you're going on cable news at one o'clock in the afternoon, it doesn't matter what you're saying.
I don't understand why that's continuing to be the strategy.

Speaker 22 And I think that there was some criticism by those mainstream media outlets that were like, Why is Kamala going on call her daddy? Well, that's because people listen to that, people watch that.

Speaker 22 The base of the party that you need to vote actually consumes that, so you want to do more of that and less of the standard traditional thing.

Speaker 22 You're not eliminating that completely, but I think that there is a very slow

Speaker 22 evolution in strategy, media strategy, comm strategy on like how to actually reach people.

Speaker 22 I think that we saw some of that in Kamala Harris's 107-day campaign, where you're figuring out that you actually have to do more podcasts. You have to go on TikTok more.
You need to do live streams.

Speaker 22 You need to talk to influencers. Like

Speaker 22 you're not sitting down with the noon anchor. You're just not doing that.
So, part of it is the medium they're actually trying to talk to voters through.

Speaker 22 And also understanding that the the media is not your friend, even if they're the most respected, well-meaning journalist.

Speaker 22 In my opinion, the media is a filter. It's always been a filter and it's very much a filter right now.

Speaker 22 If you go back and watch Kamala Harris's interviews from her short campaign, you know, there are interviews where 14 of the 15 questions were a Republican talking point as the premise.

Speaker 22 So I don't understand, I mean, like, so you can have the best message. You can have the best best best.

Speaker 4 And they get no credit for it either. I know, it's crazy.
It's like like a CNN will do that interview. And then, like, because that'll show that we're not balanced.

Speaker 4 And then they get no credit from MAGA voters for it.

Speaker 22 And it frustrates, you know, people like me who are like, you just wasted all of your time trying to appeal and so to tamp down the criticism of the media when you didn't reach a single voter that you needed.

Speaker 4 Okay, so here's my pushback on what you're saying. Obviously, I like moderate voters, so we should try to reach them.
But I'm going to put them, let's put them aside for a second.

Speaker 4 Let's put the moderate voters aside for a second. Don't Democrats need to try to reach, like, there are two groups that I'm thinking of.

Speaker 4 One is, I was looking at a map yesterday of rural America and like what percentage of them are on Medicaid.

Speaker 4 And it's like, I don't know, man, couldn't Democrats make, maybe not get a majority, but get some gains

Speaker 4 among old whites in rural America who need their Medicaid? Couldn't Democrats get some gains back from, if you look at like urban neighborhoods, those aren't voters that Democrats can't get.

Speaker 4 They're people who voted for Democrats their whole life.

Speaker 4 And then this time, you know, again, small percentages, but meaningful 5%, 10% in some boroughs in New York, like Bronx, like moved towards Trump.

Speaker 4 Like, you got to be able to try to persuade some of those folks to come back, right?

Speaker 22 Oh, yeah, I actually agree with you.

Speaker 22 I'm not saying that you're not going to try to do it at all, but I think that one of the things they do every cycle is they're like, let's go on a bus tour to get white working class voters.

Speaker 22 And I'm like, you do this every time. And you don't think that maybe that's maybe not the answer?

Speaker 22 I don't think it's not the answer, right? Like, it's not, that's not the answer. And that's not the problem.

Speaker 22 And also, it's all happening with the backdrop of changing demographics, right? So, even when we say something like rural voters or,

Speaker 22 you know, working-class voters, now we have to understand that that does include a large number of black and brown people.

Speaker 4 Yeah, Democrats actually lost a little ground on rural black voters. Exactly.
So,

Speaker 22 that's where the bus tour is not the way.

Speaker 22 But, but you you do have to figure out, and maybe it's the Medicaid message.

Speaker 22 I think the social security piece of this is really important because black women in particular, huge recipients of social security benefits.

Speaker 22 So there are ways and there are messages that work on those constituencies that you absolutely need to be engaged and excited. But I think that they keep.

Speaker 22 doing the same thing over and expecting a different result when they needed to evolve with the demographic shift.

Speaker 4 All right. Let's talk about our inner selves.
Yes. The inner work dispatch.
So, you know, I'm dealing with

Speaker 4 the current Trump 2.0 by doing an unhealthy amount of working and then binge drinking on the weekends.

Speaker 4 Is that the kind of inner work that you're talking about? Or do you have any advice for me?

Speaker 22 No, and no shade to the folks who have chosen those

Speaker 22 things. I would say.

Speaker 4 I'm just trying to be honest about how I'm doing about my self-work. I also, I am doing, I am going to yoga too.
I am going to yoga. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 22 Drinking and yoga. Yeah.

Speaker 22 Is it hot yoga or you're like sweating it out?

Speaker 4 Yeah, sometimes. Depends.
Okay, okay.

Speaker 22 So I don't know if they told you, but I live in Italy now. Oh, right.
So I'm doing the second Trump administration very different than the first.

Speaker 22 The first Trump administration, I was like, all right, I'm the resistance. I'm out here.
I'm doing it. I'm up front.
I'm consuming it non-stop. I am working all the time.

Speaker 22 I am, this is like, I live and breathe this.

Speaker 4 This time you're doing eat, pray, love, radio.

Speaker 22 Well, look, I mean, I can't say that I wasn't inspired by that, but I will say that I came to Italy in 2024. I spent half the year in 2024 in Italy, 90 days, 90 days home, 90 days back, 90 days home.

Speaker 22 And I have never felt

Speaker 4 better

Speaker 22 mentally, physically, all the things. And it's because I have just a little bit of distance from some of the daily onslaught.
I mean, there's it's it's really different here. The way that they are,

Speaker 22 and I say they sort of generalizing, but the people that I interact with, the way that they approach life and being present and

Speaker 22 you know, talking to people face to face and having those types of interactions. I'm not saying they don't also have some of the same issues that we do, but I think that I have learned a lot about

Speaker 22 like making joy and happiness on a daily basis and actually living in the present here. And so, the second Trump administration, I decided that I was not going to do what I did the first time.

Speaker 22 Now, also, my mother had massive strokes and passed away at the end of 2022. Oh, I'm sorry.
And thank you. And I'm not going out like that.

Speaker 22 So, I decided that I was going to do something different and I was going to go where I feel good and where I I feel happiness. And I can still do my job and cover what is happening in our country.

Speaker 22 And I think actually the perspective of being here

Speaker 22 is unique because it looking crazy from over here. Like, and also when you talk to people here,

Speaker 22 they are like, what the hell is wrong with America? And I'm like, I don't know what to tell you. Like, I agree, but I really don't know what is wrong.
They were universally, it wasn't like a debate.

Speaker 22 They were universally opposed to Trump. Every single person I talked to was like, you guys aren't going to vote for Trump again, are you?

Speaker 4 Which is so weird because Milani is kind of, yeah, but it's different.

Speaker 22 When you talk to regular folks,

Speaker 22 when you talk to regular folks, the people that I interacted with, I mean, literally the person, this is a true story.

Speaker 22 When I went to print my absentee ballot, the man who printed my absentee ballot spoke no English and he handed it to me and he said, no, Trump. That's all he said.

Speaker 22 He didn't speak any English at all, but he handed me my absentee ballot and was like, no, Trump.

Speaker 4 Don't get him in trouble.

Speaker 4 No, that's the thing. Well, no.

Speaker 4 Eagle Ed Martin's coming for him.

Speaker 22 No one will know who it is. But I think that here it's like

Speaker 22 regular ordinary folks are looking at us like,

Speaker 22 what are you guys doing? And also, I think it's just a different way of life and sort of approaching your everyday life and living in the moment in a little bit of a different way.

Speaker 22 I mean, like my dad came to visit during my first trip and we were walking around and he was like, I understand why you like it here because the energy, it's a vibe.

Speaker 22 I mean, when I go home to the United States, I'm mostly staying in Virginia when I'm there and

Speaker 22 it's an energy thing. People are angry.
People are

Speaker 22 anxious. They're just, they're all like pumped up.
Like, and that's when you come here, it's not like that. I mean, I'm in Sicily, so it's very much not like that.
Like in Sicily, people are chilling.

Speaker 22 Like, there's a man across the street putting the net out fishing right now.

Speaker 4 Well, I don't have that. I moved to New Orleans, which is the closest we can do in America to that.

Speaker 4 There's nobody out there with nets fishing, but we are getting into it. We are in parade season.

Speaker 22 How's your Italian? Okay, it's improving.

Speaker 4 I'll say that.

Speaker 22 Okay, I do take lessons and I'm improving.

Speaker 4 One of my besties did your same thing. It's so weird that Italian is the spot.
She, I get to see her this weekend, so I'm so excited.

Speaker 4 She's coming back to America, but she went, uh, she moved to Arpena, okay, like her ancestral land and like just did what you did.

Speaker 4 Was there like, I was going to be there for six months, met a winemaker, married a winemaker, lives in rural Italy now.

Speaker 22 So I need to meet a winemaker.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so you need to meet a winemaker. But she said a lot of the same things that you're saying.
So there is something to

Speaker 4 the mindset, I think. So for people that are stuck in America, do you have any inner mind advice for them?

Speaker 22 Every single day at the end of my show, I tell all of the listeners to do something in their day that sparks joy. And I don't mean tidy up like, you know, Marie Kondo, no shade, right?

Speaker 22 I mean, actually like be intentional about trying to make your day a good day and don't sit around and scroll through news. Like, what are you doing? Stop doing that.
Don't do that.

Speaker 22 You're not going to be able to make Trump or Elon Musk do something different just because you rage tweeted today. Like, do not do that.
So there is a time and place to engage in activism.

Speaker 22 And then you also want to live your life because previous generations who had to go through fights like the one we're going through right now i mean there is a famous picture of martin luther king dancing right like you do have to also live

Speaker 22 and if you take care of your mental health you are better able to do the things that are necessary activism wise right like if you're a complete mess and you're all over the place you're not going to be effective.

Speaker 4 Actually, in other ways, like if you're angry, if you're so consumed by anger,

Speaker 4 then you're not, you're not going to be able to convince anybody. Frankly, you might turn people off

Speaker 4 and hurt and harm yourself. Exactly.

Speaker 22 Don't, don't do that. And don't, don't sit and just scroll endlessly through the news.
Do not do that. I need everybody.

Speaker 22 I mean, I started watching shows with subtitles specifically because I couldn't stop, you know, scrolling.

Speaker 22 I mean, they built it to be addicting, and it is, but like, I started watching shows with subtitles, and that was the way that I broke my phone addiction.

Speaker 4 It's a good piece of advice. I did notice I looked at my phone last during Squid Game.
All right. And Anora.
Anora, I watched Nora. This was so great.
Anora is so great.

Speaker 4 I don't know if you haven't watched it yet. Go get it.

Speaker 4 No, I have to watch that.

Speaker 22 I'm now addicted to the show Paradise. Okay.

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 22 That's my new addiction.

Speaker 4 All right. I'll look it up.
Zelina Maxwell. Thank you so much.
Enjoy Sicily. I thought I was bragging on everybody that it's Mardi Gras coming up here, but you're in Sicily, so a little gel.

Speaker 4 And we'll do an update about our inner life and the outer life both sometime in a few months. Thank you for having me.
All right, we'll see you soon. So that's Erlina Maxwell.

Speaker 4 Thanks again to Ruben Gallego. We'll see everybody back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark podcast.
Peace.

Speaker 4 If this world were mine, hey, Romano, seven bays,

Speaker 4 mine, I'd take it hand to me's in front of God. Introduce them to that light, hit them strictly with that five.

Speaker 4 Five, five,

Speaker 4 five, five, five,

Speaker 4 five, five,

Speaker 4 five, hey, Romanum 7 babe, drop it like it's hot. If this world was mine, I'd take it, dreams, and make them multiply.

Speaker 4 If this world was mine, I'd take it hand to me in front of God. Introduce them to that light, hit through strictly with that five.
It's a vibe, they a dance, let them watch. She a fan, he a a flop.

Speaker 4 They just wanna kumbaya, nah. This world, concrete flowers grow.
Hard days, she only doin' what she knows.

Speaker 4 Weekend, skidder poppin' on the low.

Speaker 4 Better days coming for sure.

Speaker 4 If it was up to me, I wouldn't give it. Nobody, no sympathy.

Speaker 4 I'll take away the pain, I'll give you everything.

Speaker 4 I just wanna see.

Speaker 4 I can't lie, I trust you, I love you. I won't waste your time, I'll turn it off.
Just so I can turn you on, I'ma make you say love.

Speaker 4 I'm not even tripping, I won't stress you out.

Speaker 4 I might even settle down for you, I'ma show you I'm a pro, I'ma take my time and turn it off. Just so I can turn you on, baby.

Speaker 4 Wake in

Speaker 4 popping on the low.

Speaker 4 Better days coming for sure.

Speaker 4 for

Speaker 4 this world were mad. The Bullark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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