The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Throw the Bums Out

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Like all good demagogues, Trump's appeal works when he's got someone to blame. But it's on his watch that we've got a war-related global food crisis brewing and mass layoffs in Ohio—where Trump just happened to hold a rally over the weekend. So, POTUS is focused on getting his family more money through a new bribery scheme while Republicans struggle to demonize Dems and throw away resources on Paxton. Plus: Bill and Tim share their new long shot picks (in South Carolina, Florida, and Kentucky), Thom Tillis is a coward and a weakling, online trolls claiming The Bulwark is trying to get Dems more hawkish on the war really ought to catch one of our podcasts, and Russia's got a worrisome plague outbreak.Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller.show notes: Andrew in “Morning Shots” on the Pierre Damas Bel funeral vs. Trump’s rally Andrew joins Bill for “Bulwark on Sunday” Follow “Bulwark Takes” for breaking and developing news Washington Sun on Trump meme coin/bribery scheme The WSJ on the brewing global food crisis Tim’s new candidate list October Suprise: The Bulwark is 30% off Upcoming Bulwark LIVE shows, including Atlanta on Oct. 20 Closing Song: The War on Drugs - “Suffering” The Bulwark’s campaign to help the Haitian community of Springfield The Bulwark store Get 20% off when you go to trustandwill.com/BULWARK

Hello and welcome to The Bullwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Just a scheduling item this week. If everybody could bear with me, I'm traveling around a little bit. And we've got some great guests coming up this week. But I'm not sure I'm going to be quite as on the news as I always am. And so go download the Bullwark takes feed. Because somebody else is on it.

Someone at the Bullwark is on the news, no matter what. I am, for starters, tomorrow night, going to be at Dartmouth at the alma mater of colleague Sam Stein. and we'll be together with our friend Liz Smith. I think that's at 5 o'clock at the aptly named Rockefeller Center for our people. So if you're up there in New Hampshire, Vermont, come hang tomorrow night. And then I'm popping around a couple other obligations. One other thing I did want to shout out, please keep in your thoughts and prayers the family of Deb Weiss, long time, bulwark listener, commenter, viewer.

She passed away over the weekend. And we got to meet her at the Minnesota. event. She had a long-running battle with cancer and it was really inspiring. It was an emotional a couple of nights in Minnesota and it was really gratifying to get to meet her and was happy that I don't know, we're able to provide some comfort or for somebody that really cared about the country and wanted to know there are people out there fighting while she was fighting her cancer. So shout out to Deb Weiss and her family. Bill Crystal is with us today. It is Monday, of course. Bill, you were with us then as well.

Now, I remember meeting Deb White, she'd asked to come up and have a photo taken with us, and she was clearly suffering from cancer and it was very moving. As you say, it was an emotional end to an emotional couple of days. And so obviously she and her family are in our thoughts and prayers. Enjoy Dartmouth. It's a nice little school, you know. Is it? Not really, but it's, no, it is nice.

And I spoke there just a year ago. Kind of a poor man's version of some of the other schools. You and Sam Stein can discuss that. I think you should raise that probably on the panel. It's kind of a good talking point there. For me, I feel happy that, like, Sam and Liz, you know, tried hard in school in high school. They tested very well.

They worked hard to get into Dartmouth. As for me, not really. But I think I'm kind of the top bill tonight, having not been brought into the Ivy. Yeah, they're your supporting cast. So that's good. You'll want to stress that at the beginning of the panel, too. I will.

Yeah. And I've lapped them, if you want. If they put you up in, very nice in, they put me up in, when I spoke a year or two ago. There's a very good, like, authentic handover donut shop right down, right a block away. It's famous in Dartmouth, not really outside Dartmouth, but you'll want to go there and mention that in your remark. I got a lot of credit somehow when I got there the night before, so I was writing

a word of shots that morning. I remember going out of 7 a.m. to get coffee and I got a donut and got a lot of credit from the locals for, you know, patriots. I like a donut shop whose name is escaping me. Whatever. There's only one. There's only one. There's a very small town.

Hanover donuts. I'll see you there tomorrow, Hanover Donuts. All right. I want to start just briefly on, you know, because we covered a lot last week, Springfield, but our colleague Andrew Eager was back in Ohio over the weekend. There was a funeral for Pierre Damasabelle, which is just devastating. He writes about that in morning shots. And then later that same evening, Trump has this rally in a Dayton suburb.

Among the things that struck me from his newsletter was that there were a bunch of other speakers, You know, Vivek spoke. He tried to pick up a small child and was unable to, dropped the kid. John Hustead, running for Senate spoke, some other Republicans, Republicans that are, you know, right now subjecting this torture, torment onto their neighbors, the Haitians. None of them said anything about it. And then, you know, Trump was not so timid. He got up there and there were some deport, deport, deport, chance. And he started talking about Springfield and how it used to be a great place. and we're going to make it a great place again. He kind of overlooked the fact that there was mass layoffs at a Springfield plant over the weekend as well during his stewardship of the economy.

But I was wondering what you made of all that. Well, first of all, a wonderful piece by Andrew and really moving and important, I would say, reporting. What a contrast to the tragic funeral. Then Trump's kind of grotesque rally. You know, I spoke to Andrew obviously several times when he was out there and we talked, And we did a show yesterday, people could watch if they wanted to see Andrew reflecting on what he had seen yesterday morning on, I guess it was full work on Sunday. But what struck me the most, I hadn't realized from the reporting, actually, it shows how endured people out of Trump. I'd skimmed to obviously a couple of reports of what Trump had said before talking with Andrew.

They didn't even mention the fact that he, as you say, no one else raised Springfield out of a certain amount of propriety or attack, maybe if nothing else. the rally was, what, 20 miles away at about three or four hours after the funeral. Yeah, I don't know if it was tacked, probably fear. Well, they'd be booed. They figured by the background. Yeah, or political fear. Who knows?

I don't know. No, our political fear, they know that it's not a winner. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, fair enough. Anyway, so they didn't raise it for whatever reason, as you say. And then Trump went out of his way to raise it. I mean, it wasn't as if the crowd chanting deport to port, I believe, followed on his endorsing the mass deportation agenda.

And then he read that horrible poem, if it's a poem, The Snake thing, you know. With reference to immigrants, particularly presumably therefore in that context to the Haitians who have been so horribly persecuted there and pointlessly and needlessly persecuted and against the wishes of Ohio elected representatives, not that they've done much about it, but at least they've said it was a bad idea, Mike Dwight and others. So, yeah, I mean, Trump, the grotesquist of the Trump rally was brought home in the conversation I had with Andrew, both off air, then on air yesterday. but also it is peace this morning.

Obviously, the economic plans aren't working. Like we mentioned, the layoffs in Springfield. There's no golden age. You know, Trump was always better at, and all demagogues really are better at identifying somebody to blame, somebody to point his little tiny finger at, you know, rather than actually doing things to help people. And, you know, we're seeing that in Strengthfield. We're seeing the other big story over the weekend.

The way in which it's a parallel, I guess to the grotesqueries of Trump's rally. As you point out, like, it gets glossed over a little bit because it is such a dog bites man thing. It's just like, oh, Trump holds a rally and they have a racist chant. Like what more is there to cover about that? Like, there's no news there.

It's not the new part of news, but it's pretty telling that that's what was happening amidst all the horrors that are happening in Springfield. Meanwhile, shout out to the Washington Sun that covered this. Here is another story in that same vein. the crypto firm that runs Trump's meme coin was planning to hold another dinner. You might remember the first one they did

right after he got in as president. This one would be, quote, the most exclusive dinner in the world an evening with three legends and President Donald J. Trump for the 185 largest holders of the Trump coin. We should note that the number of legends

promise dropped from four to three on Wednesday. Initially it was four. So unclear which legend dropped out of the dinner. But there will be three there. The top 29 purchasers will be invited to an additional VIP reception with the president. Well, the four biggest will also receive a Trump watch. This is just straight bribery. The Trump meme coin has no value.

So for people who don't follow crypto, just to kind of understand. It's only value is in the sense that other people are going to purchase the coin, right? And so if you have other people purchasing, if you have people buying lots of Trump coin in order to want to go to this dinner, you know, then the value of the coin will go up. Trump family will get richer. People that work for the company will get richer. The other holders of the coin will, you know, offset some of the losses that they've had because the value is going down so much since his last dinner.

But so that's all this is. Like, it's just a straight bribe. It's like you can, and it's not even to donate to like a Trump pack or whatever. Like it's straight into the family's bank accounts. So it's like, hey, you go buy our stupid coin. And if you're one of the top 185, you can come to this dinner. who are in the top 29, you can hang out with the president.

And like, it is, it is not in any way different from saying, hey, if you bring a bag of cash to the White House, like, we'll let you see the president. Right? Like, that is all this is.

It's just in a digital form. And am I right that they don't release the names of these people, right? Since it's a private business, they don't have to, right? So we don't know who the 29 biggest bribers of Trump are. That's right. And the last time the report,

orders out there, you know, because I think it was at his Virginia club, I'm going from memory, on that. But so, like, you would recognize some faces, right, if you came. And that's where, you know, there were some people who got pardons, it was the corrupt crypto guy, Justin's son, Chinese national corrupt guy, got pardoned, and is now putting a bunch of money into the Trump family. So, you know, at some level, I guess, if you want to show up to the dinner and you're a notable, or you're in the market for a pardon, you might get spotted by one of the people out there. But no, but right, other than that, like, you can you can give to this coin and in total anonymity, at least for now. And we'll see what our friend Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin

and folks on oversight are able to tease out from that. Yeah, the corruption, one could talk about it every week and one probably should and one thinks, oh, we've been down that road before, but it is so astounding and so shameless that it's worth reminding. And I do think this is an issue where, don't you think politically it's done him, it's done him more harm with a, public in a way that it has with, you know, reporters and elite types who've known this was going on and suddenly discounted it internally. I do think for the, it is so shameless shameless, though, and so obviously wrong, you know. Also because of those state of the economy. It's one of these things that maybe he could have got away with this if the economy was good. But it's just people are

looking at this and it's like, okay, the president's literally getting bribed. Like his family is getting richer and richer. You know, I think there have been some Democrats who've been particularly good at tying these things together, right? And it is kind of incumbent on the opposition party to do that effectively, right? And Tala Rica has been really strong on this, basically, you know, talking about making a direct tie between the Trump family and the corrupt oligarchs around him getting rich and enriching themselves, you know, while people struggle and while people's gas prices are going up and while he's doing nothing to improve the economy for regular folks.

And so let's, I want to kind of go through the midterm state of play. here with you. All right, so we have a spate of new polls out from New York Times, Sienna over the weekend that are pretty good. In certain some places, we can really get high on the opium here and a little bit of a mixed bag at some other places. In Alaska, we have Peltola plus seven in Texas, Talrico plus six, and notably Hinojosa in the governor's race, up four in the New York Times Sienna poll of Texas.

Ohio, we've Sherrod Brown plus three, Amy Acton, plus four, and the governor. race. In Iowa, you've got Ashley Hinson, the Republican, leading by one over Josh Turrick, and then Rob Sand, leading by 11 in the governor's race. And then in Kansas, we have our guy, Adam Hamilton, in a tie, 45-45 with Roger Marshall, with a libertarian taking 5%. So that's kind of the top line number. You pointed out, Bill, the Trump favorability number, which I think is pretty striking here on social media. I'll just read it. Alaska, Trump's at 41% favorable, 56 unfavorable. In June, it was just 47-49. So a significant drop to minus 15. In Iowa, he's minus 18, 40 favorable, 58 unfavorable. In Kansas, minus 15, 40% favorable in Kansas for President Trump. In Ohio, 38% favorable,

59% unfavorable, and in Texas, he's at 40% unfavorable. So it's high watermark there was Alaska at 41%, significantly down from June. All states that Trump won by more than 10 points in 2024. I mean, that gives you a sense of what, that's why it's a wave, right? You win states by 10 points and you're favorable is at 40, basically, in all those states now. And correspondingly, your Senate candidates losing in three of them tied in one, and ahead by one point in one. It is a real wave, and that confirms it for me.

and it seems to, you know, the Senate races are, they're individual factors, and that's probably why some of them are plus six and seven and others are plus three or even. Yeah, that's a pretty startling number. And certainly, if Trump is at 40 in those states, what's he added in states that were five points better for Trump in 2024? 45, 47.

He's not at 50, probably. So a lot of states... And so like Idaho? Yeah. Idaho's the private, yes, Idaho's in play. No, but are obviously in the Nebraska's of the world. Anyway, I'll get to a couple of those in a second, but it is a very striking.

is in New York Times, Sienna, they did 600 voters in those states, each of those states. It's a national quality poll. Most state-level polls are real polls. They just don't do the kind of controls and complicated waiting. I've got to say the Times Sienna does pretty seriously. And if you read Jonathan Cohen's account of it, it's pretty remarkable. Nate Cohn, Jonathan Cohn is our colleague. Our Jonathan Cohen, yeah, the other Cohn, his account of it, it's pretty careful.

So I take these numbers pretty seriously. Yeah, I do too. And it kind of matches what I would have expected. I mean, the Peltola number, I do think Alaska is very challenging to poll. I bring up seven. Who knows? I mean, maybe. But the rest of them match kind of what I had thought.

I think Iowa's going to be the toughest. Again, if you look at those four main races of Alaska, Texas, Ohio, and Iowa, like, the idea was that Democrats needed to win three to get to 52, which is a Federman-proof majority, assuming they also hold on to Maine and Michigan. And I've always felt that Alaska, Texas, and Ohio are the best options because Iowa I do think it's tough ask of the people of Iowa to vote for a Democratic senator and governor. The Republican Ashley Hinson is a good candidate. I mean, disgusting, but not as obviously disgusting as Roger Marshall and some of these other Ken Paxton, for example.

And so that makes sense to me. The other thing, I thought you were going the other way of where is Trump's approval and some of these other states. Where is Trump's approval in Maine and Michigan if he's at 40 in these states? And he's down in the low 30s, you have to imagine. And this is why I just continue to be more bullish on Abdul Al-Said and Troy Jackson than some of the other folks out there. And I think it's always good to be vigilant and to run through the tape. And I think that Susan Collins has a stronger brand than the Republicans running in these red states. But it's just hard to imagine Republicans winning in states where Trump is in the 30s favorability.

Right. I mean, one other little thing that maybe too little to maybe it's just random. But I think it's sort of interesting. Trump's numbers have dropped four or five points in these states in three months since late June when the last time New York Times, CNN pulled it. So it's apples to apples comparison. Nationally, I looked it up in the Times average, for example, Trump's down a couple of points from over the last two months. He's been drifting down, but it's been a pretty slow process nationally in terms of approval. You know, sort of 39 to 30s happen, something like that.

In these states, which are the weaker Trump states, so not that weak because they're better than plus 10, but still not the trumpiest Trump states. in states which have been very competitive of the last few months in terms of paid media, advertising and earned media, Trump's numbers have gone down more, and these races have opened up at a Democratic direction. You could say from that that the more voters are learning, or the more advertising there is, the more attention there's focused on the race, the worse the Republican does, not by a massive amount, but by a couple of points. Yeah. And if that were to continue through October, that would be very important to obviously in these states, especially in Iowa and Kansas, which are yet even in maybe in a few other states.

I mean, anyway, I think it's an interesting little phenomenon, and that would be true also, congressional districts. Does tell me Democrats should really, I mean, I don't know, this is the time for people to get money, honestly, because the Republicans will outspend the Democrats in October, but minimizing that margin and really focusing Democratic resources where it could matter, seems to have mattered over the last few months. Yeah, and just look at Texas for an example. They spent tens upon tens of millions of dollars in the airwaves,

going after Tala Rico, calling him Tala Frico, and talking about all the genders there are and all this other cultural war nonsense. It's been the whole ad campaign. And his favorability hasn't dropped at all. And meanwhile, Trump's favorability is going down significantly in the state over that period, as you said, from, you know, 44, 52 in June to 4058 right now. That's just where the movement has been. I think we'll see. One potential learning from this is, you know, going back to the 24, campaign, you know, the big ad that everybody talked about is that, you know, Kamala is for they, them. Trump is for you. And it was kind of like, everybody focused on the they, them part of the ad, but the you part was an important part of the ad. Like the Trump being for you.

And a lot of these center races, particularly in Texas, they're just running the Tala Rico is for they, them part of the race. And that doesn't really seem to be resonating, you know, when there's no counterbalance. Now, again, who know, like maybe there's undercounting. people, maybe there's response bias. Maybe we'll feel differently about this November. But just based on what we know now, that's a potential, I think, interesting development. I think all these Senate candidates such you think are, and I'm saying this in a non-making value judge, but just sort of analytically, I think are stronger candidates than Harris probably didn't have her baggage. Much of that baggage was not her fault. She was vice president in the Biden administration, which was in office and unpopular.

None of these people, is that I'm right about this, is in office, I think, or if they're in office, their state representatives or something. Sherrod has been in office. Yeah, but he's been out. Josh Cherrick is a state representative and Peltolla was in Congress. Yeah, but they're out and they're not guilty of, they're running against challengers. And this is a good year to be a challenger, you know, right? For sure. Harris couldn't really run as a challenger.

Yeah, no, she couldn't. And just as another thing, because it relates to all the discourse out there with people trying to rerun the Harris race and learn lessons from it. It's like in some ways Harris ran a kind of a more establishment race. Of course, she was the vice president, as you mentioned. She also is from California. She was a senator from California and a black woman. And all of that, you know, kind of created an image of her as kind of like, you know, for some people to establishment and for other people too liberal, right?

And like a lot of these candidates, you know, don't have any of those issues. They're local candidates running local races. They're not. They don't have the incumbent baggage. One interesting kind of discussion I've been seeing, and I think this is probably not going to happen. But the money sink for Ken Paxton is really. really pretty astonishing. They might spend, they will spend more money on the Ken Paxton Senate race than George W. Bush spent in the primary and general of his 2000 presidential win,

just as one example. It will be probably a quarter of a billion dollars put in total in Ken Paxton. And you just look at that and it's like, man, Tau Rico, as numbers continue to be high, you almost, if you're the Republicans, have to be tempted to throw in the towel in Texas, kind of a crazy thing to say, but you could take all of the money you're spending to save corrupt, disgusting Ken Paxton and use it to cover all of these other races. Because all these other states, Alaska, Iowa, they're all small states. I don't think that they're going to do that. But that's an interesting thought exercise. No, totally. And the $200 million you spend in a race is much less valuable than the $20 million or the $2 million, right? I mean, even holding

constant, so to speak, the size of the states. You know, you just, your marginal return. and from the 5,000th time you're showing ad, is just going to be less. The theme about the Democrats is they're communists, they're socialists, they're radicals. But it doesn't quite yet, especially in a midterm that ultimately is a referendum on Trump. That's the main thing to be said,

obviously. Trump's numbers remain the driving force. But I think the secondary, but not unimportant force, is the failure to be able to demonize the Dems. And what do you think? Do you think anything is really sticking at this point? I'm a little bit, obviously, but not much, right?

Remember all the Fox and Wishcasting after months? Donnie won in New York. And then after El-Said was nominated in Michigan, that's the face of the Democratic Party. It's going to be easy to turn all these other guys into those people. Not so much. They haven't even turned El-Said into El-Said, actually, since he's a little bit in Michigan. I was going to say his numbers are a little soft compared to the rest of them.

But I think El-Side's going to win handily. But his numbers are a little softer than kind of his peers in these Senate races. But that's really the only evidence of anything. And I saw some discussion kind of on background and some of the beltway rags over the weekend from Republicans started just basically admitting that like the Elsa Ed Piker 9-11 stuff just isn't working at all. And like they're not seeing it working in the numbers, which isn't surprising to me. Once the night start getting cooler, there's nothing better than getting into a really cozy bed at the end of the day. Bundling yourself up, feeling some warm sheets. A soft duvet, that extra layer, a little extra layer.

That's nice. It's not really cool. I mean, for me, I'd rather just have it be summer and I have no sheets. But unfortunately, this is where we're at now. You know, we're coming into the cold season. I'm going up to New England as soon as this show is over. So I've got to need some fucking warm sheets and covers there. And I hope that the hotels that I'm staying at, that's the sheets from our friends of Quince.

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We've been refreshing all of the sheets, all the blankets here in our household. I had my parents come staying with us over the weekend. We're at that wedding. And you'll tell you, they found it cozy. We're not quite into the chilly season yet in New Orleans. But I'm ready. I've got my quince materials.

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Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. It's now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asked where you heard about them, let them know that it was the bulwark daily. That's the best way to support our show. I want to go to our sleeper races. We said we were going to do this once a week. Last week, as mentioned.

Bill Crystal had the Idaho Senate race and he just kind of went way deep for the deep cuts. I was a little more modest. I was choosing a race that was like in the likely Republican in the Cook rankings rather than the three deepest red states in the country. But we like Bill Crystal's boldness.

Before we get to this week, I want to mention, you flagged this from me this morning, Bill, the race that I mentioned last week, Jessica Killen, running Colorado Springs District, in Colorado, Colorado 5. She's running against Jeff Crank. I think quasi misspoke last week, so just this quick correction on Jeff Crank. That is his real name.

Jeff Crank, great name. Very apt name for the Republicans in this cycle. I had known him because he's been around Republican politics forever in Colorado. But he's only been the rep for this district. Reesley, it was Doug Landborn's seat. But he's a long-time operative, more of a Tea Party type than a Maga type. And Jessica Killen's campaign has. had a pretty brutal ads that they put up tying him to the Epstein cover up.

Let's watch that. My sister, Virginia, was one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims. She spent her life trying to expose the truth. After she died, we promised to carry on her fight. But our own congressman, Jeff Crank, refused to meet with us. Then, when he had the chance to expose the truth and release the Epstein files, he repeatedly voted to cover them up. Virginia deserved better. Pretty powerful.

I do think that Epstein has dropped a little bit down from kind of the Democratic messaging just because Trump has stepped on so many rakes or been so many opportunities. But I still think that is something that's compelling, both for swing voters, but also, you know, in a midterm, exciting your side to engage to throw the bums out and tamping down the other side. And you imagine if you're a Colorado, MAGA, Republican, you're like, who is this guy? Jeff Crank's not doing anything. He's covering up the Epstein files. Why am I wasting my time to go vote for him? I think that's potentially effective in that regard. Yeah, I agree.

Ohio, I think Epstein's been a little more of an issue. Whereas you say the Democrat is ahead by four points for governor and three points for Senate. And it's because one of the main Republican donors in Ohio, Les Wexner turns out to have been a very close associate of Epstein and a big donor to the Republican Party there. Yeah, I think I said this other day, but I was talking to Governor Polis a while back and his big bold Bill Crystal style prediction was that Democrats could win all

eight districts in Colorado and have an 80 house delegation. I've thrown at the Bobert seat and the Jeff Crankseat as the two are the ones that I've recommended people contribute to, I think, are potentially getable. The crank seat is the most getable. Then you have heard out there in Western Colorado. And then I did get some feedback from people that I didn't mention the Colorado eighth district, which is Manny Rutanol, handsome Manny. I talked about him with Jesse Lerick in a podcast a couple of weeks ago. The reason I didn't mention him is just because that is a, that is a the northern Denver suburbs, basically, up to Fort Collins. And Hansa Mani's kind of a lefty type candidate.

And I just, I think that in the suburbs, like, the Democrats are going to sweep this year. So I've been trying to focus on more red districts and like identifying good candidates running in red districts rather than, you know, kind of more left candidates running in purple districts. But if that's your cup of tea, that that Colorado 8th district is also, you know, one that Democrats are going to need to win. All right. Let's go to your pick for this week, Bill. Unless you had something on that. No, I don't. And, you know, last week I was focused.

I've been focused the last few weeks on the Midwest, Iowa, Great Plains States, Kansas, Nebraska, maybe South Dakota. And then Rocky Mountain, Idaho, the reach state of those. But I think there's a lot going on out there with special issues that are hurting Trump out there, terrorists, most obviously, but also the war at diesel fuel and so forth. Now, okay, I want to go south this week. These are less extreme. These are more Tim Miller-esque prediction. It's kind of plausible. but a little bit of a reach.

I mean, what about Florida and South Carolina for the Senate races? I've been dubious about the South is the toughest to crack because the white working class voters are deserting Trump. No question, if you look at some of the internals in the polls, including the Times, Sienna polls, which really are worth looking at the cross tabs.

But the white working class up in the north and the Midwest tends to be less evangelical. So the evangelical white working class is the toughest not to crack. There are a lot of them and really a lot of them in the deep south, obviously, but quite a few in Florida and South Carolina. But A, the polling shows those races pretty close.

Angie Nixon basically tied, I think, in Florida. Annie Andrews behind a few points, Lindsey Graham's sister in South Carolina. Florida, I don't know, people have just decided it's impossible because Santa's won so big. It was a one-one-and-a-half-point state in 2018. The last time there was a midterm for Trump. Trump won it by 13 points, 13.1 in 2024,

which is less, it's the same as you want Alaska by, it's a little less than he want Iowa and Texas by. So if Iowa and Texas are in play, why shouldn't Florida be in play? That's my attitude there against the undistinguished incumbent, I think it's safe to say. Angie Nixon had a pretty good gubernatorial candidate, David Chal, who's running pretty well against the bad Republican Democratic candidate. So I'm sort of bullish on Florida, big state, expensive state. South Carolina, smaller state, seems a little crazier.

On the other hand, that was a 17, 18, point state for Trump in 2024. People kind of have the image of South Carolina as being like Idaho. That's not quite right. 18 points is a lot. But, you know, it's four points more than the states that Trump Republicans are now in danger of losing. He needs a little more of a swing. I looked it up, though, in 2020, that famous race for Lindsay Graham crush Jamie Harrison after the Democrat spent a hundred billion dollars there, maybe not the best expenditure in 2020. That was a 10-point race. I don't know. Is it unreasonable to think that Annie Andrews could run 10 points better against Lindsey Graham's sister in the off-year election, the midterm election of 2026, when Trump is at 35% nationally, he's probably underwater in South Carolina, actually.

It's not unreasonable to think that South Carolina is very much in place. So Florida and South Carolina for the Senate. Okay. Look, I'm twice bit on, well, I'm only once bit, but Democrats are twice bit on South Carolina. I predicted Hillary to win South Carolina in 2016 on TV, so I'm trying not to go down that path again. again. And then you mentioned the Jamie Harrison debacle. It's tough. I like both of the candidates. I think Bollwork listeners are probably going to be hearing from both of them soon. And we're going to be in Columbia. I think there are literally two tickets left for the Columbia South Carolina event.

So go get it right now. The Borg.com slash events. If you want to come hang out and we'll talk about the And the Ande Andrews race there with the locals. And I look, Angie Nixon is so, it's such a spitfire. I like her. She is running what I would say is the model race for somebody that comes from the left flank. One of the problems, as we kind of discuss the DSA-type candidates, like, going forward is that in Democratic primaries, DSA was very in vogue this past primary season. We'll be next one. I don't know.

We'll see that it's still seen as a little bit of, like, baggage kind of in the general election. Like, it's kind of weird. Even pro-D-SA people, like, I've seen some of them be like, don't call our candidate socialist. And it's like, well, you join the DSA. You know, it's a little bit of a mixed bag. So she is one of these that's kind of, I think it was like a normal liberal. role, progressive candidate that becomes a DSA member to get a little boost in primary. But she's running, I just think, in a very sharp race that she dispenses with all of the

baggage that some of the other candidates from that kind of faction have struggled with navigating some of the tougher questions on that stuff. So anyway, I think she's a strong candidate. Florida's tough. I think that what we might end up learning is that Florida is now the base of the Republican Party not Texas. If it does turn out the David Jolly. Because my point is,

David Jolly and Angie Dix and I think are running good races. So if it turns out that they still lose by big numbers and Tala Rico wins, it just might say more about, I think the demographics of Florida, you know, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, like these are demographically different places than Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio. That's my main caution of Florida is I just,

I kind of think that the suburban Orlando people are meaningfully different than the suburban Dallas people, at least from a voting kind of standpoint. We'll see. Yeah, I agree with that. And the people who, the way someone put it to me the other day is the upper middle class or wealthy people who moved to Florida, of whom there are a lot, are different from the upper middle class people who've moved to Austin, Texas, right? Or even maybe to Houston, Dallas, suburbs.

And so that's a little better for the Republicans. On the other hand, I mean, Trump benefited hugely in 2020. And Republicans did subsequently with a swing in the Latino vote. obviously in Florida. I do wonder about that now. I mean, with obviously immigration and stuff. We know for sure the bottom is falling out in Texas. I were seeing this. I mentioned the Bobby Polito race last week. And that guy that had Tanas. He's running like 30 points better than Trump was running in his district. Again, the Hispanics are different too, though. Like is that, is that happening in the Cuban community, Venezuela? And we'll find out. I think they're both

good to flag. So Andy Anders and Angie Nixon. My pick is for this week is Zach Dembo running in Kentucky I was at a wedding this weekend Kentucky. That's good Tim. You decided I was being, you know, you didn't want me to be outflanking you here. Yeah, I didn't want to get bogged by Bill Crystal on the predictions. I was in Lexington this weekend. I went to Keenland about my friends to shout out Thomas and JT.

They got married. Congratulations. And I went to Keenland. And there were some bulwark people at Keenland. Well, let's just say this. I was recognized more at Keenland than I am at LSU games. So I think that there's a meaningfully difference between Lexington and Baton Rouge. just anecdotally, as far as the demo there. The district is seven points more Republican than national.

So I think that that means it's less Republican than South Carolina. So it's still a little bit more reasonable than what you have thrown out there. Candidate Zach Dembo is Lexington Native, Navy JAG officer, prosecutor, was teacher in Mississippi. So just has a great bio, long time, Lexington family. He's running against Ralph Alvarado. who is from California, moved to Kentucky, was on the Matt Bevin ticket as the lieutenant governor,

lost to Andy Bashir, so he's a loser. Then he moved to Tennessee, moved back to Kentucky to run again. He was investigated. There's some Medicare fraud scheme happening in the legislature there. He was wrapped up in that investigation. He's maha, a little wishy-washy on the vaccine stuff. I don't know.

You know, Lexington, Kentucky? includes some of the capital, college town. It's a little bit of a stretch, but the Democrats have a stronger candidate, and it's not crazy to think that that would be potentially getable. So there we go. I'm throwing Kentucky 6 under the map. I mean, I slightly ridiculed, not ridiculed, but slightly raised a slight, you know, an eyebrow about Kentucky. But, of course, that was stupid to me because Kentucky's elected a Democratic governor twice in a row.

Andy Bashir probably won that congressional district has probably been reported. but if they usually do the math view on this. It's probably won that district by a bunch of points, right? I mean, one of the state. So that district is obviously more democratic than most of the state. So it's not like they've never voted for a Democrat in Kentucky 6, you know. I think those, I think that's a good pick. I'm with you on that one.

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That's selectcquote.com slash bulwark. Selectquot.com slash bulwark. They shop you save. All right. While we're staying in the south, I want to yell at the former, soon to be former senator for North Carolina. Another place we're doing.

We'll see everybody in Charlotte in a couple weeks. Tom Tillis has a book out called How to Lose Friends and antagonize presidents. It's kind of a bold name for the book there. I antagonize. You're kind of puffing yourself up a little bit. I don't know quite how antagonistic he was. But there's a 60-minute segment on him last night

that one of my friends' texts would be almost caused him to stroke out. And so I decided to tune into that as well, get my blood pressure going last night. I want to play a little bit for that. Around here, if you're in motion, you're generally ahead. And if you're not, then you're behind. The key here. Keeping up with Tom Tillis on Capitol Hill is not for the faint of heart.

He knows the U.S. Capitol inside out, the passageways, staircases, the Capitol subway system. The president called Tillis a talker and complainer, not a doer. I respect the president. I still feel like we have an odd relationship where I've clearly made him angry, but it took years before he even made the first negative comment about me. I react to anybody on this earth the same way. If you come at me with what I think is unfair or incorrect data, I'm going to come back after you. So there's that clip.

I don't know if that's really right. I mean, has he come back after Trump? Did he go back right after him? It doesn't really see. It feels like he thinks he's attacking Trump more than he actually is. Yeah, no kidding. pathetic. Oh, God.

I'm glad I didn't know about this. I would have said, well, I wouldn't, unlike you, I wouldn't have felt obliged to actually tune in. I wouldn't. And so my memory of last night will be the excellent, fantastic Milwaukee Brewers walkoff hit winning the game against the Padres in San Diego, in Milwaukee, actually, with the crowd going wild. As opposed to, was Ross Delfat, the host or interviewer? Ross felt that was the interview. Yeah, that was Ross. They've taken on Trump.

Yeah. Maybe you're not aware of, not like you never shoppers. You never shumper just TDS tis. but those guys have had debuted, sophisticated analysis of Trump. It's really done a lot of damage to Trump. It really helped save the country for him. Tom Till, look at all those courageous votes, Tom Tillis-Cast and the Senate. Yeah, the one against the tax bill when they still had the votes anyway.

He probably would have told it if they didn't have the votes anyway. So it's just two guys telling each other great job about their modest criticism of Donald Trump over the past fucking 10 years. my main reaction to that is I'm taking people behind the curtain a little bit. I've invited Tom Tillis on this show probably a dozen times. And it's fair. I would understand why Tom Tillis might not want to come on the show because as we just demonstrate it, neither of us are particularly impressed with him.

But I will say this, I have definitely come for him. And I've come for Tom Tillis many, many times, the person who confirmed Trump's entire ridiculous clown cabinet. And I was confused and didn't think that the attorney general or the Trump himself would part in all the January 6 rioters. I mean, Tom Tillis doesn't seem to be aware what is happening around him because he just fully goes on board with everything that Trump wants. And then at the end is like, well, it's, I mean, had we only known that this was going to go bad. It's like, well, yeah, we all knew, Tom. We all knew you've been a total coward and a weakling and you think that you're a tough guy.

and I'm just going to say, if somebody comes for you, you come back for them. Invites open, baby. Invites open. Come on any time. We can hang out. I'll fly to North Carolina. You can come on the show anytime. They're so tough.

Such a fighter of anybody that criticize you. You'll have nothing to time in your hands next year because you quit the Senate rather than trying to actually take on Trump. You could have stayed in the race because I tried to take on Michael Lottley and Roy Cooper, but you didn't do it. You quit because you're scared of Trump. And so, I don't know. Maybe you're scared of me too.

We'll see. One other telosclip, I do have to play, though, now that my dander's up. Let's turn to that. Hold him responsible for the struggle in the Iran war. Because you've said that you supported the initial decision to go to war. You know, I think that they got so caught up after the immense success of the first strike that Heg-Seth probably didn't listen to his best military advice and say, now we should probably move to a different posture. He's calling for Hegeseth to resign.

You know, I'd like to think that most of the time the president would be surrounded with people who would finally say, Mr. President, if you do that, I'm walking out this door. There's a Russian expression, if only the czar knew, which means people don't want to blame the czar when bad things happen. They want to blame his advisors. But in this case, with Trump, it's on him, right? In the end, whoever he has around him, he's a... Well, he's the czar.

Truman famously said that the buck stops here. It's a good line. I get that. But Truman had great advisors. What? It's Trump. It's Trump. I know, yeah, Hanks has a fucking buffoon and you confirmed him to run the Secretary of War.

To be the Secretary of War, like, that's true. But, like, it's Trump, like, is on board for everything. Like, this whole, like, good, sar, bad boyar thing. He's got going still, even when he's not running for Senate again. Like, what is the wake up? It's fantastic that Tillis raises, I guess, the famous Truman, the book stops here thing, which makes the point, therefore, that analogously the book stops the Trump. But someone must have told him that once as like a bit of a rebuke, and he is now

figured out his answer to that, which is, well, but Truman actually had good advisors. So the buck didn't stop the Truman. So Truman was, I mean, what? Really? Who picked Trump's advisors? Who picked the advisors? Who confirmed the advisors? Trump did, you did it, you and Trump.

Tom Tillis and Donald Trump, you guys did this. And then Tillis is like, I supported the war at the start. Like, why? If you thought that Hanksup was so bad, why would you support us, like, starting a war of choice with Iran? What was the different tack? Ross didn't ask that follow-up question. What was the different tack you wanted them to take? Like, once the war started, he was like, it was so successful the first couple days.

It's like, welcome to any war. Like, there's so many cliches. about that. Like, yeah, you know, anything. You know, what's the old line about how like everybody has a plan until we get punched in the face, the Mike Tyson line? It's like, that's true about anyway. Sure, he had a good congrats on the first two days. But like the whole fundamental problem was that there was no strategy for securing that success beyond it. I mean, I can't keep track of these handful of these cowardly Republican senators and exactly which ones they pretended to vote, you know, which Trump policies or nominees they've very rarely voted against almost always when it wouldn't make a difference.

But Tillis did not vote against Blanche, right? I believe. No, Tillis was the one, Tillis and Cassidy were the ones who did the whole show about like how they're concerned. Or no, Cornyn was in there too. Yeah, yeah. So right. And then Tillis deferred to Cornyn and Cassidy. I'm obviously he was introduced to share.

I can't remember anymore. Yeah, it was an episode. So this was like recent, right? Blanche thing was after all, Tillis had learned all these horrible things. things about how important Trump's advisors were, the cabinet, right? That's the thing you really, and everything Blanche had been there running justice basically under Pam Bonding, and running it as acting as Attorney General for several months. And Tillis went along. It's a great point because it's like, okay, even if you take Tillis's view of the world,

which is that, you know, Trump won and we wanted to be supportive and I trusted Mr. Trump. The economy was good back the first time. And so I want to give him a chance. Okay. The Blan Blanche nomination vote was last month. That was like five weeks ago. You got to see a year and a half of how things were going. And you still voted to confirm Blanche. After he was the one that moved Maxwell and we all know the whole thing. It's come on the show, Tom.

It'll be fun. See, this would be great content. We'd love to have you. And you told the nation last night that you'll come after anybody that comes after you. So here we are. Always available for you, a big guy. Hey, have you ever hit one of those? This content isn't available in your region walls

and you get really annoyed. With Proton VPN, it's easy to change your virtual location so you can access the sites and contents you need, no matter where you are. This is something that I ran into when we were at our live event in Toronto last year. I miss you guys in Toronto. We got to go back to Canada in 2027, I think.

I was trying to watch LSU against Ole Miss. We ended up losing, so I don't know. I guess the Proton VPN would have been more, would have started more joy if LSU had one, But still, it was nice to have a chance. It was nice to feel like I had a chance. And I was able to, thanks to our friends at Proton VPN. It's a secure VPN service designed for people who want to prioritize their digital privacy and security.

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The straight was disrupted. If this goes the way that it looks like it's going to go, which is the midterms happen, and then there's another escalation, in addition to the energy shock that we're going through, like we could be staring down the barrels. A major global food crisis, disaster for the global floor, but even for here in America, you know, more increased grocery costs. And, you know, geopolitically, the Saudi Houthi war, Houthi war has heated up. Those Houthis, whom we had HECSeth crushed back over a year ago

and was prancing around talking about how devastating those military strikes had been. And even the idiotic talking point, 90% idiotic talk quite well, but the straight has been opened up, sort of. There are warships going through. Actually, it's sort of closed down again over the last few days. But anyway, the reason it opened up was people worked out very complicated workarounds, which is good. the market does do that.

And it's doing that at $100 a barrel for oil. So we're living, these gas prices are what they are, you know, 30% higher. So all this idiotic kind of, you know, pro-Trump, you know, Trump-adjacent talking point by the seven remaining Iran Hawks who want to be defending Trump's policies there is ludicrous, right? I mean, and totally ludicrous. JV.L. wrote about this last week. And by the way, speak of those Iran Warhawks, I don't, you don't engage in much in the discourse. as some others, and I admire you for that, Bill.

But I will say there's some discourse out there on the internet that some people may have seen about how us, you, me, Sarah, JVL are all like really excited to bring back the neocon Warhawk leadership to the Democratic Party. And I just want to say to, like, do any of those people that are offering that critique watch the show? It doesn't seem like it. Multiple times a week, I continue to, like, rip Democratic establishment for not being harder against the war. I continue to think that the Democrats should have a more clear, consistent, visible

anti-war posture with the Iran war. And from the minute this stupid war started, we were like, this is idiotic when there were a lot of Democrats, including some in Congress, that were like voting for, continuing to fund the war and we're being cautious and saying, well, I don't, you know, the Iitol is bad. Like, yeah, the I atoll is bad, but this is obviously a strategically stupid war, and we have two idiots running it, and they have no plan, and the Democrats should try to recapture some of the, like, anti-war mantle that Trump took with his lies in the 2024 campaign. Like, that's my view on all this.

And I don't, I don't know. It's a little confusing that I think people are misinterpreting. Is it your fault? I guess what I'm saying, Bill, is I think it's your fault. It's your fault. Yeah, it is my fault. Also, it's very confusing that you and I, and I think moments I've put at the bulwark are very,

hawkish on Ukraine, if you want to call it that, very belief strongly it should be defended. We could have done war under Biden and certainly should be doing much more to help them now and to oppose Putin. But that's like, if people's heads explode, if you're against a dictator invading a neighbor, which was the case with a democratic neighbor, and you think you should help it and help our allies in Europe, help it, and that you're deeply skeptical about a unilateral unnecessary attack on Iran, bad regime, though that is. It's like, that's too complicated for people, I guess, to be hawkish on Ukraine and against the Iran war. I mean, it's obvious. I don't know why it's complicated because there are the two

obvious positions to take for anybody with eyes and experience and, you know, an understanding of, of, you know, what the likely outcome was going to be in Iran and what is really happening in Russia and what Putin's plans are. But anyway, whatever. There we go. That's my discourse take. People have been clamoring for that. Another paperwork thing you should be working on, forget to my age or older. It's something that is, it's intimidating. You know, you're like, do I really want to do this? Do I really want to contemplate the specter of death?

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While we are at Russia really quick, and it's maybe another plague. And I got to tell you, I don't know, I can't do another pandemic. Okay, this is just, I'm just speaking personally for me. I cannot do it. All right. I don't know. I think I'll have to create like a massive, we might just have to create a bulwark polycule about the sex part, like where we get a big warm, big warm somewhere in Louisiana or Florida,

like a ranch and everybody lives together because I cannot be alone in my house again. Okay, I'm just saying that. That is my plan. If we have another pandemic, we're going to have to create a community with alcohol. But the story here for anybody who's been trying to keep their ostrich on it. I can't get over. I can't get over the bulwark pollucal. Non-sexual bulwark polychial.

No, even non-sexual, it'll be very, yeah, I think maybe down south of me. I'm thinking of volunteering are somewhat modest but pleasant backyard here in northern Virginia. Okay, maybe we could have two. You know, we can have two, you know. That's true. And I guess a private plane that moves people. The bulwark plane could fly us back and forth, no problem. Yeah.

We're going to need some more subscribers for that. So go to the blog.com slash subscribe if you want to support the potential need for a private jet if we have another pandemic. Here we go. A 28-year-old female laboratory technician at the Urkstuksk. Do you know how to say that one? Urkutsk. I think it was in risk. Wasn't Urkutsk in risk?

I'm pretty sure it was one of the things. you can control and risk. Okay. Anyway, at the Urquuxk Research Anti-Plaug Institute of Siberia, a 28-year-old female laboratory technician died after being diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown origin. A test tube broke at the Anti-Plaug Institute. So that's not great.

Ash Shah, you've had on several times on Bork on Sunday, very good. It was an advisor on COVID-to-Biden, said this is the situation he's worried about. for a long time. He said it's the most likely scenario of something bad happening. Not that a country with a weapons program decides to use it, but there's an accidental release from a deliberate program.

He's saying that basically, if you look at various pieces of evidence, what we know about this, this was a deliberate program that Russia was developing out in Siberia. Hopefully the Siberians stay there. And so this blows over, so to speak. but I don't know. It's concerning. As I understand it, my knowledge of this subject is very limited,

but pediology or whatever the bite subject matter is, is very limited. I guess it's so fatal that you just get it and die, so it doesn't spread the way people can get on, you know, spread something like COVID, right? I mean, but that's also kind of worrisome. It's like not a, I was not reassured to read about how fatal

this particular biological weapon is or whatever. Yeah, especially given that Putin is, doing more trouble making in Europe, more drones, I mean, more attacks. It's concerning. It's concerning. Luckily, we have the best people in charge who I'm sure

are very vigilant in monitoring all this and all of our actual Russia experts and all of our actual epidemiology experts have been run out of the government. So that kind of adds to my concern. One other note of bad news over the weekend, while we're doing that, is down in Brazil.

It looks like a full political comeback and revenge for the Bolsonaro family. Stealing this from Glenn Greenwald, who's living down there. But one of his sons, Flavio, who's currently a senator, is headed to a runoff for president. He finished first place in the first round

against Lula, socialist, current president of Brazil. So Flavio and Lula had to a runoff. Meanwhile, Zaire Bulsarro's wife, Michelle, was elected to the Senate. One of his other sons, Carlos, was elected to the Senate. Another son, Renan, was elected to Congress. And then his other son, Eduardo, who's kind of like a MAGA podcaster now.

He's in the U.S. because he's facing imprisonment if he returns. And, you know, we're obviously the Trump regime is protecting him. Here he's giving safe haven to a right-wing criminal here in this country. And Jair himself is at prison and home. He's home imprisonment. But I assume if his son wins, that will end. I think it's worth mentioning. Obviously, there's some differences between Brazil and us, but the parallels between the Bolsonaro

family comeback and the worst case scenario laid out by JVL about Trump family reemergence. I don't know. While we're catastrophizing about the Russian deadly plague, one of my big things that I'm concerned about is a victory for us in 2029, followed by a massive recession, followed by the reemergence of the family, and you're seeing a little bit of that in Brazil. I'm getting a little bit of 2024 flashback vibes, right? Obviously, Trump should come back after 2020 and 2021. And also, isn't Lula like 80 years old?

It is like running against Biden, and he's the incumbent. So maybe he could have stepped aside, sort of like President Biden there. I don't know enough about Brazilian politics to know if there would have been a good successor, but maybe they didn't want to vote for another. That fight didn't hurt that they had a big advantage in that respect, too. Brazil's 80-year-old Lula hits the treadmill to ease voter concerns about his age. Yeah, why does that not give one? Why does that not give one great confidence in that campaign?

You know, it's like fewer podiums and interviews, more lunges and squats. This is from a Sao Paulo AP article. Oh, boy. It's been quite a show. Do you have anything positive to this with, Phil? I don't have anything else on my notes here for the weekend. No. the wedding was great i loved i'd never been to lexington or to keenland and um and it was lovely and

it is tough to reemerge to kind of this rundown i guess we have our hope actually blue in lexington isn't that the famous not really i don't you agree that's a famous lexington thing though isn't it it is yeah no it's the bluegrass airport yeah i i'm not sure i'm not a scientist so i don't know anything about the arctoics plague or about why the grass isn't blue but it was it was still It's still beautiful and, you know, good spirits, good bourbon. And I'm going to need the bourbon, I think, it turns out, depending on what else is happening in the news. All right, I'm off to New Hampshire after this. We'll see everybody at Dartmouth on Tuesday night.

And tomorrow, we've got somebody I really like coming back to the show. So I'm looking forward to that. So see you all tomorrow. Bill, appreciate you. Thanks. I appreciate it. Catch you next week. The way to come that you keep in a way to come and make it all that you get on the street.

I'll be here when... Bullwork Daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeChico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.