Why Joe Walsh Left MAGA and Joined The Left

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Find Out podcast.

We have a very special episode today.

And before I introduce this guest, I'm just going to say that if you had told me 15 years ago that I would be talking to this person and that we were on the same political, the same side of the political aisle, I would have you checked into a hospital for evaluation because I just would not believe it.

But

this is, we are very, very happy and excited to have a former congressman, former talk show hosts, and now newly,

newly,

what's the word I'm looking for?

A new Democrat,

Joe Walsh, has joined us today.

So, Joe, how are you?

Tim, it's great to be with you.

Luke, Zach, good to meet you both, guys.

Good to meet you too.

Excited to have you.

So, Joe is the

perfect guest for this podcast because this podcast is obviously all about trying to move men leftward and or at least to the Democratic Party side.

And, Joe, you know, obviously you started out in the political world on the right.

I think

self-described Tea Party member, an original maybe early on MAGA,

and you have gone through quite the transformation.

So we would love to hear a little bit about your journey, Joe.

Like, how did you, most people hear this, and they're like, how is that possible?

But I got to write the book, Timmy.

I got to write the book.

What a weird fucking journey from the Tea Party to the Democratic Party in 14 years.

A weird, unique journey.

I don't know of anyone else who's made the same journey, but these are very weird, unique times.

I believe, many of you probably believe,

the very thing our founding fathers feared sits in the White House right now.

And he captured my former political party, the Republican Party, so easily so many years ago.

I helped get him elected the first time.

I was part of the Tea Party wave.

Tea Party turned into MAGA.

And when Tea Party turned into MAGA, I started to go south.

I am going to write the book.

The one constant, and guys, nothing's off limits.

It's a weird fucking journey.

And I, the old Joe Walsh, did shit and said shit that would offend everybody on this podcast.

The one constant from Tea Party to Democratic Party is:

I have always feared tyranny and excessive, oppressive government.

That's what what the Tea Party generally was to me.

And here we are 14 years later, and

it's my former party that is full-on authoritarian.

That's how come I'm a Democrat.

I'm curious about, do you have like a, because I also was a former Republican.

I was a four, I wouldn't call myself a Trump supporter, but I was like not averse to Trump for a while.

And I had like a distinct moment where I broke away from Trump and it was like clear, like, I can't do this anymore.

Do you have that moment or was it like a gradual shift away?

Both.

Both.

Exactly.

Yeah, it's funny.

Both.

Look, I voted for him in 16.

When he ran in 16, I'm on conservative talk radio all over the country.

I'm one of the bad guys.

And

I'll never forget that first debate.

in the summer of 2015 when Trump stood on that fucking stage with like all the 95 other other Republican candidates.

Jeb, remember Jeb.

Oh, my God.

And all of them.

And Trump starts to speak at this debate.

And my radio show, I was doing a live event for my listeners at some restaurant.

And the minute Trump started to speak, all the Republican consultants from D.C.

started calling and texting me saying, this guy's a fucking joke, man.

This is ridiculous.

But everybody at that restaurant who listened to my radio show said, this guy's awesome.

Finally, finally, there's somebody talking to me.

So I knew right then and there that he was something.

And look, it's simple, guys.

Like I've always been a disruptive political guy.

I think our political system sucks.

I'm anti-establishment.

The Republican Party establishment hated me.

They didn't want me to go to Congress.

I've always been a populist.

So I understood what Trump's appeal was.

His voters were my voters.

They were my people.

I didn't pay enough attention to who he was as a person that first time around.

I figured he'll get elected, he'll play a lot of golf, maybe he'll hire two good people and a few good things might get done.

The minute, Zach, that he won,

And I'm on, again, I'm all over the country and I'm on Fox News every day.

I had to start paying attention to him.

And a month and a half after he got sworn in in 2017, I came home from my radio show and I turned to my wife and I said, this ain't going to end well for us.

I said, I don't know well.

I don't know exactly, but the moment's going to come in the next year or so where I'm going to publicly have to turn against him.

And sweetheart, we're going to fucking lose everything.

Guys, when I went to Congress in 2010, I was the poorest member of Congress.

The absolute poorest.

And then I'm on talk radio around the country and on Fox News.

And for the first time in my life, I'm making money.

But I knew that was all going to go south.

And Zach, primarily because I started to pay attention to him.

And every time he opened his fucking mouth, he lied.

And I can't have that.

So I generally started speaking out against him publicly over the course of a year, year and a half.

And I got beaten up by my conservative talk radio people, by the advertisers, by my bosses.

But then the final straw for me was Helsinki in the summer of 2018.

When that traitorous fuckhead stood in front of the world and said, I'm with Putin and not our own intelligence people.

I went on my radio show that night and I said, I am going to do everything in my power to defeat him in 2020.

And at that moment, I pretty much began to lose everything.

Jesus.

I mean, it's so you didn't notice this stuff as he was running in 15, 16, as much as you did once he got in.

How did you kind of miss it?

Because, I mean, he was lying a shit ton during his run up to the first time as well.

So was it just you weren't focused on that?

You were focused on the fact that he was just like every man's dream.

And, you know, he came up and said things that no other politician ever said.

And you just kind of missed it?

Like, is that what it was?

I was.

I was a disruptive politician.

I figured he's a disruptor, too.

I believed our politics needed disruption.

I didn't, though, Zach, I didn't take him seriously enough.

I'd never watched The Apprentice.

I just figured he's a goof.

And I thought, okay, when he said I want to burn it down and blow it up and drain the swamp, well, excuse me, that's stuff I'd been talking about for five, six years.

So I figured, okay, he's a goof and he's and he's offensive, but you know, big deal.

If you've got a rat problem in your house, I don't give a damn if the guy who comes over to get rid of the rats is an asshole.

Just get rid of the rats.

So I, but I didn't pay enough attention to how often he lied.

And I really, Zach, weirdly, I didn't necessarily care where he was on issues.

I just figured we got to clean this thing up.

He looked his best.

Look, I was wrong.

And if I could go back in time, and it's weird, I've, I've been publicly naked for the last seven or eight or nine years.

I've apologized a thousand times for helping get him elected.

But if I could go back in time, man, I wish I had woken up faster.

I'd have voted for Hilarina Harpy.

I mean, it's really, it's really interesting to hear you say this because I think that a lot of us on the left feel like that was a lot with a lot of people on the right.

And my follow-up question, and I think you've kind of answered it, but for a lot of us on the left, the sort of Access Hollywood stuff was,

I thought, I thought he was done.

I thought he was done.

I mean, I didn't like, obviously,

I've been in Democratic politics forever.

I didn't like him, right?

But like, it wasn't this, this visceral, you know, disdain that I have for the man now.

But when I heard that clip or saw that clip with Billy Bush,

the Democratic strategist in me went, thank God, that's going to sink him.

And it didn't do anything.

Nope.

Is it just because people just were like, it's sort of like you said, like we're, they were looking for a disruptors and the rest of it was just whatever.

And like, that's what famous people do, or was it just I don't even care?

It's uh

by the way, that 2016 election was so fucking close.

If James Comey doesn't do what he does, Hillary probably wins.

If Hillary wakes the fuck up and campaigns in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, she probably wins.

Yes, I mean, my God, we here's the deal: we've Trump, I recognized this in 2010.

It was the beginning of Trump recognized it in 2016.

We have been living in a a populist moment for a while.

And what the fuck does that mean?

That just means that average regular Americans are pissed off at a political system they no longer believe is listening to them.

That's the attitude in the country.

And so when Republicans tried to run against Trump in 28, like Marco, fucking Marco Rubio tried to run on like morning in America again.

What the fuck?

People are fucking pissed off.

And the Democrats nominated

the poster child for the establishment, the anti-populist.

I still believe Bernie, if Bernie's a nominee in 16, Bernie beats Trump.

You think so?

I firmly do.

Yeah, Bernie's a populist.

Bernie isn't a Republican or a Democrat.

It was the beginning of people just saying, fuck it.

I'm pissed at both of them.

I want something different.

Trump.

Go ahead.

No, I was going to say, do you think Biden would have won?

I don't think so.

I think the reason Biden won in 2020, because we were fucking exhausted of four years of.

He wanted the old man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Took off from the crapslee.

Yeah.

Well, pat on the back.

It's going to be fine.

But Trump tapped into this populist moment.

Yeah.

Now, now,

he is a populist.

He's a fake populist, a faux populist.

He's an evil populist.

I tend to think populists can be good and or bad.

I know a lot of people think populism is a bad thing.

I think Democrats got to get, haha, my new party, we need to get fucking over that.

But at the time,

it was he was a populist and the Democrats were asleep at the switch.

So the average voter out there that's fucking pissed off about real shit, they don't give a damn about that.

I can grab them by the you-know-what.

Yeah.

Right.

No, that makes sense.

That makes sense.

And it feels like it's like today, too.

I mean, there's really not much of a difference between it.

Well, nobody talks about it.

They don't care.

No, they don't care.

Imagine, guys.

Imagine.

These people are like, they're cool with it that like they don't care.

This massive cover-up is happening right in front of them.

I was on some TV show yesterday morning, and they asked me if Trump were actually the number one guy on Epstein's list, baby.

He was on that plane a thousand times, baby.

Would it make a difference?

Hell no.

Not among his supporters.

We're seeing it right now, right?

Because like they, Pam Bondi said she had the

idea.

The list on her desk.

I listened to this this a lot, but like she had the list on her desk.

And then they came out and said, and J.D.

Vance pushed stuff out about the Epstein list.

And then all of a sudden they're like, just kidding, there's no list.

And he

hung himself.

He killed himself.

Yeah.

It's a figment of our imagination and a rationalization of our TDS.

That's what it is.

Joe, is that like that reaction to that?

Did that surprise you?

Because I know we saw a few people, but mostly, no, it's just, it doesn't matter.

Right.

Because again, but remember my vantage point, Tim.

I'm on Fox News and I'm on conservative talk radio.

And so my audience, everybody calling in, didn't give a fucking damn or these are people going after the guy who's trying to go after the establishment.

So

it almost strengthened him among his core.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

I mean, because there's like literally countless photos of him.

I think even Jeffrey Epstein referred to Donald Trump as his best friend at one point.

But I think it's true, you know, but you don't hear that, right, on the in the conservative media sphere, right?

You don't get any of that stuff.

Like, do people, I guess that's another question for you.

Do people hear these things and see them?

Or because they're so in Fox News and Turning Points, USA, and all of this garbage that they don't even hear it, or it just doesn't even matter?

His base generally doesn't hear it.

Yeah.

But I found.

Like I was out every day last year in a Battleground State campaign for Kamala Harris.

How fucking crazy is that, right?

Speak about that.

Just stop, right?

But I would hear every day two kinds of Trump voters.

The hardcore MAGA,

they don't get any of this.

But there were a lot of Trump voters who said, I call them the I don't care.

They said, Joe, I know Trump's an asshole, but I know Trump's an asshole, but the price of eggs.

I know Trump's an asshole, but the border.

Those people

hear this stuff.

And those people, those people who voted for Trump are reachable.

And if my new political party can fucking wake up, those people should be Democratic voters.

Yes, I say that all the time.

It really is one of those situations where, like, Democrats, I think Harris's biggest mistake was pivoting to attacking Trump as her primary focus in the campaign because those voters didn't hear a single thing of value from her.

And it could have been converted if they had come with a set of messages where they went, okay, here's how this is going to get better.

We're going to do it like that.

It just, that was not their focus.

And I think if she had been more focused on financial issues and explaining what she was going to do differently from Biden, so many of those people who said, I don't like Trump, but I'll vote for him anyway, would have voted for her and she would have won.

I agree with Zach.

I agree with half of that.

They needed to talk about that.

But my God, if we've reached a point, and I know the smart political consultants like Axel Rod and Ram Emanuel and all these people, James Carville, why the fuck is James Carville still out there on TV talking?

I say this all the time.

It drives me crazy.

And the fact that he won one race in the early 90s in which a third-party candidate made it possible.

Like, why are we listening to this?

This moment has utterly passed them by.

But I still believe if we've reached a point where

you can't get people to care about their fucking democracy or the rule of law, then I'm sorry.

I'm going going to go live in another fucking country.

You can talk about the price of eggs and the fact that this bastard tried to overthrow an American election.

And if you can't get people to care about both of those, then we're done.

Then we're done.

So what do you think is the, because obviously Democrats tried several tactics on that.

Clearly were not successful.

What

is going to, I mean, obviously like that 30%, that mega, mega, like I'm not even talking about them because I just don't even think it's worth it.

It's useless.

But that 20, 10, 20%,

like what are the, what do we, how do we communicate with them?

Because right now I think our brand is pretty toxic to a lot of them.

And so how do we start chipping away at that?

Because we won't win elections if we don't bring more people over to our side moving forward, like we saw in November.

And it's easy to say to guys, but like Democrats.

To most guys, just regular fucking guys, Democrats are pussies.

They're weak.

They're out of touch.

They're snabs.

They don't get it.

They look down on me.

They laugh at

Every one of those voters in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin that I talked to, who said Joe Trump's an asshole, but they all said, but Democrats are elites who look down on me.

So,

right, Democrats have a real issue.

And I say this as someone who goes on MSNBC a lot, they got to fucking get out of their MSNBC cocoon

and talk about, listen to real people with real issues and concerns.

But Biden, in 2022, the midterm, he went all in on democracy.

Remember?

He went all in and it worked and it staved off a humongous red wave.

By 2024, Biden's 150 years old and he can't talk about anything.

So I think the die had already been cast.

And all these voters who think the system sucks, both parties suck,

Well, okay, Trump's an Astio, but look what Biden and the Democrats did.

They hid Biden's condition and they didn't have a real election, the primary, blah, blah, blah.

So they had pretty a lot of material to work with too.

So I think it was too late by the time you got to Kamala.

I actually agree.

And I think Kamala's internal polling, which people still don't, haven't heard this message, she was in her internal polling, she was never winning.

So when I hear all these people say like the election was stolen, I'm like, first of all, no.

Second of all, like, her numbers showed her losing.

That's why they, you know, you heard their statements early on election night, which with people start saying, well, we need to like wait and see, that's a sign you're losing, right?

You're losing.

And they were doing that early.

And even before I was like, uh-oh.

So like they knew going in.

Yeah.

And I think that debate was a killer.

But I was, I was surprised at how many people said exactly what you just said.

You didn't even have an election.

So why should I

all the time?

Like

a real problem.

I can't tell you guys.

I got to know Kamala.

I don't blame Kamala for losing that election.

I fucking blame Joe Biden a lot.

Joe.

100%.

Look, Donald Trump is a psychopath.

He's humanly incapable of acting outside of his own interest.

But let's be real.

Joe Biden was a selfish old fart who put his own interest ahead of the country.

He fucked fucked things badly.

And that, again, to all these good, decent people in the middle who are just trying to get by every fucking week.

And they look at what's going on and they saw what the Democrats did.

They know what Trump is, and they just, they shrug their shoulders and say they're all bad.

So I'll at least vote for the guy who's talking about the border.

Yeah, that makes sense.

We got Rich here, by the way.

Yeah, late entrant.

What's up?

Quite a moment to walk into it.

What the hell, Rich?

Were you back?

I didn't hate it.

I'm going to be honest.

I didn't hate walking into that.

Set the tone real quick.

Fuck everything.

Too much coffee.

Yeah.

Well, Rich, we were just talking about.

I mean, I don't think we have full agreement on this, but like Joe and I were agreeing that we think Kamala didn't really have a she-was toast before.

And a lot of it was due to, obviously, Biden's first debate was the most disastrous debate in history.

There's no way to spin that as anything, but, but also, like, had he didn't quite say it, but had kind of said he wasn't going to run again.

And that that was obviously causing problems with people in the middle and the right.

And then the whole like, you didn't hold a primary to elect afterwards was devastating for folks that maybe we would have potentially been able to grab.

But I campaigned my butt off for her, but I remember putting out an article two days before the election, and I said, the worst thing about Kamala winning, and I want her to win badly because Trump's a threat to everything we care about.

But the worst thing about Kamala winning is

it will put off the Democrats having to finally address the issues the Democrats have to address.

Yes.

And they've been living in this world where,

now I'm a Democrat, we have been living in this world where Trump is so batshit bad and crazy and un-American that Democrats rightly felt like we can win by just saying Trump bad.

Yes.

November disproved that.

Yeah, huge mistake.

There's no question.

I mean, mean, as a new Democrat, how do you feel about the party's lack of evolution?

And as somebody who came from the right, just like myself, how do you feel about the best path forward probably for Democrats being adopting a more like Bernie Sanders style set of policies?

I think that probably is the more resonant with the working class approach.

How do you feel about that whole ecosystem that you're coming into?

So this may be a really weird answer from me, a guy who comes in from the right.

And if you had to label me, I'm a conservative Democrat.

I've made a bet that the party will be a big enough tent for a Joe Walsh and an AOC.

Maybe I'm wrong.

I think it has to be that big of a tent to succeed.

But

I am

an outsider anti-establishment guy.

So I want a populist Democratic Party.

I want a fucking pissed off at the establishment Democratic Party.

I don't care necessarily where that attitude comes from, if it comes from Mamdani and the AOC wing

or

maybe this is an oxymoron,

a charismatic centrist pissed off guy or gal.

I just want anti-establishment.

Show me that person.

I want to see the current person.

We fucking need that person.

I go to that person.

I love that.

Well, let's talk.

I'm curious, Joe, on the Mendani thing.

So obviously, that guy is as far outside of the establishment on the left as you could possibly get, a 33-year-old,

maybe two-term assembly member.

I'm not sure.

One-term assembly member, also former rapper at one point, and then comes out with a very, very, very

left-leaning populist platform, freezing rents,

government-run grocery stores,

a whole host of other

things.

When you saw him, take the pause.

Like, what do you think?

Is that the type of person?

Or is that, is he maybe too left for you?

What, like, because he is one of the most charismatic people, AOC the same, right?

So

where do you stand on Memdani or a Memdani-like candidate?

Well, I'd be an absolute fucking hypocrite if I didn't embrace him because I'm asking him to embrace me as a Democrat.

Right.

And so.

And so, look, that's New York City.

And he ran a hell of a campaign.

Like we said a little bit ago that we're living in a populist moment and Republicans demagogue the moment, but Democrats have been AWOL.

Well, that election a few weeks ago, that was a populist moment.

Democrats are there.

So I fully embrace him and I fully cheer him on.

And I fully believe

part of what my Democratic Party needs to do is understand that this is a big, fucking diverse country.

And the guy, the Democratic nominee in New York City, should not be the same Democratic nominee down in South Carolina.

If you want to take on Lindsey Graham, right?

You need Southern Democrats and you need good Northeast progressives.

So we've got to embrace all of it, but most importantly, embrace the anti-establishment energy.

I can't say that enough.

There is an unusually high number of people who voted for Mamdani, Trump, and Eric Adams three elections in a row.

There's something going on there.

Well, it's because

it's easy to be anti-establishment when you're out of power.

And I think that's what Democrats have to just get latched onto here is that that's if you go back in time, that's how the pendulum swings.

It's just based on if you're out of power, then you get back in power by being like, hey, I'm a change agent.

I love how you characterize that.

Progress looks different.

I'm in a deep, safe red state.

Progress looks different everywhere you are.

And I think that's something that

the sort of the the core Democratic, the people who are policing, I guess, the Democratic messaging and the way that we talk about things

have, have, by and large, come from increasingly concentrated blue areas.

And I think, you know, that's partially out of survival.

That's, those are the places where we're still winning.

And so that's where the leaders are coming from.

Rich, that's a great point.

That's a great point, Rich.

And that's, that's such a dangerous trap the party has fallen into.

So

there's been talk about me moving to the state of South Carolina because my wife and I fell in love with that state six years ago and being a conservative Democrat taking on Lindsey Graham.

I don't know if I'm going to do it, but I do know you can't run a fucking woke lefty progressive against Lindsey Graham down

there.

So, so, and the other thing that drives me baddie about Democrats, so many of them, is

there's this fear to just fucking say what you believe.

Don't worry about fucking offending anybody.

There's a yearning for authenticity.

I've never had that problem because I've always just said what I believe, but Democrats are so perfectly consulted

when they speak.

And America doesn't want that.

Yeah, it's a serious problem.

I mean, I think the way I look at it and the challenge that Democrats have is that Democrats are also the party that's embracing marginalized people.

So they're trying to protect those people where the right just completely abandons them and says they don't give a shit.

So the right doesn't necessarily have the same structural problem by different rules.

Right, exactly.

Yeah, completely.

So like I completely agree with you.

I think we need to be like dropping all that shit, but we have to understand the potential fallout of how that plays because we are still going to want to be the party that is respectful to people and inviting people in and trying to like be the big tent.

But at the same time, we got to be able to not walk on eggshells all the time.

It's a very weird balancing act with the right.

It's just like, fuck it, we'll say what we want because we're a horrible people.

It doesn't fucking matter.

I think it comes back to like what we were saying last week.

How it's you don't say we have to protect, like, so you're running against Lindsey Graham, let's say.

You don't go and say, We have to protect marginalized people and then have a 15-minute presentation on gender, you know, the gender identity.

Right.

You say, We have to protect marginalized people because they're fucking Americans, full stop.

And now, let's talk about how talking about seven NCAA trans women competing in sports out of 500,000 people is a massive catastrophic distraction while we're cutting energy, you know, new energy production.

We're cutting you.

We're fucking over everything that is economically our future, but also all of the people who are contributing to the diverse population that will be powering our future.

So why are we talking about this stupid distraction when we should be talking about something that's really important?

Bingo, and as someone who used to be a culture war warrior from the right, who would fucking tag Democrats Democrats with, oh, they all want to defund the police.

Like when there was one school in Northern California that one Christmas said, you can't sing Silent Night at a Christmas pageant.

Tucker Carlson, we'd all go on our shows the next day and say, Democrats don't want any religious songs across America on Christmas.

Or on Christmas, right?

Bingo.

Happy holidays.

I would say happy holidays.

Which, by the way, pisses me off.

Happy holidays, but we're not going to get into that right now.

But we knew, all of us on the right knew

that Democrats would never fight us on this culture war stuff.

And I think that's a big fucking mistake because most Americans are with Democrats on all these culture war issues.

Rich, you just nailed it.

Most Americans believe our transgender brothers and sisters.

God love you.

We embrace you.

Live your life.

Live your truth.

You get the same damn rights that any American gets.

You should be able to serve in the military, gay, straight, lesbian, doesn't matter to me.

And when it comes to transgender women in sports, let's just make sure the competition's fair.

Bathrooms and locker rooms, let's respect everybody's privacy.

Boom.

Right there is where 80% of America is on transgender Americans.

Yes.

But Democrats, for some reason, are afraid to even say what I just said.

Oh, yeah.

I don't know why, too.

There's nothing controversial about it, at least in my mind.

i i think they're afraid of getting into the specifics of it and they don't feel like it's a winner i mean look like the most effective ad that we've talked about a long time last year was trump's ad about i'm for you and she's for they them

and even though like it's a completely absurd it worked and we didn't say the thing that you just said joe which is basically like we respect everybody's right to exist i mean actually john fetterman who I'm not super happy with at the moment, you know, but like said, basically, why, who cares?

This is is a stupid topic.

I'm not doing, like, this is ridiculous.

And it worked.

No one bothered him with it again.

We just have to stand up and say enough.

And then people kind of go, oh.

Timmy, it worked because, again, the perfectly over-consulted and overly polled Democratic Kamala Harris campaign said, don't even get into it.

Fuck that.

Punch back on that issue.

It's like the border.

Look, most Americans, if you're in this country illegally and you got a violent criminal record, get the hell out.

But what Trump is doing now is utterly cruel and un-American.

So Democrats engage on that issue because most Americans are with you.

Yes.

I mean, that was one of the critical things.

It was like,

Kamala Harris just was incapable of keeping herself from like Biden's history.

So she couldn't come out and be like, well, we fucked up on the border.

We got to jump in and do X, Y, because it made Biden look like an asshole.

But if she had done that, people would have forgotten about the old guy and gone, I like this lady.

She's not, she's not full of shit.

She's She's coming with some straight talk.

Didn't do that.

And it's the same shit across the transition, like across the board.

She just like stayed away from all this territory and became very risk averse.

And I, I do believe, going 20 minutes back, I do think she could have won if she had embraced that kind of mentality.

I think a ton of people would have been like, ooh,

Zach, I'll buy you a bottle of tequila because that's my booze.

I, I, if Kamala Harris had sounded like me for three months,

I think she had a fighting chance.

Honestly, I agree.

I agree.

But, but like, we

look, Joe Biden legislatively had a hugely successful first four years.

Yes.

Joe Biden.

One of the best in modern American history.

Done.

But the bully pulpit is like 70% of a president's job.

And for four years, we had a president who was incapable of using it.

So, I mean, we had the strongest fucking economy post-COVID in the post-industrialized world.

Our president couldn't even talk to that.

So, like,

and Republicans then filled that void.

Oh, eggs are $3,000 a dozen.

And they're doing this every fucking day.

So, again, by the time Kamala got there.

Yeah,

she was dealt a terrible hand to play.

It's like, you got deuces and, you know,

go and win.

Go and win the ball.

You're a win, by the way.

Her only play, Zach, was to go bananas.

Yes, her only play was to come out and be like, fuck it.

I'm my own person.

I have ideas.

We made some mistakes.

We'll fix them.

Like, she didn't do any of that.

And it really was such a mistake.

Joe, I'm curious about the because there's been a lot of debate on the Democratic side about the weird angle of attack that they were using that

and Governor Walls were using.

And then they stopped.

Do you think that that was an effective attack?

Or do you think that because to me, it seemed like it was working and then they stopped and it seemed like all of our momentum kind of stopped.

But

I mean, I also

think I do think they're weird.

I'm going to preface by saying I think you four guys are smarter than me.

So I want to hear what you say about weird.

To me, it was weird.

To me, weird was weird.

I didn't get it.

I didn't understand it.

And then truthfully, by the time Walz got out there, Like when she first picked Walt, I thought, this is cool.

Fucking Midwest guy, football guy can hunt, blah, blah, blah.

But then Waltz gets out there, and you know what?

Waltz came across as weird.

i mean tim waltz came his hand it just he didn't come across as a real tough guy maybe they didn't use him right i didn't understand the weird i would have just said wrong this isn't fucking who we are this is un-american this is not who we are i didn't get weird yeah i mean i kind of understood it you have a better than fourth grade reading level though right joe

yeah i mean that's like the worst that's the worst insult to a fourth grader is you're weird it is and i think it worked really well because of the shit that they're like insanely laser focused on right like you're you're weird for thinking about everybody else's fucking private parts.

You're weird, dog.

Well, and they're, they're hyper-focused on this idea of like peak masculinity and they're all alphas and everyone.

It's like, dude, you guys are all betas.

But anyway,

they all

want to be that thing.

And

that thing is normal, if nothing else.

Like, we are the healthy, straight, white, ripped,

rich, common sense.

Like, we are the pure blood American people.

And if you're like, you guys are fucking weirdos, they're like, whoa, and it when it blows up their whole

and every time they tried to like combat it, they just fed into it more.

Like they could never get it fucking, they could never get it out of their mouths without beating, like without feeding into the allegation.

You know, for us, obviously, like it all makes sense to us, right?

But like, did we win a single vote by calling them weird, right?

That's what I was going to say.

I think that it was tailored to people who are already going to vote for Kamala Harris.

Like it wasn't, like, it just made people who were on the fence about it feel like attacked.

Like, whoa, you think I'm weird?

Like, I, I've, you know, just, what is it getting you other than like, it's just changing the narrative amongst the people who are already voting for it.

Kamala Harris.

And it is just, I mean, it's just another version of an insult.

I mean, I think the better thing is

I liked weird because zealots and sycophants and fascists, those are fucking college professor words.

Like, those are words that educated people use when they're talking in the teacher's lounge about their naughty students and like their, they're flunky students.

But it's the flunky students who outnumber the fucking president the professors and they're the ones still going to the ballot box you can't just say you are a you are a sycophant or the you or you are all zealots and so don't vote right even cultists and because they'll still just go vote so you have to find a way to either like i mean i i don't think insulting people is a great way to to get them off the fence in your favor but finding a way to use common language to connect with those people i think was maybe half the battle and then you have the other half and you reconnect it to economics as quickly as possible because it's still.

I think weird was a little too cute.

Yeah, it was.

I think it was tongue-in-cheek, like they were having too much fun with it.

Yeah, I think Democrats, like with some of this culture war shit, they were afraid to just call it out for what it is.

These guys are fucking pussies.

If you lie to me every time you open your mouth, there's nothing fucking manly about that.

If you cheat, if you commit adultery, if I can't trust you,

if you're the exact opposite of how I would fucking raise my kids, you're no man.

You're a fucking pussy.

If you lie about their eating cats and dogs, you go after people like this who are just here for a better fucking life.

You're a fucking pussy and a coward.

Now, maybe not that language, guys.

No, I would use that language.

I would use that language, but fucking call them out for.

Because I come from that world, they live on the fact.

And I talk to MAGA folk every day like they're tough.

bullshit.

I will say respectfully to him, you're pussies.

Donald Trump cheats on his wife on every one of his wives.

Is that a manly thing to do?

Fuck you.

Well, he's also the biggest baby on earth, too, right?

The second there's a mild critique of him, he like loses his mind.

I saw he got all mad about the Epstein thing the other day.

Oh, yeah, he gave you any control.

Why are you even asking about this?

Yeah.

Give me the Democrat, though, who will talk like this instead of talking like

a professor or

the head of a committee with a 30-page PowerPoint.

No, just fucking say what it is.

So

speaking of that, are there people that you see on our side?

I mean, you're obviously you.

I'm on your side now too.

So there's one.

There's one.

And I think Fetterman does it a little bit, but like there's also a whole bunch of stuff going on there.

But like what

Are there other examples of people or are these people that are yet to come and step forward?

Coming from Washington like I do, former congressman, I am loath to look at Washington for this kind of a tough, populist, real fucking voice.

I don't know who that is.

I haven't heard it yet, Tim.

I haven't heard this kind of a voice yet.

I got to say, I was...

I was almost completely out on Newsome for the bulk of the last, I mean, all the way back to Biden may or may not leaving the race.

I thought, you know, certainly on paper, Newsom is a person who you want to be excited for as a Democrat, you know, coming from the fourth largest economy in the world, and he runs the most diverse state in the country.

Like on paper, he has all of the arguments to make.

And now, like, oh, it's a California liberal.

Fuck that.

California is better run.

Yes, they have problems at scale because they are a fucking nation on their own.

They are a nation on their own.

They have problems at scale, just like Florida and the bass salt face eating guy, and just like Texas and their flood disasters.

All big states have issues.

I think that's something you fight back on.

You don't say, well, we'll be a president for all of Americans.

But

I was out on him because when he came out with his podcast and everything like that, it was just like, what the fuck are like, it was the most transparently political approach to I'm going to run in three and a half years.

But now with the ICE raids and this shit where they were just sweeping the park like it was a fucking minefield full of, you know,

it's absolute insanity.

And I think that Gavin has figured out, I need to be a fighter on behalf.

Like he's not using the language that you use, Joe, but that's also, you know, I mean, he was the mayor of San Francisco.

But I feel like for a guy who was the mayor of San Francisco and came from that area, he has

maintained his, his, I think, his loyalty to the, to the, the, the values, but he has changed how he presents himself as a leader in a way that I'm starting to look at him more and more and think, like,

is this a show or is he the fighter?

Does he have that fighter in him who can come and just say, we got to burn down all the shit that Trump did

immediately and we have to rebuild a whole bunch of new things to make up for all the damage he did and get us right on back on the right track if we're going to compete in a world with India and China and EU driving the future and not the United States.

So, so, so

there's a possibility with him.

But again, I go back to this word authenticity.

That's fucking it.

That's gold.

And he's got an authenticity problem.

And he has to prove that this is real because Gavin has a history of boom, boom, boom.

Just the moment that he's capitalizing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's kind of swinging.

He's got something to thing.

Yeah, he's got a hurdle.

He's got to jump over.

I got a guy.

I'm curious what you think about him because he's not a politician.

I've liked him from the jump, but he doesn't want to run for president so far.

but mark cubin is the guy that always jumps out to me i know he's not like you know whatever

yeah maybe john's but john stewart i don't know mark cubin the difference to me is that a lot of people in the middle are going to look at somebody like mark cubin and go oh he's the good version of donald trump he's a self-made billionaire he's got a billion different companies he understands how the dynamics of the market work and he's a straight shooter and tell you exactly to your face what the he thinks and what he doesn't think he's not going to lie to you.

That, to me, is a great combination.

Yeah, he's not a politician, whatever.

I think that's actually a plus.

I don't know.

I look at him and I go, to me, he sort of fits that mold of like, as long as he brings progressive policies with him, the delivery could be great.

I think being an outsider is a really good thing.

Yes.

I spoke with Cuban at an event about a month ago, and he just pissed me off.

He got up before I did, and he spent a half hour.

telling this audience of 2,000 people, quit criticizing Trump and tell us what you're going to do.

Outsell Trump.

Quit talking about he's a threat to democracy and the rule of law.

This was like two months into Doge, and he's telling this audience: just be a better salesman than Trump.

That's not great.

No, but I agree with you.

I agree with him, though.

I mean, I really don't.

I know it's not the right message at the time, but I do agree with him.

But two months into Doge, nobody's - you can't buy anything from Democrats two months into Doge.

So that's a very poorly timed sales page.

Poorly timed.

But correct in the line.

Jack, to your point, a guy, maybe Cuban, or a guy like Cuban, again, if authentic, could have real possibility.

Yeah.

I'm thinking George Soros.

I mean, there would, what better way to stick it to MAGA than to take?

I don't even know what the guy looks like, but these guys, they fall asleep thinking about George Soros and trans women playing in sports.

That's all they think about.

That's been there like 20 years.

That would be great.

Like George Soros and then like a trans volleyball player as vice president.

I'll tell you what, guys, when I was in the midst of my right-wing radio days, when I was in a blase mood midweek and ratings really weren't great and I needed to pick shit up, I right away would go to Soros.

Just straight to Soros.

I right away would just say that name out loud on the radio.

It's so funny because it's like Roy Roomer for us.

Right.

Well, but it's like the right has like 50 Soros, and they just, we just don't have as many Democrats, billionaires.

But it's, well, there's the anti-Semitism part of it too.

But

I want to, Joe, so.

By the way, this is Tim, one important point that, and as I'm only a Democrat now for a month, as I talk to Democrats, this is a big part of what I talk about.

The inside baseball is in private with my fellow Republicans for years.

In private, we would talk about and laugh about how the Democrats would never fight to the death politically.

And we always knew we would.

And we knew the Democrats

keep talking.

We have to fucking disprove that.

You're right to these Republicans.

I like what Luke said a couple of weeks ago.

You said, you know, you go far enough left, you get your gun back.

I love that.

I love that.

I love that.

Well, Luke, I'm curious.

I want to hear from you as our resident

Gen Zer.

Like, is what Joe is, is this what younger people are looking for in a candidate, a fighter?

Like, I'm just curious from the, yeah, they want to see.

He's 100% right.

That, like, that's what they want.

They don't want fucking stale, scripted shit.

They don't want that.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

Do you think,

do you, do you, sorry, Luca, and then you should ask your question.

Do you think a lot of these people, the young people who voted for Trump are gettable in 2026?

I don't think they really, like, and like half of them don't even really know what they fucking voted for.

And like, I've talked to some of them.

They're like, I can't believe all the shit that's going on.

And it's like, yeah, some of us who are paying attention knew this was coming.

Like, that's kind of why I was so fucking vocal before it.

But, you know, dude, sorry, my first election, I was 18.

I had just turned 18.

I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 because he,

somebody from the Green Party, it's a deep red state.

It didn't matter.

If I was in Florida, then you could, you know, throw me to the

party.

Put me in Alligator Alcatraz.

But

I voted for him because somebody from the Green Party came and spoke at my high school and they used the expression Republicrats.

And I remember thinking, oh my God, that is the most clever, brilliant, harsh burn on the system that I had ever heard.

I'm voting for Ralph Nader.

And then like a month later, after the election, I was like, oh, fuck.

Whoops.

Never making that mistake again.

So yes, to your point, kids are just fucking doing kid shit.

And it's like, I like the guy who swears a lot and is an asshole.

I do a lot of talking on college campuses.

And all of last year i would go on college campuses and i'd get a group of 200 college kids and i'd say look donald trump is a fucking threat to our democracy and the rule of law and i'd explain why and show them how and they would just roll their fucking eyes and they'd say joe love you man but they're all fucked up and biden's old the democrats suck so in their mind it the whole thing is fucked up and

They like they are more inclined young people to laugh at Trump, whereas I view him as a threat.

And there are a lot of young people who told me, Joe, the system sucks.

I know he's a fucking bad dude.

Let him go in there and just bottom out the whole system.

Yeah.

Well, that's what Republicans have spent 40 years doing is saying all of your, I mean, this is Curtis Yarvin, like textbook, playbook.

All of the big institutions that run the country, the journalists, academics, and the insider politicians, they're all destroying everything, creates so much cynicism.

I mean, you don't have to go far.

I could click into any social media site and see somebody saying burn it down, fucking throw everybody out.

It's like, dude, we have a $30 trillion economy.

We're still 30% some odd ahead of China in the number two role.

And you are so either clueless or just nihilist that you're saying you want to destroy everything and reset.

But that's where they got us.

That's where right-wing media has gotten us.

And that's what Trump capitalized on.

I agree.

I agree, Rich, with a lot of that.

Right-wing media jumped on that.

Thank you very much.

I did.

But these institutions, God love them and preserve them and they're important.

But generally, academia, media go on, generally are center, center, left.

I mean, the only reason Fox News became a thing so many years ago is because most of the media was center, center, left, and people center, right, and right needed a voice.

So

the left needs to recognize that.

But again, just recognize how disconnected regular fucking people feel from their politics.

I mean, I think that's, that's one of the biggest issues, right?

Is that like, you know, Rich, you made all everything you said was right, except like for that 21-year-old in, you know, Ohio that doesn't have a job and probably and maybe has a crippling addiction is like, I don't give a shit about any of this stuff you're talking about.

And all I'm hearing about is bathrooms and, you know, whatever

is a problem.

But with that,

Joe, you said everything was on the table for talking here.

So I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit.

You missed it.

Fuck you, Tim.

What are you doing?

God God damn it, Tim.

I'm not backing down.

We're never going to get someone joining the show again.

Joe's our last guest.

All right.

So, Joe on the show.

I don't know if this was news, if you've said this before, but Joe said that, you know, there's a possibility that he may be going to South Carolina to challenge Lindsey Graham.

So I want to workshop that a little bit because you are clearly talking about a path forward to win in some of these places that we haven't.

If, let's just say, hypothetically, you jump in.

your, what is your line of attack against Lindsey Graham and convincing, what, 65, the 65% of

South Carolinians who voted for him last time should vote for you?

And again, I'll never bullshit and I'll never run from a question.

I've been encouraged to think about it.

I'm thinking about it.

Fuck you, Tim.

Look.

I'm old enough.

Luke,

you're all.

Everybody here is younger than me.

When I was in high school and college, there was this unique animal called the Southern Democrat.

Yeah.

A Democrat who was pro-gun and, you know, a little bit more conservative than the Democrat you find in my home state of Illinois.

There's part of me that thought it's worth fighting the fight against Lindsey as a conservative Dem, if only to help show my new party how to fucking fight on this stuff.

I don't know if I'll do it, Tim, but what a gas for if I could run.

You talk about everything that's fucking wrong in our politics with one guy, Lindsey Graham.

What a pussy he is.

Dude, talking out of both sides of his mouth, like just

the contrast of you and how you present your message and how Lindsey Graham finds a way to be wrong on every single thing, even if he wasn't wrong in the past on that thing, he finds his way to being wrong.

It would be a matter of time.

I have a handful of wet dreams.

One of my wet dreams is

one of my wet dreams.

Don't Don't say Lindsey Graham.

Don't say Lindsey Graham.

No, no, no, not Lindsey.

But it's connected to Lindsay.

One of my wet dreams is that John McCain comes back with us for 24 hours.

Oh, man.

And

I fly him into South Carolina and he just beats the hell out of Lindsay.

Like, what the hell happened?

He slaps Lindsey up.

So that's the UFC fight we need on the White House grounds in front of the White Press.

I want to see that.

I'll put a lot of people out there.

Zombie McCain versus real wife Lindsey.

To your point, I'm a Democrat who's a big pro-gun guy.

I'm a Democrat who is a defend the border guy.

But I'm a Democrat who's like

reasonable and let's find common ground.

And what we're doing now with people, what Trump's doing now is

utterly un-American.

Most, I still believe most Republicans in South Carolina don't believe we should be scooping up pregnant women up off the streets.

So I'd go at Lindsay from a principled, woke, conservative perspective.

And my base has always been white rural folk.

Those are the folk that sent me to Congress and listened to me on the radio for years.

That's who I'd talk to in a state like South Carolina.

You know, I just saw a stat the other day.

There's a YouGov Yahoo poll.

And, you know, they're probably both, who knows who.

I looked at the methodology.

It looked fine.

I think it said 62% of Americans support a legal pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are in the United States, who have not committed any additional crime or any other crime other than just being here without documents.

This is after like 50 years of these fuckers, just racist attack after racist attack, lies and demonized.

And the

strong majority of Americans still can look at these individuals and say,

is all you did, you overstayed your visa?

Like

that is a argument to to go to to go to war over because it's part of our country i mean the birthright citizenship all he's stacking up all everything in our favor and i still haven't heard a single politician who just goes and says

off with the attacks on immigrants

off

all of my favorite people are immigrants Rich, if I'm with you right now, I'm fucking hugging and kissing you.

Amen.

Amen.

I think, Rich, I think this fucking issue alone

should bite Republicans and Trump in the ass in 26 because this is not who we are.

Defend the border, yeah, but we don't do this.

This is cruel.

This is not who we are.

And this is not what most Americans want.

There's a huge opening for Democrats.

Yes.

And you're watching it too.

Like you're watching and physically watching people get hurt by the pot.

It's so different from like economic arguments wherever it's like, you're watching people get dragged to the fucking street into a car by mass dudes with nothing like America.

Right.

American citizens, too.

Yeah.

The mass shit is so fucked up.

And you can even see Trump, he knew this was going to happen.

And that's why as the election was happening and in the aftermath of the election, every big exit poll that was conducted said 15 point, 20 point margin on the economy is the number one issue over everything else.

It was always, always, always the number one issue.

And yet Trump, all through the election and after the election, especially starting in about October, he was saying Americans voted for me for mass deportations and over-immigration.

That's why they put me in office.

And you can look at all the polls and say, They didn't, man.

They literally didn't.

And they're telling you they didn't.

Your people are saying that is not why they voted for you, like a one priority.

You're doing it because you like it.

You're doing it because you like it and because you can't do it.

And you suck at the economy.

Exactly.

You can't do anything to fix the economy.

And so you understand you have to hard pivot to somewhere you can win, which is, you know, racism.

I have a fear.

I have a dream.

I have a fear that because Trump has been so bad these first six months,

and I've heard Democrats privately talk about this, they believe we can take back the House kind of by just saying, look at Trump, look at Trump, he's bad again.

I have a fear that Democrats are going to fall back into that

stance

instead of raising

what you're saying.

Well, and/or or

this yeah we do not put military in in big parks in american cities where children are playing we don't do that

yep yeah i i want to hear that i'd same i i want to hear that

luke you i hear it every time i turn your videos on yeah that's normally what i do yeah i want to we need to keep that energy and we need to turn it into more than just hey the pendulum swung back and we took the midterms look at what we did.

Fuck that.

We, the, the minority party, has done that for 50 years.

Every midterm election after somebody's elected, except for I think 2018, the party in power or 2022, the party in power loses seats.

We will get some amount of that.

So like, let's just like the tide will come in, the tide will go out.

We have to not see that as a

validation of, you know, tepid politics.

We have to actually triple down on that and say, we need a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

That's what I fucking want.

And we also need a two-thirds vote in the House.

So we could actually maybe pass some fucking amendments that would make it so that none of the shit that Trump has done for the past, you know, really 10 years could ever be done again.

But will we, will we go that hard?

I already know we won't, but we'll get, you know, we'll probably get halfway there and then we'll say, look, and then it'll just be back to politics as usual.

Right.

And Rich, that's my fear.

And then you're looking at a president, J.D.

Vance, in 28, because

if there's one thing I want everyone listening to us to understand, coming from MAGA, like I do, this thing is bigger than Trump.

And Trump could be gone in two years.

MAGA now is the Republican Party.

And they've got smart, smart thinkers and talkers and leaders who will represent MAGA.

So it's here to stay.

I agree.

And I think...

Everybody is right that we can probably fall over ourselves into taking back the House

by a few seats.

yeah but i don't want that i want i want a 50 seat majority or at least i want us to fight for that and we can't do that if we just say basically our message is return to normalcy which makes me want to tear my hair out

because the reality is that the government was broken before like i worked in the government for five years um and actually Joe, I was probably in the Obama administration when you were in Congress.

Yeah, you were too.

And I was.

And I,

you know, I saw a lot of broken shit there.

Like, we don't address it.

And I think that, and I think this is probably even more important for the presidential candidate that will succeed in 20 for 2028 is

a vision for a different country that has the same values, but like that we operate differently.

The government

is bureaucratic.

It is too slow.

The hiring processes are totally fucked up.

And like Democrats need to, I think Democrats could just like steal this from Republicans.

And that's the populist message that we're talking about.

It's like, I don't want to return to normalcy.

I want to return to something better because

we were not in a good place as a country when Joe Biden was president.

Like we weren't.

And we're never going to get by this unless the Democrats actually put forward an agenda that really does work for everybody.

Because right now we don't have it.

Give me a common sense, centrist, decent, tolerant, get shit done platform.

Give me that.

And give me a populist who can talk to that.

But if I have to settle for a populist on the far left, I'm all into it.

Well, the far left is centered, though, because it's economy.

Like

you look at far left everywhere,

it's about jobs, it's about income, it's about production, it's about taking care of your people.

We just need to not be the

we just need to casually scooch out the racist, like isolationist part of populism that usually comes along for the ride.

Like, yes, we need to protect our jobs, and that means keeping brown people out of the country.

No, no, no, that's not what that means.

It means huge, massive investments in infrastructure and in job creation and manufacturing, new technologies like green energy.

I don't even want to call it green energy or alternative energy or renewable energy.

We did just call it energy, new energy, future energy.

Like

there's room to do that, and we're going to have to do that if we're going to compete with China.

I got elected in 2010 because Democrats, Tim, you know, everybody knows, passed Obamacare.

Yep.

And when Democrats passed Obamacare in 2009, Democrats knew

that bill was going to beat them up politically in 2010.

I'll tell you what, guys, Republicans privately know that this big, ugly bill should beat them up next year.

The difference is, Tim, you know this, when Democrats passed Obamacare, even though they knew it would kill them politically, they believed in the bill.

Privately, most Republicans think this is a bad bill.

And so, my God, Democrats, we've been handed another fucking gift.

Let's drive it home.

Yeah, well, Joe, I'm going to ask you one more question.

We're at the hour mark, and I told you we'd do an hour, but do you see, is there a candidate out there for 2028 that, like, no, obviously no one's announced, but is there somebody that like at least piques your interest as who may jump in for 2028?

Or

no, that's such a great question.

And I'm sorry that I'm not going to give you a name because I don't

see him or her.

I know the moment we're in.

I know where regular people are.

And I, as of yet, do not see a Democrat meeting this moment.

I just don't.

I actually agree.

I'm not sure.

I mean, there's a bunch of candidates that I think are good.

But, you know, I think I don't know if at this point in 2007, if we knew that Barack Or 2006,

we weren't really sure.

So I think there could be somebody comes that

we don't even know about.

So

Tim, just to bring us home.

we can't end the podcast without calling this out because

we sold like more merch, I think, after our last episode than we've sold.

Rich's endorsement is way better than Tim's, maybe ever.

But definitely in the process.

So, we're thinking, like, if we're going to have podcast merch that has slogans on it, like if it says, like, I, you know, I, I got fucked on the Find Out podcast or whatever, like Luke's, you know,

maybe not bad.

And mine is like, oh, that's fucking rich.

Mine's like, oh, that's fucking rich.

Tim's was going to be, hey, everybody.

And

because I say that at the beginning everywhere.

And Tim felt like that wasn't good enough.

And so fucking fuck you, Timmy.

That is fucking Timmy.

I think Joe gave you your slogan.

You know what?

Like,

we talked about me going back in time 15 years ago.

Honestly, if we went back in time 15 years ago and said, Joe Walsh will tell you to fuck off twice, I'd be like, I would believe it.

And I would believe it.

I would think you'd be negative

rather than in in jest.

But no, maybe that is it.

Okay, I'll take it.

I'll take it.

Fuck this.

That's my slogan.

Fuck this.

This is not who we are.

Fuck this.

It is not.

It is not.

Well, Joe, thank you.

You guys have been great.

This is a lot of fun.

Tim, you told me this wouldn't be fun.

Oh, I did not say that.

Oh, fuck you, Joe.

Fuck him.

Joe, it has been.

First of all, I want to say, like, when

I originally, I think we kind of met a little bit on Twitter at first.

And I remember one of our friends, Cliff,

I reached out to him because I was like, is this guy for real?

Like, this is a big change.

And he, he told me, he's like, talk to Joe, talk to Joe and you'll see.

And I think over the past few years, like you, your, your

turn of heart has been genuine.

And I know that like some people in the Democratic Party have not welcomed you.

And I would just say to everybody listening, like, Joe, you're, you're the real deal.

You have made, you have made amends.

And like, you have done what we would have wanted so many Republican officials to do.

And really, you're the only one.

And, you know, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate it because it is so important.

And you tossed your livelihood down the drain to stand up for what's right.

And I just wish there were more of you on the right than just you.

Then give me this final word, Tim Fulton, because I mean this, no shitting around.

You very early on stood by me.

And it's, look, I know I've had to prove myself, right?

Obviously, from the Tea Party to the Democrat Party, that's a big fucking change.

But you stood there.

I remember when I turned against Trump seven years ago, publicly, I looked behind me thinking a bunch of Republicans are going to follow me.

Nobody did.

So I became a Democrat a month ago.

I'm going to work my ass off.

to get other Republicans to join me because it makes no sense to stay in this no man's, never Trump independent lane.

We've got to be Democrats now to defeat what that thing is.

Yeah.

And we got to let you guys in.

Yep.

Yes.

That's the other piece.

And that's where, like, I think a lot of our job is to

hold the door open for you and welcome you in because we need everybody.

The math isn't work anyway.

Are there a way?

Tim, Rich, Zach, Luke, if you guys don't have fucking Tequila in the room, I'm not coming in.

I'm not going to.

I think I got Michelle and Anyo over on my own.

I've got some at home.

I've got some.

So you're always welcome.

So, So, Joe, thank you very much.

Also, everybody should go subscribe to Joe's Substack, the social contract, right?

I got that right.

You got it right.

Social contract on Substack.

Please do that.

And thank you again, Joe.

Also, we've got to put our pitch out for our merchandise.

If you want to get some, go to findoutpodcast.com.

And if you want to subscribe to our Substack, findoutpodcast.substack.com.

Thank you, Joe.

Thank you, everybody.

We'll be back next week.

Have a great weekend, everybody.