The Bulwark Podcast - Amanda Carpenter: Audit the White House

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

Trump may have the pardon power, but all those people making bank off of shady contracts from the administration or doing pay-to-play can lose all that money through forfeiture and seizure laws already on the books. Taxpayers are going to want their money back. And why are Chinese nationals continuing to bribe the president of the United States—and does his soft-on-China policies have anything to do with it? Plus: Trump used a catering cart to sneak out of Turkey, the Dems need to do a better job highlighting the fact that the White House is doing socialist-style company takeovers, and the National Guard will now be in DC until 2029.Amanda Carpenter joins Tim Miller.show notes: Amanda's Bulwark piece on undoing Trump's age of corruption Amanda's event with Protect Democracy and Vox on Aug. 19 NYT story on Chinese national who gave $100 million to Trump's cryptocurrency company CATO on the government's ownership stakes in companies

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We are taping the next level today before we're going to get primary results. So doing big picture politics over there on the next level feed. AOC's woke one reflections and maybe some hints about what's in the future for her. We'll talk about AOC in a much other stuff. So go check out the next level. And then on tomorrow's Bullwark Daily, we'll do a recap of the South Carolina primary,

Lindsey Graham's sister, the craziness in Wisconsin. We'll cover all that tomorrow. But today, my former colleague always like having her back. She's now a writer and editor at protectdemocracy.org. Their substack is if you can keep it. And next week, she'll be participating in a live webinar co-hosted by Protect Democracy and Vox on threats facing the midterms and the structural reforms needed to renew our democracy. We'll put a link in the show notes to that with more details.

I know a lot of you care about that. It's obviously Amanda Carpenter. What's up, girl? Hey, good to see you. Happy to be back. Hope you having a good summer. Everything's going well, right? You know, besides the world, the world's gone mad, but my summer's good.

You're looking refreshed, you know, summer vacation, little sun-kissed. We've got much to discuss today, but I think we have to start with baby Trump hiding in a catering cart. For people that miss this, John Hudson over at the Washington Post had the scoop on this. Everybody remembers the story when Trump was over in Turkey, and he had his news. Qatari Hand Me Down plane, but it didn't have the air defenses. And so he had to fly back allegedly on the old Air Force one. And he threatened to sue the New York Times over their reporting on this. What turns out the New York Times was wrong, but not in the way that he said.

He wasn't even able to fly out on the old Air Force one. They were so concerned about the Iranians shooting down our planes that they took Trump out of the old Air Force one, hit. him inside a catering cart, took him to a different plane. He flew out of Turkey on a different plane. You might remember this kind of weird thing where all the reporters had to put the shades down on the plane when it was leaving Turkey, maybe something related to baby Trump hiding. But I don't know, a lot of layers to the story. Amanda, what was your reaction? Yeah, you are right. There's a lot of layers to the story. Number one, the idea of using

the press as a decoy. But, right. What strikes me is the most important is how badly is this war going, right? Like, Secret Service doesn't take the president off a plane for no reason. He hid in a catering cart, which is embarrassing. This isn't like Taylor Swift going underneath the stage and trying to hide from fans. Or I learned from my text change yesterday. Apparently she sometimes leave her house hidden in a luggage cart. That's something that she did.

I received a text like, this is a Taylor Swift-ass move. I don't follow all of her decoys. But yeah. Yeah, but that's fun because she's evading fans. This is not fun because Trump, our president, is evading assassination attempts. So that seems extremely serious. And I just look at what's going on and how they downplay the deaths. The stories last week about how we don't know how many munitions we have at hand

because apparently people are afraid to tell him that we are running low. you look at the attack where they tested the water sources in Minnesota, and Trump tried to cover it up and somehow blame Tim Walls for attacking his own water supply, which doesn't even make sense. And so what I'm most concerned about is what is a straight story about our status with this war? I think we can all agree it's not going well. We appear to not be accomplishing the goals that they set out. The Trump's sons are making billions off it in these shady contracts.

but actually what does it mean for our national defense and the safety and security of the president? It seems to me not good if he had to go into a catering cart and hide from people and keep this information from the public for, I don't know, it's been two or three weeks. Yeah, well, I think a little longer. Times of Flat Circle in the Trump era.

I think we should just kind of do our service as former Republicans, Amanda, as people who have been on Fox News before. It's been a minute, but, you know, back. in the day can kind of get our head in that place. The astonishing weakness that, like, he started this war that he doesn't know how to get out of, that he doesn't have a plan to get out of, and that he's not willing to kind of do what is necessary to get out of, to be honest.

So he starts this war. It's a total disaster. It's a humiliating defeat. And amidst it, he has to hide in the catering cart amidst the hot meals that they're serving on the airplane, not a good smell. there and kind of duck and sneak out of Turkey and allied nation. Just think about the coverage of Fox of Obama riding the bicycle the one time and how they talked about how it wasn't very manly for him the way that he rode the bicycle.

It's just like you can't even imagine the wall-to-wall mockery and coverage that would have been given to a Democratic president who had to like put on his diapers and hide in a catering cart to get out of a country. the Iranian stuffed our president in the catering cart by his own free will. He went in there willingly to hide. It went into the locker himself. He was like, I don't want the bullies to stuff me in the locker, so I'm just going to go into the locker and hide by myself. Maybe they lured him in there with a couple Diet Cokes and a cheeseburger to sweeten the deal. But I also wonder how much did the Katari plane of it all make this a factor? I mean, we know that the plane that the president

travels on is a target. That plane that he chose to fly on originally was not safe. I think there's a lot more to the story. You don't force a president off two planes now. His Qatari plane, Air Force One, and stuff him in a catering cart for no reason. And it definitely drew attention to it. And obviously there are other security issues with the Qatari plane that like a million people flagged before we started moving to this.

I guess when we're talking about the layers, it is pretty, telling that this leaked also. You know, I mean, I'm happy it's that leaked and that we know the truth about what's happening. But that also, I think, should be a pretty concerning signal. And that obviously they felt like this was such a serious threat they'd to sneak him out in the hot dog cart. And so it's a pretty big security breach for somebody to leak it.

How do we know that the president was more safe in the hot dog cart? You know what I mean? Do you really trust the Secret Service? I mean, Carol Lennig we've got on, I've discussed, we have a lot of issues with the Secret Service. There are a lot of reasons to have concerns. Yeah, that also doesn't seem like the most, you know, battle-tested plan.

Yeah, I don't know. It's crazy. The whole story is crazy, the sign of deep weakness. And, yeah, I'm not you alluded to it just at the front. Just like the fact that then I guess we were like using his staff and journalists as decoys as part of this. Pretty alarming. But the biggest point is that,

Iran is a bigger threat than we knew. I mean, obviously we know there's been assassination attempts, not only on Trump, but John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, et cetera. I mean, when you start to put all these points together, along with the fact that Iran has terror cells around the world, there could be a day where we look back on this and said, oh, there's a lot of red flags. I think it just shows, again, the horrible judgment at the war.

I mean, look, we were managing the Iranian threat through multiple presidencies, including the Trump first presidency. And, you know, nobody's out here saying that, like, it's perfect or that they weren't a threat. But it's just like the scale of the threat before the war was like something that we were managing. And then he starts the stupid war, thinks it's going to be easy, thinks he's going to be able to just decapitate the leaders and put in Makmouda Akhmedinajad or whatever their fucking Kakamami plan was. And now it's like loyal tankers are getting bombed in the straight. He's hiding in a taco truck.

You know, it's like it's bad. Yeah. And I think it argues for the case. why Congress does need to take a more assertive role. I mean, this is much different than previous presidents who have bungled wars before. We've been there. We've seen it. But this administration is different because he asked green people for loyalty and not expertise. I mean, the stories last week where Trump is saying that whether you believe him, because it's hard to tell who's telling the truth, that he was misled about how many munitions we have at our disposal. You know,

you hire messengers to come in the first Trump administration, people that would give it to him, straight. But you keep shooting the messengers. You run out of people who will tell you the truth. So now he has surrounded himself the people who blow smoke up his ass, like Hegsef, you know, you can go down the line. And our national security really does depend on like simple ability. Can people say two plus two bombs equals four? We have four left. No, they can't. They say things are going great. We have a million. Don't worry about it. And now I do feel like we're getting ourselves into a corner or a hot dog cart. I mean, I always didn't love the hagiography of the Mattis's of the world.

And John Kelly's have a lot of anger towards them. But yeah, it is hard to imagine Jim Mattis not just being blunt with Trump about the risks, you know, regarding our preparedness to get into something like this. And maybe Dan Cain did try to do that. But this is what happens when you put yes men all around you, you know? So I want to talk a little more of the corruption stuff. I guess you wrote for us while I was on vacation. Undoing Trump's golden age of corruption,

had some ideas for that. I guess maybe one good place to start just transitioning from the last topic, which you mentioned, was like the sun's cashing in on the military industrial complex, and what is the right path forward, both as you look to oversight,

assuming the Democrats take control of Congress next year, and then even further down the line. I think it's obvious we're seeing new forms of corruption coming out of the White House that people could not anticipate. And it largely, I mean, you can look at his financial disclosures where he has admitted outright that he made $2.2 billion as president in 2025. And if you look at the buckets of places where the corruption is unfurled, I think there's five large ones. It's no bid and shady contracts. A lot of what the Trump sons are benefiting from when it comes to defense intent contracts,

cryptocurrency, the slush funds and settlements that they are attempting to set up, the foreign gifts that he's being given, which are a way for foreign countries to pedal influence, and all the pay-for-play schemes, whether that's, you know, the pardons, the lobbying business that's cropped up around that, the truth social access that he is creating a new business around. And so when you think down the road, yeah, so when you think down the road about how, if we did elect a new Congress or administration who was interested in accountability and putting an end to this kind of corruption, what could you do that's realistic and meaningful? Also knowing that he's going to continue to abuse of pardon power. If you look at the reporting from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan,

I mean, they, when they speak in interviews, I know they spoke to you about this, they really emphasize that Donald Trump is serious at looking at mass pardons once he's on his way out of office. They've talked about the Wall Street Journal was reported, him giving pardons to anyone within 250 feet of the Oval Office. So I think you have to take this seriously. So how do you pursue pardon-proof accountability? And that leads to your strategy of like, okay, when you look at the corruption that's happening, there's always two sides.

Donald Trump can put a big for sale sign outside the White House, but all these people are lining up to get in. And so if they are using this money to engage in some kind of unlawful activity, whether that's bribery, extortion, pay to play. There are pardon-proof laws on the books. It's called disgorgement, which is a gross, terrible world. Just take it out of your mind. But it just means...

Discorgement? Disgorgement. Civil disgorgement laws. In plain English, that means we can get the money... It's weird enough for me to remember. Yeah. You can... It means get the money back.

If you profit from ill-gotten gains, there are ways to get the money back that are pardon-proof. And the standard for proving... that those were ill-gotten gains is not quite as high as criminality. So this is kind of like when O.J. got off and Ron Goldman's family still got paid. Yeah. You know, it's like we're going through the civil courts now. Exactly. Exactly. And so there's got to be a lot of mapping for what those ill-gotten gains could be. But I think a lot of, there's a lot of great reporting, especially when it comes to

crypto and the pay-for-play elements where I think anybody that's interested in oversight has a lot of strings to pick up and follow. And so if there was a Democratic Congress that was interested in accountability, you know, there could be plans to audit the White House and find out where this money is going, what it is buying, and who is doing it, because you have to look at the actors on the other side of this. I know we can talk about and complain about Trump all that we can, but it takes two people to bribe or extort or corrupt the economy and our government. Yeah, two different things I want to explore there. One is auditing the White House,

which we'll get back to in a second, but just so I don't forget what are some strategies for going after these folks, even if they've imparted. And I'm intrigued by the engorgement-d-d-sorgment idea that you've put forth. The other one that I've been talking about

is at least for the up-and-up businesses, like we're going to come back to crypto in a second. But for everybody else, for the up-and-up for the companies that are, you know, defense contractors. for other, you know, deals, part-ins that Trump is doing with, you know, people that still want to have businesses in the future. There are plenty of articles for people who have been pardoned

and then started new businesses and stuff. Okay, like, Democrats need to start calling all of those people now, right? Like, and that's my message to them in 2027. Like, if you did business with Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, etc., Whitkoff kids, letnik kids, you know, preserve your emails, And like, we're going to be bringing you, bringing you forward. And, like, maybe Trump will pardon you. Okay, you know, like, you cut this deal with the Trump administration.

Well, the next administration can come after you. And, like, they're going to go after your business. And, like, you can be pardoned personally. But, like, we're going to investigate these deals. And, like, you can't pardon, you know, whatever, the Kazakhstan mining company. Right. Like, that is an entity that needs to follow the laws, right? And it's like, that has kind of been my angle.

And it's, like, a little less satisfying than imagining Jared Kushner and shackles. but even still, I think that that's another way. What do you make of that? Yeah, well, I mean, the messaging to be sent now, if you are making money off these unlawful schemes, don't plan on keeping it because there are laws on the books to claw it back. And that not only goes like, you know, from the federal side, I mean, there are state AGs that start to take an interest in this.

And then if SEC does happen to change in a new administration, the world changes again. But it's not about just, you know, punishing the Trump kids or Jared Kushner. if you are a company that is ripping off the taxpayer because you are a party to fast-tracking, these no-bid, shady contracts where people are not getting the contracts based on expertise, ability to deliver for the government, then you're out. Like, you're not going to keep that money. I mean, this really is about ripping off the taxpayer because when the government gets corrupted,

yes, like all the goons make money and people get really mad about that. that. But the services are sure to decline for the Americans. I mean, we recognize this when it happens in other countries and we laugh at like, ooh, the Soviet Union hands out all the money to the goons and like, you know, they're selling these Potemkin villages. But it is also happening here. Like there's no better illustration than the reflecting pool, right? Like a Trump lackey got the contract to do this egotastic pet project for Trump, didn't deliver it, ruined the reflecting pool. They smeared anyone who pointed it out. And in the end, taxpayers got ripped off. Like, how many times are we going to pay to re-pave or reline that pool? Probably three or four

times by the time this is over. Yeah. And they're just varying degrees of this, right? Like, the reflecting pool is the most comical. Like, we talked yesterday about the wall project and the amount of money that they're spending, you know, for this stupid wall through Bigman. Your interview that you did last week is the first time I'd ever heard it. Not only is it a travesty that they're going through the national parks, but the fact that they are building a road where there was no road before that will make it easier for people to diverse a pass that was previously unpassable. I mean, how stupid?

Stupid is this? Yeah, and then again, like, and then you have like the internment camps example of this before, you know, the vacation. when I was talking with a reporter in the New York from the New Yorker who was working on this story and it's just like, look, there are bigger things to be outraged about the internment camps than the fact that the contract went to somebody

who doesn't know how to run them and that like it was a shit show in there. That's just another example of what you're talking about, you know, and then that goes all the way up to kind of the legal but insider corrupt stuff that we were talking about yesterday with like the military contractors where like they're trying to block us

from like learning from Ukrainian innovators you know, because Raytheon wants to keep its own contract. So you see this all the way through. And I do think that the Democrats can like simultaneously take back, hey, you know, we're reforming things. We're doing good government things. We're doing the Doge stuff they said that they were going to do. And also we're doing accountability.

And also we're calling it. It's all kind of one big like package that I think somebody's just got to figure out the right way to wrap up. that can resonate with people. Aud at the White House. There you go. You brought it up. Aud at the White House.

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Right now, Soul is offering my audience 30% off your entire order. Go to getsole.com and use the code the bulwark. That's getsold.com promo code double work for 30% off. Yesterday is another good example of why we need to audit the White House. Here it is. Gurin Bobby Zhou is a Chinese national born in Shanghai, moved to the United Kingdom, started a failed flooring business, then started a failed crypto business. He was investigated for money laundering as part of the failed crypto business.

He fled the UK to the UAE. He got to the UAE in, I believe, 2024. Within a year, he had $100 million that he had invested into the Trump's family crypto. New York Times story on this. Nobody knows what the money's from. Other people do not want to work with this person because of all the red flags. Trump's family business, no issues. Worked with them.

Took in $100 million. Who is that $100 million from? Like, it's from somebody who's getting something out of the White House, you know? I think another important question is. is what are all the people who are investing in Trump crypto buying? You know, it kind of took me a little while to get my head wrapped around this because the Democrats, you know, they talk about like, oh, it's, you know, another form of dark money.

This is so much worse than the dark money that we have previously encountered. I mean, people think dark money in politics is bad because donors would funnel money into these opaque groups. But at least when it came to that form of dark money, all the money was sort of kept in groups and within campaigns, what the Trump crypto venture and World Liberty Financial is doing, it is essentially direct deposit into Trump family personal accounts. The money just goes straight to them. There are no caps. There are no limits. There are no controls on where the people could be from. I mean, it is an open door for foreign influence peddling. If you look at the money they

made, it's all in crypto. I mean, more than $1 billion of it was in crypto alone. And this is a form of currency that has no intrinsic value. Right. So what are, what are they buying? There's kind of this pretense where you can buy a governance token. You can vote in your shares, control all the money is made. Like, that's not true. It's controlled by the Trump family. They get 75% of the money. And so there are other stupid cryptos that you can invest in with your $100 million. Yes. So what are they buying? And what is being sold? You know, if you look back the reporting for in the Trump sons kind of started promoting this, they did it. They went on a global tour. They went to Dubai and all these other places abroad to look for investors. And it's pretty apparent that they're saying, like, this is the Trump family coin. Invest in us. It was sort of like presented like the new Mar-a-Lago. But anybody can join. You don't have to go camp out in the patio and like rub shoulders and, you know, eat the cheesy drinks. and the bad hamburgers. See the duck lips, yeah.

Yeah, you just sent $10 million at a time. The going rate is $100 million, $75 million. That just gets dumped into the Trump account. And when you look at the types of people, it attracts. Now, the Trump sons, their sort of origin myth story, is that, well, you know, after January 6th, we were debanked for political reasons. Well, we found out that wasn't quite exactly true over the last two weeks when Capital One came out and said, well, no, we did close over 300. Trump-aligned accounts for money laundering. Money laundering people are the people that are attracted to crypto.

I understand that there's reasons who want to escape like government at scrutiny and all the rest. But if you look at the people who are pioneering this currency, it's people that want to hide their money from the government. And is it like weird that Donald Trump is now big in the crypto business? He used to be skeptical about it. It wasn't until the Trump campaign in 2024, Joe Biden administration was cracking down on crypto.

They had an SEC regulator that was pretty interested in cracking down in the crypto. And they realized, like, we can cozy up to these guys and they will dump money into our campaigns. And if we do cryptocurrency, we'll dump money into our accounts. And so that's what's happening. So you have this guy, Bobby Joe, I may not be pronouncing that right, who is flagged for money laundering. There's another Joe, CZ Joe, who dumped a ton into the Trump accounts and got a pardon for his crypto crimes. There's UAE government as dumping money into these accounts. And so like...

Justin's son is another Chinese national. If you were someone who was worried about dark money and politics and Elon Musk giving Trump campaign $25 million, well, you better get real smart on world liberty financial. Yeah. I mean, Trump took $100 million from this guy, Joe. He also took another, I think, somewhere close to $500 million from Justin's son, who's also born in China.

I don't know. Is the Chinese communist? party influencing Trump? I don't know, but they sure as hell could be. They sure as hell could be. And I just like, it's kind of crazy to me that it's not like front-age news. Like two Chinese nationals have put in half a billion dollars into Trump, maybe others. Like, do they have relationships to Chinese government?

Like, we don't know any of this, right? And like, Trump is going soft on China. And it's like, especially when you like think about the rhetoric that had come talking in the Biden administration and from a lot of people into Trump. administration about how we need to be China Hawks. It's like, okay, I don't know. It's like, we know that the Qataris and UAE and Saudi is buying off the administration, which is bad enough. Are there behind the scenes influence campaigns happening for China? How could we know without knowing where this money is coming from? And that takes us back to auditing the White House.

I want all these questions answered. But to prove this is wrong. I kind of feel like we don't have to. Like, this setup is the scandal in and of itself. The UAE dumped a ton of money into World Liberty Financial. And then, And not so long later, they got a chips deal approved. Like, just that setup alone should be a reason to shut this down. I know there's some efforts from Congress through the Clarity Act. And, you know, the Trump administration keeps getting carves out. So that we're not going to touch the Trump family.

We're not going to do this. You thought he likes to tell people that his other businesses were successful, the golf clubs, etc. The money they're getting for this swamps this by two or three times. This is their bread and butter right now. And, again, like, we shouldn't have to prove a federal bribe. scheme every time we look at one of these deals, the fact that they have created a backdoor for foreign entities to just dump money into their personal accounts is scandalous enough in itself. I agree with that. I just will also say, you can call me a xenophobia if you want. You can call me a

neocon. But I don't think that the Chinese national should be able to bribe the president of the United States' family to the tune of $100 million. Don't think that should be legal or possible. and this whole conversation about like, oh, the Stock Act ban, members of Congress from buying stocks. It's like, okay, we need to expand that out quite a bit. And there basically already are kind of laws on the books about this, actually. And people, you know, roll their eyes about emoluments, et cetera. But it's like, I think that there's probably a way to freshen up the emolument clause to make sure in the future, you know, citizens from hostile foreign governments can bribe the president of the United States.

That just seems bad. Seems like something everybody should, would be opposed to. And I do think people get sort of hung up or distract. by the fact that this seems like a new business venture for the Trump kids. Like it's digital currency. This is something you do. No, this is like the same old pay-to-play bribery, buying influence, foreign corruption schemes. It is just...

They're putting their name on a coin instead of on a building. That's it. Yeah. It's a dark direct deposit account. Like, that's all this is. Don't over-complicate it. Right. Cutteries have been doing this for a long time paying off D.C. figures, right?

And it's like, it's like, this is why we have the foreign crop practices at. Like, this is why we have all these laws. It's fucking crazy. Look, I'm a little lax on the privacy front, a little more than I should be. It's just not in my nature. I don't know why, really. It should be genetically. My grandfather was like the guy that a lock have put three locks on the door, even when he's just taking out the trash.

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is to go to www.com join delete me dot com slash bulw blorek and enter code bulwark at checkout that's www.jointedleat me.com slash bulwore code bulw Let's do some other protect democracy, democracy world stuff. Where are you at on the midterms? I sometimes feel like I don't have the alarm bells up on this as high as I should. What's your sense of the state of play? Well, I think I can kind of do some good news, bad news that we sort of always expected. When I look at the landscape now and we're always looking at things like a year ago,

I do think the fact that the Trump administration has not been successful passing the SAVE Act and then also is losing their shirt in court when it comes to these data grabs that they wanted to get from the states. This was very central to their election rigging dreams takeover to have some kind of federal database that they can control to disqualify voters or invent these fantasies about voter fraud that they could hunt down and then also use to disqualify voters because that's always the end game, right, to throw out the votes that we don't like or find votes that we need. And, you know, the Trump administration, the Department of Justice has sued multiple states. They've lost 21 cases where they've tried to get these because it's just so egregious

what they're trying to do. And most judges, even lots of Trump appointed judges, even in places ruling on cases like West Virginia, say, like, of course you can't have this data. And the Constitution is extremely clear. You don't have a right to do election administration. There's some kind of oversight things you can do. But the idea of creating a national federal database, is not going to happen. And they don't have enough time to do it now. They still may try. They may still try to get some cyber ninjas in there to do something crazy.

But I think they're on their heels about this. That said, Trump, if you look at the way he's setting up, his speeches is saying that because Congress has failed to pass the SAVE Act, there's going to be fraud. And so he's kind of using that to lay the kind of election rigging lies that we always knew was coming because he only has three plays. Like he's going to deceive voters with lies about the election to try to disrupt the process and deny results he doesn't like. You can pick whatever narrative, whatever lie he wants to come up with. We know that is the playbook. And so this doesn't mean that he's not going to try. This is unlike the previous election because he has the entire federal

government at his disposal and lots of lactees like Todd Blanche in place who are certain to do his bidding. So our eyes are definitely wide open about this, but I do think people are in a very good defense posture. Their eyes are wide open about what he's capable of. And the good news really is that if Donald Trump tried to steal an election or disrupt the midterms, he needs a lot of accomplices. And he wrecked a lot of people after the 2020 election who went along with his schemes. They're still going to people that do it. But I do think he's on his heels in evidence. of this, I don't know if you caught the speech that he did. Was it two or three weeks ago? Oh, I'm going to talk about the fraud in the election and lay out my evidence. And it was just

like, just landed without nothing. So I think, I think that's a pretty good sign. What about, like, are the things that need to be done? Like, are there kind of action items that you're thinking about that protect democracy at this point? Like, make sure to get your vote in early and don't wait to the last minute. I mean, we talked to election officials, people involved in working with the states, like that is like their biggest focus right now. Get the votes in early, early, early, early, because if there is going to be disruption in the voting process, it could probably come on like election day or where there's officials trying to freeze things and disrupt the chain of custody. So just get, get everything in early. That's the number one guidance. But of course,

we're looking at everything. The fact that Wisconsin might elect election denier to the governorship. Like, there's always going to be these kind of threats. Let's talk about Wisconsin. And that won't be a threat for the midterms. But so we have the primaries tonight. It is looking like the Democrats are going to nominate Francesco Hong, which we can talk about. And Republicans nominating Tom Tiffany, who was one of the big supporters of Trump's Stop the Steel effort, not the biggest election denier that they've nominated. I guess that award would probably go to Arizona as Andy Biggs, who was like speaking. at the Capitol on January 6th

and before the insurrection. So, and was part of one of the plotters alongside a lot of the people that were on the ground that day trying to disrupt the election. So that's Andy Biggs in Arizona, Mike Collins, George also. So the election deniers everywhere. I think that the focus is on Wisconsin because it feels like the place where the Republicans

are most likely to be able to win. Tiffany is like just a little less visibly crazy about it Like, if that makes sense, like, his participation was crazy, but you can understand how people might, like, talk their way around it. Like, he signed the letters. He voted, but he wasn't quite as, like, out there as some of these other guys. And then Hong is just such a risky bet for the Democrats to nominate in this swing state. And for me, it's, like, not even so much about her ideology, though that's part of it as just, like, personal craziness. And I just think that's a risky bet to have a state like Wisconsin potentially have an election denier in there,

What's your thoughts on that? Yeah, I haven't gone deep on Hong, mostly because all the discourse out there is like, I can't focus on this right now. Like that's going to, we'll see what the Democrats do. We'll see how this lines up. And then we'll go from there. But yeah, it is, it is tough right now. It's like we've gone through so much with the election denialism, the authoritarianism,

to not have sure bets when you have a general election matchup. I mean, it's really, it's tough. And so it's not my place. like give advice or see where there's green shoots. But, you know, maybe maybe you can get right. I do see a lot of progressive candidates who I think are getting on the right side of things like data centers, things like surveillance. So maybe there's, there's different ways this could shake out. But when it comes to the prospect of electing an election denier in a prominent spot when it comes of 2028, not great. And so there is some good news because after the 2020 disaster, Congress did

passed the Electoral Count Reform Act, which does streamline things and make it harder for states to overturn an election. A number of states also reinforce those laws on their books in Wisconsin was one of them. Like it just like lays out certification deadlines, makes it very clear that the vice president does not have any role in changing the votes. And so there, there are laws on the books that are stronger than 2020 that would make it harder for a governor, election. election denier to do what they did previously or go further, you know, than many did. But it's just, it's not great. But again, the best thing you can do if you were worried, I mean, talk about the stakes the election now, but also you've got to be communicating with all the state clerks and all the people

below the governor, if you are in that situation, because there are so many checks along the way to keep elections safe and secure, they can work, but they just have to be utilized. Yeah, well, I'm going to have more extended thoughts on Tong over on the next level feed if people want to check that out. But I just, to me, it's like kind of an unbelievable risk to take. And it's like that after what we lived through in 2020. And, you know, we'll see how kind of the election turns out tonight. But just to say briefly, so what I was saying is if you're saying, hey, 20 years ago,

I did some stupid tweets. I mean, 10 years ago, I was a Republican. I have sympathy for people who changed their mind about things. But when it's like three years ago, I was doing insane tweets about abolishing prisons. And six months ago, I was doing brooming should not be illegal. It's a big risk what's happening in Wisconsin. The other side of that coin, Trump yesterday in the White House and Oval Office is, you know, really kind of leaning in on the communism and socialism thing on the left.

They're kind of teeing it up for him. They are teeing it up for them. And so in a continued effort to help the Democrats help themselves, I've been offering some counters to that that might be useful. I'm wondering, Amanda, if you have any thoughts putting on your former communications ad. I mean, we are now part owner of 30 companies. The Trump administration has, you know, made those investments. Yeah, no, the Cato Institute put it together an amazing analysis, I think maybe last week, just tallying up all the golden shares that Donald Trump has taken in various companies

for the government, which is also another way that he opens up people in corporations to try to curry favor and buy influence. I mean, if he's saying essentially, I'm going to set the terms of how the government is going to take a stake in your company that only makes the company suck up to him, but it opens up like a lot of betting and other ways that people around him make lots of money, which we've seen too. So it's bad on all levels. That said, I can't get my head around. What we see Trump doing there is bad. Like, we can recognize it as socialist, communist.

I see a lot of, like, people in my feed say, well, this isn't socialist. That's fascist. I'm like, okay, whatever is you want to call it, I don't like it and it's bad. But maybe you can help me, like, just work through my thinking of it. I see some Democrats like AOC, maybe not her, but I feel like this is the vibe she's getting. It's like, we're not socialist. we're democratic socialist, and that's better, and we think voters will draw that distinction.

Maybe you can explain that to me, because I'm not quite sure how parsed. It is tough. Now we get really into academic stuff, right? And like, if what they're trying to say... Is this like woke one? Because I didn't understand woke one either. I don't even know what that means. The simple way I try to say it is it's like, if you're trying to say that the America should

be more like Sweden and they're trying to make America more like Hungary and Russia, okay. Like, that's great. Like, that's simple. I think people understand it. that you're arguing that we want a greater social safety net ensuring people can have parental leave when they're sick or when they have children

and the kinds of protections that people have in Europe that they don't have here. And these other guys, they're like the bad kind of corrupt Eastern European socialists that want to have masked thugs in the streets. When do we get to be America though? Yeah, okay. I got you. I'm just trying to help.

That's how I think they're trying to define it. they're not sometimes that great at saying that. And I do think, I guess it's my point. I do think that like embracing the socialist label, I do think that they're limiting some of the potential attacks on Trump, right? And I do, and I think that also just, well, if we're going to do this, as an aside, it's like, I understand the Democrats' arguments saying, hey, we've got to try something new in 2028 because we tried the establishment way and it didn't work.

I agree with that. Like, Trump won twice. It's time to start something new. You don't really need to try anything new in the Wisconsin and Michigan governor's races. normal Democrats keep winning there. I don't understand. Things in Wisconsin are going pretty well, like in the grand scheme of things.

Everyone in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Michigan, who anytime I make fun of them on the show, they're always like, things are great here. We're great. And it's like, okay, well, then why are we trying, like, a crazy thing now when things are on the right track? Anyway, that's just me. But I do think that, like, making the case

that what Trump is doing is, Not capitalism. It's not America. It's not free market. It is something different and dark and scary. And we've seen it in other places around the world. And there's obviously some socialist aspects to it. We're taking over companies. There's some communist aspects to it with the disappearances we're doing of people. There's fascist elements to it. And we're not going to take critiques about our desire for a greater social safety net from a bunch of people that are doing foreign gulags. That's just me. I think that sounds good. I am also opening new ideas, but I just feel like I have an obligation to say, like, I just, maybe I'm dumb. Don't ask me to parse socialist, communist, fascist. I just want American, please. I want to go USA, law and order. You know, people can get jobs and contracts based on merit and expertise and who deserves it. Like, I just want fairness. Can we just do something with that? I don't know if we can have that.

I don't know if that's going to happen for you. I can dream. You can dream. Speaking of things that are un-American, how about that for a transition, I wanted to also get your take on this. The National Guard deployment has been extended in Washington.

You're outside of Washington. You're outside of Washington. You go into town. You're in the outskirts out there in America and West Virginia. Been extended in D.C. through the end of the term. So 4,600 troops from 23 states

among the different contracts is one $300 million-dollar contract for building apartment-style lodging units for the troops. We're building more barracks in Washington for the National Guard that is there to do military theater because Donald Trump wants to be a cardio, basically. Yeah, welcome to Washington, D.C. Every monument and Trump-themed thing is dipped in gold. There's troops on every corner strolling around the monuments. And, yeah, that is really the reality of it. And, you know, we've been warning against this and saying he is deploying the

truth for political purposes. He likes the idea of having these toy soldiers going around the city to keep it clean or just go on a mission that he deems worthy, such as patrolling the reflecting pool to make sure that people don't lift pieces of it that are floating off because of his dumbass reno job, right? Like, that's what's happening. And the fact that they are now becoming a permanent fixture where they have permanent housing. That's pretty much what this is. They're going to be here for the long term. What are they staying for? And I don't know if you saw this, but earlier this week, what was the image he posted on Truth Social about the White House, about the drone port, where he essentially wants to make the top into sort of this drone port, where he can launch

drones off it to go do what? I don't know. But you couple that. with the fact that he is building the bunker. Nobody seems to be stopping him. To me, it looks like he's building the White House into a military base. Why? Why? Is it because he doesn't plan on leaving? Is it because he plans on taking action that he knows maybe unpopular or he's scared of protests? I don't know the reason, but the White House is not supposed to be a military base. And he always start these things off by joking around about it. But if you look at how D.C. is changed. It's not a joke. No, it's alarming. And it ties something I was talking with Bill about yesterday where he's like,

why hasn't Higgs have been pushed out? And it's like you start to put all of these dots together. And it's like, well, we have this National Guard deployment now through the end of Trump's term. For no clear reason. We're turning the White House into a military base. We want a stooge running the FBI and the DOD, no matter how incompetent they are. It's alarming for sure. This is just kind of tangential. But I wanted an excuse to talk about it briefly, since you were talking about the drone port on the top of the White House. There's another story yesterday, speaking of ports on the top of things. You see, this is Ken Paxton. Cool guy.

Yeah, he made six to seven figures on a cellular tower company that he was invested in. So this was kind of interesting. People were like, huh, why was the attorney in general investing in a cell tower company? What was the cell tower? It turns out they put a cell tower on top of a hospital. where he is on the board. So he's on the board of a hospital. They put a cell tower on top of the hospital,

and then he cashes in on it personally. That seems weird. I would think so. You would think that if the hospital, I don't know, in a normal country, you would think that if a hospital decided it needed a little side income, a side hustle, like you would think that the money would go back to like the patients

or the doctors or the nurses or the equipment in the hospital. to try to make the services better for people. Not that the hospital would have a side hustle that would put a little walking around money in the Attorney General's pocket. No, that's a good point. I did see that story and I was like, huh,

like that's kind of a strange hustle. And to me, it was just kind of like, oh, well, that's government property that people in charge of the government found a way to take advantage of and make money off of. So that was my takeaway without reading too deeply into it just because it was weird. But you're right.

The fact that somebody's making money off the rooftop of a hospital and not using it for charity is pretty rock. The hospital. So, yeah. Yeah, Ken Paxton. I'm sure he'll point somebody to look into that. Bad Ken Paxton. Should we close with the illicit cattle?

I don't know about the illicit cattle. You know? Is it like exotic hamburgers? I was thrilled about this. You know, my favorite cabinet member is Brooke Rollins. I don't feel like anybody really talks about. Yeah. Yeah, I see her.

Talks about Brooke. Yeah. Only on this show, I think. It's probably where you see her. Or if you read the Ag News, you see a lot of Brooke Rollins. But I think most of people don't talk about her because, like, you know, on the scale of offenses, you know, you've got RFK changing the vaccine protocol this week. You know, you've got Pete Hague Seth, botching the war on Iran. You've got Todd Blanche totally corrupting the DOJ and doing this weird walk-in yesterday after you got confirmed, whereas like only white people were clapping for him.

It looks like 1961. on Ole Miss as he walked into the Department of Justice, which is a little alarming about what kind of justice is going to be meted out. So anyway, you've got all these horrible counterficials. And so Brooke kind of slides under the surface. And so I like to keep an eye on her for time to time. She was in Texas talking about the wall,

the aforementioned wall that were continuing to build. And she took an ag angle on why the wall was needed. And I want to share that with you. That is one thing that we have been tracking very closely is that illicit cattle. To date, we don't know of one case that has crossed the border into America. We just know that it is a real possibility. We're monitoring. The cartel's bringing in cattle.

Hasn't happened yet, but the cartel cattle issue in Big Bend is the big thing to be concerned about. Which way is it a problem if the illicit cattle go? I think they're worried about the Mexican cattle coming here. I really don't know why. I asked my husband this morning who has, you know, had some cattle when he was growing up on the farm. And I was like, what is the concern? And I guess maybe the Mexican cattle could have a screw worm or something. Oh, my God.

No, she's – here's my take. She's so desperate to get in on, like, the Christy gnome vacuum where somebody can go down to the border and wear the cool sunglasses and be there. It's like, what's my angle as the Agriculture Secretary? It's like, okay, so we know drug trafficking is bad. We know human trafficking is bad. I got cattle. I got cattle. They're hiding fentanyl and the cow's udders.

Okay? You don't even know it. And then they get here and they're milking the cow and it's fentanyl milk. I'm glad you brought that up. And it's getting to our children. And it's a big problem. Huge. Yeah.

She's a disaster. It's just a disaster all around over there. I don't know what else to do. You know, it's too bad she can't ride a horse. That's really the first. problem here. Maybe she can ride a cow. Amanda Carpenter. Any life stories, anything? Any lessons from West Virginia? Nothing. Well, say the kids and I weave in heaven or with a family. I'm not leaving my husband out. I usually don't like theme parks. I got talked into going to Epic Universal.

And I so far avoided all the Harry Potter stuff to date because I'm like, I don't like fantasy. It's actually pretty good. And so I've been watching the movies like when I'm doing laundry or whatever. I got to the end of it. I thought the twist was good. I really thought the snake character was well done. And so I kind of got into it for like four days. All-American mom. At Universal,

New things. USA, waving the flag. Doesn't want fascism or communism. It's Amanda Carpenter. We appreciate her very much. We're going to get dorky tomorrow on politics. So look forward to seeing you all then. Amanda.

See you soon. Love to the fam. Bye, everybody. Peace. The Bullwark that I've been before I'll snakes behind every door I've been around this world And now everything's a bore

I don't know that much But I know about keeping score And if there's one thing I know for sure It'd be a long-pulled day in hell When I take you by The Bullwork Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Ansley Skipper

And with video editing by Dante Bacheco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.