The Bulwark Podcast - Project 2025 Is Coming Back To Bite Trump

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

As a candidate, Trump knew to steer clear of Project 2025. But as president, he embraced its deeply unpopular policy goals and it has been driving down his poll numbers. Meanwhile, what are we doing with Venezuela? No one in the administration has made a remotely convincing case for the intimidation campaign against President Maduro. And the boat bombings are putting members of our military in legal danger under the guidance of Hegseth. Plus, the threats against legislators in Indiana who aren't going along with redistricting, and the broad-based coalition standing up to ICE—including people in costumes and grannies on scooters—has been one of the most successful responses to Trump's immigration agenda. Amanda Carpenter joins Tim Miller. show notes: Protect Democracy's web site Amanda's Substack "If You Can Keep It" on Substack Take advantage of Ridge’s Biggest Sale of the Year and GET UP TO 47% Off by going to https://www.Ridge.com/THEBULWARK #Ridgepod

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. We might be a little tight today because I think there's a bonus pod coming tonight. So keep an eye on your feed for a second entry. We'll be maybe a little more prurient than this morning's entry. We'll see how it goes. But I'm excited to welcome to this show, formerly at the Bullwark. She's now a writer and editor at Protect Democracy.

Their substack is if you can keep it. It's all caps Amanda Carpenter. What's up, girl? Happy Thanksgiving. Hey, good morning, Tim. You have been killing it lately. I am so, I'm just so happy to see all the Bullwark's success. And this second interview sounds pretty juicy.

What's going on? Okay, well, we'll see. We'll see what goes. We'll see how it goes. We'll see it. Keep an eye on the feed. You know, we miss you. It's good to see you.

It's been a minute. you're doing the Lord's work. It's like right there in the name, Protect Democracy. It's kind of an important job. I'm happy you're doing that, but we do miss you. I want to do big picture because I think since the last time we talked, obviously, the, you know, Project 2025 has rolled down the tracks further. But they've also had some spokes in their tires a little bit. I was on with your boss, Ian Bassett on Nicole last week. And Ian, for people who don't know him, like me, it's a little dower. You know, he's a little bit of a rain cloud. at times, and he was like, he was sounding optimistic, it kind of felt like, about our trajectory. So I'm just wondering what you think, kind of biggest picture in the, just from the democracy perspective, and we'll get into the other stuff, like what kind of where we are right now, what the threats are, what may be some positive developments of them. You know, we get this question a lot. And in my head, I always have this kind of like scorecard of where we are on the matrix of all

the categories, like when it comes to military deployments and pardons and quashing dissent and campaigns against the press and weaponizing the Department of Justice. So, like, that's always into account. There's never like, yes, it's going greater. We're at this part on the map kind of answer. But I think the biggest reason for optimism at this particular point in time

is that Donald Trump's policies are incredibly unpopular. I mean, his job approval rating right now is at 36%. And the key to defeating authoritarian, you know, these populist policies, is to make them unpopular so that they are unable to entrench themselves and their faction in power. And we did have successful elections. So, you know, this is real reason to have, you know, faith in the future that's ahead.

And one thing that I spend a lot of time thinking about is sort of what you mentioned. They had a plan for year one of Trump 2.0. That was Project 2025. You know, they had it written for every department. They were going to oust these people. they got everything they wanted for the most part. And it's not turning out well for them. And I don't think they have a plan for year two. And so it is my hope and dream that year two is the year that accountability starts. And I think we're starting to see it. You know, it's December,

2025 right now. We are finally starting to see some oversight happen and things like these insane boat strikes that are happening in the Caribbean. You know, we knew what kind of person Pete Hegeseth was going to be. We saw what they were doing with the whole Department of War branding. We want to loosen the terms of engagement. And now we're seeing that play out. And there's real bipartisan interest in exercising some oversight for the first time. And so I am particularly, I don't want to say happy, but I feel good about that because I think the single biggest threat to our democracy comes to these military deployments, whether it comes to these strikes in foreign waters, whether it comes to agents in the streets of our cities,

when it comes to ICE, the National Guard, and stopping these unlawful deployments and types of military and federal action is absolutely essential when it comes to election protection and the future of our democracy. So if we make that unpopular and we can of oversight and we can stop it in the courts and stop it in the streets, I feel a lot better. Yeah. For those who are podcast only folks, Mark Hurtling, who's more formally joined the Bullark, has been so good on all this, like the democracy threats for military deployments and just so you can check out his work at the website and YouTube and I'll get him back on the pod soon. It's like basically true, right, that the best fight against the authoritarian threat is

like taking their populist policies unpopular. I mean, there have been examples where unpopularity has not worked in stopping authoritarian, but I do think that in America, we have a lot more checks in some of these other countries where, you know, driving his numbers down is the best thing that can be done. And the funny thing is about the whole Project 2025 is back in 2024 during the campaign, there was like one thing that Trump and all of us who opposed him did seem to agree on, which is that Project 2025 isn't popular. Like, he knew it, he knew it wasn't going to be popular.

We knew it wasn't going to be popular. He tried to disown it. He tried to disown it. And so it is strange, kind of, that they have, like, he had the survival instinct during the campaign to know they had to distance himself and the toxic elements of it. And then this year, he just kind of ran headlong into all of the most unpopular elements of it, whether it be the Doge stuff or, you know,

you can kind of go down the line. Yeah, I think we should. I mean, Doge needs to be more purely branded as the spectacular failure that it was. Maximum chaos, no savings. You did all the damage. You ousted all these people. You did the Schedule F.

And you didn't save money. I mean, you killed. Life-saving programs, I mean, maximum damage for maximum nothing. I mean, I think Elon Musk will also try to make some kind of comeback when it comes to political influence in the future. I don't think he's going away forever. But I do think we should do a better job explaining how much damage that caused for absolutely no payoff. Right, guys, I'm not a big wallet purchaser. I've probably had, I don't know, three wallets, my entire adult life.

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This is by far the biggest discount they've given all year. That's Ridge.com. up to 47% off your order during their biggest sale of the year. After your purchase, they'll ask you, where you heard about them, please support our show and tell them, we sent you. You mentioned Venezuela. That's kind of the biggest, latest news of the week. Since we taped yesterday, the White House changed their tune a little bit on this double-tap strike,

which is kind of a bloodless way to describe this thing, which is just like, you know, a follow-up bomb to make sure we killed the people that were in the sea. Yeah, because the first bomb was over. Okay. Yeah. That's how I feel about it. The first tap, you get like a free tap. Yeah, bonus tap.

Yeah. Anyway, for folks who are just kind of locking back in after the holidays. So basically over the weekend, you know, there's the Washington Post stories saying that Pete Hankseth had ordered that everybody be killed in the first boat strike in the Caribbean. And the first bomb hit the boat. Two people survived. Then they sent in a second one that killed two people in the seat. That was the Washington Post reporting. Over the weekend, the Department of Defense spokesperson called that reporting.

lies. He said that the reporters were enemies of the people, said it wasn't true. Yesterday, the White House changed their tune on that. They're saying that it was maybe Admiral Mitch Bradley and not Heggseth. So maybe that's their little, how they're trying to slice this, that directed this so-called double-tap strike. Higgs has sent a tweet about this. Let's make one thing crystal clear. Admiral Mitch Bradley's American hero, a true professional. I stand by him and the combat decisions he made on the September 2 mission and all other since. He's fortunate to have such men when we say the Department of War says we have the back of our warriors, we mean it. If you kind of dissect that sentence, Britt Hume, not exactly a big critic of the administration.

He writes, this is how to point the finger at someone while pretending to support him, right? It's like, okay, I support him, but he did it. So anyway, that is where we stand in quite a turnabout from where they were. On some level, is there some positive that they feel like they have to rationalize this? I don't know. What do you make of all this? I think there can be positive. and now there's a lot more attention and scrutiny over what the hell we're doing of Venezuela.

Yeah. I mean, to me, like, the he said, he said, who's responsible in the chain of command? That is extremely important. I do believe we will find out all the details because there is certainly documentation for this. I mean, this just doesn't happen in the ether. Well, it's probably not legal documentation since we got rid of all the Jags. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah.

But, like, that also speaks to, like, this was always the plan. So what are we doing? Why is Pete Hegseth overseeing any kind of strikes on drugboats down here? I mean, the official story from the White House, you know, over the past four months that has been building and simmering, I think, in the background with not enough attention, is that we are supposedly taking all this action against these narco-terrorists, which obviously drugs are a problem, but are we at war with narco-terrorists, that you're designating these terrorist organizations?

And they're all doing it, you know, laterally, with no old. oversight from Congress, no buy-in, no anything whatsoever. And the real story here is that Donald Trump wants regime change in Venezuela. I mean, it's not just the drug straits. We have a huge military presence building in the waters down there to intimidate Maduro to try to get him to step down because I think Donald Trump has talked about how, you know, he wants another nation state where we can send deportees and have oil and mineral deals. And that would be a huge win for the administration. But along the way, I guess we're apparently just putting all these military forces in the water and striking drug boats. If they're drug boats, I haven't seen any evidence

of that. Surely they would be able to compile that as a means of intimidating Maduro. I mean, is that what's really going on here? And if that's true, Congress should be involved, right? Yeah. Well, and they're starting to, I guess. This is like the grandpa Trump side of it to me. It's like, why does he want a regime change in Venezuela? We've talked about this on a lot of shows, I still don't really understand it because you, and maybe it's related to the deportees that you said there because I was just listening to your explanation. It's like, well, okay, so that is the one thing that he's limited by. And it's not like Donald Trump has shown that he feels icky about doing deals with dictators. And he could just do an oil and millinerals deal with Maduro.

Like, supposedly they talk to each other. Maduro has reportedly said that he would. Trump has had no issue with that with any. Why is Maduro different than, you know, the Middle Eastern dictators he's doing deals with or the fact that he wanted to be buddies with Kim Jong-un or Xi or Putin? Maduro is not, like, meaningfully different from any of them. Like, to me, the strange thing is that, like, it almost feels like he's being dragged into this by Marco.

Like, I don't know how else to understand what's happening. And I think Pete Hexa just likes doing bombings. I think that's a plausible explanation. But, you know, we're sort of reaching, like, it could be this, it could be that. what are we doing down there? Like, we can guess, but it's not our job to guess. If Donald Trump wants, he has the world's largest aircraft carrier stationed in the waters down there.

Why? Why are we doing any of this? And to me, it's outrageous that Congress, I mean, there has been interest from Congress in having some kind of oversight in doing war powers legislation to stop Donald Trump from doing unauthorized actions. I should give some credit. Like Tim Cain has been pushing at the Senate Democrat. have all been united on this and getting support from Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski.

They pushed this resolution, I believe twice, failed because Republicans wouldn't support it and are going to re-up it again in light of this new information, which is extremely important. I think this is a huge winning issue, important for protecting the interests of our military, our country, our stability, all kinds of things. But what Pete Head-Sect is doing, it's just, you know, it's an important part of the story that's making people pay attention because, you know, if this is just some kind of of intimidation campaign, and Trump said, blow up the boats, Pete Heggseth took the order as kill them all. And I'm just speculating here. And we're just blowing people out of the water

to intimidate Maduro. That seems pretty bad. It also seems pretty bad to call the reporters that are reporting this the enemy of the people and then admitting three days later that they were right, basically. Absolutely. But just like in terms of a baseline of like how this should go, when we were blowing up terrorist cells, I remember, typically the Bush administration would say, you know, we launched this attack. It was these terrorists. We had this evidence on them. This is why we launched the strike. We're getting none of that when it comes to these narco terrorists. And I don't even, like, I don't have a reason to believe that label because we don't know who these people are. And previously, when members of Congress have asked for briefings on this, Rand Paul said we don't get briefings. I was looking into what Democratic lawmakers were saying in October. And they were a

essentially saying they won't give us information because they don't think they're worth interrogating. The people that we don't kill, we just let them go. So to me, that tells me they're not really terrorists if we just let them go and we're blowing up boats for effect and performative reasons, which is really what this looks like, to me at first blush. And we know they've been wrong before about taking action against Venezuelans with the ones that they sent to El Salvador that they misidentified as gang members. So it's like there's no reason to believe that they're right now. The holiday season can be pretty stressful.

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This is your old Tea Party buddy, the wacko bird. You know, you got to keep the libertarians around. Sometimes they're the only conscience the Republican Party has. And so Tom Massey, Rand Paul, I'm never going to let them go and write them off. Yeah, they're pretending as if we were at war, Rand said. They want to just blow people up. That's not how this works. I appreciate that point of me for Rand. And like, it's funny watching him on Fox. The Fox hosts are struggling to. like deal with his very clear you know there's a lot of jarbled rationale for this and rampals is very simple it's like we're not a war if you want to go to war these guys let's vote on

it let's go to war uh there is a contrary view though from uh former fox host megan kelly and uh she was on with markelprin oh did he talk about abstein sexual harassment i don't know i didn't watch the whole i didn't watch the whole segment but i did hear this clip from meg and kelly uh talking about her i think unconventional view of what she would like to see was regarding to the bombings in the Caribbean. So I really do kind of not only want to see them killed in the water, whether they're on the boat or in the water, but I'd really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hexeth to make it last a long time so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little. Like I'm really having a

difficult time ginning up sympathy for these guys who 10 seconds earlier almost got taken out by the initial bomb, but because they managed to get ejected, you know, a little too soon had to be taken out in the water. I realize legally it may make a difference, but truly, Mark, this is a tough case to really gin up the sympathies of the American people. This is sick. Like, when she says I'm having trouble finding sympathies for these guys, as you just mentioned, we don't know who these guys are. How can you have sympathy or not have sympathy for them? We don't know who they are. Like, how can, it is so depraved to have these torture fantasies about essentially anonymous Venezuelans that in like the most generous view

to the administration are drug traffickers, which is again, not a great job. But it's like, do we do torture in this country? We torture drug dealers now. Is that what Megan Kelly's new policy is going to be? We're going to go down to, you know, the park and find somebody selling drugs and we're going to blow off their arm and watch them bleed out. That's what you want for free country. Who says something like that?

I mean, even your worst enemies, the worst criminal, you want to watch them suffer and bleed out and make it last a long time and lose limbs. I don't even know how those words come to someone's mind. And like, this is a person who knows how to use her words. She's a professional lots of years on Fox, lots of years NBC, got paid tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars over the course of career for how she knows. how to speak words. And now, which again, I don't understand why you aren't just like spending time with your kids enjoying life.

Right. But she wants to sit, no shade to podcasting, but she wants to sit in her little hole. And talk to Mark Halperin. And these are her pure and true thoughts that no producer is telling her to say. There's no Audrey Ells manipulating her to wear the skippy shirt

and say the crazy things now. It's really sick. It also is in the context of she really got on the moral high ground, moral high horse around the Charlie Kirk assassination. And like, you know, which I, you know, had a deep emotional reaction to. But like, after that Charlie Kirk thing, rightly, we hear at the bulwark and her and others, we're praising Erica Kirk, who gives this speech that's like we should turn the other cheek and that's the Christian way to do it.

And so I'm just listening to you react. And it's like, if you are going to have a kind of revenge fantasy where you want somebody to to be tortured and suffered, like you would think it would be about the person that murdered your husband in cold blood. That's not bad. But she didn't. Like, she modeled a different view.

Megan Kelly praised that. And now here's Megan Kelly being like, it's not even a person I know. It's not even like this person killed my family member and I want to see them tormented. You could at least understand that. We don't even know their names. We don't even know.

They might be people being human trafficked. They might not even be drug dealers. Yeah, this point has been made. She'll support the guy who is pardoning the X100 and president who trafficked 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. Get therapy, Megan, is what I would say. I think this is a call for therapy. It's interesting this whole Venezuelan boat, illegal order conversation happens like in the days

following this big controversy over Democratic senators and members of Congress putting out a video where they encourage soldiers to not follow illegal orders. We may have known something in hindsight. Yeah, exactly. You almost wonder if they're briefed on this, or otherwise it was just pretty, in a macabre sense, in a dark sense, kind of fortuitous timing for just the political argument. But they were out there doing this. Trump says it's treason. The Democrats, particularly Mark Kelly, kind of leading the way, has been out there continuing to speak on this.

Trump pleaded yesterday, Mark Kelly and the group of unpatriotic politicians were wrong to do what they did. I hope people looking at them are not duped into thinking that it's okay to openly and freely get others to disobey the president of the United States. actually openly and freely disobeying the president of the United States is a pretty fundamental American value I guess we're not it's not China you don't get you don't get jailed for putting up a Winnie the Pooh picture of the president

like the president wants you to do something illegal you can disobey them that's how a free country works but anyway carries your thoughts on Kelly in the whole discussion well yeah I mean again this has been an issue that's been simmering for a long time why are we hitting these boats in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela.

Like, what are we actually doing? The double-tap killing is brought it to the forefront, obviously because it's so outrageous and in your face. And because of the incredible Washington Post reporting, much credit to them and other people that are following up on outlets, like the Wall Street Journal, CNN, et cetera. But when it comes to speaking out against it, obviously the White House was worried about this

and what these Democratic lawmakers with military experience said set them off. So much so, I mean, we have to really revisit what the White House is saying about them, accusing them of treason, sedition, talking about hanging them. And then Mark Kelly was threatened with a Pentagon investigation. I mean, think about this. He is a retired member of the military expressing his free speech rights as a duly elected senator protecting his constituents, his veterans, conducting oversight dewey's completely within his rights. And now he has the Pentagon investigating him, supposedly, and the FBI is making

inquiries into all the lawmakers. I mean, this is really over-the-top, insane, authoritarian behavior. And I just want to give a lot of credit to these lawmakers. I know some people sort of disagree, have crippled with the video, but they're not hiding. They're not back. down, Mark Kelly has answered it with interview after interview. He did a press conference yesterday. And I think he's a great spokesperson on this because of his background, because the integrity that he has. And it's just really important to force this issue. What the hell are we doing down there? This is completely within congressional oversight wheelhouse. We should have a discussion about war powers. We should have a discussion about reigning in Pete Texeth who fundamentally

disagrees with the law when it comes to the rules and engagement. That is his view, but if he exercises that view... It's been his view. I mean, he's been a probe. Which, like, why'd we confirm him? I don't know. But now we're seeing what this looks like. He disagrees with the law, and now he's acting accordingly.

So now we better do something because we're putting members of the military in terrible, impossible, unlawful positions. Yeah, he basically had a long history of defending war criminals, siding with war criminals, criticizing JAG officers. Yeah, it's arguably how he got famous on Fox and got Donald Trump's attention. that huge campaign that he did to advocate for Eddie Gallagher, who is the Navy SEAL, who stabbed and killed an ISIS teenager in the neck, which, you know, we can talk about that stuff happens, but then took photos of it, and they wanted to drum him out of the military, and here Pete Heggseth comes to this guy's rescue, tries to rehab him as a kind of war hero, you know, against what the military justice system said.

They kept saying, like, this is unsafe. We don't do this. This is against the rules of engagement. It hurts our own soldiers when you have unhinged actors like this within the change of the command. And we took that advocate and we made him the head of the Department of War. And these are the consequences. And I say Department of War. I don't believe that.

But that's what they're running to call it. And they're acting like it. Yeah. It was kind of with an eye roll. It was like Department of War. I roll. Yeah. Just making sure I rolled.

Just one punitive accountability note for myself. My overarching advice to Democrats has continued to be just try shit. just attack him, criticize him, go after him, try different things, try different tactics. You don't know what's going to hit. And that is correct advice. And I went against my own correct advice on this because I kept seeing these guys on Fox when I was watching it. It did feel like kind of they're losing the argument on Fox just before this recent batch

of, you know, reporting about the Caribbean. Yeah. And I was kind of saying like, God, there's so many things you go on Fox to hit Trump on right now. Maybe this isn't the best one. But like on my face on that one, because it turns out, I think, just as we've sent have seen the news develop that shows the kind of the overarching advice of whatever it is you're passionate about, you think give a strong argument about go and take it to the American people. And some of the stuff's going to work. Some of it's not. In this case, I think the table's

really turning. I want to ask you about ICE. I've got ICE coming down to New Orleans. I just landed back here at CBP, I should say. Ice was kind of the shorthand for what the immigration actions were for a while. And then this kind of weird thing happened where Tom Holman ended up being like the moderate in the regime. And so then the Customs and Border Patrol started to become kind of more of the aggressive enforcement operation. But anyhow, you guys at Protect Democracy, working with other advocates and other legal advocates, you got a bunch of lawyers on your team, did a bunch of working Illinois. And so I'm just wondering kind of what the after action was on that, what the lessons are, what we should be thinking about as they move on to other places. Yeah. Thanks for bringing

that up. I think there's a lot of important lessons that we can draw in particular out of Chicago in, I think this is one of the most successful areas where collective action, which is like, you know, such kind of like a progressivey phase that I'm still not comfortable using, it actually worked. We're libs now, Amanda. I've already went through. You are. I heard that discussion about you.

I don't have to go through that last week. Just embrace it. Just, okay, we're libs now. We do collective action. We have safe spaces. So we do the whole thing. We've embraced all of it. Just accept it.

But the lesson there is that there was a broad-based coalition literally in the streets. You had members of the media. you had members of the faith community, you had, you know, regular activists who were there in solidarity 24-7 keeping tabs on the situation. And the reason we were able to take legal action and represent people, you know, like that pastor who was hit in the head with the rubber bullets, which is so, you know, just insane to see happen was because we had people in the streets actually collecting the evidence, right? That is absolutely the first line of defense. And so you can't go to court. You can't win. You can't get injunctions unless you have people there watching,

standing their ground, and recording and ready to take it into a court and win when you don't know that you're going to do that. And as a result of that action, there's still, like, penning appeal. Bevino, like, cut loose and ran. He got out of the city. A lot of threats happening from him, a lot of big shows of force, all the media attention. And then he's out of there. And so a couple things that we're looking at that we think absolutely can be replicated. And Tim, you know, I do sort of hate to tell you this. I do think the biggest, you know, threats coming not only for ICE action now, but in the future when it comes to elections are going to be blue cities and red states. No, definitely.

Yeah. Like, that's like everybody should be aware of that. It's going to be blue cities and red states of, you know, electoral significance. And so if the troops are coming to your streets, there's a few things that I think everybody should. wrap their heads around doing. Number one, you've got to start pre-bunking the federal justifications. If they say we're coming in here to stop crime, you need to have the statistics, you need to have the mayors, you need to have the governors showing as much as you can. Like, this is what we've done to stop crime. This is what we're doing. And most importantly,

we don't want your federal help. Like, this is where it really gets invited in when you have one mayor and say, well, actually, we do want the resources. In Washington, D.C., I think the mayor's really tripped up on that. And they realized, too late, they were making an invitation that they shouldn't have. And so, you know, pre-bunk the federal justifications, forced the issue in saying, we don't want your help. But then immediately have people in the streets, a broad-based coalition, you know, all kinds of strange bed of fellows. We need everybody. Nobody is your enemy or your adversary. If you were fighting against this kind of action and start documenting all the federal abuses that you see. Your cameras are your

best friends. I mean, God bless. you see all these, you know, people swarming agents, you know, they're standing their ground. They're not being aggressive, but they have their cameras. They've got like grandmas on scooters and all the silver hairs. We make fun of the retired people, I think, in a very negative way. They have time to do this. God bless them. Thank you retirees for coming out and doing this. I have no hate. I have no shame on you because you are the ones I have times to do it. You could be safe and warm in your home watching cable TV. No, you're not out there. there. This is awesome.

Yeah. I could be doing my song. Yeah. Thank you. So that's amazing. And then, you know, the most important thing is while you're doing all this, absolutely keep it peaceful. I mean, the things that people are doing in Portland with the costumes, it's just absolutely brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. The way that they took a sense of humor about it. I mean, it was also had a protective quality because, you know, you can't really be documented with photo ID if you're wearing a big frog costume. If you happen to be worried about that, maybe you are, maybe you weren't. But most importantly, that had an element of keeping things peaceful. It's different when people are running around in frog costumes versus, you know, black masks. And so I think those are

some things that can absolutely be replicated in place like New Orleans and anywhere. Yeah. I'm already seeing the text chains get started and people sending me. What's your costume? I don't know that I'm going to be cosplaying. But, you know, nobody does costumes better than New Orleans. So I don't, you know, you'll have to get. Okay. You guys are going to have fun ones. I think there'll be some creativity. You know, a lot of paper mache. Anyway. You'll have actually good protest music. Oh, yeah.

Of course. Yeah, no, a little second line. You went to college in Indiana, right? Ball State, Indiana, right? I did. Isn't that an Indiana? It is. Very good.

Monty, also known as Funcie. What's the nickname? The Red Hawks. They're the Cardinals. I mean, it's a red bird. That was really close. It was in my head somewhere. Very good.

Okay, so we've got the Cardinals. There's not really that much connection to this, but I just like to shout out Ball State. grads. In Indiana, there's really kind of a dark story happening that's like right down the wheelhouse of what you guys are doing at Protect Democracy. And that is this redistricting fight has gotten, I think, uglier than anywhere. And it's like over one seat. In the grand scheme of things, it's much smaller than the Texas and California redistricting or even Virginia, for that matter, for like the big picture impact. The advance was pushing for it. Some rumors, I think that

Pence behind the scenes was pushing the other way, telling the Indiana legislatures to stand their ground. Shout out respect to some Indiana Republican legislators who have stood their ground on this and said, no, we're not going to redistricting just because Daddy Trump tells us. The administration has continued to push on this. The governors continue to push on this. And now we are seeing just very real threats to these legislators. We had 11. We're targeted with threats or swatting attacks in the past few days. And you can see the dark place where we might be headed. Yeah, I mean, I do think these kind of threats do get disproportionately hot in red areas where legislators are expected to do the president's bidding. So it is kind of surprise and constituents get angrier at them than normal.

I mean, I say that without knowing exactly where the threats are coming from. But what was sort of, I've been tracking this sort of surprising to me and I was kind of wondering about is one of the legislatures said, I'm not going to vote for redistricting based on the comments that Trump said about disabled people because I have a disabled daughter. Like, he's taking the right position, but those things don't go together. Can we just give a guy a pat? I'll take it. Yeah, no, no, yeah.

I'm desperate. I'm like parched. I'm in the desert. I'm looking for somebody just to say no to him that has a Republican behind their name. But it's always interesting to see where the breaking. points are for people in the president's faction because it remains important to a lot of those people that they not betray the president on a policy that is perceived as MAGA and it sometimes has to be about something else. And that's just something I'm always trying to dig into

and understand. Anything just on from the protect democracy standpoint on, you know, just thinking ahead to the midterms and these kind of threats and what, what impact. tactic could have on elections? Yeah, I mean, I am sort of like hyper-focused on the role of the military and other federal agents when it comes to National Guard, Marines, DHS, ICE, et cetera, because Donald Trump is predisposed to make claims about elections being stolen, rigged, et cetera, anytime he loses. But if he has the military on his side, those threats become exponentially harder to surmount. And so to me, it remains absolutely essential that we break that link so that the military doesn't become politicized and personalized to carry out

his political goals. I mean, and so I should tell you, so we have this campaign, educational awareness campaign going on right now called Not the Mission. You can check it out at not the mission. we started running billboards and, you know, the trucks with billboards all through Washington, D.C. when the guard there was first deployed. And what this campaign is aimed at is people who support the military, love the military, are patriotic, but don't want to see them unnecessarily used. You know, this is not their mission to go, you know, pick up trash in the streets of D.C. We respect them. We love them. This should not be how they use. And so I am also like sort of extra wound up about this because, I'm out in West Virginia, the National Guard member who is in the hospital right now, Andrew Wolfe is from Inwood. That was like the same little town. Our main babysitter is from, took care of our children. I'm going to be there in Inwood on Sunday to run an annual Christmas 5K.

That's before a wonderful community parade that, you know, I've done for years now. And our whole family goes to and I fully expect to see all the red ribbons in support of, Andrew. But, you know, you can talk about like, should he have been there? well, it just, do you have respect for how these troops are deployed? This is also gets like to the broader question of what is the mission of these troops when it comes to the drug boat strikes? How are we using these men and women? And are we respecting their service? I don't think we are. The president is not. When we give these kind of orders willy-nilly that are incompatible with the law,

it hurts them. And so I just, I hope he's going to be okay. This isn't. the point of the not the mission campaign. Yeah, but the other woman was lost. So we do have more billboards coming aimed in Baltimore at the Army Navy game coming up next week. And so this will continue. And I just think it's a really, really important message that when you misuse the troops, it escalates tension unnecessarily. It compromises troop readiness and performance. And it just endangers troops unnecessarily. I love that. I'm always arguing. I talk to Westmore about this a while ago now, talking about kind of taking back patriotism, you know, from these guys on the other side and not, it's not the National Guard troops' fault that they were sent on these

terrible missions. They sign up to help. Yeah. It's interesting. When you think about combating, it's not really authoritarianism, but this is like right-wing populism. I was talking to, there's a gay, millennial, handsome president in the Netherlands now. Oh, what's his name, Tim? Tell me more.

Obviously, I've been paying a lot of attention to that. and one of the things that he used one of the tools that he used was like being very pro-Dutch you know and their like campaign had a lot of kind of like Dutch flags and Dutch themes and like we're taking that back

and I think that like A, it is the right thing to do it is not their mission and I think I'm glad you guys are doing this but B I just think it's a political matter that is smart and wise to try to take that kind of argument back away from these guys

the prime I said president that's prime minister i'm so america focused you know i'm such a fucking yankee uh rob jetton's the prime minister uh he's handsome his boyfriend there's husband or other's handsome so google him you know it's a great effort i appreciate that you're doing that and you got the 5k this weekend how you feel about that anything else you want to leave us with i'm feeling good it's my first run since i did the jfk 50 mile race for the third time three years in row i think i'm taking a break next year though so three for theory and then we'll see if i want to come back and get the whole two if you run it five times, you're in the 250 mile club and you get a sweatshirt.

Okay. You know, hopefully it's a cozy sweatshirts. I think it's a very plain, great one. You've earned that sweatshirt. Amanda Carpenter, I appreciate you. I miss doing this. We'll be doing it again soon. All right.

Have a great holidays. Hug those kiddies. Okay. We'll do. All right. Everybody else will be back here, maybe tonight, actually. So keep an eye on the feed. We'll see you all then.

Peace. I remember the first time I drove through Indiana. watching fences in the distance fade away Once her was a girl I knew there and she was pretty We kept in touch until we just went our own ways I remember the first time I drove through Indiana Waving goodbye to the towns that we drove through far away I know they're deep inside a city rushing back and forth wanting only to get home

once I was there in a dream meeting people without names and without faces they lived I remember the first time I drove to Indiana I remember the first time I drove to Indiana I remember the first time I drove to Indiana watching semis home I drove to Indiana watching semis grain to the west. They're gonna make it all the way to Colorado. Where are the mountains duts the sky, the river's been. I remember the first time I drove through Indiana thinking to myself how big this land really is.

Amber waves of green From a highway Who lives in that house So far away I remember the first time I drove Through Indiana Watching fences in the distance Fade Away

I remember the first time I drove through Indiana. I remember the first time I drove through Indiana. The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brough. Thank you.