The Bulwark Podcast - Rick Wilson: The Shamelessness of MAGA

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

From FCC Chair Brendan Carr—who keeps trying to silence the political opinions of late night TV comedians, to DHS pressuring social media companies to expose anti-ICE accounts, and to the willingness of serial killer RFK, Jr and his MAHA cohort to stack up dead children so they can keep their antivax con going—it’s clear the shamelessness of MAGA knows no bounds. But even if the coalition that delivered Trump’s victory in ‘24 has been shattered, the Dems have to skip the seven-point policy plans and focus on the economy and Trump’s corruption. And Dem candidates need to do their own tweeting. Plus, the potential legal peril for Kristi and Corey, Virginia went big and bold against Republicans on redistricting, and an homage to Jesse Jackson.Rick Wilson joins Tim Miller.show notes Will Sommer on Bannon's legal trouble with his memecoin  Jonathan on the FDA's anti-vaccine agenda Rick on how the pro-democracy coalition is winning  Colbert's banned interview with James Talarico  Abby Phillip's book on Jesse Jackson, "A Dream Deferred"  Tickets are now on sale for our LIVE shows in Dallas on March 18 and in Austin on March 19. Plus, we have a handful of seats still available for our second show in Minneapolis on February 18. TheBulwark.com/Events. Get $35 off your first box of wild-caught, sustainable seafood—delivered right to your door. Go to: https://www.wildalaskan.com/BULWARK.

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Happy Mardi Gras. Delighted to have with me, an old buddy, co-founder of the Lincoln Project AdMaker, Political Strategist. His substack is against all enemies. We have a lot of those. It's Rick Wilson.

What's up, man? Hey, how are you, brother? Happy Mardi Gras. I'm well. I'm well. I'm happy to be here with you. You know, cut loose before Ash Wednesday a little bit. You know, be a little more sober-minded tomorrow.

You know, maybe sneak out to the quarter for a banana daquery after this. Never. It never hurts. My child's already out there on the parade route, you know, getting all the, getting all the bullshit. We got nothing but crap around here. our house nothing but you got America's feed surplus

yeah the first floor of our house is just full of shit but hey everyone's got a lot of joy we've got a bunch to get to me and Bill Crystal

did I don't know 30 minutes on little Marco yesterday and so I don't know if we need to belabor the point too much but I feel very remiss to not let you

you know take a few bites out of your fellow Florida man I wonder what you thought about his Munich you know as a guy as a guy who supported Marco you know as far back

is when he ran for Speaker of the House. A bunch of Silicon Valley guys who put together an outside Marco effort in 16 that I worked on. I was a longtime supporter of Marco Rubio because, you know, it seemed like Marco was our future. It seemed like Marco was a guy who could communicate

with a rising cohort of voters and was not going to get swept up in the crappulousness of Trumpism. And yet, he is their greatest prize in some ways because he has fallen the further. and has given up everything he ever claimed to believe in. And this week, you know, going over to lecture our NATO allies at the Munich Security Conference

about holding the line in Europe and then going to give a- Civilization. Right. A fucking kid of a Cuban immigrants. Right. He'll lecture me about Mozart. Right. Get the hell back.

Yeah. And then he goes to do a campaign rally for Orban, a campaign speech, rather, for Orban, one of the worst and most egregious dictators in Europe. So, you know, Marco has really like leaned in to failing downward further and further. I've concluded there is no bottom for Marco in his ambition to become president after Trump has gone. Yeah. I did mention it yesterday. He also made a pit stop with his buddy Robert Fico, who's a prime minister to Slovakia,

who seems to be heading on an urbanist trajectory over there as well. Yep. So he's doing this full circle. I think part of this reflects the very clear internal Trump administration dynamic of we're the baddies now. You know, we're going to, we're the bad guys now. And so he is going to side with at the end of the day, Marco doesn't have anything to do with negotiating with Putin because that's being run by the moron Whitkoff and the idiot son-in-law. So sad. But he's complicit in that.

And Trump took a Trump took another shot at Ukraine. It's kind of like, it's, you know, it's Groundhog Day with this. It's like why do you even mention this? But Trump, just earlier this week or yesterday or Sunday, I was like, they better come to the table soon. Right. They better get to the table. Or what?

You're going to cut them off? Already done. It's like they've been the ones at the table. Why do you keep threatening Zelensky? Zolensky's been at the table for a while now. You know, it's Putin that want to come to the table. He's proposed to at least nine peace plans in the last six months. And Putin has rejected all of them.

And occasionally when Trump like mumbles or something, it says, well, Putin should. I'm not happy with Putin. You're not happy with him, but you never do anything to stop him. No. You're not happy with him, but you're on his side. Yeah, and you're on the side of Orban, who said that Putin isn't a threat to worry about Brussels is. So anyway, it's pretty pathetic, little Marco.

I want to move on to kind of the big news of the morning here, which is out of CBS. So last night, Colbert revealed that the network's legal team had called the late show staff and told them an interview with James Tala Rico, could not be broadcast because of the FCC equal time clause for which these shows have long had exemptions. Brendan Carr at the FCC suggested the exemption should no longer apply to programs like Colbert's because they are motivated bipartisan purposes. CBS cave to this empty threat. It's hard for me to tell, Rick, exactly what's happening here.

Is this FCC stupidity, FCC corruption, Barry Weiss and David Ellison's stupidity, David Ellison and Barry Weiss corruption or some combination of those four. And I can't figure it out. I think the Venn diagrams can all overlap here, Tim. I mean, honestly, when you saw that, the first thing I thought, you know, as an advertising guy was like, man, CBS is really working on making their whole network brand poison. I think Chris Lhavita got on the phone to Brendan Carr and Brendan Carr got on the phone to CBS. And CBS said, you know, no to Colbert.

because of this. This is blatantly political. I don't want to hear another freaking word about free speech absolutism on the right because they are now aggressively trying to suppress free speech, and they can't have it both ways. They can't pretend that Colbert is a trivial entertainer on the one hand, but an interview with James Tolariko is of such immediate danger to the fairness and balance of the FCC's regulations that it's got to be yanked off the air. And obviously they just, they strives into the shit out of themselves. Probably more people have seen the interview now being posted online than would have watched the show.

So, you know, idiot's going to idiot. And to that point, we'll put the link to the interview in the show notes. So you guys can all go watch it too, because it is on YouTube since little, little Nazi Brendan Carr doesn't have any control over that, which speaks to the broader point of is how like this is where I go to the stupidity. It's kind of like if it is corruption, it's really bad corruption. Yeah. This whole rule, you know, I would have been against it in any area.

era, but you can understand in 1971, right, that you don't want a network that has a broadcasting license when there are only three of them to, like, pick a favorite in a political race and only air puff pieces for that, you know, that you had to create some rule. Right. But it's, it's 2026. Even on a good night fewer people are watching Colbert, God love them, that are seeing, like, random TikToks that Jasmine Crockett is putting up about the race. It's just like, come on, this is so dumb.

A hundred percent. I mean, look, look, Tim, I think you head on something really important there, which is it's not 1971 or 72. The fairness doctrine is a dinosaur. It's an artifact that lives in some regulatory, you know, backwater that in the era of YouTube and TikTok and socials means nothing. It means absolutely nothing. And if the government's going to get in and regulate platforms, which it is regulating CBS as a platform right now, that I want the folks on the MAGA side who are cheering this decision to recognize that at some point,

there will be somebody who's not Brendan Carr in charge of the FCC. And he's going to say, you know, X is a platform. Twitter is a platform. We're going to regulate them. Facebook's a platform. We're going to regulate them. YouTube's a platform. We're going to regulate them.

And, you know, the problem with these excursions into greater government interference is it invites more government interference left or right down the line. And, you know, I saw you were getting lectured by our old buddy Scott Jennings about, you know, not being a conservative. And I remember I was watching him say that. And I'm like, Tim is going to tear the bark off this guy. Because it's Scott Jennings and those guys who have abandoned all their small government principles. This is big government, man. We want some random bureaucrats telling a comedian who he can interview, really. That's limited government conservatism.

And again, it's like these guys, the same guys who are like, I'm a free speech absolutist. Oh, were you? Really? Hmm, maybe not. On the free screen, absolutely, I should also mention this story for the Times this week, which again, Scott Jennings won't like me shouting at the fake news, New York Times. I guess that, you know, I've gone so live. The DHS is expanding its efforts to identify Americans who oppose ICE by sending tech companies legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency.

So the federal government wants to docks anonymous. social media accounts criticizing ice. The apparent origin story of why these tech oligarchs went in for Trump, like if you take them at their word and you don't think it's about money or corruption or autocracy, if you take them at their word, what they say, the origin story was they were so radicalized by Joe Biden's White House, asking them, not telling them, asking them to take down COVID misinformation because that was such a threat to their free speech principles that they had to go in with

the fascists. That is the stated rationale for Elon and Zuck and all these guys going in with Trump. And now the Trump DHS is sending them enforcement requests to out their users. The brand poison for all these organizations that they're engaging in right now, if they think that making Christy Noem and Corley Wendowski happy by turning these names over so they can persecute American citizens, this is the kind of thing that is going to ripple out, I think, And people can stop using platforms when they don't like what they do. And I think they're going to expose themselves not only with the shareholder problems, but to consumer problems.

And down the line, the people that are trying to seek this information about American citizens on the basis of what, the exercise of First Amendment rights. I think there are a lot of bad outcomes here, but I think there are worse outcomes for the people that are doing this inside the government right now. I firmly believe this. I'm not joking or being sarcastic about it. I believe Christy Nome and Corley Wendowski are going to jail. Now that is a Mardi Gras wish.

You know, we can pray to the Mardi Gras gods that Rick Wilson's got something right. Tell me more. I'm interested. Look, I believe that they are engaging in a conspiracy to deprive Americans of their rights. I believe that the criminality about Lee Wendowski and Nome selling off chunks of DHS contracts for God knows how he's doing it. but there have been multiple stories reporting it. And the obstruction of justice now in the states, I think they are going to both be exposed and add in Tom Homan and every other monkey

up and down the tree at DHS who's engaged in this stuff. You know, the violation of Americans' constitutional rights is at scale. And there is an obvious conspiracy to violate those rights. And again, it's not going to happen tomorrow, folks, but there will be a day when the DOJ is not run by Pam Bondi. There will be a day when these people are called to account. State Attorney General's offices as well. What do you say to the people about the partiting?

Right. And I would love our buddy Keith Ellison, who has been blocked by justice now. They won't give Minnesota authorities any of the investigative information on the Alex Preddy killing. Our buddy Keith Ellison needs to go out. They need to indict the DHS and ICE agents who shot and killed Alex Preddy. they do indict them and arrest them. This is no longer a point where he can say, I'm going to wait and cooperate, we're going to try to get together and kumbaya this thing.

No, Keith, you've got to go and arrest these people because they're part of a conspiracy that did deprive Alex Prattie, not only of his liberty, but his life. I'm increasingly convinced that the only way out of this problem is to follow one of my fundamental rules of politics. Pain is the only teacher. These people have to suffer for the criminality and the unconstitutional behavior and for the deprivation of the rights of Americans that they are taking away from them. Because it sure seems to me like ICE is working really overtime to go after people who protest them harder than they are to, quote, round up the bad guys. 7% of the people that have been arrested are the bad guys. Did you ever expect you'd find yourself in a place in life where you're calling Keith Ellison your buddy and you are making an argument that he should be. be more radical than he is acting that you're you're asking to go further.

Tim, I guess it's because we're all just big libs now. But, you know, call me crazy. But I would remember back when I was a burkey and conservative that the rule of law was central to conservative principle, that the rule of law prevented the whims of kings. You kill somebody execution style on the street, then you can't get arrested. That is something that. Yeah, that should be a fundamental principle of the rule of law in America. but who knows with these guys.

The Keith Ellison point you bring up is interesting because what I was going to ask you is anytime I give anyone, you know, our listeners, many of them are cantankerous for good reason. It's been a long decade. So anytime I offer even a glimmer of hope

in this parade of horribles about future accountability, the comments pile up. Well, he's just going to pardon everybody. Can't pardon state crimes. You can't pardon state crimes. Right. I don't know if you recall the,

beautiful, the Halcy and days of the Tea Party, but Republicans used to scream about the 10th Amendment at the top of their lungs all the time, that the states had not only independent judiciaries, but broad rights under the Constitution to pursue their own governance. And that seems to have gone dead quiet in this day and age. Now it's like, what does Daddy Donald want the state to do? That should be what they do. No, this has been a compelling argument to my mind that the pardons are not a compelling argument. The pardons have been issued so corruptly at this point that I think there are probably ways to go at some of these people, even at the federal level on the back end of this, that the pardons become a hollow gift to these people.

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You mentioned the first gentleman of the Department of Homeland Security, Corey Lewandowski, or the second gentleman, I guess. Have you seen that he's still doing his cameos? Do you see this story? In addition to grifting, as you mentioned? Yeah, I saw that. I'm like, what, you and George Santos, Corey?

What the fuck? Have you seen the cameo about his poopies, about helping the kid with his poopies? No, I did not. I missed that one, and I'm kind of glad I missed it. Thanks for the nightmare, few old Miller. Okay. I need to play it for you.

Hey, this message is from Mickey. Mickey, your daddy, Papa Dickie, reached out to me and told me that you're toilet training. You must be a very special little boy, but I hear that you're starting to use the big boy toilet. So congratulations, and you're doing a great job with your poopies. Congratulations. I know your mom is going to be so happy for you, and I want to thank you in advance for being a Donald Trump supporter when you get older. All the best from your daddy, Papa Dickie. Oh my God. So there you go, Rick. Just a little side hustle. You know, he's throwing cash at their friends.

The spokesperson's husband has a contract with DHS. They're flying around on fancy jets together. And in between all of that, he's helping little children with their poopies. You know, Corey's just a man of a thousand talents. And one of them is obviously as the jigolo in chief of DHS. And Corey, as a special government employee, has apparently stretched that little, that fiction to the breaking point as well. What he's basically doing at DHS because you can't check in or badge in,

he's doing the thing that, you know, you did when you were a teenager where you didn't want to pay for the parking garage and you followed the person in front of you. Right. I don't know if you did that if you're a bad teenager, you know, before the gate comes down,

you just sneak on through. Corey is doing that at DHS, so he doesn't have to badge in. You know, I mean, I presume he could just work out of the plane. that they've traveled the country in as well. I think so, or her house.

Yeah. Or the secretary's house. Isn't it interesting that you've got so many cabinet members living on military bases now? It feels fashy. It feels a little fashy. It feels a little fashy, yeah. How does Nome's husband deal with Corey there? Like who sits in the cuck chair?

Like the breath, you mean? Or no, I mean who's in the cuck chair. Yeah, because I just wonder how you'd even deal with his smell around the house. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Who knows? I'm sure we'll learn more about this. And oh, so now they tell us story. There will be tell-alls coming out of this administration on the back end that make everything for the first administration look mild by comparison. Speaking of criming, we're going to talk about our friend Steve Bannon. Will Summer, my colleagues, False Flag Newsletter, another banger. It's just one banger after another.

If you're not signed up for that newsletter, what are you doing? Here's today's on Thursday, a Missouri-based investor, Andrew Barr, filed a lawsuit against Steve Bannon. your friend Boris Epstein, and others involved in the operation of the Fuck Joe Biden meme coin, or FJB coin for short. This gentleman alleged that he had lost $58,730. And 98 cents on the venture. Imagine Steve Bannon being involved in a crypto play that isn't on the up and up. How is it possible?

The complaint says that FJB coin came with an unusually high 8% fee on transactions, but the commitment that it would be divided between 3% in coin management and 5% going to charitable donations, charitable donations. But after Bannon and Nefsheen purchased ownership of the coin, the operators could only produce proof of small charitable donations, angering buyers who thought their money would go to veterans care. Turns out it did not go to veterans care. I am absolutely shocked that Steve Bannon is involved in some shady shit.

I mean, that is so disturbing. to me that that paragon of moral virtue, Steve Bannon is somehow, like I said, not on the up and up. It's a real shocker. I have to say this, you know, I always used to think of a corruption as like the killer app in politics in some ways because it transcended parties. And you look at the sort of rinky dink meme coin shit that Bannon's doing, the Trump boys are adding many zeros to those figures. I mean, they're talking billions instead of millions. they are, you know, raping and pillaging metaphorically, maybe not metaphorically, but they're raping and pillaging on all these Bitcoin plays, all these crypto plays. And so Steve Banner being

involved in a shady crypto deal is like least surprising category of the day. Did you watch any of his Epstein media prep? I sure did. You did? I sure did. And it is a really strange experience to watch it, actually, for me. Yeah, because you and I have both prep people for big challenging interviews and all that crap. And Bannon in those in those moments, even though he's trying to prepare him for tough things, Bannon comes across to me as like a court here. He's sort of like he's always got this sort of like, I would love to be you. You're so powerful. You're so you're so connected. And I find Bannon, you know, repulsive on a hundred different levels. But this relationship he built with Epstein, not only from that that video,

but just the course of the emails back and forth, the course of all of the communications between these guys, it's just so repugnant. Bannon's desire for revenge or power or whatever it was that led him into that orbit was was done fully with the knowledge that Jeffrey Epstein was a monster when he met him, but with the further intent to launder Jeffrey Epstein's reputation into something that wasn't as horrific. And Tim, I just find the whole thing like deeply sickening. Yeah, it is sickening.

And the fact that he's doing this with a child sex predator, obviously makes this so much worse. But just like, even if it wasn't Epstein, like the, speaking of the cuck chair, the obsequiousness. Calling him God. Calling him God. I've never talked to anybody like that. I never, I never puffed up any of my candidates like that. You and I both might be a lot richer if we talk to people like that's true. That's a good point.

I wouldn't have been kicked out of two debate preps if I didn't, if I talked to candidates a little bit nicer. Still, it's humiliating. It really was grotesque and humiliating and just so damn weird. Was Bannon that butt hurt after the Trump experience that he felt like Epstein was the lever for him to have power globally? because that was during the peak of Bannins trying to like really play in Europe and set up his Nazi Hogwarts school in Italy. I had a role in getting rid of that. Did you?

What was it? Yep. A little side roll in getting rid of that. But somebody I went to school with at GW is a senior Italian government official. And I was like, no, let me clarify what this guy is for you. And yeah, yeah. He is a genuinely evil character in our politics. So in that regard, it shouldn't surprise me that he was willing to try to launder the reputation of the guy who was involved in the largest child trafficking ring in American history.

There are no words. It's so cobblanking. It's just like how obsequious he was to absolutely. I think he might have just really been fond of him. He might have had a little man crush on him. I don't understand any other explanation. He might have. One of the last thing about Bannon.

Yeah. Republican behavior today is that shamelessness is a superpower for them. He doesn't feel shame. He doesn't feel guilt. He doesn't feel remorse. He doesn't feel regret. All he wants to do is accomplish his mission. He's like the scabby terminator. And because of that, he doesn't care. He would probably in a private moment say, yeah, Jeff was a great guy. What does your Italian friend think about Maloney? She's been a little better than expecting, right? I mean, Bannon kind of wanted her to be Maga Barbie, Italian Maga Barbie. And she's not really. doing that. And she hasn't been good on gays, but, you know, she's not been that bad.

No, she's not great on gays, but, but she's been much better on NATO and Ukraine. Right. Than the nat pops on our side of the ocean. Yeah. Expect her to be. They really thought because she's charismatic and attractive that she was going to be a great messenger for them. And she's been, she's been stronger for them on a couple of culture war side issues. But the other stuff of governance is where she's put her energy.

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with professional monitoring at simplysafe.com slash the bulwark. That's simplysafe.com slash the bulwark. There's no safe like Simplysafe. On the other side of the coin, here's somebody who's worse than expected. That's a good transition for you. And that's RFK Jr. My colleague Jonathan Cohn in his newsletter this week wrote about how Moderna had developed a groundbreaking vaccine for seasonal flu. The flu shot, which uses the MRNA technology that was made famous during the COVID shots,

is a product of lengthy research and development. it was rejected by RFK Jr. and his bureaucratic goons, one of those unnamed, told reporters on a conference call about this decision that Moderna might have more luck with a second request for approval if the company showed some humility when it made the submission. That's how we're deciding whether or not to approve vaccines now, whether you are nice enough, whether you've said thank you once. Right. Very much the Vance approach. So we do a lot of science stuff in this household. And the last time I checked, it was not about humility. It was about research and testing and scientific rigor. But it all makes sense, Tim, if you look at one key factor, I've determined this a while ago. If you just ask yourself, what would we be seeing from HHS if a serial killer was in charge? And it would be exactly the same shit that RFK is doing. They're killing off as fast as they can the most promising drug development vector for a lot of disease research, which is MNRA vaccines. They're killing off a program that would have potentially led to a cure for multiple sclerosis in this country in the world. They're killing off the requirements in the states for childhood vaccinations. And what they're not killing off with regulatory efforts, they're killing off by increasing vaccine skepticism. because the Maha movement is a lie.

The Maha movement is not about health. It is about a group of people around RFK who are this long-running anti-vax scam, and they are grifters and they are conmen, and they're willing to stack dead children up in this country to keep that con going. How's the measles count in North Florida, your neck of the woods? You know, we've got measles in Gainesville, Florida, which is a big college town, and it seems to be spreading pretty quickly.

We've got measles here in Tallahassee. We've got measles across the state popping up. It hasn't reached the Texas numbers yet, but I think because there's a lot of meth in the water here to push back on the counteract. We are going to see preventable deaths at a scale that nobody in Trump's world will give a damn about. They don't care.

As long as RFK is popular with the base, then he's fine. He can kill as many people as he wants. I mean, we've already seen this. And that's obviously not her publicly. We saw this with COVID. And you see this now. And like the,

when people look back on COVID, and I say this is somebody who is like, not really keen on some of the excesses of, of the, you know, COVID mandates around masking and other things and said so at the time. But like, the fact that the conventional wisdom in this administration

is to look back at COVID and think the problem was that we tried too hard to stop. Right. Like that was, what their assessment is. Like that the million plus deaths, that wasn't the issue. The issue was, you know, in some places, folks went a little overboard trying to prevent deaths. Like, that's their stated position. So obviously that will be their position on this. And look, we had not faced, we had not faced a pandemic like COVID in this country since the Spanish flu in 1917 at the same scale, right? Right. And yes, the government flailed around a bit. They were trying desperately. In

the states as well. We didn't know what was going to, was going to slow the spread. We worked hard at it. And some things, again, were there some excesses of shutdowns or whatever? Absolutely. And the problem is they've now, as you point out, they've taken those lessons and said, well, if we do anything now, including even using the word pandemic, which RFK has taken off of the websites at HHS and CDC, pandemics don't exist anymore because they took them off the website. Okay. We are going to. going to be caught up short the next time there's a COVID or something worse. And they're going to say, but my freedom. I can't wear a mask. I'm okay with lessons, by the way. Maybe we could have learned some lessons. Maybe we're on to sanctimonious going to learn some lessons about all

the excess deaths in Florida after the vaccine was approved. Maybe they could learn some lessons too. And the San Francisco school board could learn lessons. That's something to think about. But now, Uh-uh. Excess dust didn't matter. You have a newsletter that was, we're aligned, you know? So I like that. I like it when we're aligned. Absolutely.

The headline is, be careful we're winning. You observe something I was talking to Bill Crystal about yesterday, which is, I do think that on the pro-democracy side, there's a vibe shift that has happened. You know, just even anecdotally, casually, and on the internet, of course, but even in real life, people coming up to me on the street, you know, it's gone from, how do I flee the country? to like, I think we might be kicking his ass right now. Like, you know, like there is now people are so concerned. There's a lot of things worried.

I don't think there's a lot of hubris about it. But I just think that the vibe is, as they're sensing that, you know, maybe things aren't as durable as they had looked, you know, in spring of 2025. Right. That is also a cautionary tale. So why don't you tell us a little bit about what your take was on that? The point I was trying to make in this piece was that the ground has shifted under Trump. And a lot of it's his fault. It's the tariffs. It's the behavior. It's the corruption. It's the failings across the board to deliver on promises. And Democrats have an opportunity now to not only take the House by a significant majority, but the Senate is also now in danger. It's not as in as much danger as some of the press think it is. But it is a meaningful. We're getting to that next.

Right. It is a meaningful risk factor now that has got the guys at the NRC, our old buddies over there, panicked. They are not happy. They thought that this year could be bad, but now they're realizing just how terrifyingly bad it can be. There has been a snapback of the people that Trump brought over in 2024. Those young Hispanic, young African American men, they're gone. They're back to the Democrats. And further, to the Democrats than they were before. You've seen a lot of this idea there was a permanent realignment in 24 has been just shattered. The multicultural working class. Exactly. The Josh Holmes permanent working class majority. That's why we can't impeach Trump in 2021.

That's not working out. Not working out that well. Permanent governing majority was doing. Maybe they shouldn't be menacing working class Hispanics in the streets with masked thugs and doing an assault on their rights, whether they're here legally or not. But that's probably what you shouldn't do if you're trying to build a multicultural working class coalition. But that could be a factor.

But all that he gained in 24 is gone and then some. But Democrats, I think, are, Democrats are still playing by what I call the My Honorable Friend Rule. My Honorable Friend Across the Isle, it's not a bad person. He's just misled by Trump. No, they're going to try to do very, very horrible things, Tim, in the coming nine months. Trump is going to try to execute on this election takeover idea. And folks, look, every time someone says, there's no way Trump could do X in the last decade, what has he done? He's done X in the last decade.

Or at least tried to do X. I think he's tried to do X. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And again, he doesn't have to even succeed in it at scale, but he's going to try to do it to break the systems that remain in opposition to him. I just absolutely beg our Democratic friends, please do not conflate Donald Trump putting himself in political peril with the Democratic Party brand being something everybody's like, they're the best ever. I can't wait to read the policy guidelines for whatever issue and check out a public.

Appendix 7 of that PowerPoint. They don't care about any of that shit. They need to be telling people, this is crazy. Trump is hurting you. We will fix it. That's sort of my mantra for Democrats right now because people are not, they don't want to talk about climate change or gun control or health care or prescription drugs. And I'm not saying that those things aren't meritorious on some level to have discussions about, but Americans are hurting economically. They're hating the chaos. They don't like the corruption. And those things are right in front of you. And there are easy lifts because as every single day passes, Trump will get crazier and louder and more dangerous. And those things give you a perfect opportunity to say, let's stop the

insanity. It's not going to be read my prescription drug plan. All right. I want to go through that and I have some areas of maybe slight disagreement. We'll hash it out because I look at how the Democrats are responding to this. And I made a little list here of like some positive things. I think they're doing better than they're getting credit for and then some negative things. On the positive side, I do think that there has been real improvement on the, what was your rule? What was it called?

My friend from across the aisle. What's the rule? Yeah, my honorable friend. My honorable friend. I think they've made some improvements on the my honorable friend rule. I think that was a really fair to take last year. You look at Louise Lucas, just an Abigail Spanberger, just going ham on the Republicans. and drawing.

And by the way, I was saying this, and I thought, this is what I can say as a podcaster, but they're not actually going to do this. I was like, they should carve up Virginia so the Republicans only get one seat. I was like, put Southwest and Southside all together and then just carve it up and make it work. And I was talking to a Virginia Democratic congressman

who was like, yeah, that's, I would be for that. But like, is that really, is that actually going to get through the legislature? That's exactly what they did. did. I mean, they just went full bore and said, you want to try to do mid-decade redistricting? Watch this. Yours is going to backfire in Texas, by the like, because you're losing ground with Hispanics, and ours is going to work. Yeah. California and Virginia get high marks. Plus to them, plus to Gavin for starting that out in California. And even the senators, you know, the Mark Kelly's in the world, you're seeing kind of a different attitude. You know, we did the thing last year. You were doing it on your show,

everybody. It was like, well, at least there's Chris Murphy. speaking truth right like when you were talking about the senators it was like only chris murphy is like really understands what time it is like this time last year that's changing is everybody perfect no but like i i just i think sometimes they get a dogged a little too hard on that stuff yeah i mean and i think i think the problem for a lot of people is they see schumer as a guy who is desperately desperately desperately desperately wanting to go back to the normal world that he lived in for 40 years and it's never coming home yeah it's never coming back so I think that's a fair critique.

But I think you're right. There are a lot of younger leaders coming up. There are a lot of leaders in the states that are very promising. And there are a lot of people who are willing to go swing for the fences now on things that are that don't respect the my honorable friend issue. They're like these people tried to kill us on January 6th. Maybe they're not. Maybe they're not your friends. And they killed two of our supporters in the streets.

I mean, what did Donald Trump say? Like what was his message? And they're going after me because they're coming for you. Like that was Trump's message in 2024. I'm the one standing in the way. Well, now the shoes on the other foot and Trump has killed two members of the pro-democracy coalition. I mean, not personally, but like his goons killed them in the streets and they're running

cover for them and protecting them right now. And so, you know, I mean, I think that it's important to take that seriously, obviously, and I think that there has been rhetorical shifts on that front. Here's my list on the negatives. And the first one is you kind of mentioned the Senate. And like there's no successful 2026 without winning the Senate. Like that is my bar. Like that is not a blue wave.

It is not a successful blue wave unless you win the Senate. These are tough seats. They're red seats. Trump won them by 10 points. But they're all places where Democrats had senators in the lifetimes of the senior citizens who are going to be voting with the exception of Texas. But Iowa, Ohio. Sherrod's been a senator like Alaska. They've all had Democratic senators not so, so long ago.

Okay. So you got to figure out a way to win those places. Maine. Maine. And with the exception of Peltola, like the recruitment, I just, Sherry Brown is his own thing.

So that's kind of fine. I put that in a separate bucket. It's like, I guess you can ride you're riding with him. It worked once. I'm a little skeptical. But okay, it's a theory.

I join you in that. I think Ohio has changed. Yeah. Yeah. Where is the seriousness about trying to win these states with people that reflect the states and that shed some of the baggage of the party, fresh faces,

people who aren't, you know, bogged down by having whatever, the Biden position on immigration or any, you know, a number of cultural issues. Like, why not try that? They're all basically run-of-the-mill Democrats running in all of these red states. And I'm worried about that. And when you, I agree with you. When you say that, like, the Senate is not as much in play as some people think,

I think it could be in play, but I'm worried about it. I'm worried about it, too. And, look, I think tying the Senate up, having a smaller Republican, and majority could still be a marginal win. I think you would get some cracks in the in the system there. And if you get it to a tie, you can really start to put the screws to Mercouse. Exactly. You know, I'm never going to imagine that she's going to be our savior.

But, you know, that is a potential also. I don't know how Maine's going to shake out. All I can tell you is in 2020, when we went after Susan Collins from the Lincoln Project, I had more Republicans furious with me. and furious with L.P. Who were like, she's the good one. She's the good one. She resists Trump.

She's not going to be a Trumper. And they all thought she'd lost on Election Day. Her people, who I knew all the people that were running her campaign were calling me like, you motherfucker. I hate you. Well, she won. And I wonder what's going to shake out there. I don't know what your opinion is on it.

I mean, you know, Platner's got major flaws from his character in some ways. but Janet Mills is 400 years old. Yeah, they both represent the two kind of just generic flaws that you would list about the Democratic Party. And like Mills is so representative, the flaws of the Biden era and Platner like has, you know, this baggage and, you know, kind of. Rough edges are one thing, but then. Yeah, and like, pretty extreme. S.S. Tattoo's another. Yeah, exactly.

And that's what he's saying online. So I want the Democrats to recruit regular people who have bad. baggage in their past. I think we're in a different era. So I'm not quite as hostile to Plattenor as some others who share my more moderate sentence. I have not disqualified him in my head, by the way. I just kind of wish he was running in Ohio. Like that goes back to my like, I like, let's try something new. Like have a guy like that running in a red state.

See what, like you're trying that with Osborne actually. He's an independent and he doesn't have the baggage of Platner, but they have a pretty similar profile. And I think that Osborne very interesting. I think Osborne is interesting. My answer is the thing you're not supposed to say as a pundit, which is like, I really don't know. It feels a little risky. Can't we have somewhere in the middle between the 80-year-old and the far-left shit poster? Like, isn't there something? Is there another option? Is there a Goldilocks here? That's where we're like a Tala Rico. If you could clone a Tala RICO in a bunch of other

states, you would do that. You would do that. You would pick that guy. We've all broken our hearts on Texas a million times. But if you get people who are great communicators who are not 80, who are not also blue and on. Right. More Tala Ricos. Yeah. That doesn't feel that. As I said to people in Pennsylvania, you could have had Connor Lamb.

Yeah. You could have. You could have Connor Lamb. Hell yeah. Justice for Connor Lamb. Okay, I have one more nitpick with the Democrats. I just have to do with you because I feel like we're the ones. This is like our obligation as the former Republicans to be the ones to carry this message.

Tough love. I saw this tweet. I saw this tweet from Gavin Newsom yesterday. And I don't think that Gavin sent it. So I don't, I do think, by the way, that Democratic politicians who want to run in 2020 should send their own tweets. But that's a side point. I think his staffer sent it.

Ted Cruz called him historically illiterate. Fuck Ted Cruz. He doesn't know anything. I don't think there's plenty of appropriate replies to that. Gavin's reply was Ted Cruz calling a dyslexic person illiterate is a new low even for him. So I didn't even know Gavin Newsom was dyslexic until he sent this tweet. and the Democrats have to flush out every 26-year-old who sends tweets like this. Right. Stop talking like that. You know, there's a great book that changed my life in politics.

It was written by Bill Clinton speechwriter, got named David Cousnet, back in the late, early 90s. And it was called Speaking American. And it was basically an analysis of how he and the Clinton speechwriting team, had with Clinton's natural instincts, started speaking like Americans. No one says safe space or triggered unironically. No one talks like 26-year-old democratic staffers. This is a new low. Right.

It's like, come on. How dare you, sir? And it's also not a new low. It's also wrong. Like, it's not a new low for Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz has so many lows. Ted Cruz's whole life is lows. Like, just say fuck off.

You like fat body. to Cancun. Whatever. I don't know. I talk about a normal person would talk about Ted Cruz. You douche. I mean, literally, say, Ted Cruz is a dick. That solves the problem.

That is how we speak in America. No one likes you. What did Al Franken say? borrow from Al Franken. I like Ted Cruz better than most of my colleagues do. And I hate Ted Cruz. It's one of my rules of politics is there are two times of people in the world. Ted Cruz and people who dislike Ted Cruz.

There you go. So anyway, I don't want to overanalyze one tweet. It doesn't really matter. It only matters on the principle that there are too many 24-year-olds who came up online who are posting in the candidate's voice talking like they're complaining on left-wing forums, okay, and talking like they're canceling people on left-wing forums. Nobody likes it. Stop doing it.

Either do your tweets yourself or hire people to do the tweets that talk like a normal person. Just be normal. Just, I mean. Maybe only have people do tweets that did not go to private. at university. Maybe that might be a good place to start. State school people do the tweets. Nothing wrong with that.

All right. Speaking of bad tweets, I've got a way worse one than Gavin Newsom's for you. I'd like to close off with. It's always the case. Anytime it's just important always, when you're nitpicking the Democrats to remind people that this is a nitpick and it's annoying, but it is not even in the same ballpark as a congressman from your state, Randy Fine,

who posted this. If they force us to choose comma, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one. She's saying he was going to side with the dogs over the Muslims. You would think that evolution would have snuffed out Randy finds bloodline. Like unclear how, like, his parents mated, how he would find a mate, how he hasn't had a heart attack. He's like, he's a walking fucking heart attack.

How do he finds a chair to sit in? The harpoons, people shout as he walks by. It's unbelievable. It makes me question the theory of evolution that Randy Fine has survived this far. But he might be the worst congressman. Oh, he is. When Randy Fine was in the Florida legislature, his own Republican colleagues hated him with such ferocity that when he announced he was going to run for Congress, they literally had a party at the governor's club about it. They were so thrilled to be rid of Randy Fine.

They hated him so much. And because Randy Fine embodies, he's like fat Laura Lumer, all the conspiracy shit, all the craziness, all the ugliness about other people, about other human beings, that the MAGA incentive system rewards over and over and over again. That system is always like, how can you be the worst iteration of yourself? How can you be the worst person in the room? you know, how can you be somebody who wants to basically call for the murder of Muslims for likes and clicks? He's a deeply, deeply sick individual, by the way. He's a really fucked up guy.

Yeah, I was going to say, I kind of like Laura Lumer better than him. Like, I feel like it's almost an insult to Laura Lumer to call Randy fine fat Laura Lumer. Not that there's anything wrong with insulting Laura Lumer, by the way. I'm just saying. I guess I should say, Shout out. We lost Jesse Jackson this morning. I did a pod with Abby Phillip about him. And I read her book about a, and I got to say, there's a lot that I just didn't know about Jesse Jackson. And it gave me a more full perspective on his legacy as opposed to like the Fox News perspective on his legacy. And it was really valuable. If you missed it, people should go listen to that or check out her book. I don't know if you have anything you want to leave us with on that. Look, I think he was a guy who, in that arc of the civil rights movement, he became a sort of right-wing chivaleth over time, like, oh, it's a race hustler and all that. But you look at what he came out of.

You look at what he managed to build as a guy. You know, both of his sons served in Congress. He's somebody who came up out of the deep south sharecropper civil rights era radical discrimination to becoming somebody who built. something meaningful and, you know, built a legacy in that post-King environment. This does not speak well of us as a country. He became a caricature on Fox. And I think we're going to probably have a better appreciation of him as time goes by than we did. And certainly, I will admit, than I did when I lived in that bubble. Same boat. Rick Wilson, thank you for doing the Marty Grave episode with me. I thought about having JVL, but I was like,

you know, JVL is more of an Ash Wednesday person. and hear me or more of a Mardi Gras person. I do my best, my friend. I hope people enjoyed this show with a Dacquery or a Sazerac or something. Enjoy your Fat Tuesday. We're to see everybody. We'll have a regular show tomorrow. And then I'll see everybody tomorrow night in Minneapolis.

I'm so excited to be with folks up there. It's going to be great. And so everybody, we'll see you all then. Thanks to Rick. Happy Mardi Gras. We'll take you out. Thanks, Tim. With some Louisiana music.

Peace. The Borg podcast is produced by. Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.