Jessica Tarlov: Republicans Are in the Barrel

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Speaker 11 Hello, and welcome to the Bowler Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
Delighted to welcome today, am I Tim Miller or am I Jesse Waters? I don't know. We'll see.

Speaker 11 She's the co-host on the five on Fox News. She's the co-host also of Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway.
She's the only woman in America who was on stage at the Fox Patriot Awards yesterday.

Speaker 11 I saw that on my TV. And will be on stage today at Pod Save America's Crooked Con.

Speaker 11 That's code switching. That's ability.

Speaker 15 It's a crossover for the ages.

Speaker 11 Jessica Tarloff, how you doing?

Speaker 15 I'm great. It's so nice to be here and meet you in person.

Speaker 11 Welcome to the Bullworld Studios. It's very cool.
Have we not met in person? Is this it? This is it. Is it in-person meeting? I feel like we have.
Spiritually, we've met.

Speaker 15 Yeah, we've known each other a long time, if you go that way. But no, first in person.

Speaker 15 And it's a weird, you know, it's like a strange TV thing that everyone kind of feels like they know each other a bit.

Speaker 15 Like I was just in the elevator with Ali Vitali from MSNBC, and she's like, I love your code. And I'm like, are we just girlfriends? Because I've been watching you and you watching.

Speaker 11 And you're tall. You are pretty tall.

Speaker 15 So are you. I didn't know what size you were going to be.
I'm nervous about that at Crooked Con because I'm a tall lass. You are.
And I feel like everybody is going to be

Speaker 11 love it as kind of a weenie lab. Yeah.

Speaker 15 Hassan Piker is huge.

Speaker 11 Is he? Okay, we'll see what it is.

Speaker 11 We are on a panel with the soundpiker, another person I've never met. Do you have any thoughts about that? Yeah, I have thoughts

Speaker 11 about that. We'll see how it goes, and then we'll share the thoughts with you guys on Monday.
Okay, I want to start with the most important news of the day,

Speaker 11 which is justice has finally been served in America. And I'm so happy for the sandwich man.
I was disappointed I was not able to come here yesterday a little early.

Speaker 15 But you wanted to be at the courthouse.

Speaker 11 I wanted to be out there out there with, you know, throwing flowers at them. I want to just do a little flashback from two and a half months ago.
Your former colleague, Judge Shanine Tierney.

Speaker 11 Get it, girl. Judge,

Speaker 11 U.S. Attorney Box of Wine was announcing.
Sorry. She was announcing this indictment, and I want to listen to it.

Speaker 16 And then he took a Subway sandwich about this big and took it and threw it at the officer. He thought it was funny.

Speaker 16 Well, he doesn't think it's funny today because we charge him with a felony, assault on a police officer. and we're going to back the police to the hilt.

Speaker 16 So there, stick your Subway sandwich somewhere else.

Speaker 15 She's such a cutie.

Speaker 11 So there.

Speaker 11 I think we are laughing. I'm laughing.

Speaker 11 Are you laughing? I'm laughing. I speak for myself.

Speaker 15 I actually,

Speaker 15 and she released a statement this morning saying, you know, it didn't go the way that we thought. shouldn't be able to assault an officer.

Speaker 15 And obviously listening to someone argue that who's scared of like bodily harm, he's wearing wearing a bulletproof vest and a guy in a pink shirt is throwing a sandwich though i know there was a lot of mustard which was a point of contention

Speaker 11 that feels like a lie i feel like that was a lie under oath so the mustard part i do i think if there was a crime committed here it might have been the uh prosecution's lead witness lying under oath because he said that he got he could smell the mustard and onions on himself but we can see in the video yes that the sandwich is still wrapped on the ground it is a packaged item so how did the mustard get through well i think this is what the jury took into account when they were evaluating this.

Speaker 15 But, you know, I think that there are a few good things. Well, one, that Sandwich Man walks free and talks about how important jury trials are.

Speaker 11 Yes.

Speaker 15 And they are

Speaker 15 oftentimes, you know, cited as the way that you push back against creeping authoritarianism. And I think that that is a good lesson for all of us.

Speaker 15 And you see that with people who have been unfairly prosecuted. Like Comey says, let's go.

Speaker 15 Right? Like, sit me in front of them. Tish James is like, I'm not afraid of this John Bolton maybe a little bit more afraid

Speaker 15 of what's to come but

Speaker 15 I think that airing this stuff out publicly is so important in this moment there's too much that's going on behind closed doors with this government and I feel much safer about the fact that we can you know see a jury result you can have people talking about it in front of cameras and

Speaker 15 that makes me feel better about all of it and that he's free to go practice at Cravath or wherever he's off to.

Speaker 11 I'm with you. It's all very positive.
I mean, it was

Speaker 11 a little bit, it's funny. And it also is a little bit absurd.
And he, it was, so she, in that announcement, Ms. Pierrow announced a felony prosecution.
They didn't get that. No.

Speaker 11 They had a downgrade to a misdemeanor. They still took it to the jury rather than just like cutting a deal with him.
I don't know about you. Were you a troublemaker in high school?

Speaker 15 I mean,

Speaker 11 no. I was a little bit of a troublemaker.
So I had a couple of misdemeanor charges against. Like, actually, not from like your mom.
No, like, really. Oh, no.
I thought you meant like.

Speaker 11 Drinking under, you know, minor in possession of alcohol. Okay.
You know, not showing up to court when I should have showed up for a traffic ticket. Okay, watch out.

Speaker 11 I mean, I was practically trendy-aragua. But, you know, I had a couple minor,

Speaker 11 none of them

Speaker 11 went to a jury trial. You know,

Speaker 11 it felt a little bit, you know, political, a little onerous to try to take this to a jury trial.

Speaker 15 Well, totally, but they had invested also in the El Chapo-like video about what had happened.

Speaker 11 Oh,

Speaker 11 I forgot about that.

Speaker 15 Oh, it was like an OG special. I feel like for this administration, before we got like Christy Noam on top of buildings like in Chicago and Portland, looking down at the masses of Big Bird and,

Speaker 15 you know, Pikachu or whatever.

Speaker 15 But they were amped about this. And it feels so long ago.
That's the thing. They have totally warped my perception of time.

Speaker 15 This was two and a half months ago or whatever. But the beginning of the National Guard going into

Speaker 15 cities is actually a very seminal moment. And D.C.
being the smartest place to start since Trump is actually in charge of it.

Speaker 15 And Muriel Bowser had a different take than the other blue city mayors about this. But

Speaker 15 I think it's a good line in the sand that we have this and now he can be.

Speaker 11 I think it's kind of petered out the net the National Guard troops. Why do you think that is? Like, you just remember the intensity of the feeling around it back then.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 And I think maybe part of it is just that it's like there was a lot more bluster than there has been actual

Speaker 11 action from the National Guard troop side of this, but we'll get to the immigration stuff later, which is totally different animals. Yeah.
But like, it's mostly been guys in fatigues doing selfies.

Speaker 11 You know, like that's really, that's been the most of it. There have been a few other things, but like that's been the gist.

Speaker 15 In D.C. or in all the cities that they've fanned out.

Speaker 11 I mean, definitely in D.C.

Speaker 15 Yeah. L.A.
was like that because they ended up only at the one building. Yeah.

Speaker 11 like they were doing perimeter. Yeah.
I mean, I went to watch

Speaker 11 last time I was in town, you know, I'm away from the child. You know this.
I know you don't get to see a movie anymore with small children. You only get to see children's movies.

Speaker 11 So I was away and I had a little free time. I went to see one battle after another.
Oh, how did you feel? I loved it.

Speaker 11 That I walked out. I went to the one down in Chinatown here in DC.
I walked out and it's like, you know, there are four dudes in fatigue standing outside the metro getting yelled at by a crazy guy.

Speaker 11 And like, then other people are videoing it. And it just, it didn't.

Speaker 11 It hit the way that

Speaker 15 they expect it to. But I think that it's all kind of looping back to this idea of things being out in the open.
Like it's so good for it to be on display this way.

Speaker 15 And there's been so much activity on the part of the regular populace in filming things and posting things and commenting on it at a moment where the administration is making you more and more afraid of what's going to happen to you if you do those things.

Speaker 15 And, you know, if we had had this conversation last week, I think we would have had a totally different mentality about the trajectory of the country and what's going to happen in the midterms or how people are feeling.

Speaker 15 But, you know, no King's Day, you know, I'm not trying to get like so amped up about it, but, you know, you have 7 million people turning out.

Speaker 15 And then you see this election where a lot of people turned out and basically said varying degrees of I'm not into what's going on in this country. And that makes you

Speaker 15 feel,

Speaker 15 I don't want to say good, I'm not like that happy about things, but we're moving.

Speaker 15 I feel like we're all speaking a similar language now. And for a long time, I did not feel that way.

Speaker 11 And they seem weak also. So let's go to the election results.
And they do seem weak. I was watching you guys yesterday on the five.
And,

Speaker 11 you know, the

Speaker 11 right-wing kind of processing of this, there's a lot of cope happening. I was listening to them, and there's a lot of feeling of like, well,

Speaker 11 this was on home turf, which is true. Like, it was in states that Kamala won, you know, that the Democrats rule.
You hear that a lot.

Speaker 11 You hear a lot of whole kind of like, oh, well, Zo run is going to be a political cudgel for us, and we'll be able to use him

Speaker 11 that you hear on that on the right. You know, but there wasn't a lot of like, man, we're losing our grip on things of power.
I don't, I don't know. Do you feel that?

Speaker 15 I totally feel that. And I believe I said it before I was drowned out.

Speaker 15 But I don't think that the argument holds actually that this is blue turf because the lesson of the 2024 election was that what was solid blue turf is not so solid.

Speaker 15 And in Virginia, there's literally a Republican governor.

Speaker 11 Yeah. And New Jersey was the place, I think, was the state that had the biggest move.

Speaker 15 Number two. I think New York was number one.

Speaker 11 It was a second shift towards Trump from 2020 to 24.

Speaker 15 And the five counties that he picked up that a Republican had never won before went back and went back hard towards Mikey Sherrill.

Speaker 15 And a lot of serious people were saying that Jack Cheddarilli could win this, right? If there was a last-minute push and there was polling that had them within, you know, three to five points.

Speaker 15 And you don't know who, if it's a big turnout day, you know, for your side, what could happen there. So I don't want to reduce the impact of it because also the wins were so big.

Speaker 15 Like 15 points is the biggest margin in Virginia since JFK.

Speaker 11 Like, that's a big deal.

Speaker 15 And Mikey Sherrill at 13 points, no one had that. So I'm into it, but, you know, it's boring for

Speaker 15 my colleagues, certainly, but that's my specialty. I like to bore everyone for 90 seconds at a clip.

Speaker 15 Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Texas, these aren't blue places.

Speaker 11 What was the mood over there? Can we do any shot in Freudo?

Speaker 11 Were people kind of sad on Wednesday?

Speaker 15 No, I wasn't.

Speaker 11 Was Greg Gutfeld moping? Can you give me something? No,

Speaker 11 I can give you nothing.

Speaker 11 I mean, you saw what it was, and I think that there is a strong scope, which is interesting, kind of in a way in that, like, it didn't feel like they're like, oh, this was a big rebuke and we need to change things.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 15 Even though Trump's first comments were that, you know, when he's talking to the press before he had the private meeting with the GOP senators, where he said, when the cameras aren't here, I would like to talk about the shutdown, which I think is really hurting us.

Speaker 15 And until last night, he thought affordability was something he had to talk about, but now it's no more affordability. So I don't know how that's going to work out for him.

Speaker 15 But, you know, I'm struck by the difference in response to the 2024 election for people who vote like we do versus people who are supporting Trump because I think, and Grant was a bigger election, it's a presidency and, you know, a lot more results from all over the country.

Speaker 15 But I thought everyone was really introspective and thoughtful about it. I didn't see anyone get on TV and be defiant like, no, Kamala had it right and Biden had it right.

Speaker 15 You know, everyone said this is a debacle.

Speaker 11 Some people have been saying it a long time ago. I heard some, I did hear some leftists leftists talking about the Zoron victory, like it was the biggest victory in history.

Speaker 11 As a New Yorker, it is killing me.

Speaker 11 But it was good. It was a good victory.
A lot of votes.

Speaker 11 I don't turn around. A lot of votes in total.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of votes.

Speaker 15 But,

Speaker 15 you know,

Speaker 11 you got a lot of votes. You got the

Speaker 11 votes since Lindsay, I think, Mayor Lindsay. I think so.
So that's good. That's good.

Speaker 15 There were a lot of votes on the other side. Yeah, right.
Too.

Speaker 15 So, you know, if Sleewa had dropped out and if Cuomo had campaigned or been less repulsive, frankly, I don't think it would have gone that way.

Speaker 15 Or if you had had a normie Democrat get in, or a technocrat type, like a Jamie Dimon or a Jessica Tisch, I think it would have been different.

Speaker 15 But I don't want to minimize it because I think it's exciting to have young people also

Speaker 15 because we're about to go do a panel on how to be cool again.

Speaker 11 That's easy for me. Is it? Honestly, natural straight panic.
You're in a panic? Is that why you're kind of in the lace?

Speaker 11 The black lace. You're feeling like this.

Speaker 15 No, I don't know.

Speaker 11 I'm like a 41-year-old mom.

Speaker 11 You're cool. I think you're cool.

Speaker 15 Yeah, but you're like a dad in your 40s.

Speaker 11 Yeah, but you know, I had a couple of misdemeanors in high school. That's true.
I had nothing like that. I grew up in New Orleans.

Speaker 15 But yes, I was nervous about, you know, how, well, you're wearing, no, they're like in between, but like millennial women only wear like the really tapered jeans, and young people don't like that.

Speaker 15 So I was like, I can't do that. So I wore like baggier leather pants.
Anyway, I'm going to do that.

Speaker 11 I'm going to take my fucking skinny jeans off of my, pry them out of my cold, dead legs. Okay, I'm not going to do the big big pants that the kids wear now i'm not gonna do no it doesn't have to be

Speaker 11 yeah the boys do the boys are all wearing huge pants now tiny like when we were in high school yeah tiny shirts well no because in high school we did big shirts big pants now they're wearing tiny shirts big pants i had baby tees that i was way too chonky for and like a seat belt belt from urban outfitters um everything was very chic you were too chonky like i don't know i find that hardy wise not like i need to be sent away somewhere it was not you know it was like that in-between phase.

Speaker 15 I mean, you have a daughter, like where your mom's like talking to you about a bra, but you're like a little bit unsure.

Speaker 11 I don't know. You are wearing deodorant.
Yeah, this is this, I'll experience all this for the first time in five years.

Speaker 11 I had all brothers went to an all-boys school, so I know nothing about what you're talking about. It's

Speaker 11 going to be dramatic.

Speaker 15 Yeah, you should text me.

Speaker 15 But yes, it is a bit. Do you think this is like too dramatic for the morning?

Speaker 15 Thank you. The election results are really good.
And

Speaker 15 they're coping really hard,

Speaker 15 at least publicly, but I think behind closed doors that people know what's going on.

Speaker 11 If they're ever sad,

Speaker 11 I just want like a little video. Just like one little sneaky video of them being sad.
That's okay. It's fine.
They're mean to you. So it's okay to do.
Just one, just for fun.

Speaker 11 They like Schotten Freuda. They posted one of their coping things was the White House posted a thing about people crying from last year's election.
They posted like random TikTok girls crying.

Speaker 11 Do you see this? No. Yeah, the White House, our government, the federal government's official page posted like a sizzle reel

Speaker 11 of,

Speaker 11 you know, 20-year-old woke girls being sad.

Speaker 11 And so if they can do that, you can sneak us a little bit of, anyway, that's just something. I'll work on it.

Speaker 11 Everybody, I'm in Washington here on Friday for Crooked Con. Shout out to our boys over Crooked Media.
And it's chilly. It's really fall.
It's not fake fall.

Speaker 11 It's not fake winter like we have in Louisiana.

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Speaker 11 The economy. They're not really dialing in on the issues that that they have with the economy, I don't think.
There's been a little bit of lip service to it.

Speaker 11 You know, we brought on Catherine Rappell to the bowler. She had her first newsletter yesterday.

Speaker 15 She's awesome. She used to go on Fox.
I used to be on with her.

Speaker 11 Yeah, she's great. So I want to read a little bit from her first newsletter.
Layoff announcements have reached recessionary levels. Subprime borrowing is back.
Electricity prices are skyrocketing.

Speaker 11 To the extent we can actually measure anything right now, which is hard because what Trump's doing, we appear to be suffering from the dreaded S-word stagflation. So that's bad.
That seems bad.

Speaker 11 Then the election results seem very bad. And Trump was asked about this yesterday, and he was like, well, Thanksgiving meals are cheaper than last year.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 then he goes, so I don't want to hear about the affordability. I don't want to hear about the affordability.

Speaker 11 I don't know if it's really possible for Trump to deal with bad news.

Speaker 11 They might be in a real pickle here because Trump's superpower is being able to...

Speaker 11 talk about like the shitty steaks that he sold and like his shitty hotels and talk about how they're the finest things ever. Yeah, like that's what he's good at that.

Speaker 11 You gotta hand it to him on that. He's a good salesman.
He's like, you think that this steak tastes terrible, this rock hard steak, but it's actually the greatest, finest steak ever.

Speaker 11 And I know, because I'm Trump, right? And he has been good at that in like talking about his last term during the campaign. It was the greatest economy for African Americans.

Speaker 11 You know, he does that whole shtick. Lowest unemployment.

Speaker 11 If the economy's actually bad, though, if we actually are in stagflation and people are feeling real pain, like that shtick doesn't really work, right?

Speaker 15 No, well, I think that's what you saw manifested on election night. I mean, you have your normal kind of recouping of the resistance, whatever it's going to look like this time around.

Speaker 15 But people showed up and said, we hired you basically for one job, maybe two jobs. So there was an immigration job, and we wanted you to close the border.
And you did that. And you did a good job.

Speaker 15 And I think it's important to, you know, I wish the asylum system was working better, but like, if you let in, you know, a quarter of a million people on a monthly basis for three years or whatever, then there's it's got to be closed for a little bit to kind of figure out what's going on.

Speaker 15 But the main job was to lower the prices of

Speaker 15 gas, eggs, school supplies, like all the things that we need on a daily basis, housing.

Speaker 15 And none of that has happened. And I'm always try to, and part of this is a function of work to do.

Speaker 11 Single-handedly made it worse, actually. It's worth mentioning with the tariffs.
It's not just that he hasn't made it better. Well, it's a pretty good idea.

Speaker 11 He's made choices that has made it that are made.

Speaker 15 He may save us, which I haven't uttered in a very long time on the tariff front. But yeah, it's definitely made it worse.

Speaker 15 And you've seen some Republican senators find their backbone about it, you know, voting to

Speaker 11 see it a little bit more than me, but I don't know what.

Speaker 15 Well, they voted to scrap the Brazil and the Canadian tariffs. I don't know how that actually works.
The problem is I feel like all this stuff happens in government, but he doesn't care.

Speaker 15 So it just keeps going anyway. So like call up Mark Carney and be like, I know that you saw this, but actually it's still on, baby.

Speaker 15 But I try, and it's connected to working in conservative spaces for sure, but like there are good reasons that people voted for Trump in 2024.

Speaker 15 And so

Speaker 15 I want the country to succeed.

Speaker 15 I want to give the benefit of the doubt where I think that it's warranted, but I cannot get to the silver lining of what's happening now, not only in their communication strategy, but actually on the ground.

Speaker 15 I'm not an economist, but like, not a dum-dum. Like, I understand how it works, and everything's been going in the opposite direction that they've said that it should.

Speaker 15 And Scott Galloway, who I do Raging Moderates with, you know, talks about the magnificent 10. I thought it was a magnificent 7 originally, but it's 10 now.
He says 10.

Speaker 15 Anyway, I wouldn't fight with Scott about this, but he says it's propping up the whole market.

Speaker 15 We have this K-shaped economy, and it's very easy for the administration to just know, pay attention to the top of the K because they don't really care about the bottom of the K.

Speaker 15 Bottom of the K votes,

Speaker 15 usually. But I can't see like the trees through the forest.

Speaker 11 Well, it's like, yeah, to me, it's like, what's this 12-step program line? Like, the first step of solving of a problem is admitting that you're not right. And

Speaker 11 I don't think Trump is ever going to admit that he has a problem.

Speaker 11 And they don't seem like they're interested in admitting they have a problem, they being kind of like the broader media ecosystem around Trump, the people around Trump.

Speaker 11 And so, if you can't admit that the economy is going the wrong direction and you don't have any solutions, and the only solution is that you're not.

Speaker 11 You're just trying to get really rich while you have power. Yeah, or fingers crossed, Free Shrink Corsavis are like, whatever, screw it.
He's, I'm not running again.

Speaker 11 Good luck. I'm, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe not, right? I don't, right, I don't know.

Speaker 11 Like, we're like, the crypto people are doing great, and the Trump family is doing great because they are crypto people now. They're crushing, yeah.

Speaker 11 So good. Barron's like a billionaire now, just himself

Speaker 11 on, you know,

Speaker 11 crypto coin scans.

Speaker 11 Yeah, so like they're running a massive scan. They're enriching themselves to a degree that never before seen in our government.
So they're doing fine.

Speaker 11 And he's in his little media ecosystem where nobody tells him things are going bad. So why would they try to do anything different?

Speaker 11 To me, it seems like we're on an inexorable trajectory towards bad stuff unless he gets bailed out by like whatever, an AI boom or something.

Speaker 11 Event.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 But again, I'm like trying to go for the benefit of the doubt. Like small, not small people.

Speaker 15 Some smart people. I don't know.

Speaker 11 It's really hard to economic. I don't know if you're like smart people.

Speaker 11 But like Scott.

Speaker 15 That's true. She is smart and small.
Like Scott Bessant is a smart guy. He did admit.
Is he?

Speaker 11 Yeah. Like technically?

Speaker 11 Pretty bad. He was pretty bad as a hedge fund person.
Yeah. I mean, he's like,

Speaker 15 made a billion dollars and has a Barbie Dream House.

Speaker 11 He sold the Barbie Dream house. I'm so sad.
It is very good.

Speaker 11 I mean,

Speaker 11 he did well, but like his fun didn't do particularly well.

Speaker 15 When he went out on it, I mean, Soros has done great, and that's where he was for most of it. Yeah.

Speaker 11 Anyway, I can't. Because she was controlled at all.

Speaker 15 Anyway, you can't.

Speaker 11 Do you? Yeah.

Speaker 11 I mean, that's what I've heard. Okay.
We'll get back to that.

Speaker 15 I just don't. I don't think it behooves our side

Speaker 15 to just shit on them all all the time and say they're just dumb. They have no idea what they're doing.

Speaker 11 But isn't that true?

Speaker 11 Sometimes, but I mean, Howard Nutlick has no idea what he's doing.

Speaker 15 I'm totally with you on that. Like, I think that he is one of the biggest thorns in their side.
Like, on top of the fact that he doesn't do that well on TV, which is all that really matters in this.

Speaker 15 I think Besson does much better, but he does have moments where it cracks through.

Speaker 15 And, like, he admitted, I think he was with Jake Tapper where he said said there are parts of the economy that are in recession.

Speaker 11 Yeah. And you're like, oh, you noticed that?

Speaker 15 That that was happening?

Speaker 11 He's really condescending. I just don't like his affect.
Could just be me. It's hard for me to get through.
It's a very condescending affect.

Speaker 15 I saw him in person. I did not realize he was so tall.

Speaker 11 Yeah, really tall. Yeah.

Speaker 15 Like I'm 5'11, and he's probably like 6'5.

Speaker 11 He's huge. Big guy.

Speaker 15 Big guy.

Speaker 15 That affect all the time though.

Speaker 11 Really? Yeah. Even though,

Speaker 15 I mean, we didn't chat or anything, but you know, when someone's like vibing a certain way, he also, you know, maybe didn't want to hang out with me, which is totally fine.

Speaker 11 So things are bad, though. We agree.
Things are economically bad, especially.

Speaker 15 Well, they have a plan.

Speaker 15 Well, there's this plan that Stephen Mirin, who's the economist and like ex-Hutchman guy that's behind all of it, has. And there is a paper that this was based on, right?

Speaker 15 And the thing about the paper is that it has to go,

Speaker 15 you know, like,

Speaker 15 I mean, I think that there, I'm very happy in my marriage, but I think that there are, you know, multiple happy lives that we can all have, right? Like you could have found somebody else or,

Speaker 15 you know, the sliding doors of it all.

Speaker 11 I'm getting to something about.

Speaker 11 Or I'm taking this clip and just saying.

Speaker 15 No, it's fine. He always says to me.
You never bring me up at the normal times when people are like, how's life? And you're not like, I'm so happy.

Speaker 15 Like, I have beautiful daughters and a wonderful husband. You're like, with this proposal, the tariff plan to fix the economy, it's like a thousand things have to go perfectly right.

Speaker 15 And you have to be able to control how every other nation is going to respond to how you're behaving. And, like, none of those things have gone right.

Speaker 15 Like, I don't know if there's actually a pot of gold with $17 trillion or whatever he says that it is that they've brought in from tariff revenue that they're spending on

Speaker 15 SNAP benefits or that. You know how they're saying that they're like feeding women and children with tariff money that no one knows if it exists? Anyway,

Speaker 15 they were going with a plan

Speaker 15 that had to be pinpoint precise, like a sniper rifle from thousands of miles away. And that is just bombing at this particular moment.

Speaker 15 And I know that you're not supposed to kind of live or die by elections, but

Speaker 15 they have an election coming up. And this is going to be the number one issue.

Speaker 15 And Democrats seem to have found a way to stop talking about cultural issues and talk about cost of living issues, which it is a miracle.

Speaker 15 And I don't know how they can stand up to that.

Speaker 11 Well, that's a shit. Which I'm not mad.

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Speaker 11 The shutdown

Speaker 11 ties into kind of all this.

Speaker 11 And I have,

Speaker 11 I think maybe a contrarian take in

Speaker 11 the pundit space on this, which is like,

Speaker 11 maybe it's time to declare a victory. It feels like a win.
It feels like the Democrats won the shutdown. Like it's a Trump got blamed.

Speaker 11 And I was watching you guys all talk about it, and there's like the back and forth on Fox. They're coming up with reasons why the Democrats are losing.

Speaker 11 And it's like a whole different world over there. It's just like the Schumer shutdown.

Speaker 11 And this is part of the reason why I'm kind of like, it's crazy. Like, the shutdown conversations literally exist in two completely different silos.
100%.

Speaker 11 And everybody watching Fox is convinced it's entirely the Democrats' fault. Everyone watching MSNBC is convinced it's entirely the Republicans' fault.
There's nobody's broaching any positive.

Speaker 11 What's the CNN doing? And nobody's debating. I don't watch CNN.
I don't know. You tell me.
I don't.

Speaker 11 Is anybody? I don't know. Sorry.

Speaker 15 Some Abby show. I feel like some people do.

Speaker 11 We love Abby. On the airport.
Abby is in the airport.

Speaker 11 Yeah, but so like nobody's negotiating, and I guess there's some secret Senate negotiations happening, but nobody's like, nobody feels any pressure to negotiate because in their media circles, everybody's like, you're killing it, right?

Speaker 11 You know what I mean? But I just look at that, and I'm looking at things right now, and it's like,

Speaker 11 people are being materially harmed. Yes.
Not just, I mean, myself, because

Speaker 11 flying is horrible. But that's, you know, that's a first world problem.
I get it. There are other people that are being materially harmed that like...

Speaker 11 need their benefits or need their paycheck that they're not getting or working without a paycheck, various things. And it's like, there's not another election for a year.

Speaker 11 And there doesn't seem to me like Mike Johnson

Speaker 11 is going to bring up a bill to bail out, you know, to extend the Obamacare subsidies. That seems like a 0% chance that that's going to happen.

Speaker 15 I don't know what he'll do if

Speaker 15 Thun

Speaker 15 gets him in a room and is like, this is what we're doing. Because I mean, at least the reporting that I've seen is that there was a Senate GOP luncheon.
They have lunch like every day, though.

Speaker 15 I live and they act like it's such a big deal. And it's like every day there's a report out.
But anyway,

Speaker 11 poor Mitt sat alone at those luncheons. So sad.

Speaker 15 No, I guess like be home and be happy.

Speaker 11 Yeah, hang out. Lots of grandkids.

Speaker 15 Like a thousand. So cute too.

Speaker 15 That there's an appetite from Republican senators to put up their own Obamacare subsidies bill. And I hope that if that happens, the Democrats are like, sure, I'll sign on to yours.

Speaker 15 Like this shouldn't be, it has to be my way, you know, but then I don't know what happens in the House. Yeah.

Speaker 11 I guess if you're just, if you're looking at the, what were the Democrats' goals out of this? It was like, one,

Speaker 11 to help people whose health care premiums are going up. That was like the stated goal, right?

Speaker 11 Number two was to debt to fight the lawless administration and say that they're fighting it number three was to gain some political advantage at when that was the only opportunity when they had to do so because the republicans control everything right like those if we're just being honest like those were the three elements i would add two and three have been achieved go ahead well One thing that we don't discuss that hasn't been dropped from the list of demands is to restore the Medicaid cuts from the Big Beautiful bill.

Speaker 15 Like that's how the right gets that number about like 1.5 trillion. Sure.

Speaker 15 So that to me, I understand it as a point of argumentation, but like that is not happening.

Speaker 15 And I feel like it has a lot more of a feasible chance of getting passed or, you know, something getting done if you're just sticking to the Obamacare stuff.

Speaker 11 For sure. Yeah.
I mean, do any of them have a feasible chance? I guess I don't know. And it's sort of like...
If I'm the Democrats now, I just feel like the political part of this has been achieved.

Speaker 11 The substantive part has not. It's the Republicans' fault, though, that it hasn't, right? Like, the Democrats are given them plenty of opportunity to say, these are your voters.

Speaker 11 Most of these people thatse premiums are going up, it's real premiums. I'm trying to help you.
It's a lot of, you know, frankly, just like, look at the demo.

Speaker 11 It's like a lot of older, you know, white people

Speaker 11 that are

Speaker 11 in red in red states whose premiums are going up. It's a lot of, I was watching the CNBC thing.

Speaker 11 And so I don't, I don't mean to minimize a lot of people who, the Obamacare premiums going up is really bad for them. And it's a real thing.
It's a real thing.

Speaker 11 There's also like, it's particularly bad for like early retirees it's like this donut they said CNBC did a thing on like a couple that was like 58 years old living in they lived in like north some red state like North Dakota and they're like we were planning on on you doing using our early retirement to vacation but now we're not gonna have any vacation money because we gotta spend them on the premiums I'm like okay well good luck um sorry uh tough cookies but um the Democrats have made their point on this and Jonathan can come to the table.

Speaker 11 The other side of of this question is.

Speaker 15 Do you think they should open it up without an Obamacare subsidies bill?

Speaker 11 I just think that they should be like, you can just

Speaker 11 have a couple of these old fucks vote for cloture and just whatever. Not to support it.
Like, if you want to vote for, if you want to open things up on a party lineup.

Speaker 15 You can nuke the filibuster for spending bills and get on with your day. Yeah.

Speaker 11 And I guess the argument, so there are two arguments for the Democrats now to keep this going.

Speaker 11 One is maybe they're going to nuke the filibuster, which the Democrats want because they have a lot of bigger wish list if they ever get back in power. Okay.

Speaker 11 That's an interesting strategic inside the beltway reason to keep this going. The other reason to keep this going is Donald Trump's at his lowest approval rating of the second term right now.

Speaker 11 If you look at the silver, nate silver kind of average, he's gone from

Speaker 11 the bulletin. He's gone from negative seven to negative 13 over the last month, basically, since October, which is basically the shutdown time.
So he's being materially hurt.

Speaker 11 So those are the arguments for like doing it. It's like, okay, well, we'll just keep waiting until you guys will do the healthcare subsidies.
It's hurting you, not us.

Speaker 11 But on the other other hand, I'm just kind of like, well, it's hurting people,

Speaker 15 which is what your job is supposed to be about. Like I saw yesterday that Democrats were like, oh, no, I think we should go a bit longer on this.

Speaker 15 Like right after Sean Duffy got on TV and was like, they're going to be, you know, 4% of flights are going to be taken offline. And that's going to be like 10% of flights.

Speaker 15 And we both had terrible travel to D.C. last night.

Speaker 15 Though Amtrak did come through for me.

Speaker 15 But having to go from LaGuardia to Moynihan, we do.

Speaker 15 There were a lot of angry travelers on the train, though. Other libtards like myself.

Speaker 11 But we had a little

Speaker 15 family time there.

Speaker 15 I feel like trains are super friendly.

Speaker 11 It's a little more communal than the airport.

Speaker 15 I'm still always afraid that my stuff is going to get stolen.

Speaker 11 Yeah, the bags. The bags.
It's not a lot of security there. It does feel like a weakness.

Speaker 15 Like I would go.

Speaker 15 If I were a thief, I would go on Amtrak and I would also go outside of all of these play places.

Speaker 15 Like we park our super fancy strollers on the street in New York City and go in and do like bubble class,

Speaker 15 and you could just walk by and take a bunch of UPA babies.

Speaker 11 Okay, so this is why this is why you got to the coolest. This is why I'm wearing leather pants.

Speaker 11 Yeah, because you're the

Speaker 11 criminal mind.

Speaker 15 Stockmaker is not going to be talking about stealing strollers.

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Speaker 11 What are you doing if you're Chuck Schumer today?

Speaker 15 I'm still torn about it because

Speaker 15 the thing that gets me more about than the flights, and it is a big deal. And of course,

Speaker 11 real lives. Like we're joking about our stuff.
It's like if I'm

Speaker 11 fucking con, I love it.

Speaker 15 Sorry, I can't get here because of our,

Speaker 11 you know, our government doesn't work.

Speaker 15 It's like you'll find someone else.

Speaker 11 Other people have real jobs, real lives, real people.

Speaker 15 These interviews of people in food pantry lines. Yeah.
Like

Speaker 15 that's real stuff. And that doesn't mean there shouldn't be a conversation about why one in eight Americans needs to be on snap or if absolutely all of them do.
But

Speaker 15 like that has to be dealt with. And the courts are saying you need to deal with it, but that going back to the lawless administration, they don't care about court orders.

Speaker 11 Which is why I would never vote. Just to be 100% clear, clear,

Speaker 11 because if any Dems are listening,

Speaker 15 if any Dems are listening?

Speaker 11 Dem members. I would never vote for

Speaker 15 you to tell them to nuke the filibuster.

Speaker 11 Yeah, or you could give them a cloture and not vote for it. You know what I mean?

Speaker 11 You know what I mean? You could just vote for cloture. That's happened before, and that's like a dorky thing nobody would understand.
And so I don't, you know, you wouldn't get,

Speaker 11 I don't think you'd suffer any political consequences for that. I'm just saying that would be an option.
I would never vote for this budget and this government, obviously. But like, what's the hope?

Speaker 11 Like, the best case scenario feels like at this point that John Thune and Mike Johnson give you a vote on the Obamacare subsidies in a couple of weeks and you take it, which is, I guess, a good deal.

Speaker 11 That's fine. Would it actually pass? I find it hard to believe that it's going to pass this House of Representatives.
I find that very hard to believe.

Speaker 11 We've gained one, over the course of this whole fight, we've gained one vote from Republicans, Marjorie Daylor Greene.

Speaker 11 That scores on one person who has come around to the Democratic point of view. So you'd need a couple more in the House, I guess.
But I feel it's unlikely.

Speaker 15 I don't know. I think it has to do with Trump.
Like, how much does

Speaker 15 Trump signal? I mean, he seems to care more about that.

Speaker 11 He broke in 2018, 2019.

Speaker 15 Right? I mean, we had a 35-day shutdown. We're on day 37 right now.
He broke when that happened.

Speaker 15 He was, he preserved snap because you're supposed to when that time happened, but he's that much more evil this time around.

Speaker 15 But, you know, a couple weeks of people not being paid and starving is really serious stuff and i feel like the stakes like we're in full political jockeying time and it's uncomfortable to me and i say this as someone who gleefully says like in the latest nbc poll you're being blamed by 12 points so i you know i'm telling them

Speaker 15 my point is they've lost like they've lost like they've already lost and i do think that the the Democratic base is happy right now with the party.

Speaker 15 They're saying, you are fighting for the right stuff.

Speaker 11 You're not rolling over.

Speaker 15 There's no like Chuck Schumer telling us we're going to stand up to them. And then he's like, actually, I'm going to give them exactly what they want in 20 minutes.

Speaker 15 So I imagine it comes to confirmation.

Speaker 11 If you're playing the Sims, I would be like, keep rolling because they're in pain right now.

Speaker 11 So I understand the perspective, which is like the Republicans are in the barrel. Yeah.
Like on this.

Speaker 11 It's just.

Speaker 11 I don't know how much, yeah, the people are being hurt. I just don't know how much more is politically to be gained.

Speaker 11 He's already already down at minus 13, and there isn't another election until next November.

Speaker 11 And I just, I think that the next November election certainly will be about health care costs, premium costs, premiums going up, economy, but it's not going to be about like the strategy of how the shutdown came to an end.

Speaker 11 It's not going to have any impact on next year's.

Speaker 15 In a lot of cases, even if there was an Obamacare subsidies plan that that they could sign or a bill, it wouldn't solve the problem. Like a lot of these premium increases are baked in at this point.

Speaker 15 Now that the exchanges are open, you know, it's not bureaucracy is very slow moving.

Speaker 15 It's not like something like you like flip the switch and it's like, oh, actually, we're going to go back to this level, which by the way, is a totally unacceptable level.

Speaker 15 And I wanted to ask you about that because it feels like

Speaker 15 we're having this fight about making sure your premium doesn't go up 114% to 400%, you know, depending on where you are. But like Obamacare is still too expensive and there's no reform plan coming.

Speaker 15 I mean, there's nothing coming from their side at all, which makes us look good. But that's something that's been bothering me.

Speaker 15 And we have all these elected officials that come on the podcast and they're talking about like, we need to make sure we save people's health care. And I'm like, it wasn't good to begin with.

Speaker 15 Like, thank God 20 million plus people have Obamacare. But what are you going to do about the fact that they shouldn't be paying $1,000 a month anyway, let alone $4,000 a month?

Speaker 11 Well, here's why they don't want to get talked about that, because this is the issue that divides the Democratic Party the most.

Speaker 11 And it's like, are we going to, like, there are things to do, you know, like it would probably be cheaper to do Medicare for all than

Speaker 11 the current system, but there'd be a lot of other negative consequences like quality of care, et cetera.

Speaker 11 Like, there are other more, you know, bringing transparency, like my people, what we would propose, you know, the raging moderates, like, more bringing more transparency to bring costs down.

Speaker 11 But to me, the point is, if I was a Democratic politician going on your podcast and you were asking them about that, I also would not answer that question because it doesn't matter. We have no power.

Speaker 11 And the Republicans have all the power.

Speaker 11 And they're the ones that that claimed that they're a populist party now that cares about working people and they're sticking everybody with the bag right now with tariffs or is making their groceries go up, the healthcare premiums are going up, make them own it.

Speaker 11 And, you know, me and John Stewart got into this a little bit about a month ago where he was like, don't the Democrats need to put out a radical... No, we didn't get into it.

Speaker 11 We just had a disagreement where he was like, don't the Democrats need to put out like a positive vision for how to actually fix this and make it better? And I was like, no,

Speaker 11 no, no.

Speaker 15 I mean, it would make me feel better.

Speaker 11 Well, do you feel that way? My feelings aren't really

Speaker 11 the most important thing right now. I'm sorry.
Yeah. No, I hear that a lot in life.
Paying for the administration is the most important thing.

Speaker 15 But do you think that you feel that way because

Speaker 15 you're not, you haven't been on our side forever? Like that you just have a more, this has to be defeated. Like,

Speaker 15 I feel responsibility to have a better democratic platform. Like I want to, you know, read,

Speaker 15 I mean, I'm not going to read the whole thing, obviously, but like, you know, around the DNC and you get like the platform and you look at it and you're like, oh, I want to have really good, exciting ideas.

Speaker 15 Not just, I want to get the talking points, right? And I want to say, you know, I'm slashing red tape and I'm going to build houses everywhere.

Speaker 15 But I also want to see, like, these are my three reforms that I'm proposing in the healthcare space that are going to make sure that you have, no.

Speaker 11 No. I think this is like a never Trumper thing.

Speaker 15 I don't know. And that's why Jon Stewart feels like we should have good policy.

Speaker 11 This is where I think the Democrats should listen to me more.

Speaker 11 And you're crushing it. You do a great job poking the bubble of their just really hollow arguments that they make on fonts because the bubble is hollow.
You do a good job of popping it.

Speaker 11 Then, though, there is like a Democratic good government impulse, which I like and respect and is cute, about like, we really do need to have a white paper to fix this.

Speaker 11 And I'm kind of like, no, actually, you don't. I mean, probably in retrospect, sure, if we're doing a rehash of the Kamala campaign, could they have done things that were different?

Speaker 11 You know what I mean?

Speaker 15 She had a talking and a policy problem.

Speaker 11 Yeah, sure, right. So you could have done both, right? But now we are what we are.
Like, the people wanted this. Like, the job is to stop it.
There's a good day on Tuesday in stopping it.

Speaker 11 The shutdown has been good. And to me, it's kind of like, okay,

Speaker 11 maybe I could take a win. And this is not me being like, oh, norms, Tim, thinks we should start to compromise and stop fighting.
It's like, no, this battle is won. One battle after another.

Speaker 11 Like, this battle is won. Next battle is now to

Speaker 11 make these guys own

Speaker 11 whatever they decide to do on the health care and make these guys own the fact that people's premiums are going up. Make them own the fact that the economy is terrible.

Speaker 11 And in 2027, a bunch of Democrats can come out and have some great ideas about what to do going forward. And I can critique them and question them and all that.
But like, that's a problem for

Speaker 15 shutdown politics never factors into an election. Like everyone forgets that it happened.

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Speaker 9 What lengths will he go to?

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Speaker 5 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 11 You're the raging moderate. Well, I want to do some wither moderates here before we get out of here.
What's happening with the moderates? What happened with our people?

Speaker 11 And Jared Golden, Maine, he's like everything that everybody in the post-2024 election said that Democrats needed. Like he's a working class.

Speaker 11 Genuine article. Yeah, he's a working class dude.
He's got tats. He could go into the manosphere and hang out.
He cares about economic issues. You know, he's an economic populist.

Speaker 15 He fucks the party when he has to.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 And he's out. He dropped out because some dweeb in Maine is

Speaker 11 a dumlop or something. I don't even know who he is.

Speaker 11 I don't know anything anything about him except that he looks and sounds like a dweeb and he was going after Jared Golden because he bucked the party like three times and it was like nothing.

Speaker 11 There was no meaningful thing that was going to help people's lives that Jared Golden stood in the way of.

Speaker 11 It's just some resistance people didn't like the fact that Jared Golden sometimes didn't echo the latest talking point that was on Blue Sky.

Speaker 11 And so he gets bullied out of this race and he's like, this is not fun. I'm not enjoying it.
I want to hang out with my family and fish or whatever. He likes to do in his free time.
And that sucks.

Speaker 11 Yeah. And it sucks.
And I had Pat Ryan on over on our YouTube

Speaker 11 who I love. Yeah.
And he's out there recruiting. And I've been, I was in his ear.
I'm like, we need to go recruit Jared Goldens. Like, there needs to be more Jared Goldens.

Speaker 11 And we had one, we had basically two Jared Goldens, him and Murray Guskipress.

Speaker 11 There's a girl Jared Golden. And like, one of them's gone now.
And it's concerning. Are you concerned?

Speaker 15 I'm definitely concerned. I mean,

Speaker 15 in learning from the lessons of 2024, concerned also in in the

Speaker 15 lessons of like actual winning um to be more ruthless about it like jared golden had the reddest district that a dem carried yeah and you know nancy pelosi announcing her retirement this week there was obviously a ton to focus on in terms of her legacy but my favorite thing besides for the children about nancy pelosi is that she always told her caucus I'll do whatever you want.

Speaker 15 You can call me the devil or I'll campaign with you. Just win.
win. We can't do anything unless we're in office.
And Jared Golden did the impossible three times.

Speaker 15 And it feels, and this links to the Mom Dani race in New York as well, that

Speaker 15 three quarters of the party or our coalition, whatever it is, because I know there are a lot of people who still identify as a conservative that are with us, understand

Speaker 15 the task, which is

Speaker 15 run the person that fits the constituency.

Speaker 15 And then we'll see what happens. Like if you have a pro-life Democrat who still votes for pro-choice policies, what the fuck do you care? Who cares?

Speaker 15 Like, and Ezra Klein did a thing this week about Joe Manchin. We're talking about what the Democratic Party is.
And I had been saying that on Fox forever.

Speaker 15 I said, the guy votes with you 93% of the time. You would have never gotten the Inflation Reduction Act without him anyway.
Like leave him alone. He wins a Trump

Speaker 15 plus 42 state. And you think that you're going to ever have a prayer of carrying it? So that was concerning.

Speaker 15 But I feel like the election results, like before that, we had that deciding to win memo, right? Where they surveyed 500,000 people, which I didn't even think I worked in research.

Speaker 15 I didn't think that was possible.

Speaker 15 And then there was the other working class-focused one that American Bridge did. And the results from that were all like, you're woke and weak.
Right.

Speaker 15 And that we have to change the definition of what it means to be a moderate. And it can't be a strongly worded letter.
Like, you can talk the same as a firebrand.

Speaker 15 You just back policies that 55% plus of people support. And that seems like such an easy path forward.
And Jared Golden was doing that. Pat Ryan does that.
You know, Tom Swazi does that.

Speaker 15 He wins a district that he has to, you know, say, I'm endorsing Cuomo and I don't support Mondami. And then he, you know, congratulates him like a normal human being afterwards.

Speaker 15 And we should all be able to kind of shake hands and pack it up.

Speaker 11 I agree. Though he probably should have been for Mondan.
He was the nominee. Swazi should have, but that's more of a neutral thing.
I mean, to get re-elected.

Speaker 11 Would you rather have him...

Speaker 15 I mean, that's how they felt about it.

Speaker 15 I mean, besides the fact that they felt or feel that Mandani is a threat to Jews in New York City, which a lot of people feel he only got 30% of the Jewish vote, which is unprecedented in mayoral politics.

Speaker 15 But

Speaker 15 he's listening to people at home. Laura Gillen's listening to people at home who are concerned about these things.
So I don't think they're doing it just to to be mean.

Speaker 11 I don't think they're doing it to be mean either. I guess my point is just I think that the Swazi thing probably was not that strategically helpful.

Speaker 11 If the center, if those of us, raging moderates, are going to demand that the DSA crowd get on board and not do vote undeclared or whatever, then like sometimes you got to suck it up and do the other deal, particularly when it's

Speaker 11 a place like New York. But anyway, this is what has me worried.
And I think that the Democrats could end up winning in spite of themselves like they did in 22, because that's just how politics is.

Speaker 11 If the economy is as bad as what we are saying, it continues to get worse. The next midterm, whoever Democrats put up in Maine might win that golden district and they might win the Senate race, maybe.

Speaker 11 But just being strategic about it, I feel like that the Maine Senate primary is right now just like a microcosm of how both factions in the party are fucking up.

Speaker 11 It's like the Plattner side, he seems like a fine dude. I don't like, I don't know about the Nazi tattoo or whatever, like whatever.

Speaker 11 He's like obviously a compelling talker and people like him and I don't want to to take anybody's excitement away from them. But like

Speaker 11 he's running and again, it might work in Minks the Blue State Common one, right? But if the left Susan Collins wins every time. Right, exactly.

Speaker 11 But the left is like, hey, we need more economic populism. We need more guys who are like working class people.

Speaker 11 And it's like, okay, but then you also need to

Speaker 11 offer some cultural concern. Like, it feels like the Tim Walls thing over again with Plattner, where it's like, isn't it enough that he can fix a carburetor?

Speaker 11 And it's like, no, actually, the people in the district that voted for Trump have different policy issues, substantively different issues.

Speaker 11 And Plattner is running basically on AOC's platform, but just in a dude with tattoos body. And okay, that's fine.
If you like that, that's fine, but that is not like a going to be.

Speaker 11 That's not a path to win in red areas. It might win in Maine.
It might work in Maine. It's not a path to win red areas.

Speaker 11 And then the Democrats, like the desiccated Democratic establishment, is putting up a fucking Joe Biden. They're putting up a 77-year-old who has a low approval rating, who's the governor of Maine.

Speaker 11 It's like, can we not do? Is there not a different option? Like, why are both sides doing the thing that they've failed at?

Speaker 11 Again?

Speaker 15 Well,

Speaker 15 people have most of the time a financial interest in doing those things. Like, I'm sure you saw the readout from Comer's panel with the Biden folks.

Speaker 15 And, like, Mike Donlin's like, yeah, I get a $4 million bonus if Joe Biden wins the election. Like, did that affect

Speaker 15 why you thought he could run?

Speaker 11 No.

Speaker 15 Like, that's impossible. I mean, I guess very, very rich people wouldn't think the $4 million makes a big difference, but I think that they do.

Speaker 15 So there are financial interests to stay in your corners. There are people, you know, financial backers that make a difference.
But like, in Maine,

Speaker 15 Jared Golden should have run for Senate. That was my dream scenario.
And I think Janet Mills has done a ton. I think Janet Mills is great.
Like, she has a record that people like.

Speaker 15 People enjoy her, her, whatever. But, like,

Speaker 15 it's hard to comment. No, she's not.

Speaker 11 And her record might be fine, but her, not really. Compared to other governors, her favorability is pretty low, actually.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 Oh, I thought it was like in the decent area. I don't know.
Either way, I think she saw Platiner as being the only option, even though I'm being emailed by Jordan Wood constantly.

Speaker 15 So I don't know if he makes.

Speaker 11 She's like, ah, I need some raging moderates out there. It's like, this could be a moment.
This is where I'm with you. It's like, it's like the environment is good.
So I was talking to Pat Ryan.

Speaker 11 It's like, Maine should be a win. Ohio should be winnable.
Iowa should be winnable.

Speaker 15 North Carolina.

Speaker 11 I feel very good about it. Yeah, they should all be winnable.
Those are gettable this time, this midterm, first Trump midterm.

Speaker 11 But the candidates need to be fighting and they need to be able to appeal to some people that voted for Trump on some issues. Yeah.
And it's like, I just, and I'm not seeing a ton of that out there.

Speaker 11 I don't know.

Speaker 15 I certainly see it in Roy Cooper.

Speaker 11 Roy Cooper's great. Roy Cooper's been

Speaker 11 a great man.

Speaker 15 And Sherry Brown is fabulous, I think. I was surprised that he wasn't

Speaker 15 far ahead considering the environment and how beloved he was. And he couldn't run against a

Speaker 15 Trump plus 10 swing or whatever in Ohio, which is

Speaker 15 understandable. But I don't think you should be in this level of distress.
I think Jared Golden, the loss of Jared Golden is a big deal.

Speaker 11 I'm always in distress.

Speaker 15 No, I mean, it's healthy, but

Speaker 15 should also look at it like there hasn't been anything that's happened where I'm like, this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen on the platform.

Speaker 11 I just want more. I'm greedy.
I'm greedy. I'm pissed.
These guys are fucking in charge. And I just want everybody to be like, no, let's get ruthless.
Let's get ruthless. And let's

Speaker 11 go ahead and

Speaker 11 get a little bit moment. It does.

Speaker 15 I mean, the shutdown feels

Speaker 11 good.

Speaker 11 And right, yes. And maybe it's a touch back.

Speaker 15 Like Gavin Newsome is demonic.

Speaker 11 Boom. Yeah.

Speaker 15 Like, great.

Speaker 11 And I think Abigail's, I think we're about to see Ruthless Spanberger squeeze out, dark Spanberger's going to squeeze out three or four more seats, which I like. All that is good.

Speaker 11 So there's good stuff happening. I just, I'm hungry.
I'm voracious. I want more.
And I don't want people to feel like, oh, no, things are going to be a lot more difficult. No, no, no.

Speaker 15 I don't think people are going to take their foot off the gas.

Speaker 15 And it is important to dwell on something like Jared Golden saying, like, also, the threats to my family are unacceptable, like the political violence scene and all of that.

Speaker 15 But I think when you look around and you're like Ruben Gallego, who I love, and like what Newsom did, like

Speaker 15 we're meeting the moment, I think. Okay.
More or less. Is that too moderator thing to say?

Speaker 11 I want to be positive. I think the bulwark audience will love that.
They need that. Jess? Okay.
Jesse.

Speaker 11 You get to call you Jesse when you're on the five. Right.

Speaker 15 Because girl, Jesse, boy, Jesse.

Speaker 11 Girl, Jesse, boy, Jesse. We love you.
We love it. Last thing.
When you're walking through the airport, are you ever nervous that somebody's going to yell at you?

Speaker 11 Do you have to deal with that in your life?

Speaker 15 Everyone is so nice.

Speaker 11 I love that. Yeah.

Speaker 15 Isn't that great? Also, because the five is your dysfunctional family. So they're like, oh, it's like crazy and

Speaker 11 a little worried for you that it's like that sucks for your life that you're going to have to do.

Speaker 15 I've had weird like safety stuff happen, but not no one to my face.

Speaker 11 All right. Just like, you know, that's good.
In the mail. Okay, we got this hang.
We're about to go do the crooked stuff together.

Speaker 11 Everybody, we'll be back here Monday for another edition of the Bulwark podcast. Go check out Jesse on Raging Monters probably.
You can watch the five if you want to.

Speaker 15 You probably see clips of the five. I feel like that's how everyone knows me.
They're like, I didn't know you could speak for more than two minutes.

Speaker 11 She can. She did it.
Maybe. We'll see you back here on Monday.
We're cool. We'll have a way less cool guest on Monday.
See you all then. Peace.

Speaker 11 in the August Sun

Speaker 11 And if they turn green,

Speaker 11 don't be afraid

Speaker 11 Nothing can hurt you but yourself

Speaker 11 Nothing can hurt you but yourself.

Speaker 11 The Board Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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