Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - Trump Has No Strategy as the Iran War Widens and Blanche's Confirmation Falls Apart

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

Scott Galloway is joined by Sarah Longwell, founder and publisher of The Bulwark, and author of the upcoming book How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time.  The U.S. launched strikes against Iran overnight as the war dramatically widened in scope. Meanwhile, top Trump officials reportedly cannot agree on a strategy for moving forward. Sarah breaks down whether we've reached a genuine tipping point toward a broader regional conflict — and whether there's anything Trump could do to win back public support for a war that even many Republicans oppose. In Congress, Todd Blanche’s confirmation is on the brink. A committee vote to advance his nomination as attorney general has been delayed after Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) expressed concerns about Trump's IRS settlement deal — demanding a written guarantee that any audit shield would only cover past tax returns, not future ones. Neither Cornyn nor Tillis is returning to Congress after this term. Sarah weighs in on what it means that lame duck Republicans are the ones displaying even the tiniest bit of backbone. In the federal case against former FBI Director James Comey, which centers around a photo he posted of seashells arranged to spell “86 47,” defense attorneys are seeking dismissal, alleging Trump directed illegal Secret Service surveillance of Comey — with agents reportedly feeding real-time information directly to the president.  Republican Congressman Max Miller of Ohio is facing serious domestic abuse allegations from his ex-wife, Emily Moreno — who is also the daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH). In the wake of the Graham Platner scandal on the Democratic side, why aren't Republicans speaking out — and what does that tell us about the differences between the parties on accountability? In Texas, Democratic Senate contender James Talarico has proven to be a strong fundraiser against Trump-backed Republican Ken Paxton — who beat out Senator John Cornyn in the primary earlier this year but has yet to see substantial support from major Republican money committees. What's going on with Republican fundraising in Texas? On the economy: the Federal Reserve has held interest rates steady, but pressure is mounting with inflation remaining above the Fed's 2% target for over five years and U.S. economic growth slowing in the second quarter. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh says the Fed will not hesitate to act. Plus, Scott and Sarah pull back the curtain on both Prof G and The Bulwark's media operations. They talk about challenges they’ve each faced by being in the politics space, share strategies for fostering community, and give some powerful advice for all creators. Get your tickets now for our live show at 92NY: https://www.92ny.org/event/scott-galloway-and-jessica-tarlov For ad-free episodes, exclusive livestreams, and to connect with Scott, Jessica, and the Raging Moderates community, join us at ProfG+ on Substack: https://ragingmoderates.profgmedia.com/ Get The Monday Rage newsletter: https://profgmedia.com/s/monday-rage/ Follow Raging Moderates on IG, Tiktok, and Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/ragingmoderatespod/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ragingmoderates https://www.facebook.com/ragingmoderates Follow Jessica Tarlov on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/jessicatarlov https://substack.com/@jessietarlov https://bsky.app/profile/jessicatarlov.bsky.social Follow Scott on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/profgalloway https://substack.com/@profgalloway https://bsky.app/profile/profgalloway.com Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RagingModerates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely different ways. Service now turns that chaos into control. With the AI control tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place. What it's doing, what it's done, and what it's about to do. So you stay in control. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenav.com. Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway. Jess is off today, but we're fortunate to be joined by Sarah Longwell, the founder and publisher of the Bullwork, host of the Focus Group podcast and author of the upcoming book, How to Eat an Elephant, one voter at a time out in September. Also a friend of the pod.

Sarah, it's great to see you. Thanks for doing this. Hey, Scott. Thanks for having me. So before we get started, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube page to stay up to date on all the political news. All right, let's bust right into it. The U.S. launched a round of heavy attacks against Iran overnight. Saudi Arabia has stepped off the sidelines carrying out joint strikes with the U.S. on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. The drowned campaign that pulled Saudi Arabia into the conflict all of the war. also spilled over the border into Jordan, and authorities in Egypt say that a drone attack struck

several vessels in port. Meanwhile, Trump officials reportedly can't agree on a strategy on how to move forward. Sarah, there was some well-earned skepticism around the ceasefire, the memo of understanding. We knew this temporary pause in fighting might not last, but are we at a moment now where things really can tip into a broader conflict? Yeah, I mean, look what's happening. We have a broader regional war. And this was always the thing for Trump and this administration was they seem to not understand that Iran was going to have a vote in this, that Iran's behavior wasn't something

that we could control. And so, you know, when you have all of these other countries being brought in, I mean, I don't want people to get over their skis and it's not World War III, but it is something that can break containment and is breaking containment that makes it much harder than for Trump to just do his, you know, war on, war off, snip, snap, snip, because it's not just about Iran. You know, every time one of these other countries gets attacked, you're bringing, you know, there's new sort of rage in the conflict from new people. who now need to retaliate. It just, you can see how easily it can spin out of control. Yeah, it doesn't feel like it's de-escalation. It feels like it's, the war is metacitizing.

And Saudi Arabia or the kingdom just went from the sidelines to combatant with its joint strikes. And also the drone war jumping borders into Jordan and Egypt, this is, I mean, this is now a regional war. It's not bilateral by any stretch of the imagination. Just last night, you talked to some Trump voters in South Carolina about the war in Iran. Let's listen to some of what a couple of them had to say. He doesn't get a D or an F because I do think he's trying. I do think there's more to Iran. Do I want to be there forever?

Does it suck because I own a diesel truck? Heck yeah, it does. Every time I fill it up and it's $130, it's like I want to vomit. but I think there's more there than we see on our level. I wish he just, excuse my friend's had the balls to just go in there and get it done. And, you know, I don't want to sound like a warmonger or anything, but he could get it done very quickly. I'm real concerned.

It's just going to keep dragging and dragging and drag it and drag it. And our economy is just going to go to shit. Yeah. So I have a diesel truck, but he's trying. And I think that's, I think that's, I think that could be a bumper sticker from MAGA right now. What are your thoughts of your observations coming out of these focus groups? Yeah, so it's not just this focus group.

I mean, the Iran War comes up in all of the focus groups, but specifically among Trump voters, people are sort of breaking into two camps. There are the Trump voters who are angry that the war is happening because Trump promised not to get us into any new wars, and they want us out and they want it to stop because it is costing them money at the pump. it's having, you know, personal consequences. And then, as you heard in that other guy, that is another strain that you hear,

which is know that he needs to bomb harder. And Trump has set himself up for this, right? With his saber rattling, we're going to end your civilization, the way Trump threatens them every time. There's not a deal imminent. You know, he set up his own voters to sort of, he is in the sour spot with his own voters

because either, now he's sort of ratcheting up, one part's demand. that he go harder, and the other side just wants him out and to have it over. And he, in just sort of staying in that middle ground of, we're going to keep doing sort of tit for tat bombing, you know, people are just getting frustrated. And they don't follow the ins and outs, these voters. They never follow the machinations super closely, but they know the war's back on and they know it's costing them money. Going from voters to the actual administration, based on your contacts, and I know you have a lot a relationship still in the Republican Party.

What do you think, try and put us in the head or in the room in the situation room right now, do you have any sense for what their strategy is or what you think how this is going to unfold over the next few weeks? I mean, they don't know what their strategy is. But I can tell you this. If you think about the situation room and who's in it, and you just take a Marco Rubio and a J.D. Vance, the two of them have, if you have, sort of old school Marco Rubio, they have polar opposite views on foreign policy. Like, J.D. Vance has made it very clear. He's leaked a lot of things to say, I am, I'm against this war.

I mean, J.D. Vance really staked his reputation on the idea that Trump wasn't going to do any more stupid wars. Marco Rubio, on the other hand, is a voice saying, well, we're in it now. We're going to need to finish it. They're also, I don't know if you've watched this, they're sort of using the ghost of Lindsay Graham, because that part of the part of the party that is still very sort of neocon that does want Trump to sort of go hard at Iran. And look, those voters that we talk to, that schism between the voters exists in the administration too, because this Republican Party now tries to hold those two groups together. But the conflict in Iran is drawing up, but you can't have it both ways.

And so if I'm in the situation room, I think it's people making an argument to Trump that they need to cut and run, get out. That's probably the J.D. Vance side, the America First side. And then there's the Rubio side and a lot of the other people in the administration who are saying, well, now we've got to finish this because we're here. And does finish this mean boots on the ground? And what do you think is the likelihood that we do put boots on the ground? I don't think Trump has ever had an appetite for boots on the ground because Trump, he likes bombing things from far away. That is just his preferred way of doing things. But, you know, I mean, at some point somebody's going to say to him, now it's gone too far, and the only thing we can do is go in full force. Because, right, he only has a couple of options. His options are to get out and then lie to Americans to say it's a victory when it's not, which I think is what he was trying to do.

Right. But that is getting closed off because they've staked this idea that they can't Iran can't have nuclear weapons. So, like, how are you going to ensure that that happens? and they need the straight-of-ormuz open. They can't, like, he's caught in an escalatory trap of his own making, and I'm sure he doesn't want to put boots on the ground, but they may have no choice at some point. Yeah, it's just, I mean, this is, it feels like this is literally the definition of the word quagmire,

and that is the IRGC is not just going to let him declare victory and leave. It strikes me, they've been playing him perfectly. They do just enough to ensure that everybody knows it's, a victory for the IRGC over, you know, this great devil the West. At the same time, not quite enough to inspire a full-throated, Republican-supported or American-supported response. You know, antagonize them enough, make sure they know, you know, we're on top, you've lost, but don't, or don't do create as much chaos such that even the American, reticent American people are going to have to support some sort of escalation.

And I just, I wonder, do you have any sense for what the military leaders are saying around the idea of boots on the ground? Is there sort of, I mean, the thoughtful people in the Defense Department, many of whom, it feels like all of them are contributors now to one network or the other. What are they saying? Is the Rubio wing of the party getting traction around, okay, we are where we are, let's go in and try and finish the job? I don't really know the answer to that. I don't have any contacts with the generals. But look, what I do know from spending time in the Republican Party is that that wing of people that has long wanted something done about Iran is still there and is still represented in this administration. And the one thing, just you made a point just a second ago about how they're playing Trump.

One of the things that becomes clear over time is that they're. They are learning. There was this phrase back in Afghanistan where they would say, well, you know, you may have the watches, but we have the time. And it feels like that with the Iranians right now where what they're doing is they can gather information every time. Like they are learning more about us. What have they learned so far in this conflict? They've learned that the American people get really unhappy about high gas prices and that it creates a political problem for Trump here at home and for Republicans here at home. to have high gas prices, but they've also learned that Trump will tweet about ending civilizations

and then not do it, right? Like, they are learning from all of this and gathering information about us. And so they're getting better all the time at managing Trump and managing the United States and getting, I think, more in control as they go. Yeah, it's worth noting that a new Quinnimpact poll had Trump at 32% approval, which is the lowest rating he's registered. So moving on, Todd Blanche's nomination to be Attorney General is on shaky ground. A committee vote to advance the confirmation has been delayed after two GOP senators expressed concerns about Trump's IRS settlement deal. The sticking point, they want a written guarantee from Blanche that the immunity from audits

granted to Trump in the deal would only cover past tax returns, excuse me, not future ones. Here's Cornyn speaking about the reasoning. This is about making sure that even if you're the president, the United States, you don't get favorable terms from the government in a settlement of a lawsuit that ordinary citizens would not get, like protection from audits by the IRS into the foreseeable future. So I think this is about making sure that we maintain the integrity of our justice system and fairness for everybody involved. Sarah, your thoughts on Senator Cornyn's comments? Well, Cornyn's interesting here.

I saw another comment from him where he talked about loyalty going both ways, where sort of, you know, Trump is demanding and the Republicans are demanding loyalty in this Blanche confirmation. And, you know, Cornyn, who Trump famously did not endorse in the Republican primary in Texas, he went with Ken Paxton, the very corrupt Ken Paxton. and Cornyn, basically by just being a semi-normal Republican from the olden times, drew a lot of ire from Trump. And so, Cornyn, what he's doing right now, first of all, his position is imminently reasonable in this case. But, like, he's doing something to stand up to Trump. But I also, it seems not nearly enough considering how much leverage he has. And, like, he is a, he's not going to be a senator ever again. He's got one chance to.

And you know something else about Cornyn? I didn't know this about him. He actually has a long history of working on sex trafficking legislation. Like that is something that was important to him. And so the fact that the Epstein part of Blanche, you know, a big part of what Blanche did. And I was disappointed Democrats didn't make a bigger issue of Epstein during the confirmation hearings because Blanche is the one who went down and gave the sweetheart deal to Gislayne Maxwell. And so I think Cornyn should.

absolutely torpedo this guy. Like he should be doing it in much stronger terms. So should till us. But, you know, I'm so long past my disappointment with these Republicans that I guess there's just a part of me that's just happy to see any kind of backbone. And it is important. This idea that Trump could get immunity from any prosecution for him and his family going forward from the IRS is insane. And he shouldn't be allowed to do it. And the fact that Blanche isn't signing something to say, yes, this IRS slush fund is a dead letter, goes to show you that Trump doesn't want him to. Trump wants to keep that a live option. And I do appreciate that Cornyn is setting it up to be like either Blanche has to put it in writing that Trump cannot have

this or we're not going to confirm him. And they canceled the hearing this morning because they don't have the votes right now. It's just so, I mean, obviously Congress has one of the lowest approval ratings of any institution in America right now. And it just seems so obvious that they kind of earn this when Republican senators only do their job after they've lost their job. It just, it just stinks. It's like, okay, how does a Republican grow testicles? He loses his primary. And one testicle after a primary. One testicle. One testicle. There you go. My, I'm curious to get your thoughts. My bet here, the over-underlander is that Trump will give and tell him to sign the letter because he'd rather have his personal lawyer as the Attorney General than go through this with someone

else, even if it means getting only kind of the immune part of an immunity deal. Your thoughts? Yeah, I think you're right. I saw Trump, you know, making a comment about court and saying, oh, well, maybe he's still mad at me that I didn't endorse him. You know, Trump doesn't like to give up in these negotiations. And so it might drag on for a little bit longer, but I do think you're right that ultimately starting over with somebody else that is acceptable to Trump and Republicans is not an easy task. And he wants somebody who's going to make the Epstein stuff go away and go prosecute his political enemies. And so ultimately, yeah, he probably gives them what he wants. But it's interesting, isn't it? How scared, how much he doesn't want to sign to sign away

his ability to have this immunity. Like, he is nervous about prosecution when he's out. So just some breaking news as we sit here and record this, per axios, Trump just said that he would have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd Blanche's nomination until his Republican opponents are out of office next January. This strikes me as an opportunity for Democrats to say a vote for this Republican in the Senate race is a vote for Todd Blanche, which is a vote for Epstein. This feels like a messaging opportunity. Your thoughts? Yeah, it's a huge offense opportunity. That is, boy, that's Trump back on his heels.

But this goes, my immediate reaction is it goes to my point before about how much Trump wants it to be Blanche that he's willing to wait until, you know, February of 2027. But that's dicey too. You know, you have to be really sure that Ken Paxton is going to win in Texas and not Tal RICO. That is, that's interesting. I wonder if you will withdraw it. And then, because I guess he still gets Blanch as the acting through that. But that is, that is him blinking. Support for the show comes from Zbiotics.

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Join me, it's Jean-Jean-Cabouchard on the Upside Ticker Talk. We dive into what's moving markets with timely analysis, trends, and answers to ETF questions you've actually been thinking about. Hit play on the upside ticker talk and elevate your ETF investing IQ. So let's move on to the Seychelles case against former FDI director James Comey, where defense attorneys are seeking to get the charges dismissed. They alleged Trump directed a legal secret service surveillance of Comey, and the Secret Service agents were told to surveil Comey as he drove through North Carolina and send information about him to President Trump to review.

Sarah, your thoughts on this case and what it means for the way the DOJ is conducting itself under Trump? Well, it's been horrible to watch them prosecute their political adversaries and people that Trump is personally angry at, especially under something so specious as he puts them, He took a picture of seashells. He didn't even put the seashells there. He just took a picture of the seashells that said 86-47 and then tried to say that that was a threat on the president's life, which is, of course, preposterous.

There's 86-47 merch all over the place. Nobody's trying to find every individual T-shirt maker and prosecute them. They're just going after Comey. And I like that Comey's fighting back. And he has been fighting back this whole time. And he is somebody I do know personally. And I've been impressed with how he has handled himself. because in so many other instances,

when Trump has gone after people, personally with the full weight of the Department of Justice behind them, you know, that rattles people. It chills people. And that is not happening with Comey. And so I think that's... But look, using the Department of Justice

for vindictive prosecutions, this is the... When people say, oh, he's not an authoritarian, you guys are exaggerating, this is authoritarian stuff. This is what they do. So more importantly, Sarah,

let's bring this back to May. Sure. I'm in Los Angeles, and I was born and raised here, and I have been fired from some of the best restaurants in Los Angeles, Monty Steakhouse, the Chart House, Stratton's, none of these you'll know. But what I never understood about this, I don't know if you've ever worked in a restaurant. 86 is a common term for, we're out, you know, we're out of the halibut, and we'd have this chalkboard that said 86, and we'd put the things up we were out of. It wasn't, I've never heard it in the context of a call for violence. It meant it's out or it's done. Anyways, most importantly, what summer jobs did you have in college?

And two, is this, it feels to me like this has absolutely no legal merit whatsoever, and it's nothing but harassment to try and discourage other former officials from speaking out. It has absolutely no legal merit whatsoever, and it is absolutely an effort to chill other officials from speaking out. an effort to chill other officials from speaking out. 100%. That's all it's about. And Trump's sort of lust for the prosecution of people he doesn't like. My first job or my job in college the whole way through high school and college was I worked on the pride of the Susquehanna, which was a stern wheel paddle boat that went up and down the Susquehanna River. And I was a server and an ice cream scooper and a crew member for like five

summers. That's awesome. I don't even know where that is. What is that? So I'm from central Pennsylvania and in the big city of Harrisburg, the Susquehanna River runs, you know, through Harrisburg and kind of separates Harrisburg from the other side of town. And Hershey is not too far away where the chocolate factory is made. And so it's like a red and white boat that would go up and down doing little tours that would tell you things about the area. That sounds like an awesome job, and you just inspired, I don't know if you spend much time in Hershey, but we went, as one does with boys, to the amusement park there. Hershey Park.

Hershey Park. And actually, in my last company, I had a strategy firm. We did some work for Hershey. And I found out that I believe all the money from Hershey, the foundation, goes to this wonderful organization where they have houses spread all over fostering. homes spread all over Hershey. Milton Hershey. And they take care of these kids. They find a couple and they have six, 12, 18 kids in these homes and all, quite frankly, I buy Hershey bars now. It made me feel so incredibly good about these people. Did you ever spend any time in Hershey?

Yeah, so I lived in Hershey. My brother was born in Hershey Hospital. And Milton S. Hershey, who is the namesake, did all this work where he took the money and he built, and actually when I did the tour on the riverboat, you know, would have one of those audience, those things that played every single tour. You'd get the same, you know, history of the area. And it was mainly about Milton S. Hershey and all the work that he did with orphans and foster children. And that legacy continues. I do really resent that they changed. They bought Cadbury here, and they changed the Cadbury chocolate. So that's kind of my beef with Hershey. But it was a, You know, when I grew up, they, the, first of all, the town smells like chocolate.

Absolutely smells like chocolate, like for real. And then it had Hershey kisses as the street lamps. Like when you would go down. Yeah, I've seen that. Yeah. That's cool. Anyways, and now that I've taken this way out of script, let's, I'll pull it back here. Yesterday, we learned about domestic abuse allegations against Max Miller, the Republican

Congressman from Ohio, but this gets very thick, very fast. Emily Moreno, who also happens to be the daughter of Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno, is he the guy who decided it was masculine to say, who the fuck do you think you are? Was that the same guy? He did that to Fauci yesterday, yeah. Yeah, wow, what an impressive dude, aren't you a man? Anyways, his daughter says Miller violently attacked her on multiple occasions and, get this, and fractured their two-year-old daughter's collarbone.

Miller, who is running for re-election, has denied it all and said that his ex-wife, quote, sadly isn't all there. So these are obviously really serious accusations and, you know, sad for this family. In the wake of the Graham Platner scandal on the Democratic side, will we see more Republicans speaking out against Miller? I wouldn't count on it. But, you know, it's funny you bring up Bernie Moreno and how, what a tough guy he was. in that hearing, because you know where he hasn't been a tough guy, and standing up for his daughter? I mean, Max Miller, both abused her. I mean, the allegations are that he poured scalding, boiling water on her chest and stomach. Like, it is a sick, sick allegations, and that's not the only person alleging abuse. Stephanie Grisham, who worked in the Trump administration,

she worked for Melania Trump. She also dated Max Miller and said he was abusive. And so now there's multiple allegations, including from somebody in the Trump administration, and Bernie Moreno's not even standing up for his own daughter and granddaughter in this. But don't worry, he shouted the F word at Fauci. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about it. I'm curious to just get your top line impressions and takeaways from the hearing. You know, I think for people, it was a little bit of a Rorschach test. For people who love Fauci, they feel like he was done really dirty. And for people who hate Fauci, they feel like him pleading the fifth sort of over and over again as an indictment of him. I mean, I thought the hearing was terrible in part because there are genuine things we should learn from what happened during COVID. I was, I had lots of issues. I had a three-year-old at the time, or I had two kids that were pretty little. and look, there was so many things that I think were poor decisions,

but also could be understandable in light of how difficult it was to make decisions during that time. But like, it would be good to have a valuable conversation about what did we do, right? What did we do wrong? What did we learn from it? And instead, it's just gotcha, gotcha, gotcha stuff over and over. And so he's taking the fifth and, you know, America gets nowhere from it. Yeah, I found it especially cynical of Senator Rand Paul who filibustered for 10 hours calling the Patriotate a surveillance state. He seems to be comfortable with the surveillance state when he's holding the flashlight and gets to out cringy diary entries from an 80-year-old man.

And let's just assume that Fauci got COVID wrong. And by the way, I think he got it no more wrong than any other health official in any state or any leader globally. This was a very difficult adversary. Yeah. The guy also got PEPFAR right, and I know that you're, I believe you, did you work in the Bush administration? No, but he also got AIDS right. He got AIDS right. I mean, the guy, for God's sakes, give him a gold watch and a dinner and a party.

And the notion that somehow the Republicans have uncovered that a senior level official is a bit of an egomaniac and impressed with his own celebrity. It's like, well, congratulations, you've solved Washington. Yeah, right. And to your point, these hearings could be productive. You know, Dr. Fauci, give us a sense for what, give him immunity. What did we do wrong? What did you do wrong? What would you do differently? How do we do things more right or less wrong the next time a pandemic comes along? And I think the broader theme here that's really damaging is that we're now the common theme for getting up in the algorithms and getting more fundraising is to shippost our institutions. And when you continue to do this, 25% of the scientists have left CDC, the CDC. And it's no accident that we have one of the worst outbreaks of cyclosporin in years. And measles is making a comeback. So rather than, as you referenced, doing something productive that prevents the next natural health crisis, you know, we should expect kind of exploding diarrhea and measles.

It's just such, it doesn't seem as if anyone is really concerned, with, okay, how do we make sure this doesn't happen again, or we're prepared for it, as opposed to trying to shame, you know, an 80-year-old? And I'm disappointed that the public doesn't see this. This goes to my kind of basic notion that we kind of get the leaders we deserve in social media is making voters,

quite frankly, just more and more stupid every day. Your thoughts? Yeah. I think you're absolutely right that this is a, the media environment is very difficult for average people to navigate now. And the algorithms put you in silos. They are all optimized for rage and for fear and for the polarization that we're already experiencing. I think that because we are so polarized, like I said, I think people sort of saw what they wanted to see out of this.

I will say, though, for Republicans, RFK, RFK thought COVID was a bio weapon. and they all confirmed him. And, you know, he, like, cut a whale's head off and strapped it to the hood of the car. That guy's running our current health agencies. Yeah. Summer heats up in FX's The Shards. Said in 80s, Los Angeles,

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According to some recent polling from the good people at Pew, about half of Americans now use AI chatbots for something in their lives, whether it's work or personal. That's a dramatic increase from just two years ago when it was more like 30% of the country. But here's the funny thing. Only 16% of the country thinks AI will have a positive impact on society. Two-thirds of Americans think AI technology is advancing too quickly. And most Americans, especially young Americans, don't trust AI, nor the people in charge of it.

And all of this polling was done before an open AI agent went rogue and hacked another company. On today, explained from Vox, isn't that the thing science fiction, warned us about for all those years? Yes. And what can we do about it? What's the best way to think about age in politics? You don't want to be ages, right? I do think term limits are more important than age limits.

Some old people are really sharp. Bernie Sanders is popping off and he's like, what, 2000? I'm so fed up with the fact that most of our lawmakers are so old. The gerontocracy feels like a huge problem. in American politics. We're now in our third oldest Congress in history. So why won't the boomers retire? I gave serious considerations last year to not run again. I asked 17-term Congressman Jim Clyburn that exact question. And I kept being asked, how do you feel? Clyburn, who turned 86 just this week, is running for reelection in South Carolina again. And I get answering. I feel fine.

And I said, well, then why would you quit? This week on America, actually, Congressman Clyburn makes the case for experience and the establishment. So meanwhile, in Texas, amidst a notably expensive political campaign season, Democratic Senate candidate James Tala Rico, has proven adept at filling his coffers. Tala Rico has spent $12 million on TV out since June. His Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, however, is yet to get a substantial influx of cash from some of the Republican Party's biggest. money committees. Trump backed Ken Paxton, and Republicans are expected to outspend Democrats in most states this cycle. Sarah, you've spoken to voters in Texas about this race, including the woman who voted for Trump in 2024, but finds herself supporting James Talaico. Let's take a listen to

the clip from mid-June. I will be voting for James Tullerico. I like him a lot, even though I disagree with him on some things. I strongly prefer him to Ken Paxton. To me, whether he's a Christian, or not is not a huge deal. That really doesn't influence it, me at all. I'm looking for integrity and character. I really like that he has agreed not to take any pack money. He seems like a really honest fellow, not just the way he talks, but his record. He doesn't have scandals, and he seems very much.

Like, he's trying to make the world a better place. So, curious just again how you would. handicap the race. I mean, we continue to get our heartbroken when I say we, progressives, or I don't know how you identify yourself. I identify as a progressive, but we continue to get our hearts broken in Texas. But it feels, and I've been here before, it feels really good this time. What are your thoughts on the Texas senatorial race? Oh, I would never get too excited about Texas. But I think having a smidge of cautious optimism, look, if the only way for a Democrat to ever win in Texas would be basically with the conditions that we have right now. We have a pretty good

Democratic candidate that especially women in Texas find to be like perfectly kind and reasonable and normal. You have a terrible Republican candidate who has been impeached by his own party. has multiple corruption scandals and has cheated on his wife a bunch of times, who then divorced him for biblical reasons, and everybody in the state knows about that, which means Trump may be happy to endorse Ken Paxton because he's as corrupt and vile as he is, but there are a lot of big donors that don't necessarily want to be on his FEC filings. Texas is a really, really expensive state to campaign in, and so Paxton is basically banking on the fact that Texas is a Republican enough that he can get through. But I think with Republicans as disillusioned as they are,

and Democrats as fired up as they are, and the fact that Talrico is, except for some of his, he has some peak woke stuff that they keep bringing back. But I think he's going everywhere. He's trying hard. He's reaching for swing voters. If it was going to happen, it would happen in this race. So going to the economy, the Federal Reserve has decided to hold interest rate steady for now, but pressure is mounting to face the country's inflation problems head on. It's expected that oil and gas prices will remain high as a compost in the Middle East continues. And U.S. economic growth also slowed in the second quarter of this year. By the way, folks, low growth and inflation is something we used to freak out about when I was an instructor in macroeconomics

and something anyone under the edge of 45 is not experienced. stagflation, and it is literally the worst of all worlds. Fed share, Kevin Warsh, says they will not hesitate to take action against inflation. It was shocking that, well, anyway, what are your thoughts on the Fed right now and interest rates? Any reaction from this meeting? I mean, Trump wants the rates cut, and he didn't get them cut. So I think that's good. There's no way they can cut rates. Yeah. I just don't think there's any rate than cut rates right now. Yeah. And that's the thing about the Fed is like Kevin Warsh, as obviously Trump's pick. I think he wants to be as helpful to Trump as he can, but there's still just economic gravity is right there. Like, you know, and for Trump, this is the thing about with Iran and with inflation, like people only wanted Trump to do one thing. Trump ran on that he was going to lower prices. It's going to get inflation under control. And this was a superpower for him because in his first term, I hear it from voters over. And over and over again, they basically write off 2020 and COVID when everything went south and they think Trump had a good economy.

Trump knew how to do the economy. This is like, this is what Trump can do. He's a business guy. And the fact that he's been able to make no headway on the economy doesn't even focus on it. He's not, he's focused on his ballroom. He's focused on the reflecting pool. He's now launched a war on Iran that's making things harder. He's launched the tariffs. This economy has Trump stamp all over it. Yeah, and as much as I think Fed Chair Warsh wants to please the president, he does not want to be the guy that inspires an upward spiral of inflation, which I think cutting interest rates right now would potentially risk. I want to go off script for a second here, Shara. You're the founder of the bulwark, which people often, people often talk about us in sort of the same sector as being, I don't know what you would call us new media companies or new media, media companies in the, in the political realm. I'm just curious what for, we have a lot of creators to listen to the podcast. You're an entrepreneur. You've built this great kind of new, new era media company.

What trends do you see out there? Like, what do you see happening with the bulwark? And I'll be transparent as well that's good and it's bad. I'll start. Our viewership and listenership, and especially viewership on YouTube is way up. But it does seem like a lot of advertisers are really allergic to political content, which I understand. Like half, half of advertisers just won't get near political content. And so our CPMs on this show, that's the cost advertisers are willing to pay per thousand. And our ability to monetize this content is much lower than our other offerings in tech and in business. Anyways, that's my, that's my appraisal of what's going on right now. I'm curious as an entrepreneur in this space, what you're saying. Well, you know, the bulwark built itself first,

on subscribers. So tell us to that. Yeah, it's not in advertising. I mean, we basically, our advertising model came second, and our subscriber model came first, and I'm grateful for that. And some of it was just a confluence of events where we had been building this community, this audience, kind of right before substack arrived. And then when we jumped on substack really early, we were able to grow as substack grew.

And so I think that was a good synchew. for us. Obviously, we also have like a ton of written products. And so the subscription made sense. And we've been able to sort of both push Substack and use Substack to say like, hey, guys, we're really going to, yes, we're doing all of our newsletters, but we're also doing video. And so we need you, Substack, to be able to also do video, which they can now. But I think a big part of what what we found useful was kind of meeting people on the platforms where they are. So you can subscribe to us on Substac. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube. You can also subscribe to us on Apple. and I think being able to sort of build products for people where they live,

the audio products, the video products, the written products, and then try to sort of, yeah, give people things that, because some people are just audio only. And so we have an audio-only subscription tier. I will just say on the advertiser thing, you're 100% right. People are allergic to political advertising, but what I keep telling them, I'm convinced I'm going to be able to brazen through this.

At some point, these advertisers are going to say, these, especially the more AI slop there is, the having a parasycial, committed, sticky relationship with your listeners and with your community, you just advertisers aren't going to be able to keep sneering at the political stuff. They're going to have to say, I don't know, this is what all, they can keep wasting money on CNN,

which nobody's watching and where nobody has a relationship with people, or they can go where people are connected to the people talking and start investing there. And I think eventually they're going to figure that. out. Yeah, and at some point, the numbers get big enough that advertisers have a typical time ignoring you, and we're seeing that. On the subscription side, so the great white whale of this type of media is subscriptions. But you're competing against Netflix when you ask someone for their credit card who gives them a billion dollars of content for every dollar a month they spend.

We launched a subscription offering about four or five months ago. It's been successful. What's interesting for us. The thing that drives subscriptions is not the ad-free podcast or quote-unquote the exclusive content. We do these almost like classes where someone, the woman who, Mia Sovereo, who runs our data group, will do a one-hour session on how she prepares my decks in storytelling. Or we have Catherine Dillon, who runs our firm, do a thing on visual storytelling. We found the sort of more educational kind of TED Talk instruction-feeling talks have actually been the biggest subscribers, or the biggest catalyst for subscribers, and to a certain extent, newsletters. And I wonder if some of that, though, is just goodwill.

What if you, for creators out there who all want subscription, by the way, subscription revenue folks is valued at three to five times what advertising revenue is valued at in an acquisition market. It's just more dependable, easier to plan against a business, stickier. What do you find moves the needle in terms of getting people to actually pull out their credit card? Well, so part of what is, I think, a bit of a miracle about the bulwark is that we don't gate that much of our content relative to a lot of other media companies like The Daily Wire or somebody else where they sort of drop a paywall all the time. I think max, max 25% of our stuff is paywalled.

And so the reason that people ride with us and pull out their credit card, two reasons. Number one is that they support the mission. They feel mission alive. We're a pro-democracy media company. Then the second thing is sometimes people want to like, they want the commercials gone, right? Because when you subscribe, you get rid of the commercials. But the bigger thing they get is commenting, right? Then they can comment on subsection.

So that's where the community aspect kicks in. I sit in the chat. I try to ignore kind of the YouTube comments because a lot of those people are not. They're just people. We're angry. Angry people are not people at all. And that's fine. But I really try to focus my energy on.

reading the substact comments because those are people who read everything we do. They've got the broader content. They know all of us as different people and what our focuses are and they're really thoughtful and they're really smart and they like each other and they meet each other and they connect with each other. And I think at a time when people do feel lonely, like there's a lot of loneliness out there and they're looking for good intellectual homes and communities, I think being able to give them a place where they can gather has been really special and meaningful for people. And so we don't talk about our folks as subscribers. We talk about them as our community, the board community.

And that leads you then to, you know, we do live shows. They're all sold out. People come. They're raucous. They're ready to hang. And it's really, really fun. But I do think building a community is different from building an audience. And if I was giving advice to creators, I would say, think about it in terms of like,

what kind of community do you want to build, not just how do you find an audience? I think that's, I want to just stop and highlight that because I do think that's, I I didn't. I've learned from that or what you just said, and that is, you know, I understand the need, the importance for community, and I do, I do think that probably a third to half of the people who sign up for our subscriptions, just like us and want to be supportive of us. But what you said that I think has really struck a tone of something I hadn't thought about is that a great weapon for building community is engaging in the comments. And I do agree, on substack, it does feel more authentic. And I do think that responding and fomenting or

catalyzing a conversation makes sense. All right, well, listen, let's leave it there, Sarah. Thanks so much for joining us today. Everyone, be sure to follow Sarah at the bulwark. She's no longer on the pride of the Susquehanna. You have to check her out at the bulwark. Sarah, again, thanks so much for pinch hitting here. Thanks, Scott. Super fun. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if, like what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what-if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca.