Bulwark Takes - LIVE: Sarah Longwell AMA

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Ben Parker puts Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell through an AMA on how a Democratic House should investigate the Trump administration, what focus groups reveal about James Talarico’s path in Texas, and how a future Democratic president should balance accountability with reform. Longwell also discusses universal health care, the post-Trump GOP field, why The Bulwark hired a former Trump aide, and criticism of her advice to Democrats in 2024.

Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bulwark. Welcome to the AMA. The Ask Be Anything with our publisher, our fearless leader, Sarah Longwell. Sarah, how are you? Ready to answer some questions. What's up, Ben? I don't know. We're like not evenly matched right now. I feel so much taller than you. Which is not what it's like in real life. I mean, we're not that much different in real life. Okay. We got a bunch of questions that people already submitted. Thank you to everyone to submit questions on Substack. A couple of people sent there's in through email. We might get to some live questions later. You did mention to me just a couple of minutes ago that you want more fun questions, questions that aren't necessarily about politics, but are about, you know, some fun stuff, some stuff Sarah likes.

I just thought, you know, if we're going to do an ask me anything, like, I do talk about politics on the pods all day, every day. You know, it's about some stuff we, like, never talk about. Yeah. No, I think we should, we should talk about, like, you know, Kenyon. Or, I don't know, cats. Okay, we have some good stuff. Let's go ahead and kick off with a question from Substack from Kim Z.

Assume, we're going to start off with politics. Assume Dems take control of the House and start oversight. What do or don't they need to do to make sure this process highlights the incompetency and corruption of this administration but doesn't trigger voters to rally around Republicans? I assume she means like swing voters here or feel defensive of previous votes that they've taken. What do you think about that? Love that question. And actually, JBL and I did some of this on the secret pod today.

where, look, I think that my biggest piece of advice is not to impeach Donald Trump, because that does create the rally around Trump effect. We've seen it now like a lot of different times. And I think Trump would love nothing more than to have an enemy, right, something that he can really to create, get people back on his side, right? I think we should impeach Pete Hegseth. I think we should. And because that you can make about the Iran war. Like you can make, like you dare Republicans, a vote for Pete Hegset is a vote for this war. And so I think we should jam them up in some of the places where they're deeply unpopular.

However, and this is really important, you got to also do some things that people want to see to, I think, because part of, I don't have this fully fleshed out yet, but part of it is if you think about, let's assume a Dem wins in 2028, the number of things that they will have to do. do to try to help rebuild in a in sort of a post-Trump world. I think that there's a way that Democrats can get a jump on some of that, some kind of a reform package that includes a lot of popular economic things that Democrats do. Like this is sort of the moment. Democrats are, they've been living for this. Things like raising the minimum wage, very popular right now. You know, like some of the populist economic things, restoring people's Medicare, who, Medicaid, who have lost it in rural areas, things that they can crow about.

This is just very important. They need to focus on things that make people want more of it in 2028, not less of it. So when you say the top three things that I would do, I would impeachshed Seth over the war. I might do our boy over at DOJ. Like if we're going to, if we get to keep impeaching, if the first one is successful, you know, you go after,

I'm sorry that I'm blanking on his name. Todd Blanche. Blanche, thank you. Do Blanche at DOJ over the Epstein. files. Do you do RFK Jr.? Well, so I just, so on with JVL and I, when we were talking about this, I was kind of like, I would love to do RFK over the measles. I think there's only, we have to see what the appetite is and how much we're really going to because I do think you need a reform package in their 10 very popular economic things that Democrats can can try and push through.

That make people see them as the party that is thinking about their material well-being. Yeah, I think the RFK thing is also something that you can accomplish just as well through positive legislation, right? Some of these boards that he's fired all of, or, you know, the expertise is hauled out. You can say, like, well, we're introducing a law that'll put that all back and make sure you can't do that again. You don't necessarily need impeachment as much, but I don't know if that's right. Okay. Sarah B. says, I am fortunate enough to live in blue New York, but I grew up in Michigan, and I'm wondering how Abdul El-Said were governed if he's elected to the U.S. Senate. The evolution of AOC has been so interesting to watch, I believe that he might follow a similar trajectory.

Thoughts? I mean, my thoughts are basically that outsiders, when they become insiders, have a tendency to shift, right? Because what they quickly see is that, you know, being sort of angry from the outside is easier than having to work the levers of government. And in a lot of ways, that's a good evolution to go through, right? It's good to sort of get in there and say, oh, okay. I've got to build public support for this thing that I said. And not just public support, but, you know, internal support from other senators. And I've got to figure out how to build coalitions.

And I sort of think that is, that's democracy. And so it is a, watching AOC has been really interesting because she goes from somebody who, and I think she still has pretty much roughly the same principles, but her understanding of the mechanisms of government now are so much more nuanced. and she's quite good actually at explaining to people what they are. And so I just think it causes you to sort of grow out of the part, right? It's just all that you campaign and poetry, you govern in prose. Yeah.

A lot of times when you run for the first time, you don't even know what the pros are. And I have seen some people that make them worse and other people it make them better. And so we'll see. But AOC, it's absolutely made better. Yeah. No, her evolution has been really interesting. We do have one question from YouTube that it's a fun question. So we've done a little bit of vegetables.

Time for some candy. I don't know. Joltchik or Yolchik says, what was your batting average in softball? I have no idea. You know what? Here's what I'll tell you about my softball career. The best player on our team played the same position as I did. So I mostly DHed.

I was a second baseman. I was off in a backup second base. meant, but I was, my hitting was always the best thing. And so I was a, I was a, I often was a cleanup or a designated hitter, but I don't remember what my batting average was. No, that's fun. I think this next one also counts as a fun question because I love the pullback the curtain on the focus group's questions. And I know you do too. This person's first name is TP and last initial S. We're doing first grade style names here. So TPS asks, do you ever go back to? people who were previously part of a focus group to measure change over time. Do we ever repeat the

same people in the groups on purpose? We do. Although we don't do it that that often, although often when I do it. So we went back, for example, to people who didn't vote for Kamala Harris or like people who we were leaners who then we knew like didn't vote and we asked people who didn't vote why not, like why they ultimately couldn't get there. And these were people who were undecided who then didn't vote. So we do follow up, especially after an election where we've had interesting cohorts. We have in the past done things where we follow the same cohort over time. That is interesting. Like we'll take, we took a group of undecided women in Pennsylvania and we had, we met with them kind of every other week or something up until the point of election.

And there were some downsides to that. Number one was that they developed a group, like an in-group relationship, right? And so they got to know each other, yeah. They got to know each other. And it was changing what the relationship of the whole thing was. They were enjoying seeing each other. They would tell stories. And that was great.

But it wasn't giving us what we needed qualitatively to like understand. We could see that that dynamic was getting away from something that was really useful. This one is a pretty straight up question, also from Substack, about the book, about how to eat an elephant. Peabody J asks, what can each of us do personally to fight the right-wing engertainment industry? This is a really hard thing, and I really struggle with this too. but you can look this is a in the book to the extent that there is a a place to end a place to end about sort of feeding the good wolf um part of it is like do not become them this is my number one thing you know there's this Nietzschean quote stare into the abyss and the abyss looks back at

you like Trump wants to turn us all into monsters like him right he wants to bring out the worst versions of ourselves the parts of us that hate and live in fear. And what I try to do is resist that. I fail. We all fail sometimes. But like over and over, I try to reinforce almost as a mantra. Like, we don't want to be what they are. We are not trying to be a mirror image. Like I understand we want Democrats to fight harder. We want there to be a big broad coalition that doesn't isn't at each other's throats so that you can sort of overwhelm the bad guys on this side. But you want to do it without the same vitriol, without the lying, without all of the things that make MAGA so toxic and tear us apart as a country. You know, you want to fight lies with truth and you want to fight evil with goodness.

And like, sometimes it's that basic. And I try. And I believe all of us should try to do that. I think that's right. And, you know, you're not going to convince anyone by screaming at them. I think it's part of what we've learned. This is a question. Speaking of screaming from Michael H.

who left it on Substack. This is a question that harkens back to the Rick Berman section of the book. What does a flags Democrat look like and sound like today? I've heard you talk about this a lot, like even just around the office, about which part of the flags acronym people should use and when. He says, I would love to hear some examples of how Democrats should be using fear, love, anger, greed, and sympathy when crafting their narrative. Yeah. So this again is that, you know, my the guy that I worked for when I was sort of coming up in in communications world. And he and I, we disagreed on a lot, but like I really learned a lot from him about how people communicate and about how it works. And he had one of these things that he always talked about was flags, that there were

five dominant human emotions, fear, love, anger, greed, and sympathy. And this is, let's just take Trump. So I think that the mess, the way to think about messaging is always contrast, right? You want to say them bad, we good, right? Like, and John Ossoff does this. I feel like he really follows this pattern when he gives his speeches. It's one of the reasons I'm so enamored with him. Like, I joke about how he's been lifting weights and whatever. But he really does do this thing where he tells a story and he says, they have greed. They're greed. They're corrupt. They're greedy. your life is getting worse. And so he is saying,

there have greed, you should have anger about their greed. And, you know, I think that whoever runs in 2028, I do think there should be somebody in the mix, there should be love. And the love is love of America, love of her people, love of wanting to make people's lives better.

I think that Trump would do this, and I think we all found it pretty repellent, And he would be like, I love the poorly educated. You know, I love women. I love, you know, but people like to be told that they're being prioritized. That's why America First, which has its roots in horribly racist sort of 1930s propaganda, is still so effective because it's saying to you, hey, Mr. and Mrs. American, I'm prioritizing you. And people like to be prioritized.

And they like to be loved. And they like to be told that you're going to make their, better. Like, we even greed. Part of it is, I don't think it is greedy for people to want to have their material well-being improved, but that is part of what you're doing, right? You are saying to them, your life is going to get better. You will have more money. You will have a better job. You will have more upward mobility. Like, using people's anger at the elites, their love of something better, their fear of it getting worse for them. That is like, those are all things that you just,

but think about people like having emotions and that you are trying to tap into them to reach them. And how can you pull out the best stuff? And because Trump does it the other way. Trump takes fear and anger and weaponizes those all day long. How can I make people feel fearful of their, fellow countrymen. How can I make them angry and hateful at their fellow countrymen? And so you got to realize as a leader, you have the opportunity to do a lot of directional things. Where do you,

where do you take, because you're going to make people fearful. That is just part of what you are doing as a politician. But what are you making them fearful of? Because if you're making them fearful of their fellow, you know, countrymen, that is divisive and bad. But if you're making them fearful of what AI is going to do, and then you are presenting the solution to that, that's good politics. Cool. I like that. Okay. We have one more question and then a special announcement. I didn't tease a special announcement. So if you're tuned in right now, you get to hear it. It's going to be exciting. But first, another question from Substack, Alicia P. asks, I'm an academic librarian, wondering if I could lead a book club with how to eat an elephant. I am not a communications

professional. What questions of framing could you suggest to introduce this book to non-biltwork people? And do you know of any other groups that are starting book discussions with your book? I don't know. Here's one thing. I saw somebody sent this to me the other day. There was a guy who, so a bunch of people have done reviews. They'll do like these video reviews of the book. And so one thing I might encourage you to do is obviously people love being in person, but you could start an online video Zoom conversation about it. But there's, this guy who does an online review. He's a professor somewhere. And he he does this incredibly thoughtful, earnest review of the book. But the whole time his cat keeps getting in front of the

camera. And it was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. I got to share it because he was, he starts by being like, I'm sure she'll never see this. But I watch the whole thing being like, I love this guy and his cat when it was such a thoughtful, such a thoughtful review. Anyway, I do think people, I would love it if people were able to self-organize, especially in the bulwark comments and things like that. There's a lot of ways that this community can do that. Because I do think I have gotten a lot of this. It's the reason I did the AMA, that there's sort of an appetite for people who want to talk

about the things in there. So, hey, Ben, also, if the chat, if people are asking hard questions or even mean ones, throw them at me. I'm not, I'm not, go ahead. I'll take them. We have, we have people who are putting together a list for me. So I'll look for those. I'll look for some mean ones.

But in the meantime, maybe they can throw some mean ones in there and highlight them for me. Thanks, guys. In the meantime, if people want to hear more about your book, I'm sure it will be a topic of discussion on October 18th at the Bullwark live event in Charlotte, North Carolina, which unfortunately is already sold out. But Secretary Mayor Pete Buttigieg will be there with us. Maybe he'll have read the book. I hear he reads a lot.

And if you're a Bulwark Plus member, even if you're not there, you will get to watch. because that's the big exciting announcement for the first time ever. We're going to be live streaming this event. Sarah, how excited should people be? I know, leading question, whatever. I mean, well, we're going on the tour. I'm excited about it. I'm excited, you know, me and Pete, if you remember, I've had,

and is ignominious? What's the word? I just, me, last time I met Pete, I sort of fell apart in the face of meeting Pete. He is one of my favorite politicians and communicators. but so I'm excited to get to redeem myself in front of him and show him that I'm not a weirdo who can like hang out and talk normally. But I think it's going to be a really fun show. We're going to be down south in places, a lot of them places we never been. But I'm like super, I'm interviewing Pete and I can't wait for it.

It's going to be great. I'm just going to say Pete, why do you have all the best words? Yeah, exactly. So that's going to be live stream. So you can watch that. Unfortunately, tickets are sold out, but you can get tickets to the show in Atlanta. two nights later on October 20th with you and JVL and Sam and Tim and a bunch of other Bullwork friends. So those tickets are still available at the Bullwork.com slash events.

Let me see if we have. Yeah, do you get some questions and I'm just going to say one thing since, you know, people are on now. We're talking. I just want to say thank you to everybody who ordered the book. You know, it was number two on the New York Times bestseller list. It stayed on the list for a while. we're still selling a ton of audible.

A lot of people are listening to it, which is nice. But I just have been overwhelmed, both by how many people came to the book talks and the events and how well the book is done. And I know people are reading it because of all the reviews that people are leaving on Amazon and Goodreads and whatnot. And I just can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

Okay, here's a good one. This comes from someone in the YouTube questions asking, why did the bulwark hire a former Trump administration employee? Sarah Matthews. Sarah Matthews, yeah. Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, I don't know if. Sometimes I think people maybe don't know the bulwark origin story that, look, at some point we were now a long time ago, but people were Republicans. Now, most of us were out on Trump from the jump.

Like I tried to fight Trump in the 2016 primaries. didn't really have a way to do that at the time. And, you know, I went and grabbed Tim and, like, I met JBL and, you know, Weekly Standard got shut down and Ben, you built the original when we first started the bulwark. But, you know, I met a lot of people, like, part of my journey in 20, 2020, even actually like 2019, 2020, 2020, every time somebody would abandon Trump who knew him, they would do it, they would find us. Like, they would come to us to help. because they were looking for sort of a middle space, a safe space, like who are people who will understand and help me as I try to extract myself from Trump's orbit.

And so, you know, Olivia. I'm sorry. Olivia Troy, yeah. Olivia Troy. Elizabeth Newman. Elizabeth Newman. There were a lot of people from the Trump administration that we helped sort of not just get out, but also then tell their stories publicly through Republican,

voters against Trump. We turned a lot of them into ads. And so we got introduced to Sarah Matthews sort of after, right after sort of the January 6th committee stuff. And I just, her story sort of resonated with me that she was somebody really, really young. She'd grown up in a conservative family. This is sort of how I felt about myself. She was there and uncomfortable, like, obviously, I never would have worked there, but I was also older. Like, I had seen enough to know, like, this was horrible from the jump. But she wanted out and she wanted to fight. And this is where I do appreciate somebody who says, I see now, I see that it was wrong

and I want to make good. Like I want to do better. I want to fix it. I want to do my part to try to help things. And that's who she is. And not everybody's like that. But I think when you have that, you should nurture it. And I do try to find homes for a lot of these types of people, people who got

out. I do think anybody this time around, like, I feel a real difference between people who are in Trump one and people who are in Trump two, because people who are in Trump two said, uh, I would do that again. Yeah, right. Like, he tried to overthrow the government and I'm still going to go work for him. Like, I have no more grace for that. Um, but I, I do think that I do for, I do for some of the people, especially the people though who did the right thing, um, and told the truth about January 6th. Because every time somebody does it, you have to realize they are very much the exception to a whole bunch of people who are doing the wrong thing. And so I think that there's a, I think that there's a sense sometimes from people that everybody who, you know, is kind of like a never-trumper, that there's like an ulterior motive. But I will tell you, it is deeply unpleasant to extract yourself from your previous tribe. And I'm not saying everybody needs massive plotts for doing it, but I don't think you should, assume that their intentions are terrible because the fact is like if they wanted to make money, they would have stayed.

Like if they wanted. Especially now, right? Like, totally. Because now it's just pure corruption and you can sell access and everything else. And so I do think people should at least recognize that those people were trying to, they were making a kind of sacrifice. Yeah.

I mean, Sarah's great. And she's written very clearly about how like she was caught in that sort of Trump one kind of like, I feel like I can still do good here if I just like focus on the good stuff. And she was out of January 6th. And like, she's fully on board. And, you know, politics is about addition not subtraction. Like, you know, I think it's a great answer. Fun question from, I'm terrible pronunciation.

I'm so sorry. Donna, I think. Are you a cat person or a dog person? Cat person. Sorry. This is, this is controversial. But I had to, as soon as I got engaged, we got to, we got to, We named them Calvin and Hobbs because that's a Bill Waterson went to Kenyon.

So Calvin and Hobbs. And then when they passed away during COVID or just after COVID, because not at the same time, we waited a little bit. And then the boys, like that was the time. We were like, do you want a dog? And the boys said, no, we want two more cats. And they wanted a boy and a girl that they could name Harry and Hermani. But we ended up getting two boys and one was red. So now they are Harry and Ron.

That's so cute. Does it surprise people who know you that you're a cat person? Because I can see people being a little bit surprised by that. I don't know. You know, I don't. I don't want to really. Literally, you can ask me all the questions about DSA and any of that. But I can't go into the dog stuff where I just feel like I'll really get in trouble.

But I'm a cat person. Okay, here's a question from Rich on Substack. Sarah, what are your thoughts on Universal Hubstack? health care. It's the thing that I have changed my mind about the most, less politically and almost more as an adult consumer of health care and a business owner. I think that I do think it's going to require a bit of a grand bargain. I do think as a political matter, it's probably an idea whose time has come. And I actually, I wouldn't be shocked if some Republicans started talking about it too. You know, Obamacare covered a lot more people, but it also made it a lot more expensive

for the people who were able to pay. And as a result, it is one of the things that comes up, the absolute most in the groups. And again, you really know you have a problem when something is hitting people among on a bunch of different factors. And so for health care, it is both its cost, both as an employer and as just a user, but also it's not easy to use. It is increasingly very difficult as a service. And even when it's gotten sort of, and part of it too is like technology is changing it where you could see like, I think searchlight put out something on this that I thought was really compelling. But you could see how urgent cares as they populate places and people are able to get a certain basic level of health care. And I think that it's just like you get born and you are born with health care.

Like I think there are certain things that, but here's the thing. And this is what I think people should understand is that there will have to be part of a bargain. And part of that bargain will be the bigger social safety net, the more Americans are going to be hostile to people coming in the country for the first time. This is why you look at the socialist countries in Scandinavia, whatever, that do democratic socialism. They don't let outsiders in, right? Like, you. You get it, but they don't let people into their countries. They don't do a lot of immigration. And I think there will have to be some tradeoffs there. But I do think it is an idea of some kind of basic coverage is an idea whose time has come. And I think it will be more popular with voters now than it was 15 years ago. Yeah, I think I think as a political question, it's certainly, I think a lot of people warned back during the Obamacare fights. So like, this is just opening the door to universal health care. And like as a policy matter, I don't know that that was right. But I think as a political matter, that's kind of been borne out.

Like, people wanted an option that was accessible and easy to use and affordable. And Obamacare wasn't that, but it kind of was a step in that direction. We have another focus group question here from Austin from Atlanta. He says, you ended the Paxton-Taliergo focus group pod with, I really think we can get some of these people. Why try to court voters who still think in 2026 that Pakistan is, quote, the lesser evil? Well, it's Texas. And I do think that a big part of political analysis is understanding just the reality of the places that you're running in. And it's very difficult for a Democrat to win in Texas.

A Texas, a Democrat hasn't been elected to a federal. office in, I don't know, when was the last time, that you'd have to effort that, but yeah, I've no idea. Very long time. And so I think that you, if you're going to win in Texas, you need three things to happen. You need Tala Rico to turn out all the Democrats that are there, right, overperform with Hispanics. you need independence, disaffected independence, to break

like seven to three his way. And you need a lot of Republicans to stay home and some to cross over and vote for you. And so I think the fact that in our polarized society, listening to so many Texas voters, Republicans, Trump voters, say that they under no circumstances will vote for Ken Paxton

is music to my ears. Now, I think the question is sometimes people get stuck in this binary, like, well, shouldn't we be more focused on turning out Democratic voters in Texas than in trying to persuade people? And, like, it's always a little bit of both, but also in a place like Texas, you just have to do persuasion. You have to because you're so outnumbered with right-leaning voters. And so, you know, that's just what has to happen.

And I think also, though, I think it can. Like what was exciting to me listening to the focus group was how many of these Texas Trump voters liked Tala Rico, like said, like, yeah, I know he said some crazy things, but like he seems really nice. He seems like he cares about me. He seems like he loves Texas in the country. Like, okay. And look, it is hard to build a coalition out of people that you really dislike, that you

feel like made really bad mistakes before errors in judgment. Like that's a part of the human condition where you're like, I don't want this person in my coalition. But this is, again, a big part of my book is, do you want to be right or do you want to win? And you said this before Ben, and it's just true. Winning is a is a game of addition. And so I think for people who do a lot of, you're not in the coalition and you're not in the coalition, that that's a mistake. Because like, you don't, you know, it's like, it's like, you have to,

like, go to a party with the person in the coalition. You just have to be like, did you vote for the same person I voted for?

Great. Yeah, love that. We have that in common and we don't talk about anything else. Yeah. Okay, this is a question,

uh, just from me, my prerogative of being on the live stream. What was your favorite and least favorite part of writing the book? Um,

my favorite part of the book was, um, well, my favorite part was honestly, it was working with JVL and, a lot of people here. You know, I couldn't have done the book without a lot of help from people because I was also trying to run the companies and podcast and do the things. And so you helped me.

JVL helped me. But like one of the most fun things, and I have my producers for the show, but we had to do so much going back through the focus groups. And that was a trip, man. It is a trip to go back and see what people were saying at different times and be like, oh, I remember this person. Or even just I remember example. Yeah. I mean, well, so I'll give you an example. There's a guy who we knew was in several of the groups who was a voter for Ron Johnson and, wait, who was the Democrat. Jill's like a. No, no, no, no.

It was a, oh, no, it was a Kamala Johnson voter, right? Like, it's like, whatever. And that person's going to be a straight ticket down. Now, like, I just, I guess I mean, when you would go back through, two, the other thing is it refreshed your memory about people. And then those people come through again sometimes when you screen for groups and you see them and you're like, oh, I see how this person has changed. I don't know, man. So the most fun part was obviously like working with my team, who I love and going through the focus groups and getting to put it all together because that's

what I really wanted. That was the part, like I couldn't help writing it. I desperately had stuff I wanted to get out there. My least favorite part is that writing a book is super, super hard. And it takes a lot of time. And the hardest part was actually living in the old focus groups, writing analysis from things that had happened seven, eight years ago, and then doing analysis from today. Like, keeping it in my, like, straight in my brain, what are we talking about? And I feel like people who've come to me over the last year have seen me, I just feel like I used to be much sharper than this time. I feel like I was constantly trying to be like, this is now and that was then. and you can't let those, that analysis cross.

And that was hard. All right. We're just going to a few more to these because this is fun. This is a great question that just came through from Smotwani. Have you asked the focus groups what happens after Trump? Yeah. You know, if you're asking MAGA audiences, you know, some of them, if they still love Trump, would, will joke about like, well, Trump's going to run again.

Mostly, though, people are starting to want. to move on from Trump. And they don't want Don Jr. Like I ask, because JVL is always like, it's going to be Don Jr. I ask about Don Jr. And I ask about Tucker. And it's a weird thing.

Like, there's kind of a J.D. Vance cohort. There's a Marco Rubio cohort. And then there's kind of a, the field. But the field tends to be Tucker, Megan Kelly. Like, there's definitely in that right-wing MAGA ecosystem. they are now used to electing people who are not politicians but who are entertainers and they want to be entertained by the people who are going to own the libs the most and be the most aggressive.

And so like there's still real appetite for that. And so I think you're going to get a world where the JD and Marco end up kind of fighting over the America or sorry, the MAGA establishment. and Marco probably appeals more to like people who like the party more than they like Trump and J.D. Vance is trying to be the bridge and then you're going to have sort of the real America first has never been tried because I hear that different, I hear those different streams in the voters. I will tell you, we ask, if you're asking about Dems, controlling for, I mean, the bloodlust, like the appetite for, like, how are we going to put all these people in jail?

Like, what does accountability look like? How are you going to do the sort of truth and reconciliation? How are these people going to be punished? And I think that's going to be one of the biggest challenges for a Democratic politician is to both calibrate for genuine and necessary accountability so that it doesn't happen again. With, like, I've got to get to work on doing things that improve people's lives because that's why they elected me. And that's going to be tough. Yeah.

So just staying on that for a second because I think this is super interesting. What's your advice for how, if we do get a Democratic president in 2029, they should do that? How should they – I mean, first of all, what should they do as far as accountability? And then how should they talk about it, if at all? Because those are sort of different questions, right? Yeah. I mean, I think that you get the most credibility for reforms reigning in the federal government when you control the federal government.

And so because it takes a lot of, like, again, there's sort of almost a self-sacrificial way in which you're saying, this other side broke all of these rules, all of these norms. They did all this corruption. And you're like, and I think that Democrats, what they should do is they should hammer them.

And they say, we're here and we're seeing all the things that they did. And so we need to pass rules so that the Republicans can never be this corrupt again. But you're going to have to pass them and sort of rein yourself in. when you do that, or at least talk like you're rating yourself. And you should say, I don't want a Qatari jet. And so we are going to make taking presence from foreign leaders illegal. Like, there will be enormous appetite and even some bipartisan appetite for Republicans who are looking to

distance themselves from Trump with things like that. And I don't know that that is going to satisfy the people who want to see like Don Jr. in jail. But I think that, but I do think they should prosecute some people. And I think that, but like, you know, I think that there should be somebody at the DOJ who says the way that they weaponize the Department of Justice, here are the things that they did. We are going to be completely independent and let me show you how. And this is one of the things I really talk about in the book that's really important. I think from here on out, I was talking about this with Weissman on illegal news the other day. People want more transparency than they get from the government. And And people, the Democrats when they come in there are going to have to think, like, you can't have like a Mueller investigation that happens behind closed doors anymore. The appetite for somebody who comes out and briefs the public regularly is how government is going to have to start to operate. They want people want to hear from their president regularly. They want to hear from, they want to hear why decisions are being made. And I think part of the collapse of the media has led to voters wanting to hear directly from the people who are in government. and that's going to be a new feature, or should be a new feature, of how the next Democratic administration offers, which is like maximum transparency,

constant communication with the voters. And I think that they will get further and not be, the right-wing infotainment media will not be able to frame them up the same way if they're out there telling their own story first. This next question is super long, so I'm going to bridge it a little bit,

but it is super interesting. Just in case you're just tuning in now, the big announcement we had earlier, was that if you're a Bullwork Plus member, you get to stream your conversation, Sarah, with Secretary of Mayor Pete Buttigieg in Charlotte on October 18th. So sign up for Bullwork Plus if you're not already, so you could watch that conversation. I'm so excited to see it. This question from Kim on Substack.

If you, she's got some bullet points here, okay? So strap in. If you had the power, Magic Wand, would you go back in time and change the 2020 results? So that Trump won. I keep thinking about all the things he might or might not have. might or might not have happened, she says. No big lie, which means no January 6th, no voter suppression. Trump continues to mishandle the COVID response and voters remember who was president during COVID. He doesn't get thrown off Twitter, so he doesn't build truth social, no Doge. There's no

project 2025. He's not president during the 250th anniversary, the World Cup and the Olympics. Maybe he gets tired of being president after a second term. And, you know, she has a couple other things, but like maybe Iran and Venezuela don't happen. He would have done horrible things, but she says, I keep thinking they wouldn't have been as bad as what we're actually seeing. Man, that's such an interesting question. Because presumably, if you didn't have the interregnum of the Biden years and Trump had to preside over the post-COVID inflationary environment, and he still had a lot of holdovers of normal people staffing the government. I think it's, I think you're probably right.

It would have ended up being slightly better that way. But I mean, who can tell with that counterfactual? I will say, I got to add one thing, which is Mike Pence would have been vice president. Mike, yeah, well, there you go. Not J.D. Vance. Not Jady Vance. I could see that being the better of the outcomes. I mean, it's hard to argue that Trump getting four years in the wilderness to, like, break a bunch of laws and rebuild his strength and then come in with much stronger and with the cabinet of Sinkafense and people who are totally unqualified for their positions, I think has put us in a worse position.

On the other hand, you might have ended up with that as people feeling better about Trump at the end of all of it in a way where I don't know. I always feel grateful that we got to see the true nature of a lot of things because I think it will make our like a bone that breaks and then heals. I think it will make us stronger to know where all of our vulnerabilities are. And Trump has sort of shown all of them. And to know how important leadership is and how bad our leaders can be. I don't know, though. That's a tough one. I think you're probably right that it would have just been better to get eight years.

But you don't would have been really better for it to be four years and for him to never have been able to be reelected again. That would have been better. No question. Okay. We've got a bunch of, I think we can do a lightning round of the last few minutes here. So I'm just going to read a bunch of these. Vanessa from Substack, what's your favorite restaurant in D.C.? Oh, man.

Shoot. What's my favorite restaurant in D.C.? Man, I can tell you we order from Mama Lucia's all the time because I have children. That's not my favorite, but it is the one that we certainly spend the most money at. Oh, oh, no, my favorite restaurant in D.C. is Parkway Deli.

Oh, yeah, this is where I go. Oh, the one in Silver Spring? It's, it's, yeah, I think it's like at the cusp of, is it silver spring? It's like right over the border. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It is. It might be right over the river. the bite you writer for the water. It does. It has the pickle and the beat bar. And like their pickled

beats are my favorite. It's the best Jewish deli, the best matzabal soup that you can find. It's like D.C. has a stunning lack of sort of New York style Jewish delis. But that one is the best. And we go there all the time. I don't know if they're watching right now. But actually there are two Bulwark Plus members who live very close to me who like we're friends. And we actually have an ongoing project of finding the best Spots Balli is next on our list. We love that place. Okay. That wasn't very lightning run. I saw that one down. Sarah from Katie on SubSack, what was your favorite city on the book tour? Well, my favorite stop on the book tour was probably going to Kenyon because that meant a lot to me emotionally. I will say, though, the Seattle show was off the chain. It just, it was like 850 people.

And it was a funny place. They have it at this third story books, which was really cool. but it was in like a it's a it's a two story almost like library bookstore but then it has a food court in it and so they clear out the food court and so like people went all the way back to the dumpling place but people were rowdy in that one uh i got we got worked up and sweaty jvl was there it was so so fun um but i don't know they were all great um they were really great also like when i did in LA that was in an actual bookstore. Sorry, go ahead. No, what was the best non-political book you read or show you watch this year? That's from, that's from Jake. My favorite shows this year were Widows Bay and Slow Horses. I've read a lot of books. I read a lot of fiction. Reading fiction actually really helped me write

my own book. I read a ton of Anne Patchett, who was one of my favorites. I read a ton of Barbara Kingsolver. Those are some of my favorites. I'm reading the new book by Wally Lamb right now, and it is really, really dark and sad. But yeah, I think fiction is the thing that is most good for my brain. I also listen to a lot of audiobooks now. I was so glad. Look, honestly, one of the reasons I didn't make number one

is because so many people bought the audiobook and not the hardcover. But I'm so glad that people are buying the audiobook. Because JVL and I, you know, people are used to listening to our voices. and I think people have really loved the audiobook. Like they're used to that format of listening to us. And it makes me, I don't know, it's nice that people wanted to hear me read it to them. I loved the experience. Yeah, you actually read it.

Yeah, I did. What is Bill Crystal like in person? Well, okay, this is true. Bill Crystal is the nicest person I've ever met in my life. You can back me up on this, Ben. He is a lovely, lovely, wonderful guy in a way that is different than a way a lot of people are in D.C., especially people who have been at his level of fame. He is charming and he is not remotely a narcissist. He's incredibly supportive of all of us who are younger than he is.

But he also is like a riot. He clearly loves being around young people, but he like takes his shoes off. And like in his bombos socks, like, he's always like shuffling around the office coming up behind people at their desk being like, what you're doing there? Working hard or hardly working. And, you know, people love it. He's a great, great human. I work with Bill every day on the morning newsletter on morning shots, which is free if people want to sign up at the bulwark.com. And we, the thing that we always argue about like just the whole team that works on newsletter every day is what the headline should be. And very often, it's like, you know, a bunch of us throwing out ideas, trying to figure out which is the best. headline and Bill just making jokes.

This all happens like over Slack. But it's just like trying to make us laugh every morning. It's great. I was every time I say that I hate Slack culture, he's like, I love Slack. Slack is so fun. It's just where I tease everybody. Yeah, exactly. Okay.

Last question from the lightning round and then we'll wrap it up here. Are we going to get a JVL moderated focus group? Yeah, probably. You know, we're almost at 50,000 copies sold and that was my line. And so, you know, if you guys get it over 50,000, I'm going to let that guy moderate a focus group. I am going to have to sit there with my hand on him, though, because he can't, like, yell at anybody. That is not what happens. And I think people think he, like, his idea of moderating focus groups is that he, like, tears off his shirt and bust through the window, like the Kool-Aid man and is like, I'm here now to yell at you.

And I'm like, okay, well, that's not actually how these things go. You know, these things cost money, right? I know. But I do sort of, I want to set him up and I want to let, we'll have to figure out, it'll be interesting what the screen is on that group, like what kind of group we're trying to have JBL talk to. Because if I just put him in a group with rural mega voters, like he will lose his ever-loving mind. But I think that's what the people want.

And it's okay. It's okay. He needs to see it for himself, what it is like and how you maintain your composure while people say things that are difficult to hear. I can't wait for us to get the email from the focus group, like screening company, like, hey, you can't treat people like that. I know, I know. I have only had half an eye on the chat, but I do think that there are some good questions in here that are harder and more controversial and I want to answer them. Go for it.

There's one that I saw, and I'm sorry that I'm trying to find it again. Oh, I love this one. Hold on. I'm just going to say, Sarah Longwell supported a political party for decades that she thought, that thought she wasn't fit to have kids due to her sexual orientation. Has she ever reckoned with that? No, never. Never.

I've never thought about it. I didn't write a whole couple of chapters in my book. You know, I will say this isn't even a ploy to sell books, but like I did write in the book all about my political journey. And I think that it is strange that this is such a A point of criticism. Also, I'm like a newly one. But one of the things that you get a lot is like, have you reckoned with this? And I think that for people who've just found out about us and missed the first, I don't know, three or four years of the bulwark, all we did.

It's like eight years of this point. No, no, no, I know it's been eight years. But the first four years were basically all of us being like, wait a minute. What is happening? And this is not what. was this is not how it was supposed to be. This is not what anybody told me, uh, in terms of like, this is like, this isn't what I said I believed. This isn't the, and it's not like, it's not like people today saying, I didn't think he was going to do mass deportations when he told, said the

whole time, I'm going to do mass deportations. It was, it's like being in a something where they were like, character matters, um, you know, uh, America, having serious people and showing leadership in the world is really important. Our values are pluralism. Our values are the Constitution. Like, I'm a first principles person. I think even like talking about me as a partisan Republican is a little bit funny because both Tim and I were the same type of Republicans. We came into the party because of John McCain. Like that was our age. We thought John McCain was a very interesting person who was devoted to the country. I think both of us looked at 2008 between Obama and McCain and said, either one is great.

Like we were that kind of person. I also think sometimes people are like, you built this. And I'm like, like especially the Bush years. Like I don't know. I was, I was, I was in 2000, when the planes hit the Twin Towers,

I was 21. And so I was 25 for Bush's first term. And I didn't work for George W. Bush. Also, this is the other thing. There's a lot of weird things going, like floating around out there now that people are putting in either like, I worked for Liz Cheney or like I did Kamala's, they listened to you.

This is like some of these. They're like, they, they took, did they? Because if you go back and listen to me in 20, 24 or 23, I was like, you guys can't run Biden. You can't run Biden again. If you run Biden again, you're going to lose. And then I was freaking out.

And then they didn't run Biden, Sarah. Yeah, right. And then at the very end, right, he has to have a health event on stage. people who say that Donald Trump won because of Liz Cheney. I'm like, Donald Trump won because Joe Biden ran again for office at 82 years old, had a health event on stage, and then Kamala Harris, who they showed no confidence in, gave no good jobs, like hadn't built up at all, had to run a campaign from scratch. And people are like, she took your advice. I'm like, my advice was do more media. If you go back and listen. You'll hear my advice. It wasn't.

Sometimes people play this clip of us where she's giving a speech where she's talking about lethality and the war. And we're laughing about it because of how like intense and not like a regular Democrat, it seems. But it's not like we told them how to run. And in fact, all we said was the thing that I kept hearing in focus groups is people don't know anything about her. People feel like they, because part of what happened for Kamala is that she ran as a pretty

progressive person. It's not that she was, especially when she ran for herself, like in 2020, right? Yes, that's right. Somebody says, no, sir, your advice was to sideline Tim Walls. No, my advice was to not pick Tim Walls. Tim Walls was a terrible vice presidential pick, and I stand by that. So listen, trust me, they didn't listen to me about anything. And also, I wasn't giving them advice. I didn't, wasn't talking to them. When I ended up talking to the campaign was when they called me and they said, hey, We're coming to Pennsylvania, your home state,

and we'd love for you to moderate this conversation between Liz Cheney, Kamala Harris. And I was like, oh, you guys are doing that? Sure, I'll come help. Anything. Whatever you guys need, all help. But I was also, and this is for people who are also new, part of that was because not even my bulwark work.

I have spent, I've raised and spent many tens of millions of dollars over the years recruiting Republicans to make testimonials about why they're voting for Democrats. that's all I've done. Republican voters against Trump, Republican accountability project, Republicans for the rule of law. A lot of my early work was, you know, leveraging a lot of the Republicans I knew to help raise Republican voices against Trump. But I have done nothing but work at the local level and spend money on ads to get Republicans to endorse Democrats. That's the work that I've done. And when people People are like, you're a strategy lost in 16 and 24. I'm like, well, I wasn't doing anything in 16 other than freaking out and having my first kid and couldn't believe where things were going. And then in 2024, like, people didn't want Joe Biden to run again. It wasn't because Kamala Harris was too moderate or too progressive. It was because people were like, I don't know what she stands for.

And I'm mad about how much things cost. And she says she's not going to do anything different than Biden. Like, that's the analysis. My problem with the more sort of DSA types who are after us is not, it's not their political ideology or their opinions is that their analysis is really doesn't make any sense. Like, there's not a single piece of empirical data that the Liz Cheney stuff mattered. And I will just tell you that all I have done since like the bulwark was just another project. The bulwark was a project of us figuring out how do we take, how do we get more people who are disaffected Republicans, or centris or people who lean right to vote for Democrats and to make Democrats less scary or not to make Democrats, but like to get them to feel like there is a permission structure for them to vote for Democrats. And that has been at the core of all of our work. And I know that people want to be mad and I think it is very strange five weeks out from an election for people to be focused on me. But I guess people have decided I'm a big enough deal that they

come after me and like that's their prerogative. I think I'm a weird target. But have at it, I guess. I think JVL put this really well, like years ago. We were talking about like, what is the bulwark? What are we doing? And, you know, he basically said like, right now the left-right divide stuff doesn't matter really nearly as much as it did.

And it's all about like up, down, like authoritarian or democratic. And like, we are 100% in the pro-democracy. Like, if you look at the bulwark, it's people. who used to be Republicans. It's people who are like partisan Democrats. It's just all people who like value democracy and think for themselves. And I, is that something we should apologize for?

Like, I don't think so. I don't know why that would be like a like a thing that, oh, sorry. Sorry we think for ourselves. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing.

Our audience, the ones who are like with us, that's why a lot of the attacks don't make sense. Because anybody who's actually listening to us knows what's happening. So this guy asked one that I, this is worth answering. said that you would have voted for Ted Cruz over Zorat for New York City mayor. So why should we listen to you about what you think about Democrats? Great question. Did Ted Cruz, was he running

for mayor of New York City? Or were we screwing around on a podcast? Here's, this is, this is like, this is like, this is the like insane stuff where people keep like sending me, like putting on the internet, like a clip of me saying, oh, Ted Cruz, quote. mom dame. First of all, Tim had just had Mumdani on the show. And Tim and I were in an, we were not even in an argument. Like Mondani had, Tim asked him the river to the sea question. He didn't disavowed. He went on and disavowed it like a week later, which made a big difference. And I think people at the time, like there were all of Mumdani's old tweets, which are pretty, there's a lot of tough stuff in there to get over. And I think that that was like, sometimes when

people see the clips, it's like they do it with the today brain as opposed to the brain of the day that that was. And so that was like my first introduction to Moundani was him not disavowing that on our podcast, like on our platform. And some, and I was like, I was frustrated by that. And so I would like, anybody who listens to me knows how much I hate Ted Cruz. Like that's why Tim asked me about the Ted Cruz thing is because like, I hate. hate Ted Cruz. And so I was joking around by putting him there. But I was, I was frustrated in my first sort of outing with Mumbani. And I got to say, you know, and I say this all the time. Like, I, I was right about Fetterman from the jump and other people were wrong. My first blush impression of Mbani

did not take into account what a good communicator. I think he was. I talk about everybody's always like, who are the best communicators in the Democratic Party? I got four. He's one of them. I talk about him a lot. And so, you know, this is... Hold on. Hold on. Who are the other three? AOC. I know you said this, but yeah. Pete and Assoff. And because part of it, I mean, I can go on a whole long thing about this, but they're all doing something very different.

And, you know, what I admire about, Mom, Donnie besides what I think is just... And this goes to something that I talk about a lot, which is, like, loving people, right? And this is... So I have a red line in politics, guys. I have a red line in politics. And that is violence. It is saying that anybody else doesn't have a right to exist. I am a pluralist.

I believe in liberal democracy to my core, which means no violence. And so like I'm not, when people are committing violence against each other, like there's two sides and like I'm not siding. I'm against people being violent and I hate violent rhetoric. And like I think talking about annihilating any group of people, I'm against all of it. And so I was upset at that moment. And I have watched him, though, lead with a lot of love. He makes people feel like he cares about them. And he makes people feel like, you know, he wants their lives to be better.

And I do think that that is the thing that politicians often lack. And this is where sometimes people hear me, I'm like, I don't think his bespoke policies. Like, they're really not for me. I don't think they're like the ones where it's like, you know, we're going to have five grocery stores and you're, you know, they're going to be owned by the city or whatever. Yeah,

what's that's not going to work so well, whatever. Yeah, like that's not going to work as a policy, but he's doing permitting reform. He's doing things to try to make things more efficient. So like anybody who just uses those, I mean,

look, we live in a little bit of a clip economy where people are just trying to like get at you with something from at some point. And I mean, that's just the game, I guess. But what I count on is the fact that we have pretty deep community who listens to me all the time. And they don't always like every take that

any of us have. But they believe I'm being honest with them. And I'm talking about like that, you know, JVL, who is like the biggest Federman Stan, like he's there to tell you, my bad fam, not a good take. And that's what you get at the bulwark. And so a lot of these people who, you know, try to say Sarah would vote for Ted Cruz. Like there's nobody who listens to me at the bulwark who thinks that's true for five seconds. Or like Sarah, Sarah will go back to being a Republican as soon as Donald Trump has gone. I'm like, I don't like, or even Sarah doesn't want Abdul to win. I'm like, I literally not my organizations that I work with to do advocacy work,

I'm spending money right now to get Abdul Sayyad elected in Michigan. What are you talking about people? And so like, whatever. If people want to doubt my intentions or be like, these people were Republicans, or even like you guys lost all the time. Dude, we won in 2018. We won in 2020. We won in 2022. And but for Joe Biden in that health event, if Democrats had just done what I said that they should do the whole time, which is Joe Biden should step down and they should have a primary and run somebody else, I don't think Donald Trump would have won again. But that didn't happen.

And I think that it is bad analysis and quite silly to try to say they followed our strategy. We didn't have a strategy or media company. My only strategy was, as it always has been, is to find Republicans who are voting for Democrats. And that, you know, worked once. No, actually, worked way more than once. I'm getting frantic slack messages that you had a hard out three minutes ago. So here's what I'm doing. I'm having fun.

This is good. We should do, we should do this again, but it should be just Sarah reads mean tweets. We should do like a whole video on that. We'll get, we'll get a whole bunch of them together and we'll just, Put a corner in the machine, as Javield would say. Yeah, there was a trans military person, though, trying to ask a question. And I wish I couldn't find it. But I just want to say, I can't remember exactly what your question was.

I want to say this. Thank you for your service. Fuck Donald Trump for demonizing you as somebody who is a, you were a patriotic American who is trying to defend this country. And I think the question was like, what can you do? do. And I do think that people who put their lives on the line for the country who've made a specific sacrifice have the ability to be incredible advocates. And so, and also like, reach out. Send me a note. I actually think we should be doing more conversations with trans people to sort of talk about this stuff. I have a whole book called Trans America in our whole chapter in the book

about it. Because it's obviously, it's obviously, yeah, it's a very, um, like it's a complicated topic for all of people, although I don't think it has to be. And, but we should, like, I, like, I would be not just welcome. Like, I would, I think more of those conversations with people who are, because this is one of things I say in the book is, you know, if you're a, if you're a lesbian or you're part of the same alphabet soup community, people, people call me and they'll say, well, what do you think about the trans, you know, X, Y, Z? And I'm like, but specifically about the experience.

And I'm like, I can't speak to that. It's not the, I will tell you that I think one of the smartest, most sophisticated, pragmatic politicians in the country is Sarah McBride, who I've gotten to know some and who I think is just really good. Not just on trans. I think she is an exceptionally good legislator and communicator. And people should pay attention to her if or not. She is the congresswoman from Delaware, the trans congresswoman from Delaware. She's excellent. That is really interesting. Yes. The only other thing I'd say, what, are you getting frantic slacks as well? No, it's like people are still, there's a couple of people still doing, though. Why would you vote for Ted Cruzover's are on? I wouldn't, guys.

You can calm, you can calm down now. I understand that sometimes people have difficult times with joking. They don't always know about me and Tim's dynamic. But, you know, I think that, also, is that the bad, is that like that's your main opo on me? is like us goofing around on a pod. Come on. The only thing I want to say to the person who's commenting is if you're still on the service, they're actively trying to get good people out,

especially good people who they have something they can hold against, like if you're trans or if you're a minority or whatever. So it's like stay in if you can because we need good people to not just leave. Okay, I'm really getting frantic slacks now. Sarah, we will do a mean tweets video. I'm committed. Thanks for doing the AMA. And thanks to everyone to submit a question.

questions. Appreciate the questions, guys. Thanks for reading the book. I wish I could do just like a big book club with you all in person. But, you know, thanks for leaving reviews. I really appreciate it. Thank you guys are the best. Our community is the best. We love you. Love. Love.