The Adam Mockler Show - Addressing the controversy…

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

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Seriously, why aren't Democrats in Washington doing more to stop Trump? I know. Have you heard about Phil Weiser and Colorado, though? No. Is he different? Yeah, A.G. Weiser sued the Trump administration 65 times. He's beating Trump in court again and again. Things like protecting Obamacare against Trump's illegal tariffs, and he even won against Ticketmaster. So he actually gets results. Exactly. As governor, Phil will fight for Colorado. Paid for by Phil Weiser for Colorado registered agent in Nand and Nosegazy.

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. You have had some great appearances on CNN where you've destroyed another guy from Kentucky named Scott Jennings. I debated you on TV four to six weeks ago and you said we were weeks away from it. Now you're making condescending remarks because you can't defend the fact that this war is not going your way. Wait, one more time. Not going. We've gained one political concession.

Tell our audience what it's like to own Scott Jennings. It's not even about owning him. The most offensive part of all of it is how little he is bound. to the truth or reality in any way. Adam, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Governor Bashir, for having me. You know, before we start, I just want to say, I've really appreciated and looked up to your communication style

among a few other Democrats who have led the way in this country on this, you know, common sense reaching to your peers' communication. You don't care if somebody's a Democrat or a Republican. You're serving all of your constituents. And that's something that growing up in Indiana, I've tried to embody. So I just want to say thank you so much for your leadership. and I'm excited to chat. So that's where I was going to start.

I'm from Kentucky. You're from Indiana. How do you think your upbringing has impacted your style? You know, it's interesting. I grew up in Red State, Indiana. I grew up in Northwest Indiana. So there were some, you know, liberals around me, but I had a lot of formative conversations in my youth

with my friends and my friends' parents, honestly, during Trump's rise. Like, during Trump's rise to politics, I would go over to my friend's house, and their parents would be talking, about this progressive style of politics. I had one friend when I was about 11. I was in the car with his parents and he was basically saying, their parents were saying that black Americans should be more grateful to be in America. And this was like a weird inversion of slavery that I'd

never really heard before and I tried to push back. But I wasn't really equipped at the moment. Now I know about a decade later, this is the type of politics that Trump took advantage of. So I grew up in Indiana. I always made YouTube videos. I run a channel now that I made when I was about nine years old. I run the same channel, but I used to make Minecraft videos. Yeah, yeah, I built these skills in editing that I now use every single day. But I also remember debating my teacher in fifth grade about gay marriage and getting kicked out of class for that because I was being disruptive. I probably was being a disruptive little asshole, but I got kicked out because I was standing up for what I believed in. And like all of these formative experiences

having a dad who's actually Syrian, a grandpa who immigrated from Syria, having immigrants in my family really has shaped my experience in a formative manner, and just growing up and watching Donald Trump as the president has really reinforced a lot of that. Well, and I'm glad we have your voice out there because I worry with Americans at a certain age,

they haven't known many other presidents or noticed. My worry is that this somehow becomes normal for people. Yeah, and it's like trickle-down assholery, if I'm allowed to say that. It's like Donald Trump sets the tone for not only the Republican Party, but a lot of youth in America. And then you see people on the far right copying this trickle-down meanness towards other people. When America is supposed to be like an egalitarian society, a pluralist society where a bunch of groups can coexist in harmony, we have Donald Trump trying to demean and attack female reporters, trying to otherize immigrants, trying to enrich himself and his buddies.

And like, I don't know. I was talking to someone earlier that's way older than me, and they told me that there's two types of successful people, those who are successful and know that they have a duty to help those around them, and those who are successful and only enrich themselves. And I fear that right now the main model we have in America is that second model, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, people who disenrich themselves, bad role models. Yeah, in many ways, I think that's the two views on masculinity,

which people keep talking about. on the podcast or the online sphere. You got a lot of people that think masculinity is bullying somebody. I've always thought it's being the guy that stands in between the bully and the person they're going after. Yeah, that's the true masculine vibe, in my opinion. And that's what the Democrats have to lead with. I think that if Democrats continue to lead by example

and making sure that we are sticking up for minorities, holding the line, while also taking common sense positions and not being baited into taking bad positions, and we'll always come out on top. So tell me about the transition from making Minecraft videos to getting into political commentary to then just taking off to where you are now. It's a really good question, Governor.

Thank you. So, I mean, a lot of the skills that I use every single day were actually built when I was like nine or 10 years old editing these videos over and over and over. I unknowingly was building commentary skills, communication skills and production skills that I now use every single day. When I graduated high school,

I really didn't like the school structure. I was smart in high school. I was in honors classes, but really struggling. So I decided to go to college for a year, and I took a film class that reinvigorated my love of filmmaking. You know, in high school, I stopped Minecraft. I wanted to actually get girls and not be the Minecraft guy all the time. I swear, I privateed the videos.

And I graduated, and I realized there was a Trump rally two states away. So I grew up in Indiana, and the Iowa caucuses were going on. So I emailed like 30 different cameramen, and one camera guy responded and said, my free weekend. So I drove over like six hours, the longest I had driven at 20 years old, three years back. And I debated these Trump supporters, but not in a way where I'm condescending them. I don't think that's really, I don't think that's very productive to just condescent your fellow Americans. There's moments. Like if I'm on TV debating Scott Jennings, that's different.

And we enjoy that. Yeah, thank you, thank you. When I'm talking to the average American who only consumes Fox News, and you know this better than anybody, Governor. I want to hear what you have to say about this. You can just say facts that disrupt their narrative. They haven't heard a lot of these basic fact patterns. There's a very viral video where somebody says, let's stop funding Ukraine and put America first.

So I say, sir, funding Ukraine, in my opinion, is how you put America first. It's good for our economy. We're holding the line on a sovereign country. We're beating Russia. And like, I reframed it economically. I said, we're sending old stockpiled military equipment and it's helping us economically.

And at the end of it, he went, wow, I never even heard those talking points. I never even heard those facts before, and it works. It breaks through. So I think about some of the content you've put out there. You had one viral video, watch elderly woman destroy Maga Bro in 60 seconds. Tell us a little bit about that, but also how you know you've got something that will cut through. Well, that video in particular is Nick Shirley going up to, you know, the famous Nick Shirley, going up to an older liberal woman and trying to bait and trap her. And she kind of just says, I'm American.

I'm okay with immigrants saying next to me. I'm okay with people of different diverse beliefs, staying in this country and building in this country. And he just basically got rolled by this elderly woman. It's really, really funny. But right now, my communication style in democratic politics is focused on being precise, being a fighter, being objective, and trying to provide this firm version of liberalism

that we've lost in the mainstream. The word liberal, in my opinion, has been bastardized, but it should mean a society that can live with social harmony, a society of a bunch of different types of people who can then build towards similar objectives. My Muslim grandpa, who goes to Friday prayer every Friday, passes a synagogue, a church. He's got a diverse community back in Indiana.

And, you know, in Indiana, I believe 20% of the physicians are immigrants. Across America, I believe it's almost 30% of physicians are immigrants. So these people are additive. and just making these points in a very common sense way, I think has been missing for a bit. It felt like the Democratic Party lost our affirmative objective. I was very supportive of Joe Biden's presidency.

I still am. I'll still defend it. But there were moments where he didn't have the affirmative message needed to counter the message that Donald Trump was giving, right? And I think the other challenge is you've got to own your success. People need to see, touch, and feel that their life is better. and so it's important not just to have those policies, but for you to get that communication out there

that this is what happens when you elect the right people. Can I ask you as a very popular governor of a red state? When I talk about these conversations I have, does it remind you of a lot of conversations you've had with quite literally people who are working every single day, normal Americans, who may just have fallen victim to some of this Trump? Yes, is that fair to say?

So when I first came in as governor, I followed a guy named Matt Bevin who was Trump before Trump. He denied the election. He tried to defund our universities illegally, tried to withhold dollars, tried to cut public pensions, tried to break unions. If all that sounds familiar, he did it before we got Donald Trump. And so in the beginning, some of the conversations were tougher. I mean, I remember in that race, some people refused to shake my hand, which I'm from Kentucky. We're supposed to walk up to the person we dislike and shake their hand.

But what I saw is steady leadership over time that is not judgmental. I think what you're saying is exactly right. I never used the phrase MAGA voters because I don't want to judge voters. I want them to come back to some level of stability. But I will judge the leader that's out there doing those wrong things. But I found that the more that you spoke to people, not just about your what, but your why. So here's what I'm doing, but here's why I'm doing it, right? This is what drives me to make that decision.

It really opened up people being willing to talk to me, even about things that they view very differently than I do. And where we were by 24, which, you know, Kentucky went plus 31 to Trump, which I didn't like, but we didn't have the signs, we didn't have the flags, we didn't have people yelling at each other. And so I do know that a little more unity is possible. I absolutely agree. So I guess the Democratic model, something that could be successful, is owning your successes, as you said. You're good at that. Zohran Mamdani is good at the New York City Mayor. He really is good at, you know, flaunting his successes. And then having a less judgmental environment where you can actually have person-to-person conversation. Engaging. Engaging conversations, talking about your lived experiences, these things can fine. And going everywhere. I mean, Democrats, and certainly the Democratic Party in their terms of investment, stop going a lot.

of places. Like I am proud of Southern Democrats because we were defunded, uh, left out, looked down upon for so long. And today we've got three Democratic governors in, in Kentucky in the South. In Kentucky and Virginia and North Carolina, Georgia gave us two Democratic U.S. senators in the South. North Carolina is going to add one. And Roy Cooper, you know, that's scrapping to have a seat back at the table. Yeah. And I think that Democrats being something that I talk about a bit is Democrats being less risk-averse in the media. Now, it's different when you're in a governmental position. The risks are very, very different, what you can say and what you can't, and what you need to be careful saying when the federal government could come down on you at any moment. But I think

that some of my problems with Democrats and some young men's problems with Democrats over the past few years has been twofold. Number one, a risk-averse Democratic Party. Number two, a finger-waggy Democratic Party. So think about how devastating of a combination this is. Not only do the Democrats seem a little bit lame, like they won't go in some of these cool places. I'm not trying to like overgeneralize, but overall Democrats were just a little bit lame, wouldn't go in these places. And then when you would make a mistake as a young man, there was no room for error. I had a friend who is by all accounts, rather liberal. He's okay with freedom of expression. He supports gay marriage. He supports liberal economics. He's overall liberal, but he told me the

Democratic Party had felt suffocating sometime throughout Biden's term. And by suffocating, he just means like there wasn't a flexible enough dynamic tent in this. So I think exactly what you're saying is very true. Like non-judgmental politics will go far away. You can't be a party where you've got 100 litmus tests where you have to use the exact right phraseology, even if your intent is the same. And if you don't do it right, you're canceled regardless of everything else.

But what I see now is that's a Republican Party. But it's one litmus test. Do you agree with everything Donald Trump said today, even if it's different than what? he said yesterday, and if you don't, you're canceled and get out. That was Thomas Massey. My favorite part is during the confirmation hearings when they get asked who won the 2020 election, and they can't answer so they have to say Joe Biden served four years as the president. It's like, dude, just say that Joe Biden won. Why do they have to dance around this?

Obviously, because of Trump, right? The other point that you're making is that elections are math. If you require everyone to agree with 100% of what you do, you're never going to win an election. because we're all a little bit different. Your friend may have gone through an experience that impacts one issue that just makes him view it a little differently, and we've got to be open to understanding that. My take is that if the Democratic Party will be the party of the American Dream, where we want you to have a good job where you can afford the things you need,

we believe in health care where you can see a doctor in your own community, where we're the party of safe roads and bridges, great public education, and safe communities, then we can have a little disagreement on the, other things, but guess what? We can better everyone's lives. Yes, sir. I think they call it supermajority thinking, where if we want a true supermajority across the entire country, we need a dynamic enough tent for, you know, like-minded people who might be a little bit different. I think Zoran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, is doing a brilliant job, and I also think that you, as Governor of Kentucky, are doing a brilliant job. But if Zoran were to run in your seat, he would

lose. I think that different politicians in different areas have different platforms, and as long as we have the same fundamental core basics, we need to not be so ideologically rigid, if that makes sense? Oh, I mean, it's that idea that if somebody agrees with you on 80% of things, they're a lot better than having the person who agrees on zero with you. I think we're seeing it right now. I think we had some Democrats that were looking for absolute purity from Kamala Harris, and now they've gotten somebody who disagrees with absolutely everything they stand for. Yep, and then you know what really discussed me. I mean, we're talking a lot about democratic strategy on our side,

but to talk a little bit about the news today and what's going on on the other side with their overall strategy, there is a top-down effort over the past decade to undermine the sanctity in our elections. You said that the governor before you did this very same thing, so more than a decade, I guess. But lately it's, again, like trickle-down election denial. We're seeing Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.

He was just walking through the halls of Congress, you know, shedding doubt on the California election results. He's basically feigning, like he doesn't understand what's happening here. He's acting like he doesn't understand the election process when it's actually kind of simple. Like if you postmark your ballot by election day, you have seven days for it to arrive. There's some simple mechanisms, but they are intentionally undermining that. And to me, it's very, very despicable seeing that lack of leadership and that undermining of our institutions. We shouldn't allow for that. And it's ridiculous. They don't even believe in what they're saying because Trump voted by mail in several elections. Just amazing. One thing that you can offer so

much expertise on is social media and all the various platforms. And for some of our listeners, they're on a couple, but there are just so many. And Democrats now need to communicate on all of them. Tell us a little bit about, you know, you've got your YouTube piece, but you also also are posting on the other parts. How do you tailor your message to the platform? It's not even specifically about creating a unique piece of content. And this is like me giving, like, you advice or any of their campaigns that are trying to think about this. That's why I ask the question. Exactly. Okay. Okay. So I mean, I'm not going to say I'm a master, but I think that this is how you should think about it, Governor. It's not that you have to create a unique piece of

content for each platform. That would be way too much. But you need to be putting yourself in situations that are clippable and distributable across all platforms. If you go and on a very captivating podcast like a bar stool or a Joe Rogan that reaches the general public, that is the main piece of content. Then you can distribute that across every single platform, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, in clips. I had a friend one time say to me, clipping is the new canvassing. Canvassing is still very, very important. People should be door knocking in canvassing. It always has been. But young people now have the tools and the ability to clip things up on mass and get millions of views in doing so. So you can create your TikTok saying, hey, I'm going

on this podcast, check it out. But it's important that you get the most captivating clips across all platforms, and you don't let any gaps be out there. We have a high school intern right now, who I'm really proud of. And this high school intern, who is really good at social media, is posting just on Reddit for us. All the time, he posts on Reddit. And he pulls 10 million views a month, just posting on Reddit, which is a gap that we had. Wow. So you want to be across all platforms. You don't want to leave any of these gaps. And you just want to create captivating content, go on shows, have these conversations. I mean, I would love to see a series of you just talking to Maga, or Kentuckians.

I mean, Kentucky voters, but people who voted the opposite direction. Something like that would go incredibly viral. It's not hard. I can walk down the street. So, speaking of captivating, you debated Mike Lundell. Yeah, that's a deep cut. That's an old one. Wow. You know what you want to hear about that?

I do. Okay. Listen to this. This is a crazy one. We were in Wisconsin. Yes, that is a crazy human being. It was like less than a year into my career. We were in Wisconsin.

I used to go to Trump rallies. And I approach in good faith. But with someone like Mike Lindell, you kind of got to change your strategy a little bit. If I was going to be good faith, I'd get rolled. This dude, Mike Lindell, he starts, we start off for the normal interview. And then I start to push back in a very, very, you know, affirmative way. And I'm saying, listen, there's no evidence of election fraud. And he gets a crowd of Trump supporters around us.

If you scroll through that video by the end of it, there's a crowd of 40 Trump supporters. And then Mike Lindell is basically like, this guy works for Dominion. This guy works for smartmatic voting and wants to rig the pointing at me. And then they're all like booing and everything. The weird part is, even in that moment when Mike Lindell was trying to stir up a MAGA crowd around me, I still understood that even though we were slightly in danger, these were also humans, voters, who genuinely weren't going to hurt me. Like there was somebody to my left, a few feet away, who was trying to calm down the crowd. It was very clearly like a father of some, I could tell, he was just a father. And he was like, guys, guys, let the kid ask the questions. Don't be harassing him like that.

The crowd started chanting the word libtard at me. It's controversial and mean or whatever. But then I'm like sitting there debating Mike Lindell and he's trying to stir everybody up a wild, very formative experience. And these people need to stop spreading elections for all lies. It's like mass psychosis. Well, but you know you're winning when they turned to lying. It was like I remember watching Mike Pence. on Meet the Press, and I keep talking about this because he wouldn't criticize Donald Trump, who sent a mob to hurt him. But every time he got a question that he couldn't answer, because it would have required him to talk about Donald Trump, he talked about abortion. Wow. Right. Pivoting to his strong issues, I guess. I'm just going to start using that every single time I go on CNN, and I don't want to answer a question. I'm just going to talk about something I'm really passionate about. Go to, like, institutions. That is how we all. That is how we all.

to close out because you have had some great appearances on CNN where you've destroyed another guy from Kentucky named Scott Jennings. Someone that goes on and will defend anything the president does or says regardless of how shameful. We'll say virtually anything. So tell our audience what it's like to own Scott Jennings. It's not even about owning him, even though. it's fun to do, I think the most offensive part of Scott Jennings' career, the most offensive part of all of it, is how little he is bound to the truth or reality in any way. He will go on television and demean himself and the audience day by day by lying about the Iran war, lying about the objectives achieved, he's not bound to any timeline, he's not bound to reality, he'll

even sit there and condescend, mainly women on the panel, he'll condescend people. And then, when I'm the one that pushes back in a firm manner and tries to get an answer out of him, he'll act like I'm the one who's breaking some wild norm, right? Yes. So think about this dynamic that we have in the media right now, where Republicans can go on TV and lie over and over and over, and in the moment we try to push them a little bit too hard,

we see fragility in action, and they say, wait a minute, don't you put your finger in my face, though. Don't you put your finger in my face? Dude, maybe if he had an answer to the question, he could have answered the question, but he didn't. They have no answers. And it's interesting. After that moment, he actually began to tone down his confidence about the Iran war.

The next week, he was like, if I may add something to this conversation, I talk to some generals. He's never been this uncertain before. And maybe don't back yourself into corners with awful, awful positions. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, Governor. I appreciate it.