The Bulwark Podcast - Chuck Todd: Is the Economy the Biggest Political Threat to Trump?

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

Voters in the seven swing states that elected Trump in 2024 thought he'd make the economy better. His perceived strength on the economy is the cornerstone Jenga piece of the whole Trump Tower. And he keeps making the economy worse. Meanwhile, Democratic voters are highly engaged—but just not with the party, whose brand is struggling. Plus, Republicans are still trying to steal the House, and how a stronger, re-imagined local news media can help restore trust in national news. Chuck Todd joins Tim Miller. show notes Chuck's Sunday Night with Chuck Todd on the Noosphere app The Chuck Toddcast "The Stranger," Chuck's book about Obama

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome to the show, former moderator of Meet the Press. You might have heard of that show. He's also the host of the Chuck Toddcast, nice pun, and head of politics at Newsphere, a new subscription news platform showcasing the work of independent journalists. It's Chuck Todd. What's up, man?

Mr. Miller, good to see it, buddy. Yeah, it's been a minute. It has. I've got a bunch of stuff I want to talk to you about. I want to do media stuff at the end. There's a lot of media gossip, but we have real news first. I'm interested in your kind of historic perspective on August. We're in this August.

This is August 5th and what we're seeing. We had this event yesterday in Nebraska 1 with Mike Flood, who's kind of a no-name congressman, really. The only thing I knew about it was he ran against Carol Blood in the last election. So you liked Flood versus Blood? I got it. I got a kick out of that. He got into that. That's why the only thing I knew about him until yesterday. And people on the ground were reporting that it was like presidential campaign level turnout for his town hall.

And I just want to play one little audio clip from it. And more than anything, I truly believe this bill protects Medicaid for the future. Not a happy audience. What do you make of what we're seeing right now and, you know, compared to only 10 or other big sort of inflection points such as this? Well, it's funny you bring up August. I've been, you know, I've been vacillating about whether is this the summer swoon that you and I have experienced for plenty of presidents over the years where there's something about the summers that sometimes people aren't fully engaged. So, like, you know, communication staffs, half of them are vacationing. So, you know, there's always been this theory as to why politicians find so much trouble in the late July, early August, right?

Is it just because people have vacation on the brain? Nobody's quite working at 100%. You know, there's all sorts of thesis on this. But the one thing that is true is that August has always mattered more than we'd like to admit, right? These August do set toned in tenors. You go back to the August town halls of 2009. And I remember traveling the country with Obama at that time. And he was doing, trying to sell health care.

And in fact, I asked the infamous question to Chuck Grassley. Chuck Grassley back in the days when he would do cable TV, he was on, I was in Phoenix, Arizona, on remote, sort of covering Obama. But I was sort of co-hosting whatever MSNB show I was dealing with at the time. And I remember asking Grassley, hey, if you got everything you wanted out of this bill, but the majority of the Republican Senate wasn't going to support this bill, could you support it? And he said, no. I always appreciate Grassley that he sort of says what he thinks, which is why he's not the best communicator, never has been, why he was never front and center, right? Sure. But it probably explains why he always wins reelection, is that he has, you know, whether you love him or hate him, the truth usually

comes out of him in some form or another. And it's not lost on me that he's one of the few that are pushing back on Trump on tariffs, for instance, right? Unless he gets tricked by a Russian email. Well, there's that. I'm not going to sit here and say that. He was being honest. He was being honest about the fact that he thought that it was implicating Hillary. He just was wrong about the email.

Yes. But I go back and those August town halls absolutely impacted him, changed his politics. So this stuff matters. You know, I look at the Nebraska one and I'm mindful that that's Lincoln. and if you, you know, outside of Lincoln, the rest of that district's Nebraska, right? You know, and so it is an interesting decision by the congressman to hold it in Lincoln where you're going to get a more, probably a more antagonistic crowd and a more engaged crowd. And I think that's the other thing I take away right now. The party out of power right now, the voters that feel out of power.

I don't want to necessarily say the party out of power because we're in this weird circumstance where Democrats have not gotten. more popular as Trump's gotten more unpopular, but it has not meant that there isn't an opposition that's fired up to vote, right? Both things can be true at the same time. A whole bunch of people are going to get out to vote in the midterms. Democrats may benefit from it, but it doesn't mean they like the Democratic Party better than they do right now, right? I certainly think that there's some signs. I don't get to the polls next. Like, there's weakening popularity among the Trump agenda, among Trump himself, among these Republicans. It's hard for me to see. It's hard for me to see. no matter how rowdy and raucous august gets like republican members of congress behavior changing right like

i think that is like the one thing that that you know conceivably right you get to a point where trump's numbers are so low that they feel like they don't have to go along with them on everything anymore they feel like the greater threat to them is the midterm than you know a primary even though that is true for some minority subset of the conference you're not really seeing that i don't know Do you think that there's any chance that, you know, these guys come back in September after their extended Epstein break and decide, ooh, maybe maybe my behavior should change a little bit if I want to survive? So that I don't, but let me give you a scenario that I'm curious how it plays out. Okay. I'm pretty convinced the courts are going to take away Trump's power on tariffs.

Okay. The Supreme Court? Yes. I just think it's open and shut, that this emergencies, that it's a, maybe I'm wrong and maybe this Supreme Court will capitulate. But I'm, these have been such decisive arguments, right? You already had one court just overwhelmingly say, no, this is unconstitutional. Things are not going well in the appeals process. We saw that last week.

So let me paint this scenario that I think is going to be a fascinating test to whether we're right or wrong about this, whether any Republicans feel that they have to start showing some distance from Trump. So let's paint the scenario that the courts say, nope, the basis he's used. using for the authority to implement these tariffs is unconstitutional. An emergency act that was passed in 1977 is not, you know, is not something you can use. We know what Trump's going to want. Okay.

So Congress can then give him this authority if they so choose, right? He's got the majorities. So that means these Republicans have to vote for a tax hike, right? What is a tariff other than a tax height on consumer goods? now the timing of this I'm unsure of right we can't sit here you know we think the courts will be dealing with this in a fairly timely manner so let's say it's early January 06 let's say this this happens late December this year 26 I know we're getting old but you know here are two decades off there sorry about that so let's say it's 20 January 20 26 sorry about that I do it all the time Chuck it's all right I don't know how old I am I lied about my age unintentionally the other day very how uncomfortable is that vote in an election year to essentially raise taxes, especially after we've seen the impact of, right? So far, it's been nothing but negative impact on the economy. There has been no positive other than, you know, the press releases that they tout about,

look at all this new revenue coming into the government. But ultimately, this has been bad for the economy, jobs slowdown, right? All the things that mainstream left and right economists predicted about this is starting to come true. What is that vote? Because I'll say this, I don't think Epstein takes Trump down. You know, we already know no impeachment takes him down, right? What's going to take him down? Poor stewardship of the economy, right? He was elected for one reason.

He won this election for one reason. People didn't like the economy under Biden and Harris. Pure and simple. If the public sours on his ability to manage the economy, that's when I think it all crumbles. So let's talk about that. So he's on CNBC this morning, a couple hours before we're talking. It's interesting. Joe Kernan is the squawk box guy that's interviewing him, usually pretty favorable to Trump, I think we can say. But he don't like tariffs.

Yeah, no. And so he was checking Trump on a couple of items. Trump was, I was trying to do revisionist history on, you know, this BLS firing and saying that, you know, they were rigging the numbers during 2024. And the revisions were favorable to Biden. And Kernan was like, yeah, but your dates are wrong. Like Trump was pretending like it happened before the election versus after and all this happened in August. Curtin corrected him on that. He was pushed him on the tariffs a little bit. He also was pushing him just on his poll numbers. Trump was saying that his poll numbers are actually in the 70s

and that all the ones showing him in the high 30s are fake. And you look at the numbers and on the issue of kind of tariffs and inflation, some of the reason Paul is saying he's down in the low 30s on those issues. So I wonder, you know, kind of what you make about like, is that an acute threat right now? Do you see any tea leaves in Joe Kernan starting to challenge him on this? point. Yeah, no, I mean, that's my point. I think that's the core. Look, I actually think we're in a mirror image of Biden's loan term, right? Think about where Joe Biden was politically. And he was actually above 50% on July 15th, right? Afghanistan withdrawal happens. He drops below 45 and he never recovers. And I've looked back on that. I think there's two things we can take away from that moment. One is that the country never did sort of buy- to Biden, right? They were firing Trump. There was never a long leash with voters for Biden. So, you know, the minute he failed them, they walked away because they were never really

bought into them. He was this, the not Trump candidate. But what made Afghanistan more damaging to Biden was that if there was one issue that the public assumed he was not going to screw up, it was foreign affairs. It was a core competency. And just competence broadly, just like the adults are back in charge kind of thing. And here. And here, was, whoa, we didn't think this was going to be an issue. We had some doubts about, you know, your economic policy. We may have had doubts about other things, but we didn't think you'd screw this up. And then when you screw up a core strength with the voters, then suddenly they don't necessarily buy into anything. So how does this translate to Trump? Well, Trump was elected for one

reason to manage the economy. He created the mythology that the first three years of his term was a great economy when he was essentially inherited a recovered economy from Obama, but he's not the first president to inherit a recovering economy and benefit from it, right? Bill Clinton got that in his first term. This is, you know, this is how it works, right? The economy you inherit becomes your economy. Your economy is the one you give to the next president. So COVID was forgiven for him for a variety of reasons, at least on the economic impact of COVID, right? So a lot of these last voters, the voters that made the difference, the voters that decided to move those seven swings, States to the Republicans, to Trump, were voting because they didn't like this economy.

So what's happened since? Things have gotten worse, not better. Everything he does with the economy makes it worse. And it was the core competency that voters thought, well, the one thing he did right was that. And when you take that away, I think that's the piece that's holding up the entire Trump tower. Right. And now when you start doubting that, everything else you was.

assume isn't any good either. And that's why I think this is that important of a moment for him politically. And it's possible, you know this. Presidencies end a lot sooner than the term itself ends. Oh, yeah. Right. And, you know, George W. Bush's presidency ended somewhere at the end of 05, the combination of Katrina, Terry Schiavo, and the Iraq War, right? The three of them together. And Harriet Myers didn't know. Right. Yeah. But it just sort of was too much. And that was it. He was president. He presided for another two years, but he didn't really influence the conversation. And this is the precarious moment Trump's end. Maybe his best two years, though. But okay, all right, that's the sense of me probably.

But you see, you get my point on this. And that's why I think this, you know, it ain't Epstein that's going to take him down. It's not being able to provide an economy with cheaper eggs. I think another threat that he has is, do they accept like the reality of the situation? And I think that as concerning as the firing of the Commissioner of Labor Statistics was just on this kind of authoritarian creep standpoint, I think there also should be a concern that's like they don't want to accept the reality of where like the economy is and about what Trump's policies are doing to the economy. And it's hard to fix something if you won't, you know, accept that there's a problem. Well, isn't this the same issue? I don't know. What do you think? In the same way, you had a core group of Biden staffers that were protecting Biden from the reality of his. situation. There's clearly a core group of Trump staffers that are putting Trump in a

cocoon. He only sees the news that makes him feel better. The McLaughlin brothers can produce all sorts of crappy polls to make him feel better. And that's what they've done, you know. This is this same firm that told Eric Cantor he was going to win with ease. The point is that you could produce all sorts of numbers for your client to make your client feel better. That doesn't mean it's reality. And I do think we have to be asking ourselves, you know, he is not getting reality to him, right? He is getting a filtered version of events. And there's a lot of people around him manipulating him for their own benefit. We know this. And I think it's in some ways, if you were, if you were concerned about what was happening in the Biden White House, and I certainly

was, you should be as equally concerned about what's happening in this Trump White House. The reality is not penetrating that tight circle because they're so afraid. of him, that they feed him all sorts of bullshit puffed up news. This is why he comes out there and says, well, I'm in the 70s. My guess is they gave him a poll of Republicans. Yeah, right. And I have concerns about the Biden White House. At least the people around him, I felt like were decently competent. The people around Trump are insane for the most part, maybe with the exception of Bessent on some of this economic stuff. I don't think Susie Wiles is insane. I think she's pretty competent, but I also think she made her own bed on this one.

He's not insane. That is true. Yeah. Well, I know Seesie's quite well. I just maintain this. And maybe this is just my blinders. I maintain a skepticism that she has like any ability to stop the worst people around her. I don't think she does.

And obviously his own instincts. And so, you know. But nobody ever has. Sure. I did a long book project that I just never came to fruition about sort of the history of Trump in the business world and how he learned politics. And there's a pattern. He basically, he goes through a cycle of AIDS every six years, if you actually look at it, going back to 1970. And like his little circle, whoever his circle is, at some point, they're like, they're tired of it, right?

They walk away or he fires them. And it's usually, it's a combination of the two. Nobody ever has a nice thing to say about Trump after they leave his circle. And, I mean, look at it now. Must be a coincidence. Right. I mean, this has been his experience in politics, right? Look at the people that were around him in 2012.

None of them are there today. Look at the people that are around him in 2016. Only Stephen Miller remains, right? Corey's traveling with Christy Knoem. And then there's Corey. Corey is traveling with Christenome quite a bit. I keep seeing him in those pictures. That's interesting, I think.

It's interesting, isn't it? It's interesting. What are what's happening there? I don't know. Benny Hanna. There's some red flags from the arrest warrant at Benihana, the Christiano event there. Yeah, no, you're right. The point being that eventually anybody, even.

potentially somebody that would have more influence would have limits in their ability to control them. I mean, it is shocking to me that it didn't matter to the public, that every single, how many cabinet secretaries made it clear in one form or another from the first term that he shouldn't have a second term? Yeah, well, they're all pretty weak about it. Now you're getting under one of my hobby horses, Chuck. I don't know. I understand. We could have seen some of them.

Did that break through to the working class Latino voters who switched from Biden, Trump, no, but why didn't a breakthrough? Well, because they didn't try, you know, going on background to the Atlantic, love Jeffrey Goldberg, love the Atlantic, going on background to the Atlantic is not sufficient for warning the country about the threats of Donald Trump. If you wanted to actually do that, you needed to, you know, kind of do something that we got out there that people realized. Do you know the ad that never ran that I thought would run was the montage of former AIDS? Yeah. You know, meet the Trump officials who say Donald Trump's not qualified. to be president. You know, here's Jim Mattis. Well, we could have used one of them as a Zell Miller

at the convention. Anyway, now we're getting into my, uh, things will get my blood pressure up, but thanks for nothing, John Kelly. Thank you for your service, John Kelly, but thanks for nothing on the Trump. You know what they say, by the way, you know what they say? And this happened, and I've heard, I know you've heard these stories. The way MAGA, the way that the Trump supporters harass Republicans who criticize Trump, you know, I had in a conversation with a retired senator, about two years ago who left in 18 or 20 and I said are you going to speak out more he says oh god no and I said why he says he goes they've harassed my family they've harassed my wife they've harassed he goes I just that's why I'm leaving they didn't sign up for this I signed up for this

yeah I'm sorry I don't I don't have any sympathy for Bob Cork or any of these other people whatever that senator is who everyone's gotten shit like welcome to the fucking game okay like who doesn't get harassed these days like everybody He's getting harassed. This is the question I have for Tom Tillis and Bill Cattody. Yeah. Yeah? Those yes votes worth it on Hague Seth and Kennedy?

Really? On Emil both. You know, was that worth it? Yeah. Yeah, I don't understand. I did a rant on a couple of weeks ago and somebody said that, you know, he can get on the crossways with Trump and pick his spots, but he can't do things that make the other. His colleagues feel like he is the turd in the punch bowl because that might limit future earnings. or whatever. And again, I'm just like, all these, everybody that we're talking to is doing

quite fine, like financially and interpersonally. And I understand that people have legitimate safety concerns about their family. But like, I mean, the MAGA people are really bad, like an annoying and they are at times threatening and menacing. I get that. But like, I'm not to be glib about it. Are if any of these people actually had any real safety concerns from that at this time. There's been a lot of chat about it. And there's been a lot of like one-off mega guys like going to Walmarts and killing people and stuff. But Trump's been shot at twice. Well, you know, look, I'm with you. I mean, I had the FBI at my house. I had the pipe bomber targeting me. I was on his goddamn van, a picture of me. And, you know, I've decided not to stay quiet.

Right. You know what I mean? Like I could have been a PR executive at Edelman. There's a lot of money to be made in and just being silent and on corporate boards. Yeah. Anyway, okay. Why drop a fortune on basics when you don't have to? Quince has the good stuff, high quality fabrics, classic fits, and lightweight layers for warm weather, all at prices that make sense. Everything I've ordered for Quince has just been solid.

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We're still going to talk about Jeffrey Epstein on this podcast. Let me just throw this at you. Where does this cope or hope or wrong? I do not believe that Jeffrey Epstein is the thing that's going to take down. I do think he's covering up something because it would be very easy to resolve this. They could just release the information that is in the Microsoft SharePoint file they have of the Trump mentions, which I think a lot of that is going to be stuff people already assume about Donald Trump. So I don't know what he's covering up. He's covering up something.

Fox is already back in line. His core base is already back in line. Like, obviously. I do feel like there are like some of the people that moved to Trump in this last election you know, whether you want to call him the Manosphere, kind of the tech Elon world, does this become just a little bit of a shorthand for like, Trump's just another one of these fucking politicians. And like, I can't trust this guy either. And I thought he was different, but he's just the same as all of them. And I don't know.

Maybe I go back to not voting. I don't know that these two more Democrats, but I don't know. I think that it has a potential to have a little bit of a salience in that world. Do you think that's wrong? Maybe. I'm not going to sit here and rule that out. I still think the economy, I still think the basic between his promise to legitimize crypto, which I think was a big motivator to some of the manosphere for what it's worth. Plus the perception that, well, the one thing the guy seems to know what to do is how to make people money. Maybe he's going to take a little bit for himself, but maybe I'll make money with him. Right. And if nobody's making money, that's where I think when you make a transactional decision with a politician, you better hope the politician fulfills their end of the transaction. And in that sense, he's not. I do think the fear Trump has with Epstein is the idea that he's one of them, not one of us, or whatever, or he's one of us, not one of them, whatever that is, right? He built his entire political persona on the

idea that he was, he was the rich guy that was going to take it to the elites, that he wasn't a member of this club, right? Even though we all knew, my God, the guy was begging to be a member of this club. Now, it's true. Many elites didn't like having Trump around. And yet somehow they just sort of tolerated him being around. And then when they invite, and then of course, Trump wanted people to think he was a member of the elite. So he invited people, all these people to his wedding. And for whatever reason, the Clinton said, sure, we're going to go there because it's better to not piss him off than to go ahead and show up to the spectacle, I guess, right? There's always been this weird way that people manage him. There's a great story, by the way, that David Axelrod told.

me, and I included in my Obama book from over 10 years ago, Trump called early on saying, I have some ideas on how to improve the state dinner. We're seeing it all. We have some Tiffany chairs. 100%. Or you get rid of the Rose Garden. The irony is that Trump, this may have been the sole motivation of Iran for president, was to eventually do what he's doing to the White House.

But he called the Obama White House early on. This was before he was doing birtherism. He wanted to be in the circle. And nobody ever called him back. And Axx admitted, he goes, I wonder to this day if we had called him back and humored him and essentially taken a meeting with him to get his ideas on state dinners, that if it totally, it creates an entirely different relationship with Trump, right? But you and I both know, the last thing the Obama White House was going to do was placate a guy like Donald Trump, right? They just, this is before, again, pre-birtherism. Come on, Axe, one phone calls, you know, suffer for us.

I know. How did they know? No, who could have predicted? You know, obviously, little do you know that, you know, a butterfly flaps its wing? I guess there's a little bit of a parallel to that. I was just talking with somebody yesterday about how, like, I think that Kamala should, maybe not, actually. I don't know, but like RFK was also maybe manageable on this front.

Oh, that if you let him in and hurt his ideas and just say, oh, okay, you know, we'll consider, we'll have this person in an advisory group. Yeah, maybe. And we all care about, you know, we can all get together on food dyes, not sure about the vaccine stuff, but, you know, that you gave him that you would throw him a bone, like give him the food die bone over the, that's an interesting. Look, it all seems obvious now, right?

Yeah, sure. All right, let's talk about the Dems. Other failings besides David Axelrod being the butterfly that flapped his wings. He's in trouble now, Chuck, for re-bringing that back up. Oh, Axe, Axe, Axe, I mean, I think he wrote about a version of it in his book, too, for what it's worth. So the Dem problems, I don't, as you tweet about this the other day, every time one of these states reports the new voter registration

number, it's awful for Dems. And it's been like this for years now. Over a decade. Yeah. And there was I used to kind of dismiss it. It's like, well, this is kind of silly. I mean, you know, this is silly. Some of this is just, you know, part of the realignment. People have been traditionally Dems and our Republicans are now going to register and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Over time, No, it becomes the weight of that starts to, I think, really become obvious. Tim, it's two to one in Iowa now. Yeah, okay. There you go.

It's two to one. Iowa is the state I saw, and then you were tweeting about Nebraska. Right, but it's two to one. It wasn't two to one 10 years ago. Yeah, right. It's like the Democratic Party surrendered in all these states, did the same thing in Florida. They've made no effort. And by the way, here's the irony.

There was one state where there was a real effort to register voters in the last 10 years. and it was by Stacey Abrams in Georgia. And what are the results? It turned a red state into a swing state. Well, I don't know about the chicken and the egg part of there. I mean, part of that is the Georgia demographics, a lot of high college educated state, a lot of black voters, but sure. Yes, but the point is, they should try.

They should try. We agree they should try. The point is, is that the first step to getting somebody to vote for you is to make them eligible to vote. Sure. And when you get somebody to agree to register in your team, well it's suddenly that much easier to get him to turn out that much easier to identify them that much easier to like this was the part so trump loses the popular vote in 16 and you know what became the obsession of the republican party was voter registration in pennsylvania in all of the battleground states and they made massive progress in all of them every single one of them it wasn't enough to hold off the forces in 2020 but it started to pay dividends by 20s And it certainly took certain states off the board. Iowa and Florida being the, and arguably to a lesser

extent, Ohio being the three best examples. It's interesting. You go to the, to like the actual effort to do voter registration drives. This goes back to comms versus political. I was always pretty skeptical of some of them. I think a lot of work and a lot of effort went into the grass rate side that got oftentimes, you know, like you were, it's kind of like the sand at the, at the beach. Like you have this huge wave, which is like narrative incomes coming in. And like meanwhile, they're kind of shoveling trying to, you know, add a little bit to the shoreline. But sure, I think the Democrats should try harder on registration. It also is just a really bad reflection of brand.

Right. And like in Iowa, some of this stuff's happening naturally. It's not people that haven't been registered before, registering as Republicans. It's people deregistering. Oh, no. This is, you know, but it is an active effort to get, you know, the Republicans are doing what they can to target independents get them to re-registered Republicans or Target. But that's actually the one place they go to persuasion, right, is in their voter registration. You're right. It's not the sexiest thing. Look,

the DNC has been an utter and complete failure for over a decade now. Its job is to do these things. For all the reasons that the people that get mad of the DNZ on Twitter are wrong about. Right. Their job is the blocking and tackling, right? The basic job. Not just maintaining a voter file, but adding to it. So I guess my question for you is, I want to get into the gerrymandering fight here, but just like just want real quick, one more thing on Dem Brand.

Like I had Dan Osborne on on Friday. Interesting effort. I kind of break this stuff down into a couple of areas. Like, is the Democrats brand problem communications? Like, everything's kind of fine under the hood and they're just bad at talking about it.

Is there a problem, cultural issues? Like where they're just two out of step with the people of Iowa, in Nebraska now on a degree of cultural issues, they have to change. Is it economic issues? Is it the fact that they don't feel like they're fighting for working people, even though maybe you could argue that technically they have whatever, their policies are better for them, that perception isn't that and that they need to reemphasize that? Is it something else? I don't know.

Like what, it's something pretty serious if you're to a point where, you know, Iowa is two to one registered Republicans. It was a state Obama one. So one thesis I have is that the problem, the Democratic Party has versus the Republican is that there isn't full agreement on an economic vision, and there's also not one on culture. Sure. Versus the Republicans, they may be disagreeing on economic policy. They may even disagree in foreign policy, but there is agreement on culture. I hate the current era that we're living in that our politics in some ways are driven

more by culture than by policy, but that is the place we are in right now. And I think that the Democrats closest to the center and the Democrats closest to the base aren't not on the same page culturally as much versus Republicans closer to the center and Republicans closer to the base. I actually kind of disagree with that because I was just talking to somebody this other day. Like, I think the Democrats obviously have huge gaps on economics. And that's where I think the fight is going to be in the party internally. I think they're too aligned on culture to the left, actually.

I don't know. If you look at like Zoron and Vicky. Well, no, I think they're defined by the progressive left's culture, but I don't think the parties is unified by it. If you had Zoron and Mikey Cheryl and Abigail Spanberger and you gave them a list of cultural issues, however you want to describe, there's that. And it's just like a yes or no test, right? Zoran's going to talk about it differently.

He's going to use more annoying words. You know, he's going to use more like whatever, liberal arts kind of language. Like if it's just, what do you think about the trans issue? What do you think about immigration? What do you think about guns? Oh, I think there'd be real disagreement on trans. Between Mikey, Cheryl, Abigail Spanberger, and Zotron? Mm-hmm.

I'm not sure that it would be. But I don't know. Maybe. Would see. I think that the Democrats don't, I kind of think the Democrats don't have enough disagreement on culture, honestly. It's maybe the problem. I actually think they need a good fight.

I mean, there's two things I've thought about. If you look back at 1989, right? which was the last time Democrats had felt like they were in this kind of wilderness. Sure. The big difference is they got blown out in 88. So there was a right versus they didn't get blown out in 24. They did lose to George H.W. Bush in 88 versus Donald Trump in 2024. So it was close, but it's radicalizing in a different way, maybe for somebody who had been indicted to defeat them.

But I think there's too many Democrats who think, oh, but for this, but for that. But, you know, when you lose by a. Sure. a collection of 250,000 votes in seven states, right? You think, geez, but four. So there's not an incentive to make massive changes because you're just trying to get across the finish line. Geez, I just need to sign one more wide receiver or I just need to sign one, you know, whatever it is, right? Like, oh, we're so close, you know, little bullpen help, whatever it is, right?

Pick your sports metaphor. Broncos are going through this now. Right. Pick your sports metaphor. And the beauty of 88 is there was a, it was a wipeout, right? and there was a big ideological fight arguably and it was some of it was cultural some of it was sort of modern versus the past some of it was labor versus business but you know it was Bill Clinton versus Jesse Jackson was essentially the two avatars of that and it was ugly for a while Bill Clinton and Ron Brown was the DNC chair the exchanged words Ron Brown was nasty about Bill Clinton you know the DLC and that whole business but it was a healthy exercise right the Republican had a huge fight in 16. And you and I may not like the direction of where the Republican Party chose to go.

But arguably, that fight led to more successful elections for that party over the next 10 years than they had the previous 10. And it might have worked it the other way, by the way. I think it had Marco won probably similarly. Like, the fight was important. It was clarifying. But there's always been a thesis that say the party that's divided, that that's bad for them. But in some ways, having the fight, you know, and having a winner and a loser sort of is

clarifying. And I don't think the Democrats, I go back and it's like when I kept using this metaphor with Jake Tapper, you know, my original sin was Barack Obama's decision to endorse Hillary Clinton. Like that is what led the party down this path. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had an argument and he won the argument. And then he turned around and endorsed her and put his finger on the scale and essentially to some parts of his party, whoa, whoa, whoa, they were like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, the reason we picked you over her is we didn't want that wing of the party in charge. That's fun. And I took, I went back earlier, which was Al Gore not taking enough of Bill Clinton's help.

So he went all the way back to there and then had Al Gore win. Then maybe there's no Iraq and there's no backlash, enough backlash to bring Trump. Maybe if Monica Lewinsky's internship doesn't come to fruition, the whole thing is a better thing. Well, Bill had some other problems. That's pretty good. We could do a whole podcast on, you know, alternate histories. Maybe we should do that sometimes. I do it.

I do it every year. I do what ifs. I've gone through this. I did a what if Al Gore had won in 2000. Invite me on the what ifs podcast. I'll like that. Give me one to do. Give me a one and I will be my guest for it.

I even did one. What if John Lennon had lived? Because the question would be, would the Beatles look more like the Rolling Stones today if all the members were still alive and they had gotten back together? What a fat Chris Christie had run before Bridgegate, fat, angry, Chris Christie. I did that one.

You did that one already? Because Chris Christie was the more responsible version of Donald Trump. Trump. Yeah, right. And had he not had Bridgegate, he probably is president of United States and 16. All right. I have important topics to get to you. We're running out of time already.

This always happens with you. Just really quick, we have a disagreement on the gerrymandering fight. You said he thought it was a bad look for the Texas Democrats to flee. I don't know. To flee to Illinois. Oh, to flee to Illinois in particular. I think Illinois was the worst. I agree with that.

But I think part of the other Democratic brand problem is that they don't seem like they're fucking tough enough and they're not fighting and it's pissing people off. And like, I don't know, what do you think about the gerrymandering fight? Like, they got to fight. Like, they can't be like, oh, we're the democracy party. So we got to behave good. Yeah, no, no, no. The Texans should fight.

Now, I think it was bad optics to go to the, literally the Democratic state that is known to Jerry Banner the most on the Democratic side. Sure. Why did they go there? because Pritzker's paying the bills, right? So I just think optically, they pick the wrong state to flee to, okay? You weren't doing the Michelle Obama. You get the Democrats have to go high.

No. When they go low, the Democrats have to go high and talk about our norms and protecting the democracy while Republicans steal the house. Here's my frustration, though, Tim. Is any party going to stand up for fairness? No. So the Republican Party wants to be unfair. And is the answer to be more unfair to voters in California?

I think so. in order to respond to the Texans. I mean, I don't think they have any other choice. This is my concern. The unintended consequence of this is, if you're fighting to protect the democracy by breaking democratic norms, are you protecting the democracy or are you helping to break it? I think that this was a really strong argument to be made in 2023, but it's 2025 now. And it's kind of over.

Well, then it is over. He's in there. He's breaking everything. He's broken the Justice Department. He's broken the Congress. He's about to break the Fed. He's broken the Bureau of Labor Statistics. All of that is true.

Make that the fucking campaign. Like, you know, that's my... But they lost the campaign. Joe Biden lost. Well, go back in Texas. And Merrick Garland lost. Like, that strategy failed. Well, I'm...

Look, there's a lot of reasons that entire administration failed, right? Number one was Joe Biden himself. He never should have run. But that's a whole other... I'm not going to go down that road, but Jesus, right? His family was in crisis. I can't believe he ran. To this day, now that we see everything that was going,

on. It's crazy that he chose to run for president. But let's set that aside. I take, I understand the argument to fight fire with fire. I'm just saying all you're doing is setting bad precedence down the road. And, you know, I'm a believer in the law of unintended consequences. And you go down this road, it's going to be hard to go back. And I think the fight, you should take the fight to Texas. Here's the irony. I think this remap is going to do nothing. for them. I think this is the wrong cycle to remap. Like, if you were really trying to maximize Republican districts, you'd have done this before presidential. Why? Trump voters don't show up for midterms. You know, you look at the map they put out there. I think they pick up one on their best day in a

midterm. It may go better for them in a presidential, but they're assuming that this Latino vote has shifted permanently. Well, that to me seems to be a bit like being high in your own supply here, right? Like, I don't accept that premise that you're going to see Latino voters stick the way they think they're going to stick. I think actually they're the swing vote of America. And I think you're going to see working class Hispanics vacillate quite a bit over the next couple of election cycles. Chuck, I'm happy you brought us to the Latino question because I do have some audio. We don't usually play Donald Trump's audio, but this is just too good from CNBC this morning. I'm talking.

He's doing some outreach to Latino vote. He has a lot of praise for them. I want to listen to it. but we're taking care of our farmers we can't let our farmers not have anybody uh you know these are these people that they're you can't replace them very easily you know people that live in the inner city are not doing that work they're just not doing that work and they've tried we've tried everybody tried uh they don't do it these people do it naturally naturally i said what happens if they get it to a farmer the other day what happens if they get a bad back he said

they don't get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die. I said, that's interesting, isn't it? You know. There you go. That should work with the Hispanic voters, Superman. They just want to pick oranges all day and they don't get hurt. Was it Steve King? What was the Steve King line about cantalopes, cantaloup thighs?

Canaloupe thighs? Canaloupe calves? Yeah. And you're telling me the Latino vote's going to stick with MAGA with that, right? So I guess what I would argue is that I think that this goes back to the question you had about the national party and voter registration. You know, for 20 years, we've been fed this line that, boy, Texas is close. Texas, you know, all this. But you know what it takes to turn a state into a swing state?

It's called effort. And you can't just show up in one cycle, throw some money at Beto O'Rourke, and hope that it's going to come in. It is a building process, right? You got to come in there and keep going. and whatever you want it. Georgia was a 15-year project before it finally became a swing state come 2020. But it was, you know, it wasn't as if they just showed up in 2019 and said, hey, we're going to contest Georgia, right? It was an actual effort that had been built upon, built upon. And what I think the national party needs to get smarter about is this is an

opportunity. Texas Republicans care more about listening to Donald Trump's orders than they do helping flood victims. Texas Republicans care more about appeasing Donald Trump than they care about, you know, run a campaign. Go down there and make Abbott answer for this in his campaign. Make it a centerpiece. Like, do something proactive. Yes, go ahead and disrupt the special session. Don't give them a quorum, right? Like, to me, those are small D Democratic tactics that are, that are like within sort of within the realm, right? You bear elected to fight for you, you know, so to me, it's that. But the idea that the best way to fight them is to go to California and get them to do a more

unfair map or to essentially unwind their constitution in order to do it, I don't think sets a very good precedent in the future for this democracy. All right. We did politics counterfactuals. Let's do some media ones. Was there anything that could have been done? This question about that the media's lost trust, how the mainstream media has, you know, no longer has the influence it was, has. You know, you sat in the seat that Tim Russert sat in. He's at this height of power. And now it's like who even watches the Sunday shows, like people in old folks homes. I'm like, was that decline reversible? Or no? Was that just inexorable? Well, I think that everything, you know, Life magazine used to be influential.

Yeah, sure. Right. And then we got a technology that allowed us to have moving pictures, right? So I do think that like, you know, there was a time Life magazine was mainstream media. Sure. And so I do think some of this is technologically driven. But I will say this. The lesson I've taken away from the lost trust of national media, national media never had the direct trust. We got our trust indirectly from local journalists. I believe that a man named Craig decided classifieds ought to be free, yada, yada, yada, Donald Trump became president. I go back to my Jenga model or a foundation of a house. There's always a few pillars that matter more in holding up a foundation. And I think local was a more important pillar. And the decline of local got rid of our character references.

You know, you trusted media locally because you knew somebody or you knew somebody who knew somebody who was involved in that paper and that news organization. whatever because that's just how communities work. Tom Brokaw was a correspondent in Atlanta during the civil rights era. And he would say nobody liked him down in Georgia, right? Everybody hated the national media. But they trusted the local media. It was one of those when the local media confirmed what national media was reporting, it gave national media trust. So our information ecosystems broken. As I like to say, what we've done, imagine if we took our drinking water pipes in our sewer system and put them all in the same pipe and said, you in your home,

you have to filter out the shit to find clean drinking water. Well, that's what we've done with our information pipes, right? There's good stuff in the information ecosystem, and there's a lot of shit in the information ecosystem. Right now, the tech companies make you and I filter it out. There's two ways to deal with a dirty pipe and dirty water. You can try to create a separate pipe and do that, that's probably too late. Or you flush the system with just cleaner information. And I think if we can rebuild local community news by extension, then you create basically new national news organizations that are locally sourced.

You're trying to rebuild local community news through what? Through sports? Is that your idea? It's not a bad idea. I think sports is one of the few places that bring red and blue together. I think youth sports right now is a huge, just a huge boom. So you're getting people to pay. to get their middle school, select teams,

streaming, whatever it is. Okay, we need middle school, high school stats. And we're going to pay for that and you're going to give them some investigative journalism in the middle of it. Here's what you do. You build trust in a community by covering the stuff they want to see. And it begins with their kids.

And then you start building out from there. You give them micro forecasting of weather. You give them an influencer that helps them save money. You basically do the things that people used to get from a newspaper, right? The coupon saved you money. The circulars saved you money. So hire an influencer that tells you, hey, this week, Trader Joe's has got cheaper chicken than all these does.

If you want to take your family out, there's a buy one, get one free at, you know, you pick your, you know, a James Bistro this week. Sure. And you sort of rebuild that. And then when you build that kind of trust where you're doing service journalism, you're helping people live their lives locally, then they're going to believe you when you tell them their city councilman's corrupt. The Trump question of this, and this is like the hardest part to deal with the media gets just so much shit over how they dealt with Trump. And I think there are a lot

of legit criticisms. My problem is that, you know, look, if Mitt Romney's 47% gaff was put in the middle of a Donald Trump speech, it wouldn't have made the news in any of the last cycles, like people wouldn't have even talked about it, right? Well, it was overheard. Right. By the way, this is the beauty. If anything Trump said was found on a Nixon tape, it would be more news than it is. I guess. Yeah. So anyway, the point is, I guess, I don't know how you guys were supposed to deal with that, right? Like, Trump lied all the time. And so it's like, okay, well, we lost the trust of the Trump voters because we're always talking about his lies, but Trump's lying all the time. And so, you know, then you get into a situation, you're like,

well, I'm going to try to, I'm going to pick on this thing, this lie that a Democratic person told. And so how do you deal with that besides just, I, To me, it's like, well, in the other standard, the entire newscast would have been talking about Trump's lies. It's not really a realistic thing to do, and that wouldn't have done anything to help your trust with the mega voters. I felt like it was a really challenging pickle the whole time, and a lot of times sometimes people tried to do fake stuff to deal with it. But here's the fundamental thing that I think we all have to sort of accept, which is simply Trump won because he correctly convinced the country that most politicians are. lying to you. I'm just more authentic about it. And, you know, I can't tell you how many Trump voters I'd talk to going, yeah, I know he's a bullshit artist, but so are they. At least he's honest

about it. Sure. And I know that sounds like a weird thing to say, but that is the relationship he created with his voters. And that handcuffed you, right? Because if you did a whole show, you did a whole meet the press, you had them on, and the whole throw is you lying about this, you're lying about this, you're lying about this, which you should have done, I guess. But like, that wouldn't have changed any of those people's view. All it did was make me more polarizing. Yeah. You know, which I, look, I didn't care.

I will say this. I think one of the problems with journalists is too many of them care about their own popularity. And once I stopped caring about that, and it's not easy. I'm not going to, we're all human beings, right? It's easier said than done. But, you know, if you want to be a journalist, you shouldn't care about popularity. All right. We're over.

But I do have to ask you, do you have any thoughts about Sidney's rank? Can I make a confession that I had no idea? This didn't penetrate any of my social media feeds. I didn't hear about it until I read the Washington Post version of the story. Oh, man, old man, Todd. No, and I felt this. Like, I always, I call myself a political anthropologist, and I thought, uh-oh, I'm missing some part of this conversation. And, you know, I every time I-

Count your blessings, man, actually. This should be a gift of being off TV. Well, that's what I say. But I will say this, the rights ability to manufacture cultural divides that I don't think really exist. But here's something I don't understand, Tim, and maybe you'd get this better. The right can take any voice from the left that you and I have never heard of and turn them into the Democratic Party believes X. the left finds a Nick Fuentes

and it does not stick to the entirety of the Republican Party. Why is that? I can answer this because it feels like the Democrats control the culture and that's maybe not fair or right or whatever, but we've gone through a period of like 40

years of Democratic or left, maybe not Democrat, left cultural hedgerid movies and stuff. And so people have felt like like this all this change is happening it's been pushed by these people on the left and so like I don't know I think it's it's rewired people's brains

I yell about this all the time but I don't think like the Mediasan Jubilee thing where he debates the 20 neo-Nazis no matter how much I yell about it from having hung out of TPSA I think that there's a group of people you can't get to believe that these 20 little neo-Nazis are like actually have

cultural cachet among the youth and they're growing in power and you should take it seriously because we haven't dealt with that at a long time. And so people just don't believe it, that it's a threat. Some people do. Like, you know, obviously we're generalizing. But I don't know. And also Fox.

So that part, like the Democrats' cultural success and Fox's ability to step into the news is what? The only mainstream media that exists is Fox. Yeah. Fox and, and, you know, I don't know. Everything else is dispersed now, right? Right? Yeah. Everything else is more fragmented. Fox is the only mainstream outlet left that has cultural impact. Well, all right. Well, that's a great place to leave it. I was trying to leave it with a little joke about Sidney's Sweeney, but you've brought us back down. I don't have anything.

Trust me, it is in the spirit of the Bollock podcast to end us in a dark place. Chuck Ton. I was just going to say, I feel bad about this. My mother said this to me about my own podcast. She goes, man, it was really dark. Even your rant about the Nats was dark. I'm like, yeah, I know. It's not a good time. All right. Well, we'll have you back. Hopefully, I don't know, maybe around LSU championship season, do a little football talk.

Chuck Todd, we'll be seeing you soon, brother. Yeah, LSU and Miami, both of them. We're back. Both of their head coaches are on the hot seat if they don't get into that playoff. Well, good luck. I think we're going to be in there. We'll be seeing you soon, brother. All right, see you, man.

Thanks a bunch of Chuck Todd. We'll be seeing you back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bullwork podcast. It'll be a good one. Peace. away from the devil's palm. I end the left. How dare you? I was shouting down the world

and it scared you. Can't hold a girl down as this bad. Shame nice in my nose and my hair do. Not a type that I'll trip off nostalgia. Too nice, but my silence is louder.

Spend off, my finance is louder. I'm not a type to abuse or my power. Realness in the village I come from. All my dolls go to sleep with a monsoon. You can do shapes around all you want.

But no, I'm the missing piece to the puzzle. As I walk his wicked ground and keep me. away from the devil's palm. I can't never forget when the shit stay flooded niggas didn't believe in my hustle could have drowned but I stayed with a mic why you niggas all don't write they obsessing my genius plan and that's being as free as I can they want you to stop they nearly need to rock but that's just not my frequency man as I walk this wicked ground keep me away from the devil's palm I saw walk this wicked ground keep me away from the devil's palm and I am the light

Number one is play Like a better I'm never Number one is play your position Don't trust all the hands that you shake If I put the wrong cold in the system Won't be no permanent change Number two don't take it personal

This place is invested with snakes Don't get caught in your own trap Every bat braid has a good trait Number three take care of yourself Be vigilant, mind do you help You pray you can make it to heaven make it to heaven, and they're trying to track it to hell. Number four, don't react to a clone.

Don't be the one from stones. Never eat with the hyenas, because they will look at you as bones. Number five, keep the business away from the family, sipping their rivalries vicious. It's meant to be you and them garden of blood protecting the family business. Six, don't quit. Keep building it brick by brick. Takes a million to send you to prison, a million to get you a house and a stick.

The Bullwark, keep me away from the devil's palm. I am the world. I am the world. The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.