Jim Messina and Michael Weiss: Midwestern Nice

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Speaker 14 Hello, and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
We've got a double header today up in segment two. It's Michael Weiss talking about the flare-up in the Middle East.

Speaker 14 Also, remember, it's Wednesday, so I'm over on the Next Level podcast where Sarah and JVL and I are rending our garments about the state of affairs. But not here on today's daily podcast.

Speaker 14 We've got Jim Messina, campaign manager for Barack Obama's 2012 re-election. He's the chair of a new PAC, Democracy Defenders.
And democracy is going to need defending in the last month.

Speaker 14 How are you doing, Jim? Thanks for coming on the pod.

Speaker 17 My pleasure. Big fan.
First time caller, longtime listener.

Speaker 14 First time, first time. It's a first-time week.
I think we've got all first times coming up the rest of this week.

Speaker 14 We've got some folks that I really respect, like yourself, who I'm hoping will calm me down and calm the listeners down. We'll see if that actually happens.

Speaker 14 I want to start with last night on the positive side. I want to talk a little bit about what you thought Walls did well.
What was the objective?

Speaker 14 And what, you know, if the campaign, if you were back in your campaign manager chair, what are you guys pushing today?

Speaker 17 Well, look, what I'd be pushing today is the last five five minutes of that debate where he refused to acknowledge that Trump had lost the election. He went right back to the election denier thing.

Speaker 17 And I think there's already an ad from Team Harris out there on this, and it's exactly right.

Speaker 17 Like over and over and over in 2022, and Tim, you've been a hero on this, pushing back on these people who are election deniers, and they all lost in the 2022 elections because the country wants to move on.

Speaker 17 And the only person who didn't seem to

Speaker 17 understand that on that debate stage last night was J.D. Vance.
Now, look, you know, I think J.D. Vance did himself some good last night.
Clearly helped the reputation of the Yale debate program.

Speaker 17 And if I'm working for the J.D. Vance for president campaign in 2028, I'm feeling better about things.
But I don't think he did his boss any favors because the story is back to January 6th.

Speaker 17 And that's just a place where the Trump campaign cannot have it. And you saw that, Tim, from the snap polls with independent voters.
Waltz won 58-42.

Speaker 17 And when you asked them why, they said abortion in January 6th. And so that's kind of exactly what David Pluff wanted out of last night.

Speaker 14 Let's actually listen to the ad that you just referenced, that the campaign put out this morning.

Speaker 15 It's really rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power. He is still saying he didn't lose the election.

Speaker 15 I would just ask that. Did he lose the 2020 election?

Speaker 15 Tim, I'm focused on the future. That is a damning non-answer.

Speaker 15 America, I think you've got a really clear choice of who's going to honor that democracy and who's going to honor Donald Trump.

Speaker 14 Okay, that's good. The ad part of this is good.
Messina, your old buddy David Pluff, got what he wanted. It was also 96 minutes into the debate.
All right.

Speaker 14 So like for the walls, actual performance, you know, for people that, you know, maybe tuned in for a little little while, then flipped over to WNBA or baseball playoffs.

Speaker 14 What was your broader thoughts about how Tim Walls did last time?

Speaker 17 I think that

Speaker 17 he did fine. He kind of grew into it.
His best answers,

Speaker 17 and you could tell where he was most comfortable, were on abortion,

Speaker 17 kind of pushing back on offensively.

Speaker 17 Yeah, healthcare did a great job. Kind of his record did a fine job.
He had totally understood the goal, and the goal was to tie everything to Donald Trump. And so I think that's exactly what he did.

Speaker 17 And I think that's good. You know, J.D.
Vance is a better debater. Let's just be honest about it.
I mean, he went to the fucking Yale debate school. Like, you know.

Speaker 17 And the other thing is, like, I think Waltz was really disadvantaged by the rules. No fact-checking made it really, really hard.

Speaker 17 And I think, you know, if you could have gone back and waved your magic wand, you would have had CBS do anything to be helpful there.

Speaker 14 I want to talk about my major complaint with Tim Walz last night with you.

Speaker 14 And I want to play a little clip from the Daily Show post-debate that I think does a good job of summarizing the thing that frustrated me.

Speaker 15 You're going to hear a lot from Tim Waltz this evening, and you just heard it in the answer.

Speaker 15 A lot of what Kamala Harris proposes to do, and some of it, I'll be honest with you, it even sounds pretty good. So the rhetoric is good.

Speaker 15 Much of what the senator said right there, I'm in agreement with him on this. Governor Waltz and I actually probably agree that we need to do better on this.

Speaker 15 I believe Senator Vance wants to solve this.

Speaker 14 I agree with you. I think you want to solve this problem.

Speaker 15 I agree with a lot of what Senator Vance said. I actually agree with Tim Waltz.

Speaker 14 I don't agree that J.D. Vance wants to solve anything.
No. I don't think that J.D.
Vance's intentions are good.

Speaker 14 And I don't understand how you can run a campaign where you're saying that the other side is going to be... a dictator on day one and where J.D.

Speaker 14 Vance is his henchman that is going to institute all these horrific Project 2025 plans and also be the sitcom dad. That was tough for me.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I get it. And, you know, I think in the end, they decided that he's not the attack dog, that he's not the, he is Midwestern nice, and they wanted him to connect.

Speaker 17 And the numbers show that the independent voters liked it. You and I are used to a different deal.

Speaker 17 When I ran President Obama's campaign and we lost the first debate worse than anyone had ever lost a debate, I literally said to Joe Biden, I need you to go fucking kill Paul Ryan.

Speaker 17 And that's exactly what he did. And so that's what you and I were, you know, were kind of expecting.
I think they had a different theory of the case last night.

Speaker 14 The theory of the case, and so I guess this is really what I want to spend the most time with you on, since you've been in these rooms and you know, you know, kind of how you're strategizing, you know, looking at the maps, looking at the data.

Speaker 14 I'm a little worried their theory of the case last night was based on a race that they think is moving their direction and is close but favorable for Harris Walls.

Speaker 14 And I think in that context, it's like, okay, maybe last night's strategy makes sense. But to me, like this is a margin of error race.
It's a coin toss.

Speaker 14 And I think that my frustration stems like a little bit from the fact that Tim Walls' sort of brand of politics is just not

Speaker 14 what you and me and Messina would maybe hope for

Speaker 16 as far as the crush, crush, crush.

Speaker 14 I also worry that it is a sign of like a little bit of complacency. And I wonder what you think about how your old friend David and the rest of them think about the the state of the race right now.

Speaker 17 Oh, I don't think David Pluth thinks anything other than this is a coin flip race, right? I mean, every night my company, Tim, does 66,000 simulations of the election.

Speaker 17 We have last night Harris winning 51.7, Trump winning 48.3 or whatever the other number is. And so this thing, to Tim's point, is a coin flip election.

Speaker 17 And I think that's exactly the race they think they are in. Their view of this is a little different than yours.
Their view is these women voters don't want to be bludgeoned.

Speaker 17 They want to be talked to. They want to be explained.
And this is about abortion. And their view was, let's go make it about abortion.

Speaker 17 And, you know, his highlight moment, and you saw this because Pluff tweeted out, the highlight moment of the debate on the dial test was abortion. That's their theory of the case.

Speaker 17 And they don't think the Miller-Messina bludgeoning is how you talk to these swing voters. And they're probably right, too.

Speaker 14 All right. I'm hearing that.
I just want to just assess myself. If you want to say that it's possible that I am blinded by my just rage and hatred of J.D.
Vance, I am guilty.

Speaker 14 You know, I mean, like, J.D. Vance is literally me.
He was a never-Trump blogger who sucked up to the worst person in the world, and his payoff was the vice presidential ticket.

Speaker 14 And he like reminds me of Lyle Menendez. And I, like, I just, I want, like, I would like to have seen him knock down a peg.
So it's possible that this is more about me than the strategy.

Speaker 14 On the other hand, like, there are also some other gettable voters out there.

Speaker 14 There are center-right Nikki Haley voters. There are younger men who aren't paying attention that closely.
And I just do wonder if part of the objective is to make these guys seem really extreme.

Speaker 14 Like if you look back at 2022, what worked against Gary Lake? Like it was one part abortion, one part. This is an extreme crazy person that you don't want in charge.

Speaker 14 And I feel like the abortion part, they're doing well.

Speaker 14 That other element, isn't that other element needed to talk to that other group of people who aren't quite as engaged as like Bulwark podcast listeners?

Speaker 17 Wait, everyone does listen to Bulwark? Come on, people. Let's.

Speaker 14 No, we were doing pretty well. Our numbers are up, but I do think that like most, I think that 99.9% of listeners are decided.

Speaker 14 I don't think you're speaking to swing voters this morning.

Speaker 17 No, that's right. And like, I think a little bit, there's two campaigns going on here.
There's one campaign about, you know, being nice and being Midwestern nice.

Speaker 17 And there's one campaign about what they're doing in the battleground states where they're ripping Donald Trump's fucking head off on TV every night and digital and and I think that's a big piece of this so like first of all let's step back the majority of swing voters who are undecided we're down to four percent of voters who are undecided aren't watching this debate right

Speaker 17 and they're gonna get the coverage on tech talk and youtube yep exactly right and the coverage this morning is about abortion at january 6th and if that was the goal then governor Waltz gets an A.

Speaker 17 If the goal was what you and I expected the goal to be, which is to rip his fucking head off, then,

Speaker 17 you know, someone forgot to tell the candidate.

Speaker 14 The grades are a little different.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I guess there's a middle ground, though, right? I guess is my point, right? Like, I do think that there is a middle ground between, you know, just total evisceration of J.D.

Speaker 14 Vance that would have been emotionally satisfying and kind of allowing him. And again, this is part of the moderators.
It's part of everybody.

Speaker 14 Everyone is playing a role here. It's part of Wallace, it's part of the prep, like allowing him to kind of position himself as sort of a softer, compassionate MAGA.

Speaker 14 That's the part that worries me a little bit. Since J.D.

Speaker 14 Mance has been picked, I actually think he's done real damage to Trump in the way that it has helped solidify the idea that Trump is an extremist, right?

Speaker 14 Like Trump is not the New York Playboy guy that you think.

Speaker 14 He has these guys around him that are extreme. And I think that JD, if I was going to give him one piece of credit, succeeded a little bit in like kind of sanding down those edges last night.

Speaker 14 Even if I think you're probably right that the big clip today is the January 6th one.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I think a couple of things. One, I totally agree with you.
I think they told him this race is not about J.D. Vance, it's about Donald Trump.
And let J.D.

Speaker 17 Vance say whatever he wants, and you just stick to Donald Trump. And I think that was the strategy, and that's what they did.

Speaker 17 I do wonder a little bit, and I just came up with this, Tim, but let's talk about it for a second, whether Democrats are a little bit sort of have a little PTSD from 2016 and Tim Kaine's performance, where

Speaker 17 the view was Tim Kaine, they tried to turn Tim Kaine into a frothing attack dog, and it didn't work, and it wasn't who he was,

Speaker 17 and he did a really poor job. And so last night they said to Waltz, be who you are, and just say the word Donald Trump as many times.

Speaker 17 And Tim and Messina will have a drinking game later about how many times he said the words Donald Trump.

Speaker 14 Going back to kind of the strategy from here on out, are they in a persuasion game the last month of this thing? Or is this just trying to maximize the vote share among the anti-Trump coalition?

Speaker 14 And like, that's like the phase of the race that we're in.

Speaker 17 No, no, no, no. We are in a persuasion game.
And the reason I can tell you in a persuasion game is who's still left out there. Right.
Like, I build what Tim and I call message grids and/or

Speaker 17 what each side's saying to their base, what each side's saying to the swing voters, and who the other side is trying to peel from each other's base.

Speaker 17 Clearly, Trump believes that there is African-American and Latino voters out there who should vote for the Democrats who are for him.

Speaker 17 Tim and I believe there are some Nikki Haley conservatives out there that she can talk to.

Speaker 17 But who really is in the middle in the big number of votes here are older white seniors who supported Joe Biden and a bunch of kind of lower educated white voters.

Speaker 17 And those are all persuasion targets.

Speaker 17 And I think the one thing that Kamala Harris has done right in this campaign so far, that Joe Biden didn't, because the Biden campaign seemed to believe there weren't any swing voters and they were just going to go turn out their base.

Speaker 17 And I think the Harris campaign understands very clearly there are these voters. And you see them in the morning polls.
You see she's not getting the senior numbers she's got to get in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 17 And those are all persuasion targets. And they've got to run a persuasion thing.
That said, they got to do turnout too. They can do both.
We're Democrats. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Speaker 14 Yeah. So let's talk about then the persuasion groups.
Is it your sense at this point that they still need to get there and Kamala Harris?

Speaker 14 And that the persuasion is kind of about just still, I mean, just because of the weird nature of this race, like almost still introducing her, giving new information to them about her, making sure they're comfortable with her?

Speaker 14 Or is the persuasion like reminding them what they hate the most about Donald Trump?

Speaker 14 I mean, it's probably both, but like, like, like, what is your sense looking at the data from like what is the big task for the campaign in the last five weeks?

Speaker 17 It's both.

Speaker 17 They don't like Donald Trump. They don't want to vote for Donald Trump, but they don't know enough about her.
30% of these undecided voters say they don't have an opinion of Kamala Harris.

Speaker 17 So you got to continue to do that. And you know, the

Speaker 17 Harris campaign believes it because that's why you sent her to the southern border on Friday, right? That's exactly why you do that. Because you need to tell them that it's okay.
She gets it.

Speaker 17 She knows you're scared on immigration. It's okay.
And then you rip Donald Trump's head off and remind them why they can't vote for him and why they all walked away from his party.

Speaker 17 So it really is both. And in 30, you know, four days, Tim, that's hard.
Usually by now, you're not there. But this is what happens when your candidate gets in the race in August.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 14 On the immigration point, I shouldn't just go to the border, but there's a new ad the campaign has has out today featuring my friend, Olivia Troy, who's a star of Republican Voters Against Trump in 2020, former Trump administration official.

Speaker 14 Let's just listen to the ad really quick.

Speaker 18 I served in Donald Trump's administration, but I know Kamala Harris is the leader we need to keep our country safe and strong.

Speaker 18 Throughout her career, she's gotten drug traffickers off the streets and protected vulnerable people from fraud. And as a homeland security expert, I trust her to protect the border.

Speaker 18 Kamala Harris's plan will strengthen our border security and crack down on drug smuggling and human trafficking.

Speaker 18 We need a president who's tough, who cares about the American people, and who puts the country first. That's Kamala Harris.

Speaker 19 I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message.

Speaker 14 It tells me everything you need to know about where they think they need to gain, right?

Speaker 14 It's like we have a Trump administration official, Olivia Troy, who's a woman, like delivering a message about her strength. Like, I mean, doesn't that check all the boxes you're talking about?

Speaker 17 Oh my God, I want to hug that ad. I love that ad so much.
And

Speaker 17 it's exactly

Speaker 17 the right thing. You know, Tim, I'm doing all these international elections all over the world.

Speaker 17 And after one of them, I flew last summer to the Biden White House and said, look, immigration is killing incumbents all over the world.

Speaker 17 And if you guys don't start dealing with this, you're toast next year. And they patted me on the head and said, every day we're talking about immigration, we're losing.

Speaker 17 We're not going to talk about it. And I think the Harris campaign knows that was exactly wrong.

Speaker 17 And they've got to persuade these voters she gets it on immigration so they can go back to doing what they really want to do, which is vote against Donald Trump.

Speaker 14 All right. My final nitpick of the campaign that you get to give me the spin on is or the positive view of is I just I could use a little more of the VP

Speaker 14 places and I'm wondering what you think about that. I mean, I guess there's always this balance, right?

Speaker 14 That if you have her out there doing a bunch of stuff, there could be a gaffe, there could be a negative piece of feedback.

Speaker 14 But I mean, her favorability has just improved so much that I think they've done an amazing job since she took over. Like, this is like, I'm grading you as an A-,

Speaker 14 but like, my thing that's leaving me a little wanting is

Speaker 14 just a little bit of caution on kind of her public engagement. I'm just wondering what you think about that.

Speaker 17 My own sense is that's all going to stop on Sunday. I mean, she's due in 60 minutes.
She's announced a big swing afterwards. You know, we're now under five weeks.
We're a month out here.

Speaker 17 It's time to kill the candidate. I remember Obama calling me at one point and saying, are you trying to kill me out there? Like, how many events a day do you have me doing?

Speaker 17 And I literally said to him, My health is not my goal. Like, my goal is 270 electoral votes.
And so, I think you're going to see both.

Speaker 17 And I think it's going to kick off with 60 Minutes thing this weekend.

Speaker 14 If you don't pass out from exhaustion on the Wednesday after the election, then Jim Messina, Jen O'Malley Dillon, and David Bluff didn't do their jobs.

Speaker 17 Exactly.

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Speaker 10 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 11 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 2 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 8 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 3 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried.

Speaker 11 So keep your enemies close.

Speaker 6 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 14 All right, let's do the states really quick. How do you kind of judge everything? I mean, obviously, the upper Midwest states are the places where she's doing the best.

Speaker 14 If one of them falls off, how do you kind of assess the Sun Belt states where the most value is and the state of play?

Speaker 17 Yeah, in our simulations of the election time,

Speaker 17 Pennsylvania is a tipping point state in 70% of the simulations.

Speaker 17 It is the closest of the Midwestern states. I feel great about Michigan.
Wisconsin drives me crazy and used to be the tipping point state, and I think still will be a battle the whole way.

Speaker 17 And you know that's true because the Senate race is tightened up too. So both those states make me nervous, but I'd rather be Cambla in all three of those states.

Speaker 17 You pair that with the Nebraska II seat, and

Speaker 17 she's over, and she wins the election. If she were to lose Pennsylvania, she's got to replace it.
And the place they think you replace it with is Georgia combined with Nevada.

Speaker 17 Georgia, you know, is a state that Barack Obama didn't play in either time and has come on to the thing.

Speaker 17 I think Georgia is the hardest of the seven swing states, but lines up the best in some way for her with 30% of African-American votes. And you know they think that's it.

Speaker 17 North Carolina is interesting. It was the only 2012 state Barack Obama didn't win, Tim, so I'm still bitchy about it and I'm still angry.

Speaker 14 What happened? How did you fail him on that?

Speaker 17 Yeah, I sucked. It was really cute.

Speaker 14 Did you just not do the right

Speaker 14 number of ads, right? Percentage in a couple of markets. Was it the Wilmington market? You know, you should have spent a little more.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I think it was just campaign manager incompetence, really, probably.

Speaker 17 But, you know, then you have the storm in all of this and what that does. And can people actually vote? And obviously, the president's going there.

Speaker 17 It sounds like the vice president may be going there. So those are big.
You know, you could replace Pennsylvania with either Georgia or North Carolina if you add Nevada to that.

Speaker 17 Nevada is the weirdest state of all of them. It looked over for Joe Biden, and it looked like the Republicans were going to win the Senate seat.
Then Kambla gets in the race.

Speaker 17 Jackie Rosen's pulled away. And now there's thinking the Democrats can win in Nevada.
So that's kind of how I view the map sitting here 30-some days out.

Speaker 14 All right. The pact that you're working on, Democracy Defenders,

Speaker 14 let's talk about that.

Speaker 14 Obviously, that's going to be related related to the Republican efforts to create problems with the counting of the vote, to challenge the vote, to do voter suppression in various places.

Speaker 14 So, talk about what the group is doing, and then I also want to talk about kind of the counting of the vote and the timing around all that.

Speaker 17 Yep. So, it turns out, weirdly, because you and I grew up in a democracy, that we thought the election was on the first Tuesday in November.
Turns out we may have been incorrect.

Speaker 17 And you know, we may have been incorrect because Donald Donald Trump's campaign manager said two or three weeks ago, you know, this really is not over on Election Day.

Speaker 17 We're going to fight every single ballot all the way until January 3rd. And that's certainly what they did last time.

Speaker 17 And I think it's clear Donald Trump's going to go to jail if he loses this election for one of his many, many court cases. And so they will do whatever it takes.

Speaker 17 They have filed, as of this morning, 100 lawsuits in the battleground states contesting everything from whether RFK should be on the ballot in some of these places to early voting to whether or not they can kick voters off who didn't vote in midterm elections, which is, you know, I think the political science term is fucking insane, to early vote stations, to all this stuff.

Speaker 17 You know, there's a huge need out there. So we formed this PAC about a month ago and are kind of trying to rein money upon lawyers, which is one of my least favorite things to do.

Speaker 17 But it's just incredibly important

Speaker 17 to do it because we're going to be, you know, between now and Election Day, fighting every single day to make sure everyone has the right to vote.

Speaker 17 And then post-election day, I think there's going to be, you know, huge problems on election night because the Trump campaign has already announced they're going to try to stop some of the counting.

Speaker 17 They're going to do this election monitoring thing where they give shit to all the poor volunteers who are trying to count the ballots.

Speaker 17 And they already have Republican election officials, county election officials in Michigan and Nevada saying they won't certify their county elections if Donald Trump doesn't win.

Speaker 17 And the question there is you might have to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get the state to certify because the state could say, look, we don't have all the counties. How can we certify?

Speaker 17 And so all of these things.

Speaker 14 Thank God we beat Kerry Lake and

Speaker 14 Josh Shapiro one. And I mean, the fact that there's only Republican governors and Brian Kemp's quote-unquote good one, at least on this issue, have been a lifesaver on this stuff.

Speaker 17 You're exactly right. That's exactly right.
And it's so much easier than it was four years ago. But also, the Trump campaign is so much better than they were four years ago.

Speaker 17 And they understand that, you know, this isn't just about Election Day.

Speaker 17 And so Democracy Defenders is making sure that we are ready and fighting all these things. I was up till 2 o'clock this morning

Speaker 17 working with the lawyers on an emergency filing in Georgia. And so we're literally just going to war every single day to make sure these people can vote.

Speaker 17 And for your listeners, you know, who used to be Republicans or Independents, you know, like, it doesn't matter who you're going to vote for on Election Election Day.

Speaker 17 I think every single person watching this and listening to this knows that like we should have a Democratic election where we let people vote.

Speaker 17 And the fact that we have to now contest this in the courts just drives me fucking insane. God, Tim, I hope I can cuss on your podcast.

Speaker 14 We love cussing here. My father doesn't like it, and my colleague Mona Charon doesn't like it.

Speaker 14 So I've tried to cut it down a little bit, but not certainly not when we're discussing these fucking assholes. We're not going to cut it down.
You told Politico that this is all driving you to drink.

Speaker 14 I'm curious, the number one thing that's driving you to drink in this context, and I'm going to tell you the thing that's driving me to drink is thinking about, I think we're going to have a slow count in North Carolina.

Speaker 14 We're going to have a slow count in Pennsylvania. I don't know so much about the other states, but those are two important ones.
What's your sentence of the counting?

Speaker 14 And like, you know, is this going to, are we going to be waiting until Saturday again this year? Because I just don't know if my heart can take it.

Speaker 17 I think it's a really good question. It really kind of affects, you know, how much booze we get for election night, whether we start what time we started drinking.

Speaker 17 Like, these are important Miller-Messina concerns.

Speaker 17 And the bad news is I think we're going to Saturday again. And to your point, just look at the storm in North Carolina.

Speaker 17 We're not going to know.

Speaker 17 One of the things that makes me drink is now the election boards in Georgia can change the rules all the way up to election day. Like we're just...

Speaker 17 These guys are just screwing with the election in ways we haven't seen before. So I think it's very unlikely we're going to know who won.
So it means pacing, Tim.

Speaker 17 It means maybe starting with white wine and not going straight into the brown stuff.

Speaker 14 Maybe nothing.

Speaker 14 I told you my favorite tweet from the 2016 campaign, or like this was the beginning of the end for me, but it just resonated with me the most, was a fellow Never Trumper tweeted out after Florida was called for Trump, things have gotten so serious that I stopped drinking.

Speaker 14 And like, that's kind of how I feel just thinking ahead to election night this year. Things might be too serious to drink, actually.
I have one flashback. I want to do one memory lane for you.

Speaker 14 Before we do it, just bottom line, where you think things stand right now?

Speaker 14 How much you'd rather be Kamala, but how much more would you rather be Kamala?

Speaker 17 I think Kamala Harris is going to win the election,

Speaker 17 but I think it's close. I think it's 52, 48.

Speaker 17 I think it's hers to win mostly because the Midwestern states are easier for her.

Speaker 14 Are you worried about hurting at all?

Speaker 14 I'm starting to get worried about hurting in the Pennsylvania polling. I guess you're seeing private data, so there shouldn't be any hurting in private data.

Speaker 14 Do you have anything that would assuage my concerns on that?

Speaker 14 Because when 10 straight public polls show the state between two points, that makes me think that some of these pollsters are cooking the books because they don't want to have an outlier.

Speaker 14 So I'm just wondering if you, if that's what you're saying privately.

Speaker 17 Oh, thousand percent. Thousand percent.
That's what's happening. Like, you know, I have my own personal jihad for your listeners against Nate Silver because he's usually wrong in all these elections.

Speaker 17 And it's because he puts all these shitty polls that we all know are bullshit. And I think there's absolutely hurting going on.
Yeah,

Speaker 17 it's why I've threatened to fire my staff when we look at the daily polls because it does make them want to drink. And at 9 a.m., if my team's drinking, Tim, we got problems.

Speaker 14 Lastly, I just want to go back to 2012 for fun because this is actually, I think, the beginning moment of our alignment. You and me being on the same side, it was coming.

Speaker 14 The beginning moment was when Carl Rove went on TV to start talking about how Mitt Romney was really winning that election in 2012 and that they shouldn't be calling it for Barack Obama.

Speaker 14 I was a young comms person for the Republican National Committee at the time, and I was like, Carl is being insane. I had started drinking.
I was like, I've seen the numbers. This race is over.

Speaker 14 And I was like, I'm not going to go on local TV or whatever fucking thing they wanted me to do and tell them that I think that we should keep counting.

Speaker 14 I was like, I refuse to do that because this race is over and I have like a little bit of dignity. And I think that was like a kernel towards the future.

Speaker 14 But like throughout those final months, I just didn't see it. Like I didn't see the unskewing of the polls.
Like I felt like you guys were going to win the whole time.

Speaker 14 What was that experience like for you inside? Were you confident? Were you more confident than you are this year? Like what was it like watching all the crazy Republicans do skew unpolling?

Speaker 14 What did Obama think about it? Just like paint me a flashback picture for kicks.

Speaker 17 Definitely the worst month of my life.

Speaker 17 And not kidding, it sucked. I had PTSD for October of 2012 for a very long time because Barack Obama lost the first debate so badly and we just gave back our lead.

Speaker 17 But then, you know, I remember the morning after the debate, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid calling me and saying, get your ass on a plane and come calm the caucuses down because they're losing their minds.

Speaker 17 And then Joe Biden thrashed Paul Ryan in the debate, and you could see the numbers getting better. And I remember the weekend before the election, by 10 days out, I was convinced.

Speaker 17 The data was clear we were going to win. But it wasn't like a breakaway.

Speaker 17 And I remember the weekend before the election, Barack Obama called me and said, Hey, Hey, I want you to fly to Milwaukee tomorrow. I want to have a private conversation with you.

Speaker 17 And part of what was freaking everyone out is the Gallup poll was really wrong the whole way. And the Gallup poll had Romney up the final weekend.

Speaker 17 And so Katy Perry was introducing and playing for Barack Obama in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And I'm trying to watch Katy Perry, and Obama comes and says, Come here, I want to talk to you.

Speaker 17 And we go back, and he's like literally recited me the polls and said, Gallup Gallup has me down. AP has me up one.
New York Times has me up one. What's your model say?

Speaker 17 And I said, look, I send you the model every night. You know what I think.
The election's been over. Early votes.

Speaker 17 We have the votes locked up. This thing's over.
I slept eight hours last night. You should too.
And I remember him saying to me, Tim, look.

Speaker 17 If we lose on Tuesday, the world's going to blame two people, Messina, you and me. And he's like, I'll be fine.
I can write books. I'll be fine.
You, my young friend, will never work again.

Speaker 17 And he's like, see, you better be right. And I looked at him and said, I'll see you on Tuesday night.
And I was that convinced we were going to be okay.

Speaker 14 It's good. We were equally aligned.
I was kicked out of the early vote meeting. There was like the RNC and the, you have a comms meeting to talk about the early vote numbers every day.

Speaker 14 You could come in and how you're going to talk about them. And I was like, I was looking at your buddy Jeremy Bird and Mitch Stewart's memos.
And I was taking them into the meeting.

Speaker 14 And I was like, we're losing. I was like, I don't know what you guys are talking about.
This is, we're going to lose.

Speaker 14 And they're all like, no, we're winning. We're winning.
Our models are existing. And I was like, that's crazy.
And finally, they kicked me out of the meetings.

Speaker 14 We don't need somebody being an app. We don't need the fucking deputy comms director salting the vibes.
So you and I were aligned. That is a wonderful story.

Speaker 14 Well, I'm happy that you and you and Barack Obama both turned out okay. Hopefully, the country turns out okay.
Will you check in with me 10 days before this election and let me know what you think?

Speaker 17 I'd love to. It'd be my pleasure.

Speaker 14 I'd appreciate that. Thanks so much to Jim Messina.
Up next, Michael Weiss.

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Speaker 14 All right, we are back with Michael Weiss, editor of The Insider.

Speaker 14 He's also a host of the Foreign Office podcast, former investigative reporter for CNN, as a forthcoming book about the GRU, Russia's Intel Agency. Thanks for coming back, Michael.

Speaker 14 Obviously, I want to talk about the situation with Israel and Iran, but just briefly, I feel obligated to touch on the foreign policy elements of the debate last night with you.

Speaker 14 Ukraine is not mentioned, not asked about, or it's mentioned, I guess, by But Wallace, but it's not asked asked about by the moderators. There's no meaningful exchange on it.

Speaker 14 I don't know how that's possible. And I was just wondering what your kind of observations were

Speaker 14 and also, you know, on J.D. Vance, given his

Speaker 14 isolationism and how he kind of presented that last night.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I think it was a colossally bad move on the part of CBS not to ask about it because, you know, Trump is, I think, a disaster on foreign policy. We've discussed this before.

Speaker 15 I think he has a weird jones for autocrats and strongmen, particularly Vladimir Putin. But weirdly, the Ukrainians seem to think that he's malleable on this issue for whatever reason.

Speaker 15 I happen to disagree with them. I think they're being naive.
I think he's going to sell them down the river.

Speaker 15 There's a kind of congealing wisdom among pro-Ukraine Republicans that, well, you know, what will happen is Trump will try to strike a deal with Putin.

Speaker 15 Putin will rat fuck him and then Trump will be so angry he'll give Ukraine everything except nuclear weapons and maybe even those two. And I just think that's too clever by half.

Speaker 15 I don't see it going that way. Vance, however, is outspokenly anti-Ukraine.

Speaker 15 And what I mean by this is he has trafficked in conspiracy theories and disinformation that are amplified wholeheartedly by the Kremlin and its agents of influence and surrogates in the media, from David Sachs to Elon Musk to, you know, you name it.

Speaker 15 What do I mean by this? Vance has gone around saying that US taxpayer money is going to finance yachts purchased by Zelensky. This is just false.
It's been debunked.

Speaker 15 Also, Vance is sort of posturing as this

Speaker 15 Appalachian good old boy who's done well for himself, but who came from real poverty and he cares about the working class, particularly the white working class in America.

Speaker 15 The Washington Post had a very, very good story the other day on how

Speaker 15 security assistance for Ukraine, all the money we've spent, presidential drawdowns, congressional supplementals, the vast majority of it is being spent in the United States to create jobs at weapons manufacturing plants, including in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which is where Zielinski went rather controversially to some, not to me.

Speaker 14 And Josh Shapiro signed in the missiles. Yeah.
Yeah. That was well received.
That was received at Bullwork HQ. But yeah, I did notice some negative feedback on that on social media.

Speaker 15 Good on him. Nobody complained when Zelensky went to Utah and met with the Republican governor there.
I mean, the idea that this is politicized somehow, I don't get it.

Speaker 15 This should be a bipartisan issue. And in many respects, is a bipartisan issue, but for the MAGA cult, which wants to basically sort of cleave Ukraine away from America's foreign policy interests.

Speaker 15 But look, regardless, the money, U.S.

Speaker 15 taxpayer money is being spent in America to help Ukraine, because what we're doing is we're giving sort of our hand-me-down weapons platforms and ammunition to the Ukrainians, and we're simply investing in building...

Speaker 15 better, newer stuff for our own purposes. And this is something I think the Biden administration has failed in terms of strategic communications to convey to the American electorate.

Speaker 15 They should have been out front from the beginning to say, not only are we doing this because it's morally imperative to help an ally and a friend and the victim of the largest land war in Europe since World War II, but by the way, we're getting a lot out of it too.

Speaker 15 So there's a utilitarian motive. baked into this cake.

Speaker 15 And unfortunately, MAGA, I think, has been successful in convincing, well, certainly its own constituents, but then again, they'll believe anything and everything.

Speaker 15 But it's convinced ordinary people who might be on the fence about Ukraine that actually

Speaker 15 this is sort of the welfare queen of Europe and they're

Speaker 15 draining our coffers. And it's just nonsense.
It doesn't work that way.

Speaker 14 Yeah, that was my main frustration with the debate last night, is that JD is so extreme on this stuff. And he literally said he doesn't care about the Ukrainians.

Speaker 14 As you said, he's advanced all these conspiracy theories. And he's kind of able to present, I think, much more mainstream than he is on a range of issues, but on foreign policy as well.

Speaker 14 That was frustrating. Okay, let's move on to why I asked you to do an emergency bonus substitute here.
We had coordinated attacks in Israel yesterday.

Speaker 14 Obviously, the Iranian missiles targeting Israel, largely unsuccessful. There's also a mass shooting in Tel Aviv.

Speaker 14 Talk about what you see as what happened, and then we'll talk about what's going forward.

Speaker 15 Yeah, so this, I think people are getting it a bit wrong when they say that this is largely a replay of the

Speaker 15 salvo, missile salvo, the Iranians fired at Israel in April. They fired at that point 130 ballistic missiles plus cruise missiles plus drones.

Speaker 15 This time it was 180 ballistic missiles, but of a higher grade of sophistication than the ones that they used in April.

Speaker 15 And I mean, we all saw the footage of the incoming and sometimes it's hard to tell what's a rocket or a missile impacting and what's debris from an interception.

Speaker 15 But suffice it to say, some of these things did get through. And Israel's got the best integrated air defense system.
in the Middle East. They were not using Iron Dome.

Speaker 15 I see a lot of people saying, oh, Iron Dome was working spectacularly. Iron Dome has no capability against ballistic missiles.

Speaker 15 They were using the Arrow system and other platforms to take down these missiles. But look, the targets are interesting.
So Iran clearly targeted Mossad headquarters.

Speaker 15 They targeted Nevatim and Telnof air bases. Nevatim is the home to Israel's S-35 fleet.
So they were looking to degrade Israel's military and intelligence capability.

Speaker 15 And I mean, by all the sort of day-after battle damage assessment that I'm seeing, including from comments that the White House has made, is that they failed. They didn't take out planes.

Speaker 15 They didn't damage or destroy any critical strategic infrastructure. So, in a sense, this is a win for Israel.

Speaker 15 I mean, the only fatality in a sort of grim twist of fate was a Palestinian originally from Gaza who had the rocket booster of one of these things fall on his head in Jenin in the West Bank.

Speaker 15 There's actually footage of this guy getting beamed by a giant piece of a missile falling on him. So, yeah, I mean, Iran is killing Palestinians now when they're aiming at Israel.

Speaker 15 But, you know, the question I have now, and I think it's one that we all have, is what's going to happen? And here's where I think it gets a little bit interesting and provocative.

Speaker 14 So, just really quick before what has happened, I just do like just on what happened. I just have one other element I just want to get from you.

Speaker 14 There's pretty significant U.S., I guess, Navy involvement in helping with this. Jake Sullivan said yesterday, we're proud of the actions we've taken alongside Israel to protect and defend.

Speaker 14 Like, do you have a sense for the extent of U.S. kind of involvement there? And then, just to clarify, like, the mass shooting side of this was coordinated, right?

Speaker 15 I haven't seen the full data on the mass shooting. I mean, this is the real problem, though, that Israel faces and is going to face.

Speaker 15 And by the way, also, we as Americans will face, is asymmetric warfare.

Speaker 15 You know, Iran's proxies, I think they've been badly battered in the region insofar as they are paramilitary or organizations or militias, but as terrorist entities, they're still very capable.

Speaker 15 And so, yeah, I think what you're going to see is these kinds of gun, knife, bomb attacks.

Speaker 15 I mean, the kinds of things that Israel's been putting up with, you know, for decades in terms of intifadas and whatnot.

Speaker 15 But in terms of what the United States and also other countries, I mean, the UK evidently had a role in shooting stuff down.

Speaker 15 The Jordanians either shot stuff down themselves or allowed America to use their airspace to intercept things.

Speaker 15 But we had, you know, carriers and battleships in the eastern Mediterranean that were on alert.

Speaker 15 It didn't seem, though, that this was as kind of coordinated, and there certainly didn't seem to be as much of a preemptive PR campaign waged by the White House to show that this coalition of nations, including pro-American Arab countries, were sort of quick on the trigger to take down drones, cruise missiles, and other things.

Speaker 15 I mean, in this case, the Iranians fired pretty quickly after both the Israeli and American governments said that something is going to happen as soon as this evening.

Speaker 15 It was much more accelerated this time than last.

Speaker 14 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: The other thing Jake said, which takes us back to your moving forward, is he has said, we have made clear that there will be consequences, severe consequences for this attack.

Speaker 14 And we'll work with Israel to make that the case.

Speaker 14 I mean, you know, and I guess just in a vacuum, you could see this as an escalating or de-escalating moment just because of the failure, but clearly it seems like an escalating one.

Speaker 14 I don't know what's your sense.

Speaker 12 Yeah, you know,

Speaker 15 for years I've watched as a consortium of enemies of the United States took us less and less seriously

Speaker 15 in terms of our threats of deterrence, so-called red lines in Syria. These things were violated serially.

Speaker 15 And the consequences were we are gravely concerned, sanctions here, maybe, you know, anti-tank missiles there. But it took a while for America to kind of do something.

Speaker 15 actually substantive, if not kinetic. What I'm noticing now is our allies increasingly are also not taking taking us as seriously, or we don't wield the kind of leverage we would like to think we can.

Speaker 15 We see this in Ukraine. We tell Ukrainians, please don't hit Russian oil infrastructure because we're worried about the price of gas at the pump.

Speaker 15 And the Ukrainians say, thank you very much for your counsel, and they hit them anyway. The Ukrainians are now saying they want to do deep strikes.

Speaker 15 They're already doing deep strikes into Russia with their own homemade missile and drone systems. They want to fire attackums and storm shadows.
We continue to say no.

Speaker 15 The Israelis, look, we told them, don't go into Rafa. And they said, where we're going.
They said, well, you can only send a division in. And they said, oh, okay, great.

Speaker 15 So they sent a division and they kept stacking it with additional brigades such that it became the size of two divisions. We told Netanyahu don't assassinate Nasrallah, which evidently was...

Speaker 15 in the planning stages, if not in the offing, right not long after October 7th. Remember, Hezbollah started firing rockets into northern Israel on October 8th, before Israel invaded Gaza.

Speaker 15 So they made Lebanon and certainly themselves party to this war. And obviously now Netanyahu has killed Nasrallah, not just killed him.

Speaker 15 Frikazid, the genitals of middle-ranking Hezbollah operatives using a rather spectacular infiltration of a supply chain of pagers, walkie-talkies. They have decimated Hezbollah's upper echelon.

Speaker 15 I mean, the entire command structure has taken out in the space of nine or ten days. I was making this point earlier.

Speaker 15 I mean, Hezbollah as a military force on the ground has never been weaker, or certainly hasn't been this weak in a very, very long time.

Speaker 15 The other sort of dog that hasn't barked yet is for years, for almost 20 years since the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, Hezbollah has been rearming to such a degree that they had over 100,000 missiles that they were going to fire at Israel.

Speaker 15 They haven't fired them. Is that because they're keeping their powder dry for later, or is it because Israel's done a pretty good job of taking out this arsenal?

Speaker 15 The IDF released footage of cross-border raids that they had conducted already prior to the ground invasion earlier this week into southern Lebanon, where they've been uncovering vast tunnel networks, stockpiles of ammunition, weapons, command and control centers, etc., all in violation of the UN resolution that followed the 2006 war.

Speaker 15 So it looks like strategically, Hezbollah is

Speaker 15 on the back foot, is probably never going to be the same organization again. And I think what's happening, interestingly, is the United States's instinct for de-escalation is now

Speaker 15 people are getting interested and intrigued by what has happened, largely as a result of Israel defying all of our.

Speaker 14 Winning begets desire for more winning.

Speaker 15 Yes, nothing succeeds like success, right? And we want to always take credit for things that we not only have no business taking credit for, but said, don't do it, you mustn't do it.

Speaker 15 And by the way, you won't be able to do it. And it was all done anyway.

Speaker 15 So Brett McGurk, the Middle East coordinator, I think Jake Sullivan, Hochstein, all of these guys seem to now suddenly see a changing dynamic in the region.

Speaker 15 And I think, you know, not to be, well, you know, I am going to be very cynical.

Speaker 15 For them, it's sort of win-win in the sense that if Israel does manage to neuter or badly weaken Iranian hegemony in this neck of the woods without a direct American intervention, well, that's just good for America's interests, right?

Speaker 15 And so the question I have is, Israel has yet to retaliate for this fuselade of missiles that happened yesterday. That means they're coordinating the response with the Americans.

Speaker 15 Well, what are they going to do?

Speaker 15 Well, they relate, evidently, and I've seen the reporting on this, to the Iranians by intermediaries, that no matter what the Iranians do, no matter how many things they fire at us and no matter how many casualties we sustain, the response is going to be targeting Iran's oil infrastructure and or its nuclear weapons program.

Speaker 15 Now, I have a hard time seeing how the Americans get behind either of those things. The nuke program, clearly, it's always been a diplomatic solution for Barack Obama.

Speaker 15 This was Obamacare for the second term, according to his strategic communications advisor, Ben Rhodes, at the time. Biden wants to resolve this thing diplomatically.

Speaker 15 Oil, I mean, global oil prices continue to be a major concern for the United States.

Speaker 15 I mean, see under what I was describing earlier about Ukraine's deep strike capability and the reason, the logic behind why the United States is against hitting Russia's energy infrastructure.

Speaker 15 But there is going to be a military response. And what would I envisage seeing go up in flames or get targeted anyway? IRGCHQ, Iranian military sites.

Speaker 15 There was a good piece in the Atlantic today where the correspondents querying his Iranian sources said, you know, we don't have an air force. I think they've got like, you know, seven Nacred MiGs.

Speaker 15 Israelis could probably take those out as a show of force.

Speaker 15 I mean, the idea is to hammer home that Iran does not have a conventional capability that can match Israel alone, much less can it risk all-out war, which would pull in the United States and which would probably be the end of its regime.

Speaker 15 And, you know, the Ayatollah Khamenei is 85 years old, so he's older than Biden. A war could probably likely kill him.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 And also, does he want his legacy to be the end of Khomeiniism and the end of the Islamic Republic? I don't see it. He seems to be risk-averse in that sense.

Speaker 14 There's a good side of success begets success as far as taking out some people like Nasrallah. So he's horrible

Speaker 14 terrorists who have committed these atrocities and sort of positive momentum in the region. The other side of those success begot success for Bibi also, who's pretty awful.

Speaker 14 And it seems to me that he's in as strong a position as he's ever been. I mean, it seemed like Bibi was politically dead in the months after October 7th, and that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

Speaker 14 I don't know if you have a sense for that.

Speaker 15 His polling is up. I mean, keep in mind, his political fortune is also inextricably linked to his personal freedom.

Speaker 15 I mean, mean, this is somebody who could very easily wind up in jail for corruption and criminality. So he has to stay in power.
But don't discount the Israeli electorate and what they think.

Speaker 15 In the West, we love to do this. We love to say, oh, you know, you just replace Netanyahu and

Speaker 15 they'll do America's bidding.

Speaker 15 No, I mean, since October 7, the vast majority of Israelis, left, right, center, have basically rallied around the country and been largely in favor of going after Hamas and Gaza.

Speaker 15 Nobody is shedding tears to see Hezbollah defanged and to see Hassan Nasrallah having a bunker collapse on his head. And yeah, I mean, Netanyahu's polling is up.
So he's in a pretty strong position.

Speaker 15 Also, there was a good piece by David Sanger in The Times today that said,

Speaker 15 look, from his perspective, you've got a lame duck democratic administration, with which he's been at daggers drawn since a year ago.

Speaker 15 Knowing, though, that he has serially defied American diktats and got away with it and now is seeming to be strategically successful in Lebanon.

Speaker 15 Keep in mind, you know, one of the reasons that Israel was caught completely off guard by Hamas is they'd spent the better part of two decades with an overwhelming intelligence interest in Hezbollah, which was their most formidable threat in the neighborhood.

Speaker 15 They saw Hamas as something that could be managed and that was not going to pose any kind of military or terroristic threat to them. So with Hezbollah, They have incredible insight.

Speaker 15 Clearly, they have infiltrated the organization, which is how they did Beepergate. And now they seem to be winning that campaign.

Speaker 15 So he also looks and says, meaning Netanyahu, if Donald Trump wins, well, great, because they have a sort of bestie relationship and they see eye to eye on a lot of things.

Speaker 15 I think they share a lot of personal characteristics, to be honest. And Trump is not going to object in any way.
In fact, he'll be cheerleading to see Israel strike at Iran and would probably...

Speaker 15 be all too willing to to get the United States.

Speaker 14 I'm told on the left that Donald Trump is the peace candidate.

Speaker 12 Is that correct?

Speaker 15 That's right. Yeah.
I mean, he's the guy who's going to be more pro-Palestinian than Joe Biden. I've heard this line, too.

Speaker 15 The guy who dropped the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan, whose son, I think, posted on Twitter not long after October 7th, a cartoon. And the caption that Donald Trump Jr.

Speaker 15 said is, This is how you solve the Middle East. And it was a very stereotypical Arab caricature with a nuclear bomb shoved up the anus of a goat.

Speaker 15 So the idea, I'll leave it to your readers to divine how that conflict will get sorted. So this is the

Speaker 15 peace candidate, right, Donald Trump.

Speaker 15 He doesn't care about Ukraine, but he does care about Israel or pretends to care about Israel and says he does. And I think would line up behind whatever Netanyahu wants to do.

Speaker 14 So then the last thing, if the momentum is positive for Israel on

Speaker 14 the military side of things, which it clearly is, how does that interplay with the remaining hostages, the humanitarian side of this? I mean, like,

Speaker 14 you know, does that

Speaker 14 do you have any open thoughts on that?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I mean, the biggest domestic pushback Netanyahu has faced is his failure to bring the hostages home.

Speaker 15 And whether or not that would be predicated on a ceasefire with Hamas or some kind of resolution to the war in Gaza, or simply, you know, why haven't we done more special forces raids and rescued them like we've done with the handful?

Speaker 15 I think, though, and, you know, I don't want to sound heartless and cruel here, I think that the Israeli security establishment is of the opinion that it's going to be very, very difficult to get these people back, at least most of them.

Speaker 15 And many may well already be dead. So I think, in a sense, their portfolio has moved on.
Not that they don't want to have their people back.

Speaker 15 We've seen the lengths to which the Israelis go to, I mean, they traded hundreds of terrorists to get one IDF soldier who was kidnapped back.

Speaker 15 However, again, they're now, you know, they find themselves fighting in two different fronts and now opening a third campaign directly against Iran. So, you know, this has expanded.

Speaker 15 We're not quite at the region-wide war that has been ominously foretold. It's not all-out war yet, but we are creeping ever closer to that point.

Speaker 14 Yet, I mean, what is your sense?

Speaker 14 I guess on the one hand, like when the news broke yesterday that the Iranian missiles were coming, like the initial instinct or wisdom of people was, man, we're really headed towards regional war here.

Speaker 14 After the failure of it,

Speaker 14 maybe, maybe, I don't know. How do you assess it now?

Speaker 15 Yeah, and also the Iranians have telegraphed, you know, I mean, and they're not going to get their wish on this, but they said, for our purposes, this is the end of it. We want no further escalation.

Speaker 15 So they're advertising the fact that they don't want to go to war. What can they withstand in terms of Israel's response? That's another question.

Speaker 15 And as I say, I mean, a lot is going to depend on what targets are selected.

Speaker 15 I mean, I could well see if Israel does decide, let's go for the nuclear program, which they might not be successful in doing because the conventional wisdom is that's going to require a lot of American assistance, including, by the way, assets on the ground.

Speaker 15 If they do that, Iran will probably have to escalate much further. But, you know, a lot also will depend on what Israel chooses to do in Lebanon.

Speaker 15 So, you know, the Latani River is sort of the cutoff point.

Speaker 15 I think what the United States has said was, okay, if you're going to go in, it has to be a limited incursion, but please do not attempt a replay of 2006.

Speaker 15 And I think, to be honest, it would be incredibly strategically stupid for Israel to try to do that now. I mean, their biggest weapon in Lebanon at this moment is psychological.

Speaker 15 They have so demoralized Hezbollah. They have so kind of set the cat amongst the pigeons in Lebanese society, because unlike 2006 and 2024, A lot of Lebanese are not rallying around

Speaker 15 Hezbollah and seeing Hezbollah as the savior and defender of the nation. There's a lot of recrimination and anger.
Why did you bring us into this thing?

Speaker 15 Nobody asked us to go to war with Israel this time around. And also, Hezbollah are moving their constituents and refugees into the houses of ordinary Lebanese.
So there's

Speaker 15 a real authoritarian aspect to what they're doing in terms of domestic calculations as a result of this kind of campaign against Israel that's rubbing a lot of people the wrong way.

Speaker 14 Thank you so much, Michael. And there's much more to do.
So I appreciate you being our emergency global flare-up correspondent

Speaker 14 i should get that printed on a business code unfortunately i think that you'll probably be back soon yeah well you know it's it's it's always a little light reading uh when i come on right it's we should we should do like a comedy hour or something at some point we should do a comedy hour i'm very much open to that tomorrow actually might be a little bit more of a comedy hour because we have a first-time guest coming on who made an appearance-ish on saturday night live recently so i'm looking forward to having her we'll see you all back then thanks to michael weiss thanks to jim messina Messina.

Speaker 14 We'll see you all tomorrow. Peace.

Speaker 12 alright And you showin' up, but it's alright It's a short life, yo

Speaker 12 That's a real one in your reflection Without a follow, without a mention You really piping up on these diggings You gotta be nice for what to these

Speaker 12 I understand you got a hundred bands, you got a baby bands, you got some bad friends High school pics, you was even bad then. You ain't stressing off no lover in the past, kids.
You already had them.

Speaker 12 Work at 8 a.m. Finish round five, host tall down, you don't see them outside.
Yeah, they don't really be the same offline. You know dog games, you know hard times.
Doin' overtime, for the last month.

Speaker 12 Saturday, call the girls, get them gased up. Gotta hit the club, gotta make the ass jump.

Speaker 12 Gotta hit the club like you hit the motherfuckin' angles. With your phone out, snapping like you fable.

Speaker 12 And you're showing off, but it's all right. Think you're showing off, but it's all right.
It's a short life.

Speaker 14 The Bullwork Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 20 Gun violence isn't just a policy issue. It's personal.
Every day in America, 125 people are shot and killed. For too many, it's left a mark.
And for all of us, it's a crisis we can do something about.

Speaker 20 Every Town for Gun Safety Action Fund is the largest gun violence prevention organization in the U.S. We've helped pass life-saving laws and built a nationwide grassroots movement.

Speaker 20 You believe in progress. So do we.
This is your moment to act. Go to everytown.org and donate today.
Together, let's build a future free from gun violence. Everytown.org.

Speaker 16 This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culture Eastas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. Get ready for your next TV obsession.
All's fair.

Speaker 16 Starring Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, Nisi Nash-Betts, Tayana Taylor, with Sarah Poulson, and Glenn Close, a team of fierce female divorce attorneys leave a male-dominated firm to start their own.

Speaker 16 Filled with scandalous secrets and shifting allegiances both in the courtroom and within their own ranks, these ladies know that lawyers are a girl's best friend.

Speaker 16 Don't miss All's Fair, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

Speaker 13 Master distiller Jimmy Russell knew Wild Turkey Bourbon got it right the first time. So for over 70 years, he hasn't changed a damn thing.

Speaker 13 Our pre-prohibition style bourbons are aged longer and never watered down. So you know it's right too.

Speaker 13 For whatever you do with it, Wild Turkey 101 Bourbon makes an old-fashioned bold fashion for bold nights out or at home.

Speaker 13 Wild Turkey bourbon, aged longer, never watered down, to create one bold flavor. Copyright 2025, Coca Harry America, New York, New York, never compromised, drink responsibly.