The Bulwark Podcast - Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

Being secretary of defense is one of the hardest jobs on the planet. But after Pete Hegseth was plucked from a part-time Fox & Friends gig, Republican senators could only kiss his ass and act starstruck during his confirmation hearing—all to ensure he takes their calls when they need military equipment or contracts in their states. Meanwhile, Nancy Mace has been a con artist from the beginning, Trump nominated Nazi-curious Joe Kent to run the National Counterterrorism Center, and Tulsi thinks Edward Snowden is a hero.  Sen. Mark Kelly and Rep. Adam Kinzinger join Tim Miller. show notes Tim's piece on Joe Kent courting the racist fringe vote when he ran for Congress

Hello and welcome to the Bulldog Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. As we're recording right now, the Pan-Bondi confirmation hearings are happening. There'll be much more on that tomorrow. Today we got a Hegseth double header and segment two is Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. But first, he was a Republican congressman from Illinois. He served in the Air Force during Iraq and Afghanistan. He's a senior political commentator for CNN, founder of Country First, and

he's got a substack newsletter like everybody else. He's Adam Kinzinger. What's going on, bro? Dude, I'll tell you what, man. I'm happy to be here. I'm so sad I'm missing the grilling that Pam Bondi is gonna get from the Republican senators. I'm sure they're just going to be going through her statements and, and, and

just tearing them apart, doing their oversight job for America. Do you think Tim Sheehy will ask her how many pushups she can do? Or is that just, is that only a question for dudes? I think it's just for dudes, but they'll ask her like- How many pushups can you do actually? Now we're right here. How many pushups can you do these days? I don't know, man.

Like I think without stopping, so we used to do, we do the PT test in the Air Force, which I'm out now, but I could probably get up to, I think like 60 something before I was like toast. Right. Okay. 69. What, what'd you think about Hicks is 47, five, five rounds of 47. You think that's, that's happening? How was his claim?

He's one of those dudes that like you see when you're scrolling through Instagram and he's like, here's what? Amino acids. I'm 50, but you know, I look like I'm 12 and my wife was just born six minutes ago and I do amino acids. That's him. You know those people like, and they're like, and you're like, listen, it's good to be in shape. I try to be in shape as a 46 year old man. When you're obsessed with how you look at 50 something, something is missing in your life, something.

Something else missing. Okay. My husband usually looks at those kinds of guys. I'm not into the muscle men, but I do know who you're talking about. All right. We're going to do a lot of Hegseth. We're going to go deep on Hegseth. We kind of already did a palate cleanser with the amino acids, but I just think given how

horrific the world is right now, we need two palate cleansers. So let's take a listen to a little exchange on the house floor that I don't know if you've caught yesterday. Kirsten Hayes-Royce, Ph.D. Somebody's campaign coffers really are struggling right now. So she going to keep saying trans, trans, trans, so that people will feel threatened and child listen I am claiming my time. If you want to take it outside. Mr. Chairman, the committee is not in order.

Order. Cassius outside, says Nancy Mace. She is not a child. She's glass, she's breaking glass ceilings everywhere she goes. What do you think? That was Jasmine Crockett and Nancy Mace, if you missed that.

Listen, man, I got something to say about Nancy Mace, especially. Okay, first off, she shouldn't have called her child. Okay, let's say that. Like she shouldn't have called her child. Okay. Let's say that. Like she shouldn't have. I just think it's kind of like a manner. So it's kind of like how I say man, you know, kind of like, I was like, Hey man, what's up?

And then some people are like, I'm not a man. Don't call me man. You know, I think, I think it was just cultural, but okay, go ahead. But then watching Mace, it's like, and this, I'm not even joking here. I saw that this morning. Okay. And then I pulled up on YouTube cause it reminded me and I didn't do it on purpose. It just like, you know how you get this chain of events in your mind. Yeah. I pull, I'm not even joking. This is God's honest truth.

I pulled up the Will Ferrell, I drive a Dodge Stratus, like, you know, thing from SNL where they're sitting there eating in the awkward dinner and they all start yelling each other's like, I'm an important guy. I'm a district manager. And literally, and it was not because of her, but it led to that chain because I was like, ah, the Dutch Stratus SNL thing. Like, it's crazy. I mean, and the thing about Nancy Mace is she was when she started out.

So when I was in, she was very much the moderate and mature. And honestly, you remember, I think I've talked to you about how the day before the impeachment vote, I thought we had 25, okay? We ended up with 10. Of those 25, you know, people like Mike Gallagher, who was committed to vote for impeachment until he didn't. And then Nancy Mace was one of those.

She was one of the drivers of it. And then she voted against impeachment, which was disappointing, but okay, fine. And then she just went all in. And all I can say is this, is either somebody has a complete actual change in what they believe, or they were just a con artist from the beginning. And I think that's her. Yeah. But she's having a mental break. She's having real mental issues. And I mean that like, I say that gently,

understanding that if it's true, she really should get help. But that's the kind of thing we've all, when we've done, anybody that's done any significant amount of time in Congress can tell you, you go through dark periods. At some point I can think of years that were pretty dark for me. And I think she's in one of those.

And I say that truly like compassionately. Yeah therapy nothing wrong with therapy I have to do a little therapy I'm gonna have Jason put I drive a Dodge Stratus in and post just so people can I think the people need that people need that these days. I wish you weren't a liar. I didn't lie Ted. I just wish you weren't a liar. I wish you wouldn't call me a liar. Don't raise your voice, Ted. I just wish you weren't a liar. I wish you wouldn't call me a liar. Don't raise your voice at me. I am not raising my voice.

You do not talk to me like that. I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I want underage men! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I am a division manager in charge of 29 people!

I don't care what you do! Shut up, bitch! I drive a Dodge Stratus. Okay, Hag Seth, we could go a million ways with this. So I guess I just, let me put a quarter in and what's your biggest picture thought on the hearing yesterday? Okay, so first off, let me go after the Dems first. I thought the Democrats did a pretty bad job.

Look, I get it. Hegseth was against women in combat and in the military. That's worth one of the senators asking questions on. But Hegseth, I think, regardless of whether you believe he's genuine or not, he's changed his mind. And when he's secretary of defense, it's not like he's going to then turn around and ban women. Okay? But the fact that there were so many senators that use their 10 minutes or whatever, hammering that same thing, I thought was a waste. I also thought the Democrats let him get away with not answering too much. One of the things I learned as a congressman, a witness tries to filibuster you.

So you ask a basic question and they'll try to go for a minute to burn your time. And you have to kind of rudely cut them off and say, no, I'm reclaiming my time. None of the democratic senators did that when he was, you know, burning the clock. Even on the women in the military thing. Yeah. Just like as an example, and I know we got democratic staffers that are the tune in sometimes. So just like friendly tip, like he said he was against women in the military in November of 24, two months ago, right? And so, I just, despite the fact that five of them asked about this, there was never a, so what changed since November? Like, what changed since November? And just

a very direct, specific question. Here was the quote in November. What changed? And then he's like, blah, blah, blah. I was like, so you just changed your mind? Did somebody tell you a new thing? Might you change your mind back in two more months? Yes. You know what I mean? Like, there just was no, a lot of times it was a rant, you know, and this is why we have Mark Kelly on in segment two. I thought he did a nice job and a couple others did a nice job. So it wasn't everybody. So I just think that was to me, like the biggest, like just process, like just

process failing of just being able to go at people directly. And I think like here's one, for instance, again, if he doesn't answer questions, but she didn't answer any of them. I mean, let's be honest, you know, hey, would you refuse an illegal order? That probably should have been asked in the first couple questions, not at the very end, because then every senator could have been like, wait, you didn't answer. The answer should always be yes, by the way, always, if you would refuse. But like, you sit there and it's like, okay, so I don't know. They were unable to kind of follow up.

The fact that you use Jesus every other sentence as a prop, I would have been like, okay, hey, tell me exactly when was the conversion moment? When was your road to Damascus moment? What were you doing when you realized that your life was a mess and you needed to turn it around? And tell me how your life has been different since then. Because that may be something that's personal to you, but you're sitting there using it, right? Yeah. What'd you do that you asked forgiveness for? Right. You never told us. You said you were saved by Jesus. What did He save you from? What

did you do? You never told us. Yeah. So that's on the Democratic side. Look, on the Republican side, it was a joke. It was a joke. I talked to somebody today, and I have to unfortunately leave everybody anonymous here, that talked to a Senator that was on that, a Republican who's like, yeah, unfortunately, he's going to get in. So we all have to, you know, play along. And, but it's all about oversight now. It's all about oversight. No, it's not. No, yeah. No, it's not. It's not. Yes. Yes. A recognized Republican,

U S senator said to this person. But now it's about oversight. So what you saw yesterday, Tim, was they all knew that Hexeth was gonna get confirmed. They all know that, okay? They obviously pre-count this stuff. So now- Does it have to be? I mean, it's only takes three of them.

I know. Are they sure? I mean, Collins, Murkowski, Curtis, one more? I know, I know, but they basically know that that okay, there's not the resistance on this guy So what do you do? So you instead and I like I know this is a former member You instead go from asking serious questions then to how do I kiss his ass? So that when he's secretary of defense, I can get an audience with him about the fighter jet in my National Guard unit or whatever. And that's what they were all doing.

Mark Wayne Mullen, in essence, why are you so amazing? All these people were sitting there trying to, they want to make him happy so that when they call and say, hey, my National Guard unit, my national guard unit needs a new, whatever, you know, Swiffer sweeper, you know, he can do it. He'll take their calls. And so- Adam, that is like, this is, that's like Russia shit. It is. Like that's China shit. We're sucking up to this guy. Like, it's crazy. Like we kind of got, immediately got into the process, like the biggest possible picture,

you know, as somebody that served and was in Congress, who was on these committees, like this is an insane person to make the secretary of defense. Like it is total madness. Like, there's not one person. It's like, guys, this is a little crazy. I mean, we should at least, we should at least pressure test this guy. He's been like half drunk, allegedly on a weekend is a weekend talk show cohost for the last decade.

Yep. My wife had made a point today cause she used to work in the, she worked for Pence kind of under the Scaramucci regime for, you know, Trump for a little bit. She actually dislikes the administration even more than I do, which is funny. But she, she want to do a YouTube segment with me anytime. Well, she'd be good. She can do it in Spanish too. So there you go. Broaden the audience. But like she, she made the point. She goes, a lot of people think that, you know, Congress is this separate and equal branch. I guess technically it is. But the reality is, Congress gets starstruck by the administration. Like Congress gets, when you see somebody that you see on TV that's in the administration or that's close to

Who the president is or that runs this branch or this you know, whatever this agency All of a sudden instead of being oversight you're trying to get in good with these people And that's the dirty secret is it's not actual oversight. It's more like access and that's what this modern, you know, American country is. And so terrible questions by the Republicans and Pete Agseth. Now, can I mention, I haven't seen many people writing anything about this, but the fact that he didn't meet with any or most at least of the Democratic senators is not only unprecedented. It is absolutely a shame because he's making

it very clear that he is going to be a Republican in charge of the Department of Defense. Now we all know that there are Republicans or Democrats that get appointed to head the Department of Defense, but once you take that position or once you're nominated for that position, you at least put on the pretend to be nonpartisan thing by him going and only speaking to Republicans. He made it very clear he will be a Republican military and that that bothers me a lot. Tim, in a way, it's kind of worse than that. I'm glad you brought this up, but I hate to kind of obsess on the process like the kinds of questioning the kinds of meetings. It's

like, it feels like this is a Punchbowl DC podcast or something. But like, the process stuff matters on things like this. This man has been nominated to run the largest bureaucracy in the world, in addition to it being the military. So there's life or death decisions on the line. The idea that he couldn't even meet in private with Democrats before this hearing, I guess he's going to do some meetings after. The idea that they truncated the hearing so that it was like only a couple hours and they didn't get to

ask him follow-up questions. It just shows a total lack of seriousness from the people on the Republican side that they've decided that like they, they are just completely going to throw away any ability to vet this person, any even pretense that this job is serious and that the vetting should be taken seriously. And that is why it's fucking laughable to hear that they are going to do oversight if this is the way they behave, you know, during the advice and consent process. Yeah, absolutely. And look, even on, again, another hit to the Democrats, how come somebody didn't spend 10 minutes talking about Ukraine? For the life of me, I don't understand that. But okay, fine, whatever.

No, let's actually stick on that for a second. That's okay, fine. This is a good point, because this is a hit on the Democrats and on the Republicans, because for the Democrats, it's a strategic thing, right? You know that these Republicans don't give a fuck about somebody cheating on their wife. All right. They're in a Donald Trump cult. Okay. So doing that, talking about that to embarrass them or whatever, it's fine if somebody wants to spend seven minutes on that. But conceivably, you could maybe peel off a Republican on policy issues. Maybe not, maybe not.

Okay, maybe not. But you have Roger fucking Wicker, who is the chairman of the committee, who's the Senator from Mississippi, wearing a Ukraine pin. Okay? And, Hank Seth is testifying, who's clearly just going to do whatever Donald Trump and ultimately Vladimir Putin wants, you know, in order to totally sell out our friends in Ukraine. How can you in good conscience, like, wear a Ukraine pin and say you care about Ukraine and then not even pressure test this guy on whether

he intends to do what he can to help our allies in Ukraine? Yeah. And so one of the, I don't remember who it was, one of the Democratic senators asked him in passing about Ukraine. I think it was the only time he was asked. Instead of Hegseth saying, okay, whatever answer, you know, negotiations, blah, blah, blah, you know, you would expect any nominee to say, of course, we think Russia is wrong and Ukraine is the good guy here, right? Instead, what he said is, we all know who the aggressor is, and we is the good guy here right instead what he said is we all know who the aggressor is and we all know who the good guy is okay well so we just now fill in our things yeah does Trump know right the director of the DNI now you take somebody who's extreme MAGA that has been tweeting over and over how

amazing Vladimir Putin is and they put into that, in their mind, oh well, yeah, obviously the aggressor is Ukraine because they wanted to join NATO, and the good guy is Russia, who's just simply defending their right to exist. Then that's what, like, so why can't he even say that? And by the way, that was every answer Pete Hegseth gave was a non-committal BS or it was thank God for Jesus. It was one of those kinds of things and he got away with it. The Republican Center is a Ukraine thing. I mean, do you think that Roger Wicker has convinced himself that Donald Trump is going to come around on this?

Yes, I think they all have. What is he doing wearing a fucking Ukraine pin? It is just so shameful. The election of Donald Trump is essentially giving Ukraine away. And so then he wears a Ukraine pin on there and doesn't even challenge Trump's nominees on this? What do you do? He's stupid? He's just been fooled? Yeah. Look, I think, look, the human mind can convince themselves of anything, especially if you have to bring into alignment who you are with your values, and currently where you are is outside of your values.

You can convince yourself of anything, and they've convinced themselves. Donald Trump has just looked. He's not saying he wants Ukraine to win because he wants to be able to go to the negotiating table, but trust me, he wants Ukraine. He knows if Ukraine falls, he's going to be judged harshly. And actually he wants Vladimir Putin to think he's unpredictable.

By the way, if anybody else ever says the, Oh, Donald Trump just wants the people to think he's unpredictable BS line, it's garbage. Donald Trump doesn't want people to think he's unpredictable. He just is unpredictable because he doesn't know if he likes our enemies or our friends. And he actually, honestly, doesn't even care who he likes. It's all about what makes him feel good at the moment. It's a three-year-old way of doing foreign policy. Yeah. And in some ways, he is predictable. If you just suck up to him, then he'll do what you want. So in some ways, he's unpredictable in certain ways and otherwise the most predictable person possible in a foreign exchange. Planning any exciting foreign trips this year? I know I'm going to try to take a little vacation

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around you. It feels a little bit more like a vacation. Looking at Babbel, trying to figure out a way to be able to order at the restaurants at minimum, you know, be able to chat with some gays at the bar. That's something I'm gonna be looking into, but first I gotta decide where I'm going. So we'll see how it goes. If you need proof that Babbel gets you talking,

studies from Yale, Michigan State, and other leading universities continue to prove Babbel works. One study found that using Babbel for 15 hours is equivalent to a full semester of college. So let's get more of you talking in a new language. Babel is gifting our listeners 60% off subscriptions at babel.com slash bulwark. Get up to 60% off at babel.com slash bulwark. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash bulwark. Babel dot com slash bulwark. Rules and restrictions may apply. I want to just get in on that Slockkin question that you mentioned, which was an example of the

Democrats trying to pin him down in a way that was effective. Unfortunately, it was the last round of questioning of the hearing, but there was an important issue that was under undergirding this Q&A. So I want to listen to all of it. It's a little bit longer clip than we usually play, but let's listen to Alessa Slock and new Senator from Michigan challenging Pete Heksev yesterday. Donald Trump asked for the active duty 82nd Airborne to be deployed during that same time. Secretary Esper has written that he convinced him against that decision. If Donald Trump asked you to use the 82nd Airborne in law enforcement roles in Washington,

D.C., would you also convince him otherwise? I'm not going to get ahead of conversations I would have with the president. However, there are laws and processes inside our constitution that would be followed. President Trump said in November that he is willing to consider using the active duty military against the quote enemy within. Have you been personally involved in discussions of using the US military active duty inside the United States? Senator, I'm fine.

I'm glad we finally got to the topic of border security equaling national security because it's been abdicated and ignored for the last four years. It wasn't my question. I'm just asking, have you been involved, you're about to be the Secretary of Defense potentially, have you been involved in discussions about using the active duty military inside the United States? Senator, I am not yet the Secretary of Defense. Right.

It's confirmed I would be party to any number of conversations. You haven't been in any of these conversations. Which I would not reveal what I have discussed with the President of the United States. No, no. Do you support the use of active duty military in supporting detention camps? Senator, everything we will do would be lawful and under the Constitution, but I recognize... Okay, you're going to take that as a yes. I'm going to take that as a yes.

That was really... That was the most alarming part. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. This is why I'm a believer in... A lot of times when you compare the House versus the Senate the Senate is always seen as a smarter better body in reality I think the house is and I mean this because and I'm serious We're better at asking questions because we have a much stricter clock, you know

And you have five minutes to ask a question of an important person so what you see in this sockkin there is she basically was able to see when he was starting to filibuster to cut him off. This is what every Democrat should have done, to cut him off, to not let him do it, to go back to her question. No, I asked you a specific question. Now, is he ever going to answer that? Probably not. Is that going to affect his nomination? Probably not. But at least you're getting it on the records. The other thing is, you know, Pete, and again, he did a good job for if your job is not to have oversight and simply to get confirmed by a cult, like he did fine to do that, but he would always answer everything with, I'm

not going to answer hypotheticals. And it's like, look, OK, if Russia attacked, would you defend the United States of America with the US military? Well, I'm not going to answer hypotheticals. It's like, well, no, you're going to be Secretary of Defense. We need to know, would you be willing to do that? So when you ask, would you put the 82nd Airborne on the street?

Would you use the military to round up people? Just answer the question. No, it's not hypothetical because Donald Trump said He's gonna do it and that's again a frustration For is they let him get away with all that with answering. That's a hypothetical like Trust me. I'm gonna tell you as a politician That is the fallback answer to punt and not answer a question if I'm on TV particularly when I was in and they're like, hey, you know, if Donald Trump, blah, blah, blah, if I felt comfortable answering it, I'd answer it.

If I didn't, I'd be like, I'm not going to deal in hypotheticals. That's just, it's a politician trick. Is there anything that worries you most about Pete? The thing I guess that would worry me the most is Donald Trump makes a decision like, let's use the military to suppress a riot, right? You know, the National Guard can be used, but let's use the Title 10 military. There's not going to be anything to stop him. And there's not going to be a general, you know, we always have this belief that,

you know, officers will refuse an illegal order. Well, maybe, but they also have to know the order is illegal. And a secretary of defense determines in many cases what is, and so does the president, what is illegal and what is illegal because it's really just an interpretation by a lawyer. So I don't think this like honorable swear of duty to the constitution thing is really going to defend us against overreach by this president. The other thing is just sheer incompetence. I mean, there is no way P. Agseth goes to Washington DC and ever gets a grip on the bureaucracy and what actually DOD does because

by the time he learns that he's either going to be fired or his time in office is going to be up, I guess that's a concern. But yeah, more than anything is this politicizing the military and just violating the constitution. Yeah. I just think the risk of this, I don't know about him getting fired just because he's not gonna go against Trump. Trump doesn't actually care about incompetence, right? He cares about disloyalty.

And so I think that he might be around. And that worries me, man. The thing that worries me the most is him getting fired would probably be good because 82 year old Donald Trump in 2028 Trying to get into some shit. Yeah, I would much rather have Mark Esper in there Yeah at that point then Pete Hicks off, but yeah, here we are Anything on the substance of Ukraine's state of play that you want to win? Here's the thing. I want to keep

Hammering this to people because people will say like well, what state of the war? You know, you'll see these things Ukraine is losing. Okay Ukraine if they lose the amount of territory they've lost in two years Okay, if they keep losing that rate of territory, it will take a hundred years for Russia to take over Ukraine I want you to think about that. So yes, you'll read Ukraine lost 20 square kilometers or 30 square kilometers. When you do the math, at that rate it takes a hundred years for Russia to overtake Ukraine. You also extrapolate the math and say at the cost of 70 million Russian soldiers. So obviously it's unrealistic. For a defending country to win a war, all they have to do is defend. They don't have to collapse the Russian government war, all they have to do is defend.

They don't have to collapse the Russian government. They don't have to defeat the Russians in three months. They have to continue to defend. Ukraine is doing that bravely and heroically. If Donald Trump makes a decision, and I pray he does, to stand with Ukraine or at least give Ukraine what they need while we negotiate, there is no way Ukraine falls. And so substantially I've said this, Ukraine is way out punching its weight class. It still occupies territory of the Russians, the first time that's happened since World War II. And their fighting

spirit remains strong. The one thing I'll say quickly is the Ukrainians have got to get a grip on their drafting age. They don't draft until I think 25 years old, which means 18 to 25 is not drafted. And it's the whole thing is what we want to save our youth. I get it, but if your country collapses, you're not going to save your youth. We basically stop drafting people about the time that Ukraine starts.

That is a huge problem in Ukraine that they have to fix. And I expect that would happen, you know, with any deal with Trump, probably. Well, who knows how good the deal is. Sure. There was a little nomination news yesterday. I want to ask you about Joe Kent. He's the leading contender to be the next head of the National Counterterrorism Center.

People don't know Joe Kent. I'll put this article in the show notes. I wrote an article about him, God, about three years ago now. He's run for Congress a couple of times and lost to a friend of the pod, Marie Gluse and Cam Perez, one of our favorite Democrats. And I watched this video of him. The shortest way to describe it is there's a group of kind of Hitler youth, like white nationalist young people, the Gropers, and Kent wanted to get into their good graces.

So he goes and submits to an interview from like a child in his bedroom asking him about protecting white people. And Kent is like sucking up to him and being like, yeah, I care about white people. He is a very far right MAGA person who is off the deep end on conspiracy stuff. Thoughts about having Joe Kent as the head of the National Counterterrorism Center. I mean, look, this is although it doesn't have quite the implications as like Michael Flynn would have had. This is like having Michael Flynn at that level. Joe Kent, he lost to Jamie Harrier Butler, my friend.

She was a fellow impeacher. I mean, this guy is like, I'm not going to say neo-Nazi, but as close as you can get to that without being labeled that is about what he is. Every conspiracy theory... He's curious about it at least. He might be curious. He's Nazi curious, yeah. Every conspiracy theory he buys into, and honestly there's some real mental health questions

that again, I don't say judgmentally, but those are things you have to take into account. You can't even fly an airplane for United if you've had mental health issues. In terms of being in charge of our very important parts of the military, we probably should have that discussion. This has nothing to do about competence or anything. This is all about who is a MAGA influencer. And if you're a MAGA influencer, you're gonna get a job in this administration.

And, you know, if you're Elon Musk, that's a whole nother thing. Elon Musk is the most frightening person in the world right now. But yeah, the Joe-Ken thing is scary. Let's talk about that in the counter-terrorism center, I mean, this is like gonna be part of under Tulsi's remit, I guess.

Yeah. Right? Yeah, it is. So that's the crowd you have there. Yep, so you have Tulsi, who basically passionate about Bashar al-Assad until he fell, also believed we couldn't spy on spies. Basically we couldn't spy on spies

until she all of a sudden switched because either she didn't understand what it was or more than like it because she needed to to win. And then she's putting this other conspiracy in that position. So look, the good thing is there'll be safeguards around them in terms of like the CIA will have its own safeguards and everything. But this is a mess. I guess. But I get into this a little bit with Kelly in the next segment, so just very

briefly, but just for people to understand what this job is, the National Counterterrorism Center was created after 9-11, and there was in the 9-11 commission, one of the takeaways was that there wasn't communication between FBI and CIA, and so this is a coordinating type role. And so in order to be in a coordination of role, you've got to be able to take in info from these different agencies and then process them and prioritize, right. And, and help prioritize and share. Well, if you're a conspiracy theorist and you can't tell the difference between truth and something that was posted on, you know, in the comment

section of Breitbart, that's not a great skill set for that role, to say the least. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, let's say, you know, these same people are the ones that are cruising X to find out what the latest conspiracy is that people like Elon Musk are retweeting. Yeah. So I wanted to update my references. You're right. Like they're getting conspiracies from like app and wokeness on X and not from comments comments on bright part anymore. Yeah, that's right. Or from hustle bitch or cat turd. Yeah, the hodge twins. By the way, give me one second to say this. Like the people that say, and I really don't read the comments on X, but occasionally I'll look at them and they'll be like, you know, they'll call you a coward or something like that for something. And then their name is cat turd or hustle bitch or,

or some name that is not their real name. Dude, by the way, if I, if I tweeted under an alias, I could say really brave stuff too. Like, come on. I asked the whole thing is like the definition of like manliness or bravery or whatever or courage has totally changed to can you tweet in all caps on the internet? And if you're brave and courageous, it means you're going to do whatever Donald Trump and other men tell you to do, not what you actually believe to be right. It's such a bizarre world anyway.

That's all rant. It wasn't on my list, but you just you piqued my interest with your Elon aside. So I just want to hear you kind of rant about it for a minute. This to me, Tim, is I haven't put a grip on it yet fully, but it is the most frightening kind of thing to me that exists out there is the fact that somebody like Elon Musk, there's rumors, by the way, pretty good ones that there was a FOIA, we don't know who it came from, to request every time anybody at NASA typed out SpaceX and, you know, for all those emails. And so, you

know, who has a negative view of SpaceX? The problem is, is Elon is violating all these rules can basically demand his company gets whatever, you know, could actually start working with the Russians, could do whatever he wants, and there are no safety valves right now. At least in the next five days, you and I know that if Elon Musk basically broke the law, that there would be some thing to come in and stop that from happening. Either there would be a breakup of, you know, monopolies or whatever. Under Trump, that doesn't exist. There is nothing. So he can endorse the neo-Nazi party in Germany.

He can go against the UK government and he is basically Ironman. He's the most powerful man in the world right now. That is a massive concern to me because it's not like he's even thinking rationally. This is another dude on the edge of a mental breakdown or something. I actually really do am concerned more about Elon Musk than I am probably even about Donald Trump at this point. Yeah. There was a report yesterday he's going to have an office, I guess, maybe in the White House.

Oh, good. Good. Yeah. I mean, look, having free reign to target people inside the government to go after him, he's obviously a very sensitive person, a huge government contractor. All of it is alarming. The Jack Smith report came out. Liz Cheney wrote this about it. The special counsel's one-sixth report confirms the unavoidable facts of January 6th. Once again, DOJ's exhaustive investigation reached the same conclusions as the select committee, which you were on. All this DOJ evidence must be preserved. But more important now is the Senate considers confirming Trump's Justice Department nominees.

If those nominees cooperated with his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, they cannot now be entrusted with responsibility to preserve the rule of law and protect our republic. As our framers knew, our institutions only hold in those in office are not compromised by personal loyalty to a tyrant. So the question is now paramount for Republicans. Will you faithfully perform the duties the framers assigned to you? I think we know the answer to that rhetorical question, but you can take it if you want.

No, it's a great question. Um, we need to keep kind of the fire as dim as it is kind of lit on the, on these principles and these ideas. But yeah, they, I mean, honestly, no Republican Senator cares anymore. The good thing is I honestly believe this in four years is the end of MAGA. I think it's done in four years. I don't think it survives past the Trump administration for any number of reasons, but I don't think it does.

And so then history is gonna kind of look back as it defines what is January 6th to things like what happened on the January 6th committee and the January 6th report. So this is important from a historical perspective for our kids to learn what to never do again. But in the short term, look, they don't care. And we've got to keep this fire lit.

But something, Tim, that I was thinking of in the last couple of days is, we keep thinking about this old Republican party that we hold up so dear, the Reagan party or whatever. But for the last 10 years, there has been no vestige of that. So over a period of 10 years, a party eventually does completely change its stripes. It no longer holds old vestiges of what it was. And I sadly we're at that

point now. It's it's there is no principles in the Republican Party. It's literally a party of one man, which means when he eventually has won too many Big Macs, I don't know what will happen to the party, but they're going to have a little... It's like when a dictator falls in a country, you can expect some real instability. Pete Slauson Did you have any other thoughts for the Jack Smith report? I know it was just kind of confirmed, but you guys all covered already. Jared Slauson Yeah. It confirms it and it makes me angry that I am angry at Merrick Garland.

You know, I've tried to kind of cover that anger up because I wanted to defer to the Justice Department on a lot because I'm not a lawyer, I've never worked for the Justice Department. But, you know, the reality is it was after our first hearing in the summer when it was kind of that holy shit stuff that came out. That's when DOJ started their investigation against Trump. They lost a year in that process and a year and a half, actually. This would have been fully adjudicated had Merrick Garland actually appointed

a special prosecutor right after January 6th, as Mitch McConnell basically had said should have been done. This would be fully adjudicated I really believe had the American people seen the full totality of this had a Jury convicted Trump. It would be a very different America, but I had to tell you Trump is the luckiest man That's ever lived in earth like everything goes his way Like if karma is real it's gonna get bad at some point for him. But like- I don't think karma is real. I've got bad news.

Yeah, I know. I think we can close the book on that one. Karma, not real. I agree. You gotta do the right thing for your own purposes internally and to feel good about yourself because you're not getting rewarded. Unless maybe an afterlife.

I guess we can't close the book on that. Who knows? Yeah, true, true. Maybe heaven. Maybe heaven, yeah. But... I'm not counting my chickens on that, but we'll see. All right. You mentioned the vestiges of the Republican Party and how those embers have died. I'm wondering if any of the vestiges

still exist within you when it comes to the conversation of Greenland. I asked Bill Kristol about this. I was like, does national greatness conservatism still live inside of you? And are you at least a little tempted by these conversations about the US acquiring Greenland? And I asked you this question, and there's a fact this morning, because I knew this at one point,

but I'd forgotten, so I Googled it. The president that acquired Alaska was Andrew Johnson, America's worst president before Donald Trump. So you can be the worst president and also expand our territory. Are you intrigued by the new worst president also looking to expand to the great white north at all? Look, I never thought as a neocon I'd ever be against an invasion, particularly a land grab.

But no, we don't want, I don't want Greenland. I mean, honestly, like all of a sudden, you know what, 40,000 people that are going to expect us to take care of them because there's not a huge economy there. Look, we already have access to Greenland in terms of some of the military stuff. It is a very important landmass. This is something I think people need to understand. When Donald Trump claims that it is important for national defense, he's actually claiming it is important to posture against Russia, because Russia is the threat on this, which

is interesting because we could actually posture against Russia by ensuring that Ukraine wins the war. That's actually the best way to push back, not an invasion of Greenland. So look, as long as I think we can continue to use our military there to an extent and be able to monitor and whatever we need, the Danes are not going to ban us from Greenland and they're not going to side with the Russians. In fact, Denmark is one of the most staunchly anti-Russian countries out there. So I don't think we need to invade Greenland. Sorry. Sensible.

Yeah. Adam Kinzinger, realist. I want to do the last thing. There was a Daily Mail story about you on Sunday, and it was a nice Daily Mail story, which is a big change of pace for you for the last couple of years. Yeah. A mom of four, Amina Hamden, has thanked Adam Kinzinger for rescuing her from a deadly knife attack in the street in Milwaukee in 2006. I saw

you shared this, that there are things you didn't know, that you learned about this instance. Talk about that a little bit. So the film that's coming out, Last Republican, actually documents in 2006, I had a situation where a guy was murdering his girlfriend and I ended up intervening and he was using a knife and look, honestly, I'd fight, I would fight a guy with a pistol before I would fight a guy with a knife. And so it was like by the grace of God, I intervened and I ended up beating him and got him down, disarmed him, saved her life. She got 70 stitches in her neck. You know, and I got the Airman's Medal, which is actually higher than the Bronze Star. And unlike

other people that sit there and publish, I mean, you can tell I have an Airman's Medal, but I don't talk much about it. And it's rank and order and all that stuff. But anyway, that story is in this documentary and Daily Mail to their credit. I was in politics for 14 years and not a single US journalistic entity ever researched this story, but the Daily Mail does. To me, it was amazing because I find out that she was a mom when I intervened. I didn't know that.

She has since had three more kids. And you know, it's like, you sit there and you realize like, there is gonna be generations that exist now because of that act that I took that I really, if somebody would have whispered to me to run, I would have run away. So I don't know, it was amazing. And you know, the other thing that I thought was kind

of funny is I think she knew who I was As a public official but at no point realized that I was the Adam that saved her And so she basically ended up after daily mail calls and puts two and two together So I'm gonna talk to her at some point in the next few days and it's been emotional for me to read that by the way It really punched me in the gut kind of because I didn't expect it to come I didn't expect anybody to research the story as well as they did. So I give them credit and I'm looking forward to talking to her about it. You can actually, if you Google, I think Adam Kinzinger, you know, Milwaukee

knife attack or whatever on YouTube, but you can actually see a story where we meet for the first time. And that was a year after the incident, but I hadn't heard anything about her, you about her since that day. So anyway, it's a interesting story. I look forward to hearing about that, man. No, that's cool, man. I appreciate you. Thanks.

You're a great American. You're a good pal and it's tough out there. So we got to take the good stories where we can get them. We'll be talking, maybe keep updated on this story and all the other bullshit that's happening in Washington. Sounds good. I very much look forward to it. All right, man? Absolutely. Take care, brother.

All right. Sounds good. Up next back with Mark Kelly, Democratic Senator from Arizona. He was a Navy combat pilot, flew 39 missions in Operation Desert Storm. He was also a NASA astronaut and flew into orbit on four space shuttle missions. He's a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and had some questions for Pete Hegseth on Tuesday. How you doing, Senator? I'm good. How are you this morning? You know, I'm doing good, all things considered. You know, setting aside maybe the future of the Pentagon, I'm doing pretty good.

All right. I wanted to start with your exchange with Pete Hegseth from the hearing yesterday. Let's take a listen. December of 2014 at the CVA Christmas party at the Grand Hyatt at Washington, DC. You were noticeably intoxicated and had to be carried up to your room. Is that true or false? Anonymous Smears. Seth Dixon Another time, a CVA staffer stated that you

passed out in the back of a party bus. Is that true or false? Anonymous Smears. Pete Slauson In that back and forth there, I thought it was interesting that for some of the stories that you laid out, his answer was just anonymous smears. But then when we got to young ladies at the strip club, that was, that's not true and also anonymous smears. So, that was maybe a little bit of a reveal to me about whether the first stories were true

or not. What did you think about your exchange? Well, Tim, when I went in there yesterday morning, that was not the line of questioning I had planned on. I had this plan to talk to him more about his management experience at Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans of America, and, you know, how he managed these organizations and his financial management and the state that he'd left them in when he moved on, which is still unclear exactly how that happened.

Was he asked to leave or was he removed? So that was, you know, what I had planned. And then after some of my colleagues asked some of these other questions about personal issues, it became kind of clear to me that there was a little bit of a conflict between him saying that he has these personal issues. But when asked about things that I think all of us would consider would be significant personal issues he would just say smear you know that he's being smeared so that's when I went in there and I you know I said to my team and we just kind

of went and pulled all these specific cases so the thing that concerned me more than what you just you know said about the last question was that he couldn't say if these things were true or false. And it's a very simple question. And if you feel you've been smeared, it would be obvious you would say, well, these are false. And he did say that in one case, which makes you think that maybe the other cases, they weren't false. Well, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. At the end, that is true. But just stepping through all these things, and I gave him more than one chance. I said, hey, I'm asking you, just tell me if this is true or false. And he wouldn't give me an answer. So, you know, obviously I'm still concerned about this

because the enormity of this job cannot be overstressed. because the enormity of this job cannot be overstressed. It is perhaps, besides maybe being president of the United States, it's one of the hardest jobs on the planet. You've got to be ready all the time. This is not a nine-to-five job. This is 24-7, 365 days out of the year. You need to be available and ready? We've had cases in our country's history where Secretary of Defense has woken up in the middle of the night,

actually often, but some rather disturbing situations, you got to have a person there that's ready to go. Yeah. The enormity of the job question, this is what hangs over everything to me, is that the lack of seriousness with which the Republicans took their job to advise and consent on him yesterday was pretty astonishing to me. There's a million examples of this, but there's just one clip I wanted to play for you, if you don't mind. Because there's a lot about qualifications. I think it's so hypocritical of senators, especially on the other side of the aisle, be talking

about his qualifications, not be able to lead the secretary or be the secretary defense and yet your qualifications aren't any better. You guys aren't any more qualified to be the senator than I'm qualified to be the senator, except we're lucky enough to be here. That was Republican Senator Mark Wayne Mullin of Oklahoma. I was watching that, I'm thinking, you're pointing at a damn astronaut. You know, Pete is a weekend TV co-host who can allegedly do his job while half in the bag. I just, the lack of caring about the fact that they're pulling this guy off the Fox and Friends couch and putting him in the most important job in the world, I, like it was pretty astonishing to me.

I don't know, what did you think about the defense of his resume from the Republicans? Well, that, but also the whole thing about we're talking about two different jobs. I mean, being a US Senator, being the Secretary of Defense are on different planets. I mean, they're different kind of experience. I mean, you're not in the nuclear command and control structure in the US Senate. And what Mark Wayne was saying, you didn't play it, but about like seeing people on the floor of the Senate, you know, with the same kind of issues. I've been there twice as long as he has, only four years. He's been in the Senate two years. That is not something I have ever witnessed.

You haven't seen any hammered senators being like pulled off the floor by their staff? Not once. Pulled off the floor, not pulled off the floor by their staff? Not once. Pulled off the floor, not pulled off the floor. I've never seen that, not in a single occasion. Maybe he's talking about his experience in the House. He was a House member. Matt Gaetz was his colleague in the House. People like to party in the House.

Yeah. I don't know what goes on there, but you're right. Pete Hegseth, nothing against folks in journalism, right? I mean, we've got a lot of folks up here, you know, on Capitol Hill. It's a very important, you know, role that you have, especially when it comes to keeping people like me, you know, politicians, folks in the Congress accountable, very important role. I just don't see how that nine years or six or seven, whatever he was there at the Fox Saturday Morning Show, has prepared him to walk into this job here potentially in a couple weeks and run this enormous agency where the consequences of your job performance are so

significant. We've got well over a million service members, and then there are government employees. Now, I served in the Navy for 25 years. The person at the top of the organization always matters. It matters a lot. If he messes it up, he puts people's lives in danger, or he can wind up screwing up some acquisition program that costs the taxpayers multiple billions of dollars more because he was unprepared for the job.

And my Republican colleagues in this case, as you point out, in my view too, I don't think they address some of the more serious issues that we have with this nominee for this job. Yeah. And again, there are other jobs out there, Doug Burgum, if you kind of want to go around and do a quick one round of questions, seven minutes, half day, move on, that's fine. I don't have any objection to that. But given what you just laid out about all of the different contingencies that you have, if you are running the Pentagon,

I interviewed Mark Hurtling about this last week and he laid all of this out so clearly, you have to just be pretty flabbergasted. Have you had any conversations with your fellow Republicans? They're just going to do three hours of questions to Pete Hegseth and rubber stamp him. I guess there's going to be some private meetings now, but do you have any sense whether there's any more vetting happening here given the seriousness? Well, I haven't spoken to them since yesterday.

I did, you know, at the committee hearing, I spoke to the chairman about having another round of questions. I think it's sort of unprecedented, you know, how abbreviated this hearing was. This is the first one I've done for the Secretary of Defense. We should have had an opportunity to ask more. And I had a bunch of policy questions I wanted to ask him on specific programs. On CJEDC2, on Sentinel, on SLICMN,

on the state of our maritime industry, which is related to shipbuilding. We couldn't get to it because we're not allotted enough time. You're talking about how significant this job is. I just cannot stress more how important it is to have somebody there that's incredibly competent to do this. And it's an incredibly hard job and I don't expect every nominee to check every box, but I'm trying to figure out which ones he does check. Yeah, it's hard to think about any. You know, do one that if he had the

experience but his personal life was a mess, that'd be one thing. Or if he was a great leader in his community but didn't quite have the experience, maybe it's another thing, but no, he's not checking anything. You mentioned that you hadn't planned to kind of ask the questions that you did. Are you coordinating with the other senators about this? I mean, like there was some talk that maybe given the fact that, look, Roger Wicker had a Ukraine pin on, maybe it would have been better to try to win Republicans over to try to pin him down on policies where he is separate from the senators.

I can't imagine Roger Wicker and Pete Hegseth have the same policy on Ukraine. How do you guys decide what the strategic approach is in these sorts of hearings? Well, I would say on other nominees, because I did go through this experience with some of the other lower DOD nominees at the beginning of the Biden administration. There is not a lot of significant coordination, but the seriousness of this hearing and the consequences of this hearing were such that we did ahead of time talk about it, sort of come up with a plan. Every senator kind of views them, not me, but might view themselves as, hey, they got the most important stuff,

and you're kind of like a lone ranger out there. But for this, we did, and I asked, actually asked the chairman or the ranking member, Jack Reed, I said, hey, we have to kind of coordinate because we don't all want to be asking the same exact thing. And in Hegsess background, there is a lot of stuff to cover. And we have a limited amount of time.

So we did, but I would say real time for a number of people, you're making adjustments on the fly and kind of rewriting what you're going to do. I was sitting next to Alyssa Slockin, was the junior member on the committee for a while. And during the whole time, she was actually writing down what she was planning on asking. And I thought what she covered was really smart and she was really effective in doing

it. Her material was great. I just talked to former Congressman Kinzinger about that exact exchange. Was that the most alarming thing? Obviously, just his background and his existence as the Secretary of Defense is the most alarming thing, but of the actual substantive things you got into, his unwillingness to say that he wouldn't oppose unlawful orders or that he wouldn't use the military to target citizens, was that the most alarming part to you or was there something else that jumped out?

No, I think that was it for me. Obviously him not being able to answer my questions was a tell, and it was significant. If he gets to the job, we're going to all understand that he is going to be very reluctant to push back, even possibly when given an unlawful order from the President of the United States. He might be very hesitant to push back against those. That's concerning.

You've got another hearing here on the committee for Tulsi Gabbard. His heart confirmation is coming up soon. In a way, that's a little bit of a different challenge than Hegseth, because I think it's possible, we'll see, that some of your Republican colleagues might be against her on policy grounds. So, and have you thought about that confirmation hearing and what you want to challenge her on and whether any of the Republicans you think

might share the concerns of the folks on the Democratic side when it comes to Gabbard? Well, I know they do. I mean, just from my conversations I've had with them already. So there are some concerns about FISA. She has changed her position dramatically on this issue. And this is the collection of foreign intelligence that we do through a program called FISA. It's 702. It's the authority

to be able to listen to foreign nationals when they're in another country, not in the United States. And there is some incidental collection issues if that foreign national happens to be talking to an American and how all that stuff is handled. So she's done a 180 on this. That's a concern. I think some of my Republican colleagues, just like the concern I have about how she views Snowden,

you know, and what she thinks, you know, should happen with regards to a pardon of him. My view is he did incredible, long-lasting and serious damage to our national security, and he's a criminal, and he should be prosecuted if we're given the opportunity. She seems to still think that he's sort of some kind of hero and should be pardoned for these actions. I know some of my Republican colleagues are concerned about that. But I think just like Hegseth, there's going to be tremendous pressure on them to confirm

all of these nominees. Whether she knows who our ally is in the Russia-Ukraine war, might be something interesting to explore. I'm not sure she knows which side she's supposed to be on in that. Yeah, we talked about that a little bit. I mean, she was in my office last week, so we got to touch on a number of these topics. And were you at all assuaged by? these topics and- Were you at all assuaged by-

I still have concerns about her taking on this role. Her background as a member of the House is not with the intelligence community. Same thing with her service, even though she holds a, I think, a top secret clearance, it is not the same as working with intelligence agencies. When I was on an aircraft carrier, I had a top secret clearance on the A6 Intruder. We were able to carry nuclear weapons and also in targeting we got to see sometimes top secret intelligence, but it's very limited.

It's not like your job where you're dealing with and trying to manage the intelligence. And the biggest issue I think I have, right now with Congresswoman Gabbard is just this predilection to go down the rabbit hole of misinformation. Where are you getting your information from, your sources? Who are the experts you're using?

There's this whole case in Syria with chemical weapons attacks that Assad did on his civilian population. It's very clear, and I think even to her, that he was gassing and poisoning with chemical weapons his population. That wasn't really in dispute. But she used her political capital to defend him on two separate specific cases, and then didn't do it well,

and was using what I think most people would view as like bad sources of information to try to make a case that in that specific instance that he did not use sarin gas from that weapon on this population and it just seemed like a really odd thing to do and the challenge that she will you know face if confirmed as the DNI is you sometimes get conflicting information from the intelligence community like you're looking at these reports, and then they'll present to you, like, here's the dissenting view on this. And you've got to be able to sort it out and figure out, okay, what do I think is right

here? And now I've got to go to the president and say, hey, these are the five most important things today, and I think this is what you need to focus on. But if you have this like tendency to kind of go down the rabbit hole every time with the disinformation and misinformation, that puts all of us at risk. Yeah, if you can't tell the difference between Gateway Pundit and the Wall Street Journal, that's not, when it comes to reporting, that's not a great sign. Okay, I got to let you go. I have one last thing though.

I have one last thing I have to ask you. Just you know, we have to last thing though. I have one last thing I have to ask you. Just, you know, we just have to get on the record on this. There's a lot of concerns that Democrats are struggling with young men, you know? And so I was watching it. I thought you gave Pete Hegson some really good tough questions, but I just, I want to be clear, you know, you don't have any issues with, you know, pounding some beers on a party bus.

Okay? If some bros want to pound some beers on a party bus on the way to the football game That's okay with you that that wasn't that's not your issue. You know, I spent 25 years in the Navy I was a junior officer on an aircraft carrier in a squadron Not my issue, but for the Secretary of Defense Whether you have it's self-reported by the way, you know in his books that he has this Significant problem and it's not like it was way in the past. I mean, some of these reports are just two months ago. Have you ever passed out on a party bus?

Me? Never. Cake stand? What about a cake stand though? None of that. No cake stands? None of that. All right. What is your favorite beer? What are you drinking right now? There is a local brewery called Moto Sonoran in Tucson, Arizona. Yeah.

And they, you know, they've, they've got a whole selection and, uh, they make some pretty good beer. I love Tucson's sneaky. Cool. So I'll have to go check it out the next time through. Tucson's a cool place. All right. Thank you so much, Senator Kelly.

Come on back. We're going to have to talk about a little politics next time. Well, I'm in Arizona, so we'll see you soon. All right. Let's do that. All right. I appreciate it. All right. Thank you to favorite of the pod, Adam Kinzinger and to Senator Mark Kelly. We'll have much more tomorrow on the Pam Bondi hearing

and the rest of the parade of horribles. Look forward to see all them. Peace. I shouldn't have said what I said last night But I'm about to say it again Those girls were not your friends, I was right And the look on your face says you know about it I know what you're gonna say, oh, but party got away from you, baby The lights in your eyes with your hands on a skirt You're making it worse with your meaningless words Forget about it You ruin every night You always start the fight Oh why do I say that I love you?

Sweet dreams can't sleep at all Wait till I wake you up Cause I can only wait to tell you all the B****** things that you've done When you're up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, I look drunk, I thought that I was but I'm not your type I've seen the messages on your phone, it kept me up a whole goddamn night And all of our friends seem to know about it Oh but what about me, maybe I should have a secret I keep it locked in my chest, you'd be chasing the key

Is that what you need? A girl that can cheat Forget about it Forget about it Forget about it You win every night You always start the fight Oh why don't I say that I love you? Sweet dreams can't sleep at all Wait till I wake you up The Bullork podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.