The Bulwark Podcast - Jared Polis and Bill Kristol: Live from Denver

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

Gov. Jared Polis says Biden should focus on what he'll do for the American people in his campaign, rather than getting caught up in the crazy of Trump. Plus, guns, weed, the value of talking across party lines, and how Colorado is trying to avoid California's housing and growth problems. Tim Miller was live with Polis on Friday. And Bill Kristol joined Monday to discuss Trump's penchant for lying and to preview Tuesday's primaries.

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complex relationships, or family dynamics, therapy is a great tool for facing your fears and finding a way to overcome them. If you're thinking of starting therapy but you're afraid of what you might uncover, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, dot com. Hello and welcome to the Belorg podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller, a little horse coming off a wonderful weekend in Denver. I'm with Bill Kristol right now, but the back half of this episode will be my interview with Jared Polis from our live event on Friday.

If you want to hear the live next level from Friday, that'll be over on the next level feed. It was really a marvelous weekend. Part of the reason why I don't have a voice right now, we had, I think, 550 of y'all came out. You met my mother. We chatted afterwards. We had beers.

I got a wonderful package from someone. I didn't catch your name. I'm sorry, but thank you for that. And, you know, working the rope line, I'm not catch your name. I'm sorry, but thank you for that. And, you know, working the rope line, I'm not like Joe Biden. I don't have the Joe Biden vigor to work a rope line and then also go to Gay Pride where I saw some of you. And then also maybe I saw widespread panic last night. So, you know, here we are on Monday. It's been a big weekend at my home in Denver. I'm back in the basement. I'm excited to be here with Bill Kristol. How are you doing, Bill? It's tough being a

celebrity, Tim, but I sympathize with you. I've seen it up close, not myself, of course, but when I worked for Vice President Quayle, I was always struck that that's a tougher part of the job than people appreciate, just the pure rope line, politeness, but also keeping sane and stable and avoiding totally crazy people so you get a horrible clip out there, but also being, as I say, being nice to people and then and so forth. So I'm impressed that you're in this good shape. I'm impressed that you can do it. You're not taking a week off now, you know? No, I can handle it. I can handle it. But we're just, my voice cracked on the first intro. So we're keeping it in the lower register today, this morning. All right, Bill, before we get to polis, we have a few things.

Donald Trump, I don't know if you know this, but he has a penchant for lying. And he did some lying over the weekend and some serious lies, but also some silly ones. And I'd like to start this little palate cleanser with an interview he did with my former boss, Sean Spicer. It is interesting to think that that 2012 RNC comms team has spurned two media careers. We've gone different directions, though. You can compare and contrast my polis interview with the Sean Spicer work in his interview of the disgraced Donald Trump. Let's take a listen. You look at our airports where flights are being delayed four days, where people are pitching tents in an airport because their flight is so, you know,

it's never going to even happen. We've never had problems like this. What you're seeing in the last two years, we've never seen anything like it. And we become like, you know, we are a failing nation. We've become a third world nation in many ways. Our elections are third world, in my opinion. Our airports are being run so badly. It's so badly. It's not even conceivable. People go,

the other night, I had somebody going to the airport, and they called up two days later to tell me that they've never gotten out. I said, but where are you? Still at the airport. And it was like two days before. And this is common now. When was the last time Donald Trump was on a commercial flight? Bill, what were your thoughts about that? What are the odds that that phone call really happened? Someone who just picks up the phone and calls Trump, hey, just to let you know, I'm still at the airport two days later. Still stuck in San Antonio, 48 hours.

Yeah, at the West Palm Beach Airport after leaving Mar-a-Lago. I think, yeah, no. Ludicrous, obviously, very Trump-like in the sense that it's so ludicrous, you almost, I don't know, you don't take it seriously. And therefore, you just lose sight of the fact that he just routinely lies about everything and makes up everything. And it is a weird way. I don't think he does this on purpose. But it is kind of a way to normalize lying to start with, or to throw in with the serious lies, a lot of just idiotic, trivial stuff. And then you feel like almost like an idiot fact-checking it so i spent three minutes on google and it turns out

that 2023 the busiest year i believe in american aviation history over 16 million flights had one of the lowest maybe the lowest cancellation rate ever 1.2 percent it had a little bit of an uptick in 2022 the year before remember there was that southwest airlines i think it was in them the computer system melted down or something and they were like people were stuck for a day or two but anyway this is very uh yeah so he just lies and um and also denigrates america and what can we say yeah i mean i think that there are some serious undertones there that are worth mentioning we're a third world country we We're a failing nation. We didn't play the full clip, but if you want to go watch yourself, you can just take my word for it. Not

a hard pushback from Sean Spicer there on the notion that America is a failing nation, that our election systems are third world. Sean Spicer is living a pretty nice life in the suburbs of DC as a D-rate TV host. So I don't think that works usually in a failing nation but um but he's he's doing okay and the airport thing more people flew on memorial day than ever yeah like this is it's crazy like we've had record travel this summer which i think there's commentary both on whether we're a failing nation or not but also whether our economy is failing and how you know how bad could the economy really be how much is inflation really hurting everybody if no one's vacations are being, well, not no one's, but if at the median, people are not being affected in their summer vacation plans. And so, you know, but here we go.

And, you know, Trump just gets to just gets to lie and lie and lie about that without any. Is there not without any repercussion? I feel like I'm sounding like JBL. There is some repercussion. This is why Donald Trump is not winning this race right now, right? Because people find him disgusting. I mean, I guess, but he should be losing by a heck of a lot more. No, I landed at BWI Baltimore, Washington Wednesday. I didn't see any tents there. Amazing. You guys all flew out for the panel Friday, Thursday and Friday from various places. You, I take it from New Orleans and Sarah from DC and

so forth. It's amazing. Andrew Egger, you all made it there. How could that happen? How could that happen in the modern failing America where every third plane is canceled according to Donald Trump? The Denver airport kind of looks like a tent. Must have been luck. One more thing. It's up to us to point out the obvious,

but poor Poppy Bush. Add the supermarket scanner story just drag him just follow him around even though it's kind of bs like he was looking at a cool new scanner and people are like this guy this a feat kenny bunkport living coastal elite is so out of touch he doesn't even know what a supermarket scanner looks like and you know i mean it's like donald trump doesn't know what it's like to fly with regular people but i guess that's just that's dog bites man at this point biden should he can't do this i get so secret service have a heart attack but he should fly commercial to atlanta on thursday for the debate just to make the point that you

know what these flights are fine and i'm one of the regular guys i float commercial a lot in my life which he has to be fair until he became vice president and stuff, which Donald Trump hasn't done for ever, I suppose. He's been for 40 years, 50 years. But why do we think even as a – I don't know that he ever flew commercial. Yeah, or on the train, on the Biden-Acella. Anyway, okay, there's another lie that you wrote about morning shots. People should be signed up for your morning shots at thebork.com if they're not. Here's Trump talking about years later he's decided

to refute general kelly let's take a listen but they made up a suckers and losers statement so terrible and my stupid people when i wanted to refute it they said sir don't dignify it with a refuddle refudal or a refuddle what the hell word would that be refuddle do iuddle or a refuddle? What the hell word would that be? Refuddle? He didn't know. Refuddle or refuddle? But they don't know either.

Rebuttal, I think. Reputation. It should not be dignified, sir. And I said, well, I got to fight that. That's the worst thing you could probably say to me would be that. He said, sir, it's going nowhere. Three years later, it still simmers. And you know what?

Anybody in the military? Oh, now I fight. I talk about it all the time because it doesn't make sense. Nobody could say a thing like you can't. Even if you hated the military, you couldn't say that because it would be it would actually be dangerous. It would be it would be so bad. Nobody would say that. And so now I speak about it all the time,

because these people are liars. They make it up. It's now on top of that, you have AI. On top of that, you now have AI. It seems like a person at the top of their game, mental acuity-wise there. Bill, where do you want to go with that? A lot of places you could take a response to that clip. Yeah. I mean, yeah, of course, a lot of the Twitter commentary and other places was on his failure to use the word rebuttal and getting a little confused about refutable and refuddle and all this. But that is, in fact, not the important part of it. So Trump brought this up out of the blue, kind of. He's lying about it. He's lying about his lie. That is to say, he did try to refute it right at the time. He tweeted right away on September 3rd, 2020, when Jeff Goldberg's Atlantic piece came up with people, anonymous sources at that point, saying that Trump had called the military

suckers and losers in the context of not visiting the cemetery in France, and also when he was at Arlington with General Kelly in 2017 for Memorial Day. So Trump rebutted at the time, both on Twitter and actually that evening to reporters. So he's pretty conscious of it at the time. So he's lying when he says that the staff persuaded him not to rebut it, and that that's kind of why the story is still simmering. The story is still simmering because it's true, because General Kelly in 2022 confirmed it, 2023 maybe, confirmed it in a statement and also a couple of interviews. And so that's why the story is simmering. And then President Biden indirectly, you might say,

kept it alive with his visit to the cemetery in France when he was there for D-Day. And because people are rightly outraged about it. And it fits, of course, so much with some of the other public things he's said about John McCain and stuff. But it's interesting to me that he raised that somehow it's there in his lizard brain causing some anxiety or some worry, right? And, of course, his first reaction is to lie. The second reaction is to blame the staff, the stupid staff. I love that, which wouldn't let his, is hurting him a little bit. That they have some polling, they told him that this is a problem.

And finally, I think he's thinking about the debate Thursday night and a little worried that this is a pretty effective thing for Joe Biden to bring up. I think the last thing is for sure. And I want to talk about the debate. But just a few, just put a finer point on a few of the facts here in that ramble. It's interesting to know that his staff can prevent him from sending out things on social media. That's news to me. And also, I guess now confirms that I guess his staff approves everything that he pops out there. I didn't realize they had control of the reins there. Refutable, you might want to know, is a word that existed,

but it's virtually obsolete. Neither of the main corporate American or British contain a single example of it. So, you know, maybe Trump is just trying to bring it back. You know, the old English, something to think about. Lastly, the debate thing is obviously on his mind. And I think that's what I want to get into with you next. By the time we next speak, the debate thing is obviously on his mind and i think that's what i want to get into with you next by the time we next speak the debate will have happened hopefully it will be the beginning of the great biden comeback and we'll be in high spirits next monday but you know you

can sense in situations like these things that he's trying to you know put put bumpers around vulnerabilities he's trying to put bumpers around by talking about them now, but also in this insane, like Joe Biden's on cocaine thing, Joe Biden, the lifelong teetotaler, you know, that they're pushing out there, that if you watch Fox, it's like an hourly topic on Fox now. I mean, it's on constantly.

This notion that Joe Biden might be on drugs, you know, a totally preposterous fabrication that now they have like panels about. What do you think about this thing we made up? Do you think it's true? Do you think it's true? I guess I absurd, but it is reflective of their mindset about the about the debate. So I'm curious what you think first about the Trump perspective going into debate and then divide it. Yeah, no, and I think didn't his press secretary, whatever she is, Catherine Leavitt, I think her name is go on. She was on TV earlier this morning, Caroline failed congressional care and just launched on cnn just her first talking point which was not responsive to her

the question was an attack on jake tapper and and one of the hosts of the debate and i thought she would have gotten to the other host in a second and got cut off by casey hunt or whatever but again that what does that tell us that they are trying to obviously prepare the groundwork for well if you did poorly, it's because of incredibly biased hosts. I still think there's a small chance that he uses that as an excuse or the drug test for Biden as an excuse not to debate if he really gets worried that it could hurt him. But so far, it looks like it's going ahead.

So I think Trump's worried. I hope he's right to be worried. I hope Team Biden is really prepared, not just preparing him, but preparing the other things. So I just think this one thing we just discussed on John Kelly, I hope someone's been in touch with John Kelly to, you know, just encourage him to come forward that night if Trump lies again, or the next morning and say, and, you know, go on some interview and just say, you know, of course, it's true, I didn't make it up. And then unfortunately, Donald Trump's lying again. And if he wants to add that people shouldn't vote for Donald Trump for president, which I'm sure John Kelly believes that if he wants to add,

they might even consider voting for Joe Biden, that would be fine, too. But that would be nice if anybody's out there who is pals with John Kelly. And he can just take that little clip, we can do a little screen record and just send it right over to him. Happy to share that. And if you if he wants to come on the podcast, your podcast, Friday morning, you know, use that as the occasion. I think we can I take the liberty of inviting him to do so? Please. John Kelly, you have an open invitation to join the Bullard podcast anytime. So look, I think in general, Biden's been doing better.

So in that respect, Trump's a little worried. More upside and more downside, don't you think? I mean, the downside, obviously, is that he looks faltering and very old and so forth. The upside is that there are two or three blows landed of the kind we just described. For me, the key just advice to Biden would be don't defend your, I mean, it's so hard when you're up there not to defend your own record, not to explain what you've done. And I don't mean this in some kind of vanity thing, though there's some of that too, of course, but just, you know, someone criticizes you and you say, no, wait a second, here's the job numbers,

here's this. I think it's very important to be forward looking and really mostly paint the picture of how genuinely dangerous and terrible a Trump second term would be. And to some degree, do a little more painting of a picture of what a Biden second term might accomplish. That was also Jared Polis's advice. We get to that in that interview in a little bit. So you and Governor Polis are aligned. I might be misaligned from you guys on this, just in one sense. Well, in two ways, actually. One, I think that he has to at least make the things are better than they were four years ago case. Like you might not

remember it, you know, but crime is down. Immigration border numbers are down. Economy is up. Like things are moving the right direction. Yeah, we have more work to do, blah, blah, blah. You got to go do all that stuff. But I do think it's important to at least refute some basic facts because you know Trump's going to lie about how this is a third world economy and America's terrible. You have to at least do a little bit of that. And traditionally in these debates, in the first debate, that's why it's been a problem for the incumbent president because they feel the need to refute every detail about the record. I agree with you in that point, but I think they've got to get a little out. I don't know. What about the offensive side of things? I think that he has to have some punches for Trump rather than just focus on positive

vision. Where are you on that? Oh, no, I totally agree with that. I think, in fact, most of it should be about the danger of Trump, less about the virtues of Biden. Very hard for people to internalize that because, you know, candidates like to, and presidents like to talk about their virtues more than they like to. But Biden's been pretty good at punching at Trump, I'd say for the last three, four weeks, better, honestly. I agree. some obvious things. So this, I wonder if the Biden team was thinking of this when they, when they proposed this date, I think it's more their proposal than Trump's in terms of the date. This is the final week of the Supreme Court term, or almost this final week. We have big decisions. Today is the anniversary of Dobbs. I think Biden can do a lot with, you appointed the justices reversed row without Trump justices, it doesn't happen. You've got judges doing other things in terms of guns and so forth that are way outside the mainstream, and you've got extremist judges. If you become president, I shouldn't say you, I'll come back to that in a minute, but if my opponent were to become president, we will have even more extreme courts and even more extreme curtailments of our liberties.

I think the courts is, I mean, it's conventional view that it's not a great issue. Who thinks, you know, courts is sort of a second order thing. People don't think of that. But I kind of think in this case, the week of Dobbs two years ago, it's a pretty good issue. I also think this is a point my friend Jeff Toulas made when we were having lunch last week. Maybe Biden shouldn't even address Trump.

He should just say, you know, I want to speak to the American people. And I want to speak to all the American people, including voters who are inclined to vote for my opponent. And I respect all of you. I want to work for all Americans. I have been working for all Americans. In effect, make clear that he doesn't consider Trump a worthy person to have an argument with because Trump's just a liar and sort of talk about my opponent says this or my opponent did this, but talk about him in the third person.

Maybe that's a little too stilted and artificial and wouldn't work. I don't know. I'm not a great debate strategist or anything, but I also, I think it would convey a sense of disdain for Trump, but without disdaining all the swing vote, the voters out there who might be inclined to consider Trump, but Biden needs to win over. I feel like that's the kind of thing that sounds good. And I can practice, it's hard to work. This is the thing for me with Biden. When Biden is good, like when Biden is at his best, he's more casual in his speech. So I kind of hate that, like that they put him in these more stilted speech environments. Like Biden's best moments are always like kind of almost like the face that he made at Marjorie Taylor Greene. And then he's looking at, he's looking at Trump. He's like this guy, like this guy, I really, you know, I would

almost try to diminish him in that sense. Right. That it's like, this guy caused the storm in the capital. Can you believe this guy? You want this person to have a majority of the Supreme Court? I agree with you on the court side of things in that context, like specifically the Dobbs case, but also in macro. I think it might make a few people, at least some of those Haley voters, some people and some younger, who knows? Logically, you would think that some people might make them blanch a little bit to just be aware of the fact that Donald Trump will have

appointed a bare majority on the Supreme Court. Do you really want the Supreme Court majority to be all Trump picks? I think that there's a certain group of people that that might hit home with. Yeah, and I think it's one of those issues that obviously Biden's base is appalled by the prospect of more Alitos and Thomases and other Trump picks, including at the lower court level. But swing voters are very much with Biden on guns and on abortion and on contraception and on IVF and so forth. And I think it's totally fair, incidentally, for Biden to, you know, ascribe to a second Trump term what Trump's supporters say they're going to do in such a term. Make Trump disavow

them. Make Trump say, oh, no, Clarence Thomas is much more right wing than I am. I wouldn't even dream of doing it. Then we'll have a little fight between Clarence Thomas fans and he wants to get rid of contraception, apparently, and Trump fans. So make him disavow heritage. I think it causes problems in your own side if you can drive those wedges. But I think ascribe to Trump the worst of MAGA, which is totally, they're all supporting him. It's totally fair. And I think really paint a picture of, and I think it's a totally true picture, I think, obviously we think, I think, of what a Trump second, how dangerous a Trump second term would be. That should be the key

thing. The key thing should be, Michael Scherer had a good piece on this, right? Biden had to figure out a way to sort of take care of the fact that people looked at the first term, the guardrails mostly held. There were people in there who stopped, disrupted doing a lot of things. And people now say, well way into thinking the first term wasn't so bad. And I think his notion of the, you know, that he's become unhinged because of January 6th, he's giving a permission structure to people who voted for Trump once or twice, or maybe sat it out to say, you know what, he it's, it would be different this time. It would be worse this time. He needs to do that, I think. Yeah. It's a good talking point. I don't agree with it, but I think it's a good talking point. Right, no, I don't agree with it. Biden has leaned in on it. Yeah, right. Just as a factual matter, this notion that something cracked in Trump when he lost in 2020, and then he got really crazy. I mean, I think Trump's been steadily becoming just little by little, a little more crazy since 1982 know, since like 1982, but is basically the same

person. I don't think there's any big break. That said, I agree with you. I think it's a good talking point. And there's a certain group of people, I can think of somebody in my life that is like, that went for Trump in 2020, that January 6th was a final straw for them, right? And so it gives that group, which maybe might be waffling, or might, you know, might be gettable for Trump to win back. Something to lean on, right? This notion of, yeah, okay, it was fine, but he went crazy with this stop the steal stuff in the January 6th and now he's off his rocker and we can't do it again. I think that's a good talking point. This is an ad by BetterHelp Online Therapy. October's the season for wearing masks and costumes, but some of us feel like we wear a

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therapists at any time for no additional charge. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com. Last thing, we do have some primaries tomorrow across the country. In New York, I want to mention two. We have George Latimer, who is being supported by a bunch of center-left groups, including AIPAC, running against Jabal Bowman, who is being supported basically by AOC, I think, and some others. And Bowman, frankly, AOC has been pretty responsible, I think, across a wide variety of issues in a way that Bowman has not, at least in my opinion, both rhetorically and the weird fire alarm poll and some of his more anti-Semitic statements, frankly.

And so anyway, I want you to take on that race, but I also want to mention, we have John Avalon, friend of the pod. So if you're in his district, that primary is Tuesday. He has a primary as well. And in Colorado, I was talking to Polis after the interview, and there are two DSA left Democrats in the statehouse that are being primaried by more mainline Democrats. I wouldn't even call moderate, but just middle of the road Democrats. It'll be interesting, I think, you know, to see whether there's a little bit of a picture here. This is something that's not happening in the Republican Party, which is why I think it's worth bringing up. People are always like, why don't you focus more on having the Republicans get back to normal? And it's like, well, if you

look at the primaries in the Republican side, it's the normal ones who are being primaried by crazy people. And sometimes it's like crazy people who are being primaried by even crazier people. In the Democratic side, we have a couple of examples of some of their more extreme members being primaried tomorrow by more mainline members. So it'll be interesting to see how that goes. So the floor is yours just on that broadly or on the Bowman-Latimer race. I mean, on a broadly, I do think it's important. I think it's also such a talking point for the, you know, Wall Street Journal wanting to justify their vote for Trump types of the Democratic Party is just, I was caught so far left. The left is just driving

the train. It's unbelievable. And then people like me or you say, well, really? Biden, Janet Yellen? I mean, Tony Blinken? Exactly. Well, it's down in the bowels of the bureaucracy and also at the congressional level. Look what's happening. The squad and stuff.

It would be important, I think. Did you see the spokesperson for the EPA wanted to defund the police? That was going around on social media. I mean, the spokesperson for the EPA is a leftist. And what do we, you know, how can I, I must vote for Trump. Yeah, exactly. I'm sure Trump's EPA spokesman is going to be just a very straight and narrow guy.

Yes. So anyway, I think it's a useful if Latimer and it's in New York, it has media attention. That district, New York 16 is some of the Bronx and then up into Westchester, our son and daughter-in-law and little kids live in that district in Westchester. And I would say we visited them, as it happens, a couple of weekends ago. I live in Virginia, northern Virginia, kind of swingish area. So we get a fair amount of campaign mail, you know, the stuff, postcards and so forth, and brochures and what do they call flyers, you know, still the old fashioned stuff as

well as the texts and the emails. It's insane up there. I mean, they were getting three a day for Latimer or against Bowman. They're in the Latimer leading part of the district and their own voting history would suggest, you know, a Latimer vote in the primary. So this is, I guess, will be the most expensive congressional race maybe in primary, I think, in history. And I think Latimer will win.

He's the Westchester County executive too. So he has some advantage of being an incumbent against an incumbent, kind of. But it'll be good. It'll be good if he wins, because Bowman has been the most irresponsible of them, pretty much of the squad, I think, and the most outspoken. I would throw Cori Bush in that camp as well, and she also has a primary coming up.

Yeah, Bush and Bowman. And Bush, I think, may lose. And then Avalon winning, a very moderate guy, kind of a no-labels guy, before no-labels went off the rails. I think John then Avalon winning, a very moderate guy, kind of a no labels guy before no labels went off the rails. I think John was involved in this and starting that front of the bulwark and so forth. So yeah, no, suddenly it's like, really how, how left wing exactly is this democratic party? And that's New York and Selly. That's not the Denver. That's not democratic governor of Kentucky or the democratic governor of North Carolina or anything, you know?

So I think it would be important if Latimer wins. And I think he could win pretty easily. And if Avalon's the nominee in Suffolk County. All right. Well, thank you, Bill Kristol. A little bit shortened today. So because we got the poll list interview on deck. I'm looking forward to seeing that. And speaking of Democrat, he's a pretty responsible and moderate Democrat and pro-business and so forth, governing a pretty important state out there in Colorado. We do a lot of issue talk. We have a little fun too, but we do a lot of issue talk. And absolutely. I think it's funny. I get in Colorado adventure on these panels, you get questions from people and they're like, why can't we have a party that respects business, but also doesn't

hate anybody? You know, isn't cruel. Like, why can't we have somebody like that? I get these questions from like people at panels and like when they happen in Colorado, I'm going to be like, well, your governor is that. The mayor of Denver, Mike Johnson, is that. The president of the United States is that. I mean, you do have that happening here. So anyway, it's an interesting interview. I hope folks will enjoy it. We'll be back with Bill next Monday post-debate. There'll be much to discuss. Up next, Governor Jared Polis. I named this the best cover in America audience. It's good to see you guys. Hey, y'all. I named this the best governor in America in an interview about two months ago, so it's going to be a really hard-hitting interview. You better watch out.

How are you doing, Governor? Thanks for doing this. I am doing great, and welcome back to our prodigal son returns. It's great to have you back, Tim. Don't give my mother any ideas about me coming home. All right, I want to have a little feelings to start. Can we talk about our feelings for a second? I suppose so.

I don't know, do you love talking about your feelings? Not really. You know, I think the folks in the audience, so my mother, the poet, right, she writes about her feelings. So she did that for all of us. My mother, she's in Polish. Well, I'll talk about my feelings then, and then you can decide whether or not to win. So me and the governor just came from the Pride kickoff, was it called?

Pink party? Yeah. Supporting One Colorado. You should support One Colorado. And I was just sitting there watching him, and it's all these gay people in their pink outfits and some drag queens. And I'm thinking, and then he welcomes all of them. And I'm thinking, we have a gay married governor with kids speaking to a group of entirely gays. And here I am sitting here in Colorado.

And I was thinking back to teen Tim, like Amendment 2 and Matthew Shepard. I was like, if you would have showed me a video of this at age 16, I think I would have thought that Independence Day aliens would have felt more likely as a 20-year arc. So do you ever take a moment to think about that, appreciate that? Well, first of all, we're excited you are back here and hopefully get to enjoy Pride Weekend with your family

with 500,000 of your closest friends. Give it to her. get to enjoy Pride Weekend with your family, with 500,000 of your closest friends. It is exciting to reflect on. I mean, we're really focused on a Colorado for all. That means a place for really everybody, no matter who you are, no matter who you love, but also, you know, no matter your race, no matter how long your family's been here. And that's what we're trying to bring about. But yes, there's been tremendous progress, not just in Colorado, but nationally and internationally.

Thailand just the other day recognized same-sex marriage as the third country in East Asia after Nepal and Taiwan, if we're allowed to call Taiwan a country. We are. At the Bulwark, we are. I'm glad. Get ready for being sanctioned by China.

But, you know, no, I think it's wonderful. And, of course, you know, when there's a, when the pendulum swings towards progress, there's always that pushback you hear, and we still see some of that, of course, to this day. But overall, I think it's a much better time to be able to grow up and be a little different than others and feel loved and respected. So you don't think about little Jared, like playing video games, looking at Link, getting some feelings.

I love video games. Don't think back. I still play video games. I know. I know. Speaking of the people, there's still some pushback. Our friends in the Colorado Republican Party, they put out a press release saying that we should burn all the pride flags. They said that the LGBT community is part of a demonic realm trying to harm our children.

I don't know if it's our children like yours and my children or all of our children. With enemies like these, who needs friends, Governor? What's happening over there? Well, it's one of the reasons that Colorado has become more of a capital-D democratic state is, yes, I like to think the Democrats have governed well. But frankly, even more than that, the Republicans have marginalized themselves this district, who happens to be gay himself, who now finds himself in a position where his own party was saying, you know, burn those flags. It was also telling, I heard from a conservative Republican commissioner, a friend of mine from Southern Colorado, and they did, you know, they condemned this. And I shared with him that similarly, I spoke out, this was probably a year or two ago, when somebody was trying to, in a school, prevent kids from ringing, don't tread on me, flags. This wasn't, that's, you know, freedom.

So, I mean, but this concept of burning flags or icons is just very anti-American in its core. It turns people off. Above and beyond, of course, the anti-LGBT ramifications, just trying to say you're against that kind of freedom of expression really rubs Coloradans the wrong way. What about the school stuff? Your opponent in the governor's race

was concerned about we're grooming our children. I think that she was concerned that there were a lot of non-binary children that were identifying as cats in the classroom. They're meowing. They're peeing in a litter box in the class. It seems like identifying as cats in the classroom. They're meowing. They're peeing in a litter box in the classroom. It seems like a big problem in the state. Have you cleaned that up at all?

That was when I realized I had won the election. A month from when ballots dropped, that's what my opponent pivoted to. I was like, I can take a day and spend it with my kids. I got this. All right. Let's do a little national politics. That's enough gay stuff for today. You did a tweet today giving some advice to Joe Biden.

It was a very long tweet, so I'm not going to read all of it. But it was a seven-point advice. You said you should look to the future. Number one, every American should be able to go to kindergarten at no cost and preschool. Two, compare and contrast Trump's terrible tariff agenda. Three, talk about how health care is broken and it should be more affordable. Four, tout your bipartisan permitting reform view. Okay.

Five, show enthusiasm for renewing middle class tax cuts. Six, ignore Trump's antics. Seven, go get them. That's hard. It's hard to ignore his antics. I get it. What I think that the president should do, and it's the way I've always...

You preempted my question about how that was not possible to ignore his antics. Isn't that wonderful? I love doing that to reporters. Okay. Go ahead. What's your question? No, no, don't do it.

What I was going to say is that, I mean, you really should... Every election is about the future. It's not about the past. And I think what President Biden needs to do is not talk about what he's done. And of course we know what he's done and we've done, and we can, and he likes to talk about that, but the challenge is what do you want to do? What will you do for the American people? If you're elected for another four years, I gave him some ideas. If he has others, that's fine,

but really talk about the future and your vision for how you can make life better for everyday Americans. And so I hope that he focuses on the future in the debate and also in the campaign, doesn't get caught up in Trump's antics. And that's hard. I get it because that guy's a walking antic. I mean, I don't know what, you know, I mean, he'll say insane stuff.

But you say, and I've run against people that have said crazy stuff. You cited that. And you just ignore it. You just don't, I didn't get into a debate about whether cats were in our schools. I said, I'm focused on free preschool. Cats might be, it's humans dressed as cats that are not. I'm focused on renewable energy. I'm focused on, you know, middle class tax cuts. I mean, I just stayed focused on what we were doing, not the nutty stuff, you know? So I think permitting reform is very important. It's wonderful. And I'm for it.

It's very important. I don't know that that's going to win over the voters as much as pointing out how crazy Donald Trump is. And I don't know that does Joe Biden have a good message for his second term? What is his message? I don't think Joe Biden is the one who should be pointing out how crazy Donald Trump is. It's self-evident. Donald Trump does that

himself. Certainly others can do that. What Joe Biden needs to do is talk about his vision for America and what he wants to do over the next four years. Which is what, do you think? Well, I mean, again, I can tell, you know, I give him some advice, but I'd like to hear from him. But I mean, he supports these things that I put in there. He supports it was dropped from some of the bills, preschool and kindergarten for every kid. He does support, you know, more trade than Donald Trump, whose policies would lead to more inflation and hurt the middle class. So, I mean, these are all things that you can run on and talk about. support uh you know more trade than donald trump whose policies would lead to more inflation and hurt the middle class so i mean these are all things that you can run on and talk about and

and i hope that the the president really paints an exciting vision about what america will look like and how people will be better off in four years if he has a chance to serve again um i wanted to go to colorado a little more than the national stuff since you know we're colorado people were here um i had i had a question proposed to me. I don't think they knew that they were proposing the question from someone who may or may not be in the crowd who's close to me that may or may not be Republican-ish. And the question went something like this. Ask the governor, we're a little concerned that Colorado might turn into California.

High taxes, high regulation, high cost of gas, high cost of housing lots of traffic not as good skiing are you uh what would you say to that that there's some concern that that colorado is moving in california direction do you like the california model do you think that there's a difference in my state of the state uh last year i really focus on how we can avoid becoming like california particularly around the high cost of housing and crowded highways and congestion. There's different elements of what California means to different people. But I think Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives agree that we don't want to be California. What we talked about and what a big challenge in our state is the average cost of a home in the Denver metro area now about $600,000 statewide.

It's lower than that, but still went up 30%, 40% over the last few years. That's a problem. Still inexpensive by California standards. There are cities in California where the average home price is $1 million. But that's why we took action to make it easier to build new homes, reduce regulation, cut red tape. We cut the income tax three times since I've been governor, twice by the voters, once through the legislature. So, no, I really think that we're on a different path in many ways.

We're always happy to take good ideas from any state, from California, Texas, New York. They all have things we try to learn from the laboratories of democracy. But we don't aspire to be a particular state other than a better, more perfect Colorado. You took some digs that last time I interviewed you, you did take some digs of California. Like what, when you look at the more progressive agenda. It's popular in Colorado to bash California and Texas. It's not, it's not a partisan thing. It's just popular to bash California and Texas. All right. So it's, it's smart to do popular things as a politician,

but are there specific, when you look at the kind of California progressive agenda, are there specific, and you mentioned cutting taxes or regulations, are there specific things you look at and say, this is too harmful, this is not smart? In which state? In California.

Well, I don't follow everything the legislature does. Well, you know, generally. I drive my stress level through the roof. It's stressful enough following what our own legislature does here in Colorado. I bet. And so, I mean, of course, there's things they would do. And, you know, Governor Newsom has even vetoed some of them that they've done. And again, we try to look at best practices in different states and find what might work here. Certainly around housing, there's

examples of both Republican and Democratic states removing barriers to housing. California has done some good work, so has Montana, where they've, again, basically allowed the zoning for more affordable units to be built closer to transit, allowing for accessory dwelling units by right. So, you know, we just got that done here, which is wonderful. So, I mean, just so, you know, you shouldn't have to spend tens of thousands of legal bills in a fight city hall to add a needed housing unit that you can rent out to somebody who needs a home. So this is the kind of stuff we're focused on. How do you balance the, the kind of those questions? Obviously you need more housing in Colorado. I think everybody agreed. Not me, not everybody. Most people agree with that.

The ADU policy and that stuff you put forth makes a lot of sense. How do you balance that against concerns about growth? You know, traffic going up to Vail is too bad. I can't even go up to the mountains to ski. Well, it's really about how we grow. So that's very much a part of our discussions. What we want to have is a greater opportunity to live close to job centers, near transit. We're working on implementing front-range passenger rail, improving the bus transportation system, more opportunities of closer job centers rather than exurb and sprawl.

Further and further out, longer commutes, more cars on the highway. Highlands Ranch hardest hit. What's that? Highlands Ranch hardest hit. There you go. But I mean, that's kind of the bad part of the California model, right? Like you're in the LA area. it's not rush hour, you know, 4.30 to 5.30 like here, it's rush hour like three to eight.

I mean, you might have like all day. So I mean, this is what we want to avoid and we do that by really smart growth and making sure that people have the opportunity to live close to jobs. Most people don't want to commute 45 minutes to work each way. They do that because they can't afford a home

closer to where their job is. What about the energy side of things? Like, you know Obviously, we talked about permitting reform. You want to be able to do more renewables. You want to be able to build more. How do you balance that with, okay, we also need existing access to natural gas. There's a big debate over here about fracking, whether you can frack in Colorado. A permitting reform is broad sweeping. We've done some at the state level. The reason we have this discussion nationally is the federal

government owns close to 40% of Colorado Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service. So anything on their land, federal land, we have to go through a very long, arduous bureaucratic process. President Biden has wanted to expedite that. He's done some administrative actions to do that, but they haven't been able to do it legislatively. But here in Colorado, for those who follow it, we used to historically, we've had something called the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission. It permitted oil and gas. What we have now added to their responsibility is first putting health and safety first for oil and gas siting. But they also now site renewable energy, deep well geothermal, which we're hoping to grow here in Colorado. We just had

a summit yesterday. We're very excited about adding geothermal energy to our mix, the heat beneath our feet. That was my initiative at the Western Governors Association, as well as more transmission. So as we move towards a more renewable grid, we need to be able to move electricity around better, and we need to make sure that we're able to tie into other states for interstate transmission. When we first talked, the reason why we did our first interview was because I was stuck at home during COVID and I was watching, you know, I had nothing else to do. So I'm on Twitter and I'm just watching videos and you got into a fight with maybe a couple of the reporters here about masking. And there was this big debate that was happening and you were saying we need to balance,

you know, the questions about public safety and distancing with questions of individual freedom and autonomy and encouraging that. And I think that you're, I'll just say, I think that in retrospect, it seems like your balance on that was a lot better than someone that maybe DeSantis and the Newsom side of that debate. There's an issue that has a similar dynamic right now,

which is immigration and people coming to the state. There's this question about public safety as everyone is coming vetted versus you want people to be able to come to the state. You want freedom. Maybe there was a time, particularly a couple months ago, where there were some people in Colorado feeling like this is out of balance.

We have all these migrants coming here and we don't know what to do with them. How are you thinking about that? How do you deal with that issue? Well, it's complicated. We could do a whole half hour discussion. Let's do it. All right. I've got fun rapid fire questions at the end.

So our fundamental frustration, I think with the federal government is they're the only ones that can secure the border. They're also the only ones that can grant work permits to people. We would love to be able to grant work permits, and we would be able to use that. If there's a way to get that to the state level, we would do that.

What's frustrating is when we have people... Why don't you just look the other way? Let them work and not enforce. Well, again, it's federal enforcement that everybody's worried about. So, I mean, fundamentally, if there's people here that want to come and work and have work permit, we need them. We actually have 1.6 job openings for every unemployed Coloradan. We need folks that want to come and work and have work permit, we need them. We actually have 1.6 job openings for every unemployed Coloradan. We need folks that want to work. But the mismatch is if they're

coming without permission to work and there's a year until they get it or indefinite, what do we do during that time? And so that's what we're dealing with with some of the Venezuelan migrants. But many of them now have permission to work. They're getting integrated into Colorado. So, you know, again, I think there's room for bipartisan immigration reform, securing the border, workforce authorization. It just has been elusive for too long, and it would benefit our economy tremendously. I'm sorry, what you're saying just doesn't make sense to me, because I've been watching a lot of Fox lately. I'm sorry. We have, like, we just, the border is totally uncontrolled. You know, there are hordes of people coming to town.

There are a lot of people who need jobs that can't get them. Is that, that's not, that's not right? So we do need better border security, of course. At the same time, we need to make sure that people that are part of our economy and have jobs are able to do it legally and that we're able to support our economic growth

and support our ag industry, support our hospitality industry. These things are all important and we can figure it all out together. That was pretty good. I have a couple other balancing public safety with freedom questions and I'm going to read you some recent comments from conservative influencers online. I spend a lot of time reading conservative influencers online. I'm sorry. You have to govern. I'm just a podcast host.

I've got all afternoon to just kind of read Breitbart. Here's one. This guy, Mike Davis, he wants to put me in a gulag, by the way. This is a quick aside. He said that Colorado just made me wait 72 hours to buy guns. Does Colorado make people wait 72 hours to get trans pills? We must fight every gun restriction. The left's goal is to disarm us so they can control us.

Are you trying to control Mike Davis? So, yeah, you know, we have a three-day waiting period. We do the background checks during that time. And it works fine. And for folks who are transgender, the process of getting the diagnosis, the prescription takes a lot longer than three days. It takes many months. Really?

You can't just trans like that? No, you can't just trans like that. So I think the waiting period is quite a bit longer. I guess I have another funny one, but we should be serious for a second before we talk about the gun issue. Because there were real gun reform accomplishments that you got after the horrible shooting at Club Q.

And talk about those. Colorado has had a disproportionate reality when it comes to these mass shootings. Yeah, we did a three-day waiting period to make sure we get the background checks done. Also, you know, in the spur of the moment, anger purchases. It was very strange.

You could be 18 and buy a rifle, but to buy a pistol, you need to be 21. We just made it 21 for guns. You can buy it with your parents at 18, of course, and your parents can go hunting with a kid at 15, but to just walk into a gun store and buy it, we said, same age as alcohol, 21. Do you consider 25? I know some 21-year-old boys. I don't know. Well, you know some 18-year-old ones too. So we're just trying to do common sense stuff, and it protects our Second Amendment rights.

Yeah, a red flag law, if somebody's having a mental health crisis, there ought to be a legal way to temporarily remove access to their firearms, domestic abuse. These are all common sense measures, and no single one is a pardon the pun, silver bullet. But I think together, they absolutely have a

positive impact on improving public safety yes yeah and i mean you can have libertarian streak tendency that you don't feel uncomfortable about any of that those you know i think they all fun i mean you know you met i don't know the total percentage but i mean you know 40 50 percent of coloradans are gun owners and none of this interferes with anybody who wants to have a gun for home defense or sport or hunting or whatever purposes they have it for. Here's another one from my friend at the Breaking Points podcast. I don't know if you're a viewer of that. They did pretty well on YouTube. Weed. This is about weed. Weed ruined the great city of Denver and the great state of Colorado. These stores are all going bankrupt, and the promised tax revenue is drying up. ER visits are booming.

The air is polluted. Traffic accidents soaring. Sad. Wow. So, wow, they're blaming everything on that, aren't they? Although, so no, I mean, I think overall cannabis legalization has been great

for our state. I've long been a supporter of that. I've been getting it. A couple guys on gummies in the crowd right now. Well, you know, just to get it out of the underground illegal economy, the policy prohibition has failed, getting it out of the hands of drug dealers to legal regulated businesses. It has generated hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. You know, people are legally employed in the sector. Yes, some of them have gone out of business. That's called capitalism, right? I mean, of course.

So, you know, I don't know what that person is saying. He's saying they all should have stayed in business. I don't know. I think saying it's bad that there's so many of them. On that point, I guess another observation I've had talking to you over the last kind of hour is just the tone of your kind of conversations about talking about Republicans and Republican views, like feels like it's from

another plane of existence that is not our national politics. And you're talking about how you talk to Ken Buck all the time and oh man, Scott McGinnis. And I was saying, Scott McGinnis has gone kind of crazy. And you're like, I don't know. No, he seems okay to me. I was like, he's for Trump. And you're like, well, they're all for Trump, right? Right. You're extolling the virtues of capitalism. You're talking about gun ownership. Like, why do you think it's so unique here, like your ability to kind of talk across party lines? Like, why is that able to happen here where it's not other places? Well, you know, the plurality of Colorado, most Coloradans aren't Republicans or Democrats.

Unaffiliated are by far our biggest group, almost a majority. I think now 46, 47% of plurality, but pretty soon unaffiliated will be a majority of Colorado. It's already a majority of people under 30. And so we kind of look at both parties and just say, you know, talk about them. And both parties have ideas that are good and both parties have ideas that are bad, but mostly people just want a positive vision for what will make life better. Yeah, it seems like almost some of your, all right, a couple claps for making life better. So, you know, good ideas from the left,

from the right, from the center, from up, from down, a good idea is a good idea. You know, let's take it and let's move forward and make life better. What about people who are concerned? So, you know, I lived through this. Some will say to me, Tim, like you lived through this process where, you know, you were out here when Bill Owens was governor and there were normal mainstream Republicans and the crazies took over the party. Now they want to, you know, burn pride flags. And like, that's what's happened

to the Democrats now, right? Like the normies are in charge of the Democratic Party, but, you know, the DSA and the pro-Hamas crowd and the socialists and the far left are taking over the Democratic Party. Like, what do you say to that? I don't see it. I mean, obviously, there's, it's interesting, because like, you know, in European multi-party parliamentary democracies, they have like eight parties, right? Six parties, ten parties. We have, yes, we have these small parties, but basically we have two very broad ones. And so, yeah, somehow on the Republican one, you have everything from kind of authoritarian, neo-fascist, libertarian, to traditional conservative.

You got all that stuff. On the Democratic side. Concerning about on the neo-fascist side of things these days. You got them over there now. Concerning percentage. You got them over there. On the Democratic side, you have center-left, you have center-right, center. And yeah, you have some of the socials folks that might say I'm voting Democrat

because they're better than Republicans. So yeah, I mean, they're both broad big tent parties. You've got to be when you're functioning in a two-party system. All right, we're going to move to rapid fire. Our time is running short. Are you ready? Sure. Are you prepared?

Are you sure? These are going to be a little off the wall, okay? And you haven't given me any feelings yet, so I might add one more feelings question at the end. Famously, you've never smoked weed, despite being a, what were you called, a godfather of cannabis? I think Wes Moore called you that today, despite the fact that you've never smoked weed.

But if you were to break your cherry tonight, what would your dream blunt rotation be who would you who would you want to smoke with and who would you want to smoke with so that's it that was quite a scandal for me to come out of the closet is never I'm sorry you out of me sorry my apologies um I would go with Dolly Parton Dolly be good no one else you don't want to join and And it's a rotation, you kind of need a third person for that to work. I know you've never done this before, and me neither, Mom, but you need three for a

rotation. The new president of Argentina seems pretty cool. Really? Javier Malay? He might creep me out in a blunt rotation. He could lend me some of his hair. I could use it. The chops?

I don't know. Okay, we'll see. The people didn't like that choice as much. All right. As somebody that's libertarian Is there something else you think That's illegal now and should be made legal Or decriminalized, I don't know Like Molly, or like full stripping

At strip clubs Or just giving out some ideas I mean, Colorado's already doing We're doing that now with mushrooms And yeah So we're doing the mushroom therapy And yeah, so that're doing the mustard therapy and yeah, so that's happening already. Anything else?

I don't know. I mean, generally speaking if something, you know, doesn't hurt other people and it's somebody's choice, it ought to be respected. Why don't you add just on like kind of decriminalizing non-violent crimes more? Like, do you feel like we're over-jailing? Well, I mean, careful of the word non-violent because that can include something like theft,

right? And, you know, car theft and stuff in stores. I mean, careful of the word nonviolent because that can include something like theft, right? Right, sure. And, you know, car theft and stuff in stores. I mean, those, of course, should be harsh criminal penalties. But, I mean, kind of what you do in the privacy of your own home, that's a different category, and I would show more latitude in that. But in practice, we're not generally, you know, going in and arresting people for what they're doing in their own home. I hope we're not. Hunter.

But, I mean... Hunter's getting arrested for... What's that? Hunter Biden's getting arrested for something he did. There you go. No, I wasn't here for lying on the gun form. I guess he wasn't in his home. It wasn't like he was waving the gun around in public.

He just lied on the form. Do you think Hunter should go to jail for that? Just like with former President Trump, I have confidence in the justice system to adjudicate it. When people violate the law, they should be held accountable, whether they're a former president or a president's son. I have one final rapid fire, but do you have any, you know, final pitch for my listeners? Everybody here likes Colorado, but this will be airing on Monday's audio podcast.

Like a Colorado pitch. Do you want more people here? Or are you kind of like, at this point, you're like, you know, anything else you're doing? A final word? We got a great state. I mean, we got a great quality of life. And of course, you know, that's, we're part of victims of our own success. That's why housing prices have gone up and people have sought to live here. But really, we always aspire to be an even better state. And I'm glad that everybody here is part of that. Me too. Hey, guys.

All right. Traditionally, on the podcast, I do an outro song, a walk-off song that is relevant to the subject of the podcast. And so I was hoping, we're not going to do this right now, but tonight, if it works in the IT, they're going to play my favorite gay pride anthem as the outro song. We'll see how that goes. But for the podcast listeners,

I want them to hear your favorite gay pride anthem. So what should we send them off with this Colorado Gay Pride Weekend? Let's do It's Raining Men. Oh. Hallelujah. A classic. A classic.

It's Raining Men. All right. That is it, everybody. We'll be back to the next level. Thank you to Governor Polis. A classic. It's Raining Men. All right. That is it, everybody. We'll be back to the next level. Thank you to Governor Polis. Thank you. And see y'all soon.

Thank you. There it is. And have we got news for you. You better listen. Get ready, all you lonely girls, and leave those umbrellas at home. All right. The wind is rising. I'm just getting low. How low, girl? Going to all sorts of streets, the place to go. We better hurry up Cause tonight for the first time Just about half past ten For the first time in history It's gonna start raining men

It's raining men Hallelujah, it's raining men Amen I'm gonna go out I'm gonna let myself get absolutely soaking wet. It's raining men, hallelujah, it's raining men, every step of men. Oh, God, God, and me Rough and tough and strong and free God is best for the nature Sugar-fed the woman too She comes from the heavens And she did what she had to do

She bought every angel And rearranged the sky So that each and every woman Could find the perfect guy It's raining men Hallelujah It's raining men Amen It's raining men, hallelujah, it's raining men, amen It's raining men, hallelujah, it's raining men, amen

It's raining men, hallelujah, it's raining men, amen It's raining men, hallelujah, it's raining men, amen The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.