Adam Kinzinger: All the Little Bros

hello and welcome to the bulwark podcast happy halloween i'm your host orville peck and i'm here with my partner contributor to the bulwark he's a former republican congressman a veteran founder of country first which packs pro-democracy candidates it's adam kinzinger how you doing partner hey good man my halloween costume is a washed up has-been how do i how's a washed up hack has been it's not really working for you i don't know you're you're filling out that shirt with those muscles and uh i don't know you look like you have a second wind in you to me uh brother well thank you for joining the podcast uh donald trump got into costume last night so i figured i had to so i wanted to start there have you had a chance to look at it i mean he he is wearing this like triple xl like dump truck driver costume that doesn't fit so he looks like kind of a small oompa loompa in a big costume yeah and then he didn't do the his makeup right so there's like a big hole right around his mouth so he kind of looks like a sex doll yeah what do you think about his closing kind of visual it was amazing it was amazing because of two reasons so number one yeah he didn't do his makeup right he's been doing his makeup wrong lately it's like worse like he you now see that like pale wine you know now around the side and i don't know what's going on contouring yeah maybe his skin's just so old that he needs to change his makeup to match it. But the best part is like, Maga is so obsessed with visuals, right? They don't care who this guy is as long as the visual is good.
And so him going up, looking overweight, unhealthy, and then reaching twice for that doorknob and then kind of tripping when he grabbed the doorknob to the garbage truck like you know that drives him nuts and that drives his supporters nuts and so it was like his little mcdonald's thing which was actually smarter where he was just trying to at the moment make something but i i think it just makes him look dumb and it's not going to change it nobody's going to be like gosh i was going to vote for kamala but but donald trump awkwardly got in a garbage truck i just can't help it i have to vote for him now also i talked about this a little bit with sam stein last night like the metaphor doesn't work for me because it's like i thought they were supposed to be offended that they were called garbage but so he's taking out the trash but meanwhile donald trump's been saying on the campaign trail multiple multiple times that America is a trash can for migrants. Yeah.
So wouldn't the metaphor have worked better if he was saying, I'm taking out the migrants, I'm taking out the trash? It just didn't work for me. I didn't understand what they were going for.
No, and it was probably his idea, to be honest with you, because he's like, that is one thing that Donald Trump is good at, is like, I'm going to come up with a visual. And sometimes he gets it wrong.
And I think this was a case of that. And plus, again, to them, it's I think we have to get in their mind and understand that it's not about doing something that is going to win an election.
They've already been convinced they're going to win. It is about how do I need all the other side? What is it that I can do to just tweak it and make them even more angry? And like the garbage truck metaphor they thought would do it.
And, you know, it just it's again, it's unfortunate that the whole thing happened because we were coming off a pretty good news cycle, Kamala's speech. And then, you know, frankly, the Madison Square Garden and this kind of blunted some of that.
But yeah, I don't think it's going to be quite the panacea they say it is. Yeah, thanks for nothing, Mr.
President. All right.
Well, I guess you mentioned Madison Square Garden, so we'll put this wrong. We have a segment that I used to do, man.
I used to do a lot, but then the political news cycle got kind of crazy. You know, there was a debate, a couple of assassination attempts, and our little gimmicks, we didn't have enough room.
We had to do real real business on this podcast but now we're in the home stretch for the ogs i want to bring back one of my favorite segments and it's where we talked about a guy named johnny mcinty who was trump's deputy president and he was in charge of staffing at the white house he left the white house he started up a dating site for incels called right stuff that has kind of failed as a dating site,

but it succeeded as a place for offensive conservative TikTok memes.

And so I want to get to the segment here, but today it's a bonus.

I want to play for you not just Johnny McEntee, but also clips from Charlie Kirk and Jesse

Waters.

So let's take a listen to our old new segment, The Right Stuff.

Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh and Jesse Waters. So let's take a listen to our old news segment, The Right Stuff.
So I guess they misunderstood. When we said we wanted male-only voting, we meant male M-A-L-E.
Hilarious. This wife is wearing the, you'll show it, wearing the American hat.
She's coming in with her sweet husband, who probably works his tail off to sure that she can go you know and have a nice life and provide to the family and then she lies to him saying oh yeah i'm gonna vote for trump and then she votes for kamala harris as her little secret in the voting booth kamala harris and her team believe that there'll be millions of women that undermine their husbands if i found out was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for harris that's the same thing as having an affair that to me oh my god he let him finish your god that violates the sanctity of our marriage yes i mean adam what is that what are they doing here i this is what we're we're closing the deal with the bro-fest at Madison Square Garden.

Got the surrogates out here trying to shame women for who they want to vote for.

Trump at the rally last night said, I'll be your protector whether you like it or not.

They want all-male voting.

I guess at some level, there's a serious element to it, but it's also very pathetic and sad.

Yeah, I mean, look, here's what this is. It really is, and Nikki Haley, I hate to give her credit for anything, but she, she called it right with the bro culture.
And you've talked about this too. There is a massive gender split, obviously there always kind of has been, but you know, Democrats are going to crush it with women and Republicans are going to do really well with men.
And part of this, and this is a whole hour long conversation in and of itself, but you know, I've said for the last 10 years, like we were kind of in this moment where everything masculine was called toxic and, and that was went way too far. And so there were these young men particularly that felt like they didn't really have a place.
What is my role? And Donald Trump comes along with actual real toxic masculinity. And in the absence of another version of masculinity, men just kind of gravitated to that.
And so that's what you're seeing here is an extension of this like, angry, you know, I'm in charge of the house type masculinity. And I think they're just doubling down on saying we're going to win men, we're going to win them big, outside of the morals of it politically, because it's kind of dumb, because women tend to turn out in much higher numbers than men do but that's what you have it's again it's it's the joe rogan slash andrew tate bro culture and they can't go back on that so you know does you know johnny mcinty really believe that he wants to repeal the amendment for women to vote probably not although maybe he would if he could honestly but for, it's all about like, I'm so anti PC.
I'll so say what's on the edge that I can win these folks. And that's kind of been the new Republican party is just how much can we trigger the left? And the more we trigger it, the more popular we become within our own little movement.
Yeah. I mean, like regardless of whether it's, it's clearly not a serious proposal to repeal the 19th Amendment, but like, putting it all together, you know, you have within Project 2025, and some of these guys, they've re brought up the fact that we should re look at no fault divorce.
I helped JD Vance even mentioned that in one of the million podcasts he did. shouldn't be letting people you know women should stay in these sorts of marriages obviously you have the abortion issue you know birth control like they're talking about how it's undermining of the man of the house to vote against them regardless of like which of those particular things you think is is doable in a trump term like the fact that you're going to have all these little little bros running around who have not yet matured into men and that they will wield the power of government that's got to be pretty alarming to any on the fence women it does have to be and i can't here's the thing like i can think of times in this country's history obviously when races have been pitted against each other obviously there were times when women didn't have equal rights as men but i can't necessarily look back and figure a time when actual genders have been pitted against each other.
Obviously, there were times when women didn't have equal rights as men, but I can't necessarily look back and figure a time when actual genders have been pitted against each other. I mean, and maybe I'm wrong.
I'm no clear historian, but I can't think of a time when other political leaders have so openly tried to turn men against women. I mean, it's wrong to say like, we're going to turn blacks against whites or use race, but that's happened before.
The fact that you are within each home now trying to pit men against women. You think what this is doing to relationships, by the way, if there's a dude that's in a marriage and he thinks this kind of stuff's funny and his wife is feeling very minimized because of this.
You know, we've had trouble with marriages staying together anyway, particularly in the in the pandemic era post-pandemic era. Think of what Donald Trump, Johnny McEntee and others, Tucker Carlson, are happily doing to marriages now, creating a real stress point.
I mean, look, I actually think that, you know, somebody that votes Republican and Democrat should be able to be married together. But the reality is that is a stressor in marriages.
And all these guys are doing is inflaming that further. This is not the pro-marriage, pro-family party anymore.
It really isn't. This is the trolling party.
And literally, that's all it is. My colleague, Kathy Young, sent a tweet about this, which I liked, which was like, you know, all these guys do the lip service to raising children and, you know, being a is so important and valuable and the left wants to take that from you and you know and the feminists and third-wave feminism and they want to put you out in the workplace for something that's less fulfilling and the real fulfilling work is being a mom and they say that and say that and then the minute it becomes convenient it's like oh what you're ungrateful You're so ungrateful sitting around at home eating your bonbons? You're not going to vote for Mr.
Trump like the man of the house who's providing for you does? It reveals just the hollowness of the whole endeavor. You're right.
Because what you see is, and this has kind of been something I've been on a little bit lately, which is like, there's this kind of belief that the 1950s was really like what you see on Leave It to Beaver, right? It was just this amazing time. Mom loved being at home.
She loved, you know, not having a microwave and having to cook everything in the oven for seven hours. Like that's what, that's what this view is.
And the kids just go outside and play. Now you don't think about like, you know, back to the future with Biff the bully and how, you know, everything, if you were slightly different, you literally would get assaulted back in the day.
And, you know, all the sexual abuse that happened that you couldn't report because police wouldn't take you seriously or racial violence that would happen. And the police would always take the side of the white guy.
Like, no, you think back to the fifties. And the thing is, is we're getting a bit of a preview now that the 1950s weren't quite this idyllic time where everybody was happy.

I bet in the 50s, there was a lot of things where men are like coming home drunk at 9 p.m. from the bar after being at work.

And the wife wanted him home with the kids.

And he strikes her because she's not grateful enough for all the hard work he's doing.

We're seeing a little preview of that now. This is what these guys want.
And honestly, I think that's a miserable life, to be honest with you. We're not going back.
You know, you'd think maybe, whatever, maybe we're just cucks. Maybe we're soy boys that don't understand, right? So we've turned on Mr.
Trump. We don't understand how it goes.
So I was interested to hear Megyn Kelly's take, not those particular clips, but on just the general culture at Madison Square Garden and the various speakers and what she noticed from the Madison Square Garden event. Let's listen to Megyn Kelly.
But I'm telling you, even for me, and I voted for Donald Trump last week, it was too bro-tastic. Okay? It was.
You're trying to win an election in which you're hemorrhaging female voters maybe when you present in front of hundreds thousands at least at madison square garden you clean up the bro talk just a little so you don't alienate women in the middle of america who are already on the fence about republicans do they have no women advising their campaign? Is there no actual woman sitting behind the scenes coming up with a guest lineup and saying, let's just have a word with the guys who are going to be speaking about this isn't the bar. This isn't their living room.
This is a campaign. This is politics.
We're trying to get him elected.

We don't need to rally the base or guys anymore. And it's not helpful, even if we do want to rally the base or guys, to go full off-color insults to different racial groups and so on.
worst person in the world world makes a great point. Dot meme.
That was great. Oh, man.
Megyn Kelly. There was something I liked about Megyn Kelly at one point deep in the recesses of my brain, and I haven't seen it lately.
And there it was. That's pretty good.
So I'm going to give Megyn Kelly a reverse compliment sandwich. Great.
She's insane. That was a good point point i don't know what happened to her okay and uh because she remember she's the one that was taking out trump like in 2016 like you know you said women blah blah blah but i mean she's right here which is there really is no campaign strategy behind it again it's like how much more how much over the edge how intense can we get How much can we trawl the left? And at some point, while that may feel good, that comes into conflict with we actually need to win this election.
And, you know, if we don't win this election, all this will have just been a good time and not worth anything. And so, yeah, I mean, if Megyn Kelly is ringing the alarm bells, if I were the Trump people, I'd actually listen.
The problem is the Trump people are probably actually listening. It's Donald Trump that isn't.
And every speaker knows that if they can go there and say extreme stuff, that Donald Trump will love it. And look, let's be very clear.
Maybe this guy was a comedian. Maybe he shouldn't have said it.
Maybe everybody was disgusted by it. They knew what the reaction was to it prior to Donald Trump going up and speaking.
And if he'd have gone up and simply said, look, we had a speaker here prior. I totally disagree with him.
I disavow that. He would have probably jumped 20 points in the polls because the first time he would have seen contrition from Donald Trump.
And this wouldn't be an issue we're talking about. But they can't bring themselves to do it because at the depth of their heart, this stuff really is funny to them.
Yeah, they agree. I mean, Donald Trump can't say that doesn't represent me because it does i mean like it's a stated talking points that there are shithole countries up there and that they're garbage and that other countries are sending us their garbage so you know the joke is right in line with donald trump's actual views and i went i went off on this actually on twitter i put out a video a little two minute video just like listen spare me and i think spare me.
And I think I put an article on Substack about it, which is like, spare me your indignation, Trump people. When you sit here and you say that Joe Biden's called you trash, and you're like, oh my God, I'm so aghast.
Spare us your indignation, because you are worshiping a man who basically says that on a Tuesday, who divides genders against each other, who divides race against each other, who divides socioeconomic status against each other, who divides nations against each other, who divides neighborhoods against each other. All he does is divide, stir division, stomp on heads, punch down.
That's what he makes his money on. That's what he basically is known for.
And yet you're outraged that the current president honestly misspoke, but let's even say he didn't misspoke. He said something you didn't like.
Guess what? He's not even running for president, but quit being outraged when your guy has spent eons dividing and destroying people against each other. Like, I have no room for your outrage.
I'm sorry. Zero.
Back to your point about, you mentioned Nikki Haley earlier and how like there's no strategy there. I guess the one thing I disagree with on your point is that you're like the strategists are on to something and it's Trump that's not.
I don't know. I mean, Trump's speech at Madison Square Garden was way less like offensive on its face.
I mean, it was baseline Trump offensiveness, but it was way less offensive on its face than like a lot of the warmups and like Stephen Miller's Nazi comments. Stephen Miller's one of his advisors and it was his advisors that decided they needed to have 18 fucking dude bros doing, you know, insult comedy before him.
They didn't have to do that. It's the advisors that also made this mistake, as far as I can tell.
Let's listen to Nikki Haley. The Associated Press says, as Democrats court Haley supporters, the former UN ambassador is still waiting to hear from Trump.
When was the last time you talked to the former president? Last time I talked to him was back in June. So are you surprised that you haven't been deployed out to campaign or have you volunteered to go out and campaign for him directly? They're very aware that we're on standby.
They know that we would be there to help. I've helped with some fundraising letters and text messages and those types of things so we've done that but look we're on the same team.
It is their campaign's decision on what he needs in these last final final days it does not bother me at all i think they need to do what they need to do to get across the finish line i just think that they need to focus primarily on who it is they're talking to you've got americans who are absolutely going to vote for trump you've got americans who are absolutely not going to vote for trump and then you've got a percentage in the middle who like Trump policies but don't like his style. That is what they need to focus on.
So when you look at these things, it has got to be a story of addition. This is not a time to have anyone criticize Puerto Rico or Latinos.
This is not a time for them to get overly masculine with this bromance thing that they've got going 53 percent of the electorate are women women will vote they care about how they're being talked to haven't talked to him since june suzy wiles can't set up a phone call that is crazy i mean a it goes to show you that you get nothing for sucking up to trump you get nothing he just takes your soul and you get nothing in exchange for the deal but um just as a strategic matter i mean wow i think it's first off i just i can't stop laughing that she call it this bromance culture because it's true but it is like you know like they pride themselves on being so manly but yet they are just literally sitting around like googly eyed at each other all, right? Like if Andrew Tate walked in or if Joe Rogan walked in, it's like this male worship culture, which to me is, I don't know. It doesn't seem very masculine to be honest with you, but maybe I'm wrong.
I'm not sure if Donald Trump's feeling very gay, but he is giving out in the first round of RuPaul's Drag Race. I know.
With the amount of makeup that he's putting on right now. Like, he's giving full last place in RuPaul's Drag Race energy over the last few weeks, which is kind of gay in its own sense.
Yeah. Yeah, well, that's Trump.
But the Haley thing, look, there is nothing more pathetic to me than Nikki Haley clearly wanting to be used by Donald Trump, clearly wanting to be out there on the trail, clearly with her feelings hurt, and clearly probably sitting around going, gee, did I actually do the right thing by coming out and supporting him? Because her assumption was, which happens to so many others, it's why Trump is a good cult leader. If you ask for forgiveness, he'll forgive you and usually bring you back into the cult and you learn not to do that again.
She miscalculated that. And like from a Trump perspective, I think it's really bad politics.
If he'd had Haley out there pretty hard, I mean, she would have been a pretty serious contender against those of us in the Republicans for Harris coalition because she's's, you know, she was kind of the meme of the Republicans for Harris, but her feelings are hurt. And you know what? And I don't care because if you're going to turn against everything you said in the primary, because you want to still be in the in club, then you deserve to be ignored.
Honestly. It is pretty crazy when you think about it, how much more effort the Harris campaign is putting in to reaching Haley voters than the Trump campaign.
Yeah. And it's pretty wild.
The Harris campaign has made a real concerted effort through what you're doing with Republicans for Harris, the little tour she did with Liz. We could go down the whole list.
The ads, her rhetoric, freedom signs. And it's like the Trump campaign is just not even trying.
It does feel a little bit though, like, like there's some Stockholm syndrome with some of the Haley voters. So they're not, the message isn't getting through to them that they're not invited to the party, that it's a no homers club, you know, but.
And given that there are probably some listening to this now, I think it's important to say this, which is look, um, the party that you you still have affection for, that party that believes in a strong national defense, a smaller government, you know, the one that we all remember, I know it's hard to come to grips to this, but it doesn't exist. It literally, if you're going to put policies up against each other, you are closer to the Democrats, even in their most liberal form, than you are the current Republican Party.
It doesn't mean you're close to Democrats, but on a spectrum, you're closer to Democrats because you believe in kind of the liberal small-l order out there, and the Republicans don't anymore. And look, I know it feels like it happened extremely suddenly, too.
It didn't. This has actually been in the works for about 20 years, maybe longer.
But really, the last eight years since Donald Trump came down that escalator on the scene, the last nine years, it's gone from being the party you remember to what it is today. That's not a quick happening.
Nine years is a decade. Like, you can change the tone of a party in a decade.
You don't have a place in that Republican party anymore. And I know it hurts because our political identity is tattooed on our foreheads and we never want to get rid of it.
But you are the outsider now. It's not that there's outsiders in the party.
Yeah. Over a decade, your little kindergartner started to drive their car.
You know, I know it happens fast. You know, the days are long and the years are short.
But like, you know, that's that's what's what's been happening all right one last thing on the nikki haley voters i've said this a couple times but i've received several texts this is not a fake sir story i've received several texts and dms from people that shared my pitch to nikki haley voters that said they sent it to their dad or their friend in pennsylvania and and it helped it worked it nudged them over into kamala's camp so So we'll put the link in the show notes again. You should be out there knocking on doors or doing whatever, you know, postcarding.
But send this article around. You have somebody in your life.
You have a Wall Street Journal reading Brett Bear watcher in your life. Send it to him.
Maybe we can nudge him over. Okay.
Here's one last point that I think should maybe be relevant for them that I don't feel like i've spent enough time talking about on the on on the podcast because there's just so much shit going on rfk said this in an interview a couple of days ago and it's pretty alarming let's listen the key that i i think i'm you know that president trump has promised me is um is control of the public health agencies which are hhs and its sub agencies cdc fda nih and a few others and then also the uh usda which is uh which you know is key to making america healthy because we've got to get off of uh seed oils and we've got to get off of pesticide-intensive agriculture.

Talk about spooky.

There's my Halloween fright for you.

RFK has been promised the head of HHS and NIH and USDA.

That's alarming.

Can they do something about his cough?

But look, I do.

He's like, that audio isn't giving health to you.

That's not giving making America healthy again to you. It's not helping.
I was like, I, dude, it's crazy. He's like, that audio isn't giving health to you.
That's not giving making America healthy again to you. Right, yeah, it's not helping.
I was like, I ate glass. Yeah, exactly.
But listen, man, like the seed oils and the, you know, the fluoride and the electromagnetic frequency that's coming off of your Wi-Fis and the 5G towers, this is all in the same thing. And by the way, the earth's flat.
We never went to the moon and Fahrenheit is just a construct. I mean, and honest to God, if you have a Republican Senate and you can imagine the pressure coming on the Republican Senate to allow this RFK appointment to go through, because all of a sudden RFK's people are going to be going crazy, very well may end up with this and you could imagine a surgeon general warning against seed oils for god's sakes or a surgeon general warning against just virgin olive oil and not extra virgin olive oil whatever it is but it's this is just crazy stuff you know and it's not based on science it's based on somebody that wrote an internet article i think with what we know about rfk he'd be he's he's into extra virgin olive oil but probably so i don't know if it matters that the republican senate would confirm him right like they could just make him the czar and and the people around you know andrew egill wrote about this in the newsletter this morning that guy that spoke at msg howard lichnick the ceo his employees died during 9-11 like he says he wanted the like business guys the practical guys around trump he's on cnn last night with caitlin collins do you see this and he's like rfk who's convinced me he's making some good points about autism and like all this stuff and like we should maybe be re-looking at vaccines like in a worst case scenario i don't think it's just surge in general warnings you know i think that vaccine mandates for kids bringing back smallpox, measles, rebel, like all that stuff is potentially in play, because there are no normals around.
And like the people that are around are going to be pliant to this crazy stuff. I mean, look, Tim, I've said this, and I kind of jokingly, but kind of serious, which is like the dark ages would be looking at us going, holy shit, you guys need to just start paying attention to some science, right? And these are the people that would like burn everybody as a witch because I mean, like the seed oil thing, maybe the seed oils aren't healthy.
I don't know. But I also know that like two years ago, everybody was on this kick called the croissant diet because it didn't have some ingredient in there and croissants don't have that and so you can eat like crap as long as it's not and then that was found to be crap is that real the croissant diet did you just make that up that was a real thing and uh that was real yeah i love croissants i know dude look it up and you can find you can find anything to support like there's an ice cream diet out there somewhere i'm sure but like it's always you know, one month eggs are bad for you and one month they're good for you.
Right? Like, but the seed oil thing is when he said that, I'm like, okay, we're in cuckoo territory now. Completely.
Completely. Cloud cuckoo land.
Let's stay in cloud cuckoo land for a while. I want to talk about Elon Musk.
Eventually we're going to get to the election. But the election i think that this is it can get flattened you know in the final days people and we did a little bit of this yesterday my buddy laksha i'm like you can get focused on oh what's the early vote showing and what's the showing that's like a lot of that there's a lot of uh smoke and mirrors frankly a lot of worry about things that like are out of control And what is in our control is making sure people understand just the degree of fucking lunacy that is going to be around Donald Trump if he gets in there.
And so I want to talk about Elon Musk, who is, it seems to be like going to be his closest advisor in the White House, can be in charge of cutting things. He said he was going to cut the military industrial complex yesterday on Twitter.
He said that there is to be some short-term economic hardship while they right-size government and start tariffing a bunch of people and then uh yesterday his pack i saw you tweeting about this in michigan canvassers and paid door knockers for uh musk's america pack have been subjected to being driven around in the back of a seatless u-haul van and threatened that their lodging in a local motel wouldn't be paid for if they didn't meet canvassing quotas. One canvasser says that they didn't even know they were signing up for anything having to do with Musk or Trump.
This is a totally unhinged man, oligarch, with unbelievable powers that they just want to unleash on the government if he gets in there. So I'm curious your thoughts on the domestic side, and then I want to talk about Russia.
Yeah, so this is truly like what you see oligarchs do in countries like in the Russian sphere. You know, the country of Georgia, by the way, just had an election, totally fraudulent.
So there's a lot of unsteadiness there, but their party is basically run by an Elon Musk in that area. And he would do the same thing, pay people, threaten people.
And this is a huge problem. I mean, this whole million-dollar lottery thing is clearly corrupt and clearly illegal.
The fact that they are basically using slave labor and then the better is maybe indentured servitude because they're threatening their lodging and stuff for them to go do this. Like if we really want this, and by the way, let me just say too, you know, they talk about right-sizing government and putting tariffs on everything.
I'm going to tell you what industry will not have tariffs. Probably the Tesla electric car industry because Elon Musk will not tariff to his own detriment.
And, you know, we can get into the whole security clearance thing and maybe that's coming up with Russia, but that's a huge issue with me too. So, so we cannot, we cannot as a country do this.
I mean, it's crazy. Like they're planning for the tariffs and it ties to the Nikki Ailey discussion because like to me, in addition to the article I to send to the brett bear person in your life to the person that's in the stock market in your life to the dad that just cares about their 401k trying to shake them and being like this is their plan like it is not the 2017 paul ryan tax cut plan is that is coming like it is putting elon at musk in charge of indiscriminately cutting things in the government,

including from the Defense Department, and then tariffing all foreign goods.

Well, not all foreign goods, indiscriminately tariffing foreign goods and making it especially

high on companies or CEOs they don't like.

Like that is turning this country into hungry.

And the hungry economy is not humming.

Okay.

Like this is not, this is not your daddy's, we're going to cut some red tape. Nope.
I mean, Kamala Harris talks more about cutting red tape than these guys do. Like, they want to slash huge segments of the government and reorient the taxation system to tariffs in a way that will totally disrupt things that they admit will cause short-term pain.
Like, that is a crazy pitch. And the only reason people are going along with it is because they don't believe that it will happen.
They believe that it will be 2017 and it's not fucking 2017. So there's this belief that globalism in and of itself is really bad and evil.
And you have to think as an evangelical to understand this, but I'll give you the 12 second overview, which is we were taught growing up as evangelicals that we were always on the edge of the apocalypse and the one world government, right? The antichrist, this one world government, the thing that we were constantly told was leading to the one world government is globalization. So to many of these people, anything that reverses globalization, including destroying trade routes, including, you know, big tariffs is a good thing because of the whole one world government situation and the antichrist.
And obviously, that's all evil and cashless society and whatever else you can throw out there. To you people that think that the old Republican Party is going to come back just soon.
And, you know, it's not. It's gone.
Maybe it'll come back someday, but it ain't here right now. The old Republican Party is coming back.
The Lindbergh Republican Party. That's what we're coming back to.
It's not the Reagan Republican Party. We're going way back.
All right. So he's talking to Russia.
So I guess I'm interested in your take on, you mentioned the security clearances. So open floor to just kind of riff on both of these things.
But I think it's kind of crazy how little attention it's gotten but i mean it's gotten some attention but like the fact that that the biggest government contractor and the biggest donor to one candidate is having back channeled conversations with an adversary and apparently being asked to do favors for that adversary including including limit wi-fi access to another independent ally quasi ally in tai. It's a scandal without precedent.
And it's just kind of like, oh, well, Elon's being crazy. So anyway, I'm curious your thought on that.
And then we can get into the security clearance stuff too. Yeah, it's absolutely a scandal without precedence.
Like, here's the problem with Elon Musk. He has done so well with SpaceX.
And Boeing has crapped the bed so hard on literally everything. If you're a Boeing executive listening to this, get your shit right.
Okay. Because Boeing has been trying to, in essence, compete with SpaceX.
And as you know, they put that rocket up that ended up stranding these frigging astronauts in space. Whatever is going on at Boeing, it has led to SpaceX being really the only way to get astronauts in and out of space that's not Russia, as well as satellites and stuff like that.
So the government utterly needs Elon Musk. The problem is Elon Musk knows that, and he can go and do whatever he wants.
If it was me as a government contractor, let's say I was selling, I don't know, Coca-Cola cans to the U.S. military, but I was also having back channels with Russia, I would lose my contract because there would be other people that could go out and provide Coca-Cola cans.
But for some reason, Elon Musk is exempt from that. And he is, in essence, doing more damage to U.S.
foreign policy than anything. And I got to tell you, I don't understand.
I don't understand. I've been holding back certain criticisms of the Biden administration until the election's over, but I don't understand where the Biden administration is on this.
I've not heard a word out of them. I see weak actions in Ukraine continuing to deny Ukraine the opportunity to strike long into Russia, despite North Korean troops now in Russia, it's like they are asleep at the wheel right now.
And this Elon Mustang is a huge deal. What's also going on with TikTok? TikTok has been banned.
It's supposed to be sold off to a different company. I don't know what's going on with that.
Are they pursuing the sale? Because we all want to keep TikTok here. We just want to get it out of the purview of the CCP.
And so I am angry at Elon Musk, and I'm also angry at the lack of action. Now, before somebody uses my words to say, see, vote for Trump, it would be way different under Trump.
Let's just be very clear. Trump would be embracing this garbage.
Biden's just kind of asleep at the wheel at it. When I interviewed Walter Isaacson about his Elon book, I got to tell you, I mean, you can hate Elon and despise him and loathe him and think he's pernicious and all this, and also maintain the correct thought in your head that it hasn't just been the Biden administration, but the last Trump administration also apparently, and the Obama administration has totally abdicated this space, pun intended.
It's unbelievable that like that Elon was like filled this gap. And with all of the resources of federal government, that Elon is the only person and that not Elon himself, because he's not the technologist, but that SpaceX and Starlink are that with Starlink are the only people that

are able to do this.

Like that should be a crisis.

And it's a crisis that we've known about for years now,

like for years,

you know,

and Walter was writing about this in the book when he was interviewing Elon

two,

three years ago and smart people who are paying attention to this industry.

Obviously we're aware of this before that.

And so it's like,

it is totally unacceptable that the government has just,

Thank you. and smart people who are paying attention to this industry obviously were aware of this before that and so it's like it is totally unacceptable that the government has just completely abdicated this arena yeah and look here's the thing 1960s we send men to the moon okay we are trying to recreate that now in the in the year of our lord 2024 we had an artemis one mission where rocket basically went around the moon that was basically like apollo 2 or 3 or whatever now artemis 2 is supposed to be next year and that's where we actually have a manned mission around the moon not landing yet because god forbid we do that it's only been 70 years we got to reinvent the wheel and probably artemis 2 is not going to go in 2025 like they say it is.
That is way behind schedule. How is it that we have abdicated this so badly? I mean, again, we are basically redoing what we did in the 60s.
But yet, just like what happens with every new Air Force airplane that comes in, you instead of relying on pilots, you have to load it with so much technology that doesn't work or like these new electromagnetic catapults on aircraft carriers, because we just can't use an old mechanical catapult anymore. And instead of having, you know, Buzz Aldrin piloting his aircraft or having an astronaut, Neil Armstrong, fly it to the moon, you have to have some technology and it puts everything way back.
Like I could go on an hour about how we've screwed this up, but the fact is we're just trying to land a man on the moon again and we can't do it. The story, I think it was Maggie Haberman and John Swan at the New York Times, if I have that right, I apologize to the reporter who had this, if it was not them, reported that the Trump administration is already looking at workarounds for not having to go through the normal security clearance process.
If there's to be another Trump administration, they're going to hire some private vendor, I guess, and change the rules. Talk about all the implications of that.
Yeah, I mean, they can do it. Look, keep in mind, when you're president, you're the head of the executive branch.
So everything that falls under the purview of the executive branch, that's not explicitly in law, like you can just do it. And even if it is in law, and you do it, what are you going to do? Is the Congress going to sue you? What if they win? How are they going to force you to change that? So these are the kinds of questions we're gonna have to think about now.
But yeah, you look at all the garbage folks, like, and I'm not talking about the supporters, I'm talking about the people that actually worked for Donald Trump, right? I'm talking about the Stephen Millers. I'm talking about the whatever.
These awful people that would never get a security clearance because they've had contacts with foreign agents. They have debts.
They have domestic assault charges. I'm thinking of whoever.
What was his name? Parscale. Yeah, Brad Parscale.
There were two of them. Parscale and then another one but anyway yeah but pars oh yeah oh my god see this is like i hope we don't remember all these fucking characters from the universe again uh he was the staff secretary i can picture him oh he's such a douche anyway staff secretary guy so you think about anybody that's got arrested on domestic violence domestic assault who got convicted on, can't get a security clearance.
But if you change that, you can. Or if somebody has a gun charge or somebody has anything.
And again, even just things like too much debt, too much debt to income ratio denies you have a top secret security clearance. And let's take Elon Musk for a second.
Again, if I would have reached out to Vladimir Putin, now I'm talking about not my congressional security clearance, my clearance that I got cleared for in the military. If I would have reached out to Vladimir Putin and tried to negotiate things with him, honest to God, if the government found out about it, I mean, if I would have even dated a Russian girl, I could have lost my top secret security clearance for that and probably would have.
Now calling Vladimir Putin and negotiating things that affect US policy, your security clearance would be stripped faster than you can even say the word security clearance. Why is nobody doing that with Elon Musk? He is in a unique place of his own that he can somehow engage in diplomacy against the wishes of the United States government with our chief enemy, but they won't take the fact that he has a security clearance or he's the number one contractor to the federal government.
To me, again, it's mind-blowing and it goes to show the vulnerabilities that we have. And I'm not here to be like doomsday naysayer, but like if we don't recognize this stuff, we can't fight back against it.
Because the fact that we haven't talked about this the last 10 years is how we got to this moment we're in. No doubt.
All right. I want to close with some Kamala stuff.
Arnold got off the couch, said he was endorsing Kamala yesterday, the governor. Thank you.
Could have used it a little bit ago. Could have used a couple of interviews.
Whatever. We'll it, though.
We'll take it. Water's warm.
Come on in. Chris Christie, you're still out there.
You're still out there on the beach, you know, laying in that beach chair like you were. You can do it.
You're welcome to get off the beach chair, off the Barca lounger, off the couch, the double M&M box. You can just come on in.
We're going to welcome you with open arms. Very open arms.
Yeah. Widely open.
So anyway, I'm wondering your thoughts on Arnold. And then I got one more thing for you.
Yeah. I mean, look, it's good.
And I think, again, you know, what we're up against, what we're competing against is, first off, if there's a so-called Democrat for Trump, it's really people that basically used to be Democrats that became hardcore Trumpers. And now they're pretending to be Democrats for Trump.
They're not. What you're seeing among our uneasy alliance to support democracy, to defend democracy, are people that still kind of hold their not really Republican values because Republican values are no longer that, but like old school Republican values and recognize that Kamala is the best.

And I, and obviously Arnold is one of those.

And I think the more that these happen, the more it gives those, cause there are still people out there that are just like, I can't vote for Kamala.

It's a Democrat.

My whole identity is wrapped in my politics, but the more and more people that do this,

give them permission to say, okay, my dad for the first time voted for a Democrat, you know, and you know, and I don't think he liked doing it. Much love, Mr.
Kinzinger. Yeah.
And part of it was probably to support me, I'm sure, and the things I've been through. But the fact that there are more and more people make it easier for somebody like him.
And so I think it's great that Arnold's done this. I concur.
Rob Porter was the guy's name. So, you know, I don't want you to feel like you can just disappear into obscurity.
Rob Porter was the staff secretary guy that did add some domestic abuse issues in the Trump administration. All right.
Lastly, let's end on a positive. We saw Kamala.
We saw Kamala at the Ellipse earlier this week. I just want to have an updated temperature check to you on the type of campaign she's been running, what you're hearing from her, particularly on the kind of national security stuff that you really care about and how you're feeling in the last few days.
Well, I'll start with the only negative thing I can say, which is, look, Democrats, it's not going to happen in the next five days, but you need to look longer term at this. You need to start being part of defining, and this is what I want to be part of too defining for america's young men what is healthy masculinity versus unhealthy masculinity you know defending the defense list stuff like that you do have a problem with men you know i get it that you know it's great to have these events where it's all women and all women in the background i think democrats need to actually do some more events where it's all men and all men in the background.
It's tough for them, I think, to get past that old muscle memory where everything is identity politics. So that's my only negative thing.
The fact that Kamala has only been in the race for three months, that she basically came in six points down where Biden was to where we are today, is I think you could have run this scenario 100 times and 99 out a hundred would not have ended as good as this one has. I think she has done literally everything right.
I can't think of a massive mistake and any mistakes I find are just small ones that can happen with any campaign. I think it has been a masterclass in how to run a positive campaign.
I say that Democrats kind of feel a little addicted to identity politics. I exempt Kamala from that because she's the opposite of that.
She doesn't talk about the fact that she's a minority. She doesn't talk about the fact that she's a woman.
And frankly, when I was at the DNC and hearing USA chants, and I heard and I saw this at the ellipse again, Kamala saying, we need a lethal US military. Democrats never uttered that word.
And it is brilliant. And if you're a Democrat, like worried about that, listen, the Republican Party has become what you guys were in the 80s.
The blame America crowd, the ho-hum, everything's awful crowd. That is now the Republicans.
You can be the optimistic, proud American crowd and take that real estate back. So my view is this.
This has been probably one of the most flawlessly run campaigns that we possibly could have. There's still five days left, so God, knock on wood, please.
But my feeling is last week, I was basically saying, I think she's going to lose. Today, I feel much, much more confident that she can win, but there is no doubt it's a dead tie.
It's a dead tie, but it feels like there is a little momentum on her side and in a tie that matters, that matters a lot. All right.
I agree. We have the men that know how to cry, and I love those kinds of men.
I'm one of those, but we can expand. We can expand out.
We can expand out

from there, hopefully enough, to get

across the finish line. Adam Kinzinger,

I appreciate you so much. I appreciate

your service to the country, your clear

eyed nature on this, and

the next time I see you, we'll have a president-elect.

God willing, it's president-elect Kamala

Harris. You bet.
Great to see you, buddy.

Good hanging out. Thanks so much

to Adam Kinzingeriger we'll be back

tomorrow we're gonna do something a little different tomorrow it's friday it's before

the election we're gonna have all your faves next week for election week starting to bring a new voice into the borg podcast tomorrow i'm looking forward to it we'll see you all then peace Some men only ride alone

I only ride alone, I only ride in the night.

Some drown in the warmth of home But nothing fades like the light

Blackened houses, morning skies on my mind

April showers, June is the same in your eyes Something tells me you know why I lie But nothing fades like the light.

The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.