The Bulwark Podcast - Rick Wilson: The Reich Stuff

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

The "unified Reich" reference was no accident: Trump is aiming to both fire up the base and court public controversy. Meanwhile, Giuliani is hawking sedition coffee, Marco Rubio is auditioning for secretary of state, and the UN had a dumbass reaction to the Iranian president's death. Rick Wilson joins Tim Miller today. show notes: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-killing-of-roger-fortson

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, and I got to tell you,

today we just have an unbelievable tonnage of dumbassery to review. And so I've just, I brought in the only man for that job, Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, ad man, host of the podcast The Enemy's List. He has his own sub stack, Rick Wilson's sub stack. He's written some books, Everything Trump Touches Dies. You've probably heard of that, Running Against the Devil. Hey, brother. How you doing? Welcome to the pod.

Welcome back to the pod. Thank you, my friend. Good to see you. It's good to see you too. Just before we started taping this, the defense, if you want to call it that, has rested. It's not rested their eyes. They've rested their defense of Donald Trump. I do want to spend some time with that, but I feel kind of as a hazing ritual since the first time you've been on, since I've been the host chair.

We need to begin, as I did yesterday, with your former boss. I'm so sorry. Yeah. Well, I just want to play a little. We covered the cougar party at Caroline Wren's house already yesterday and the subpoena. So today I want to cover something else. He's got a new infomercial out. Jason, can we listen to a little bit of that? You all know I stand by the truth. And if I put my name on something, I truly believe in it. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to something I'm by the truth. And if I put my name on something, I truly believe in it. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to something I'm incredibly proud of. My own brand of organic

specialty coffee, Rudy Coffee. Believe me when I say it's the best coffee you'll ever try. It's smooth, rich, chocolatey, and gentle on your stomach. It's so good, I even recommend drinking it black. It comes in three varieties. Comes in three varieties. So my first question for you, what are the three varieties of Rudy Coffee? Perjury,

evasion of service, and complete moral and mental collapse. I mean, that's four, I guess, but close enough. That's pretty good. Even black. I don't know, was that a little racial subtext there or is that just like you know you never can tell anymore as somebody who was around rudy a long time and helped in his 97 re-elect and i was in city halls an advisor to the mayor and then i was on the campaign against hillary all these things right i've said this for a while now the last time

he and i spoke was 16 he used to talk all the time would you talk after he had a couple pops is that usually sometimes yeah oh yeah give you both yeah yeah but but it's like how is it that this guy who was not a dumb man at the time has gotten so far into the swamp of the mire of this unbelievable he's like the alpha case study of everything Trump touches dies and it doesn't ever get any better. He always like hits the bottom and he's like, I think I'll dig some more now. I mean, the fact that he's shilling coffee, he's desperate financially. We all know this. You know, he correctly got his head handed to him in the Georgia election workers defamation case and i guess he still

believes that somehow or another trump is going to save him from i don't know ending the last years of his life living on the street panhandling it is really depressing if rudy had not gone into trump's universe even with all his flaws when he died people would have named high schools after him they would have named bridges after him and i always say this if he just did speeches if he just moved to italy yeah and drank wine they would have renamed la guardia giuliani airport a hundred percent a hundred percent tim he all he had to do was was like not fall into the trap of this garbage with these people and unfortunately he kind of likes it i think i think rudy has always been i mean even when i when i was working for him there was always kind of a star fucker thing

with rudy like i remember the sopranos were just out and man he loved like any cast member crew member any sopranos adjacent person was always like we've got to have so-and-so to gracie we've got to get so and you know whatever some Gracie. We've got to get so-and-so. And you know, whatever. Some politicians are like that. We should call Stevie Van Zandt. We should plan a troll. Oh my God.

Stevie would do a good troll. He would crush that. Send to the pod. God. But no, look, I mean, this is a guy who had hundreds of millions of dollars back in the 2000s. He made a lot of money on Giuliani partners, all this national security stuff he did. He lost it all.

He keeps losing everything all the time. And it's weird that he can't see that his proximate relationship with Trump is what's causing him in a large measure to lose everything over and over again. He just doesn't get it again not a dumb man but really morally flawed and deeply fucked up and deeply unable to process just how bad it's going to continue to get for him if i could feel assured that shea and ruby would be getting their money i would buy the coffee i would buy the sedition coffee if I could, if I knew it was going to go to them, but I'm just not confident that that's going to happen. Same here.

And I think that he will do everything possible to play fuck around with them until, you know, he's trying to run out the clock on his life basically. And, you know, for a guy who is a chronic cigar smoker and heavy, heavy drinker at 80, he's lucky to still be around. They're never going to get what they deserve out of this very terrible situation that he put them in. That's macabre. Okay. Speaking of dark stuff, a new ad. Donald Trump bleated out a new ad on his social media feed there.

On trash social. Yeah, trash social social we don't really know yet this might be a desantis situation where they're pretending like this was like some fan that made it but it turns out to be a little nazi like nate hockman on the staff that did it or something but what the but what happened essentially is they put out this ad in bold headlines that include such things as 15 million illegal aliens deported so even the text was not particularly heartwarming but the subtext there were these faint headlines underneath that you had to like really kind of squint to look at one of them said quote industrial strength is increased by the creation of a unified

reich this is imagining what would happen in a trump administration unified reich r-e-i-c-h you might be familiar with that term failed congressional candidate caroline levitt who's the spokesperson now wrote this was reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the word reich while the president was in court president was too busy in court defense rick what say you about this one listen trump may not be the brightest guy but he he has a certain degree of feral cunning. He has a certain degree of animal instinct for shit that is going to fire up his base and cause a public controversy. He likes it.

And so I am not believing for a second the guy didn't see it. I'm also not believing for a second that very smart people like chris lasavita and suzy wiles and i won't say jason miller is very smart but bright enough your former colleague we're just playing all the hits from your past this is rick wilson this is your life chinless jason miller but none of these things happen around trump by accident none of this stuff happens around trump by you know some sort of weird set of coincidences. He loves this kind of thing. He loves this kind of play.

He loves this kind of like, I'm going to cause chaos and I'm going to cause, you know, I'm going to stir the shit. He loves to stir the shit and he's very good at it. Let's be real. He's a talented guy for triggering a public disgust and it's he's okay with that he likes that and you know what uh the people that made this ad whoever the fuck they are and i think they're the same people that produced the uh god made trump ad which you know for the party of christ values, the idolatry is rocking through the

ceiling on that one. But it's far from the end of this kind of shit we're going to see this year because Trump gets it. And look, as I've said a million times, and I'm not the only one, I don't believe that Donald Trump is an actual Nazi, but I think the Nazis are okay with him and he doesn't have any enemies to his right. He's adopted the Bannon philosophy. And this is, I think, the important part of this is there's the trolling part there's the how the fuck did we get here that we have a republican presidential nominee and former president tweeting reich references the serious part that i think sometimes gets lost among our old friends and when i say old friends in this case i'm not talking about jason miller i'm talking about the ones that know better with trump yeah you know, you see this a lot, which is like,

well, I can't be for Biden because the people around him, he's got these progressives around him and they're wearing keffiyehs and they're pro-Humas and they're far left. And that's not really the case. Like those people actually dislike Joee biden and the true cases regardless of what you think about donald trump's nazi tendencies like the young people that are working on these campaigns now the early 20-somethings that have been attracted to donald trump and desantis for that matter we've seen it time and again and tucker carlson we've seen it among the produce all these controversies where we it's like another 4chan account by a tucker carlson producer has been revealed with n-word all over it right like there is a big group of racist anti-semitic

young bros that work on these campaigns that are around donald trump that's how he ends up having dinner with nick puentes or lunch with nick puentes those are the people that steven miller is going to hire if he gets in there and like that is a serious and real threat that I think that sometimes the Wall Street Journal crowd just doesn't take that seriously, and everyone really should. I think that's right. And again, the gentry conservatives, the Wall Street Journal guys, the National Review guys, they have this sort of moral escape clause. It's like, well, i don't like trump or trump's tweets or trumpism or trump voters however the choice is either that or full communism i'm like what wait what and the irony underneath it all is that these guys are now saying things like well we have to vote for trump

otherwise you know we're going to have authoritarian socialists debanking us and deplatforming us all. And yet, the projection with these people is so astounding because it's exactly what they're proposing for everybody else. Project 2025 and all these things that we have been told over and over again they want to do. And that that when trump says you're going to stop the poisoning of our blood and all these things just add it all up and you're like wait a minute they literally always tell you what they're going to do they literally every time tell you exactly what they're going to do why would you not listen to them and and our friends in that gentry conservative world they have a deafness that they've set up a blindness they've set up for themselves so that they don't have to ever acknowledge that they're now party to some of

the worst ideas and people in the world well put speaking of the worst people in the world we have a new segment on the podcast you know our friend johnny mcinty yes the deputy president the gambler yeah the deputy president right stuff johnny yeah deputy president. The head of the right stuff. Two-fisted Johnny. Yeah, we have a new segment called The Right Stuff. It's important to keep an eye on this. I think in the day after some little Johnny McEntee acolyte posts, Trump will bring in the United Reich advertisement.

We should listen a little bit more to what they have to say let's listen to a couple of johnny's recent posts here's the first one i'm just gonna ask this one more time why do we only judge white people for owning slaves when every culture had them you know excuse me i've i've got pneumonia so i'm gonna hack and cough a little bit. But Johnny, do you just want to go down to the dollar store and get yourself a white hood now? Because that's that language right there. And, you know, again, this is that tendency inside the Bannonite tendency of no enemies

to my right. And whether or not Johnny McEntee is a deeply knowledgeable person about america's fraught history with i don't know chattel slavery this is a real tell on what they believe it's a real tell on what's inside their hearts yeah these are not good people these are not people who want to make america great again these are people who want to have a return, not to the 1950s, but the 1850s. I know people think, oh, you're exaggerating, Wilson. I'm really not. And remember, folks, this is the man, Johnny McEntee is the man who will be in charge of all presidential hiring for Donald Trump if he wins again. He will pick every single person in the administration.

And remember, they're telling you very clearly, they're going to burn down everyone in the government who isn't a Trump supporting acolyte. They're going to burn down everybody who doesn't swear fealty and allegiance to Donald Trump. So work that problem folks for a minute. And you're going to see that again, they tell you everything they're going to do. They always tell you everything they're going to do. These are the people just to put a bell on it, that will staff. He will choose the staffing.

The people that want to do apologia for slavery and put the unified right in videos are the people that will staff the next administration. No matter how much you hate the craziest leftist on GW's campus, that person is not going to be Joe Biden's head of personnel. You know, Joe Biden's staff is like mostly DLC old guys from the early 90s, which is a problem in its own right. But it's a much better problem than having Johnny McAteer around. Right.

You can critique the Biden administration in a thousand different ways. And I have. But if Joe Biden came up and said you know i'm gonna name the head of the communist youth league to a senior position people would lose their minds fox would have a 24 7th crawl on the bottom of their screen day seven communist takeover but these people around trump the johnny mcentees and the rest of them who are right now, whether they're inside government or outside government in the Trump era, part two, you know, fascist boogaloo, they will be the people like the Jack Posobiec of the world. And you will see people in senior government

positions who you would not let run a goddamn Waffle House. I mean, folks, you should prepare yourselves for ideas like National Security Advisor Seb Gorka and the clownish stuff that you kind of want to laugh at, like, oh, these are idiots. A lot of them are idiots, but you know what? A lot of them have a very intentional, dark, evil, directed vision of America that, folks, you're not voting to build the wall you're voting to to put in to power people who are not in any way what you think they are it is considered a lot of damage all right that was good enough we'll save johnny's other missives for a future episode that was the right stuff landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment stuff.

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. We got to talk about the courtroom yesterday. So the fence rested, as I said, at the start today. So we've seen the end of their case, if you want to call it that.

If you will. Yeah, the last witness that they called on the stand speaking of idiots was this guy bob costello they had to clear the courtroom yesterday for this clown here's judge mershon i'm putting you on notice that your conduct is contemptuous if you try to stare me down one more time i will remove you from the stand these are the types of you know goombas that the trump defense is putting forward costello for his little background for people who don't know the reason why he's on the stand is that he tried to be the mediator between cohen and trump and giuliani our friend rudy in the aftermath of

all the stormy daniel stuff in 2018 you'll be surprised rick to hear that that relationship broke down when giuliani stopped paying him i am stunned by that news, Tim. I can't imagine a world where sometimes you need a criminal lawyer. So anyway, that was the star witness. His claim was that Cohen told him once that Trump never knew about the payment to Stormy Daniels. So that's their main pushback. He did not work out for the defense. I think as the defense expected, he would work out for them that was a shit show that showed me that the trump defense team took the hook that the prosecution kind of wanted to take they thought oh we can discredit stormy daniels we

can discredit michael cohen but the real guts of the case tim there are the receipts i mean a lot of this case is going to be based on the fact, here's the check that Trump wrote, that Weisselberg approved, that he gave to Cohen to pay off this thing that we had an agreement on. There's a paper trail here. There's a line here of transactions and orders and communications that I think the prosecution has proved beyond a reasonable doubt and costello up there was kind of a long bomb play to try to discredit cohen but for all michael's flaws he is a guy who ended up verifying what the documents the paper trail said and the paper trail verified what cohen said and you know michael is a passionate guy he He is, he has been through a lot.

I like Michael. He's a weird cat, but I like him. He's just so-so for me. Yeah, I got it. I got you. No, I got you. But I like the fact that he's a person who actually was so deep inside that world and got so fucked by it.

And he's a good exemplar for people to understand that no matter what you are with Trump, no matter how close inside the family you think you are, no matter how much you've done for him, in the end, he will always screw you over. And that as an exemplar, I think he's really valuable in the sort of political culture. Because right now, people like Susie Wiles, and people like Chris La la cevita they really believe like i'm the one who solved the problem i've broken the code i'm gonna be okay in the end nobody's ever okay in the end have you talked to suzy not recently it's been a long minute we had one email like after de santa's fired her so it's been a long time you know yeah

for people who don't know suzy wiles is the trump is her title campaign manager a leading campaign role long time florida political operative was my boss many many years ago very smart on the john huntsman campaign is what i was gonna say so like this whole like her going maga i'm like oh no the john huntsman campaign didn't turn well but well that's a whole another long story but the point is was that she was i didn't see any of this you know we were like the squishy mods so it's been a journey i've never read suzy in all the years i've known her as some sort of like right winger she's us she's a bushy she's you know establishment republican type who for all her reasons and then look part of this is ron desantis and there's a long the michael cruz article folks if you haven't read it about suzy wiles it's a great piece of anthropology of you know she felt screwed over by desantis who at the time represented the peak of

the surviving establishment tendency in the party in a weird way and then you know when she got thrown over the edge she went to trump which you know he has a very weird magnetic kind of power with with people who have grievances and that ranges from serious people like a suzy wiles down to you know the guy who thinks the mexicans took his job it's his terrible superpower it's good insight though these people do think that they can fix him or they can be the one to sand the edges and nobody can be that person uh speaking of trump crimes there's some news about the social media company what'd you call trash social trash social yeah so i don't know if you saw this uh they'd report their q1 revenue yesterday oh i did yeah so total revenue for the company for uh the first quarter 770

thousand dollars not bad like not bad if you're running like a local mom and pop shop or something yeah like pretty good for a quarter here's a problem net loss for this quarter 327.6 million like what in the fuck is happening rick like this is a there's a crime happening there's got to be some skim going on here there's got to be some sort of fraud here as someone said to me this morning jokingly this is like get your advisors at bear stearns to help you out on this one this is these fundamentals are amazing what the hell how do you lose 327 million dollars now i think what they've done and i don't know this for sure, I think what they're doing is trying to write off their cost of IPO, cost of going public, all that stuff,

into this quarter. But this makes no sense. It's a meme stock completely. There's no real fundamentals here. All the market valuation formulas are out the window now the idea that it's still trading at a six billion dollar market cap is because of you know the same suckers who were buying gamestop two years ago or maybe better the same suckers that were buying nfts gamestop still hanging around but all those nft all the based monkeys the based monkeys right the clowns and the monkey, all that stuff. Right. Bored ape, all that. All the NFT market was a classic Ponzi scheme. This is a classic Ponzi scheme. There's no value there. This company is only there because the name Trump is attached to it,

and it is being juiced by people who, you know, I made a Sopranos reference on Twitter this morning. This is like the webistics of MySpace stocks. It's utterly valueless, and yet somehow the alternate reality bubble around Trump still has enough of these people like, there's nothing Trump does that doesn't make money. Oh, really? Look, I mean, the first auditors were already charged by the SEC. They have new auditors now. Like, I don't exactly know what the crime is.

I'm not a financial crimes expert, but it doesn't take one to know. You only have to watch one CSI Miami episode to know that there's criming happening here. And more people are to go down around them. And this is the other thing. It's just like, again, back to these so-called credible people that want to stay around. If you give any of them truth serum, they all would say it.

Of course. Everybody knows this is a fraud. There's nobody that's smart enough to read the Wall street journal and you know it could be a an investor themselves who looks at this and says this is something other than a total fraud by a career huckster anybody who woke up this morning and said wow they lost 327 million dollars and made 770 000 the ebita formula of of earnings and valuation the t doesn't stand for trump folks this is disconnected from reality if you're old enough to remember pets.com this makes pets.com look like ibm it's insanity i'm glad that ebita has finally made it into the bullard podcast

transcript uh history a few more going down our running list of the fucking deplorables and the dumbassery today. Let's just go to Florida for a second. Here's a Florida twofer. You're two Florida men. Let's listen to Wee Little Marco from the weekend. Will you accept the election results of 2024

no matter what happens, Senator? No matter what happens? No, if it's an unfair election, I think it's going to be contested by either side. Senator, no matter who wins. I think you're asking the wrong person. The Democrats are the ones that have opposed every Republican victory since 2000, every single one. It's Hillary Clinton. No Democrat has refused to concede. Hillary Clinton conceded. Senator, will you accept

the election? Hillary Clinton said the election was stolen from her and that Trump was illegitimate. Kamala Harris agreed. But she conceded. Senator, she conceded her election. We have Democrats now. Okay, I can't listen to any more of that he's he's such a little bitch he's such a squirmy little bitch you and i have both known marco long enough to know that this person is a guy the chicken shit level of marco

rubio is a historic artifact of american politics he will end up not being the character he thought he was going to play in the character he thought he was going to play in the world he thought he was going to be this transformative figure who was going to bring a new youthful vitality to conservatism and it's turned out that marco is going to be i mean when the movie is cast about trump he'll be like minion number seven on the catwalk unless he gets vp do you think he really wants it do you think he really wants it no he wants to be secretary of state yeah that's what he's told people that i still know around him that he wants to be secretary of state that he can convince trump he's an absolute loyalist

and that he will represent trump faithfully he'll be a great secretary of state as donald trump lets china take taiwan that'll be a great part of his legacy right it's going to be fantastic as as russian tanks roll into the baltics and and marco says well america's interests are not really served by protecting nato and europe our allies are they're not paying their fair share i have a sense of pity for marco because he is a very lost guy two years ago he was desperately trying to get a job as a university president anywhere in florida he would have taken like palatka junior college to get out of dc but now that he sort of senses maybe trump's got a chance to win he's playing the game again of oh yeah give me some true estate that's yeah rick you've gone soft i have no pity from marco i just want to say it's

fine it's fine we all do it's like it's like John Boehner. Soon you're going to be crying on every podcast. You know, eventually if you just, you know, men, we just get into our feelings as, as we age. It's okay. Uh, but I'm also softening, but I'm still sharp enough to, to not have pity for Marco. I wish I had feelings. Since I had you on, I just felt like I wanted a Santas update. What's happening in the freedom state. I, cause I just, State? Because you're living it. I see it in the periphery. It comes across my Twitter feed. DeSantis is having a press conference with some dead cows.

And he's like, here in the Freedom State, we're going to ban any innovative attempts to create lab-grown meat. Total ban on that. That's happening here in Florida. Any other updates from our little dictator so the biggest update from from we ronnie yeah so first off he's tried to keep his core team together of people who are going to run his 2028 presidential campaign which is already well under steam they're running casey for governor that's going to be a fun primary against matt gates and byron donald you really think so? I just, I can't get, God is not that good to me that we could get a Casey

DeSantis, Matt Gates, Byron Donald's primary. Young Matthew understands that Washington is not going to be any fun for him over time. He's exceeded the limits of trolling as a hobby there. Do you have room in your guest house? Because I might have to move to Tallahassee for that primary, at least for a couple of months. I have a compound, as you may know. Do you have room in your guest house? Because I might have to move to Tallahassee for that primary, at least for a couple of months. I have a compound, as you may know. So you're welcome anytime. But the dumbest thing he's done, and it's caused a huge rift inside the party,

is he has gone all in on opposition to the abortion amendment and on the marijuana decriminalization amendment. Those are going to be the hill he decides to die on in florida and the democratic party of florida has been so hapless snake bit fucked up broken bad at its work for so long that while it's still very very difficult for them to win florida we are now in a situation where DeSantis deciding to do this on an amendment that has like 60% Republican support and 97% Democratic support. DeSantis deciding to burn it down and spend a ton of money to fight this abortion amendment in Florida. It's the greatest

gift he could have given the Democrats. It's going to make Trump spend money in Florida in some of these areas. It hasn't put the state in play for Biden in a fundamental way, but it is such a dumb move. The best strategy was to ignore it. Let it go. What about the Senate race? Is there any hope in the Senate race or not really? Yeah. Debbie Musgrave Powell is the Democratic candidate against Rick Scott. She was a refugee from Ecuador. She is a fluent Spanish speaker. She's a person who fled authoritarianism. And so she can neutralize some of that Hispanic South Florida thing of, you know, soy comunista. Every time someone

mentions a Democrat's name, it's a lot harder to play that game with her. And I will say this, Rick Scott is, he's a person who proves that if you put enough thrust behind anything, you can shoot it into orbit. And Rick Scott has spent, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of his stolen Medicare bounty, getting himself elected repeatedly in the state of Florida. He's not quite the same guy he was. He seems a little bit off kilter. And some people that are close to him are like, he's getting older. He's not, you know,

he's, he doesn't have the same sort of like stupid confidence he once had. It's a tough race. She's got a chance to try to engage with him on a level that isn't Charlie Crist on a level that isn't, you know, the, the sort of generic Democrat,

but she's got to do a lot of things, right. But I do think she's an's got to do a lot of things right. But I do think she's an impressive candidate, just a hard hill to climb. It's like Florida and Texas are tough states for our Democratic friends, and they're going to remain so for a long time. One more Florida item. I have to shout out JVL's triad yesterday if people didn't read it. It was about the killing of Roger Forston. And the TLDR on this story is Roger Forsten was a black 23 year old airman. He was

at his home in Fort Walton Beach. Somebody else in the apartment complex, I guess, calls the county sheriff's department. He's just sitting up there on a FaceTime with his girlfriend. The cop comes to the door, bangs on the door. He's holding his gun, legal firearm, constitutional carry in Florida, and opens the door and the cop shoots him and he dies the funeral was this past weekend yep the interesting thing about the jvl piece is and because it ties the texas thing we've been talking about and i know you're a second amendment guy is just like it's almost too obvious to say but it merits saying just like the hypocrisy and the latent racism of like the nra in this movement. Trump speaks at the NRA this

weekend. And there is no recognition of either Forreston or of the protester who was shot in Texas, you know, and killed. And these guys were both carrying their firearms legally. And they get shot because but one by the state one by a vigilante MAGA freak. And it's like there's no, I mean, it's a it's a pretty dark place here where there's no acknowledgement really of these victims. There is a cop culture inside the Republican party now that will defend this officer, even though the body camera footage shows that Roger Fortson was dead on the floor before the officer started yelling, drop your weapon, drop your weapon.

And without a body camera, it would have been described in that world as, you know, black guy attacks cop. And I'm sorry, if we're going to honor the second amendment, it has to apply to everybody, regardless of skin color. Hey, look, we got swatted at my house a few months ago and all of our cameras and alarms start going off. And my natural instinct, because we've had a lot of problems, obviously, my natural instinct is to press the buttons, pop the gun out, and walk out.

I didn't do it because I looked on the cameras, and I saw a line of police cars parked up at the top of my driveway. Now, if I'd been a young black guy, chances are that could have gone a lot differently. And this idea that if you're going to have states that have constitutional carry, if you're going to have states that have the ability of citizens to exercise that right, then the police have to start treating it like it is something that the shoot first stuff cannot continue it is not a world where we can excuse the behavior of some cops when they do things like this and where we don't reconcile you know that there are trade-offs in that that risk profile especially if you're african-american in this country that you know we have not addressed as a society we'll go read jvl's piece if you hadn't roger forreston it's terrific it's just yeah it's unbelievable okay i want to make us feel like republicans again for one second and then i want to talk a little

strategy with you before we let you go the un yesterday did you see this i did not this is an example of non-mag dumbassery non-maga category despite earning the nickname the butcher of tehran for presiding over iran's human rights abuses the united nations on monday held a moment of silence for abraham raisi after the iranian president died in a helicopter crash they all stood security council silence including our member i saw it because it was uh shared by press tv the iranian state tv these guys can't get out of their fucking way. Or maybe they actually just are sympathetic with the Iranians.

But it makes it hard to take the moral high ground on things, you know, like what's happening in Gaza when you're, you know, giving a moment of silence to the butcher of Tehran. When Raisi was killed in this helicopter crash, I got a little bit of static from it, but not much. But I said, listen, I didn't want Raisi to die in a helicopter crash. I wanted him to be beaten to death by iranian pissed off women because he's he is systematically engaged in the abuse and oppression of women in iran at a level that americans do not realize and the un of

course has put iran on the un human rights commission what that's like putting donald trump in charge of the treasury of a boy scout troop he's gonna rape and pillage he's gonna steal the money the iranian regime this is a regime that kills unveiled women on the street that beats women to death for dancing on videos that hangs gays from cranes these are not good. There's nothing good about the government and the leadership of this medieval theocracy in Iran. It is a universally corrosive force in the world. We should not be acknowledging and saying, oh, poor, poor, pitiful him. Listen, I'm a pilot and flying your helicopter in bad weather is a bad idea. in this case you know i salute the pilot's judgment

because it took some very very bad people off the board i have zero fucks about the iranian leadership just none i'm snapping i come in a new york times staff meeting for that um uh that's good okay i want to get a little campaign shout talk before i let you go yeah yeah i'm worried all right i don't know where you're at on the on the nervousness versus confidence uh scale about this election i know one thing though we are both aligned at the scale of the threat here and the most important thing in front of us is taking out this fucking burnt sienna bastard yep i don't want to get into poll talk and cross tabs diving and all that like it's just reality like it's not one poll. It's like in Pennsylvania and Georgia and Arizona consistently, every poll Joe Biden is losing. He's got to win one of those. So my question for you is thoughts on the state of play. And if, you know, uncle Joe, president Joe called

you tomorrow, what advice do you have for where we're at right now? I think Pennsylvania is expensive, but it's the easiest one to change the water temperature. I think Arizona has prospects. At Lincoln, we're heavily advertising in Maricopa now, specifically targeting pro-choice Republican women. That's where the fish are. Fish where the fish are. Like everybody else, we're looking at four states where there's a window of opportunity. And it's what everybody else is doing, too, for a large part, because, you know, again, that's where the swing votes still remain in the world. It's in the wow counties in Wisconsin. It's in Oakland and Macomb in Michigan. It's in Bucks and a couple of other counties in Pennsylvania. for the last several months from a fairly obvious and fairly consistent framing by the national

media you know trump may be a an incipient fascist and a criminal but biden is so very very old how will biden's age play in trump's criminal trial and i get it i get that the times is butthurt that joe biden won't give them a private interview and so they're taking it out get it i get that the times is butthurt that joe biden won't give them a private interview and so they're taking it out on him i get that there is a novelty seeking behavior in the media to make this into a bigger drama a worse race this race should not be closed this should be a goddamn blowout and yet here we are where trump has a meaningful chance to win this election and there is a sense among the moneyed class in the country that it's time to pony up for Donald and they're giving him money.

There's a sense in the media class that the race is over. And so they're framing it and covering it that way. And I think what it comes down to, Tim, and I've been thinking about this, I've been writing something about this last couple hours before I came on with you. There's a sense in the pro-democracy movement that they're playing offense and we're playing defense. And the American people traditionally want to see some fight in the dog when you got a dog fight going on.

And I think that there's a sense of like, we're warning them about the apocalypse. Trump is like, fuck it. We're having a bonfire. Let's do it. Let's, we're having a bonfire. Let's do it. Let's have a bonfire. And that idea is kind of appealing to a lot of people.

And it's profoundly dangerous. And the stakes could not be higher. I said to a Times person recently, I'm like, who was defending to me their coverage of Biden. Like, we're reflecting what a lot of Americans want to read about. And I said, you know, the minute he's in office, you guys are first up against the fucking wall. You guys are going to be day one targeted in ways that right now you think you're being

even handed and fair. These people are not, they're not trying to go in and pass just a tax bill. They're trying to fundamentally recalibrate what America is, including things that will reduce or eliminate the freedom of the press, including things that are incomprehensible to people who live in a comfortable bubble in Manhattan or in McLean, Virginia, who say, oh, you know, it'll be crazy, but it won't be that crazy. What could go wrong?

Everything, folks, could go wrong. And that's why the stakes are where they are. I think we have always underappreciated the risk that Trump poses to the future of the country. Maybe not you and me, but, you know. Yeah, no, no, no. A lot of people have, for sure. And I mean, couldn't be more aligned on it.

Last thing, just one more strategic question for you, because it's something i've been noodling on and i'm interested in your take i'm interested to hear you guys are doing abortion ads that makes sense pro-choice women the group i'm worried about is people in the democratic coalition who are less engaged who inflation has hit hard because maybe their salaries haven't gone up as much as right and so sure the economic message i keep vacillating back and forth between whether joe biden should be going out there and doing morning in america again and hell yeah america's got the best or whether he needs to be doing the man we're working on that and you know more nuanced more empathetic message what would your advice be on that i think the latter because remember one of the reasons barack obama i think did very well in 2011 and 12

was that we were coming out of the 2008 crisis and he always framed it like we're getting better but we're not there yet we're doing better but we got a long way to go i think biden has to frame that because the economic pessimism in this country now is as as a lot of people have pointed out is now inversely driven. It used to be that your feelings about the economy informed your feelings about politics. Now, your feelings about politics inform your feeling about the economy. And so, because of the softness in Biden's base, in the center of his base, and the more moderate Democrats who are working people, who are paying more for gas, who are

getting hit with inflation, it's important not to pretend that those people are having a great life right now. They're having a tough time. This is not easy for them right now. And so I think that he has to continue to be cautious about it. He has to continue to be like, we're making progress, we're doing good work, we're helping you, but it's not sunshine and roses and puppies and kittens right now. It's still a long road. We're going to see, um, I, you know, the next week Trump's going to be found guilty, I think. And I think we're going to see a, a group of people that have embarrassed me as a former Republican watching these idiots wear the same outfit, wear the white shirt, red tie,

blue suit uniform, going to New York to crawl across broken glass to kiss Trump's ass. I think we're going to see that going into overdrive. These people are, the cultishness of it and the political ambition of it is staggering. I find it so offensive that people who are supposedly representing their states and their districts don't give a shit about what they do for their people. They care about Trump.

That's it. The fucking outfits, the little mini Trump's. It's so weird. Outfits. Why don't you guys all just wear fucking jumpsuits now, you know, with logos on the make wonder bread.

So weird. Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln project, host of the enemies list. He writes Rick Wilson, sub stack, maybe my future landlord, depending on how things go thanks thanks for coming back to the bulwark podcast we'll see you again soon brother anytime tim thanks for having me all right guys we're gonna be back here tomorrow with an update from the trial and a special guest we'll

see y'all then peace i was up in the morning with the tv blaring brush my teeth sitting watching the news all the beaches were closed the ocean was a red sea but there was no one there departed into I was up in the morning with the TV blaring, brushed my teeth sitting watching the news. All the beaches were closed, the ocean was a red sea, but there was no one there to part it into. There was no fresh salad cause there's hypers in the cab, Staten Island disappeared at noon. And they say the Midwest is in great distress and NASA blew up the moon. The ozone layer has no ozone anymore and you're gonna leave me for the guy next to the store? I'm sick of you. I'm sick of you. They arrested the mayor for an illegal favor, sold the Empire State to Japan, and Oliver North married William C. Corden, gave birth to a little Tehran. And the Ayatollah bought a nuclear warship.

If he dies, he wants to go out in style. And there's nothing to eat that don't carry the stink of some human waste dumped in the Nile. Well, one thing is certainly true. No one here knows what to do. And I'm sick of you. I'm sick of you. The radio said there were 400 dead in some small town in Arkansas. Some whacked out trucker drove into a nuclear reactor, killed everybody he saw.

Now he's on Morton Downey and he's glowing and shiny. Doctors say this is a medical advance. They say the bad makes the good and there's something to be learned in every human experience. Well, I know one thing that really is true. This here's a zoo and the keeper ain't you and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of you. They ordained the trumps and then he got the mumps and died being treated at Mount Sinai. And my best friend Bill died from a poison pill, some wire doctor prescribed for stress.

My arms and legs are shrunk. The food all has lumps. They discovered some animal no one's ever seen. It was an inside trader eating a rubber tire after running over Rudy Giuliani. They say the president's dead. No one can find his head. He's been missing now for weeks.

But no one noticed it. He had seemed so fit. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of it I'm sick of you I'm so sick of you bye bye bye The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.