Rick Wilson: The Reich Stuff

Hello and welcome to the Borg podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller and I gotta tell you today we just have an unbelievable tonnage of dumbassery to review and so I've just I've brought in the only man for that job Rick Wilson co-founder of the Lincoln Project ad man host of the podcast the enemies list.
He has his own sub stack, Rick Wilson

sub stack. He's written some books.
I've brought in the only man for that job, Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, ad man, host of the podcast, The Enemy's List.

He has his own Substack, Rick Wilson's Substack.

He's written some books, Everything Trump Touches Dies.

You've probably heard of that, Running Against the Devil.

Hey, brother, how you doing?

Welcome to the pod.

Welcome back to the pod.

Thank you, my friend.

Good to see you.

It's good to see you, too.

Just before we started taping this, the defense, if you want to call it that, has rested.

It's not rested their eyes. They've rested their defense of Donald Trump.
I do want to spend some time with that. But I feel kind of as a hazing ritual since the first time you've been on, since I've been the host chair.
We need to begin, as I did yesterday, with your former boss. I'm so sorry.
Yeah. Well, I just want to play a little.
We covered the cougar party at Caroline Wren's house already yesterday and the subpoena. So today I want to cover something else.
He's got a new infomercial out. Jason, can we listen to a little bit of that? You all know I stand by the truth.
And if I put my name on something, I truly believe in it. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to something I'm incredibly proud of.
My own brand of organic specialty coffee, Rudy Coffee. Believe me when I say it's the best coffee you'll ever try.
It's smooth, rich, chalky, and gentle on your stomach. It's so good, I even recommend drinking it black.
It comes in three varieties. Comes in three varieties.
So my first question for you, What are the three varieties of rudy coffee perjury evasion of service and complete moral and mental collapse i mean that's four i guess but close enough that's pretty good even black i don't know was that a was that a little racial subtext there i don't even even you never can tell anymore as somebody who was around Rudy

a long time and helped in his

97 reelect and I was in city halls

an advisor to the mayor and then I was

on the campaign against Hillary all these things

right I've said this

for a while now the last time he and I spoke

was 16

used to talk all the time would you talk after

you had a couple pops is that yeah oh yeah yeah but but it's like how is it that this guy who was not a dumb man at the time has gotten so far into the swamp and the mire of this unbelievable he's like the alpha case study of everything trump touches dies and it doesn't ever get any better he always like hits the bottom And then he's like, I think I'll dig some more now. I mean, the fact that he's shilling coffee, he's desperate financially, we all know this, he correctly got his head handed to him in the Georgia election workers defamation case.
And I guess he still believes that somehow or another Trump is going to save him from, I don't know, ending the last years of his life living on the street, panhandling.

It is really depressing.

If Rudy had not gone into Trump's universe, even with all his flaws, when he died, people would have named high schools after him.

They would have named bridges after him.

I always say this.

If he just did speeches, if he just moved to Italy and drank wine, they would have renamed la guardia giuliani airport a hundred percent a hundred percent him he all he had to do was was like not fall into the trap of this garbage with these people and unfortunately he kind of likes it i think i think rudy has always been i mean even when i when i was working for him there was always kind of a star fucker thing with rudy like i remember the sopranos were just out and man he loved like any cast member crew member any sopranos adjacent person was always like we've got to have so-and-so to gracie we've got to get so and you know whatever some politicians are like we should call stevie van zandt We should plan a troll. Oh my God.
Steve, you do a good troll. See what crush that of the pod.
God. But no, look, I mean, this is a guy who had hundreds of millions of dollars back in the two thousands.
He made a lot of money on Giuliani partners, all this national security stuff. He did.
He lost it all. He keeps losing everything all the time.
And it's weird that he can't see that his proximate relationship with Trump is what's causing him in a large measure to lose everything over and over again. He just doesn't get it again, not a dumb man, but really morally flawed and deeply fucked up and deeply unable to process just how bad it's going to continue to get for him if i could feel assured that shay and ruby would be getting their money i would buy the coffee i would buy the sedition coffee if i could if i knew it was going to go to them but i'm just not confident that that's going to happen same here and i think that he will do everything possible to play fuck around with them until you know he's trying to run out the clock on his life basically and you know for a guy who is a chronic cigar smoker and heavy heavy drinker at 80 he's lucky to still be around they're never going to get what they deserve out of this very you know terrible situation that he put them in that's macabre okay uh speaking of dark stuff a new ad donald trump bleeded out a new ad on his uh social media uh feed there on trash social yeah trash social we don't really know yet this might be a de santa situation where they're pretending like this was like some fan that made it but it turns out to be a little nazi like nate hockman on the staff that did it or something but what but what happened essentially is they put out this ad in bold headlines that include such things as 15 million illegal aliens deported so even the text was not particularly heartwarming but the subtext there were these faint headlines underneath that you had to like really kind of squint to look at one of them said quote industrial strength is increased by the creation of a unified reich this is imagining what would happen in a trump administration unified reich r-e-i-c-h you might be familiar with that term failed congressional candidate caroline levitt who's the spokesperson now wrote this was reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the word reich while the president was in court president was too busy in court defense rick what say you about this one listen trump may not be the brightest guy but he has a certain degree of like feral cunning he has a certain degree of like animal instinct for shit that is going to fire up his base and cause a public controversy he likes it and so i am not believing for a second the guy didn't see it i'm also not believing for a second that very smart people like chris lasavita and suzy wiles and i won't say jason miller is very bright enough.
Your former colleague. We're just playing all the hits from your past.
Yeah, right? We got to- Rick Wilson, this is your life. Chinless Jason Miller.
But none of these things happen around Trump by accident. None of this stuff happens around Trump by some sort of weird set of coincidences.
He loves this kind of thing. He loves this kind of play.
He loves this kind of like, I'm going to cause chaos and I'm going to cause, you know, I'm going to stir the shit. He loves to stir the shit and he's very good at it.
Let's be real. He's a talented guy for triggering a public disgust and it's, he's okay with that.
He likes that and know what uh the people that made this ad whoever the fuck they are and i think they're the same people that produce the uh god made trump ad which you know for the party of christian values the idolatry is uh is rocking through the ceiling on that one but as far from the end of this kind of shit we're going to see this year because trump gets it and look as i've said a million times and i'm not the only one i don't believe that donald trump is an actual nazi but i think the nazis are okay with him and he doesn't have any enemies to his right he's adopted the ban and philosophy and this is i think the important part of this is there's the trolling part there's the how the fuck did we get here that we have a Republican presidential nominee and former president tweeting Reich references, the serious part that I think somehow at times gets lost among our old friends. And when I say old friends, in this case, I'm not talking about Jason Miller.
I'm talking about the ones that know better with Trump. You know, you see this a lot, which is like, well, I can't be for Bideniden because like the people around him he's got these progressives around him and they're they're wearing keffias and they're pro hamas and they're far left and like that's not really the case like those people actually dislike joe biden and the true cases regardless of what you think about donald trump's nazi tendencies like the young people that are working on these campaigns now the early 20 somethings that have been attracted to Donald Trump's Nazi tendencies.
Like the young people that are working on these campaigns now, the early 20-somethings that have been attracted to Donald Trump and DeSantis for that matter, we've seen it time and again. And Tucker Carlson, we've seen it among all these controversies where it's like another 4chan account by a Tucker Carlson producer has been revealed with N-word all over it.
There is a big group of racist, anti-Semitic, young bros that work on these campaigns that are around Donald Trump. That's how he ends up having dinner with Nick Cuentos or lunch with Nick Cuentos.
Those are the people that Stephen Miller is going to hire if he gets in there. That is a serious and real threat that I think that sometimes the wall street journal crowd just doesn't take that

seriously and everyone really should i think that's right and again the gentry conservatives the wall street journal guys the national review guys they have this sort of moral escape clause it's like well i don't like trump or trump's tweets or trumpism or trump voters however the choice is either that or full communism.

I'm like, what?

Wait, what?

And the irony underneath it all is that these guys are now saying things like, well, we

have to vote for Trump.

Otherwise, you know, we're going to have authoritarian socialists, you know, debanking

us and deplatforming us all.

And yet the projection with these people is so astounding because it's exactly what they're proposing for everybody else. Project 2025 and all these things that we have been told over and over again, they want to do.
And that when Trump says, we're going to stop the poisoning of our blood and all these things, just add it all up. And you're like, wait a minute.
They literally always tell you what they're going to do they literally every time tell you exactly what they're going to do why would you not listen to them and and our friends in that gentry conservative world they have a deafness that they've set up a blindness they've set up for themselves so that they don't have to ever acknowledge that they're now party to some of the worst ideas and people in the world. Well put.
Speaking of the worst people in the world, we have a new segment on the podcast. You know our friend Johnny McEntee? Yes.
The deputy president? The gambler. Yeah, the deputy president.
The head of the right stuff. Two-fisted Johnny.
Yeah, we have a new segment called The Right Stuff. It's important to keep an eye on this.
I think in the day after, you know, some little Johnny McEntee acolyte posts, Trump will bring in the United Reich advertisement. We should listen a little bit more to what they have to say.
Let's listen to a couple of Johnny's recent posts. Here's first one i'm just gonna ask this one more time why do we only judge white people for owning slaves when every culture had them you know excuse me i've i've got pneumonia so i'm gonna hack and cough a little bit but johnny do you just want to go down to the dollar store and get yourself a white hood now? Because that's that language right there.
And, you know, again, this is that tendency inside the Bannonite tendency of no enemies to my right.

And whether or not Johnny McEntee is a deeply knowledgeable person about America's fraught history with, I don't know, chattel slavery, this is a real tell on what they believe.

It's a real tell on what's inside their hearts. These are not good people.
These are not people who want to make America great again. These are people who want to have a return, not to the 1950s, but the 1850s.
I know people think, oh, you're exaggerating, Wilson. I'm really not.
And remember, folks, this is the man, Johnny McEntee is the man who will be in charge of all presidential hiring for Donald Trump if he wins again. He will pick every single person in the administration.
And remember, they're telling you very clearly, they're going to burn down everyone in the government who isn't a Trump-supporting acolyte. They're going to burn down everybody who doesn't swear fealty and allegiance to Donald Trump.
So work that problem, folks, for a minute. And you're going to see that, again, they tell you everything they're going to do.
They always tell you everything they're going to do. These are the people, just to put a bell on it, that will staff.
He will choose the staffing. The people that want to do apologia for slavery and put the unified Reich in videos are the people that will staff the next administration.
No matter how much you hate the craziest leftist on GW's campus. Right.
That person is not going to be Joe Biden's head of personnel. Nope.
Joe Biden's staff is mostly DLC old guys from the early nineties, which is a problem in its own right, but it's a much better problem than having Johnny McIntyre around. Right.
You can critique the Biden administration in a thousand different ways. And I have, but if Joe Biden came up and said, you know, I'm going to name the head of the communist youth league to a senior position, people would lose their minds.
Fox would have a 24-7 crawl on the bottom of the communist youth league to a senior position people would lose their minds fox would have a 24 7th crawl on the bottom of their screen day seven communist takeover but these people around trump the johnny mcintees and the rest of them who are right now whether they're inside government or outside government in the trump era part two you know fascistogaloo, they will be the people like the Jack Posobiec of the world. And you will see people in senior government positions who you would not let run a goddamn waffle house.
I mean, folks, you should prepare yourselves for ideas like national security advisor, Seb Gorka. And the clownish stuff that you kind of want to laugh at.
I'm like, Oh, these are idiots. A lot of them are idiots, but you know what? A lot of them are, have a very intentional, dark, evil, directed vision of America that folks, you're not voting to build the wall.
You're voting to, to put in to power people who are not in any way what you think they are it is considered a lot of damage all right that was good enough we'll save johnny's other missives for a future episode that was the right stuff we got to talk about the courtroom yesterday so so they uh the fence rested as i said at the start today so we've seen the end of their case if you want to call it that if you will you have the last witness that they called on the stand speaking of idiots was this guy bob costello they had to clear the courtroom yesterday for this clown cheers judge mershon i'm putting you on notice that your conduct is contemptuous. If you try to stare me down one more time, I will remove you from the stand.
These are the types of, you know, Goombas that the Trump defense is putting forward. Costello, for his little background, for people who don't know, the reason why he's on the stand is that he tried to be the mediator between Cohen and Trump and Giuliani, our friend Rudy, in the aftermath of all the Stormy Daniels stuff in 2018.
You'll be surprised, Rick, to hear that that relationship broke down when Giuliani stopped paying him. I am stunned by that news, Tim.
I can't imagine a world where sometimes you need a criminal lawyer. So anyway, that was the star witness.
His claim was that Cohen told him once that Trump never knew about that payment to stormy daniels so that's their main pushback he did not work out for the defense i think as the defense expected he would work out for them that was a shit show that showed me that the trump defense team took the hook that the prosecution kind of wanted them to take they thought oh we can discredit stormy Daniels. We can discredit Michael Cohen.
But the real guts of the case, Tim, are the receipts. I mean, a lot of this case is going to be based on the fact, here's the check that Trump wrote that Weisselberg approved that he gave to Cohen to pay off this thing that we had an agreement on.
There's a paper trail here. There's a line here of transactions and orders and communications that i think the prosecution has proved beyond a reasonable doubt and costello up there was kind of a long bomb play to try to discredit cohen but for all michael's flaws he is a guy who ended up verifying what the documents, the paper trail said, and the paper trail verified what Cohen said.
And, you know, Michael is a passionate guy. He is, he has been through a lot.
I like Michael. He's a weird cat, but I like him.
He's just so, so for me. Yeah, I got it.
I got you. No, I got you.
But I like the fact that he's a person who actually was so deep inside that world and got so fucked by it and he's a good exemplar for people to understand that no matter what you are with trump no matter how close inside the family you think you are no matter how much you've done for him in the end he will always screw you over yes and and And that, as an exemplar, I think he's really valuable in the sort of political culture because right now, people like Susie Wiles and people like Chris Lasavita, they really

believe, like, I'm the one who solved the problem.

I've broken the code.

I'm going to be okay in the end.

Nobody's ever okay in the end with Donald.

Have you talked to Susie?

Not recently. It's been a long minute.
We had one email. Like after DeSantis fired her.
So it's been a long time, you know. Yeah.
For people who don't know, Susie Wiles is the Trump, is her title campaign manager. A leading campaign role.
Long time Florida political operative. Was my boss many, many years ago.
Very smart. On the John Huntsman campaign is what I was going to say.
So like this whole like her going MAGA. maga i'm like oh no the john huntsman campaign didn't turn well but well that's a whole another long story but the point is was that she was i didn't see any of this you know we were like the squishy mods so it's been a journey i've never read suzy in all the years i've known her as some sort of like right winger she's us she's a bushy she's you know establishment republican type who for all her reasons and then look part of this is ronda santis and there's a long the michael cruz article folks if you haven't read it about suzy wiles it's a great piece of anthropology of you know she felt screwed over by de santis who at the time represented the peak of the surviving establishment tendency in the party in a weird way.
And then, you know, when she got thrown over the edge, she went to Trump, which, you know, he has a very weird magnetic kind of power with people who have grievances. And that ranges from serious people like a Susie Wiles down to,

you know,

the guy who thinks the Mexicans took his job.

It's just terrible superpower.

It's good insight though.

These people do think that they can fix them or they can be the one to

sand the edges and nobody can be that person.

Speaking of Trump crimes,

there's some news about the social media company.

What'd you call it?

Trash social?

Trash social.

Yeah. So I don't know if you saw this uh they they'd uh report their q1 revenue yesterday oh i did yeah so total revenue for the company for uh the first quarter seven hundred seventy thousand dollars not bad like not bad if you're running like a local mom and pop shop or something yeah like pretty good for a quarter here's a problem net loss for this quarter 327.6 million like what in the fuck is happening rick like this is a there's a crime happening there's got to be some skim going on here there's got to be some sort of fraud here as someone said to me this morning jokingly this is like get your advisors at bear stearns to help you out on this one.
These fundamentals are amazing. What the hell? How do you lose $327 million? Now, I think what they've done, and I don't know this for sure, I think what they're doing is trying to write off their cost of IPO, cost of going public, all that stuff, into this quarter.
But this makes no sense. It's a meme stock completely completely there's no real fundamentals here all the market valuation formulas are out the window now the idea that it's still trading at a six billion dollar market cap is because of you know the same suckers who were buying game stop two years ago or maybe better the same suckers that were buying nfts gamestop still hanging

around but all those nft all the based monkeys the based monkeys right the clowns and the monkey all that stuff right board ape all that yeah all the nft market is was a classic ponzi scheme this is a classic ponzi scheme there's no value there this company is only there because the name Trump is attached to it and it is being juiced by people who, you know, I've made a Sopranos

representation. no value there this company is only there because the name trump is attached to it and it is being juiced by people who you know i made a sopranos reference on twitter this morning this is the like the webistics of myspace stocks it's utterly valueless and yet somehow the alternate reality bubble around trump still has enough these people like there's nothing trump does that doesn't make money oh really look and the first auditors were already charged by the sec they have new auditors now like i don't exactly know what the crime is i'm not a financial crimes expert but it doesn't take one to know that you know just you only have to watch one csi miami episode to know that there's a there's criming happening here and and like more people to go down around them and this is the's just like, again, back to these so-called credible people that want to stay around.

If you give any of them truth serum, they all would say it.

Of course.

I mean, like everybody knows this is a fraud.

There's nobody that's smart enough to read the Wall Street Journal.

And, you know, it could be an investor themselves who looks at this and says,

this is something other than a total fraud by a career huckster.

Anybody who woke up this morning and said, wow, they7 million dollars and made 770 000 the ebita formula of of earnings and valuation the t doesn't stand for trump folks this is disconnected from reality if you're old enough to remember pets.com this makes pets.com look like ibm. It's insanity.
I'm glad that EBITDA has finally made it into the Borg podcast transcript history. A few more going down our running list of the fucking deplorables and the dumbassery today.
Let's just go to Florida for a second. Here's a Florida twofer.
You're two Florida men. Let's listen to wee little Marco from the weekend.
Will you accept the election results of 2024 no matter what happens senator no matter what happens no if it's an unfair election i think it's going to be contested by each side senator no matter who wins i think you're asking the wrong person the democrats are the ones that have opposed every republican victory since 2000 every single one it's hillary no democrat has refused to concede hillary clinton coned. Senator, will you accept the election? Hillary Clinton said the election was stolen from her and that Trump was illegitimate.
Kamala Harris agreed. We have Democrats now.
Okay, I can't listen to any more of that. He's such a little bitch.
He's such a squirmy little bitch. You and I have both known Marco long enough to know that this person is a guy, the shit level of marco rubio is a historic artifact of american politics he will end up not being the character he thought he was going to play in the world he thought he was going to be this transformative figure who was going to bring a new youthful vitality to conservatism and it's turned out that marco is going to be i mean when the movie is cast about trump he'll be like minion number seven on the catwalk unless he gets vp do you think he really wants it do you think he really wants it no he wants to be secretary of state yeah that's what he's told people that i still know around him that he wants to be secretary of state that he can convince trump he's an absolute loyalist and that he will represent trump faithfully he'll be a great secretary of state as donald trump lets china take taiwan that'll be a great part of his legacy right it's going to be fantastic as as russian tanks roll into the baltics and and marco says well america's interests are not really served by protecting nato and europe our allies are they're not paying their fair.
I have a sense of pity for Marco because he is a very lost guy. Two years ago, he was desperately trying to get a job as a university president anywhere in Florida.
He would have taken like Palatka junior college to get out of DC. But now that he sort of senses, maybe Trump's got a chance to win.
He's playing the game again of, Oh, it could be some curious day. That's me of oh rick you've gone soft i have no pity for marco i just want to say it's fine it's fine we all do it's like it's like john bainer soon you're gonna be crying on every podcast you know eventually if you just you know men we just get into our feelings as as we age it's okay uh but i'm also softening but i'm still sharp enough to to not have pity for Marco.
I wish I had feelings. Since I had you on, I just felt like I wanted a DeSantis update.
What's happening in the Freedom State? Because you're living it. I just see it in the periphery.
It comes across my Twitter feed. DeSantis is having a press conference with some dead cows.
And he's like, here in the Freedom State, we're going to ban any innovative attempts to create lab grown meat total ban on that that's happening here in florida what any other updates from our little dictator so the biggest update from from we ronnie yeah so first off he's tried to keep his core team together of people who are going to run his 2028 presidential campaign, which is already well understeen. They're running Casey for governor.
That's going to be a fun primary against Matt Gaetz and Byron Donald. You really think so? I just, I can't get, God is not that good to me that we could get a Casey DeSantis, Matt Gaetz, Byron Donald's primary.
Young Matthew understands that Washington is not going to be any fun for for him over time he's exceeded the limits of trolling as a as a hobby there do you have room in your guest house because i might have to move to tallahassee for that primary at least for a couple months i have a compound as you may know so you're welcome anytime but the dumbest thing he's done and it's caused a huge rift the party, is he has gone all in on opposition to the abortion amendment and on the marijuana decriminalization amendment.

Those are going to be the hill he decides to die on in Florida. and the democratic party of florida has been so hapless snake bit fucked up broken bad at its work

for so long that while it's still very, very difficult for them to win Florida, we are now in a situation where DeSantis decided to do this on an amendment that has like 60% Republican support and 97% Democratic support. DeSantis deciding to burn it down and spend a ton of money to fight this abortion amendment in Florida.
It's the greatest gift he could have given the Democrats. It's going to make Trump spend money in Florida in some of these areas.
It hasn't put the state in play for Biden in a fundamental way, but it is such a dumb move. The best strategy was to ignore it.
Let it go. What about the Senate race? Is there any hope in the Senate race or not really? Yeah.
Debbie Muscarl Powell is a Democratic candidate against Rick Scott. She was a refugee from Ecuador.
She is a fluent Spanish speaker. She's a person who fled authoritarianism.
And so she can neutralize some of that Hispanic South Florida thing of, you know, soy comunista. Every time someone mentions a Democrat's name, it's a lot harder to play that game with her.
And I will say this, Rick Scott is, he's a person who proves that if you put enough thrust behind anything, you can shoot it into orbit. And Rick Scott has spent, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of his his stolen Medicare bounty getting himself elected repeatedly in the state of Florida.
He's not quite the same guy he was. He seems a little bit off kilter.
And some people that are close to him are like, he's getting older. He's not, he doesn't have the same sort of stupid confidence he once had.
It's a tough race. She's got a chance to try to engage with him on a level that isn't Charlie Crist, on a level that isn't the sort of generic Democrat.
But she's got to do a lot of things right. But I do think she's an impressive candidate, just a hard hill to climb.
It's like Florida and Texas are tough states for our Democratic friends, and they're going to remain so for a long time. One more Florida item.
I have to shout out JVL's triad yesterday if people didn't read it. It was about the killing of Roger Forston.
And the TLDR on this story is Roger Forston was a black 23-year-old airman. He was at his home in Fort Walton Beach.
Somebody else in the apartment complex, I guess, calls the county sheriff's department. He's just sitting up there on a FaceTime with his girlfriend.
The comes to the door bangs in the door he's holding his gun legal firearm constitutional carry in florida and uh opens the door and the cop shoots him and he dies the funeral was this past weekend yep the interesting thing about the jvl piece is and because it ties the texas thing we've been talking about and i know you're a second amendment guy just like, it's almost too obvious to say, but it merits saying just like the hypocrisy and the latent racism of like the NRA in this movement. Trump speaks at the NRA this weekend, and there is no recognition of either Forreston or of the protester who was shot in Texas, you know, and killed.
And these guys were both carrying firearms legally and they get shot because but one by the state one by a vigilante mega freak and it's like there's no i mean it's a it's a pretty dark place here where there's no acknowledgement really of these victims there is a cop culture inside the republican party now that will defend this officer even though the body camera camera footage shows that Roger Fortson was dead on the floor before the officer started yelling, drop your weapon, drop your weapon. And without a body camera, it would have been described in that world as, you know, black guy attacks cop.
And I'm sorry, if we're going to honor the second amendment has to apply to everybody regardless

of skin color look we got swatted at my house a few months ago and all of our cameras and alarms start going off and my natural instinct because we've had a lot of problems obviously my natural instinct is to press the buttons pop the gun out and walk out I didn't do it because I looked on the cameras and I saw a line of police cars parked up at the top of my driveway.

Now, if I'd been a young black guy, chances are that could have gone a lot differently. And this idea that if you're going to have states that have constitutional carry, if you're going to have states that have the ability of citizens to exercise that that right then the police have to start treating it like it is something that the shoot first stuff cannot continue it is not a world where we can excuse the behavior of some cops when they do things like this and where we don't reconcile you know that there are trade-offs in that that risk profile especially if you're african-american in this country that you know we have not addressed as a society well go read jvl's piece if you hadn't roger forreston yeah it's terrific it's just yeah it's unbelievable okay i want to make us feel like republicans again for one second and then i want to talk a little strategy with you before we let you go the un yesterday did you see this i did not this is an example of

non-mag dumbassery non-maga category despite earning the nickname the butcher of tehran for presiding over iran's human rights abuses the united nations on monday held a moment of silence for abraham rayisi after the iranian president died in a helicopter crash they all stood Security Council

silence, including our member.

I saw it because it was

shared by press tv the iranian state tv these guys can't get out of their fucking way or maybe they actually just are sympathetic with the iranians but it makes it hard to take the moral high ground on things you know like what's happening in gaza when you're you know giving a moment of silence to the butcher of tehran when Raisi was killed in this helicopter crash, I got a little bit of static from it, but not much.

But I said, listen, I didn't want Raisi to die in a helicopter crash.

I wanted him to be beaten to death by Iranian pissed off women because he is systematically

engaged in the abuse and oppression of women in Iran at a level that Americans do not realize.

And the UN, of course, has put Iran on the UN Human Rights Commission.

What?

That's like putting Donald Trump in charge of the treasury of a Boy Scout troop.

He's going to rape and pillage.

He's going to steal the money.

The Iranian regime, this is a regime that kills unveiled women on the street,

that beats women to death for dancing on videos, that hangs gays from cranes. These are not good people.
There's nothing good about the government and the leadership of this medieval theocracy in Iran. It is a universally corrosive force in the world.
We should not be acknowledging and saying, oh, poor, poor, pitiful him. Listen, I'm a pilot and flying your helicopter in bad weather is a bad idea.
But in this case, I salute the pilot's judgment because it took some very, very bad people off the board. I have zero fucks about the Iranian leadership.
Just none. I'm snapping.
I come in a New York Times staff meeting for that. um uh that's good okay i want to get a little campaign shout talk before i let you go yeah yeah i'm worried i don't know where you're at on the on the nervousness versus confidence uh scale about this election i know one thing though we are both aligned at the scale of the threat here and the most important thing in front of us is taking out this fucking burnt sienna bastard yep i don't want to get into poll talk and cross tabs diving and all that like it's just reality like it's not one poll it's like in pennsylvania in georgia and arizona consistently every poll joe biden is losing he's got to win one of those so my question for you is thoughts on the state of play and if you know uncle jo, Uncle Joe, President Joe called you tomorrow, what advice do you have for where we're at right now? I think Pennsylvania is expensive, but it's the easiest one to change the water temperature.
I think Arizona has prospects at Lincoln. We're heavily advertising in Maricopa now, specifically targeting pro-choice Republican women.
That's where the fish are. Fish where the fish are.
Like everybody else, we're looking at four states where there's a window of opportunity. And it's what everybody else is doing, too, for a large part.
Because, again, that's where the swing votes still remain in the world. It's in the Wow counties in Wisconsin.
It's in Oakland and Macomb in Michigan. It it's in bucks and a couple of other counties in pennsylvania trump has benefited for the last several months from a fairly obvious and fairly consistent framing by the national media you know trump may be a an incipient fascist and a criminal but biden is very, very old.
How will Biden's age play in Trump's criminal trial? And I get it. I get that the Times is butthurt that Joe Biden won't give them a private interview, and so they're taking it out on him.
I get that there is a novelty-seeking behavior in the media to make this into a bigger drama, a worse race. This race not be close this should be a goddamn blowout and yet here we are where trump has a meaningful chance to win this election and there is a sense among the moneyed class in the country that it's time to pony up for donald and they're giving him money there's a sense in the media class that the race is over and so they're framing it and covering it that way and i think what it comes down to tim and i've been thinking about this i've been writing something about this last couple hours before i came on with you there's a sense in the pro democracy movement that they're playing offense and we're playing defense and the american people traditionally want to see some fight in the dog when you got a dog fight going on and i think that there's a sense of like we're warning them about the apocalypse trump is like fuck it we're having a bonfire let's do it let's get lit and have a bonfire and that idea is kind of appealing to a lot of people and it's profoundly dangerous and the stakes could not be higher i I said to a times person recently, I'm like, who was defending to me their coverage of Biden.
Like we're reflecting with the, what a lot of Americans want to read about. And I said, you know, the minute he's in office, you guys are first up against the fucking wall.
You guys are going to be day one targeted in ways that right now you think you're being even-handed and fair these people are not they're not trying to go in and pass just a tax bill they're trying to fundamentally recalibrate what america is including things that will reduce or eliminate the freedom of the press, including things that are incomprehensible

to people who live in a comfortable bubble in Manhattan or in McLean, Virginia, who say,

oh, you know, it'll be crazy, but it won't be that crazy.

What could go wrong?

Everything, folks, could go wrong.

And that's where the stakes are where they are.

I think we have always underappreciated the risk that Trump poses to the future of the country. Maybe not you and me, but you know.
Yeah, no, no, no. A lot of people have for sure.
And I mean, couldn't be more aligned on it. Last thing, just one more strategic question for you, because it's something I've been noodling on.
I'm interested in your take. I'm interested to hear you guys are doing abortion ads.
That makes sense. Pro-choice women.
The group I'm worried about is people in the Democratic coalition who are less engaged, who inflation has hit hard because maybe their salaries haven't gone up as much as, right? And so the economic message, I keep vastling back and forth between whether Joe Biden should be going out there and doing morning in America again, and hell yeah, America's got the best, or whether he needs to be doing the man, we're working on that, know more nuanced more empathetic message what would your advice be on that I think the latter because remember one of the reasons Barack Obama I think did very well in 2011 and 12 was that we were coming out of the 2008 crisis and he always framed it like we're getting better but we're not there yet we're doing better but we got a way to go. I think Biden has to frame that because the economic pessimism in this country now, as a lot of people have pointed out, is now inversely driven.
It used to be that your feelings about the economy informed your feelings about politics. Now, your feelings about politics inform your feeling about the economy.
And so because of the softness in Biden's base, in the center of his base, and the more moderate Democrats who are working people, who are paying more for gas, who are getting hit with inflation, it's important not to pretend that those people are having a great life right now. They're having a tough time.
This is not easy for them right now. And so I think that he has to continue to be cautious about it he's going to continue to be like we're making progress we're doing good work we're helping you but it's not sunshine and roses and puppies and kittens right now it's still a long road we're going to see um in the next week trump's going to be found guilty i think and i think we're're going to see a group of people that have embarrassed me as a former Republican watching these idiots wear the

same outfit, wear the white shirt, red tie, blue suit uniform, going to New York to crawl across

broken glass to kiss Trump's ass. I think we're going to see that going into overdrive.
These

people are, the cultishness of it and the political ambition of it is staggering. I find it

Thank you. to see that going into overdrive these people are the cultishness of it and the political ambition of it is staggering i find it so offensive that people who are supposedly representing their states and their districts don't give a shit about what they do for their people they care about trump that's it the fucking outfits the little mini trumps it's so fucking outfits why don't you guys all just wear fucking jumpsuits now you know with logos on them make wonder bread so weird rick wilson co-founder of the lincoln project host of the enemies list he writes rick wilson's sub stack maybe my future landlord depending on how things go thanks thanks for coming back to the bulwark podcast we'll see you again soon brother anytime tim thanks for having me all.
We're going to be back here tomorrow with an update from the trial and a special guest.

We'll see you all then.

Peace. I was up in the morning with the TV blurring, brushed my teeth, sitting, watching the news.

All the beaches were closed.

The ocean was a red sea, but there was no one they departed into.

There was no fresh salad cause there's hypers in the cab.

Staten Island disappeared at noon.

And they say the Midwest is in great distress. And NASA blew up the moon.
The ozone layer has no ozone anymore. And you're gonna leave me for the guy next door.
I'm sick of you. I'm sick of you.
They arrested the mayor for an illegal favor. Sold the Empire State to Japan.
Oliver North married William C. Corden gave birth to a little Tehran And the Ayatollah board a nuclear warship, if he dies he wants to go out in style And there's nothing to eat that don't carry the stink of some human ways dumped in the Nile Well one thing is certainly true, no one here knows what to do and I'm sick of you.
I'm sick of you. The radio said there were 400 dead in some small town in Arkansas.
Some whacked out trucker drove into a nuclear reactor, killed everybody he saw. Now he's on Morton Downey and he's glowing and shiny.
Doctors say this is a medical advance. They say the bad makes the good and there's something to be learned in every human experience.
Well I know one thing that really is true. This here's a zoo and the keeper ain't you and I'm sick of it.
I'm sick of you. They ordained the Trumps and then he got the mumps.

He died being treated at Mount Sinai.

And my best friend Bill died from a poison pill.

Some wire doctor prescribed for stress.

My arms and legs have shrunk.

The food all has lumps.

They discovered some animal no one's ever seen.

It was an inside trader eating a rubber tire.

After running over Rudy Giuliani.

They say the president's dead.

No one can find his head.

He's been missing now for weeks. But no one noticed it.
He, it seems so fit. I'm sick of it.
I'm sick of you. I'm so sick of you.
Bye, bye, bye. The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with... Bye, bye, bye.

The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.