Bill Kristol: Cannons All the Way Down

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Speaker 3 Hey, everybody, when I take this with Bill this morning, we were discussing these legal motions from a couple of Trump's underlings, including Walt Nada, that was trying to delay the release of the Jack Smith report.

Speaker 3 They'd put in a filing with Judge Eileen Cannon. Since we've recorded, those motions have been denied.
And so, as of right now,

Speaker 3 there are no legal barriers to the release of the Jack Smith Report. So, hopefully, we'll be seeing that soon, and we'll be discussing it later this week.
Up next, Bill Crystal.

Speaker 3 Hello, and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
It is Monday, so we've got Bill Crystal live from Washington. A big moment for Washington.

Speaker 3 The football team has won a playoff match on the backs of LSU grad Jaden Daniels.

Speaker 2 First in 20 years, I believe. The first playoff victory in 20 years.

Speaker 2 And they can go to Detroit next Sunday, which next weekend, I was thinking about this, will be a good distraction from the inauguration that's coming up Monday.

Speaker 2 I don't follow pro football much like I used to, but it seemed like at least on... Pretty good playoff games next week, right?

Speaker 3 We will have some great games next weekend. That distraction will absolutely be needed.

Speaker 3 Our friend Ben Stillman with Severance is coming back.

Speaker 3 Maybe on Friday, I'll create a list for people of various distractions from the inauguration.

Speaker 2 You need Monday, 9 a.m. to midnight, you know, 15 hours of

Speaker 2 things to watch.

Speaker 3 I'll work on that assignment for our listeners.

Speaker 3 I guess I wasn't going to do this, but since you brought it up, I was going to pretend like the inauguration wasn't happening for this hour, but we'll just do briefly.

Speaker 3 Because he announced just right before we were coming on the schedule for the inauguration, which includes on Sunday night a MAGA rally followed by a candlelight dinner. So

Speaker 3 not exactly traditional to have a rally, you know, a partisan rally before the inauguration, which I'm sure will have a message that they leak to the media. It's like about unity and blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3 The night before, he's going to have a MAGA rally and then a nice candlelight dinner. Who knows, a picnic or something.

Speaker 2 It's all grift, isn't it? I'm sure I haven't seen it, but I haven't seen the announcement. But Trump can't personally, I don't think, still benefit from ticket prices to the

Speaker 2 I don't think the inauguration, you don't pay for to go there, right? So people can go to that in the old-fashioned way as a public civic event.

Speaker 2 But Trump can't miss a 24 hours without the chance to charge people for something. And he can charge them, I assume maybe there's a price to get into their alley.

Speaker 2 And then certainly a candlelight dinner. Is it with him or just with other people? With him.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah. Oh, wow.
Very nice. Yeah, I guess that must be it.

Speaker 3 I don't have it in front of me, but somebody reported that there's a report out there that Trump, they've already filled up the coffers for the inauguration because of all these suck-ups pre-submitting to him.

Speaker 3 And so like some one of his fundraising advisors was saying to corporation, well, well, you know, you could just give the money to the PAC instead. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So I mean, like, the grift is just couldn't be more out in the open at this point, as if the 40 million for Melania wasn't enough. All right, let's, uh, we have a little bit of actual news here.

Speaker 3 So we're expecting today, you read about this in the morning newsletter, the Jack Smith report.

Speaker 3 For people who have not been following this that closely, the favorite judge of Donald Trump, Eileen Cannon, put a stay on the release of the report based on some kind of ridiculous rationale.

Speaker 3 She doesn't even have any jurisdiction, obviously, over the Jack Smith trial. She only has jurisdiction over the classified documents case.

Speaker 3 And today there's another delay because Walt Naudu, one of Trump's flunkies, who was not indemnified by the Supreme Court like Trump, so he still is going going to have to face trial over the classified documents case.

Speaker 3 He filed a petition, or his lawyers filed a petition, to delay the Jack Smith report because it might prejudice the jury in the classified documents case against him.

Speaker 3 And there's no connection between these two things, besides they're just two separate crimes that Donald Trump was indicted for.

Speaker 3 And yet, Eileen Cannon obviously is doing what Nada and the Trump lawyers have requested. What are your thoughts on all that?

Speaker 2 Trump Justice Road is going to drop the case against Nada and to the other Trump employee a week from now, so it's all ridiculous.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, I mean, Thursday it seemed like the 11th Circuit they were going to tolerate Cannon's three-day,

Speaker 2 somewhat random three days. We have to wait till after that decision, and then the report could be released, which would take us to today.

Speaker 2 And then over the weekend, there were various back and forths, backs and forth, however you say that. And culminating in the filing that you just described, which may or may not delay things much.

Speaker 2 I mean, the lawyers I've talked to seem pretty confident we'll get the report. Maybe Maybe it'll be delayed a couple of days this week.

Speaker 2 And maybe Trump will go to the Supreme Court if the 11th Circuit says no way. And that'll take a day.
But it's not 100%. And the degree to which the Trump people just they don't give up.

Speaker 2 They try to exploit every ambiguity. They invent ambiguities.
They invent legal doctrines.

Speaker 2 They invent is pretty impressive in a way, maybe a little bit of a lesson for the rest of us that if they're going to play the system this way, and the Justice Department is playing it very straight, as I say in the morning shots, and to their credit, I think you got it.

Speaker 2 The Justice Department of the United States, they're not supposed to cut corners or avoid things. And so they're scrupulous at all this.

Speaker 2 And they're answering these objections as if they're serious objections. But it is kind of a lopsided or one-sided thing, right? I mean, it's.

Speaker 3 Well, it's a way for them to gain the system and get the advantages of that while people that are scrupulous are penalized.

Speaker 3 It has been said before, it's not an original thought for me, but there is the rule that the defendant has an opportunity to get a fair and speedy trial, you know, is one of the things that underline our justice system.

Speaker 3 What about the other way around?

Speaker 3 And the United States versus Donald Trump shouldn't United States also have the benefit of a speedy trial. Apparently not.

Speaker 2 And Judge Cannon's the person who really denied that in the classified documents case and now trying to reach over to even let us, and the Supreme Court denied it basically in the January 6th case.

Speaker 2 And now Cannon's trying to reach over to delay or stop really the release of both reports.

Speaker 2 One already is apparently not going to to be released, at least for now, the classified documents report, because that case continues against the two Trump employees.

Speaker 2 So the degree of, yes, the degree to which they've all gamed the system, including the judges, and this, I guess, is the point I try to make this morning a little bit, that, you know, the lawyers are too polite.

Speaker 2 Everyone's too polite to say that Judge Cannon is behaving as a pure partisan political hack. People are too polite to say that to some degree about the Supreme Court, too, I would say.

Speaker 2 And the next four years, Trump's going to appoint 200 Judge Cannons. Trump learned a lesson.

Speaker 2 You know, he complains bitterly about the Trump appointed judges who ruled against him in November and December of 2020, right? That's one of his big grievances. I appointed them.

Speaker 2 Don't they know who they're supposed to be loyal to? He's not making that mistake again. And his White House counsel isn't going to make that mistake.

Speaker 2 And Pam Bondi, as Attorney General, is not going to make that mistake. We're looking at judge cannons all the way and the Republican Senate.
confirming all of them or 95% of them.

Speaker 2 And a Pam Bondi-run Justice Department, which is not going to be scrupulous as Merrick Garlands has been.

Speaker 2 So it's going to be, this is a little bit of a foretaste of what four years of Trump could look like.

Speaker 3 Cannons all the way down. I want to play, to speak of this asymmetry, Chris Wray was on 60 Minutes last night, his one interview since he decided to resign his role as director of the FBI.

Speaker 3 He addressed some of the questions about Trump's grievances about the classified documents case. I want to play that and then just talk more broadly about the interview.

Speaker 4 Part of the FBI's job is to safeguard classified information. And when we learn that information, classified material is not being properly stored, we have a duty to act.

Speaker 4 And I can tell you that in investigations like this one, a search warrant is not and here was not anybody's first choice.

Speaker 4 We always try to pursue invariably try to pursue the least intrusive means, first trying to get the information back voluntarily, then then with a subpoena. And only if, after all that,

Speaker 4 we learn that the agents haven't been given all of the classified material, and in fact, those efforts have been frustrated, even obstructed, then our agents are left with no choice but to go to a federal judge, make a probable cause showing, and get a search warrant.

Speaker 2 And that's what happened here.

Speaker 3 I just wanted to lay all that out because it speaks to exactly what you were just talking about, right? Where the FBI follows every rule here, right?

Speaker 3 Like they go to Trump in a friendly way, you know, and say, hey, you might have forgotten that you have these classified documents. Do you want to hand them back? No.
Subpoena.

Speaker 3 They go around the subpoena. And then eventually they have to go and seize.

Speaker 3 these documents back as is required as is their job as as the federal bureau of investigation to to protect these classified secrets. They didn't know Trump was going to be back in the White House.

Speaker 3 You can't do something based upon that. And so they do all of that.
They follow the rules. And then Donald Trump,

Speaker 3 after all of his delay tactics don't work, then gets to say, oh, they're targeting me.

Speaker 3 He gets to flop around on the ground and say, oh,

Speaker 3 the government is targeting me. And the concerning thing about this is that worked.

Speaker 3 That effort to convince people that he was being unfairly targeted, that there was a politicized government coming after him, he convinced

Speaker 3 not only his cultists, but like a broad swath of other folks in the media, particularly in the alternative Joe Rogan's type media, to buy his story here.

Speaker 3 And what you see is Ray and the FBI and our institutions punished for going about it the right way.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and I guess Joe Biden had some documents, it turns out, from his vice presidency and maybe from before, from the Senate days, classified classified documents in his garage or something.

Speaker 2 I don't remember how we know that, but we knew that.

Speaker 2 It's like his lawyers were going through it and discovered somewhere at some point when there was a general concern about classified documents after Trump had a massive cache of them.

Speaker 2 Pence had a couple too, I think, which he gave back. Biden totally cooperated, invited the FBI to come in and search, and they did.
The documents were sent back.

Speaker 2 There was a special counsel whom Garland, again, being very scrupulous, appointed to look into this so there couldn't be a conflict of interest with Garland himself, Biden appointee looking into it, or someone he, you know, he, someone reporting directly to him.

Speaker 2 And so you get a special counsel, Robert Hurr, who does a report, which is damaging somewhat to Joe Biden, right?

Speaker 2 Says, we can't prosecute him for this because he wouldn't have a good enough memory in any way and to be a sympathetic figure, old guy. And

Speaker 2 that's released by Garland. I mean, think about that for a minute, right? The sitting president of the United States, who didn't do anything wrong, really, has a report released.

Speaker 2 And I'm not complaining about that. That seems right.
But detailing sort of what her found.

Speaker 2 And the ex-president of the United States, who purposely takes masses of documents, lies about having them, orders employees to hide them and, you know, I don't know what, mess around with the cameras and all that kind of stuff in Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 2 He's got a grievance and he gets lucky, I suppose, with the judge to whom the case is assigned. And the judge basically runs the clock out for a year and a half and

Speaker 2 he's trying now not even to have a report that might be critical of him. So the disparity there is pretty extraordinary.

Speaker 3 Aaron Powell, okay. So let's get the devil on our shoulder out here.
Is it the lesson that

Speaker 3 Democrats really shouldn't play by these sorts of rules? That there should be a little bit of Calvin ball going both ways.

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, yeah, or at least they should know that their opponents are not playing by these rules. And maybe they still should, in my view, try to obey the law and so forth.

Speaker 2 But there are ways to do so, and there are ways to be more aggressive, obviously. And I think maybe not bending over backwards would be a good start and playing hardball within the constraints of

Speaker 2 legitimate baseball as opposed to sort of polite batting practice pitchings. And that's unfair, as opposed to Garland and Justice.
And I don't have a grievance.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think Jack Swift did his best at all.

Speaker 2 But I've got to say, when you go back and think about it, the idea that the Justice Department spent two years prosecuting every person who stormed the Capitol, which I'm for, and didn't start the case against Donald Trump until after the January 6th Committee, I think it was at the the very end of 2022, I think, when Garland announced that.

Speaker 2 What were they thinking? I mean, who was responsible for all those people storming the Capitol?

Speaker 2 They didn't, if they didn't find a crime, they didn't find a crime, but at least investigate it in a very serious way, not, you know, this very tiny,

Speaker 2 almost nothing really until the January 6th Committee did its thing. So I don't know.
In retrospect, that was a very bad decision by Biden and Garland.

Speaker 3 And the other interesting things from the Ray interview, and we'll get the right expert in here to have a broader conversation about this at some point.

Speaker 3 His comments about China, I think, were were very interesting. 60 Minutes was trying to direct him to talking about the terrorist threat given what was happening in New Orleans and stuff.

Speaker 3 And he was like, actually, the thing that I think has been underappreciated is the way that China is breaching our infrastructure in various ways. I thought that was interesting.

Speaker 3 Could have a broader confo about that. But then the rest of the convo is just, again, Ray just doing the, well, I wanted to make the transition orderly.

Speaker 3 It's kind of goody-to-shoes stuff about how, oh,

Speaker 3 the Bureau can't be politicized.

Speaker 3 And it's all kind of a worldview that's like, yeah, that all makes sense in a 2011 world, but they've nominated somebody who's literally stated that he plans to politicize the Bureau, right?

Speaker 3 And so don't you have to act differently in the face? And I think that's really what we're saying here. It's not about going around the law or not following the law or not respecting our

Speaker 3 democratic norms and institutions. It's about

Speaker 3 recognizing, you know, tactically, you know, that just saying, oh, I'm going to cross my T's and dot my I's, and while the other side is just shameless about

Speaker 3 their plans for corrupting the institution, I just don't think that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 2 Right. As you say, you don't have, no one wants anyone to break the law here, but so fine, he's now resigned.

Speaker 2 I guess he's about to resign or he has, I don't know if he's officially resigned yet, but anyway, he will have resigned on January 19th.

Speaker 2 He could testify about the Bureau, which he knows a lot about, and how dangerous it is to politicize it. And therefore, Cash Patel should not be the next director of the FBI.

Speaker 2 He can make clear that he's fine with people who he doesn't agree with on everything, and that there's a bunch of people who have supported Donald Trump who probably are capable of leading the FBI in a decent way.

Speaker 2 But why doesn't he join other former, like Bill Webster, the long time ago former director of the FBI, in opposing Patel? And that's the part that's kind of amazing, right?

Speaker 2 He's going to quit, and then he's going to say, well, it's a former director, it'd be inappropriate for me to testify before Congress or say anything like that.

Speaker 3 Exactly. He said, I don't have the exact quote, but he said he didn't want to embroil the Bureau in more drama and more political drama than necessary.
And it's like, it's too late.

Speaker 3 Like the horse is out of the bar and it's run around the track a few times. As far as the

Speaker 3 FBI being in the middle of sort of political hay being made out there, it just felt naive to me.

Speaker 2 He would do more to oppose politicization of the FBI, which I assume is an institution he really cares a lot about, if he came out against Patel.

Speaker 2 I mean, he would at least try to create a little bit of a barrier or a little bit of a guardrail against the total politicization of it under Bondi and under Trump.

Speaker 2 And maybe that would work a little bit, as happened incidentally in the first term where people were very alarmed and screamed and yelled.

Speaker 2 And Mike Flynn was dumped as national security advisor in a month.

Speaker 2 And in fact, some of these guardrails held a little bit more than they would otherwise because people were so willing to be alarmed, including Jim Comey, to speak of this particular F instance, right, who Trump fired and he went, he got fired, but he didn't then think, I'm not allowed to speak about anything that happened.

Speaker 3 So, yeah, none of these guys ever seem to say that. Like, thank God that Flynn was kicked out.

Speaker 3 Like, what he did after he was pushed out of the Trump administration, going around on a tour around the country, talking about QAnon, you know, and talking about deep state conspiracies, this man was going to be the national security advisor.

Speaker 3 Like, imagine what would have happened had it been him instead of H.R. McMaster.

Speaker 3 And yet, the people, you guys, write in the morning chat today about Lankford, about how Lankford, you know, said, I forget which of the crazy Trump things he was talking about.

Speaker 3 He's like, ah, you know, this isn't going to happen. This is all bluster.
You got to sort of wait things out.

Speaker 3 Like the responsible ones, you know, never then talk about the value of the times when the guardrails held. Then they go silent.

Speaker 3 You know, it's not like there's anybody out there in the Lankford, Cotton, McConnell world who's using this very example.

Speaker 3 Like, you know, look, there are times when we need to protect Trump for himself. Like, you can imagine them saying this, right? This wouldn't be my preferred route, right?

Speaker 3 But it'd be better than doing nothing, right? Then saying, you know, look at how Mike Flynn and how dangerous that was.

Speaker 3 And we went through the normal process and he was investigated and he was replaced by H.R. McMaster and that was an upgrade.

Speaker 3 You can imagine people saying that, but nobody ever does.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And just to close that loop, a circle, I mean, I believe Patel personally has appeared many times with Mike Flynn and is a big supporter of Michael Flynn.

Speaker 2 So it really kind of really just brings home the point here.

Speaker 3 All right. We We have other hearings this week.
Hag Seth is Tuesday. We're going to be live streaming some, maybe all, depending on how good it is, of that on our YouTube page.

Speaker 3 So make sure you subscribe to the Bullwork on YouTube. You can press the little alarm bell to see when we're going to go live on that.
Christy Noam, Bondi, Russ Vote, Duffy are Wednesday.

Speaker 3 It's got the cent at Treasury and then Bondi again on Thursday. That's kind of the schedule for now.

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Speaker 3 Other news related to these confirmation hearings over the weekend, Tulsi Gabbard apparently has been flipping her view on Section 702 in her conversations with Republican senators.

Speaker 3 I think Lankford mentioned this. Section 702, if people aren't familiar with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA, it allows the U.S.

Speaker 3 government to collect electronic communications on non-Americans located outside the country without a warrant.

Speaker 3 This has been a big flashpoint among kind of the isolationist right, Rand Paul, et cetera. And this is the horseshoe.
Rand Paul and Tulsi have been fighting the use of this tool.

Speaker 3 But it's obviously a tool that would be used as the person in charge of coordinating intelligence across agencies. I'm just curious your thoughts on the hearings coming and Tulsi flipping on 702.

Speaker 2 702 is kind of complicated, but A, if Chris Rea is very concerned about China, one reason he probably knows what he knows is because of 702 and intercepts of communications.

Speaker 2 I think it's the communications with American citizens, which are masked and which are mega data and so forth.

Speaker 2 And then they have to get a real Pfizer warrant to open those up, so to speak, as I understand it. That's what, let's say, responsible civil libertarians have been worried about.

Speaker 2 As I understand, the bill Tulsi introduced in December 2020, it would just get rid of the whole program, the whole NSA ability to intercept these communications from abroad, including from abroad to other people abroad, certainly from abroad to here, which is kind of important to know.

Speaker 2 I hope she doesn't get any credit for this ludicrous flip-flop at the very last minute when she's been harping on this thing for years and she's unqualified in a million other ways.

Speaker 2 Hey, they're all in hex, so unqualified. One doesn't even know where to begin.

Speaker 2 Russ Vaughat, I hope he gets asked about the things he has said publicly and also been filmed saying when he thought he was in private.

Speaker 2 I mean, he's a pretty extreme choice for a very powerful position, OMB director. I don't know.
We'll see.

Speaker 2 It'll be interesting to see how sort of well-organized the Democrats are, how focused they are in their questioning, and whether any Republicans sort of have any interest in being at all tough or

Speaker 2 serious. And also whether, you know, the FBI reports, the Democrats insist on knowing what's in them, especially in the case of Hexeth, or did they just let the two top members...

Speaker 2 I don't think that they've gotten the FBI briefing yet. They've gotten a briefing from the Trump transition team and what the FBI told them.
The whole thing sounds very squirrely. And I don't know.

Speaker 2 I hope Democrats are tough about this because I do think, I mean, Trump himself has won the election, so it's a little hard to go after him now, honestly.

Speaker 2 And we discussed this the other week, I think. And it's not hard, but I mean, probably politically, you got to give him a chance to become president and see what he does.

Speaker 2 These nominees didn't win anything. They're just picked by Trump.

Speaker 2 And I totally legitimate to criticize them and to say, and if one wants to speak to Trump voters, say, unfortunately, the president's made 15 fine nominations, but three or four of these are problematic.

Speaker 2 It happens. It's our every president loses one or two of his nominees, things he didn't know.

Speaker 2 He thought Pete Hag Seth was a charming guy. And Fox, we didn't realize that he had this whole history.
And we're saving Trump from himself, as you said a minute ago, right? So I don't know.

Speaker 2 We'll see how much of that there is.

Speaker 3 We'll learn a lot since Hag Seth's first on the block. So we will learn a lot from the Hag Seth nomination on Tuesday.

Speaker 3 We will obviously be having a lot of coverage of that here.

Speaker 3 To your point about how Democrats manage this transition, there's one Democrat in particular that has taken a different approach from everybody else. It's John Fetterman, senator from Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 Him and his wife went to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, met with Trump. Trump loves attention, loves a convert, says he's a common sense person, not conservative or liberal.

Speaker 3 This is a long way from when Trump had said that Fetterman is taking heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, and fentanyl, and that his brain didn't work. So big flip there from Trump.

Speaker 3 Is he a risk of a party switch? Is this just a strategic gambit where he's trying to do things a little bit differently to play nice? Is it self-preservation? Is it the stroke?

Speaker 3 I don't know. What do you think is happening with John Fetterman?

Speaker 2 Yeah, and more broadly with others who are there's other tendency other members have shown

Speaker 2 made at least much more minor steps in that direction. I mean, I'm not sympathetic to the argument they have to do this to preserve, you know, to get re-elected or something.

Speaker 2 It's like the votes on the immigration bill last week, 48 of them in the House. Really? I mean, they're up.
At least the House members are up in two years.

Speaker 2 Fetterman's up in four and others are up in six. I mean, really?

Speaker 2 Is anyone going to remember a vote in January of 2025 that's, you know, in terms of their re-election, it strikes me as ridiculous or a trip to Mar-a-Lago?

Speaker 2 I mean, Fetterman's kind of a character, so it's hard to generalize from his case. He's a senator.
He's not in the position we're in.

Speaker 2 And I can totally see if there's a tax bill in April and he has to look out for his constituents or things he believes strongly in in terms of policies and deductions and so forth, he should go to the Treasury Department and talk to them.

Speaker 2 He should go to the White House and talk to Trump or to other relevant officials. Making the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago is different, don't you think?

Speaker 2 I mean, that part of it is what rust me so wrong, right?

Speaker 2 If Trump invites Democratic senators to the White House two weeks into his presidency, obviously they'll go and he's the president of the United States and they're senators and they have a million things to talk about and some of them they might end up agreeing on.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 the pre-presidential pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, and then all the, you know, talk about how what a wonderful conversation they had, that's not good.

Speaker 3 Here's the thing that bugs me about it. Like the whole, like, oh, guys, chill out, stuff getting your hair on fire.

Speaker 3 It's like, this feels like a contrarian, you know, real talk kind of position, but all it is is it's just a total CYA. Anybody can do this, right? It's so easy to be like, guys, chill out.

Speaker 3 It's not not going to be that bad. And then if things get bad, be like, well, I've changed my mind, right? Like, things have gotten bad.
I'm now going to weigh, I'm now going to weigh in.

Speaker 3 It allows you to kind of posture as more serious when it's really just, and it's not childish, but it's just kind of like surface level, right?

Speaker 3 Like, it's like, oh, well, you know, I mean, anybody like, let's just chill out, guys, calm down. Who knows? Because I guess that's objectively true, right? Like, we don't know yet.

Speaker 3 So I'm not advocating for people like running around with their hair on fire saying Nazism is coming.

Speaker 3 But it does feel like there's a middle ground between that and like doing thumbs up pictures with all the nominees. Like, do we have to do the thumbs up picture with all the nominees?

Speaker 3 I feel like there might be a more productive way to say, hey, I'll meet with these nominees and see if we have common ground in certain things or, you know, whatever it is, like the fentanyl crisis or whatever.

Speaker 3 Like there are certain issues that we can work together on. You know, there have been centers that are good at that.
Tammy Baldwin did this.

Speaker 3 She worked on a bill with JD Vance that was relevant to the people of Wisconsin. I interviewed about this.
And that's what you're supposed to do as a person in the legislature, right?

Speaker 3 The thumbs up pictures and like eye rolling and anybody who is expressing legitimate concerns about Donald Trump coming in, that part annoys me.

Speaker 2 I don't like that. I totally agree, obviously.

Speaker 2 And it's, again, if you actually care about influencing the behavior of these nominees, because you're going to be a senator and they're going to be, many of them are going to be cabinet secretaries and sub-cabinet and the like, you should be tough on the things that they're saying or have said in the past and have said they would do in the past.

Speaker 2 You should be tough on that and say, well, that's unacceptable. Now, look, I'm open to having a conversation.
Maybe I'm even open to voting for you as a Democrat, if Federal wants to say that.

Speaker 2 But you've got to assure me that you're not going to do A, B, C, or D. Or Trump has to assure.
If you're going to talk directly to Trump, did he ask Trump any tough questions?

Speaker 2 Did he ask Trump whether he would order Pam Bondi to not do investigations of people that are on Cash Patel's list? I mean, I have no impression.

Speaker 2 I didn't read carefully all the accounts, I guess, of Federal's visit, but I have no impression that there was any sort of sending a message to Trump.

Speaker 3 Well, no, if he did, then Trump wouldn't have been talking about how great and how smart he was. Right.

Speaker 3 You don't have to read all the accounts. That's the other thing with the Federman is, now that you mentioned it, now I'm getting my hackles up.

Speaker 3 He does this thing where people ask him about, well, you know, Cash Patel said this or, you know, so-and-so said that. And he's like, well, yeah, I haven't seen that.

Speaker 3 And when we talked to him, he told me he wasn't going to investigate enemies, so that's okay. And it's like, wait a minute, no.

Speaker 3 fetterman ran as a progressive right like far more progressive than either of us right and so if you have nominees coming in who have stated plans that are in stark contrast to what you have

Speaker 3 have said your preferences are on various policies then it's your obligation as a senator to vet through those.

Speaker 3 If it's like a Tulsi situation where he asks her tough questions about something and they're like, you know what, sure, I said that on Steve Bannon's podcast, but I changed my mind.

Speaker 3 I'm going to do this instead.

Speaker 2 I don't know that I would really still believe them but at least then you're doing your job of vetting the person rather than just being totally dismissive of any concerns about these nominees and doing doing nicey nicey thumbs up pictures I don't dig it at least Lankford got Tulsi to flip flop on 702 now we don't I don't still think she's still think she's qualified and I don't trust her to run DNI having said that they can literally now, I believe, be very hard for her to come out against 702 or not to support its reauthorization and so forth, right?

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 once she's there, having said this publicly. So I think, yes, at least get, minimally get the commitments on the things that are important for the country.

Speaker 3 I do want to see the holdout. And my one caveat on the Federman thing is

Speaker 3 just in order to be consistent with myself, the Democrats do need people who just talk normal. And Fetterman does that, right? I know, I know, I know.
Take a deep breath, Bill.

Speaker 3 I know that you love the, you know, high-minded Straussian talk and the quoting of Churchill.

Speaker 2 I like Fetterman. You have to

Speaker 3 going back to the Greeks. And I know you like all that.
But the Democrats could use a mix of people and they could use one person in there who does wear the hoodie and just is like, come on, bros.

Speaker 3 I'm going to chill out about this. Like there is some value to that posture.
And I guess that's just why I keep coming back to the thumbs up photos.

Speaker 3 I feel like you could achieve that.

Speaker 3 You could get the value out of that without being so obsequious.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2 Look, I rather liked Federman from what I know of him. I've met him just a few times.
Actually, I joke, I saw him a couple of different events in the last few months.

Speaker 2 Some reason, this was before this last stretch, but earlier in 2024.

Speaker 2 And I said, you know, I think I'm probably a little bit to your left now, but that's okay. We have a the Democratic Party is a big tent.
You know,

Speaker 2 he was already moving to the, I was spending more time attacking the left. And we had a sort of jocular, very brief exchange about this.
So no, I have a jocular exchange.

Speaker 3 You didn't quote Euripides or anything? You just

Speaker 3 too brave.

Speaker 2 You know, I like to adjust my remarks to the. No, but Federal is a smart guy, also.
I mean, he's got that whole shtick, but it's not like he's not a, you know, anyway. I don't have a problem.

Speaker 2 I look, I think he's a good politician. He won to Pennsylvania.
We were happy.

Speaker 2 I recall defending him quite a lot after that stroke, incidentally, when everyone was saying, oh my God, how could you support someone who's not, you know, in totally great shape?

Speaker 2 And I remember we published articles in the bull work about how people recover from strokes, and having a stroke is very different from being, you know, 80 years old and not being able to do things and so forth.

Speaker 2 And when you're middle-aged and you can recover and so forth. So, yes, we are not an anti-I don't, I really think JVL loved Fetterman, didn't he? Wasn't he pushing Fetterman to like president?

Speaker 3 I'm hoping he can come on sometime. We can hash some of this stuff out.

Speaker 2 I like it. We have been a pro-Fetterman publication.
So we say all this from sorrow.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and I like heterodoxy. And I'm happy if he wants to leave the party norms in certain ways.
There are a lot of elements of it I like. The smiley thumbs up pictures, maybe we can stop.

Speaker 3 That's, I guess that's my number one. That's my number one issue.
The visits to Mar-a-Lago, let's chill out on those.

Speaker 3 On the other side of the coin, on the more normy Dem, whatever you want to call it, traditional Dem side of the coin, while we're doing little nitpicks,

Speaker 3 we've not covered the DNC race at all. So I'm...

Speaker 3 I would like your take on the DNC chairs race broadly, but I have to, you know, in order to be fair here on the podcast, if you're going to criticize the heterodox suck-up to Trump Dems, I also need to express my concerns about the more mainstream Dems and their strategies.

Speaker 3 The key players in this chairs race are Ken Martin, chairman of of the Minnesota DFL, and Ben Wickler, the chair of the Wisconsin Dem Party.

Speaker 3 Martin O'Malley, former governor of Maryland, is also in the race. There's this guy, James Skoofis, who's been creating a star.
He's kind of a lefty populist state senator from New York.

Speaker 3 There's some other people running, but those are the main players. Wickler, who I think is considered the favorite, he did this tweet over the weekend.

Speaker 3 We unite our coalition by making sure everyone's at the table. As DNC chair, our leadership team will lift up our full coalition: Black, Latino, Native, AANHPI,

Speaker 3 LGBTQ,

Speaker 3 youth, interfaith, ethnic, rural, veteran, and disability representation.

Speaker 3 Nobody talks like this. Nobody talks like this.
Okay. You can be for diversity.
and

Speaker 3 be for having voices at the table while just talking normal. Stop.
Okay. Stop.
What is interfaith? Does anyone know what interfaith is? What is ethnic? A-A-N-H-P-I? I had to Google it.

Speaker 3 N-H is Native Hawaiian. Do we really need Native Hawaiians at the table at the DNC decision-making process? And if there's a talented Native Hawaiian who happens to be a good strategist, sure, great.

Speaker 3 But is that a key part of democratic outreach? Like invite the best people who know how to win. Get perspectives.
Sure. I'm all for this.

Speaker 3 Like say, hey, if I'm at the DNC, we're going to get perspectives from people, you know, to make sure we aren't in our bubbles. Like, right.

Speaker 3 We're going to have diversity when it comes to race, but also college attainment, you know, religion. You can say that in a way where you sound like a normal human.

Speaker 3 Listing out interfaith ethnic, like, I understand it's a little bit of a nitpick. And this is kind of just like woke copypasta, but it just has to stop.

Speaker 3 So anyway, I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or the DNC chairman's race more broadly.

Speaker 2 I mean, I know Wickler a little and I love it.

Speaker 3 I like Wickler, by the way. I'm picking on him with love.

Speaker 2 I'm picking on him with love. Good job, Samarita.
But it is, he must have thought he was having trouble on the left, you know, with some of the DNC members.

Speaker 2 It's saying the DNC is a representative organization and, you know, and it's quite diverse. And Hawaii has DNC members.
They're not being discriminated against.

Speaker 2 Hawaii's governor, actually, was here, was talking to people about how he's a doctor, if I'm not mistaken, was talking about how dangerous Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
would be as Secretary of HHS.

Speaker 2 So I like, I think his name is Governor DeGreen. I don't know much about him, but he seems like an impressive guy.
Anyway, yeah, I mean, so why go through that whole ridiculous thing?

Speaker 2 It just kind of confirms one's impression of the DNC. I mean, whether the DNC matters, I don't know.
Didn't you work in a previous life at the RNC for a year or two?

Speaker 3 I did. I did.

Speaker 2 Just want to learn your point about this.

Speaker 3 Yeah, here's the diversity that you could use.

Speaker 3 There's Bill Simmons, I think, used to, as a sports pod guy, I listen to, he used to say coaches and NFL coaches need like a director of common sense on the sideline of like clock management.

Speaker 3 I just like somebody who's played a lot of Madden who can be like, don't do this. It's like I have an 18-year-old kid who's played a lot of Madden that's like, don't do this, coach.

Speaker 3 Like, I just know that this is a bad idea. The Democrats need that.
They need like a 22-year-old Twitch streamer to just sit next to whoever gets this job. And when they see a draft, just be like, no.

Speaker 3 I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 People talk like this. We don't know.
I don't know what A and H P I is. We're not going to do that.

Speaker 3 A 24-year-old Twitch streamer to just veto tweets, I think, might be a useful person to have at the table while you're adding people to the table.

Speaker 3 These committees aren't as important as people think, is I think the point of your question. And like, there are two different models that are useful.

Speaker 3 One is just raise a lot of money and put a ton of money into ground troops and data and door knocking. And it's just, this is behind the scenes, you know, and

Speaker 3 you're just.

Speaker 3 I was about to say making the trains run on time, but

Speaker 3 that has kind of a negative connotation these days. So, you know what I mean.
Just make sure the operationalizing of it is good.

Speaker 3 That's been most of the RNC chairs, frankly, going back to like Ken Melman, like all the way forward. Reinz was, I think, chosen under that rubric.
Then he kind of, you know,

Speaker 3 started to enjoy the limelight a little bit. But, you know, the new RNC chair, whose name I'm forgetting.
Right now at the moment, from North Carolina, Watley, Michael Watley, just came to me.

Speaker 3 I think he is in that rubric, right? The other model is the more like, I am, I'm the chief communicator for the party while we're out of power. You know, Terry McAuliffe was maybe more in that role.

Speaker 3 Dean, I think, might have seen himself as operationalizing, but was more of a public-facing.

Speaker 3 So either of those models are fine for me, right?

Speaker 3 None of the candidates there, Ken Martin, Ben Wickler, and Martin O'Malley, I don't think are going to be seen as the chief public face

Speaker 3 of the Democratic Party. I don't think any of them fit that bill.

Speaker 3 So given that, really their job is just do no harm on the public-facing stuff and make sure that the actual party is running well behind the scenes, is raising money. So

Speaker 3 that's it. If you cut away all the BS, that's it.
And I know it's not really about ideology or any of that.

Speaker 2 Not at all. Wickler did a good job in Wisconsin.
They got the governor re-elected. He wasn't the greatest candidate.
They got Tammy Walden get re-elected.

Speaker 2 They lost the set of race to Johnson, but it was pretty close and lost the state this time, obviously, but close, get closer, I think, closest to the three Midwestern states, I think.

Speaker 2 Blue Hall states. So he has a perfectly good claim that I know how to do this kind of thing.
They want a judicial race, too, that was important.

Speaker 2 And he went after the Republicans and reduced their margins, I think, quite a lot in the legislature.

Speaker 2 The whole Democrats, just like take a second on this, there's a kind of fantasy world they're in now of like, we're going to redefine the party in this way.

Speaker 2 We're going to be centrist on immigration, but we're also going to be populist on this, which is all fine. And they should all try that out.

Speaker 2 And different people should say what they believe or say what they think works politically or both.

Speaker 2 But for now, it's about opposing Trump and stopping him from doing as much damage as possible and establishing yourself what you believe, what you would do really by contrast with Trump.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's what a good opposition party does. So if his tax bill is all for rich people, you say, look at this tax bill, it's a disgrace.
We should help the middle class or the poor.

Speaker 2 But the idea that they're going to sit around in sort of endless meetings about how they can really rebrand the party is childish. Now, they have a couple of elections this year, good candidates.

Speaker 2 I think Spanberger here in Virginia, Michael Sherrill in New Jersey would be

Speaker 2 my preferred candidate for governor there. Help those two people win governorships.
You know what? That would actually really help.

Speaker 2 Help some younger members of Congress become spokespeople on different issues in a more organized way than they can do when they're just sitting in some committee on the minority.

Speaker 2 That would be a good idea. Do some stuff around the country with the Jason Crows and Jake Auchenclosses and others.

Speaker 3 Or even AOC.

Speaker 2 This is why I like to say that. Yeah, so totally, I agree.

Speaker 3 This is why we, both of us, were for AOC

Speaker 3 taking that oversight chair role because the most important thing right now is defining Trump and the Trump administration negatively. And she's good at that.

Speaker 3 And instead, they gave her a seat on energy and commerce. I'm like, I'm sorry, AOC going to bat against Trump and using her media power to do that is the highest and best use of her, not

Speaker 3 trying to argue for the Green New Deal or whatever while you're in the minority on the Energy and Commerce Committee, no matter what your view is of that as policy. None of that is going to happen.

Speaker 3 Like there's not going to to be,

Speaker 3 I mean, I say this, it's pretty macabre given what is happening in L.A., but

Speaker 3 there's not going to be meaningful legislation on climate that the progressives like on the Energy and Commerce Committee this time. Like that, this is your point, right?

Speaker 3 You can have the ideological fights, but like the fight right now is an anti-Trump fight.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't know if they can adjust, if they can help on some legislation, that's fine. It's not mutually exclusive.
Chris Murphy, I've got to say, I think you had him on.

Speaker 2 Didn't you have him on fairly recently?

Speaker 3 I've had Murphy on, not that recently, but yeah.

Speaker 2 He's been good, though. I mean, I don't know him much at all, and I didn't really follow him very closely.

Speaker 2 I mean, he's very outspoken on gun control issues, which was fine, good, and some other issues.

Speaker 2 But I've got to say, he seems to be one of the few people who's like internalized the notion that, okay, what we need to do, the way we define ourselves as something different, as something new and different, is by opposing Trump and thinking of interesting ways to do so.

Speaker 2 Then you're not just defending Biden's accomplishments from the last few years and or before defending whatever, you know, the Obama administration, you know, and you find your way into the positions you need to be in.

Speaker 2 And you never know ahead of time, incidentally, in my experience in this, what issues take off, right?

Speaker 2 And what fights take off and what nominees blow up and what departments turn out to have scandals and suddenly you're making your name on something you didn't really expect to be.

Speaker 2 Murphy at least seems to me to have a feel for that in a way that most of these other members are busy sitting around. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And the other thing Murphy's doing is making that and saying we need to do this fight on behalf of working people getting back. You know, I think that's right.

Speaker 3 Like thinking about how can we reframe this Trump fight where we're putting us on the side of regular people, working class people against entrenched powerful interests. That's a smart use of time.

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Speaker 3 You did a tweet, which you do sometimes, about bullies, and this is related to this.

Speaker 3 You wrote, as I've gotten older, I've had to acknowledge the sad fact that in this world of ours, bullies often prosper, but my loathing of bullies has also intensified over the years.

Speaker 3 And as bullies are ultimately weak, I do think the Putins, Trumps, and Musks, if resisted, can be defeated. This is the mindset, right? No?

Speaker 3 Was that just you don't actually believe that?

Speaker 2 No, I do believe that. After I did what I did, what was I striking?

Speaker 3 No, no, you just made an eyebrow thing. You made an eyebrow.
I was like, maybe I was a little over my skis on that.

Speaker 2 Maybe they can be defeated. No, sometimes.
Eventually they can be defeated. Eventually they can be defeated.
No, that's true.

Speaker 2 I find the bullying side of MAGA and Musk and the tech pros and stuff particularly repulsive, I got to say. They could have views that I really think are bad for the country.

Speaker 2 And obviously, I've argued with people for decades about such views in different foreign policy and other areas. But that's one thing to earnestly have such a view and advance it.

Speaker 2 It's the really repulsive bullying and the taking pride in being bullies and that other people taking pride in supporting them because they're bullies that I just find kind of personally so off-putting, I guess.

Speaker 3 Like, Musk behavior is just appalling in these sorts of cases.

Speaker 3 Sam Harris, who I had on recently, was doing an interview with Bill Maher, and he was like telling a story about how Musk had been, had tweeted out a link that the Pizzagate guy tweeted out.

Speaker 3 It was like a clip of Harris, and they used to be friends, a clip of Harris talking about immigration, but like it was, it was clipped in such a way that they

Speaker 3 totally got the point backwards that he was trying to make. And Sam emailed Elon, who had been his friend, and was like, hey, you got this wrong.

Speaker 3 And by the way, the guy that you're sharing this was the guy that

Speaker 3 thought that there was

Speaker 3 child abductions happening in the basement of a pizza parlor with no basement. And he said, Musk replied, fuck off.

Speaker 3 And it's just like, that's it. It's like, I can do what I want.
I can smear people. We can attack people.
I can bully people. And, you know, if I'm challenged, you know,

Speaker 3 I can just tell you to go pound sand. It's a particularly unappealing trait.
And I, but I do think maybe like the glimmer of hope is that

Speaker 3 I don't think it's a trait that wears well.

Speaker 3 Maybe, right?

Speaker 3 Are you convinced about that? You seem unconvinced about

Speaker 3 your own take.

Speaker 2 So I don't think it wears well. That's why I wrote that.
I'm usually pretty sincere when I write.

Speaker 3 Sometimes

Speaker 2 I'm doing thought experiments.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right. Well, you got to do that too.

Speaker 2 And once I don't really look at the response, you see the responses sometimes.

Speaker 2 And someone had responded quite intelligently, something about how, well, I think what Bill underestimates here is how much people like bullies and bullying.

Speaker 2 You know, that there's more support for it than you would would like to think. I tend to agree with you that people don't like it ultimately and that it wears thin.
And

Speaker 2 if one can organize in response to it in an effective way, one could really fight back effectively, actually. But I don't know, the MAGA situ experience

Speaker 2 is a bit of a wake-up call, the degree to which people like being part of the bullying crowd as opposed to standing up to the bullying crowd, right?

Speaker 2 Even billionaires, even Mike Zuckerberg, and all that bullshit about this is you can do this on some other show, but on the what is he, what did he say?

Speaker 2 That he realizes now that Facebook, they need more of a culture of masculinity or something. What is he even talking about?

Speaker 3 I mean, they need more of a culture of masculinity. Yeah, this was on my notes, but I was like, I don't have Bill Crystals right now.

Speaker 2 You should have someone better.

Speaker 3 But yes, but no, I just teased you about like, yeah, we need more of a masculine energy that celebrates aggression more. Mark Zuckerberg, like give me a break.
Just give me a break.

Speaker 3 All these people is just so fucking embarrassing. I have one burning question for you before I let you go because I've been having people message me about this.

Speaker 3 Is the old national greatness conservative inside you at all when it comes to Greenland?

Speaker 3 Is there anything firing inside Bill Crystal, you know, from 90s Bill Crystal that says, you know, Greenland, I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 3 Trump, I don't like. But Manifest Destiny to Greenland may be a little appealing for you?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't like Manifest Destiny as a historical matter.

Speaker 2 But I used to joke in the 90s, hey, you know, parts of Canada, if they want to join the U.S., that's fine. Obviously, they should want to join.

Speaker 2 We shouldn't be conquering them.

Speaker 2 But then they would have some issues and how they would separate themselves from the rest of Canada, but that's sort of between them.

Speaker 2 But I don't have a problem with if Denmark decides it's too much of a pain in the neck, I guess they pay quite a lot of money actually to support.

Speaker 2 support the people in Greenland who don't really have that much of an economy there, I guess.

Speaker 2 And if they decide it's too much of a burden for for them, and if Greenland wants to become part of the U.S., that would be fine.

Speaker 2 And they would have to figure out how to, they should have votes, you know, as should people from DC and Puerto Rico. Yeah, maybe they'd be part of Alaska, some kind of like

Speaker 2 coalition of the islands, I don't know, or something like that, or far-flung places. It has a little bit of resonance.

Speaker 2 So someone texted me actually when the Greenland thing started to see, which is, wow, the neoconservatives really have taken over the Trump administration. And

Speaker 2 but so, but on the other hand, just as someone who does, you know, if we could be semi-serious for 20 seconds, Denmark has been totally, as I understand it, I asked some foreign policy guy about this, and so I don't know anything about it.

Speaker 2 Are we having problems like we're doing what we want to do in Greenland? Not at all. Denmark's perfectly, it's a NATO ally.
They're perfectly happy.

Speaker 2 If we ask to send 10,000 troops to Greenland tomorrow to guard it better or something like that, they'd be fine. And there are American troops there, incidentally, on and off, I gather.

Speaker 2 And if we want to exploit the minerals there, if Trump doesn't put tariffs on everything and destroy the world trading system, we have very good relations and good trade relations with Denmark.

Speaker 2 We import stuff, we export stuff. So, fine.
So, let's get the rare earth minerals. So, it is just such performative.
I had thought before it was performative bullshit.

Speaker 2 You know, just it was just bullshit and a way of keeping people off his back as he sells out Ukraine and the important stuff.

Speaker 2 Maybe he realizes that if you want to be on Mount Rushmore, you probably it's not a bad idea to expand the size of the U.S.

Speaker 2 And maybe he's more serious about it.

Speaker 3 And Greenland looks big on a map.

Speaker 2 It looks like

Speaker 2 that's what this says.

Speaker 3 Greenland looks big on a map.

Speaker 2 And the people there look white or whitish. I mean, so

Speaker 2 and that's good. The place is white in general.
It's very snowy. You know, Trump likes that.
He doesn't want one of those places with dark people and a lot of sunshine, you know?

Speaker 3 Yeah, none of the Caribbean islands are on the list, you know, for acquisition.

Speaker 2 Well, or how about let's just give Puerto Rico statehood as an actual place with millions of Americans, you know.

Speaker 3 All right. I just wanted to see if, you know, that's a good thing.

Speaker 3 It had a little.

Speaker 2 I take it had a little.

Speaker 3 It had a little, a little.

Speaker 2 But not incidentally, if he were saying, you know what, we need to really help Ukraine, we have a chance to topple Putin, look at the energy problems they're having, you read about this warning with Gazprom, and we really can double down on Ukraine.

Speaker 3 And incidentally, I'm not a, you know,

Speaker 2 Ukraine should join NATO. And if Denmark is, well, if Greenland is too much of a burden for Denmark, we could take that off their hands.
That's a consistent greatness position.

Speaker 2 But Trump is not for American greatness. Trump is for bullying a couple of little countries.

Speaker 2 mostly even symbolic bullying, I would say, you know, taunting Canada, being idiotic about Mexico, honestly, which is a very important country that we need to be on good terms with, and then not standing up to either Putin or G, or I predict Iran.

Speaker 2 He's going to be bad on all the big challenges that we're bad from a hawkish point of view, including the Trump hawks in the administration. You know, I think on all those issues, on all those things.

Speaker 2 That actually requires like serious policy and tough trade-offs at times, right?

Speaker 2 Maybe, maybe he'll realize that he won't be a successful president if we lose ground to Putin and to G and to the Iranian theocrats. But

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 2 I don't know. I'm not pissing.

Speaker 2 That I'm very worried about, actually, the Ukraine situation. But Bob Kagan had a good piece on that in The Atlantic last week.
Very long piece. You can read it at your leisure.

Speaker 3 We'll put it in the show notes, Bob Kagan. All right.
Thanks, Bill Chris.

Speaker 3 We also have our, we should say, Jen Rubin has left the Washington Post, and she's starting with your friend Norm Eisen, an outlet called The Contrarian, to fight the autocrats. So

Speaker 3 FYI, that's the people desiring to fight autocrats, might be leaving some of the other more legacy news outlets. A thousand flowers are blooming.
So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

Speaker 2 Welcome, welcome. Welcome, Enli.
The anti-autocracy water, I was going to say, it's not really warm.

Speaker 2 It's lucrative. It's freezing.
It's freezing here

Speaker 2 in pro-democracy and anti-autocracy world. But welcome, welcome.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but if you want to do a polar bear plunge with us, we'll accept you. Come on in.
All right. Thanks for Bill Crystal.
We'll be back tomorrow with another edition of our Bowler podcast.

Speaker 3 See y'all then. Peace.

Speaker 3 This river is on the grave.

Speaker 3 Echo, something's gotta change.

Speaker 3 I'm at all.

Speaker 3 And I'm stuck somewhere in between. Your death and my lucid dream.
I'm no help, Lily, and no.

Speaker 3 But I'm trying to try to prove my worst. To be accepted and on this dirt.
Baby, I'm ready to go.

Speaker 3 And greed,

Speaker 3 move slow. I'm living the scene.

Speaker 3 Back home, that's where it's on the green.

Speaker 3 Echo is on this

Speaker 3 team.

Speaker 3 I know.

Speaker 3 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Bratt.

Speaker 2 Dude, this new bacon, egg, and chicken biscuit from AMPM, total winner, winner chicken breakfast. Chicken breakfast? Come on, I think you mean chicken dinner, bro.

Speaker 3 Nah, brother.

Speaker 2 Crispy bacon, fluffy eggs, juicy chicken, and a buttery biscuit. That's the perfect breakfast.

Speaker 3 All right, let me try it. Hmm, okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 Totally winner-winner chicken breakfast.

Speaker 3 I'm gonna have to keep this right here.

Speaker 2 Hey, make sure every breakfast is a winner with the delicious new bacon, egg, and chicken biscuit from AMPM. AMPM, too much good stuff.

Speaker 2 Lowe's knows that saving is always top of mind, especially this season. That's why we've picked some great deals for early Black Friday.

Speaker 2 Get free select Dewalt, Cobalt, or Craftsman tools when you buy a select battery or combo kit. More tools? Why not?

Speaker 2 Plus, we've got select pre-lit artificial Christmas trees starting at $59.98 because it's never too early to think Christmas. Get Black Friday prices without the crowds.
Lows, we help. You save.

Speaker 2 While supplies last, selection varies by location.

Speaker 5 October brings it all. Halloween parties, game day tailgates, crisp fall nights.
At Total Wine and More, you'll find just what you need for them all.

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Speaker 5 Total Wine and More is your cocktail central for all your Halloween concoctions.

Speaker 5 With the lowest prices, for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love and love what you find find at Total Wine and More.com for details.

Speaker 5 Spirits now sold to Virginia and North Carolina drink responsibly. People.