The Bulwark Podcast - George Conway: Trump Is a Vampire

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Biden and Merrick Garland thought Trump would just go away, but malignant narcissists must be made to go away. And with Congress not fulfilling its constitutional obligation to hold Trump accountable for running the country like a mob boss, newly christened congressional candidate George hopes to join those Democrats on the Hill who aren't afraid to investigate—and impeach—the president and his miscreants. Meanwhile, Trump is rambling about postponing the midterms as he orders the military to commit piracy at sea.George Conway joins Tim Miller to discuss his congressional race, his return to New York, Yimbyism, and Mamdani.show notes Monday's "Morning Shots," including Mark Hertling on the "belly-button rule"  Tim’s 2025 Music Year in Review  Snag the hoodie that will bring you comfort for life, the American Giant Classic Full Zip. Go to https://www.american-giant.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code BULWARK. Thanks to American Giant for sponsoring the show!

Hey, everybody, it's Tim. I wanted to talk briefly about this brutal execution in Minneapolis where an ice officer shot a woman in her car who was protesting an ice operation in Minneapolis. This happened after we had taped the pod with George. I just wanted to get you my thoughts on it really quick. This is something that was inevitable. We all knew that a tragedy like this was going to happen when you send masked armed. thugs into communities, into neighborhoods, to menace people, to escalate tensions, to grab people that are not violent criminals, to grab people that are citizens, to confront protesters. Eventually, there was going to be a tragedy. I think in a lot of ways I was surprised that it wasn't worse in 2025. It's a tribute to all the protesters who've been out there peacefully speaking their mind.

that there was not a situation where something escalated into violence last year after the Trump administration started sending these ICE and National Guard officials into the streets. But unfortunately, that ended today in Minnesota. The video is really hard to watch. You have a lot of community members screaming and blowing whistles at the ICE agents. We have a couple of ICE agents giving contradictory directions to, woman who appears to be shouting at them from inside her Honda Pilot and she's like backing up and then tries to get away and she's driving towards one of the agents but but clearly turning and

the agent just executes her just shoots her right in the face and then as she turns shoots her again to the side window again of her Honda pilot like it's a 37 year old woman in the suburbs like driving her SUV, minivan, whatever. Like, it is unimaginable. It's totally unnecessary. There's no reason for this. There's no reason for anybody that their guns drawn. They're not going after a violent criminal.

Somebody executing their First Amendment rights in this country, and they get gunned down in broad daylight by the state. And you won't be surprised to learn that then the feds and the DHS and Christy Noem and Tricia McLaughlin. have now decided to smear the victim. They're calling the victim a domestic terrorist. They're lying about the victim, saying that she was trying to kill multiple officers.

Christy Nome told a ridiculous lie about how the officers were trying to push their vehicle out of an ice flow when the vehicle came after them. That's like none of that. We can all see the video. I'll put the video on the show notes. And don't watch it if you don't have the stomach for it. None of that was happening.

Like the administration is lying. Like one of their ice thugs killed some. somebody for no good reason. And now our government is smearing the citizen victim before our body is even cold. It's just, it's an unbelievable tragedy and it's horrendous. And we'll be talking about it more on tomorrow's show. But I wanted to at least weigh in now and give you guys my initial thoughts, having just seen this video a couple minutes ago.

So that's where we're at. There'll be much more tomorrow. up next, our old friend, George Conway. Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back, a lawyer, guitar player, resistance content creator, and former Republican. He recently co-hosted a Bullwark podcast with Sarah Longwell and now he's well.

Let's listen. A former Republican, now a Democrat, I fought Trump publicly in every way I could, and I paid a price. I'll never regret standing up to Trump or for the victims he abused, helping E.G. and Carol sue Trump for raping her and lying about it. Now Trump owes E. Gene $88 million. He doesn't like me. I don't like what he's done to our great country. And now I'm running for Congress to take the fight directly back to him. On your behalf. On the behalf of New York. New Yorkers, to whom I owe so much, to protect the fundamental rights and basic economic needs of all New Yorkers, to make our nation better than it was before, to write new laws that will safeguard our democracy so that we don't end up facing autocracy ever again. This is no ordinary time, and I will not be an ordinary member of Congress. Let's do this together. George Conway, welcome back to the show. You're running for you.

for Congress now. Full disclosure, I've donated to your opponent because there are two former Bullwark podcasters in the New York 12 congressional race. How is that happening? What's going on up there? I'm back in New York. It's like the Thomas Jefferson coming back. I was just Is that a Hamilton reference? I don't do theater. That's a Hamilton. I saw, we saw Hamilton over the weekend. So I'm very Hamilton. Is Broadway in your district? I don't know how they cover it up. Oh, my God. Broadway's in my district. My law firm is my district. All of my apartments are in this district. The Penn Station is in my district. Everything's in this district. You're in a Rangers Jersey? This is, yeah. I was a Rangers season ticket holder for a while back in the 90s when I was

at the firm, at the law firm. Mark Messier. Mark Messier. That's right. The captain, the mess. And this was their third jersey back in the day. And now I live like three blocks away from Madison Square Garden and it was great. So I'm going to go to the Rangers game on Thursday night, having a lot of fun and I'm sorry that you gave to my opponent but it's yeah well it's just important to radical candor is the ethos of this podcast I just wanted everybody to know radical candor I know the radical candor is when I ran into you after I started thinking about doing this in November you looked at me like I had five holes in my head I still kind of think you have five holes in your head so make the case tell me why are you doing this you have a good life I do have a good life

and look somebody's got to do this right we have a criminal president. He is running the country like a mom boss. He is running it for his own benefit. And we need lawyers in Congress to do something about this. We need experienced lawyers. We need people who are not regular politicians. And I'm 62 years old, and I'm not going to do this for very long. But my view is that we need skilled, smart lawyers who aren't afraid of this fucker to go in and do two things. One is to hold him accountable through investigating his misdeeds and all the miscreants around him and to impeach people, including the president, four of their high crimes and misdemeanors. Because Congress has a moral and constitutional obligation to do that, that the

Republican majority has forsaken for almost the decade now. And that's why we are where we are. And we can't screw around anymore because this is, this is it. I mean, this is a guy. He's, you know, he tore down the East Wing because he's thinking that he wants to have his grand palace to hold his unconstitutional and illegal third inauguration. And I'm literally, he's talking about that. And then the second thing that we need to do is to pass laws to make sure this, this never happens again.

And that requires, that requires more lawyer. And so what I view myself as being as being someone who can really fill that mandate in a way that other people cannot. I want to be Jamie Eraskin's wingman. And this is how I think I can get back to this district that gave me so much. It gave me my entire legal career. And that's why I'm doing it. It does seem crazy. I'm a retired lawyer.

I should be out skiing somewhere, enjoying myself, walking glide, who you just heard bark. Oh, he loves Central Park. The corgues are very excited. The corgues are very excited. Corgi's for Conway. We're going to have a special affinity group there. So you don't hear people say too often, we need more lawyers in Congress. So I assume where you're going with that is we need more good lawyers, good prosecutors. Yeah, people who can cross-ins.

What a finer point on that for me. People who can interrogate witnesses and know how to conduct investigators who are really smart and know how to convey what they're finding to the public. And these are the, you know, I mean, this is explaining things. which is what I did on a podcast on some place that I used to have. I explained legal stuff. And I think I'm pretty good at that. And I think that I'm good at all those things that are required to explain to the public what we're doing, what we found, why this is illegal, why it's unconstitutional, why it's earning you and why it's destroying the country for your

children. And I think we need a lot more of that right now. I mean, there are a lot of Democrats who I greatly admire who are fighting a good fight in exactly the way it needs to be fought. Like Chris Murphy's of the world, the Jasmine Crockets, the Jamie Raskins, the Dan Goldman's, all these people. But there are a lot of people out there. And I think they're sort of like reading consultants talking points who basically said, well, we don't want to talk too much about Trump because that keeps us from talking about affordability and talks about that. Yes, affordability is important. The ACA subsidies being yanked is important. All those issues are important, but they are inextricably intertwined with this fucker in the White House.

Because he was running the government for his own benefit. You know, he doesn't give a shit about people out there. He's a guy who lied his way back into office talking about and complaining about inflation. And now he's telling people that affordability is a hoax. And what's he doing? What's he doing? You know, we're worried about the armrests at the Trump Kennedy Center and the outfitting of a Qatari 747, and now we're talking about Greenland.

We're taking Venezuela's oil. You know, he's behaving like Nicholas Maduro would if he had the fucking U.S. Navy backing him up. The most compelling part of the pitch for me is particularly when it's focused on the oversight responsibilities, presuming that the Democrats get back in charge next year. They will. You hear a lot of lamenting on podcasts such as this about Merrick Garland, but for good reason, we can talk about that if you want, and just the speed with which. which he moved with regards to Trump.

But a related complaint you don't hear about as much is I just, I think that the Democratic oversight work was not up to the standard of what we saw from, say, Trey Gowdy going after Benghazi or going back to the 90s going after Clinton. I just, with all of the corruption coming up next year, I just, I do think there needs to be a different mindset in the Democratic Congress about how to look at the crypto corruption, Epstein, all down the list. They're doing a little bit better on the Epstein stuff, I would say, since Robert Garcia's got in there. But talk about that and what that would look like for you from an oversight perspective.

Look, I mean, it shouldn't be that hard to be aggressive here. Right. Because this is like shooting fish in a barrel, okay? I mean, the corruption is so rampant. There are so many forms of it. I mean, there's a smorgasbord of illegality and criminality to pick from. And what we need to do, what Congress needs to do, is to staff up, staff up the House Judiciary Committee and the House Government Reform and

Oversight Committee and just really crank it up and do it nonstop. People are ready for this, not just people in the 12 congressional district of New York. I walk the streets here and people are saying, you know, they've been saying for, you know, thank you, thank you. I listen to the board. These are Democrats. Duh, yeah. Right? I mean, and it's not just them, you know, we, you, we, Yeah, people out in the heartland, in red states, in red districts, they're starting to get it, that this isn't about them, right? No foreign wars. Oh, look at what we're doing. We're bombing the shit out of Venezuela. I mean, it's crazy. And I think people are starting to get it. Your new friend Marjorie Taylor Green gets it. And, you know, one of the things you can't do with Donald Trump is just assume he's going to fucking go away. That's what Garland did. That's what frankly, Joe Biden did. They just assume. Oh, after January 6th, he's going to go away. These psychos, malignant narcissists, narcissistic sociopaths, I've been writing about this here.

These demented, a deranged personality disordered people do not go away. They don't. You have to make them go away. Okay? And you have to call them out and you have to go toe to toe with them and you, you know, you can't ignore them. Don't give him oxygen. Don't give him oxygen.

Excuse me? He's got plenty of fucking oxygen. Yeah, exactly. It was cold in New York, and we had a good time. All right. We had a good time with my daughter for a birthday, but I was experiencing the frigidity of rugged individualism still when I was in New York.

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When you use code bulwark at checkout, that's 20% off your first order at American dash giant.com code bulwark. I want to ask you about one specific tactical thought. You already had mentioned impeachment of him and other members of the administration. He yesterday was at the Trump Kennedy Center. And he looked like he had scurvy to me. I don't know, some people corrected me and said maybe he looked at John Desk.

But I think you become John Disp by having scurvy. I don't know. I'm not a doctor, but he looked, he looked very bad. His skin was bad. I think you need to do a medical show on the bulwark, a special, you know, ask doctor so-and-so, you know? Yeah, the yellow was seeping through the orange, I guess. It was creating a strange color.

But at that speech to the House Republicans, he said basically, look, if you guys lose, are going to impeach me. And you've mentioned impeachment. I want you to make the pitch to me because I'm kind of on the fence. Part of me is just like impeachment, obviously didn't work the last time. maybe the right thing to do is instead just do oversight across a bunch of different variables. Saudi Arabia deals, Qatar deals, crypto, Epstein, and maybe try to impeach Christy Knoem instead. I don't know.

But there are a lot of different things that could be done. Okay. Make the case for why you think impeachment. Bullshit. Okay. It's not about politics. It's not about, oh, are we going to offend people by impeaching Trump as opposed to maybe we should start small and impeach Nome? It's like, no, no, no.

when you swear to uphold the Constitution as a member of Congress, as a member of the House and the member of Senate, my view is you have a constitutional obligation to remove, to impeach and to remove executive officials who are committing high crimes and misdemeanors. That is your job. It's not a question of what the polls say. It's not a question of maybe it wouldn't be prudent. And maybe it wouldn't be prudent. I mean, I'm showing my age that I remember that. I don't even know the reference. The references, that was the Saturday Night Live was, that used to be the sounding live impression of George Herbert Walker Bush. I don't do that.

Wouldn't be prudent. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. It's not a question of, yeah, you're too young. See, I'm 52 years old. I can't fucking do this for very long. You have to absolutely point out, this is an obligation. This is an absolute obligation.

obligation. And if you pretend it's like something that you can hold back on, that, oh, it's on the laundry list of things to do, you immediately, you're basically telling people this is okay. And that's what happened with Garland. And the other thing about this is this guy is like a vampire. Okay. These malignant narcissist psychotypes are like vampires. You cannot let them off the mat if they're on the mat. Okay. I'm not going to use the steak through the heart metaphor. Some people will say, Oh, he's talking about violence, but you cannot stop with this guy because he doesn't stop. And if you sit there and say, oh, you know, ring your hands is, oh, gee, we, oh, well, you know, we have to talk about some other things we look like we're talking about Trump so much. It's like Trump is causing everything bad. Trump is bad. He is a criminal. He is ignoring his oath of office.

He is doing bad things that cause bad things to people around. the world, including ordinary people who are going to the fucking grocery store. That's a compelling pitch, George. That's a compelling pitch. No, I mean, I get to use the F word all I want on this podcast, which is... On this podcast, it's allowed. When you're out in the streets in New York, when you're on the Upper East Side. No, no, you can use the, you can use the F word in New York on the streets of New York.

You absolutely can't. I know this from having lived here for decades. What a great district. It is a great district. Glad you're not running in Iowa. Iowa. No, they actually do use the effort in Iowa. I need to tell you.

It's like whispered. But usually. Yeah. Oh, that's compelling. And it's very rare that I'm the one who's being prudent. Now are you going to contribute? To your campaign? Yeah.

We're going to see. We got 30 minutes left in the podcast. Have I sold you yet? Have I sold you yet? Yeah, I'm going to donate $1 less than Cameron. I donated to Cameron, depending on how we do. And then Sarah can even it out. I'm going to check the, I check the list though.

You know, we get we get lists now. I didn't ever know how it works. You're taking a list. You're checking. I'm going to get coal in my stocking next year if I don't donate enough to George's campaign. You know, I don't know. You may have to listen to me sing a sing a song or something on the guitar that I could. I love that.

I'm the only one around. I loved your guitar performance on our bus tour last year. But we've got, we've got news we got to do. You saw the website yesterday. This is one of those things where it's like some people are like, you just roll your eyes. It's Trump. There's no, why get outraged about it? And I'm trying my best this year on the podcast.

to not be outraged about things I'm not genuinely outraged about. I'm genuinely outraged about this. On the White House website for our country, it has, among other things, Ashley Babbitt was murdered in cold blood and that names the police officer, probably the wrong one, actually, that they were accusing of shooting her. They say Mike Pence did a betrayal of the president. They talked about how a stolen election was certified. On the five-year anniversary of January 6th,

that's what they put up on the, not on his campaign site, on the official White House website that is totally appalling and unimaginable in any other world. These people are deranged. They're all deranged. I mean, one of the things that happen here is, okay, Trump is a sociopath. Trump is a psychopath. Trump is a malignant narcissist. He is unwell. He is unfit for any position of power because he is mentally ill. But one of the things that's happened, like during the first administration, he was surrounded by people who were not. so afflicted, right? And they would try to tamp him down, and they would say, no, you can't do that, Donald. They would take papers. Like, remember, the Goldman Sachs guy would take papers off Trump's desk, and then they would slow walk the craziness. All those people are gone. If you are in some way normal, you can't work in that administration. So he's surrounded by people who do nothing but do his bidding and not only just do his bidding, anticipate his bidding.

They are just as bad as he is. I mean, look at Katie, you know, Katie Miller, she's not in the administration now, but, you know, she's posting things about Greenland with an American flag on it. I mean, these people are just. She's kind of in the administration because she's like that character for the Hunger Games. I forget his name, the interviewer who like takes everybody from the regime and gives them softball interviews and talk about how amazing they are. That's kind of her role.

So that's sort of a new, it's kind of in a propaganda arm of the administration. I mean, basically what's happened is, I mean, you know, at the center of every galaxy, there is a supermassive black hole, okay? And because of the gravitational pull, it's surrounded by other black holes that swirl around it. Donald Trump is the supermassive black hole of Cluster B personality disorders under the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. and he is surrounded by all these smaller black holes. And that's the problem we have in our government right now. We have elected a man who's just so sick that he can't have anybody around him who gives him sensible advice. And he has people around him who are as unwell as he is or people who are just so beholden to the grift and so desirous of maintaining their hold on power that they will do him.

his bidding. And there are no restraints. And it's going to get worse. Even if his poll numbers are declining, even if Republicans defect, even if the wheels are falling off the bus, they don't know when to stop because he doesn't know when to stop. And this is the danger we're in, is that we saw Merrick Garland and the Dem and the Justice Department say, oh, he's going to go away. The danger we face right now is people saying, oh, look at large retail agreement. Look at Thomas Massey. Look at the poll numbers. Look at the wheels falling off the Trump bus. Okay. He's still present in the United States. He still has control of the United States armed forces. He still has control of the government. And, you know, as I was talking before, it's like we can see get him enjoying. But sooner or later,

he might just say, I'm not going to obey the courts. And, you know, he was in that crazy ramble yesterday where he was oozing jaundice out of orange, as you said, right, at the Trump Kennedy Center. You know, he's saying, I'm not going to talk about postponing the election because if I talk about postponing the election, they're going to, they're going to call me a dictator. He said something like that. Did you hear that? Yeah, yeah. He said something like that. Well, he always does that, but he always does that. But it's like, okay, but why are we talking about postponing the election? Why is that even in your fucking brain? Okay. He talks about this stuff because that's how he thinks. And if he can do it, if he can get people to go along with it, if he can go, you know, he did this in 2020.

He was talking about postponing the election when he started to realize he was going to lose. But then at that time, everybody came down on him. Like, you know, he's not surrounded by people who are going to tell him no. Yeah. And this is where I was talking to J.B. I'm sorry about this yesterday on the next level about the Greenland thing. It's like, he is an open book. You know, I mean, there are secrets.

What's the day in the front line? There's secrets, but no mysteries. And he basically shows you what he wants to do. And so that was what worries me about the Greenland thing, which does seem ridiculous, obviously on its face. But it's like, look, he told you in the lead up to the 2020 election. And last time that if he lost, he was going to call it rig to try to challenge it. He told that you he was going to invade Venezuela. And then he did it.

Told you he was going to send people to El Salvador. He did it. Like, why wouldn't he do it? Well, see, here's where people kind of get fooled by Trump. He's a pathological liar. Right? Yeah. He lies about everything. But, and this is one of my Conway fortune cookie lines about Trump. Okay. He is at his most truthful and in fact is truthful when he's at his most malevolent.

When he is talking out of malevolence, saying bad things that he wants to do, that's when he's actually telling the truth. That's when you see him speaking from the heart. And it's, no, I mean, laugh, but it's true. No, I'm chuckling because of the fortune cookie. It's like the fortune cookie from hell. Yes, yeah, Trump is the fortune cookie from hell, yes. He would call it the Kung Fu fortune cookie because he's such a racist. All right, it's time for some life talk, some steak through the heart talk, some life insurance talk. You probably have it, but do you know how much you're paying for it?

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I mean, that's just like, I mean, to me, that's like, that was, right out of a Saturday Night Live cold open, Don Row Doctrine. But, you know, he's way past the comedy writers. Now, in terms of piracy, you cannot take a ship on the high seas. The United States of America through its entire history has been all about freedom of navigation of the seas. One of our first big naval engagements after the Revolutionary War were, you know, off the Barbary Coast, it's in, I guess, from the halls of Montezuma and it was fighting piracy off the Barbary coast, which of what is now Libya. You cannot just seize a ship on the high seas unless under international law you have some basis to do it. If you are at war, a legitimate actual shooting war, you can have a blockade

under certain circumstances. And there are all sorts of things you can do under international law, but you cannot just take somebody's ship because you want the oil or because you just decide, I just want to stop all traffic in and out of this country because we are running it. Okay. And that's piracy. I mean, I can be stand corrected. Maybe there's some admiralty expert and some international law expert who's going to tell me otherwise. But I don't think there's much of a case to be made that this is not piracy. And the U.S. has always been very strongly against piracy. And one of the things I litigated as a lawyer was the presumption against extraterritoriality of American law. And I won this big securities case 9-0-8-0 in the Supreme

Court. But this statute, 18 U.S.C. 1651, basically says if you fucking commit piracy anywhere on this planet and we find you in the United States, we can prosecute you and put you to jail for life. This has been the American position on piracy from basically, you know, the Adams administration, if not the Washington administration. Well, maybe another country should come arrest our president then. That's an idea. That's what we're doing now. If they have a law similar, if they have a law similar to that, I think they might actually have a case. I mean, you know, I mean, unless the Supreme Court of the United States thinks it can somehow create presidential immunity in Japan, I don't know.

Venezuela case, and the thing seems so stupid. It's just so stupid to me that I kind of hate even talking about it in these ideological terms. But, you know, you used to be a Republican, as I did. We had some affinity. Long time ago in the galaxy far far away. But somewhere in our bones is this affinity, this idea of like, we should get rid of communist dictators and try to give people of these countries freedom and opportunity. That's just not what is happening here. Here's what Trump posted yesterday. The interim authorities in Venezuela, who's the same people as the Chivistas, are now turning over 30 to 50 million barrels of sanctioned oil to us.

Now, I have two thoughts about this. Number one, since I watch Landman, I'm not a landman myself or an oil man, but I want you enough landman to know that that's actually not that many, that's not that much. That's like a week of the Permian Basin in total oil. And number two, it's like we're doing land piracy. We're not bringing freedom to the people of Venezuela. We're stealing their oil. It's extortion is what it is.

And Trump is very good, as we have seen at extortion. The tariffs are extortive. What he did with the law firms is extortive. And what he's doing here with Venezuela is extortive. The only thing about it is he loves to claim victory. So the price of paying off the extortion isn't necessarily that high, which is what we saw with the tariffs. He basically will cave on tariffs and if somebody comes and says, here, here's a nice award or here's, here's a little token of our appreciation and here's, we're cutting this just by a little bit, you know, he will cut the tariffs and the law firms, you know, I mean, I'm second to no one in criticizing these law firms for caving, but, you know, to some extent they thought the law firms thought they were winning by paying him funny money. Okay. But the problem is, is that it's a problem is that it. encourages him. It's like the bully. You give the bully a nickel, even though you have

$50 in your pocket. He's going to come back and he's going to bug somebody else for a nickel. And this is all just extortion. It is all extortion. He is instinctively a guy who runs a protection racket. And this is, he's running the U.S. government as a protection racket. And now he's going to make these people who are every bit as bad as Maduro and Chavez, you know, part of the the family at a low price. You mean the people that are now running Venezuela? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what he's doing.

Well, the new anchor of CBS Evening News had a different view of kind of the role of Trump and his Secretary of State in South America. I just want to play a little clip from that. This is last night. But for Rubio's hometown fans, which are many around here in Miami, it is a sign of how Florida, once an American punchline, has become a leader on the world stage. Marco Rubio, we salute you. You're the ultimate Florida man. Wait, this was on the CBS Evening News?

That was the end of the CBS Evening News last night. Marco Rubio, we salute you. I have not been following the CBS. The travails of Barry Rice. I remember, you know, and that's the way it is. Tuesday, January 17th, 1977, I'm Walter Cronkite. You know, I mean, we've come a long way from that. It's just obscene.

It's just obscene. I mean, just that's basically state-owned media. I feel bad for the people at Fox News now. They have competition. But no, I don't. Yeah, we salute you as, that's a little much. We salute you. We salute you.

Whose hands were bare or is it with a little hand or a big hand? I figured who has the big hands. I guess there's some reports, which they didn't tell us, obviously, because they're not briefing Congress. But there are several American troops injured. We don't exactly even know how many veterans were killed in the process. And, you know, now we're leaving the Chivista model. upstairs a charge. I don't know if it deserves a full, full salute.

Rapid fire isn't really your strength, but I want to get to rapid fire. But I did have what is rapid fire? Means I ask you questions and you give rapid answers. Okay, but usually I want to say, well, I want to think about that and there are pros and claims. Well, I'm going to let you think about it. The rap fire is coming next, but we've invoked the Trump Kennedy Center a couple of times. So I just want to let you cook on that for a second. Then we get to rapid fire. This is Rick Grinnell, our old friend. last night, Bella Fleck and the Fleckton said they weren't going to play at the Trump Kennedy Center.

Seth. And Rick Rennell wrote this, you just made it political and caved to the woke mob. The Trump Kennedy Center believes all people are welcome, except for trans people and migrants, Democrats and Republicans and people uninterested in politics. I kind of want to enjoy this one for a second because the cobwebs in the Trump Kennedy Center are going to bring me a little bit of joy. No. And they bring Claude some joy, it seems like. Sorry about Clyde. Clyde, come there. Hey.

Anyway, no, Clyde's not going to the Kennedy Center, the Trump Kennedy Center anytime soon. I had this great idea. That reminds me this I had this great idea for Sarah, like where we would do some kind of hidden bulwark event at the Trump Kennedy Center where we were made fun of him. But we do it like with a secret group and they think it was like, but it never came to fast. Okay. That's a good idea. If you're booked or you're an agent that's booking somebody. We can do a swap.

Yeah. We can do something where they kind of bring us in under the cloak of darkness. Bring the board in. And you can do a guest interview of me on stage. And we can make fun of Trump. And let's see how long it takes before the unwoke mob takes us off the stage. I don't think it will be very long. Like they think that they're going to get Bella Fleck and the fucktones.

But instead, we just have like pictures of his tiny mushroom penis like all over at the Kennedy Center. This is the thing I've always wanted to do. And everybody, every time I try to get the Lincoln Project to do it, I try to get some other people to do it. I always wanted, on his birthday, to get Stormy Daniels to dress up like Marilyn Monroe and do a take on happy birthday, Mr. President. Stormy would be good. What better place to do that than at the Trump Kennedy Center. We should get Stormy. You connect you with that.

You're running a campaign. I think that would be a song. I think that would be a song. You're running a campaign. So you've got other things to focus on. I'm sure if the listeners or anything like me we're like, we know George is the dog on a bone with Donald Trump. We know he's going to go

impeach him and do oversight and make fun of them. And that's good. That's important. We need more of that in Congress. Jamie Raskin does need a wingman. Yes. But some of this other stuff, I'm like, I don't know where George's at on all this. So I have a few things for you. Number one, what do you think the Democratic Party has screwed up over the last few years

policy-wise? Not like, oh, they're too weak. Like, obviously we know we wish that they had stronger backbones and arrested him and all that. But like, What policy-wise, what do you think the Democrats have screwed up over the last few years? Policy-wise? I mean, what policy have we been talking about over the last few years other than Trump? Biden administration. There's plenty of things you could look into too much stimulus.

The student loan thing, I didn't understand that. I mean, I understand it's great to give people stuff. And I think it's great. If I were a student, I would have loved to have my student loans paid off. But it just struck me as a little overreaching. I mean, I understand that it helps people and it promotes the economy to have people not have to, you know, pay off their student loans so they can take the money that they make when they leave college and they come to the big city and work. On the other hand, it's like politically, I didn't understand, like, why are you just pitching to a very small subset of people when a lot of other people who didn't go to college who are older than that? they have to pay off their loans for various things that they have.

I didn't understand the politics of that. And I thought it was a misstep because I didn't think, I don't think it helped them. And I didn't think it was necessarily the best expenditure of public money. That's one thing. I'm with you. That's fair. And they lost some ground with non-college folks. Absolutely.

That's like a crazy thing. It's like you're losing ground with non-college folks. So why are you doing giveaways to college? And I don't mean that we shouldn't be helping kids who have. you know, who come from poor backgrounds to get college educations, there are ways to do that while allowing people who are able to pay off their student loans, let them do that. They should. That reminds me, I'm going to ask you at the top of we got distracted.

I saw, after you announced, some of kind of the lefty social media types, particularly younger folks, saying, look, this is a blue district. Why would we have this guy? Why would we have a Republican run, a former Republican? Like, what do you say to that? And obviously you'll get some of that. Yeah, I think that's sort of been, I do think, I mean, you point out that they're young. Maybe there are some old people who said that.

I just happened to see younger people. No, they're usually, the older people, you know, are the ones, the older Democrats in this district are the ones who walk up to me on the street. The younger ones don't remember a time when Ronald Reagan talked about how important immigration was and how, like, his last speech in on. office about how, you know, what binds us together as Americans. He said it so eloquently that day in 1989 isn't ethnicity or race. It's a shared belief in freedom and democracy. They don't remember that. They don't remember the Tax Reform Act of 1986 where a Democratic Congress and a conservative Republican president, Ronald Reagan, raised taxes and made the tax system fairer. They don't remember a time when there was a Republicanism that wasn't fascistic. And they don't remember a time

when, frankly, there were conservative Democrats who were to the right of liberal Republicans like I do in the 1970s. And like they don't remember that somebody like me who became a Republican in the fall of 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan, that's 45 years ago. That's a long time. in politics. Forty-five months is a long-time in politics. Forty-five days can be a long-time in politics. That was a whole different world. And republicanism means, to me, something different than what we have today. And it even means something different to, you know, the 70-year-old Jewish female Democrat who lives down, you know, probably lives in this building that I'm in right now, okay because they remember um republicans that they liked they may remember john lindsay the mayor of who was

you know i'm not john lindsay they may remember um i think of a they remember all inspector they remember you know on the east side there was a republican assemblyman named roy goodman who everybody liked and democrats voted for john lindsay he was john lindsay was a good reference he was he was a republican who switched he was a republican who switched he is fresh and everyone else is tired i think was his it was different yeah i mean i didn't want to go john lizzie is like he's even before my time. Yeah, it's like, it's a different time. And they remember, they remember a sober Rudy Giuliani.

I mean, he had a lot of problems. Oh, boy, that's a long time ago. He's wet now. He was elected overwhelmingly as mayor here because the Democrats in this city thought he did a good job. Okay? Now, he wasn't perfect. He did some stuff people didn't like.

And he, you know, he was always an asshole, not the way he was today. But, you know. It's different era. What was it different here? I had two others just kind of on like New Yorkie type issues that are out there. This is going to be the question that determines how much I donate to you versus Cam. Where do I get that extra dollar? Yeah.

Where are you out on Yimbi versus NIMBY? Okay, where are you going to be on that? You know, allowing more buildings, you know, I think that in Congress, like, we're going to need to do stuff to make it easier for people to build, is my opinion. But maybe you're NIMBY. No, I'm not, I'm not NIMBY. I've never been NIMBY. I do think that we have to be, look, Zoran, Mundani got elected talking about affordability. And it's always been an issue in the city of New York.

It's an issue throughout the country. It's always been, particularly housing, has been an issue in this, one of the most, probably the most expensive housing market east of Hong Kong and west of London. You know, as a matter of basic economics, which I still believe in, I've always believed in. It was really reason why one of the. is why I became a Republican 45 years ago, you have to increase supply, okay? And you have to figure out ways to help increase supply. And so you can't do things that constrict supply, and that's kind of where there's a fault line there.

So, yeah, I'm not a nimbie person. On the other hand, you know, I do understand my favorite mayoral candidate of all time in this city was the rent is too damn high guy. I remember him? Yeah. Yeah, the rent is too damn high. I love him. You know, talk about message discipline. He was fucking great.

It is too damn high. Well, what is your position on taxes? Rent is too damn high. You mentioned Zoran. Where are you out in the mayor in the mayor's race? You know, I have to say he's a remarkable figure. I mean, he really is a political talent of, you know, not Obama level, but he's pretty good there. I hope something good comes of him.

I mean, the shit he said about Israel. makes you want to pull your hair out and understand how people feel about that. But, you know, New York needs him to be successful. And I think in order for him to be successful, he may have to trim his sales in some ways and he's got to reach out to Jewish people and he's got to, it can't just pitch to the DSA types in Brooklyn. All right. So, but we'll see how this goes. We'll see how this goes. He's a very smart guy. And he's surrounded, I think, by smart people. and we'll see how this goes. And for the sake of the city in New York, I hope it goes well. Last one there. Then we'll get to some New York rapid fire, fun questions. But you mentioned

the Jewish issue. Cameron is running in the district was just over in the West Bank. I mean, he has been very vocal about, you know, saying that the U.S. is supporting Israel too much. It's kind of weird that that became a hotly contested issue in the mayor's race since the mayor of New York doesn't have a huge oversight over U.S. policy towards Israel, but Congress does. So, like, where are you at on that? Look, I mean, I support Israel. I always strongly supported Israel. I am not a BB fan at all in the slightest. And, you know, I think Khamas is absolutely evil. And I think Israel has the absolute right to defend itself to exist. On the other hand, I think some of the conduct of the Gaza war, particularly as time went on, crossed some boundaries that I think were wrong, A and B was not in the best interest of Israel to cross. And I don't think it advanced, I mean, again, I'm thousands of miles away, but I was following along and listening to some lots of Israeli military experts and talk about this. And, you know, I don't think they help themselves. And I'm glad it's sort of at least over, at least for now. And we'll see

how it goes. Here's my fun one. So you had someone tweeted, I saw this, that George Conway has the confidence of someone who's in month three on GLP once. And so I want to, I don't know if you have a response to them. Are you fit? Are you ready? Are you confidence because you're looking trimmed? I'm like, I'm like, do you ever see those like Nixon for president? 2000 things tan, rested and ready after he died?

Tans rest and ready. I guess that's, that's more position. Your New York favorite musician, you're a guitarist yourself. You're now in New York. I want a New York City musician from you. A New York City music. musician. You can't have the boss. He's Jersey. No, I mean, I just associate New York with, and you know, singer is music. I mean, I just listen to a lot of Frank Sinatra, and I know he's from

Jersey, but I associate him with New York. I think of him when I come to New York. I think of him at the end of every Yankees game when they win and they play, you know, New York, New York. So I'm just going to, the first name that comes to my head is Frank Sinatra. Are you Knicks at all or just Rangers? Are you monitoring the Knicks and what's happening? Nix. Yes, I do Nix as well. I am not as much of a basketball fan as I am a hockey fan. I've always been a hockey fan. Why is that? Did you play hockey as a kid? What was it about hockey? I did play. I played hockey in Massachusetts. I played high school hockey as a kid. And then one of my, I was talking to a friend of mine who's in this district who maxed out, who helped with antipsychopac. He gave a lot of money to ICOS. Anti-Sycopac. And he lives in this district. And he was just, telling me that he plays ice hockey at Hudson Yards. And it's one of the things like when I worked at Wachtell Lipton,

I never had time to do anything like that. And now it's like, you know, I have more time. As when we're talking, even though I'm running, I'm going to get some gear and suit up and play over. You know our FBI director is a hockey player. Do you want to challenge him to kind of a skate off? He can come up. Yeah, he can come up.

We can have a little, we can have a little contest up here at Hudson Yards at the rink here. I would love to see that. All right. Here's my last thing. I forgot to actually mention. I wanted to leave you at this, because I think this is something that you've talked about in your lunch and what you want to do. By the way, my consultants will absolutely fire me if I don't say at least five times, www. George Conwayfor Congress.com. www. Georgecomway for Congress.com. Did you get that? And you don't need consultants. Don't be pushed around by these people.

Okay, George, you've been out there. No, no, no. Consultants are great because they're getting bullied. What's great about the consultants, is I don't have to figure out where I'm going at any given moment. That is important. Like, they told me you have to talk to Tim at 10 o'clock. If nobody hadn't told me that, you'd be looking at a blank screen. That's great.

As somebody who had to deal with scheduling you for podcasts before you had consultants, massive upgrade. No, I was a total nightmare. I mean, the poor people at Sauras people used to pull their hair out of me. He's like, oh, I'm sorry, I have to brush my teeth at 12 o'clock. My last serious thing I want you to leave people with is we are aligned that this guy is a vampire and you've got to keep fighting all the way till it's over till the last dog dies, so to speak, metaphorically. Yes. After that, though, you've mentioned this about how what is an important thing for your role in as if you got into Congress, as a lawyer, is like figuring out how to put some new rules in place, just prevent this from happening again.

Just give us like a brief pitch on what that would look like because that's something that I struggle with. Yeah. I mean, look, I mean, obviously the War Powers Act, we need to figure out a way to make it more self-enforcing and self-executing. I haven't thought about exactly how you do that. But I'm sure there are proposals over the years that we can kind of resurrect. Another is we have to really, really create some of these rules about how the White House interacts with the Justice Department have to really, really be put into legislation. So we don't have, we can't have. have a president ordering up prosecutions of political enemies. And that has a corral of effect will be that when people who are political enemies of the president get prosecuted, you can point to these protections to say this wasn't political. So that's something that's very important. Another one that comes to mind has to do with the application of Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, if you go to it, basically says that the cabinet is the default body to determine whether the president is a psychopath, a psycholunatic, or physically unfitly unfit to carry

out the duties of his office. But of course, no Trump cabinet will ever make, this guy could be hauled in drooling on a stretcher, and they're going to say, Mr. President, you are so powerful and wonderful, you know, they're never, ever going to make the finding, even if it's apparent to anybody with half a brain that the guy is done, which he, I think he is now. frankly, he's just totally, he's just a babbling, dribbling, fool, and he's totally incapable of carrying out his duties in office. But anyway, get back to Section 4 of the 25th minute, it allows Congress to legislate a different body, create a body that makes that determination. It could be, for example, a body of psychiatric and medical experts

can make that determination, and you'd have some kind of an appointment system for them so that they would be apolitical, and they could make a judgment at any given time that, wait a minute, we got to haul this guy in here to conduct an exam and bring them up the wall to read and check them out and say, sorry, bye, next. And that's something, we need that now. We absolutely need that now. And for all these fucking Republicans who were talking, including Trump, we're talking about sleepy Joe Biden and Joe Biden this. It's like, well, that would apply to that would apply to the next Joe Biden, too, if you think. If you, I mean, I don't believe the comparison.

I mean, it was bullshit the attorney to make Biden the equivalent of Trump, where Trump is clearly way beyond any measure of sanity. But this is something that we should have, no matter who the president is. And there are lots of things like that that we can work on. And that requires, as I say, lawyering. It does. And it's going to require people that are focused on it in Congress because the next Democratic president can't run on this kind of thing. And you can talk about it, but it can't be the main thing.

They've got to run on things that are more broadly important, but you need people in Congress. We're going to focus on these long-tee reforms. Who are going to push this right? Okay, www. George Conway for Congress, stop. There he is. He's George Conway. He used to do a podcast with Sarah Longwell.

He's running against someone who used to do a podcast with me. So a lot of tensions in the Bullark office over this. There are a couple other folks running in the race as well. well. Check them all out. Choice is yours. He's George Conway. We'll see you all back here for another podcast tomorrow. Thank you, Tim. Always always fun. I'm looking forward to it. We'll see you all then. See you back here soon, George. Bye. The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.