Bulwark Takes - Tim is Totally Starstruck: It's Cussin' Katie Couric!

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Tim Miller sits down with Katie Couric to talk Trump’s attacks on free speech, Disney folding under pressure, the future of late-night comedy, and the looming redistricting fight — all with some laughs (and a little cussing).

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey guys, Tim Miller from the Bull Work here. I popped on Substack Live with the inimitable, the legend, the icon, Katie Couric. I just, I still kind of pinch myself sometimes in talking to Katie and she's cussing Katie now. It's not today's show Katie.

So it's kind of like cussing grandma, Katie. That's not an age joke. She literally has become a grandma. It was like right around when I first met her. So, you know, she's just kind of turning over a new leaf. Anyway, we discussed all the news. And I think that she has somebody who's been in the corporate media and kind of adjacent entertainment space was really shook by the attacks on Jimmy Kimmel and how swift it was and how quickly Disney folded. So we got kind of deep on the Jimmy Kimmel news.

She asked you about a couple other things, redistricting, some of the stuff more in MySpace, political world. And we had some laughs and we cussed. So it's great. Stick around. Katie Couric and me. Tim, WTF. I mean, it's so insane that every week is another crazy news cycle. But here we go again. What was your reaction when you heard about Jimmy Kimmel? I mean, it's like so ridiculous and absurd. It was my first reaction, right? My initial reaction, sometimes this stuff is like you almost have to like laugh and roll your eyes at these guys. Like how pathetic.

they are it's so embarrassing you know and and then but it's so upsetting it's so upsetting for me it's hard to laugh and roll my eyes i'm so it's so shocking and and infuriating actually right yeah and that's what i was going to get i get there as i learn more about what happened right it's like you know because this is how you're seeing the stuff like comes out of nowhere it springs from the fever swamps i mean i'm not i don't know about you but i wasn't watching brendon car on the bennie johnson show you know i'm not a regular viewer of the benny johnson show he's this maga podcaster be like that's where this stuff stemmed from which he's on the show when he starts threatening these these local affiliates like the the conglomerates uh you know next star which

wants to buy tag like these companies you never people have never heard of but they own like your local news stations right and they want to merge and car is basically threatening them you know saying look i mean you know if we can't have this jimmy kimmel on the air saying this inappropriate stuff and you know that is when things to me start to get very chilling and you start to realize and you start to dial in on the corruption side of this because like this is this is a free speech story for sure and it's a threatening of free speech and chilling of free speech but it's it's like a lot of the other trump stuff it's a straight corruption story and this is a mob shakedown right like these these this is that's what this is all about like these local affiliates

one emerge and they need brenden car to approve it he's popping off about how they should crack down on Jimmy Kimmel, they did it, right? They did it. Why Disney and Bob Iger went along with it, and I think that's concerning and embarrassing for him in particular. But that is like what was driving all of this, right? It's these guys resentments, these kind of pathetic guys in the Trump White House that can't handle criticism combined with the corruption that we've seen throughout the administration. And, you know, to me, that is what kind of takes this story from just like just a pathetic, you know, embarrassment to something that's really kind of pretty concerning about where the trajectory we're on. I know that some Democrats or demanded the resignation of Brendan Carr

earlier today. They accused him of forcing ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimball's late night show through regulatory threats, which we were just talking about. Think any Republicans will grow up here and join them? I don't. No. I don't think so. I mean, we haven't seen them on any of these other really issues growing a pair. I don't know why this would be the one.

You know, look, I think that on this sort of stuff, these guys are unwilling to get crossways with Trump on stuff that's important to Trump. And I think that's the key thing here, right? You saw Pambani. Let's just look at that example. Last week, Pambani comes out. out and says, we're going to go after hate speech following the Charlie Kirk assassination. And you did. You saw a rare little bit of outrage from the right going after Bond, right,

saying that, no, this isn't right. We're for free speech. People have the right to say what they want. The government shouldn't target them. And then she kind of has to back down. But then Trump goes out there and says, no, no, he endorses it. Right. He's like, yeah, we should, she should go after them, right? and those same people don't go after Trump right like and so you know they might differentiate from the administration on some niche issue that matters to them but on stuff that Trump cares about and this is obviously stuff that Trump cares about this is what motivates Trump the revenge tour is why he's in there they're not going to go get get on the other side of them now I think we'll see kind of non-politicians like we're already seeing some of the maga comedian type speak out

against this and podcasters this is important you know free speech is something it's obviously important to them since it's in their wheelhouse. I think we'll see some of that. But from the politicians, no, I think they've signed up for this. They're along for the ride now. You know, now he said, I mentioned, I just interviewed Bill Carter, by the way, who's fabulous. I don't know if you know Bill, but he was the longtime media writer for the New York Times. And I've known him for a long time. But I read this quote, but let me read it again for you, which I'm sure you heard that after he landed on Air Force One, what he said, they're 97% against, they give me wholly bad publicity. I mean, they're getting a license. I would think maybe their license

should be taken away. And this plays to your full out corruption angle of the story. It's basically you say, not nice things about me. I'm not going to give you a license, which is so outrageous. Yeah. And he's trying to intimidate, right? Like, that's what this is. Like, he, He did it with the universities. He did it with the law firms. And now he's going after the networks. And this is testing everybody, right? Like, this is why what Iger did is so shameful, I think, in folding, right?

Is that, you know, I don't want to be over here saying, you know, call my bluff. But I kind of like feel that way. I kind of feel like it's like, call his bluff. Like, really? He's going to pull ABC? I don't know how that's going to go over with, you know, regular Trump voters. that like watching the voice or whatever is they watch on whatever's on ABC these days, you know, or people that want to watch.

American Idol, I think the voice is NBC. NBC, all right, sorry, I get a mixed up. I'm more in my wheelhouse. How about this? SEC football just moved to ABC. You think people really want their local ABC to be taken down? Well, I don't think he would do it. I don't think he would love, right, call us law.

But to your point, I don't think he would do that. He's trying to put a chilling effect. Right. on all these people, on newscasters, on, you know, showrunners, on anyone that will challenge him. Elaine H says NBC is next, Fallon and S&L. A lot of my friends have been saying this too. Like, is he going to go after Fallon? Is he going to go after Seth Myers?

Is he going to go after S&L, which obviously I'm sure he hates with a passion? I mean, where does this stop, Tim? It's a good question. And it doesn't stop until people try to fight it. Like, here's, this is my, this is the thing. Like, you know, there's some of the stuff we're not going to be able to control, right? Like, the local ABC, you know, affiliate that wants this merger is going to do what they want to do, right. Sinclair, those guys that own different stations that are going to, you know, replace the Jimmy Kimmel show with an ode to Charlie Kirk, as noxious as that is, they're right-wing conservatives.

But if you're SNL, if you're The View, if you're one of these other shows, if you're Bob Eiger, like, what you should be doing is saying, okay, Sure. Take me to court. Take my license. Let's see it. Of course they should. A lot of people on the left are like, oh, well, maybe the Supreme Court has gone all right. I don't know. The Supreme Court still, I think there's a pretty a majority on the Supreme Court for the First Amendment. You might not like the Supreme Court's views on a bunch of other stuff. But it's like, do what Trump would do to you? Take him to take him back to court, kick the can. You know, run the clock. The Jimmy Kimmel show, what was going to happen? What was Brendan Carr going to do to the Jimmy Kimmel show? Nothing. like nothing like make them do it while all these people there his his intimidation tactics only work if people get intimidated right and everybody is getting intimidated everybody's getting scared and i guess my point is i don't know if i'm a migrant on on mixed uh on a you know on an expired green card or something sure i would be scared if i'm a trans person i think there's a good reason to be scared it'd be judicious if you're bob hiker what are you scared of what is this guy going to do i mean like you

have a hugely diversified business, you know, and I think this is just such cowardice that we're seeing right now. And like, we're not sure, we might be on a bad trajectory. And maybe this ends in urbanism or Putinism or Erdogan. But like, we're not there yet. Make him do it. You know, don't just hand it to it. Just don't hand the keys to him. That's what else. You know, no, I mean, I reached out to Bob Eiger for an interview and not surprisingly, he did get back to me and say he was not making any public comments right now. But, you know, and I was talking to Bill about this, Tim. Bob Eiger is revered by so many people and has managed his reputation in an extraordinary way throughout his career.

So that's what I think is really interesting to see if he is going to step up and do some things, you know? And so I wanted to ask you about this question. that I've been seeing on social and that Jim Ruttenberg wrote about this morning in the Times. He wrote, President Trump received thunderous applause during his second inaugural address in January when he vowed to, quote, immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America. I mean, the irony of this, it's like free speech is fine as long as it doesn't criticize me, right? Yeah. And I think the interesting question will be, where do the people go that went on board with him for that? Right. Like, there was a group of people in Silicon Valley and the Joe Rogan types in this world that a lot of them used to be Democrats. They were radicalized during COVID. They did not like the COVID crackdowns. It did not like some of the, you know, warnings that started to go on people's YouTube pages if they said something, you know, contrarian about the COVID or whatever. So that's, you know, that's conspiracy stuff, and they, they went all in on this. And Mark Zuckerberg and all these guys said

that they were there for free speech. I'm not surprised at like the MAGA voters, the red hat folks that go to the rally, they signed up for the vengeance. You know, like they signed up for the culture war. They're happy to see Jimmy Kim will go down. That's what they, they bought the ticket for that ride, you know, like a lot of the mega voters. That was not the case for a lot of people that came to Trump late, you know, your Silicon Valley. Or anti-comla, right? Right, or anti-comla. So that's a lot. So that, is the question. Does he lose ground with those folks? We've seen a little bit of that today. You know, I've seen some mega comedians I follow, Tim Dillon, Andrew Schultz, speaking out against us,

which is encouraging. And so, you know, to me, that is the question. Can you rally a broader coalition of people? Not everyone's ever going to turn on him, who actually did care about this. And I think that we can all roll out. Obviously, Fox was never serious about their free speech concerns. It was always partisan positioning. But there were some people out there who were serious, and it's time for them to step up now, I guess is what I'd say. I think it's wild that Sinclair is going to be running on Friday during the time slot of Jimmy Kimmel Live, the Charlie Kirk Tribute special on its ABC affiliates. It's offering the special to all other ABC stations across the country.

I mean, if you think about Sinclair, I don't know what percentage of the country has Sinclair stations. I one time wanted to do a documentary about Sinclair, but this is super hard. write super, they get them scripts basically to say, and they all say the same thing. And I'm just surprised that Bob Eiger is fine with this. The local news side is what really has me worried. I'm also surprised that Bob Eager's fine with it, and I think it's just these guys just don't want the fight, and they're being cowardly, and Barack Obama really called him out about that in an interview recently.

He's like, if you are Harvard, if you want to switch corporations, like this is the moment to stand up for yourself before it's too late. The local news thing, I think, is the most legitimately worrying because there are a lot of people that still just get their news, you know, from whatever. The local ABC affiliate, turn it on at 5 o'clock, and they might not be as plugged into the political debates, right? To me, that worry. Like, I think Jimmy Kim will be all right. If he ends up getting canceled, he'll reemerge somewhere, and I think that's good. But if you have these local stations that want to do this merger, this next star in Tegna, and they have to be nice to Trump to get it.

and then you have Sinclair, which is already in the tank for Trump, doing this absurd hagiography of Kirk, that's going to be a huge percentage of the country that's getting their local news from essentially like something between Fox and Newsmax style news. And that's pretty alarming to me, I've got to say. And I don't know how to roll that back. I mean, really, you know, once that starts happening, you know,

I mean, that's just that's kind of where, I guess, the corporate media is rolling, you know, and I think that you combine that with some concerns about the social media side of things, with some Trump allies buying TikTok, Elon OniX, Zuckerberg being pro-Trump, right? You start to look at that picture, and it gets pretty concerning. My team just said Sinclair owns or operates 185 TV stations in 86 markets. When the company buys the station, its coverage of national politics increases significantly, as does the shift to the according to a 2018 American Political Science Review journal study. And I think you have reason.

We all have reason to be concerned about sort of how many of these news stations are turning into basically propaganda tools for far-right political figures, including Donald Trump. You know, I was thinking when you were saying Jimmy Kimmel will re-emerge, and the same with Stephen Colbert. You know, I'm also wondering if some of these streamers, don't share the same concerns about having repercussions for, you know, hosting or housing or platforming somebody like Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel. You know, they have been very reticent just from everyone I've talked to in the industry to take on projects that are critical of the Trump

administration. And, you know, they don't want to get into politics, these streamers. So I'm curious, if Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel, if Jimmy Kimmel ultimately gets canceled, if, in fact, they'll be able to find a home there. I think that's a legit thing to worry about, too, for sure. And again, we're in a brave new world out there now. You know, look, we're doing this on Substack Live, and we're on YouTube, obviously, you know, the YouTube page is not going to be as big as what network terrestrial TV is. But I've heard the same thing from people that are pitching stories. And it's even more, I think, of a chill than even just anti-Trump stuff, I have friends that are kind of pitching, you know,

whatever, documentaries or political-based stuff to these streamers, and they're just kind of like, we don't want to touch it. Like, it kind of doesn't even matter. Actually, it doesn't even really matter if it's, like, overtly anti-Trump. It's just like, we'd rather not touch it altogether. And that, that is real. That is, like, that kind of chill is out there for sure. I just want to read what Obama said on X today. After years of complaining about cancer, culture. The current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn't like. You know, I do have some conservative friends who kind of point to

cancel culture and this sort of pendulum swinging the other way. But I mean, this is wholly something new and different. Do you agree? I totally agree. I wasn't a huge fan of cancel culture. I think that it's fair to say we went through a moment where, you know, certain companies were letting kind of like online mobs of their young staff, like bully, you know, people out of jobs for things that they'd said a long time ago. Like, I think that's a fair thing to be worried about. I think it was a fair thing to complain about back then to try to kind of bring some balance back to that conversation. This is not that. Like, this isn't, the problem here isn't that Jimmy Kimmel is getting canceled.

sold or whatever like the I that isn't great like the issue here the story here is that the government is pressuring companies to fire him and to stifle his speech in order for them to be able to get stuff something out of the government in this case emerge right like that's the issue here like this is not similar to like 20 New York Times staffers complaining to the boss that somebody wrote a bad tweet and they want him fired that wasn't good by the way that was not good the bosses at the times when that stuff was happening should have, you know, been more, I think, judicious in some of those places. And I'm not picking on the times in a bunch of places that happened. Right.

That's not, that is different. Like, those 20 people, like, their only power was to complain to the boss. Like, this is the head of the FCC, who is in charge of licenses. This is the president. This is the vice president. The vice president was on, I think it was Stephen Miller's wife's podcast, actually. And he was saying that that people should call if they see other that said something nasty about Charlie Kirk after he died, that they should call the person's employer. And I did a whole thing on Monday at the Bullwark, where I'm like, I didn't like some of the things I was seeing people say,

you know, after he was assassinated. I don't think people should do that. Like, the idea that the vice president would tell somebody, you should go rat on someone to their employer and try to get them fired. Like, that has canceled culture coming from the next in line to the presidency. I mean, like that, you didn't hear Barack. The example I used is, like, Barack Obama didn't go out there after the Trayvon Martin saga and say,

if you see somebody say something racist about Trayvon Martin, called their boss. Like, the right would have gone insane if they had said that. And J.D. Vance said that the other day. And nobody even, like, there was no peep about it. I think it's totally, I drudge to this guy. I said drudged at a big out by now. It's just like there's a little peep. But most on the right were silent in the face of that.

Why do you think Bill Clinton or George Bush have spoken out at all? I think that George Bush made a decision a while ago that he wasn't going to speak out on any of this stuff. And I think that it was, I think that he was kind of unhappy that Clinton was kind of speaking out about him when he was president. He, like, didn't want meddling him and Clinton that ended up becoming friends. But I think he just made a decision that he didn't think it was his role to meddle as a past president. And I think that was a defensible and principal decision for a while. My personal opinions that were long past when that was defensible, I think it would have been used. for him to speak out a lot since the 2020 election stuff at the minimum, but I just think

that I just think that's where he's out. I have no idea about Clinton. Did I ask you about, I know I talked to Bill, did I ask Tim about Seth Myers and Jimmy Fallon? I know that Jimmy canceled an appearance today at an ad week event. And, you know, Comcast, and I'm going to be talking to Matthew Dowd after you, Tim, which should be interesting. Then we're going to talk about the Epstein files in a second, everybody. But what do you think is going to happen to Jimmy Fallon and Seth Myers? And I guess we were talking with Bill about S&L. Yeah.

I mean, I think that Jimmy Fallon's been pretty careful for a while now. I know, but he's actually, I think ever since he was really criticized for tussling Donald Trump's hair during the campaign. I feel like Jimmy hasn't really pulled a lot of punches when it comes to Donald Trump. Maybe he's not as pointed as Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert, who I think are both brilliant. But he's been pretty critical of Trump. Yeah. I don't know. I think that I one thing that Brendan Carr said today, I think it was on Scott Jennings show. We just posted on the bulwark was there's this rule and i don't i might not have the exact name of it right right because it's not the fairness doctrine is gone but it's kind of an equal time rule right where

where if you're a comedy show you have to have one if you have one side on you have to the other side on but you don't have to do that if you're a news show there's a news exemption to that and late night shows have had a news exemption and and cars said that they might look into that and so to me i just think if you just listen to their own words if you're you're the view, if you're Jimmy Fallon, if you're Seth Myers, that might be a way that they try to go for you. We'll see kind of how the like suits react to this. The reality is it just circling back to what I said at the beginning. This is all about how the suits react to it. There was no real threat from this government on Jimmy Kimmel. There was some words said on a

podcast by the FCC head and all these guys folded in six hours. And it's truly embarrassing and shameful. So I think that like the threat to Jimmy Fallon and Seth Myers is equal to the threat that their bosses will allow is the truth about it. They're not a lot of Scott Jennings fans on this conversation. Well, can I just say I'm not a daily listener of the Scott Jennings podcast. We pay some some 24 year old's hazard pay. Shout out Brendan and Jared and those guys. They're getting hazard pay to monitor that stuff. So Tim doesn't have. to yeah can i rant about one of the thing on this did you mind can i be the host of the show for a second yeah because i and this is my current obsession of the moment the premise of the jimmy kimball thing

just like their complaint if you take it at face value was that he spread a false like narrative about that shooter that the narrative was maga that the shooter was maga if you look at the joke like he actually wasn't really saying that like he was saying that maga was doing everything can to, like, use this for political advantage. But, like, okay. Like, if you take it at face value, their concern was about accuracy when it comes to discussing this assassination. I just think it's so noteworthy that everybody's been dialed in on that. When the vice president, this was another thing that our guys, Brendan and Jared found, the vice president was on Fox yesterday. And he said this, I just want to pull it up. He said, maybe the FBI should have been investigating the networks that

motivated, inspired, and maybe even funded Charlie Kirk's murder. Now, that is a total fabrication. The vice president just created this total fake news story that he put out there, that there's some evil liberal network that motivated, inspired, and maybe funded this guy, this just obviously drained young man in Utah who was like living in an apartment in a small town in Utah with his trans girlfriend. I don't know where all his money was going if they're like, but the fact that the vice president would spread a conspiracy theory like that and nobody even just nobody even talks about it because we're so used to their conspiracy theories i just think it shows the asymmetry and all this and like you could not imagine that in the past so you could not imagine like after the oklahoma city bombing

like al gore going out there and being like this was a secret right wing cabal that was funding it it was george bush you know that and that's what's happening now the vice president is just advancing that craziness and i just um anyway i'm using every platform possible to rant about this in the hopes and other people talk to you about his lies. It is outrageous that he did it. And by the way, anyone who wants to know the quote that Jimmy Kimmel said, I'm just going to repeat it because I think it's important. On Monday, he said the following.

We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half staff, which got some criticism. He then threw to a clip of Donald Trump, who was asked, how are you doing after the death of your, you know, the assassination of your good friend? I'm paraphrasing.

Donald Trump said we're doing good and started talking about the ballroom, the construction of the White House ballroom. It was very bizarre, honestly. And Jimmy Kimmel said he was in the fourth. stage of grief, which is construction, which follows demolition. It was a pretty good joke because, honestly, it was so bizarre that Donald Trump didn't answer the question in any kind of human. Well, human, but also like rational, kind of like responsive way. I mean, he just ignored it. But anyway, what do you think is going to happen? Do you think that ABC is, is going to, you know, they said he's been suspended indefinitely. Do you think that they're going

to cancel him? Can you see any world where ABC will suddenly have a change apart and say enough is enough? What do you think, Tim? I mean, I think that they hopefully are getting pushback and should and folks, you know, everyone should be reaching out to them via your own Disney Plus subscription or whatever um but i don't i think it's hard to see him come back at you know a lot again because of this bottom up like abc's pressure now is going to come from like even if they put them back on wouldn't those next star stations put them on now that they still they still want to get that merger i would guess probably not would sinclair put them back on i would say almost certainly not so that's i think next star was like 20 something you know together that that's like a third of the stations

give or take i don't have the numbers in front of me but so now if you're if you're if you're ABC got to bring them back, and then even then, like, a third of your affiliates aren't going to air them. So if you're Jimmy, what did you do, yeah. Well, Bill Carter said, you know, ABC can put him on Hulu and put him on Disney. And if the stations don't want to run them, they, you know, Bill even went as far to say to me, hey, they could also say, hey, you don't want to run Jimmy Kimmel. Guess what? You can't run the NFL football games.

Right. No, no, that's true. But would Jimmy, like, could you see Bob Hocker doing that after his? behavior this week. That's hard for me to imagine. Would Jimmy want to do that? Like, you know, after all this, if you're Jimmy, he's been a lot of money. That's what I said to Bill Carter. Like, if they say, you know, I don't know, will Jimmy want to do it? I wish I could talk to Jimmy Kimmel. I reached out to Howard Stern to see if he'd do an interview. And I haven't heard back from him because he's such a close friend of Jimmy Kimmel's. But I don't know. What a crazy,

fucked up country for living in right now. It's been a weird week, Katie. I don't know. On a long list of weird, strange, screwed up weeks, it's been... I was going to say it's been a weird nine months, hasn't it? Extremely. Extremely, I don't know. I was talking on the board today, and somebody mentioned that it was a year...

It was one year ago that we were doing the Haitians, they're eating the dogs and eating the cats. And I was kind of like, that was only a year ago? I mean, I feel like I've lived three lifetimes since that. So, you know, this is just kind of the world where... Before we go, I have to ask you, because a lot of people watching this are asking about the Epstein files. It always comes back to that. By the way, did you see how they projected all those Epstein videos on...

On what was it on Buckingham Palace? Windsor Castle during Trump's visit, which I thought was a stroke of genius. But, you know, people haven't forgotten about them. Someone's saying release the files in all paths. So where are we with that? I thought that the Cash Patel hearing on this. I watched the Senate one. I didn't watch the House one.

So just caveating. Maybe he expanded on this answer. But in the Senate hearing, he was pressed actually by my senator here from Louisiana, John Kennedy, who's been mostly a clown recently. But in this case, he was pressing him on this. issue. And Cash essentially says, I don't have to quote in front of me, but essentially says, like, I've read some of the files, not all of them, and there's no other co-conspirators. He's not saying that they didn't have co-conspirators. He's just saying the evidence that he has, there's no other

co-conspirators besides Epstein and Maxwell. And, like, that is just so unbelievable, right? It's so preposterous. And we obviously know, we're listening to the women who've spoken to FBI officials of the years that at least other people have been accused of wrongdoing. Like, we know that because we've heard from women who said that. And so it's a straight cover-up. I don't know that we will learn a lot more until, and unless the Dems are back in charge of the house. And this is something I was asking Hakeem Jeffery's on.

And then the question becomes, do they spend time on this and care about it? But to me, it's like, well, once you get subpoena power back, you can start subpoenaing. Not just Cash Patel is going to lie to you, but, like, the other FBI officials who were reviewing the files and like talking to them about it. You know, who knows? Maybe they all plead the fifth and all this. But I think that, I don't think the story's going away any time soon, I guess is my, is my short answer. Hey, I know what Matthew Dowd's waiting in the wings, but Tim, what's the latest on redistricting? You know, I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger. God, how does, how do we keep up with this news? Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke out against California redistricting.

and other states are talking about it. I don't really know the status of various states at this, on the top of my head. But how are we looking at that right now? Yeah. Look, Arnold, who I love, in his defense on this, this has been his issue for a long time, and I think maybe he's not updating

to the reality of the situation we're in. And so just to his credit, I think he's been a long time opponent of partisan gerrymandering, which in a vacuum is the right. right place to be. Unfortunately, we're just not in that world right now. So, you know, this is going to go to the ballot in California. All evidence I have is that I think California voters will support the new maps. The California map changes will basically even out the Texas changes. I think the

Republicans are going to try to squeeze out some other seats. Right. Isn't Indiana? Isn't Indiana, redistricting? Indiana, Missouri, maybe Florida, Ohio. Democrats can probably squeeze out another seat out of Maryland. My guess is, if you just, at the end of this whole process, what we'll have is less fair maps, the Republicans will probably have four or five seats more than they would have that are favorable to them. It doesn't mean that they win all of them, right, but like four or five more seats that are favorable than they would have before this fight started. The Democrats will. No, the Republicans will. The Republicans. Yeah, because there are just more states out there that have, unfortunately for the Democrats, a lot of the gerrymandered states that

hurt them are like purple states like North Carolina or Wisconsin where it's mixed, you know, where Republicans are in charge of it and Democrats are in charge of others. And so those states aren't going to redistrict, right? The North Carolina map is really unfair to Democrats. And they have a Democratic governor, but they have a Republican legislature. So that's not going to change, you know. The Republicans have more of these states where they control all of it and can change the maps. So I will see how it actually turns out, but I just think that if you like look at the field. California and Texas end up evening out, and then it's these other Republican states. You'll see how many more they can get out of them. So you think it's going to work this whole plan to do

mid-decade redistricting is actually going to favor Donald Trump and the Republicans in the midterm. I do. I do. And I think it will work. Yeah. I mean, I also think that it's going to be a really ugly midterm for it most likely. Look, we just talked about how long this nine months is. It's a long 13, 14 months or whatever until we get to the midterms. So, You know, I think there'll be a lot of motivation on the left. So there's like, there'll be a little bit of a backlash in some of this, right? I think that the left, the Democratic voters are going to be much more motivated to turn out than Republican voters, which is kind of the name of the game in midterms. So, yeah, but, you know, if you want to be sad, if you want to be depressing about it, then, yeah, you can summarize it.

I think it's going to work. It might not work as well as they had hoped, but it's going to work. Okay. That sucks. That you just told me that. I apologize. And that's a good way to say bye. Bye.

I'm sorry. Have you booked me, all right? Did you expect me to be like, things are great, Katie. Everything's looking, sunshine and rainbows. No, no. All right.

We'll see you. I love you, Tim.