Andy Beshear and Terry Moran: The Power of Normal People

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Speaker 2 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes. Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 8 What lengths will he go to?

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Speaker 17 Hey, y'all, we got an absolutely packed show today, but I got a few quick notes for you.

Speaker 17 First, we're going to stay mostly away from today's off-year elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York, as we're going to have a deep dive on that on tomorrow's pod.

Speaker 17 And if you want to join us to watch along live tonight, we're going to have a full rundown on YouTube starting at 8 Eastern with Sam Stein and some friends.

Speaker 17 And then we're going to have a live next-level podcast sometime around 9:15-ish when we have a sense for the results. So hang out with us on YouTube tonight.

Speaker 17 Before we get to our guests, Governor Andy Mashear and Terry Moran, who I'm super excited about, I wanted to speak briefly about the death of Dick Cheney.

Speaker 17 Bill Crystal and JBL will have much more on that over on the Bulwark Takes feed if that is of interest. But as for me, I never worked for Dick Cheney.

Speaker 17 I don't think I ever met him, not that I can recall. I was a campaign guy of a different era.

Speaker 17 It's an unfortunate reality that the first line of any obit about the former vice president must be his spearheading of the disastrous Iraq war, which was somehow the single worst policy choice of my lifetime, including all the crap Trump has thrust upon us.

Speaker 17 It was a war that caused incalculable death and suffering for far too many. And

Speaker 17 shit, I mean, I think it very well may have led us to this populist nationalist moment. So

Speaker 17 I don't think there's any sense in trying to spin or whitewash that. But alongside of that, humans are complicated and complex.
We all contain noble and ignoble within us.

Speaker 17 If nothing else, we know that Dick Cheney was a good and loyal father and husband.

Speaker 17 I went back and re-watched the 2000 vice presidential debate, and he basically comes to the left of Joe Lieberman on the question of gay marriage.

Speaker 17 He said he wanted to be open-minded and tolerant on that. He said that the state should decide.

Speaker 17 He was no doubt influenced in those remarks by his daughter Mary.

Speaker 17 Then four years later, in August 2004, while the Bush campaign was running decidedly ignoble tactics on the topic, Dick Cheney spoke out at a campaign stop in Mississippi, of all places.

Speaker 17 He said, freedom means freedom for everyone. People ought to be free to enter any type of relationship they want to.

Speaker 17 It was a position obviously out of step with his boss, with both major parties at the time. Even his daughter Liz didn't go that far in her campaign for Senate almost a decade later.
It was

Speaker 17 an important and significant thing for the then sitting vice president to stand out for people's right to enter into a marriage if they want to, no matter their sexual orientation in the deep south on a campaign trail in 2004.

Speaker 17 And then again, more recently in August 2022, Dick Cheney actually made me cry.

Speaker 17 He ran this ad on behalf of his daughter's hopeless campaign for re-election following her bucking of Trump after the insurrection. I just want to play a little clip from it.

Speaker 18 Lynn and I are so proud of Liz for standing up for the truth, doing what's right, honoring her oath to the Constitution, when so many in our party are too scared to do so.

Speaker 19 Liz is fearless.

Speaker 18 She never backs down from the fight. There is nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office.
And she will succeed.

Speaker 18 I am Dick Cheney. I proudly voted for my daughter.
I hope you will too.

Speaker 17 Liz obviously didn't succeed in that fight based on where we are, but it was an important fight.

Speaker 17 And it was one that came against interest and came against their family history and against their social circle. It was

Speaker 17 not

Speaker 17 an easy thing to do. It took courage, it took backbone.
We are continuing to hold the torch for Dick Cheney in this fight today.

Speaker 17 And so on this day, I'm going to remember Dick Cheney as a father, somebody who took on two politically toxic, seemingly hopeless, and morally righteous causes on behalf of his daughters.

Speaker 17 And he did so clear and steely-eyed, as he did on everything else. So rest easy, Dick Cheney.
My love to Liz and his family who are dealing with this loss today. Up next, Andy Bashir and Terry Moran.

Speaker 17 Hello, welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
We got a doubleheader today in segment two. It is Terry Moran who's been reporting live from Chicago.

Speaker 17 But first, he needs a pretty short introduction. He's the governor of Kentucky.
It's Andy Bashir. How you doing, governor?

Speaker 16 I'm good. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 17 One of my buddies was made an honorary Kentucky colonel. I hear that you do that down there.

Speaker 17 So I'm just, I don't know what the nomination process is like, et cetera, but I just wanted to mention that at the top, that I'm interested.

Speaker 16 Well,

Speaker 16 it is a tough process where we only make a couple hundred colonels a month.

Speaker 16 It's a process that helps spread Kentucky around the country and around the world. We try to recognize recognize great service in all types of areas.

Speaker 17 Feels like you can sneak me in then.

Speaker 17 I'm coming to a gay wedding in Kentucky next year. Maybe I can do a double dip, become a colonel.
There you go. Head to a wedding, or we'll talk about it.

Speaker 16 We look forward to that.

Speaker 17 I want to talk a lot about kind of big picture Democratic stuff. I did some tweeting about you that prompted this here podcast.
But first, just a little bit on the news.

Speaker 17 Obviously, the government shutdown is continuing. The loss of SNAP funds has started for a couple of days now.
It's pretty acute in red states.

Speaker 17 I know that you guys are trying to figure figure out ways to patch that.

Speaker 17 What exactly is the impact of this shutdown in Kentucky and particularly the SNAP issue?

Speaker 16 It's significant. First, we've got between 20 and 30,000 federal employees, many of which are going without a paycheck.

Speaker 16 At a time when things cost too much, at a time when far too many people live paycheck to paycheck, not getting one at all is just brutal.

Speaker 16 And so we're thinking about each and every one of those families. Then there is the president's president's decision originally not to fund SNAP at all and now to only partially fund it.

Speaker 16 I want to be clear that this is entirely on the president. This is the first shutdown that SNAP hasn't been funded.

Speaker 16 And a president who has never really cared about what he can and can't do under the law took the position that his lawyers told them that he could not fund SNAP.

Speaker 16 So I sued him along with a number of other governors and AGs, and we got a very clear ruling that said he could either fund it in full or in part. And now they have chosen to only fund it in part.

Speaker 16 So we've got 600,000 Kentuckians that rely on SNAP to help them to have enough to eat. It should be a no-brainer to fully fund it.

Speaker 16 A president should never make a decision where people don't have enough to eat, especially in a country that grows enough food for everyone.

Speaker 16 You know, my faith and values are driven by, you know, the miracle of the fishes and the loaves, which is is so important. It's in every book of the gospel.

Speaker 16 And it should teach us to always make sure our neighbor has enough food. So in Kentucky, we're stepping up and doing what we can.

Speaker 16 No state's going to be able to make up for, in Kentucky, it'd be at least $50 million a month that the federal government is not covering.

Speaker 16 But as a start, we have provided $5 million in emergency funding to our food banks who are working to get it out all over the Commonwealth.

Speaker 16 And then we're asking neighbors to help their neighbors, to donate. And if the federal government won't do the right thing, the people of the United States should do the right thing.

Speaker 17 In addition, obviously the most important thing are people that are potentially going hungry and losing access to food that they've been relying on.

Speaker 17 In addition to that, obviously, like farmers contribute this food to SNAP.

Speaker 17 This is part of a broader trend of Trump administration policies that are hurting ag country between the trade wars, et cetera.

Speaker 17 Yeah, keep talking about what you're seeing on the ground in the more rural part of the states and how

Speaker 17 this administration's policy has been affecting the economy there.

Speaker 16 Yeah, farmers are getting hammered. The Trump administration may be the worst presidential administration towards farmers that I've seen in my lifetime.

Speaker 16 You look at his trade war and how it has pushed China to purchase soybeans from Brazil and Argentina.

Speaker 16 Kentucky farmers grow soybeans and corn in that rotation, as do farmers throughout most of the Midwest, losing this giant market on top of USAID, which was another big client of farmers, on top of the cuts to the farm to cafeteria program, is hitting farmers every which way.

Speaker 16 And then the Trump administration decides they're going to do a huge multi-billion dollar bailout of Argentina, which is now providing those soybeans to China, taking away that market from us.

Speaker 16 And now cattle farmers are getting hit because the Trump administration is talking about purchasing beef from Argentina.

Speaker 16 That same place we are bailing out, that same place that's taking our soybean market. And let me tell you, our cattle farmers are fired up.

Speaker 17 Do you think it's breaking through in the world? In addition to the ag and the farm stuff, there's also the health care

Speaker 17 issue and the cuts to health care that we're seeing from the administration.

Speaker 17 A listener sent me a screenshot from like the next door, so like the neighborhood conversations, you know, and in her community.

Speaker 17 And, you know, there are a lot of people that are like blaming the Democrats for the increase in healthcare. I guess Obamacare must be Democrat, et cetera.

Speaker 17 I do think this is kind of a challenge for Democrats to message, you know, particularly in this information environment to people.

Speaker 17 in rural communities and more red communities about like why this is happening, why they're losing access to healthcare, why their Obamacare is going up, why their SNAP is going away.

Speaker 17 Do you have any thoughts on how to communicate that?

Speaker 16 Well, I think it is starting to break through and it will continue to break through. One of the challenges in rural America is the National Democratic Party for decades didn't invest.

Speaker 16 And the Republican National Party demonized Democrats throughout those decades with significant investments.

Speaker 16 And thus, sometimes it became a part of people's identity, their party, or at least the party they didn't want to be a part of. And that doesn't change overnight.

Speaker 16 But what you do see are people knowing where these policies come from, or most people knowing them. And that's in part.
And I want to give him credit for this.

Speaker 16 Donald Trump owns his terrible policies more than any other president that I've ever seen. I mean, he held that big tariff board.

Speaker 16 And so anybody that's impacted by tariffs, they know that this is Donald Trump's policy. And the fact that it changes so much that it's so chaotic has his fingerprints all over it.

Speaker 16 We've gone from across the board to reciprocal to industry-specific to company-specific to product specific tariffs.

Speaker 16 We've now seen tariffs because he doesn't like a commercial during the World Series or the baseball playoffs.

Speaker 16 We've seen tariffs against Brazil over a prosecution and on non-economic grounds, it's making coffee prices go up, which impacts most Americans.

Speaker 16 I even know of a small business in western Kentucky, and they were booming, but they get their raw materials from China, and then they assemble their product in the United States.

Speaker 16 We get the better part of that deal because those assembly jobs pay good wages to the people of western Kentucky in this instance.

Speaker 16 But because of their products, the price going up because of tariffs, they've had to start laying people off. And when a small business starts laying people off, it's people they go to church with.

Speaker 16 It's people who their kids play on a soccer team with.

Speaker 16 And let me tell you, at least one of these owners is telling every single employee that he lays off exactly who caused it, and that's Donald Trump.

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Speaker 17 So let's go back to your assessment of kind of why the Democrats have lost ground in more rural and red parts of America.

Speaker 17 And I think it's definitely true that the lack of investment is there and that Republicans have done so.

Speaker 17 And there's a media environment that demonizes Democrats that a lot of folks are ensconced in for sure.

Speaker 17 I think also, though, like it's just a reality like the Democrats have gone left on cultural issues, I think, over the decades.

Speaker 17 You know, when I was coming up back when I was a Republican, there are a lot of Democrats who had far more conservative views on a variety of issues, be it immigration, abortion, gay marriage, whatever it may be.

Speaker 17 And there's less of that now.

Speaker 17 And I wonder if how much of that you attribute to the Democrats' loss of ground, like that they maybe have gotten out of step with more culturally conservative America on some of those social issues.

Speaker 16 I'm not sure sure that it's a particular view on an issue as much as how much time

Speaker 16 that the people of America think we spend on any one issue. So I'm governor of a state that went to Trump plus 30 in the last election.

Speaker 16 I've got about a 64% approval rating, and I vetoed every anti-LGBTQ bill that's come across my desk. I vetoed anti-choice bills that have come across my desk.

Speaker 16 And I think the reason that I still win is while some people may disagree with me on on those issues, they know I spend 80% of my time focused on things that impact 100% of the people of Kentucky.

Speaker 16 That's their jobs and whether they can afford the things they need. It's their next doctor's appointment for themselves, their parents, or their kids.

Speaker 16 It's the roads and bridges they drive, the school they drop their kids off at, and whether they feel safe in their community.

Speaker 16 So I may on one day veto a bill that somebody supports, but if the next day I'm opening a new factory that pays great wages, that's going to change people's life in that community, I think this last presidential election has shown that that's where people are.

Speaker 16 That's what they care about the most, that they may have very strong convictions on different things, but if they're struggling to pay their child's next prescription, they're looking for a candidate that lives right there, that gets real results and that betters their lives.

Speaker 16 So I think that Democrats, we just need to spend more of our time on what are really nonpartisan issues that better people's lives and show we are the party that gets results.

Speaker 16 Now, the other thing I think we need to do is speak like normal human beings. I mean, to talk to people and not to talk at them and to never talk down to them.

Speaker 16 And we shouldn't be judging voters that are out there because we need them to come back. and vote for Democratic candidates.

Speaker 16 But we use sanitized terms like substance use disorder instead of addiction.

Speaker 16 You take something that's mean and nasty with the word addiction that we all feel, and we use something so sanitized, it just, it has no emotion on SNAP benefits.

Speaker 16 I mean, saying that more people are going to be food insecure isn't going to pressure the administration to do the right thing.

Speaker 16 But seniors going hungry and children going hungry, I mean, that again has the real emotion, the reality that can hopefully push people to do the right thing.

Speaker 17 So I agree with all of that. That makes me nervous because when you're saying stuff that is exactly what I agree with, I start to think, well,

Speaker 17 there must be something else to the story here because I don't.

Speaker 16 Maybe we're just on the right lane.

Speaker 17 Oh, yeah, well, maybe. That could be right.
But I look at you.

Speaker 17 I feel like

Speaker 17 there's got to be something else there. Like, that's a nice story.
But, you know, Heidi Heitkin, I've had on the pod last week. She lost in North Dakota.
She talked like a normal person.

Speaker 17 I don't think anybody thought she was really focused on far-left cultural issues. Brandon Presley lost in Mississippi a couple of years ago.
I don't think anybody thought he was

Speaker 17 some lib culture warrior.

Speaker 17 We could go down the list of Democrats who have lost

Speaker 17 in these states who kind of took your advice. Is there something like, what else could it be?

Speaker 17 Is there another element to this that

Speaker 17 you think Democrats need to think about?

Speaker 16 Well, I think a third piece is Democrats are really focused on the what. We get obsessed with our policies, with policy point three, subpoint two, bullet point four.

Speaker 16 We get way down in the weeds on the what, but we never talk about the why.

Speaker 16 And what people want to know a lot of times is what drives you?

Speaker 16 What makes you authentically want to do this job and to be able to feel like they know enough about you to where they know why you make certain decisions?

Speaker 16 So when I vetoed the nastiest anti-LGBTQ plus bill our state had ever seen in the middle of my reelection. I talked about my why.
And for me, that's my faith.

Speaker 16 It teaches me that all children are children of God. And I didn't want people picking on those kids.
A legislature is going to show them hate. I wanted to show them love.

Speaker 16 If the legislature is going to show them judgment, I wanted to show them acceptance. And I talked about it in those terms because that's how I feel about it.

Speaker 16 The other side then ran $10 million of the most awful, terrible ads. I ran $9 million of, look at all the great jobs that were creating ads.

Speaker 16 And I won by four and a half more points than I was elected by four four years before.

Speaker 16 And so I do think that there is a path, but it's respecting voters enough to talk about not just the what, but the why. Now, admittedly, getting results is also really helpful.

Speaker 16 Now, since I've been governor, we've created the most jobs. We've had the most private sector investment.
We've broken our exports record. We've broken our tourism record three straight years.

Speaker 16 Drug overdose deaths are down. And so what Democrats do when we win is we govern well.
And you see that across Democratic governors.

Speaker 16 And that's why I think you see Democratic governors winning and winning re-election. And I think that's really important, that it can't just be about the election.

Speaker 16 It can't just be about the policies, but you actually have to make people's life better when you get the opportunity.

Speaker 17 On the why, you went straight to faith. And

Speaker 17 it's kind of awkward when I bring up, but I just, I do think that there is an impression that the Democratic Party has become at least somewhat hostile to Christianity, fair or unfair.

Speaker 17 You know, I was interviewing a Hispanic influencer guy who said basically,

Speaker 17 like, he thinks part of the reason why Democrats lost ground with Hispanics is that

Speaker 17 if you go back in the past, whether it be Joe Biden or past Democratic candidates, like there's a sense that

Speaker 17 they were Christian, they believed in God, and that that is lost a little bit. Do you sense that?

Speaker 17 I mean, do you think about that at all? Do you intentionally talk about your faith, going to church, all that?

Speaker 16 Well, I talk about my faith because it's part of me. It's part of what drives me.
And I think our candidates need to be authentic about what drives them. You know, Josh Shapiro talks about his faith,

Speaker 16 which is different from mine, but it still teaches those same value sets. And people will respect faith, even if it's different from theirs.

Speaker 16 People could talk about how they were raised doing right and not doing wrong as long as it's real to them. But for the longest time, Democrats were scared to talk about their why.

Speaker 16 Now I think we absolutely have to do it. I mean, Democrats can't sound like sanitized robots.
People demand authenticity in a world of social media where you can see people in very different ways.

Speaker 16 Things like this, they expect you to answer tougher questions and then they just want to feel like they know you a little bit.

Speaker 16 I tell you what, maybe one of the main reasons I won re-election in Kentucky by so much compared to before is people in Kentucky don't call me governor. They call me Andy.

Speaker 16 And part of that is because especially during the pandemic, I had a daily update for a year and a half without missing a single day.

Speaker 16 But it created a relationship where if you're doing that every day, they're going to see exactly who you are. You're not going to be able to hide one piece of who you are.

Speaker 16 But even when I'd make a mistake, the fact that it was upfront and real and authentic, you know, people can forgive that as long as they see who you are and that you're trying.

Speaker 17 You got teenage kids, right?

Speaker 16 I do.

Speaker 17 Pray for me. Are you making them go to church with you on Sunday?

Speaker 16 We all go to church.

Speaker 16 Sometimes they'll go to youth group, and that's been a neat part of them. That doesn't mean they like to get up to go to church.

Speaker 17 It's like good on them. I'm not going to, close your ears, mom.

Speaker 17 I used to, when I was, as soon as I got my driver's license, I pretended to go to church on Sunday and went and got donuts and read the newspaper like a door.

Speaker 16 There are lots of options.

Speaker 17 You may want to keep an eye on them if they say they're going to the late service. You don't know what they're actually doing.

Speaker 16 Thankfully, with YouTube and the rest, there are lots of options to see your church service.

Speaker 16 That's true.

Speaker 17 One more thing on this, on the social issues. Do you think there's any issues that you feel like your party has gone too far left on or that you feel like they're out of step with you on them?

Speaker 17 Or do you really think it's just all about framing?

Speaker 16 Well, no, I think we need room. in the Democratic Party for people to have different views.
I think we've got to get away from the litmus tests.

Speaker 16 You know, the idea of a healthy democracy means even within a party, everyone doesn't have to fully agree. And elections are math.
You need more people voting for you than the other person.

Speaker 16 And therefore,

Speaker 16 the more litmus tests you have, the more purity tests you have, the fewer people that you welcome into your party. Also, we claim to be a party of inclusivity.
And those litmus tests are exclusive.

Speaker 16 Now, we've got to support people when they stand up for their convictions, and people can have different convictions. But we shouldn't just be the party of this issue or that issue.

Speaker 16 We should be the party of the American dream. I mean, right now, over half of Americans believe the American dream is out of their reach, and that's really dangerous for this country.

Speaker 16 The idea that if you work hard and play by the rules, that you can get ahead, if suddenly people don't believe in that, then our country hurts and doesn't move forward with the momentum that we need.

Speaker 16 And so, we've got to be the party of creating better jobs, of bringing down costs, of affordable health care, of making sure that people can buy their first home when they're about the same age that their parents could.

Speaker 16 I think it's the right place to be. And I also think it could help bridge this divide of us versus them.

Speaker 16 Because listen, somebody may have voted Republican their entire life, but if they can't afford that first home, And your policies make it possible for it, that they bring that American dream back in line,

Speaker 16 they're going to think a little bit differently in that next election.

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Speaker 17 You talked about the results you delivered in Kentucky.

Speaker 17 There is one of the other kind of debates that's going out there when Democrats look at like how things went wrong for them and how they've allowed themselves to lose power is a critique being posed by Ezra Klein and some others around this question of abundance, right?

Speaker 17 That like the Democrats have not actually delivered the government services that they promised because of rules and regulations.

Speaker 17 I was listening to an interview you were doing a couple months ago. We were talking about how hard it was to get that rural broadband down in Kentucky.

Speaker 16 What do you make of that?

Speaker 17 of that conversation around abundance and regulation and red tape. To some people, I think in the Democratic Party, it codes a little bit Republican-y.

Speaker 17 It sounds a lot like what Ronald Reagan is talking about, so it makes them uncomfortable.

Speaker 17 What do you make of it?

Speaker 16 I'm less worried about any coding than I am about getting real results for the American people.

Speaker 16 If Democrats believe that

Speaker 16 internet access is critical for the future and that we ought to have policies that allow everyone to be able to afford it, then we actually have to follow through and get the results.

Speaker 16 And if we create so many hoops that you have to jump through and so much pre-planning that three years later, there's not one inch of fiber in the ground, we've got to recognize we're doing something wrong.

Speaker 17 And that's crazy, though. That is a catastrophe.
Like three years later, it's one thing to be like, oh, this was a mistake and we didn't do it.

Speaker 17 People should have been, there should have been hair on fire over this.

Speaker 16 And let me just say, I believe that the Democratic Party can be pro-worker and pro-business. And here's why I describe myself as being pro-business.

Speaker 16 I recruit the next big business to come to Kentucky.

Speaker 16 I'm going to tell them that we're going to follow every rule, but we're going to get them up and running six months faster than they would in any other state. Why is that important to me?

Speaker 16 Because the faster they're up and running, the faster they hire Kentucky families, the faster someone has a better wage, the faster someone has that health insurance that's provided by that company.

Speaker 16 So as Democrats, we're supposed to believe in that end result that makes people's lives better. So we ought to be reflective.

Speaker 16 about what we're doing from the passage of a bill or the decision to pursue a policy and what it takes to get there.

Speaker 16 So as we look forward to hopefully flipping the House, flipping the presidency in 2028, rebuilding the federal government, we ought to do it in a way that's really effective.

Speaker 16 Because if we can deliver for the American people at a real level without any of the cruelty of the current administration, without any of the chaos, then I think we could have really good governance.

Speaker 16 We could heal the country and we could have a lot of Democrats doing really good things for a long time.

Speaker 17 So once again, I'm just going to challenge you because I agree with all that. You're speaking to me a little too much.

Speaker 17 It kind of reminds me of when I was, I went to work for John Huntsman in 2012. And I was like, I love this guy.
He's making sense. And then we finished in last place running for president.

Speaker 17 So, you know, sometimes my instincts are a little out of touch with what the electorate is.

Speaker 17 A lot of other Democrats will listen to that and say, I think that, no, the real answer is there needs to be just more of a populist left focus, like centering of the workers, where, sure, bringing business into Kentucky is all fine and good, but you need to understand who the real foes are here.

Speaker 17 It's the billionaire class. It's the elites.
And the Democrats need to

Speaker 17 be once again the vanguard of the working man. It would be kind of the Bernie Sanders argument that he made the New York Times this week.
What would you say to that?

Speaker 16 I think the approach can and should be a lot simpler than that.

Speaker 16 That a lot of that speak where we're talking about center left or

Speaker 16 center right, it falls into that idea of the coalition that I think hurt Democrats the last time.

Speaker 16 I think Democrats in some of the campaigns were saying, well, we have to have 76% of this group and 86% of that group and 65% of this group. And they were sending different messages to all of them.

Speaker 16 And to give the Trump campaign credit, they said, let's do 3% better with everyone. And what did it show us? That, yes, there are important issues to important groups, but.

Speaker 16 Everyone wants to be able to afford not only the groceries for their family, but to be able to take them on vacation from time to time.

Speaker 16 And so I think we've just got to be the party that is saying, we see you, we hear you, we know that you are struggling, we know the American dream feels out of reach, and we are going to work harder every single day to make it a reality, again, to make your life a little bit better and a little bit easier.

Speaker 16 I think that's the lane for us. I think that's the lane that Trump won in.
And I think that his policies now, making it so much more difficult, are eventually going to lead to a feeling of betrayal.

Speaker 16 But again, that lane that he won on. and that we used to win on is right there.

Speaker 17 I think Kamala would tell you she did that. It's like, what do you think? Where do you think things went wrong?

Speaker 16 I believe that President Trump was able to depict the vice president as distracted, as focused on a bunch of issues that didn't necessarily impact people's daily lives.

Speaker 16 And a lot of us, we see all the rallies, we read a bunch of it, but those weren't what his ads were in those swing states. Those weren't what his digital messages were.
What were they?

Speaker 16 Things cost too much. I'm going to work to bring them down.
I'm going to work harder on it.

Speaker 17 But also, I mean, a ton of negative ads about how she supported health care for transgender immigrant prisoners.

Speaker 16 So in that last ad, I think it ended up being more about distraction than anti-trans. I think if a voter was anti-trans, they were already voting for Donald Trump.

Speaker 16 But I think what he did in that ad was to say, I'm not sure that's right, though.

Speaker 17 I think there are a lot of black voters that aren't really, just for one example, you look at the interview she did on Charlemagne the God show.

Speaker 17 Charlemagne talked about this, but there are a lot of his listeners who had been Democrats, but also have various conservative values or whatever, various views that made them not be supportive of a trans girl playing in girls' sports.

Speaker 17 And so I think that there are maybe traditional Democrats that aren't anti-trans, like bigoted, but were on the Republican side of that debate.

Speaker 16 But I think it depends on how much they think you're going to focus on what. You know, all of us have slightly different views.
We're raised in different ways. We have different life experiences.

Speaker 16 So you're almost never going to have a candidate that has 100% of the same views that you do. And if you think that, you're probably not looking closely enough.

Speaker 16 But I think what voters are saying right now are what are the things that you're going to spend 80% of your time on?

Speaker 16 And that's why I think the formula is 80% of our time on things that matter to 100% of the American people. That 20%,

Speaker 16 people can be okay with differences in if their next paycheck is going to be a little bit better, if they believe you're trying to bring down the price of pharmaceuticals, if you've built that new road that saves them 20 minutes each way and they've got 40 more minutes with their family.

Speaker 17 I'm with you on all that. I'm just trying to figure out what it looks like.
And I'm sorry to belabor the point because I just

Speaker 17 think that if you asked Joe Biden's team and Kamala Harris's team, they would say they tried to take your advice, right?

Speaker 17 Like, I don't think that they were really focused on trans sports or climate or identity issues, particularly.

Speaker 17 The vice president went out of her way, I think, to not talk about identity issues, in my view. So it feels like there's something else there.

Speaker 17 And I wonder if you had a time machine and were able to go back to 2020

Speaker 17 and sit down with Joe Biden in the Oval Office and say, I'm from the future.

Speaker 17 Doc Brown gave me this DeLorean, and I'm telling you that we're going to lose next time based on the current plans.

Speaker 17 What would you have told them to get it on a different trajectory? Was there anything that they could have done to get us on a different trajectory?

Speaker 16 Yeah, I would have done a couple of things.

Speaker 16 First, I would have told him fewer regulations, fewer rules, get the dollars for Internet for All and for other programs out there, and then carefully watch and audit all of us and make sure that we follow the rules, but actually have all of that work happening.

Speaker 16 You know, they were under the belief that once a law passed, that the next administration wouldn't be able to pull it back. And I'd seen that in Kentucky.

Speaker 16 I was attorney general under a Republican governor that at a time of a budget surplus refused to send all the dollars appropriated to our universities. And I had to sue to make it happen.

Speaker 16 And so I'd seen this happen before. I would say, if you want eight years to be able to put these programs in, they've got to really be humming in the first four.

Speaker 16 And then I'd say you also got to get out and show people what you're doing. People need to see and feel and touch.
the progress that's out there.

Speaker 16 When I was going into re-election in 2023, 2021 had been our best year for economic development ever by far. 2022 had been our second best year by far.

Speaker 16 And I was running against an opponent that had spent one year in the private sector. And ironically, he worked for my law firm.
A little awkward.

Speaker 16 But when we originally polled, you know, who's better for the economy because of the Democrat-Republican thing, I was only winning by about four or five points.

Speaker 16 And I just couldn't believe it with all this work.

Speaker 16 But what we saw in focus groups, which can be effective, just to get your mind where people's minds are if you're you're really listening, was that people just need to be reminded.

Speaker 16 They're not living in the everyday that you are. And so we said, What about the $5.8 billion battery plants? And they said, Oh, yeah, I heard about all those jobs.

Speaker 16 If you talk to them about new jobs in their community, which we did, we put them on our mailer specifically in their county that they drove by every single day.

Speaker 16 If you send out a postcard to everyone who lives within 10 miles of a new important road project, I would say get out there and just make sure sure that people know that reason that your life is a little bit better is because of this administration.

Speaker 16 And I'll tell you, I was at a lot of groundbreakings for them. And you know who was standing there with me? The Republican congressmen that voted against it.

Speaker 17 Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 17 I'll get back to the Republicans, but just, and the last thing on this, it's awkward, but I just think, was the problem that Joe Biden wasn't capable of going out there and just because of his age didn't have the vigor or the communication skills anymore to do it and that the Democrats should have just dealt with that reality earlier?

Speaker 16 So I think certainly the pandemic played a role in the first part. I think a focus on foreign policy when people were crying out domestically, you know, impacted it too.
And they admitted that.

Speaker 16 On the health side, as a governor, you know, I see the president twice a year.

Speaker 16 And so it's hard for me to know if that's what

Speaker 16 things were.

Speaker 17 I mean, again, I could just, I don't think that there are any Republicans out there, governors out there who are saying I don't ever hear from Donald Trump.

Speaker 17 Like, my understanding is that he's pretty visible.

Speaker 16 I will say he is visible, but the way he's visible is very different. Sure.
Donald Trump gets out there and goes to sports, and just being seen, we can see, is helpful.

Speaker 16 What we don't see him doing is traveling to states on the economy or on health care, on major policy pieces. And I think that's going to come back and hit him later on.

Speaker 17 You don't think that the age thing was the problem last time?

Speaker 16 Oh, I think age played a role. There's no question that age played a role.
There's even nuanced questions that you can ask about energy to run in the toughest election in the world.

Speaker 17 Back to Trump and him getting out there. I forget, I guess it was on Jon Stewart's.

Speaker 17 I listened to one of the other interviews where you were saying that, you know, obviously you grade Trump's performance pretty low, but

Speaker 17 you should compliment administrations when they do things well. I think you acknowledged FEMA at that time.
This was a couple months ago, was doing well at that time. Here we are, like 10 months in.

Speaker 17 what would you say are the things that the administration has done that's the most damaging? Maybe it's what we've already discussed.

Speaker 17 And are there anything that you think that they've done that you think you approve of?

Speaker 16 Well, the big ugly bill is going to be the most devastating of their policies.

Speaker 16 And that's saying something because tariffs are really awful and are slowing the economy and are causing job losses and may well cause a recession will at least prevent what was going to be really significant growth.

Speaker 16 But the big ugly bill, I mean, it's going to take a trillion dollars out of primarily rural health care. It's going to close rural hospitals.
Kentucky may lose 20,000 health care workers.

Speaker 16 Remember, that's one of the fastest-growing parts of rural economies. The largest payroll in a lot of these communities is going to close.
And that means the restaurant, the coffee shop, and the bank.

Speaker 16 all may close too. You're going to see property values decrease, which is going to impact schools.

Speaker 16 And then worker productivity is going to go way down because you got to take a full day off just to see a doctor. Then you got to take your kids.
And then you got to take your parents.

Speaker 16 and so this is going to hit rural america like a like a sledgehammer on the positive side the female certainly to february flooding in kentucky was some of the best i'd seen i also think we've got to give him some credit for for getting hostages back recently i wish that could have been done faster but listen a lot of people got to come home to their families

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Speaker 17 I want to talk about the governor's races out there really quick with the head of the governor's association and then we'll do some fun stuff and I'll let you get out of here.

Speaker 17 How do we get more Andy Bashirs? How do the Democrats get more Andy Bashirs out there? I'm looking at the races in 2026 and red states. You got Kansas and Iowa jumped out at me.

Speaker 17 Are you seeing other candidates that are doing things you like in particular?

Speaker 16 I am. And I'm the head of the Democratic Governors Association in 2026.
And our goal is to change the map, is to win in places that people don't expect.

Speaker 16 And part of that is having really good candidates. You look at Iowa and Rob Sand has gotten elected statewide as auditor a bunch of times.
I've been with him. I've heard him.
What a great candidate.

Speaker 16 And I think he's going to have a really good opportunity.

Speaker 17 We did a great interview with him over on the YouTube. I'll put it in the show notes for people who want to learn more about him.
He was good.

Speaker 16 And so I think that's an example. Now, another example is having a good candidate, and then the other side puts up an extremist.

Speaker 16 You saw that when John Bell Edwards, and he became governor of Louisiana, just as hard to run in Kentucky before

Speaker 16 I won. Now, I remember the call when he was running, when he described how he was going to win, and he was right.

Speaker 16 That his opponent was going to be too extreme, and that he was going to focus on people's everyday lives. And so that's what we'll be looking for.

Speaker 17 Now, John Bell Edwards is pro-life, though.

Speaker 17 He took some cultural views to the right.

Speaker 17 Back to that conversation from earlier. It's worth noting.

Speaker 16 But look at where he was on climate change. I mean, for instance.
And so

Speaker 16 you think we can put all these in one bucket or another.

Speaker 17 I'd love to have John Bell Edwards right now, man. We got the worst governor in America down here, Jeff Landry.
He's fucking up the football coach search in addition to

Speaker 17 everybody's sales taxes are going up. There are no jobs.
He's doing nothing right.

Speaker 16 Well, John Bell is a good friend of mine, great governor, good example of how you can govern in states where the governor may be one party and the legislature another. So I still call John.

Speaker 16 And by the way, when Kentucky got hit really hard by the worst tornado disaster in our life and the worst flooding disaster, John Bell and y'all in Louisiana gave us, gave us your travel trailers that you had kept in good condition.

Speaker 16 After the tornadoes, we had them up in a month. After the flooding, we had them up in six days.
And we owe a big thank you there.

Speaker 17 What about the model of having one of my people run? We got Never Trumper, Jeff Duncan is in a primary in Georgia, obviously. There are other candidates.

Speaker 17 Keisha Lance Bottom is a mayor of a former mayor of Atlanta, others.

Speaker 17 So I know you probably can't pick a horse in a primary, but just in general, what do you think about the Jeff Duncan model in some of these states?

Speaker 16 I can't pick a horse in a primary. We got a lot of great candidates in Georgia, and I was all for him getting in, which some may disagree with.

Speaker 16 But listen, he was at the time a Republican willing to speak out against Trump, willing to give up his office because of it. And there's a lot to respect there.

Speaker 17 All right. Let's do some fun questions at the end.
They might not all be fun for you. They're fun for me, though.

Speaker 17 One area I like, Andy Scher, one area where maybe

Speaker 17 our MO is a little different is I got a lot of people I hate.

Speaker 17 I do a lot of two-minute hate on here, which is maybe against Christian values. I'm working on that.

Speaker 17 But is there anybody, if you just look at the news right now, is there anybody out there that really is boiling your blood that you really detest?

Speaker 16 I won't use the word hate, but

Speaker 16 you know, J.D. Vance made his money initially

Speaker 16 off of criticizing my people in Kentucky.

Speaker 16 Hill Billy Elegy blames our challenges on us, claims we are lazy, and that is not who we are. I think he is incredibly condescending.

Speaker 16 And I believe that he is fraying our alliances with Europe that are critical to world stability, supporting far-right groups, and talking down to world leaders that we we should want strong relationships with.

Speaker 17 Great pick. That was my pick, too.
I was hoping you'd pick J.D. Vance.
Stephen Miller is a close second, but JD is, there's a special category for him because of the smarminess. To that point,

Speaker 17 a lot of Democrats really want a lot more fight right now. You know, a lot of Democrats obviously like Tim Walls, thought he did a good job as governor.
We're happy he was picked as VP.

Speaker 17 And his debate performance with JD, though, like the debate was kind of collegial in a way that rubbed some people the wrong way. I was wondering what you made of that.

Speaker 17 How do you think Tim Walls did in that debate? And what do you think the Democrats' job is when it comes to actually confronting the other side?

Speaker 16 Tim is a good friend, and he was upfront with the vice president that debating was not

Speaker 16 his strong suit, that it made him uncomfortable.

Speaker 16 You know, I got a legal background. I get excited about debates and I take it right to my opponent.

Speaker 16 My opponent in my reelection would not on the record say whether he was for exceptions for rape and incest in our total abortion ban in Kentucky. And I will tell you, during those debates,

Speaker 16 I looked at him and I asked him in one debate six times to go on the record for it. And you could see how extreme that he was and also unwilling to just look at the camera and answer a question.

Speaker 17 Why weren't you on the short list for VP, do you think?

Speaker 16 I don't know how far I got. I don't know if I was in the elite date or the final.

Speaker 17 You haven't asked her? You haven't called her and asked her. She's telling

Speaker 17 all the old stories now in her book tour.

Speaker 16 So listen, I don't think that I was the right fit for her, and I don't think that she thought I was the right fit for her. And I'm okay with that.
So

Speaker 16 my thing was,

Speaker 16 if I was in that final game, I had two questions before

Speaker 16 I was willing to do it. Number one, what's the job? You know, being a governor is great.
You got a really good job every day where you can get real results and things are going so well in Kentucky.

Speaker 16 And the second one would have been, how in this role can I deliver for Kentucky?

Speaker 16 Because I made the promise to serve out you know my entire four years of my second term I never got to to to ask those questions but that's that's what what I still had on my mind and and on my heart all right the most important part of Kentucky is the bourbon I'm a bourbon man myself I'd like your I'd like a bourbon ranking from you a top three

Speaker 17 I don't want you to get in trouble with any of those bourbon makers but you know those hard choices

Speaker 16 asking me my favorite kids and and when I look at Will and Lila I tell them my favorite child is Winnie the dog because she doesn't talk back I like a lot of them I think Mictor's is really good

Speaker 16 I love that the owner moved to Kentucky and and is growing that business I like Eagle Rare from Sazarack that's also a really good one I like a lot of the the products that come out of Brown Foreman.

Speaker 16 I like some of the Woodford Reserves. The double oak, I think, is really good.
The triple oak may be a little too sweet for me, but I really like the double.

Speaker 17 That's pretty good. I'm a Blantons man, but those are all good choices.
Mixture's is good.

Speaker 16 Blantons is good.

Speaker 17 The only good thing that came out of the LSU season this year is I want to bet with a listener on the Clemson game over Blanton, and he sent me a bottle of Blantons. So shout out to him.

Speaker 17 People say you can be a little, you know, look at you.

Speaker 17 You even mentioned in your church going.

Speaker 17 Have you ever gotten any trouble, had won too many bourbons, gotten any loose?

Speaker 17 Well, I think when we're growing up, we all cut a little loose every now and then, but we all try to learn from that uh and and being imperfect human beings get better each and every day all right all right that's that's good enough governor bashir i appreciate next time we get together how about over a bourbon maybe in kentucky when you're when you make me a kentucky colonel is it like a british thing where i kneel down and you put a sword on my shoulder or how does that work we we can do that if necessary okay maybe maybe we'll do that over a bourbon next time in town sounds good holler at me if you get down to louisiana all right all right thank you for having me all right i appreciate it that's governor andy bashir up next terry Moran.

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Speaker 17 All right, we are back. Delighted to welcome back to the show a former foreign correspondent and chief White House correspondent and an anchor for ABC News.

Speaker 17 He's now on Substack at Real Patriotism with Terry Moran. It's Terry Moran.
What's up, man? Welcome back to the show.

Speaker 19 Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 19 It was great the first time we talked because after that, the Substack took off. I got some press.
So let's do it again.

Speaker 17 I love that. And folks, you go check out your Substack.
You're doing great work. I was just watching your video from Chicago this morning, which we'll talk about in a second.

Speaker 17 But first, I just wanted to get your take on former Vice President Dick Cheney, who died this morning. You, we were going back through your archive.

Speaker 17 I guess you did in the Nightline interview with him, maybe back in 2005 or so, actually in Iraq. Cheney made a surprise trip there, and you interviewed him.

Speaker 17 It seemed like from the interview, kind of in

Speaker 17 an undisclosed location type type situation because you're asking about this, and it's like it's not really a sign that things are going well, that's the nature in which your arrival in Iraq happened.

Speaker 17 But what did you remember about that? And any other thoughts about the former vice president?

Speaker 19 I do remember that interview and a few trips that I took with Cheney.

Speaker 19 Let's set aside the substantive issues for a moment. He was an old school politician.
I felt like he'd been in Washington since the 1960s, early 70s.

Speaker 19 And so he was kind of, in my experience as a political reporter, the last of a breed, right?

Speaker 19 You'd get on a plane. He flew around in, you know, the Air Force 2, which was basically the same plane.

Speaker 19 And at the end of every day, workday, not every, but he would frequently invite people, invite the reporters up to his cabin, to the kind of cabin, and offer everybody a whiskey and sit down and take all comers.

Speaker 19 It was off the record.

Speaker 19 It's not like he disclosed state secrets, but you got a sense of the old insider, in the good way insider,

Speaker 19 political process. The way he talked about Democrats affectionately, some of them, less others.
And you got a sense that he trusted the press

Speaker 19 in a way that I think he learned not to, and maybe was very unhealthy, right? We're in the stage right now where it was all too cozy, and the insiders, including me, let us all down.

Speaker 19 I was White House correspondent on September 11th, 2001, and in the invasion of Iraq. But there was also something, there was Greece in the gears.
And guys like that kind of made the system go.

Speaker 19 Now, he made it go in the wrong direction. First thing I thought of when he died, when I heard he died was, to me, the most important question when I think of a politician is,

Speaker 19 you know, are they true patriots? They love the country. And he loved the country.
Now, I don't mean, you know, chest dumping. I mean he was a patriot.

Speaker 19 He had terrible judgment, obviously, and a kind of strange paranoia that this great country was always at risk of being, you know, attacked and destroyed. And it led the country down bad directions.

Speaker 19 But he loved the country, as I think he demonstrated in the last years of his life.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I went and just kind of re-looking through the transcript of the interview. And man, you did give him the business.
Deserved.

Speaker 17 You know, it was quite a time capsule from late 2005 with the Valerie Plain issues, Guantanamo, and torture at the time. I don't know, with the benefit of how long do we have now?

Speaker 17 20 years, almost 20 years on, just on the merits of the arguments,

Speaker 17 the back and forth between the two of you, they really dug themselves a bad hole and made a lot of bad judgment on that one.

Speaker 19 They did. Thank you.
I looked at that interview, actually, coincidentally.

Speaker 19 I just thought, you know, what was that like? And there's still, the ABC still has the transcript of it up online. So I looked at it and I thought, okay, yeah, I mean, I held them to account.

Speaker 19 The news that the federal government was spying on Americans without a warrant from any court had just broken a week or so earlier.

Speaker 19 And he kept saying, well, the Justice Department okayed it and the White House counsel okay. And I was saying, that's not the way it works, right?

Speaker 19 The president doesn't get to decide what's legal, right? We got to have the courts involved. And,

Speaker 19 you know, it's the same kind of way to go from old to young. When I think about Zoran Mandamni, I think this is a guy who, A, you got to love his aspect, right?

Speaker 19 We're in a dreary, dull, angry time, and he's a very upbeat guy. And second, in a weird way, like Dick Cheney, he loves this country.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 17 He was

Speaker 17 there's a little video I saw this morning where he was informed live when he went to vote that Dick Cheney had died. I want to know his internal monologue because

Speaker 17 he gave a concerned, you know, kind of response, like, oh, really? And like thought about it for a second. You could tell he was thinking that he might talk.

Speaker 17 And then he just kind kind of turned down and went and signed the card with the lady volunteering to vote this morning. And so I don't know, maybe better judgment prevails.

Speaker 19 The bottom line, people are saying Cheney's legacy is complicated. Well, the headline is not.
It was a catastrophe, the way he led George W. Bush into that war.

Speaker 19 And I remember thinking at the time that Bush was completely unprepared for that. for September 11th and its aftermath.
And he kind of looked around. He'd never been around the world, really, at all.

Speaker 19 When Bush was elected, he made his first trip to Mexico.

Speaker 19 We were all kind of saying, well, he's never been out of the country. And they took umbrage at that.

Speaker 19 They produced a paper, which I believe is in his official papers, Places the President Has Been Outside the United States Before He was President. And it was about a dozen countries.

Speaker 19 Number one, Bermuda. So he was unprepared, and he looked around.
He said, who knows anything about a world, about this world? And there was Dick Cheney.

Speaker 19 And he was de facto president for about two years.

Speaker 17 Not complicated. Wrong in Iraq, right on Trump.

Speaker 16 You know, there you go.

Speaker 17 Our thoughts are, though, with Liz and the rest of his family because it is tough.

Speaker 17 She loved her dad and listened to her talk about her dad. It was really moving.
I want to hear from you about your time in Chicago.

Speaker 17 The video I mentioned earlier, which we'll link to here if people want to go watch the whole thing, was titled Inside America's Immigration Crackdown.

Speaker 17 It is tough for us who are watching. It's hard to get your bearings on like how much of the city is this happening in, right? Like, what is the scope of all this?

Speaker 17 Like, you see some horrible videos, and and then you also see people running along Lake Michigan, like, there's no, nothing different, right? That's the nature of these sorts of things.

Speaker 17 From your being on the ground, being in many neighborhoods, what's your sense for the scope of the immigration crackdown in Chicago?

Speaker 19 Well, it is sweeping, and everyone feels like they can be,

Speaker 19 that their neighborhood can be targeted, right? There is that randomness.

Speaker 19 And if you are, I mean, I was standing out in one of the iconic locations in Chicago, right on the the Chicago River, the Chicago Tribune Building, that magnificent Gothic building there rising away.

Speaker 19 We just planted there during morning rush hours. People were coming to work.
And I asked people, so what do you think of this? And a couple of people stopped by, and I didn't choose them.

Speaker 19 They were of one was of Hispanic descent. They're going to some

Speaker 19 office building.

Speaker 16 She says, I'm afraid.

Speaker 19 Everywhere I'm afraid. Because it has that quality.
It's supposed to have that quality. But then the reason that I went there is something I saw in all those videos.

Speaker 19 The normies.

Speaker 19 These aren't the usual suspects who are getting in the way of ICE, who are taking out their phones and demanding identification or allowing the person who's being arrested to cry out their names before they're disappeared.

Speaker 19 The priests who brought Holy Communion to that detention center and were turned away by ICE.

Speaker 19 I talked to them as well. When you get people who don't do this on a regular basis, you always need instigators in every protest movement, right, left, center, whatever.

Speaker 19 But when you get the normies to come out of their house and say, this is wrong, I need to do something about it.

Speaker 19 Up in Rogers Park, we spent an afternoon with a group that has hundreds of moms who stand outside the schools during dismissal. And they blow those whistles if ICE is around.

Speaker 19 Chicago felt decisive to me. It is not decided, but it is the decisive place, I think.

Speaker 19 Trump is bringing the full force of his immigration crackdown and his authoritarian ambitions. That's the underlying theme.
And Chicago's 2.7 million. I was born there.

Speaker 19 I grew up, you know, right outside. Those people are pretty independent, pretty tough, and

Speaker 19 they're not going to be pushed around.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I was interested. You mentioned the priests.
It's kind of in the context of Pope Leo being from Chicago. You know, obviously, there's maybe a little bit of extra gravity to that.

Speaker 17 And, you know, there were multiple kind of priests you talked to in church. I'm just wondering, obviously, and a lot of the Hispanics are Catholic, you know, and there are churches that have

Speaker 17 Spanish language mass there and things of that nature. So I was wondering, kind of, any reflections on your conversations with the priests in Chicago?

Speaker 19 You know, the two priests, two of the several that brought the Holy Communion to that detention center, one

Speaker 19 had just been ordained in June. The other had been a priest 58 years.

Speaker 19 And they walked together, right, with the monstrants holding the post and all that stuff.

Speaker 19 The older one said something, because I was quite moved by it,

Speaker 19 how respectful they were. They had gotten in touch with ICE in advance, days in advance.
Only a few priests were going to go in. They were going to lead some crowd in.

Speaker 19 And he said, you know, essentially these old things, when you put them in a new context, gain a new and fresh power. And, you know, Trump is the head of the most powerful government in the world.

Speaker 19 No protest is ever going to defeat him, really, in physical ways, but in that kind of power, that witness, that

Speaker 19 deep, deep power, a call to patriotism, a call to common decency. And I think that's why you see his numbers sliding.
People don't want this.

Speaker 19 They understand the border was out of control. They want a solution.
Americans are not ideologues by their nature.

Speaker 19 We don't give up our consciences to some great leader who tells us everything is great.

Speaker 19 We're pragmatists. We like what works.
And I think that in Chicago, you felt normal people

Speaker 19 saying, this is too much for me and getting out of their houses and doing what they can.

Speaker 17 And it's inspiring to see the people that are volunteering and trying to help. And, you know, it's just your heart like breaks.

Speaker 17 Like the idea that these kids like have to be worried when they're coming out of school that maybe somebody might be nabbing their family.

Speaker 17 And so, for those people who are coming out, like that's one type of person who's making a change, who's changed their day-to-day life since these raids started.

Speaker 17 The other is kind of the inverse, folks that are staying in, right?

Speaker 17 You were at the Little Village neighborhood, and that video was pretty shocking where you're talking about just how the street is empty. This is a Hispanic neighborhood.

Speaker 17 You have to get buzzed in to get into the barber shop. Talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 19 That was incredible. So, Little Village

Speaker 19 was when I was growing up, the great polish neighborhood of chicago is now the great mexican-american neighborhood of chicago and for a mile and a half or so 26th street is just chock a block with stores and restaurants and all kinds of of places of business it's the main street of latino chicago it really is and it was absolutely deserted there was like a ghost town and I was thinking, well, how are we going to tell the story here?

Speaker 19 Because several days earlier and the day after we left, ice was all over the place. And so people are, you know, taking cover, basically.

Speaker 19 It makes as much money as Michigan Avenue does, which is the great shopping street, right? The Madison Avenue of Chicago.

Speaker 19 And so is this engine of commerce. And I was told it's 60%

Speaker 19 down. It's having real world impacts.
And it's not that everybody there is, you know, illegal. It's that they could be mistaken for such.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 they don't want to be seen at all within you know 100 yards of a federal office or even if they're born and raised in the united states i was in um i was in this barbershop i said oh talk to somebody in the barbershop and they looked at me very suspiciously finally they buzzed me in because i looked like this they had no idea i i've always been mistaken for a narc

Speaker 19 you do give off narc vibes you do give up narc vibes if you were in a if you were in a jam band show i don't think i'd be seeing if you wanted any drugs it's true it was actually a liability as a reporter too people he's too straight arrow uh they wouldn't leak but in there was a guy getting his hair cut and he's uh uh he grew up there he still lives there um he got he went into the army uh came out got an mba and he he owns a business he did not want to go on camera but he told me what people were feeling and how scared people were and that the whole life of that part of Chicago is different now.

Speaker 19 And that's, I once again say, immigration isn't the entire point. It's what permits him to use force in a way that, A, isn't necessary.
You don't need the military in these cities. And

Speaker 19 the manner in which they're rounding people up, tearing mothers from their children, tackling working men in their streets, in the streets, isn't just let's get people who are here unlawfully out.

Speaker 19 They're arresting people at the courthouses, right? We're trying to get their papers correct. It's to send a message that we have the force and anyone who gets in the way can be subject to it.

Speaker 19 I'm convinced of that, which is why Chicago feels decisive to me.

Speaker 17 I guess the potential argument for it not being decisive is listening to what the president said on 60 Minutes about these ICE raids.

Speaker 17 He's asked by Nora O'Donnell about, you know, this kind of feeling that people have that you're describing, that some of these raids have gone too far. And

Speaker 17 he says the opposite. No, I think they're planning on escalating this, moving into other cities and becoming more aggressive, not less, when it comes to immigration enforcement.

Speaker 17 I was wondering what your thoughts were on that.

Speaker 19 I think we all see that coming. We all see the increasing expansion of his authority through force, not consent,

Speaker 19 as much as he can get away with. And even if the Supreme Court finds a pair or excuse me,

Speaker 19 that's not quite right, but even if the Supreme Court finds a backbone.

Speaker 16 We can do that.

Speaker 17 That's fine. That's okay on the Bulwark podcast.
I don't know what the rules are on Terry Marian substitute.

Speaker 19 If they find a backbone, even there is the high likelihood that he will find a way to say, you know, just as President Jackson or some such did, I'm not going to abide by that. And then it really does

Speaker 19 present the problem. You know, you're a nice suburban or Chicago woman with your whistle outside the school, and he's the federal government with the army,

Speaker 19 You are not going to be able to

Speaker 19 stop that. And that will be the question before each and every one of us.
We will know. Look, he can put a fig leaf over it now.

Speaker 19 I actually thought what the New York Times did, the 12-step program for deciding whether or not a person is an authoritarian, and he checks all the boxes, it won't be persuasive to people until they actually see

Speaker 19 basically martial law.

Speaker 17 You talked to a Chicago who did change,

Speaker 17 who said that, like, man, this is worse than I expected. Or, you know, that's another thing that's hard for me to kind of grasp.
Is people that are already liberal are upset about it.

Speaker 17 People are already conservative saying, wow, it's not as bad as it looks, kind of thing.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I mean, look, there are people who say,

Speaker 19 I talked to a couple, actually, this is my favorite interview in some ways. We just stopped a couple on the street outside that Tribune building.
What do you think?

Speaker 19 And they aren't, you don't want to talk to us because we're a mixed marriage. We disagree on it.

Speaker 16 I was like, oh, oh, then I definitely want to talk to you.

Speaker 19 And she was very against it. And he

Speaker 16 was for it.

Speaker 19 Although her, I was kind of playing therapist. I said, well, look, he sounds reasonable.

Speaker 19 And then I said, well, look, she's got this best point, which is that this can't be really who we are, the way it's going about. Is this what you hoped for?

Speaker 19 And he was like, yeah, that's, you know, that does make me feel bad, but we got to get on top of the problem. Once again, I'm kind of pragmatic.
He sees it still as.

Speaker 19 part of the solution, but he understands he's not there yet. He's not there yet.

Speaker 17 Back to the 60 minutes again, as mentioned, this is a big change for you. You know, back then,

Speaker 17 it was your job, you were interviewing the vice president 20 years ago. The 60 Minutes interview came, I think, with a cloud around it, like the idea that they had

Speaker 17 submitted to his extortion when it comes to paying him off over the ridiculous, frivolous lawsuit. Then they get

Speaker 17 rewarded, you would say, I guess, with an interview with the president. What would you make of the interview?

Speaker 16 I was kind of disappointed.

Speaker 19 I'll tell you to you can't win for losing with Trump. Look, I interviewed him in April.
He's a tough interview. Everybody knows that.

Speaker 19 He's going to spew whatever comes into his mind to try to get you off your topic. And he's got pissed at you, though.
He did get very angry at me. Yes, indeed.

Speaker 19 Which I kind of almost didn't notice in the moment.

Speaker 19 I was having a good time.

Speaker 19 Really, genuinely.

Speaker 19 I thought it was a good interview.

Speaker 19 I was respectful, which was very important to me. I didn't want to get in a fight with him because he wins those.
but I thought it was important for him to answer some questions.

Speaker 17 Though he didn't win, though, so I'm sorry to interrupt, but just like the crux of your interview, the main point of the interview people don't remember was this question about Kilmar Breggo-Garcia and at the time and how he had the tattoos on his fingers, but those were fake.

Speaker 17 And you just wouldn't let it go. You're like, no, this is fake.
What you're saying is like, it's one thing to have a different opinion or for you to spin your view about how things are happening.

Speaker 17 But you are saying something that is fake. And I'm not going to just sit here and move on.
And that happened several times in the 60 Minutes interview where they just moved on, right?

Speaker 17 You know, whether it was on the 2020 election or a variety of things where Trump just said things that were just blatantly false and they just moved on.

Speaker 19 Yeah, and I think

Speaker 19 that's the thing you must do, right? You can't re-litigate the 2020 election or whatever. Inflation is actually up, not down or whatever, but you have to pick a spot and communicate to the audience.

Speaker 19 And just for the principle of it, you have to stand up for what actually, factually is true. And he hates that.
He wants to invent a reality where he is king of the world.

Speaker 19 And I do think it is a hard thing to do because he gets angry at it. You don't want to fight with him, which I think is the big mistake, kind of get in there and yell at him.

Speaker 19 With respect, you have to say, no, actually, the moon is not made of cheese. The grass is green, the sky is blue.
And just because you say it, otherwise, doesn't make it so.

Speaker 19 And you don't have to be a jerk about it, but you have to stand up for it. Otherwise, what's the point?

Speaker 19 and nora o'donnell i know nora 20 plus years now i know her as one of the as a great journalist somebody's very tough we've all seen her she's moderated debates she can be very persistent and very tough she wasn't

Speaker 17 you know again you can do theater criticism and all of that and you know there's value and less value to it i guess but for me the thing that stands out is she didn't challenge him on

Speaker 17 the extortion and the suppression of media.

Speaker 17 And to me, it's like if you are at 60 Minutes and you're going to take that interview after you had, you know, settled with him over an absurdly bogus lawsuit, like something that's not even close to the line, to not challenge him on that, like to not bring it up and, or to not deal with it is crazy to me.

Speaker 17 He brought it up randomly and then she just kind of let it go. Like where after he, you know, sort of belittled CBS and said that they had been fake news.

Speaker 19 I love the way you think because that's a good producer.

Speaker 19 That's a good American, but it's also a good producer because

Speaker 19 that's what people want to know about. Are you an honest broker here or are you bending the knee? And also,

Speaker 19 was that a legitimate thing for him to do? I guarantee you, I know how these things go. I know how it went.

Speaker 19 I've interviewed a couple of presidents and the rest of it.

Speaker 19 The bigwigs are always in the room. They're always in the room.

Speaker 19 The best thing to do is kind of get out of the office with a couple of your pals and prepare the interview.

Speaker 19 But then at some point, they say, we're going to have a big meeting about the interview. And there's the vice president, there's people from Disney, there's all this stuff.

Speaker 19 And they're in the interview and they're weighing in. Okay.
That's the way it was. And I guarantee that's the way it is.
Barry Weiss undoubtedly was involved in the prep here.

Speaker 19 But what you just said is it's a better interview, and it's harder to do, and it's harder for him to answer.

Speaker 19 if you put that on the table hey you went after 60 minutes yeah you know parent company paid you 16 15 million dollars whatever but really you won how is it how were you harmed at all by what happened you know anything like that that would have been a live wire of a moment that would have been absolutely forbidden by the powers that be at cbs yeah you mentioned the disney thing i have to ask you so curiosity you have any takes on the disney i i can't watch abc right now on youtube tv there's like a corporate feud going on.

Speaker 17 Maybe you just check out of that because you got triggered.

Speaker 16 You don't want to hear any news.

Speaker 17 But do you have any thoughts on what's happening? It's crazy.

Speaker 19 The only thoughts I have is my in-laws were here for Halloween. So they see the kids go out, you know, and all the rest of it.

Speaker 19 And my father-in-law spent 20 years teaching law at the University of Oklahoma. So he wanted to see Oklahoma, Tennessee, which was on ABC.
He couldn't believe it. He's like, what's going on? I said,

Speaker 19 there's a big fight. I don't know.
That's way above anything I ever understood. I will say this, though, after having been fired, you know, by

Speaker 19 ultimately, Disney apparently made that decision. My wife and I made our own decision.
We are not going to stop loving Disney World or Disney movies.

Speaker 19 I mean, it's great.

Speaker 19 And I made sure in the severance that I'm a Disney lifer, which means we get the discounts in the parks and such still.

Speaker 17 That's a good bargain. Well, congrats on that.
That's good.

Speaker 17 It's important to be the better man. You can't let the kids suffer over it.
You know, know, you can't blame Walt. All right, anything else? Any other deep thoughts? It's been a couple of months.

Speaker 17 Like, I talked to you. It was right after this all happened.
Do you have any updated perspective on it as after a couple of months away from the Borg?

Speaker 16 I do.

Speaker 19 Look, it's harder than I thought. I mean, it's like really hard, but it's also without question.
Without, I mean, it's obvious. It's tomorrow.

Speaker 19 And as I felt like I, like Dorothy, I'm walking out of black and white into color, out of yesterday into tomorrow.

Speaker 19 And I think that, as somebody who's in his mid-60s, I think that's a gift and a blessing. Now, yeah, I have to do it, right? But what a great thing to still be connected into

Speaker 19 the next chapter of the media in the country. And I'm very, very happy.
I look at

Speaker 19 my friends and colleagues at ABC. I've got nothing bad to say about them.
They do great work still. I had a great career there, but it feels to me almost like they're,

Speaker 19 what, birds in a cage or something? Like,

Speaker 17 feels depressing. It must be how I go when I get a PR email from somebody who's working at a PR firm, and I'm like, there, but for the grace of God, go high pitching this garbage.
God love you.

Speaker 17 Everyone's got to make a living, you know?

Speaker 19 But that's it.

Speaker 17 It's nice to be

Speaker 17 independent and saying what you think. Terry Man, let's stay in touch, man.
At RealPatriotism is a sub stacker. We go check it out.
And we'll be talking to you again soon.

Speaker 19 All right. Great.
Thanks, Tim.

Speaker 17 Everybody else, check out our live stream for Election Night tonight. Me, Sarah, and JVL around 9:15.
And I'll be back tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. See you all then.
Peace.

Speaker 16 You remind me of a Sunday back home in old Kentucky with the church choirs just belting to the pines.

Speaker 16 And I love you like the mountains. Loves the way the morning opens to a soft and bright greeting from the sun.

Speaker 16 So, if it'd make you stay,

Speaker 16 I wouldn't act so angry all the time.

Speaker 16 I wouldn't keep it all inside. And I'd let you know how much I loved you every day.

Speaker 16 so, darling, won't you stay right here and shake this frost off of my bones?

Speaker 16 Well, I used to ride a Mustang,

Speaker 16 and I'd that thing on high-holes till they raised the price of dreams so high I couldn't pay.

Speaker 16 So I let that car just sit there

Speaker 16 when I should have took you driving

Speaker 16 from windows down

Speaker 16 while the music played.

Speaker 16 So if it'll make you stay,

Speaker 16 I wouldn't act so angry all the time.

Speaker 16 I wouldn't keep it all inside. And I'd let you know how much I loved you every day.

Speaker 16 So, Dawn, will you stay right here?

Speaker 16 Shake this frost off of my bones.

Speaker 16 Don't we stay right here?

Speaker 16 Shake this frost off of my bones.

Speaker 17 The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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