Mark McKinnon: Taking Back the Freedom Agenda

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

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

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

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

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

Speaker 2 Master distiller Jimmy Russell knew Wild Turkey Bourbon got it right the first time, mellowed an American oak with the darkest char.

Speaker 4 Our pre-prohibition style bourbons are aged longer and never watered down.

Speaker 5 So you know it's right too, for whatever you do with it.

Speaker 6 Wild Turkey 101 Bourbon makes an old fashioned or bold fashion for bold nights out or at home.

Speaker 7 Wild Turkey Bourbon aged longer, never watered down to create one bold flavor.

Speaker 8 Copyright 2025 of Party America, New York, New York, never compromised, tried responsibly.

Speaker 10 Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
I'm pumped to be back with my partner in crime, Mark McKinnon.

Speaker 10 He was a media advisor for both Democratic and Republican campaigns, including W, McCain, and Richards.

Speaker 10 And he's co-creator, executive producer of a little show called The Circus you might have heard of. Hey, MCAT, what's going on, man?

Speaker 11 Hello, Thelma. Louise here.
Good to see you again, my old pal.

Speaker 10 Yeah, long time no-see. The last two months, it's just a crime that we weren't able to be out there.

Speaker 11 Oh, my God.

Speaker 11 I mean, it's just insane.

Speaker 11 It's just ridiculous that we're not on the air right now. I mean, this is more circusy than anything we ever covered and

Speaker 11 would be epic. But we can talk about it.

Speaker 10 Unbelievable. I did my best without the cameras to do circus type behavior in the spin room the other night.

Speaker 11 No, we can always count on you.

Speaker 10 I want to talk about the debate. I buzzed you.
We had the little hurricane in New Orleans. My schedule got

Speaker 10 mixed around, and

Speaker 10 I needed a pinch hitter. So thank you for pinch-hitting.

Speaker 10 But I texted you right after I saw this tweet. Bob Shrum, a former Democratic strategist, had sent this.
He wrote, I coached a lot of presidential and other candidate debates.

Speaker 10 Harris had one of the very best debates ever, JFK 60, Reagan 80 level. You replied, as have I, and worked against Bob, and I 100% agree.
Really? That good? Reagan 80?

Speaker 11 Yeah, really that good. For a bunch of reasons.
First of all, Bob Shrum is one of the best in the business ever, and I watched him and also worked against him.

Speaker 11 He was a big Kennedy guy and prepped for gore. So he's a Hall of Famer and doesn't say that casually.
But you think think about the stakes that were at play here.

Speaker 11 And what's important to remember here is that people are not just, I mean, people are natural born communicators. People are not natural born presidential debaters.

Speaker 11 It takes a goddamn lot of work and a lot of preparation if you're actually going to excel at this. And, you know, you can try and wing it like Trump did and see what happened.
But also George W.

Speaker 11 Bush winged it and is re-elect. Obama winged it in his re-elect.
They didn't take it seriously. And they got their asses handed to them.
And it's a very particular kind of preparation that it takes.

Speaker 11 I mean, you have to understand what a split screen means, and she did that exceptionally well. I mean, in that debate, she looked like she was, you know, on the beach in the sun.

Speaker 11 Trump looked like he was in a hailstorm, freezing his ass. He looked miserable.
This debate, there was so much at stake, mostly for her.

Speaker 11 You know, Trump was not going to move the dial one way or the other, much. People have fixed opinions, but a lot of people don't know her.

Speaker 11 They were kind of open to whether or not they might consider her. Listen, I mean, there's sort of just the sound test.
Turn the sound off. What did it look like?

Speaker 11 She looked relaxed, in control, calm, presidential. You know, for people who just tuned in, they say, Yeah, yeah, I could see her in the oval.
She checked off the things she needed to do.

Speaker 11 She introduced herself, told her backstory, did a bunch of policy stuff, checked those boxes.

Speaker 11 But the thing that was incredible and puts her in the Hall of Fame category with 80 and 60 is that she trolled him like I've never seen before, like nobody's ever done.

Speaker 11 And not only trolled him, but here's an interesting aspect of the trolling. She not only trolled him and just went right to his deepest psyche, which is so smart.

Speaker 11 You think about the debate prep and they go, what's the thing he's most proud of?

Speaker 11 Like, you know, Wharton School, crowd size, and just go right at what he thinks his strengths are, and that'll take him off the chain. And it fucking did.
But she also did it.

Speaker 11 The times that she trolled, if you go back and look at it, she did it when she was being sort of attacked on her weak points.

Speaker 11 Like when she got pinned on immigration, she counterpunched on the trolling. So she took it right off her weak spot and went right to his, which was incredible.

Speaker 10 I was talking with somebody on her team about that.

Speaker 10 And actually, like, they had a planned, because I also called it a crowd-sized joke yesterday, but it wasn't really, it was, it was even deeper than that. It was like, you're a bad entertainer joke.

Speaker 10 It's like people leave early. They get bored.
Like, people are walking out on you. Like, people are ready to turn the page, which is even kind of a deeper cut.

Speaker 10 But they had like planned that around something later in the debate where she was going to do it.

Speaker 10 And like the immigration question comes up and she gives her answer and then she's just like, you know, I'm just going to throw the

Speaker 10 you're boring people thing on the end of this to kind of get you to change the subject. That was not the plan according to the debate prev team.
And it was like done on the fly by her.

Speaker 10 Really well done.

Speaker 11 And that that shows incredible ability and performance.

Speaker 11 That's just not a natural thing. And you know, people say, well, you know, it's it's a debate and what does that have to do with being president?

Speaker 11 Presidents, you know, don't throw into a situation where the camera's on, so you have 30 seconds to answer a question. That's true.

Speaker 11 But what presidents do have to do is prepare, prepare for foreign leaders' meetings, prepare for crises.

Speaker 11 And this showed that she has the discipline to prepare and act like a president, which is, I mean, think how much was on her shoulder. I can talk about Tension City.
And she looks so fucking relaxed.

Speaker 11 And then one other thing I just want to do is shout out. This is such inside baseball stuff, Tim,

Speaker 11 but it's important to give a shout out you know i was around the edges of a lot of prep but i was a shallow media guy there was always somebody in the room who was actually really organized really like going through the list and you know had the binders yeah

Speaker 11 and that's karen dunn you know and i've worked with her and she is talk about hall of fame and here's an interesting data point that i learned and i i won't out where it came from but it's a reliable source that she did all this at the same time she's one of the most powerful lawyers at one of the most powerful law firms in the country And they have, according to my source, they were opening a trial for one of the biggest firms in the country this same week.

Speaker 11 So she was doing both. So like Ann Richards, backwards and in high heels.

Speaker 10 Unbelievable, Karen Dunn. For Vanity Fair, you wrote pieces of advice for Harris going into their debate.
I just thought it'd be fun to go back through those.

Speaker 10 You gave 10 pieces of advice, but here were your top eight. One, confidence is key.
Check. Two, tomorrow is better than yesterday.
Check. Three, you can be both the incumbent and the change candidate.

Speaker 10 Yep. Four, pronouncements that separate from Biden are encouraged.
She literally said, I'm not Joe Biden in kind of a funny way at one point. Five, drive home freedom message.

Speaker 10 Six, bait Trump and switch. Seven, almost ignore him from time to time.
I don't know if she hit that one. Eight, laugh.
All of them. I mean, she did everything.

Speaker 11 Yeah,

Speaker 11 what I said was it takes extraordinary preparation, and politics is about performance, especially at this level. And to do what she did requires extraordinary preparation.
And she just was a pro.

Speaker 11 She's like a professional athlete, you know, and she just prepared. She had the muscles right.
She had the playbook down and she went out and executed.

Speaker 10 Let's talk about that. So you interviewed her for the circus.
You've covered her. I mean, look,

Speaker 10 during the Troubles, as I like to call them, after the Biden debate, you know, the whispered thing in D.C.

Speaker 10 from Democrats was, we don't know if she's up for it. Like she's been shaky.

Speaker 10 I was always a little more bullish on her than kind of what people were saying to me privately, but I was also concerned, you know, like she hadn't had a ton of reps.

Speaker 10 We'd seen her at times be in her head a little bit in some of these interviews. I mean, did you see this coming, like this level of

Speaker 10 Hall of Fame baseball, whatever you call it? Did you see any of that when you were covering her, spending time, or have you been surprised as well?

Speaker 11 Well, listen, I think she exceeded everybody's expectations. Nobody expected that level of performance, you know, for something that was so critical.

Speaker 11 I did think that she, you know, her stock was undervalued. And I interviewed her for the circus, and I always felt that

Speaker 11 she was a natural, not only a natural, but that she was a performer. That she could, when the lights go on, she hits a switch.

Speaker 11 And like Ann Richards or others, she just she could, she could turn it on with a flick of a switch. She was just relaxed.
You know, it was fun being around her.

Speaker 11 She just, she was sort of playful, and she had the laugh and just kind of an ease about her. She wasn't uptight.
You know, she wasn't like, oh, God, I'm in an interview, and what should I say?

Speaker 11 You know, and so vice president, Cesar McCain, always said, you know, you get kept in the dark and get fed scraps. So there's always a bit of that that, you know, I think is unfair.

Speaker 11 And I think there was a bit of misogyny always going on as well, too. But, but that she worked that to her advantage.
You know, everybody underestimated her.

Speaker 11 And the best thing in the world to go into a debate is to be underestimated and overperform, which is exactly what she did.

Speaker 10 Let's talk about the substance of it a little little bit.

Speaker 10 You've spent most of your career talking to the big middle folks. She ran pretty far to the left in 2019 and has been trying hard to pivot to the middle.

Speaker 10 How do you feel about the efficacy of that, you know, of that pivot and the Republicans' efforts to kind of brand her as on the far left?

Speaker 11 Pretty good. I mean, the one thing that I'd say about her and Trump,

Speaker 11 and the one that she shares at Trump, I don't think at her core she's ideological. I think she's practical.
You know, I think she's kind of navigated the water. She came up through California.

Speaker 11 She kind of did what she had to do. But she's never been pinned ideological, despite Bernie Sanders.

Speaker 11 I think. Thank you, Bernie.

Speaker 10 Well, I mean, in 2019, it was wrong, but it was the practical conventional wisdom among Democrats. 100%.

Speaker 10 Oh, this is the moment that's the progressive left is ascendant and the racial justice.

Speaker 10 That was the conventional, and it was, it turned out to be wrong was Biden was the primary, but that's what the smart people thought i think she was just do she was acting practically and one thing that i'll say that i think is really important is that i

Speaker 11 and i know you know this i learned a lot more from losing campaigns than winning campaigns and i think she did too yeah and the thing about her is if you've watched her over time she's gotten better and better and better and better and better she's grown and you can just see it she's like you know she played in the minors she you know she she you know she got her batting practice down and now she's fucking she's slamming them, man.

Speaker 11 And it's because she's done this a lot

Speaker 11 and she's gotten really good at it. And so for people who turn on the television and look at it, they go, yeah,

Speaker 11 it looks like she knows what she's doing. She looks because she's presidential.

Speaker 11 And by the way, I think it's a big strategic mistake for the Republicans and Trump to call her a flip-flopper because that's basically saying, oh, she's moving to where most Americans are.

Speaker 11 It'd be much better to just say she's still a fucking liberal because that's what people don't want.

Speaker 10 Yeah, and I think that she maybe still has some work to do on that on the economic side of things. But I don't know, on the foreign policy stuff, to me, like flying colors.

Speaker 10 I felt that I said this a couple of times. Like when I, we had a little briefing with her privately a couple earlier this year.

Speaker 10 And that was the thing I took away from that was that like she has been doing the homework on foreign policy stuff and taking it very seriously. And she has had a familiarity with it.

Speaker 10 And the themes that she was sounding are themes that, I don't know, 2004-08 MCAP could have written for her. And some of that's some of the stuff.
I mean,

Speaker 10 she was sounding very, you know,

Speaker 10 in the bipartisan tradition of the country as far as national security.

Speaker 11 Yeah, and it also sounded like it wasn't talking points. It felt like it was sort of coming from a core of experience.
And that's the thing that you get from being a vice president.

Speaker 11 You're behind the scenes a lot, but you're absorbing a lot as well. And by the way, on that front,

Speaker 11 whatever you think of Joe Biden, that's something he did exceptionally well.

Speaker 10 You mentioned that he's in the airport. You're in the airport.
You do.

Speaker 10 You're kind of like a Thomas Friedman in a cowboy cowboy hat, you know, kind of getting information from regular people, studying about some Ukrainian folks. And she was so strong in Ukraine.

Speaker 10 I liked how she tied it to Poland.

Speaker 11 Oh, so smart.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Talk about the substance of her kind of conversation on the Ukraine policy and then the conversation you had in the airport.

Speaker 11 Well, I mean, this is something that I didn't even notice until I saw somebody remark on it later. But she...

Speaker 11 When she was talking about Ukraine, she talked about sort of a, you know, the Polish component of that history and the conflict that relates to, I don't know what the numbers, it's like 50,000 people who, Polish people who live in Pennsylvania, that it's going to have a direct impact on and relevance to.

Speaker 11 And that's, boy, that's talk about a smart, you know, game playing of where, you know, the

Speaker 11 David Plus.

Speaker 10 You're looking at the demographics. You're looking at the demographics.

Speaker 11 Don't talk about 5,000 things. Talk about the five that matter that get us elected.
Yeah. So that was super smart.
And then

Speaker 11 my Friedman focus group was, I just was in DCA airport, and a woman walked up to me who's from Ukraine.

Speaker 11 You know, it was really sweet, but she said, you know, I just wanted to tell you that, you know, first of all, coming from Ukraine, I really loved what Harris had to say.

Speaker 11 But more importantly, she said, I have a daughter who is

Speaker 11 in college in Illinois. And she said that she and her sorority sisters.

Speaker 11 none of whom had voted before, all watched the debate, and every single one of them was now registered and voting for Kamala Harris. That's a a ridiculously

Speaker 11 fine-point anecdote, but I'm hearing more and more and more of that.

Speaker 11 And I think the thing that's maybe overlooked in this election and undervalued at this point is we talk a lot about undecided voters. I don't think there's a lot of those.

Speaker 11 There may be a lot of unregistered voters who are registering. And you think about the Taylor Swift impact and stuff like that.
Those kind of things could make a difference.

Speaker 10 She's breaking some brains out there on the internet. I have a little montage for you from Dave Rubin, Russian stooge, big influencer, millions of followers on YouTube.

Speaker 10 Apparently, he was taking Russian money unwittingly. And Megan Kelly, Rich Lowry,

Speaker 10 talking about Taylor Swift. Let's listen to that.

Speaker 12 Elon Musk, who they hate, he saw that and he wrote this, fine, Taylor, you win. I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.
So

Speaker 12 he's mocking. He's exposing the ridiculousness, right? It's like Taylor Swift, you are a young, pretty girl.
Do you know what the gang members from Venezuela do to young pretty girls? It ain't pretty.

Speaker 13 I'm allowed to criticize Taylor Swift and I don't give a shit who gets upset. This is disgusting.

Speaker 13 If she wants to vote Harris Waltz, she can do it all she wants. But to say the reason she's doing it is because of Tim Walz's stance on LGBTQ

Speaker 13 F-U Taylor Swift. And Emily, this is unbelievable.
The left is losing its mind. She signed it, Taylor Swift, childless cat lady.

Speaker 10 The anger.

Speaker 10 Where's all this anger come from?

Speaker 10 Elon wants to father her children. Dave Rubin's fantasizing about her getting raped by Venezuelan migrants.
Megan Kelly's F-wording her. I've lost the plot a little bit.

Speaker 11 Yeah, Tim,

Speaker 11 there's a Cajun expression that you'll hear from James Carville.

Speaker 10 Hit dogs bark.

Speaker 11 Those dogs are hit, man.

Speaker 11 I mean, it's ridiculous. Are you kidding? Megan Kelly, she's saying, fuck you, because some celebrity endorsed a candidate? Come on.
I mean, you didn't say that about Hulk Hogan, for God's sake.

Speaker 11 And I just think it testifies to it really hit a nerve. And, you know, you talk about the value of celebrity endorsements.
Taylor Swift, here's my idea for Taylor.

Speaker 11 She goes to the swing states, does concerts that are free for unregistered voters. And if you're unregistered, you get in free and you have to register at the concert.

Speaker 10 I don't know. Get in for free? I don't know.

Speaker 10 She has a pretty fancy setup there, Mark.

Speaker 10 I don't know if we're subsidizing that level of free tickets.

Speaker 11 I think she can afford it.

Speaker 10 I think she can afford it. I mean, I think there's no bad ideas in a brainstorm.

Speaker 10 We're going to start playing with that, but I'm with you. More voter rights.

Speaker 11 She's already, I think, just in her little link that she put out, she's already registered almost a half a million new voters.

Speaker 10 Yeah, crazy. You know, you just think about the college dynamic, North Carolina, and obviously the big state schools up in the Midwest.
There's a

Speaker 10 non-trivial amount of people that can get engaged for something like this. I do agree with that.
I think that that's obviously the bigger impact than her convincing people.

Speaker 10 I want to go back to the foreign policy thing with Ukraine, though. I'm asking everybody this.
It's my obsession.

Speaker 10 So I've got to ask you, because you know this world, the folks that you worked with in W world

Speaker 10 that are on the Nat Sex side of things, what more do these people want from her? You know, the Condies, the Bob Gates', the W himself.

Speaker 10 Why haven't more of them spoken out on behalf of Kamala, do you think?

Speaker 11 Well,

Speaker 11 I think it's a remarkable number who have, and all those dominoes are falling, and there's like a new one every day and there's 50 days left and I'm still holding out hope my boss will come out.

Speaker 11 I mean, we know how he thinks. He knows what he thinks about all this weird shit

Speaker 11 and know how strongly they feel about

Speaker 11 what's happened to foreign policy and how

Speaker 11 what Trump has done to the American First Nation and standing up strong against Russia and all of that.

Speaker 11 So you know that Condi Rice is just gritting her teeth every day as a Russian expert of all Russian experts watching this. So yes, I agree.

Speaker 11 But like I said, you know, Alberto Gonzales came out today or yesterday, and there's like a new one every day. That's true.

Speaker 10 You're always more of the glass half full guy than me. This is the Thelma and Louise balance.
You know, I'm always like, I want all of them. Like every last one until the last dog dies.

Speaker 10 I'm going to be shouting at the moon. It is the foreign policy thing that is the most striking, right? Because I just think that like

Speaker 10 it would have been understandable. if you're a national security conservative that doesn't like Trump, that like doesn't really know what her foreign policy is going to be.

Speaker 10 Like you don't know who's going to be around her. You're a little worried.
She's California liberal. Who knows?

Speaker 10 You read something on Fox somewhere when you're still watching Brett Baer that her dad was a Marxist.

Speaker 10 You got some little concerns in your head. But since she's been out there, like the last seven weeks on foreign policy in particular, I mean, she has just been right down the middle.

Speaker 10 Like not missing a beat on any of that stuff.

Speaker 11 Yeah, no equivocation, hard as a hammer, tough as steel. Again, it's not like talking points.

Speaker 11 It's something that's coming from her core, and it doesn't feel like something she just sort of recently adopted for the campaign.

Speaker 10 The only substantive complaint I've heard from anyone on foreign policy is from the left on Israel stuff. You know, the left was hoping that

Speaker 10 she was going to be, was going to tamp down some of the, or at least leave the door open maybe more to some more distancing from Israel, and she hasn't done it.

Speaker 11 Yeah, yeah, and I think she's navigated that one pretty adroitly as well.

Speaker 10 Were you surprised by Dick, Jamie?

Speaker 11 Kind of. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I'm not surprised by Liz, of course, but Dick, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's Cheneys are all in.

Speaker 10 Can you get your ad man hat on for me? You had your Taylor Swift idea while we're brainstorming. I like Dick Cheney and AOC in a joint ad, sitting in a living room like the one you're in right now.

Speaker 10 You know, maybe, maybe a cultural exchange. We disagree.
A cultural exchange. You know, he's giving her some elk or some, like some meat from Wyoming.
And, you know, she's cooking up some

Speaker 10 beans and rice or something for them. You know, I don't know.
Get them in the kitchen, a little cooking show.

Speaker 11 Oh, I can't do better than that. Yeah.

Speaker 10 Well, we're working on it.

Speaker 2 Master distiller Jimmy Russell knew Wild Turkey Bourbon got it right the first time. Kentucky born with 100 years of know-how.

Speaker 4 Our pre-prohibition style bourbons are aged longer and never watered down.

Speaker 5 So you know it's right too for whatever you do with it.

Speaker 6 Wild Turkey 101 Bourbon makes an old fashion or bold fashion for bold nights out or at home.

Speaker 7 Wild Turkey Bourbon, aged longer, never watered down to create one bold flavor.

Speaker 9 Copyright 2025, Opari America, New York New York, never compromised, drink responsibly.

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

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

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

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

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

Speaker 10 I want to pivot to the cat stuff. I mean, these fucking guys, they're quadrupling down on this totally made-up racist conspiracy that Haitian immigrants are abducting animals and eating them.

Speaker 10 Bill Haggerty was on CNN yesterday saying that he, you know, he's been hearing things on the internet, senator from Tennessee.

Speaker 10 Chris Ruffo, who's supposedly from the intellectual wing of MAGA, that Ron DeSantis put him in charge of a university down there.

Speaker 10 He put out a tweet offering a $5,000 bounty for anybody that can provide evidence of Haitian immigrants eating cats.

Speaker 10 How did they get here?

Speaker 11 Well, Laura Loomer traveling around in the plane.

Speaker 11 That's part of it.

Speaker 10 Let's stop that. Tell people who that is.

Speaker 11 Okay, Laura Loomer is like the most outrageous sort of QAnon conspiracy theorists out there. So far out there that she's getting attacked by Marjorie Taylor Greene as being out of the mainstream.

Speaker 10 Too crazy from MTG.

Speaker 11 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 10 And it's kind of a delicious Twitter fight for the real sickos out there.

Speaker 10 You want to go and look at the MTG Laura Loomer Twitter fight.

Speaker 10 It's kind of like the let them fight meme in a big way.

Speaker 11 A beautiful thing. So, yeah, you know Eric Erickson, who is a

Speaker 11 well-known journalist on the right, who's no Harris fan. And his tweet yesterday was, you know, okay,

Speaker 11 you stupid motherfuckers, you know, you realize that by putting out this ridiculous shit, you just threw out the bait and made

Speaker 11 the guy who should be the next president look like a complete idiot. And I responded to that to say, yeah, and you know, stupid motherfucker number one is J.D.
Vance,

Speaker 11 because he's the guy that was out there promoting it.

Speaker 11 And the thing to me that's worse than, or the worst thing about all of that is that when asked about it, they double down and make it worse by saying, when people say, what's your evidence?

Speaker 11 They say, well, we heard it from a constituent.

Speaker 11 So just like the steal the vote stuff back in 2018. Well, I don't have any evidence, but people are telling me.
So therefore, I'm reporting it.

Speaker 11 And rather than doing what elected leaders do, is find the facts and then tell your constituents, they're letting their constituents just feed off conspiracy horseshit, and then they're repeating it and amplifying it.

Speaker 10 Just think about the J.D. Vance pick also for a minute.
Oh, God.

Speaker 11 I love that. I mean, it just, you know,

Speaker 11 Trump's body language on Vance now is so good.

Speaker 10 How do you get in a situation if you are Susie Miles, our friend,

Speaker 10 friendish, and Chris Lazavita and Trump, and you're going down the list, and you're like, we are going to pick a VP that is actually putting even more conspiratorial

Speaker 10 material into the campaign than Trump.

Speaker 10 It's like, how could you find a person?

Speaker 10 It's like Trump is the conspiracy monger in chief, and like, here we here, we got one where our VP candidate is actually instead of kind of reining him in or you know, being the being the bumpers on the bowling lane for him, trying to keep him in the middle, he's accelerating it.

Speaker 11 You know, who's loving this? Sarah Palin.

Speaker 10 Oh, my God. Yeah,

Speaker 10 No longer the worst pick?

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 11 I mean, it's incredible. You think, I mean, the first job of a VVP pick is to do no harm, and he's doing harm like every fucking day.

Speaker 10 Every day.

Speaker 10 They can't like each other. Like, he can't lie.
Like, does Trump want to hang out with him?

Speaker 11 I mean, that's why I said the body language of Trump is like, every time he gets asked about J.D. Vance, it's like, I don't talk to J.D.
Vance.

Speaker 11 He doesn't share my, you know, everything is like clear. Like, he's, you know, he's on the phone with Jr.
saying, what in the fuck?

Speaker 11 Why did you insist on this guy?

Speaker 10 John Jr.'s in the doghouse. Trump's going to be sending some Haitian immigrants after him pretty soon.
There's a lot to laugh about about this, but I do, there are two serious elements

Speaker 10 I want to talk about because the whole thing is outrageous. I usually am

Speaker 10 not one to pick on people for not being swift on their feet in interviews and on TV panels. We've all been there.
Sometimes you get put into a tight spot, but I'm making an exception in this case.

Speaker 10 I want to play for you an exchange between Ana Navarro and Scott Jennings, two former colleagues of of mine on CNN yesterday.

Speaker 14 When he said that, he wasn't being sarcastic. He wasn't being hyperbolic.

Speaker 14 He was amplifying a conspiracy theory that I think you would agree puts a target on the backs of Haitian immigrants and that it is based on racism. Would you agree on that?

Speaker 10 Anti-black racism would be more pointed.

Speaker 14 Do you think that if do you think that if there were 20,000 Scandinavians that have been sent to Springfield,

Speaker 10 people would be saying that they're eating cats and dogs and geese? I'm not going to answer for him, for his memes, or anything else. But I am asking you.

Speaker 10 No, no, but I'm asking you, do you think that dishonesty is based on racism?

Speaker 10 I mean, it's an angle.

Speaker 10 Because I'm not going to answer. I don't know.

Speaker 10 That was a long pause, Scott.

Speaker 10 Because I don't know the answer. And I'm not going to sit here and answer for somebody.
I don't talk to Donald Trump about

Speaker 10 what the motivations are. And I don't answer to you either.
But Scott,

Speaker 10 but the bottom line is... I was trying to give you a thoughtful answer.
But the bottom line.

Speaker 10 boy,

Speaker 10 yeah, that was a long pause there. Our podcast listeners thought that that was the Sopranos episode.
I just went to black there for a second. So, like,

Speaker 10 where'd Scott go?

Speaker 10 The audio speaks for itself with Scott. But, like, that is the thing.
Like, Anna does hit on the point. Like, this is not just...
like a crazy QAnon conspiracy like JFK Jr. is alive.

Speaker 10 It is a racist conspiracy that targets a specific group of people because they're black. And that's just it.

Speaker 11 100%. And again, you think about the Republican Party and

Speaker 11 what a 180 this is from John McCain and George W. Bush.
I mean, the reason that I crossed the bridge to join George W.

Speaker 11 Bush was because of compassionate conservatism and his embrace of immigrants and our neighbors to the South. And you remember John McCain famously in his debate saying, no, Obama is not an other.

Speaker 11 He is one of us. And to do anything other is, you know, un-American.
And it's just, it's the worst,

Speaker 11 worst kind of appeal to nativist racism that you can imagine.

Speaker 10 And the darkest part of this, this one's going to be tough. This is tough for me.
I almost cry. I'm on a little bit of sleep this one.

Speaker 10 I've only had three hours, I think, the last two nights between the debate. And I came down to DC and called a little concert last night.
I probably shouldn't have done that.

Speaker 10 I probably should have got a good night's sleep. But, you know, life is for the living, right? We'll sleep when we're dead, as Tim Walls said.
So maybe I'm just a little vulnerable, but here we go.

Speaker 10 The thing that started all the stupid cat conspiracy for people who've not been following this closely is in this town of Springfield, there has been an influx of Haitian immigrants.

Speaker 10 It's not clear to me actually. Some of them are immigrants, some of them are Haitian Americans.
Some of them are like migrants who are not yet citizens, and some are citizens.

Speaker 10 And there's one incident where there's a bus driver that was Haitian that didn't have a license to drive the bus, shouldn't have been driving the bus.

Speaker 10 And there's a car accident, and a kid died in the car accident, Aiden Clark, 11-year-old kid. And that is like what was the impetus for all of this in like the crazy right-wing fever swamps, right?

Speaker 10 And, you know, this, this, it goes from, you know, whatever, we shouldn't be having these migrants in, this kid died to, you know, and then, you know, it gets expanded and expanded, expanded to eventually the point where the presidential candidate is talking about how Haitians eat dogs on in a national debate.

Speaker 10 But the father of the kid, Aiden Clark's dad, said this to the newspaper yesterday. I now wish that my son Aiden was killed by a 60-year-old white man.

Speaker 10 I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone.

Speaker 10 The last thing that we need is to have the worst day of our lives violently and constantly shoved in our faces, but even that's not good enough for them. They take it one step further.

Speaker 10 They make it seem that our wonderful Aiden appreciates your hate and that we should follow their hate.

Speaker 11 That's incredible. I'm tearing up too.
I've had a full night's sleep.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I mean, what a presumption of grace on his part, too. I mean, to

Speaker 11 extend and reflect that idea. Really powerful.

Speaker 10 Yeah, and that's what it is. I mean, it's just like that's what all of this fundamentally is, right? It's like Springfield's an actual community with this is happening.

Speaker 10 I saw another interview with like a manufacturing job, a manager of a manufacturing plant, and he's like, I don't know, man, the Haitian immigrants are showing up to work on time.

Speaker 10 They're like doing, they're doing their job. They're not complaining to me.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 10 Like, you know, when you have a pick and flux of any group of people, you know, there's going to be challenges and like dealing with disruptions. But like, that's what this fundamentally is.

Speaker 10 Like, this American story of people in a community trying to navigate this, and it's being perverted into this like just totally blatant racist bullshit.

Speaker 11 And it's so un-American. I mean, Steve Ratner did a great thing this morning, my morning joe, on just showing the data on, you know, what's the real story with immigrants and crime statistics.

Speaker 11 And as it turns out, although it's way under the actual population, and they're much more law-abiding.

Speaker 11 And it's just to take advantage of that for political gain, it's just, it's so contrary to the ideals of this country.

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Speaker 10 Speaking about the ideals of this country, you did it. Your TV, man, you know how to transition for me.
You don't even know it's coming. I got Chip Roy for you on the House floor yesterday.

Speaker 10 Let's take a listen to this.

Speaker 15 What the hell are we trying to defend?

Speaker 15 What is left of the United States to defend?

Speaker 16 What?

Speaker 15 A school where I can't send my child to to pray to God without spending $20,000 a year on top of the taxes I pay?

Speaker 15 A school that my friend sends her sixth grader to with a trans music teacher asking her kid to do some dance in class. Yes, true story.

Speaker 10 What the hell is left to defend about America?

Speaker 10 What?

Speaker 11 A kid was asked to dance in a class?

Speaker 10 There is a weird arts teacher?

Speaker 10 I mean, this is just happening now. There's never in history before been LGBT drama club teachers before.

Speaker 11 I would have been more surprised if it was a straight arts teacher asking them to do the Pledge of Allegiance.

Speaker 10 I mean, I just don't even know how you get to a place like this where you're like, what the hell is left to defend about this country?

Speaker 10 I mean, this is where this total inversion in this race, which is kind of what I actually wanted to talk to you about, the clip is embarrassing. It's fun to make fun of Chiproy.

Speaker 10 But like this inversion where the Republicans are now the ones that are like, this country fucking sucks. This country sucks.
There's nothing to defend about it.

Speaker 10 We're no better than any other country. We're killers too.

Speaker 10 And it's now the Democrats. It's Kamala Harris.
It's like, no, actually.

Speaker 11 100%. And that

Speaker 11 she has stolen back the freedom agenda is so brilliant. And, you know, George Bush used to say, you know, people don't follow a leader who says, the future is all fucked up.
Follow me.

Speaker 11 You know, And Reagan knew that, Bush's knew that. And just to have this dystopian, we're a horrible place and it's all fucked up.
And

Speaker 11 this dystopian vision of America,

Speaker 11 that's one of the great things about Harris is that

Speaker 11 I think she understands that. And she has made it all about

Speaker 11 a bright future looking forward and not a backward dystopian hellscape that people like Chip Roy are trying to paint.

Speaker 10 Yeah. And the other thing is that she has done is she's not gone down that also that path that sometimes people left to.
And look, there's reasons to criticize America.

Speaker 10 I'm not saying that America should never be criticized, but of,

Speaker 10 you know, just focusing overwhelmingly on the historical discrimination in the country, right?

Speaker 10 Like, it's something that as a woman, as a black woman, as an immigrant, I mean, like, there's plenty of material to work with.

Speaker 10 She could have talked about historical discrimination in her convention speech or the debate or whatever. And it's just she doesn't.
Like, it's the opposite.

Speaker 11 Well, yeah. I mean, does she ever talk about the discrimination that she's faced? Never.

Speaker 10 Never.

Speaker 11 I've never heard her talk about that.

Speaker 10 In the debate, another moment that really struck me was when the moderator asked Trump about his turn, her turn-black comment. And she

Speaker 10 responds by kind of going through his history of racism. And like the next sentence, right, after she kind of lists off Central Park V and birthrism, et cetera, et cetera.
You know,

Speaker 10 you could... Imagine then going from there to being offended, to talking about how offensive that is, personally.

Speaker 10 And sure shit, Donald Trump and Republicans talk about their imaginary grievances and offenses all the time.

Speaker 10 But she didn't. She goes to talk about how that's not what America wants, right? America doesn't want to be divided.

Speaker 10 She goes, you've done racist stuff and you're dividing us and people don't want it. People don't deserve it.
I thought it's very deft of a way to handle that.

Speaker 11 Yeah, and I think that really resonated with people and I think it will continue to do.

Speaker 11 And again, I just think that she's, it's just an example of somebody who has gotten really good at her craft, has learned over time, and, you know, just

Speaker 11 we've seen a lot of candidates over time. And it's just, you know, you think about, again, sort of the pressure pit that she's been put in.

Speaker 11 She's in a microwave turned up to 11, and she's handling it really well.

Speaker 10 What's left to defend in this country, Mark? Everything's going to shit.

Speaker 11 Art teachers asking us to dance.

Speaker 10 My God, Chip.

Speaker 10 Transgendered teachers. Transgender teachers are out there.
You know, there's just, might as well just throw this whole fucking experiment to shit.

Speaker 10 You know, Thomas Jefferson's rolling over in his grave.

Speaker 10 All right, man, before I lose you, anything, what next 50, 50 plus days, what's your sense of the state of play? You occasionally have a little contrarian POV on

Speaker 10 the handicapping. So where's your head up?

Speaker 11 I kind of look for data points that aren't the usual data points. And I just have this notion that

Speaker 11 one thing we do in politics is we look at it through a mirror instead of a periscope.

Speaker 11 And first of all, how many people do you know that actually get, you know, pick up a phone to answer a telephone poll? Almost nobody. So you know

Speaker 11 who is it that they're actually talking to. So you've got to have some level of cynicism about anything you read about the data and polling.
And we've seen the problems in recent years.

Speaker 11 But I think the smart thing is that the Harris campaign is running like they're 10 points behind, running like they're running under dog, which is the only way to run. You run scared or unopposed.

Speaker 11 And they know the historical time set on popular vote and the Electoral College and the challenges all there.

Speaker 11 And so I worry about, despite all the energy and excitement about everything, I think there's a huge challenge, particularly in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 11 I was a Josh Shapiro guy, and I just thought, you know, it's a very political thing for me. It's like, you win Pennsylvania, you win.
That guy may give you a 0.1 bump, but

Speaker 11 that could be it.

Speaker 11 But I am encouraged by, again, the anecdotal stuff I hear that I think that in places like North Carolina, where they have a horrible Republican nominee for governor, who's not not exciting any Republican voters.

Speaker 11 And I'm hearing sort of

Speaker 10 except for the guys in the back of the dirty video shop eating pizza, eating their dominoes while they're

Speaker 11 the people concerned about the trans dancing going on.

Speaker 10 So he's exciting a couple folks, right?

Speaker 10 A couple of folks are getting excited.

Speaker 11 If I had to handicap it now, I think that Harris is going to win. And I think it's because of new unregistered voters that have come onto the scene.

Speaker 11 You know, again, sort of anecdotally, you just think about this has got the feeling of a movement thing, something exciting, something historic.

Speaker 11 And if you're a young person or sort of a low-information voter, you just kind of see it going on around you and say, wow, something's happened. I kind of want to be part of this.

Speaker 11 You know, there's just that factor going on. And I think that's where she could make a play and pick up North Carolina and or Arizona and Georgia, which would make up for losing Pennsylvania.

Speaker 11 Harris wins.

Speaker 10 There's your contrary view. You think Harris could lose Pennsylvania and still win?

Speaker 11 Yes, I do. I think she's going to win North Carolina and or Georgia and Arizona.

Speaker 10 There you go. Mark McKinnon.
You heard it here. Thank you for pinch hitting today.
They can cancel the circus, but there's no erasing us.

Speaker 10 I need to give a special thanks to Bulwark Super fans, Russ and Audrey for taking care of me last night. A little serendipitous bonus night in D.C.
Everything's good. We got power.

Speaker 10 I just got a text while we were live. We got power.
Some of the plants may be a little worse from the wear at our house in New Orleans, but everybody's safe and sound. I appreciate y'all's concerned.

Speaker 10 I'll be back tomorrow for a weekend edition of the Bulwark Podcast. See y'all then.
Peace.

Speaker 10 I think my teeth are falling out,

Speaker 10 like in a dream of mine.

Speaker 10 But I haven't slept for tears,

Speaker 10 and you're on my mind.

Speaker 10 And then I watch as the memory passes.

Speaker 10 See your face through these dark sun passes.

Speaker 10 And what I once knew now is just ashes.

Speaker 10 Once knew how had to be without, but there's no escaping, no escaping,

Speaker 10 no escaping. Love

Speaker 10 and I feel like taking, feel like taking,

Speaker 10 feel like taking drugs.

Speaker 10 When there's salvation,

Speaker 10 elevation,

Speaker 10 evasion's done,

Speaker 10 there's still no erasing, no erasing

Speaker 10 The Bullwork podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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