IHIP News - Trump’s Paranoia Spins Out Of Control as He Hunkers Down in WH

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

We are joined by  @mike_nellis  to discuss Trump's WH ballroom and what Dems need to do about it. Pre-order Jennifer’s new book Not Today, Fascists today: https://linktr.ee/ivehaditpodcastFollow Us:I've Had It Podcast: @IvehaditpodcastJennifer Welch: @mizzwelchSpecial Guest: Mike Nellis  @mike_nellis  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Okay, joining me today in studio is Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist, and host of endless urgency on Substack and YouTube. It does feel like an endless urgency. Yeah, yep, every single day. Yeah, I had a guest on one time and I said, what if you had it with, Monet Exchange, very famous drag queen? And she said, I've had it with living in unprecedented times. I want to live in precedented times again. Okay. Okay, you brought to my attention a video of Jeff Bezos just this morning on the news.

This is stunning. Let's play the clip. What do you think? I think he has, I mean, I'm comparing him to his first term. Yeah. And I think he is a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term. And, you know, it is. Okay.

Mike. I don't know. Where do I start? Like, Jeff Bezos looks more and more like pit bull every day. So he's talking like him too now. It seems like I what discipline is he seeing from the president of the United States? Maturity. Right.

I don't understand. I mean, that is just gaslighting bullshit. And also I think it's like this denial that he must have like his whole reputation, Jeff Bezos. Yeah, you won in capitalism. Bravo. Good job, Jeff. We did a great job. You launched five women into outer space for 30 seconds at a boy.

Really getting Gail King into space. Really good. job there. But nobody likes him. Nobody likes him. And he has an opportunity to leave his imprint on this world. And he has chosen to fund and nurture and coddle fascism, fascism that kills people and is killing our country. Right. Also, he can squeeze out like a little bit more money for Amazon and for himself. Like, I just don't, how much is enough for these guys where they're not going to debase themselves like this? And I don't know if you've seen this, but Netflix is a new documentary up on Teddy Roosevelt. And I was watching and they were talking about Teddy Roosevelt's father who's

very wealthy man here in New York City. And he was a philanthropist. Like that was what his job was. I have all this money. I did all this business and I'm just going to give it away and help the unfortunate. And I'm like, where are the philanthropists in the billionaire class? Like, where are they? We have Melinda Gates and that's about it. Like what is well? And the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, McKenzie Scott Bezos cannot spend money quick enough. Donating it to help marginalized people. I mean, she is spending money hand over fist, Mills on Wills, HBCUs, and on, and the Trevor Martin Project and on and on and on. And she doesn't want to be on TV.

She's just doing this because she can't get rid of the money quick enough. But the majority of them, I agree. This group of billionaires is so appalling. And I believe they are just like in a complete state of psychosis. Okay, let's get on to this. So the person that Jeff Bezos debases himself for is Donald Trump. Objectively embarrassing, incompetent, cognitive decline, mental illness, et cetera. He is laser focused on his ballroom.

And as he talks about it, I say he's in his death bed confession era. He cannot tell, he cannot shut up. And so now he's saying, oh, it's going to have a hospital. It's going to have military. It's going to have all of this stuff. And the more he talks, the more you. you realize, oh, he has PTSD for Marine One picking him up in 2020. And he is doing everything in his power to avoid that.

He wants to hunker down and die in this ballroom, in my opinion. Let's play the clip. Building a hospital. They're building. It's a military hospital. They're building a, all sorts of research facilities. Also meeting rooms and rooms that go hand in hand for the military using the ballroom. It's amazing how his hair is the same color as the.

that's the sky it's it's crazy so what do you think i mean do you think this is his his bunker hitler style bunker where he's just going to go down there and that's going to be the end of it i i don't know but i do think he's like obsessed with his legacy like i think he knows that he's not that far away from death like one way or another either he's dying from something right now or in the next 10 years he's just going to die because of an actuarial table right and i think he is like i got to build the art to trump i got to build this ballroom i got to do this and that and he's such a like old school rich person. Like Jeff Bezos, for all the criticism that we have of him, and it's legit, he's not building

like giant monuments to himself in the sky, right? Like, that's kind of like an old, like turn of the century, first gilded age kind of thing to do. He's obsessed with building these things. So I think he just wants to like build this ballroom, make it gaudy and ugly on taxpayer dime now, by the way, a billion dollars, according to the Senate Republicans is what we need to spend. So I think he wants that so that we can't erase him when he's gone because he knows he's unpopular.

He's the worst president in American history by a mile. So I had a scholar. that studies dictators and autocrats, Ruth Ben Guillaude on my show. And she said this is a feature of autocrats, a psychological feature that they fixate on building a safe space. Because they operate from a default setting of fear. The number one thing that motivates him is fear and accountability. And so he is laser focused on building this ballroom. And the more details that he reveals, the more it appears like he is building this on one of the clips.

He talks about if a drone hits it, the drone will just bounce right off of it. And it's going to have a hospital and what he was saying, that research facilities and all of this stuff. And so I'm fearful that this is, because he's more focused on this ballroom than anything. I think the Washington Post did a study. And he has mentioned the ballroom more than any other subject since it came up by a long shot. And so I think that Ruth Ben Guillaude is probably right that he is just, laser focused on getting to his safe space because he has so much PTSD from Joe Biden beating his

ass. Yeah, well, he's so paranoid. And the same thing goes back to like his food choices. Like everybody makes fun of him for eating McDonald's and flay of fishes and all that. But the reason he eats McDonald's is because he thinks it's less likely to be poisoned if he gets it from a fast food join. And like there was a my father was a former FBI agent and what friend of his did security for Trump when he went through Omaha, Nebraska during the first campaign in 2016. And apparently they had to go get him like Burger King and like other stuff. He was. talking about how I'll only eat this stuff because it's not going to be poison. It comes in the wrapper. They can't get anything through the wrapper. And I'm like, what are you talking?

He's a billionaire. He should be able to have like a chef that just follows him everywhere. Like, I just don't, I don't get it. Okay. Now let's talk about a lot of people claim that they voted for Trump because of inflation and for economic reasons. And he was recently asked about American struggling with rising gas prices. Let's play the clips. see a problem and this is peanuts and i appreciate everybody putting up with it for a little while it won't be much longer but uh you're gonna have and frankly there is so much oil out there one of the things what's your take on that peanuts i mean peanuts and what they keep saying it's short-term pain right there's the same thing they said about the tariffs the year ago it's going to be a little bit short-term pain but then we're going to

bring back all these manufacturing jobs and it's going to be amazing they always say we're we're three weeks or three months away from the golden age of america or whatever but but But he's so disconnected from the day-to-day lives of the average American. And he got elected. Obviously, there's a ton of racism and sexism that plays a role in the MAGAMU, but I'm not going to pretend like it's not there. But the people in the middle who are just getting killed in this economy, and I don't think the economy was that strong under Biden.

Now I think there were a lot of factors into that, and he had dealt with a lot of it and it was getting better. Trump came in and poured gasoline all over it, but what were the promises he made in that campaign? Everything's going to get less expensive on day one. I'm not going to launch another Forever War and send your sons and daughters to go die in the Middle East. He's broken both those promises.

this. And then when people go, hey, you lied to me and I'm angry about that. And I don't like paying $6 a gallon for gasoline. He goes, I don't care. I don't care about your finances because Iran can't have a nuke, which Tulsi Gabbard says that Iran is nowhere near having a nuke. She's inside his own administration. So it's embarrassing. It's why they're going to get creamed in the midterms. They're going to learn the same lesson. A lot of the establishment wing of my party had to learn in 2024 is you can't gaslight people in believing that the economy is strong when they can't pay their bills. Right. And I think if we consider like every, the majority of Americans have been poor at some point at some stage in their life. And I think about the time when I was a young mother, my husband

was in rehab. I mean, we were really struggling financially. And if I had to go to the pump to buy gas and it was, you know, what used to be $60 is now $120. That is debilitating. That is very, very paralyzing. And so Donald Trump exclusively doesn't understand, like remember when he said groceries, it's an old-fashioned word because he's never been to the grocery store. I, I, I doubt he has ever pumped gasoline into a car. No, no, I don't even think he knows how it works. He probably assumes it's like the movies where there's somebody who pumps your gas for you, like a Tommy Boy or something like that. It's just it's it's embarrassing. And you're right, like every economic pain that he creates is a daily indignity for the average American, right?

Imagine you're sitting at home and you're trying to work with your partner to balance your your checkbook so you can have enough to put away for retirement to send your kids to college to pay for your mortgage. It's just a daily indignity on and on. And you turn on the TV and the president's like, I don't give a damn about you. I don't care. Yeah. Like, that's just got to suck. Yeah.

At least Democrats, like, we're not perfect. And then I know we're going to talk about this in a bit, but like, at least Democrats give a shit about people. At least we try to. There's no question that I lived in a red state for 50 years. Oklahoma, right? Yeah. I grew up in Nebraska.

Oh, yeah. Far away. So Oklahoma. So Republican super majorities are incredibly damaging. I saw it firsthand. We had a Democratic governor, Brad Henry in the early 2000s, education was ranked 17th. Since then, Republican supermajority. across the board the entire state. Oklahoma's ranked 50th in education. 50th. So Republican policies,

I say this over and over again. Republican policies are an anti-family death cult. They have been lying about it for decades. Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, the Smart Bush, all of them went into rural America and said, wealth will trickle down. And we are compassionate conservatives. All of it was total bullshit. The Republican Party are pathological liars. which honestly, a lot of people are upset that Massey lost. I'm not. Okay. I'm glad that he lost because voting with Trump 91% of the time is not good enough for me.

And if the Republican Party is going to be crazy, just let the freak flag fly, get all of them crazy in there. And I am not going to give a participation trophy to somebody who says pedophilia is wrong. That should be a default setting. I am not going to allow a Liz Cheney who lied, looked in the camera and lied to Americans and said these fourth term abortions are so dangerous. They are babies are being born and they're being killed because I live in a state where there is a total abortion ban. And I think everybody's like, oh, Kamala only campaigned with Liz Cheney one day. I felt that. I fucking felt that because I remembered.

when Liz Cheney looked in the camera and lied. And those lies are not good enough for the American people. And so I appreciate Thomas Massey's honesty on some things, but I disagree with Barack Obama. I don't want a strong Republican Party. I want the Republican Party to be defeated. All they have done is drove up deficits, started wars, and caused pain to the American worker,

and created this wealth disparity in a much higher rate than Democrats have. Yeah, I mean, I broadly agree with you on that, right? Like, I want to have that idealistic view of American politics where there can be like a great debate between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party when I was 18. I dropped out of college to go work for Barack Obama. That's what I believe was happening. I love him. I love Barack. He's amazing president. Like, he's a good human being. But like, he's also the same guy in 2012 who said, well, after I win the presidential election, the fever's going to break and the Republicans are going to start working with us. And like, the infection has gotten significantly worse over the 20 years. And it's bad. And I think Democrats, this is why my substack is called endless urgency. is I want the same endless urgency that I see from the Trump administration to use power to help people. I'm tired of watching Trump every single day come up with like 50 ways to drive me crazy and put money in his back pocket. Why don't we use power that way to make sure people don't go bankrupt when they get sick? And by the way, to save our democracy, which Democrats love to just shout from the rafters about saving democracy, but they don't have a plan to do it. They're uncomfortable with getting rid of the filibuster. They're uncomfortable with making DC estate.

They're uncomfortable with tackling big money and corporate money in our public. Supreme Court. Supreme Court. Like we're going to have to pack the Supreme Court or we're going to have to get lucky and wait for them to die and hope that we have control of the Senate and the presidency in the process. Which is insane. Which insane. But you know what? They're being incredibly arrogant right. None of the Supreme Court justice is a retiring this year. And if Democrats pick up the Senate in November, and we have to do it, by the way, with what I call a Federman-proof Senate majority. So we have to have 52 Democratic Senate seats. Otherwise, Federman is just going to fuck us every chance. No, you're right. No, you're so right about that. Okay. And then let's discuss J.D. Vance. This is really interesting. My least favorite politician. ever. Right. I think that J.D. Vans is America's biggest prostitute. He... An insult to prostitutes. It totally is. But he's changed his name three times, changes religion three times, absolute nihilist to his core, believes in absolutely nothing. Was purchased by some of the worst people on the planet, Peter Thiel and others. And he was

placed into Trump's orbit because they purchased him. And they purchased Trump to do it. Trump has been rat fucking Vance. Every chance he can get. And I can't get in that's great it's hilarious broad czar it's great it's so good it's so good okay so here is watch this clip of j d vance he's so bad politically play the clip that say no kings they are very very insistent that we not have kings and then king charles comes to the the congressional chamber and these guys break out and rapturous applause so maybe they don't care so much about kings as they pretend that they do maybe they just don't like the agenda that we're implementing that's actually making american workers and American families safe and prosperous again.

I feel dumber for having listened to that. It's so dumb, I think that I'm dumber for listening to that. I want you to imagine him in the morning applying his eyeliner and practicing that life. Because he thought he had it. He was like, I got the Democrats. I got a real good today. Oh my God.

That is so funny because you know what? I can imagine it. Yeah. I can see him doing that. I think that J.D. Vance, I cannot wait, I hope he's the nominee. Oh, me too. I want him to be the nominee. I want to watch him lose. I want to watch him face plant. I want to ridicule him. I want to ridicule the donors that have bought him. Because here's the thing. When you think about Bezos and Peter Thiel and Elon Musk,

these guys are the biggest bunch of pussies. They want to control politics, but they won't put their name on the ballot and run. Right. Right. And you know what? Say what you will about Trump, but at least he put his name on the ballot. He did. There's courage. And ad right i give props to anybody that'll do that because you put your whole life on the line for it but but vance is just such an exceptional weasel he represents literally everything that's wrong with american politics it's part of the reason why and i get yelled out online about this i bet people in the comments are going to flame me for it and i love you guys for it but i i don't support getting rid of trump on the 25th amendment i don't support impeaching trump and it's because i don't want jady vans to be president of the united states

Trump is a disaster. That's such a good point. But if you think that Peter Thiel and Palantir don't have enough power in the federal government, then J.D. Vance is your candidate because Peter Thiel has some kind of master plan to defeat or ascend the Antichrist into America. I don't really understand what he's doing, but the guy's crazy. I don't want him to have any more influence. So I think the only thing saving us from something worse is Donald Trump right now and his vanity.

I, you know, you bring up such a good point because impulsively and short-sightedly, I think, okay, he needs to be removed or he needs to drop dead. And then I'm not playing the tape through because I want that just immediate discomfort gone. And I think about the cult completely falling apart. But you're right, they placed J.D. Vance as a chess move in, knowing Trump was old, knowing probably some insider information about his health. And he was bragging about passing cognitive test during Trump 1.0. So this dementia diagnosis, I believe, has been out there.

you know for a while and so that is such a good point we have to be careful what we wish for yeah i think think the other thing here too is like a lot of democratic politics you've had a ton of them on your show it becomes like this fallback position for the democratic party to get like collapse and clicks and stuff without having a real plan on what to do and so they go we have to remove down trump we have to be like we've impeached him twice we're not going to be able to remove him like he's here i think sometimes we've got to sort of face the threat that we that we have in front of us and be prepared to deal with it limit the damage as much as we can have an actual plan on what to do when we win in the midterms when we win in 2028.

Because I think right now in this trajectory, we're going to elect the Democratic president unless somehow Donald Trump saves the job market and finds a way to raise wages and decrease prices, which he's not going to do. He's not even trying. So I just don't want Democrats keep falling into that trap, but also to think through the whole game. Democrats never do that. We don't think through step one and step two.

Like I spoke to the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association last year, and one of them asked me about whether or not we should get rid of the filibuster. Or either should get rid of the filibuster because it's important to protect us. Like right now, you know, the Republicans could pass. a nationwide abortion ban if they wanted to if they didn't have the filibuster right and i was like look you can get rid of the filibuster i support doing that i think it's it's antiquated it's ridiculous and it prevents progress but that's step one of like five thousand uncomfortable shitty decisions the democratic party has to make and it's like day one we're doing that day two

we're back in the supreme court day three we're passing massive campaign finance laws day four we're making dc porto rico guama state day five we're merging the dakotas like it's just we got to be like prepared to go and have that i hate to say we need a project 2029 because everybody says that but we need that it just can't be like if we we get rid of the filibuster and all we do is like fiddle with the affordable care act and raise the minimum wage we'll get killed and nick flentes will be president one day that's how bad it'll be i agree and i think that one thing trump has shown the electorate is that you can govern all gas no breaks yes democrats it's you know we have to be careful we have to be forward thinking and and joe biden's biggest error was appointing uh merrick garland

And that allowing, we do not punish the Republicans lawbreaking enough. Agreed. We didn't punish the Confederacy enough. We didn't punish MAGA enough. And now they're getting a $1.7 billion slush fund taxpayer funded, which J.D. Vance said in the same face plan of a press conference, he said, January 6th, people have not received enough sympathy from the American public. They're just in a constant state of victimhood. While at the same time wanting to be tough guys.

Right. I mean, it's a party of petty grievance. That's all that it is. Like if you go on X right now, there'll be somebody complaining about Roseanne Barr being fired for saying something racist, Valerie Jarrett. Like, they're obsessed with that guys. I see people talk about it all the time. And I'm like, why can you guys never face accountability?

They're the party of personal responsibility. and they can never take responsibility for anything that happens to them. And on accountability for a second is, you know, I'm about to be 40. I've been doing this since I was 18 for two decades now. And like I have witnessed three major moments in American history where it was so obvious about this deep well of criminality that the American government didn't do anything about, all right? I entered a job market that was a mess in an economy that was destroyed by Wall Street here

in New York City. Nobody went to prison for that. I watched an insurrection that was led by the president of the United States, people creating fake electors and trying to rig the election and just lying. Basically, a bunch of people went to prison and then they got pardoned by the president. But not the high, not the high dollar. Right, right, exactly. They're mad because Roger Stone got arrested at 4 a.m.

And there was a CNN news camera there, right? So that makes it okay for them to go after Don Lemon. It just doesn't, it doesn't make any sense. And then now we've got the Epstein class, right? We've got the biggest sex trafficking ring that I know about in the history of the United States. It's clear as day that there's no way that just Delane Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein are the only two people who ever be arrested for this. I mean, Maxwell's dead and Jelaine is running a minimum security prison. So those are three moments.

How do you get the American people to buy into our system of government and our criminal justice system if they watch an entire class of people never be held accountable for anything? So when we take over, and I do think we're going to win the midterms, I do think we're going to elect a Democratic president in 2028. And I hope it's not an institutionalist. I hope it's somebody who understands how to use power. When we do that, we have to hold them accountable. I don't care what it takes.

We can't let this level of criminality go. Trump is, Trump has taken $4.5 billion so much he's increased. priest is net worth. They're just, they're, they're, they're liars and their thieves. And I think the American people will reward us if we establish the criminality that they've done and we power through and then we go make a difference in their lives on, on economic policies too. We have to do, we got to walk and chew gum. We got to get accountability. We got to fix our democracy. We got to fix the American economy. And that's a hefty task for whoever becomes the next president. It is. But let me say this. Democrats are good at, like we won in 2020. We can win a cycle.

And right now, if you look at the Democratic polling, the approval rating is abysmal. It mirrors MAGIS. The only reason that Democrats are winning right now is because Trump is that bad and independence are swinging over. Sure. Well, on our own base is very mad at us right now for the way that the Democratic Party establishment handled the beginning of last year. Yeah, justifiably and how they still continue to handle it, which I want to take you to the, I think there's two worlds with the Democratic Party. right now. There is the consultant class that does a lot of focus groups and is very data driven and has no passion. It's like, okay, what are we going to believe what's working here? And then

you have the actual base of people that have really swung further and further left. I think you've seen people get deprogrammed off of corporate news. And in that deprogramming, they've also deprogrammed off of this idea of corporate rule and corporate welfare. And oh, We have to take all this money and able in order to compete with the Republicans. We have to take all this pack money. I think the Democratic establishment has no fucking idea how radicalized and deprogrammed the base is right now. And one thing that tells me this is for, I think we're on like week eight of the Hassan Piker bedwetting syndrome. It never ends by Democrats.

Yeah. By Democrats are the biggest. bedwetters in this. And I have sons that are of the age and all of their friends where they get their news from places like Twitch. And it is absolutely Gen Z suicide for Democrats to partake in this simply because Hassan Piker calls out Israel for war crimes as I see it. Well, I think there's a couple of things. Like I've never met him, but I've watched a show before. Like I don't hate the guy or anything. I do think he said some things that are problematic that go a little bit too far. Like I think you know this about me like I do a lot of like going on newsmax and trying to

go fight the good fight. Oh yes. I've seen those clips. You're great. Thank you. You do such a good job with that. Thank you. I'm doing two hours in studio with Newsmax right after this. Oh my gosh. Okay. We'll have to watch it's gonna be you are. I forgot about that. You're phenomenal on that. Thank you for doing that. It's important. Of course. Because I mean to me it's like I'm trying to reach that like you know 90% of them It's so I mean I'll tell you I love Jessica Tarlov. I do too. Yes. She's great. Yeah. So I'll tell you a first. I'm funny story. The first time I did Jesse Waters' show. I looked down. It was like two minutes to go and

my father called me. My father is a three-time Trump voter watches Fox News all the time. I knew I was going to be on Jesse Waters. I picked up the phone. I went, yeah, dad, what's up? And he goes, just remember, you're the bad guy. You're the heel, like in pro wrestling. And that actually mellowed me. It was like, okay, I'm the heel. Like, all right, I'm going to show up and I'm going to be myself and I'm going to know that 90% of the audience is going to hate me. But I want that 10% that's going to go, I don't like that guy, but I am getting fucked right now. Like, that's not right? Like, why did Trump do that thing? And you just start that conversation. Yeah.

Any more people to do that. On, on Hassan is like, you know, I do think he said some things that make it hard for Democrats to communicate. Like, when I go on Newsmax, this is why I brought this up is like, they'll play a clip of like Asan Piker being like, and I'm going to misquote him. So like, I apologize to people, but I once did a hit on Newsmax where it was right after the White House Correspondent or shooting or whatever the hell happened there. I don't want to call a shooting because I don't really buy the story that they're telling us either. But they played a clip of it being like the capital, the street should run. with the blood of capitalists or some shit like that and like it's unhelpful like it is

unhelpful now i don't think he's a bad dude or anything i think it's equally as unhelpful for a kori booker who i asked on my podcast is benjamin net and yahoo a war criminal it's a yes or no question and he actually has power he actually has the ability to go in are we holding a twitch streamer who uses metaphors to an account that we don't hold our democratic politicians who actually have life-saving power is Isn't that the problem with the Democratic Party? We're bedwetting over a streamer completely bedwin. It was a metaphor.

And here's the thing. Like I said, Liz Cheney has caused real life damage. Women in America are dead because of the lies that she fed into the rabid pro-life movement. Yes. Yet she's not held to account for that. She gets rewarded by the Democratic Party as look at our trophy. Look at our big catch. look at who we're going to trot around on the campaign trail with while women in red states that are

rape victims are like what yeah like it was a huge betrayal well it's i mean is a is a questionable strategic decision that the harris campaign made to bring in list janey i know like i'm a former harris advisor but i worked on i love kamala i do too i want to say like a lot of the politicians i pick on i like 90% of the stuff they do well and i think like being a good democrat we should be able to like deal with dissent like what i hate because we're not in a cult i know I know, and it's like we just watched Thomas Massey get killed because he doesn't think we should be covering up for pitos, even though he votes with Donald Trump 95% of the time. Yeah. So, like, I think it's good. Like, I think it's fine to criticize Cory Booker's to find a court, Chrisis, Kamala Harris and Chuck Schumer, we should do that without hating each other. Right. And I agree with you. And I agree with you, I think that, like, Husson and other streamers and other content creators, including you and other content, by the way, by the way, by we're held to a higher than a lot of elected officials. Yeah. President of the United States is up in the middle of the night for like four hours between crazy conspiracy theories. It's barely a blip on the radar. Like, what are we doing? He talked about committing a genocide. Yes, I'm going to annihilate the people of Iran.

It's like a thing that he said. Fox News, the pro-life channel rolls out. Literally, I went to a basketball game with Hassan the other night. And he said every. The Knicks? No, Oklahoma City Thunder. Okay. Versus the Lakers.

Hassan was cheering for the Lakers. War LeBron Jersey. I'm a die-hard Oklahoma City fan. Oklahoma City swept them. It was beautiful. It was a beautiful event. Awesome. But I just wanted to get in the Knicks having a 0.01% chance of winning yesterday's game and coming back last night.

Oh, they did such a good job. There were people like chanting in the streets. It was like we'd want to walk. But Hassan said every at the top of the hour on Fox at the top, it was him. Yeah. And so here's my thing. People tend to find somebody who is actually a really good messenger. And I know this because my children who are college-aged and their friends, when they'd all come over and hang out, they are talking about things like wage inequality.

They are talking about things like corporations buying politicians. These are things they're not going to hear on corporate names. No, they're not. And having a smarter electorate is better. And so I think there's been a lot of false equivalencies. And I understand MAGA because Hassan Packers like catnip for them. He's good looking. He says provocative things.

So that's going to be the top of the hour. He's not white. So they're going to turn him into a book. Right. Although he identifies as white. Is he? Oh, well, they treat him like he's not. No, yeah.

He knows that. but he identifies his wife. Because when they talk about him, they're like, he's a Muslim. Yeah. But I do think the component of the Democrats that go after him, like third way. Yeah. And a lot of them bedwetting about that instead of saying, look, we need to partner with him and build a big tent here.

And the thing that I think causes them to beat up on him is because he has absolute moral clarity and a lot of the Democrats don't on Israel's genocide in Gaza, displacing millions of people in Lebanon and dog walking, Donald Trump, our own State Department said this, by the way. This is not- Marco Rubio said it. Yeah, Marco Rubio said it, the Secretary of State that Trump did this for Israel and we're killing little kids. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I think that's right. And I also think it extends beyond that too okay which is most of the Democratic candidates that I've worked for not all of

them but most of them don't really know what they stand for and don't really know what they believe in that's devastating it it sucks so devastating my right and you and you bring up like the consult it's depressing but you bring up the consulting class like I am for better for worse I'm a card carrying member of the Democratic Party's consulting class you are I am a good one you're well I don't think I don't know that I'm a good one like I don't want to like overstated it's okay but like thank you I mean I write a lot of fundraising emails like what I do in my day job. But it's, so I apologize, if you've got any fundraising email and you liked it, I wrote it. Didn't like I had to read. But it's a lot of them just don't quite know. And maybe they have like a

couple of things that they believe in. But it's tough. And like, do you remember during the shutdown towards the end of last year, Hakeem Jeffries kept having like every Democratic member of the House stay in D.C. And they kept doing these unity events where like they were all together and they were posting like a video being like, we're all here and we're working and like we're ready to go. And the Republicans scattered all across the country to go talk to voters and stuff. Now, it didn't work because people were mad at the Republican Party. But I kept saying, you know what I want? I want all, you know, 200 members of the Democratic Party to be out there on podcasts and

local news shows and cable news and go out there and doing it. And like half of them can't do it. And half of them that can do it who can articulate a vision, maybe only like five or 10 of them are even good at TV. And good at TV is such a relative thing. Like they can't have conversations like this because they don't know what they're about. And if you drop me or you in the middle of any room, even if it's an uncomfortable room with people who I don't agree with, like, I did bar fight with

with Michael Knowles. It's a daily wire show in Nashville where you're at a bar, you're drinking, you're chatting. And I cornered Michael Knowles on Epstein. And like afterwards, I stayed for like two hours and talked to everybody in the bar. Could not have been a more conservative crowd who hated me, but I won some of those people over. And like, you can't do that with a lot of Democratic politicians because they don't know what they believe in. And you can tell when you watch them on TV. You can just see it. It oozes out of them. Oh, that's so devastating to hear. But I think I, we know that. So, The way I see the Democratic Party right now is there are two camps.

There are the pro-people Democratic Party, the Zoran Mamdhanis, the Abdul Al-Said, the Grand Platners, the people who are not taking corporate money, period. They're not doing it. They're calling, as Alyssa Slotkin likes to say, I call balls and strikes, but she can't call, she can't call it a genocide, which is a ball and a strike. And so it's that double-speak bullshit that Democrats do, that the election. electorate is done with. And then you have the Corey Bookers, the Alyssa Slotkins, the Mallory McMorros, the Hakeem Jeffries, the Chuck Schumers, who play Patty Cake with the same pimps that buy off

like the vice president who bought off Donald Trump. So the way I see it is you have pimps and hose. And I think the pimps are the PACs and the corporations and the prostitutes are the politicians that are willing to be bought. So Donald Trump is a big prostitute. J.D. Vance, in my opinion, is the country's biggest prostitute. I know a lot of y'all probably thought I was going to say Melania, but that's not what we're talking about right now. J.D. Vance might be the skankiest with the eyeliner again. He is the skankiest. I want to know how he does it because I'm like a J.D. Vance type like in the face. I want to know how to get that. Maybe we'll put some money before you go on news. That'd be good. We'll do like a TikTok, TikTok collab. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I also think there's some

hos and the Democratic Party, they get purchased and they get bought. When you find out, like as I weaned off of corporate media and I find out that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are taking money from fucking Palantir. Right. It's devastating. It's like, no, I am so sorry. That is just not how it works. You do not get to say, oh, I'm an opposition party when you have the same pimp that MAGA has.

And so I see this as an existential issue right now. And there can be degrees of progressivism, degrees of liberalism, degrees of being a Democrat and independent or whatever. But I see then there are two things that will get people elected that would make the Democratic party favorability rise up. And it is fighting, which goes to your believing in something, not being a nihilist. And number two, not being a prostitute. Yeah.

What do you think? I think I broadly agree with that. I maybe like disagree on some of the candidate choices. and stuff like that, and that's maybe a separate fight for another time. But I think that the two people that I see talk about this, like I always articulate this, like right now in the country, the problem is it's the Epstein class

versus everybody else. Like that's just the way that I think about it, because there's a powerful, wealthy, influential group of people who are abusing our campaign finance laws, who are abusing little kids and getting away within the criminal justice system, who are spending so much money to rig it, and it goes beyond partisan politics.

Like there are- See, I think that still frames it in the Trump era. So, because there are, Hakeem Jeffries isn't a part of the Epstein class, And Chuck Schumer isn't a part of the Epstein class, but my God, are they compromised? My God, are they a contributing factor to the Democrats' abysmal approval rating? Can I make this point? Is that the people in the Epstein class are playing both sides.

To them, partisan politics is a game. And Thomas Massey's actually talked about this as Miriam Adelson and Paul Singer are the two who spent so much money through APEC, through these shell organizations to spend $35 million to unseat him yesterday in Kentucky. They're also spending a ton of money on Democratic campaigns all across the country. They're propping up state legislative organizations. They get them all the way down here, right? And state senate and state house. And they work their way up.

So they're polluting our politics at every level. So the answer is like there's style questions that we can argue about. There's, you know, do you care about Medicare for all, a public option? Like those are legit conversations we can have. But until we break this very small class of people like Peter Thiel, who does play both sides, like Paul Singer and Mary Madelson who play both sides, we have to break them. And right now the problem is our campaign finance laws are a joke. They're an absolute joke.

They're not enforceable. The ones that are enforceable are ridiculous. The FCC is an absurd organization that never accomplishes anything. And it just doesn't matter. And then on top of that, you have a foreign government problem, which is that there are influencers that are being paid by foreign governments through corporations to act as mouthpieces. They're basically foreign agents.

We know Benny Johnson and Tim Poole were taking money from Russia. We know that Victor Orban, likely through Russia, would be my guess, was paying for CPAC. I believe there are influencers on the left. They're taking money from China just based on the way that they're talking. Laura Lumer is rumored to be like an Israeli influencer. Like if there's all these rumors in innuendo, we have to get to the bottom of that too because those things are polluting our politics.

So forget like Democrat-Republican labels for a second, just for a second. I'm not saying they're not important, but that class, they're ripping us off. And we're all busy fighting with each other about whatever's going on in social media that day about Assam Piker versus Third Way or whatever, which is dumb. It is so dumb.

I mean, oh my God, I was like done with it after 70. I thought it would end. They're still going at it. And all he did is he's bigger now. Like that's all that it is. Like third way made him big. He's so much more popular. Well, I mean, and they also, like, look, no, again, no insult to a sign.

I think what he's built is impressive. They also talk about him like he has the influence of Joe Rogan. Like he has 30,000 people who watch him on Twitch. Joe Rogan has like 50 million people who watch him. It's not even remotely the same. It's just. Well, I think he has 30,000 that watch live. And then he's really well on YouTube.

Millions and millions. Yeah, I'm just saying that there's like, there's a difference. No, totally there is. No, they elevated him to that. Okay. They did. Last question. So there's this vote blue number.

matter who. Sure. Mantra. And generally, I'm a harm reduction voter. I lived in Oklahoma City, and I typically would always vote blue. All my candidates always a loss. I'm so excited to register and vote New York because I'm actually going to vote for people that win for the first time of my life. But New York politics is an absolute cesspool. No, good luck. Yeah. But it's much better than Oklahoma politics. Oh, well, for sure. Oklahoma politics, these people are depraved. Yeah, but every now and again, you got to look, you look at the eye of an Andrew Cuomo. So, or an Anthony Weiner. Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you what, the Oklahoma politicians are when they think the earth is 6,000 years old. I mean, yeah, 100%. I worked in Kansas for a year. Yeah. So you get it. Chris Kobach was, you got to look. I'll tell you about him off the street, but he was a crazy person.

He was the attorney general. So, Graham Platner. Yeah. A lot of people are bedwetting over him. Sure. And obviously he had this tattoo. Yep. And he covered it up.

And I think, okay, that's unfortunate like that fucking sucks because this guy speaks to people. He gets big crowds out. He's put himself out there, his PTSD, his problems, his struggles. It's been somewhat refreshing to see that. And then you have this big pushback from the establishment. Chuck Schumer, despite Graham Platner polling 20, 30 points higher than Janet Mills. He endorses Janet Mills. So obviously, Grand Platner is going to be the Democratic nominee.

And a lot of people do, I'm wondering, the vote, blue no matter who lecturers are they going to endorse and vote blue no matter who because they didn't do that with zoron yeah well the thing i mean and you and i talked about this briefly before we got started is like give me your take on that closing thoughts so like so like with with zoran like i was pissed about this because and like look i'm i'm not quite like movement progressive or i could probably straddle the line a little bit i work with a lot of establishment politicians i work with a lot of like i've worked with el honomar and michel wood a bunch of great progressives and um i'm probably like a normie dem is what i I would say. I don't know what that really means anymore because the party's moving around.

Yeah, yeah. But the number of times I've worked on a race and I've been really excited about the progressive candidate that I was working on and I was in love with them. I thought they were going to be amazing and then we lose the primary and I got lectured or the folks watching and home got lectured about, well, the primary is over. The voters decided you have to rally around the candidate. And we did. I mean, the progressive wing of the party rallies around the centrist when they need to or there might be a little like, you know, hurt feelings and stuff like that and but they didn't do that with Zoran and I think that's a problem because there's going to be a time when there's a big fight maybe it comes in 2028 where a centrist wins or a more establishment

candidate wins and you need the left to rally. They didn't rally around Zoran and left Cuomo with an opportunity to win that race, right? I mean, it was closer than I think a lot of us thought it was going to be and I think that's a problem with Platner I want to believe him. This is the way I would put it is like one and I say this is like one of the founders of white dudes for Harris. Like if we're going to bring in more white men, well guess what white men in the last 20 years have done said some really problematic things. And obviously there's a line that shouldn't be crossed, particularly on like sexual assault and racism and stuff like that. I want to believe, though, that Graham's story is true, right? He went into the military. He got this tattoo. He didn't

know what it was. He said some stupid things on the internet and then grew over time. My guess is if you found stupid stuff that I said when I was 18 and 20, I'd probably say some things that I would regret now as an adult and a dad and a husband and an activist. So I want to believe that. And I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. I mean, he won the primary, right? He went into, you know, restaurants and community halls all across Maine, one people over. Janet Mills, I think, was a strategic mistake by the establishment. Like, Janet Mills is actually a super badass governor. Like, she's a really good governor.

She's done some really amazing things, but it's also, you know, 70-something years old. And at a time when people are pretty frustrated with that. So I think Platner also got lucky that that was the candidate that they coalesced around. I'd be curious, but what would have happened if they'd gotten around like a Troy Jackson or something for Senate who's running for governor right now. I think it's phenomenal. So I don't know, but I do have a little bit of that worry. And I know this will get me like people in your comment section,

will be mad at me. I'm a little bit worried that he could be a Federman type. And I say that because I worked against Federman in that primary. A very similar group of people screamed at us when we had concerns about Federman. And then Federman turned out to be who he has. Now, maybe Plattner's going to come in and be amazing, and that'll be great. And we just don't have a voting record to rely on for him. We don't have something.

He just kind of came out of nowhere. Candidates who come out of nowhere make me nervous because they say all the right things, but I don't have anything to back it up. So again, if I was a main voter, I would vote for Grant Platner because he's better than Susan Collins and I want Democrats to win. But I have those concerns and it's going to be incumbent on him and his campaign to win people over. That's just ultimately what it is. I think it's a very fair assessment that when you don't have a voting record like Donald Trump came out of nowhere, politically speaking. Was he famous? Yes.

I like him. I think if he were, you know, like this horrible person that. that they claim he is, I don't think he would be so morally clear about genocide and the killing of children. That really, that to me right now becomes, I think, Tenei Coat said this for the Democratic Party. And I think this is a true assessment. If you cannot draw the line at genocide, you're not going to be able to draw it anywhere.

I agree with that. And I think that's a very, the people who cannot say that still to the state, the genocide deniers, history is not going to be kind to them. And then you see they have moral breakage, not just from that, but that just kind of like trickle down breakage. Right. You know, and you see it and sadly, but I do believe this. I want to leave people with some hope. I do believe that generally the Democratic Party, if you're fighting for LGBTQ plus people and you're fighting for equality. And the biggest thing that we haven't talked about is the anti-black racism is on the rise more than anything in the United States right now. It is. It is.

is the biggest form of bigotry constantly, consistently, and now they're removing black voices from Congress. And the mask is fully off now. Totally. The Jake Langs of the world, did you see Jake Lang is now banned from National Stadium after putting up a white supremacist banner in a baseball game? Yeah. And so, you know, I believe that the Democratic Party is the best place to get people to a place

where we can all support universal human rights, that all of the forms of bigotry. are connected, whether it's misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, and I'm just very, my biggest litmus test is for any Democratic politician that concedes and capitulates to right-wing framing, like Rahm Emanuel was on my podcast. And he threw trans people under the bus. Yeah, he did. And that's, you torched it forth. That is the biggest red flag to me, because if somebody will throw less than 1% of the population under the bus, who doesn't want anything except for to be able to vote, have a job, have health care, the same thing that everybody else wants. If a Democratic politician is willing to do that, then they will continue moving the goalposts.

And at some point, you will be on their list of people. And so that's my biggest litmus test is Democrats who capitulate to right-wing framing. Yeah. Well, and there's a ton to unpack there. Like, I want to respond to like so many different things. Like the transgender attacks inside the party really pissed me off, particularly after 20, um, 2024 because that, um, com, they ran that ad against Kamala Harris that she's for they, them, not us, right? And it was a really powerful and effective ad. So I understand the like reaction that the Democratic establishment had to that like Seth goes to your point. They

don't believe in anything. They don't believe in anything. But also it was like the reason that ad worked was not because it was about transgender stuff. It was a very clever framing to make Kamala seem like they were other in Kamala. She doesn't care about you. The biggest knock on the Democratic Party in every you mentioned polling and focus groups earlier. So I'm going to be the consultant that mentions. Do it. They say, oh, the Democratic Party, they're really well-meaning. We kind of agree with a lot of what they say. But they're fighting for other people, not for me.

So that was what that ad was doing. It was reinforcing the narrative that Kamala Harris was going to come in office. She was going to fight for everybody else and not you. And Kamala's campaign didn't have a good answer for that. And in fact, they outright ignored it, which I think was a mistake. Again, Monday morning quarterbacking. But I want to on the Democratic Party for a second. Because I get asked this all the time.

Like, Mike, why are you a Democrat? Like, Democratic Party sucks. Like, why are you a Democrat? And the truth is, like, if I quit doing what I did right now, I might become an independent, like a lot of other people do. Yeah, that's enticing. But I do think we need people who stay and fight in the parties because there's so many independent voters now that both parties are just kind of left

to their own devices of whoever stays. And the people who stay are the ones who win. And to me, the Democratic Party remains as imperfect as it is the best case scenario to save democracy, to save decency in this country. And it's the only group of people in this country who give a shit. But whether or not you have a good paying job, can afford to buy a house, retire with dignity, take vacation, et cetera. It's basically the core tenants of what I believe the American dream.

So, like, I'm going to stay in fight. And I'd rather stand side by side with people that I don't fully agree with on everything like Zoran Mandani or or Grant Platner, right, who I have some concerns about it, I think are legitimate. But I know that they're at least trying. Now, the one thing I'll add on Platner just to get back to that for one second is because, again, is you talk about the consulting class. And I think the framing of this is often a bit off is that Grant Platner also has a ton of consultants who work for him. And they're very good. And they're very smart and clever and creative. So, again, the thing that I worry about is that the consultants are doing a really good job creating a brand and then don't.

don't know what they have in their product. That's what I worry about without that record. But again, he's the nominee. Like, let's move forward with it. But I think that sometimes it's, we should just always take a deep breath and be more discerning when somebody shows up and says the right thing, you know? And sometimes they turn out to be amazing because like AOC came out of nowhere.

Nobody knew who the hell she was. She was a bartender. So, and sometimes it works out, but sometimes it doesn't because then it's Federman. So like I get, I get nervous. Yeah, I really, I think he's the real deal. That's my take on it. I want to believe.

He has never shied away from any question. He's been on my podcast. You know this. I'll invite politicians on. Yeah. And they want to know. You'll destroy some of them. That Rahm Emanuel interview was.

They'll ask, what are we going to talk about? They want the whole thing like pre-scripted. Graham Platner, Zorn, Mom, Donnie. The people who genuinely believe in something, there's no script beforehand. Bernie Sanders I had on last week. Can Bernie come on? Sure. And Bernie can talk about anything.

And that's it because he believes in something. And I put Graham in that camp right now. Does he have to prove himself? Yes. 100% he does, but everybody does. And so I think this is really fascinating stuff. And I just on a personal note, I think that people like you and Jessica Tarlov that go on right wing media, I think it is so important because so many of those people live in these

crazy cult like bubbles. And for them to hear just a little seed of a fact here and here and here, I think is such an incredible public service that you do that. So thank you for doing that. That's incredible. We're going to watch later on today. Loved having you in person. I think that these conversations about the Democratic Party are so important and so healthy.

Thank you. And thank you for having me on. I mean, you guys have built something really special here. And this setup is amazing. And I'm very excited to get to know you more. Yeah, thank you.