The Bulwark Podcast - Jane Coaston: Pod Save Michigan

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

The polling was way off, but suburban Dem voters in Michigan nonetheless showed that they’re sick of the party establishment and enraged by Trump, the war, the lies, and the corruption. AIPAC didn���t read the room. But party leaders are sounding united behind El-Sayed and Jane predicts he’ll bring a Mamdani-like energy to his campaign against Mike Rogers. Meanwhile, Republicans are sticking with sh*tbag Max Miller. Plus: Federal agents are threatening Americans for speaking out against ICE, Vance is always looking for a way to signal that he hates the war, and what other former podcast hosts can try to segue to elected office? Jane Coaston joins Tim Miller.show notes: Jane's podcast, "What A Day" El-Sayed with influencers Monday night Photo of Chuck Edwards Function provides 160+ lab tests for $1/day and member pricing on advanced imaging. Join at functionhealth.com/THEBULWARK and use gift code THEBULWARK25.  #FunctionPartner

Welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. A few scheduling notes. The pot was out a little late yesterday. And I think it might be out a little bit late today. We're back from vacation. We're working out the kinks. Today's guest had a personal issue. We're scrambling. It's like, who do I call in an emergency, a big Michigan moment? Many people. But who answers the phone at 6.30 a.m. Pacific time. Jane Koston, host of What a Day podcast, friend of the show. Thank you, Jane. Greatly appreciate it. Go Blue. Great to be back. And yeah, it is the first week of August, which I think we forget about in terms of like, you know, that's summer. That's like, you know, if you are like chomping at the bit for a politics podcast on August 5th. At 3.30 in the afternoon. Well, we salute you. Yeah, we appreciate you. We appreciate all of the listeners to the Bullwark daily every day.

It's daily. But, you know, 3.30 comes out of fourth. It's okay. We're going to do our best. We'll get it back going once school's in, you know, because you're going to need it for school pickup. Because you need to listen to a real human podcast during school pickup instead of the Sam Altman-Chatch, GBT, AI podcast, you know? So we got to make sure. I still love that he's at no point has to have been like you could talk to your kids. Like all of his proposals sound kind of like, you know, on the Calvin and Hobbs comic strip, how like the Calvin's dad is always like, well, just set up the Christmas tree in the garage and you can pretend it has lights.

Like all of Sam Altman's suggestions sound like that. It's concerning. It's very worrying. But, you know, it wouldn't be that concerning if he's just weird. There are a lot of weirdos that are a little weird out there in the world. It's just, it's all concerning when they hold the future society in their hands. Obviously, the big news of the morning here of the day is the results in the Michigan Senate race yesterday. People are expecting, because of the polls, a significant win from Odell said, maybe double digits.

I was expecting that. That did not happen. There was an Anne-Seltzer-style poll error in Michigan. The way that these polls control the narratives and the discourse is probably something we should reflect on as commentators. So it's kind of like had the polls been showing Haley up and Abdul wins, it would just be like progressive DSA, shock, earthquake. And now it's kind of like, ooh, is there some weakness?

But anyway, Abdul is up by 1% at the time of this taping. Lurie's has been called the AP. But it's just going to be a much narrower victory than expected. I've got a bunch of takeaways. What are yours? I've got some micro and some macro. thoughts. Micro thoughts is that Michigan is a weird state. Like Michigan, it's a state in which Democrats can hold a trifecta and Trump can win it. Like that, that's the state of Michigan.

And so I kind of expected this race to be tight, especially with so much attention, that's much money going into it. I think that, again, to your point, I think polling does us a disservice in how we talk about this race and especially how we talk about what this race means for people in the state of Michigan, the most majestic, wonderful state that there is. Like, what does this mean for Michiganders? What does this mean, you know, going forward? I'm interested to see the pivot towards the general election. You have a Republican Mike Rogers who told Semaphore that he, no one asks me about the Iran war and I don't know how I'd vote on anything because I don't care. I mean, I do. And so I'm interested to see what that pivot looks like. But I think overall, the challenge we have

is, and this is the macro, and this is kind of more of a meta point, is that we love storylines. We want there to be a story of how this is all happening, and the story has an obvious beginning, middle and end. There's kind of, you know,

heroes and villains. Yeah, exactly. And so we want a story of like progressive big win or progressive loss to establishment. Like, I think the top three stories in political right now are like, progressives are anxious. And I'm like, well, I mean,

everybody's anxious all the time. That's how we are. But like, is that actually what we should take away from this particular moment? I don't know. I think that what I'm getting from this is a anti-establishment rhetoric. I think it's, you know, Abdul spent a lot of time

talking about how he wanted to get away from democratic politics as usual. His opponent was being supported by Chuck Schumer, who now has come out with a statement being like, we're all united and fighting Trump, which is the right way to be. Like, you get, like, whoever it is, You also saw that from Pete Buttigieg

talking about like, we're all coming together We've got 90 days to go beat Trump and beat the Republican Party. That's what matters. But like I see this less as like progressive versus establishment and more about like the establishment being everybody in politics right now who everybody seems to hate. Which in the majestic Michigan,

which part of the state is it where the trees are just the right height? I believe, let's see. I have to do the mitten. It's like up here. Irish. And then you've got the UP where no one knows what happens up there. I know. I was like, can I think of an emergency UP guest? I was like, I have no idea. Because I've dueled it pretty poorly in most of rural Michigan, but did well in the UP. And I don't understand how to explain that. Listeners, if there are UP listeners there, please comment. I'm trying to understand the ways.

Also, please answer all of my questions about how many Wolverines you have seen. They are still up there. They are angry. And I want to know more. You said we like narratives and like storylines. I want to posit an idea. Maybe there is a story here, and it's the never-ending story. There is no beginning, middle, and end. It's the forever war. It's the 2015 Democratic presidential primary.

Are you ready for this? Here is the results of Bernie v. Hillary in 2016, 10 years ago. Bernie, 49.6. Hillary, 48.2. At the time of this taping, they're still supposed to trickle in. Abdul, 48.4, Haley, 47.5. Abdul plus one, Bernie, plus 1.4. It's the same. It's the same. Everything. All of the, what was the line that Rick Tyler did? All the takes and the trivia. All of the events and the two Trump terms. And it's just like the Democratic electorate in Michigan is basically like, you know, some of us are looking for radical left-wing change and others of us are looking for you know just kind of

middle of the road suburban mom trying to fight for liberal values and America's role in the world yeah I mean the thing is in Michigan a lot of those suburban moms are like fuck all of you also fuck ice also like we hate all of you like the general I think this is a sentiment that like you don't get enough of in mainstream media. But like when I talk to like older Dems, Dems living in like suburbs, Dems who like previously would have been, you know, like, you know,

they were Hillary supporters and they were Obama supporters. And, you know, they voted them like all these cycles. At this point, they are at the ramparts. And they have axes and they're mad. Like they are. unbelievably mad. People are posting things on Facebook where I'm like, maybe keep that

on signal. I agree. And that's why I thought actually Abdul is going to win by more than he did in addition to the polling, but just because I have anecdotally people in my life who are just more mainstream Dems, but are like I want to give these the DSA

but we should say, Abdul does not identify as a socialist or his DSA. But like just in the kind of broader definition of. Yeah, the colloquial, the factional kind of definition. You know, I want to give this kind of left populist brand a try because I'm so outraged. I'm so enraged. And I just, I just want punishment for my foes. And, you know, I want to hear the lamentations. You want to hear the lamentations of their women and their children.

And I'm like, I understand. Same. So I was expecting more. Black voters, older black voters are kind of countervailing point on this. In particular, you know, Haley last night when we were live is like, you know, down six or seven points. And then kind of the urban precincts of Wayne County come in. And, you know, she was, she's against landslide numbers there. And so, you know, that in addition to kind of rural, the rural is as another reason. And I guess obviously, you know, she had a nine to one spending advantage and then kind of the, I think that there is both a lot of evidence. that outside of the big metros,

black voters are less interested in the DSA populist left stuff than maybe there'd be in New York City. And also, Haley Stevens spent an ungodly amount of money on ads with Barack Obama saying nice things about her. And that obviously helped. Right.

I also think that there might be the same phenomena that we saw back in 2020 in South Carolina where you had African-American voters saying, we know what white people like. Like, we know what white people like. white people are going to vote for. And we know that white people are going to want 20-20 Joe Biden. Right. They don't know that that's what they want right now. As much as a- Right. So I think that there's an understanding. I mean, I think that that was also kind of this

underlying thing from Stevens's campaign was that, you know, Abdul can't win with independent, moderate voters. That it just, you know, he, it's this, I am the safer choice if you actually want to win the Senate race. August is National Wellness Month, but most health trends mean buying random gadgets, guessing at what actually works. I want to stop guessing and look at the data behind what's happening in my body. Your daily resilience leaves a clear data trail in your blood and function tracks the exact markers behind your energy and immunity.

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abdul that impressed me recently because I do think he's a little bit undervalued in some quarters And the concerns right there, I just, I'll just kind of list the concerns that people might have that I am thinking about. Is the under-polling performance just that Michigan's hard to poll? Is it, you know, just that, like, we're just still not that good at this? Is it something else? You know, is it an updated Bradley effect? You know, is there some kind of feeling that, you know, people didn't want to say to pollsters

that they don't feel comfortable voting for Abdul. I don't, you know, the Republicans are going to try to kind of racialize this, of course. Right. You know, or is there something else about him that caused the underpolling performance? That's something that concerns people. They're going to have a unity breakfast tomorrow morning, which is exciting? Love a unity breakfast. But is he going to put in the energy to go and get the Alyssa Slotkin voters?

It's important to remember Lizzo Lachin 1 in 2024. She gets a lot of shit from the left for some reason, but Kamala Harris Law, Altsos Soslaken 1, like that happened just two years ago. Can he go get those voters? And also, I think the Apo questions, is everything out? You know, are Republicans holding stuff on him? Those are kind of, I think, the concerns. Do you share any of those?

I mean, let me put my cards on the table. I've known Abdul for a while. He had a podcast here at Crooked Media. Indeed, he did. Indeed, he did. It was called America Dissected. We have more on that at the very end of the show. Yes.

So I've known him for a while. He and I have discussed such matters as weightlifting and working out, which, you know, bonds a person to another person forever. I think that he has the energy and the willingness. And I think that that's something else that is, I just said that, you know, we don't need to start an overarching narrative. But I think that what we, I am expecting to see from him is something similar to what we saw from Mumdani and New York. Obviously, very different race. But like a big thing that Mamdani did, which is underestimated, is that he tried really, really, really, really hard.

He was all over the place in York. Like, there was not a bodega in New York City that Mamdani did not wander into with a camera. He was in the streets. He was talking to people selling stuff. He was all over the place. He also wasn't strident. Like he wasn't above like he met with the rich finance guys. He tried to, he met with Jessica Tisch.

The cops. You know, like when he came on my show, he had a list of red tape that he wanted to cut, knowing how to please the host. Exactly. And so in comparison, Andrew Cuomo did not try in the same way. Like there was not the same like, I am here to win this race. I will talk to everybody and their dog and I will shake their dog's paw and the person's hand. I will do everything. You know, again, part of the anti-establishment attitude is also kind of an anti-gerentocracy attitude. I'm aware, Haley Stevens is not a elderly person. But I also, I also, you know, I also, think that the kind of like, let's go after every vote, let's talk to everybody, let's go

everywhere, let's do everything, the kind of thing you saw from Mdani and you've seen from candidates who are doing well in a bunch of different states, Democratic candidates who are doing well. Like, you know, we're going to talk about this, but like, you know, Josh Shapiro's in a meek-mill video. They will, you know, you got to go everywhere and you got to do everything, even if it doesn't seem like it's going to make sense. Like, I think that Abdul has shown a willingness to be in the fight and be completely aware of what people are going to say or what people are going to pretend that they are going to say or something like that. Because you're already seeing kind of like, oh, like, can he possibly win in this environment?

And it's like, yeah, he's doing it right now. And I think that the intersection of people who are mad at the establishment, people who are curious about a candidate who is talking so much about health care and is talking so much about health care in a state where that's a giant issue, I think that that will be an advantage for him. I think also, again, I keep thinking about this, how sometimes like more centrist outlets will talk about progressive Dems

and pretend that progressive Dems are going up against bizarreo Paul Ryan or like, bizarreo, whatever generic Republican meant in like 2013. They are not. like Abdul is going up against Donald Trump. Abdul is going up against Stephen Miller. Abdul is going up against J.D. Vance. Abdul is going up against the war in Iran. Abdul is going up against a massive rise in the cost of living

while some dude in the White House is like, I want an arch and everyone will be able to see it and you can't avoid my arch and I want it because it would be nice. Like we are in an environment that is about as, I mean, to your colleague Sarah Longwell's point, like we are below the bush line. At this point, we haven't even had a massive hurricane, but we're in like, we're in like Bizarro 2006. But the person at the center of it doesn't seem to know that and still thinks that what everyone wants is to hear from Donald Trump all the time when they don't.

Well, he might know and not care. But the Mike and the Mike Rogers point with the Republican Senate candidate, I do think a lot of people are making, are grading this race through like a 2014 or 2010 lens. where it's like Mike Rogers seems like he might be pretty good at getting those crossover Mitt Romney voters. It's like, oh, he has a national security profile. He's not crazy. He's not posting Q&N on stuff, you know, whatever he doesn't seem like overtly racist. And it's like he also is just not particularly talented. I mean, like, think about the politicians that have like managed to get out from under Trump and the Republican side.

It's like Susan Collins with this like long. longtime reputation locally in Maine of like being, you know, separating her brand from the party. We can all roll our eyes at that. But she worked hard at it over many years. And obviously the people of Maine know her. They all have met her. Brian Kemp, who like literally stood up to Trump on the insurrection. And is Georgia a good old boy, like right wing cultural Christian conservative? Like there's no like model for like a Mike Rogers to overperform like the rest of the party. And like you said, he's not, he's not distancing himself. Really. He's just kind of trying to avoid having to answer for all Trump's unpopular shit. I think it will be very talented

at taking that on in a debate, et cetera. If you have someone who literally said, I wanted to double check, who literally said to semaphore about where he stood on Trump's anti-weaponization fund. And I quote, I'm not talking about any of that stuff. I don't care. I mean, comma, I care. Like that, really? That's what we're doing? I'm not blown away by the political skills there. No, no.

And for, you know, for Michigan people, like this is somebody, like, this dude makes Rick Snyder look like some sort of like heretofore unseen genius. Like this is, we are not talking about 2010 and we're not talking about 2014. We're talking about a wildly unpopular president who is in the midst of a wildly unpopular War, the most unpopular war since that we started polling how wars do. And like, that's the environment we're in. That's

just what it is. The other thing about Abdul, I just wanted to mention, just from foreign policy perspective, I have to admit, like, me and Abdul have not shared workout routines. You know, I didn't, I have met at once, but I didn't, don't really know him that well. And I had kind of projected onto him

that he had the full suite of like lefty isolationist foreign policy views. And a couple of things I saw this week as I was kind of digging deeper on um that just surprised me pleasantly surprised me he's asked at ukraine um he said this when it comes to ukraine i think we're involved in a righteous struggle to protect a sovereign nation from being invaded by their neighbor that's completely consistent with international law hell yeah like that's not him dabbling any of the lefty horseshoe stuff about how we shouldn't support ukraine no no like he's not like code pink like no like he's

not like that's not what we're doing here and then obviously like this big issue in the race is is all this APEC money that comes in for Haley Stevens. I talked about that much on Monday. And I just am not any group trying to come in and put $30 million into a race like is going to come under criticism. Obviously, there's a lot of sensitivities around APEC because of anti-Semitism, et cetera. But like, I don't think that it was surprising that there was a backlash there, given what we've seen from the way Israel's prosecuted the war and just like the scale of that money in the primary. but you know sometimes some left populist Democrats, including one that's been mentioned earlier

who was on this very show and struggled a little bit with handling anti-Semitism questions. Finding the right tone can be a challenge. This is a longer clip than I usually play, but I think it's worth hearing all of it. Abdul this weekend was on MS and was really pushed on questions of whether his rhetoric has some anti-Semitic undertones.

Let's just listen to it, and then we'll get it on the other side. Are you worried that that framing, juxtaposing the Jewish, funding for the Jewish state against the needs of, in your own words, our own people, echoes an old anti-Semitic trope. Let me just be very, very clear. You know who benefits from guaranteed health care in this country, Jewish Americans?

The idea that somehow we are going to use the specter of anti-Semitism to defend what a foreign government is doing actually has, does a deep disservice to the well-being of Jewish Americans in this country. Judaism and the Jewish people are a light onto the world. beautiful faith, beautiful people, the contributions that they've made to this country alone are staggering. And I'm looking forward to standing with the Jewish community against anti-Semitism. After all, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are one in the same, and we need to take them on.

But we cannot sit idly by and ask, why is it that our $3.3 billion a year at baseline is used to fund apartheid at baseline, genocide over the last several years, a war we have no business fighting, with the attempt to annex the southern part of a neighboring country, country and then wonder why our kids' schools look like they did 50 years ago. The reality of this is that we cannot continue. You haven't made that same trade-off argument with regards to other items in the U.S.

is $800 billion. Oh, I have. You just don't cover it. No, no, no, I have. You just don't cover it. I'll say the same thing about the money we send to Egypt, which is where my family comes from. So if you want to go ahead and call me anti-Egyptian, go ahead and do that.

But the reality is that on principle, I don't think we should be sending unconditional foreign military aid to any government because none of us actually pay our- On principle, then, are you against ethno-religious states writ large? On principle, I absolutely am. I mean, I think that there are going to be people that are very big. Israel supporters that are obviously an equivalent the way that he characterized their actions. But outside of that, I think that's a, that's going to be a median voter view. And I think it was very skillful and earnest.

And he was doing talking points, but it felt very natural. Anyway, I was impressed with that exchange. Yeah. I mean, you have at this point the, and I've talked about this before, the conflation of Judaism and the Jewish state, which I'm aware that that is a long and complex history. I mean, something that people keep missing. And like, you already see like right wing commentators being like Jews will never support like this Democratic candidate. And I'm like, they did already. Most Jews are Democrats in the U.S.

Like, that's like, you know, some nice reform guy is obviously voting for a Democrat. That's like, I will say this. The most people I know who are in DSA are Jewish American. Like, that's just a thing that exists. And so I think the part of the clip that I was particularly taken by was how he made the point that, like, we shouldn't be giving unconditional aid to anyone. Like that, you know, we shouldn't be doing this in Egypt. We should not be doing it. I mean, especially we're in the midst of, you know, giving so much money to the Saudis,

giving so much money to a host of countries for reasons. And especially as the Israeli government made the calculation, a very clear calculation, that it needed to appeal to America's right. And it needed to do that over and over and over again. Like Netanyahu's, you know, there's been some really great reporting talking about, like Netanyahu speaking before Congress and basically going after. Obama while Obama is in office. And like that being a very clear calculation to make.

I mean, the fact that you have the settler movements in Israel, you've got Ben Gavir being one of the shittiest people in global politics, he just is. And so. He's standing up. I know. And so I think like there are a lot of people in Michigan and elsewhere that can well understand the difference between Jewish Americans and a particular. particular Israeli state. Like, we are not talking about the Israeli state of Itzakrabin. We are talking

about the Israeli state as it exists, doing this stuff, which we do not like. This would be different if it was 2024, maybe, and we're coming off of October 7th. I just think it's a strategic matter, just even if you just kind of separate out moral or personal views on what's happening in the region. With the Iran war ongoing, like, if the Republicans decide to try to use this, issue to go after him. I think it is a massive backfire. Kind of like reminds me of us establishment Republicans going after

Trump for being racist and like attacking him over that. And Republican voters are like, oh, you're telling me he's racist. I feel like if Mike Rogers wants to be like, oh, you know, Abdul al-Sayyad doesn't support our ally Israel, though a lot of voters are going to be like, oh, really?

Oh, thank. I appreciate that. So anyway, I just think that's where we are. When we were kids, You know, way back in the day, in the Halcyon days, the beautiful early 90s. Oh, summer meant freedom. We froliced. We're ponds. We were bored.

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is busy, includes up to a 20 gigabyte hotspot, cable device required, availability, speed, and coverage, various cementmobile.com for details. I want to move on to another very important race that happened to Michigan last night. It's a Michigan 8th Republican primaries. The Democrat in that seat is somebody I really like. Krista McDonald-Rivitt. People should check her out if they don't know. They represent Flint and Saginaw.

The primary was between a guy named Amir Hassan, who Trump had endorsed. I want to repeat that, Amir Hassan. Trump endorsed him. U.S. Navy vet, former federal law enforcement officer. there was another candidate who's damn I don't remember. And then there was Republican Thomas J. Smith. Thomas J. Smith raised no money, had no endorsements, dropped out of the race. Endorsed someone else.

Endorsed Republican Al Lemmo. And appeared in a Facebook video wearing a lemo for Congress hat. Who won this Republican primary, Tim? So there was Al Lemo, who was endorsed by Thomas Smith, and then Amir Hassan, who's endorsed by Trump. Thomas Smith won it on a landslide Thomas J. Smith And, you know,

I don't want to pretend like I'm an expert of what's going on in the Republican primary Michigan 8th, but I'm a person who has been an observer of the Republican base over the years. And I do wonder if they looked at Amir Hassan and were like, no, no thanks. I guess I'll just vote for Mr. Thomas J. Smith.

Who submitted his effort to withdraw from the contest in like a written letter because he couldn't log into the portal to figure it out and I'm like, Homest among us has been unable to log into a portal

to drop out of a race or do anything. God, I spent an hour trying to log on to the Minecraft portal so I could play with my daughter on two different computers and let me tell you, I've never felt older in my entire life and just put me in the gray.

So Christopher Salver has Thomas J. Smith up. There are a few little anecdotes and I think that the NRS put out a statement today calling Abdul Sayed, like Abdul Ramah, like his long Muslim name, Amir Hassan gets the Trump endorsement. It's not enough to overcome, let's say, the implicit bias to be generous, the people of Michigan 8, the Republican voters of Michigan 8.

I don't think that it takes like a deep investigation to identify some racism and Islamophobia still percolating in the Republican base. There might be gambling in this establishment, Tim. There just might be some gambling happening in this establishment. I want to talk about our friend Max Miller. Oh, boy. I'm going to tell you. The Max Miller story, this piece of shit has been a piece of shit for years.

And it's one of those things. It's wild. It's like, I'm glad he's getting his comeuppance. But I've been ranting about Max Miller for months now. You and George Santos. Oh, God. No, George Santo. He yelled that Max Miller was a wife beater like years ago.

Yeah, okay. Well, George might even beat me to the punch. I never said anything nice about George on this podcast. I was hoping you were to say George Conno, who's back in the fold. Max, that's just, you know, throw scalding hot water and all the accusations about his ex-wife, daughter of Senator Bernie Marano. But there was a previous accusation by Trump's spokesperson. Yeah, Stephanie Grisham. You know, who said that she was roughed up by Max Miller.

She was terrified of him. And she reportedly told President Trump and Melani about this, and they did not care because, of course, they didn't. But here's what gets me. And I will say the quotes from Bernie Marino that he gave to TMZ totally made sense of him being like, I haven't said very much about this because my daughter does not want this. She doesn't, you know, she hasn't made any public statements, but he makes a point. Like, Max Miller is doing a publicity tour. And, you know, there are many people I think should shut the fuck up. Like just like a long and healthy list of people who should shut the fuck up.

But Max Miller will not shut the fuck up. And he went on Tapper yesterday. I've got a clip from Jake Tapper. Do you want to play that or do you have a broad thought before we do? No, no, we should play the clip from a Jake Tapper. There are so many clips to choose from. On TNL, we chose the one where he was asked to respond to Bernie Marino's claim that he would not let his daughter have her beloved bunny. Max Miller denied the two-year-old daughter of the bunny.

But this other clip was, I think, even more alarming talking about what the daughter allegedly said about Max Miller. Let's listen. Now, your ex-wife stated to police that your child told her in the days leading up to the discovery of the injury, quote, Daddy Kill You. And your ex-wife also said your child had said, Daddy Angry and Daddy's House is scary. Now, according to your wife, your daughter articulated these statements to children and family services. So can you explain why your child may have said those things? Jake, I wish you could talk to my beautiful baby girl. She can't string together sentences like that.

She's two and a half years old. She doesn't have the ability to articulate any of what you just said. That is an entire fabrication of the truth. I have actual video, actual documentation. I have been through two investigations. You just told me that she had said that she was scared to go to Mommy's house. She is, and I have video of it. But now you're saying that she's not capable of saying, Daddy, kill you?

I mean, it seems like she's either able to say one but not the other. That doesn't make sense. Jake, to be very direct, this is incredibly disturbing. I am not going to my child to say, Daddy, kill you. You have to look at the timing of everything that is taking place, right? What about due process? Good for Jake. Could this guy look more like a wife beater?

he's doing a thing where he is like already bored. Like he's already bored with whatever Jake Tapper is going to ask him. He's already like, oh, like, how dare you ask me about this woman who I keep portraying as being deeply mentally ill? So to that point, he went on this sack of shit. Like, let's take aside the allegations that have been made by Emily Marina. We already knew, based on Politico's reporting from 2024, that people in. in Trump's orbit, we're like, this guy kind of sucks, and he's drunk all the time. And so we already knew this. So he goes on Newsmax today, where, you know, the best and the brightest go.

And he claims that his former wife was so unwell that Ernie Moreno tried to pay her $5 million to just go away, which, to his credit, the host of Newsmax, Rob Finnerty, had to stop the interview and be like, what? What are we even talking about? So he is saying, and let's also keep in mind that Max Miller keeps saying like, oh, you know, I've got all this dirt on Bernie Moreno and he doesn't want that out. And that's why he's doing all of this. And I'm like, what?

What? You're a sack of shit. What? I don't even know. That talking point made sense for when he was silent. That doesn't make any sense now. No, it doesn't make any sense now. And especially because we know that based on the court documents that Miller has been threatening both Moreno and also his ex-wife and also his ex-wife's attorney and also his ex-wife's attorney's fiance.

Like all of this is just baffling to me. And I think it was Sam Stein who tweeted a couple days ago, I understand better why Moreno wasn't saying anything. he wants to protect his family. Why Mike Johnson, who has the worst job in the world and lives in hell of his own making, why Mike Johnson is like, well, this isn't really for me to get into. This isn't really for me to take part in. This isn't really a thing I need to worry about. Apparently, he told Politico, quote, there's all sorts of domestic events going on with 435 members of Congress all the time. It's not my business to get engaged in it. What? We have an allegation that a two-year-old girl was saying

Daddy kill you to their mother. A man allegedly broke the collarbone of a child. Yeah. And you're like, nothing to see, nothing to do with me. I don't know if this has changed since yesterday, so somebody we can correct it and post if needed, but

like, I don't think a single House Republican has still called on Max to leave. There have been several Senate Republicans now, you know, I think who followed up on Moreno. Johnson, to your point said that the claims are serious, but he wanted the House Ethics Committee to run its course. I mean, he's running for re-election right now.

How could you possibly support this person for re-election based on these allegations? But if you think Mike Johnson is bad, it's impossible to go any lower than the President of the United States, who's the most, also the most despicable person on the planet. Can't be done. Last night, he was on the tarmac and was asked about this. Here's what Trump said. I hope he's able to work it out.

I feel badly for him. To your point, Trump only feels badly. He only has empathy for the shittiest men in the world. That's it. Oh, and Galane Maxwell. I feel badly for him. Why? Have you ever heard Trump say that about anybody?

I feel badly for, I mean, maybe as an insult. But, like, as a genuine, I feel badly for him? He didn't say I feel badly for her, for his daughter, for Bernie. I feel badly for Max Miller. Like, that's the other thing is that Bernie Moreno is a Republican senator from the state of Ohio. He is like very right way. I remember his race. Yeah.

It's an intra-GOP, intra-Ohio. Drama sounds stupid. Like, this is not drama. This is like a horrible family situation involving allegations of both spousal abuse and child abuse. It is terrible. And for Trump to look at the situation to be like, House rep. in tight race who, you know, we could probably find somebody else by the deadline and figure this out.

Or seated Republican Senator, who's been one of my biggest supporters? Too badly for a shitbag guy. I got to go with a shitbag. I feel badly for the shitbag. Anytime somebody gets accused of shitbaggery, I have that's the one thing that strikes my inner empathy cord if you're Donald Trump. He's just such a sick person. We'll see what happens with Max Miller.

but all these people are so sick and all the people getting on their fucking high horse over Graham Platner are just so disgusting. You mentioned that there still is time to move on in certain cases and that's happened for another candidate, Chuck Edwards. A real quick, forget to Chuck Edwards, I got distracted. When you were talking about Newsmax, did you see the story that Newsmax has entered into a partnership with meta-AI?

Yeah, I did see that. I did. If you didn't already have concerns, yesterday's podcast was about AI, about kind of how this advanced intelligence, is going to kind of learn things and educate your children and educate you, they want to make sure that they're like really kind of locked into the mainframe of newsmax. I can't wait to ask meta-AI who won the 2020 presidential election and just have it just be like, back to Chuck Edwards. This one's a little goofier. I mean, it's dark in its own way,

but it's not really quite maximal or dark. How could it be? Chuck Edwards is a congressman in Western North Carolina. There's a great, one of my favorite Democratic, candidates this year. It's a guy named Jamie Egger who's running in that district. Check him out who you guys haven't. Shout out to him. Chuck is the incumbent,

but decided last night that he's not going to run again. This comes after a series of stories discussing some pretty strange behavior that he engaged in with female staffers. He is alleged to have given his female staffers

personalized guns and creepy poems. Yeah, pink-hand guns. Which, you know, no. He attempted to invite himself over to a female staffer's house to decorate her Christmas tree. And I was like, where's your key? I'll just come on in as his tradition. He posted on social at 3.32 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, after much prayer and reflection, I've decided to withdraw from my re-election campaign. I'm very curious about all the prayer and the reflecting.

The other thing about this, I mean, too, I think Jake Tapper made this point. I recommend if you do not know what Chuck Edwards looks like, I recommend just Googling him. Just imagine, if you want- And for the YouTube viewers, we'll just put him on the screen right now. Just imagine, like, this person being like, I'm going to give my 22-year-old female staffer tickets to go see Adam Sandler with me. Just like- I'm going to decorate her Christmas tree and go over into her. Two-tapters point. Like, what did? Really?

You're going to give her a pink handgun? No. One of the cases he booked and paid for massages and spa treatments for a staffer, took her to the casino, paid for her to gamble. After the casino trip, she texted thanking Edwards. He printed out the text, drew a heart next to it, and wrote, perhaps my proudest personal moment. When that staffer later left the office,

he hand wrote her a note that included the following. I only wish that I could find the time in words to describe how much I will always cherish what I consider a deep friendship. Can something be like off the charts creepy and like just a little sad, make you feel a little sad for them at the same time? Yeah. Yeah, this is, this is, you know,

the first act of death of a salesman, kind of real. real. This is a tragedy. Dislike. Well, Chuck Edwards is gone. North Carolina. 11 Republicans, and their wisdom will have a meeting an annoying to successor.

Who hopefully will get schlonged by Jamie Acre. And who hopefully will not be the type of person to print out text messages from young staffers and put hearts next to them in like the cringest boomer behavior in history. I want to talk to you about this, this ICE report in the Wall Street Journal. because, you know, it's something we've, I think, talk about every time you're on because it's something that both of us are passionate about. We care about free speech. We do. I'm a free speech, maybe even, am I an absolutist?

I don't know. I'm certainly an evangelist. And so it was frustrating, big fan. Frustrating in 2024 when, you know, all these people got on board Trump and they're like, we have to be for Trump because he's going to be the free speech president because Joe Biden was against free speech because something, something. like a mid-level staffer wrote to a mid-level... It was always like something, something, Twitter, something, something, COVID. It was like a mid-level staffer wrote to a mid-level staffer at Facebook and was like, could you please take this down?

And like the Facebook staffer could have just said no, but they did take it down. And that was like the greatest assault on free speech in history. Mm-hmm. Well, it's terrible that all of these deeply impassioned free speech advocates have largely, I don't know, like gotten extremely busy. I'm wondering what they're doing. Like what are all the people who told us about the critical nature of Trump's protections of free speech and how this is going to be the free speech administration?

Like I remember when Turkish PhD student Romina Ozturk was arrested for co-authoring an op-ed in the student newspaper. Co-authoring. Co-authoring. That was the thing that got me. It wasn't just her. She co-authored an op-ed, which I have now read multiple times. It is like Marco Rubio trying to pretend like, oh, there's all. Other stuff you just don't know about.

Like, no, no, it was the op-ed and I was the stupidest fucking thing that one of the stupidest fucking things that has ever happened. But, like, you know, our valiant free speech defenders, I think around that time seemed to have gotten like super busy. I'm sure, you know, they're like knee-deep in a law and order rewatch, whom's among us. You know, they'll come back around like 2029. That's for you. Yeah. Well, who knows? Maybe they'll comment on this Wall Street Journal report.

I'd like to read some of it. ICE has deployed a round-the-clock digital dragnet to scour the internet from Facebook to Instagram to X for speech that could endanger the agency's mission. The government's paid millions of our money to private contractors to surface everything from potential threats to agents and activities that could disrupt ICE's operations and other criticisms of the agency. The program in snared U.S. citizens and activist groups, contractors prepare daily reports and dossiers on threat actors and, identifying the poster's name, location, date of birth, workplace, social security number, vehicle registration and criminal history if available to unmask anonymous critics. DHS has sent hundreds of subpoenas to social media companies. Like Reddit.

We're talking about Reddit posts also. Let's be very clear. We are talking in part about someone who posted three times on Reddit that ACAB includes ICE or something like that. Here's one from our friends at fire, the only legit free speech organization out there. They're representing a client named David Strever. Streber wrote an email to Ice Director Todd Lyons after Alex Preddy's death and said, you are a monstrous human being. Five months later, he was harassed by a special agent on his vacation.

He's tracked down on a vacation. They didn't even come to his house. They were, I guess, surveilling him. Oh, they did go. They went to both his hotel in New York and went to his home and gave his wife a notice saying that he may be in violation of things. federal law. That's what the feds are doing now, is that they are showing up at the houses of people who posted something they don't like and saying that you have to sign a letter saying that you know

that you may have violated federal law. Like, let me read the email that he sent to Todd Lines. And Tim, you tell me if this is an email, like, let's say if you received it, if you would be thinking, I should send agents of the state after this man. Tim, you're a public. figure, I'm assuming you get emails from crazy people all the time. I do. Okay, so this is what David Strever sent. You're a monstrous human being and will go down in history as America's Reinhard Hadrick, the butcher.

The way you are protecting the obvious execution in Minnesota, even as we see the videos, will lead to your downfall. Even Trump will turn on you before the end, and you will be a sad, despised man who eats himself alive with shame at your own pathetic weakness. You will never know peace. You will seek to lose yourself to escape the burden of knowing the truth about yourself, But wherever you go, you will find yourself. You will torment yourself until your last day on earth.

Now, that is a great email. I wish I had trolls like that. Most of my trolls are like, fag breath or gay. Yeah. Yeah, like at a certain point, yeah. Like, this is like, even Trump will turn on you before the end, probably. But, like, that is the email that was sent. And when Striever, Striever's on vacation, let's say.

Strievers on vacation. He's in Finland with his daughter. And he sees a ring camera, or actually the nest video, shows these agents like showing up. His wife is an Episcopal priest. So she's wearing her like clerical collar when they show up. They give her this warning notice that explained in underlying capital letters printed on the official federal stationery from ICE and DHS with respect to Striever that you may be in violation of federal law. The notice insists that he should, quote, promptly discontinue his behavior and warns that the notice will be, quote, into consideration if he, quote, continues to be involved in, quote, criminal activities. He sent an email.

He sent a mean email. He sent a mean email to a federal employee. Like, come on. What's what these guys are doing? I mean, you know, it's like it's a reflecting pool case, you know, going after a guy falsely. So, anyway, I don't know. Come at me, bro, I guess I would say to the ICE and DHS people. I echo everything that was written in that email.

male, I do think that these are monstrous beings. We'll never know peace. So you wanted to do Reflecting Pool talk, but we are running out of time and I really want to do J.D. Vance Talk. So you just want to do hot, rapid fire on Reflecting Pool? Yeah. Just very quickly, Janine Puro, she may not lose her job over this, but it would be the idea that you would fire this woman because she cannot manufacture a case against individuals. Like, let's keep in mind, we're talking about civilians. Like, this is not like, you know, it's bad enough when you're trying to.

to get Letitia James or James Comey, you're just grabbing random people and threatening them with 10 years in prison for doing something that you're well aware they did not do. And Trump is like, no, no, I want that. I've decided that. We built a whole permission structure for you to do that. Chris Hayes showed some of the footage of Jesse Waters being like, you know, protesters who destroyed the reflecting pool. You're on notice because Janine Piro's coming. Like, these are again. Terrible people, and this is a sick, sad world. But let's talk about J.D. Vance and Mark Thiessen and in-self. I'd like to add to this really quick.

Speaking of monstrous human beings, Doug Bergum, you're a monstrous human being. You need to go home to North Dakota, reconnect with Plains Values, talk to your family and think about your actions. Because smearing a person that the federal government was going to put in jail for 10 years, for something he did not do, want to put in jail for 10 years. And you're out there going after this random Olympian from the perch of the federal government, it's disgusting what he did. And then still afterwards being like,

we know that this happened and we're working. No, no, you don't because you know it didn't. I think the grossest thing that Doug Bergam has done and it's infecting his position in the cabinet rankings. J.D. Vance, I just thought this was funny. There was a tweet this morning. It's not really that good of a joke. At first I laughed because I'm susceptible to any jokes at Mark Tieson's expense.

And Jady Vance made one. And so I laughed. But then I kind of read it again and I was like, the joke doesn't actually make any sense. because Jady Vance is not good at jokes. But I just think it's interesting because it speaks. There's a lot of subtext here. Right.

Well, it's actually about foreign policy. Somehow. Yeah, it's actually about foreign policy. It seems like it's about burritos. On the service, it's about burritos. But it's actually about the Iran war. Andrew Colvitt, a TPSA, wrote that one of the college students there is upset about affordability.

A burrito shouldn't cost $20. Mark Tyson quote tweeted him. Martisan's the Washington Post columnist. Who loves more. He loves war. He believes that we are at the 20-yard line of the Iran War and that what we need to do is war harder because war is great.

He loves war. Big fan. Trump advisor as well as Washington Post columnist. I'm not exactly sure how that works over there the Washington Post called Jeff Bezos, but he's been calling Trump, giving advice on the war. Teeson quote tweeted, Andrew, talking about the college student upset about burrito prices and wrote this. Crimea River, the burritos in the college cafeteria are included in your meal plan. J.D. Vance then quote tweeted

Mark Tieson and wrote, I'm surprised to hear Mark say this. If you've ever met him in person, it's quite obvious the man has never missed a burrito. I think it's, I want to shout out Andrew Egger, who on the office Slack wrote to this J.D. Vance is taking GLP ones and then pulling up the ladder behind him

so that nobody else can take Ozempic after me. Okay? I was a fat boy until three years ago. Yeah, which apparently Trump is very, impressed by this. This is a genuine thing that there's some reporting that as Trump decides if he's going to support Vance or support Marco Rubio for 2028, part of the appeal of Vance is his weight loss, which I have said that, you know, Donald Trump is a deeply heterosexual person, but also our most gay-coded president ever. Like by far. Well, in the last two centuries. Yeah. We don't need to get into that. It's just interesting, because,

Because J.D. Vance deeply, deeply wants to signal to the world that he knows that the Iran war is stupid. But he can't make fun of Donald Trump. He cannot criticize Marco Rubio. He cannot criticize Pete Hegsa. He cannot criticize our warfighters. So he's kind of limited in the way to let people know that this dumb war that everybody hates, that's not on him, even though he's the vice president. And so he's trying to look for ways to do. do it. His effort here is to say that I thought this war was dumb and I'm against it through the vessel of making fun of Mark T.son for being fat. Yes. And this is like, again, J.D. Vance is very mean on the internet at people he believes he can be mean to without consequences. A classic wuss. A classic doughy wuss boy, you know. Let's see you, J.D. Have some balls. Come out. Say that you think that. You think that Donald Trump made his fake.

You got on your high horse and was like Donald Trump is not like the dumb presidents we've had in the past. He's a smart president. So I'm sorry, you can't pretend like you're against the Iran war. You did a whole tour where you were like, we're going to do this the smart way. The past presidents did it the dumb way. But now we have a really wise, great president who understands our lava. Okay, buddy. Sorry, dough boy.

Also, all of the clear leaking that is happening to all outlets about how this war happened, or it's like just just make it very clear jd vance did not want this he was in the room and he kept saying no but then benjamin netanyahu said we got to do it and trump was like okay like every single piece like this i just love imagining that like just to be clear just keep saying jd vans didn't want this that's like poor maggie and john swan every interview they did because i was listening to them to prep for the podcast so jd vans is your source right they'll be like we can't talk about our sources All right, final topic. You mentioned at the start that you knew Abdul because he was a colleague of yours.

He co-hosted America Dissected, which was a poorly rated crooked media podcast. He did that prior to becoming the Senate nominee, which gives hope for all of us in the podcast space. Think about this administration full of podcasters, FBI directors become a podcaster. Now the Democrats are getting in on the action. You know, you might have thought the Democrats were better than this. The Democrats would look for serious people. But this is the way the country is now. People are looking for the wisdom of podcasters when they turn to future leaders.

Everybody's saying, we need more podcasters in politics. That's what they've all been saying. So congratulations to Abdul and winning. And I wanted to end this podcast with a little game in the podcast spirits, which kind of looks ahead to the future. I want Jane to get into her crystal ball to put on her swami hat, the Chris Berman's Swami hat, and say which podcasters, ideally in the crooked media world, but if you want to expand it out to Bullorker elsewhere, that's fine. would best fit each of the following categories. We'll both give our opinions and then see what the listeners think.

Number one, who is the podcaster that is next most likely to run for office and win? Current podcaster, most likely to run for office and win. The win part, that's the question. Run for office. I want to hear your thoughts first because the win part. I'm like, okay, where are they running and for what? Yeah, the win is tough. I think within the crooked bandwidth, I think Dan Pfeiffer.

Yeah. Because he has the Yes We Dan slogan already right there for the taking. He's the most serious. I think he's got the least concerning things in his opophile. Yeah. And people don't seem to have weird beef with him that's actually about the 2016 Democratic primary. So I would say him. Is there anybody else that you can?

No, I think Aaron Ryan could all. So when? Because... What type of office would you see her running for? I could see her. She could do literally anything. She is formidable.

And her campaign would be terrifying. It would be like watching Soviet tanks go across the step. It would be, I would be frightened. I'd be impressed, but also frightened. Good pick. All right. Next, who is the most likely to run for office and lose? My guess is that we're going to nominate the same person.

So we'll do it at the same time on the count of three. one, two, three, love it. Yep. Yeah. The thing is, like, his campaign would be, like, great and inspiring, and he would lose. But the speeches would be fantastic. Love it, Mrs. Moe. He started to engage in LA politics, and the L.A. mayor's race is a shit show. And I think that had he got in, look at Nithia's performance, he could have gotten into the runoff.

Probably would still end up losing to Karen Bass would have trouble, you know, kind of expanding his demographic base. But might have had a puncher's chance. but now I think he sees a possibility for himself, and I see a failed city council race ahead for John Lovett. Okay, next. Abdulsaid, right before the election, kind of interestingly, decided to have an content creator party

where he was photoed with like sunglasses at night under the bridge of his nose, in a muscle shirt showing off his guns, with two girls pointing their fingers at him like this. And so my question for you is, which podcaster would be most like, to run for office and find themselves in that setting. Tommy.

I was going to say you. No, no. You're not doing you. Jane Koston, I could see, for you, maybe it would be drag queens. But like, you know, you showing off your guns, but you think Tommy. It's more the sunglasses at night thing. It's more like. Sunlasses at night you wouldn't do.

No, I would not. You'd not do sunglasses. Okay. Finally, the podcaster most likely to be appointed. to the next Democratic administration in the cabinet level following in Cash Patel's shoes? Who would be the Cash Patel of the Crooked universe? That's actually the most devastating insult

I could possibly give someone. Yeah. Hmm. Because I think like there would actually be numerous people in the crooked universe, I think would do quite well as appointees, like the whole strict scrutiny crowd. But I mean that as like,

they would do great and be very effective at talking about the law. Like, I'm, I would be down for that. But also the moment you said Cash Patel, I just kept thinking, I don't dislike any of my colleagues that much. I actually quite like everyone I work with. It's Ben Rhodes. Okay.

Thank you to Jane Koston. We're over. I appreciate everybody so much. We'll be back tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. Jane, we'll have you back soon, all right? Sounds great. Go check out what a day. We'll see you all soon.

Peace. The Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Anzley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.