The Bulwark Podcast - Adam Kinzinger: A Small Man

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

The ex-POTUS who claims he was taken down by the deep state is looking even smaller in court, getting scolded by the judge and sitting through testimony about how he and Melania don't sleep in the same bed. Plus, RFK Jr.'s brain worm, winning over the still-going Haley voters, and the plan to ban porn. Adam Kinzinger joins Tim Miller. show notes: Tim's interview with Tammy Baldwin Tim's interview with Colin Allred

Hello and welcome to the Bollard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm here with the resident bro and chief, Adam Kinzinger, former Republican congressman from Illinois, senior political commentator for CNN, founder of Country First, author of the book Renegade, Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country. He also writes a Substack newsletter. He's also sick. He's like, this is like the Jordan flu podcast for you. You remember the Jordan flu game? Yeah, it was like a, I did like a little, hey, it's morning. What's going on? I'm feeling great. And then I'm not feeling great all of a sudden.

So we'll get through it. It's all right. We're going to make sure you have your Z-biotics, you know, and and we're gonna make sure that uh you know you're just like jordan elevating over byron russell in the nba finals i want to start with what the president of the united states was doing yesterday i know that that's unusual for a news program these days to actually listen to what joe biden said better to talk about stormy in the missionary position or whatever uh the kids on campuses but joe biden gave a pretty interesting speech on Holocaust Remembrance Day. And I want to play two clips for you.

We've seen a ferocious surge of anti-Semitism in America and around the world. Vicious propaganda on social media. Jews forced to keep their hides or keepers under baseball hats, tucked their Jewish stars into their shirts. On college campuses, Jewish students were blocked, harassed, attacked while walking to class. Anisemitism, antisemitic posters, slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel, the world's only Jewish state. Too many people denying, downplaying, rationalizing, ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust, and October 7th, including Hamas's appalling use of sexual violence to torture and terrorize Jews.

Now, here we are, not 75 years later, but just seven and a half months later, and people are already forgetting, are already forgetting that Hamas unleashed this terror. It was Hamas that brutalized Israelis. It was Hamas who took and continues to hold hostages. I have not forgotten, nor have you. And we will not forget. I want to get to the actual war policy with you in a second, Adam, because we might have a little disagreement on that. We'll see. But just on the rhetoric side first, you know, isn't this what people have been asking for him to do? Like, there's no, oh, and also Islamophobia, and also Islamophobia is serious, but there's no trying to, you know, be like all bigotry matters in this, you know, it's focusing on the one problem, right? And isn't it what we were hoping for Republicans always to like go out there and give a speech and say, I'm concerned about the domestic extremism on my side. They never do it. Shouldn't he be getting out of boys

for this? Well, you should be getting out of boys. He never does, obviously. And I think this is the, I don't know if this is on the media, if this is on us, if this is on the White House, but when he goes out there and he says, you know, normal things like this, right? Stuff that you're listening to, you're like, wow, this is a president. This is what we should hear for president. They need to be out there promoting it. They need to be out there talking about that as well. But it is so nice to hear somebody very openly say this anti-semitism is out there this anti-semitism is wrong yeah i didn't hear any uh two-sidedism to that so i

thought it was pretty solid and uh we'll see if the republicans give him credit i think i know the answer to that one already though no republican politicians are to give him credit i don't know maybe mitt but the frustrating thing for all this is you have you know i got in this fight on tv with this guy eric levine i've mentioned this a couple times i think it's really telling because because there are a lot of people that are like this that are like they are on the right they don't like trump some of them are jewish maybe some of them are just good friends of israel non-jews and they see what's happening on campus they see what ilan omar says or whatever and they're like, you know, I'm the left. I'm really worried about the left.

They're on the side of Hamas. They're on the side of Hamas, and so I'm going to have to vote for Trump. When meanwhile, you have Trump's actual opponent repeatedly saying like, no, fuck Hamas. I will not forget. I'm not going to change. You have these people in your life, right?

Can this break through with any of these people? Is there a, can we send them an audiogram of Joe Biden talking about this? Yeah, good luck with that. I mean, yeah, you know, you can, but in people's minds, if you send it to them and they're like, oh, he's great, he's going after, you know, anti-Semitism, gee, they're not playing the clip where he was being anti-Semitic or where he's also talking about this other side as well, too. So I think I don't know if it would have that much impact in it. But, yeah, it's just it's a massive difference. It just depends ultimately to people. Who do you want for president?

What kind of a president do you want? Do you want somebody that can lead your better angels, that can send you to a better place? Or do you want to wake up angry every day and have somebody that is using a serious issue, not trying, you know, like anti-Semitism and what's going on in Gaza, not to bring us together, but to tear us apart? It's nice to see a difference for a change. Well, if you want to go listen to the whole speech, do it.

I wanted to play a good bite of it. I was sending my Biden friends attaboys yesterday because, you know, I complain about them enough on this podcast when they don't do well. Let's talk about the broader issue, though. Some people then will take it to the next question and say, all right, well, that's good on Biden for condemning anti-Semitism, but he's putting some conditions on Israel. You know, he's not giving full-throated support to Bibi. Some of the weapons are moving slowly i guess the idf push back on that notion today in a new story but how do you you know assess the biden administration's conduct

when it comes to the actual war i mean i think they're doing as well as they can do taking the political reality uh taking the fact that you know there is no way for a war in Gaza to happen where it's not just some awful story. Let's think about this. In Mosul, for instance, when we were going after ISIS, we basically leveled the entire city of Mosul. The difference is people that lived there had an opportunity to get out, and the only ones that stayed are ISIS.

So what you have in Gaza is basically like that, a very dense area where there's these terrorists. The problem is- And way denser than Mosul. I mean, it's like one of the densest places in the world. Yeah. Yeah, way denser. But the point is though, they cannot leave like people in Mosul did. They cannot leave for refuge because the borders are blocked in Egypt and Jordan. So you sit there and you look at that and you're like, okay, that's a terrible thing. The bottom line though, I think Biden is doing as best as he can when it comes to Israel, because he cannot give Bibi, who is unpopular here, he's unpopular in Israel, a blank check to do it. We have to talk about things like precision strikes. We have to talk about counterterrorism. That's really important. You've got to keep the world on your side as well. So that's, I'd give them a solid B,

I guess. All right. Well, we're basically on the same page on that. Maybe that may our one little disagreement on this is, isn't there also reason to not give Bibi a blank check because there's no reason to trust Bibi and that they have a good plan right now? I don't know. I was listening to some other podcasts and somebody put this better than i did and it's like the two goals of israel their stated goals are eradication of hamas and getting all the prisoners released and it's like they're kind of in conflict those two stated goals right and and like no there's no real clear plan for achieving both at the same time. Right.

Well, and that's what happens when you kind of create a plan or create a sense of what you need to do. In an emotional time, you usually put out a standard that you may or may not be able to meet. How can you eradicate Hamas? Is that Hamas's military power? Is it Hamas's entire organization? Does that mean until the last Hamas person is alive? And so I worry that Israel set out a goal that is too big, but this is where the U.S. can exert that influence is just to make sure that, okay, your goal is too big.

What's your real goal? What can we really do? Where can we get you through? Like, how can we try to switch Hamas out with the Palestinian Authority, for instance, and that's about the best you can do. I was hoping for full hawk Adam, so I could sound like humanitarian squish, and you're going to be you're ready to be bomb, bomb, bomb in Iran over here. And like, look at this. I don't know, that's fine. We can this is great. We're growing together. You know, I guess if I wake up not feeling well, I'm a little more dovey, I guess. Maybe the thing. Next time'm going to be like, hey, that thing I said about Irene.

You know Adam's under the weather right now. He's like, can't we all just get along? All right. Let's move on to Stormy. How much did you get to see yesterday? I mean, we can't see any of it. It's too bad that there aren't cameras in the course. How much did you get to catch of the?

I didn't catch much of it yesterday. I just got the the top line okay we'll have a fuller report with uh with ben with us tomorrow um from the courtroom but um i just wanted to talk to you about just the broader question of you kind of the political ramifications or something like this the thing that struck me yesterday about the stormy testimony is two things one trump comes off in the story that she retells as absolutely disgusting which is not like that surprising right um given that it's trump and that he bragged about grabbing women by the pussy and all that but um you know i don't know i think some people have an impression of the stormy situation where it was like oh you know they're both they're both getting something out of it he's a celeb and he was

suave and you know she uh was you know liked being around trump and like the story she actually tells is like no she was grossed out by him he's trying to pressure her and say that she can get director roles if she sleeps with them and he's got a security guard standing outside the door so like it wasn't like rape but it was like kind of rapey have people internalize that is that just me that's saying that that that is going to be a turnoff for folks or does that not matter is this all baked in where are you on that question i guess i want to say i'm in the middle okay what i cheat towards is saying it's already baked in you, the thing that kind of holds me on the other side is once he gets the conviction, once he gets that, he becomes the convicted rapist or he becomes this and this and this. Does that change when you hear it? When you hear convicted felon? Maybe.

But honestly, I think it's all just baked in. Yeah, that's maybe true. I don't know. I just, I do think that there is a misalignment still between trump's actual behavior with women and the reality of it for some people maybe bringing that into alignment work and help the other thing is like he's there in court and there is just this pathetic nature of it yeah you know she's up there talking about how bad he is at sex and and she's up there talking about how she coerced him and now him and melania sleep in different beds and he's forced to sit there and kind of just mutter under his breath and get finger wagged by the judge it's a small man yeah there and this is where i do kind

of wish there were cameras in the courtroom but is there a error to take out of the balloon here maybe not on the merits of the arguments but just like this is not a error to take out of the balloon here? Maybe not on the merits of the arguments, but just like, this is not a winner. This is not somebody that's beating the deep state right now. That's one of the things I've always argued is that if you think of a typical Trump supporter, if you come out and say, look, Donald Trump scares me. Donald Trump, you know, I'm worried about Donald. Like some of them love that because to them, it makes him more powerful. So I think when you can take Donald Trump and say, look, I get it. He wears a long tie and he says crazy words, but he is not the courageous man that he lets

himself out to be. Donald Trump is small. Donald Trump is a victim. Donald Trump whines. Every time Donald Trump says something, it's about himself and how he's a victim of something. And all of a sudden, the Republican Party has become the party of the victims. I think there is a certain subset of people that would work on, but that message has to keep getting hammered home. It's kind of one of the things I'm focused on with Country First is that message of look Donald Trump is not the big bad scary guy actually he's just a victim and he was president of the United States for four years and he still was overtaken by the deep state and every you know it's like this guy is a small man and I do think that is the kind of thing that can help with some people if that message is just hammered after a

while another favorite story from so far this morning i don't know if you were drinking your nyquil if you've seen it so maybe i can just i can just surprise you with this there's new york times revelation about rfk jr that is uh in a 2012 deposition rfk jr uh admitted that he had brain worms not like not like brain worms as we like to say colloquially here like lauren bobert has brain worms no he literally had a worm that ate part of his brain and died inside of his brain and his behavior started to get so weird that his friends asked him to look to see if he had a brain tumor and he went to go see a doctor and the doctor said no you have a dead brain worm in your brain and then he testified to this that's how it came out he testified to this in a court case where he was claiming he ate too much fish and the mercury in the fish led to the worm and i mean is there a more perfect

story for our locationk jr than this like if you told me yesterday they're like there's something great that's going to come out of rfk jr he has an actual brain worm yeah come on i don't know whether to laugh or whether to feel bad or what what's going on here but yeah that's i mean i think you can laugh he's recovered yeah i mean i guess maybe not mentally he's not fully well yeah i think that i think there may be some lasting impacts there but that's the craziest thing i've ever heard and how do you get brain worms now i'm scared like i don't even want to go outside i want to go outside because i don't want to get a brain worm where does that come from if you listen to rfk jr i'll tell you

what you should not do since you got the brain worm don't eat fish okay don't take vaccines right do take steroids yes it's pretty important that is the most important thing it's an it's an it's an interesting combo you know when you're trying to to live the health the health and wellness life where are you at on the on brain warmed rfk at this point are you feeling like like what's your concern level for how much he might help trump hurt trump what's your assessment on that? I'm like, it's my one that I'm just really still uncertain about. Yeah, I am too. You know, you look at these numbers and you know, some of them show it actually obviously helps Biden. I'm still of the belief

that he is helpful to Trump in the long run, because you think about it. If you're a Donald Trump supporter, you're not going anywhere. He's like Coca-Cola, right? Like you're not going to go get RC. He is the man. I don't think they're going. I mean, he's like RC kind of, I guess. If you're an RC person, you've already made a choice. You've made a counter-cultural choice. You're sticking with RC. That's it. So just given that Donald Trump's folks are a cult, I's it so just given that you know donald trump's folks are a cult i think it's just more obvious that he's going to help trump but it is possible you know we'll see what happens my worry on this is black voters i talked about this a little bit with bakari sellers last week

and he was less concerned about this i'm going to have additional conversations about this in the coming weeks with other folks that are really kind of deep in that community and kind of know the voter electorate but the numbers are the numbers and there's a pew study out that looked at biden 2020 voters and what they're doing in 2024 the amount of ground he's lost with black voters in that time is alarming it is yeah and so maybe the theory is that they come back home in november when the choice is clear okay maybe like kennedy's existence does it offer an off-ramp for somebody that's unhappy with biden either about inflation or gaza or whatever and they're like i can't go all the way over to trump like this is ridiculous like the polling that shows that biden's losing out black voters doesn't actually show that

Trump's gaining that much, despite like his awesome spin that black people love felons. Yeah. But it does show this like undecided is up. And I do worry about Kennedy with that group. Yeah, I think with really anybody out there voting, if they're not happy, you know, if they're like, oh, I can't go with Biden or I can't go with Trump, they're probably going to go for Kennedy because he's going to be the protest vote this is like the ross perot and who are the unhappy groups right like let's just talk about this actually because it's really

nothing i want to bring up yesterday was indiana there are three unhappy groups non-college black men mostly young voters yeah okay and you like wall street journal college educated classical conservatives right like those are three main groups that are unhappy with the choices other people are unhappy but like those are the three biggest groups like the two groups that biden is struggling with and those voters kennedy might be a natural fit for like the people that trump is struggling with kennedy is not really a good fit for you know, which is this college educated. And so you see this a little bit in Indiana yesterday, which I think is continues to be the one green shoot for Biden, which is like six figures.

Republicans turned out to vote for Nikki Haley yesterday. What are they doing? They're not going to RFK. Right. So are they going to Joe Biden? Are they going home? They're not going to RFK. They're either going to go home or they're going to go to Biden.

And a few will peel off for Trump. But here's where I think it's really important. If you think about who are the Haley voters in terms of what they care about, they care about foreign policy, right? They're defense voters. Ukraine matters. Yeah, it's important to reach out. It's important to talk to them. But it's important to show a strong foreign policy. Foreign policy is the one thing,

especially as the roles have kind of changed, that is kind of the gateway drug for people to come over to the Democratic Party, because the Democrats are now more hawkish than Republicans on some of these issues. So yeah, I think if the Democrats and Joe Biden can show we're making progress in Ukraine, we're at least supporting them, we're fighting hard, we're standing with our allies, that's one thing you can do to win that 20% is just say, we're for a strong America. That kind of relates to a Substack post that you had the other day. And I don't have the headline in front of me, but it was something about the tale of American decline might be greatly exaggerated. I have kind of a specific angle on this, but why don't you, for folks who haven't read it, why don't you explain the case that you are making about the state of America today on the world stage?

Well, look, the bottom line is, you know, there are signs that America as an empire, if you consider us an empire, is in a state of decline, state of decline with internal disagreements. China's on the rise. So just by contrast, we're in decline. And the question is, can we reverse that or not? And I think there's this expectation or this kind of acceptance from people that, yeah, we're're in decline there's nothing we can do about it let's let's live our life let's burn through cash let's do whatever let's not believe in anything anymore let's you know vote for rfk and and that's a big concern here's my angle in on it and you can riff on this show but i had david sanger on a couple weeks ago and he's sounding the alarm about the the great power threat with China and Russia, which I concur with.

And, you know, he basically talks about how both parties have basically fucked this up for a quarter century now. And he makes some astute points on that. The one area I kind of I didn't think he made that strong case was that he was arguing that these threats to America are urgent and severe, like in this great power battle, that the threat to America is urgent, timely, severe. And I'm like, okay, well, I do think it's an urgent and timely threat. If you're in Eastern Europe right now, I buy that. And if you're Taiwan, is that an urgent, timely threat to America? I don't know. So I've been thinking about this. I've been noodling on this for two weeks. And there's a 60 Minutes piece. I think it was this past Sunday.

Maybe it was two Sundays ago about the border. And the point of the piece was about the hole in the border and that the border is a real problem. And a lot of the points they made were very merited. But one of the points they're making was that a lot of the people coming to the border are Chinese. And not just poor Chinese. Middle class Chinese. Middle class Chinese are like buying plane tickets to mexico city you have to stop off somewhere else but like buying plane tickets mexico city with their

savings and then taking the trek across the border 60 minutes framing of this and many people on social media's framing was like how great of a threat this is but i saw that and i was kind of like hell yeah home team like i wanted to get out my my hulk hogan thing you know i'm real american i'm a real american like if middle class chinese are going on long journeys to sneak into america that just feels like a good indicator that like the american carnage and american demise might not be quite as imminent as people say well that, that's exactly right. I mean, if you look at every indicator of where we're at, I mean, the economy is fairly strong. You look at new business starts, new business starts basically are mainly immigrants, usually first generation immigrants. What is it like 70% are not native born Americans. I mean, if you really look at

the numbers, America's actually doing good. We're holding our own. We're doing well. We've just got to kind of recommit to this idea that we are good. We've got to recommit to the idea that this is worth fighting for. And that's why I think it's important to say we may feel like we're in decline, but we're not. And ultimately, it's our choice. And if we sit around and we just bellyache and we hire presidents that are going to go and do nothing but divide us, that's where we're going to make those choices. Are we going to bring a divider in here to continue us on this slide or somebody that can inspire?

And I don't necessarily think Joe Biden is going to be the biggest inspirational president his second term, but he can actually paint something that matters and gives people hope, gives people something to fight for. I do think if the Democrats can take one thing from us, the new immigrants, to their coalition, at least temporarily, maybe more permanently for some than others, you can take one value that we're bringing. I think that the Democrats could do well positioning themselves as the America is great, actually, like party, like not America needs to be great again. Like America is great now. And part of being America being great is a lot of things that liberals value, actually, that, you know, diversity is part of the reason why America is great. A lot of the, you know, companies coming out of blue states, California is what makes America great, our culture our culture music you know the kendrick beating drake and the beef like there's a lot of things that make america great and

sometimes i felt like not always i don't want to pay too much that like there's some on the left that i feel uncomfortable making that case right because it's like they want to focus on all the ways it can be better that's the whole point of progressivism that's why the word is progressive you know i think that obama was actually pretty good at this. And the Democrats have lost some of that Obama flavor of being able to, you know, combine uplifting American values and American strength while also saying, yeah, and we can do better about this, that and the other thing. Yeah, I mean, they're like, there's not been an inspirational president like that in how long, right? I wasn't a huge fan of Obama, but when he would talk, you could hear that. And you'd recognize that that's somebody that cared and there was a lot

of passion behind that. But yeah, I just think we're not in that now. That's not that moment. I have another news item for you. I think you're going to be interested about something that's happening. Brighten my day. I don't know if it'll brighten your day i'm not sure actually what your habits are in your private time but we're about to find out there's a new policy proposal it's kind of tucked into the project 2025 thing at heritage and um over at the daily wire michael knolls it's like a ben shapiro secondhand man was interviewing johnny mcinty johnny mcinty is on the inside circle of Donald Trump, was in charge of Donald Trump's staffing, would likely be in charge of that again in a

second term. He also starts the Right Stuff dating site and posts very cringe TikToks about how MAGA people can find other MAGA people to mate with. But here he is on this podcast. Let's just take a listen to his new proposal. The elephant in the room, which is a stain on not only society, but the entire dating culture, which is pornography. Yeah. And I think whenever America bans that, which will be happening at some point, everyone will be much better off. Banning porn.

Since this is the broadcast, I felt like this is important for us. You know, I'm not a big porn man myself. I've got a lot of vices. But I do think that that shouldn't land great with the Barstool Bros porn banning. And in your new home state, Texas, I don't know if you know this or not, but Pornhub is functionally banned because of rules that were put in state by the state government. So, I don't know. Is this an opportunity for Democrats? Are they brave

enough to take the pro-porn opportunity i think it might work to everybody's favor just to stay completely away from anything with porn in it porn pornography anything like that so i like i don't know if they'll be anti or so this is just me this is going to be a lowly fight adam people say that i gave up my principles, people say that I gave up my principles. Okay. People say that I gave up my small government principles when I aligned with the Democrats. And I did not. I still believe that we should limit the size of government.

I still believe the government shouldn't be telling me what to do. And I sure as shit don't think that Johnny McIntyre should be telling me what I want to look at, you know, on the internet, on Sunday night when I'm alone in my home. I don't think that anybody should be told what they should be watching. You know, it reminds me of Chairman Xi demanding that the men on TV all be manly men and not sissy men. This is America. In America, we do porn, we also do good stuff, but people can, you know, do what they want. No? Yeah, I mean, that's, we do porn, theater. We also do good stuff. But people can, you know, do what they want. No?

Yeah, I mean, we do. Johnny McAtee really was one of the biggest kind of inducements or one of the bigger kind of points of rot in the administration in terms of creating a lot of mistrust. He was always grilling people. You know, are you loyal enough to Donald Trump? He was kind of his henchman what just a a terrible dude and uh what they do is they'll go on these podcasts then or they'll make comments to try to be as crazy and as terrible as they can because then

they can make money off it you want to go out and say well we're for banning porn or we're for you know whatever it is i think in that same interview said something about repealing the right for women to vote it just yeah it's a little joke just joking we're for, you know, whatever it is. I think in that same interview, he said something about repealing the right for women to vote. It just... Yeah, it's a little joke. Just joking. We're just joking, Adam. Just a little joke-a-roo because he got found out.

Yeah, we're going to ban abortion at zero weeks. We're going to ban porn. We're going to tell people what bathrooms they have to use. You know, we're going to tell teachers what they can talk about. This is the freedom party. We're also going to ban cell-based meat. You see that? Yeah.

Ron DeSantis banning cell-based meat. That's another freedom thing now. Yeah. You're a real meat man now, I guess, probably. You know, I like real meat. But look, I'm not opposed to a lab-grown meat. I don't even know what it means, but I'm not that opposed to it. It might lead to brain worms, I guess, would be the concern.

But as long as the FDA is vetting for brain worm risk. Yeah. Well, let's hope they are i don't think we should be limiting innovation i've got one final topic for you yesterday's pod with jeff duncan what a great american that guy yeah lieutenant governor and wcnn colleague of yours the difference between the jeff duncans of the world and the bill bars and the paul ryans you know we can the Bill Bars and the Paul Ryans. You know, we can go down the list.

John Boltz, like, why is it so hard for people to do the simple thing Jeff Duncan did? Because he came on this podcast yesterday. And I don't think any of our liberal listeners were like, I love this guy's politics. He was like, I love a heartbeat bill. And, you know, we got to secure the border. And this is not a fucking rhino squish. But he's just like, guys, we can't do Donald Trump. It's a no. What's your take? Yeah, the great thing about him is he takes his faith very seriously he obviously is really passionate about this and i know that like all of us it's kind of a difficult decision when

you make a decision to endorse in a party that is not part of your identity but ultimately you are accountable to you you're accountable to god you're accountable to your family and that is not part of your identity. But ultimately, you are accountable to you, you're accountable to God, you're accountable to your family. And that is when I have been talking to Jeff about it, that's something that he has very close to his heart is that idea. So look, you know, every now and then there's a bright star, somebody that's going to do the right thing. And on the sidelines, the people that don't, you know, the Elise Stefanik's in their heart, in their soul, they know what they've done is wrong. And so it just makes it, you know, it makes it harder for them, but good for Jeff.

In a world of Elise Stefanics, be Jeff Duncan. All right, Adam, I was going to keep you around for the mailbag, but you've just been gutting this out. I'm sorry, buddy. I'm in a mailbag alone. No, you're doing great. I have Ro Khanna on tomorrow, your former colleague. Do you have any gossip about him or any hard questions you want me to ask him? no just uh say hello that'd be the best just say hello say hey there's no like cafeteria cafeteria chat nothing good nothing good i'll text you if i get something okay you

text me if you get something good adam kensinger but the house bro former congressman a great american a jeff duncan in his own We're going to have him on again soon. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. You just power down some Pepto-Bismol. Make sure that you don't have any worms in that brain. We'll be seeing you soon, all right? All right, buddy. Later, homie.

Thanks. Okay, that was Adam Kinzinger just doing his best Jordan Flu Game impression. I'm going to do a little mailbag here for a bonus for you guys. Remember, you can reach us at bulwarkpodcast at thebulwark.com if you have mailbag questions. We're getting a lot of the political questions. I've been giving great life advice, I think. I think I've improved like four people's lives.

So, you know, if you're looking for life advice, you can send that in too. Here we go. Steven, what is the fringiest political belief you hold? I had some great questions, by the way, but I'm doing this on the fly because of the Kinzinger illness. And so some of them were just too good for me to give you my off-the-cuff answers. This one, though, I have an off-the-cuff answer for. On the left side, I guess I wouldn't say that I'm a prison abolitionist, because I do think that violent criminals need to be in prison. But boy, I think that there are a lot of people that we have in prison that shouldn't be in prison.

And I think that, you know, the criminal justice reform stuff in Congress is probably even pretty mild for me. If you listen to that serial podcast about the kids juvenile detention center in Tennessee, I mean, it is just like, it is nauseating to think about these teenagers that are getting put in juvie for truancy. Like what, you know, we can figure out ways, volunteer service, public service, more money invested into social workers, you know, to go into these communities. Think about the money we can invest into social workers if we weren't spending so much money you know on our prison industrial complex so like violent criminals need to go to jail i haven't really thought through the

implications of my views with regards to white collar crime because i do think we need to punish the white collar criminals but non-violent offenders in prison particularly juvie is a no for me and that's pretty fringy okay my fringiest right-wing view this is gonna make some people hate me but like i do not want the don't get me wrong don't get me wrong people don't take me out of context i do not want the donald trump administration or the vivek ramaswamy administration or any of these freaks to have access to Schedule Fs. This is the reclassification of career government employees as political appointees. It makes it easier to fire them. And, you know, I got to tell you, we probably could benefit from having some of the

members of the administrative state reclassified to make it easier for the government to shrink or to grow or to reorient itself or do a number of different things. And there are a lot of these folks I think probably should be cut. The number of people we have as federal employees is way too big. The number of people who are doing jobs that really, you know, they could be moved around. I just, I've got, I'm not going to call anybody out, but i've got some buddies that have federal government jobs you know gs13s or something that i think the republic could survive if they weren't in there there was like a moment in 2009 i wish i'd had my political reawakening by 2009 because there was a moment of like tech bro neoliberal leftists who wanted to do liberal good

governance stuff but also wanted to just completely overhaul the federal government and streamline a bunch of shit and and bring in new people who are getting paid more money to do more important things various oversight i worry about this deeply when it comes to ai there are a bunch of areas we're seeing this a little bit with lena k, which you're talking about in that Amazon interview a while back, where if you actually put good people in at the FTC who make a competitive wage, then maybe we can have some good government regulation and oversight. So nothing against you if you work in the federal government. I'm not putting you on the chopping block, but I don't know. I mean, Rick Perry wanted to cut a couple of agencies and he forgot one of them,

but he wanted to cut a couple of them. You could probably sell me on that. So, all right, those are my fringiest political beefs. You can get mad at me in the comment section. Carmen, again, so I guess Carmen has asked us twice. She wants some bulwark discussions of the states in which Democratic senators are vulnerable. I have kind of been falling short on this, on the Senate races, which are really important because the Democrats basically need to run the table, you know, given that West Virginia is off the board. And I think that's going to be very challenging or they have to pick up a blue state. The most vulnerable senators are in Ohio and Montana, Sherrod Brown and Tester. Both are

really good politicians and really good senators. It's just like Susan Collins is literally the only example of a senator that is running way ahead of what her party's presidential candidate does in these races. We're just in a different era now. So I think it's going to be very, very challenging for Tester and Brown. But that's the top tier. Then you move on to the next tier, which are Senate races that are happening in the presidential swing states. So you've got Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, you got Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin. I did a great next level interview with Tammy Baldwin, by the way. We'll put it in the show notes if you're interested in that.

It was one of my Sunday interviews with Tammy Baldwin. She surprised me how much I liked her. She was super candid and very interested in bipartisanship, very interested in, I think, looking at the Democratic Party in a more healthy way about how they can appeal to rural and working class voters. Anyway, check out the Tammy Baldwin interview. Then you've got Michigan, and then you've got the open Kyrsten Sinema seat in Arizona. Oh, and Nevada. You have Jackie Rosen in Nevada. So I would tier those out this way. you get the open kristin cinema seat in arizona oh and nevada you have jackie rosen in nevada so i would tear those out this way i feel pretty good about ruben gallego right now in arizona

carrie lake kind of has all the trump baggage with none of the positives ruben offsets some of the ground that trump is we're about to get to in nevada some of the ground trump is making among working class hispanic, because Ruben Gallego is Hispanic and has a lot of credibility in that community. So I would put that at the sort of bottom of the list. If you're looking at this from a democratic perspective, the ones that you're most worried about being Ohio and Montana. And then the next batch that I would be worried about is I think Nevada, because Jackie Rosen just doesn't have this brand that Baldwin and Casey do. I'm just generally worried at the demographics of Nevada compared to some of these

other states, just because college educated percentage, percentage of Hispanic voters, working class. So Jackie Rosen would be the next one. And then the Michigan, I guess I'm tentatively put on that tier right now, because we still don't know who the candidates are going to be. Alyssa Slotkin is the preferred Democrat from Michigan, at least from my perspective. The Republicans have a wide open primary on their end as well. So we'll kind of put a hold on Michigan for now. from that would be Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, just because like I said, Baldwin and Casey, I think have been very strong senators, very good ties to their communities. Both are running ahead of Biden right now, which is concerning if you look at the poll numbers. And so I'd look at that and then you get to the potential pickup opportunities. You have Florida and Texas,

which I think are both stretches. But I also had an interview with Colin Allred a while back. If you want to check that, we'll put the allred interview as well uh that was before he actually announced but it was still pretty interesting about kind of colin allred the person he's going up against ted cruz in texas so you know if i'm if i'm assessing where you want to give your money volunteer resources ohio and montana at the top nevada and michigan next and put a star next to Michigan, TBD, on how the primaries shake out. And then I would have the third tier, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Texas, and Florida. Two defenses, two offenses, if you're the Democrats. And then below that, for now, Arizona.

You also have that wildcard race with St. Larry Hogan in Maryland. I'll do a deeper dive on that because I think that's going to be an interesting race from a bulwarky perspective because, you know, Larry Hogan, good man, and in a vacuum, I'd be very interested in having Republicans like Larry Hogan in and would want to support him. With Trump on the ballot, you're like, ugh, anything that gives Republicans any more chance of having a trifecta where they have the House and the Senate and Trump gives me the willies a little bit, given the Project 2025 element to this. So that's just a quick overview, back of the envelope, a little bonus for you guys since the Kinzinger interview went a little short. I will go deeper on all those races as we get ahead to November. Send me your hate mail on

my fringiest political beliefs. And we'll be back tomorrow, as I already mentioned, with a bit from Ro Khanna and also a report from New York from Ben Wittes. I hate doing this. I hate telling you what's going to be on tomorrow because you never know. It's live to tape, but it's live podcasting. We're doing this stuff on the fly and maybe one of

them won't show up and now I would have jinxed it. So hopefully not. Hopefully we'll have Ro and Ben Wittes tomorrow. We've got a great slate of folks ahead. Thanks for being with us every day on the Bullard Podcast. Thanks to Adam Kinzinger. We'll see you all tomorrow. Peace. all around and a worm took a bite of me and then he washed it down with a bite of you The same worms that eat me will someday eat you too they'll meet you

nibbled on your feet and they nibbled on my toes they become the same when our bodies decompose you'll turn into dirt someday same dirt as me Like one becomes a two And two becomes a three

The same worms that eat me Will someday eat you too They're gonna eat you too. They're gonna eat you. They're gonna nibble on your hair. They're gonna eat you up. They're gonna slither all around you. Touch you everywhere. We got the same worms.

We got the same worms We got the same worms We got the same worms, baby They're gonna eat you Same worms that eat me will someday eat you too The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.