The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Stop the Stupid Infighting, Dems

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

Both the left and center-left are acting like the other faction within the party is the enemy—and not Donald Trump. Democrats need to keep their eye on the ball: Trump and the corruption, lying, and incompetence across his administration. In the past couple of days, the massive dishonesty has included Doug Burgum’s doubling down on the Reflecting Pool lies and Todd Blanche’s sham document on the IRS and the J6 weaponization fund. And why is Schumer signing off on a deal with Republicans to keep the government open? Plus: Max Miller is finally a national story, and Tim unloads on getting dragged into the Michigan Senate race as well as AIPAC’s massive spending on behalf of Haley Stevens.Bill Kristol joins back-from-vacation Tim Miller. show notes Monday's "Morning Shots" Bill's "Bulwark on Sunday" with Ron Brownstein  Bill's interview with Margaret Donovan on Hegseth last week  TNL live tomorrow on Tuesday’s primaries: on YouTube or Substack Tim's candidate list

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Daily. We'll get to that. I'm Tim Miller. Thanks so much to everybody who sat in while I was away. We brought fever dreams back. Sarah did multiple heads. Bill is everywhere. Bill Crystal doing multiple podcasts for me.

So I appreciate that. I appreciate the pod production team for working while I was getting tan. We'll do a little vacation talk, explain the new pod logo and name. And I got some thoughts on the Michigan elections. We'll do all that at the end. But first it's Monday. And so he's back again. It's Bill Crystal. Hey, Bill. Good to be with you, Tim. We missed you. The audience missed you.

Everyone was all anyone can talk about. The two main topics here. Where's Tim Miller and The Odyssey? They were closed. I don't believe that's true. I really tried to bubble myself as much as possible while I was going. And so thanks to the producers here, thanks to Ansley, they pulled together a list of the things that happened since I bubbled myself. And I just kind of want to go through them with you. And then we can pick whichever topic you want to start with. You feel like his most pressing two weeks i was gone more u.s casualties in the iran war which was supposed to be over very quick as i recall uh numbers number of service members killed and the war is now up to 18 the regional

war is expanding trump is pretending like we're close to a deal again but i guess last week had promised the biggest attack since world war so that's kind of a little bit same as it ever was with what's going on with the iran war brent crude did get back over a hundred dollars a barrel while it's gone there were cyber attacks on our water supply that experts say point to Iran but Trump said it was Minnesota that did it. So that's concerning.

The Saudis, we have a deal with the Saudis to go nuclear. That doesn't seem great. They're still imprisoning foes of the regime. I don't really know if we want them having a nuclear weapon. We're bailing out Japan for some reason. Jay Clayton, a man with no experience for the job and no integrity, was tapedly DNI. The GOSPG Center's all went along with it

because he was better than the other person. that they had previously put up with less experience and less integrity. Todd Blanche was on the ropes for a second. The Secret Service illegally surveilled Jim Comey over the seashells, we found out. Trump's social media company is now giving early access to his market, moving tweets to banking clients, so otherwise known as taking bribes. The Trump family is taking bribes to give financiers early access to his announcements.

The DOJ admits that the reflecting pool problems were caused by shoddy work, not vandalism. So they dropped the case against an innocent man. They were going to put in jail for 10 years for going after the reflecting poll. Even after they dropped the case, Trump administration officials are still pretending like the vandalism was happening and doubling down against the people that they had falsely accused. Federal agents around the country were told that the FBI would no longer investigate confrontations with immigration agents. The Trump administration has launched plans to channel more asylum seekers into deportation proceedings without hearings. The Haitians are going to be deported. their plans for that, putting them on deportation flights back to crisis-stricken Haiti.

That's coming. The Executive Director of the Office of Homeland Security Statistics resigned, saying that there is a war on immigrants and they're using the statistics for ill. Trump kind of sort of hit the bushline. Socialism is coming back to the Upper Midwest, and I don't even want to know what's happening of the DNC. I'd say, Ansley tried to brief me, and I want to continue bubbled from whatever's happening there. So that's a summary.

where do you want to start does that cover everything was there something you feel like i missed i think those are the high points or maybe we should say the low points right yeah low and lower a lot of corruption a lot of lying a lot of bad government And you know what's good about that list, actually, which I hadn't really thought of since I have been kind of following it stupidly, you know, getting too involved day-to-day is it does give you a sense of the magnitude and the breadth and depth, I guess, is the way I put it, of what's happening in the Trump administration. You know, the lying, the corruption. It's not one little place. It's not just the White House. It's not one department. Department of Interior, who thought about them at all?

It turns out Doug Bergam is also, you know, lying or his people are lying to the Justice Department. And they're all together lying to the court. and the Secret Service is calling the Air Force One to report on Jim Coe. I mean, the degree of, it's bad. It's bad. That's my conclusion. The way that the corruption and just the incompetence all ties together, it's like looking at the list. I cheekily said we're bailing on Japan for some reason.

We're really bailing them out because of the Iran war. Right. Honestly. I mean, like, you know, because we got into a stupid war and, you know, Japanese yen is now down to the lowest point. It's been since the 80s and that a lot of Asian countries, including our allies, are having oil crises. because it's more acute for them as far as, you know, receiving oil for the law that goes to the Strait of Hormuz, you know, versus, you know, how it impacts us domestically. So, like, you know, all these things, like the insider dealing, like the insider trailer,

I mean, it ties to the Blanche story, which I papered over because I think that's what we should start on first. I mean, like, ostensibly the objection to Blanche, which was, I guess, maybe the one besides Trump hitting the Bush line, the one green shoot from the news update from the last two weeks, was that Blanche had been briefly held up by Republicans in the Senate because they're like, this slush fund is too far. This is like Trump family taking bribes like through his social media company. That's no big deal.

Or taking bribes from Middle Eastern countries that now we're giving nuclear access to. Like that's not a big deal. But like Trump like literally taking tax dollars and giving it to insurrectionists was like a step too far for like two Republicans. And so last night, Cornyn and Tillis fold on this because Blanche has promised put out on a piece of paper, the sludge fund is not going to go forward. Money isn't going to be dispersed to allies of the administration. But they did not do anything to take back, like Trump being able to avoid being audited for his taxes. And the idea that this was the only reason to object to really honestly, even the main reason, it was one that they'd last. matched on to and it was good that they did, I guess.

And I was happy when they were objecting to Blanche. It would have been better that he not be Attorney General. But, I mean, as you said, he's busy prosecuting innocent people, not prosecuting ICE agents who were attacking both American citizens and people who were here lawfully. And for that matter, people who were in an undocumented way, but minding their own business and living peacefully. The Epstein thing, unbelievable.

And the meeting you had with the Epstein survivors, maybe you were already away for that. Really extraordinary to talk to Danny Blanchev. about that, just what it was like in person, the kind of contempt he had, and whom he had covered up, you know, had no intention of not even, not doing anything, but not even making them feel heard. I mean, really. So, but anyway, they caved predictably. Yeah, they came predictably. And it's a ridiculous prospect to put him in for, like, for those reasons you just laid out, but just in the grand scheme of things, the slip up from his confirmation

hearing, where he is like, when John Kennedy said, are you in Trump's friends? And he's like, Trump's lawyer. And it's like, that's how he sees that. Like the scale, like, you were just talking about the scale of corruption. They're doing sham investigations, whether it be able to the reflecting pool or Comey, et cetera. They're doing plenty of sham investigations against foes. They're not investigating. Like you said, the ICE agents. Think about all the other stuff they aren't investigating them. I mean, like, the scale of public corruption right now is unimaginable. I mean, one of the other stories that briefly pierced my peaceful bubble was, you know,

how corporations are going into Trump, and it's like you've got to give a million dollars to the MAGA super PACs in order to get kind of favorable treatment on regulation, et cetera. I mean, like the graft that is happening in this administration is uncomparable to the first term and extremely uncomparable to anything else in modern American history. And it's like to put a person in charge of the Department of Justice amidst all that under party-line vote. It's just like going to act as a henchman for the president is insane. It's insane. And these guys like, you know, the only two people that offered tepid pushback are people that are people that are retiring.

Like, what is their point of folding now? What's the point of folding now? And I think that these guys are so deep speaking of bubbles, they're so deep in their own bubble that I do think that they've convinced themselves that like Blanche, I got to go with Blanche because, you know, if it's not him, who the hell knows? who it could be. It could be somebody worse. Yeah, that was the attitude that led them to quickly confirm Clayton, right, for Director of National Intelligence. So we have, just to step back as you say, we have now Blanchett of Justice, Clayton at ODNI, Hexeth at Defense, Mark Wayne Mullen at DHS, a Patel at FBI, key national security agencies, all involved in justifying corruption, lawlessness, election subversion, incidentally,

which Blanche's Justice Department's been plugging ahead on as much as they can, And they're losing a fair amount in the lower courts, but I was talking to a couple of State Secretaries of State last week. And, you know, they're getting a lot of pressure. Some of them are resisting, but the pressure has some effect. Maybe it deter some people from voting to if you scream and yell enough about how you're going to get in deep trouble if you make a mistake and vote when you shouldn't. And they're not sure if they're correctly registered.

Anyway, the whole thing is, it's very bad. I mean, we have a really bad administration full of true Trump loyalists, some of whom are not totally incompetent, unfortunately. And I guess the other thing I'd say is it's clearly, when you read about the reflecting pool case, for example, it's penetrated down, right? It's not like there were Interior Department staffers who provided the bad information to Justice Department staffers, who in turn provided it up to Piro. There are people at the second, third, fourth, fifth levels who are going along or who are

enthusiastic in some cases if they were hired as MAGA loyalists and enthusiastic participants at all this, and then the White House obviously. So the degree of danger over the next two and a half years, I think, from the executive branch. It's just kind of confirmed by the confirmation of Blatch, you know, and it wouldn't matter that much, incidentally, if he didn't get confirmed, it's not like Trump was going to put someone good in there, but Blanche probably a little more dangerous because he knows what he's doing. So that's really the bad news. Let's go to the security side of that, because you're right. And I do think since it gets lost,

and when you on Thursday at a podcast, I focused on, you know, Department of Defense and what's happening with Hankseth, which is really good. And you say that, well, sure, they do have some competent people in some of these offices. I think Blanche's like the velociraptors who's learning how to open the doors and like he's learning how to do it. And you've got Miller and then, you know, in immigration, they've got some competent nefarious people in immigration and other places. From this is a security standpoint.

Like the incompetence at the top of DOD where Hexeth has no idea what he's doing. You know, there are now leaks coming out about the ways in which we're not prepared now for counter. attacks against us, against the homeland, against allies in the region. And then you pair that with Jay Clayton, who was just like had one of the most buffoonish, clownish confirmation hearings I've ever seen being at OD&I. You have cash at the FBI. You have the president of the United States going back to that rundown saying that like what

seems like an attack on the homeland, a cyber attack from Iran. Like he's pretending is from Minnesota. You know, who knows? Maybe we'll get out of this. Good luck. You know, maybe, maybe, you know, for whatever reason. You know, good fortune will fall in the country and that we won't face threats from foes.

But like, it is truly madness thinking about kind of that, like, just the Hegg-Zeth-Claton Cash, kind of leadership of in these security offices. No, totally. And especially when you have a president who's, it's all gone to his head. The imperial vision is now much more part of where he is than in the first term, where he had all kinds of other terrible visions and prejudices and inclinations and policies, but that really wasn't quite as much part of it. Now it's clearly central, and now he's got himself in the hole in Iran and he can't get out

and won't do the things he would have to do to minimize the damage. Yeah, so we get the worst of all worlds, right? Very aggressive authoritarianism at home. Some of it, unfortunately, with some prospect of succeeding at least for a while, and then at a broad sort of incompetent imperialism, if you want to call it that, authoritarianism. If you were just staying at home, at least one would feel like, okay, maybe, you know, it's not great policy, and our alliances are getting weaker, but one can imagine it just being a gradual process. But the Iran war really has, you've made at this point several times, it's put an exclamation point

on, you know, on the retreat abroad and on the incompetence abroad, and every ally and every opponent we have around the world is looking at us and thinking. Well, none intended consequences. I want to do a little bit more on Iran in one second. Let's just really quick close on Blanche, because you had in the newsletter this morning trying to make lemonade out of lemons. It was a good effort. I appreciated the effort. You know, it's pretty sour out there. But why don't you make the case for people that have an opportunity?

Well, it does force all these Republican senators to vote for Blanche, maybe with the exception of Collins. They need to get 50 votes. And several of them were on the ballot. And then it forces one with the other, in the open seats, the Republican challengers are going to gas this week. and they'll say they support Blanche's confirmation. I don't know that Blanche is a huge voting issue, but I think it does bring home, but for me is the key issue for the next three months

the Democrats just need to hammer. A Republican Congress will never stand up to Trump. You don't like Trump. Trump is at the Bush line. Trump is at 34% approval. You want him checked. Whatever you think of us, Democrats, you don't have to love us, God knows,

but we will check Trump and the Republicans won't. And here's the latest instance. It looked like they were going to check Trump, and they didn't, right? I mean, so it's good to go out into the recess with a capitulation to Trump in that respect, I think, for a political point of view. And I think it's good to just make the point also then that they really didn't stand up to Trump at all.

Not only do they confirm him, they did it based on this fig leaf, like total sham document. Like, did the document ever have legal standing really could have held in a court before? No. But like, this isn't signed by all the parties to the original agreement. Like, it's just Blanche, right? And, you know, Trump has certainly broken a lot of handshake. deals before. And it doesn't seem as if Trump was on board for this. And again, like, even the stupid piece of paper he put out didn't do anything to address like the other

corruption about this, which is immunity for Trump on the on the tax side. And so like the whole thing is fake. And what Trump wants to spend his time and focus on in the next two years is just going to be more and more examples of this enrichment of himself and his allies. Like that is what That is his agenda. Like, that's what is left of his agenda. I mean, I do think that, like, using branch as, like, an example of that for some of these House and Senate races is sensible. It's still tough. Especially the Senate, though, because they really will vote for him.

I mean, Hustadt in Ohio and, you know, Moody and Florida. And they really will have to cast that vote. And it's not a great vote for them. I don't think. Sullivan and Alaska. Sullivan and Alaska. So it can make a marginal difference. And I do think it fits into the theme.

And if it keeps Democrats on message, which is you need us to check Trump as much as we can. they shouldn't, you know, oversell it. There's this corruption. It's going to be hard to stop it. But at least you're not going to facilitate it, turn a blind eye to it, go along with it. So that's got to be their core message. I would add, I say this in the morning shots. I don't know if you agree with this.

Maybe I overstated it. But meanwhile, yesterday, this is before the capitulation on Blanche. And so there's some chance the Blanche still doesn't make it. Other Republicans might have problems, et cetera. And Democrats should fight it hard and drag it out all week and make a big fuss about it. Assuming he does make it through, Democrats yesterday, announced, they were, had an agreement on a continuing resolution. They're going to fund the government through December 11th.

It totally confuses their message. The message should be the Republicans are terrible. All they want to do is accommodate Trump. But you know what? We're going to cut a deal with them totally unnecessarily now before they go home so they can go home and saying, you know, we're governing responsibly. Look, the Democrats just voted for a bipartisan way to keep the government open. I was going to rant about Dan Sullivan, but we'll just, we'll get to do it.

We'll get to Dan Sullivan next. We're going to do the CR. Because I couldn't believe this. I texted this to you yesterday. I got my little... No, you were the one. I hadn't noticed it. I turned my alerts back on.

You know, they're all off. And it was like the punch bowl news alert. And it says this, congressional appropriators have released a short-term spending bill that will fund federal agencies through December 11th attempted to avoid a pre-election day shutdown. The bipartisan bill is expected to be taken up in the Senate this week. It's like, why?

What? Why? Why would the Democrats go along with anything? And this is like, you understand, we're doing Michigan at the very end. You understand what people are going to go for Abdul, I'll say when the stuff like this happens. Honestly.

Like what could plausibly be the rationale for signing on to a bipartisan effort to fund this government with the way that Donald Trump is spending the money on its fucking triumphal arch and on massed murderers in the streets? Let them have the shutdown fight. Do the same thing you did the last two times. Talk about you're not going to fund the government because you want to spend people's taxpayer dollars on helping taxpayers, get health care, get things that they need. not, you know, fund Donald Trump's fucking pet projects.

Like, it's crazy. And they get almost no concessions in this. So they don't get to, there are no limitations on what ICE does. There's no question the war will be funded or all the things the Democrat should could have made a real fuss about. A and B, just to make the point even more obvious, I mean, the current funding runs to September 30th. If they feel in September 26th that it's too hard to shut the government down and they're better off doing a short term CRI, you know, I could, that will be a case to be made. doing it now, two months early, giving the Republicans this nice out to say they're being bipartisan and they're being responsible. And look, we're working with the Democrats. The Democrats are saying

we just suck up to Trump, but no, we're working together on it's beyond. I thought it was going crazy. I looked around last night. I thought maybe after you sent me the thing that I started read about it, this is crazy. There must be something I'm missing and I looked around. But so far, I have not found a compelling argument the other way. Maybe I'm missing something. If you're a Democratic Senate staff, I'd be glad to hear a counterpoint to this. But I'm looking at the bill. It's like we're going to fund the National Security Department of State and Related Programs Appropriations Act. Why?

Why would the Democrats be funding Marco Rubio's coups? That's what Marco is going to spend money on for the rest of the year. He's planning his finishing his Cuba coup. Like it includes DHS funding. Right. It includes Interior, which I think is funding the arch. Why? Well, not one cent.

would be my position. I mean, it's the CR, so it includes, I think it includes all of them, basically. And again, there are ways to, it says, if you want to keep stuff open in late September, there are ways to selectively keep the key departments that service people open. There are ways to do even a short-term CR, maybe get some, insist on some concessions on some of these things, as you're saying. But this is really kind of crazy. And I do, yes, you're right.

I mean, honestly, why are Democratic voters unhappy with Democrats in Washington and the Democratic establishment? That's why. There you are, right? One of the other moments of clarity I had on vacation was thinking about how I'm going to prioritize my time going forward. You guys know, if you're a long time listeners, one thing I don't do, iron. Life's too short to iron. Here's another thing that life's too short to do.

Spend a Saturday wandering around a blind store. I'm not going to do that. Not interested in that. That's an hour that could be spent for higher and better purposes. I want to spend my Saturday brunching with my gaze. or with my child at the park or, I don't know, doing a bulwark take for you guys. That's useful. So what do you do instead?

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Right now, get quality window treatments that fit your budget with three-day blinds at the three-day blinds.com slash the bulwark for their buy one, get one, 50% off deal on custom blinds, shades, and drapery for free, no charge, no obligation, consultation. Just head to three-day blinds.com slash the bulwark. one last time. That's buy one, get one, 50% off when you head to the number three, D-A-Y-Blines.com slash the bulwark. I'm going to go back to just the Blanche vote because I think you did make a good point.

And I was a little cheekily dismissive of it about these senators having to confirm him. I just, the Dan Sullivan, you were talking that got me going. So I pulled up, I pulled up Dan Sullivan's Twitter feed. I pulled up this little press release thing to see what he's doing. And is there a more pathetic figure than him? And Dan Sullivan tried to run in like a Tom Cotton-esque kind of oove as like that he was going to be like a national security kind of responsible steward, you know, strong U.S. military type senator. And that's like he's nowhere. He is just the invisible man in Washington.

He goes along with everything Trump wants to do. It didn't in these hearings, it doesn't seem like he has any concerns about somebody being in the head of OD&I who has. was absolutely no experience who was, like, who was offensively dismissive about questions of basic facts about the election and other, other matters. Like,

no complaints about the concerns of DOD that you've covered on Thursday's podcast and then the issues that we have with material, like nothing. Like, he's posting like, oh, he was at the Blueberry Festival this weekend in Alaska. He's got two posts about him and Mike Roe having an event.

It's like nothing. Like, nothing. He goes weeks without putting out anything. What is his position on the Iran war? Who knows? I guess pro. He doesn't say anything about it. These guys are so unbelievably pathetic. Trump is at 34%. Like, he's up for re-election. You have no concerns about the way things are going? If you're Dan Sullivan? Apparently not. Mary Peltola for Senate. Once you've gone along so long, you don't, it's just too hard to break. and maybe it wouldn't help him to break this late

because he's gone along with everything. As you say, though, he's actually, I knew him a little bit back in the day. You know, obviously senior person in the military knew a lot about defense, seemed to care about it sincerely. It also was incidentally kind of a McCain internationalist. I think he joined the board of IRA,

didn't need the international Republican student. Maybe he's chairman even now. I'm not too sure I've lost track it. It's become a pretty ineffectual and pathetic organization for the Trump years. But it was once a place that kind of was a home for internationalist, conservative, of internationalist Republicans.

Yeah, he's the chairman of IRA. Yeah, and he wanted to be part of that. But has he spoken up against all the other stuff? No. Tell people, just so people can understand my laughter, tell people what IRA was supposed to be about. Like, what was IRA? They're part of the complex of organizations that get some money from the government

and that conveys money on their own to do things like election observance, helping civil society groups, especially in Ukraine, but in places where there are conflict or whether there's authoritarianism. And it was they and the Democratic equivalent did some pretty good work over the last two, three, four decades. And you know, sort of quiet. Do you know what their tagline is?

It's right here, pull it up. Advancing democracy worldwide. Okay. It's under attack everywhere with Donald Trump leading the charge. And like Dan Sullivan, who is ostensibly the chairman of this group has nothing to say about it.

It's just like unbelievably, like pathetic and cucked. Yeah, I didn't know he's chairman. I'm glad we circled back with Dan Sullivan. A good five-minute hate on Dan Sullivan is a nice way to return. Where was I? Oh, I wanted to talk more about the war. So, and you covered some of this, but like, at some ways, this is a little bit of Groundhog Day with like Trump making threats and them backing down. But like, there have been some like real developments. The Ukraine war, Iran

war quasi-merge would be an overstatement, but like Ukraine attacked an Iranian ship, increasing evidence that Russia is providing targeting intel to Iran, going after our troops, and our bases. And then in addition to that, kind of trying to figure out how to get out of it, there's a CNN exclusive this morning

and says that there was a request from a senior officer at the U.S. military command that said, quote, we are looking for new, creative, and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran. So that's where they're at. It really is spiraling. There's a bunch of other stuff that happened

as far as, you know, as the expanding regional war and the way as much Saudi it was getting involved in other countries. While at some level, it's kind of the same as it ever was story, like it is worsening. Yeah. Iran turns out to be stronger than we thought even two months ago when we knew that they hadn't been obliterated, but we thought I did think at least, well, maybe they really have been set back, though, and they got a few drones and a couple of missiles, but it turns out they have quite a lot of missiles and quite a lot of drones and quite a lot of capability to strike all over the place, and they're working closely. It does look like with China actually behind

in the scenes and with Russia, and they've got other neighboring countries totally intimidated, and MBS called, your friend MBS called Trump's Saturday to urge him not to escalate the war against Iran. The Saudis don't like Iran, and they don't want to make it even worse, you know. That's what, I mean, we have just destroyed the alliance structures that we have in Europe and the Middle East. Remember when they're getting in the Abraham Accords? Yeah.

How's that working out? Yeah, everything was great, you know. Jared Kushner, peace in our time. it's like mockable and concerning, right? There's like a memo going out around the security agencies. It's like wanted, do ideas for how to go after a run. Like as if there hasn't been like, what, a half century of wargaming on this? Like there isn't, you know, people in the bowels of DOD that have been coming up with the different ideas for fucking decades.

But the reason why that is, like we're harming our Asian allies, like economically, the Arab allies are being targeted and Israel is in a different boat than the rest of them. But like, that's why, I think, that they are like, we need to come up with creative ideas because they, you know, still feel like they need to put on pressure, but they don't have support for doing, and I don't even think Trump wants to do what would need to be done to escalate. And the military has gone along with an awful lot. It seems to me it's hard to judge from outside. Maybe there was more resistance than I realize. But certainly on the show I did Thursday when I was pinch hitting for you. With Margaret Donovan, I mean, it was a JAG

a decade ago, the fact that we have no report, no public acknowledgement that we hit the Girl's School and how that might have happened, at least a classified report for Congress, but also a public report. That's been done many, many times in the last two, three decades as we fought wars and made mistakes and hit civilian targets, obviously.

That's just disgraceful, really. This is what got me freaked out about that conversation. The degree in which the military itself could be getting corrupted. I hate to even say it. I hope it's not happening. and I think the military is more resistant than almost anything else in the U.S. government. You get the firings, you get the politicized promotions, you get the message that goes all the way down.

If you want to get along, you not just go along, but maybe you even suck up. That New York Times story when you were gone about the way in which the guy whose chief of naval operations called Admiral Cottle got the job is horrifying. I missed that story. What was it? So it's like a nightmare of what everyone who's worried about a third world politicized military. He basically saw that Hexeth was going to fire, the chief of naval operations. I think it was Admiral Franketti. I think that's her name.

He was her name. And he decided he could get it. And he spent weeks sucking up to Hegsef, hiring Parlatorie, who was Hexas lawyer to be his lawyer, saying he didn't like all that DEI stuff. I mean, basically the worst kind of political campaigning for this job, which worked. And now he's head of naval operations. So that's at the very top level, four-star. But then, of course, God knows what's happening at the one-star level.

at the kernel, major level and so forth to get promoted. I mean, I'm much more worried, and I think Margaret was in this conversation, about the degree to which in 18 months, you know, 18 months is not a short amount of time. Another 24, 30 months, you're going through a whole promotion cycles here, right? People have three-year assignments usually. Hex is more incompetent than the rest of them, I'd say, compared to presumably the grown-up lawyers at Justice and even to Mark Wayne Mullen, probably at DHS.

but he's pretty determined to do what he's doing, and he's getting no pushback, and that gets us back to Dan Sullivan, your friend. I mean, there are people in the U.S. Senate who know something about the military, and some of them, many of them are actually, are Republicans, and this is a place where they can say, look, we love Trump, we love this, we love that,

blah, you can have all the corrupt graph you want, but you know what? We are going to get serious about not letting you ruin the United States military. Kind of an important institution, right? And they're not doing, so far as I can tell, almost nothing. it's pretty telling that cash and hikes that they're still in there yeah you know i mean like with all of the stories that came out about caches and competence and you know the

i'maic point the people from inside the house even maga fbi agents like just talking about how clownish it is and then again with all the reporting you were just talking about about the od and with the obvious disaster that the iran war is you would think there would be, like that's where one of the scalps would be. And I think that the fact that it hasn't been, and that there isn't really even buzz about it, is like pretty alarming, right? As you look ahead to the kind of things to be worried about in 2008, Trump wants people that are pliable in charge of those ministries. In those two cases, obviously people who are more than pliable, who were eager to participate in all the anti-democratic.

Yeah, right. Thank you. Really, but I'm serious. When you think about it, it's really terrible that they're there. I couldn't agree with you. I really thought about the fact that they're still there. But you're right. That is very... Bondi. No. Telling. Right. You know? Yeah. Gabbard. Yeah. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You've heard me talk about BetterHelp for a while now. But I don't know what we ever talked about how much people love the service when they use it. You can check it out yourself at BetterHelp.com slash reviews to see amazing customer reviews in real time. The reviews are updated every day with hundreds. of people saying how much they love BetterHelp and how helpful it's been to them. Speaking, which, have you given this podcast a positive review lately? You probably should right now. Just go ahead and do that. And go read the reviews at BetterHelp.com.

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Answer a few questions. Get matched with a therapist based on your needs and switch therapists at any time if it's not the right fit. See the reviews. See what stands out and see if BetterHelp is right for you. Visit BetterHelp.com slash the bulwark. That's BetterHELP.com slash the bulwark. I want to go out to the other news. One more thing from the things that I missed that I would be remiss to not cover briefly.

The surveilling of Jim Comey, like that story from our friend Carolinig and MS Now and others, apologies to whoever else was on that story. It's like this combination of like shocking and alarming and, you know, it's also like the boobishness of it. I mean, it's like it had a little bit of a watergate feel to it that it was like this was very menacing and also like so boobish and like crazy. But like Trump's on the plane on Air Force One, I guess, going to the Middle East. And the Secret Service folks in D.C. are getting messages from the plane that like redacted figure is very interested in the surveillance of Comey and where Comey is.

And that this is a big topic of discussion on the plane. What are we going to do? And so he surveilled him on his drive home from the beach to his house in Virginia. And surveil his house, it got his phone. They're pinging where his phone was. Like, illegally, no warrant. Like, based on an emergency, like a supposed emergency notion that he might be threatening the president. Like, that is, like, really just sheer madness.

Yeah, I guess the Secret Service got involved because they had to, their claim was it was a threat to the president. And the Secret Service deals with those. So they have expertise on that in other way in which they investigated it. Justice was comical, of course, trying to get some old 86-year-old mobster to say that 86 does mean, rubbing someone out, which it doesn't. It didn't he said, I think. But it does illustrate also, doesn't it? I mean, how, again, it goes down through the ranks.

So some third level, you know, Secret Service guy gets a call from his buddy on the plane and he's involved in the investigative side of things in the Secret Service. And suddenly they're all doing this stuff, which they should not be doing, right? And in that respect, it is worse than Watergate, obviously. It was Watergate they couldn't really penetrate the agencies quite that well, you know? Right. That's what makes me worry. I mean, every place you look, it's happening.

And it's often buffoonish, the Federal Communications Commission, the post office with the ballots. But they've, you know, it's a pretty sustained government-wide effort for corruption, for prosecution of enemies, and for election subversion. Yeah, and the buffoonish just doesn't negate just the total assault on civil liberties in this country and the authoritarian nature of it, right? It's just like, Jim Comey should not be spied on because the president doesn't like him. that's what was happening. You know, that is what happens in authoritarian countries. It doesn't seem like this is happening at scale yet here. But the fact that, like, that it was happening at all is an unbelievable scandal.

And, like, you know, you always do, oh, if this, if Obama did this blah, blah, blah, blah. It's kind of stupid a dog about the man thing. But, like, really, like, if you look back to another administration of our lifetime besides the two Trump administrations, I mean, the president of the United States directed the secret service to spy on a political foe. It would be an administration and broiling scandal. I mean, like people would resign over it. Right? I mean, there's that since Nixon been anything akin to it.

Well, talk about a couple of the Republican crazy stuff that's been happening. I'm happy to see that the Max Miller story has been. burst into public consciousness. It's something that we've been talking about on this show. But for people who miss that, I don't remember, he's the Ohio congressman that has two credible domestic abuse allegations against him. And they're particularly credible because the first is from Stephanie Grisham, who is Donald Trump spokesperson.

And the second is from the daughter of Ohio Senator Bernie Marino. So two Republicans. smaga folks are in the Trump orbit saying that he assaulted them. And the strange thing was like this was not getting any attention really. And he's up for the election. It's a winnable seat potentially for Democrats. I think Brian Poindex was a Democratic candidate in that

district. And Moreno hadn't said anything. The allegations from his daughter about Miller throwing scalding hot water on her and pictures. She's just a bit of pictures of like the burning on her skin and other kind of bruises came out. like two years ago, her dad didn't say anything. He finally put out a statement yesterday saying that Miller shouldn't be in Congress.

I haven't seen a whole parade of other senators or congressmen joining on. I mean, for all of the Graham Platner drama, maybe belatedly, all the Democrats, even his close allies came around to, you know, saying that the allegations were too serious for him to run. for him to run, the Miller accusations are at least as serious. And I guess the only person to have said anything so far is the father of the woman who made the allegations. I guess I should say, I do think it's potentially meaningful.

You don't have to hand it to Bernie Marino who waited two years to do this for some reason. But it's potentially meaningful that he did so because I do think him not saying anything was like cover for the other Republicans to not say anything because they're like, if the girl's dad, this woman's dad, excuse me. me isn't going to say anything than

loud at I. I think there's more pressure now on them to do so, but we'll see. It's another one where you look at the senators, John Hustad. It would be interesting to see what he has to say in Ohio Senate race. Yeah, I do wonder if this is a much bigger story in Ohio, obviously, then now is a big story nationally, but it's already big in Hawaii. Yeah, what does who used to say?

What does the Speaker Johnson say when they get back? He's so far as, oh no, I guess there's an ethics investigation, just want to take a close look. I mean, it's really appalling. It's horrifying. Who was that other guy that's in there? There was another, I forget his name always. Corey Mills. Yeah. Who's another

I mean, they're just all happily there and Trump's GOP, you know, sexual abuser and stuff. But of course, it fits in with the overall Epstein thing too. So the Democrats just need to say this is Trump's GOP. And then they'll let the decent ones say, oh, no, that's not me. But fine. If it's not you, distinguish yourself from your buddy

there and Max Miller, whom you're clowning around with in the House Republican Conference every day, you know. Yeah. Among the other things, I guess he held a gun to her head threw hot water at her. Police are also conducting an active child abuse investigation. Yeah, it's terrible. It's terrible. Reporters reached out to several high profile of

how Republicans, including John Hustead, and they didn't give a comment. So I don't know how long it'll be able to last, but we'll keep watching. These guys have no absolutely no integrity. They don't care at all. Millers, I put out a lengthy video defending himself yesterday. There was one part of it that particularly

caught my interest that I want to play for people. He doesn't really like give an alternate explanation of what happened in the scalding hot water incident, but he does try to provide an alibi for himself. Let's listen. The very next day we had a friendly phone call about our daughter's upcoming hospital procedure and I drove in from Washington to be there for it. Six days later, she offered to cook empanadas for me for dinner. If I had assaulted her, would she had offered to cook me dinner six days later, would she have invited me to spend an afternoon at the playground with her and our

daughter? If I had assaulted her, would she have cooked me empanadas? I mean, like, this is, like, from a fucking 80s movie villain. That is insane. Yeah, and we know that that's often, unfortunately, the way victims, they're at a tough position. They feel that they have to get along with this guy for a while. He's stronger than they are. He's a member of Congress. He has powerful friends. She's worried about her daughter. Maybe he invite him to the playground for a couple of hours. Maybe cook them dinner or something, you know, if it keeps him from doing even worse things. But this has been much studied, obviously, by those who's no much more than I do. But she had cooked me supper if I roughed her up a little

bit? It's just... The idea that that's the defense, and now we have, I guess, these other tapes. No, there's no defense. I one point thought, look, I don't want to jump to conclusions a few weeks ago. I don't know. I don't know any of these people who knows what happened in these cases, but it's pretty clear. And Moreno, I mean, I do think that's where Moreno makes a difference, right? He was very reluctant to say anything. I don't think he's covered himself in glory, incidentally, if I may say, as a father of by rallying to the defense of his daughter publicly. Now, privately, I think he was with her on her side, so to speak, trying to help. We seriously believe that Moreno and his daughter are on some conspiracy to drag down Max Miller,

Miller, you know, I don't think so. Yeah. And it's really like, if the writers of mad men would have been like, we need to go back to the drawing board on this one. It's two. It's two on the nose. would she have cooked me some dinner if I had to punch her? It's like, what? Fucking sick. Sick guy. Big race there in Ohio. It's another one to look at.

Hopefully we can rid ourselves with Max Miller. I want to talk about Mitch McConnell. Not a lot has changed since I left on that front. He did issue one more proof of life photo. We've not heard him speak. Putting everything else aside, like the page. the paid medical leave is pretty good in the Senate. I don't know if anybody else would get to just disappear from their job for months on end without getting that. I think maybe like Mitch McConnell.

I don't know. That should be a increase his interest in health care reform if he's to come back to the Senate, which I don't expect. We have Kay Granger also died while I was gone. She was a House Republican from Fort Worth. She spent the final months of her house career in an assisted living home in Texas. these people, like, need to understand who they are representing and, like, what their job is. I don't understand how they can rationalize that this continues to be okay. And I guess we're coming up on August 6th. Is that the idea that, like, the rules in Kentucky on how it gets replaced for stuff are different coming up for the next few days?

But if they do that, if they, like, try to pull this where Mitch McConnell finally drops out right after the deadline, it is a total offense and a front to the people that they're supposed to be representing, including people that don't vote from them. Yeah, the degree to which we are going to have, don't you think, a massive generation, I mean, a real rebellion against the old people

in both parties, though, including healthy ones, but it just, you know, sort of, it has to be a presumption now that you cannot just have the attitude of you're there forever and you're there until you become feeble and you're there till you die. It's to, I mean, after everything we've been through. Shouldn't we know where I could, what Mitch McConnell's status is?

I don't know. I mean, I felt like when I was, when I left, there was like some rumblings, like whether Andy Bashir should be a little tougher on this. I do kind of feel this way. Like, shouldn't the governor of Kentucky, like, know if the senator from Kentucky is compassmentous? Well, yeah, he doesn't, he says.

And do any Republican senators? No, I suppose John Thune knows. He's just keeping them. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, it is kind of astonishing. All right. Well, I've got more. stuff for people. I've got a little business, you know, podcast business. So I'm going to share with

people. I've got a very lengthy dissertation on the Michigan Senate race, which I'm sure people are really excited about. What else? Is there anything else from the past that I missed, Bill? Anything else you want to get off your chest? Reflecting pool. Otherwise? Reflecting pool was amazing. And again, just the kind of degree to which all kinds of people at interior and justice and the White House were lying. The lying, the continued lying, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, namelessness of the lying. We shouldn't forget about that. It's stupid to even talk about it. It's been so obvious for years, but again, we shouldn't neglect that, I suppose, you know? It is quite something, the lying, the corruption, the incompetence. So on the one hand, it's all bad. I guess the one thing

I would say is the Bush line. I mean, the good news is last week, they really were several polls and respectable polls, a couple of them of registered voters and said not just adults. Trump has typically done a little better with registered voters, all four of them under 35. I mean, that's pretty astonishing. And that really is a drop down from the 40 was bad, or 40 you start, that's when I started to think the Senate's really in play, 35. I mean, now, presumably he gets a little bounce back from that. And Ron Brownstein was on the billwork on Sunday yesterday.

You just do the math. We know quite a lot about how approval ratings correlate with the vote in an off-year election. If you do the math of what Trump's approval rating must be in the different states that we've been talking about, it's going to be better than three. 35. If he's 35 nationally, his approval rating in Ohio is 45 maybe, right? 10 points, Ohio is 10 points better than the nation probably for Republicans. It's not about 50. And there's a lot of evidence that if you get the president below 50, the senator or the senator or candidate from his party has trouble, especially when that

party is so closely linked to Trump. It's why the Democrats have to make it all about Trump. They have to, if I can, maybe I'll close that with this, not go along with stupid, unnecessary compromise bills to keep the government open two months before you have to pass anything about keeping the government open and why they have to just hammer the Republican going along with Trump in this just a rubber stand for Trump in the most shameless way, I think. Can I add one thing to this because it's what I'm going to rant about next? I just want to get your take is. And also the tying to Trump is also just keeping the eye on the ball about what this midterm election is is about Trump. I just like to the extent that

my bubble got pierced, the amount of like factional infighting and nitpicking, I find it like almost irresponsible. And I think that it's a pox on both sides are all the sides of the fight within the Democratic side. I understand the notion that the Democrats need new fresh thinking in the future, if they're not president, if they're going to win presidential majorities again. Like I hear that. But like that's not what the 2026 election is about. I totally agree. It's and apart for the fact, yeah, it's analytically stupid. I mean, that's to say, in the sense that obviously Democrats need to have a positive agenda, et cetera, in 28 for the presidency, and obviously they should fix various things about the party and about liberalism,

and liberalism's message and figure out who's right between the progressives and the centrist on a whole bunch of issues, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The one thing they have to do in 27, 28, is stop Trump from further, as much as they can, stop Trump from further ruining the country. It is not just politically useful to make it about Trump because he's at 34%. It is correct to make it about Trump. It is the most important thing. But we're in this like crazy world. It's not even close, by the way. It's not even close. Totally. I mean, well, oh, the Democrats really have to work a little on the health care theme because they're, you know, no, Medicare fall is kind of good, but it's kind of problematic. And what about this? You know what? Fine. I think tank should do that. Individual members should do

that. They have staffs. They have their committees. I'm all for that. They should be ready to go with good legislation in 27. We'll go anywhere probably in 28, but certainly in 29. And that's all fine. But it is not the fundamental thing. So this is a case where the political imperative and these, what would we call it, substantive imperative, are the same, I think. It's such a comfort to be back with you, Bill. We are extremely aligned. Thanks again for your assistance for us on holiday, and we'll catch you next Monday. All right, everybody else, stick around. I got more for you. Yeah, stick around, though. This is going to be a good rant from Tim's. All right, so a couple of items just between me and y'all. You may have noticed

whenever it matriculates into your pod feed. We've got new art. We've got a new bulwark website. It's looking great. Go to the bulwark.com. Sign up if you haven't. We also have a new name for the podcast, kind of, ish. It's the bulwark daily now.

I've been wanting to do this for a while because, like, this show is really more than a podcast. It's in part my engagement with you guys. It's obviously video. It's on YouTube. I'm surprised by how many people who say they listen to the podcast, tell me that then subsequently tell me they didn't realize. it was daily. So I think that's good for the branding,

people to know, I'm here every day. People need everyday material. I also noticed some of the other podcasts like mine have started calling themselves video podcasts lately, and there's something about that that just makes my skin crawl. It just feels wrong. Video podcast. I don't even like to say it.

I thought for a second about the bulwark show. I felt weird. I don't know why. It just didn't read right. So anyway, The Bullwark Daily. We're here every day. Nothing else is changing, but just a little brand refresh for everybody.

And also, I want to acknowledge and appreciate everybody that comes every day because I do think that it is a different type of thing, a different type of relationship when I'm talking to you guys every day and hearing from you guys every day. And I think that is something that I value about what we're doing here. So hopefully it doesn't spook you too much. I know some people don't like change. I know our all are never Trump. Oh, geez. you know, the small C conservatives out there. We don't like change.

We get uncomfortable. But I think it'll ring right after a minute. A few vacation big thoughts. Before I wax poetic about how great it is to have two weeks off on vacation, I do just want to say I realize that like I'm really lucky. You guys make that possible for me. So I appreciate that. A lot of people have jobs or financial situations or family situations

that don't allow them to just gallivant for two weeks. and so I'm really grateful that I was able to do that. And I think it was important because I feel like I found a lot of clarity in week two. Week one, you know, you're still on vacation. You're still stress. You're still tense. I was partying a little bit, week one. Week two, there was a piece.

There was a piece. There was a lot of time for reading and thinking. I felt like I got a lot of that. I felt like I got some clarity of mind about what our purpose is here. that is useful. I feel like I was able to do some learning again, which is nice. Because you've got to be able to consume

to provide new kind of thoughts and ideas and perspectives to people. I was able to learn, in particular, a lot about bananas. So you're going to be hearing a lot of banana facts in the next few podcasts. I don't know if you guys knew this,

but we gave people when they got to Ellis Island a banana for a period of time when they got off the ship. One of the big fruit companies that then did the coups did that. But I thought that was kind of nice USA. I want to, in particular, though, right now to talk about one element of the clarity that I just previewed for you with Bill Crystal. The distance gave me a lot of feeling of the pointlessness of the fights that I find myself embroiled in sometimes on social media or even on the comments of this here video.

I don't know if it's the phones. We have to know everything about everybody or if it's trauma from a decade of Trump or if it's like this feeling that the stakes are so high that anyone, who doesn't see things exactly like you do as a traitor. If it's something else, it's some combination of all that. But like I just, it feels like there's a fraying of the opposition right now. And there's a lot of like really personal petty,

nasty fighting that is happening that I just think is extremely counterproductive and stupid and a waste of time when we are still two and a half years away from January 6, 2029. like it's August 3rd, 2026. We know what happened in January 6th, 2021.

There's a lot of months, a lot of weeks, a lot of days and hours for him to fucking create problems. And like, that is the focus of what we're doing here. And I just think that's what should be everyone's focus.

And, you know, we talked with this little bit with Nicole before I left. And I think that it's, you know, something that I kept professional admiration for about her show.

which is just like her eye is on the ball. Television shows different from a podcast, and I'm still going to talk about all this other stuff. It's not as if you should ignore what's happening. There are important things happening in democratic politics. I'm about to talk about it a little bit. But like, the anger and the rage and the energy should be channeled against the person

that is trying to turn us into a right-wing authoritarian dictatorship. And I think that in some ways it's obvious, but like when you get into the day-to-day, you can lose sight of it. And so that's one of the, I had a lot of, what's the movie line? What alcoholics call a moment of clarity? I had a lot of moments of clarity while it was gone.

That was just one of the moments of clarity. So you'll hopefully hear some of the others as the days move on. This takes us to Michigan, though. I really hate the Michigan Senate race a lot. It makes me sad. And so before I get to that, I do want to shout out a Michigan House candidate as a little pallet cleanser. I got to meet Matt Mazdom, who's running for the House of Michigan seven a couple months ago now at Slokkin's old seat.

This guy, if you don't know him, he held the nuclear football for Obama. He's a Navy SEAL. He has organized labor and Slokkin behind him. So he unites the tribes a bit. He's got this personal profile of masculinity that people tried to project onto Platner, but is actually legit and doesn't have the baggage with it. It's fucking hockey dad. And the dude has his priority straight. I was watching one of his ads this morning.

And he's talking about how his top priority is fighting corruption in D.C. And like that is just correct. That is the correct focus for somebody who's going to the House of Representatives. In 2030, are there many other issues that are going to be important for the Democrats to hash out? Like, yes. But right now, for these guys, we're getting in January of 2020. 27 through the end of Trump, through the beginning of the post-Trump, investigating their corruption, fighting it, and getting our democracy back is the top priority.

And this guy gets it. I just think he's exactly the type of dude Dem's need. You can check him out. If you live in Michigan 7, I'd encourage you to give him a look. Primary election is tomorrow. There are some of the candidates in the race, but I'm partial to mess him. So check them out. I also put a list of candidates a couple weeks ago that I think are worth supporting in the triad.

I want to put a link to that again in the show notes in case you missed it. Go check it out. I think we're going to update that at some point here once all the primaries are done. But looking at candidates who are across the ideological spectrum, I think are strong candidates who are running in places where Democrats haven't had a lot of success recently where I think that they could have success. So there's the positive. Now we get to the center race. The story of my thoughts in the Senate race starts with a troubling tweet I sent in the Charlotte Airport Lounge before I did across Intercontinental Flight.

I don't know if you guys remember the story of Justine Sacco. My elder millennials, remember this. She tweeted, I don't remember what it was. I thought about looking it up this morning, just kind of, who cares at this point. She tweeted something that was either racist or quasi-racist or interpreted as racist about her trip to Africa. and then she got on a plane and people saw the tweet and they started piling on her

and then a hashtag started about like when does Justine land and so like she, her flight lands and she gets off the plane and she realizes that she's been canceled that everybody hates her for the tweet that she sent. I had kind of a micro version of that before my vacation nothing racist.

I tweeted that Haley Stevens was growing on me and it's like, it was like kind of cheeky. She had this funny riff and I wish I could do her voice. She's like, we're going to let her rip. We got her let her rip.

And she's just kind of mad. And I don't know. There's just something about it that made me giggle. And, you know, I'm stuck in an airport lounge and just like, yeah, you know,

fire it off. I'm fucking firing off tweets all the time. Fire off this. She's growing on me. What happened after that, I guess, I don't know because who cares. But my understanding is like some people who follow me,

like also tweeted that she was growing on them. and then some other people started tweeting that sarcastically or mockingly and then it's all happening while I'm in the plane and then like track A-pack like somehow

got on the jump to conclusions Matt and was like this must be an op and then somehow somebody decided that we were getting paid $1,500 to tweet that Haley Stevens was growing on us and Wajahat Ali is like tweeting

insane accusations at me about how I'm taking money for my tweets and and Rashida Talib is tweeting about this and it's like this is all crazy. It was all crazy. It's like I don't I think it was the second nice thing I've ever said about Haley Stevens.

There's something that she did the debate I liked. I don't really remember what but I've been nasty to Haley Stevens mostly for most of this campaign. One of her friends like chastised me after a panel that I was on because I was comparing her to egg from arrested development and like being very critical of her. Like I'm not like this is like not Haley Stevens person, really, but I thought the clip was funny.

And so, you know, this thing like spirals out of control, though. And it's like, there are memes about this. And like, it's like, okay, well, so this is part of my personal growth. I land in Berlin. And it's like, okay, I like a lot of Congresswoman. And a lot of people, like, apparently I think I'm taking money to say that Haley Stevens is growing on me. Just like, why would they pay me for that?

I don't know. The whole thing is insane. saying. So whatever it's worth, I don't take money for anybody for any tweets. Certainly no campaigns or allied groups. The only people I take money from or we take money from at the Bullwork are those. And the sponsored ads

that you hear if you're not a Bullwark Plus member, shout out our friends at three day blinds and laundry sauce and they're disclosed as such. Yeah. So people send me things and they're like, will you tweet this or whatever? Like flacks? But like I almost never do. I never do I disagree, obviously.

Everyone's wants to want somebody to flag me for me something that I that I like. And so I'll share it, of course. I think most flacks are scared of me because I used to be a flack and I don't care. And this podcast would be fucking boring if I was like saying things

that the press secretary for Haley Stevens wanted me to say. It's great. The whole thing is lunacy. But I wanted to share some lessons from it. Number one. I sent one tweet trying to correct the record. Probably shouldn't have even done that.

Put my phone down, let people lie about me. and moved on, went to Burke Hein. I think that's personal growth. And I think that just kind of in general, like keeping focus on the things that matter as smart for all of us in the stupid social media wars. I will say another lesson here might be like a little bit careful of what influencers you follow.

If there are people that are like randomly doing false smears against people that are ostensibly on their side because they want to win some inner nicene factional fight, like maybe that should raise questions about whether they should trust them on other matters. And three, I think the Senate primary, the Senate primaries have caused everybody to take their eye off the ball. I've got into it with Bill.

Like for the people who are like professional moderates or professional DSA, like their eyes are so far off the ball right now, like that they aren't even in the same stadium. And I know the DSA people aren't even going to listen to be on this. So I try to say this to my moderate buddies, but it's just like going to the mat with personal nasty attacks on people who are part of the broad anti-Trump coalition right now in August of 2026th, I find to be totally irresponsible and wrong. And I think everybody's got to take a breath. I think the people that are engaged in this should like also go on a two-week vacation.

if they can or maybe two days. It's going to walk around the block. And like it's time to re like get the ship back on course here. I'm mixing my metaphors. But I could be the threats are so great right now. Like the threats and the risks. Like what we talked about with Bill about like the buffoons. We're running the national security.

I've ice people. They're still killing people in the streets. We're about to do mass deportations of Haitians. Like they're spying on Jim Comey. like why possibly would you prioritize like bickering over something it's like not even gonna like Bill said we're gonna bicker over what your health care plan is

it's like nobody's health care plan is bidding past Donald Trump is fucking president okay so like fight about that in 2029 like we have to defeat Donald Trump so having a good message for people that's good and arguing about what that message should be like that's fine but like these sort of low blows and lies and smears about people we're going to need to have on our side.

Like this year and going forward, to me is crazy. And so to the Senate race itself, here's my thoughts. I don't really like either candidate that much. For Abdul, I know that a lot of people really like him. Like he's got a huge fan base. I like the people get excited about candidates. I think that's good. I think it can be dangerous.

You know, you don't want to get into a cult. But I want people to be excited. I don't want everybody to be jaded. it seems like younger people are excited about Abdul in particular in Michigan. That makes me happy. And so like that part of it, I don't want to yuck anybody's young. I worry a little bit. Just my personal worry is that he's like an inverse fetterman and he like makes the life hard for the next Democratic president.

Like from the left in 2029, there's going to be narrow majorities. We're going to have to do stuff. Does he really seem like a team player? I don't know. But I also understand why he's resonating. at the people are really pissed. He's got a message for people that are pissed. And he has focused message.

He's a good message. Talking about health care, corporate influence, the way that we're wasting money on these stupid wars. I think that that message is right. And so I understand. The cultishness, though, again, is part of what concerns me with him. The fact that he had to send out a tweet telling his own fans

to stop doing misogynist hits on Haley Stevens is great. The fact that, like, They're regularly making up lies about their opponents. I don't like. In fact that many of the people that were sending me messages and posting on my Instagram posts about my vacation about how I'm a Zionist, I'm taking blood money from the Zionists, and I'm worse than MAGA.

It's like, guys, if you think that Haley Stevens is like a MAGA or a worse than MAGA, like you've lost your mind. Okay. You've totally lost focus on the plot. and I just I think that that is the part that worries me about El Caid and his supporters they think that the enemy

is the center of the center left Democrats and not mega and I'm concerned about that I'm a little bit concerned about the election with him I will get to electability at the end as for Haley personally she doesn't like she's kind of a strange cat that's what the old growing on me thing was about

she seems to have been a totally competent House member I think that she'd be a total team player in the Senate it's hard to imagine Haley Stevens like not voting for whatever the policy priorities are of the next Democratic president she seems to care about Michigan get things done for Michigan I bet that is a totally fine person in the Senate

there are a lot of people in the Senate like Haley Stevens as I said with Bill I'm concerned about some of the ways that these people want to make too many deals with the Maga Republicans that would be something I'd have concerns about Haley with but all in all, I don't. I think in the grand scheme of things, I should be a broadly inoffensive senator.

I understand why people are mad about the APEC stuff, and I do want to just talk about this really quick. I just think that in general, if any interest group puts tens of millions of dollars into one race, like, I think that should become an issue in the race. I do. And whether that would be AI or big oil or whatever,

it's too much. It's too much influence. It is distorting the democratic process. We should reform it. There should be campaigner finance reform. This was a bipartisan thing when I was coming up. This was McCain's thing. And after Citizens United, things have gotten out of control.

And it's going to be tough for the Supreme Court to do stuff. People need to come up with ways to make changes. And until we can make changes, the best that can be done is to make it a political issue. And so I think that no matter what the interest group is, like the idea that there would be that much money flowing to one person, and like feels like a totally relevant issue in the race. And it's something that I understand why people would be like, I don't want to vote for somebody that is getting propped up by that kind of money from interests. The Israel thing in particular, the APEC thing in particular,

it's like, okay, again, people have to live in reality. Like the Democratic Party rightly is upset about a lot of the ways in which America and Israel have conducted foreign policy. Like the fact that Israel, that Nanyahuahuahu, who's in our situation room, arguing for this disastrous war? That's terrible. The way that Israel has prosecuted their actions in Gaza and then with the settlements I've Cam on talking about what's happening in the West Bank, like people are pissed about it.

People are pissed about the way that we are involved with it. And so if you're going to have an interest group that is supporting closer ties, like to this foreign country that people are upset about some of their actions recently, Like, that's going to be a problem in the campaign. And like, I, and this is going to become a campaign issue. And, and I just think that, like, this, this is where, like, this whole race, like, has, like, devolved into this kind of sectarian, like, religious war, which is just not how our campaign should be run. Like, things aren't going that great in the Middle East. I don't really want our primaries to be Israel, Palestine, and Jews versus Muslims.

Like, I don't, I don't think that's healthy. We're in a pluralistic society. I don't think that interest groups or PACs that are pushing the interests of any foreign country should be having that much influence in our elections. Like a PAC that is backed by Qatari Americans or Saudi Americans or Israeli Americans or Belgium. That is not healthy for democracy. And so it's become an issue in the race. I think it should have become an issue in the race.

And I don't know that the pushback results in less money flowing to these races because it's not effective because it backfires. I think that's probably a good thing. You know, look, everybody has their free speech rights in this country. Everybody should be able to advocate for the candidates they want. But, like, I just think that in this moment where the Democratic Party should be uniting around Donald Trump and uniting around how Trump has betrayed voters and uniting around a message and economic message for people who are being left behind and reestablishing themselves as a working class party,

like turning the party into like a Middle Eastern sectarian religious war is ill-advised to say the least. And so I don't think that it was wise for APEC to spend 30 million in this race. I think it ends up being self-harming to their interests and to the interests of American Jews. We're concerned about anti-Semitism, all that. Like I think that it backfired. And I think that as a result of Abdul's going to win this race. tomorrow. So I don't know that my opinion matters that much. I'm a little concerned about, you know, I think it's a little risky on the electability front. I think that, you know,

Michigan has elected Gretchen, Gretchen, Dana Nessel, like a lot of people that are of the Haley Stevens profile. And I think that any bad year for Trump, like I think that Haley Stevens would win easily. I think that Abdul will probably win. But I do think it'll be incumbent on him to really work to win over the voters of the people that voted for. Alexis Lachin, who you might remember one in 2024 when Kamala Harris lost. So figuring out how to talk to those voters who may have concerns,

it's something that he's got to focus on. And I think that that is going to take a vibe shift from acting as if the central left Democrats are the enemy to focusing on Donald Trumping the enemy and how central left Democrats need to be on board with the effort. So that'd be my advice to Abdul and to fight agency and to the folks that are

excited about his campaign. So that is that long show. I have a lot to say. Tomorrow we're going to be live on the next level as the results come in. So that'll be great. If you want more Michigan Senate content, Wisconsin, it's going to be a doozy of a night tomorrow night.

I've got a really great socialism rant coming for tomorrow night's next level. I have so many rants that I've been kind of bubbling up in the old brain after a couple rosés at the beach. So get fired up for that. And I don't think it's going to be what you think it's going to be, by the way.

So hope to surprise you. Appreciate everybody very much. Good to be back. I'll take your comments, criticisms, compliments in the comments. We'll see you back to here tomorrow for another edition of The Bullwark Daily. The Borg podcast is brought to you.

Thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper. Associate producer Anseley Skipper and with video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.