The Bulwark Podcast - Jasmine Crockett: Nikki Haley and B6

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Rep. Jasmine Crockett joins Tim Miller to talk about the origins of "bleach blond bad built butch body," what it's like to work with a House GOP that spends most of its time on pro-Trump messaging instead of serving the public, and African American voters in 2024. Plus, Tim's thoughts on Nikki Haley.

Hey guys, we taped this interview with Jasmine Crockett before the news that Nikki Haley was voting for Trump. So on YouTube last night, I popped out a quick reaction to the Nikki Haley endorsement. I want to play that for you here and make sure you subscribe to our YouTube feed because when there's breaking news, obviously this is a once a day podcast, when there's breaking news, I'm going to pop on there and give quick reaction thoughts. Our YouTube is crushing, so I'd appreciate it if you headed over there and subscribed. Here was my take last night. We will have much, much, much more on this with A.B. Stoddard on tomorrow's podcast. Hey guys, I wanted to come on and give you a quick reaction to the

Nikki Haley announcement at this Hudson Institute event that she is going to be voting for Donald Trump in November. I think that there is a political discussion that we should have, whether the political implications of this, and also talk about the merits of her arguments. So I want to get onto the merits of her arguments first. She starts by saying that she wants to support a president that is going to stand with our allies and be hostile to our enemies. That's literally the first thing that she says she wants out of a president and the idea that somebody that believes that could then turn

around and say i'm going to be for donald trump is absolutely asinine our allies hate donald trump unless you're just talking about israel unless you're just talking about bb netanyahu and that's the only ally that you're talking about who else are you talking about donald trump alienated us from europe alienated us from everybody in nato donald trump is loathed by leaders across the southern hemisphere i guess maybe you're also talking about mbs is he an ally i guess if you consider mbs an ally then maybe mbs and bb are the ones that are the most for trump but like don Donald Trump is locked at the hip with potentially our greatest foe or one of our top two greatest foes, at least right now, Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump ran interference for Chairman Xi while they were covering up the coronavirus and how that got out

of their shores. Okay. Donald Trump was like like he was talking about how much he trusts she Donald Trump writes love letters to Kim Jong-un what are you talking about that you're I think he was like oh I'm for people that that support our allies and and oppose our enemies and so I'm for Trump that's nonsensical you're just in this deluded world I again like if you only care about Israel maybe you could argue that though I think Joe Biden's been a reliable ally to Israel as we've talked about many times in here. I think sometimes you can tell your friends have gone a little too far. Joe Biden isn't sympathetic to Hamas.

Listen to Joe Biden's rhetoric. You can just tell this is post hoc rationalization stuff. And this is a stupid bubble that she's in. Then she talks about closing the border. Okay, whatever. I think that child separation was one of the most disgusting things that's happened in this country in my lifetime. But if you like Donald Trump's border policies, all right. And he's planning to deport 15 million people.

So if you think that the federal government bureaucracy is going to do that in a way that's clean and humane, then all right. Or maybe you just don't care about that. Maybe you're fine with putting people on buses and into camps and all this shit. Maybe that's what Nikki Haley's for now. I don't know. Then she's like, oh, I want somebody to be for capitalism. This is just brain rot. Joe Biden's against capitalism? Since when? The capitalist system right now is thriving. It's booming. Companies are making record profits.

We're drilling record oil. What do you mean? Joe Biden's hostile to capitalism. He's been a catastrophe. What are you even talking about? Show your work. Show your work. All right. If there's some regulation that you don't like, that's the reason you're not going to be for Donald Trump, then tell me what that is. But like this like blanket, like Fox News brain rot crap about how Joe Biden's against capitalism is insane. So like the merits of our argument are stupid. Unfortunately, they're going to resonate with a certain type of person.

So we're going to have to keep talking about it around here. I think the politics of this are such that I don't know that Nikki Haley endorsing Trump helps Trump all that much. I think she could have helped Biden a lot because I think that there are a lot of people that share her views. And just backing up a little bit among those views are those that we just listed on policies, but also the view that Donald Trump is unfit. Nikki Haley, I was there. I was in New Hampshire. I asked her in a gaggle about whether or not she thinks Donald Trump is fit. She didn't answer the first time.

And I asked to follow up. And I was like, well, are you saying that you don't think that he is the character to be president? And she kind of smirked at me and again, didn't answer. And I was like, we're still going to take that to where you don't think he has the character. And she, to her credit then, said yeah. So a person said to me, to my face in New Hampshire, that she does not believe Donald Trump has the character to leave this country. That she thinks that he's unfit. She's said that before.

The logic doesn't make sense, all right? If you really break it all down, the logic doesn't make sense, but we have to bring it all down because of this. There is a category of voter that is in line with Haley on everything they said. They want the United States to be strong with our allies and to be hostile to our foes. They want to secure border. They support capitalism. They also think Donald Trump doesn't have the character to be president and is unfit. Many of those people are already Joe Biden voters. And that's the big thing about this Nikki Haley endorsement. We're really only talking about people are like 30%, 20%.

We're really only talking about like 5, 6, 7% of people that are really persuadable. Because a big portion of Nikki Haley voters were Joe Biden voters that were expressing their hatred for Donald Trump by voting for her. They weren't Nikki Haley stans, all right, or Nikki Haley super fans. They were anti-Trump voters and she was the vessel that they had. Had instead of Nikki Haley been on that ballot, had it been Larry Hogan or Mitt Romney or Tim Scott or whatever, they would have voted for them, you know, pre-Trump suck up Tim Scott, you know what I mean? So those voters, Nikki Haley endorsing Trump, they're not, she's not moving them.

All right. They've already rendered a verdict on Donald Trump. They don't think he's the character to be president. So they're not voting for him. They are matching their vote with their convictions. Now we get to this other group, which could be a decisive group. The five, six, seven percent who are hostile to Trump and his character, who don't think he's fit, but are also traditional Republicans. They're unhappy. They wish Joe Biden was a little stronger with Israel. They wish Joe Biden's border policies were stronger. They wish Joe Biden had more free market instincts. We can argue the merits of all those points, but these are real people. They exist. Does Nikki Haley endorsing Trump help them move to Trump? Maybe, but these were already Trump

people, right? So her biggest net positive could have been to endorse Biden to help move some of those people who are Republicans and have always been Republicans over for this one time. Now she's kind of giving them a person's structure to stay with the Republicans. And so Biden's going to have to make a case to them. And he's going to make the case to them the same way he did the State of the Union by talking about how he's strong with NATO, how Donald Trump's going to be with Russia, right? How the economy is improving in this country and how Donald Trump is a threat to that with his 10% tariff across the board. That's going to have to be a message to these people. Hopefully we can win some of them over. It's going to be a big part of our work here. I'm going to talk about this. I'm going to keep talking about it.

Hopefully it starts to sink in. Nikki Haley, my final thought on her is she's always been a political animal. All right. She thinks she has a future in this party. I think she's wrong. I don't think she does. But her calculus is that she's putting an end to her career as a Republican politician if she endorses Biden. I think that that's correct. And she wants to keep having a future. So she's going to keep her options open. And so that's why she's backfilling that rationale with some absurd logic about why Joe Biden is a catastrophe. So we will have much more on this, much, much, much, much, much more. But I wanted to give you guys a quick take, quick reaction. We'll be talking again soon.

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I am just so delighted to be here with Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, Democrat from Texas. She represents part of Dallas. And we're both from St. Louis, I found out. Yes, yes, yes, yes. You know, I've got to ask you the St. Louis question, though. Where I went to high school. I left before fourth grade. I left in fourth grade, girl. I went to Academy of the Sacred Heart up to elementary school out in St. Charles. Well, now I know you for real are from St. Louis, though. Yeah, oh yeah. I know I got a lot of cousins. I know the high school question.

So I've been wanting to do this for a while. Ever since you talked about classified documents being in Trump's shitter, we got to get her on the Bulwark podcast. So we've been scheduling it. And then the news gone shined on us at the end of last week when this happened. Miss Crockett.

I'm just curious, just to better understand your ruling, if someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody's bleach blonde, bad built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct? A what now? All right. So I got to know. So bleach blonde, bad built, butch body. What kind of work went into that?

Was that just off the cuff? Was there a team? Was there a team? Was there a speech writing team involved, a text chain? No, none of that. It was all me. And so one of my favorite people in the entire world was my granny. And my granny, if anybody knows anything about old black women, they really say whatever's on their minds and they don't filter anything out. And so my granny used to call people bad built. That was like a thing that she would do. I did have some bees in my mind. So I was looking at her and so I was like, she's bleach blonde. And then I thought of my

granny, bad built. And then we all know that she has some masculinity about her. And I was like, which body? So no, I came up with it all by myself. I think my team probably would have been very nervous to write something like that for me. It was me. I thought maybe there was like a group text you had going and I was like, I'm thinking maybe I could get on that. But all right, I hear you. I just have to say earlier this week, we had Tom Nichols on, you know, not our generation. I think, you know, norms, mores of the Congress, you know, he was clutching his pearls a little bit. Well, what do you say to folks that are like, oh, we shouldn't stoop to their level, you know, shouldn't be calling them names, you know,

the old Michelle Obama line? Like, what's your response to all that? Well, first of all, it's a false equivalency. Marjorie Taylor Greene had two opportunities to actually stop this from going there. Number one, she could have just not said it because it was against the rules. Number two, she was given an opportunity to apologize and she was indignant and refused to apologize. And so once Chair Comer decided that he was not going to do what he was supposed to do, which was to enforce the rules, then I decided to basically question him. I did not say anything directly to her. I didn't even mention her name. I didn't look at her. I didn't do anything. I asked the chair a question. And really,

it was so that the chair could think. I don't expect for there to be any lessons learned by Marjorie Taylor Greene because she just doesn't care to learn lessons. But I would hope that my chairman says, listen, I don't want to be in any more songs, whether it's a country song or a trap song. I don't want to be in the middle of this. I think I just need to handle my committee because I wanted to exemplify for him how far it could potentially go.

She didn't come to committee today, so I don't know. But everything was a lot smoother without her there. And the eyelashes thing was obviously racist. You know, I mean, like she wasn't exactly subtle about it. So I thought it was fine. I understand that complaint. It's like, look, we had to deal with this.

Like when I was working for Jeb, there's this combo that we had, you know, which was the old cliche, like, oh, you don't want to wrestle with a pig, or you're going to get mud on you. Like, that was our attitude going against Trump for like two weeks. And then we're like, no, like mud's going to get on us regardless, like now, like, this is how these guys are going to play. And so I don't know, I mean, how do you kind of think about that just as a Democratic Party thing? Yeah, I am consistently hearing people say the Democrats are weak. and it couldn't be further from the truth. And part of the reason that I think that they have this perception that

Democrats are weak is because you have these out-of-control bullies such as Marjorie, and no one decides to really beat her back. And I think that while the B66 movement while it was uh an interesting way to put words is that what we're calling it now the b6 movement the b6 movement absolutely um and b6 is way better than j6 but nevertheless with it i think what it was was it was a release for people i think that is why you see songs of all genres you see skits see memes. You see all these things because people have been frustrated with her for for a very long time. And this was an opportunity to unite against a bully and make sure that you take her down. I can't say that I ever walked into Congress really wanting to demean another person, whether it was another woman or anything like that. But I also did not walk into Congress expecting that someone would disrespect me to my face and expect me to sit there and just take it.

I'm with you on this. I just think you have to push back. And I think a lot of people that talk about this stuff don't realize just the degree of the clown show that you've been subjected to on the oversight committee you know for folks who don't suffer through this this has been going on for months they have nothing they're wasting everybody's time they have these show trials going on and um you know i think you've done a good job pushing back carlson moskowitz which we had on a good job of pushing back but even still and just just talk about what it's been like to be in this just kind of absurd committee when you're supposed to be serving the public. No, it has been so frustrating. Today, I actually pointed out how ineffective this Congress has been. We were having a hearing where they were

attacking federal workers and complaining about telework. And basically, if you telework, according to them, you're not working at all. And I wanted to make the point that, listen, we show up, we're not allowed to telework here. And we have been more ineffective than we've ever been. So clearly showing up ain't going to necessarily solve the problem either. But that's what it's been. It's been just full of hypocrisy. It's been full of messaging to make sure that Trump knows that they're standing by their guy instead of focusing on the people that sent us here to work, right? Trump can't vote for anybody on my committee, but there are at least 700,000 people that voted for each and every person to sit on this committee. And constituents such as mine, Eugene Gates, that lost his life, a postal worker that was working for 37 years for the post office and died because he overheated.

That falls under our purview. But I've yet to be able to have a hearing on something such as that. And so there is real work that we could be doing. We could be figuring out how we can strengthen our military, which I'm excited to say that I actually was able to get a bill passed called the Readiness Act out of oversight last week. But there's so much work that really needs to be done. And it's frustrating because they make up conspiracies about the president. They decide to have hearings that basically are nothing more than Russian propaganda, finding out that the entire basis of their rationale for wanting to impeach the president of the United States is because of information that they got from a Russian spy. Yeah, that really makes sense. Right. Like these are the people that are running our country. And while it's funny, to some extent, it's really scary. And it's a matter of you have to laugh to keep from crying, because these people are truly dangerous. Do you talk to any of the Republicans on the committee that are still attached to reality? I mean, like, is there any shame left over there? Or have all those folks been kind of flushed out? For the most part, they're gone. Behind closed doors, some of them will say like, hey, you know, we know it's wild, but it's what we've got to do if we're going to win our primaries.

But you see the Kim Bucks of the world. I mean, I have a Freedom Caucus member who says that this place is just too much for him and for him to leave, that tells you how bad it's gotten. But he was ridiculed for not wanting to vote for an election denier to be the Speaker of the House. He was ridiculed because he felt as if you don't just wield impeachment as if it's one of Oprah's gifts that you just hand out to everybody. He felt like this institution required more. And as a trained lawyer, former prosecutor, he felt like they were playing with fire and really setting a terrible precedence. And he just didn't want to be part of it anymore. Now, we can disagree on tons and tons of policy, but it tells you how bad things have gotten.

Yeah, back when I was a Republican, Ken Buck was one of the crazy ones. I was supporting his opponent in the primary for the Senate. We were like, this guy's insane. He was running against Jane Norton, who was more of a mainstream Republican back at the time. Anyway, you did go up to New York, support Republicans are up there doing these press conferences. And it might be time to, again, push back a little bit, like not let them have these platforms. So what did you see up there and what was the point of you going? Yeah, so I went to raise money. Thank you, New York. New York is always a great place to do that. JasmineCrockett.com.

Exactly, right? But no, I was in town. I am an attorney. I do miss the courtroom every single day. I did criminal defense work specifically. And so I said, well, I'm going to go see what all the fuss is about, especially since people couldn't show up to work on time last week. So let me see what's going on. And interestingly enough, the person that was testifying for the defense at that time, Bob Costello, had actually just come before me on the weaponization committee the week before. I was not a fan of his then. I wasn't a fan of his when he was in the courtroom. But I appreciated that the courtroom is a more controlled environment

than anything you ever find on Capitol Hill under the control of the Republicans. And so Judge Mershon stood his ground, was very strong. I felt like he seems to be a great jurist. It's one thing when pundits are commenting and things like that. It's another thing when you can actually look and see the judge's demeanor. And I also was trying to figure out what was the defense's strategy with putting Bob Costello on the stand, because I personally believe that the jury heard some things that were more harmful than helpful, which is the impression that I got out of him when he came before our committee. And I think for the jury to have that be the last thing that they heard I think that it

was problematic and I think that the state is going to seize on some really good opportunities to talk about things that they probably wouldn't have got into evidence such as some of these emails where it seems pretty clear that Trump was attempting to instigate or really put Michael Cohen into a bad situation, he and or Giuliani. And I don't think that that's the last thing that you want the jury to believe. As you've had jurors that have said, I don't know if I can serve on this jury because they were afraid. The idea that he continues to lodge threats, even though they may be thinly veiled, or sometimes they're just direct. I don't think that that's what you want a jury to be left with is their impression of your client. And I think

that some people, if they're on the fence, they may say, I just don't like this guy. I think he's a bad guy. And I think that their last witness only kind of solidified that for them. I want to talk about kind of a related issue to this. The president struggled a little bit with black voters. If you look at the numbers, you believe the numbers. I was listening to you on the breakfast club with Charlemagne and he was conceding that.

So it's not just polls, not just me saying that he was the one that was asking you about this too. And saying that he hears that, you know, Trump's out there kind of doing the, Oh, the courts are coming after me and black people like me because they know what it's like to be treated poorly and this kind of racist nonsense.

So I wonder what you think about, A, that argument. Like, is that seeping through to anybody that the feds are coming after Trump and it's not fair? And if not that, like, what are some other issues that you think explain the soft support for the president in that community? I don't think that people are saying, you know what, I'm going to leave Joe Biden and go for Trump. I just don't think the droves of Black people are doing that.

I do believe that there is voter apathy. And I think that it really is across the board. I think that it's being highlighted specifically about Black folk because Black people are a large portion of the coalition for the Democratic Party. And so I think that that's why it's being discussed. But I think that I hear more from people just really feeling a bit fatigued and not feeling as if anyone cares about them. And ultimately, when people head to the polls, they head to the polls because they are determined to vote for somebody that they absolutely believe will take care of them, whether it's true or not. It's the person that they believe will make their lives better.

And I think that this election is really going to boil down to the issues. I think that most people that show up to the polls won't necessarily show up because they're so in love with Trump or that they're so in love with Biden. I mean, the reality is that when you look at Trump and his primaries, Trump was never getting the type of support that Biden was getting from his party, right? Regardless of the fact that there are those in the coalition that may be breaking off, you're seeing the primaries where President Biden was getting 80 or 90 percent. But then again, you're seeing where Nikki Haley has been out of this race and ended up getting like, I think, 25 percent here recently. So there's been a little bit of pushback from mainstream Republicans. And I think that, president may end up with a different coalition.

I think it's one of the reasons that he is going after those Haley voters. But I think that it's also important for Black people to understand what has been done to help you. And I think that this president and this administration has done so much, not this term, because clearly we ain't doing nothing in the House, but prior to. And so I think that they were so busy keeping their heads down and working that they really didn't take time to run their laps and tell people what they've done or why your life is better. So, for instance, I'll tell you, we had a conversation with the vice president. You know, I was like, hey, we are all in. We support you. We love you. We know you're doing great work. But literally, there were two members of Congress that were sitting

at this table that had their student loan debt relieved. And you know what? They did not know why. Two sitting members of Congress were trying to figure out if something was a glitch. They didn't know what happened. They were searching everywhere. They were calling everywhere. They could not not pay their student loans. And then they found out ultimately that their student loan debt had been relieved. And it was by the administration. And I said, listen, we got to tell people, like when people have over a hundred thousand000 that is being removed from their backs, they need to know why and who did it. And so, you know, just pushing those messages out, pushing out the message about record low unemployment for African-Americans, pushing out the message that when it comes to investing in HBCUs, there's no one that's ever invested to this level. $7 billion. The most that Trump ever did was $253 million. They have the data. They have the facts. It's just about making

sure that Black people know that there has been a specific and intentional focus on making sure that their lives are improved. When we talk about the child tax credit, that was so big. But you know what? People were getting $400 a month per child, and they didn't know why or what was happening. Because this administration didn't slow down people's money by saying, make sure you put my name on the check, or any of those gimmicky things. But those are the things that have stuck with people. Yeah. All right. My former Republicans got to come out for a second. I got to pick on you. Like the student loan thing. I just, I don't know. You could win me over on certain situations with the student loan thing. But that story you told me, isn't that just a sign that like this is not effective? It's not working.

Like the people that are getting this relief, I don't even know about it. And then on top of that, you have other groups of people. Like if I didn't go to college and I was struggling with inflation and I see a news story today on the nightly news, it's like we're giving another billion dollars out to people that went to grad school to relieve their loans. That might piss me off. So I don't know. What do you think about the student? I think, first of all, they absolutely needed to make sure that people were being informed and they have now started sending out letters so that people know. What I consistently heard, specifically in my district, would be people saying, it's amazing how the federal government can bail out these big corporations. They can help

everybody except for us. And at a time when there is record inflation, at a time when people are really struggling, and they're saying, we don't know how we can buy a home. We don't know if we can buy a home. This is right on time. And when we're talking about something like the wealth gap and what it looks like for African-Americans, this is something that is allowing that wealth gap to actually be decreased. And it has been decreased because we know that there was a disproportionate impact in a negative way on African-Americans when it comes to this debt. That is why it was so important because this was a way of trying to help people that absolutely want to move forward without having this on their back. Because a lot of people didn't necessarily end up in Trump shoes and go to college. I mean, and daddy had a bunch of people didn't necessarily end up in Trump shoes and go to college. And daddy had a

bunch of money. Not everybody was born that way. And when you live in a society where they try to convince you that the only way to move up or the only way to somehow be qualified is to have a college degree, then this is what you end up with. Now, I appreciate exactly what you're saying because I actually don't subscribe to this. I think that people should grow up and do whatever it is that makes them happy. I became a lawyer because I wanted to help people in this way, but goodness knows I would have preferred not to have any student loan debt and have to go to law school. But we need people in trades, and I've been very supportive of all of that. In fact, one of the bills that

I've pushed forward with and Republicans are blocking us on is when we look at Pell Grants, making sure that you don't just get access to a Pell Grant if you are attending a four-year institution. But if you have decided that you want to go into the trades or you want to go and get into a field where you only need a community college degree, then we want to make sure that you have the access to because ultimately, we're contributing to making sure that you become a good taxpayer. And that's what I want is a lot of good taxpayers. One of the things that I thought was the most compelling thing on your Charlemagne interview was discussing SNAP benefits and how small they are. A lot of people don't know

they could retell that story and how Republicans are trying to take that. And since that interview, it came out the CBO kind of scored the farm bill that the Republicans are pushing, and it's increasing the deficit. So it's like fiscally irresponsible, and it's cutting SNAP benefits. And so it's just absolutely crazy. You're on the House Ag Committee. So maybe just talk about that a little bit. Yeah, thanks so much for bringing it up because we never get to go viral talking about SNAP. But no, it's really important. At a time when people are struggling, you again mentioned inflation. We know that the first thing that people are talking about is the cost of food. So the average person has no idea that when it comes to SNAP benefits, you only get $6 a day. Now, would Democrats probably like to at least

increase that to $7 a day? Absolutely. But you know what? The solution that the Republicans have come up with is that they actually want to cut about $30 billion in SNAP benefits. And here's the deal. You can cut it all you want to, I mean, if you can get the votes, which we know they can't count. So I'm going to just tell you, they ain't going to be able to get it done. But even still cutting SNAP benefits, they act as if it's another kind of racial trope that they kind of throw out there because they want to make it seem as if it's the inner city black and brown folk that are just lazy and refuse to go to work so that they can get $6 a day to eat. I don't know who would opt to do that, but this is what they put out there.

When the facts are that rural America actually uses more SNAP benefits than urban America. And honestly, most of the Republicans represent rural areas. And so my fight is not just a fight for my district, but I'm fighting for their districts while they're tearing them down. In addition, if you care about farmers, farmers don't just go out and say, you know what, give me that broccoli. It just doesn't appear overnight, right? So you pull this money out of the ecosystem. As farmers are making their plans, we know that that's less money to be in the ecosystem for these farmers that are trying to make a living as well. And we know right now that our farms are struggling. So it's a lose-lose for everybody.

I don't know why they feel as if it's the way to go. But I'm telling you right now, I can't support a bill that would take literal food out of the mouths of Americans. That's really good. Okay, last question. I have to ask you this since you're representing Texas. I've been enraged about how Governor Greg Abbott had pardoned Daniel Perry for the murder of Garrett Foster, Black Lives Matter protester, who was exercising his constitutional right

to carry a firearm, who didn't do anything. Perry drives into the crowd with his truck and shoots him in cold blood, and Greg Abbott pardons him. And then you have this story over in Florida where Roger Fortson, who's a black 23-year-old airman, a veteran, is in his home in Alcalusa County when the sheriff's department gets a tip that there's some domestic situation happening. It wasn't happening in Forsten's apartment, but the cops come in and shoot him dead. And the body camera footage shows that

they didn't ask him to drop his weapon until after he was already on the ground. So when you see situations like these, I'm just wondering kind of what your reaction is. You know, I wish that I could say I was surprised. Like, I wish that it was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this happened. But instead, it's more frustrating that people continue to put a person like this in power. I mean, he's not hiding what he's doing. It's not like he did this late at night and when nobody would see it and try to hide it and deny it or blame it on somebody else. He is blatantly telling you that he doesn't believe in law and order. He is blatantly telling you that it's okay to kill

another human. I guess at least so long as it's a black person. I mean, I don't know. Like when you talk about the numbers and the president, this is the party that literally has people that are saying, yeah, your black life doesn't matter. And that's why you've seen black folk be in the streets and do things like say black lives matter. Because let me tell you, this country was outraged when they heard of a certain governor killing her dog. You couldn't find anybody that wasn't talking about it. Everybody posted pictures of their dogs and things like that. But I haven't seen anywhere near the level of outrage about the fact that there is an officer that went through the process. We're not talking about somebody just banished him. He went through the process. He was prosecuted. He was convicted

and the governor decided to overturn it. And there's been no outrage. That's why black people get so upset, because it seems like dogs will always have lives that matter more than ours. Jasmine Crockett, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the Bullard podcast. Please come back soon. Keep on fighting the good fight on that oversight committee with all those clowns and, you know, go Cardinals, I guess. We'll see you soon. Absolutely. Bye. Thanks so much to Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. I'll be sticking around here for a mailbag on the

other side. All right, mailbag time. Thank you to those who sent in questions. The questions are way improved, much shorter. The readers of the mailbag, super excited. Very positive feedback for the gerbils back at Bulwark HQ in DC. Remember, it's bulwarkpodcast at the bulwark.com if you have questions comments well not comments actually if you have questions insults life advice this is kind of a combo question and life advice it comes from mike in minneapolis is it crazy to contemplate

emigrating somewhere else if god forbid trump wins in november here's my answer to that question i ain't going fucking anywhere all right i ain't going anywhere i am staying i'm staying i'm not going to be run out of my country by these freaks so hopefully we don't have to think about this i get the jokes i don't begrudge anybody particularly somebody wants to do their golden years in portugal or uruguay or wherever um that's fine and one of my besties she moved to italy and did an eat pray love thing and met a boy and decided to stay there that's a cool option if you want to give that a try maybe you'll have as much luck as she did but you know that's not for me all right i'm happy here

i have a great life good good family. And if Donald Trump wins this thing, we're going to beat this bastard back again. All right. I didn't want to have to do it. I wanted to stop thinking about Donald Trump, November, whatever the day after the election was in 2016. I remember thinking about this the night before the election. I remember thinking the thing I was the most excited about about hillary winning in 2016 was that i would not have to send another millimeter of brain space of brain matter on this fucking asshole like that was the thing i was most excited about freeing my mind reading books you know to thinking about other things that wasn't the life we were given all right and so

we're stuck thinking about them and if i gotta think about them for four more years or eight them. And if I got to think about them for four more years or eight more or whatever, then we'll fucking think about it for four more years or eight more. All right. People have been dealt worse hands than that in history. You know, I think that the threats will be really great. I think that the risk to people, particularly immigrants, migrants in this country is going to be extremely high. I think he's going to target some political foes, knock on wood, not me. I think that trans people and young women, particularly poor women that want access to medical care are going to have a tough time. And there'll be a lot of people that have a tough time, but this will be something we'll continue

to need to fight. And by the way, if he loses, this is going to be something that we're going to continue to need to fight. So, you know, I don't know. If Donald Trump wins again, I'm planning on batting down the hatches. I'm not letting him take my Parkway Poe boys away from me. I'm not letting him take away my trips to Sea Galactic tips away from me. I'm not letting them take it. I'm just not. So I'm not going anywhere. You shouldn't go anywhere unless you want to. I mean, you know, it's your life. But I think that particularly those of us that live in blue enclaves with resources and with privilege are going to have an obligation to do what we did the last eight years and try to get the country back on the right track. And that's what I plan to do what we did the last eight years and try to get the country back on

the right track. And that's what I plan to do. All right, a couple quick ones. Eddie asked, what would a reasonable Republican position on income inequality be? Do you even agree it's a problem? I had to answer this one because literally the Jeb Bush super PAC was called right to rise for a reason. It was because we acknowledged that income inequality was a problem. Stupid us. We thought that income inequality and alleviating that and trying to help working class Americans improve their lot was going to be an appealing message as the party made a populist turn, right? Isn't that right? Isn't that what people wanted in populism? They want greater access to capital formation, to the ability to earn money, to the ability to grow their careers. And that's what we thought. That was dumb, it turns out,

because Donald Trump talking about hating on immigrants and how Mexicans are rapists and how Hillary should go to jail and how we should build a wall, that ended up being a more appealing populist message. It turned out in 2016. but there's been a long debate on the right about this question of income inequality obviously there's some you know kind of pure libertarian types uh that don't believe that there should be any limits on on the wealth that the rich create and that we should let the markets decide all this that's there's certainly some republicans that think that way but there was you, kind of a robust, it was called a Reform-O-Con discussion between 2012 and 2016 about what are some of the ways that we can try to alleviate the income inequality problem. You know, the child tax credit was one of those things.

Joe Biden embraced that until the Republicans killed it two years ago, but there were some Republicans that were with him on that. You know, there were other issues about, other issues about ways that we could reform and change the tax code that would help people on the lower end of the spectrum, working class folks, make sure their tax burden was lowered, make sure they had more access to an ability to rise up the income scale. That's what the kind of right to rise theme came from. You can just go back and google reformacon or you know google jeb's proposals for 2015 and 16 you might not like them but i do think that there was a understanding and agreement that this was an issue and that it led to i think the liberals talk about this more under the kind of

rubric of fairness you know for me you know it was also just kind of about the cultural fabric you know it felt like the resentments that were growing as type of this, like there's a fairness element to this, of course, there's a social responsibility, there's a responsibility to the community, of course, but you want people to feel like they have an opportunity to improve their lot. And you want people to feel like they're not living in some dystopian period where you've got the Rockefellers up top that are living however they want. And, you know, the rest of us are forced to, you know, let each other eat cake. So I think that, you know, back in the before times, there was a robust conversation around this, but here we are not so much anymore. I bet JD Vance might tell you that he has some thoughts about this. And,

you know, maybe in a post Trump world, there's like an imaginary Republican populism that does care about this. That's just kind of hard to see that happening when you've got the actual real world Republican populist focusing on like imaginary conspiracies about how Donald Trump was almost assassinated by Joe Biden and, you know, how vaccines don't work. It's kind of hard to imagine how they pivot that into responsible policy rubric around income inequality. But, you know know we can hope lastly ryan asked why doesn't the biden campaign highlight the work the cabinet and other people in various leadership positions are doing it seems to be biden has high quality people around him that are effective at getting things done i agree with that i agree i don't really know i've asked and it's almost like even the biden cabinet people know you, sometimes when you ask a question,

you get a sense that there's something people aren't telling you. I hope you don't ever get that sense in this podcast. I'm doing my best to just tell you everything I know. I don't always know everything, but I'm trying to tell you everything I know. That's the nice part about not having future career prospects in the government. When I talk to people around the Biden admin, I never feel like I get a satisfying answer to this question. And I don't know if

there's some personality elements or if there's something else that I'm missing. You know, there's some of this, obviously Pete's out there some, you could see Pete out there way more, you know, Gina Raimondo, and you can just go down the list. I think that obviously Biden has a good relationship with Secretary of State Blinken. And you do see a lot of him out there. That's not really relevant so much to domestic politics, but I wish other people had the rope that Blinken does to go out there. And I think that that's something that hopefully is coming. And it's something that I can tell you that you better believe that whenever anybody with any decision-making power on this stuff talks to me or Sarah or anybody in our orbit, this is something we're telling them. More is more,

and they need to get the high quality people out carrying these messages more. I think that Jasmine Crockett, who we just had on, is a compelling messenger, particularly in this question of how does the Biden administration reach voters that are less engaged, that maybe get news off of social media. You know, her ability to talk in those soundbites and to talk like a normal person, I think is useful. And so it's good that they have some of those folks out there, but we could see some more. All right, that's it for the mailbag today. We'll be back tomorrow with Bulwark Fave from the dark side, A.B. Stoddard. We'll hopefully bring a bright and

shiny weekend podcast with A.B. Stoddard. Is that possible? We're going to do our best for you. We'll see you all back here tomorrow. Talk to you A.B. Stoddard. Is that possible? We're going to do our best for you. We'll see you all back here tomorrow. Talk to you then. Peace. That you'd talk to her maybe did even worse. I kept quiet so I could keep you and ain't it funny Even worse, I kept quiet so I could keep you

And ain't it funny How you ran to her The second that we called it quits And ain't it funny How you said you were friends Now it sure as hell don't look like it You betrayed me And I know that you'll never feel sorry For the way I hurt you

You talked to her when we were together Loved you at your worst But that didn't matter It took you two weeks to go off and date her guess you didn't cheat but you're still a traitor the bulwark podcast is produced by katie cooper with audio engineering and editing by jason brown