The Bulwark Podcast - Margaret Hoover: Kamala, the Real Apprentice

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Harris has been watching and learning about the ways of Washington, and she keeps sticking the landing like a gymnast. Meanwhile, Trump is desperately trying to unring the bell on abortion. Plus, what is his plan to delegitimize the election this time? PBS' Margaret Hoover joins Tim Miller for the holiday weekend pod. show notes: Margaret's Firing Line special, "Counting the Vote" on your local PBS station Margaret's Firing Line documentary on YouTube Tim's playlist John Avlon's congressional campaign website

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I think I stand by every word in the book except the subtitle. The possibility. I don't think that new generation of Republicans, Tim, that would be you and me. And I don't think we saved the Republican Party, but all right. Yeah, I don't think that that happened. But it was a noble effort.

At least you were trying, you know? We were trying. We correctly identified the problems. And, you know, the elders didn't want to take our solutions. Oh, well. All right. Well, I have three clips from your Bill O'Reilly days that I've saved for the end of the podcast which we can no i'm just joking

you know i actually teaser i might actually have him back on firing line oh really ah he has a couple books coming out and i feel like it's like a full circle i think you should i would tune in for that he actually pitched it to me which was a surreal moment yeah some people be like don't platform or whatever it's good for these guys to take some heat that taking heat is good it's like free platforming is the bad thing i think that some somehow this thing got warped during 2016 when like cnn was playing trump's empty podium you know and playing trump's speeches uh two hours worth and and they would only talk about jeb if it was about how our polls were going down, or how Trump was attacking his wife. And then people are like, we shouldn't

platform these people. It's like, no, you should challenge them. Like you just you shouldn't give them free platforms. Like that's it, right? Correct. Correct. And by the way, you've done a really good job of that on this program, since you've taken over from Charlie. And I've really appreciated that. Thank you, Margaret. I'm doing my best. I like you're not afraid to tangle and to engage and you do it respectfully. And you know, that's what we need more of. Back at you. We're going to talk about a little bit about interviewing these people at the end, have a little interviewing tactic convo. But we need to do some news before we get to that

and to your documentary, which is really good and important, I should say. So people should definitely stick around for it. Kamala last night gave her first joint interview with Tim Walsh. It was with CNN and Dana Bash. I'm wondering what your impressions were. Can I tell you? Didn't watch. I watched it. I watched it.

And I am so tickled and delighted by how she answered some of these questions. I just feel like she's a gymnast who's just going off of the vault and then sticking the landing in a way that makes you so proud to be an American. Like when you're watching the Olympics, I just, I thought she nailed the fracking answer. Look, and by the way, I did not share her positions on fracking or her sort of the development of her position on fracking, but she's ended up in the right place. And she's actually, her answer is believable. You know, when she said, I actually cast the deciding vote as vice president on the leases for fracking, right? Like, actually, she did. That's believable. Like, if I'm, well, I don't know, maybe she's just changing her position for a political purpose. I'm like, actually, well, no, I guess she has had that position for four years. And I actually think she made it totally

believable, her answer on immigration. I mean, she answered the migration criticism, and then she tacked directly to where she should be, which is that if I am president, I will demand that that border bill that the Republicans scuttled come to my desk and I will sign it. I thought she nailed it. And my favorite part was the race question. I mean, Dana Bash basically said, Donald Trump doesn't think you're black, thinks you're Indian, think you just became black. You know, really a full opening for an identity politics, grievance politician to just wallow in it. And she said, same old playbook. Let's move on.

Next question. So good. I got the audio to that. Let's listen to it. I want to ask you about your opponent, Donald Trump. I was a little bit surprised. People might be surprised to hear that you have never interacted with him, met him face to face.

That's going to change soon. But what I want to ask you about is what he said last month. He suggested that you happened to turn black recently for political purposes, questioning a core part of your identity. Any same old tired playbook. Next question, please. That's it.

That's it. That's it. Moving on. Nothing to see here. Just going to be the first female woman of color president of the United States, and we're not going to talk about race. And isn't that exactly how it should be? Like that actually, if that is true, that means we're ready. Like, let's just not make it an issue. Yeah, I thought that that was deftly handled. I did have one bone to pick with Dana on it. I thought Dana was pretty good last night. So this is not a pick on Dana

moment. She begins by being like, you know, I was surprised you haven't met Donald Trump before. I was surprised to learn that during our conversation, you haven't met face to face. And I was sitting on my couch with Tyler and I was like, I'm also surprised by that. How is that possible? And then I thought about it for two seconds and I was like, oh wait, I know why. Because Donald Trump didn't attend the ceremonial peaceful transition of power for the first time since the civil war. And he tried a violent coup and then he cried like a little baby and flew home with his binky to Mar-a-Lago to hang out with his emotional support cougars. That's why they haven't met. Any other time, they would have met when they were doing a transition.

Totally. Totally. Or at any of the ceremonial. I mean, he didn't go to any of the funerals for George H.W. He just hasn't participated in any of the sort of ceremonial decorum, like the things that you do as a post president, for continuity of operations, and just for the respectability of the office. That's such a good point. I hadn't even Right. So that's, I do think this is where Trump, you know, benefits from the soft bigotry of low expectations sometimes, right? Where it's like, that don't say what really happened. That is fair. Totally fair. I agreed with your point on her move to the middle and how she kind of explained that. Also, good call out on how she cast a tie-breaking boat on the fracking issue about adding additional leases. And that was paired with a lot of the

climate investment that they did in the IRA. I liked this line, it's important to build consensus and find a common place of understanding where we could solve problems. That was as a response to being asked, like, why did you evolve on some of this stuff? Like her answer is, I got in and I realized that to actually solve problems, we need to build consensus. I think that's totally a refreshing and appropriate answer. And it felt very Margaret Hoover-ish too. So I'm not surprised you liked it. But also, it's actually sort of putting her vice presidency in a new frame, right? I will count myself as one of the people who as recently as two months ago, three months ago thought, God, Biden really needs a new VP. As recently as three months ago?

Well, Biden is going to need a new candidate because Biden's going to die and we're going to need somebody who's going to be able to be the president because we didn't know Biden was not going to be the candidate. Got it. Right? About candidate. It was a candidate skills concern. Yeah. And actually, I actually think what's happened is, look, being vice president,

I mean, I just think it helps us think about what she's been doing for the last four years in a different way because the truth of the matter is, going all the way back to the very first vice president of the United States, John Adams, the job is a terrible job. It is a freaking terrible job to be vice president of the matter is, going all the way back to the very first vice president of the United States, John Adams, the job is a terrible job. It is a freaking terrible job to be vice president of the United States. It is the most useless job. It is the most powerless job. You're just sitting around waiting for somebody to die. And the only successful vice presidents are vice presidents who have figured out a way

to be useful to their principal. And I think there are examples of really excellent vice presidents. I think Joe Biden was useful to Obama. I think Dick Cheney was useful to George W. Bush. I think vice presidents who are most successful are the vice presidents who actually know their way around Washington and can add value to their principal's agenda. these last three and a half years, four years, is that she's been watching and she's been learning. And she also now, like, this gives her an opportunity to sort of recast those years and the narrative of those years as her being sort of useless and floundering and not helpful to actually, like, she was learning. She was learning. She was like an apprentice. Take that, Donald Trump.

Right. The real apprentice. I think that's true. And this is also true in foreign policy, by the way. I've been saying this for all year. It's like she took that's true. And this is also true in foreign policy, by the way. I've been saying this for all year. It's like she took that very seriously. She went to multiple Munich security conferences and is like under the radar, right? Because it's like she's not making the, doing the negotiations with Bibi, right?

But like she had a lot of these foreign trips. Biden wasn't making as many foreign trips because of his travel. Peer-to-peer, bilateral meetings, multilateral meetings where she was showing up representing the United States of America. So people say, well, she didn't have any foreign policy experience. I'm sorry, she was vice president for four years. Like she got a ton of international experience. The other news from the interview was she said she would put a Republican in her cabinet, which Biden did not. And Trump obviously did not put the Democrat in his cabinet. I don't actually really care about this that much personally,

but other people do. And I do think it's good signaling. I don't know. What do you think? What are we trying to do here, Tim? We're trying to win suburban voters, 10, 20% of those Nikki Haley voters. You know, like we got to build a broad coalition

to defend democracy here. And if you're going to build a broad coalition, yes, put it. And by the way, it's also like, there's a history of this right there's a history of reagan having a democrat as candidate and bush having a democrat as cabinet and and clinton i don't know who clinton's republican was but he did have one clinton had a republican secretary of defense right uh i know there were multiple transportation secretaries from the other party in a row obama had la hood yeah bush had norman, right? But like

that, it is symbolic. We're trying to win. We're trying to win. You know, maybe it's even more than symbolic when it comes to some of these agencies. I mean, a lot of these agencies have, they have a lot of power. They have a lot of power over a lot of aspects of American life. And I do think it's important to build a broad coalition. Okay. My only nitpick really on the interview, and it isn't even really a negative on college, just it's projecting towards September 10. And to the debate is, obviously, she's building this stuff on the fly. And I'm just watching this as a comms person who's been behind the scenes, you have to briefing these people and thinking about the briefings and being on the interview side. She was briefed on the defensive questions, right? Why have you changed your mind on fracking?

We've talked about that on immigration. She was comfortable. She knew what she was going to say. The Trump hits, obviously she was prepared with her smart and cheeky answer that we played earlier about the, she turned black bullshit, but there weren't like the sharp prosecutor hits on Trump that I was hoping for. And that actually takes practice and takes time and all this stuff, you're building this plane on the fly. Trump for all of his, you know,

weirdness, which we're about to get to, he has a lizard brain memory for he's going to know the details of Kamala's oppo book, right? Like that's the only thing that he can remember, right? He doesn't actually know anything about policy, but he'll know the hits on her. And so I would like to just monitor, making sure that she's sharp on the Trump contrast side of things. Don't you think she'll save that for the debates? I mean, this is a really important hurdle she had to clear. Like she had to be able to sit down and answer all these questions about her record and why her record now is different from her record when she ran as a progressive presidential candidate in 2020.

And I think she cleared the hurdles for this interview. But I think you're asking for too much in the first interview. Okay, that's fair. To the point that they're building a plane while they're flying it. You know, just let us get through the first round of interviews and stick the landing on them. I think the prosecutorial Kamala, who's going to create the stark contrast between her and Trump, which by the way, we saw a lot in her first speeches, right? Like I know how to prosecute criminals and I know how to, you know, shut down fake universities. And I'm the only person, by the way, you know, she did do last night. She said in her immigration answer, I wrote this down. She said, I'm the only person in this race who has

prosecuted transnational criminal organizations. Right? So that was a little bit of a contrast there. Again, it wasn't, you're right. She didn't litigate the case. She didn't prosecute the case against him. But I feel like she really needed to answer these questions. Because the right's now going to have to come up with a whole new round of criticisms about her policies. Because she was able to answer these, I think pretty effectively. She passed. She passed. She passed. Next step, moving forward. Check the box. It's also, you know, I sometimes feel this way where I'm like, all right, I'm so worried about it and we're nitpicking. I'm nitpicking and I'm thinking about it. I'm watching and what's her

answer? What's her perfect answer? What she's going to say? And then I listened to a clip of Donald Trump. Here's Donald Trump yesterday, same day at a town hall. I guess if you want to call it a town hall, the moderator was Tulsi Gabbard. And we are going to get the energy prices down when we get energy down. You know, this was caused by their horrible energy, wind, they want wind all over the place. But when it doesn't blow, we have a little problem. People don't eat bacon anymore because of wind and prices or something.

I have a lizard brain explanation. You do? You can speak Trump? I don't know. It's like a guess. I'm sure the people who are better at this than me would correct me and be like, no, no, no. What he was really doing is this. But on some level, it's like he just knows the problems that he's supposed to hit. He's supposed to hit energy. He's supposed to hit inflation.

He's supposed to hit the economy. But he confuses them. So the bacon hit is an inflation hit but he was talking about energy and so he's doing the energy thing and then he just like switched like his his brain like was like went over to inflation instead of stay on energy so windmills bacon you know you got energy you got inflation he's just like it you know and he's also just kind of up there freestyling and it's fastballs lost a little bit of its speed.

Well, as our Trump translator, because I think I decoded the late, great Hannibal Lecter and what's happening there. Have you decoded that? Oh, no. I'd love to hear. And this is with the help of the internet. I'm not claiming that I'm the person that identified this. But in the same thing where he's doing the jump he hears about asylum seekers being a problem and then he his brain goes to insane asylum and then he's like they're

letting people out of an insane asylum and they're coming to the country who do i know from an insane asylum all of my pop culture references are from 30 years ago hannibal Lecter. Oh, wow. So now the asylum seekers are people eaters like Hannibal Lecter. I think that's what's happened. He's not distinguishing between people seeking asylum and people that are in an insane asylum. I'm going to mull that over for a little bit, but I think you might be onto something. I think you could be onto something. Just mull that. We had a crazy day with Trump yesterday on abortion as well.

I kind of want to set the scene on what happened. He does this interview and she's asking about the Florida abortion ban. And Trump says, he kind of implies, he doesn't give an answer. He kind of says that the existing Florida law is too tight for him, the six weeks. And then kind of implies then that he would vote for the Florida referendum coming up. And that referendum would bar any restrictions on abortion before viability and bar any restrictions on abortion if the health of the mother is at risk. So pro-lifers say that basically that bars any restrictions on abortion, because you can always say the health of the mother's at risk. That would be the pro-life

argument. So then he backtracks on that via a statement where his spokesperson says he hasn't decided how he's going to vote on this referendum yet. And then also in the same interview, he seems to say that the federal government will start paying for everybody's IVF treatments, which is going to be pretty pricey. What do you think? What's happening over there? It's very clear that this issue, the abortion issue is one of the top issues in the election. It's one of the top issues in Florida. It's one of the top issues in New York. It's one of the top issues in Florida. It's one of the top issues in New York. It's one of the top issues in Arizona. This is the number one issue Democrats are running on. Then there's inflation. Then there's economy. I mean, I've seen certain congressional polls in random states that are not necessarily swing states. Abortion is the number one issue for

Democrats, for independents, and for a certain portion of Republican women. And by the way, white Republican women have not voted for a Democrat. This is just like fun fact since Bill Clinton. Okay. way this is ever going to be credible because he has said too many times and all you have to do is find three of them and put them on a loop. I'm the guy who overturned Roe v. Wade. You know, he takes credit for it. He's the one who did it. And, you know, of course, obviously he didn't. He appointed the justices who did it, but whatever.

Like he just, he does that short math, you know, that shortcut himself all the time. I don't think there is any way he can unring the bell or persuade people that, you know, any of his moves around the outside are going to change that fact in that position. And by the way, then he gets in trouble when he does, because then the far right is like, what are you saying? I thought, you know, then he's going to depress turnout on the right. Right. So he's just totally backed into a corner. There have been some loud people on the evangelical right, and I've gotten some texts about, you know, from some pastor friends about how there is some bubbling anger a little bit in that world for the first time in a while.

I'm kind of skeptical that that actually results in people not voting for him, but maybe. I think it's something that's worth monitoring. The thing with Trump is, if we really had a dictatorship in this country and it was just his whims that would decide the laws i'd be like who knows maybe like maybe he would want to just make abortion legal again and and pay for ivf because he doesn't care about profligate spending at all that's not something that he cares about he certainly doesn't really care about abortion he's probably paid for one and like the problem is that that's not what he's running for. He's running to be the head of a government that has tons of staffers that are all going to be staffed.

And this is where it ties back into the Project 2025. That's where the Project 2025 thing kills them. And there are going to be people all over the government who are obsessively focused on restricting women's access to reproductive care. It doesn't really matter what his whims are, right? Unless he says, no, I'm only going to bring in people that are whatever, pro-IVF and pro-choice, then okay, well then I would listen to that. But like, that's obviously not going to happen. Well, also if he wins, right? I mean, in the circumstance where Trump wins, and you have a Republican House of Representatives, and this is a year where the Senate should be Republican. And so if Trump wins, then you have the Life at Consumption Act, right? And then you have all these, forget the administrative things on the outside that the

Project 2025 guys can staff. I mean, you actually can get legislation that will not codify Roe, codify the opposite. So abortion really is on the ballot, actually. It really is on the national ballot. And it's not hyperbolic for, you know, this isn't like the really progressive pro-abortion advocate groups to fearmonger. I mean, it actually is. And I think that's why, like, when it is, you see women turn out in the least expected and least likely places like Kansas and Kentucky and Ohio. This is real. And I don't think that Mike Johnson would take a swing at this as one chance, you know, if they ended up having united government, you better believe you would. And I should shout out

Andrew Edgar, who writes with our Morning Shots newsletter with Bill Kristol. He contacted the campaign about this earlier this week and was like, okay, but if that happened, would he veto it? They don't answer that. Just like he doesn't answer how he's going to vote on the referendum because they can't answer about what the truth is because it's politically untenable you know y'all watch me on here every day you know that there are these certain pieces of clothing that i just keep coming back to even when i've got other options my little chambray shirts my little gay jeans having a high quality piece of clothing that feels great you just got to stick with it having a whole closet of them feels even better and that's why

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promo code BULWARK. We'll just give people one little bit of candy before their holiday weekend, and that's some poll candy. There's Bloomberg poll out. I'll just flag that Bloomberg polls were always a little bit better for Biden than some of the other public polls. So you throw it all on the average. But here's what Bloomberg's polls have yesterday. Harris plus eight in Wisconsin, plus four in Pennsylvania, plus four in Nevada, plus three in Michigan, plus two in Georgia, plus two in North Carolina, and tied in Arizona. And the thing that really stands out to me there is that's three straight Georgia polls we have with her up, which is an absolutely critical state for Trump to win if he wants to get to 270. So we're feeling good about that, right? I'm not.

Good, please. Temper people's exuberance i'm not like first of all exuberance gets you nothing hillary clinton was up six percent in 2016 at this point and i think it hurt hillary just like as a as an important fact when everybody's like oh we should be cheerleading the polls we should be cheerleading the polls we should have only hopium i have individual like examples of people who did not vote for Hillary, who preferred her to Trump because they didn't like her Clinton baggage and they didn't think he had a chance. Right. So why do it? Yeah. So, you know, it can backlash. It can be a backlash if people feel too comfortable.

Like there's still so many problems with polling. Like, I don't know if we're modeling the electorate correctly. I mean, frankly, if we're modeling the electorate incorrectly, it might be that you're undercounting women. Because I think, you know, to the extent that abortion really is on the ballot in all these places, look, I don't want to say there are places where these could be undercounting women, and therefore the lead could be bigger. But God, wouldn't that be great? The point is, you have to run like you're behind if you want to win. And with democracy on the ballot, which I know you believe, and I know the listeners of this podcast believe, like, we cannot pretend like we're winning. We have to run like we're behind, and we have to win, and we have to win by humongous margins, because the subject

of my documentary, which I know we're going to get to, like, they're going to do the same playbook again. And if the only way to prevent the disaster from 2020, and the first non-peaceful transition of power in American history, the only way to prevent that again, because all the fundamentals are the same, we've done some tinkering from state to state. We can talk about it. But the fundamentals are the same. The playbook is the same. The principle is the same. Cast out on the outcome of the elections and make it harder to know the outcome quickly on election night. The more you do that, the more doubt you cast. The only way to get around that is to win and to win big. And if you win big and you have a large margin at the electoral college, then we're not going to see a repeat. It's that thing that Obama

said in his speech. We saw the first movie. The sequel's always worse. We don't want a worse sequel. And the only way to do that is to win big. So pretend, I think, just don't sit, rest on our laurels. Don't look at the polls and think this is great. Keep charging ahead. That's the only way to do that is to win big. So pretend, I think, just don't sit, rest on our laurels, don't look at the polls and think this is great. Keep charging ahead. That's the only way we're going to protect our democracy. I know the Democrats will say it and I hear it. It is unfair.

It's like the Republicans have an electoral college advantage already, right? So the Democrats need to win the popular vote, not by one, but by two or three to win the electoral college. And then you kind of have to win by four or five, actually, to avoid the attempts to steal it, right? Or attempts to object to it or create drama or violence or other problems. I mean, that's crazy. I don't even think about it as national polling, though. I mean, I really think about it as these states. I mean, we don't have a national election for a president. We have 50 state elections for electors. That's what we have. And so we have to win in these battleground states, and we have to win by a lot in these battleground states. And if it's close in any of these battleground states, then we're

going to have a series of unfolding dramas that we need to be prepared for on the messaging front and the media front. We have to know what to expect on election night and then sort of know where this could go. And so that's, that was actually the impetus for, for my doc, because I could see all these states that had all these counting problems and some of them fixed it, but some of them didn't. And they had four years to fix it. And the ones that didn't fix it, like shame on them, but we need to know. So we know what to expect in Pennsylvania and Arizona and North Carolina come election night, come November 5th. There are 365 days a year, which means there are 365 days where you might need to buy somebody a birthday present. And finding the perfect gift for everyone, that can take weeks.

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At this moment, there's no cause for overconfidence and no reason for despair. That's a big upgrade from 4th of July to Labor Day. There was a lot of reason to despair at 4th of July. There was a lot of despair in your voice then, Tim. I would listen to you guys and I was like, oh man, they're not making me feel better. And normally they make me feel better. Look, I don't have a good poker face or poker voice. If I'm despairing, people can tell. So I'm happy that sometimes I make people feel better, but it's only when I believe it. The counting the vote documentary, which I watched a lot of Jeb, which we're going to get to very excited about that.

Just as a side point, what were your biggest takeaways from like, why'd you do the project? Did you learn anything that was surprised you? What was the biggest takeaway? I did the project because I have never been one of these folks on the center right that felt that after January 6th, we had really seen Donald Trump's true colors and he could never come back, especially after the Senate failed to convict. I always believed that he would be the nominee this time around. I always believe the party would re-nominate him. Like I just. You, and so I've been always thinking through that lens. All right, if that's going to be the case, what are we going to do to protect the election next time? What are we going to do to protect sort of, to make sure that we have a peaceful transition of power? And one of the things that happened that was really, really good in the 2022 cycle was the

reform of the electoral count act. Thectoral Count Reform Act did several things that will prevent Kamala Harris from being in the position that Mike Pence was in. So for example, they clarify that her role is totally ministerial, right? Completely ministerial. That's it. She can't do anything. She can't set a slate of electors back. Also, raise the threshold in each of the houses, the Senate and the House, to 20%.

So you don't have one objector in the House and one objector in the Senate that can start objecting to the election. You have to have 87 members of the House and 20 U.S. senators. Now, you could get 87. Yeah, the 87 in the House, I was going to say. I don't know. You could get them. You could get them. But you also have to have 20 U.S. senators.

You won't. I mean, you could, in a worst-case scenario, get 12 senators. Yeah, sure. But you're have to have 20 U.S. senators. You won't. I mean, you could, in a worst case scenario, get 12 senators. Yeah, sure. But you're not going to. So 20% threshold in both houses to object to the counting of the ballots, which is only ministerial, by the way. These are really positive improvements. But so then after that was fixed, I started thinking like, well, so then what's going to happen sort of with the counting, right? Because the breakdown really was because it was COVID, because there are all these absentee ballots, because the states didn't have the ability to process quickly. Trump leveraged those hours of uncertainty at the

end of the night where, you know, he supposedly was winning because they were counting the absentee ballots first, but not the same day ballots. And so you had these red mirages in all these states. So I went sort of state by state to look at who had fixed and locked, tightened up their voting systems and their counting systems to make it better so that that doesn't happen again. So that one party, one side can't say this election was stolen or cast out or begin to sort of foment these conspiracy theories because we're simply doing the counting. And then I also just wanted to look at sort of all the conspiracy theories and just demonstrate and show we actually have an extraordinarily safe, incredibly transparent, like the best voting system in the world. The most transparent,

the most thorough, the most clear, the most audited. And it's unbelievable. We have, essentially, I said we had 50 state elections for electors, but there are like 10,000 voting jurisdictions that administer their own elections with the most transparency and the most security around the world. I don't know if you know this. I don't know. Most people don't know. 95% of our ballots in this country are recorded by paper ballot. So like this notion that you can just like go hack and like, you know, like, oh, we don't know what the algorithm is inside the Dominion voting machines.

Like, it doesn't matter because we have paper trail. 95%. And the places where we don't have paper trail are like deep red states where we know the Republican won anyway. Or, you know, so like Mississippi and Alabama. Or as we've seen several times, like my girl Tina Peters in Colorado, where they are trying to screw with it, but the other way. Yeah.

Like the actual voting fraud is on the right in order to show the Mike Lindell pillow guy, whatever, that his conspiracy theories are correct. I mean, it's crazy. I also wanted to give props like Michigan did some really good work. The key is pre-processing, right? You're going to get a ton of absentee ballots. Actually, let's just, the pre-processing thing is really important. But one thing you did before we get to Michigan, because I do want to talk about that, because

Michigan went the right way, North Carolina went the wrong way. But the OG of this, we just have to do this, you know, since it's a board podcast. Please, let's do it. I love it. It's Jeb. So this all happens after the 2000 recount. And I love that you started with that. I started with 2000 because actually, Tim, most people, when you think of Florida, and you think of election integrity, it's like a punchline, right? You don't even have to finish the sentence. Everybody thinks of hanging chads and Broward County and the Bosch 2000 election. And what we never hear about or think about is what happened after that. And so, yes, this is a total ode to Jeb. I actually

reached out to Jeb and Jeb sat down for the interview. He was delighted to do it. I was so happy to sort of sit with him because one of the things he's really most proud about his legacy is pulling Republicans and Democrats together to fix Florida. We've got a clip. Let's listen. Let's listen. Here's you and Jeb talking about this very thing. Now I can proudly say that we saw some of the problems that existed in a bipartisan way. It was resoundingly bipartisan. Nobody was against it. This bill will create a law that will be the model for the rest of the nation. We created a standard for the ballot, which made it easier to count the ballots. We expanded early voting.

We expanded access to absentee ballots. And then we did something that I think people really appreciate. We count the ballots that have come in early when they come in. And so by 9 o'clock, you know who won. California counts for three weeks. By the time the polls close in California, we know who won in Florida. It's 10 million plus votes. It's two time zones. And Florida has never been a problem before and it never will be again. Although one coded to that is that, and there's this great clip in the

doc that I love, you know, DeSantis after 2020, after Florida had perfectly administered elections, went and passed an election integrity bill, which he signed on Fox News, and it actually made it harder to count and it made it harder to vote. So actually DeSantis is undoing Jeb's work. And so there's this like really fun, like super Jeb clip in the doc where he's like i asked him about you know what to say in the state and he just kind of shrugs and he's like i don't know i kind of like getting my no excuse absentee ballot in the mail every time without having to ask for it yeah that's what he did he changed it was like you get a ballot every time and if you do absentee ballots you get an absentee ballot in the mail the next year it just comes in the

mail it's an easy system just seems like let's make it harder and jeb was like i was kind of easy sometimes i forget you know i also liked the um the jeb and al gore little ode to each other because that is true like that's the other thing when you go all the way back to that like you just imagine this scenario and compare it to 2020 and it's like a totally different universe right like? Like Al Gore loses by 537 votes, has very legitimate criticisms. It goes through the process. Supreme Court is 5-4, one vote on Supreme Court. And Al Gore concedes generously and steps away and goes and grows a beard. And becomes a billionaire.

There you go. Good point. And then Florida, after all that, the Republicans and the Democrats get together and pass this bill that we're talking about that does these reforms that makes Florida the best right now in the whole country for counting ballots and it's everybody together and it's just like totally counter to everything that happened in 2020 in a good way it's like the the good bizarro 2020 what happened after the 2000 election and that's just really credit to all of them. Credit to them. Credit to Jeb for doing that.

Credit to the Democrats for working with Jeb. They could have been so bittered by the election and said, no, I'm not going to work with this guy on election reform. He just helped his brother, right? Like you could imagine that very easily. And Jeb also knew his role was totally ministerial in Florida during the counting of the ballots and during the certification. But afterwards, he did. They fixed it and they created a gold standard for the rest of the country. And Michigan has reformed since 2020. Georgia has reformed since 2020. By the way, more people vote in Georgia now. I mean, I do sort of tackle this sort of fallacy that Georgia became Jim Crow 2.0 because it isn't. I mean, most independent experts will look at Georgia and say, actually, more people are voting in Georgia now than ever before.

By the way, that's going to happen this year, especially with a black woman on the ballot, the top of the ballot. I mean, I think, and Georgia has early voting. They have early absentee voting. They have souls to the polls. They added a souls to the polls day that had never been codified. And so, so Georgia is good. I know there's a sort of concern about the Georgia election board, but I, I have a lot of confidence in Brian Kemp, Brad Raffensperger, and Gabriel Sterling to monitor and keep their eye on the situation in Georgia. And I do think we have to be vigilant, but I do think Georgia has all the ingredients to get it right this time, even though there will be, look, it'll take a long time to count the votes. I mean, that's the

problem. If it takes a long time to count the votes, people create conspiracy theories. And that's what we want to shine a light on. But Arizona and North Carolina could be tricky. Pennsylvania is going to be tricky. Yeah. So talk about that. North Carolina has backslid on all of this, right? So they're going to take forever. They slowed down how long it's going to take to count the vote. Yeah. And Pennsylvania didn't fix it. Pennsylvania took forever last time and they did nothing. And they had a couple of bills come up through the legislature and frankly, they didn't get it done. I mean, I know friend of the pod, Governor Shapiro is one of your faves. He was governor and it would have been really good if he could have used some apple grease to sort of fix it. They have a very divided legislature

there and they needed probably some executive leadership to get it through. So it would have been great if Pennsylvania had fixed it the way Michigan had and the way some of the other states. Wisconsin also failed to fix it. I mean, Wisconsin totally didn't get it done. And what fix it means really in these specific scenarios is pass a pre-processing law. Pre-processing of what Florida did. The thing Jeb just said in that clip. It's that you get all of the ballots in, but they're in secrecy envelopes. And you have to check for the signature match depending on the state.

And so if you do all of that work, you take the envelope. This is what Arizona can't do until 7 p.m. on election day. Arizona cannot take the ballot out of the secrecy envelope and verify the signature. So it takes 13 days to know who actually won in Arizona. And, you know, we go down and talk to, you know, our friend Stephen Richer, the recorder of Maricopa County, where 60% of Arizonans vote. It's the largest jurisdiction in the state and one of the largest jurisdictions in the country for voting. And the legislature refused to fix it. And everybody knew what they needed.

And they didn't want to fix it all for their own partisan reasons. And kind of the grossest partisan reasons. Because they want to create trouble. Right? Because they want to help Trump. They want to help Trump create trouble. Let him stir up all this BS. It was why i was mad at the networks i got into some screening matches with some friends at the networks who didn't call the election till like saturday and and i think a lot

of the january 6th stuff built up during that week between tuesday and saturday when we knew biden had won by like thursday night like we knew, but they were just, you know, for whatever reason, they were being cautious, they're over learning the lessons of 2000, taking so long to count and like all of this trouble and all this momentum for creating trouble happened during that time. The one legitimate, potentially legitimate criticism of pre processing is worst case scenario planning. What if somebody leaks it? Like what if Maricopa County does start counting and they leak it? So yeah, what's the pushback on that?

That is the critique, except for that like 38 states do pre-processing. More than 50% of the ballots undergo pre-processing and it's never happened. So, and by the way, the pre-processing doesn't mean it's tabulated. See, that's the other piece of this. They haven't actually counted the votes, right?

They have prepared them to be counted. They have gone through the scanners, but nobody ever clicked the button that says, this is how many votes Al Gore got verify the signature, let the voter know that you have their ballot. Sort of that kind of confirmation, it's sort of laborious and it's tedious and it just takes a really long time. You could get all that done before Election Day and then on Election Day, run the ballots through the scanners and have them count. I think you gin up these critiques of preprocessing that are really fueled by the conspiracy theorists that actually aren't practically applicable when you go and you see how they do it. You know, I took cameras into all these processing centers to see, like, how do we count our vote? And by the way, in all of them, you can go into your local election center and you can watch through plexiglass or you can observe. I mean, that's the other thing. We have the most transparent elections in history. And so there's these clips of like Corey Lewandowski being like, well, I can't even go into

the center to watch because he was talking about the TCI Center in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, the convention center. Remember, they had to have a huge space because it was COVID. They didn't want people getting COVID. So they wanted social distancing. Now, none of that exists. You have a permanent facility in Philadelphia where anybody can go and watch how they're counting the votes. And God bless Seth Bluestein, who is the only Republican election commissioner in Philadelphia who just will stand by and explain to anyone who thinks that Pennsylvania went for Trump. And he will show you exactly how. He'll show you the audits. He will show you where the ballots are. I mean, the information is there for people who want the truth.

But if you don't want the truth, you just keep going on all the conspiracy theorists sites and keep repeating the lies. But, you know, the idea was I still believe sunlight is the best disinfectant. And so the idea was sort of to get ahead of it, to unpack what happened last time and then prospectively to think about what's going to happen this time. Because, I mean, can I just say that the play, what the Trump campaign wants is to prevent one state, at least one state, from sending in a slate of electors. And that could be like, it just takes too long. You just can't get a count. You can't get a certification. You guys, you have taught, AB has written about this. You've talked about it

with Amanda. But I think what then ends up happening is because of the Electoral Count Reform Act, the states will be compelled ultimately by the Supreme Court to send in their slate of electors. So this is never going to go to the House. The slates of electors will get sent in. They will be sent in because the adjudication for this process used to be before the Electoral Count Reform Act. It used to be that every state was different in terms of how this was adjudicated in the court. Sometimes it would go through the state courts and then it would get over to the federal courts. And there were different, there was just an amalgam, there were completely different processes for how this kind of question would be adjudicated.

And because of the Electoral Account Reform Act, it will be adjudicated in federal court, it will then go to circuit courts, it will then go to the Supreme Court ultimately. And I think the play is that they force and they compel the Supreme Court to compel a state to send in its state electors. And then that ultimately casts a shadow of sort of not impunity, enough of a shadow of illegitimacy on whether Pennsylvania happened appropriately, that there's still, you know, 70%, 68, 70% of Republicans that aren't so sure that there weren't shenanigans in Pennsylvania. I mean, I think now we do have a process for ensuring that whoever wins the election actually will become the president, but it won't be without, you know, possibly quite a dark shadow of illegitimacy, especially if the Supreme Court is forced to compel a state to send their electors to the Electoral College. I mean, that will cast doubt on the ultimate outcome. One more item that you covered that I want to listen to. Here's Donald Trump talking about dead people.

Dead people. Lots of dead people, thousands. And some dead people actually requested an application. That bothers me even more. We found that there were four people that assumed the identity of someone that had already passed away. And in two cases, wasn't it family members? It was family members. Who were voting for their deceased family member as they believed they would have wanted to. Two of them were actually Republicans and two of them were the other side. So it was bipartisan. They canceled each other out. Yeah. Donald Trump just doesn't care about any of this stuff. The dead people clip, by the way, could have been from anything because that's Donald Trump, but that was from his speech

on January 6th. I think the play this time, it's not the dead people, it's the non-citizen voting, right? Which they did a little bit of non-citizen voting last time, but this time they're really doubling down on it. I mean, I think that is going to be the mechanism by which they say Arizona is just, we can't certify Arizona or whatever it is. There's so many non-citizen immigrants. I mean, and it's not true.

I mean, I cover this in the documentary. Like there isn't a way for mass numbers of non-citizens to vote. But that seems to be the tack they'll take come November. The mail thing is the one thing that I'm a little squishy on, on electoral reform. I do wonder if we should have a little less mail. The only example of voter fraud I've ever heard of in my life has been also a Republican who voted for their college-aged son who was going to vote for the Democrat and they voted by mail because they were away at college. To me, it's like I'm for early voting, lots of

early voting, easy access to early voting, excuse mail. You want old people to be able to vote by mail. Colorado does. My home state has full mail. Yeah. Let me take it on. Let me take it on. I know, by the way, you and I are both from Colorado. mean i'm i'm also a denver girl i like it when you have put your denver references in because um i i know i know saint regis i mean i i know i know you guys i know where was your high school again have we we've done this i went to high school i didn't really particularly love kent i went to kent denver oh you went to kent that's why i even talked about it oh kent i didn't i didn't love it i didn't love it that makes sense no I didn't it was not a good fit it was not a good fit but I grew up in Hilltop and uh you know anyway I'm older than you that's

all right there on Quincy no what is it yeah it's on okay I've got some Kent Denver stories I got in some trouble with some Kent Denver kids I gotta tell you some of the Kent Denver kids got me in trouble anyway continue I'm sure you weren't the instigator. Listen, Colorado does 100% mail-in voting. Utah does 100% mail-in voting. Washington State does 100% mail-in voting. Oregon has 100% mail-in voting. Where there are states that have properly administered this and really effectively, people love it. I actually went to Utah and I went and talked to one of the commissioners of voting in Utah because Utah is a red state. And I mean, the part of the point is to get against the narrative, right? It's, it's Republicans who are like, I don't know about the mail and that can be really shady. So like, so I went to a Republican state. You guys do a hundred percent mail-in voting. Why do you do it? How do you do

it? How does it work? I mean, the thing about mail-in voting in each of the states that do it, rather than like a hybrid state like Arizona, where 80% of the people vote by mail, but then some, you know, vote on the same, on the day of, they have barcodes, they have tracking. Your mom and my mom in Colorado get an email when the board of elections has received their ballot, right? So if the son, the dad who voted for the son, he would have gotten an email saying your ballot was just received and he would have been like, wait, but I didn't vote. And then he would have called his dad and be like, did you vote for me? There are really fastidious tracking mechanisms for knowing and being in touch with voters. And then if not, they would have gone and cured the ballot or fixed the ballot. And so in states where

this is, has been going for many years, it works really well. And people really like it. And ultimately, what Amelia Powers Gardner tells me in the documentary is like, she took on this notion that Republicans are against mail-in voting. She said, when we implemented mail-in voting in Utah, more people could vote. We had higher participation. A lot of the people who can't get to the polls are women on election day because they have in Utah, they have big families and lots of other things going on and they can't actually get to the polls, but it actually ends up enfranchising far more voters. And if you have more Republicans, more Republicans are going to vote. And so participation is way up amongst Republicans in Utah, as it turns out, because they've done

mail-in voting. So I think actually, honestly, if Donald Trump wanted to win in 2020, he should have doubled down on mail-in voting. He would have won, by the way. I mean, if Donald Trump hadn't believed that mail-in voting was not secure in some way and had just like put all of his attention into making sure that the ballots were secured and returned, he would have won easily in 2020. So, like, I mean, I guess thank God he didn't. Thank God. Counting the vote. People should go watch it. The firing line, the other half of your job at PBS.

I was rewatching the Joni Ernst interview the other day. I just want to pick your brain on it. it's so hard to do Republicans these days. Like a lot of them want to come on this podcast, partly because of my Trump derangement syndrome, you found a nice balance, we are tough on them, but you can still get them, you know, in a different environment. Joni Ernst has plenty of things people disagree with. But, you know, she worked to bipartisan on on you know second helping sexual assault victims and you know she seems like a decent person but at the same time every single one of them is complicit in donald trump's effort to overthrow the government and and like so there's like a fundamental lie they have to tell to just even sit in the chair next to you on the show

and so like how do you deal with that? That is different. Sure, Democrats spin and all that, but that's the only example where you're beginning an interview and you know that, well, they have to lie to me about Donald Trump. That's just the baseline. That's crazy. I understand what you're saying.

One of the things that is true about the fact that Donald Trump and his sort of cult of personality has overtaken the Republican Party, is that there are people who, when push comes to shove, like will absolutely defend democracy, even if they're not willing to put their name, like plant the anti-Trump flag in the sand, and then lose their seats, the way Kinzinger and Cheney did. There are a lot of them in hiding in the Senate and the House. There are. It's not what maybe you and I would prefer. It lacks the outspoken sort of the loud moral clarity that we're so thirsty for. And yet, I want Joni Ernst in the Senate advocating for Ukrainian funding. And I want Joni Ernst saying that the military isn't woke and by God, transgender soldiers are

some of the best soldiers she's ever fought with. And she is really good on these issues. And frankly, the Violence Against Women Act and military assaults, it's tricky. Look, it's not tricky. It's just the party has been overtaken. And by the way, if you think the Republicans in Arizona are nuts, they're nuts in Iowa too. Jon has always has people on the far right gunning for her and gunning for her seat. And, you know, her next election, you know, she may have a really serious primary if Trump were to win. But if Trump loses and loses definitively and with like the no question, he has to lose by so much this time that the curse

passes, right? Like the shadow passes. And it's not like his power will wane immediately, but it will wane. It will wane substantially because he won't be the nominee again in four years. And I don't know that the party's ever going to be what the party was. I don't know if that party that the young generation of conservatives that I like, I don't know that that's ever going to happen again. But what I do know is Trump has to lose and he has to lose so seriously. And by so much, the fever begins to recede. There's this question that like, Joni Ernst has to ask herself, like, do I do I come out and stand up against Trump and lose my seat? Or do I continue to stay in because I believe in Ukraine, and I believe in the military and I believe you know, and, you know,

you see it with a lot of them. And, and you're right. I mean, if the final question is where they stand about Trump, they won't go there. They don't want to go there. And they believe it's in service to larger policies and to larger principles and larger values. And that is the dynamic. Yeah, it is a dynamic. And it's like, okay, I don't know. You can sell me on that dynamic with Bill Cassidy, at least, because he voted to convict, right? For like the people that didn't.

Well, and that's why I love, that's by the way, why I love having Lisa Murkowski and why Susan Rick Collins is going to come on soon enough. Like, those are the ones I really want to uphold. By the way, they're trying to get rid of rank choice voting and open primaries in Alaska. There is like a move for that. The Wall Street Journal is editorializing about that. Lisa Murkowski, who voted to convict, who is pro-choice, who did not vote for Brett Kavanaugh, would not have won her seat back

into the Senate if it hadn't been for those kind of voting reforms. I mean, so that's the other piece of this is like, how do we fix it long term? We have to change this closed partisan primary system because it just empowers, you know, the cult of personality and the crazies to continue having Republicans that can't win people up from the center right who just can't win broadly. And then, you know, you get a single party, you know, government government which isn't good for any of us either i'm with you on all those reforms i just it's the lying thing that really comes down to with me i don't know it's the lying it's like as an interviewer you know you got to just be like well you just tell me what

you really think just tell me i get it i guess the fundamental thing that they, that you know that they know that they can't. And that is what is pernicious about it. And that's only happening on one side, right? You don't have to deal with that moral calculus when you're interviewing Chris Murphy, right? Like he might be, you know, exaggerating a point or spinning, but like there's not a fundamental untruth. Yeah, yes, that's true.

It is asymmetrical. Look, I think Joni Ernst actually believes that Donald Trump, fundamental untruth yeah yes you know that's true it is asymmetrical look i think joni erince actually believes that donald trump if he is surrounded by the right people and she believes that that can happen too i think she believes that he'll be okay like that's what she believes we've moved from liar to delusional okay all right so we have a delusional person that is somewhat well intended i know i mean i'm not willing to say that she's delusional but i'm not asking you to say it i'm not asking you to say it. I'm not asking you to say it.

You got to keep, this is why they don't come on my show because I can't fucking help myself. One of my besties is one of her advisors. Oh, I think I know who you're talking about. The idea also is like, we have to show the American public what these people,

who these people are and what they're dealing with, right? Like Joni in many ways is a profile in courage. And in other ways, like I know that you and she were more outspoken about Trump. By the way, there are a lot of them like that, right? Like, Joni, in many ways, is a profile in Courage. And in other ways, like, I know that you and she were more outspoken about Trump. By the way, there are a lot of them like that, right? But there are a lot of them also. One of the calculus I think of, Tim, and maybe this will bring us to our next topic, like, every single member of Congress that's running, I just think in my head, the only question I'm asking myself, are they going to vote for certification? Like,

is this Republican or Democrat in front of me going to vote for certification? Like, is this Republican or Democrat in front of me going to vote for certification of the election, regardless of who wins, right? Whether it's Kamala or whether it's Trump, like, cause Trump could still win this thing fair and square. He could. And you know, if he does, are they going to vote for certification? There's a lot of herd mentality to go around, but there's way more of it on the right. And for the Republicans who voted for certification, I mean, there's only two, God bless Dan Newhouse. God bless David Valadao. I will say their names over and over and over again. These are the only two Republicans who voted for impeachment in the House of Representatives that remain there. And Dan Newhouse just got second in his primary,

which made the top two primary in Washington against a far more right wing crazy guy. So now he's going to win. So now he'll return and Valadao should return too. But like those guys deserve so much support. And by the way, financial backing, like, you know, send these, like, I'm not in the business of fundraising for everybody, but like send these guys a check. These guys deserve it. They stood up to Trump. They live to tell the story. Unlike Adam Kinzinger, unlike Liz Cheney, they deserve our support and they should return to the House of Representatives. So that's what I'm just thinking is like, because we need a House of Representatives is going to certify the next election, period. Like we just can't have what we had before. That does take us to our final topic. This is your first time on the Bullwark

podcast, which is crazy, by the way. And it might be internalized misogyny because it's not the first time anyone in your household has been on. Your spouse is John Avalon, who many of us know. My spouse, John Avalon, has been on twice. on twice yeah i know once with you and once with charlie maybe twice with charlie yeah i know what the hell i don't know what the explanation is for that um but uh john is running uh in new york he's putting his money where the mouth his mouth is he's gonna serve as a democrat yeah for people who didn't listen to that episode i'm dying for an update on the race like what's happening with him and it's. For people who didn't listen to that episode, I'm dying for an update on the race. Like what's happening with him. And it's an important seat.

You were very kind to have him on. You had him on in the primary right after he announced. So like most people go to Congress so they can be on TV. My husband left TV so he could go to Congress. He's doing this completely backwards. And so he had resigned from CNN. The anti-Gates. He is the anti-Gates, um, in every way.

Let me tell you, you had him on right as he announced his primary and, and the field was crowded. There were five people in the primary. Um, it, it winnowed pretty quickly. There were two people in pretty soon and a self-funder, uh, stayed in and spent a million dollars in negative ads against him of her own money. Uh, and he won the primary by 40 percentage points. Um, it was 70% to 29% actually. So he did an incredible job and it just like,

he actually turns out he's a pretty good candidate. I knew he'd be a good talker, but I didn't know he'd be like really have a great political sniffer. And I was really proud of him. He did great. So now he's cruising, he's running against a first term Republican incumbent who won't vote to certify. Just want to be clear. There are 18 districts that Biden won that are held by Republicans. And he was the first. This is one of those districts. It's New York one. This guy was the first of those 18 Republicans in Biden districts to endorse Trump. He cheered the overturning of Roe v. Wade. He cheered the killing of the border bill. He wants to lower the age limit to buy AR-15s. I mean, he's just like too extreme for a district that is essentially a third, a third, and a third

Democrat, Republican, independent. That's great. Let's lower the age limit. That's really what people are looking for. Can we get 15-year-olds with AR-15s in high schools? That's exactly the solution to the problems we have in this country. Look, I think the fundamentals are really good. And John's definitely outworking him and out raising him. But I've also learned, Tim, elections come down in the last two weeks. And you know that. I mean, you know that. You know that. So it doesn't matter what the polls are now. It matters to ask me what the polls are on October 15th. And that's where the pedal goes to the metal. And that's where all the work you've done all year long, or in the case of Kamala,

that she's done for the last six weeks. That's where it all sort of comes to fruition. And, you know, where the rubber hits the road. So I'm really proud of him for doing it. It's not always easy for families. I understand why people say that. But look, this is not a hardship posting either. Like, you know, people who serve in our military do far harder things. And, you know, my hat's off to them. So I'm, you know, proud of my husband, hope he wins. And thanks for shining a light on his race. Of course, johnavlin.com, if people want to support him. It's one of those Biden seats in New York that Republicans won, ties to our whole conversation. Abortion, I think, is very related to it. The Republicans did better in blue states,

I think, because people didn't feel like the risk to abortion was as acute. And it is now, I think, in a national election versus a midterm. So I think there's something to that. If Trump wins, by the way, if Trump wins, the Senate looks bad. So the House is critical. It's seats like John's that are critical to ensure that Hakeem Jeffries is the speaker and not Mike Johnson. So it's a super important race. We love John, common sense Democrat. We'll be having him back on the podcast, hopefully as a speaker and not Mike Johnson. So it's a super important race. We love John, common sense Democrat. We'll be having him back on the podcast, hopefully as a congressman next time.

Margaret Hoover, will you come back soon as well? I'd love it. Thanks, Tim, for having me. One time Adam Kinzinger was like, well, who am I going to listen to on my run today? Because this is what I listen to. And I'm like, this is exactly how I feel. I mean, you're part of my daily podcast diet.

So it's a true pleasure and honor to join the audience and you here. I'm so proud of what you guys do. Really, really love it. Thanks so much. Check out our documentary. It's on YouTube. If you're watching YouTube, it's on PBS on the PBS app. We're gonna be back on Monday for Labor Day episode with Bill Crystal. It'll be abbreviated. I'll probably be hung over at Southern Decadence here in Louisiana. So I'll see you all there on Sunday night. It's the Lsu opener versus usc so we'll be watching that go tigers i hope you all have a wonderful labor day weekend get some sun and we'll see you on monday peace and i was hiding by the stair Half here, half there

Past the lashing rain And as the sky was petal white All innocent minds came to mind As we stood congregated at the fiery mine The night ended, the fight, but the song remained So I headed to the wall Turned tail to call to the new domain As if in the sight I've seen

You're suddenly free But it's all the same Oh, but I can hear you loud in the center On me, make me be crowded together like a beast Was I too slow? Did you change overnight? Second son. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.