The Bulwark Podcast - Adam Serwer and Bobby Pulido: MAGA Got Proven Wrong

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

The mass deportation operation was supposed to be about the manly men pulling out all the stops in defense of Western civilization, which they claim is being brought down by brown and black immigrants. But it is the multi-racial, multi-faith people of Minneapolis who are fighting—at the risk of their own lives—for the cause of community, neighborhoodism, and social cohesion. And that is not the same social cohesion of JD Vance, who thinks white people need to live next door to other white people. Meanwhile, MAGA’s dreams that Trump had flipped Hispanic voters sure doesn’t seem to be the case in the Rio Grande Valley, where people are feeling disrespected by ICE and not free to be themselves. Plus, the current state of Second Amendment politics, and some much-needed ridicule of Stephen Miller.The Atlantic's Adam Serwer and Texas-15 congressional candidate Bobby Pulido join Tim Miller.show notes Adam's piece in The Atlantic Adam’s book, “The Cruelty Is the Point”  Bobby's campaign web site Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/BULWARK and use promo code BULWARK at checkout.

Hey, everybody, big news. We are going back on the road. We wanted to be with y'all. Me and Sarah wanted to hug you. JV.L. wanted to greet you from a polite distance. So we're planning our spring bulwark tour, and we demanded to kick off with our friends in the Twin Cities. So we'll be there February 19th. I guess it probably won't be very spring in the Twin Cities, February 19th, but that's okay. We're going to be there for a one-night show. Details are to come on that. Then after that in March, we're headed to Texas. I'm in Dallas on March 18th and Austin on March 19th. Minnesota tickets are going on sale Friday.

The Texas shows will go on sale next week. Watch your inboxes. Thebillwork.com slash events for more. Go to the bulwark.com slash events. If you are not from Minnesota, by the way, come. Come, come hang with us. It's going to be a big venue. We're going to plan some other stuff February 19th.

Hope to see you all there. Welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim. Bill, we got a double header for you today. Up in segment two is Bobby Polito, who's running for Congress in South Texas. Super interesting guy I met last week. I'm excited to talk to him about immigration and what the hell the Democrats are going to do if about their Hispanic voter problem or even if they have one anymore. So stick around for that. But first, delighted to welcome back to the show, staff writer at the Atlantic. He was in Minneapolis last week to report on ordinary Minnesotans who mobilized to resist the occupation of their city. It's Adam Sarwar. What's up, man? Hey, how's it going?

I guess I'd start here. Could you sum up the administration's actions in Minnesota in five words? An attack on an American city? I don't know if that. Say the line, Adam. Oh, yeah. I refuse to do it. I want to give you the Bard Simpson.

It's funny that that's exactly where you were going, and I didn't even get it. Anyway, yes, you know, I think you'd have to say the cruelty is the point there. I mean, you just look at how people are talking about, you know, the two Minneapolis, St. Paul, residents who were killed by the border patrol and basically seeking to unperson them in order to justify the unjustifiable, which is, you know, the taking of the lives of people who pose no threat to anyone and who were, you know, when they were killed in the process of trying to protect or aid the people around them. I'm just jealous. I don't have a tagline. I mean, I've been talking 20 hours a week and nothing sticks yet, but one of these days.

The article that you wrote, I think, had some really deep and poignant elements that I want to get to and is maybe concerningly for you in line with some of the stuff I've been thinking about. You just put it better. But just before we get to kind of the deeper elements of your analysis, what's happened in Minnesota, just explain for people. I was interested to kind of hear the more rote, you know, play-by-play of what's happening on the ground. Like you were riding around with some of these Ice Watch folks. Like what exactly are they doing and what's happening? Yeah, so look, you know, I was riding around South Minneapolis in a neighborhood called Powderhorn that has seen a lot of ice activity in which you'll see when you go to Powderhorn is there are a lot of people

walking around on foot with their whistles. Sometimes they stand in front of particular restaurants that they know are vulnerable because they're, you know, Somali-American-owned or Mexican-American-owned or something like that. so they know there'll be a target for immigration authorities. And then you have people in cars. And generally, you know, these people are referred to as observers or commuters. And you'll have a driver and a co-pilot. And the co-pilot will listen to, sorry, my cat loves it whenever I'm recording.

You two people love the cat. All good. So the co-pilot will listen to a dispatcher who will identify, you know, locations where, ice activity is occurring or the presence of an ice vehicle. Now, ice came in and basically took all the rental cars in the city. I couldn't even get one. And so they have all these, you know, sport utility vehicles with out-of-state plates, which made them relatively easy to identify. And so the Ice Watch folks, which, and they're, you know, decentralized, they're organized by neighborhood. It's a very person-to-person thing. That's why it was difficult for conservatives

to infiltrate, although they appear to have successfully done that. And they, you know, operate using handles. So I don't actually know the names of the people that I was with. I know their handles and I can communicate with them and I can talk to them and I can confirm things with them, but they did not give me their names, at least in some cases they did not give me their actual names. And they go around a neighborhood looking for ice vehicles. When they find an ice vehicle, they report it back to the dispatcher or they follow the ice vehicle and they make noise to let everybody else in the neighborhood know that ice is around. Everybody knows. Everybody knows. that, you know, it's both ICE and the Border Patrol and maybe some other federal agents,

you know, everybody's masked. It's not like they're telling you who they are. Everybody just simply refers to ICE, which may be a source of frustration for ICE people who feel like the Border Patrol are the real Yahoo's here. But the fact is that everybody just sort of refers colloquially to federal agents as ICE, whatever agency that may be a part of. It's like a Xerox, you know, even if, you know, you got a brand now. Yeah. So what I would say is that they go around. And sometimes these lead to confrontations, right? Sometimes the agents will get out of the car. They'll box somebody in.

They'll threaten them. You know, I was told of incidents where they sprayed pepper spray into the heat vents in order to get the pepper spray into the car, especially if someone doesn't want to roll down the window. A couple of the people that I spoke to had actually been followed home or had their plates run by federal agents who came and said, you know, stop fucking following us. You know, there are lots of viral videos of federal agents saying things like, you know, like, did you see what happened to unrepeatable language, which is, you know, a death threat?

And obviously, you know, they're willing to kill people, even people who are not posing a threat to them. So, you know, the thing that I was struck by was the tremendous courage of the people who are following ICE around because they know that if they get killed, you know, the federal government will refuse to investigate. They won't allow local authorities access to the scene. and then, you know, the president and the vice president and their advisors will all say that they were a terrorist and murderers and trying to kill federal agents. So they know that they might be killed and that whoever kills them will not be held accountable for their death and that they will be smeared by their own government. So to me, you know, what these people are doing is profoundly brave. They're unarmed.

They do not seek physical confrontation with ICE agents. Their purpose is just to foil their operations by making everybody aware that they're occurring. And talk about why that is foiling their operations, I guess. Is it because they're just going to leave the neighborhood if they're going to get harassed? Is it because it's warning people not to come outside? Like, what is foiling about that activity? Well, I mean, you know, ICE wants the element of surprise. So if people are ready for them, they might be able to escape or hide, you know,

or something of the sort. And the thing is, is that what people have told me is that, you know, it's not just if you don't have legal status that you should be afraid because there are lots of stories of people stopping people who are citizens who have legal status, who are here legally, and being mistreated. You know, I spoke to one Somali-American activist who told me that her sister had been detained at the Whipple Building for hours, even though she's an American citizen. So I think it's not just a question of, you know, they're trying to warn undocumented immigrants.

They're warning anybody who might presumably be racially profiled by ICE because the Supreme Court said, you know, the 14th Amendment doesn't exist anymore and you can just stop anyone if you think they're an illegal immigrant because they have brown skin or they speak a different language. Or the most apt group is people who did come here using the CBP1 app or people who came here seeking asylum who've been doing their meetings. Stephen Miller wants to disentangle that group from people that snuck across the Rio Grande or whatever. But it's a meaningfully different legal status. And those folks are being treated no different than somebody who is an actual illegal immigrant, has committed a crime. Well, to be honest, I don't think that Miller and whoever's running the like

DHS social media accounts distinguishes between American citizen, undocumented immigrant, a person with legal status at all if you are of a demographic category that they don't want in the country. I think they do not care. You know, Stephen Miller is a big fan of the racist 1920s immigration restrictions that, you know, partially inspired the Nazis. He said that the big problem with the country was when they repealed those restrictions in 1965. He's talked about if you import the third world, quote unquote, you get the third world, which is, you can't even describe it as barely veiled, really racist statement that does not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration. It says the presence of people who are not like me in this country is

wrong. And as long as that's your ideological, you know, North Star, you cannot have like a lawful legal immigration policy that distinguishes between categories of people because which you really want to achieve is a kind of ethnic cleansing, demographic reengineering of the country. That takes to your article, which is how Minnesota proved Maga wrong. And I kind of want to go through the elements of the ways in which they've proven Maga wrong one by one. But just give folks who haven't read it like the overall, you know, thesis. The overall thesis is that I think, you know, if you've ever seen the movie Fight Club, you know, there's that Tyler. Darden line where he's like, we have no great war. Our great depression is our lives. And this is the

figment of an imagination of a disturbed person, but I think, you know, for a lot of like online, like far right maga types, it's actually a thesis statement. And so, you know, they thought of this, you know, mass deportation project as their great, masculizing, you know, saving Western civilization thing where they would get to prove that they were manly men. They would finally get the manly execution of violence in defense of a great cause that would give their lives meaning. And instead, you know, this oppressive federal invasion of an American city has given their political opponents to show that they are brave, that they are fighting a great cause, that they are the ones who have a community that they will defend even at the risk of their

own lives, that they are the ones who truly believe in their principles to the point of, you know, risking everything to defend them. And I think there's a kind of irony to that because this community in Minnesota, you know, the right has a social theory of that like multiracial, multi-faith communities cannot be, you know, quote-unquote cohesive, that our chaos is the result of the presence of people who are different from us. And then you see this multiracial community in Minneapolis. coming together in defense of each other in this like broad, nonviolent way. And it's just inspiring. And it just refutes the idea that the problem with quote unquote cohesion is the presence

of people who are different from us. The problem is, you know, people who make an issue out of someone being different from you. You know, the way I sometimes describe it is it's like, you know, an arsonist setting a building on fire and then complaining about the temperature. If you're going to demagogue about how horrible, you know, X group of people are, of course, like, there are going to be cohesion problems because you are saying these people are the enemy and they are a legitimate target of state violence in the way that Trump has said, you know, Somali immigrants are garbage and we don't want them. So I want to go through those elements one of the time there's a social cohesion element that kind of defense of Western civilization who's doing that in the masculinity. The social cohesion thing has been an obsession of mine since I watched J.D. Vance's interview with Ross Douthat. Did you see that by chance when they're in the world? I did not see the whole thing.

Yeah, okay. You use a quote from JD on the topic of how immigrants ruin social cohesion in the article. But he goes at that in greater depth sitting in the Vatican with Ross Douthat after the Pope died. And I want to play for you a little bit of that. I think a lot about this question of social cohesion in the United States. I think about how do we form the kind of society, again, where people can raise families, where people join in institutions together, where, you know, what I think Burke, have called the mediating layers of society are actually healthy and vibrant. And I do think that

those who care about what might be called the common good, they sometimes underweight how destructive to the common good immigration at the levels and at the pace that we've seen of the last few years. I really do think that social solidarity is destroyed when you have too much migration too quickly. And so that's not because I hate the migrants or I'm motivated by grievance. That's because I'm trying to preserve something in my own country. Social solidarity is destroyed by migration. Yeah, look, I've heard this before, and I think, you know, it is an argument that makes sense on paper. You can disagree with it. You can think it's wrong, but, you know, there's a logical progression to it. Here's the thing. It's wrong.

We know it's wrong because we could see in Minneapolis, we could see these communities of people who say, you are my neighbor, whether you were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu, you are my neighbor, and I'm going to protect you. I'm going to walk your kids to the bus stop so that they, you know, because I know you can't go outside, I'm going to bring you food if you need to stay at home. I'm going to help you pay your rent. You know, if I see ice, I'm going to blow my whistle, or I'm going to take out my camera and start filming. I mean, when you look at the death of Alex pretty, the reason that we are able to discount fully the lies that we're told about, the circumstances of his death is that there were so many people filming from so many different

angles. I mean, apart from Vance's argument being wrong in practice, in my view, wrong, period, I mean, what you're actually saying, that the pace of immigration might help people assimilate better, if you, maybe, maybe. But, you know, it's a little weird to say that when like you consider that, like, a substantial amount of, you know, the white population. United States was segregated into ethnic enclaves where people only spoke their original language, you know, for much of the late 19th and early 20th century, and it turned out okay. You know, and what we have here is like immigrants are actually assimilating much faster than in that period, like much faster, like second, third generation, you know, they only speak English. So it's not true.

It has like a logical sense. It's not true. But it's also like just not true on the ground of Minneapolis. What is so moving about the sort of neighborism there is that everybody says it doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what gender you are. It doesn't matter what race you are. It doesn't matter what religion you are. You are my neighbor. I will defend you. And that is a level of commitment to social cohesion that I have yet to see from anybody in the entire MAGA coalition who all seem to be about stating these things, not so much as a matter of like principles they want to see lived in the world, but as a question of like brand building and political identity, which is, I think, what J.D. Vance is doing. Yeah, exactly. I get my backup when somebody talks

about how important social cohesion and social solidarity and the common good is to them in one breath and then in the next breath, they smear and lie about their neighbors. Yeah. We're going to get to social cohesion eventually, but first, you know, we have to smear and, you know, denigrate our neighbors. And then on the back end of that, we'll get to friendship. We're going to get masked men to shoot people dead in the street, and that's going to lead to social cohesion. No, look, I mean, what they are doing is they're trying to come up with a, what sounds like a morally justifiable argument for violence against undesirable people they want to leave the United

States, people they want to force out of the United States by means of terror, whether or not they're actually citizens. Delete me. Makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time with surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. it's easier than ever to find personal information about folks online, having your address phone number and family members' names hanging out of the internet can have consequences in the real world and make everyone vulnerable.

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And he was like, well, one of the things you should do is use this thing, delete me. And I was like, oh, great. Well, they're already a sponsor. Already done. Check that box. So don't take my word for it. Take his. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me.

Now at a special discount for our listeners, get 20% off your DeleteMe plan. when you go to join delete me.com slash bulwark and use promo code bulwark at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to join delete me.com slash bulwark and enter code bulwark at checkout. That is join delete me.com slash bulwark code bulwark. I want to go to the masculinity part next, which you referenced. And this has been another hobby horse of mine. It's hard for me to understand how you can look at a group of seven masked goons, pushing down a woman and then tackling, like, let's be honest, kind of a liberal soy boy looking

kind of guy, and then needing seven of them to keep him on the ground. And then shooting him in the back of the head. And then shooting him six times after he's dead. And looking at that and saying, you know, the real masculine people are the ones that did that. But that is Stephen Miller's view of masculinity. You referenced this audio in the article, but I think it's important for people to actually hear it to hear kind of the menace in his voice. You know, the gangbangers that you deal with, they think that they're ruthless.

They have no idea how ruthless we are. They think they're tough. They have no idea how tough we are. They think that they're hardcore. We are so much more hardcore than they are. And we have the entire weight of the United States government behind us. What do they have? We are so hard.

I am so hard. We're going to lose. My voice hasn't dropped yet, but I'm so hardcore. That's so masculine. There's nothing like screaming, I'm so hardcore while your voice rises an octave. It's amazing. Yeah, look, I think part of the cognitive dissonance here is that, you know, here's Stephen Miller screaming about how hardcore he is.

But the people who are dying in defense of their ideals are people like Renee Good and Alex Pretty. They're the ones who have proven to be tough. who have proven to be brave, who have been willing to defend, you know, the redeeming ideals of Western civilization, like due process, like equal protection under the law, like individual liberty, those are the things that are being defended by the people on the ground in Minnesota. They are not and cannot be defended by men with masks and guns who have, quote, unquote, total immunity to exact violence on a civilian population.

It's just not possible. The person who is staring down a gun with empty hands is always braver than the person with the mask and the gun. But what has happened is that MAGA has adopted this juvenile definition of masculinity where it's simply a question of dominance. They have replaced every redeeming quality of traditional masculinity or the traditional masculine ideal that they talk about, heroism, sacrifice, bravery and they've replaced it with, you know, a capacity for violence and domination. That's it. I want to add one addendum to that. The person protesting is obviously more brave than the guy at the mask and the gun, but sometimes the guys with the guns are brave, right? I mean, like, there is real police work that it has to be done where you do have to encounter actual bad guys,

actual troublemakers, where you do fear for yourself because they might lash out at you and they might try to harm you. And a lot of those guys are out in the streets in Minneapolis and all over the country and they're doing it responsibly and they're doing it like real men do it and they are not pushing women to the ground and they are not unloading their clip into dead protesters. And I think that's important. I've had loved ones who have been on multiple deployments. But what is a reality is you cannot have people with mass and guns who are not accountable, you know, to the public because we don't know their identities, who have total, quote unquote, total immunity to use lethal force, that is just not compatible with the democracy because the lifeblood of democracy is accountability.

And if you give someone ultimate power, the power over life and death, and you say they can never be held accountable under any circumstances, then you've defeated the purpose of democracy in the first place, which is to find what the will of the people is and execute it. I want to ask you to expand a little bit on that point about Western civilization as well, because I think this is important. I like, look, if you spend any time online, you see a lot of bravado from MAGA about defending the West against whatever,

is radical Islam or the, you know, libtards, whatever it is. But they don't actually know anything about what the undergirds Western civilization. Stephen Miller's wife, Katie Miller, uh,

the podcaster and chief of the administration. She, uh, she posted this week. attacking a AI CEO who said that his deep loyalty is to the principles of classical liberal democracy. Katie seemed to either misunderstand and think that he was saying that he's loyal to liberalism, like she thinks it means, like Democrats are libs. Or she does know what classical liberalism is and is actively hostile towards it.

I think either explanation of that post is pretty damning. But you got into this bit in the piece about how it's actually the Minnesota instead of defending Western civilization and classical liberal democracy. Yeah, look, I think, you know, when a lot of MAGA-aligned people, you know, talk about the West, they're not talking about great literature, they're not talking about great art, although they may sometimes invoke classical literature or classical art that they haven't read or cannot appreciate in order to defend what they really mean, which is the West is a, you know, a racially defined thing.

It's defined by white people in the presence of people who are not white, is therefore an attack on the West. But what the people in Minnesota are defending are the actual Western values, individual liberty, due process, free speech. It's sort of extraordinary how much the people align with the Trump administration either don't understand, as you pointed out, or don't like these things. You know, when I was at the march, there was a young man I spoke to whose family was from Uganda. And he mentioned that, you know, his mom had like made sure he knew where her passport was in case she got picked up by ice. And what he said to me was like, you know, my parents are scared because the country they fled had men in the street with masks and guns and they never thought it would happen here. So when you think about Stephen Miller saying, oh, you know, these third world migrants recreate the conditions of their broken homelands, no, you're doing that. That's which you are doing.

And you're doing that because you have no appreciation of the, quote unquote, principles of Western civilization, the good ones. Just to be clear, not the ones that led to the industrialization of chattel slavery, but the ones that say individual people have value and rights that must be respected. And these people have nothing but disdain for those things. And I think in part, when you look at the people around the Trump administration, and Miller is like an example, we have a society now that selects for people who are excellent at getting attention, not necessarily people who are competent at the work that they do, not understanding what classical liberal principles are is just an example of that.

You started to reference it there. So I want to get with you a little bit more into kind of the context of, you know, this more historic examples of state violence against folks here. I mean, obviously, in some ways, this is not new. But I've been kind of like grappling with this a little bit about how to talk about it in the right way. Because in our lifetime, like we're about the same age, it's pretty different, I think. It's like meaningfully different. from like police violence against black folks, right?

Like I think that that is also an example of state violence against, you know, people where the government sort of covers it up and smears victims, right? So there's some similarities. But the structural nature of this, right, like the degree to which this is like a top-down stated policy by the president of the United States and Congress has funded it. and now they're executing this policy in our streets, like to me makes it a little bit more similar to kind of things from the deeper past.

And I'm wondering how you would contextualize it. Well, you know, Langston Hughes famously said that the South was a fascist government, right, during the rise of fascism in Europe. And I think he was right about that, even though we can distinguish between, you know, classical dictatorships and hair-in-voke democracies. But I think what is different here,

What is novel is that, you know, after the Civil War, the framers of the Reconstruction Amendments were like, the thing we need to really prevent is oppression of people by their state governments because, you know, the original founders thought, oh, the state governments will protect their residents from tyranny by the federal government. But it turned out that philosophy, you know, was one that was employed by men who wanted to own other men as property, other people as property. They revised the Constitution to say the federal government will protect the rights of the individual people. So I think what's unusual here is we have sort of a reverse reconstruction

where the Redeemers are in charge of the federal government. And rather than, you know, the sort of redemption era red shirts running around with guns intimidating people who are, you know, associated with, you know, local and state elites, it's the federal government who's invading states and oppressing people there on the basis of their skin color or legal status or, you know, As we see in Minnesota, there's no way to contain this kind of state violence to, you know, the quote-unquote undesirable themselves. American citizens who want to defend the ideals that they were raised to cherish are also in the line of fire and will also be killed as a result. I want to just nitpick one sentence in your piece. Is that okay? Can we do that?

Sure. Yeah. It was maybe your best line as a literary line, but I'm just trying to deal with whether it's accurate. And you wrote this, the secret fear of the morally depraved is adverse. virtue is actually common, that they are the ones who are alone. And you argue that fear is being realized by the Trumpists in Minneapolis. That may be true that that is a fear that these folks harbor inside. But man, it has to have been assuaged a bit by the last few years and by social media. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I think the secret to this overreach is that they thought they had gotten a popular mandate to go full fascist.

Got it. I have a lot of different kinds of feelings about the choices that American voters made in the last election. You know, I know that people will say it was largely a result of inflation when you look at like global political trends. But like, guys, do you understand now why voting on that was a bad idea? In any case, you know, I think what these two killings have demonstrated, is that the rest of the country, you know, whatever you think of that choice, and I really find it baffling, they don't want to see people gun down in the streets.

And there are a lot of people on the extremely online MAGA right who are saying things like, you have two months and we're going to come get you. You know, like this sort of, I think sometimes the kids call it Sepi Roth posting after the main antagonist of Final Fantasy 7. Well, like posting a video of a woman getting pushed to the ground by an agent being like, I voted for this. like that kind of shit. Yeah, I mean, like, this sort of like weird super villain shit, you know, I think most of the country actually doesn't like it. You know, the thing about the internet is that these people who are like weird and depraved have all been able to find each other and make a very loud cacophony of voices,

making it seem like these attitudes are normal. And, you know, some of the richest men in the world are among them and encourage these voices to express themselves. But I think, you know, the response to. to the killing of good and especially of pretty suggests that actually the rest of the country doesn't want to like do Holocaust too and they're not with you on that. I think you have a perfectly reasonable point about, you know, the choice that Americans made in the last election. I think it was the wrong choice. I do not think most of the country feels the way that Stephen

Miller feels. There's a, you know, a large and loud minority of people who feel that way. But I think, you know, his level of bloodthirst is actually relatively unique and strange. That takes us to kind of the last thing, and then I'll leave you, but I just, having been there, you know, I'm trying to ask this without being cloying. Like, I'm wondering what your take is for like what the resiliency of this type of resistance is. You know, like obviously it's cold there. Obviously, people have real lives, attentions, Wayne.

And I agree with you that the majority of the country isn't for this. There's a concerningly big minority that is. But in order to keep the attention on this, this can't be kind of like a mission accomplished, right? Like they move out of Vino. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't seem to me that they've really slowed down. They've tried to change the face of the operation with Holman. But from what we're seeing on the ground in Minneapolis and St. Paul and in Minnesota, they don't seem to have like slowed down at all. So we'll see what happens.

To answer your question, I don't know what the resiliency factor is. I can't tell you how long that they can keep this up. What I can't say is that I was deeply moved by the level of concern that these people have for those around them. I mean, you know, I walked into a church and saw pallets and pallets of food. I saw a huge line of cars of people that had to be directed because there were so many cars. There were so many people, Minnesotans of all racist creeds colors, were lining up to help other people eat. people who are hiding in their homes. I can't help me move by that.

You know, these people who are going around tracking ice, they're scared. But they are doing it anyway because they care for the people around them. And I think that, you know, that is the kind of community that I would want to live in. I can't speak for anybody else. But certainly, you know, for me,

it was one of the most moving things I've seen, you know, as a journalist. I appreciate you very much. Thanks for going out there and coming on the show and we'll talk to you again soon. All right. Thank you for having me. All right. We are back. He's a Tehanna music star. He's running for Texas's 15th congressional district. South Texas seat currently held by Monica de la Cruz, Republican who flipped it in 2022. He's a Latin Grammy winner on his farewell music tour. He took a minute for us. He's up for an American Grammy at Sunday ceremony in Los Angeles. It's Bobby Polito. How you doing, man? Good, Tim. How are you doing? Most importantly, I hear you're a bulwark OG. I hear that you were like our 19th subscriber. Yes, I was a political science major in college,

and so I've always followed politics really closely. And so, yes, sir, I was one of your first subscribers. We appreciate that, buddy. All right, I guess got to admit right at the top. We're going to get to news in a second, but I don't know anything about talent of music. I'm a music person. This is a blind spot for me.

So I want you to like, tell me. a little bit about it and like give me give me a comp like are you like the billy joel of this world like the john mayor or like what is uh what's something a little more hardcore like a jack white listen i'm i'm i'm i'm probably at that one of the top in my industry and my industry is a it's a regional industry that's grown you know selina i'm sure you've heard of selina that's what selina was in my industry i knew her when we were kids we sing in spanish but we're very a to the American culture. So my mother, on my mother's side, I'm eighth generation Texas. And so we've been here a long time. But we're very, very close to our cultural roots and

mostly Mexican-American roots. And so it's kind of a bubble. It's a unique area, really. The Rio Grande Valley is really unique. It's different. You're not going to give me a comp? Come on. Compare yourself to someone. Man, that's going to sound like. Yeah, compare yourself to someone. Come on. That's okay. You can brag. You know, like George Strait and country has been around a long time. I guess, you know, I guess in that industry, I've been around 30 years. And we've been blessed to have recently won a Latin Grammy and we're nominated next week. It's going to be really hard to win that one. But I'm just glad to be there for the American Grammy.

All right, George Strait. I like that. We'll stick with George Strait. Now I've got a baseline. I want to talk about your campaign because I think that there's some real political implications for political nerds among us. but we have to talk about the more acute issue of what's in the news first, and that's everything that's been happening in Minnesota. And I guess I'm just looking for your thoughts in general

on what we've seen in Minnesota, what you think the response should be from Democrats. It's horrific. And a lot of people down here, people that I know that voted Republican are also not happy with what's going on. I think this is something that is unifying, as for the most part, you know, they're unified against what they're seeing.

there's no way to spend that. They've tried to spend it when they tried to go out there and say that he was a domestic terrorist and stuff like that, I think people saw what they saw. And it just takes away for their validity. Now they're changing all these things

to try to get the people back. But there's ice rates here. Tim, like, it's not like it was just there. This is something that's been hitting this community pretty hard. The builder community has really been hurt by this. The workforce is very skis. scarce. And so they're having trouble finishing their projects. And the realtors also need more

things to sell. So there's less houses. And so it's really affecting our community down here, too. I want to talk about the funding side with enforcement with ICE and CBP because, yeah, I think your perspective is probably going to be different being on the border. Right. It's like, it's one thing to say, get these guys out of Minneapolis, abolish it. They have no reason to be there. It's absurd that CBP is in Minneapolis, which is 300 miles from any border. And that's the Canadian border where there's not a lot of crime coming through. And so I think that's something that's easier for us to say. It gets a little bit more complicated, you know, when it comes to your community, right? Like there needs to be some kind of enforcement down there. And so I wonder how you kind

to think about that conversation about like what funding should look like and what should be done presuming you get in next year and the Democrats take control of Congress. Well, I think there's several things that is problematic. When they put quotas and they say, go get me 3,000 people, and they basically chastise them for not having done their job like Stephen Miller did, well, then they're going to go to the lowest hanging fruit. What they initially said, we're going to get out the bad guys. You know, I'm all for targeting the bad people and getting them out.

That's what ICE historically has always done. But they're not trained. and the people joining ICE are really suspect. And they're getting 47 days of training, right? 47 days. Why 47? Because they want to flatter the president. I don't think that's serious, to be honest with you. And so I think the quotas are bad. I think the way they're doing it and they're conducting it.

Look, don't go after gardeners and grandmas. You know, there's been more of the people, like 70% of the people that they've deported, don't have a criminal record. And the racial profiling, Tim, here in the Real Grand Valley, is a huge problem, huge. Because think about this, the number one rated TV network is Univision. A lot of people speak Spanish here. And when you hear them saying, well, we're going to go after people, we can go based on their accent.

Guess what's going to happen here, right? They're doing it. A lot of people speak Spanish. And so I think in general, the Latino community and Hispanic community down here, they feel disrespected because you can't be yourself anymore. Seven Democrats voted to fund ICE in the House? last week at DHS? Where would you have been on that? Look, I would have been opposed to funding it. And I get it, right? They have their reasons why they voted and they've justified them,

say, well, there's other things in that bill. But we needed to have pushed them to say no, separate them, or we're not going to vote for it. Because right now, the biggest pressing issue in our community is this specific issue. It just is. And so I was not for that. And I'm friends with them, Right. That doesn't mean that I would vote the same way. Sometimes you've got to tell your friend they fucked up. I have a lot of friends who have made mistakes. I've made mistakes. You know, that's part about being a good friend. All right.

Some of those members I like too, but it's like was horrific. I agree. And a couple of them know it. I shout out to Tom Swazzy, for example. I mean, you know, would rather have been on the right side first. But he came out and just said bluntly, no, I've screwed up. You know, I screwed up. Right.

And you know what? That's kind of rare and probably it's refreshing, right, to have somebody actually admit that they're, hey, my bad, whatever. We don't see that often in politics. I'll talk about kind of another issue that has popped up related to, in particular, this latest killing of Alex Prattie, which is the fact that he was carrying a weapon. We've seen all of these supposedly pro-second amendment MAGA guys being very quick to say he deserved it because he was carrying a weapon as he was monitoring ICE. Yes.

And they've been doing that. He had an extra clip or magazine. or whatever. And Trump even said yesterday, you can't walk in with guns. You just can't. You can't walk in with guns. I'm wondering what your reaction is to all that. It's the same mega hypocrisy that's been going on ever since he got elected. Look, it's not about principles anymore. It's just not. I mean, listen, I'll be honest with you. I'm pro second amendment. Like down here in South Texas, I'm a long range competitive shooter. Okay, so you can tell me that did I use it, which one is it? Is it a clip or a magazine? I don't know any gun terms. All right. I'm a gay from the suburbs. No, it's magazine, but clip is not, it's accepted. It's accepted. Okay, great. All right. Yeah. So, so I'm very familiar with firearms because it's a part of our life down here, which is just, I'm in a rural area and, you know, I have my fair share of guns, like a lot of them. But it's ironic, right, that the Second Amendment was exactly from, to prevent the tyrannical government overreach.

I think if Alex Freddie wanted to have done something, he would have pulled a gun out right there and start shooting at them. He obviously was not intending to do that. He never reached for it. They took it out and then they killed him. And that's not right. That's not where we are right now. And, you know, principles need to be your principles.

They can't waver. It's just pretty ironic that, you know, they supported Kyle Rittenhouse, you know, walking around there going to a protest with a gun. and yet they come and try to demonize Alex Freddie. I know this just happened and like the tragedy is more important to the politics and it's just sick that the, it's just it makes me so upset that he's dead and that they killed him and that they lied about him. We don't know who killed him. But the reality is there's political elements to all this.

And so I guess I wonder, like do you think that they're blaming him for having a weapon? Like is something that can resonate? Like is it something that you can talk about down there? You know, when you talk about your Second Amendment commitment or, you know, do you think that people think it's hypocritical? Like, what do you think about the politics of all that? I think there's a lot of principled people that disagree with this. I mean, I don't know if you saw this statement from the NRA. It was kind of a rebuke from what he was saying.

Yeah. You know, they're staunchly pro-Trump. But I think they're starting to kind of realize that a lot of their principles are out the window. And again, it's just, it's that tribalism. well, if it's my team doing it, we're okay with it. And I don't think we should go down that road. January is when we recommit to the habits that support our health and well-being. And naturally, we start looking at what can support those goals, including supplements. But choosing the right supplements can be confusing. Because not only are there so many brands out there, the supplement

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How do you do that? How are you competitive there? I think, Tim, 2024 was a huge anomaly down here. Remember, they gerrymandered the district again. So 65% of the district is new area to Congresswoman Monica La Cruz. We've already traveled and gone and done town halls or meetings at all 11 counties in this district. This district is almost 80% Latino, Hispanic. And my music and my father's music and my father's also a singer, we've traveled all these areas and met a lot of friends.

throughout the years. And we've been going, taking our message there. Now, just for context, in 2022, Rochelle Garza ran against Ken Paxton, and in this district, this was for Attorney General of State of Texas, she lost by less than one point to Ken Paxton. So this district isn't as red as people think it is.

Beto O'Rourke in 2018 won it by almost 10 points. The people down here really, really vote for the person more than the party. Just for context, like in Star County, which is right neighboring on the border, Henry Quayat actually won with a larger percentage than even Trump did. So the people here really listen to the candidate

and really vote more that way than a lot of party line. There's lots of split-ticket voting. I'd listen to that pitch, and it sounds like, okay, well, no, I understand why the Democrats feel good about your candidacy, why you do. You feel like this is something that you can potentially win. But like the other thing I hear is Beto won this by 10 points.

Kama lost it by 17. And that is a massive switch, basically one in four, a little more than that, people in the district switching to sides. How did the Democrats fuck this up so bad? Like how did that, you know, what happened? Well, you know, I think every time you're running, you've got to listen to the people. That's what we've been doing. And the people were screaming at the top of their lungs, make life more affordable for me.

That's the bottom line. And I felt like we prioritized other things over that. They were obviously also concerned with the stuff on the border. I think the Biden administration really effed up, really, to be frank with you, in not really addressing it until in year four. Now, let's be honest, right? Trump also killed this bipartisan immigration deal, right? And we didn't do a good enough job at telling people he killed this for partisan reasons.

but for three years we didn't do anything about it. And so that was a problem. And I think that all of those things really just culminated in that asswapen that our party took. And I'll tell you, you know, I'm not surprised what happened the last time in 2024. I saw it coming. You saw it on the streets. You saw people just talking about it. And so having sent that, I can tell you right now, here's a lot of.

there's a lot of disappointment there and a lot of regret, a lot of buyer's remorse. So I really don't think that that was a permanent thing. So when Republicans said, oh, we're just going to assume that they're always going to be Republican, that's a very, very wrong assumption that they made. I think that's pretty good political analysis. You could be a pundit if you ever decide to retire. I don't want to be a firm. There are a couple other things I want to throw at you.

Okay. And I think obviously the border stuff and cost drives some of this. The cultural stuff, I think we shouldn't just totally rule out. You know, Carlos Espina, he's like that young Hispanic TikTok. He's a friend of my, yes. Yeah, yeah, good guy. I had him on, I don't know, a couple months ago now. And I was asking him this question, like what happened with young Hispanic men?

And he was just thrown out of various reasons. But one of the things that was interesting, and I've heard from a couple other people in the community is faith, basically, that there was a period of time where Democrats were maybe more liberal on some social issues. Jews, but like it seemed like the party was still, you know, had a lot of folks who went to church and, you know, were religious and that, you know, there's this impression, fair or not that, you know, that's not true anymore. And, you know, I was talking to a guy, a right wing kid, but, you know, he was, obviously there's a lot of BS around this, but just like, this is what voters say. So, you know, just like listening to him, what he said is basically, look, I went to a MAGA rally and they began it with a prayer. And then I watched the Kamala rally and they began it with Megan the stallion twerking. or whatever. And obviously that's a BS argument and that the MAGA guys aren't genuine questions. We can just look at their behavior. But still, like, if that's the impression, it's maybe something to think about. So I don't know. So what do you think about like faith and cultural issues also being part of it? And how can that be mitigated somewhat?

It is. You're spot on. You know, I went to Quiro High School. They had a football game and I was up there. That's in the northern part. They vote 80-20 Republican. And I went to their football game Friday. night and right before the game they said a prayer over the speaker when i was younger going on like they wouldn't pray they would just you know the star spangled bangor and let's go right and uh it i have seen a definitely a big shift towards people and faith uh down here it's even bigger and yes i think we need to not shy away from our faith and i think you can also you know say i i believe in god and i believe in being a good person. And I think Teler Rico is doing a great job with that, right?

Where he's talking about those issues because we got branded as Democrats as the party of a bunch of Heedans that, you know, that don't believe in God and are not moral. And, you know, in many of these districts and these counties that they haven't seen a Democrat, Tim,

in 10 or 12 years. Sure. Beto was probably the last one they saw. Well, Beto went to all of them in 2018. And if you look at it, like policy-wise, I'm different than him. Everybody's different. Sure. But the blueprint of going there and showing up, I think is a good blueprint. And that's what we're doing here, is we're going to these places. Somebody made a comment up there is you can fit all the Democrats here in a phone booth. There's not that many Democrats. So the thing is,

you've got to go talk to Republicans and tell them, look, you've been lied to. You know, they're really good salesmen. They'll tell you that the economy is really good. And the Republicans are best for the economy, but history shows us its exact opposite. Democrats are the best on the economy historically. In the last 30 years, GDP, job growth, inflation, recessions have been started more under Republican administrations. So I feel like we have to be better at educating people and telling them, like, this is what it is. And I tell everybody, don't ask me, just go chat chibit.

Right? You go, go look and you don't have to take my word for it. Maybe tell him to ask Elon's AI. You know, even if even Eli says, then you can, then maybe you can trust it. That's true. So, like, I think we need to make a better case as Democrats as to why we're better on the economy. And it's people who just have this thing of, well, Republicans are better on the economy and it's not true. What kind of reaction you're getting when you're up there at the football games when you're telling them they're a Democrat?

You'd be surprised, man. Like, it's been really positive. I can honestly sit here and tell you, I've gone into a room with a lot of Republicans. and they come out saying, I like what you have to say. I agree with you. There's also one thing I noticed, Tim, is when I go up there and you go to like a taqueria or a restaurant or whatever, and there's a TV, they got Fox News on, everyone, right? So everybody right now is in their information bubbles and they don't really see, they only see one perspective. And I think how we break that is good old-fashioned get out there in front of their faces, shake their hand, answer their questions.

And once you do that... And also go on Fox, by the way. Those Fox anchors aren't that smart, all right? They can't run circles around you. Like, they're not that smart. You can handle it. You can give people a little dose of reality on there. I am not opposed to it.

Although it is pretty funny, they've written four attack pieces on me already, which shows me that... I saw one of them that said you peed on a Hollywood Square. Is that right? Did you get drunk and pee on a Hollywood Square? It's only half true. Oh, okay. Okay.

I might have had a couple of drinks in me like 10 years ago. But I did not, but I did not pee on Trump Star. I did not. It was a joke. I had a water bottle. There was police officers there and I told him, hey, I'm going to do this joke. And I posted it. And so they, of course, like always they do, they start clutching their pearls and saying,

he urinated on Trump Star. And it was a joke. Yeah, I thought we were making humor legal again. I don't know. So they said. That's what I thought, right? The Rio Grande Valley, I think, is probably the most culturally separate part of the country from, like at all, like maybe, I don't know, like, Hylia maybe or something else you could think of.

But I don't know, but people go to Miami, right? I'm guessing a lot of our listeners have never been anywhere near McAll, like San Antonio is maybe the closest that they've been. It's very different. Tell us a little bit about the Real Ground Valley and then give us a tourist assignment. Like, where can we go, you know, give us some restaurants or something to be funded? do the real grand valleys is really unique because it really is an integration of cultures of of Hispanics right that like my mother that her family was here since before texas even was a state it was actually its own union right but uh and then there's a crossbreed where we're like a grandfather

of mine came from Mexico right and so it is a truly unique blend of cultures a lot of Spanish speakers down here. It's normal to hear people speak in both English and Spanish and sometimes, many times mix it. You know, you'll listen to a radio station where they play music being sung in Spanish, but the DJ talks in English. It's truly, truly unique. And our food and our cuisine is really good because it is Mexican inspired, but we also have, we can barbecue the heck out of stuff here. Great, great barbecue. And so, Palenka Grill, they're originally, you know, they started in Laredo, Texas. I'm friends of the family.

They originally had a Pollo loco that you know. They started that franchise. Okay. And so they now have a place called Palenka Grill that's one of my favorite spots to go visit. Which town is that in? They're in several towns, actually, in South Texas, yes. But there are in Edinburgh, Texas in my home. Where should we pick?

I mean, I guess you're in your districts. You're going to be biased. But, like, where do people come to go to visit McCall? Like, are there other, do you have any tourists down? Do you have any Gringo tourists down there? Of course. Look, of course. That's, they're called winter Texans. And, you know, now with this ice freeze that, that, that happened right across the country, we got to about 31 degrees. Okay. Our weather's really good. In the summers, it gets really hot. But, but our weather's really nice. We have Mexico really close, the border towns. We have the beach, South Padre Island, about an hour away. Oh, South Padre Island, yeah. Yeah. And then we have ranch lands just north and west of us. So if you want to go do some hunting and there's good fishing, we have everything. It's really truly unique. It's it's a cool place. And you know what? Our businesses, a lot of times are intermingled with Mexico. Right? A lot of people from Mexico when the cartel violence started happening years ago came to live here. You know, they're immigrants that came in here and enriched our culture here.

and made our area better. I was hearing, you know, another interview. We were talking about that. And they've truly, like, brought investment, and it's growing. Like, we're literally, I tell people, like, we're San Diego, but without the big old city, but we have everything San Diego has. You know, we have the beach there in Mexico. Do you feel like the immigration from Mexico there has hurt the social cohesion there?

Do you feel like J.D. Vance's view that having too many immigrants in a community makes things ruin social solidarity, and you guys are at each other's throats and you don't like each other because that's not the case tim no not at all that's not the case here our economy really really depends on people from Mexico coming over and right now that's gone down and so immigration down here is not just it's not just an issue on its own it's economic as well for our local economy all right man how can people what is your website how can people support you if they want to support the campaign bobby polido for texas and then we're on all the social media's, you know, the TikTok.

It's a modern campaign. You might be down in the Real Game Valley, but you're still, you know, it's still 2026 down there. As you know, as a bulwark person, I take us out with a song. And so I've never played a Tahano song as an outro. So pick one for me. You can pick one of yours or another favorite if you're too embarrassed to do your own. But give us one, give us something to take us out with.

Well, there's a song that I wrote called Algun Dia, one day. one day I'm going to buy me the car of my dreams one day I'm going to buy me the house of my dreams because it's okay to dream and ironically the song was the video was about immigration and I was somebody in construction this is the irony and all of this this was about 12 years ago that I did this but it ends and it says se vales soniar it's okay to dream and because that's our spirit here as as Hispanics we always want to do better than our parents did and our parents always want us to do better. And that's our spirit as Latinos. We'll leave it there. Bobby Polito,

thank you so much, man. Good luck on the campaign. Let's stay in touch. All right. All right, Tim. Thanks. All right. Everybody else, thanks to Adam Surwer as well. We'll see you back here tomorrow for another good one. Peace.