The Bulwark Podcast - Michael Weiss: The Clown Car at the Pentagon

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

The Army is currently operating without any Senate-confirmed civilian or military leaders at the top. For Navy secretary, Trump is nominating an election-denying veteran who thinks witches and Wiccans are taking over cities. And when Hegseth is not busy purging the DOD’s leadership, he seems to be under the spell of a Rasputin-like character who failed a polygraph and may have taken the supposedly sober defense secretary out for a bender. Meanwhile, Don Jr. got another Pentagon contract, and the administration keeps ignoring the fact that Russia is helping Iran try to kill American soldiers and sailors.Plus: Tim today launched a new series featuring a younger generation of Democratic operatives who are working hard to win the midterms. First up is Biden White House alum Rodericka Applewhaite.New Bulwark pod host Michael Weiss and Rodericka Applewhaite join Tim Miller. show notes: Tim’s candidate recs (which will be updated soon!) The Atlantic on Trump being surprised about all the top officers being fired ProPublica on Don, Jr.’s Pentagon drone contract Bulwark LIVE: GOOD FIGHT TOUR with Tim, Sarah, Sam and JVL is coming to the Southeast in October. Tickets are on sale NOW. Head to TheBulwark.com/Events for details and to get your tickets.

Welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We've got a doubleheader for you today. In segment two, I've noticed a little bit of a gap in the political commentary at Marketplace. The Democratic consultants that get called to go on TV and talk about politics are people from the Clinton-Bush-Obama era. We love them all. A lot of experience, a lot of judgment comes from, you know, successful presidential campaigns. But, you know, getting a little long in the tooth. A lot of things are changing in politics these days. And then the younger people who talk about democratic politics are mostly like 23-year-old Instagram influencers. And we honor Instagram influencing. That's a noble profession. It's a noble pursuit. But, you know, it isn't like a lot of experience in the field. And so between now and the midterms, once a week, I'm going to bring somebody on who's like actually doing campaigns in the Trump era on the Democratic side and chat with them. And so we're bringing on my old friend, Roderica Applewhite, and segment two.

She's unbelievable. Please stick around for that. But first, I've got an exciting announcement. He's an old friend. He writes at Foreign Office on Substack, but I'm pumped to reveal to you right now that he's the co-host of a new Bullwark podcast, Reporter and the Spy, with Mark Polymeropolis,

which is going to be launching soon. It's Michael Weiss. We're officially colleagues and buddies and life partners now. Common law marriage has been sanctified. That makes Mark my side piece, which is, I think, what his wife already calls. me. That sounds right. That sounds right. The great news is now that you're officially in the fold, we'll have the budget to get like a high quality blackout blanket for the birds.

The birds are covered in the blanket. So my daughter decided these are her pets, but they're moving into our bedroom. So I now have dog, fish, and birds surrounding me at all time. In the house. Okay. We might have to get you in office. We'll see how well the podcast does in the ratings. Now getting highfalutin already. Okay, cool. Do you want to give people before we get to the news? What's the, what's the pitch? What's the elevator pitch? The podcast? Yeah. So basically Mark and I have been friends and he's been a source for my reporting for a long time. And we talk all the time about the state of the world, national security, spy stuff, or, and I thought it would be fun to click record on some of these conversations just because he brings a perspective that's obviously different from my own, but parallel to my own. I mean, doing the work of

journalism, I liken it to being a case officer, right? You get to know people, you cultivate them, you get them to tell you things that they otherwise might not want to say, and you advance an agenda. In my case, what's in the public interest, in his case, national security in the great state of America and making it great again or keeping it great. I don't even know what stage we're in now. But anyway, yeah, it's a fun one. The way I see it is akin to, there was a great conversation between John La Cere and Ben McIntyre in the New York Times at the height of like the Trump Russia saga, I thought it was the best thing I'd read about it. I'm like, that's what I want to do, right? A historian, reporter, talking to a practitioner, and it's sort of like talking shop,

but as I say, from slightly different perspectives. I love it. All right. It's going to have its own feed soon. I'll make sure to announce that for everybody so they can subscribe to it. In the meantime, there's going to be some rogue YouTube episodes, but it will be up this fall. I'm pumped. All right, to the news. Dan Driscoll, Army Secretary, has resigned. This is interesting for a couple of reasons. I'm not usually covering kind of like random,

what would it be, HR moves inside the military on this podcast, right? But this is relevant for a lot of political reasons. He's been a foil of Peg Seth for a while. He's an old friend of J.D. Vance. There's been kind of a lot, he's been at the center of a lot of the turmoil behind the scenes in the White House. According to the Atlantic, when he went to inform Trump that he was leaving, Trump was surprised to hear how many generals and other top officers had been fired, pushed out,

or passed over for promotion under Heggseth. Not surprising. He's pretty focused on the marble and the new ballroom, not on this sort of material. The Army now has no secretary, no deputy undersecretary, no chief of staff, no Senate-confirmed top general, no confirmed Army General in charge of operations or confirmed commander of army troops in Europe. That's right. Boy.

And we're in a state of war with Iran. So no biggie there. I mean, there's a lot of things to say about this. Number one, the scuttlebutt is, this has been long in the making, and Driscoll is most likely to be part of, if not, leading J.D. Vance, 2028. So expect to see him involved in the vice president's presidential campaign. soon. Their best friends, they went to Yale Law School together. Driscoll seemed to be pretty well regarded, though, in spite of his attachment to J.D. Vance. The thing that impressed me about him is,

remember he was sent to Kiev several months ago to kind of deliver this ultimatum to Zelensky and the Ukrainians, you know, sign on the dotted line. We got to wrap this war up, basically shaking them down, make concessions. He came away favorably disposed toward the Ukrainians because he's a military tech guy. He's into drones. He's into 21st century warfare. He wants to. to modernize the state of the U.S. military. And the Ukrainians have a lot of know-how and sophisticated tools with which to do that. So he kind of came back more pro-Ukraine than I think he went in. There's a missing piece to this story. I've read all the reports about this and, you know, great stuff in the Atlantic and great stuff in the Wall Street Journal. There's a guy who keeps

not coming up with respect to all of the shenanigans going on at DOD. Like Pete Heggseth is We've talked about him on the show. Everybody knows him. He's probably one of the most reviled secretaries of defense since Rumsfeld, maybe even more so than Rumsfeld. Nobody talks about his chief of staff, a guy called Ricky Berea, or Rasputin Ricky, as DOD sources have dubbed him. Ricky Berea was a U.S. Marine. He retired at the level of colonel, even though he didn't do the full three years of service. signed his own papers, by the way.

This was a guy who was not supposed to be chief of staff, not liked by Susie Wiles, not liked by Carolyn Leavitt, not liked by anybody in the White House, but somehow has managed to Geppetto himself into a position of power. And essentially, from what I'm given to believe, he's kind of controlling Pete Heggseth. There's a report in the New York Post. They went on some clandestine whiskey soil when Heggseth was living in Pentagon City. He was in disguise, you know. He's not supposed to be.

drinking at all because Trump kind of read in the riot act. You know, if I catch you with the, you know, the booze are out of here. And so he's doing this on a slide. Was that a real thing where they were actually drinking in disguise or were they pretending to? Well, we don't know. But why, well, why were they sneaking out and why would, why would you pretend to sneak out and not, you know, go on some kind of like boys night? I don't know.

I don't know much about Ricky Baria. And I don't really believe in physiognomy, you know, where you judge somebody based on the shape of their face and skull. Right. But he's got a bad one. He's got a concerning one. You look at it, he's got an untrustworthy face. Yes.

And, but the, the news item here is, you remember Signalgate? Of course, yeah. When Heggseth was basically putting in classified about bombing the Houthis in Yemen into Signal. And whoopsie Daisy, Mike Wals, had added Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic to that chat. Ricky Berea was the guy who was putting in Pete Hegsteth's messages into Signal. Hmm. Okay. And he thought he was going to be fired as a result of that.

And instead, he climbed over all the corpses, including of Mike Walts, and slotted himself in as chief of staff. Failed a polygraph, by the way, which is slightly concerning. You know, the U.S. Air Force is the one that does counterintelligence for the military at large, or the Pentagon, rather. And somehow he's in this position of great influence and power. And from what I understand, you know, a lot of the reporting that Driscoll is at odds with Lanif, the general. He's acting chief of staff, just to be clear.

I don't acting is important because I never like to give Rick Rinell his fake title National Security Advisor because he's not confirmed national security advisor but like I think actually that role doesn't even exist I think in this administration but long story short what I was told this morning is you know Driscoll wanted the hell out of DOD because of Berea and the kind of clown car that's being run there and his his sort of I use Rasputin right but his kind of weird control over the secretary of defense. So I would encourage people to dig into that story more. The fact that we don't hear about him at all is interesting.

Did people know that Ricky was the one that typed it into Signal? Is that been reported? No. I'm reporting it now on your podcast. Wow. Confirmed by two DOD sources, by the way. So it's one of these things that, you know, a lot of people know this stuff, but it doesn't get said or put out there.

And I think once it is, people will come and confirm it even more. He's a Democrat, too, which is bizarre, because how does Donald Trump let somebody like this be acting chief of staff to the Secretary of War, Mr. Anti-D-EI, anti-Woke, macho-macho man, Pete Heggsett? It's a very strange state of affairs going on there. But anyway, this is the reason you have a Pentagon press corps, you know, that usually, or did. that don't consist of influencers and people who used to be on the Russian state payroll like Tim Poole. You have actual journalists digging into stuff like this.

Yeah, at least 20 generals, admirals, and civilian defense leaders have been fired or left their job since Hege's became Defense Secretary. Correct. Including the Army, Navy, and Air Force's highest ranking officers, leaders of key units. This is crazy. Like, you got a weekend talk show host and Ricky Berea putting emojis into signal chat with Jeffrey Goldberg. like kind of running things while we're in multiple multiple conflicts

we're in multiple conflicts and possibly getting into new ones in future so yeah I know I mean it's a total shit show what can I say we do have a replacement over at the Navy so if you're concerned about what's happening on the seas I've got bad news for you you should be even more concerned

a man named Hung Cal Hung for secretary is being nominated today I encountered hung I've encountered several hunks, but I've encountered hung cow. I was waiting for it. I mean, if you did walk through the door,

I was going to have it. I had to do it. You know, we've got some fans out there that just that want me to sneak that in. I encountered him, not in that way. And I got to tell you, he is a weird dude.

He's one weird fella. And he ran for Congress and Senate, failed Senate campaign. Over the course of those campaigns, he said, we don't need NATO. called NATO officials in Europe lazy, said they don't do shit. A lot of conspiracy theories about the elections, obviously.

He was big on freeing the insurrectionists. He's very concerned about witchcraft and the Wiccan community. He's Vietnamese, but he said he's African-American because he lived in Africa. I don't know, man. The dude is, it's not, we're not doing our best. Yeah, not the best and the brightest, huh? Yeah. I mean, look, you know, you tick the boxes, you play to the kind of conspiratorial base, you don't have to have the qualifications.

In fact, it behooves you to kank the people who do, generals who've earned their stars, right, but are telling you what civilian leadership needs to be told. Like, we don't have the capacity to do the things you want to do. We're running low on critical munitions to fight a war against Iran, which is now unfortunately impacting other wars going. on such as the one in Ukraine. There's a float of Brian Mast, his Army Secretary. I don't know. This is a leak. That is a congressman from Florida.

I did a media training forum once back in the old days when I was a Republican. He was a dick and a crazy person then. And he's gotten worse since. I guess he was volunteered for the IDF was wearing around an IDF uniform on the floor of Congress as an American representative. This is where I don't know. It's a good way to read the room. given the current political environment, by the way.

We'll see if he gets picked. We know that Hongkow has been picked. I was asking Hurtling about this this morning. And he's like, you know, we've had some good Army and Navy secretaries. We've had some mediocre ones. We haven't really had total clowns in those roles. But we're putting on the clown nose right now. Yeah.

I think that's accurate. So, okay. Meanwhile, over at the Pentagon, when there aren't a lot of people in the building doing the works, you know, it's pretty easy to slip things through the cracks, such as this story from ProPublica. Last year, a $620 million alone was announced to a small North Carolina startup to do some military contracting. They start up with linked to Donald Trump Jr. There were some reports that, you know, that possibly this was cronyism, obviously, just another example of Trump corruption. That was getting batted down by the Department of Defense.

ProPublica has done some interviews and reviewed some defense record records, and they showed that the loan to the firm, the request for this loan was made by Peter Navarro, White House advisor. There's looking jacked out of prison, according to Don Jr., right? Yeah. So, again, it's just all this stuff starts to pile up, right? We just look at what's happening in the Defense Department. You have, like, Hague Seth, maybe being under the spell of his, like, unqualified

respute and qualified military leaders being pushed out, contracts being handed out to Don Jr. on Peter Navarro's wreck. And 1789, what is the private equity or venture capital firm that he runs with this guy's names, Omir Malik, who's fundraising for J.D. Vance and the Hamptons, or was this summer, raised like $5 million for the RNC. Yeah, no, look, I mean, it's corruption all the way down, which is why after the midterms, everything is going to be gumbed up because the Democrats are just going to have hearings into, you know, the violation of the emoluments clause, just pale,

and cronyism, the Kushners cashing in on things, Whitkoff, what kind of side action is he doing either with the Russians or with Russia-aligned countries? And as well, they should. I mean, you know, this Pentagon deal is basically

U.S. taxpayer money going to enrich the children of the President of the United States. Right? Again. Again. You know, the interesting thing, too, though, about Don Jr., I mean, you've got to love the grift here. So he's one of the most outspoken anti-Ukraine people in the president's orbit, right?

Denounce Zelensky is a dictator and all that stuff on social media. He's an investor, along with his brother, who looks developmentally disabled, but that's another story. In a company called Power Us, it's a Florida-based drone company. And guess who or what Power Us is looking to invest in? Ukrainian drone technology. They want to buy licenses. They want to acquire the kit that the Ukrainians are manufactured. So it's okay to cash in or capitalize on this country that you despise

and would have no problem seeing overrun by the Russians. Oh, but maybe you do now because it's going to affect your bottom line. Well, this is, I mean, the classic Trump story going back half century now, you know, putting your name on other people's work and taking money for it and then screwing over people on the back end. And that's basically the business model of the Trump work. And you know what, Tim? I mean, I would be all for that kind of corruption if I thought it was going to actually change the president's mind about Ukraine. But unfortunately, it doesn't.

there you go. This segment has been sponsored by the New York Times. When I'm doing podcast prep in the morning, I'm always looking at that morning shots newsletter from Bill Crystal and Andrew Edgar, go subscribe, but going to the New York Times homepage, scrolling Twitter, making sure I am up to speed on all the latest. This morning, for example, I was reading The Times takeout on a hung cow, the nominee for Navy Secretary.

It's like, it's hard for me to keep track everything that's going on. today. So I was scrolling through my little NYT app. I'm going, oh, fuck, it's hung cow. And, you know, you got to have the reporters out there. They're doing the work that are informing us on what's happening behind the scenes of the Navy. We've got Times reporters here all the time. A ton of Maggie's reporting has been informing the podcast recently. Obviously, I had David Wallace Wells on a couple weeks ago, who is doing such important reporting on what's happening with the climate, as well as AI and other issues. It's tough.

It's tough to get good information out of the White House these days. It's tough to follow just the avalanche of shit that is being dumped on us from this administration. And you need outlets that have the reach of the resources that have the sources to go out there and do that reporting. So I can bring it to you so we can contextualize it. So we can fire off some hot takes. the basic building blocks that undergird all that is the reporters out there doing the work. I mean, for example, this is in the New York Times, but how would you have known about the woman that was running as a Republican in two different states and also was allegedly under indictment for wire fraud if it wasn't for Andrew Eggers reporting?

I'm not doing that reporting. He's out there doing it. All of us depend on fact-based journalist easily breathe their beats. So the rest of us are well informed when it comes time. to sling takes can take a week, months, or even years of work to put a good story together. So support their work, wherever you seek it out nationally, locally, support fact-based reporting. Thanks to our friends of the New York Times. Let's go to that in Ukraine. There's a bunch of stuff actually happening in the war that I want to get your take on.

There's a G20 meeting in Asheville. I just want to start with that first. Russia Finance Minister Anton Sulinov, is that right? He was there at the table. There's the first time there's been a Russia representative at the G20 since they invaded Ukraine in 2022. Europeans were pissed. Reporters were banned, so we don't really know why.

You got the side deal as you're talking about with Wickev and all this. It's a little alarming, timing. Yeah. So Trump's been banging on about bringing the Russians into the G20 from the beginning. And it seems like he's done that, right? So the way this was couched with me, Bessent was telling reporters, we're not sure anyone's going to turn up and we've extended invitations to everybody. That's obviously bullshit.

You know, the Russian finance minister doesn't come to the United States without getting visas sorted and the State Department involved and all of that. I'd like to say that this is in isolation of other things like Ukraine war policy and so on, but probably it's not. I mean, look, how many times have I come on the show? Trump is desperate to do a deal with the Russians. He would love nothing better than to have rapprochmann, but the Russians cannot give him that which he requires to present to the American people and to the institutions that still do exist in this country,

a rapprochement deal worthy of whatever concessions he's offering. And, you know, this should be twinned to the other big thing that happened in the last week or so, which was John Rackcliffe's CIA director going to Moscow. I do my own recording on this because there's a lot of contradictory stuff floating around. One set of pieces said that he went there to threaten the Russians. Beg like a dog. Or, you know, facilitate rapprochmann in his own way.

Like, maybe like join our coalition against Ukraine. No, it was to do two things. One, and the New York Times got this right. To tell the Russians, look, the war is not going well for you. Your economy is even worse. Now is the time to wrap it up. Let's make a deal. And then, two, by the way, we know that as a result of the war not going well for you,

you're doing a lot of other provocative things like escalating your state-sponsored terrorism campaign all throughout Europe, sabotage operations. Just yesterday, the German government came out and blamed Russia for this attempted drone attack in Leipzig Airport. By the way, the Germans blame the GRU, Russian military intelligence. The culprits responsible came in to Germany. this is also news for you, so break up your ears, through Serbia and Turkey. That's been confirmed on the German side. And this could have gone very, very bad. Our NATO ally. Yep. This could have

been a mass casualty event. And I'm waiting for that to happen because what the Russians are doing, they're not sending their own trained operatives into the field because most of those operatives have been rolled up and their biometric data is on every Border Guard database. They're recruiting organized crime, riffraff, teenagers, what I call gig terrorists or gig saboteurs, you know, finding them on telegram, the internet, offering them a few thousand quid in cryptocurrency and saying, go, you know, sometimes they do it under this veil of plausible and my ability. I'm going to go deliver this parcel. Don't worry about it. It's just a, it's an anodyne thing, cosmetics, sex toys, whatever. And it turns out there's a bomb inside. And another case is telling

them, you're going to detonate an incendiary device. But these attacks have been skyrocketing in recent weeks and months. To your point, I noticed this yesterday. Mark Ruda had a NATO said Russia's grown increasingly reckless in these efforts. He had met with Elbridge Colby last week. Anytime Elbridge Colby's involved anywhere is concerning to me, I'd like to keep him in a basement, but that is unusual. Like, you know, it's the type of thing you do if you're worried about increasing threats. So this is another sort of piece of the puzzle here. So months ago, CIA briefed the Poles, the Scandinavians, and the Bolts, and said,

we have intelligence that the Russians are going to do something. We don't know what it is. It could be cyber attacks. They do that. That's just Tuesday for them. Sabotage operations, again, see above, already ongoing and now expanding. Or more provocatively, more worryingly. an incursion, quote unquote, into NATO territory.

So either little green men pour across the border into Latvia, Estonia, or they send a regiment of conventional troops, and they do it to test the inviability of Article 5. And I was told as well, and this is what kind of bugged me, CIA basically said, if this happens, you're on your own, telling our eastern flank NATO allies, we ain't coming to the rescue. So that's on the one hand. This, of course, leaked in Poland, and now it's all over the board.

place. Then on the other hand, because of the war in Iran, we are running dangerously, critically low on key munitions, including and especially interceptors, Patriot missile, Pac-3, and Pac-2. According to analysis by CIS, that's the DC think tank, not the Canadian spy service, we're down to like 750, 800 of these things. That was before the latest round of tit-for-tatch strikes between the U.S. and Iran, right, where in one night we apparently fired close to 100 patriot interceptors at incoming Iranian missiles. So now we're down to maybe 600 or 500. We don't have the missiles to give the Ukrainians who need several hundred of them to survive what's going to be a really miserable winter. I mean, every night barrages of Russian missiles and drones killing civilians, they're targeting

population centers, not military facilities, in order to terrorize the Ukrainians to weaken their resiliency and resolve and make them basically give up, which I don't think they're going to do, but that's a different story. Anyway, we go to the Europeans and we say, hey, Russia might invade you, and then we say, hey, can you spare some patriot interceptors for Ukraine? And the Europeans are like, no, because we need them in case we get invaded. There's no sort of whole strategy here, right? We don't have any military leaders in the army in Europe. So there's nobody to flag the concerns. And, you know, when you send a guy like Bridge Colby out, who's already hostile to the Europeans, and it's sort of like, I mean, he's the Janet Jackson song, what have you done for me lately, right? It's like, what are you spending on?

No nipple flip, though. No, well, keep it under. I don't know. He kind of looks the type to me. He goes to them and he hectares them. He lectures them. He berates them, you know, and then says, are you a model ally or are you not? And we will decide who we are going to defend, who we will support in any military conference.

on the basis of how much money you're spending. So he's not the guy you send. No. Sending Ratcliffe to Russia, I will say, you know, we've discussed this as well, and this has been confirmed to me by the Ukrainians, the only reason I believe it. You know, Ratcliffe is the most pro-Ukraine actor in the administration. Ratcliffe is responsible for giving the Ukrainians intelligence how to bypass Russian air defense system.

So when they bomb oil refineries are now logistics hubs, warehouses, containing dual-use equipment like the Russian Amazon, they can get their drones in and they can hit the target, right? So Rackcliffe is responsible for blowing shit up in Russia. To send him to Moscow to say, it's time to make a deal, is itself an implicit threat, right? Because they know that Rackleff is doing this.

That's an improvement on which often... It's interesting mixed messaging. Right? Yeah, very mixed messages. That's the problem. And Rackcliffe, it's kind of a low bar. Because on this point, I wanted to play this for you. This was this morning.

The Treasury Secretary, who was kind of playing like a military, Terry roll also lately as well. They're sending out a fit Scott Besant to be the heavy on the Iranians economically. It's an interesting

choice. Operation Outcast. Yeah, he did take a $5 billion in hedge fund, investment fund and end it with a gentleman's $527 million in the bank account. So that was pretty good. So he's threatening the Iranians. Also

the Ukrainians, we are late. This was him this morning trying to explain why gas prices are up. And we are going through an energy shock right now due to both the war in Ukraine, because Ukraine has decided that they want to blow up Russian energy assets and refine products. So that is creating upward price pressure on a global basis. Ukraine has decided to do that. It's the Ukrainians. Yeah, I wonder why.

Yeah, they just took that random decision to do this. First of all, this is the guy who allowed waivers that were implemented on the back of the Iran war to allow Rosnev, the Russian state oil company, to sell oil in the global market. So we put in these waivers to bypass the sanctions that Donald Trump did impose a year ago or whatever. Those waivers have expired. So if he's so concerned about Russia not making money from selling oil, he could simply re-up the waivers. He hasn't done that. So when you talk about mixed messages, yeah, and the onus here is not on Ukraine. And as I said, the U.S. intelligence community is helping Ukraine in this effort.

I've confirmed that within an inch of my life on both sides, the American and the Ukrainian side. So, you know, which is it, man, like, you know, you want to blow up oil refineries in Russia, but you're like, hey, you know, that's the reason. It's that meme. You know, we're all trying to find the guy who did this. Right. Right. Maybe that's just politics and lying. and you know, you got anti-Scott out there

being like I'm looking for somebody else to blame. Exactly, exactly. I mean, look, I'm trying to get a handle on. There's now a debate about how much oil is getting through the Strait of Hormuz. Goldman Sachs says it's returned to about two-thirds of the pre-war level. Yeah, I saw that. Another oil tanker tracker, which is highly reputable

and relied upon by journalists say it ain't close to that. So there's a debate about this. It does seem, though, that the blockade is having an impact and it's making life more difficult for the Iranians, and the Iranian economy is already in the toilet. So the question is, is this going to alter their calculations with respect to how they talk to the Americans or Nika? I'm very skeptical at will,

but this is, you know, Operation Outcast or maximum pressure, as it used to be known, right? You sanction them, you block their ability to make revenue the only way they can, exporting their energy, and you hope for the best that maybe, you know, been working. They become more kittenish,

decide, like, as J.D. said, there are just a bunch of cool revolutionary guard terrorists now who want to make a deal with the United States. I don't know. Let's be clear. This is a crisis of our making, because we went to war with Iran. It's not Ukraine's fault that they're fighting back against Russia. It's true and blunt. I don't think that's what Scott Bassett is trying to be. When he's trying to explain why gas prices are up, it's like, well, you know, it's out of our hands, Ukrainians. It's the straight of war moves. We got that under control. I want to talk about Iran, but there's a story in the F.

about the kind of nexus between these two conflicts and Russia's kind of increasing involvement in trying to help Iran. But FTA is this. They're secretly helping Iran develop a supersonic cruise missile, some of Russia's most experienced missile specialists. Kind of laughed when you hear that phrase, though. I do think about like a kind of mockumentary where you have Russia's most experienced missile specialists. Such an old guys from the Sputnik era coming through. But anyway, they're helping Iran develop a new class of weapon capable of threatening U.S. aircraft carriers and warships. Yeah, I mean, nobody should be surprised by this.

That's just one story. Russia is cooperating at a degree really unprecedented with not just Iran, but also China. We did a story at the insider about how the Chinese came to them and said, you know, we're very worried about Starlink and what it can do to, for instance, disrupt our ability to invade Taiwan. on. So let's come up with a joint air defense and aerospace defense, because this is happening in low orbit, to maybe shoot down Starlink satellites out of space or do cyber warfare or somehow interdict these systems. The Russians sharing this kind of tech with the Iranians is absolutely an escalation. It doesn't surprise me so much. So one of the other things we noticed is in the last

several years. The Russians were sending their Black Ops team Unit 29155 of the GRU. These are the guys that poisoned the script balls in Salisbury. These are the guys who are responsible for all of these state-sponsored terrorist attacks happening throughout Europe, beginning in 2011 before the first invasion of Ukraine all the way until now. They sent their top men from that unit, including the founding commander, Andrei Avrianov, to Tehram, to liaise with base. the IRGC counterparts. And the question we had at the insider when we're investigating is, what the hell are they talking about? You know, these guys don't do arms deals. They don't do, you know, intelligence liaison services. They do kinetic things. So we were kind of waiting to

see what's the grand reveal here of this Russian-Iranian partnership. And look, I mean, our intel community has concluded that both the Russians and the Chinese are sharing intelligence with the Iranians to target American soldiers in the Persian Gulf. And you might say, well, the Russians would do that because, as I just mentioned, we're doing the same thing with the Ukrainians inside Russia. But like, why are we not talking about penalizing the Russians for trying to kill Americans? Right. We're inviting the Russian finance minister to the G20. We're talking about how it's the Ukrainians fault of gas prices. Or are like simultaneously the fact that Russia is trying to help Iran kill our men and women.

It's it's a it's a pretty weak, frankly, posture. Very weak. And you know, you had this Lindsay Graham sanctions bill, which passed the Senate and was rewritten to be pretty robust. And also, frankly speaking, written in such a way that it would be hard for Donald Trump not to enforce certain provisions in this thing. And it wouldn't have passed the Senate if Trump hadn't allowed it to because the Senate, like the House on the Republican side, is just top.

hostage to this personality cult. But now it's gumbed up in the House. And it's gummed up in the House. How's that going? The House got went back in the session yesterday. They voted on some things. Did that make it? No. I mean, it's, I haven't seen the latest this morning. But last I heard, there are a lot of sticking points for people, including, I mean, on the Democratic side is the, the, the cudgel here tariffs, right? Which that party does not like and is against Donald Trump in doing this sort of trade war. But it's the best thing you're going to get out of this administration to hurt third parties importing it's Russian oil gas uranium petroleum products right and that's what you would want if you if you if you were interested in strategically defeating this country yeah my guess

is that it's Mike Johnson sitting on this because they don't want to do anything that's going to hurt the correct and so you know or you know exactly you have a situation where president of the United States doesn't really care about his party's political fortunes in the midterms he cares about his quote legacy so he will do things to advance what he sees as his legacy. So if he can defeat the Islamic Republic of Iran or denuclearize it, as he puts it, that's going to be for him that that will trump, no pun intended, Republicans losing perhaps both houses of Congress, right? It just doesn't care. But they, of course, care. And they're very nervous and worried, which is why they want the Iran war to end. Any other thoughts on the latest from the Iran war?

This is, you know, more kinetic action this week than we've seen in a little bit. We hit targets in Iran on Tuesday. Tehran fired missiles and drones at sites across the the region yesterday. Yeah. I mean, look, I said at the beginning of this thing, you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound. It's easy to start a war like this, but it's going to be incredibly difficult to get out of it. And once they close the straight of foremost, that's not, you know, that's not a modus of any of the United States can live with because, you know, 20% of the world's oil supply bypasses that waterway. We can't allow the IRC to take it hostage. But, you know, our strategy thus far has failed. I said, the black.

Cade is operationally speaking, it's being met with some success. But I don't see this thing being wrapped up. And, you know, I said at the beginning, the Israelis have this doctrine called mowing the lawn or mowing the grass, right? So they have a conflict with an adversary. It's either a state like Iran or a non-state actor, Hezbollah Hamas. And they don't try to strategically destroy the adversary. They contain them. And they contain them when they feel that they're being armed with weapons that are just not sustainable for the Israelis to allow them to arm with. They go in and they bomb, and they do this periodically. They did this in Syria for 10 years during the Syrian Civil War. The Israelis would bomb Hezbollah and IRGC weapons transfers going

to Hezbollah. And they did this with impunity. I think the American strategy, and I saw Axios reported some U.S. official called it mowing the law. So the question is, how long can we allow this law and mowing operation to continue, because as I said, our resources are very straightened. We're running out of munitions. If we expended 100 Patriot interceptors in one night, and we're down to like 500 of them, do the math, how many of these sort of, you know, tit for tat exchanges? Five nights. Yeah? Yeah. Unless we start knocking on the doors of our allies and saying, you must give us your interceptors. Oh, and by the way, the Russians might invade you, so you're on your own if that happens. You see? Yeah. There's a Wall Street Journal report that, like,

that this was really impacting Russia's thinking on some of this stuff. Of course, how could it not? If you're Putin, if you're she, I mean, you're sitting there saying, okay, well, our adversary is running out of kit. So now is the time to start probing, getting provocative, and seeing what we can get away with. So for a guy like Putin, for Rackcliffe to go to Moscow, by the way, according to Russian media, he was meant to meet with Putin. And Putin declined the meeting because he had told Naryshkin and Bortnikov, the heads of the SVR and the FSB, the war is going

miserably. Putin doesn't want to hear this. Putin doesn't believe this because he's being lied to by his generals and by his intelligence services. The war is going fine. He just has to abide for time, press on, and eventually all of Donbos will fall. If you're Putin now, the intelligence you're being fed, which is accurate, it's credible, is that the United States does not have the resources to sustain this war in Iran indefinitely, much less do they have the resources to sell to third parties, NATO allies in Europe, to then donate that kit to the Ukrainians. So this is why the Russians are escalating their missile attacks on Kiev and other population centers on a nightly basis, because they know that we don't have the missiles to give the

Ukrainians. According to one Senate Armed Services Committee source I talked to, they need about 200 plus interceptors to withstand the winter. They're not going to get anything close to them. So a lot of people are going to die in Ukraine. Now, I say that, and I don't mean, what I'm going to say next, I don't mean to be callous or cynical, I'm just kind of giving you an objective reading. That fact does not change the military dynamics at the front, because these missiles are not being directed at Ukrainian soldiers, and that front is largely governed by unmanned systems, drones. But it does affect, you know, the humanitarian crisis. Citizens. Yes. People in Keith. Correct. Yeah, it's brutal. And I don't know. You mentioned earlier that there's a lot of ghost

ships and such going through the straight. And so like there is, you know, analysis saying that, you know, we're at what, two-thirds. I even saw one person that said three-fourths of before the war. But it's still, the cost is so high. Correct. Insurance costs. How much we're paying. Like if you look at oil prices right now, they're back up over $90 a barrel. And it's like, who wants to do do this? Who wants to ride a ghost ship through the Omani side of the Strait of Hormuz? There's a chance that the Iranians are going to fire a drone at you. Right. And I mean,

you've seen the reporting on the state of the USS Lincoln and the morale and the mass sort of psychological state of the sailors on by me. I've poor things just pulled into port in Thailand. I mean, you won't hear from them for a while. It's going to make hangover part two look like

a fucking walk through kindergarten. Yeah, no, I mean, these things have costs, right? We're paying for this blockade on a hourly basis, but also our servicemen and women in the field are, they're not seeing their families, and they're being told, they're being rotated in and out,

but a lot of them being told you're going to be in there until 2027. And, of course, this doesn't even account for the fact that in these little series of escalations, I mean, what if the Iranians hit a ship and kill dozens of American sailors? Yeah. That's the kind of thing where I could see Trump and I could see General Kane and I could see whoever's left in the Pentagon to hold our military together saying we have to put boots on the ground,

right? So, yeah, this is not happy times right here. Another uplifting report from Michael Weiss, Abraham Lincoln Sailors, when you hit port in Thailand, if you see Sam Rockwell's character from White Lotus Season 3, go the other way. Yeah, that's just trouble. That's just trouble. Yeah. My love to Mark, I'm very excited about the new show.

Thanks, man. The Reporter and the Spy. Everybody get ready for it. It is going to be great. Up next, we're doing some politics with my friend Roderick Applewhite. All right, we are back. She's a rapid response director for majority Democrats, a group dedicated to growing the Democratic Party so that it can compete everywhere. Previously, she was the White House's director of Black Media during the Biden administration.

She worked for Pete and a bunch of other campaigns. It's Roderick Applewhite or just row to me. What's up, bro? Hey, Tim, how are you? I'm doing great. Thank you for doing this. I already gassed you up in the intro, so we don't need to go over that. But I would like to introduce you to people.

Maybe give us a little bit of your political origin story, how you got into all this, how you ended up in South Bend. And I checked your Lincoln this morning. I knew it was early, but April 2019. April 2019. So you were like one of the OGs in South Bend. Yes. So to cut a very long career short, I,

got my start as an opposition researcher and actually transitioned to comms over this campaign. I was one of the first hires because I am a psycho and sent my resume cold to read jobs at info at for all of the exploratory campaigns. So that was like 20 of them. I was like, I've worked at every level of campaign except for presidential. So it is happening this cycle. Liz called me out of the blue and the rest is kind of history. Pete actually left me a voicemail when I accepted the offer. It was that early in the campaign. He got his own name wrong in the voicemail, which was kind of funny. And then... Like Buttigieg? He mispronounced Buttigieg. He tripped over it a little bit. And someone with a difficult name, I get it. So we won't hold that against him. But yep, April

2019, I was in South Bend a couple days before the launch and got into the rocket ship. And then that's kind of how it remained until we dropped out in March of 2020. Was your family, or your friends like, this is crazy? The gay South Bend mayor? Like, what are you doing? You're going to finish in last place. Yeah, I was, you know, I told my boyfriend at the time, I was like, hey, I'll be back in six weeks. Like, this is, I don't even know who this guy is. But it ended up being such an incredible ride. I still talk to a lot of people I worked with every single day.

What were they? What was like Pete and Chaston like in the early days? Do you have any fun behind the scenes, Goss for me? Yeah. I mean, the same as they are now, which is really heartening to see in this line of work. A lot of people switch up when they get more eyeballs on them. but Pete and Chaston have always been unbelievably sincere. You know, there are so many different things to point to,

but any time he or Chaston or the dogs were in the office, it was just, it felt like you were the only person in the room. He would take the time to kind of go around to all of our pods and ask us how things we're looking, what are some things that we're hearing online and things that he should be thinking about ahead of the next debate. But, yeah, I was the keeper of his debate Bible, which beyond the book was just the catalog of drama between all of the other campaigns happening.

So he would know when to jump in and want to jump out. And so being one of the last people, he would kind of hear from before getting on stage is personal importance to me. Keeper of the tea. Did you ever get drunk brunch with Chaston, you know? Do you have any drunk Chaston story? I do not know. We try to let them have normal lives as much as possible. Okay.

I have drunk Jeb story. So I was going to trade one for one. but we'll do it another day. All right, let's talk about the news. Yesterday, there was some weirdness on the hill. Like, there was some drama over a rule vote. Anytime someone talks about a vote on the rule, I immediately start to pass out.

So it seemed about a lot of nonsense to me. The thing that I did notice was Bill of Chris, when I talked about this on Monday, the House did vote to pass as like bipartisan continuing resolution, which basically funds the government to after the election. A couple of no votes from Friends of the Pot. Brendan Boyle, friend of the pod, majority damn, Robert Garcia. But a lot of dams voted for it.

I don't really get it. My personal take on it is I just, I feel like there should be more foot on the gas pedal, more aggression, more, you know, using every tool in the toolkit to like draw attention to the corruption, to all the stupid shit we're funding. And just really, I'm not funding this fucking corrupt government. The counter-argument to that is kind of basically like, well, things are going well, things are going well, like, We don't know. Who the hell knows? You have a government shutdown. We could get blamed and, you know, we don't want to rock the boat. You know, whether about that vote in particular, in general, like my concern is sort of about like this prevent defense. I think Bill called it on Monday. Like, what do you think about all of that and like how the, how the Dems should be handled the next couple months? Yeah. I mean, I think there's a real reticence to rock the boat a little bit, especially from leadership. I mean, we've been conducting focus groups across the country. And I'm. shocked as someone that's been doing this for a minute, how specifically voters are naming. These are everyday voters. These are not freaks like you and me. These are people that are just

living their lives and feeling how the Trump administration and how congressional Republicans have been impacting their lives. And they are naming and shaming quite specifically. So, I mean, to put myself in- Like what? Specific like tariffs, like the ballroom. Yeah. So one of the first questions that is asked is, you know, how are you feeling about the economy in the world. And they're like, well, the Iran warrants makes my gas expensive. I go to the grocery store. It's expensive. Health care is up. All of these cost of living issues are making, are putting the squeeze in me and my family and my communities. And it's because Trump is not addressing any of these things and getting us into long, drawn out conflicts. So the fact that people can name that, I think has Democrats in a situation of

maybe we should just continue to let the main thing be the main thing and not get to involved in procedural fights that honestly, for the most part, end up making Democrats look bad. The last shutdown that we had was over health care, which voters gave that to us of like, oh, you know, this is a win, right? It was a win, but when you drag it out especially as we're in the middle of an affordability crisis, I think it makes it kind of hard to square that with Democrats also saying that they're trying to make your lives more affordable. The party that's in the minority tends to be the one that takes the blame when you have long drawn-out shutdowns. And if you're going to, in to get one, you know, eight to nine weeks out from Election Day.

I don't see how that helps. Democrats show how they're going to actually be functional. I'm in Yolo mode over here, right? Like, okay, I just, I want to start going in, like, multiple guns blazing. Like, screw these guys. I understand that perspective. I think that there's a broader, you know, putting aside, like, that specific, like, tactical vote, because I don't think the Democrat's success in whether they take the Senate is going to

make a break on whether this budget passed or not. But, like, I do this. think that in a mindset of let's not rock the boat, things are going our way, like, risks like leading, like falling up short. Because like there are like these red states, and we're going to get into some of them that you need to win in the Senate, the Texas is the Iowa's. Oh, oh, like, you could outperform Harris by nine points to not win any of them. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. But, you know, still have to show voters that they're actually going to do something. And I think there's not going to be a lot of patience and rightfully so the voters are going to have

for Democrats if we retake both of these chambers. So I think losing the battle to win the war, I do think is a calculus that's worth considering when we're this close to election day. Okay. Let's look at the Trump ad. He's making life easier about for Democrats for going on offense because he's not really on offense either. I don't know how you'd explain this. This just popped today. They're spending a million dollars on this to Trump's super PAC. They've got a ton of money. Yeah, I mean, they've got it. Yeah. This is the thing the Iowa Dems were the most concerned about the local strategists I was talking to.

They're just like, look, Turuk and Rob Sand are running good races, but like it's a small state, they could just blow it out with money, just smearing Turich in sand. And so to spend a million dollars on this, I find curious. Let's watch. We gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security, the largest tax cuts in American history. The price of eggs is down 60%. I took prescription drugs

from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest. We're telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power need so that no one's prices will go up. He's fighting for you every day. Help him finish the job.

It's strange if it's about Trump. It's just like a million dollars. Yeah, I mean, I think what's interesting, and I would love to, I wish I knew exactly when this audio was from, but I'm going to guess it was from a while ago because Trump has been kicking and screaming, not wanting to talk about affordability, calling it a con job and a hoax by Democrats. I think this is the result of probably very long discussions of Sir, we need to do something like we are getting killed on affordability and cost of living arguments. Folks want to see that we've got something and Trump said fine, but no more than a million dollars, which if you know how much he has in his coffers. It's like a penny. I guess that's true. It's just, but even him talking about how things are getting better, like in some ways, like part of that ad, the Democrats could have run. Right. Absolutely. I think he's got kind of nothing and they know that they have to address this in some way. So they're doing the best I can with what they've got. Yeah. I just think that any million that's not spent trying to turn whatever, James Tellerico

into Woke One Kamala or whatever, you know what I mean? Like trying to turn him into like a crazy far-left activist is a million dollars that I'm happy that they're spending on something else. Republicans are basically begging for Trump to do something to support Ken Paxton in Texas and Ashley Henson in Iowa. And it's very interesting that we are not seeing any movement there. Yeah. And it's September 2.

Like it's kind of late. You know, to normal people, right? It feels like, well, you know, the election's two months out, et cetera, et cetera. And like we've seen this. I remember, God, it was it all the years. mixed up. It was 2020 now where Adelson came in really, really late and spent a ton of money for Trump in the last couple of weeks. Obviously, that didn't end up working. Biden wins. But, like, you know, the Texas has so many media markets. Like, it's, they're kind of, like,

losing valuable time here to use that war chest, it seems like to me. It's a very expensive state to run in. And, you know, for all his faults, Trump does, like, a scoreboard at the end of the day, James Dahlirico has outraised Ken Paxton significantly. And there comes a point where you don't want to throw good money after bad. And that might be where Republicans are at Texas right now. It's crazy. I saw a pull out today. It has a coin flip.

And it is really expensive versus Iowa. But there was this Atlantic story, maybe last week, from Ashley Parker, about how Trump had a meeting in the White House where he's like, I want more ads featuring me. And then this ad came out. So I don't know, maybe that leaked because they knew the ad was going out. And so there's some CYA. But to me, this is like this Trump ad is, if anything, a net plus for the Dems. All right.

I want to go through the map. Not the whole map, but just a couple of the races that you have your eye on and get into some of the majority of Dems races. Over in the Michigan Senate, though, first, where there's a lot of buzz around that. I try to be out of the prediction business ever since 2016 when I made some very bad, very public predictions that ended up on like mega highlight reels on YouTube. of like, of like, dem pundits crying. And I was one of the criers. And so I try not to do that. So I'm hedging a little bit.

But I just, I think that the pundits are really wrong about what's happening in Michigan. I think that Mike Rogers, like, appeals mostly to, like, people that show up in the CNN green room. No offense. I said you on CNN recently. But, um, and I like, he does. And like, you know, there's a handful of like rich Wall Street Joan Republicans and some Jewish Democrats, that there's maybe some crossover there, 1%.

But this idea that he is like a modern, this has this huge crossover. I just don't buy. And I think that Abdul has a lot of skills that don't map along what, like, traditional, what people want from politicians. So I look at that race, and I think that that race will end up being a clean victory for Abdul, ends up being, you know, Iowa probably end up in closer. What do you think about that? I certainly think this is the cleanest shot he's got.

I mean, it's no denying that voters are very much looking for fighters and doers this cycle. And he's messaged himself very successfully. And I say that as somebody that worked for one of his opponents to Mallory McMorrow. He did a really good job of sticking to the message of, you know, money out of politics, money in your pocket and Medicare for all. And anywhere we would go in Michigan, people were able to rattle that off. It's effective. It's good. However, when he strays from that, that's when he gets into trouble a little bit. you know, this proximity to Hassan Piker, you know, just now getting to apologizing for his comments

after a synagogue got attacked earlier this year. All of these things make it, they trip him up and makes him distracted and spend time apart from talking about the issues that Michiganers care about. Mike Rogers also very distracted. He's been going after all of this culture war stuff. I think any of the points he might have about, you know, the dangers of, electing somebody as far as the left as Abdul get really buried under all the Islamophobia and all of this other stuff that he's wrapping this campaign around. It's going to be hard for him to separate himself from Trump, especially in a state like Michigan that is getting particularly squeezed on this tarifford. We decide to start with the Canadians, getting squeezed on manufacturing, just a lot of

these issues that it's going to make it hard for Mike Rogers to actually tell Michiganers how he's going to be, you know, a senator that's going to act independently and not necessarily just be a rubber Stanford Trump. He's in nothing. He's offered no independence. Having to work for Mallory in the primary, I noticed shout out Mallory. I mean, she's been out campaigning for Abdul. We have seen that not happen in Texas, for example. So, you know, good on her. Well, like, what is your sense, though, not at kind of the politician level, but like the voter level, the McMorro voters, the Stevens voters? Like, is there any risk there, any vulnerability? Like, I understand there's some hurt feelings, you know, among the people that know each other. But like, from the actual

voters. I don't know. Sarah's Michigan focus group, it's just one focus group, like didn't really seem to indicate that the same thing was true among just average voters. What's your sense? No, I mean, the primary was very messy, but primaries are also inside baseball for voters

in Michigan who have actual lives and aren't like us, just like pumping this into ourselves every single day. Yes, it looked very cohesive, especially right after Abdul was elected. I mean, And Michigan has a very late primary.

It was not even a month ago. So you need to be able to turn around very quickly, demonstrate unity, to focus on hitting Mike Rogers and making sure he has a bad day every day between now and November. And I think Mallory McMorrow and Haley Stevens, to their immense credit, came out for him very strongly. And they've been also, I'm sure, working behind the scenes to get some of the other folks on board like Jeremy Moss, who has been very pro-Israel, but also has said that he's been open to talks that he's been having with Abdul-Sahed that, for the most part, have seen

productive until, of course, then Hassan Piker threw a whole bunch of cold water on that. So I think as much as he can focus on his race in Michigan and keep it about what Michiganers are going through, it'll make it a lot easier for him to show really good, sharp, effective contrast against Mike Rogers. Yeah, I'm bullish on it. I'm a mission against interest. So I think it's useful to hear from me, but I'm bullish on Abdul. Any thoughts on Jasmine?

What's happening with her? I have. Okay, let me find it. Let me find it. Okay, on Jasmine, look, she does not have to endorse James Talley. Let me say that up front. She doesn't? No, no.

Against Ken Paxton? She doesn't. She is allowed to manage her legacy and the way that she sees fit. I don't see the value in having somebody who's like going to do half-assed endorsement work when we need people who are enthusiastic about defeating people. Ken Paxton. If she doesn't want to do that, that's on her. However, she's dragging this out in a way that is making her look bad. At the end of the day, if you want to just say asked and answered, I will not be supporting James Tolerica. Thank you so much. I'll be supporting these downpillot candidates.

It would be helpful if you could actually name those candidates and point to some events you've been showing up to on their behalf. That'd be really helpful. But she can manage herself however she sees fit. I, you know, I am a black one myself. I hate when people. come in and tell black people what to do. So I'm not doing that. But just be honest. If you don't want to support him, then okay, that's fine. We got a lot of other stuff to do.

James Tarrico has been making very productive inroads with the black community. The polling has been very positive for him. It's around like 75, 76 percent of black voters will be supporting him. Obviously, there's still a lot of work to do. I trust that his campaign is sophisticated enough to do it. I do too. Very diplomatic of you. That's nice.

I don't know. Ken Paxon is the other choice. I keep coming back to this with Trump, and people kept being like, well, I didn't. I mean, I voted for fucking Hillary. Okay, I started an anti-Hillary super pack, all right, and then voted for Hillary. Like, sometimes it's like, the choice is the choice.

I don't know. You're right. She can do whatever she want. I can do what I want to. And it's insane. And she's really kind of embarrassing herself. Let's talk about that Florida race. I had another contrarian view from my kind of moderate rep on the Angie Nixon win.

I thought Vinman is really good. honorable man, I know personally, and a hero, really. I also thought that the campaign was kind of laxidaisical and that having Jolly and Vindman on the ticket, it's kind of tough to motivate some demographics of the Democratic Party. This is kind of like my just hot take view as an outsider, though. I don't actually have any evidence of that. So I'm wondering what you think about Nixon Jolly, whether there's any hope for Jolly in the governor's race and don't know what you think about how Nixon's been running.

Yeah, I mean, I think this is very emblematic of one, with Florida, and two, that this is a big, a tent party. You have David Jolly, who's a former Republican, running with Glenn Graham, who ran statewide for governor a few cycles back, running a very, no-nonsense adult in the room. Republicans are crazy and not meeting your needs, very straight-laced, kind of like quintessential Florida Dem campaign. It worked for them very well in the primary, and I think it's the exact contrast we want to see going into the general. And then you have the complete other side, which, you know, by your, to your point, like, Alex Vindman maybe should have won that primary based on, you know, where he was ideologically. However, Angie Nixon was the person

who people were actually seeing show up to their union halls and their women's democratic meetings and all of that. She's been a staple in Florida politics for quite some time. She's a staple in a community, and she shoots straight. I mean, I've been really happy to see the no-nonsense attitude she has when she's been doing some of this national press, when they try to tie the worst facets of DSA's policy of platform to her and Hassan Piker. And she's like, I don't know about any of that. Here's what I'm hearing in Florida.

The people can't afford health care, that their roads are messed up, their education is bad, and they can't afford to go to the grocery store. And she's stayed laser-focused on that. When they try to get her on to defund the police, she's like, I want to defund flock, which more and more seems like a bipartisan issue.

She's been doing a really, really good job. of staying focused on what she's hearing on the ground from Floridians, and that's why she won her problem. Yeah, total media training. Dary Alisa and some of these folks should just watch Angie Nixon videos. Even if she doesn't win, she's doing a service for DSA candidates as far as how you handle this stuff. She's been awesome, I think. But there's also another race in Florida, if you'll allow me that I want to highlight,

being that the bench is one of the organizations I work with. Pia Dandia in Florida's 22nd district, is running as well. I know nothing about Pia. So just give it to me. Give me the- Let me tell you. She's a teacher.

She's a principal, a private sector leader, and a rising star. She is extremely passionate about why she's running for office, what she's going to actually do in Congress. And she's been doing a really good job laying out how she's going to get that done and building the coalition necessary. What is the district? The district is Florida 22. I believe it's in the Fort Lauderdale area.

That's kind of by Trump. It's part of Mara Lago, I think. Yes. So it got redrawn, and it was a district that Trump won 55% of the vote in 2024. In a normal year, this would be kind of a dumb deal, and he would not be successful. But this is kind of a testament to the type of candidates that we've been backing across the country with the bench. Let's do more about that. Because that race, I did an article a couple months ago now.

Wait a minute. Is the PRAs, is she running against the guy that's trying to rename 75 Trump Highway? Yes, that's correct. He, uh, that's Casey Asker. He's a self-funder, wealthy Naples businessman that has, um, run before. Although very interestingly, and I think this is finally reflective of the dam starting to burst a little bit for Republicans. He's been slowly wiping mentions of his working with Trump off his web. Sorry, once you come out for renaming things, Trump Highway, you can only do so much with your website. People remember that. He's hoping nobody notices, but this is me outing him right now. We see you. A lot of these candidates, as I mentioned, about a month ago or two, and I'm going to update this. The primaries are finally fucking over next Tuesday.

So I'm going to update this here in a week with some other candidates. So maybe you can make some recommendations to me. But I wrote basically about that 55 is like right on the outer edge, right? Like I was trying to look at districts that Trump won 53, 50s. 54, 55, maybe 52, many 56, right? Like where it's like a Democrat and if there's a strong candidate in particular, like this could be a wave year where you can win one of those seats. And I wrote about a bunch of them. We'll put the link in the show notes.

But I was wondering, you just mentioned floor 22, what else are you either working on or kind of monitoring that you're interested in if people are looking to kind of support these stretch candidates? In particular, because I think like the big swing candidates, like I know that the bench, you guys also have Kate Conley's running. it's Mike Lawler. Like, there's nothing against she's going to put in money, right? Like, she's going to have a ton of money in that race, like because everybody's going to go in because that's a big swing race.

There's that like next layer, like that Florida 22 that I think that I want people to look at. So is there anything else you're monitoring in that kind of vein? Yeah, a lot of overlap with the candidates that you mentioned in your piece.

So it was nice to see that. But it's same four stag in Montana 1, Jamie Acre, and North Carolina 11, Bobby Polito in Texas 15 and Johnny Garcia in Texas 35th, Mary Peltola running for Alaska Senate, and Josh Turek running for Iowa Senate. These are all candidates who are running very different races, but all in the same vein of building the coalitions necessary and showing their voters and their constituents what they're actually

going to do for them in Congress versus being focused on tenure leadership, whose name is on what door, who gets what office, just actually focus on delivering wins for their people. Right. One of the other candidates that I highlighted was in the news this morning, Brian Poindex for Ohio 07. Allegedly, in 1998, police, I guess, were, you know, going to some, there's some, you know, some young guys hanging out, getting in a little trouble. And allegedly, he swallowed a crack cocaine rock in 1998. Yeah, that's kind of like, cool. I don't know. Like, that's not so dissimilar for how my aughts went. maybe 1998. But shout out Brian Point Dexter. He's running against Max Miller. Yeah, I was four, so I won't be speaking on those.

Fuck you. I was four. Just in general in these races, like, just is there any big picture of like, from your focus groups, from these campaigns that you're helping out with? Like, what is working like in these kind of red districts, you know, kind of besides, like, obviously everybody's talking about affordability? But is there anything else that, like, jumps out as, like, candidates that are resonating. What's working is not getting caught in the binary of progressive

versus moderate or Democrat versus Republican. I think Republicans are caught a little flat foot at this time because they're going after all this culture war stuff that frankly voters don't care about when the economy is good. Like then they can focus on that stuff. But right now they're like, okay, but like cut the bullshit. What are you actually doing to lower costs for me? And what has been so effective across the ideological spectrum on the left has been the candidate that makes that argument the most effectively of what they're actually going to do for people upon election is the candidate that has survived the primary, regardless of, you know, if they're a progressive or a moderate. So it's really, I think the binary we're seeing here is doers versus sitters.

And those are the people that are really making Republicans have to answer for why they've given Trump a rubber stamp to do everything but tackle the issues that voters actually care about. I just think having that outsider thing, I mean, it's a little eye roll. sometimes, but it's like, it's what voters react to when you hear from them. They don't, like, in this day and age in particular, like, they don't want to see normal politicians. And, like, just sometimes people talk about it in like the sister soldier context, right? I mean, I don't even mean it like that. Like, I just mean like, I just differentiating your brand in some way from the party. And like, even in some ways, it could be left ways, right? Like,

where the party's too tied into corporate interests or whatever. Like, it doesn't even have to map. But, like, I, you just see that that either it's bio, it's politics. like getting some separation from as important. Yeah, absolutely. I think a good case study of that was the race that we saw in Connecticut between Representative John Larson and Luke Ronan who challenged him, not from the left, but just from the issue of gerontocracy, the issue of how older representatives don't necessarily understand the issues that voters are facing today and don't seem particularly

open to understanding how to pivot for the world we're living in right now. That's the argument that Brunen focused on throughout the primary. And I mean, you saw on the result. It was pretty significant. I have two more hot takes for you and then that I want from you. Actually, I have no more hot takes left. I want you to provide hot takes. What is really kind of what were the lessons from these primaries broadly? Because it's obviously, you know, anytime one faction or another gets a win in a prime, they're like, see, you know, but like it was kind of a mixed bag, right? Like in that sense. Browen wins at the Connecticut race you mentioned last night, Seth Moulton loses to Marky, where it's kind of a similar type bios of the two candidates.

You know, you have dual wins and then Hong loses, right? So, like, you're seeing kind of a mix out there. I'm wondering if you're looking ahead to 28. I know you're focused on November. Everyone's focused on November. But, you know, somebody might call you. Someone of the 30 people. What's 2028?

Yeah. One of the 30 people that run for president might call you, you know, and say, hey, you were engaged in all these primaries. Like, what did we learn? Like, what is the electorate want right now? The Democratic primary. We're often talking about swing voters now. Like, the Democratic primary electorate, like, why did some lefties resonate and others

didn't? Why did some generation arguments win? And others didn't, in your opinion. Yeah, I mean, it really comes down to candidate authenticity. I think voters were very, very savvy, more savvy than I think a lot of people in the Beltway give them credit for, of really taking the time to understand and, and, I mean, in a voter way, feel the vibe of the candidate that is running. And the candidates that were successful in these primaries are the ones that did that most effectively

and were the most authentic. Voters aren't engaged in these ideological battles. They're not. They just want things in their community to feel like they're solved and at least, or at least getting addressed. And being able to show some wins, especially going into hopefully a Congress that is controlled by Democrats, being able to point to that is going to be really effective. for candidates considering running for president, pointing to their own wins throughout the two Trump

administrations will also be really helpful. I think anything that really shows voters, and I know this seems pretty common sense, but I'm saying it anyway, anything that shows voters that you actually care and that you see them, those are the candidates that you're going to see emerge victorious. So I want to put a finder point in that because I think it's something that is like actual wins, like also over Republicans. Like, Democratic voters are mad at Trump, right? And so like I think that in a weird way, I took it was a little bit with Rhodes on Friday about how, like, the resistance candidates didn't do that well. Whatever. Obviously, George has a new podcast coming on the Bullwark platform.

We love George. I love Dan Goldman. But, like, Trump got back in, right? So obviously the impeachment thing didn't work. You can't see that say that as a win, right? And so it's like, okay, what are other things? And like, I think a lot of the left candidates were saying, well, we're providing a new framework for how we can win by focusing on popular stuff. Correct.

You know, you saw and Bronon or some of these other center candidates that have, been successful. Like, they were offering, okay, well, I have a different path for fighting Trump that's going to be successful, right? Like, and I think that to me is what was, like, missing from some of these other campaigns. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this was, this was, no, no, none taken. This was Vinman's downfall as well in Florida. Like, nobody cares about impeachment. Like, yes, this didn't work. Bad for the arc of justice, sure. But at the end of the day, people are like, what is an impeachment proceeding going to do for my bottom line? And the answer is like, nothing. And So, you know, people who can actually say not just I oppose Trump and Trump's bad, but here's what I would do instead.

Here's what I'm actually going to do for you versus just help you continue to yell at Trump. These are the candidates that voters are gravitating towards. And they more often not have to be progressive just because I think from Brutons have done a really good job of nailing that message. They have a model. And they also have the whiteboard, you know. Abdul, you mentioned it. Abdul had the fucking hat. People knew what he was for.

That matters. Okay. Final hot take. you did black media, this feels like very outside my wheelhouse, right? Because like I just, you know, it's hard for me to kind of grasp like what the undercurrents of this are. Like Trump does do better with black voters last time than he did in 20. Yeah. Right with Harris at the top of the ticket. So it's like, is that just same economic trends as every other voter demographic or was there something about Biden and Harris or was there something about the message?

You mentioned the Tala Rico number in the polls. Like, that's still a little soft from where you would like want Democrats to be. like what's your take on that? It does feel like Democrats, it's on the margins, and it's mostly black men, it seems like if you look at the numbers, not like women, but like,

you know, like you're still winning overwhelming numbers, but it does matter if this is the base of the party if you're winning 88% versus 82%. Like that matters, right? So I don't know. What is your take about that softness

and whether that's reversing at all or what Democrats should do? It could be the difference between a win and a loss for a lot of these races that we're seeing, especially the very tight ones. I fully understand that the black community feels a little bit baited and switched that, you know, you see candidates in your churches and barbershops eight weeks out from Election Day, and then you don't see these candidates or hear from them again until the next time they're on the ballot.

That's a problem, and it's something that the Democratic Party is going to have to specifically work to fix. It is not on black voters to just show up to bail out Democrats every single time that we're on the ropes. That's not how it works, and that's not what we should. We should not expect that because it's not fair. What we need to do, and this was a lot of work that I did at the White House, working directly with black-owned and operated outlets, is engage those outlets way more. These are outlets that fully understand their communities.

They write like their communities, and they tell stories that are being overlooked by more mainstream type of outlets. So that's really important. And then I think something that really hamstrung us in the White House is that there was a reticence all the way from the top to really own and name wins. A lot of black Americans did not know how much we did for the Biden administration, Biden Harris administration did for black Americans because there was really just not a willingness to kind of talk about it from the top. Like, sure, I could do my job and did talking to these outlets as a spokesperson. But it was really important to the community to cure that directly from. Biden and Harris, because when you don't hear it from them, it's not, no one says, oh, look, how humble they are. They're looking towards the noise of Republicans saying that they're not doing anything for them. And so I think that's why, especially with black men, you saw a lot of them vote for Trump last cycle because they didn't hear what was happening on their behalf from left.

Yeah. All right. Any mayors out there you're going to go fly and visit in April 27? I won't be getting into that. I'm focused on November 2020. No mayor. No mayor. No unknown. No unknown. No unknown trans-LGBQ plus mayors out there that might be on their eyes. Okay.

I mean, anybody is welcome to give me a call and we would be happy to talk to them about how they can work and further the bench's mission going into the next cycle. I appreciate you, Ro. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks all to my friend Michael Weiss. New show coming up soon, reporter and the spy. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow. With my best, I see all then.

The Bullwark Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeChico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brough.