The Bulwark Podcast - Mike Madrid: The Latino Century

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

Young Latinos are a giant emerging voter bloc with populist leanings—who also favor tougher border security. If Trump was to win reelection, it would ironically be because these voters put him over the top. How can Democrats reach them? Mike Madrid joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod. Plus, in a mega-mailbag segment, Tim gets personal and shares the story of his daughter's adoption. show notes: Mike's new book, "The Latino Century" Tim's playlist

landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash rentsafeTO. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm pumped to be here today with my old pal, Mike Madrid, coming straight at us from the underrated city of Sacramento.

Madrid's a Republican barely consultant. He's the author of the new book, The Latino Century, How America's Largest Minority is Transforming Democracy. It's out June 18th. What's up, brother? How you been, man? It's been a long time. It has been too long. Has it been since I might have been my book stop in Sacramento, my book tour stop in Sacramento. Was that the last time we hung out? That was the last time that I saw you in person, for sure. I think we probably chatted a couple times since then. But yeah, that's been a while.

Well, let's do it. Let's get caught up. I want to get into your book and kind of big think stuff about the Latino vote, Latino block, something we don't talk enough about here on this podcast. But just right off, I kind of want your consultant hat on and what you think about the state of the race, what you think about the Democratic poll truthers, what you think about the fallout from the conviction. Where do you think things stand right now in the presidential race? I have been saying for the past 18 months or so that the fundamentals of this race strongly, strongly have been leaning towards a Biden reelection. I'm now taking a deep breath, like we're seeing enough data that the consolidation of his base is not coming together. If Biden's base were coming together, he'd be in a much

stronger position. We know Republicans are largely going to consolidate, but we're heading into summer now, and it's getting a little bit late to have a gap being this wide. And I'm also not seeing the messaging coming from the Biden campaign that I'd like to see to keep working class folks, especially black and brown folks from leaving. And that's what I think is setting this race apart from 2020, is 2020 was really all about how many GOP defections could we get? How many Republicans could we get to wake up and move away from Trump? We've got a more significant problem. That remains, but they're also hemorrhaging Latino voters predominantly, but African-American men also. And so, Tim, I'm a little bit worried about

their capacity to prevent that loss. They seem to be kind of the Democratic Party that thinks it's all just about turnout still that thinks it's all just about turnout still, and it's clearly not. How are you seeing it? I mean, that is pretty close to how I kind of assess things. It's funny. I've got a couple other podcasts, like, in more liberal progressive sphere. In 2020, I felt like I was, you know, ringing the bell about how the Democrats need to focus more on our people you know the bulwark never our vat people the lincoln project people right like and and how like they need to do better at maximizing that vote because that's going to be so key to biden yeah and that message

has kind of gotten through and and that vote is is doing pretty well if you look at the numbers it's sticking with biden to a large degree I think there's still some room to gain there with some of the Haley voters. There's still a battle happening over some segment of the former Republican or barely Republican vote, college educated. Agreed. The real battleground this time is consolidating these traditional Democratic constituencies, and that's where I'm nervous. I think that's true, especially with Latino and African American men. And it's kind of one of the reasons why I wanted to have this conversation. So I was hoping you're going to tell me that my concerns were unfounded, but I guess not.

I mean, they're not unfounded at all. The nature and the coalitions of both parties are shifting. If the polling is to be believed, and I'm not one of those people that says it's all garbage, there's some truth to all of this stuff. The Democratic Party is now in its least ethnically diverse position since 1960. They're hemorrhaging working class people, and it's really a working class problem that is overlaying, the working class is increasingly black and brown in this country. That's what's happening. And they're more economic voters than they are race and ethnic voters the way they were 10, 15, 30, 40 years ago. And that transformation is really redefining the contours of the coalitions of both parties. And that's, the math is not good for the Democrats there. There's a lot more under, I shouldn't say undereducated, I love the undereducated.

There's a lot more non-college educated. Non-college. There's no judgment here. Yeah, no judgment. Non-college. It's not an elite thing. It's just we're trying to describe the type of voters we're talking about. I get that. I want to talk about how you think the Democrats can do better with this group, but let's just do a little bit more on the polling side and the potential that there's maybe that something's being missed. There's been one consistent miss that has undercounted Democrats over the past few cycles. There's sometimes a lot of smoke and mirrors in these like poll trutherism discussions. People are like, well, it was supposed to be a red wave and then it wasn't a red wave. It's like, okay, well, if you actually look at

the polls, a lot of the numbers were pretty close to accurate. One area where the Democrats, though, have been undercounted is Spanish-speaking Latinos. And in Nevada, this is something I'm just eyeing about Nevada. The polls are very bad for Biden right now in Nevada. I'm open to the possibility that that's just real, that that's a shift that's happening. I do think the other possibility is that, you know, Latino voters who speak Spanish as their primary language are getting either missed or undercounted in the mix. What do you think about that theory? I don't buy it. Okay, I'll tell you why. It's actually central to the book and my research and work. And a credible poll, every credible survey instrument of Latino voters that I've looked at over 30 years, and I've looked at and developed many, many hundreds of them,

has about 15 to 17% of the interviewees in Spanish. That's not a lot. I mean, conventional wisdom would be like, oh, it's like a third or 40% are in Spanish. No, it's only 15 to 17% of Spanish speakers or voters prefer interviews in Spanish. And they tend to be recently naturalized. These are immigrants themselves that became citizens and are now voting. They actually have a higher turnout rate, a higher propensity to vote than second and third generation voters. So getting to 15% to 17% of Spanish speakers is usually not that difficult. And even if you missed it by 3% to 5%, your data is not going to be terrible. What's really, I think, happening, Nevada, by the way, is very interesting because Nevada,

of all the swing states, it has been in the past two or three election cycles, been moving towards a more Republican position. The bigger concern that Democrats have is they're losing third generation, which is the fastest growing segment of the Latino vote. And now there's a discernible fourth generation that we can actually engage in polling. And that's where they're losing these voters. So help me with quick math here. So third generation is the grandchildren of people that came in the 60s? Yes.

My grandparents came in the 40s. I have children that are voting age now. They're fourth generation. So yeah, probably around the 60s would be third generation. I hate to be so nerdy on this, but let me geek out a little bit more. No, that's a nerd out. In 2007 was really when the peak waves of immigration started to fall dramatically, right after the Great Recession started, which is really a depression now. A lot of those migrants left,

and people absolutely stopped coming. And we've had a 17-year lull up until about the year 2020, when it started back under the Biden administration. That lull in immigration created a big pause of the recently naturalized voter coming in and becoming a citizen and registering to vote. And now 80% of all new Latino registrants are U.S. born, compared to 2002 when it was over 50%. So the Latino voter now going forward is dramatically different than it was. And it's why you're seeing like in polling on Biden's executive action on immigration, there's not much of a discernible difference between Latinos and non-Hispanic whites on border security. They

want more border security. They're saying, you know, fix the border and then we'll talk about a pathway to citizenship and DACA and all that stuff. Now, I'm sorry, Mike, but that can't be true, what you just said, because we were told for years by Fox that under the Obama administration, there was a massive invasion that was happening. So I don't know how, where are those, where are the people that invaded us during the Obama years then? They're hiding. They're hiding. It's quiet.

It's going to be a quiet, slow invasion. Got it. But yeah, I be a quiet, slow invasion. Got it. But yeah, I think in time, we will realize that Fox was right. You're with me then on being kind of bearish on the state of the Nevada trajectory and just the demographic makeup makes that. To me, I think Nevada seems like the toughest besides maybe Georgia of the main competitive primary states. I think Nevada, to is tougher than Georgia, even tougher. You think the Latino vote is a big part of that. And again, they're not losing, you know, the culinary union is a big deal in Nevada, obviously, they're not losing those voters are going to be fine. And most of

the polling, by the way, has been a little bit tricky, not just in Arizona, but in Nevada also. It's a very similar demographic where you have this five-point leaning Republican sort of miss in the polling. Mexicans, it's Mexican-American vote there, by the way, almost predominantly in Arizona, Nevada, California. They vote very similarly, high 20s level of support for the Republicans. Very rarely are you breaking into like the 30s, mid-30 range. Polling will always show it in the mid-30s, even high 30s sometimes. Every time it's razor thin the way Nevada is, I think it's more likely than Georgia and Arizona to go for Trump. Yeah, I don't know. I'm almost marking it off mentally and happy to be surprised. I'm feeling more bold.

You're trying to reset expectations. Yeah, no, I'm not. I'm not. I'm just telling you. I'm just giving you real talk here. I feel better about Arizona. Maybe we'll talk about that on the back end. But let's go to the bigger trends you've seen. As you looked at the book, how this voting bloc is transforming. What is different about the Latino voting bloc now than, say, in 2008, when DACA was such a big big issue where Obama really, I think, did benefit by arguing for liberalized immigration. Like, talk about the changes over the course of the next,

you know, 15, 20 years. And that's really kind of the foundational question of the book, Tim, so thank you for asking it. The really big transformation is the fact that, you know, we've always talked about how Latinos are not monolithic and there's all this diversity. Most people look towards, like, country of origin to find that diversity. Cubans are not monolithic and there's all this diversity. Most people look towards like country of origin to find that diversity. Cubans are not Mexicans are not Puerto Ricans are not Venezuelans. Just so you know, I had a mental drinking game to see when the word monolithic would come up and we made it 12 minutes. That's pretty good. I won't say sleeping giant either because you'll be drunk before noon. So with all of that, you know, diversity, the real demarcation has always been the generational divide.

And there's been essentially three generations that we've looked at. First generation, recent migrants. Second, their sons and daughters. Third, their grandchildren. The explosion in Latino numbers now, and Latinos surpassed Black voters in 2020. And now the numbers are going to start hitting kind of an exponential rate. Almost all of that growth is happening in the third generation. It's no longer a recently migrated vote. And so Spanish speaking is dropping off of a cliff. That's why Univision and Telemundo are

in like really deep consumer demographic trouble. These audiences are really falling apart. They're collapsing. And the perspectives on immigration are very different. There's not as many DACA people anymore as there were in 2008. I hate to say it, 2008 was a long time ago, right? Well, I mean, I guess there are as many DACA people because we haven't solved it. None of them have gotten status thanks to the Republicans, but as a percentage of the population. I'm sorry, correct. As a percentage of the Latino population, that's well put. If you look at the Latino public opinion as a whole, the share that are primarily concerned

or prioritized issues around DACA, immigration reform, and pathway to citizenship is shrinking considerably. And the share of Latinos that want more border security, in fact, most of the rightward shift that we've seen in the past few years is happening along the border with Latinos along the border in the Rio Grande Valley, southern New Mexico, southern Arizona, even Central Valley and Southern California. So all of that is happening while this third and now fourth generation are growing. So generationally, the projections going forward, and keep in mind, America will be for the first time in a long time, a non-white majority

country in about eight years, due largely to explosive Latino growth. And that growth is not from immigrants. It's from really the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of immigrants who have a completely different perspective on immigration issues, even though immigration has never been a top issue for even first-generation voters. I think this is a key point just to really dig in on because it goes against conventional wisdom. a lot with the white young Republican vote, but there's this parallel here with the younger Latino vote, which is there's some conventional wisdom among the political set, among the journalist set that like younger voters are more liberal on these traditional social issues, you know, immigration, race, abortion, guns, gays. It's true on gays. But on some of these issues, like that's not really the case. And like on immigration, when you look at the Republican vote, like the younger voters

are the most MAGA, right? Which like breaks people's brains when they think about that. Like they're the most like in line with the Donald Trump agenda. And when Latino voters, you would think that the younger voters might like whatever, be more liberal on immigration policy. Not true. So talk about that and like what that means about how Trump is able to appeal to them and what Democrats are missing talking to younger Latino voters. Look, I'm glad you brought that up because you can probably educate me on a little bit too, but I'm going to try to thread both of these together because when we're talking about younger voters, Latinos are, almost 40% of Latinos are under 30, these voters. So

it's a dramatically younger age cohort. It's really, really young. Almost 40% of Latino voters voted in 2016 or more recently for their first time. They are more MAGA, but they're also more Bernie Sanders. They're more populist. And a lot of the precincts that Donald Trump won in Hispanic dance precincts, Bernie Sanders won in the primary. So they're responding, it's the same voter. And there's a huge correlation between this younger populist cohort you're talking about, which is not a traditional conservative like you and I were when we were kids. They're MAGA. They're populist. They're nationalists. It's the exact same dynamic that's happening with Latinos who are saying, we don't believe in the parties,

really. We're not buying either of your guys' bullshit. The system is rigged. And when we say system, we mean the Democratic and Republican Party. And that was really most pronounced, I saw it for the first time in the Nevada caucuses in the 2016 election when Bernie Sanders kind of shocks the world and Hispanics go for over Hillary by a shocking degree. And if you were under 35, a Latino under 35, you had an 80% plus propensity to vote for Bernie Sanders. If you're over 35, 80% propensity to vote for Hillary Clinton. It was this massive chasm. And people were motivated by the anti-establishment message, not just in the Democratic Party. We saw it again with Trump later that year. And so you're tapping into something that people really have not explored nearly enough. And we're

seeing that fuzziness in the polling now, which pollsters are getting results back and going, that can't be like nonwhite voters can't be voting like that, but they, there are, and they have been, and they've been telling us for a long time in the data that this is not what we have stereotypically viewed as a minority vote, quote unquote, minority voter. It's foundationally different. And a lot of people are saying it's kind of this racial realignment that's happening. I don't see it that way at all, because it's not a voter that's changing its voting behaviors. It's emerging. These are new voters with a new attitude.

This is not like the Southern Democrats, where there was a realignment. People were voting with one party that wasn't reflecting their values for 30 years. And then they wake up one day and like, oh, wait a second. I've been voting for Republicans. Maybe I'm a Republican. That's not at all what's happening. This is the emergence of something entirely new that's not meeting the standard definitions of a minority voter as we've known it. And populism, to your point, and again, there's a huge overlap between young voters and Latino voters. It's the same age cohort. They are absolutely reflecting a populism that is shaking both parties to their core. This is just so important because it has my brain moving.

Because when people look at the numbers, when you think about it, not in a data Juan, who's 50, who voted for Obama and voted for Hillary and voted for Biden is now like, oh, I'm mad at the Democrats. I'm switching now to Trump. Like, that's not what's happening. Like the makeup of the Latino electorate is changing and the new people that are coming in are less Democrat. So messaging wise, how can the Democrats reach these people? I think even more important that how do they actually get to them? Because, you know, I think about this and you're like, man, 40% of Latina votes under 30.

These people are not watching cable. They're not reading the New York Times. They're not, you know, watching TV ads. Right. Probably, you know, on TikTok. All Right. Probably, you know. On TikTok. Right. Are they even being talked to? Are they even being talked to by the Democrats in any meaningful way?

So great questions, both of them. So let me answer the second one first. I think they're trying to, right? But the way they are consuming information, to your point, is they over-index dramatically online and on their handheld devices. These are folks that are living on their phones. That's their whole experience. They're not reading the New York Times.

They're not watching the ads that are coming out on broadcast or even cable. So there has to be a more sophisticated messaging strategy. And I think it's also why populism is on the rise. It's just so much easier to be anti-establishment and anti-institution. Incidentally, and this is a really important point, Latinos by a wide metric display greater confidence in virtually all of our institutions, which is a very optimistic and hopeful part of restoring kind of American style democracy, right? Whether it's government, media, higher education, military, church,

all of them, they've got much higher levels of trust and confidence with two exceptions, the Republican and Democratic Party. That's why there's this kind of anti-establishment system is rigged sentiment. And tactically, yeah, the Democrats, I think, are not doing as well as they need to with this younger age cohort to get the performance they need to traditionally win a race like the one we're heading into. The messaging becomes particularly problematic in some ways. There's a larger gender gap amongst Latinos than any other race or ethnicity. Women, by a wide margin, are breaking towards the Democratic Party. Men, U.S.-born Hispanic men, are breaking towards Trump and the Republican Party. And the reason why is we also have the

largest education divide. Our women are going to college at far greater rates than our men are, and that has political implications. So in many ways, this assimilative effect is actually benefiting Democrats, especially on Dobbs and abortion and the cultural issues that we've been talking about that kind of animate the Democratic base now. The women are there. Third, fourth generation, they've got them. Men are a little bit different, and that's where they're having trouble kind of both

communicating with them on message and kind of selling them that Bidenomics has worked. It quantifiably has not. It quantifiably, especially with Latinos, one in five Hispanic men work in the residential construction space or a related field. So a tripling of interest rates, not Biden's problem, but happening during his administration, tripling of interest rates, not Biden's problem, but happening during his administration, tripling of interest rates, devaluation of the currency, 20, 25%. Quantifiably, Hispanic men are not better off than they were four years ago, like quantifiably. Four years ago, if they're in the construction business, they didn't have any jobs. Yeah, sure. Four and a half years ago.

Fair. But what we have to do is we have to look at a strategy where they're feeling your pain more than they are convincing them that they're doing well when they are not. Yeah. The media side of this feels to me like almost a bigger challenge than the message. Sure. They should do a better job on messaging to working class Americans. I agree with that. We talk about that a lot here there are ways to do that but to do that you have to have a reliable a trustworthy

messenger to get there i kind of want just as an exercise to like have a little focus group of 28 year old latino men and like ask them what they watch you know and like my guess is it's some stuff that's totally off my radar that's like spanish and like my guess is it's some stuff that's totally off my radar that's like spanish-speaking stuff but then it's also the joe rogan mma stuff it's also you know this world that the democrats like don't even engage with on a cultural level and like they really need to put a real effort into identifying yeah when i say young i mean like because i'm not really young anymore but like my age and younger like men and not me because i'm wearing purples like men influencers who are like into men's stuff and like into fucking mma and in that culture who are also

like wait a minute we don't want these freaks over here you know because like there still are a lot of gaps between the Donald Trump, Mike Johnson agenda and what these young men actually want, but I don't know that they're hearing it. I could not agree with you more. Let me add a little bit of nuance to the education divide that we were just talking about. It's not an income divide. When I was a young guy doing this, we would go after the Republican base if you made over 100 grand a year back when 100 grand was 100 grand a year. You know, you could close Republicans always on tax cuts and the S&P 500 and deregulating the economy. That's how we brought them home. That's not the way it works anymore. It's cultural issues. And the correlation between culture and

college education is what is important. So what you will see is non-college folks that might be a successful contractor making multiple six figures, they're MAGA, they're red, they're part of a blue-collar culture. And blue-collar culture is a real thing. It is Joe Rogan, it's MMA. That is where the gap is getting bigger as the Democratic Party becomes more of a white, college-educated, progressive, homeowning, upwardly mobile, higher-income party. They're losing touch with that. And this is important because as Latinos are voting more Republican, I strongly believe it's despite their best efforts, not because of them. It's kind of the old adage in reverse where Reagan said, you know, I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me. Latinos are just not relating, Latino men are just not relating to the Democratic Party. It's not that they don't like them, it's just not relatable.

I was on this panel yesterday about rural Americans. It's this great group, I'll just shout out, it's a great group called One Country that's trying to organize Democrats in rural America. My message to them was the exact same thing. It's just like, you know, the question's like, well, why aren't rural voters more excited about, you know, this agenda that Biden has put forth, where it's like, we're building factories again, and they're communities, and it's chips, and it's infrastructure, and we're doing rural broadband and like my answer is i don't think they're hearing it and it's not that it's not in their media they are like they know about it but i mean literally they're not hearing it because the people that are telling them about

it feel like culturally separate and different and condescending it's the same thing like the democracy to work more at like finding messengers who can speak with credibility and the whole premise of the rvap campaign right was like how do we find messengers who can speak with credibility to former republicans like they got to do that now with working class yes i think there's this box checking sense it's like oh we got tim miller we got mike madrid we got liz cheney kinsinger at least was in the army so at least like he has calluses on his hands unlike me so he's a better bet than me but you know what i mean it's like nah man you need to find somebody that like speaks their language that not spanish cultural language yeah and who can tell them like wait a minute no you're upset about construction

with trump that doesn't want to do you know this that and the other thing you know what i mean and that's like a big miss right now. It's a big miss. And I think a good way to look at it is Latinos are the fastest growing segment of the blue color workforce. So these guys are showing up to the construction site, swinging hammers. They're the manufacturing folks working on the assembly lines. They're working in the energy patch.

They're in the Rio Grande or New Mexico or Central Valley. These are the folks that are in agriculture, mining, forestry, you name it. Their cohorts, their non-Hispanic white cohorts, who are they? Like that's the people that the New York Times has been focusing on with diners and economic anxiety. The fact that they're voting similarly should not be surprising. There has to be some sort of messenger, to your point, absolutely correct, and infrastructure that allows them to communicate to people

culturally where they're at. But, and this is important, I'm also a big believer that if your policy doesn't reflect where people are at, they're going to respond to that too. So when you say like, well, build back better, like these are hard hat jobs. Okay. But blue collar people have never believed that, you know, 10 or 15 years down the road, when we start breaking ground on that bridge, there's going to be a better day. One, part of me kind of gets frustrated with the Democrats going, it's just not that complicated. You know, go talk to blue collar people. people the other is that you know these industries view the democratic party as an existential threat to their existence like they the worker views

the democrat is trying to put them out of work and in many cases most i would say that's largely true so it's great that you want to build a chip manufacturer what are you talking about like car manufacturing and stuff what are you talking about any manufacturing you're doing your cal talk because of CEQA and everything. They're not building everything. I'll listen to California, but I mean, they're trying to build. Biden's pivoting back towards kind of an American industry. He's also producing more oil than any president ever has in history. Yeah, right. No, I'm not making a policy point. I'm making a political perception point.

If you go on to the energy patch and talk to the average oil drilling worker guy on the rig, he's not saying Biden's my guy, right? And he's going to give you a whole lot of economic argument for his industry where he believes that the environmentalists are the bad guys. I'm talking about politics here. And that perception is not being broken through by the Democrats. And that's a big problem. Like you said, you've got to have a messenger that can convey it on their terms. Otherwise, you're seeding all those votes. We need more hard hat guys.

This was a federal advantage from the start, like putting aside all the specifics of federal like pivot on a couple of policies recently, like he at least sounds like he doesn't want to fuck them over. It looks like it. You know, he looks and sounds like it, right? And like, that's half them over. It looks like it. You know, he looks and sounds like it, right? And like, that's half the battle. It is half the battle.

Even if he's saying all of the same words that Chris Murphy is saying, God love you, Chris Murphy. Like, it just feels more credible coming from Fetterman. 100%, right. That's just human nature. One more topic I feel like we should just discuss we've been we've been nagging the dems here listening to you a big insight that i already knew but that becomes abundantly clear is the great replacement theory is a bunch of fucking bullshit and it's racist bullshit and it's dangerous racist bullshit but it also is just

not true like it's the opposite of what what you're talking about is happening is you know the further people get away from immigrating into this country like the more open they are to republican messaging and if these assholes weren't just advancing racist bullshit all the time the republicans might be doing better even with these groups i have two chapters saying what can the democrats do and the others what can the republicans do and my advice to republicans is one sentence don't be racist that's pretty challenging it is tough that's a core element of mega it's simple it's direct but it's a huge challenge for the republic don't be you donald trump be somebody else let me run through some

some quick data points here you know ronSantis, Greg Abbott, former Republican Governor Doug Ducey, even this guy Brian Dolly in California who was a sacrificial lamb in California against Gavin Newsom, they all have something in common. They all either met or exceeded Donald Trump's numbers with Hispanics. And if you look at most of the competitive congressional districts, the Republicans, candidates for the House, exceeded oftentimes dramatically where Donald Trump is with Hispanics. It's very strong evidence to suggest that Donald Trump is not bringing these folks to the polls. He's actually an obstacle to greater improvement, which is why I make the point, just don't be racist. Like just quit being a nativist

asshole, racist asshole. Republicans could have a 45% baseline with Hispanic community, which is extraordinary. You know, when we were doing, you know, George W. Bush stuff together, because we're that old, you know, when we were hitting that upper 30s, mid 40s. I was an intern. All right. Let's not start aging me that much. I was a little I was an intern. All right. Let's not start aging me that much. I was a little older than an intern. Yeah. We were hitting that low 40s, mid 40s range when the Latino community was much more foreign born with an optimistic pro-Mexico agenda, like blatantly, directly, clearly that was part of our appeal. So if you were just flip that on its head,

you would be having significantly greater opportunities. And not to bring up the hypocrisy thing, but to bring up the hypocrisy thing, you can't be anti-immigrant and also say you're winning the Hispanic vote, as they're saying. They don't want more Mexicans here, but they're winning the Mexican vote. Which is it, guys? If you really had confidence that you were winning this vote, why are you saying it's the Democrats that want them here? It doesn't make sense. And why are you saying it's a conspiracy that they're bringing them here?

Shockingly, the conspiracy breaks down with even one data point of actual knowledge. But it has caused some mass murders so there's that but the great replacement theory these fucking assholes okay last thing on republicans i feel like i'm a lone voice on this but i hear you on the fact that the latino population has moderated on immigration and and i think maybe they weren't quite as progressive on it as the democrats thought all along but in addition the the makeup has moderated right that said a fucking plan to mass deport 10 million people that includes camps that includes donald trump saying the interview on fox the other day is like we'll get rid of 10 bad guys and there might be one mother and maybe she's guilty or maybe she's not guilty but that's just

going to be part of the deal is there a potential, because I think it's a long-term effort to do the other stuff we've been talking about, actually appealing to young Latinos and finding voices and all that's going to take time. Is there a way to scare them? Is there a way to demonize Trump in a dramatic enough way to kind of stop the bleeding for this cycle? Or do you just think that stuff, there's a boy who cried wolf element to it? Look, it's a great question. And the one year that was anomalous in this rightward shift or emergence

that we've been talking about was 2018, when Trump was cracking down with ICE and literally going into communities and pulling people out of factories and houses and deporting them. And there was a massive, massive reaction to that. But until it happens, I'm not sure that there is a way because in many ways, it is the boy who cried wolf stuff. It's been so beaten down that nobody is believing it or listening to it anymore. That's what frightens me the most.

When it does happen, there has been this visceral reaction. There is a multi-generational block that comes together to say this is bullshit. But not before then. Not before then. Which is so weird, again, as a Californian, because when Pete Wilson with Proposition 187, that lasted 30 years and a generation. Donald Trump, by everybody's estimation, is far worse than pete wilson ever was i mean he was kissing joe arpaio yesterday on stage at at whatever weird right-wing thing he was at i'd like if that we have any billionaires listening i think it's worth a try maybe call up mike madrid i wouldn't mind seeing a youtube ad campaign of jackbooted thugs you know pulling

people out of quinceañeras and sending them into a camp and just uh trying to freak people out a little bit because by the way that's real that's not like pushing grandma over the cliff type stuff that's a that's a real threat yeah and some ads that are you know able to break through that aren't just like he's planning a deportation no i think you go back and pull the real footage of that from 2018 to remind people this is what happened. This is why you voted that way would work. Mike Madrid, so thoughtful. Thank you for coming on.

His new book, Latino Century, How America's Largest Minority is Transforming Democracy. He's got a podcast, Latino Vote, as well. Let's stay in touch. Let's talk a little bit more as we get towards the fall. How does that sound? Always love talking to you, buddy. Thanks for the time. All right.

Thanks, brother. Up next, I got a mailbag mailbag time it's been too long bulwark podcast at the bulwark.com if you want to send questions in remember questions end with a question mark a little shorter the better also we have kind of a dearth of people asking me for advice which is fine though i've had multiple successful engagements already we've got people moving thanks to our advice we've got people changing careers thanks to our advice so you know if you're struggling out there one of these things with life advice questions is like the person knows what they should do they just need a little

kick in the butt so if you need a little kick in the butt for me you send in some advice requests but today is just all questions all right are we ready we're starting with superfan holly superfan holly asks what's my opinion on boycotting chick-fil-a because of its founders views on lgbtq stuff i want to be a good ally but damn the chicken is very very good eat the chicken in peace okay eat the chicken in peace eat the hate chicken it's fine you know it's it's fine life life is short popeyes is better i will say popeyes is significantly better but if you like chick-fil-a i'm absolving you if you're on youtube i'm doing my catholic absolution i'm absolving you you can have chick-fil-a it's a-okay all right the gays we're not going to judge you david given how much trump says he wants to be a dictator

and how much he approves of putin's behavior don't you think there's a reasonable chance that folks like you at the board could be victims of political persecution in trump's second term i have an accountant i'll just say that i'm making sure i'm crossing my t's on on my tax documents other than that i think the people that are really a threat for persecution as discussed in the prior segment is uh migrants family of migrants people who came here who were brought here illegally as kids, the dreamers. We talked a little bit about DACA, folks who didn't catch that acronym. Those are the dreamers. Those are kids whose parents came here illegally or brought here when they're young. There have been many efforts to try to give them permanent status. It has been scuttled by Republicans every

time. A lot of them are in their 30s now i think and so like the idea that somebody was brought here when they're four and is now 35 and has kids of their own and has a job would be deported back to a country they've never lived in is fucking insane but that's a real possibility in a trump second term that's a real possibility obviously more recent migrants asylees are going to be treated horribly child separation will be brought back. I've mentioned several times, trans folks, people serving in the military who are trans, people who live in red areas who are trans. Yeah, poor women who want to have abortion services or who want to have,

who maybe, as we discussed earlier this week, and maybe it's not even abortion services, maybe it's ectopic pregnancies or other related issues. I'd be very concerned for them, poor women in particular that live in the South, where it's very challenging to get to another state. So that's off the top of my head, the people that I'd be most worried about. I'd be pretty worried, I guess, if I was a federal government employee that had been part of one of the efforts to investigate Trump. Did he file one piece of paper wrong? I'd be worried about that. So anyway, long story short, I think I'm pretty low on the list.

I'm not worried about myself. I appreciate your concern. But I think there are a lot of people that should have real, real concerns about a Donald Trump second term. And educating our fellow Americans about that very real threat is the most important job this year. John, assuming Trump loses, how will the Republican Party break free of him? Or should we all start looking forward to Trump 2028? My favorite gag on the panel circuit, when people ask me who the 2028 nominees are, and I'm like, well, clearly Trump and Kamala are the favorites. That gets

everybody really excited for Trump Kamala 2028. I genuinely think Trump could run again in 2028 if Biden beats him, who knows. And even if he wasn't, I think I mentioned this earlier this week. So let's say Biden wins. Now all my Catholic stuff's coming in now I'm doing the sign of the cross. Let's say Biden wins. Trump then faces very serious legal consequences very serious and the core mega base rallies around him in a major way i think there's real risk of violence at that point real risk of unrest and i don't see any reason to think that the 2028 republican nominees would not have as just an entry level demand in order to be taken seriously in a Republican primary, a commitment to pardon Trump.

So even if Trump is in jail, even if Trump is, you know, has an ankle bracelet at Bedminster, like even if Trump is sick, the 2028, the Republicans have saddled themselves with this guy, with his family, Donald Trump Jr. will be out there. And I don't see how the 2028 campaign does not have a heavy hint of Trump in the Republican Party, even if he loses and he goes away. Then even after that, 2032, we had this conversation with Mike Madrid. A big part of the stuff that I'm writing about now and thinking about for some longer term writing projects is the younger Republican vote. What do they want? These guys want Trumpiness. I think that the best case scenario for the GOP is not going back to Paul Ryan or Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush.

Or maybe that's not a good scenario if you're a Bernie listener listening to this. But if you're a centrist, that's not what the party is going back to. It is pivoting more towards a European style conservative party that looks like Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance. And, you know, maybe you can nudge that one way or the other, but hopefully for our sake, you know, because we can't have, as J.B.L. has written many times, we can't have our sake, you know, because we can't have, as JVL has written many times, we can't have our democracy, you know, rest on the Democrats winning every single election. They're not going to. So hopefully, eventually the Republicans can evolve into kind of a populist tinged nationalist

tinged party that has a lot of policies that I disagree with, that is probably more isolationist, but is not led by an insane person that wants to lead an autocracy and is instead led by somebody that like you know will accept the results of an election if they lose i think that's kind of the best case scenario so that's some uplifting stuff for you okay uh norvangie on reddit we have a great reddit by the way join the reddit page if you haven't yet especially if you're more one of our more center center right readers feels like the bulwark libs gather in reddit so i'd like to see it get mixed up a little bit over there we repeatedly hear

about republicans who will acknowledge the danger and insanity of trumpism behind closed doors but not in public why doesn't anyone out those people have you read why we did it a travel for the republican road to hell because I did out some of those people. And I think that Jonathan Martin's book, This Will Not Pass, outed a lot of those people. So there's some of it. I agree with you. I'd like to see a little bit more outing. I'm pro-outing, not in the gay sense.

It is Pride Month. But outing in the sense of we should be outing these people who say one thing about Trump but do another thing. There's a great example of the JD Vance. Was it his roommate who was outing their old texts and emails? There have been a couple of good outings. Not as many as we all want, but there have been a couple. Maria, I've heard you say that you consider yourself pro-life, but you also seem a bit squishy about it. How would you describe your position on abortion? I wrote at length about this in an article about a year or two ago called Strange New Disrespect.

You can Google that, the bulwark Strange New Disrespect. Here's a little bit from it. Ensuring that people can live a life of purpose and meaning must begin by respecting and acknowledging the value of the mother's life. It should go without saying that she deserves the same opportunity to live a purposeful life as anyone else. And too often, the treatment of mothers by politicians who claim to be pro-life ignore or are actively hostile to this part of the equation. It's even more true now than when I wrote it. But this worldview also recognize that her baby's life has value and purpose too. And within that moral architecture, as I have laid out, this is not a conflict that can be remediated by just erasing the value of one of those lives. You know, I hear it, get a lot of negative feedback, especially from women, especially from older women on this, I understand. But I

explained it more at length in this in that article. And it ties a little bit to this next question, which I want to get to Bailey from Tennessee. Will you share the story of how you met your husband and how y'all adopted your daughter as much as you can? Or are you willing to share? I'll save the how I met my husband for later in pride month. That a little bit a little bit more of a fun email bag maybe i'll have a fun email bag i'll save that one so that's a little teaser for you how we adopted our daughter look the adoption process is very fulfilling but very challenging and um you know we met with a lot of mothers who were trying to do the best by their baby and i've just nothing but respect for all of them and they were all in hard situations

and they all are handling it differently. The very first child we thought we were going to adopt was going to be born in Arizona the week of the 2016 election. That mother changed her mind a couple of days before the election, which is totally her right. I think she got more support, more help from her family who came in, which I get, I appreciate. Obviously family who came in, which I get. I appreciate.

Obviously, that was like emotionally devastating for us. Donald Trump won four days later. So that was like probably the worst week of my life. And between her and several other mothers for whom it didn't end up working for a variety of reasons, I sat there with them. I sat there with all of them in doctor's appointments, you know, when that child was in their belly, when that child was five, six, seven months along. And like, you can just feel it. You can feel the reality of the life in those in those rooms. haxton telling that mother what what she can or cannot do i really don't and i get that there's only a very small percentage of examples where there's not some remediating circumstance but i just i do struggle with that notion that like oh tim there's only it's only in one percent of the cases or only in 0.5 percent of the cases are these elective abortions after a certain week

and i'm kind of like that of like, that's too many. That's too many. You know, somebody that comes to me and says that in any other situation where it's like, well, we shouldn't have a law about this because this thing that happens only happens 1% of the time. It's like, okay, it's still too many. So I think about all those babies a lot. And, you know, I hope they're having fulfilling lives.

I hope they're given the opportunity to grow and live i hope that those mothers are not living in states where they're being discriminated against now by fucking republican assholes that want to own them and want to prevent their ability to have access to health care and like there's got to be a way to try to find a solution that is respectful of all the people involved and and the life that is involved there. I know that's challenging. I know that in our political time right now, it doesn't feel like there's a lot of opportunity for that. And I certainly understand the perspective that we can't trust any of these assholes to make any laws regarding women's bodies because they haven't earned the trust to do that. I get that. I'm very sympathetic to that argument, but that doesn't kind of change my broader ideological, idealistic

perspective on this. As for Toulouse, man, we got really lucky. All those other kids we were talking about were supposed to be boys. And I don't know, I felt like maybe we were just meant to have a little girl. And it worked out. We had a great lawyer, a lesbian power lawyer, that heard my sob story about all the ones that went sideways. She was like, we're going to do this. We're going to finish this. We're going to make it work.

We found a mother that just, God love her, just wasn't in a position to raise a child. And we're just lucky that she blessed us with little Toulouse. And so that was in 2018, about two years after the first one went south so that's a little uplifting weekend talk for you you know how our little family came together eric wants to close by asking who i'm rooting for in the nba playoffs i'm not rooting for anybody

fucking miriam adelson owns the mavericks and the celtics are you kidding me the celtics no i'm not rooting for anybody i do like luca i like luca but besides that not a lot to enjoy in this nba playoffs guys i appreciate you all very much hope you enjoyed this week's podcast i'll be back on monday with bill crystal we'll see y'all then and do it all over again peace many hearts may be broken many lovers left behind and no prayers unspoken I think I know what's on your mind When bullets take the rain Baby, I'm not trying to hide

So play it like a game Running like Bonita and quiet Mi gente querida, que vivo, baby For me and you tonight Mi gente, mi vida, púsame, venga We can tell the lies Amor no correspondido, es tiempo perdido Pero miente querida, olvídame y entiende

Me bajo del taxi, los otros se quedan aquí Yo vi lo que te haces y te hago esperar Dijo que no quiere juegos juegos Pero tú tiraste el dado Mientame, pero mírame así Y así, pensó que tenerme es tan fácil Loco que nos vemos acá, era mi plan real Miente, querida, te digo, baby Hormigón, yo me llenaré The Bullwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.