The Bulwark Podcast - Adam Kinzinger: The People of Minneapolis Won

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

ICE failed in its operation in Minnesota because the people would not bend to their terror campaign. Minneapolis residents also maintained incredible discipline in their resistance and totally let Trump down by keeping a check on any potential riotous behavior. Meanwhile, the El Paso airport closure shows the administration’s continuing communication problems, and Bondi’s performance before the House Oversight Committee was so over-the-top bad, it’s even getting panned on the right. Plus, Bongino is a con artist and a loser, the Dems have an increasing number of pickup opportunities in red states, Nick Fuentes of all people is providing a little clarity on the state of Republicans, and exactly how many pardoned J6 insurrectionists have gone on to commit child sex abuse? We’re losing count.Adam Kinzinger joins Tim Miller.show notes Country First's campaign to push back on politicization of the National Guard Kinzinger on his event with Democrats in Anderson, Indiana Tickets are now on sale for our LIVE shows in Dallas on March 18 and in Austin on March 19. Plus, we have a handful of seats still available for our second show in Minneapolis on February 18. TheBulwark.com/Events. Exclusive $35-off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARK. Promo Code BULWARK Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/BULWARK and use promo code BULWARK at checkout.

Welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Deliative welcome back, one of our faves. He's a former member of Congress from Illinois. He served in the Air Force and Air National Guard. He's the founder of Country First. They got a new campaign to push back on the politicization of the National Guard. He's also on substack with the rest of us. He's in the gym a lot. He's doing peptides. It's Adam Kensinger. Hey, buddy, what's going to be back with you, man? It's going to spend a minute.

Yeah. And, you know, we just put this on the calendar. We didn't know what was going to be happening. and this is insane. We could do nine hours of podcasts and today with all the shit that's out there. Just pick a day though. It's like insane every freaking day. So, you know.

Yeah, much to cover. We've got to start with Pam Bondi, unfortunately. It's unpleasant having to listen to her talk. Just to be candid. But I'm going to punish people. We're going to listen to a little bit from yesterday's performance on the hill. So I really have just one question for you.

How many of Epstein's co-conspirators have you indicted? How many people? Are you even investigating? First, you showed it. How many have you indicted? Excuse me, I'm going to answer the question. I answer my question. No, I'm going to answer the question the way.

I want to answer the question. No, you're going to answer the question the way I asked it. You don't tell me anything washed up. You saw what you did in the Senate. Not even a lawyer. Have you apologized to President Trump? Have you apologized to President Trump, all of you who participated in those impeachment hearings against Donald Trump. You all should be apologizing. You sit here and you attack

the president and I am not going to have it. I'm not going to put up with it. And none of them, none of them, ask Merrick Garland over the last four years one word about Jeffrey Epstein. How ironic is that? You know why? Because Donald Trump, the Dow, the Dow right now is over. The Dow is over $50,000. $50,000, the Dow's over. That's the Attorney General of the United States of America having a temper tantrum on the hill because she's not investigating any of the perpetrators of child sex trafficking. Well, you know why nobody asked Merrick Garland because Joe Biden didn't run on Epstein Files' transparency.

I think they should have released them, but that's not what he ran on. Trump did. Here's a crazy thing, Tim, is they're like, hey, we're just going to take what Donald Trump ran on, okay? And I'm going to ask you if you've fulfilled that. Well, screw you, you, you know. And I've got to just say, so let me just take the broad view, which is when we end up in a situation like we've had over this last year where these people from the administration come in,

speak before Congress and have complete and utter disdain and disrespect for Congress. I get it because people hate congressmen and women and it's fun to watch them combat if you're on the side of MAGA. But this is honestly how democracies can die when you do not respect the oversight of the people. Keep in mind, Jamie Raskin, love them or hate him, represent 700,000 Americans with a right to a voice. You know, every one of these folks. And she comes in and basically refuses to answer the question. And what I really think's going on here, and I'm not a psychiatrist, but I think there's something to this, which is, and I've seen this in kind of MAGA folks, too, particularly my old friends in Congress who got mad at me because really they were mad at themselves.

Like they know inside what they should be doing. And when I was doing what they should be doing, in essence, putting a mirror up to them, their anger at themselves would be projected outward. And I honestly kind of see this in Pam Bondi where she knows what's going on here. She knows what she promised. She knows that she tried to cover up in March. And now she's being called out by it and not implaus. quite honestly. And her anger at herself, maybe at Trump, maybe at the situation she's in,

is projected outward. If she thought that she did anything good for herself, I think she came out of that hearing quite the opposite. I think even Magas were sitting around going, this was a pretty bad presentation here. And I think it's only going to make it worse, honestly. I think it's only going to grow the interest into why is she so defensive. Why are they so defensive? Yeah. I agree. And Eric Erickson said she should be fired or resign as getting mocked. the manosphere. It was an extremely unhelpful performance. I would also like to answer her rhetorical question about why Merrick Garland wasn't up there. Another key difference is that Joe Biden did not lie about being on the plane with the child sex trafficker and the victims. So,

you know, Donald Trump was in the files more than anybody. So that is another key difference between him and Joe Biden when it comes to oversight of what was happening with the files. Yeah, it's kind of a big deal. And also, people forget this. Donald Trump was president during the Epstein suicide, right? There's a lot of people I see in the Monaster. It wasn't Hillary Clinton. She was not the president when he killed. They think it's Hillary or they think it was Obama or they think it was Biden. It was Donald Trump.

And again, I'm not making the accusation that Epstein was killed, but there are questions. And certainly in these files, like you said, I did not see Joe Biden's name. I think you said yesterday. I didn't even see Hunter Biden's name in there. I've seen Trump a lot. So there's legitimate questions. He's the president of the United States. And, you know, that's kind of creepy. Yeah.

Epstein prayed on dorks that needed help with women. And, you know, Hunter Biden got his prostitutes all by himself. I guess just from your vantage point, having been a member. So like how different this is. Because there are a lot of people who like kind of came awake to this in 2016, came awake to politics or not sure how this is supposed to go. Or maybe they've seen some, you know, the British parliament's pretty rowdy. Like this performance by her yesterday, both just like the style of her presentation,

but also like the idea that I guess they were looking at what the members were searching for in the Epstein finals and she had like an opo briefing on each member. I mean, that's very different than anything you would have experienced even in Trump 1.0, right? Oh, completely. And this is like, this is Big Brother stuff. Now, I'm not going to give them the credit to say that they're building some well-oiled machine surveillance state because I don't think they are. but I think they are so insecure that instead of looking at and saying, well, let's just get the files out there. Let's have transparency. Let's, you know, if somebody deserves to be prosecuted, let's prosecute them.

It becomes like it always does with MAGA, and particularly with Donald Trump, they automatically insert themselves into the position of victim. And they automatically insert themselves in the position of defense. The only way to defend themselves is to attack somebody. It can be crazy. It can be real. But that's all they know. And so, yeah, I mean, look, if I was a member of Congress and I found still and I found out this happened, I'd be furious. Not because I necessarily have a reasonable expectation of privacy that other people don't. But the idea of what I'm doing in my position as a member of Congress should be completely separate from the knowledge of the executive branch, if I so choose, comes down again to the basic thing of separation of powers. And I think we, Unfortunately, because Congress is unpopular and because people say, look, only 15% of Americans approve of Congress, which has been that way since the founding of Congress, because it just is a faceless institution. But ever since that, like, we have been okay with chipping away at their power or their

ability to do what they need to do. But that is really the only voice you have. And that's an important thing for people to remember. You do not have a voice through the president of the United States. His job is simply to execute the laws that you. through your member of Congress have created. That's his job. We've changed that a lot.

But that should be offensive to every American, honestly. I mean, there were some pretty mild-mannered Democrats that were like, this is fascist. You're spying on me? And the skiff? And it's really chilling. On the other hand, it's also extremely ham-handed. And she got called out for it and literally had the spy papers in her binder. And the Getty photographer caught her.

Keep in mind, too, like when you're in a skiff, because I, Assume that probably most of your folks listening haven't been in a skiff is I've never been in a skiff. My candidate's lost. Yeah. That's right. Sorry. We'll get you in a skiff someday. It is very sanitized. You are allowed to walk in with a basically a notebook and a pen, but you cannot take your notes with you. I've seen people take notes with them. So I guess it's gray area, but you technically can't do that. So you walk in basically defenseless, you know, as it should be. Because your job is then to just see what's presented in front of you, commit it to memory, and leave.

And for them to do that is just, it's disgusting. And they probably violated skiff rules, to be honest with you and how they did it. Yeah. But they don't care. One other thing that came up yesterday that is a little bit of a tales all this time, but it's worth not letting people forget that they're doing this. Bondi was pressed by Jonah Goose, Congressman from Colorado, Boulder, actually, on how she had hired Jared Wise.

Jared Wise is a January 6er who was there storming the Capitol, and he was shouting kill them to the police. Bondi's excuse for hiring this insurrectionist was that he was pardoned by Trump, and so everything's okay now. That guy works for the Justice Department, the guy that was shouting kill them to police. Separate news item yesterday, another January 6 rioter who had been pardoned by Trump was convicted of sexually abusing children, including an 11-year-old. Andrew Paul Johnson tried to bribe one of his victims by promising to share, January 6 restitution money from the Trump administration. So, you know, while she's testifying yesterday, two of the people they pardoned, one, you know, one works for her, and the other one was convicted of child rape.

If you take the universe of January 6 pardoned defendants and you say, what is the recidivism rate of them? And quite honestly, the recidivism rate, although it's not recidivism per se, but the rate of being arrested for child abuse, sexual child abuse, it is higher than illegal immigrants. Way hard. Like this is the thing. You remember how it's the whole reason they're saying we need to go after those that are here illegally is because of crime, because they commit all these crimes. And, you know, we always push back with the real statistics and say they're more likely to actually start if they could do it legally. Immigrants are much more likely to start a business and hire people than a second, third, et cetera, born American.

but they would always bring up. They're bringing their rapists. They're bringing their druggies. I guarantee you, if you picked 1,500 random people that are here illegally and you said, who was doing more child sex abuse, it would be the January 6th defendant. So why don't we have ICE go after the January 6th defendants after that? Because we really do want to tell. I mean, this is like the 10th, 15th, 20th person that has been arrested for this crime, Tim,

not just for shoplifting or breaking and entering, for child sexual abuse. She's literally at the testifying in Congress and getting questions about how they're covering up the investigation into the biggest child sexual abuse are, you know, in modern times. And like simultaneously, they're pardoning people that are committing child sex abuse. I couldn't be more on the nose. Well, and let me ask you. So, you know, you were talking about the guy that was hired by the DOJ. And she said, well, he was pardoned. So the question is, five seconds before the guy who was soliciting children, who also was pardoned, was arrested, would he have been qualified to work at the DOJ simply because he received a pardon?

Because it goes both ways. I mean, yeah, it sure seems like he would be. All right, hey, guys, here to tell you about our friends at ORA Frames, the easiest gift to give. What kind of past Valentine's Day season? But look, what about a teacher at school? What about a colleague? Sometimes it's nice to give a gift for no reason. you know, it feels a little better as a gift recipient to receive a gift for no reason than to feel

like somebody who's checking a box. And the great way to do that is with Aura Frames. Orrame's offers free unlimited storage so you can add as many of photos or videos as you want. So you can go up to your work colleague and just give them a bunch of, you know, photos from last year's Christmas party where they're acting a fool or go to one of your college. You know, if you go through a, you go through your archive on your phone, you know, find some old college pictures, put them together, throw them in the aura frames, send it to one of your college buddies. that's a good gift. Grandmas are the key though.

Grandma's, great aunts, great uncles, baby picks, kid picks, put it together a little collage. Couldn't be easier. You can preload all the photos for it, ships. They open it up. They can put it on their mantel. Is that what you call it? Whatever.

Mantle, side table. They throw it up there. Looks good. They have good mems. It's a great idea. You should go do it right now. Name number one by wirecutter. You can save on the perfect gift by visitingoraframes.com for a limited time.

listeners can get $35 bucks off, their best-selling Carver Matt frame with code Bullwork. That's A-U-R-A-Frams.com promo code Bullwork. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout, terms and conditions apply. Kind of related to this because he had worked in the Federal Justice Department. Dan Bengino, I got an email today from Dan Benjino that I want to mention because he's back to podcasting.

He's back. He's a competitor now. We wish in the best. And I somehow got into his list. And this morning's email says this, FBI's bombshell Fulton County affidavit. And it goes in to talk about all of the evidence that they had of the alleged theft of the 2020 election. And I got to tell you, I just think that is such a good encapsulation of this Justice Department. They hired a podcaster to be the number two person at the FBI.

and he left the FBI without successfully investigating anyone that allegedly stole the 2020 election without successfully investigating anyone that was involved in Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring without investigating anyone that was part of the Russia gate hoax against Donald Trump. And now he's back to podcasting without successfully arresting or indicting or investigating anyone. and he's advancing the same conspiracies he was advancing before. Like, are the people this stupid? This is really going to work? Are the listeners like, Dan, if the evidence for the Fulton County affidavit was that great,

why isn't anybody in jail yet? Why didn't you get anybody? You were the number two person at the FBI. You had an agency here. You knew you had the intel. And if it's so great, you don't think they'd be all over Fox News right now presenting the evidence. You think it would, they'd sneak it to Dan Bongino to be the guy to leak it. this like fame addiction they have. I mean, I would like to think if I was ever hired to be the

director of the FBI, that I would very happily put my doing media and podcast thing aside with pleasure and focus on being the FBI director or the deputy. I would really miss you. If the next Democrat puts you in charge of the FBI, I would miss you. I wouldn't ask you to come on. I'll text you, but I'm not coming on. Okay. We'll stay. We'll still keep a good friendship. But Unless you do something illegal, then I'll come after you. But I'm going to kind of go a quick different direction, but it'll make sense. One of the things that we didn't have the time in the January 6th committee to really flush out for the American people, it's in the report a little bit. But is the role of emails, fundraising, and kind of clickbait in actually radicalizing people.

So one of the things we came to realize, so between the period of the election in 2020 in January 6th, The Trump, which I love to know where the money went, but the Trump campaign and stopped the steel combined raised close to $400 million, I think, in just three months, keep in mind. And they did that through five to ten emails to everybody on their list every day that basically would say, imagine the headline, they're stealing this. The Democrats are coming for you. Nancy Pelosi said this, boom, boom, boom, right? And you get 10 of these messages to your face a day. You don't even have to open the emails. Miles Bruner, who you know, who wrote for the bulwark about leaving.

He talks about his role in some of the fundraising and stuff like that. All of those emails, those headlines, you do not need to open the body of the email. Each one is a dopamine hit. So if 10 times a day you get a dopamine hit for three months, you become radicalized. And that's what Dan Bongino is doing. Of course, we know that he doesn't have any specific evidence that proves the Fulton County case. But if you see that and you get that dopamine hit, you will watch him, you'll listen to him, you'll go to his YouTube feed or whatever, and he makes money off you.

This whole thing, all of politics on the right has become the opportunity or the operation of basically sucking every bit of wealth away from people that don't have wealth to be drained from them to give to the most wealthy. You know, the Candace Owens is all these people, they're worth millions of dollars, but they're going to get that person on a fixed income to give them money or to pay attention so they can drain that further wealth from them. And I think we have to talk about it in that term. So Dan Bongino, screw you, you're a con artist as well. You're a con con artist. I like you snuck in there that you're demonstrating no fear or favor. If you get appointed the FBI director, you'd come after me if I did a crime. And I appreciate that. I'll come after my own

mom if she did. Dan Bonino is a con artist. I just also want to say clearly that Dan Bonino is a loser. loser. He got into the FBI and totally failed. Think about this. Jim Comey walks free. Tish James walks free. Don Lemon walks free. I was on his live stream earlier today. The people who supposedly stole the 2020 election, none of them have been arrested. None of them are in jail. None of the people that were part of the child sex trafficking ring that he talked about all the time are in jail. He got nobody. He arrested nobody. His successors at the FBI seem to have detained the wrong person in the Nancy Guthrie investigation. But like they, they did nothing.

Like he was in there for a year. He advanced all of these theories about how they're all these criminals out there. Adam Kinsinger and Liz Cheney and you guys were all going to get arrested. There was all this bluster. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. And, and I just want to say one more thing. If you're like, I'm all for health and physical fitness. Okay. One of the things you won't see me do is like, yeah, damn.

one of the things man guns ladies weight class paying off the festival yeah there you go I got my two pull-ups in listen one of the things that like drives me nuts

is be in good shape be healthy please do it everybody great but when that becomes your image and you're a 50 or 60 year old man I'm sorry you're a loser right unless it is your specifically your job but when you become one

of these like I do MMA and I'm going to blub, blah, and wear my shirt and I'm going to have Velcro and I do my boo-bo-bo-boo-bee. Like, and you're 60. I'm sorry, you are trying to compensate for something. I'm sorry. You're trying to. I mean, wear a revealing shirt, whatever, a tighter shirt. I don't care about that.

But like, when you're out there, just all you're worried about is how people perceive your physical prowess at 60. I don't know. I'm sorry. Yeah. And that's Dan. It makes you think there's some other deficiencies too, but we won't get into that. All right, delete me.

Makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everybody vulnerable. Delete me does all the hard work wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. Delete me knows your privacy is worth protecting. Sign up and provide delete me with the exact good information you want to delete it. And the experts take it from there. They send you regular personalized privacy reports and update it.

This is something that we've been using to try to scrub out some of my information online. And I appreciate that. I've got an email bomb lately. like I had a couple months ago. So that's a win. I was also reading the other day, one of the areas where AI has been advancing really quick, contributing to the insidification of our society,

but their tech overlords is in the scams department. It's a lot easier for just regular people to, you know, start grabbing information, sending you text and emails as part of a scam. Usually that was left to professional scammers. Now we're democratizing the scams, thanks to AI. So having something like Delete Me that updates constantly is a good way to protect you and your loved ones.

Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now to special discount for our listeners, get 20% off your DeleteMe plan. When you go to JoinDeletMe.com slash Bullwork and use promo code Bullwork at checkout, the only way to get 20% off is to go to Joindeletme.com slash bulwark and enter code bulwark at checkout.

That's joined delete me.com slash bulwark code bulwark. There's some other news this morning, a bunch of other news. Tom Homan, White House Bordersar, said he's going to end the aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota. Homan cited increased cooperation by local officials and announcing the end of the surge, but he didn't actually cite any concessions or changes that they've made, but you know, got to do some face saving. We'll see. I'll believe it when I see it, but it does seem like just a total failure in their Minnesota operation.

Completely. And here's the thing is we have this tendency to believe that Donald Trump and actually you guys talked about that. You guys talked about everything, which is great. your show. Like a lot happening over here. Totally. The assumption that they want you to think that that Donald Trump wants you to think is he doesn't care about public outcry, he doesn't care about public opinion. He does. And he cares about it more than a regular democratically elected person because it is key. His facade of power is key for the fear. Because if he loses that facade, and one way to lose the facade is, you know, public outcry. You don't have as many people on your side as you think. And the ability of the local Minnesotans to have pushed back as hard as they did,

as peacefully as they did, as kind of neighborly as they did, is absolutely incredible. They went into these ICE operations. They went into Minneapolis with the assumption that we would see the equivalent of George Floyd, you know, 2020. And by the way, full disclosure, I got activated with the guard for the George Floyd riots. I was flying overhead in Minneapolis. And it was very violent. Half of the city felt like it was burning. This is something completely different. And they wanted to provoke this. And the discipline that freedom-loving Americans have shown in this, I think it's been incredible. And I think we need to take a victory lap here. Now, inevitably, this operation would have ended, right, at some point. But it ends when they lose their talking point value on Fox News.

The whole reason there was an ice surge to Minneapolis was because of the Somali issue, and they wanted to go on Fox News and stir up that, like, fraud issue and then say, we're reacting by sending ICE. And it was really going to give the feel goodies to everybody on Fox News. And they failed at that. And they lost the value of that. And they're pulling out. That is the role of ICE, by the way, is to be a Fox News talking point. And so I think we as the kind of pro-democracy coalition should take. a victory lap here. We won. And the only violence was against us and our people. And as terrible as

that is, that the discipline has been incredible. Yeah, that is tragic. But I agree on the victory lap. I mean, we're in Minneapolis next week for two shows excited about it. And 18th and was planning. When initially when we planned it, it was like, you know, we're going to be there in a wartime setting. And now it's kind of a victory lap, which is nice. People deserve that. So hopefully we can bring everybody some addaboys and some joy. And by the way, Minneapolis is such an amazing city. I was there like right before all the ice stuff started.

And it's cold and just an amazing city that really is. I don't know why anybody would act like it was anything but that. I don't get it. Yeah, insane. Kind of related on this immigration stuff is something I haven't talked about yet because it happened last night and you're the perfect person to talk to about it. Little Greg Bevino was posting late last night. Maybe drunk posting.

I don't know. He was tweeting at Amanda Moore, who's been a journalist, friend. She's been on the ground covering the CBP and ICE Actions doing great work. And he was tweeting a bunch like controlling her. I thought they took his password away, but I guess he found it or I don't know, Stephen Mill will give it back to him. Among the things he said to her to Amanda was, I'd love to see you bustling around the governor's kitchen fixing us a pie.

I truly would. He also tweeted that he'd really like to try Beaver. I don't know. What? I'm just telling you what he was tweeting last night. Not great. Dude, you have to have been, he has to have been hammered. Right?

I don't, yeah, I guess. I don't know. The little guy, little, you know, the Sean Penn from one battle after another, he's probably lonely. I mean, you know, he found his purpose, which was menacing and intimidating people in the streets of the cities. And that has been taken away from him. And now he's just doing gross.

Reply Guy material. It's gross and should be condemned, but it also feels like a victory. It feels very sad. It's like sad. That's what he's been reduced to now. It's very sad. You know, it's interesting. So everybody I know that's been in politics for any length of time has been through something, not similar to Greg Bevino, but you'll see where I'm going on this. Something where you kind of hit some dark months, right? Some months where you're kind of depressed. You maybe don't know you're depressed and you covered up by drinking or you party too hard. or whatever. Maybe that's Tim's entire life. You know, whatever it is, right?

I went through a phase like this in my life. And I think, frankly, it's the kind of thing like you see Nancy Mace going through right now where the pressure is intense. I've never meant to do the Nancy Mace thing. Okay. I've had some dark moments. Okay. I've had some dark moments.

And I've made some bad calls after a few pops. Okay, that's true. But come on. Let's just. All right. All right. I'll revise that. Yeah.

Impugmate. He's too much. He's only half Nancy. No. But you go through a point when you hit like, I don't know, professional walls. Everybody's kind of done this in their own way. You hit a wall and you kind of go through a dark moment. This is probably what he is going through. He was just recently pictured in Vegas, got kicked out of a bar in Vegas. Not because his behavior, but because he was a disturbance being in there because he looked like him. It's hard to find him in the pictures, actually. I saw people like, these are the pictures of Greg Bevino. And then I'm looking like, where is he? It's like, oh, wait, he's the guy that. Oh, yeah, he's just down there. That's the best thing is when I can call people short. You know, there was. really short, right? And he's, but I don't, I just remember one time he's walking in Minneapolis and he was surrounded by other short guys. And I'm like, he literally had them recruit people that were also five four to walk with them. And, uh, because he'd seen all the pictures. Anyway, yeah, I mean, I would say what you're seeing here is just a guy that got fired probably is in a pretty dark,

depressed place and probably had a couple pops and hopped on and said that last night. And probably should be fired from federal service for that, to be quite honest with you. In Earth 1, he would be fired from federal service. I agree. You should be fired. I agree with that. I mentioned in the entry of the country first campaign that you guys are talking about. I want to hear you talk about that. And there's, I assume, you know, there is overlap here at the other big news item of the last 24 hours, which is the grand jury rejecting the Trump administration's effort to get an indictment in connection with that video featuring six Democrats who are urging members of the military intelligence community not to comply with.

unlawful orders. This is another I should say another group of people who walk free that this Justice Department tried to indict. I've had just a disastrous record on this. I thought one sick little side effect of this was that Mike Johnson was asked about

this. Basically said that he thought that his colleagues deserved to be invited, which is extremely low, blow. And I think a beginning sign of the death throws of the Johnson speakership. But anyway, I was wondering what you made of the grand jury. rejection and also kind of talk to us about the campaign you guys are done. I've actually testified in

front of a federal grand jury and I'll tell you, you're not even allowed to, as a witness, you're not even allowed to take your lawyer into a federal grand jury, much less the defense has absolutely no presence. So this is an uninterrupted, you know, infomercial for the prosecution. And so to reject a indictment is incredible. This happened so many times. And this time, this was obviously the right thing to do. Now, keep in mind, again, the prosecutor, is presenting the case against these six. There's not a defense attorney sitting there saying, yeah, but, and the jury on their own go, no. And so that's an amazing thing. And I think that should give us some faith in not just the grand jury system, but frankly, our judicial branch. The point, though,

is achieving what they wanted to achieve. I don't know if they ever thought they were actually going to be able to keep rank from Mark Kelly, or if they ever thought that they were really going to be able to indict or at least get a conviction. The point is the countless number of retired military members that are scared to speak out right now. And I know too, particularly that are, you know, generals that are retired, that everybody would know their name that are not speaking out because of their fear of this. So that has done its job, sadly. And that's, you know, part of the reason. Like they're afraid they're going to get court-martialed? Yeah, it's all of it. Court-martialed, security concerns, you know, have their rank stripped and or actually, now,

I'll tell you this is the sick thing, and this is actually why you also don't hear a lot of retiring members of Congress speak out, because they have to have jobs when they get out. And their job relies on their ability to have relationships with people in power, whether you're a four-star general or whether you're a former member of Congress. Why are these guys retiring, but they're still voting party lines? Because they want to go back in lobby, and they need to have access to their friends to do it. That's a sad thing, by the way. Thank God. We should just shout out. my colleague, our colleague, Mark Hartling now.

Yeah, absolutely. Not being bowed by this because there is, there's risks for everybody that are doing this. I see him and people like Ben Hodges, who was, you know, the general for Europe has spoken out. There are a few that are willing to speak out and they, seriously, they get high comments for me on that. On the country first side, it'd just be very brief. Look, our goal is just to remind people of the role of the National Guard.

You can see it at country1st.com. And, you know, we have a commercial that's out there that's basically talking about, imagine the floods actually hit your district, but the guard's not there because they're being used by a politician to suppress people. One of the things we've seen in polling is that one of the things that actually compels people to the guard the most is the idea that if a natural disaster hits, their guard is, you know, doing some political thing off somewhere. And so we talk about that. It's information for guard members and for the public. and so I'd encourage people to take a look at it, and that's all I'll say on it. I think that's good. It's a good and important because a lot of people don't know what the National Guard does.

Yep. Right? And so just even as an education effort, you know, the more people learn about what they're supposed to do, I think the more mad some of them will be for good reason about how the guard's being used. As I asked you this question, I just got this text. We have a breaking little item from Senator Slotkin who's saying that she hears that they're going to another grand jury tomorrow. So they're trying to go back at them again. Good Lord.

How many elves do these guys? me. Good Lord. You know? When we talk about like what can we do in the future to put up guardrails, I will tell you there should be some rule against double jeopardy in front of grand juries. You cannot, like they've done to Letitia James, James Comey, now these six. Okay, one grand jury says no bill.

And now you're going to go to another one and another one. And maybe we'll find one in the south. Like, I'm sorry. You can't grand jury hunt. That's got to be, that's got to be on the agenda in three years. Well, we're kind of running down the list of their rake stepping. I want to talk about the situation in El Paso yesterday. So I was flying home in the morning.

I was a little nervous about this because they're saying that they're shutting down the flight area around El Paso for 10 days. And I was thinking my head, I was like, I don't know, Los Angeles to New Orleans. That kind of flies over El Paso. And then there's some misinformation out there about how New Orleans had a no-fly area. But that's Mardi Gras-Row-related. You just can't fly drones, you know, over New Orleans during Mardi Gras. you know, safety first. But anyway, the initial claim from the admin

was that Mexican cartels had deployed a drone across the border. Sean Duffy declared that threat had been neutralized. And so then they reopened the airport. It turns out it was a Mylar party balloon that was shot down. And this is not been confirmed, but we're hearing that it was not shot down by the military, actually, but it was the Border Patrol who were given some weapons to use, some experimental weapons to use. So the Border Patrol guy shut down a party balloon, and as a result, they shut down the airport in El Paso.

Well, look, I want to be fair and say, I understand. I once shot down a party balloon by accident as well. I did it in an F-15. It was okay. I want to be fair and say, like, the actual, like it's comedic that they shot down a party balloon. I understand it, right? Because there are real, I will tell you one of the things that was I over. opening to me because I have worked the border in the Air National Guard, particularly against cartel operations. And they are better funded, maybe not than now, but they were better funded

than us back then. And they had better intelligence and stuff. And so the idea that there would be drone defense against that is good because you'll see a lot of cartel drones come and spy, look for where border patrol isn't, look for right times for crossings, drugs, you know, people, stuff like that. But the 10-day closure of the airspace is, what's indicative of what happens in this administration, which is instead of there being a mature discussion about what's happening, I mean, first off, if you're going to shoot down a drone, you really don't need to shut down airspace. What you have to figure out is simply, are there aircraft in the flight path? No, okay. And we can know if there's aircraft in the flight path.

This overreaction happened. People woke up, WTF. I got a ton of email or off attacks from people that wondered if it was aliens related. I'm dead serious. Okay. Because it was, it is kind of of near where this happened was near what's it called i'm not an i'm not an alien conspiracy theorist the thing i don't know some alien thing whatever the thing in new mexico is that they're at an independent state oh yeah roswell or something yeah yeah it was near that yeah but anyway and no it was just an overreaction but on the issue of these this drone defense this is a good thing in general because it's laser laser is returnable and cheap right now to shoot down a drone in many cases we're using massively expensive weapons it's a it's a kind of a miss match right like a drone's

$300 the weapons we're using are $50,000 so this is a good thing but this is comedic in that I'm not sure the border patrol should be the first using this I actually think the best use of a weapon like this is to send it to units in Ukraine who are actually defending against a real drone war right now and see what happens there. Similar to what the Brits are doing. They're creating an anti-dron weapon that's a laser, maybe further along than we know. And they're deploying that in Ukraine before their own side because there's a real life-saving benefit to it. Also, it was communications fuck up.

It doesn't feel like they've got the A team here, right? Like there's a, you know, DBP is not communicating with the military, not communicating with DOT. They're shutting down the Alpasa airport for 10 days. That's what they initially had said before they pulled it back. Everybody is scared to underreact. And so they're overreacting. Everyone's worked at an organization like this, right? If you've been in the military, it's like, hey, the boss says we have to line up for formation at seven.

So your squadron commander says, let's all get here at 630. The flight commander says, let's all get here at 615 because the commander wants us at 630. And you end up with that way front loading thing. And that's, I think, what you see here. Like, hey, we need to shut down the airspace temporarily. It's like, oh, hey, 10 day. Time they seem tough. We're tough.

The cartels can't send any balloons, our way. We'll stop people from flying to see their grandma. It is perfect, though, that it was a balloon. It's just perfect. You bet you Ukraine. We went deep on this with Ben Wittish yesterday, but I just wanted to give you a chance to cook on the way to study Ukraine if you want to. I thought Ben gave a really good rundown.

This war is by no means over. This war is even close to over. It is a industrial fight right now between Ukraine and the West, I will say, and Russia. Who can produce the most stuff? Who can produce it for the longest and who can continue to put men on the front lines? And what Ukraine has been able to figure out is how to reduce their footprint on the front line, thus how to put less people in danger. You're only seeing movements now in groups of one and two people,

not platoon movements, not massive armored movements. So you're seeing a lockdown front line because anywhere within 50 kilometers, basically, of each side of the line of contact is now under complete control of massive amounts of drones from both sides. So this is now a matter of who can strike medium, who can strike deep into each other's territory, who can defend themselves, and quite honestly who has the industrial capacity to win. I wouldn't have said this last time I was on the pod, but I think it's possible that in five or ten years there is still this thing going on. And unfortunately, we have to come to grips with it and not get numb to it.

I know. Yeah, that really, it was that economist article that really sat with me. I mentioned with Ben yesterday where they kind of painted out a way that like it's 2030 and, you know, we're still in the stalemate in Ukraine, Russian, Belarus have more formally united, you know, maybe they pick off a little island in Estonia. Like, this is just what we're at now. And I just want to add to that real quickly, which is in February, Lindsay Graham was talking about his sanctions bill that's ready to go. and Trump is going to try one more time to do this. It's February right now. You mean he was doing that this week? A year ago. A year ago. And he's constantly talking about his sanctions bill and then Trump wants him to hold it back because they have this one chance to do something.

It's been a year, Lindsay. I know you or your people listen to this. It is either get that bill done against the wishes of the president or shut up and just admit you're only going to do what Donald Trump wants. But you cannot have your cake and eat it to anymore. I'm sorry. I don't think Lindsay listens anymore. I got to tell you, I did bump into him. I don't know, maybe a year ago now.

And it was one of those situations where he remembered me from the old days. Like when he saw me walking up, he did the politician. A smile came across his face. It's like, oh, good to see you again. And then you saw it like click in his brain like eight seconds in as I started to talk. He was like, oh, wait, this person hates him. And he started to say he's like, get out of. And then he started yelling at me.

It's just fine. It's just good. I like that. He should have to deal with more exchanges like that. He shouldn't be hiding. He was a job guy too. He was a job guy too. I want to do a little politics.

Should we do the Republicans or Wussies first or should we end with that? Maybe let's end with that. That'll be a little fun place to end. So let's talk about the Democrats. Two areas that you're in Texas. You live in Texas and then you're in Indiana yesterday. So I kind of want to talk about both. Let's start with the Texas Senate race.

It feels like a shit show to me. And a huge opportunity to, to pick up a seat. Yeah. And it's part of the reason why I'm talking about it a lot, because it's just extremely frustrating that we are where we are. But you're on the ground there. I'm hoping maybe it isn't as bad as it seems to me from my podcast studio.

It feels like it's bad. I mean, first off, let's just on the Republican side, it's basically a three-way tie, which is crazy. And if I was Cornyn, I would be embarrassed about that, right? Just for people who aren't paying attention. So it's John Cornyn, the sitting senator. Ken Paxton is a MAGA, Tea Party guy who has a million issues, corruption, cheating on his wife, like everything.

The whole gambit of MAGA foibles, he's done all of them. And then like a third kind of MAGA-ish guy, Wesley Hunt, got into the race as well. And that's, I think, the only thing really keeping Cornyn alive, really, kind of, because it's dividing up to vote a little bit. So anyway. Yep. I think so, too. And so that's probably, I think, good money is going to bet that Paxton is going to win.

That's bad. And it's good if you're a Democrat because Paxton is the one that Democrats could potentially beat. And keep in mind in 2018, it was Beto who ran to the left actually came within a point of winning statewide in Texas. And so this is the equivalent of that election cycle. It is equivalent of that. But I think it's important to correct the record for people to be clear-eyed on what Beto's 2018 campaign was because it was not as left as his second campaign. And he was, he was like running as a moderate or anything, but he like he was really focused on, like, I'm going to go everywhere in Texas. And remember he did that thing with Will Hurd,

where it was like the two of them were in Congress. Oh, yeah, the road trip. So on the policy-wise, he was running still as a liberal Democrat, but his brand, he was trying to cultivate a brand that was more bipartisan in 2018. Yeah, great point. And I just think that's important to remember when you think about the fact that that's the closest the Democrats have gotten to success. Yep.

And like within a point, I mean, incredibly. And so you have a situation. It's Talor Rico against Crockett, both very well-spoken in terms of passionate, kind of getting everybody fired up. The polls show that Tala Rico would have a much better shot against Paxton. And I think people in Texas need to simply know. I haven't obviously taken a side in the Democratic primary, but people need to know that if Paxton wins,

if basically Paxton wins the primary, it has to be everything unleashed to be in. That is the only thing that matters at that point, because if you think Cornyn or Ted Cruz are bad, holy cow, wait till Paxton comes. So unfortunately, it looks like it is a bloody fight. And I'm not sure that the guy that probably could do the best in the general election Tala Rico is going to win.

I don't know. But that's a situation we're sitting in. On the other hand, on the House side, there's like Texas 9, my buddy Terry Verts is running, astronaut running in the primary there. If he can win that primary, I think that can be a takeaway from, it wouldn't really technically be a takeaway from the Republicans, but it would be one of the, districts they counted on to go Republican. It's 60% Hispanic. So there's real opportunity for Texas. Yeah, similarly to Polito, Bobby Polito, who I was on a couple weeks ago running down there in South Texas.

So no, on the House side, there are too, there are opportunities. This takes us into the Indiana and a thing that I want to talk to you about. And so I want to frame it up through this poll. This is kind of why I'm obsessed with the Texas thing. This is this is Trump net approval. Morning Council did that. This is checked his approval in every state, state by state. you know, there's margin of error and all this. And, you know, so I don't want to get overstated. But directionally, you can get a sense for what the, what the battlefield looks like. And you look here at the states where he is just a little bit in the green still. Montana, he's plus four.

Nebraska's plus six, I should mention. So I think that Dan Osborne Senate race is interesting. South Carolina only plus three. Florida plus two, Texas plus two. Kansas plus one. Indiana, where you were even. Ohio, even. in the big Sherrod Brown Senate race there.

Alaska and Iowa, two other places where there are conceivably competitive Senate races, he's minus one, and then you can't jump into the blue states. But I just think if you look at that batch, and those are all states he won by 10 points or more. Iowa, Alaska, Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, Texas, Florida. And his approval is between plus two and minus one in those states could get worse. As the year goes on, we'll see. But Democrats need to be very serious about competing in those states. and winning in those states in the Senate.

And I need to have the type of candidates that can appeal in those states. So anyway, you were in Indiana. What do you think about the broader picture and what you saw in Indiana? Yeah, so I met with Indiana Democrats in Anderson, Indiana. It was one of the congressional districts. Here's the thing is I think back the best example of what this year could be is 2010. And you were part of 2010 with me, which is, you know, look, I ended up running against a Democrat that had won my district. by 23 points and I beat her by 15.

Okay. Now that gives you an idea of that kind of swing. And it was without a scandal. She didn't do anything scandalous. I'm sorry, I've just, I've just calculated there. She had won by 23 and you won by 15 or she had won by 15. She had won by 23 and then I beat her. 23.

Yeah. It was a massive, massive flip. Yeah. And then I ended up serving with a lot of people that had no clue they would actually win. I mean, honestly, people that were showing up to freshman orientation, like looking around, They knew they'd probably only be there two years, but they're like, what in the, wow, this is a crowd. I didn't think I'd be here. That is this year.

Yeah. Except on the potential for a blue wave here instead of a red wave. There are going to be people that win races in Indiana or Texas or any of these states that we're going to look at and be like, that person was never on the D-Triple C, the Democratic Congressional campaign, never on their radar, never on the NRCC's radar to defend. and they won by five or 10%. So this is why it is essential to put good candidates in place to elect the best one to compete in the general election out of a primary because this is not the time to pass a purity test. This is the time to defend our democracy by taking power away,

not just barely, but crushing the Republicans so that Mike Johnson never does anything public again because he's so embarrassed by how much they lost. House. And by the way, now the Senate's in play, which is insane. It's insane. Just to your point, and it's not over. That's why I'm continuing to talk about this. It's February 12th. And filing deadlines have passed in some states, but not others. Like, California is still in March. Colorado is in March. Hawaii's in June. I'm just like kind of scrolling down here really quick. You know, Iowa still. So Democrats have a lot of candidates. The House recruitment is going, I think, much better. You know, I think those stretch districts are still going to be.

So critical. And that's kind of what I'm focused on as well. Just encouraging people, it's not too late to decide to run, to choose to run, and to think about different types of candidates that might fit those districts a little better than what a typical Democrat is. Amen. And vote strategically in the primary. I get it. Somebody may have a different view on one thing than you or five things even. Vote strategically. Because in many cases, it's that versus a MAGA. And I'm sure I know who you would prefer. I want to say this every time because as a former Republican people, like, people here vote strategically and you're like, oh, vote for the most moderate person. And then some districts, that does mean moderate. But I also just, I want to see more like working class Dems running who have backgrounds who like are from the community who maybe, you know, maybe they're economically way more to the left of me. But like they were a cop or something, you know. And so they have some cultural cachet that's a little bit more in the middle. I, you know, I just think that more of that type of thing is better.

Anything in particular from Indiana strike out to you from the conversations from your time? Just energy, man. I mean, honestly, I went there thinking, well, it's probably, I'm probably going to have to deal with, you know, people are going to be down and kind of, you know, muttering. It's Indiana. And I even had made a comment once to somebody like, you know, I know it's a red state. And their response wasn't, no, it's not. We're really close.

It's not as red as people think. And that is exactly what I wanted to see because they have a fighting spirit, which was pretty cool. Was it weird just for you to speak in a Democrat? rubber chicken dinner? I've been doing it for about a year now. How does it feel? It feels much more welcoming than if I went to a Republican line that's for sure. Nobody's telling you you're the devil.

Satan has entered. Satan is in now. You're on the Epstein files. Actually, no, I'm not. Well, you should be on the Epstein files. Not look is. All right. Last thing that I teased.

I don't believe I've played Nick Flentes' voice on this podcast ever. and you don't ever have to hand it to white nationalists and racist. Nick Fuentes, I have no love for him at all. I think he's deeply pernicious. Sometimes, though, deeply pernicious people that say what they really think,

occasionally, like have some clarity that the hacks don't have, right? Like, you know, Sean Hannity never has any clarity because he's just a hack. All right? He's just saying whatever the party wants.

Because Nick Fuentes is a gross in-cell, like he's occasionally says, stuff that the party doesn't like to hear, and every once in a while it's right, and this happens to be one of those cases. I'd like to listen to them. It's not funny anymore. It's not edgy. It's really just become a drag. At one point, we were the trolls, and now we're the butt hurt ones. There was a point in time when we were having fun and we were laughing and we were trolling and we were making jokes. And now our side are the biggest butt hurt faggots of all time. The far right has become the biggest butt-hurt faggots ever. Everybody's mad all the time. You can't make jokes.

Everyone's moral fagging about everything. Purity spiraling. At the end of the day, people don't even really have a vision for what the country should be. The Republicans are butt-hurt. They don't have a vision. They're not fun anymore. They're whining about bad bunny and all the Olympian. I just think that like that in summation explains. why J.D. Vance is going to have a really hard time. I agree. Because all those things, all those complaints he said just define J.D. Vance. Like, he is just, he's constantly butt hurt about everything.

And Trump at least has some fun sometimes. And I think it is, it is a correct assessment of the problems with the right right now. As a right in the middle of X and millennial, some zinial, I can understand the idea of why trolling has such a draw to people. although I can't really explain it, right? I will say he's right on in that whole thing about they used to have fun doing this.

They love to take people off. They love making people victims. And now, listen, this is the party. I can't tell you, even up to my last year in Congress, we would talk about the ruggedness of the individual and the Republican Party that believes that men should be able to provide for the family and whatever. We have created an entire generation of victim cissy. I mean, I've got to tell you, watching, you know, 50-year-old white men who are complaining that they're being, you know, pushed out of society, look, you can have real issues with things like hiring preferences. I understand that. But to say that you now are being discriminated in society, this is not, it wasn't just bad bunny, Tim, that they were upset about. They've been upset about every halftime Super Bowl since I was like one year old. Every half time Super Bowl that ticked.

didn't include Lee Greenwood. I mean, we are creating an entire generation of men that sit on the internet. They watch other men talk about how unfair their life is and how things are terrible. And my grandfather stared down Nazis in World War II and came home and never talked about it. He wasn't the nicest guy ever. So I'm not saying we need to be exactly like that. But for once, practice what you preach. Grow up, be rugged.

Stop being a freaking whiny victim. and my advice to Democrats is keep calling these people out as whiny victims because it drives them nuts and it makes them more victimy. And ultimately, Americans hate whiny victims. Okay, that's my diatribe. Yeah, it's not appealing. Yeah, no, they're diaper babies. It's not appealing. And like, you think about the people, the gains that they made among men between Obama and Trump, a lot of those guys, like, they're not signing up for, like, they were upset at the woke scolding, you know?

And I don't think that they're going to take any better to J.D. Vance's, like, you know, patriotic hall monitor. Yeah. I don't think that nobody wants a hall monitor in chief. It's not fun. It is not in the American spirit or tradition, frankly. And, you know, they just grow up. They're diaper babies. I'm not going to say the words that the next side.

Right. Like, just grow up. Like, be a man. Grow up. I don't care. Oh, yeah. Or no. Don't keep whining about everything.

or keep bitching about bad funny we'll see how it goes for you we'll see how it goes you know you made all these gains among Hispanic men and it's like it's like oh the society is over if there's a spanish half-ton show by the way we only speak english in america and english is american now actually english is from england we imported that too did you see the other guy at the not kid rock the other guy at the alternate halftime show it was the saddest most pathetic thing i've ever heard it was this fat country fuck up there doing a sad song. And I like sad songs. Sad things happen to people.

There's, you know, there's a lot of great history of the blues music. It's talking about all the bad things that happened to folks. Like, legitimately bad things because the blues musicians, like, were descended of slaves and they were in Jim Crow South. And it's like they have legitimate things to complain about. This fucking whiny bitch was up there just going like, it's hard being country in this country.

I just want to fish and mow my love. without having to turn on the news and hear people being mean to me. And it's just like, I'm kidding. Don't turn on the news, dude. Yeah. Right? Just fish if you want.

You can finish. I'm tired of having to take this fish and knife and stab myself in the leg. Well, you could also just not do it. And then you wouldn't be stabbed in the leg. Good Lord. Just an idea. Something to think about. All right.

Adam Kinziker, it's always a joy being with you, my friend. You too, man. Hope to see you soon. And ever we go check him out on Substack, wherever else he is. is going to go support country first. And for the rest of you all, I'll be back here tomorrow because it's Friday for another edition of the show. We'll see you all then.

Peace. We used to have fun. We used to have fun. But something's changed. We used to have fun. We used to have fun. Things don't feel the same. The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason

Brown.