Marc Caputo and Dan Goldman: Trump v. the United States

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller.
Remember it is Wednesday so if you're just looking for my punditing and my hot takes over on the next level feed late on Wednesday I've got JVL and Sam Stein in for a vacationing Sarah Longwell. So it's boys.

And who the hell knows what we'll be doing?

Fart jokes, I guess.

I don't know.

Whatever boys do.

I'm gay.

I don't know about what boys do in those sort of settings.

Locker room talk.

But on this pod, we're going to be serious.

And so we turn to serious people.

In segment two, I've got Congressman Dan Goldman.

We're going to be discussing the Trump transition, what the Democrats are doing to prepare for it.

But first, my colleague, Florida man, author of the Maginville newsletter, Mark Caputo. Hey, Caputo.
Good. Serious.
Of course, this is when the dog comes in to bark. Fantastic job, Peanut.
That's okay. People like the dogs and the cats in the background, as long as they're not getting eaten.
Caputo, I wanted to just get an update from you because to try to make some sense of what is happening in mar-a-lago um since you're our man with the ear to the ground down there it has been a bizarre couple of weeks to say the least you know as far as the various selections are concerned i say not bizarre in the narrowest definition of the term not unpredictable not unforeseen just typically bizarre even. I kind of just wanted a top line report from you and maybe the best place to start is here.
You know, the first pick, I believe the first staffing pick was Susie Wiles, my former boss, as the chief of staff. And there was some scuttle about, okay, you know, there's some seriousness there.
And, you know, Susie's going to make sure that whatever you want to say about the campaign like you know most of the time Susie kept things on you know the trains running on time

and then Marco gets picked and then after that it gets into kooky town so I'm just kind of like

let's just start with like what is happening there is is anybody actually in charge or is just just

we just in Trump whim world no I think it's that scene from Apocalypse Now or you know he he basically

says that he doesn't see any

Thank you. in charge or is just, just, we just in Trump whim world? No, I think it's that scene from Apocalypse Now, or, you know, he, he basically, you know, says that he doesn't see any kind of order in this chaos.
The thing with Susie is that, you know, no, no method. Like they say, my methods were on sound.
He says, I don't see any method. And I, and I think, you know, understanding Donald Trump is as sort of the heart of darkness Kurtz of what's happening at Mar-a-Lago is probably a good starting point.
Susie succeeded as the chief of staff because, as I think I've said before, she said the MAGA serenity prayer, which is a serenity to accept the things she can't change. And that's Donald Trump's fundamental nature.
And then the strength to change the things she could, which is basically everything else and having the wisdom to know the difference. And the reality is, is Trump's fundamental nature means he's going to pick the people he wants, when he wants and how he wants and fuck all to everything else.
And so that's kind of what you're saying. Also, when she was handing over, you know, the reins of basically Magaville to Howard Lutnick and company for the transition.
It just meant that there was just a broader number of people with just sort of a different style or lack thereof in handling this. And that's another reason it just kind of looked more chaotic.
Mar-a-Lago used the word bizarre, kind of pun off the homonym of it, a bazaar. It has that sort of bizarre-like quality.
There's all these people sort of milling in and out, like social media influencers and job seekers, consultants, gawkers who have enough money and influence.

Yeah. And so there is just this sort of menagerie of people, and it just sort of lends itself to the sort of chaotic scene that you saw.

Rubio's announcement was actually mistakenly leaked.

Some people actually figure and with reason to believe that it was Howard Lutnick who did. And that was among the things that caused him trouble and caused him to potentially lose the Treasury Secretary post.
He just got commerce. So Susie's ultimate role generally has been, this is Donald Trump's campaign, or now it's this is's transition.
This is Donald Trump's White House, and she's going to focus on those things that she can kind of fix and deal with.

So I think she was an advocate for Marco Rubio for Secretary of State.

I do think that Donald Trump also wanted him.

Obviously, that's why he picked him.

But all this other stuff is by and large just Trump and some of the other inputs he gets. Peacocks, vultures, cougars.
I'm just thinking about the venagerie. What other animals? Yeah, well, being South Florida, you're going to have like iguanas.
You might have some, you know, tegu lizards in South America. I think there's some monitor lizards in Southwest Florida that haven't made to the Southeast yet, but give them time.
Pythons, obviously. Lots of reptiles.
What are the things that she can change in the serenity prayer? It's hard from the outside to see anything that anyone has control over besides Donald Trump, but I'm sure I'm missing something. Right.
Well, that's part of it. It's not trying to control Donald Trump, but Susie excelled from what we gather and from what people told us and from what we've observed at sort of not having your ego first, getting along with people and trying to sort of, you know, nudge the SS Trump in the right direction, you know, kind of, and I mean, SS as in steamship, or I don't mean the other thing.
Okay. Not, not like the leather, right.
You know, kind of nudging the tiller, not trying to kind of grab on it too tight and to turn the ship too quickly

and making the sort of small adjustments. I think staffing is going to be a big thing.
That is an issue that she's going to have to pay attention to. So far, the White House is staffed with a lot of the campaign people she greatly trusts.
It's Trump world. So people inevitably wind up knifing each other.
We haven't really seen that yet within the umbrella of the former campaign team, but that could be coming.

The Gates nomination

is a classic example of, I guess, the limits of the serenity prayer method for Susie. Based on your reporting and others, my basic framework of understanding is that Lutnick and McMahon had put forth some serious attorneys and some lawyers for this job.
Trump did not like how much lawyering that they were taught, you know, all these lawyerly words they were working on. And Gates kind of hatches this plan with Trump within like, I don't know, 20 minutes while the headmistress is not around.
But yeah, maybe put a little more color on how that came to pass.

I wouldn't say this as gospel. This is just from what I gather.
Allegedly, this was Donald Trump's decision. It's not like Matt Gaetz is like, hey, I've got a great idea.
Make me attorney general.

That's what I'm being led to believe. Susie Wiles was on the plane when this happened,

but she was in the back of the plane. And in the front of the plane was Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump,

Elon Musk, Boris Epstein, and probably a few other people.

But the main players are-

I thought Musk and Boris were fighting.

I mean, to a degree, yeah.

Axios broke that story first.

And from what we're able to follow, it's like everyone who spends a significant amount of time around Donald Trump notices that Boris Epstein is the shadow.

I'd said the other day, and then he has a kind of a canine master relationship with Donald Trump. Think of like a St.
Bernard. He's a big dude, right? And the thing is, is like people like their dogs, right? So they're not going to get rid of them or dog, right? D-A-W-G.
And the reality is, is like people have come and people have gone and Boris Epstein has endured. And so though Elon Musk apparently looks at Boris Epstein with a certain amount of concern and suspicion that Boris is a leaker and all these other things, I think it was just more borne out by the fact that he doesn't trust Boris.
But this happens all the time around Trump and people fight and people knife each other. And in the end, Boris usually endures.
But anyway, back to the airplane. So they're on the airplane together.
And apparently Donald Trump says, like, I don't like these other guys. These guys are stiffs.
And was like, Matt, do you want this? And from what I gathered, you know, it was made clear to Trump, like, Matt has charitably speaking, terrible SEO, search engine optimization. If you Google his name, you know, I mean, I've had that, but not to that degree.
You know, sex trafficking a teen is a pretty terrible thing to come up in your top-ranked Google searches, and yet there it is. Nevertheless, he persisted.
That is Donald Trump. Also, all the pictures of Matt, all the recent pictures from the convention, where it like he I don't know had uh expanded his like his face had puffed a little bit there have been maybe some facial changes I've known Matt for a long time I just mean his face just looks significantly different than his face had looked in the past I'll let people judge for themselves why that may have been a bee I guess or it's South Florida so professional work Yeah.
Well, that was technically Wisconsin when he gave that speech. I assume it was Botox, but I must admit, never having had it before, I'm not quite up on that procedure.
This is what you're giving us is on natural, Mark. I apologize for interrupting.
So Matt has bad SEO. So yeah.
And Trump was like, no, I want to do this. And so a plan was hatched and they've just decided to proceed.
Now, there are obviously like just big doubts about whether this can get done or not. And the question is, is to what degree does Trump really try to not just twist arms and maybe break arms? I mean, my mainstream media mammal brain, it's hard for me to see with all of these negative inputs, like the information flow is just all negative toward Gates, how the Senate is going to stand through that.
At the same time, Trump does have that sort of ironclad grip on the Republican base, and they can be loud, and there are 53 senators, so I guess we'll have to see. Yeah, JD was shoulder to shoulder with Gates and Rubio this morning.
The three amigos were together going to the Senate. So I think that's pretty telling about there was some like somebody took the New York Times out of context and it was going viral on social media about how Trump maybe thinks Gates might not get through.
And it's like, there's not a lot of evidence of that to me. There are people on Trump's team who think that it's like any competition.
Like you can't step in the boxing ring and like, oh, I'm going to lose. Well, then you're going to wind up on your back within a few moments of the bell ringing.
So there's always a certain amount of delusion if you're behind in a campaign or an endeavor like this to say, oh, I'm going to win and I'm going to do it. So certainly that exists.
But yeah, there are more kind of sober-minded people in the Trump atmosphere and orbit and certainly in the United States Senate and thereabouts that say how does this happen i i'm assuming i'm kind of close to one of them but the interesting thing for me you know the gates story maybe about as well as anybody having reported on it and the gates life story but also in particular you know the story that is surrounding this ethics report about the two young women and how they're partying and he was flying them i guess he flew them to new york and took them to see pretty woman which is a little on the nose for me but uh give us just a little bit of like your insight on what the truth of the story is and i want to compare and contrast it to the hegs story which it weirdly is being overshadowed by all the gates stuff when i mean if you just took that straight accusations at face value right and and who knows and these sorts of stories, but the allegations against Hegseth are like far darker. Anyway, I guess it's hard to rank these things, but the balance seems a little bit off about the focus on both to me, but give people just a rundown of what the reality is with the Gates situation.
That's difficult to describe in a short period of time because there's so many different twists and turns in the case, but essentially there was- Give us the Reader's Digest version. Give us the Axios version.
There was a 17-year-old who came into Trump's orbit who had lied about her age and said she was 18. Gates's orbit.
Correct. And this was through a friend of his at the time, certainly no longer, named Joel Greenberg, who wound up being the most corrupt official ever to serve in any public office in Florida ever.
Competitive category. Oh, but I mean, he just stands head and shoulders above the rest.
The insanity of Joel Greenberg is kind of fascinating. So Greenberg was the one who used to procure women through seeking arrangement.
And he knew this young woman, we'll call her as they call her in the court documents, KM.

Those are her initials. And KM had a friend named AB.
AB was 17. AB wound up on seeking arrangement with KM, her friend, and wound up lying and saying she was 18.
And she wound up hooking up with Joel Greenberg and having sex with him for money. And that relationship started in April.
around September of 2017,

so April 2017, September 2017,

Joel Greenberg and having sex with him for money. And that relationship started in April, around September of 2017.
So April 2017, September 2017, Joel Greenberg finds out that AB is a minor, he continues to have sex with her for money. And so eventually he gets busted for that.
What originally caused his political downfall and his legal downfall, Joel Greenberg, was that he falsely smeared a political rival as, wait for it, a pedophile. Shocker.
Every accusation, a confession, of course. Indeed.
So now the question is, because Gates was involved in this milieu, there were drugs servicing around, there were women who were being passed around, there were group sex sessions, for lack of a better term. The question is, from a legal standpoint, did Gates have sex with this 17-year-old essentially between that time of April and September? And he says no.
And so far, no real evidence has surfaced to say that he had. That is, no direct payments to her, no communications to her, or any other related communications.
However, AB, KM, and Joel Greenberg all say that Gates did have sex with this teen when she was a minor. And the feds, last thing, which a lot of people don't understand in reading the coverage, decided not to charge.
And the reason they decided not to charge is not only was there no hard evidence, but that each one of these three witnesses had serious credibility problems. Obviously, Joel Greenberg was pretty clear.
AB as well, because if you look at a related civil lawsuit, she had a number of misstatements. And then KM herself, who is now being presented by other media as just this sort of, oh, wow, I just happened to go in this room and see Matt Gates have sex with this woman on a hockey table.
Well, actually, KM, if you read the documentation and you have the sourcing, you realize she was guilty of sex trafficking herself. That's a difficult witness to put on the stand to testify against Congress.
It's an important correction. Earlier this week on the podcast, I said that the accusation was that Matt Gaetz had sex on a poker table and it was an air hockey table.
And facts do matter here on the Bullard Podcast. And it's a complicated situation.
It's a situation that, like, obviously there's some legal complexities. It's like, was the law broke? There were some judgment questions, which I think are maybe a little less gray about the poor judgment of, you know, a first-term congressman, you know, kind of having the 18-year-olds, even anybody adjacent around and flying them around to these sorts of parties.
But it is like, because everybody hates Gates. Like, all the focus is on this.
And he works at it. He works at being hated.
Like, all the focus on this, when the Higgs of accusation, again, we'll wait to see what comes up, but like, this woman, like, accuses, she goes roofied and was raped, you know, which is a scale of accusation linda mcmahon gets picked all you have to do is watch the vince mcmahon documentary to know the types of cover-up of sex crimes that was happening at the wwe where she was an executive like rfk jr we got into those earlier this week like the list of like various sex pest allegations in this cabinet is insane. And in some ways, Gates is like a shield for all the others.
Right. I don't think this was intentional, by the way.
I don't want to imply that was intentional. Yeah, there is that theory.
However, what you're hearing more and more of in Trump world is the Senate always rejects one. That there's always one nominee who gets rejected, almost like a scapegoat or whatever.
Maybe that's the scapegoat is the wrong word, whatever, a sacrificial lamb. So that's going to be Gates.
But the function that Gates is going to have here is that he's just exploded the Overton window into the size of a garage. And, you know, if he goes down and if he goes, you know, the harder they come, the harder they fall, it probably will create the space for the rest of these picks to go through.
And then there's this matter of like recess appointments and the degree to which Trump can almost declare Congress in recess. And apparently there's only really one U.S.
Supreme Court ruling about this from 2014. And there are a number of legal theories and documents floating around that says Trump can do this.
It wouldn't surprise me to see Trump testing out a novel legal theory based on the Constitution and daring people to sue and take it to the US Supreme Court. The other thing I think is coming down the pike, and I'm interested in your take on the internal version of this in Trump world, but I'm going to talk about the external.
A California House race looks like it's flipping. Last night, the people hadn't expected John Duarte as the Republican.
It looks like he might end up losing, which would mean that the Republican House majority might be 2220 to 215, and then you lose a couple of House members for a little while for these appointments. So they're going to have a one, two, maybe three seat advantage in these early days in the House.
Mitch McConnell's press conference yesterday was kind of like, he has a little bit of a YOLO vibe about him right now. Tom Tillis does too.
And we'll see if they actually do this. But they have very narrow majorities for novel legal theories to be tested, for starters.
And two, internally, you're already seeing like J.D. Vance sends this tweet yesterday lashing out at a Steve Bannon producer calling her a mouth-breathing imbecile.
Some of these leaks are starting to come out again. So I don't know, like what is your sense of like, obviously there was a moment of we are victorious.
We have a mandate. We have the mandate of heaven.
And like the old school Trump shivving seems to be starting to appear again. Is that wishful thinking or are you sensing that too? I mean, you're sensing a little, as you were talking about earlier with the Elon Musk, like Boris Epstein, Contratem and Howard Lutnick and everyone sort of whispering about him as being kind of too much and over the top.
I think that Congress is going to be more of a challenge for the Trump team than their bragging indicated.

But at the same time, and this is grading on a curve, Trump has been contained.

Yeah.

Like the old Trump of 2017 would have been lashing out constantly at this.

And he's not lashing out at McConnell because he needs McConnell.

Right.

And they're working behind the scenes.

They're dispatching J.D. Vance to the Senate.

And I think Rubio, I was talking to one of his people yesterday, and they kind of ducked the issue.

But I think Rubio also plays a kind of a key role in trying to smooth the waters here.

This will be different from the 2017 Trump White House for this reason.

The 2017 Trump White House had three centers of power that were all knifing each other.

You had the Bannon group. You had the Reince Priebus group, and you had the Jared Kushner group.
And you don't really have that right now. Right now, it looks like just kind of the Susie group.
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All right. I wanted to get to your Latinx story really quick because it is, it's just such a revealing.
It's like this is the type of story that only happens in the Trump transition. You don't recall during the Obama or Bush or Biden, any of these other transitions, people being like, you know, Obama just was really annoyed with Larry Summers.
So he didn't get the job because Obama didn't like his voice. You know, you didn't hear stories like that.
But that is essentially the Lutnik story where he is like on the path to be Treasury Secretary. But Trump's just like, there's too many meetings with this guy.
He's annoying me. Like the gist well yeah he's too much he's too much like apparently when you meet howard lutnick he's one of these like ah you know kind of gregarious back slappers but what happened in the end it was a little too much gregarious back slapping on the front hand and then a little too much like backstabbing on the back end yeah and it just became too much for Trump, inner circle and all that it started with rfk you know lutnik just freelances before the election goes on cnn starts talking about vaccines like rfk convinced me vaccines are bad i'm kind of mocking paraphrasing here a little bit inaccurate to be clear and then says when caitlin collins asked him well is rfk going to HHS secretary? He's like, of course not.
Like dismisses it. That pisses off RFK.
The next day there's all these meetings. It's the weaning days of the campaign.
RFK ultimately winds up as HHS secretary. So that kind of starts the proximate fissure sort of between Trump and Lutnick when Lutnick just looks like he's just sort a loudmouth, rake-stepping problem.
And he just kept being loudmouth and rake-stepping. And as one of the sources I talked to before he officially didn't get treasury and was then given basically a lesser position of commerce, they had said Howard would probably get it, but he just needs to keep his head down and shut the fuck up.
Well, he didn't do either. What is the DeSantis gossip? So you lose, Rubio is in the Senate, so DeSantis is going to get to appoint a senator up into the midterm, and then there will be an election where someone would fill out the rest of the Rubio term.
The MAGA world, at least some people have been pushing Lara Trump. Some DeSantis people have been pushing a guy that's younger than me, who is his chief of staff.

Other names are out there.

What's the latest?

I'm going to make some news and probably scoop myself.

All right.

What the fuck?

You know.

So the chief of staff is James Uthmeyer.

From what I gather, once Lara Trump entered the picture, and once the Trump people started to say, it's Lara or bust, guys like James Uthmeyer, loyal DeSantis, and before that, Trump Republican worked in the Commerce Department under Wilbur Ross. He doesn't want to get crosswise with Lara Trump.
I don't want that smoke. No way.
So Uthmeyer is signaling to other people like, you know, like I'm cool. So the going theory of like, if this were decided in a vacuum more of a vacuum and it weren't that much of a problem de santos would want to pick ashley moody who's the attorney general the state of florida and then uthmeyer his chief of staff would replace her because he wants to run for attorney general one day and that would work out hunky-dory.
However, the real question here is, to what degree does Trump world bring so much pressure on the situation that everyone is like, I don't want the job. And then that basically leaves one person, Laura Trump, to be appointed.
I could see that as a possibility. Otherwise, the state CFO, Jimmy Patronus, would like the job, but also he might run for Gates's seat because he lives out there.
There are so many different things in flux. And one thing to look at down the road, at least in Florida, is there are at least two Miami figures, Kevin Cabrera, Miami-Dade County commissioner, and Steve Bovo, the mayor of Hialeah, who are probably going to wind up in the Trump cabinet.

So we're going to have all these vacancies around Florida as a result of Trump getting picked. Mike Waltz is gone and the like.
But as for who is going to be the Senate pick, I don't know. I have great reason to believe that Ron DeSantis does not want to be cucked by Donald Trump and told to pick his daughter-in-law.

DeSantis had to eat enough shit

to does not want to be cucked by Donald Trump and told to pick his daughter-in-law. Like DeSantis had to eat enough shit by doing that sort of hostage video of dropping out of the primary and endorsing Donald Trump.
And one of his advisors told me at the time before he dropped out, he's just going to swallow the shit sandwich whole rather than nibble it in little bites, which he did. But no one likes shit sandwiches you even well maybe some i don't know you're just but at least that's a silver lining for some of us or not not everybody maybe i'm thinking of him having to pick larry larry trump is having her be in the senate that's not so great does santa 70 to shit sandwich you know hey well, that's the thing with Donald Trump is one of his superpowers is even for the people who dislike him, is that eventually he insults and demeans someone they hate.
And there was a lot of schadenfreude during the Republican primary. Like I remember, you know, Nikki Freed, I hope I'm not betraying a confidence here, the Florida Democratic Party chairwoman.
She was like, look, I don't want Donald Trump to be president, but if it means humiliating Ron DeSantis, well, that's kind of a silver lining. Nikki, be careful what you wish for.
But looking forward, though, I think if Laura Trump, if the Trump brand remains the way it is, and I don't really see that failing in Florida, in 2026, if she decides to run for the office of Senate, she is a strong favorite.

Hey, Caputo, thank you for that Apocalypse Now imagery and going into the Mar-a-Lago heart of darkness.

We're not quite at the end yet, but I appreciate your reporting.

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All right, we are back.

He's the congressman from New York's 10th congressional district representing lower Manhattan, a little bit of Brooklyn.

He was lead counsel in the first impeachment of Donald Trump. It's Dan Goldman.
How are you doing, Congressman? I'm great, Tim. Good to see you.
Great? You're great? You know, you got to be positive. You got to be optimistic.
Okay. I like that.
I like that. I'm doing my best.
I'm here. I'm surviving, but I'm aspiring to great.
It's hard to even know where to start, but I guess we have two new transition choices since yesterday's pod. Both have extensive reality TV experience, so that's pretty key.
Linda McMahon is going to be running the Department of Education, and Dr. Oz will be running CMS, which is totally not a serious job at all, that you'd want to have somebody who has subject matter expertise and a history of understanding bureaucracies and Medicare repayments.
Anyway, so you can take either of those that you want. Did either of those jump out at you? What jumps out at me is the consistency of these picks.
Some are objectively worse than others, but all of them reflect Donald Trump's disregard for our government. Frankly, just simply how our government operates and all of the essential functions that our government performs.
These are two more political sycophants, people who will do whatever Donald Trump wants. And he's trying to lay a foundation with these picks, where he can execute his worst instincts.
And it is such a clear reaction, I would say overreaction to his frustration from the first term, when you had competent, patriotic people who were in these significant positions, who put guardrails around him, whether it be John Kelly, or Mark Milley, or Rex Tillerson, or Jim Mattis, or Mark Esper, and the list goes on. Mike Pence, of course, in the final days.
And all Donald Trump is focused on clearly is not doing that again. And so qualifications, competency matters not at all.
All that matters is that he believes and trusts that these are not only political supporters, but they're sycophantic loyalists and they will do whatever he wants. And that's where the real danger lies.
I think experience on television and having a few kind of sex related allegations are also key, seem to be key, you know, sort of resume builders for people. Well, before you went to the second point there, Tim, I was going to say you would really be excellent now.
I know. This is what I'm saying.
Why did I leave? Why did I leave the party? You know, why couldn't I have come around on Trump? I would have been, who knows what job I could have had, you know. It's prime qualification is ability to go on television.
Alas, I'm stuck with you guys now, you know, that actually, you know, that wants somebody to run CMS who actually cares that people on Medicaid get the services that they want and, you know, have ability to understand how the bureaucracy can work more efficiently. It's unfortunate.
Yeah, look, and not only is there the basic functioning and the critical role that CMS plays in making sure that Medicare and Medicaid are executed and implemented properly, but it is very clear that, and Donald Trump has said this, that he wants to cut these entitlements. He wants to cut Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.

And- that he wants to cut these entitlements. He wants to cut Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
And he is putting someone like Oz in there, or someone like Linda McMahon in the Department of Education, which Trump has said he wants to eliminate. He's putting these people in Matt Gaetz and the Attorney General who wants to get rid of the FBI who wants to to undermine the DOJ, RFK Jr., who is a vaccine denier and all of his public health views are contrary to science, and he's not, of course, a doctor.
All of this is an effort for Donald Trump to really undo and dismantle the proper functioning of our government. And it is scary because people don't realize how essential these departments are and how important it is that you have someone who's competent, who can oversee these critical roles that every American relies on, whether they realize it or not.
Yeah, I think that's astute. And particularly in the Medicaid area, I think their plans for Medicaid cutting is maybe like the most underappreciated and reported element of what's coming down the pike of the things that we kind of know is coming, because they're going to have to find ways to pay for the, you know, extending the tax cuts, etc.
And like, this is in all of their plans. And it certainly seems like something that Dr.
Oz will go along with. What worries you most just kind of as you assess all that, and I think it ties to kind of the next topic, which what what can Democrats do now during the lame duck to try to put some guardrails around the worst potential actions.
But like, as you assess these picks, like what are the things that that you're the most concerned about? This goes back to what my biggest concern probably of Project 2025 is, which is Schedule F. And what that would do is essentially eliminate all of the protections for the career experts, the civil servants, the foreign service officers in the Department of State, you know, career military officials, DOJ officials.
And what that will do is allow Donald Trump or his cabinet secretaries who oversee and run those departments to get rid of anyone they want for any reason, and then to be able to put whomever they want. And as we've seen from his picks at the top, qualifications and competency do not matter.
And so what scares me is that this is the first step in completely dismantling our executive branch and our government. And the risks are immense because I'll give you one example.
And this is Tulsi Gabbard, you know, who has questionable contacts with foreign leaders to oversee our intelligence community. If she then removes people who are experts in intelligence gathering and assessment, what that will do is it will mean there will be very few sources of intelligence that give us critical information, that give us information about what Vladimir Putin is doing,

or what China is doing, or what Iran is doing. We will lose them because A, the people won't know how to handle them.
Our intelligence community cannot be trusted. Tulsi Gabbard and Donald Trump will use intelligence for political purposes, and they will burn sources.
So we will lose sources. And none of our allies will provide us with

their intelligence. That is going to make our national security at much, much more risk.
People do not understand how important it is that we get that information, how often that information is used to thwart terrorist attacks, to thwart criminal gangs. And that's just one example of how this, what Donald Trump is doing is laying the foundation to dismantle our government.
And people will say, oh, well, it's a bloated bureaucracy. And that may be the case.
I don't disagree that our government does not run as efficiently as it should. I agree.
But the way to attack that is not to just completely destroy these departments, because the work that they do is critical for our national security. It's critical for all of the programs that people rely on.
And if you're just if your goal is to tear it down, you are going to put Americans at risk, you are going to put Americans in greater poverty, and you are going to create crisis after crisis. It's interesting.
Every smart person I asked that question, one of the most worried about the answer comes back around to Gabbard, basically. And like, I do think there is a misalignment between that and what is in the public discussion right now.
But yeah, you're talking about the sources and methods, and some of it is her expelling people, but some of it is just people opting out, right? We have to have some concerns about intelligent sharing and our allies and sources. There being a period of feeling less comfortable sharing information.
Well, remember when Donald Trump provided highly classified information from one of our allies to the Russian foreign minister in the Oval Office? That set off a whole cleanup operation for that country to protect that source, get them out of harm's way, and it eliminated that source of information. Now, imagine if that is on steroids, and that happens all the time.
That information that we get from sharing from our allies and from our own sources who will run away because they won't be protected, I can't emphasize how vital it is to our national security. And if you think that Tulsi Gabbard, who cozies up to Putin and Assad, is going to be respecting and using our intelligence for proper purposes and apolitical purposes, you're sorely mistaken.
That puts every American at risk. A couple things you guys are working on now.
You're a co-sponsor with Don Byron, Security Clearance Review Act, because I guess these guys aren't vetting people for security clearances anymore. You have a resolution reaffirming the 22nd Amendment, which for people who don't know, you're about to really familiarize yourself with that, which is the ability to not run for a third term.

Talk about those efforts and just other things that can be done between now and January 20th.

We will certainly try to do everything we can. And some of this is, you know, making sure that Republicans and Trump are on notice that this is not going to be, you know, some cakewalk running roughshod over our democracy, that they are going to be called out and they are going to be challenged in everything that they do.
I think there are sort of two key pathways that we need to go on. The first is Donald Trump is appointing or nominating these cabinet secretaries at record pace.
But the Senate is still controlled by Democrats. The administration is still the Biden administration.
So if it is true that Donald Trump and his administration are going to try to bypass the FBI and the proper security clearances, which is just absolutely bewildering to me when you think of someone like Tulsi Gabbard, who would oversee our intelligence community, the Democrats can still do something while they have the majority in the Senate. And they can request or even subpoena all sorts of information from the FBI, from the intelligence community, from any other vetting agency, while they have the majority before January 3rd.
And so I have urged my Senate colleagues to get jumping on that, because that's something that's within their power to do. And that is a way of getting out in front, I guess, of some of the issues that will be coming down the pipeline.
And the other thing that I think we really need to emphasize, and I get asked all the time, what are you going to do to stand up for the Constitution? What are you going to do to stand up for the rule of law? I take an oath to the Constitution, as does every single Republican congressperson and senator. And my oath is no different than theirs.
And the Republican elected officials take an oath to the Constitution, not Donald Trump. And they have to uphold the Constitution.
They have to uphold the rule of law. They have to uphold our system of checks and balances.
And we cannot fall into a trap where everyone just looks at the Democrats to be the bulwark for the rule of law and the Constitution. We have to, all of us, have to hold Republicans accountable.
The one silver lining in everything that has happened, in my view, is that the Republicans selected John Thune to be the Senate Majority Leader over Rick Scott, who was clearly Donald Trump's preferred candidate. And what that indicates to me is that the Senate Republicans still take their oath, at least some of them, very seriously, including John Thune.
I don't know about very seriously, but okay, potentially seriously. I will give him the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise, because we know what Donald Trump wants to do.
But Donald Trump can only execute his goals. If he has accomplices in Congress, if he has complicity from John Thune and Mike Johnson and the other leaders and, and we cannot let them off the hook.
They have an obligation to our country, not to Donald Trump. And just because Donald Trump just overloads the zone with so many unqualified cabinet picks does not mean that there's a negotiation where you get to say, okay, well, you have, you have five completely absurd cabinet picks.
so we'll let you choose three and we'll reject two. No, each one, they have an obligation to evaluate on the merits themselves.
And if that means that you don't confirm five out of five, because they don't meet the standards that the Senate has historically set for advising and consenting on nominees, then that's what you have to do. And that is really important, I think, for all of us to start stressing.
It's not just what the Democrats can do in the minority. It is the Republicans who are in the majority who are the ones who are really obligated to uphold the Constitution.
Less optimistic than you on that front, but I appreciate you setting the standard for them. On this thing and what's happening on the Hill, though, so just yesterday over in California 13, we have your potentially new colleague, Adam Gray.
There's an influx of votes. They take way too long to count in California, and you should fucking fix that, California.
But a new batch of votes came in. It seems like he might beat Republican Congressman John Duarte, which would take their majority down to 220.
And then a couple of them, Stefanik, Waltz, are going to be gone at least for a little while. That gets you down to 218.
And they have a very narrow majority. I already saw Chip Roy and Anna Paulina Luna sniping each other on Twitter.
I mean, I don't know. Are you doing any charm offensives over there with any gettable Republicans? Because it's unbelievable how narrow their, you know, their ability is going to be to maneuver.
Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right. And when they get down to 218 or 217, they have a one vote spread, which means every single member of the Republican Party is the deciding vote on every single thing that runs through.
And that is assuming everyone is there. And as we see, sometimes people are sick or they have other family obligations and you often don't have full attendance.
They want to go be a university president or whatever. You get some people who are, you know, who just who don't show.
And there's no margin for error.

And it also means that each of the Don Bacons or Mike Lawlers or, you know, some of these these purple district Republicans who are who have close elections are in democratically majority districts and who win their individual vote is determinative of what the Congress does. And that is, as you look two years down the road at the next election, which comes pretty quickly, that can have a real impact.
And so last Congress, what we saw, of course, was the most inept and ineffective Congress by the Republican majority in modern history. And they had a larger majority than what they're going to have in this next Congress.
We think that just like last Congress, where Democrats were needed to do the basic functionings of governing, we think there will be a role to play for Democrats in providing checks on Donald Trump, but also in trying to find some compromise to improve the lives of the American people, which is truly what Democrats' objectives are. It has not proven to be the case for Republicans, but we are not going to allow politics to overrun what we understand our responsibility to be, which is to try to find solutions for the American people.
Can I be the devil on your shoulder? Are you sure? Shouldn't you just let them F it up for a little while? Is that not maybe the best Machiavellian long-term strategy? I think you're probably right.

I think politically it's probably right, right?

Just like politically it was smart for Donald Trump to submarine the bipartisan border security bill, which would have dramatically addressed and significantly addressed the problems at

the border and in our immigration system.

And he submarined it because he wanted the political issue. And there's no question that was helpful to him in this election.
I think that if we descend into tit for tat, politics over people all the time, we will descend into more ineptitude, more polarization, more partisanship. And at some point, and yes, Democrats are all too often seem to be the only adults in the room.
But I am of the view that we cannot let politics be the tail that wags the dog. And that we really do need to make sure that we are taking our obligation seriously.
And our obligation is what the people sent us here to do, which is to work, not to fight. A noble notion.
We're going to keep a dialogue open on that. Looking at the electoral failure of Democrats, looking back, I mean, there are a lot of different things out there that people are saying.
The kind of buckets that I put them in is there's like an economic bucket that the Democrats economic message or policies failed. It's a cultural bucket.

The Democrats shouldn't shouldn't be so far left on some of these cultural issues. There's just a messaging bucket.
We didn't talk. We didn't go on enough podcasts.
We didn't talk normal enough. And then there's just like bad luck, global inflation.
And, you know, hopefully Donald Trump gets a recession and that'll solve everything for us. So like where, where, well, among those kind of four categories, what, what feels the most

salient to you looking back as, as the fail point? Yeah, look, I think there are, there is truth to all of them and there's some element of all of them. And so it is easy to try to pick one over the others.
A couple of things really jump out to me on this. And the most frustrating thing for me is that it seemed like whatever Donald Trump's economic message was, worked a lot better than Democrats economic message.
And the thing that was so striking to me about Bernie Sanders statement after the election, where he says that the Democrats have lost the working class,

and that what the Democrats need to focus on is a higher minimum wage, paid family leave, affordable health care, lower prescription drug costs. And I went down the whole list.
And I said to myself, every single one of those policies is supported by the vast, vast majority of Democrats. Those are Democratic policies.
They are opposed by Republicans. And somehow, we allowed the electorate and even Bernie Sanders to think that it's the reverse.
And that to me is part of meeting people where they are. And rather talking about things related to identity politics or to culture wars, we need to talk more about what we plan to do to help people.
It's as simple as that. We have to address the issues that the people care about.

So if Donald Trump spends tens of millions of dollars on a misleading trans ad, we have to say, well, actually, that was a Trump policy.

And then we can move on to talking about the policies that we care about and that we want.

But we can't gaslight the American people into not feeling what they feel or to not believing what they believe and just pretend like it's not an issue. And we just want to talk about abortion or something else.
We have to address these issues head on. And we have to be able to then have a positive message that explains coherently to people why our policies are the ones that will help them.
And that was just a massive gap. And part of it is because we got distracted by these extraneous issues that don't matter as much to the vast majority of American people.
And we allow the Republicans to distract because they want to distract on those issues because they know if we dig into the meat of policy, people will realize that the Democrats' policies are the ones that will help the vast majority of the American people, and the Republicans' policies are the ones that will help the top 1%, and that's it. So that's where I think we need to find some common ground and common purpose moving forward.
All right. Thank you so much.
Congressman Dan Goldman will keep the convo going.

Everybody else, we'll be back tomorrow

for a lengthier discussion on this demo,

Autopsy stuff with a first-time board guest.

Look forward to doing that.

We'll see you all then.

Peace.

Your love from comfort is watching cityscapes turn to dust.

Film in hell, the copters crashing in the ocean from way above Got the music in you baby tell me what Got the music in you baby tell me what You've been marked in here forever And you just can't say goodbye Your lips, my lips, apocalypse Your lips, my lips Apocalypse Apocalypse Go and sneak us through the river Flood is rising up on your knees Oh please Come on, haunt me I know you want me Come on, haunt me Got the music in you, baby, tell me why Got the music in you, baby, tell me why. Got the music in you, baby.

Tell me why.

You've been locked in here forever and you just can't say goodbye.

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