Heidi Heitkamp: How Trump’s Trade Chaos Hurts Farmers

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Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 14 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 20 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 21 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 25 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 27 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

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Speaker 32 Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
Delighted to welcome back to the show one of my favorite former U.S. Senators.

Speaker 32 She's from North Dakota and the chair of the board of the One Country Project. She also hosts the podcast Hot Dish with her brother Joel at Tidy Height Camp.
What's going on, Heidi?

Speaker 33 It is

Speaker 33 a beautiful fall day in North Dakota and just glad to not be in the Beltway.

Speaker 32 Where in North Dakota are you? In Bismarck? I forget. Where do you live?

Speaker 33 I am in Mandan, which is a beautiful city across the river from Bismarck.

Speaker 32 Okay, how far is it from Buxton? I got on my bean bag here.

Speaker 33 You know, I think it's so funny because they think you got that.

Speaker 33 I saw some rumors about where you got that bean sack. And I'm like, no, he got it from his husband.

Speaker 32 I know where he got it.

Speaker 33 It is quite a ways. It is probably 200 miles from Buxton.

Speaker 32 Okay. I've never been to Buxton.
Buxton man might as well be the same for me, but I'm repping it. I'm repping it proudly.
I know. I want to start with you.

Speaker 32 It's one of the reasons we called you up, bring you back. I'm going to start to talk to you about farm stuff because my husband does his best to brief me, but every once in a while I do make errors.

Speaker 32 Like I was talking about, was I saying something about soybeans rotting or something? He's like, that's not what happens with soybeans. But anyway, I do my best as a suburbanite.

Speaker 32 But there's a lot of stuff happening in farm country. There's a New York Times story earlier this week about Iowa, but you know, some similarities to your neck of the woods.

Speaker 32 I want to read just a little bit from this. The costs of tractors and fertilizers have shot up with tariffs.
Labor has grown scarcer in agribusiness. Manufacturers have laid off workers.

Speaker 32 Even the wind turbines that provide income from from farmers are in the president's sites.

Speaker 32 During the first quarter of 2025, Iowa's gross domestic product contracted at a 1.2% annual rate, which is like a great recession-level contraction.

Speaker 32 Things are a little better in North Dakota because oil and gas stuff. But what's your sense for how bad the economic straits are in rural America right now?

Speaker 33 You know, the one thing that we watch, the lagging indicator for farm economy is bankruptcies and farm bankers, people who, you know, kind of

Speaker 33 put the cash on the barrel head

Speaker 33 before the planting,

Speaker 33 how they're feeling about the economy. And I think they're really nervous.
We're hearing more and more stories about how they are not taking anything for collateral on operating loans besides land.

Speaker 33 And farmers since the 80s have been loath to somehow leverage their land, but that may be where it's at.

Speaker 33 And the sad thing is that the large producers right now, the more stress there is, the more stress there's going to be on smaller producers, which is going to lead to further consolidation.

Speaker 33 And so this is a real challenge. And, you know, one of the not talked about issues is the issue of land ownership.

Speaker 33 And you saw that this week when the Secretary of Treasury tried to convince us all that he was a soybean farmer and how he was stressed to the backs on what was happening. It was ridiculous.

Speaker 33 But it shows you that there are, I wouldn't call them vultures, but there's a lot of venture capital that is out there that is swarming around farmland as an investment.

Speaker 33 And that is going to be a trend that's going to be very injurious, I think, to rural Americans, certainly production and agriculture.

Speaker 32 Yeah, Scott Bessett was feeling the pain, he said. He understands the pain.
His manicure was a little bit messed up.

Speaker 32 Not from farming, but just from other.

Speaker 33 And the thing, Tim, that no one talked about is he was required to divest himself at that farmland and hasn't done it yet.

Speaker 32 Yeah, well, we're not, the the DOJ isn't really looking into, you know, corrupt public corruption.

Speaker 33 Yeah, I mean, the rules, they're for the little people. They're for the little people.

Speaker 32 I want to get into specifically the soybean and cattle ranger stuff, but just like broadly, you know, and the community, like, is your sense that the squeeze is really on? Is it what's lagging?

Speaker 32 Like, we'll see how it goes. Maybe this China deal will fix things.
Like, how, what, what's the sense for like the economic?

Speaker 33 The sense is that even though a lot of injury is done, there's going to be a bailout.

Speaker 33 And, you know, it's going to be interesting because the question that I always, when they say, oh, Trump hasn't hurt the economy, I say, good, good.

Speaker 33 Then you don't need that 40 billion he's talking about sending to rural America. And then it gets really quiet.

Speaker 33 It gets really quiet. And at some point, there's a tipping point.

Speaker 33 And I think one of the things that that is misunderstood is that a lot of these farm subsidies and farm bailouts are kind of cheered across the board in rural America.

Speaker 33 There's a lot of people struggling in rural America who aren't, who don't own farmland, who aren't, you know, you know, 5,000 acre producers, who are, you know, right now it used to be that they would buy their fuel oil in town, they would buy their groceries in town, and now everything has gotten so consolidated, they ship in semis of fuel, you know, and so that's not helping the local economy.

Speaker 33 And I think that the rural economy is, we can't just look at it through the lens of what's happening with the farm bill and with farmers. You got to look at the entire rural economy.

Speaker 33 And certainly the largest employer in rural America is health care.

Speaker 33 And rural health care is really under a lot of challenges, in part because of the Big Beautiful Bill, in part because it's been stressed for a long time, because you don't have economies of scale, but you have reimbursements that act like you're actually in, in fact, in the past, they would reimburse rural hospitals less than urban hospitals under the theory that cost of living was less and that you know recruitment of workforce is incredibly challenging.

Speaker 33 And so, you know, there's just a lot of things out there. And that's why, just to put a plug in for our project, I signed on along with Governor Sununu to chair a rural prosperity conference.

Speaker 33 We're going around the country looking at what's happening in the rural economy. And hopefully, sometime in a couple of years, we'll issue some suggestions on how policy can change.

Speaker 32 To your point about how there are more consumers in this part of the country than there are producers, really, I guess. There are a lot of people that are living there that aren't farmers.

Speaker 32 I've been confused by the cattle rancher, this whole kind of debate. I was hoping you could educate me a little bit.

Speaker 32 So, the cattle ranchers, I guess, are mad that Trump is wanting to bring in, to import more beef from Argentina and other places to help bring the cost of beef down.

Speaker 32 You know, as a free marketer myself, more than somebody who's concerned about ranch economics, I'm like, well, there are a lot more beef eaters than there are beef consumers.

Speaker 32 So it makes like it makes sense that we should be doing that. But obviously, the ranch was very upset.
A lot of senators were giving J.D. Vance the business on that.

Speaker 32 Can you just give me like a little bit of a 101 on why we think beef prices are so high, why the cattle ranchers are so upset about all this?

Speaker 33 Well, I think number one, concentration. Everybody kind of looks at the ranchers and says, oh, look at these beef prices.

Speaker 33 Their share of that pound of hamburger, minuscule compared to what the processors and we've been.

Speaker 32 So how does that could you just explain? Because I have no idea, how is that possible? So they're selling the cow to a pro to a

Speaker 33 lot of the cattle that they sell are feeder cattle.

Speaker 33 And so they are not, they are not ready to be slaughtered and turned into hamburger. They're ready to be sent to the feedlot.
And so they don't can these farmers don't own the feedlots.

Speaker 33 And so especially the ranchers that are, you know, out on the prairie in places like North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska.

Speaker 33 And so they bring their cattle or they consign their cattle to a feedlot and the feedlot finishes them as what

Speaker 33 would be the term, finishes them and then sends them to the slaughter. The farmer's share, the rancher's share of that chain has diminished over time.

Speaker 33 And the reason is concentration in both those other operations.

Speaker 33 And this is a bipartisan failure, both Democrats and Republicans to basically make it possible so that they get a bigger share that they actually get rewarded and paid for what they're doing.

Speaker 33 Now, cattle ranching has been pretty prosperous. I mean, my husband's family raised cattle.
Cattle isn't something you're going to see a lot of

Speaker 33 on really good farmland, which is where I grew up in the Red River Valley, mainly farms that have a lot of pasture. And so they were doing pretty well.

Speaker 33 And when Trump announced this deal, what happened is the market, the futures market collapsed, basically hit the limit, which means that they shut it down because they don't want it overheated.

Speaker 33 Hit the limit, I think, three days in a row, and basically cost farmers over $200, $300 a head for cattle.

Speaker 32 Seems like a bad deal then. What are you telling me?

Speaker 33 Yeah, but just to push back on

Speaker 33 your, you know, just let it all in, you know, our food supply is heavily regulated. We are very cautious and careful about the quality of the food, about the safety of the food.

Speaker 33 I was a big proponent of country of origin labeling, which is, okay, let it in, but tell people where it came from so that they can be educated.

Speaker 33 Canada pitched a fit, and so did Mexico, and we got a bad trade.

Speaker 33 decision and that that was just something that all the packers you know salvated over and jumped on it and your husband helped me try and fight it um you know to try and get some voluntary country of origin labeling but that issue is raised is the consolidation country of origin labeling but if you want the herd to grow, if you want more beef and more production in this country, you know, I'm not somebody who is a protectionist, but I also believe that our food supply should be heavily regulated for safety.

Speaker 33 And I think we're some of the best ranchers and farmers in the world. And, you know, we've got to be able to produce enough food for ourselves and make it affordable.

Speaker 33 But when you're looking at that pound of hamburger,

Speaker 33 don't blame my cattle ranchers. Blame somebody else.

Speaker 32 Okay. I'm not blaming anybody.
I want the market to happen.

Speaker 32 Just from an America-first prism, it seems like your suggestion of the country of origin labeling seems better than whatever it is that Donald Trump is doing, which is bailing out the Argentina farmers and also buying their currency and letting our farmers hold the bag.

Speaker 33 Oh, don't forget, don't forget that the day he announced that he was going to buy Argentinian bonds and God, there's a scandal somewhere in there.

Speaker 32 One of Besson's pals is making money.

Speaker 33 They say, oh, it's just a bond swap. Well, you know, have I got a deal for you? I've got some old Confederate bonds.
Can I swap them for some U.S. securities right now? No.

Speaker 33 And inflation is rampant in Argentina. And so, you know, this whole idea that we're going to be made whole on this bond swap is ridiculous.

Speaker 33 But on the same day, what Argentina did is they lowered their export tax on soybeans and sold a bunch of soybeans to China, which really added insult to injury for the ranchers ranchers and farmers.

Speaker 32 Well, that's another L for our farmer Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant. Big farm.

Speaker 32 He's got a lot of cattle. He's got a lot of farming up behind the barbershop.

Speaker 33 You know, there is an expression, all hat and no cattle. I said, you know, all talk and no soybeans, let me tell you.

Speaker 32 He's definitely doing a lot of detasseling. A big, big pack round of detasseling from Scott Besant.

Speaker 35 Greetings from my bath, festive friends.

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Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 14 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 20 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 21 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 25 One thing's for sure: the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 27 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 32 Oh, you mentioned the soybeans. So we have a deal, I guess, today.
You're going to call it an art of a deal. And again, this is more in your wheelhouse than mine.

Speaker 32 So as an amateur, I'm looking at this. Essentially, Trump starts a trade war.
And so our soybean farmers can't sell

Speaker 32 their soybeans to

Speaker 32 their top customer, foreign customer, China. And so they're sitting on all these soybeans.
So Trump goes to China and he says, okay, I got a deal for you.

Speaker 32 If you start buying the soybeans again, we'll give you advanced AI chips. Like, this seems like a pretty bad deal.
Like, had we done nothing, they still would have been taking the soybeans.

Speaker 32 And so now we're giving them the advanced AI chips in exchange for the 25 million metric tons of beans. But like last year, they bought 27 million metric tons of beans.
This is a horrible deal.

Speaker 33 Well, I, you know, ranchers are saying, or farmers are saying, see, I told you he'd get it done. And you want to say, you know, step back.
And I think the Chinese played Trump like a fiddle.

Speaker 33 I think Trump knew that there was huge challenges with critical minerals. And I don't call them rare earth because they're not rare.
What's rare is the processing and the unwillingness of America to

Speaker 33 suffer the challenges of mining and processing in our country. And so we have plenty of these minerals in our country if we could figure out a way to mine them and process them.

Speaker 33 Anyway, so then he says, I want Canada and I want Greenland. And that was just a play for minerals.
You know, Canada has a lot of

Speaker 33 really important natural resources. And so he's thinking that that's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to get Canada and Greenland. And that didn't turn out so well for him.

Speaker 33 And then he steps back and says, well, I need to do a deal for TikTok because I know how important that was for my campaign.

Speaker 33 So he completely unravels Congressional with their tacit approval because they're chicken to say anything. And so you tell me where we have inflicted any pain on China.

Speaker 33 I mean, I think that's the question that everybody needs to ask. And one thing I don't think the president understood is exports of Chinese goods to the United States is less than 3% of their GDP.

Speaker 33 And so they're like, hey, we can wait this out. Plus, we'll just manufacture in Vietnam.

Speaker 33 We'll manufacture someplace else and send it into the country from a different country of origin and do a bunch of workarounds. And so the Chinese,

Speaker 33 you know, you can say this president is all about the art of the deal.

Speaker 33 You know, he is, he has been taken on a lot of these trade deals, I think.

Speaker 32 Because you mentioned the mineral side, it said it's just so to be just for folks who are like are trying to follow this, like the Luka Doncic trade here is that the Chinese are getting these AI chips that NVIDIA makes that we had trade controls on because because they're powerful and we're in an AI war.

Speaker 32 And so they're now getting these chips.

Speaker 33 But remember, we're blackmailing NVIDIA in this deal tool. Explain that.
Well, I mean, the president basically said, I want X percent. I think it's 15% of your profit selling into China.

Speaker 32 So it's socialism, too.

Speaker 33 You know, sounds like state-sponsored socialism.

Speaker 32 We're doing some socialism. We're sending them the chips.
In exchange, we get one year of these minerals.

Speaker 32 For one year, they're going to sell us these minerals, and they're going going to buy the soybeans that they're already buying, but not as money. Like, that's the deal.

Speaker 32 Like, that was the deal that he cut after all this. The TikTok thing isn't finalized.

Speaker 32 There's no pain on China. We're not doing anything to advance our position vis-a-vis China.
Where are the China hawks in this administration?

Speaker 32 Like, nobody is getting anything out of this deal except for the one year of minerals.

Speaker 33 Well, anytime you say, where are the deficit hawks? Where are the China hawks? Where are the people who care about these issues? They only care about one thing.

Speaker 32 Trump and themselves.

Speaker 33 Kissing the, you know, what?

Speaker 32 Ass. We can say ass.
The ring. The ring.
Kissing the ring. Kissing the ring.
I say a lot grosser stuff than kissing the ring.

Speaker 33 And God forbid, because he's not my favorite guy. Rand Paul is the only one left with any principles on that side.

Speaker 33 And, you know, he's at least saying, holding up his hand saying, excuse me, you know, this isn't the right thing to be doing.

Speaker 33 And, you know, you saw five, I think it was five, Mitch McConnell, Lisa, and Susan, and maybe it was just just four uh votes um to try and uh claw back some tariff authorities say this is an emergency yeah yeah till us did it too till us was the other one yeah yeah who's retiring so really profile encourage

Speaker 39 ah greetings from my bath festive friends the holidays are overwhelming but i'm tackling this season with paypal and making the most of my money getting five percent cash back when i pay in four no fees no interest i used it to get this portable spa with jets now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body.

Speaker 41 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 32 Save the offer in the app.

Speaker 42 NS1231, see PayPal.com/slash promo terms.

Speaker 43 Points give your renewing for cash and more paying for subject to terms and approval.

Speaker 44 PayPal Inc. and MLS 910457.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 14 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 20 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 21 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 25 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 27 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 32 I want to get to Thune on this and his courage, but just a couple more things on one more policy thing, then I'll talk about the Democrats on Thune.

Speaker 32 So the SNAP is the other part of this, and this kind of ties into the shutdown debate now that's happening. SNAP benefits are going to expire here, I guess, this weekend.

Speaker 32 And your fellow Redhead running for Senate in Michigan, Mallory McMorrow, had a good rant about this, and I want to play that.

Speaker 45 There are years worth of funding available for the SNAP program.

Speaker 45 Our tax dollars that we have already paid to the federal government to facilitate this program, and the Trump administration deleted this language from the website this morning.

Speaker 45 They are hiding the fact that not only is there more than enough funding to pay these benefits that we have already paid our tax dollars into,

Speaker 45 but that there was contingency language to ensure that even in the event of a government shutdown, that snap would go uninterrupted.

Speaker 45 The Trump administration and the Republicans supporting him are using food as a political weapon.

Speaker 45 This is a choice. They chose to delete this language.
They are choosing to force children to go hungry.

Speaker 45 We will not stand for that choice, and I encourage a yes vote.

Speaker 32 Pretty good. Familiar with more there.
And the SNAP stuff that ties into two issues.

Speaker 32 Obviously, this ties into the kind of food and ag discussion that's all part of the same legislation, but also now into this, how Democrats should handle the shutdown.

Speaker 32 Wonder what you make on both of those items.

Speaker 33 If I can just talk first about SNAP, because she's absolutely right. They deleted it from the website.
If they can stop SNAP benefits from being paid out, they can stop Social Security.

Speaker 33 Most programs, you have an appropriation. You can't overspend that appropriation.
When we talk about so-called entitlement programs, you know, SNAP fits in that category along with Social Security.

Speaker 33 Whatever the need is, whoever qualifies, there'll be money for those qualifications and it will go uninterrupted.

Speaker 33 But it also goes with the threat that they've been saying we're not going to pay employees who've been furloughed when they return. There's legislative language that prevents them from doing that.

Speaker 33 And so, where we are right now is lawsuits about whether they have to pay it out.

Speaker 33 but they clearly are in this vein where they believe that this is a leverage point that they can use to basically take away health care from a lot of people in this country and, you know, basically put leverage on the Democrats to basically do what they want them to do without any negotiation.

Speaker 33 And so, you know, this is going to play out over the next couple of days, but I'm anxiously waiting the results of the lawsuit.

Speaker 32 Yeah. So, what do you think about your former colleagues and how to handle this? I mean, at this point, on the one hand, I think,

Speaker 32 you know, it is totally a defensible position for the Democrats to say, you guys control everything. You're not a honest, good faith negotiating partner.

Speaker 32 Like, you know, we've been passing budget, you know, passing funding for programs that you're just choosing not to fund through rescissions, et cetera.

Speaker 32 And so we're not going to play ball with you unless you absolutely come to the table if you want to get our votes.

Speaker 32 On the other hand, real suffering is already happening for some people, but is really is really going to ramp up the longer this goes. How do you navigate that?

Speaker 33 You know, what, Tim, what, if I can just do it a little aside here, I think what's interesting is we're now finding out who SNAP benefits, what that program benefits, and this idea that it's all surfer dudes who buy lobster, you know, which was the narrative that was there when I was there, or these are just lazy people who don't want to work.

Speaker 33 They're finding out.

Speaker 32 And so it was welfare queens,

Speaker 32 yeah. Children was the narrative, actually.
But yeah, and the surfer dudes. Yeah,

Speaker 33 you remember the surfer dude buying lobster? That guy, I hope he rots in hell because he was a real guy and

Speaker 33 kind of created a narrative that was so minority, but yet caught on.

Speaker 33 Anyway, so typically what happens, and I've been saying this a lot, the shutdowns that I was part of, what was part of it in critical times was the debt limit.

Speaker 33 So it was you shut down government and then you're going to hit the debt limit. So you cannot not fund the debt.
And so

Speaker 33 there was just a lot more pressure on economic pressure on getting the government open. And what you're seeing now is this impasse.

Speaker 33 And because things are even more polarized than they were when I was there, an unwillingness of people to sneak around into

Speaker 33 the hideaways and actually come up with 10 people who can fashion a deal.

Speaker 33 I remember, you know, the deal that we did in Susan Collins' office, 10 of us or 12 of us, I think it was in the end, became the deal that opened government up because we basically said, we're going to go to the floor and propose this and we'll see what happens.

Speaker 33 So at the end of the day, I don't think that leadership is where the impasse is going to get fixed. I think it's going to get fixed with people, you know, getting

Speaker 33 really tired of the kind of politics that we're seeing and sitting down and saying we need to step up.

Speaker 33 But a lot of people think, and I think it's fair, that this can't happen until the orange guy steps up and says, I want you to do a deal, because

Speaker 33 he's not only the president of the United States, he's the majority leader of the Senate and he's the Speaker of the House.

Speaker 32 Yeah, we don't really have a Congress, actually. We don't have anything.

Speaker 32 So if you're a Democratic senator right now, you're in, and we don't really have red state Democratic senators anymore, but which I want to get to next. You're a swing state Democratic senator.

Speaker 32 At this point, you're just saying this is is their, this is up to them. It's up to Trump.
This is in Trump's hands right now?

Speaker 33 No, what I'm doing is I'm grabbing, you know, people that I know to be reasonable and saying, let's get in a room and see if we can't.

Speaker 32 There are only like two of those left, though, is kind of the problem.

Speaker 33 Yeah, that might be. I mean, you saw five vote against the tariffs.
And, you know,

Speaker 33 I think Mitch McConnell, he is loath to pull the nuclear option on substantive legislation on appropriations.

Speaker 33 He is in his his bones, he believes that the Senate is not the Senate without the opportunity for filibuster.

Speaker 33 And so, you know, if this gets pushed where they say we're going to use the nuclear option to reopen government, you know, he may be somebody who says, you know, I don't like what the Democrats are doing, but I don't want that to be the solution.

Speaker 33 And so, you know, I think there's going to be tremendous pressure on both Thun

Speaker 33 and on Chuck from their membership to get this resolved. And my understanding is they aren't really talking.

Speaker 35 Ah, greetings for my bath, festive friends.

Speaker 38 The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money, getting 5% cash back when I pay in four.

Speaker 37 No fees, no interest.

Speaker 31 I used it to get this portable spa with jets.

Speaker 34 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body.

Speaker 41 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 32 Save the offer and the app.

Speaker 43 N1231, see PayPal.com slash promo terms, points give your renee for cash and more paying for subject to terms of approval.

Speaker 44 PayPal Link and MLS 910-457.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 14 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 20 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 21 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 25 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 27 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 32 So back to the kind of the Red State Democrat thing.

Speaker 32 You know, given the issues that you laid out, I mean, it's funny, you know, we talked about the economy being bad, Trump making these terrible deals, but you say you go back to the farmers and they say, they still say, see, he got it done.

Speaker 32 Like, what can Democrats do to start reopening those conversations and start doing better?

Speaker 32 I mean, the idea of probably winning North Dakota anymore is probably off the table for a while, but like doing well enough in rural America to start to put someplace like Iowa back in play or, you know, Ohio.

Speaker 32 Like what can Democrats do to regain some trust in rural America, would you say?

Speaker 33 I think you have to get away from identity politics and back to economic politics and what works and what doesn't work and where the investments are.

Speaker 33 And, you know, people say, well, you're never going to win rural America. No one says we need to win rural America, but we can't lose it 80-20.

Speaker 33 If we can win back about 10-15% of rural America, I think, and continue to have a conversation with groups that were lost, young people. And I think young people are probably,

Speaker 33 you know, in spite of what you see with Turning Point and with college campuses, I think young people have soured on politics because the end result is they're graduating into a really uncertain economy, whether it's driven by AI or whether it is driven by autonomous cars, driven by stagnant wages at that high school graduate level.

Speaker 32 The problem is we're self-sorting. Like the young people that Democrats can get are moving to Chicago and Minneapolis for jobs and moving into blue states and the ones that stay are tougher to get.

Speaker 33 Right, right.

Speaker 33 I mean, I get that, but I think that there's a lot of outreach outreach effort that, and that, if I can plug one country, I mean, that really, when I left in 2018, I saw this trend beginning in 12.

Speaker 33 I actually saw it. People want to say it's about Donald Trump, but you know, Donald Trump at his heart is an opportunist, right? He's not an ideologue, really.

Speaker 33 I mean, he's turned more ideological as of late, but that's more vengeance-driven.

Speaker 33 The Tea Party movement really, the Democrats' ineffective response to the Tea Party movement, I think, was the beginning of a separation from traditional, like small farmers, small business people, young people, working class people, felt like the Democrats left them behind.

Speaker 33 And then there was the whole fallout from NAFTA. And so I think, you know, a populist message is a message that can still win, a more left-leaning populist message.

Speaker 33 And, you know, America First is a great slogan.

Speaker 33 I always wanted to watch, ask the Biden administration what the difference was between American First and Buy american because we have our own version of america first our own version i mean we are the party of protectionists i mean i was an outlier because i supported tpa trade promotion authority me and some colleagues from the west coast and so it is a matter of actually understanding and david axelrod my dear friend says it best when he says democrats approach rural america like missionaries and not friends you know it look what we've done for you you should appreciate us and vote for us.

Speaker 33 And you want to say, you know, and the people ask me all the time, why do they vote against their interest? I said, no one votes against their interest.

Speaker 33 You just don't understand what their interest is.

Speaker 33 And you can't understand that unless you get out and you actually visit.

Speaker 33 But I think there is a growing uncertainty about this economy among working class people who see, you know, these kinds of layoffs that you saw at Amazon, the kinds of layoffs that you saw at Target, the kinds of, I mean, really, I mean, look at UPS.

Speaker 33 I mean, there's not good news and you see it reflected in the index of consumer sentiment. Democrats need to understand those insecurities and talk about what they can do.

Speaker 33 One give me issue, why are credit card companies charging 28% interest on credit cards?

Speaker 33 There's no way a family with $10,000 of credit card debt is going to, and they're putting more and more of their need to have needs, not wants, on credit cards and carrying those balances.

Speaker 33 And they're not ever going to be able to dig out from underneath them. Somebody should be talking about that.
Somebody should be talking about this credit crisis for low-income Americans.

Speaker 32 Specifically, thinking about just Red America and that kind of message that you're laying out. Like, do you see anybody in the Democratic Party doing it well right now in general, kind of open-ended?

Speaker 32 But also, specifically, I'm wondering what you think about the Oyster Man up in Maine and Graham Platiner and that model.

Speaker 33 This is going to get me in trouble, but I don't think that we can

Speaker 33 win back any kind of credibility by offering the same thing that we've always offered.

Speaker 32 Yeah, it's not getting you in trouble here. I'm good.
Keep going. Let's hear more.

Speaker 33 Yeah, well, no, but my point is that I think there is always this rush to go to what they consider the safe candidate. Oh, they've won before, they've done this, or they've done that.

Speaker 33 It's time to really look at younger, different, more vibrant, you know, kind of a much more non-traditional kind of candidate. I love the oyster and I get, you know,

Speaker 33 bad tattoo and maybe said some things. You know what? Donald Trump did some really horrible things and got himself elected president.

Speaker 33 This whole idea, this whole idea that there is now some kind of litmus test that will take you out, that's why the Democratic Party's failing because they're so adverse to taking a risk.

Speaker 33 They want safe. And that's not what the public wants.
The public wants different. And so I'm for non-beltway candidates.

Speaker 32 You know what would be different that I've been calling for, Heidi? I think we can have a big,

Speaker 32 I'm imagining that we're going to have a really hardy agreement about this, but let me throw this out there.

Speaker 32 It's funny hearing you, as you know, really a traditional kind of old school center-left, you know, red state Democrat saying that you're interested in the kind of populist-left

Speaker 32 Aburni-ish type candidate in Maine. I feel like that there is a potential like populist left, center, left alignment

Speaker 32 on candidates. If you find somebody that's doing left, economic, populist, but also, you know, maybe on energy is more open to natural grass or on guns is maybe a little bit more moderate.

Speaker 32 And somebody has some moderate issues on some of these other type of topics. And to me, that feels like something that could potentially, it would be at least worth a try in these red states.

Speaker 32 And that would kind of bridge the online fight that you see between like the Bernie crowd and the centrists. And And I don't know, I feel like there could be a merger maybe.

Speaker 33 I think there has to be a merger. It's interesting because the candidate for mayor in New York, people were like, oh, how do you feel about this? Because they know I'm a moderate.

Speaker 33 And I said, Mom Dami. Mondami.
I said, I don't know. I mean, I don't have to agree with him.
Just because he's a Democrat doesn't mean that,

Speaker 33 you know, I'm like Lincoln Arms. I said, you know, he can do him.
Good on him. You know, go do him.
When I don't agree with what he's talking about, I'll say I don't agree. You know, this idea that,

Speaker 33 oh my God, we've got to have some purging and unity,

Speaker 33 that's a huge, huge problem in the Democratic Party that they think that

Speaker 33 there's only one path and there's many paths to success. And Tim, I want to remind you,

Speaker 33 and Democrats didn't learn this lesson when Hillary was being challenged by Bernie

Speaker 33 and Bernie was filling up auditoriums, basically, you know, speaking to the real concerns of real people, you know, being that kind of man on the ground,

Speaker 33 not the institutional candidate. And I'm not knocking Hillary.
I'm just saying, you know,

Speaker 33 it's the difference. And don't take this personally between Jeb Bush and

Speaker 33 Donald Trump. Don't take it.

Speaker 32 The results speak for themselves.

Speaker 33 So it's the same thing. And when they interviewed the Bernie people who were leaving and Bernie lost, they said, well, now we're going to vote for Donald Trump.

Speaker 33 And you're like, that made perfect sense to me. Because basically, they were addressing the same basic concerns that people felt, the same basic insecurities that people felt.

Speaker 33 And, you know, I think going forward, the Democratic Party needs to come back to some of their populist roots and talk about what those challenges are and how we can do better.

Speaker 33 And they need to abandon the, oh, he said this once upon a time and now it's fatal. It's like, you know, run the ad, see what happens.
You know, don't, don't be institutionalists.

Speaker 33 I mean, be creative, be inventive, be have, bring new ideas to the table. I talked yesterday, the turning point was in Mississippi and there was some counter programming.

Speaker 33 And I talked there and, you know, they're all at Olmiss in Oxford.

Speaker 32 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 33 And I mean, I didn't go there. I just zoomed in and yak yakked.
You know how that is nowadays. Oxford is a beautiful town.

Speaker 32 Some of the people talking at the, some of the people questioning, asking questions to JD gave me some concerns about the future, but it's still a nice place to visit. Square Books is nice.

Speaker 33 But the young woman who really challenged him, I mean, students are always going to be, you know, the

Speaker 33 listen to what they ask and listen to what they say. But, you know, I said, stop worrying about what they're doing.

Speaker 32 Start worrying about what you're doing.

Speaker 33 What's your message?

Speaker 33 I mean, I think the democratic party for three presidential cycles has run against donald trump without any real ideas of their own and people are like i don't know what you stand for i know you don't like donald trump i don't like him much either but you know i don't know if i should take a chance with you You said at the beginning of this, you thought this might get you into trouble.

Speaker 32 I'm still trying to figure out who you might be in trouble with. So I'm going to make it a little harder.
On this point, you have Chuck Schumer is maybe somebody you might be getting in trouble with.

Speaker 32 In that Senate race in Maine,

Speaker 32 they're essentially endorsing Janet mills the governor and i i think her behind the oppo hits on graham platinum which is fine by the way it's better for this stuff to go out in a primary than a general but they're doing fundraising and stuff for mills they're doing the same thing in michigan strangely for haley stevens who is a congresswoman who might be okay but she's not exactly lighting the room on fire for me when there are two other candidates in the race mallory mcmorrow who i played earlier and um el syed who are running What is happening?

Speaker 32 Like, why are they doing that?

Speaker 33 I think, you know, when I was in the Senate and Elizabeth Warren would take out after me, I'd say, people say, oh, that's terrible. And I like, just bring it on.

Speaker 33 You think that Chuck Schumer's endorsement is going to really play well with Democrats in Michigan or Maine? Right now,

Speaker 33 The attitude among the Democratic Party is we need change.

Speaker 33 And the more he steps into this to put his fingers on the scale, the more I think he hurts the candidates that he's putting the fingers on the scale. And, you know, I have one name for you,

Speaker 33 John Tester. John Tester, I mean, they endorsed and funded John Tester's primary opponent, but yet he came out of it, you know, because he was the authentic.

Speaker 32 Originally, who was the whole, who did it?

Speaker 33 I forget, it was some, it was some like self-funder, some, you know, kind of, I always say they like to go to the candidate candidate. Remember, uh, Redford? Yeah, sure.

Speaker 33 You know, straight out of central casting. They like to go to the central casting instead of looking at the authenticity and the genuineness of the message and the person.

Speaker 33 And so I think, and this is the other thing that maybe is interesting to your listeners. Everybody talks about money.

Speaker 33 If money bought you an election these days, I'd still be a United States Senator and Kamala Harris would be president of the United States. Money has become less significant.

Speaker 32 Or maybe Jeb.

Speaker 32 I guess we would have been done with our eight years by now. Jeb would not be president anymore.
But, you know,

Speaker 32 I would be cashing out as a former communications you'd have your own show on box

Speaker 32 of money bought elections i don't think that's in your future

Speaker 33 boy that's a scary alternate universe but you know what i'm saying i'm saying you know money

Speaker 33 everybody exaggerates and when you say oh look they're doing this or doing that you want to say look the democratic party is hungry for authenticity is hungry for new ideas it's hungry for new faces and i by the democratic party i mean the rank and file i've been out there i've talked to them the frustration even even among what you would consider the elite donors, they are tired of what they see as blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 33 And not, you know, where's the authentic message? Where's the message that's going to carry us forward?

Speaker 32 Guy's name was John Morrison, was an auditor, lost to history running against John Tesser. Lost that primary in Montana Technology.

Speaker 33 Isn't Google a wonderful thing? Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 32 I should know that. That's a little trivia political for my era.
I should have really pulled that. Well, just one other thing on this.

Speaker 33 What about the Nebraska model, having an independent run, Dan osborne do you have any thoughts on that yeah i think at the end people people kind of see through that and they know that this is an opposition but i think in in elections where where people still really distrust the democratic party

Speaker 33 you have to be very authentically independent And I think a lot of people think, oh, I'm a Democrat, but I'm going to switch over and be an independent. Voters will smell that change.

Speaker 32 Rob Sand is doing this well in Iowa. We should shout him out.
He did an interview with Andrew Egger on our YouTube. He's running for governor in Iowa.
And he kind of does this.

Speaker 32 He's basically, I register as an independent, but I understand it's a two-party system. And, you know, so I'm a Democrat, but I'm independently minded.
That just feels honest, you know?

Speaker 33 Yeah, no. And, you know, people used to say when I was running in 12, Obama was losing the state by 22 points.
And so the whole message against me is she's voting for Obama. She's voting for Obama.

Speaker 33 And you remember a lot of Senate candidates wouldn't say whether they were going to vote for Obama. I'm like, and I always tell people, I walked around,

Speaker 33 I had a poster because I knew I had to answer that question, which is why you don't agree with Obama on a lot of these issues.

Speaker 33 You say you're not going to walk lockstep with him, but you're a Democrat. And why are you voting for Obama? And so I had the Ryan budget.

Speaker 33 And you might remember the Ryan budget cut Medicare, it cut Medicaid, it cut, you know, social, it had draconian cuts to the farm program.

Speaker 33 And I would carry that with me and I would put it up and I would say, see this budget? I said, this is the blueprint of the other side and this is really bad for North Dakota.

Speaker 33 This is what they're going to do. And

Speaker 33 I think she tried that with Project 25, but Trump deflected it when you knew all along Project 25 was going to be the. the blueprint.
And I think a lot of people don't like Project 25.

Speaker 33 We always used to say for Republicans, they were spenders and spenders, not tax and spend, because they don't want to pay for their spending.

Speaker 33 And I think we're going to see that again with the Big Beautiful Bill. We're going to see it again with Trump, you know, basically bailing out farmers.
You know, he's not a fiscal conservative.

Speaker 32 I'm just still trying to wrap my head around this. Heidi Heitkamp is some nice words for Zoron, Mamdani, and Craam Plattner on this show.

Speaker 32 Not so nice words for some of your Democratic establishment friends. It's a new day.

Speaker 33 You know what, Tim? What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing you've always done, expecting a different result. Let's shake it up.
Amen. Let's shake it up.

Speaker 32 We got such a big laugh this morning in Playbook. They wrote this.
Andrew Cuomo this week picked up endorsements from Mike Bloomberg, Tom Swasey, and even Republican Mike Lawler.

Speaker 32 Meanwhile, Mom Donnie got the backing of unlikely bedfellows, Bill Crystal, my colleague, and the United Bodegas of America, and maybe Heidi.

Speaker 32 So, you know, we're just shaking up the globe a little bit.

Speaker 33 I think that we need

Speaker 33 different voices. You know, when people say, well, you're stuck with them then, guess what? I'm not stuck with them.
I mean, I said, New York can do what New York does. It's not going to hurt me.

Speaker 33 I've got an opinion about what I need to do.

Speaker 33 New York Democrats don't define my brand of

Speaker 33 party identification. I mean, people just are too afraid.
They're too afraid. And it's like they haven't learned the lessons of Donald Trump.
Yeah. Amen.
You know, Donald Trump, he's a phoenix.

Speaker 33 He just rises from the ashes because the things that Democrats want to attack him on, people don't give a shit about.

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Speaker 32 I was going back, I was kind of googling what you've been talking about lately, and this was an old one that popped up in my feed. It was from right after the election.

Speaker 32 You said that the Senate confirmations would be a litmus test for for your neighbor, John Thune. I'm wondering how you'd grade John Thune and how the litness test has been for him.

Speaker 33 Well, you remember that Donald Trump wanted him to do recessed appointments.

Speaker 33 Yeah, which is what I was responding to.

Speaker 33 That if he caved, which I think Speaker Johnson would have caved and done recessed appointments and not put people through, I think Thune said, no, I'm not doing that.

Speaker 32 He didn't package all the appointments for some of these lower things.

Speaker 33 Right. Now he has.

Speaker 33 But each one of those cabinet folks had a confirmation hearing, albeit abbreviated, you know, kind of controlled by chairmen that weren't fair in how they conducted the hearings, but they went through the hearings.

Speaker 33 They were not recessed appointments. And so I think you got to give Thune some credit.
I think Thune has more backbone than Mike Johnson. Well, I mean,

Speaker 32 Mike Johnson is an amphibian.

Speaker 32 Mike Johnson does. Mike Johnson has a backbone.
It's actually so Trump had some of like Barron's backbone taken out of his back and so put a Trump bone into Mike Johnson's body.

Speaker 33 And so I think that Thune's been protective.

Speaker 32 Okay. How about I don't have to hand it to him.

Speaker 32 I'm maybe a little as a former Republican, it's always, you know, you're most hurt by the people that were that were the, you know, the narcissism of small differences.

Speaker 32 Like Thune was like a regular free trading establishment Republican. And I look at him and I'm like, what, what? And he's totally abdicated the power of the purse to Trump.

Speaker 32 He's done nothing on the tariffs. He confirmed two far-left Democrats like Dulcie Gabbard and RFK and an idiot to run the FBI.
I don't know. I don't have to hand it to him, really.

Speaker 32 I think it's crazy kind of how much he's gone along with.

Speaker 33 I think when you're in leadership in the Senate, you're not necessarily a leader. You're a compromiser.
He didn't have to be, though. He came in not with a majority of the caucus either.

Speaker 32 He could have been an LBJ or he could have just stayed a senator from South Dakota and been like, hey, you know,

Speaker 32 why don't you let one of these clowns take this job?

Speaker 33 And so

Speaker 33 then the president calls up Rick Scott and says, I want you to challenge him and I'll get you enough votes so you win. Great.

Speaker 32 Yeah. I would love that.
I would love for exoskeleton Rick Scott to be the majority leader. That would be an easier person to run against.

Speaker 32 Let's see it. Yeah,

Speaker 32 Mr.

Speaker 33 Rip Off the Medicare program and then, yeah, the Medicaid program and

Speaker 33 kind of think that you're going to be the fiscal conservative.

Speaker 33 I think that when you look at the Senate, it's a really difficult body to lead. And why I say that is because,

Speaker 33 you know, at least half of his caucus gets up in the morning, looks in the mirror, and sees a future president of the United States.

Speaker 33 And so their interest is not in legislating, it is in advancing their own kind of personal agenda.

Speaker 34 Yeah.

Speaker 32 Well, Jonathan's never going to be the president of the United States. So I hope you enjoyed it.

Speaker 33 That is a funny story, though.

Speaker 32 He's tanned.

Speaker 33 Have you ever heard the John McCain story?

Speaker 32 Refresh my memory. It's not coming to mind.

Speaker 33 Okay, so John McCain is in the well of the Senate, and it was after his,

Speaker 33 you know, his loss to Obama and, you know, still thinking about it. And a good friend of mine is actually James Langford.
We did a lot of great work together.

Speaker 33 And James Langford has the most amazing voice, like it is James Earl Jones' voice. And John Thune, you know, comes kind of looking like out of central casting.

Speaker 33 And so McCain goes, yeah, if I look like Thune and could talk like Langford, I'd be President of the United States.

Speaker 32 I don't think that's true, actually, but it's a good thought. It's a good thought.
I don't think it was going to happen for us in 2008. Obama, pretty

Speaker 32 underrated.

Speaker 33 I know it was closer until the markets crashed.

Speaker 32 Yeah, that's true. Still, people are done with Dunbar.
There's no amount of difference McCain could have gotten away from him.

Speaker 32 Final thing. I'm curious how you think that the Democrats should handle immigration.
There are two things. One, should they be going after the mast and the agents and the way they're handling it?

Speaker 32 But also,

Speaker 32 like trying to learn a lesson from the 24 campaign, I want to play this video of JD Vance was talking to Miranda Devine yesterday, and he's still on the cat eating stuff.

Speaker 46 And then what happens is 20 people move into a three-bedroom house. 20 people from a totally different culture, totally different ways of interacting.

Speaker 46 Again, we can respect their dignity while also being angry at the Biden administration for letting that situation happen and recognizing that their next door neighbors are going to say, well, wait a second, what is going on here?

Speaker 46 I don't know these people. They don't speak the same language that I do.

Speaker 46 And because there are 20 in the house next door, it's a little bit rowdier than it was when there was just a family of four or a family of five.

Speaker 46 It is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next door neighbors and say, I want to live next to people who I have something in common with.

Speaker 46 You blink your eyes in Springfield, Ohio, and you wake up and literally a third of the population of your town is now Haitian immigrants.

Speaker 33 And eating cats and dogs.

Speaker 32 Eating cats and dogs. We can treat them with dignity and also call them cat eaters.
I don't, that doesn't really work for me, but how do you deal with that?

Speaker 33 Well, I think, you know, Mike DeWine,

Speaker 33 who's a functionally, really decent human being, he and his wife have, you know, true Christian values and they reflected those when they were dealing with the whole Haitian immigration thing. thing.

Speaker 33 And you want to say, you know, they're there because they have an opportunity to work.

Speaker 33 And they're legal, by the way. Right.
I mean, you know,

Speaker 33 we have always struggled in this country with an influx of a new culture. You know, no Irish or dogs allowed.
No Germans were discriminated against.

Speaker 33 And so with each wave of immigration, we see more and more kind of historic uncomfortableness with the realignment.

Speaker 33 So it's going to take communities to basically build those bridges and build the social trust

Speaker 33 that is essential to growing our workforce. And so let's talk about the economics.
Right now, we are the first year in a long, long time that we have net out migration.

Speaker 33 We have fewer people coming into the country than are leaving the country.

Speaker 32 A lot of other really successful countries have that. You know, Syria, Venezuela.

Speaker 33 Yeah.

Speaker 33 You know,

Speaker 33 look at Japan. Japan, you know, highly monolithic in terms of what they want their country to look like.
And it's not going well for them.

Speaker 33 They have zero population growth and a real challenge with taking care of elderly.

Speaker 33 So I think, you know, what has made America dynamic and prosperous has been a willingness to have people come to our country, come to this country, who have new ideas, who are ambitious, who care about their families, all of those things.

Speaker 33 And I think it's interesting because there's just a lot of speculation right now about AI and can the worker be replaced by AI and

Speaker 33 even Musk talking about

Speaker 33 mandatory income payments to compensate for technology changes.

Speaker 33 My theory is in 20 years, the single most important commodity will be people.

Speaker 33 You know, we look at critical minerals, we look at natural resources. All across the world, population is declining.

Speaker 33 And why would we stop people from people who want to be productive from coming to our country? And we will figure out a way in our social fabric to incorporate new ideas, new behaviors. And

Speaker 33 the second or third generation, you know, integration is there and we move on.

Speaker 32 I mean, you'd think that the maggots would have learned that. They've assimilated too well.
That second generation immigrants moved huge for Trump this last time.

Speaker 33 Yeah, well, not only that, but you know, he married to.

Speaker 32 And JD.

Speaker 32 When I was listening to JD, I was like, the 20 people in the house, I was like,

Speaker 32 I've seen the Diwali pictures of your family. Like, what do they think when you're talking about all of that? That seems like a pretty crowded house that Usha lives in.

Speaker 33 I like to think he knows better. He's just throwing the raw meat out.
And he is basically affirming.

Speaker 33 he's basically

Speaker 33 affirming what people are thinking.

Speaker 33 It's an age-old political. You don't want to have the responsibility of leading to a different idea.
What you want to do is you want to hear what people are saying and just repeat it.

Speaker 33 I always said that Donald Trump was brilliant because he had the biggest focus groups. He didn't pay for a focus group.
He had his rallies.

Speaker 33 He would do call and response and the things that hit, that's the thing that he talked about.

Speaker 32 And luckily, I think the one good thing we've got going for us is that that wouldn't work for JD because nothing hits for him.

Speaker 33 You know, yeah, this idea that he is the heir apparent to the MAGA movement, I don't see it because he's too intellectual and he's not funny.

Speaker 33 Donald Trump has this kind of twinkle in his eye when he knows he's saying something completely ridiculous. And people go, Yeah, he didn't believe it either, but it's fun to say.
Yeah.

Speaker 33 You know, it's, it's, it's theater.

Speaker 32 Yeah. Whereas JD doesn't try to be funny.
He tries to be mean.

Speaker 32 JD tries to be mean to make up for the intellectualism. And it comes off as

Speaker 32 like smarmy and yucky.

Speaker 33 Well, and

Speaker 33 let's admit it, the president in Asia, a lot of that stuff was pretty cringy.

Speaker 33 Pretty cringy.

Speaker 32 You mean the getting the crown and the ketchup?

Speaker 32 Like how South Korea is like, sir, sir, you're the first American to ever get our highest honor. It's a Burger King crown with a ketchup staff.
And you're like, what?

Speaker 32 And the MAGA people are tweeting that.

Speaker 32 They respect Trump now. And I'm like, you guys are dumb.
This is dumb. Yeah, well,

Speaker 32 anybody can get that with a happy. You just show up and you go at noon to Burger King and order the kids' meal.

Speaker 33 I didn't know that our foreign policy was based on, you know, him feeling good, getting little rewards. It's just, I mean,

Speaker 33 of all the mysteries for me of Donald Trump is that if you went to the coffee shop in Manadur, North Dakota, and you sat around a table and somebody bragged as much, somebody, you know, kind of behaved like they were better and, you know, there was a local award and they nominated themselves for the local award, people would go, ew, you know, that's cringy.

Speaker 33 You know, if you're worthy, you will cream rises to the top. You know, you don't need to ask for it.
You just need to wait your turn. And Donald Trump breaks all those norms.

Speaker 33 And I have no idea why people think that's okay because I think it's cringy.

Speaker 32 Same. Heidi, Heidikamp.
What a pleasure. So good to get to hang out with you.

Speaker 33 Oh, it's always fun.

Speaker 32 The work you're doing is really important at One Country. So folks should check that out, the podcast Hot Dish.
And we'll do it again in a few months. All right.

Speaker 33 You know, every year we try and put out some ideas on how people can be more respectful when they go to rural America, but also encourage people to know those issues and understand what those challenges are as they're looking at building back.

Speaker 33 But if they don't show up, all the people who are sitting on the sidelines, and there are people, you know, 20, 30%

Speaker 33 who are not with this president, but they are cowed because there is so much social pressure to not step out of.

Speaker 33 I just got a call, Tim, from a long time Democratic leader who moved to a fairly good-sized town who said, man, there's a lot of Democrats here, but they aren't talking.

Speaker 33 Can you come and, you know, kind of give us some ideas? And so, what I would say to Candace, there's a lot of Democrats out there. They're not talking, and

Speaker 33 they need to see somebody who's leaders who will step up and actually help them get back to some semblance of political balance in rural America.

Speaker 32 Amen to that. When you put out that report, send it to me, and we'll make sure to publicize it.
Appreciate you, as always.

Speaker 32 And everybody else will see you back here for another edition of the podcast tomorrow. Peace.

Speaker 32 In 1981, I was just a drink

Speaker 32 on the shelf, a daiquiri.

Speaker 32 Not even a thought

Speaker 32 till sometime in July.

Speaker 32 Sometime in July,

Speaker 32 and something happened in 84.

Speaker 32 I ended up with two places to be fro

Speaker 32 The only tree with leaves in a bed

Speaker 32 With roots and mineral wells

Speaker 32 Mineral well

Speaker 32 At night I dream I'm in the Brazos River

Speaker 32 Pines and cypress the west cross timbers Oh

Speaker 32 I know

Speaker 32 it shows

Speaker 32 I'm another one still thirsting for my home.

Speaker 32 There's a spot under the train track trestles.

Speaker 32 The water's still

Speaker 32 deep to stand in.

Speaker 32 And you were there once

Speaker 32 We climb the sandstone and jump in

Speaker 32 Hold your breath and jump in

Speaker 32 We take the airboats away upstream

Speaker 32 The heat's tiring and I fall asleep

Speaker 32 In my folding chair

Speaker 32 I dream dad was smoking cigarettes

Speaker 32 He always had one hanging from his lips

Speaker 32 At night I dream I'm in the Brazil River

Speaker 32 Pines and Cyprus of the West Cross timbers though I know

Speaker 32 it shows

Speaker 32 I'm another one still thirsting for mine

Speaker 32 The Board Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 32 I've been out here a while.

Speaker 31 Cast up to cast, and nothing's biting.

Speaker 31 That's fishing for you. And honestly, that's what online fishing is like for hackers too, when Cisco Duo's on watch.
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Speaker 31 No ripples, no splashes, just a hook that never gets a bite. Cisco Duo, fishing season is over.
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Speaker 32 In our nation, we don't follow. We lead.

Speaker 47 We don't wait for permission. We move first.

Speaker 47 So while others talk about AI, Bruce Allen puts it in space. That's right, in space.
Because real leadership, it's about building what nobody else can. Coding so we can't lose.

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Find out more at boozeallen.com slash our code.

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