Mallory McMorrow and Bill Kristol: Imagining a World Where Trump Is Irrelevant

Speaker 1 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovny, and Carise Van Houten.

Speaker 1 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 1 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal. Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family? What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

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Speaker 2 All right. Hey, everybody.
So much going on.

Speaker 2 I just want to tell you about our schedule and make sure you know where you can find all of the amazing content here as we reach the last two weeks of the campaign.

Speaker 2 Today on this podcast, it's Monday, so I'll have Bill Crystal. I'm back in New Orleans right now.
That is in segment two.

Speaker 2 Segment one was live from Detroit on Saturday with State Senator Mallory McMorrow. She is just an uplifting shot of energy, which I think maybe I needed.
So if you need that too, that's segment one.

Speaker 2 If you just want Bill, go ahead and fast-forward through, and we're doing our usual Monday jig in segment two. All right.

Speaker 2 By the time you listen to this, my colleague Sarah Longwell will already have moderated an event in Pennsylvania with Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney. That happens Monday around lunchtime.

Speaker 2 We live stream that on the Bulwark YouTube. So if you haven't seen it yet and you want to watch it, you can go to the Bulwark YouTube.
Me and JVL provide some analysis.

Speaker 2 Sarah does a town hall sale interview with the vice president and Liz Cheney. Super exciting.
We're super proud of Sarah. So go check that out.

Speaker 2 Other stuff, we had multiple live events, as you know, in Philly, Pittsburgh, and Detroit. There was a kind of dark next level, the the opposite of the Mallory interview in Pittsburgh.
That

Speaker 2 I'm sorry for the people that came out in Pittsburgh, but they seem to enjoy it. I apologize for taking it down to the ninth circle of hell before Sarah built everybody back up.

Speaker 2 But you can get that on the next level feed, and hopefully, then we'll be back to our normal schedule here coming tomorrow. So, there you go.
That's the plan.

Speaker 2 Up next, Michigan State Center, Mallory McMorrow.

Speaker 2 Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller, and I'm here today with Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow.

Speaker 10 Hi, Tim.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 So I want to start here. I don't know about the rest of y'all, but I'm feeling a little uptight on Saturday night in Detroit Rock City, and I'm hoping that you can chill me out a little bit.

Speaker 2 How are you feeling?

Speaker 10 Y'all, I feel so good right now.

Speaker 2 Do you feel good?

Speaker 2 No, but thank God you do.

Speaker 10 So good. Do you want to hear why?

Speaker 2 Please.

Speaker 10 Okay,

Speaker 10 so I am supporting 13 state house candidates across the state in some of our most marginal districts. And some of you may not know I flipped a Republican district to get elected in 2018.

Speaker 2 What's happening to that guy now?

Speaker 2 What's that? What's happening to that guy now, the district you took?

Speaker 10 You know,

Speaker 10 he's hanging out. Retired.

Speaker 2 He's good. I represent him well.
Okay. I guess you do.
That's true. That's a good point.

Speaker 10 But I got to tell you, so we have been out downriver. We've been out in Macomb County.
And we are talking to independents, Republican, Republican-leaning. People are excited.

Speaker 10 And when people shut off the conversation, it's not in a rude way. It's not like, please get off my doorstep.
It's, hey, guess what?

Speaker 10 I already voted, and I voted for Kamala Harris and for Democrats all the way down the ticket because I'm sick of this shit.

Speaker 2 Let's move on.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 2 so you're saying we're gonna win.

Speaker 10 We're gonna win if we keep working our asses off for the next 17 days.

Speaker 2 Okay, that's a good place to start. Now we can get into the details.
So, you know, I've never been to Detroit. Can you believe it? Welcome.

Speaker 2 I've never been to Detroit before. I was here all afternoon.
I was walking around by the Shanola Hotel and, you know,

Speaker 2 we had a coffee at Madcap, and it was great.

Speaker 2 There was no Venezuelan migrant mobs,

Speaker 2 didn't see anyone stealing any pets or anything.

Speaker 2 If the whole country turned out like Detroit, I think it'd be pretty good. It would be pretty good!

Speaker 2 I've been to a lot worse places. We drove past Toledo on the way here, for example.

Speaker 2 I can do it. I'm sorry, are you from Toledo? Sorry.
I usually pick on Dayton, but that's a college thing. You flipped the Republican district, you talked about that.

Speaker 2 You know, Sarah was just up here talking about the RVAT folks. Like, let's talk about that demo.

Speaker 2 It's an important demo for, I think, Camela this year, like getting to people that maybe had voted for Mitt Romney in 2012.

Speaker 2 Boo, or John McCain, Les Boo. How did that work for you? Talk about your experience and how you talked to those kind of voters successfully.

Speaker 10 So look, I ran for the first time in 2018 in an Oakland County district that included places like Bloomfield Hills, Mitt Romney's hometown, Rochester, Rochester Hills.

Speaker 10 I talked to a lot of people who had never voted for a Democrat and also weren't sure they had ever met a Democrat before.

Speaker 10 But in a place like Oakland County, and I think like a lot of Michigan, you know, when I was knocking doors for the first time, I had a backpack on and a baseball hat, and I looked like a 12-year-old knocking on their door.

Speaker 10 But a lot of people said, why did you come back to Michigan? And what can we do to bring my daughter back? And this is going to sound controversial, so bear with me.

Speaker 10 But if you are a sane, rational, normal person with a personality and you can convince people that you are going to act in the best interest of most people,

Speaker 10 it's a pretty compelling argument.

Speaker 2 Really? Yeah, really.

Speaker 2 So it was mostly that they were just kind of like living vicariously through you. They're hoping that their daughter was going to be able to do that.

Speaker 10 There was a woman on the phone with her daughter who moved to Chicago and she paused the conversation and handed me the cell phone and said, can you please get her to move back?

Speaker 10 I hope she did.

Speaker 2 It's great.

Speaker 2 I think that

Speaker 2 part of what you're talking about is just being basically effective and competent, right? But how do you balance this question of maintaining your values

Speaker 2 with reaching out to people that come from a different side?

Speaker 2 I mean, you hear sometimes on the internet, you shouldn't be on the internet, but when you are there, you hear sometimes from lefty folks, like, why is Kabbalah having Liz Cheney around so much?

Speaker 2 You know, it's like, does that mean that the warmongers, see, that's that? She's worried about that.

Speaker 2 Why does that mean the warmongers are going to be in charge? How do you balance that? How do you say that the Liz Cheneys are welcome, but we're still maintaining our values?

Speaker 2 Like, how do you deal with that?

Speaker 10 So here's the thing. I think if you don't do that, if you don't reach out to as many people as possible,

Speaker 10 you're not true to American values. We are not, think it.

Speaker 10 We are not Democrats versus Republicans. I mean, one of the biggest challenges that I have every time I'm on TV and I'm talking about something, and it irks me, is that it says Mallory McMorrow D.

Speaker 10 And I feel like you see that visual and you're immediately making judgments.

Speaker 10 When at the end of the day, and I knocked on one door in Rochester, and I will never forget this, I had a high school volunteer with me,

Speaker 10 and we didn't have any data, and the data said that these were probably lean Dem voters, and I knocked on the door, and that was very clear almost immediately. They were not.

Speaker 10 She came to the door, and she told me her son worked for the Border Patrol Agency, not the Canadian one, by the way, the other southern border.

Speaker 10 That she had a bunch of guns in her pickup truck, that she and her husband used to be union members, but that Democrats had looked down on them for so long.

Speaker 10 There was a long conversation, and it sounded, especially to this high schooler, this poor girl, she was looking at me like Mallory, I think we have to leave. This is not going well.

Speaker 10 But eventually, I sat there long enough where this woman said, my daughter-in-law is a teacher, and her job is so hard.

Speaker 10 There are too many kids in her classroom, she doesn't have enough resources, she spends $500 a year on supplies for her classroom.

Speaker 10 And I said to this woman, there are probably a lot of issues that we disagree on. I'm going to be honest with you.

Speaker 10 But I care a lot about education and I care a lot about making your daughter-in-law's life easier.

Speaker 10 And this woman said to me, and I I tell people all the time, she said, you sat here for 45 minutes, which my team was angry about because I was not knocking enough doors.

Speaker 10 But she said, you listened to us and you didn't judge us. And if you had just come here with your literature that said Democrat on it in big letters, I would have just put it in the garbage.

Speaker 10 But she said, I trust you. And you can count on two votes from our house and you can put a yard sign in our front yard, which made that yard the most confusing yard in Rochester.

Speaker 10 It was like Bill Shooty, John James, and me. It didn't make sense.
But this touched on something that I think is universal is people want to feel heard. They want to feel understood.

Speaker 10 And most people understand we are not going to agree on everything and that's okay because we are Americans and we are Michiganders and we agree on that much, which is why Kamala Harris reaching out to Liz Cheney, doing events together, reaching out to most people to say, in the future that Kamala Harris is laying out in this vision, you belong here.

Speaker 10 And think about that contrast versus what Donald Trump is laying out.

Speaker 2 I would rather that one.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's hard to think about somebody looking at Donald Trump and thinking he cares about me. I don't think that's me.
He's really thinking about me.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he's mostly thinking about himself and Arnold Palmer's penis these days. And it seems like.

Speaker 10 And Hannibal Lecter.

Speaker 2 And Hannibal Lecter.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't think he's thinking about that lady's daughter-in-law. Have you called her back about this cycle? Do we know?

Speaker 2 Have we found that house again? Can you start driving around the neighborhood be like, I think it was that house?

Speaker 10 Yeah,

Speaker 10 I should.

Speaker 2 You should.

Speaker 2 That's a homework assignment for you.

Speaker 2 I want to talk about one thing I think, and we talk about it some, but I feel a little remiss in the Borg podcast.

Speaker 2 It's probably because of my background and views, but like the just critical nature of abortion here in this state and how the Democrats have, really across the so-called blue wall states like in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and here since jobs had such success.

Speaker 2 So talk about the issue broadly and why it's been so important, but also how you're kind of communicating to the kind of me's, like the, I'm not Catholic anymore, but the Catholics in Michigan who are like,

Speaker 2 maybe I'm pro-life-ish, but I don't know about this crazy shit that's happening. Like, how do you communicate to them? about the importance of this issue right now?

Speaker 10 Yeah, so I was raised Catholic, Pratt graduate of the University of Notre Dame. and what was interesting, hell yeah, go Irish.

Speaker 2 Okay, rank your top three favorite saints.

Speaker 10 This is a football school. Marcus Freeman, we're in the football era.
It's high football.

Speaker 2 Catholic Saints.

Speaker 2 I got mad at Kamala because she did the, this Al Smith dinner was so stupid. It's like all these rich people in their white ties sitting around laughing at Donald Trump's terrible jokes.

Speaker 2 It's like, it's sick.

Speaker 10 Yeah, there's a lot about the Catholic Church that needs to evolve. And we need a lot of events.

Speaker 2 She sent a funny video, though, in Kamala with Mary Catherine from SNL, but then she quoted the Bible. And I was like,

Speaker 2 we don't do that. No, we do.
All right. All right.
We do Rosaries, we do Mary, we do Saints. Yep.

Speaker 10 And then we complain.

Speaker 2 And then we complain. And we drink.
And we drink. Yeah.
Okay. So there's a little bit of a miss on that, but otherwise it was good.
Nine out of ten. Anyway, I'm sorry.
Continue.

Speaker 10 Okay, so what's interesting about the Dobbs decision is I think for the longest time as somebody who was raised Catholic and heard the worst versions, I remember going to CCD and I came home one day.

Speaker 10 I had to be like eight. And I told my mom, mom, did you know that they kill babies with coat hangers? And my mom was like, oh no, that's not okay.
We need to actually have a conversation about this.

Speaker 10 But

Speaker 10 before the Dobbs decision, I feel like both Democrats and Republicans could run on rhetoric. You could either be baby killers or abortion on demand.

Speaker 10 And there was no middle ground because there was always a backstop. And then Dobbs happened and there was no longer a backstop.
So you could no longer run in rhetoric.

Speaker 10 And then we finally, all across the state, talked to people who said, I may not personally believe in this, but I had an ectopic pregnancy, or I had a miscarriage that didn't fully pass, or my daughter did, or I know somebody did.

Speaker 10 And we were finally having the real, nuanced, frankly, heartbreaking conversations about how hard it is to get pregnant, stay pregnant safely, and the desire to know that if it goes wrong, which happens far more often than anybody talks about, that you have access to that care.

Speaker 10 I shared on the Senate floor, my daughter is now three and a half. I had an IUD placed after I gave birth and that punctured through my uterus.

Speaker 10 One in five million chance, by the way, so I don't know if I should play the lottery or what,

Speaker 10 but I had to have that surgically removed.

Speaker 10 And my OB told me, you know, if we hadn't been trained on common abortion procedures, we might not be able to know how to remove this, and you could have died.

Speaker 10 Sharing that type of story with people opens their eyes to say, yeah, no, I don't want that to be illegal. And that is why you saw in this state, Prop 3, which was the

Speaker 10 proposition to guarantee abortion access.

Speaker 10 It collected more signatures than any other ballot initiative in state history.

Speaker 2 That's a big message.

Speaker 2 It is a big message. And like, and there just is no message to that middle from the other side, took from the other side.
Can you explain to me how the Republicans got so crazy here?

Speaker 2 I mean, you had John Engler and Spence Abraham, and I'm sure people in here had some problems with some of them, but like even Peter Meiser, though, he's got some issues.

Speaker 2 I mispronounce his name on purpose.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's all freaks now. What is happening? Like, how is that? What is happening?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I think

Speaker 10 it's the dog that caught the car, and it's really hard hard to come back from that.

Speaker 10 We had, in one of my first years in office, there was legislation from the Republican side when Republicans were still in the majority to ban DNEs, which is the most common procedure, for later terminations.

Speaker 10 And I took constituents of mine who they had gotten married, they got pregnant, they had a healthy pregnancy.

Speaker 10 At the 20-week scan, they found out the collagen wasn't developing, so no bones were developing.

Speaker 10 So their doctor advised them to consider a termination because if it survived to birth, would very likely only live a day or two and those few days on earth would be nothing but pain, like a sneeze could break a rib.

Speaker 10 So this couple decided to pursue a termination and then all of a sudden found themselves having a really hard time getting a doctor who would schedule the procedures because the doctors were afraid of getting sued and getting put in jail.

Speaker 10 So I took them to Lansing, they met with some of our Republican colleagues, and I remember one of my colleagues pulling me aside on the the floor and saying,

Speaker 10 How frequently do you think this happens?

Speaker 10 And I said, Well, that's kind of the point, that we don't know.

Speaker 10 So, you're legislating something arbitrary that is going to put this couple in a position where she might no longer be able to conceive ever,

Speaker 10 and that shouldn't be our job. And then she voted for the legislation anyway.
So, it's this very hard, like you hear them grappling with it, and you're almost there.

Speaker 10 And then you're just like, Well, Donald Trump and God told me to save babies, so that's what I'm doing.

Speaker 10 I don't know, like, it's this very extremist, very black-and-white view, and I don't know how we break out of that, except that this version, and I'm very intentional to say this version of the Republican Party has to lose.

Speaker 10 Crushed, crushed, not just lose to shake it back to a place where we can be normal again.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 strong agree.

Speaker 2 Strong agree.

Speaker 2 But while we're doing this, just really quick, on other local races for people to pay attention to in Michigan, I get this question a lot from listeners, like, you know, who could I donate to or what are the very close races?

Speaker 2 What are you monitoring, either at the state or congressional level?

Speaker 10 So I am somebody.

Speaker 10 I believe that state-level races are the most important level of government that nobody ever invests in.

Speaker 10 A good example is when there was a campaign to take out Mitch McConnell. Amy McGrath was running.
Everybody remembers this. Many of of you may have donated to that race.

Speaker 10 Donors donated $96 million to Amy McGrath to try to defeat Mitch McConnell.

Speaker 2 Nice person.

Speaker 10 Yeah, yeah, totally great.

Speaker 2 Same result with $900,000, though.

Speaker 10 The budget for the DLCC, which is the state legislative version of like the DCCC and the DSCC. Their budget for the entire country for that entire cycle was $50 million.

Speaker 10 That's every state, every single state legislative race combined. $50 million versus $96 million for one race.
So I am focused on the state house here in Michigan.

Speaker 10 I have a pack called A More Perfect Michigan. We're supporting 13 state house candidates statewide.
These are races that are won with thousands of dollars, not millions.

Speaker 10 And I have been out on doors all over the state for them. And they're super important.

Speaker 2 There was one really terrible Republican running for Congress you're telling me about. Who is that?

Speaker 10 Oh, my goodness. So my friend Curtis Hurtel is running,

Speaker 10 all right, is running to replace Alyssa Slotkin in her congressional seat. He's running against Tom Barrett.
Tom Barrett positions himself as a normal Republican because he was a veteran.

Speaker 10 You may see some billboards if you drive down 96.

Speaker 10 I worked with Tom Barrett for four years. I'm going to share one story.

Speaker 10 During COVID, There were some pretty aggressive shutdowns in the state, and Tom Barrett came to the microphone and he said that there was one restaurant owner in his district that was arrested because all he was doing was trying to stay open to provide meals for the homeless.

Speaker 2 Sounds nice.

Speaker 10 The entire story was made up. There was video of it.
This person was arrested because the police showed up and he fought them. He was drunk.
He punched a cop.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm sorry. This is the back the blue party.
That can't be possible. I don't believe that that story could be possible.
They've never attacked any police before.

Speaker 10 Yeah, no, never. Definitely not on sometime in early January.

Speaker 2 In the Capitol. No.
No. It's an interesting.
Okay.

Speaker 2 There was another thing we were talking about that goes against my nature. But, you know, you've won more races than me.
So we might maybe listen to your advice on this.

Speaker 2 We were having a beer earlier, and you're like, I think as a closing message, we should talk about Trump less.

Speaker 10 That's true.

Speaker 2 Now, that's challenging for me.

Speaker 10 I know. I know.

Speaker 2 Because I fucking,

Speaker 2 I've got a lot to say about

Speaker 2 him. But I want to hear your pitch for how Kamala can close by bringing back a little bit of joy and positivity to the campaign.

Speaker 10 Okay, so my closing pitch is that Michiganders, we're all Michiganders in this room, we have been through some stuff the past few years. We have been through a pandemic.

Speaker 10 We have been through the trial run insurrection when armed gunmen came into our state capitol and were above my head, by the way.

Speaker 10 And then January 6th was taken out. And there was a glorious few weeks when Kamala became the candidate and then the nominee where we did not talk about Donald Trump.

Speaker 10 And he weirdly decided not to campaign. I remember he gave an interview and he was like, well, I'm just waiting until they have their convention.
And I was like, oh, that's nice. He's tired.

Speaker 10 My closing pitch is, wasn't that a nice place to live?

Speaker 2 God,

Speaker 2 that would be nice.

Speaker 10 Let's just imagine that. And I think the more we talk about him, we know who Donald Trump is.
He's defined. We know he's going to do all kinds of crazy stuff.

Speaker 10 Now it's like the gloves are off and he's just doing rage-baiting things

Speaker 10 like this rally at Madison Square Garden. Is it just like a Nazi rally in 1939? Maybe, but that's what he wants you to talk about.
He did a rally in Detroit.

Speaker 10 Is it where they sent a bunch of protesters to try to throw out the votes of one of the largest majority black cities in the country? Maybe, but that's what he wants you to talk about.

Speaker 2 Let's not talk about it. What should we talk about instead?

Speaker 2 The world that we can live in where Donald Trump is irrelevant.

Speaker 2 I'm just thinking about it.

Speaker 2 Just imagine it. It's so nice.
It's going to be really nice.

Speaker 10 It's so nice.

Speaker 2 What would we talk about then, though? Football. Football.
Tacos. Tacos.
I love tacos. I don't know.

Speaker 10 Remember when he promised us a taco truck on every corner?

Speaker 10 I'm still waiting.

Speaker 2 If only. If only we could have

Speaker 2 that taco tuck on every corner. Okay.
Got one more thing to talk to you about.

Speaker 2 I'm in Detroit now, and I'm going to see all of the key

Speaker 2 areas.

Speaker 2 I went to the chapel

Speaker 2 where

Speaker 2 Eminem had his rap battle with Papadoc. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Iconic.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I'm just wondering, do we feel like we're doing well in that demo? Like, is everybody at the rap battle,

Speaker 2 are we going to be getting the votes that we need, do you think?

Speaker 10 Yeah, look, I mean, if the rap battle, and this isn't even a rap battle, but if it's the white boy from Detroit battle and it's Eminem versus Kid Rock, we're winning.

Speaker 2 I agree with that. I agree with that.

Speaker 2 What about the rappers that went to Cranbrook?

Speaker 10 Oh, that's a private school.

Speaker 2 All right, that's a private school. Is that in your district? Do we have any Cranbrook people here? Oh.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Sad.

Speaker 2 Mallory McMorrow, final call to arms to people. Give us a final rallying cry.

Speaker 10 Final call. We got 17 days.
None of this happens without action. So sign up for one voter contact shift.
Just one. Find a local party.
Find a candidate you like. Talk to five people

Speaker 10 in your life. I know these are conversations you don't want to have because we are tired of having these conversations at Thanksgiving.
You know, you have these people in their life.

Speaker 10 They need to vote and get off the sidelines and get it done.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much. This is so delightful.

Speaker 2 Ah,

Speaker 3 greetings from my bath, festive friends.

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

Speaker 2 No fees, no interest. I used it to get this portable spa with jets.

Speaker 6 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body.

Speaker 7 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 2 Save the offer in the app.

Speaker 8 Ends 1231, see paypal.com/slash promoters. Points, give your renee for cash and more pay in four, subject to terms of approval.

Speaker 9 PayPal link at MLS 910-457.

Speaker 1 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 1 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 1 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal. Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family? What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 1 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 2 All right, and we're back with Bill Crystal Monday. That was my Saturday night in Detroit with Mallory McMorrow.
I was feeling a little uptight, but she is a Spitfire. We needed that.

Speaker 2 We need a little positive energy. I was sorry to miss miss you there, Bill, but I think maybe Mallory was a little bit more yin to your yang, which was needed, I think, for our crew.

Speaker 2 I'm sure she was both yin and yang or whatever that means. I've never been quite clear on what that was, but anyway.

Speaker 2 I had to leave. Yes, I had to leave the excellent Bulwark Swing States tour after Thursday night in Philadelphia, where I thought it was terrific.
So I missed Pittsburgh and Detroit.

Speaker 2 So how were those? Yeah, Pittsburgh was kind of emo. Pittsburgh was a little emo, and it was maybe my fault, but I'm pissed.
I mean, it's the same thing.

Speaker 2 You You know, it's just like, it's hard for me to get past.

Speaker 2 It's not so much pessimism about Kamala's chances, though I wish we were in better shape, as it is just despair over the fact that, like, we have to sweat this out after everything.

Speaker 2 And so I maybe got a little bit too into the despair side of things. We rebalanced it in Detroit, you know, towards, you know, the Crete de Corps, the call to action.
But it was great.

Speaker 2 You know, my family came to both of those. People got to meet everybody.

Speaker 2 The crowd was great. And I love Detroit, by the way.
Donald Trump says it's a bad thing that America is becoming Detroit if only America became Detroit. Detroit's awesome.

Speaker 2 You know, I told Susan when I got back from that. We're at a family wedding this weekend, so when I got back from Philly on Friday, that

Speaker 2 it was really,

Speaker 2 you know, inspiring, it's not quite invigorating, I guess is the word I'm looking for.

Speaker 2 I mean, people were really excited to be there, excited to see people like themselves, awful lot of ex-Republicans, some normal Democrats, I would say, who like the bulwark too, and a nice mix of people, people feeling self-consciously that they're a part of something bigger than any one campaign for one person.

Speaker 2 I thought that was interesting how much people really have sort of have that sense. Maybe everyone has that sense this year because so much is at stake.

Speaker 2 But certainly if you're not a traditional down-the-line Democrat, you more likely have that sense, right? And so, yeah, sorry to miss Pittsburgh and Detroit.

Speaker 2 No, it was wonderful. I totally agree with that sense of invigoration.
Is that a word? Of being invigorated. Invigorate.
Yeah, yeah. We also have other news today, other bulwark news.

Speaker 2 Our colleague our our publisher our leader sarah longwell is in pennsylvania so by the time this is out sarah will already have hosted a town hall with kamala harris and liz cheney trying to reach these remaining you know hangers-on uh nikki haley type voters um our our old colleague charlie sykes is doing a similar conversation with with kamala in in wisconsin so i think it speaks to how focused the campaign is on all that.

Speaker 2 I want to get into that a little bit at the end of the pod. But it's also, it's just, it's pretty great for Sarah, and it's pretty great that they're doing this, I think, and that

Speaker 2 I think that their eye is on the ball of one of essentially two key groups of people they got to speak to the last few weeks.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was advocating within the bulwark in Slack that we put up giant billboards. Sarah Longwell, Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Also, you know,

Speaker 2 also whatever, Kamala Harris, Liz Cheney. Perry County, I think.
I think she was Perry County. Is it Perry County wherever it is? Perry County.
We should, yeah, but they didn't.

Speaker 2 My colleagues didn't go along with that. So

Speaker 2 Kamala and Liz are getting equal billing with Sarah, which I think is fine. I mean,

Speaker 2 give them a little bump up in recognition. For now, I think it's fair.

Speaker 2 All right, let's get down to business. Somebody else had less kind things to say about Liz Cheney.
I think judge Liz Cheney a little more maybe harshly than Sarah Longwell and we have at the bulwark.

Speaker 2 I want to listen to the Republican vice presidential nominee, for some reason, ranting about Liz Cheney over the weekend.

Speaker 11 And what they will tell you to a person is that Liz Cheney is motivated by an obsessive hatred of the people who cost her her Wyoming congressional seat.

Speaker 11 She is not motivated by a love of this country. She's a resentful, petty, small person.
And if Kamala Harris wants to parade her around, she's welcome to.

Speaker 2 Projection much? Resentful, petty, small.

Speaker 2 That describes JD about as well as I think any three adjectives could. I don't know.
What say you? Can you psychoanalyze JD Vance there for me?

Speaker 2 Too unpleasant to do so at any great length, but I could briefly. But the first point,

Speaker 2 obviously, it's not worth even rebutting, but just to be simple about it. Liz Jenny broke with Trump, obviously, before January 6th, but let's just say over January 6th.

Speaker 2 She broke with him what she saw, definitively with him, what she saw what he was trying to do after the election. So that was January 6th, 2021.

Speaker 2 She knew very well it could cost her her congressional seat, and it did in 2022.

Speaker 2 The idea that she's motivated by resentment at losing the congressional seat is just, I mean, it's leaving everything else aside that's unfair and stupid about it. It's literally incoherent.

Speaker 2 I mean, she was fighting Trump for a year and a half before she lost her congressional seat. And by the way, she spent most of her time in the J6 committee versus the primary, right?

Speaker 2 Like if she had actually cared about her congressional seat that much, she could have done, she would have had a very different approach, I guess. Let's put it that way.

Speaker 2 I guess it's revealing, if you want to get in the psychoanalytic business, business, you know, that J.D.

Speaker 2 Vance can't imagine, on the other hand, anyone being willing to sacrifice the number three spot in the House Republicans, a very bright future, the congressional seat.

Speaker 2 I mean, she still has a bright future in my view, but let's say a more straightforwardly bright future in the Republican Party. J.D.

Speaker 2 Vance can't imagine anyone being willing to sacrifice that for a matter of principle or honor or the good of the country.

Speaker 2 The other point, I think I make this point in warning shots this morning, that J.D. Vance, of course, was a Never Trumper, sort of, in 2016, 2017.

Speaker 2 And I do think the ex-Never Trumpers have a particular bile and, you know, sort of resentment and envy, maybe even, of the people who just were Never Trumpers and stayed with it.

Speaker 2 I mean, the two people who were most vitriolic over the weekend about J.D. Vance's case, Liz Cheney.
The other one was Lindsey Graham about any Republican who's supporting Harris.

Speaker 2 And they kind of pretend they can't even imagine how it could be the case, whereas they were examples of this case, you know, seven or eight years ago.

Speaker 2 It does. It's like this, you have to do this performative anger, right, to like overcompensate for your failings, right? Like it's that you can't just be like, they're wrong, right?

Speaker 2 Like you have to convince yourself that they are morally bad, right? That we are morally bad to compensate for your own kind of deep down gnawing sense that you've made a moral sacrifice, right?

Speaker 2 That they have to even the score in their head. I felt this way about my exchange with Lindsay.

Speaker 2 I was going to do it later, but now that you mentioned it, let's actually just listen to Lindsay on Meet the Press and really get our hackles up this morning.

Speaker 12 Terrorists residing in our backyard. It was their decision to stop energy production, making us more energy independent.

Speaker 12 It was their decision to abandon Israel at their time of need when it came to weapons.

Speaker 10 Senator, the U.S. is making more energy.

Speaker 2 So no, I know these gentlemen.

Speaker 2 But they worked for Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 Dave worked before President Trump. These are former Trump independent people.
Every Republican supporting her?

Speaker 12 What the hell are you doing? You're supporting the most radical nominee in the history of American politics, the Green New Deal, Medicare for All.

Speaker 2 I mean, I wanted to play a little longer clip than just the what the hell are you doing, so you can just see how shallow this argument is, right?

Speaker 2 That it's like to demonstrate that she's radical, it has to be she's for the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, which he's not campaigning on and has no chance to pass, even in the rosiest possible outcome for the Democrats in the Senate this year.

Speaker 2 You know, that you have to argue that she abandoned, they abandoned Israel in the time of need, right? At a moment where the New York Times is reporting about all of the

Speaker 2 intelligence support we've been providing Israel.

Speaker 2 The argument is so shallow that they have to convince themselves of that to make this just like fake anger over-the-top, you know, kind of judgmental argument to offset the fact that like they obviously know better because they told us that they know better.

Speaker 2 They told us in JD Vance's case that God wants better of us, you know, so they know better. So this is this is how they lash out.
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 Kamal Harris is part of an administration that rejected the Green New Deal, that rejected Medicare for all, and that stood by Israel.

Speaker 2 One of two things I might have done a little differently, but 95% stood by Israel. So this is these are Lindsey Graham's examples of how radical Kamala Harris is.

Speaker 2 And incidentally, if you really wanted to say someone was the most radical candidate in modern American history, that would be Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 If you take radical in the sense of not left or right, but just challenging the constitutional order, the norms and the institutions, the consensus that's guided American politics more or less for 70, 80 years and foreign policy, certainly, but I'd say at home too in the last 50, 60 years.

Speaker 2 That's Trump. I mean, they're proud of being radical, incidentally.
Trump and Heritage Foundation and J.D.

Speaker 2 Vance, they're not interested in just tweaking the system or improving it a bit or continuing some reforms or correcting some previous reforms.

Speaker 2 They want to overthrow it all. What was the book, the Heritage Guys book that Vance wrote the preface for? Then they pulled it back because it was too controversial.
Burned it all down.

Speaker 2 Trump is the radical. I was just literally, analytically.
Empirically, Trump is the radical.

Speaker 2 And now Lindsey Graham is pretending that, oh, Kamala Harris, unbelievable radical, prosecutor in California and vice president to Joe Biden yeah yeah give me a break the other thing just that's maybe only matters to you and me Bill but it's just worth sitting on for a second because we get this like oh you've changed so much you've gone so far you know to the left like these issues that he's talking about if anyone has changed not just their character and their moral outlook, but their actual policy views and what they think are radical, it's Lindsey Graham.

Speaker 2 I mean, Lindsey Graham and John McCain were

Speaker 2 at the hip in that 2008 campaign, which included, among other policy planks, a belief that we should have some kind of cap and trade deal to deal with climate, a belief that climate change was a problem, a belief that we need immigration reform, we need legalization for dreamers, and yeah, we need to secure the border too, but some kind of comprehensive immigration reform.

Speaker 2 A belief that America needs to be strong in the world stage and counter Russia and counter dictators. If you just think about that McCain campaign in 2008, like those are kind of the core issues.

Speaker 2 At least the most defining issues. They might not have been the issues that were at the top of his list because

Speaker 2 they were the ways he was kind of distinguishing himself from the other Republicans in the primary. And so

Speaker 2 he's abandoned all that.

Speaker 2 Like he's for a candidate now that wants mass deportations, like we've never seen before, and that doesn't believe climate change is real and wants to hand over Eastern Europe to Putin.

Speaker 2 And he doesn't seem to have any

Speaker 2 reflection on that at all. Yeah, you have to pretend that's not, that just doesn't exist.
Trump's not going to do all the things he and J.D. Vance have said they're going to do.

Speaker 2 No, I'm angry. We've worked that out.
I mean, I would like it out. Fance is, is, I don't know which is more contemptible.
Vance is an opportunist who saw his chance as a young man.

Speaker 2 It's the way he saw his chance years ago, and now he continues to be opportunistic. I think he's a more simple case in a certain way.

Speaker 2 Lindsey Graham is a pretty interesting and complicated case because I worked very closely with him and quite closely with him

Speaker 2 in the 2000s. We were both for the Iraq War.
We did a lot on the foreign policy front together. I was close to McCain.

Speaker 2 Lindsay was really McCain's top kind of deputy, you might say, in the Senate and a very good tactician on a lot of this stuff. And then as late as 2016, he was not just like J.D.

Speaker 2 Vance, you know, had written a book and was on a couple of talk shows saying, I don't like Trump. He was running against Trump and denouncing Trump

Speaker 2 as strongly as Jeb Bush and everyone else. And calling me to try to strategize on how we can defeat Trump and talking where he was sounding like deranged.

Speaker 2 The degree of flipping here and then lashing out, that is, yeah, that needs a so-psychoanalyst. Yeah, it does.

Speaker 2 Well, finally, one last thing then on psychoanalysis, because we were at our Philly event, we were at the same hotel where I encountered Lindsay a couple of weeks ago during the debate.

Speaker 2 I was just reflecting back on it. It was interesting.
Like, when he first sees me and I first go up to him, I said something first, I forgot to go. I said something kind of teasing, joking about

Speaker 2 how Trump's performance was so bad. Like, he's always welcome back on side or something like that.
And he immediately

Speaker 2 blows his top and goes straight to how do you sleep at night to me. There's something to be said for that, right? I'm like, how do I sleep at night? I'm used to it.
What do you mean?

Speaker 2 But like, the fact that you feel like you have to go to that place, right, to me

Speaker 2 tells me that you might be having some problems sleeping at night.

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Speaker 2 Trump over the weekend,

Speaker 2 you know, I don't even know what to do with him. I mean, he's totally off the handle at his rallies.
We discussed at the Detroit event the, you know, kind of 12-minute excursion conversations

Speaker 2 about

Speaker 2 Arnold Palmer's oversized three wood. And, you know, he can't help talking about how he's not having cognitive decline and he's not actually almost 80.
He said that at one point.

Speaker 2 In addition to that, he's been lashing out at Kamala Harris in more overt ways. I just want to play one clip from his rally over the weekend.

Speaker 13 And this one, Kamala, is further left than them.

Speaker 13 So you have to tell Kamala Harris that you've had enough, that you just can't take it anymore. We can't stand you.
You're a shit vice president.

Speaker 13 The worst.

Speaker 13 You're the worst vice president. Kamala, you're fired.
Get the hell out of here, you're fired.

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't mind cussing. We do some cussing on this podcast, but you know, it's totally deranged behavior for a presidential candidate two weeks out.

Speaker 2 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, and of course, what's distressing is the cheering that greets the vulgarity, the bullying.

Speaker 2 The more vehemently bullying the vulgarity is, as opposed to just maybe cavalier, kind of more like the Arnold Palmer thing, which whatever.

Speaker 2 It's not what a presidential candidate should be saying, but that is locker room talk,

Speaker 2 to use the phrase that he he used about the excess Hollywood tape. They like the bullying, they like the pseudo-strongman.
That's depressing. Yeah, and it's the asymmetry of it.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Like, I just kind of look back on the deplorables comment and like all of the fake, like the histrionics and the

Speaker 2 fainting couch, you know, hours upon hours of Fox News coverage of all this. And it's just like there's no even attempt, right, to try to

Speaker 2 treat this as if you know that like it's fair play, like is if we're calling a fair game here, right?

Speaker 2 Like, Donald Trump gets an excuse to do whatever he wants, he can just curse and demean and lie and do conspiracy theories.

Speaker 2 And if, if, like, Kamala Harris says, like, one thing that's a little bit harsh, it's like, what happened to the joy campaign, you know, and like the whole thing is preposterous.

Speaker 2 He did something smart. We can just say it.
The McDonald's thing was smart. It was fake.
It was totally fake. There was a practice procession with the cars that were in the drive-thru.

Speaker 2 We did a practice run going through the drive-through before he got in there.

Speaker 2 And then on the video, they all come up and they're not professional actors, so their acting is very poor where they pretend to be surprised to see him. So it was fake, but

Speaker 2 it was a good photo op.

Speaker 2 So I think we can acknowledge that, though, I don't know.

Speaker 2 You might have won the day with a very viral tweet discussing how it's a great sign for the Biden economy that felons are now getting hired at McDonald's.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the fakeness of it is more than the normal. Normally, these things are sort of fake, of course.

Speaker 2 The advanced team is there, and they kind of say, Look, the vice president or former president Trump will come here and buy a donut, and you can give him one of the, you know, they kind of raise it.

Speaker 2 They stalked a few people in there.

Speaker 2 But this was totally fake. This was not an open McDonald's, right? If I'm not mistaken.
Right, no, it was a closed McDonald's.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so when I would bring Jeb to a place, for example, just to give people context, we'd go to a coffee shop and we'd tell 10 of our supporters, like, well, you go to this coffee shop, Jeb's going to be there.

Speaker 2 But like, strangers could also be there. You know what I mean? So like there's, so it was quasi-fake, right? A quasi-fake photo op versus like a literal studio set to McDonald's.

Speaker 2 I think the McDonald's thing is interesting, though. I mean, this does fit with Arnold Palmer, leaving aside the vulgarity at the end, which is he is a salesman.
He is a con man.

Speaker 2 He's marketed himself to Middle America forever, 40 or 50 years. And so he's not stupid in that way, right? Who does he want to be associated with in people's mind?

Speaker 2 Arnold Palmer, golfer who, if you're a little older than I am, if you're Trump's age actually, but certainly even my age, you know, the greatest kind of iconic golfer and also a real gentleman, actually, and kind of had a very good post-golfing career is my sense.

Speaker 2 You know, and of course, he invented the, you know, his daughter actually put out a statement about how he's a gentleman and would have hated Donald Palmer.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and he invented this, you know, drink or whatever, you know, it's iced tea. What is it, lemonade and iced tea? So Palmer and then McDonald's, right?

Speaker 2 The kind of iconic American fast food institution.

Speaker 2 So in that respect, Trump does have a certain kind of weird, not weird, it's just, that's what he's been doing for 50 years, you know, instinct that kind of, you know, I'm in touch with you guys in Middle America.

Speaker 2 You watched Donald Palmer on TV, you watched ads with him later on, you've been to McDonald's a million times. I'm kind of a McDonald's type guy.
He's so much smarter than a DeSantis type, right?

Speaker 2 Trump is.

Speaker 2 He's a more effective Democrat. I mean, they're out of date, as your point.

Speaker 2 Like, they're out of date cultural touchstones, but like they are, you know, kind of whatever, middle American cultural touchstones from 30 years ago. That's true.

Speaker 2 He does have a good instinct for that. The only other thing I think that is worth saying about the McDonald's, again, is just this is all like projection.

Speaker 2 Like, what is underlying all this was that, like, there's this conspiracy that Kamala never actually worked at McDonald's, right? And it's like, that is what they're doing.

Speaker 2 So, literally, it's like we're accusing Kamala of

Speaker 2 being fake and saying that she worked at McDonald's when she was a teen. And in order to do so, we're going to do a fake McDonald's stop.

Speaker 2 This is a very kind of upside-down element, but right, but on brand for the Trump University guy. I want to get now into the nitty-gritty of where we're at.
We've had our fun. It's a super close race.

Speaker 2 I had sent you this morning, there was a good conversation with my friend John Heilman, formerly of the circus, now at Puck, who had a lengthy discussion with David Plough, who's come in to be Como's advisor, and he is the

Speaker 2 even keeled, measured, Zen-like, whatever word you want to use.

Speaker 2 Not me, not rain, cloudy, bed-wetty person inside the Harris campaign. I'll put a link in the

Speaker 2 show notes. And it's kind of worth reading all of us if you want to dork out to see what the Harris team's POV is on the campaign.

Speaker 2 But the most interesting takeaway, I think, at the top level, and we can dig in, is that they have seen the race as being basically static for a little over a month, which is something Axelrod said on this podcast about a week ago, too.

Speaker 2 And that the movement in the public polls towards Harris after the debate and then towards Trump in in the last week, like they don't see.

Speaker 2 Like, they think that's kind of like a phantom movement based on crappy public polls. And that what they've seen is a very, very tight race that's close in all seven swing states.

Speaker 2 And their premise as they think about the strategy and who they need to turn out for the last two weeks. So, so what did you think about the top level? And then we'll kind of get down at each element.

Speaker 2 I think Floss's telling the truth here. I mean, there could have been a tiny movement, half a point one way after the debate,

Speaker 2 half a point back the other. Even though that's such a tiny movement, it's basically a phantom movement.

Speaker 2 And it's, you know, it takes a couple of polls being slightly off one way or the other, and every poll is going to be off a little to create that sort of illusion of movement.

Speaker 2 We've all seen this so many times in campaigns, right? It's not a real movement. A real movement would be, you know, from zero.

Speaker 2 The real movement was the movement from when she took over to when she established a tiny small lead in the national popular vote.

Speaker 2 And more to the point, since that's what Pluff's totally focused on in the swing states, pulled even in the swing states. And so she was down, he said six or seven.
I was struck by that.

Speaker 2 Wagner was down when he got out in the swing states, and she was made an even race in the swing states. That's the real movement.

Speaker 2 Then there's been noise for the last month and a lot of tidy little, tidy oscillations. And here we are with two weeks left.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 The other thing that jumped out to me because people always ask this, right? Like, who are the voters that we're talking about? Are they even real, et cetera? And this is how Pluth assesses it.

Speaker 2 There's 4% of the electorate, which on the one hand is really small, but it's like kind of a lot of people. You know, you'd have 150 million people.

Speaker 2 Six, seven million voters. Yeah,

Speaker 2 quite a lot of voters. 4% who are still trying to decide between the two candidates.

Speaker 2 And then there's another group of people that are different, like they're different for each campaign, who haven't firmly decided yet whether or not they're going to vote.

Speaker 2 And those are the people that you got to get off the couch. For Trump, obviously that's going to be mostly white, non-college, working-class voters.

Speaker 2 And for Harris, a lot of younger voters, voters of color, et cetera. So like those are essentially the groups.
And Clough,

Speaker 2 based on the event today with Liz Cheney and Sarah Longwell, and just kind of based on their ads and based on their behavior and based on what he said, there's no reason to think he's lying, thinks that a big portion of that 4%

Speaker 2 are

Speaker 2 college-educated, Nikki-Haley type Republicans to use that as a shorthand.

Speaker 2 I think you and I have had versions of this division, too, that people talk about the swing voters or the undecided voters, but it's pretty obvious when you just think about it for a minute.

Speaker 2 There's the sort of swingish, engaged voters who are traditional Republicans, hard time voting for a Democrat, don't want to vote for Trump.

Speaker 2 Pluff says that's 4%. He knows better than I.
That sounds about right. 1% might not vote.
So if you can get two out of the three remaining percent to be for you, you pick up your net a percent.

Speaker 2 That's pretty good. Pennsylvania is

Speaker 2 important. And that is very much the Liz Janey, Sarah Logwell, Charlie Sykes, people who know who they are and respect them.

Speaker 2 Now, I do think the Republicans for Harris events, including the one on Thursday, also can have an effect on that second group of less engaged voters who are weakly for Harris or weakly for Trump.

Speaker 2 Because if you're a weak, I don't know, Trump voter, you haven't followed things very closely, but a whole bunch of Republicans suddenly are coming out against them, and maybe it does give you pause, right?

Speaker 2 And if you're a weak Harris voter, you're reassured, even though you're not a Republican, perhaps, oh, yeah, well, look, they're even there for her. The groups are different.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure the strategies for getting to the groups are entirely different.

Speaker 2 I mean, they're different in terms of turnout and targeting, and you have to make calls into Bucks County instead of into, you know, Philadelphia and so forth. It's the city itself.

Speaker 2 But I think that the messages aren't that different. And for me, the core message has to be now, never Trump.
Both of these sets of voters, they like Harris well enough.

Speaker 2 That was the accomplishment of the Harris campaign in the first, what, six, seven, eight weeks. Now they just need to really be alarmed at the idea of four more years for Trump.
And

Speaker 2 that is the closing Kamala message, I think, unhinged, unbalanced, unchecked. And then the different examples you can give of that.
I think that's a good message. I hope she really hammers it hard.

Speaker 2 I hope all the outside groups hammer it hard too. Many of the outside, in my opinion, Democratic super PACs are still running slightly gauzy as I guess it's okay on healthcare and all.

Speaker 2 I just can't believe they're moving that many voters at this point. But I think that's very important.
And then I'd say Dobbs. I mean, I do think the actual one issue that

Speaker 2 some chunk of these less engaged, well, both categories again, of voters could really be engaged on is the Dobbs decision and its implications and what four more years of Trump would mean for personal freedoms, especially for women.

Speaker 2 Yeah, let's actually put in that unhinged, unchecked ad that you referenced for people who aren't in swing states. I want to hear what Kamala's up to.

Speaker 10 I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message.

Speaker 2 Donald Trump makes a lot of promises, but we can be sure of one thing. If he wins, he'll ignore all checks that rein in a president's power.
It's all in Trump's Project 2025 agenda.

Speaker 2 What does that mean for you? Higher cost on groceries, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, more tax breaks for billionaires, and a national abortion ban putting women's health at risk.

Speaker 2 A second Trump term, more unhinged, unstable, and unchecked.

Speaker 2 I agree.

Speaker 2 I think that alarming people about Trump, I think that's a good ad, alarming people about Trump is right for both of that four, for that 4% group, but also for the on-the-couch group think about younger voters, right?

Speaker 2 Like I think about, you know, there's a good New York Times story this morning, good and also maddening, you know, where they're talking to like a 22-year-old in Arizona.

Speaker 2 It's like, I don't know, if the mail-in ballot shows up at my house, I guess I'll vote.

Speaker 2 In the time that you talked to this New York Times reporter, you could have voted, but okay.

Speaker 2 But I just think that, particularly for that younger demo, I do think there's a category of people that, to use the word I hate, Trump has been normalized because he's been around their whole life and like a little bit of a kick in the ass about scaring them, which also could be about Dobbs, also could be about the authoritarian, could be about any, you know, whole suite of issues.

Speaker 2 Just be like, just go do it. Like, go do it.
Go vote against him. Like risk is too high.
I think that that is a key message that works for both groups and should be what she's focused on.

Speaker 2 I do think, just to be completist, there is one other group of persuadables, which is kind of the young that we've talked about, like young men of color that I think are in that 4% too, along with the college, you know, Wall Street Journal, Nikki Haley voter.

Speaker 2 And so I think maybe the strategy for them is a little bit different. And I do think the Trump campaign, like Trump himself has gone insane, and his performance is

Speaker 2 a sign of that we should be deeply concerned, even more concerned than we would be baseline if he gets back in. But the campaign team itself has been laser focused on reaching those voters.

Speaker 2 And I do think that the Harris campaign could, you know, in addition to meeting with Sarah Longwell and Liz Cheney, that should be another part of their agenda item is like getting into venues to speak to those young voters.

Speaker 2 I know Tim Walls did a rich ISAM interview over the weekend. Like more is more on that front, I think, as well.
So that basically sums up the playing field at this point.

Speaker 2 Anything else from you on that, Bill? No, I agree with that.

Speaker 2 Can we close with some good news? Anytimes the Russians lose, that's a win for me. It's a little country called Moldova.
Have you been to Moldova? I have not. You've not been? Okay.

Speaker 2 I've met this wonderful woman who's prime minister. I mean, it's a tiny, what is it, three, four million people, something like that?

Speaker 2 Bordering on Russia. It's very small.
Yeah. Small country bordering on Russia.
It's pre-democratic and pro-Western. Yes.
And there was a

Speaker 2 kind of a join the EU referendum. And the Russians were deeply involved in it.
There was a rich oligarch type that was leading the campaign to oppose it.

Speaker 2 People are getting, there was a lot of walking around money.

Speaker 2 I guess we can tie this back to American politics as there was a lot of Elon Musk style tactics happening in the final days there, where they're handing out cash to Moldovans, telling them to vote down the referendum to join the EU.

Speaker 2 But narrowly,

Speaker 2 which might be another parallel with what's happening here, narrowly, the Moldovans decided to become aligned with the EU and maintain their status as a free and democratic country, not within the reach of the Russian influence.

Speaker 2 And so good on you, Moldova. I don't know, Bill, if you have any closing thoughts on that.

Speaker 2 I am no expert on Moldova, but I just want to emphasize this is not risk-free for the 55% of everybody who voted that way and the government, which is Russia is sitting right in their border, and they are a tiny little country, really without a military almost, with a police force kind of.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 Russia can already do a huge amount, as they have been doing, in the kind of more Elon Musk way, but they can also just do a lot by pure

Speaker 2 invasion and brute force, as they did to Georgia and Ukraine. So this is a pretty courageous.
I mean, that's one reason I think the referendum was so close.

Speaker 2 I think people just are scared about their future future if they go this way. But to their credit, they chose to go this way.

Speaker 2 May we have the Moldovan courage here in America over the final two weeks. Thank you to Bill Crystal.

Speaker 2 Make sure to check out the Longwell, Cheney, Harris Town Hall on our YouTube feed when you get the chance. And we'll be back here for another edition of the Bulwark podcast tomorrow.
See you all then.

Speaker 2 Peace. I'm feeling outside on Saturday night.

Speaker 2 I'm going to go to the radio

Speaker 2 I hear my song and it pulls me through.

Speaker 2 Cause I'm so

Speaker 2 what I got to do.

Speaker 2 I got it.

Speaker 2 Get up, everybody's gonna move their feet. Get down, everybody's gonna leave their seat.

Speaker 2 You gotta lose your mind in Detroit, Rock City.

Speaker 2 Get up, everybody's gonna move their feet. Get down, everybody's gonna leave their seat.

Speaker 2 Can't in leave, I just can't wait.

Speaker 2 Get up,

Speaker 2 and I know I gotta hit the road.

Speaker 2 First I dream, then I smoke.

Speaker 2 Stop the car, and I try to make the midnight show.

Speaker 2 Get up, everybody's gonna lose their feet. Get down, everybody's gonna leave their seat.

Speaker 2 The Bullworth Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brett.

Speaker 14 Even though severe cases can be rare, respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is still the leading cause of hospitalization in babies under one.

Speaker 14 RSV often begins like a cold or the flu, but can quickly spread to your baby's lungs. Ask your doctor doctor about preventative antibodies for your baby this season and visit protectagainstrsv.com.

Speaker 14 The information presented is for general educational purposes only. Please ask your healthcare provider about any questions regarding your health or your baby's health.

Speaker 15 Even when you're playing music,

Speaker 15 you're always listening to your baby, especially when RSV is on your mind.

Speaker 15 Baphortis, Nursevimab ALIP, is the first and only long-acting preventative antibody that gives babies the RSV antibodies they lack.

Speaker 15 Bifortis is a prescription medicine used to help prevent serious lung disease caused by RSV or respiratory syncytial virus in babies under age one born during or entering their first RSV season and children up to 24 months who remain at risk of severe RSV disease through their second RSV season.

Speaker 15 Your baby shouldn't receive Bifortis if they have a history of serious allergic reactions to Baportis, nursevimab ALIP, or any of its ingredients.

Speaker 15 Tell your baby's doctor about any medicines they're taking and all their medical conditions, including bleeding or bruising problems. Serious allergic reactions have happened.

Speaker 15 Get medical help right away if your child has any of the following signs or symptoms of a serious allergic reaction, such as swelling of the face, mouth, or tongue, difficulty swallowing or breathing, unresponsiveness, bluish color of skin, lips, or underfingernails, muscle weakness, severe rash, hives, or itching.

Speaker 15 Most common side effects include rash and pain, swelling, or hardness at their injection site. Individual results may vary.
Ask your baby's doctor about Bayfortis.

Speaker 15 Visit bayfortis.com or call 1-855-BAFORTIS.

Speaker 14 Even though though severe cases can be rare, respiratory syncytial virus or RSV is still the leading cause of hospitalization in babies under one.

Speaker 14 RSV often begins like a cold or the flu, but can quickly spread to your baby's lungs. Ask your doctor about preventative antibodies for your baby this season and visit protectagainstrsv.com.

Speaker 14 The information presented is for general educational purposes only. Please ask your healthcare provider about any questions regarding your health or your baby's health.