Susan Rice and Mondaire Jones: The Dictator Hugger

Let's listen in on a live, unscripted second grade Challenger School class.

They're studying Charlotte's Web.

How would you describe Charlotte compared to Wilbur?

I would describe Charlotte as self-reliant.

I would rather have a self-reliant friend because then they would want to work for things that they get

and they would want to earn it instead of just having it given to them.

Those students are seven.

Starting early and starting right makes a real difference. Learn more at challengerschool.com.
Hey guys, it's Wednesday. So I'm also over on the Next Level feed with JVL and Sarah.
We taped it on Tuesday night and I was having a glass of wine because I don't know, I'm getting a little stressed about the polls. So be warned, it's a wine filled episode of the Next Level.
We also are live in Philly tomorrow on Thursday. We've got Charlie Dent with Sarah Matthews, George Conway, a bunch of the Bulwark gang.
I think we're going to be streaming it live on YouTube. So go and check out our YouTube feed and press the little alarm bell button.
So if we go live, you will get to join in the revelry, join in the rallying cry with us in the final weeks before the election. We also have a new Bulwark podcast from John Avalon where he's talking about solutions to issues.
I think it's a nice compliment to our suite of podcasts. Obviously, we talk about issues and solutions as they come up, but to have something that's totally dedicated to it.
This week, he's talking about phone usage among children and how we can kind of maybe roll back the phone-based childhood a little bit. So we're very excited to have this new offering.
The podcast is called How to Fix It. You can go to thebullark.com to find it or search your podcast app of choice.
All right. Up next, super excited for this podcast.

We've got a double header, Ambassador Susan Rice in segment one. We're talking about foreign policy

and then Mondaire Jones and one of maybe if not the most important house race

in the country. We talk about why the house races are so important this year.
All right. Up next,

Susan Rice. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast.
I'm your host, Tim Miller. We got a double header for you today in segment two, Democratic congressional candidate Mondaire Jones.
But first, she served as national security advisor and ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama administration. She was also Biden's Chief Domestic Policy Advisor for the first two-ish years of the administration.
It is Susan Rice. Well, none of my candidates won, so I'm bad with formal titles.
Are we Ambassador? Are we Susan? Are we Advisor? What are we going by these days? Well, if you're talking about titles, we're Ambassador, but if we're having a conversation, you're Tim and I'm Susan. Okay, great.
How's it going, Susan? And we'll do a little bit on some of your formal titles. And I know that you pivoted to the domestic stuff, to stateside.
But if you don't mind, if we could try to focus a little bit on foreign policy for this little convo today, because I think there's a lot of interest in both candidates on foreign policy, plenty to discuss in the foreign policy side of things. And so I wanted to start with Donald Trump, if we could.
We had a lot of news from Bob Woodward in the last week about Trump's relationship with Putin. And so I'm just curious at the most open-ended level, what concerns you the most about the Trump-Russia relationship? Well, Tim, a lot concerns me about the Trump-Russia

relationship. And I think it's important to be focused on the threat that Donald Trump poses to our national security internationally.
But to be very honest, as we speak right now, I'm most concerned about the threat that Donald Trump poses to us domestically. And that is truly a national security threat.

When you hear Donald Trump

talking not only about

Trump, to us domestically. And that is truly a national security threat.
When you hear Donald Trump talking not only about terminating the constitution and being a dictator on day one, but now most recently focusing on the so-called enemy within, claiming that the biggest threat to the United States is not China, it's not Russia, but it's the so-called enemy within, meaning anybody and everybody in this country who disagrees with him or opposes his policies or votes against him, or more recently, he's just blanket labeled to all Democrats the enemy from within and pledged to use the military against them as necessary. Now, that's insanity.
And that is an extreme threat to our national security. It really is, Tim, Donald Trump running on a platform of civil war.
By the time you turn the military domestically on your opponents, or anybody who disagrees with you, that's what you end up with. So that's what's worrying me most right now.
You're closer to this, having been in that world, having been a national security advisor. What is the sense from inside, kind of military world, inside the national security world about these sort of policy proposals, if you want to call them call them a policy proposal these sort of assertions from trump right i mean like for some people on the outside there's a sense of oh this is just bluster i mean but this becomes real business if you have to like prepare for what would happen if he gets in there and he makes a you know and he tries to command the military to do something like? Like what kind of preparations and conversations are happening, you know, in that world? Well, first of all, it's not bluster.
Let's remember what he did when he was president, not just seeking a violent armed mob on the U.S. Capitol to kill Nancy Pelosi and hang Mike Pence, and resulting in the

deaths of a number of law enforcement officers. He actually had plans for and wanted to use the military against peaceful protesters in the United States.
That was, remember, the whole thing that had General Milley so deeply concerned, both in June of 2020 and then again during the transition that Donald Trump was going to invoke the Insurrection Act and call the military out against civilians. So this is not a fantasy.
If he were to be elected in 2024, he will no longer have around him, Tim, the kinds of people that would refuse to comply with that kind of illegal and unlawful order. You know, he is somebody who has unprecedented history.
His vice president, two of his defense secretaries, his secretary of state, two of his national security advisors,

his former chief of staff, a four-star military officer, all say he's unfit to be commander-in-chief. He's dangerous and shouldn't come back.
We've heard General Milley just in the last several days say exactly what I just said, that Donald Trump is truly the greatest threat to the United States right now because of all of his plans and his readiness to use the force of the military and the force of the presidency against the American people. And what's different this time now, Tim, which is really, truly frightening, in addition to the fact that he will not have around him people with any sense of restraint and decency.
It's that the Supreme Court has said that the president of the United States acting in his official capacity is immune from prosecution. So there are literally no guardrails.
So to me, this is extremely concerning. And it will require people up and down the military chain of command to refuse what what they consider to be an unlawful order and i don't know that you know once he's fired all the the senior leadership as he's vowed to do and court-martialed them that those that are you know responsible senior military officials who uphold their vow to the constitution i don't know where that leads i think it's a very.
Yeah, I totally agree with you on the political appointments, something we talk about a lot. But that really is where the rubber meets the road on the career military officials in the chain of command.
I mean, I know that there were these sort of conversations happening among the former secretaries of defense during that period between the election and January 6. And it's, you know, I mean,

it's wild that we're in a situation right now. It's very scary that we're in a situation right now that like, kind of those conversations have to be happening again, right? I mean, obviously, that was a political objective of beating Donald Trump, right? But we are really on the cusp of a major crisis within the chain of command and the career military officials.
Tim, the only sure way to avoid this kind of scenario is to defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box and hopefully to do so resoundingly. There's no other certain path.
All right, back to Russia. You know, we're having these conversations.
I saw you tweeted this week that Trump's conversations with Putin would be a violation of the Logan Act. And I have Woodward on tomorrow, so I'm excited to ask him about this too.
But like, are we sure he's not lying about this? Like, is this really how? Like, what is our sense for what is really happening in that relationship? I don't know who's lying or what, but I do not find it in the least bit surprising when Bob Woodward reports that Donald Trump has talked to Vladimir Putin some seven times since he left office. Part of the reason why I don't find it surprising is because I know when I was National Security Advisor in 2016 during the transition, Donald Trump was having conversations with foreign heads of state that were undisclosed to the sitting administration and that were involving policies and actions that ran directly counter to the policies of the administration.
We have one president at a time and one government at a time. Donald Trump's never respected that.
So I would not be at all surprised. And I find it completely credible that he would be having those conversations with Putin.
And I gathered just in the last couple days when pressed about that, he neither confirmed nor denied those conversations and in fact said, it would be a good thing if I were talking to Putin. Now, the bigger question that you're getting at is what is this about? Why are they talking? And I think that's exactly the right question.
You don't call somebody seven times to wish them happy birthday or happy new year. We know that there is a history of Donald Trump seeking Vladimir Putin's assistance to interfere in our electoral process.
He did it openly and publicly in 2016. Were those calls to try to gain Putin's assistance again to interfere in our elections? Were those phone calls about Ukraine and offering Putin some promises or assurances about how Donald Trump will, you know, force Ukraine to surrender and capitulate and, you know, cut off military aid if he just, you know, if he's able to win.
You got to ask yourself, what the hell were they talking about? And there's no scenario that I can think of that is consistent with the U.S. national interest and that isn't quite frightening.
The only scenarios are, you know, Trump's interest and Putin's interest. And clearly, at some level, giving him cover for extending the war, for giving him optionality, thinking about what, like, why make any moves now if you're Putin, thinking that maybe you'll get Trump in there next time.
And you're having, apparently you're having apparently some sort of back channel conversation. So I mean, I think that it's having real world impact on the security of Ukraine right now.
Absolutely. There's no question that Putin is playing for time.
And his whole strategy is to wait out the election, hope that Donald Trump wins, and then hope that Trump does what he's pledged to do, which is to end the war very quickly by basically cutting the cord with Ukraine and selling them out and being the Neville Chamberlain of the Republican Party, a surrender monkey. That's exactly his plan.
It's wild that we've got here. I'm here with Obama's national security advisor, calling the Republican nominee a surrender monkey.
It's been a strange decade, Ambassador Rice. I have to ask you, though, since I've never been in these rooms, you have.
I noticed Avril Haynes gave a very cryptic, classic national security style non-answer to the question about whether we know whether Trump and Putin are talking. Would we know? Like, would they know? Do you think that they would know? I guess this is my question.
I'm not going to go. I'm not going to go there, Tim.
You don't know whether they would know. I love this.
I'm going to ask you to ask the next question. Okay.
All right. I want to go to what Trump did.
Trump's interview yesterday with John McElwain at the Economic Club of Chicago, editor of Bloomberg. They talked a little bit about a wide range of things, though Trump was kind of unable to follow most of the questions.
And I want to play one specific exchange about how the Trump tariffs might impact the relationship with allies. At the last Cold War against the Soviet Union, America won it in part because it rallied allies to it.
You're talking about slamming allies with 30%, 20% tariffs. Isn't this time you're going to end up trying to rally the West and you're dividing it instead? Isn't that the real problem with tariffs, even beyond all the problems due to the economy, where you keep on bringing up these individual examples, but the overall effect is going to be dramatic.
The answer first about foreign policy. Yeah, I'll do that.
How does it help you take on China, turning all your allies against you? Tremendously, because China thinks we're a stupid country, a very stupid country. They can't believe that somebody finally got wise to them.
Not one president, Bush, Obama, Barack Hussein Obama, have you heard of him? Not one president, not think of it, not one president charged China anything. They said, oh, they are a third world nation.
They are a developing nation. Well, we're a developing nation nation too.
Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at our cities.
We're a developing nation. We have to develop more than they do.
We're way behind them. You take a look at what's happened to our cities.
So what I'm saying is this. My question was about your allies, not about China.
So there is not understanding how tariffs work. There's attacking America and American cities, not understanding the question about what the impact would be on the allies.
Where do you want to take that? A lot of places to go. I don't know that it's that he doesn't understand.
I think he doesn't care. And I think he thinks the American people are stupid and that he can keep saying tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, and tariffs are penalized foreign countries and make people believe that that's the case when in fact, as you know, and I know, and most people know, tariffs are a tax on the American consumer.
It is not the foreign country that pays the price of tariffs. You know, the way it works is- China doesn't just write a check to the treasury? Is that not that's not how that works that's not how it works is a company.
China doesn't just write a check to the treasury? Is that not, that's not how that works? That's not how it works. Oh, okay.
A company exports something from Germany and sells it in the United States, an American company. If there is a tariff, it is the company that pays the tariff when the product comes into the United States.
And the company passes cost on to the consumer. Germany's not paying or China's not paying.
It's the American consumer who is paying. So that's the first problem with his logic.
But the question was a very good one. How do you lead in the world with friends and allies when you are punishing your friends and allies across board, just as you would your adversaries on the same basis with a 20% across the board, you know, tariff on every good coming in from every country.
That's insanity. It's economic insanity, but it's national security insanity.
Because why would Germany, our ally or the the UK, or Canada, or any other friendly country want to join with us when our national security is on the line, whether in the Middle East or Ukraine or vis-a-vis China or vis-a-vis Russia, when we are actively penalizing and undermining their economies and treating them like adversaries? They won't. It's crazy.
And Tim, the problem is Trump tried to do this in his first term. He imposed steel tariffs on Canada under the guise of that the steel industry in Canada was a threat to the United States national security.
He invoked a national security authority to impose tariffs on Canadian steel. I can't tell you to this day how pissed off the Canadians are that U.S.
policy would paint Canada as a threat to the United States. You know, Canada who stood by us in every war that we've fought in over, you know, generations and the longest peaceful border in the world and the closest trading relationship.
And that's how Donald Trump treats our closest friends. So this is a real concern.
These tariffs are an economic disaster and a national security calamity. And he clearly either doesn't care, doesn't get it, but I think he gets it.
And this is consistent with his policy of building up and benefiting Russia and China for his own personal gain, as well as because he has this fascination with dictators, to the detriment of the United States national security and to the detriment of our alliances. You speak to a lot of our allies and

ambassadors, people that you've dealt with in bilateral relationships over the years. Right now, as we're a couple of weeks out, what do they fear most about another Trump term? They fear exactly what we've been talking about, the erraticism, the recklessness, the absolute disregard for our alliances.

You know, when Donald Trump says that he could give a damn about NATO, that NATO is a protection racket, and if they don't pay, which is full of all kinds of fallacies, then they, you know, no protection. NATO's not a country club you pay dues to, actually.
It's a strange, it's an interesting concept. Vladimir Putin can do what the hell he wants with nato i mean that that's what our friends and allies fear that donald trump actually you know means it because look his former national security advisor john bolton is very clear in his estimation that trump intends to withdraw from nato and trump has been very clear his disdain for nat.
He's called it obsolete, among others. And that's one of the nicer terms he's used.
This is, again, about doing Putin's bidding. There's nothing Vladimir Putin wants more than to dismantle NATO and to see it, you know, devolve in atrophy and then be able to continue to press his military campaign further and further to the West.
You know, we started in Georgia in 2008, then in Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014, then his attempt in 2022 to take over all of Ukraine. You know, if he were to succeed in Ukraine, if Donald Trump hands him surrender on a silver platter, then why do we think he's going to stop now? It's Poland, it's the Baltics, it's, you know, it's Katie bar the door.
And then we, the United States, either have to abandon our NATO allies or send U.S. troops into battle.
It's insanity. Let's listen in on a live, unscripted second grade challenger school class.
They're studying Charlotte's Web. How would you describe Charlotte compared to Wilbur? I would describe Charlotte as self-reliant.
I would rather have a self-reliant friend because then they would want to work for things that they get and they would want to earn it instead of just having it given to them. Those students are seven.
Starting early and starting right makes a real difference. Learn more at challengerschool.com.
I want to turn over to the vice president's kind of proactive foreign policy, but I think that there's a lot of misunderstanding of it out there, in part because of misinformation, in part just because it's been such a short campaign run and people are just getting introduced to her. My guest on the podcast yesterday, one of them said that he thinks that she's a neocon.
I'm like, if only, but he didn't like that. Some of my neocon friends think that she's basically like a campus protester that wants to withdraw us from the world.
And so how would you describe her foreign policy? I describe it as as strong, pragmatic and principled. She's in the very much in the mainstream of national security policymaking.
There was a time, Tim, and you remember, and so do I, when foreign policy and national security between Democrats and Republicans was played within the 40 yard lines, as I like to say. You know, you could have shade here, difference there, but basically played within the 40-yard lines.
I think that's where she is, quite frankly. She said very clearly that she thinks the United States needs to maintain the strongest fighting force the world has ever seen, that we have to strengthen and invest in and nurture our alliances and partnerships, that we are stronger when we stand for our values of freedom and democracy.
But she is going to be very judicious about the use of force. She is not a neocon.
She is not a campus protester. She's squarely within those 40-yard lines.
I'm very sure about both those things. But she will be smart and thoughtful and deliberate.
She's got a lot of national security experience already. As vice president, she's been to more than 20 countries.
She's met with more than 150 world leaders, including adversaries like Xi Jinping. She's been to Asia four times, Europe multiple times.
She's been a major player in sensitive negotiations about returning Americans who are detained unlawfully. She's been a central player in our efforts to bolster Ukraine and to deal with a very complex situation in the Middle East.
But she also understands that American strength is dependent on our strength at home and that we need to invest at home in our manufacturing capacity and education, in health care, in our supply chains to secure them against potential disruption, whether, you know, because of something like COVID or because of something nefarious like Chinese action. So she understands that our national security has to have very strong domestic underpinnings.
Our economy has to be strong. Our people have to be well.
But she also understands that we can't go it alone in the world. We can't afford an America first approach, which really means America alone.
It doesn't mean we put our national interests first. Obviously, we put our national interests first.
That's what any responsible commander in chief does. Trump puts his personal interests first.
But we cannot go it alone in this dangerous and complex world where China and Russia and North Korea and Iran are increasingly concerning their efforts. We need our friends and partners in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, and in Latin America to be with us.
We talked about how dangerous the Trump sycophants will be around him on the national security side. No Mattis coming in for term two.
They're not even supporting him this time. What about the Harris team? There's some scuttle that Phil Gordon, who's her advisor, is maybe a little bit more hawkish on Ukraine.
Any general thoughts on the type of team that will be around her and what the impact it might have on policy? Well, the good news, Tim, is that the Democrats have a deep and experienced bench on foreign policy and national security. I know Phil Gordon well, who is Vice President Harris's national security advisor.
I've worked with him in the Clinton administration, in the Obama administration, and in the Biden administration. He's a smart, experienced, thoughtful guy.
I don't know what exact role he'll play. I'm sure he'll be involved, but so will many others.
I mean, there is no shortage of good people who are currently serving and good people who previously served and may come back that she can call up. So I am confident that she will have a strong, experienced team of national security professionals around her.
I'm real quick. There's just some news on Israel this week.
The vice president put out a tweet saying that the u.n is reporting no food has entered northern gaza nearly two weeks israel must urgently do more to facilitate the flow of aid to those in need civilians must be protected international humanitarian law must be respected as she also was questioned about this a bunch on 60 minutes i think gave a very nuanced answer about about our alliance with the israeli people and and how that at times you know, that doesn't necessarily mean full support of the Netanyahu administration, but it does mean full support of the Israeli people. How do you feel like she's handled that balance and kind of the latest news about the humanitarian issues in Gaza? Well, I think she's handled it very well.
It's a very complex situation. Obviously, we have a strong commitment to Israel's security, and particularly its defense against adversaries like Iran and Iran's proxies.

And yet at the same time, one can understand the extreme toll that the war in Gaza has taken on innocent civilians, both through military action and through lack of humanitarian access. And you can be very clear, as the vice president has been and as President Biden has been, that it is past time for a ceasefire in Gaza that enables the hostages to come home.
I mean, Tim, it's mind boggling when you think that

hostages have been held there for over a year in tunnels, in darkness, in deprivation. It's just extraordinary.
And the fact that this is not the central focus right now is hard to understand. And then, of course, the extraordinary suffering of the people of Gaza.
It is not a strategically sound approach to pummel Gaza into the ground and expect that there will not be generations of resentment and desire for revenge that emerges. Vice President Harris is absolutely right.
We need a ceasefire. We need the hostages home.
We need humanitarian access and support for the people of Gaza. And we need a horizon for the Palestinians and their aspirations for security, sovereignty, and self-determination, a two-state solution, as we stand by Israel and its absolutely justified need to defend itself against its many adversaries in the region.
Were you surprised by her answer to 60 Minutes about Iran being potentially the biggest foe in the world right now? Look, we've got, unfortunately, a number of foes. We've got no shortage of foes.
We've got no shortage of of foes and we haven't for a long time.

You know, so Iran is definitely up there, China, Russia, and North Korea. And the combination, their coordination is what concerns me most.
But honestly, Tim, I'm not trying to be cute here. All of those threats are exceedingly real.
Yes.

But right now, today, literally, I'm worried more about our domestic cohesion when we have a president who's campaigning on a platform of civil war. And Tim, what this is about, by the way, is, you know, telling us what he intends to do if he is elected, but also laying a foundation if he's not elected for violence and outrage among his supporters.
So this is really, really dangerous. Amen.
All right. You're on the Never Trumper pod.
So we are aligned on this. We are fully aligned.
But I've got to do one follow up on the foes because, you know, I mean, this is my chance. Sure.
Looking back to the Obama era, like we did, we had reset with Russia. We, you know, obviously the relationship with Iran different at that time, a more realistic view of working with Xi.
I talked to David Sanger about this on a pod a couple months ago. Do you feel like there's a reassessment of that? Some of the kind of views of that nexus of China and Russia and Iran from what you guys saw during the Obama time? I don't know if it's a reassessment.
I think that the situation has evolved. When I was serving at the United Nations in President Obama's first term and then as national security advisor in his second term, we saw diplomatic collaboration and coordination between Russia and China.
If we were negotiating something complicated in the UN, for example, you know, they would often align their approaches and vote together, but not always. And there were issues like Syria and Ukraine and others where their approaches diverged.
Now what we are seeing is something that looks a lot more like a traditional alliance that is military. It is economic and diplomatic.
It is really a full-fledged partnership where China is providing critical economic support as well as dual-use items that Putin is using in Ukraine. There are reports today, I don't know if they're accurate, about North Korean military personnel on the ground in Ukraine on the Russian side.
And we've seen a big shift. You know, 10 years ago, the Russians and the Chinese were working with the United States and the Europeans to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran to isolate North Korea with sanctions and other forms of pressure.
That has shifted. And so obviously our approach has to shift as well.
You know, the world doesn't stand still. And in Putin and in Xi Jinping in particular, Xi was early in his tenure during the Obama years.
He's become much more confident, much more assertive, and frankly, more dangerous. Yeah.
All right. Final question to the Nikki Haley voters out there.
All right. The national security Republicans are still on the fence.
What's the strongest pitch you can make for them to supporting Kamala Harris? The strongest pitch is that Kamala Harris understands and respects American strength and values our military and our veterans. She doesn't denigrate them as suckers and losers.
She's not going to court martial former officers who have had the audacity to speak their minds as private citizens. She will be a thoughtful, careful, steady, smart commander-in-chief who will lead the United States in a dangerous world in partnership with our allies through strength.
And Donald Trump is reckless, dangerous, self-interested, dictator-hugging, and will put the United States national interest at the bottom of his priorities when it suits him personally, which is all the time.

Ambassador Susan Rice, fellow critic of surrender monkey Donald Trump. You're welcome at the

Bulwark podcast. Anytime.
Come see me in New Orleans. Thanks so much for doing this.

Up next, Mondaire Jones.

Thank you, Tim. Let's listen in on a live, unscripted second grade Challenger School class.
They're studying Charlotte's Web. How would you describe Charlotte compared to Wilbur? I would describe Charlotte as self-reliant.
I would rather have a self-reliant friend because then they would want to work for things that they get and they would want to earn it instead of just having it given to them. Those students are seven.
Starting early and starting right makes a real difference. Learn more at challengerschool.com.
All right, and we're back with a Democratic candidate for New York's 17th congressional district. He's a previous congressman from the New York City area, but gave up the district after a redistricting shuffle in 2022.
So now he's back in the mix running against first term Republican Representative Mike Lawler. It's Mondaire Jones.
What's up, Mondaire? It's good to be here with you and always good to be running to represent the district that I always intended to continue representing prior to New York's disastrous redistricting in 2022. A horrific redistricting thing.
I mean, we don't need to go down into the muck and all this, but it really is one of those things. I mean, the way the Republicans are carving up Tennessee like it's a pizza to make sure Nashville doesn't have any representatives.
And meanwhile, in New York, Democrats are doing own goals on the redistricting system. Kind of a ridiculous process, but that's for a nerd podcast.
That's for another day. Let's go forward.
We're not going back, Mundair. We're just going forward.
We're not going back. Though I did, I thought this was a nerd podcast.
It is. It is.
That's super nerd, though. If we're getting into kind of congressional redistricting shapes, I mean, that's like deep nerd stuff.
This is like light nerd. This is like soft nerd.
So so you're running against mike lawler i want to talk about mike first and not his obsession with michael jackson we're going to close with that but i want to talk about his politics first you know he's kind of the stand-in for the moderate republican people like use him as an example and you're running against him and i just i don't know that the reputation matches the reality of what he's been doing in there. I was wondering if you could share why you're running against him and how you assess your opponent.
Mike Lawler is a con artist. He masquerades as a moderate on television, but he votes just like the extreme MAGA Republicans.
As recently as a few weeks ago, Donald Trump was on camera praising Mike. He said that he used to not like him, it seemed, but now he loves him.
He doesn't know what happened. Well, I can tell you what happened.
It's that he got cocky. I mean, Mike Lawler has been supporting Donald Trump, of course, since 2016.
He's supporting him for the third consecutive presidential election. And eventually your past catches up to you.
So between his voting record to restrict access to abortion, to oppose protecting Social Security and Medicare, and to open that baseless impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, and now having to be accountable for the fact that he's supporting a guy who tried to overturn the last presidential election, and who is now a convicted felon, despite Lawler pretending to be the law and order candidate in this race, is something that has caused a lot of people in recent weeks to say, this guy is not who I thought he was. Yeah, it shows you the low bar these days for Republicans.
It's like this guy was for the completely absurd clown show Joe Biden impeachment and is for Donald Trump post January 6th and still kind of gets this sheen of as long as he isn't Marjorie Taylor Greene, you know, that must mean he's mainstream. And it's just like not not a match with what is happening in reality.
The bar is in hell. I mean, you simply have to say that the 2020 election was won by Joe Biden, and people in the press will ascribe the word moderate to you without you having to do any work, without you having to prove it.
There are so many bipartisan things, so many moderate things that Lawler could be doing right now, such as supporting that tough bipartisan border security bill pending in Congress, which is something he claims, you know, the border crisis is something he wants to solve. But again, he's taken his direction from Donald Trump like the rest of them.
I want to talk about just kind of the importance of the House because it does get lost a little bit in this presidential year. I know everybody doesn't need these nightmares going forward, but there's a chance Donald Trump could win this election.
It's a very close election.

The House basically went Republican on the back of seats in blue states like New York,

like California.

A handful of seats, including the one you're running for right now, went to the Republicans.

And I think that part of it was because in those blue states, there was this a little bit of a sense of comfort that like, you know, it's still a democratic state. You know, we don't have to worry about losing abortion access here.
We don't have to worry about, you know, some of the crazy anti-democracy stuff here. And so it gave people a little bit more room to do crossover ballots.
That is not really the case this time. I just I don't know if that's clear for people.
There's a possibility that Donald Trump could have complete control of Congress. And if that is true, it's like a massive difference whether Mondaire Jones is in the House versus Mike Lawler.
So I know you don't want to imagine a Donald Trump presidency, but I just think it's important to explain the stakes to people about how different things could look. In fact, imagining a Donald Trump presidency is one of the things that keeps me in this fight.
It is just the fact that Donald Trump is doing better this time around at this stage of the race than he was doing in the 2020 and in the 2016 presidential campaigns. So there is a very good chance that Donald Trump wins this race, as confident as I am and as optimistic as I am about Kamala Harris.
And so what can we do here in the state of New York to make sure that we don't have Donald Trump's dangerous project 2025 agenda next January? And that is, of course, flipping this seat right here in the lower Hudson Valley. And there are other seats in New York that collectively would decide control of Congress and make Hakeem Jeffries Speaker of the House, God willing.
We are staring at the very real possibility of a national abortion ban, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, continued obstruction of the efforts to secure our southern border, which is something that matters a lot to people in my district, believe it or not. And also, obviously, keep the Affordable Care Act intact so that insurance companies can't go back to denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions like cancer and diabetes and asthma.

All of these things and so much else are at stake.

And the question is whether we will do what we can in these house races, including my own house race, to get the job done and be a bulwark, shall we say.

Yeah.

All right. All right.
We'll allow it. We'll allow it one time.
Just once. One free pass on the bulwark pun.
Look, this is a district that Biden won by 10 points. There are 80,000 more registered Democrats and Republicans in this district.
And we are in a dead heat as of the latest public polling. I'm really excited about the progress that we've made in this race, about the incredible field program that we have, and the grassroots fundraising.
But Elon Musk is spending the most in this House race that he is spending in any House race in America. And he's doing that to defeat me, obviously.
It's also in addition to a lot of other Republican super PAC spending. So we're fighting dragons here, but we're getting closer and closer to winning this race by the day.
And it's really exciting to see play out. Yeah, they're fighting it because they know the other side of what I'm talking about.
And like how important, you know, if you want to have, see Donald Trump doesn't really care that much, right? He just wants to be president and stay out of jail, right? But the rest of these guys that are putting this agenda in place, the Project agenda as you mentioned you know whatever you know grift elon wants out of the government mike johnson having mike johnson in control of the agenda next year i honestly should probably scare like new yorkers in your district more than donald trump right there's some people like look at trump and see him as a new Yorker and see him as like a model. He doesn't really believe all this crazy, you know, social conservative stuff like Mike Johnson does.
And if he's in charge of the agenda and the Republicans have the Senate, you're going to get a Mike Johnson agenda in New York. I mean, we need a Democratic Congress just to certify the election results.
Look at the interview that Mike Johnson, who I knew better than the rest of the world because I served with him on the Judiciary Committee. Look at the interview he gave a few days ago.
Did you guys have a little covenant eyes deal where you were monitoring each other's phone usage or not that close? Listen, that stuff that he does is very weird. I'll leave it at that.
But in terms of him not even committing to certify

a free and fair election, if the winner is Kamala Harris, and knowing his past as the chief legal

architect in the Congress of the 2020 effort to overturn the presidential election, you have to

take very seriously the fact that we can't trust these guys to do the bare minimum. And so that's

I'm sorry. effort to overturn the presidential election, you have to take very seriously the fact that we can't trust these guys to do the bare minimum.
And so that's why, among other reasons, we need a Democratic Congress for January. You were campaigning with the Haitian community in your district, I saw earlier this week.
Just talk about that. What were you hearing when you're out there with Haitian immigrants, Haitian residents here in America? And kind of what has there been any, you know, downstream impact on them from the BS that Trump and Vance

were pushing? So I was born and raised in this district. I spent most of my life in Rockland

County, where in the village of Spring Valley, we have the largest Haitian American community in the

country per capita, the second largest Haitian American community in the country per capita, the second largest Haitian American community in the country per capita. More than Little Haiti down to Miami? You got to Little Haiti? You got to add the per capita to it, man.
Okay, all right. Okay, per capita.
All right. So when I was at this rally on Sunday with a lot of folks who frankly helped raise me growing up, what I heard and what I saw was a lot of pain and outrage towards Donald Trump and J.D.
Vance, but also a member of Congress named Mike Lawler, who refuses to call those two men out by name. this despicable lie that Donald Trump and J.D.
Vance have been repeating.

They haven't stopped telling you.

Something that has been debunked, something and J.D. Vance have been repeating.
They haven't stopped telling you. Something that has been debunked, something that J.D.
Vance was forced to admit was a lie on CNN when he did an interview with Dana Bash, has caused not only dozens of bomb threats in Springfield, Ohio, but has really put a target on the backs of Haitian Americans throughout this country. And the bare minimum that leadership requires is condemnation of the people who are spreading that despicable, hurtful lie about Haitian people eating cats and dogs.
And there was a warm reception, obviously, for me and the prospect of representation like what I had been providing. And I was proud to represent this community.
We have a diverse district here in the Lower Hudson Valley, and I have been proud to stand with a number of different constituencies over not just the course of this campaign, but my time in Congress last term. We don't have a member of Congress who's been doing any of that.
I mean, he's only standing up for communities optically to the extent that he views it to be an opportunity to hit at the far left, but he'll never stand up to Donald Trump or any other extremist in his party. No doubt about that.
All right. I want to read you a little bit from Nate Cohn in the New York Times.
Everybody, nobody get triggered by the needle, but say what you want about what the polling's been out there. think nate does a good job analyzing the data that we got here's what he said earlier this week uh-oh miss harris is no doubt on track to win an overwhelming majority of black voters but mr trump appears to be chipping away broadly at a long-standing democratic advantage much of the erosion and support for harris is driven by a growing belief that democrats who have long celebrated black voters as the backbone of their party have failed to deliver on the promises the poll showed.
40% of black voters under 30 said that the Republican Party was more likely to follow through on its campaign commitments than the Democrats were. Woof.
What can be done about communicating to younger black voters that may not have the full picture? I don't know. That'd be one way to put it.
How do you assess all that? Or are you not seeing that? Let me just say that there are challenges. I don't think to the extent that pundits have been making them out to be.
But, you know, a big part of this is explaining what those campaign promises are. I mean, Donald Trump is completely adverse to the black community, not just because he is virulently, explicitly racist, but because he opposes things that would actually improve the lives of black people.
This is a guy who wants to drive up the cost of prescription drugs, throw people out their health insurance plans. He has no appetite whatsoever for the idea that there is unfairness within our criminal legal system, despite himself being a convicted felon and an adjudicated rapist.
He is so at odds with the best interests of the black community. It is important to highlight those myriad ways in which he and the Republican Party are, but also to talk about the accomplishments and the progress that has been made.
You know, I was part of a Congress that created millions of good paying jobs and will continue to do so over the next decade. Many of those jobs, union jobs.
I was part of a Congress that, yes, sent out stimulus checks, but that cut child poverty in half. Who do you think poverty disproportionately afflicts in this country, in our broken economy? I was part of a Congress that passed the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act through the House.
And then when it got to the Senate, it failed because of unanimous Republican obstruction. So to be sure, the Democratic Party is imperfect.
And we've got people in our party in elected, and other leadership roles who have not always done right by the black community. I know that well.
I'm obviously black. My whole family's black.
But there is only one major political party in this country serious about racial progress. And in this most important election of our lifetimes, where you've got a candidate in Kamala Harris who has the lived experience of black Americans and who, frankly, is the most forward thinking on racial progress of any person to any major political party's nominee for president, I think, in the history of this country, I think there's a real opportunity to advance the ball.
And we just have to communicate this in conversations, in barbershops, on the airwaves, with our family members, on social media. And I'm seeing a lot of that happening.
So that's encouraging. So do you think that's the issue of the communication? The issue is the social media, it's bifurcation, people are getting bad information, or is there something else? Terrible information.
With the generational side of with the generational side there's been just frankly a coordinated effort to misinform and to disinform people whether that's on social media or on fox news or in the new york post um it is just critically important that we push back on that i hear it all the time i mean i get my hair cut every week so i'm in so i'm hearing it all the time in black barbershops i'm getting my hair in a few hours, the conversations that I get my hair cut every week. So I'm hearing it all the time in black barbershops.
I'm getting my hair cut in a few hours. The conversations that I'm hearing are a little different at the gay parlor here in town.
Okay, last thing. I have to ask you about this.
I've been thinking about it ever since I read it. I can't get it out of my mind.
In 2005, this is also the New York Times. In 2005, as a high school senior, Mr.
Lawler, your opponent, flew from New York to California.

I want to sit on that for a second.

He's a high school senior.

He flew from New York to California to attend parts of Michael Jackson's criminal trial.

The pop star had been charged with molesting a 13-year-old boy at his Neverland Ranch.

Lawler went there as a Jackson superfan to harass and harangue the people testifying against Jackson in his molestation case. That's the weirdest shit I think I've ever read about a candidate.
And I don't know, it kind of just like, it was dumped into paragraph 19 of a story about how he also did blackface one time. And I'm like, I want to learn more about this.
When I was a teenager flying across the country to harass Michael Jackson's accusers. So anyway, do you have anything for me on that topic? Have you ever flown across the country to stalk a celebrity? There are, no.
There are so many people in the district who have actually reached out to me about that anecdote. Good.
Which was reported last summer, actually, in the summer of 2023. But when the New York Times writes about it, obviously, a larger audience reads it to say that they are actually more concerned by that behavior than the blackface that he did the following year in 2006, at a time in American history when it was well established that black face was deeply offensive.
So there would be no excuse for it. Look, this is all very weird and disconcerting, but it speaks to an extremism.
It speaks to an extremism that persists. You know, it is, I think, at times concealed because he's never asked any tough questions.
And I think the reporting on Mike Lawler has not been robust when it comes to his past. I mean, all you have to do is go to his Twitter history and you see all kinds of crazy, MAGA extremist things from the period before he was ever elected to office and was serving, for example, as the executive director of the New York State GOP and a career lobbyist.
My opponent is emblematic, I think, of the MAGA movement, where cruelty is the point where people are motivated by fear and anger rather than love and optimism about the future of this country. And it comes across in his policies.
I think that's a very calm and judicious way to respond to that story. So thank you, Mondaire Jones.
Hopefully at the end of your campaign, Mike Lawler will beat it, so to speak. We will be back here

tomorrow with another edition of the

Blog Podcast. Wait, hold on.
What's your website if people want to

go and check out more? I appreciate

it. Mondaire4Congress.com

Please click on that Donate button.

Also, please click on Get Involved so you

can volunteer. We are so close

to winning this race. Everyone knows that it's

why Republicans are spending a fortune

to defeat me here. Alright, we'll see everybody tomorrow with Bob Woodward.
Peace. Michael Jackson make them mad, he make them mad Michael Jackson make them crazy, he make them mad Just beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it Them a cut up shorty, cut up, dem pants full And a take plastic surgery but dem work pretty low And some a dem fever slingshot coat Michael Jackson make them mad, he make them mad Just beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it He not the army, you have the general Kyelo man, him no gonna funeral Michael Jackson, him doon partial If you look pan him fierce, you know it normal Some of them take plastic surgery fever, oh man Michael Jackson make them mad He make them mad Michael Jackson make them crazy He he make them mad Just beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it Cause yellow man under no freezer Some of them are dressed up like Michael Jackson And some of them fever in the whole that sun Beat it, beat it, just beat it, beat it See me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see it See me ya, see me ya, tell me who me favor See me ya, see me ya, tell me who me favor Car, let from Jamaica, they me go overboard Some jive BMW under a card When me come and they say me favor boy, John See me ya, see me ya, tell me who me favor See me ya, see me ya, tell me who me favor Car, let from Jamaica, they me go overboard Some jive BMW under a card You hear this I want But no The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.
Let's listen in on a live, unscripted second grade Challenger school class. They're studying Charlotte's Web.
How would you describe Charlotte compared to Wilbur? I would describe Charlotte as self-reliant. I would rather have a self-reliant friend because then they would want to work for things that they get and they would want to earn it instead of just having it given to them.
Those students are seven.

Starting early and starting right makes a real difference.

Learn more at challengerschool.com.