Jared Polis and Bill Kristol: Live from Denver

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Speaker 3 Hello and welcome to the Ballork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller, a little horse.

Speaker 3 Coming off a wonderful weekend in Denver, I'm with Bill Crystal right now, but the back half of this episode will be my interview with Jared Polis from our live event on Friday.

Speaker 3 If you want to hear the live next level from Friday, that'll be over on the next level feed. It was really a marvelous weekend.

Speaker 3 Part of the reason why I don't have a voice right now, we had, I think, 550 of y'all came out. You met my mother.
We chatted afterwards. We had beers.
I got a wonderful package from someone.

Speaker 3 I didn't catch your name. I'm sorry, but thank you for that.
And, you know, working the rope line. I'm not like Joe Biden.

Speaker 3 I don't have the Joe Biden vigor to work a rope line and then also go to Gay Pride where I saw some of you. And then also maybe I saw widespread panic last night.
So, you know, here we are on Monday.

Speaker 3 It's been a big weekend at my home in Denver. I'm back in the basement.
I'm excited to be here with Bill Crystal. How you doing, Bill?

Speaker 4 It's tough being a celebrity, Tim, but I sympathize with you.

Speaker 4 I've seen it up close, but not myself, of course, but when I worked for Vice President Quayle, I was always struck that that's a tougher part of the job and people appreciate just the pure rope line politeness, but also you know, keeping sane and stable and avoiding totally crazy people.

Speaker 4 So, you get a horrible clip out there, but also being, as I say, being nice to people and then talking and so forth. So, I'm impressed that you're in as good shape.
I'm impressed that you can do it.

Speaker 4 You're not taking a week off now, you know.

Speaker 3 No, I can handle it. I can handle it.
But we're just my voice cracked on the first intro, so we're keeping it in the lower register today.

Speaker 3 Uh, this morning, all right, Bill, uh, before we get to Polis, uh, we have a few things.

Speaker 3 Donald Trump, I don't know if you know this, uh, but he has a penchant for lying, and he did some lying over the weekend and some serious lies, but also some silly ones.

Speaker 3 And I'd like to start this little palate cleanser with an interview he did with my former boss, Sean Spicer. It is interesting to think that that 2012 RNC comms team has spurned two media careers.

Speaker 3 We've gone different directions, though. You can compare and contrast my Polis interview with the Sean Spicer work in his interview.
of the disgraced Donald Trump. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 5 You look at our airports where flights are being delayed four days, where people are pitching tents in an airport because their flight is so, you know, it's never going to even happen.

Speaker 5 We've never had problems like this. What you're seeing in the last two years, we've never seen anything like it.
And we become like, you know, we are a failing nation.

Speaker 5 We've become a third world nation in many ways. Our elections are third world, in my opinion.
Our airports are being run so badly. It's so badly.
It's not even conceivable.

Speaker 5 People go, the other night, I had somebody going to the airport, and they called up two days later to tell me that they've never gotten out. I said, but where are you? Still at the airport.

Speaker 5 And it was like two days before.

Speaker 5 And this is common now.

Speaker 3 When was the last time Donald Trump was on a commercial flight, Bill? What were your thoughts about that?

Speaker 4 What are the odds that that phone call really happened? I mean, just like, yeah, someone who just picks up the phone and calls Trump.

Speaker 4 You know, hey, just letting you know, I'm still at the airport two days later.

Speaker 3 Still stuck in San Antonio, 48 hours.

Speaker 4 Yeah, at the West Palm Beach airport after leaving Mar-a-Lago. I think, yeah, no.

Speaker 4 Ludicrous, obviously, very Trump-like in the sense that it's so ludicrous, you almost, I don't know, you don't take it seriously, and therefore you just lose sight of the fact that he just routinely lies about everything and makes up everything.

Speaker 4 And it is a weird way. I don't think he does this on purpose, but it is kind of a way to normalize lying, to start with, or to throw in with the serious lies, a lot of just idiotic, trivial stuff.

Speaker 4 And then you feel like come almost like an an idiot fact-checking it.

Speaker 4 So I spent three minutes on Google, and it turns out that 2023, the busiest year, I believe, in American aviation history, over 16 million flights, had one of the lowest, maybe the lowest cancellation rate ever, 1.2%.

Speaker 4 It had a little bit of an uptick in 2022, the year before. Remember, there was that Southwest Airlines, I think, wasn't it then?

Speaker 4 The computer system melted down or something, and they were like, people were stuck for a day or two. But anyway, this is very, yeah, so he just lies and

Speaker 4 also denigrates America. And

Speaker 4 what can we say?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I think that there are some serious undertones there that are worth mentioning. We're a third world country.
We're a failing nation.

Speaker 3 We didn't play the full clip, but if you want to go watch yourself, you can just take my word for it.

Speaker 3 Not a hard pushback from Sean Spicer there on the notion that America is a failing nation, that our election systems are third world. Sean Spicer is living a pretty nice life in the suburbs of D.C.

Speaker 3 as a D-rate TV host. So I don't think that works usually in a failing nation,

Speaker 3 but he's he's doing okay. And the airport thing, more people flew on Memorial Day than ever.

Speaker 3 It's crazy.

Speaker 3 We've had record travel this summer, which I think there's commentary both on whether we're a failing nation or not, but also whether our economy is failing and how bad could the economy really be?

Speaker 3 How much is inflation really hurting everybody if no one's vacations are being, well, not no one's, but if at the median, people are not being affected in their summer vacation plans.

Speaker 3 And so, you know, but here we go. And, you know, Trump just gets to, just gets to lie and lie and lie about that without any.
Is there not without any repercussion? I feel like I'm sounding like JVL.

Speaker 3 There is some repercussion. This is why Donald Trump is not winning this race right now, right? Because people find him disgusting.

Speaker 4 I mean, I guess, but he should be losing by a heck of a lot more. No, I landed at BWI, Baltimore, Washington, Wednesday.
I didn't see any tents there. Amazing.

Speaker 4 You guys all flew out for the panel Friday, Thursday and Friday from various places. You, I take it from New Orleans and Sarah from D.C.
and so forth.

Speaker 4 It's amazing, Andrew Edgar, you all made it there. How could that happen?

Speaker 4 How could that happen

Speaker 4 in the modern failing America where every third plane

Speaker 4 is canceled, according to Donald Trump?

Speaker 3 The Denver airport kind of looks like a tent. Must have been luck.
One more thing.

Speaker 3 It's up to us to point out the obvious, but poor Poppy Bush, you know, add the supermarket scanner story. Just drag him, just follow him around.
Even though it's kind of BS.

Speaker 3 Like he was looking at a cool news scanner.

Speaker 3 And people are like, this guy, this a feat, Kenny Bunkport living coastal elite is so out of touch. He doesn't even know what a supermarket scanner looks like.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I mean, it's like Donald Trump doesn't know what it's like to fly with regular people, but I guess that's just, that's dog bites, man, at this point.

Speaker 4 Biden should, he can't do this.

Speaker 4 I guess the Secret Service have a heart attack, but he should fly commercial to Atlanta on Thursday for the debate, just to make the point that, you know what, these flights are fine.

Speaker 4 I'm one of the regular guys. I flown commercial a lot in my life, which he has, to be fair, until he became vice president and stuff, which Donald Trump hasn't done for ever, I suppose.

Speaker 4 I'm going to say for 40 years, 50 years. But why do we think even as a, I don't know that he ever flew commercial.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, or on the train, on the Biden Acella. Anyway, okay, there's another lie that you wrote about morning shots.
People should be signed up for your morning shots at thebuler.com if they're not.

Speaker 3 Here's Trump talking about years later he's decided to refute General Kelly. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 5 But they made up a suckers and losers statement so terrible. And my stupid people, when I wanted to refute it, they said, sir,

Speaker 5 don't dignify it with a

Speaker 5 refutal.

Speaker 5 Refutal or a refutal. What the hell word would that be? Refutal? They'll say he didn't know refuddle or refutal, but they don't know either.

Speaker 4 Rebuttal, I think.

Speaker 5 Refutation. It should not be dignified, sir.

Speaker 5 I say, well, I gotta fight that. That's the worst thing you could probably say to me would be that.
He said, sir, it's going nowhere. Three years later, it still simmers.

Speaker 8 And you know what? Anybody in the military?

Speaker 5 Oh, now I fight. I talk about it all the time.
Because it doesn't make sense. Nobody could say a thing like you can't.
Even if you hated the military, you couldn't say that because

Speaker 5 it would actually be dangerous.

Speaker 5 It would be so bad. Nobody would say that.

Speaker 5 And so now I speak about it all the time because these people are liars. They make it up.
It's now on top of that you have AI. On top of that, you now have AI.

Speaker 3 Seems like a person at the top of their game, mental acuity-wise, there. Bill, where do you want to go with that? A lot of places you could take a response to that clip.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, yeah, of course,

Speaker 4 a lot of the Twitter commentary and other places was on his failure to use the word rebuttal and getting a little confused about refutal and refutal and all this.

Speaker 4 But that is, in fact, not the important part of it. So, Trump brought this up out of the blue, kind of.
He's lying about it. He's lying about his lie.

Speaker 4 That is to say, he did try to refute it right at the time. He tweeted right away on September 3rd,

Speaker 4 2020, when Jeff Goldberg's Atlantic Peace came up with people anonymous sources at that point saying that Trump had called the military suckers and losers in the context of not visiting the cemetery in France and also when he was at Arlington with General Kelly in 2017 for Memorial Day.

Speaker 4 So Trump rebuts at the time, both on Twitter and actually that evening to reporters. So he's pretty conscious of it at the time.

Speaker 4 So he's lying when he says that the staff persuaded him not to rebut it and that that's kind of why the story is still simmering.

Speaker 4 The story is still simmering because it's true, because General Kelly in 2022 confirmed it, 2023 maybe confirmed it in a statement and also a couple of interviews.

Speaker 4 And so that's why the story is simmering. And then President Biden, indirectly, you might say, kept it alive with his visit to the cemetery in France when he was there for D-Day.

Speaker 4 And because people are rightly outraged about it. And it fits, of course, so much with so many other public things he's said about John McCain and stuff.
But it's interesting to me that he raised it.

Speaker 4 Somehow

Speaker 4 it's there in his lizard brain causing some anxiety or some worry right and of course his first reaction is to lie the second reaction is to blame the staff the stupid staff i love that which wouldn't let him rebut it allegedly at the time but it makes me wonder if they have some reason to think that the his disdain and more than disdain his trashing of the military, really disgusting things he said about the military, revealing deep attitudes of his, is hurting him a little bit, that they have some polling, that say they told him, you know, that this is a problem.

Speaker 3 And finally i think he's thinking about the debate thursday night and a little worried that this is a pretty effective thing for joe biden to bring up i think the last thing is for sure and i want to talk about the debate but just just a few just to put a finer point on a few of the facts here in that ramble it's interesting to know that his staff can prevent him from sending out things on social media.

Speaker 3 That's news to me. And also,

Speaker 3 I guess, now confirms that I guess his staff approves everything that he pops out there. I didn't realize they had control of the reins there.
Refutal,

Speaker 3 you might want to know, is a word that existed, but it's virtually obsolete. Neither of the main corporate American or British contain a single example of it.

Speaker 3 So, you know, maybe Trump is just trying to bring it back. You know, this kind of the old English, something to think about.
Lastly, the debate thing is obviously on his mind.

Speaker 3 And I think that's what I want to get into with you next. By the time we next speak, the debate will have happened.

Speaker 3 Hopefully, it will be the beginning of the Great Biden comeback, and we'll be in high spirits next Monday.

Speaker 3 But, you know, you can sense in situations like these, things that he's trying to, you know, put bumpers around, vulnerabilities he's trying to put bumpers around by talking about them now, but also in this insane, like Joe Biden's on cocaine thing, Joe Biden, the lifelong teetotaler, you know, that they're pushing out there.

Speaker 3 That if you watch Fox, it's like an hourly topic on Fox now. I mean, it's on constantly.

Speaker 3 This notion that Joe Biden might be on drugs, you know, a totally preposterous fabrication that now they have like panels about. They're like, what do you think about this thing we made up?

Speaker 3 Do you think it's true? Do you think think it's true? Like, it's like absurd, but it is reflective of their mindset about the debate.

Speaker 3 So, I'm curious what you think first about the Trump perspective going into debate and then the Biden.

Speaker 4 Yeah, no, and I think, and didn't his press secretary, or whatever she is, Catherine Levitt, I think her name is going, she was on TV earlier this morning.

Speaker 3 Carolyn, failed congressional care.

Speaker 4 Caroline Levitt. And just launched on CNN, just her first talking point, which was not responsive to the question, was an attack on Jake Tapper and one of the hosts of the debate.

Speaker 4 And I suppose she would have gotten to the other host in a second, and got cut off by Casey Hunt or whatever. But again, what does that tell us?

Speaker 4 They are trying to obviously prepare the groundwork for, well, if he did poorly, it's because of incredibly biased hosts.

Speaker 4 I still think there's a small chance that he uses that as an excuse or the drug test for Biden as an excuse not to debate if he really gets worried that it could hurt him.

Speaker 4 But so far, it looks like it's going ahead. So I think Trump's worried.
I hope he's right to be worried. I hope Team Biden is really prepared, not just preparing him, but preparing the other things.

Speaker 4 So to take this one thing we just discussed on John Kelly.

Speaker 4 I hope someone's been in touch with John Kelly to, you know, just encourage him to come forward that night if Trump lies again or the next morning and say and go on some interview and just say, you know, of course it's true.

Speaker 4 I didn't make it up. And unfortunately, Donald Trump's lying again.

Speaker 4 And if he wants to add that people shouldn't vote for Donald Trump for president, which I'm sure John Kelly believes, and if he wants to add they might even consider voting for Joe Biden, that would be fine too.

Speaker 3 But that would be nice. If anybody is out there who is pals with John Kelly and you can just take that little clip, we can do a little screen record and just send it right over to him.

Speaker 3 Happy to share that.

Speaker 4 And if he wants to come on your podcast on Friday morning, you know, and use that as the occasion. I think we can, I can, can I take the liberty of inviting him to do so? And yes.

Speaker 3 Please. John Kelly, you have an open invitation to join the Bullwick podcast anytime.

Speaker 4 So, look, I think in general, Biden's been doing better. So, in that respect, Trump's a little worried.
More upside and more downside, don't you think?

Speaker 4 I mean, that the downside obviously is that he looks faltering and very old and so forth.

Speaker 4 The upside is that

Speaker 4 there are two or three blows landed of the kind we just described.

Speaker 4 For me, the key just advice to Biden would be don't defend your, I mean, it's so hard when you're up there not to defend your own record, not to explain what you've done.

Speaker 4 And I don't mean this in some kind of vanity thing, though there's some of that too, of course. But just, you know, someone criticizes you and you'll say, no, wait a second.
Here's the job numbers.

Speaker 4 Here's this. I think it's very important that you be forward-looking and really mostly paint the picture of how genuinely dangerous and terrible a Trump second term would be.

Speaker 4 And to some degree, do a little more painting of a picture of what a Biden's second term might accomplish.

Speaker 3 Aaron Powell, Jr.: That was also Jared Polis' advice. We get to that in that interview in a little bit.

Speaker 3 So you and Governor Polis are aligned. I might be misaligned from you, guys, on this, just in one sense.
Well, in two ways, actually.

Speaker 3 One, I think that he has to at least make the things are better than they were four years ago case. Like you might not remember it, you know, but crime is down.
Immigration border numbers are down.

Speaker 3 Economy is up. Like things are moving in the right direction.
Yeah, we have more work to do. Blah, blah, blah.
You got to go do all that stuff.

Speaker 3 But I do think it's important to at least refute some basic facts because you know Trump's going to lie about how this is a third world economy and America's terrible thought.

Speaker 3 You know, you have to at least do a little bit of that.

Speaker 3 And traditionally, in these debates, in the first debate, that's why it's been a problem for the incumbent president because they feel the need to refute every detail about the record.

Speaker 3 I agree with you in that point, but I think they've got to get a little out. I don't know.
What about the offensive side of things?

Speaker 3 I think that he has to have some punches for Trump rather than just focus on positive vision.

Speaker 7 Where are you on that?

Speaker 4 Oh, no, no, I totally agree with that. I think, in fact, most of it should be about the danger of Trump, less about the virtues of Biden.

Speaker 4 Very hard for people to internalize that because, you know, candidates like to, and presidents like to talk about their virtues more than they like to, but Biden's been pretty good at punching at Trump, I'd say for the last three, four weeks, better, honestly.

Speaker 4 Agree. I think there's some obvious things.
So this, and I wonder if the Biden team was thinking of this when they proposed this date.

Speaker 4 I think it's more their proposal than Trump's in in terms of the date.

Speaker 4 This is the final week of the Supreme Court term, or almost this final week. We have big decisions.
Today is the anniversary of Dobbs.

Speaker 4 I think Biden can do a lot with you appointed the justices who reversed row. Without Trump justices, it doesn't happen.

Speaker 4 You've got judges doing other things in terms of guns and so forth that are way outside the mainstream. And you've got extremist judges.

Speaker 4 And if you become president, he shouldn't say you, I'll come back to that in a minute.

Speaker 4 But if my opponent were to become president, we will have even more extreme courts and even more extreme curtailments of our liberties.

Speaker 4 I think the courts courts is, I mean, it's conventional view that it's not a great issue. Who thinks, you know, courts is sort of a second order thing.
People don't think of that.

Speaker 4 But I kind of think in this case, the week of

Speaker 4 Dobbs, two years ago, it's a pretty good issue. I also think, and this is a point my friend Jeff Tullis made when we were having lunch last week.
Maybe Biden shouldn't even address Trump.

Speaker 4 He should just say, you know, I want to speak to the American people. And I want to speak to all the American people, including voters who are inclined to vote for my opponent.

Speaker 4 And I respect all of you. I want to work for all Americans.
I have been working for all Americans.

Speaker 4 In effect, make clear that he doesn't consider Trump a worthy person to have an argument with because Trump's just a liar.

Speaker 4 And sort of talk about my opponent says this or my opponent did this, but talk about him in the third person. Maybe that's a little too stilted and artificial and wouldn't work.
I don't know.

Speaker 4 I'm not a great debate strategist or anything.

Speaker 4 But I also think it would convey a sense of disdain for Trump, but without disdaining all the swing vote, the voters out there who might be inclined to consider Trump, but Biden needs to win over.

Speaker 3 I feel like that's the kind of thing that sounds good.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I can practice this hard to work. This is the thing for me with Biden.
When Biden is good, like when Biden is at his best, he's more casual in his speech.

Speaker 3 So I kind of hate that they put him in these more stilted speech environments. Biden's best moments are always like kind of almost like the face that he made at Marjorie Taylor Greene.
And then

Speaker 3 he's looking at Trump and he's like, this guy, like this guy,

Speaker 3 I would almost try to diminish him in that sense, right? That it's like, this guy caused the stormy of the capital. Can Can you believe this guy?

Speaker 3 You want this person to have a majority of the Supreme Court? I agree with you on the court side of things in that context, like specifically the Dobbs case, but also in macro.

Speaker 3 I think it might make a few people, at least some of those Haley voters, some people, and some younger, who knows?

Speaker 3 Logically, you would think that some people might make them blanch a little bit to just be aware of the fact that Donald Trump will have appointed a bare majority on the Supreme Court.

Speaker 3 Do you really want the Supreme Court majority to be all Trump picks? I think that there's a certain group of people that that might hit home with.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and I think it's one of those issues that obviously Biden's base is appalled by the prospect of more Alitos and Thomases and other Trump picks, including at the lower court level.

Speaker 4 But swing voters are very much with Biden on guns and on abortion and on contraception and on IVF and so forth.

Speaker 4 And I think it's totally fair, incidentally, for Biden to, you know, ascribe to a second Trump term what Trump's supporters say they're going to do in such a term. For sure.
Make Trump disavow them.

Speaker 4 Make Trump say, oh, no. Clarence Thomas is much more right-wing than I am.
I wouldn't even dream of doing it. But then we'll have a little fight between Clarence Thomas fans, and

Speaker 4 he wants to get rid of contraception, apparently, and Trump fans. So make him disavow heritage.
I think it causes problems in your own side if you can drive those wedges.

Speaker 4 But I think ascribe to Trump the worst of MAGA, which is totally, they're all supporting him. It's totally fair.

Speaker 4 And I think really paint a picture of, and I think it's a totally true picture, I think. Obviously, we think, I think, of what a Trump second, how dangerous a Trump second term would be.

Speaker 4 And that should be the key thing. The key thing should be, Michael Scherer had a good piece on this, right?

Speaker 4 Biden had to figure out a way to sort of take care of the fact that people have looked at the first term. The guardrails mostly held.

Speaker 4 There were people in there who stopped Destruct from doing a lot of things. And people now say, well, look, the first term wasn't that terrible.

Speaker 3 In fact, I mean, they tried to kill the vice president.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, believe me, I'm with you. And January 6th, there's been memory holding all that.
But still,

Speaker 4 an amazing number of voters have rationalized their way into thinking the first term wasn't so bad.

Speaker 4 And I think his notion of the, you know, that he's become unhinged because of January 6th, he's giving a permission structure to people who voted for Trump once or twice or maybe sat it out to say, you know what, it would be different this time.

Speaker 4 It would be worse this time. He needs to do that, I think.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's a good talking point. I don't agree with it, but I think it's a good talking point.
Right.

Speaker 4 No, I don't agree with that.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Right.
Like, just as a factual matter, like this notion that something cracked in Trump when he lost in 2020 and then he got really crazy.

Speaker 3 I mean, I think Trump's been kind of steadily becoming just little by little, a little more crazy, you know, since like 1982, but is basically the same person. I don't think there's any big break.

Speaker 3 That said, I agree with you. I think it's a good talking point.

Speaker 3 And there's a certain group of people, I can think of somebody in my life that is like that went for Trump in 2020, that January 6th was a final straw for them, right?

Speaker 3 And so it gives that group, which maybe might be waffling or might, you know, might be gettable for Trump to win back, something Something to lean on, right?

Speaker 3 This notion of, yeah, okay, it was fine, but he went crazy with this stop the steal stuff in the January 6th, and now he's off his rocker and we can't do it again. I think that's a good talking point.

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Speaker 1 Visita tu Los Macercano in East Arcas Avenue in Sunnydale.

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

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

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

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

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

Speaker 3 Last thing, we do have some primaries tomorrow across the country. In New York, I want to mention two.

Speaker 3 We have George Latimer, who is being supported by a bunch of center-left groups, including APAC, running against Jabal Bowman, who is being supported basically by AOC, I think, and some others.

Speaker 3 And Bowman, frankly, AOC has been pretty responsible, I think, across a wide variety of issues in a way that Bowman has not, at least in my opinion, both rhetorically and the weird fire alarm poll and some of his more anti-Semitic statements, frankly.

Speaker 3 And so, anyway, I want your take on that race, but I also want to mention we've John Avalon, friend of the pod. So, if you're in his district, that primary is Tuesday.

Speaker 3 He has a primary as well. And in Colorado, I was talking to polis after the interview, and there are two DSA left Democrats in the state house that are being primaried by more mainline Democrats.

Speaker 3 I wouldn't even call them moderate, but just middle-of-the-road Democrats. It'll be interesting, I think, you know, to see whether there's a little bit of a picture here.

Speaker 3 This is something that's not happening happening in the Republican Party, which is why I think it's worth bringing up.

Speaker 3 People are always like, why don't you focus more on having the Republicans get back to normal? And it's like, well, if you look at the primaries,

Speaker 3 in the Republican side, it's the normal ones who are being primaried by crazy people. And sometimes it's like crazy people who are being primaried by even crazier people.

Speaker 3 In the Democratic side, we have a couple of examples of some of their more extreme members being primaried tomorrow by more mainline members. So it'll be interesting to see how that goes.

Speaker 3 So the floor is yours, just on that broadly or on the Bowman-Lattimer race.

Speaker 4 I mean, broadly, I do think it's important. I think it's also such a talking point for the, you know, Wall Street Journal wanting to justify their vote for Trump types.

Speaker 4 The Democratic Party is just, I've just got so far left. The left is just driving the trade.
It's unbelievable. And people like me or you say, well, really? Biden, Janet Yellen? I mean, Tony Blinken,

Speaker 4 where exactly is this? Well, it's down in the... bowels of the bureaucracy and also at the congressional level.
Look what's happening, the squad and stuff. It would be important, I think.

Speaker 3 Did you see the spokesperson for the EPA wanted to defund the police? That was going around on social media.

Speaker 3 I mean, if the spokesperson for the EPA is a leftist, then what do we, you know, how can I must vote for Trump? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 Because I'm sure Trump's EPA spokesman is going to be just a very straight and narrow guy.

Speaker 4 Yes. So anyway, I think it's useful if Latimer in New York, it has media attention.
That district, New York 16, is some of the Bronx and then up into Westchester.

Speaker 4 Our son and daughter-in-law and the little kids live in that district in Westchester. And I would say we visited them.
This happens a couple of weekends ago.

Speaker 4 I live in Virginia, Northern Virginia, kind of swingish area.

Speaker 4 So we get a fair amount of campaign mail, you know, the stuffs, you know, postcards and so forth and brochures and what do they call flyers, you know, still the old-fashioned stuff as well as the texts and the emails.

Speaker 4 It's insane up there. I mean, they were getting three a day for Latimer or against Bowman.

Speaker 4 They're in the Latimer-leaning part of the district, and their own voting history would suggest, you know, a Latimer vote in a primary.

Speaker 4 So this is, I guess, will be the most expensive congressional race, maybe, in primary, I think, in history. And I think a Latimer will win.

Speaker 4 He's the Westchester County executive, too, so he has some advantage of being an incumbent against an incumbent, kind of, you know. But it'll be good.

Speaker 4 It would be good if he wins, because Bowman has been the most irresponsible of them, pretty much of the squad, I think, and the most outspoken.

Speaker 3 I would throw Corey Bush in that camp as well, and she also has a primary coming up.

Speaker 4 Yeah, Bush and Bowman. And Bush, I think, may lose.

Speaker 4 And then Avalon winning, a very moderate guy, kind of a no-labels guy before no labels went off the rails. I think John was involved in starting that, friend of the bulwark, and so forth.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, no, suddenly it's like, really? How left-wing exactly is this Democratic Party? That's New York, it's Sally. That's not the Democratic, that's not

Speaker 4 the Democratic governor of Kentucky or the Democratic governor of North Carolina or anything, you know. So I think it would be important if Latimer wins, and I think he could win pretty easily.

Speaker 4 And if Avalon's the nominee in

Speaker 4 Suffolk County.

Speaker 3 All right. Well, thank you, Bill Crystal.
A little bit shortened today, so because we got the polis interview on deck.

Speaker 4 I'm looking forward to seeing that. And speaking of Democrat, he's a pretty responsible and moderate Democrat and pro-business and so forth, governing a pretty important state out there in Colorado.

Speaker 3 We do a lot of issue talk. We have a little fun too, but we do a lot of issue talk.
And absolutely, I think it's funny.

Speaker 3 I get in Colorado eventually on these panels, you get questions from people and they're like, why can't we have a party that respects business, but also doesn't hate anybody? You know, isn't cruel.

Speaker 3 Like, why can't we have somebody like that? I get these questions from like people at panels. And when they happen in Colorado, I'm going to be like, well, Your governor is that.

Speaker 3 The mayor of Denver, Mike Johnson, is that. The president of the United States is that.
I mean, you do have that happening here. So, anyway, it's an interesting interview.
I hope folks will enjoy it.

Speaker 3 We'll be back with Bill next Monday post-debate. There will be much to discuss.
Up next, Governor Jared Polis.

Speaker 3 Why did you leave me?

Speaker 3 Why did you leave me

Speaker 3 to

Speaker 3 sway?

Speaker 3 You know there's something wrong

Speaker 3 that I wanna tell ya.

Speaker 3 You know there was something there.

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Speaker 9 Everyone comes in the audience. It's good to see you guys.

Speaker 7 Hey, y'all.

Speaker 7 I named this the best governor in America in an interview about two months ago, so it's going to be a really hard-hitting interview. You better watch out.

Speaker 7 How are you doing, Governor? Thanks for doing this.

Speaker 9 I'm doing great, and welcome back to our prodigal son returns. It's great to have you back, Tim.

Speaker 7 All right,

Speaker 7 don't get my mother any ideas about me coming home.

Speaker 7 All right, I want to start. I want to have a little feelings to start.
Can we talk about our feelings for a second?

Speaker 9 I suppose so.

Speaker 7 I don't know if you do you love talking about your feelings? Not really.

Speaker 9 You know, I think the folks in the audience, so my mother, the poet, right, she writes about her feelings. So she did that for all of us.
My mother, Susan Polish.

Speaker 7 Well, I'll talk about my feelings then, and then you can decide whether or not to win. So me and the governor just came from

Speaker 7 the Pride kickoff, wasn't it called? Pink Party? Yep.

Speaker 7 Supporting one Colorado. You should support one Colorado.
And I was just sitting there watching him, and it's all these gay people in their pink outfits and some drag queens.

Speaker 7 And I'm thinking, and then he

Speaker 7 welcomes all of them. And I'm thinking, we have a gay married governor with kids

Speaker 7 speaking to a group of entirely gays. And here I am sitting here in Colorado.
And I was thinking back to Teen Tim, like Amendment 2 and Matthew Shepard.

Speaker 7 I was like, if you would have showed me a video of this at age 16, I think I would have thought that Independence Day aliens would have felt more likely as like a 20-year arc.

Speaker 7 So like do you ever like take a moment to think about that, appreciate that?

Speaker 9 Well, you know, first of all, we're excited you are back here and hopefully you get to enjoy Pride Weekend with your family

Speaker 9 with 500,000 of your closest friends.

Speaker 9 It is exciting to reflect on. I mean we're really focused on a Colorado for all.

Speaker 9 That means a place for really everybody, no matter who you are, no matter who you love, but also, you know, no matter your race, no matter how long your people and family has been here.

Speaker 9 And that's what we're trying to bring about. But yes, there's been tremendous progress, not just in Colorado, but nationally and internationally.

Speaker 9 Thailand just the other day recognized same-sex marriage as the third country in East Asia after Nepal and Taiwan, if we're allowed to call Taiwan a country.

Speaker 7 We are.

Speaker 7 At the bulwark, we are.

Speaker 9 At the bulwark. I'm glad.

Speaker 9 Get ready for the inception by China.

Speaker 9 But, you know, no, I think it's wonderful.

Speaker 9 And of course, you know, when there's there's a when the pendulum swing towards progress, there's always that pushback you hear, and we still see some of that, of course, to this day.

Speaker 9 But overall, I think it's a much better time to be able to grow up and be a little different than others and feel loved and respected.

Speaker 7 So you don't think about little Jared like playing video games, looking at Link. I love video links.
I love video games. I don't think back.

Speaker 7 I still play video games.

Speaker 7 I know. Speaking of the people that there's still some pushback, our friends in the Colorado Republican Party,

Speaker 7 they put out a press release saying that we should burn all the pride flags. They said that the LGBT community is part of a demonic realm trying to harm our children.

Speaker 7 I don't know about if it's our children, like yours and my children, or all of our children.

Speaker 7 With enemies like these, who needs friends, Governor? What's happening over there?

Speaker 9 Well, it's one of the reasons that Colorado has become more of a capital D Democratic state is, yes, I like to think the Democrats have governed well, but frankly, even more than that, the Republicans have marginalized themselves with that kind of rhetoric that just turns off mainstream Colorado voters.

Speaker 3 And,

Speaker 9 you know,

Speaker 9 it was offensive even to the Republican congressional nominee from this district who happens to be gay himself, who now finds himself in a position where his own party was saying, you know, burn those flags.

Speaker 9 It was also telling, I heard from a conservative Republican commissioner friend of mine from southern Colorado, and they did, you know, they condemned this.

Speaker 9 And I shared with him that similarly, I spoke out, this was probably a year or two ago, when somebody was trying to, in a school, prevent kids from bringing don't tread on me flags.

Speaker 9 There just wasn't, that's, you know, freedom of speech. So I mean, but this concept of burning flags or icons is just very anti-American in its core, turns people off.

Speaker 9 above and beyond, of course, the anti-LGBT ramifications, just trying to say you're against that kind of freedom of expression really rubs Colorados the wrong way.

Speaker 7 What about the school stuff? Your opponent in the governor's race was concerned about that we were grooming our children.

Speaker 7 I think that she was concerned that there were a lot of non-binary children that were identifying as cats in the classroom. They're meowing.

Speaker 7 They're peeing in a litter box in the class. It seems like a big problem.
Didn't you clean that up at all?

Speaker 9 That was when I realized I had won the election.

Speaker 9 A month from when balance dropped, that's what my opponent pivoted to. I was like, I can take a day and spend it with my kids.

Speaker 4 I got this.

Speaker 7 All right. Let's do a little national politics.
That's enough gay stuff for today.

Speaker 7 You did a tweet today

Speaker 7 giving some advice to Joe Biden. It was a very long tweet, so I'm not going to read all of it, but it was a seven-point advice.

Speaker 7 You said you should look to the future. Number one, every American should be able to go to kindergarten at no cost and preschool.
Two, compare and contrast Trump's terrible tariff agenda.

Speaker 7 Three, talk about how health care is broken and it should be more affordable. Four, tout your bipartisan permitting reform view.
Okay. Five,

Speaker 7 show enthusiasm for renewing middle-class tax cuts. Six, ignore Trump's antics.
Seven, go get them. That's hard.

Speaker 9 It's hard to ignore his antics. I get it.
What I think that the president should do, and it's the way I do it.

Speaker 7 You preempted my question about how that was not possible to ignore. Isn't that wonderful? I love doing that, Terry.

Speaker 7 Go ahead. No, no, no, no, no, don't do it.

Speaker 9 What I was going to say is that, I mean, you really should, every election is about the future. It's not about the past.
And I think what President Biden needs to do is not talk about what he's done.

Speaker 9 And of course, we know what we've done.

Speaker 9 And he likes to talk about that. But the challenge is, what do you want to do? What will you do for the American people if you're elected for another four years? I gave him some ideas.

Speaker 9 If he has others, that's fine. But really talk about the future.
and your vision for how you can make life better for everyday Americans. And so I hope that he focuses on the future

Speaker 9 in the debate and also in the campaign, doesn't get caught up in Trump's antics. And that's hard.
I get it, because that guy's a walking antic.

Speaker 9 I mean, I don't know what, you know, I mean, he'll say insane stuff. But you say, and I've run against people that have said crazy stuff.
You saw the stream. And you just ignore it.

Speaker 9 You just don't, I didn't get into a debate about whether cats run our schools. I said, I'm focused on

Speaker 7 humans growing up. I'm focused on renewable energy.

Speaker 9 I'm focused on middle-class tax cuts. I mean, I just stayed focused on what we were doing, doing,

Speaker 9 not the nutty stuff.

Speaker 7 So I think permitting reform is very important. It's why I'm for it.
It's very important.

Speaker 7 I don't know that that's going to win over the voters as much as pointing out how crazy Donald Trump is. And I don't know that does Joe Biden have...

Speaker 7 Does Joe Biden have a good message for his second term? What is it?

Speaker 9 I don't think Joe Biden is the one who should be pointing out how crazy Donald Trump is. It's self-evident.
Donald Trump does that himself. Certainly others can do that.

Speaker 9 What Joe Biden needs to do is talk about his vision for America and what he wants to do.

Speaker 7 Which is what do you think?

Speaker 9 Well, Well, I mean, again, I could tell, you know, I give him some advice, but I'd like to hear, you know, from him. But, I mean, he supports these things that I put in there.

Speaker 9 He supports it was dropped from some of the bills, preschool and kindergarten for every kid.

Speaker 9 He does support, you know, more trade than Donald Trump, whose policies would lead to more inflation and hurt the middle class. So, I mean, these are all things that you can run on and talk about.

Speaker 9 And I hope that the president really paints an exciting vision about what America will look like and how people will be better off in four years if he has a chance to serve again.

Speaker 7 I want to go to Colorado a little more than the national stuff, since, you know, we're Colorado, people are here.

Speaker 7 I had a question proposed to me. I don't think they knew that they were proposing the question from someone who may or may not be in the crowd who's close to me that may or may not be Republican-ish.

Speaker 7 And the question went something like this:

Speaker 7 ask the governor, we're a little concerned that Colorado might turn into California. High taxes, high regulation, high cost of gas, high cost of housing, lots of traffic, not as good skiing.

Speaker 7 Are you, what would you say to that? That there's some concern that Colorado is moving in California direction? Do you like the California model? Do you think that there's a difference?

Speaker 9 When I stated the state last year, I really focused on how we can avoid becoming like California, particularly around the high cost of housing and crowded highways and congestion.

Speaker 9 There's different elements of what California means to different people, but I think Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives agreed that we don't want to be California.

Speaker 9 What we talked about, and what a biggest, big challenge in our state is the average cost of a home in the Denver metro area, now about $600,000 statewide.

Speaker 9 It's lower than that, but still went up 30, 40 percent over the last few years. That's a problem, still inexpensive by California standards.

Speaker 9 There are cities in California where the average home price is $1 million.

Speaker 9 But that's why we took action to make it easier to build new homes, reduce regulation, cut red tape.

Speaker 9 We cut the income tax three times since I've been governor, twice by the voters, once through the legislature. So, no, I really think that we're on a different path in many ways.

Speaker 9 It doesn't, you know, we're always happy to take good ideas from any state, from California, Texas, New York. They all have things we try to learn from, the laboratories of democracy.

Speaker 9 But we don't aspire to be a particular state other than a better, more perfect Colorado.

Speaker 7 You took some digs at last time I interviewed you. You did take some digs at California.
Like, what, when you look at the more progressive agenda.

Speaker 9 It's popular in Colorado to bash California and Texas.

Speaker 9 It's not a partisan thing.

Speaker 7 It's just popular to bash California and Texas.

Speaker 7 So it's smart to do popular things as a politician.

Speaker 7 But are there specific, when you look at the kind of California progressive agenda, are there specific, and you mentioned cutting Texas or regulations, are there specific things you look at and say, this is too harmful, this is not smart.

Speaker 9 In which state? In California.

Speaker 7 Well, I don't follow everything their legislature does. Well,

Speaker 7 I'm going to have a stress level through the roof.

Speaker 9 It's stressful enough following what our own legislature does here in Colorado.

Speaker 7 I bet.

Speaker 9 And so, I mean, of course, there's things they would do. And I, you know, Governor Newsom has even vetoed some of them that they've done.
And again,

Speaker 9 we try to look at best practices in different states and find what might work here. Certainly around housing, there's examples of both Republican and Democratic states removing barriers to housing.

Speaker 9 California has done some good work, so has Montana,

Speaker 9 where they've, again, basically allowed the zoning for more affordable units to be built closer to transit, allowing for accessory dwelling units by rights. So

Speaker 9 know, we just got that done here, which is wonderful.

Speaker 9 So, I mean, just so you know, you shouldn't have to spend tens of thousands of legal bills and fight city hall to add a needed housing unit that you can rent out to somebody who needs a home.

Speaker 9 So, this is the kind of stuff we're focused on.

Speaker 7 How do you balance the kind of those questions? Obviously, you need more housing in Colorado. I think everybody agrees, maybe not everybody, most people agree with that.

Speaker 7 The ADU policy, and that stuff you put forth makes a lot of sense. How do you balance that against concerns about growth? You know, traffic, traffic going up to Vale is too bad.

Speaker 7 I can't even go up to the mountains to ski on the bottom.

Speaker 9 Well, it's really about how we grow. So that's very much a part of our discussions.
What we want to have is a greater opportunity to live close to job centers, near transit.

Speaker 9 We're working on implementing front-range passenger rail, improving the bus transportation system, more opportunities to live close to job centers rather than a servant sprawl, further and further out, longer commutes, more cars on the highway.

Speaker 7 Highlands Ranch, hardest hit. What's that? Highlands Ranch.
Is that what you're doing?

Speaker 9 But I mean,

Speaker 9 that's kind of the bad part of the California model, right? Like you, you know, you're in the LA area. It's not rush hour, you know, 4:30 to 5.30 like here.
It's rush hour like 3 to 8.

Speaker 9 I mean, you might have

Speaker 9 all day. So, I mean, this is what we want to avoid.
And we do that by really smart growth and making sure that people have the opportunity to live close to jobs.

Speaker 9 Most people don't want to commute 45 minutes to work each way. They do that because they can't afford a home closer to where their job is.

Speaker 7 What about the energy side of things? Like, you know, obviously, we talked about permitting reform. You want to be able to do more renewables.
You want to be able to build more.

Speaker 7 How do you balance that with, okay, we also need existing access to natural gas. There's a big debate over here about fracking, whether you can frack in Colorado.

Speaker 9 So yeah, a permitting reform is broad, sweeping. We've done some at the state level.

Speaker 9 The reason we have this discussion nationally is the federal government owns close to 40% of Colorado Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service.

Speaker 9 So anything on their land, federal land, we have to go through a very long, arduous, bureaucratic process. President Biden has wanted to expedite that.

Speaker 9 He's done some administrative actions to do that, but they haven't been able to do it legislatively.

Speaker 9 But here in Colorado, for those who follow it, we used to historically, we've had something called the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission. It permitted oil and gas.

Speaker 9 What we have now added to their responsibility is first putting health and safety first for oil and gas siting, but they also now cite renewable energy, deep well geothermal, which we're hoping to grow here in Colorado.

Speaker 9 We just had a summit yesterday. We're very excited about adding geothermal geothermal energy to our mix, the heat beneath our feet.

Speaker 9 That was my initiative at the Western Governors Association, as well as more transmission.

Speaker 9 So as we move towards a more renewable grid, we need to be able to move electricity around better and we need to make sure that we're able to tie into other states for interstate transmission.

Speaker 7 When we first talked, the reason why we did our first interview was because I was stuck at home during COVID and I was watching, you know, I had nothing else to do.

Speaker 7 So I'm on Twitter and I'm just watching videos. And you got into a fight with maybe a couple of the reporters here about

Speaker 7 about masking. And

Speaker 7 there's this big debate that was happening and you were saying we need to balance the questions about public safety and distancing with questions of individual freedom and autonomy and encouraging that.

Speaker 7 And I think that you're, I'll just say, I think that in retrospect seems like your balance on that was a lot better than someone that maybe DeSantis and the Newsom side of that debate.

Speaker 7 There's an issue kind of that has a similar dynamic right now, which is immigration, right, and people coming to the state.

Speaker 7 Where there's this question about public safety, you know, is everyone that's coming vetted, versus you want people to be able to come to the state, right? Like you want freedom.

Speaker 7 And, you know, maybe there was a time, particularly a couple months ago, where there were some people in Colorado feeling like this is out of balance, right?

Speaker 7 Like, we have all these migrants coming here, and we don't know what to do with them. Like, how are you thinking about that? How do you deal with that issue?

Speaker 9 Well, it's complicated.

Speaker 9 We could do a whole half-hour discussion.

Speaker 7 Let's do immigration.

Speaker 7 I've got fun rapid-fire questions at the end, but they're right.

Speaker 9 So, our fundamental frustration, I think, with the federal government is they're the only ones that can secure the border. They're also the only ones that can grant work permits to people.

Speaker 9 We would love to be able to grant work permits, and we would be able to use that. If there's a way to get that to the state level, we would do that.
What's frustrating is when we have people.

Speaker 7 I mean, just look the other way, let them work and not enforce.

Speaker 9 Well, again, it's federal enforcement that everybody's worried about. So, I mean, fundamentally, if there's people here that want to come and work and have a work permit, we need them.

Speaker 9 We actually have 1.6 job openings for every unemployed Colorado, and we need folks that want to work.

Speaker 9 But the mismatch is if they're coming without permission to work and there's a year until they get it or indefinite, what do we do during that time?

Speaker 9 And so that's what we're dealing with with some of the Venezuelan migrants.

Speaker 9 But many of them now have permission to work. They're getting integrated into Colorado.

Speaker 9 So, you know, again, I think there's room for bipartisan immigration reform, securing the border, workforce authorization.

Speaker 9 It just has been elusive for too long and it would benefit our economy tremendously.

Speaker 7 I'm sorry, what you were saying just doesn't make sense to me because I've been watching a lot of Fox lately. And I'm sorry, we have,

Speaker 7 we just, the border is totally uncontrolled. You know, there are hordes of people coming to town.
There are a lot of people who need jobs that can't get them.

Speaker 7 That's not right.

Speaker 9 So we do need better border security, of course.

Speaker 9 At the same time, we need to make sure that people that are part of our economy and have jobs are able to do it legally and that we're able to support our economic growth and support our ag industry, support our hospitality industry.

Speaker 9 These things are all important, and we can figure it all out together.

Speaker 4 That was pretty good.

Speaker 7 I have a couple other balancing public safety with freedom questions, and I'm going to read you some recent comments from

Speaker 7 conservative influencers online. I spend a lot of time reading conservative influencers online.
I'm sorry,

Speaker 7 you have to govern. I'm just a podcast host.

Speaker 7 I've got all afternoon to just kind of read Breitbart.

Speaker 7 Here's one.

Speaker 7 This guy, Mike Davis, he wants to put me in a gulag, by the way, just as a quick aside.

Speaker 7 He said that Colorado just made me wait 72 hours to buy guns. Does Colorado make people wait 72 hours to get trans pills? We must fight every gun restriction.

Speaker 7 The left's goal is to disarm us so they can control us. Are you trying to control Mike Davis?

Speaker 7 So,

Speaker 9 yeah, you know,

Speaker 9 we have a three-day waiting period. We do the background checks during that time,

Speaker 9 and

Speaker 8 it works fine.

Speaker 9 And for folks who are transgender, the process of getting the diagnosis and the prescription takes a lot longer than three days. It takes many months.
Really?

Speaker 7 You can't just trans like that?

Speaker 9 No,

Speaker 9 you can't just trans like that.

Speaker 9 So I think the waiting period is quite a bit longer.

Speaker 7 I guess I have another funny one, but we should be serious for a second if we're going to talk about the gun issue.

Speaker 7 Because there were real gun reform accomplishments that you got after the horrible shooting at Club Q. And talk about those.

Speaker 7 Colorado has had a disproportionate

Speaker 7 reality when it comes to these mash shoes.

Speaker 9 We did a three-day waiting period to make sure we get the background checks done. Also, you know, in the spur of the moment, anger purchases.

Speaker 9 It was very strange. You had to be,

Speaker 9 you could be 18 and buy a rifle, but to buy a pistol, you need to be 21.

Speaker 9 We just made it 21 for guns.

Speaker 9 You can buy it with your parents at 18, of course, and your parents can go hunting with a kid at 15. But to just walk into a gun store and buy it, we said, you know, same age as alcohol, 21.

Speaker 7 Do you consider 25?

Speaker 7 I know some 21-year-old boys. I don't know.

Speaker 9 Well,

Speaker 9 some 18-year-old ones, too.

Speaker 9 So we're just trying to do common sense stuff and it protects our second member rights.

Speaker 9 A red flag law: if somebody's having a mental health crisis, there ought to be a legal way to temporarily remove access to their firearms. Domestic abuse.

Speaker 9 These are all common sense measures, and no single one

Speaker 9 is a part of the pun silver bullet. But I think together do they absolutely have a positive impact on improving public safety?

Speaker 4 Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 7 And I mean you have a libertarian streak tendency that you don't feel uncomfortable about any of those reasons.

Speaker 9 No, I think they all fun.

Speaker 9 I mean you know you met I don't know the total percentage but I mean you know 40 50 percent of Coloradans are gun owners and none of this interferes with anybody who wants to have a gun for home defense or sport or hunting or whatever purposes they have it for.

Speaker 7 Here's another one

Speaker 7 from my friend at the Breaking Points podcast. I don't know if you're a viewer of that.

Speaker 7 They did pretty well on YouTube. Weed.
This is about weed. Weed ruined the great city of Denver and the great state of Colorado.

Speaker 7 These stores are all going bankrupt, and the promised tax revenue is drying up. ER visits are booming.
The air is polluted. Traffic accidents soaring.
Sad. Wow.

Speaker 7 So,

Speaker 9 wow, they're blaming everything on the birthday.

Speaker 9 Although, so no, I mean, I think overall cannabis legalization has been great for our state. I've long been a supporter of that.
I've been getting it.

Speaker 7 A couple of guys on gummies in the crowd right now.

Speaker 9 Well, you know, just to get it out of the underground illegal economy, the policy of prohibition has failed,

Speaker 9 getting it out of the hands of drug dealers to legal regulated businesses. It has generated hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue.

Speaker 9 You know, people are legally employed in the sector. Yes, some of them have gone out of business.
That's called capitalism, right?

Speaker 9 Of course. So

Speaker 9 I don't know what that person is saying, saying they all should have stayed in business.

Speaker 7 I don't know. I'm saying it's bad that there's so many of them.

Speaker 7 On that point, I guess another observation I've had talking to you over the last kind of hour is just the tone of your kind of conversations about talking about Republicans and Republican views feels like it's from another plane of existence, that it's not our national politics.

Speaker 7 And you're talking about how you talk to Ken Buck all the time, and oh man, Scott McGinnis. And I was saying Scott McGinnis has gone kind of crazy.
And you're like, like, I don't know.

Speaker 7 No, he seems okay to me. I was like, well, he's for Trump.
You're like, well, they're all for Trump, right?

Speaker 9 Right.

Speaker 7 You're extolling the virtues of capitalism. You're talking about gun ownership.
Like,

Speaker 7 why do you think it's so unique here? Like, your ability to kind of talk across party lines? Like, why is that able to happen here where it's not other places? Plurality of color.

Speaker 9 Most Coloradans aren't Republicans or Democrats. Unaffiliated are by far our biggest group, almost a majority.
I think now 46, 47% of plurality.

Speaker 9 But pretty soon unaffiliated will be a majority of Colorado. It's already a majority of people under 30.
And so we kind of look at both parties and just say, you know, talk about them.

Speaker 9 And both parties have ideas that are good and both parties have ideas that are bad, but mostly people just want a positive vision for what will make life better.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it seems like almost some of you are. All right, a couple claps for making life better.

Speaker 9 Say, you know,

Speaker 9 good ideas from the left, from the right, from the center, from up, from down. A good idea is a good idea.
You know, let's take it and let's move forward and make life better.

Speaker 7 What about people who are concerned? So, you know, I lived through this.

Speaker 7 Some will say to me, Tim, like, you lived through this process where, you know, you were out here when Bill Owens was governor and there were normal mainstream Republicans and the crazies took over the party.

Speaker 7 Now they want to

Speaker 7 burn pride flags. And like, that's what's happening to the Democrats now, right?

Speaker 7 Like, the Normans are in charge of the Democratic Party, but, you know, the DSA and the pro-Hamas crowd and the socialists and the far left are taking over the Democratic Party.

Speaker 7 Like, what do you say to that?

Speaker 9 I don't see it. I mean, obviously, there's it's interesting because, like, you know, in European multi-party parliamentary democracies, they have like eight parties, right? Right.

Speaker 9 Six parties, ten parties. We have, yes, we have these small parties, but basically, we have two very broad ones.

Speaker 9 And so, yeah, somehow on the Republican one, you have everything from kind of authoritarian, neo-fascist, to libertarian, to traditional, conservative. You got all that stuff.

Speaker 7 On the Democratic side, concerning them out on the neo-fascist side of fanatical status. Concerning that, you got them over there.

Speaker 9 On the Democratic side, you have center left, you center right, center, and yeah, you have some of the socialist folks that might out of, it might say I'm voting Democrat because they're better than Republicans.

Speaker 9 So yeah, I mean, they're both broad big ten parties. You got to be when you're functioning in a two-party system.

Speaker 7 All right, we're going to move to rapid fire. Our time's running short.
Are you ready? Sure. Are you prepared? Are you sure?

Speaker 7 These are going to be a little off the wall. Okay, and you haven't given me any feelings yet, so I might add one more feelings question at the end.

Speaker 7 Famously, you've never smoked weed. Despite being a,

Speaker 7 what were you called? A godfather of cannabis? Something? Did Wes Moore call you?

Speaker 7 I think Wes Moore called you that tonight. Despite the fact that you've never smoked weed.

Speaker 7 But if you were to break your cherry tonight,

Speaker 7 what would your dream blunt rotation be?

Speaker 7 Who would you want to smoke with and who would you want to smoke with?

Speaker 9 So that was quite a scandal for me to come out of the closet as never having smoked weed.

Speaker 7 I'm sorry to break your weed.

Speaker 7 You out of me. Sorry.
You out of me, Ted. My apologies.

Speaker 9 I would go with Dolly Parton.

Speaker 7 Dolly'd be good.

Speaker 7 No one else, you don't want to join? And it's a rotation. You kind of need a third person for that to work.
I know you've never done this before, and me neither, Mom. But

Speaker 7 you need three forty.

Speaker 9 The citizen of Argentina seems pretty cool.

Speaker 7 Really? Javier Malayne? He might creep me out in a blunt rotation.

Speaker 9 He could lend me some of his hair.

Speaker 7 I could choose.

Speaker 7 I don't know. Okay, we'll see.
The people didn't like that choice as much.

Speaker 7 All right. Ask somebody that's libertarian, is there something else you think that's illegal now should be made legal or decriminalized?

Speaker 7 I don't know, like Molly or like full stripping at strip clubs or just giving you guys some ideas.

Speaker 9 I mean, Colorado's already doing that now with mushrooms and

Speaker 7 yeah.

Speaker 9 So we're doing the mushroom therapy and

Speaker 9 yeah, so that's happening right now.

Speaker 7 Anything else?

Speaker 9 I don't know. You name it.
I mean, generally speaking, if something doesn't hurt other people and it's somebody's choice, it ought to be respected.

Speaker 7 Why are you just on kind of decriminalizing non-violent crimes more? Like, do do you feel like we're over-jailing?

Speaker 9 Well, I mean, careful the word non-violent because that can include something like theft, right? Right. Sure.
And, you know, car theft and stuff from stores.

Speaker 9 I mean, those, of course, should be harsh criminal penalties. But, I mean, kind of what you do in the privacy of your own home, that's a different category, and I would show more latitude in that.

Speaker 9 But in practice, we're not generally going in and arresting people for what they're doing in their own home. I hope we're not.

Speaker 7 Hunter.

Speaker 7 Hunter's getting arrested for Hunter Biden's getting arrested for something that he did. There's a job.

Speaker 9 No, I wasn't here for lying on the gun form. Yeah.

Speaker 7 I guess he wasn't in his home, but it wasn't like he was waving the gun around in public or he just lied on the form.

Speaker 7 But do you think Hunter should go to jail for that?

Speaker 9 Do you think that's the same thing? Well, I mean, you know, just like with former President Trump, I mean, I have confidence in the justice system to adjudicate it.

Speaker 9 And, you know, when people violate the law, they should be held accountable, whether they're a former president or a president's son.

Speaker 7 I have one final rapid fire, but do you have any

Speaker 7 final pitch for my listeners? Everybody here likes Colorado, but this will be airing on Monday's audio podcast. Like a Colorado pitch, do you want more people here?

Speaker 7 Or you're kind of like at this point, you're like,

Speaker 7 Anything else you're doing? A final? Yeah, we got a great state.

Speaker 9 I mean, we got a great quality of life. And of course, you know,

Speaker 9 we're part of victims of our own success. That's why housing prices have gone up and people have sought to live here.
But really, we always aspire to be an even better state.

Speaker 9 And I'm glad that everybody here is part of that. Me too.

Speaker 7 Hey, guys.

Speaker 7 All right.

Speaker 7 Traditionally,

Speaker 7 on the podcast, I do an outro song, a walk-off song that is, you know, that's relevant to the subject of the podcast.

Speaker 7 And so I was hoping, we're not going to do this right now, but tonight, if it works in the IT, they're going to play my favorite Gay Pride anthem as the outro song. You know, we'll see how that goes.

Speaker 7 But for the podcast listeners, I want them to hear your favorite Gay Pride anthem. So what should we send them off with this Colorado Gay Pride weekend?

Speaker 9 Let's do It's Rainin' Men.

Speaker 7 Oh, hallelujah. A classic.
A classic. It's raining men.
All right. That is it, everybody.
We'll be back to the next level. Thank you to Governor Polis.
Thank you. And see y'all soon.

Speaker 7 Thank you, Beth Stewis.

Speaker 7 There it is.

Speaker 9 And have we got news for you?

Speaker 7 You better listen. Get ready for your lonely nerves and leave those umbrellas at home.
All right.

Speaker 7 I'll just get no power over.

Speaker 7 Love tonight for the first time.

Speaker 7 Just about half past eight.

Speaker 7 For the first time in history,

Speaker 7 it's gonna start raining there.

Speaker 7 It's raining bad.

Speaker 7 Hallelujah. It's raining men.

Speaker 7 Amen.

Speaker 7 I'm gonna go out. I'm gonna let myself get

Speaker 7 absolutely looking rain.

Speaker 7 It's raining, man.

Speaker 7 Hallelujah. It's raining there.

Speaker 7 Every special man,

Speaker 7 all blind, not to me.

Speaker 7 Love and dust and strong and free.

Speaker 7 God said for the nature,

Speaker 7 she's the thing that woman do us.

Speaker 7 She comes on the heaven.

Speaker 7 If you did what she angel did,

Speaker 7 she

Speaker 7 for every angel

Speaker 7 and rearrange the sky.

Speaker 7 So that began everywhere

Speaker 7 to find the perfect God

Speaker 7 It's raining bears

Speaker 7 Hallelujah It's raining man

Speaker 7 Amen

Speaker 7 It's raining now

Speaker 7 Hallelujah It's a rainy man

Speaker 7 Amen It's a rain

Speaker 7 Hallelujah It's a raining man

Speaker 7 It's a rain and then

Speaker 7 Hallelujah

Speaker 7 The Bullwork podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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