The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1051: Pete Buttigieg: Dream Bigger, Talk More Boldly

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

Democrats need vastly more imagination to confront the enormous challenges the country faces politically, economically, and on climate. The party can't just focus on stopping what is happening in Washington. Meanwhile, Trump can't stop insulting the intelligence of the American people, every part of the political spectrum has something to hate about the reconciliation bill, and libertarians need to speak up about a president disappearing people to a foreign black site. Plus, cracking the manosphere, what Biden could've done differently on Covid, and the era of politicians sticking to their talking points is over. Pete Buttigieg joins join Tim Miller. show notes Pete on the “Flagrant” pod on YouTube or on audio Remaining tickets for the live Bulwark show in Nashville on Thursday

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It's Tinker, mayor, soldier, secretary, Pete Buttigieg. What's up, man? I'm doing well. Good to see you. You got a lot of titles now. I don't know what to call you anymore. Yeah, let's just stick with Pete. I get it.

Dad? Pete sounds good. I want to start with news, then we'll get into, you know, whether the Democrats, whether democracy and all that. And I guess those things are related. Over the weekend, Trump, both in a bleat on truth social and in a, and then a kind of a gaggle outside of an airplane, talked about how Putin's gone crazy and, uh, he's not the same man he once knew.

And meanwhile, we got the Wall Street Journal reporting this morning that the US is working on reinforcing Europe's northern front and preparing for an escalating war with Russia as Russia's taking more territory in Ukraine over the weekend. I'm just wondering what you make of all that. I think no one should be surprised to see Putin continuing to play the president. It's really tough to watch. It's again, unsurprising, but still upsetting to see this unravel the way it is. I'm pretty sure I remember Trump saying that he would solve the war on day one.

Like most of what he says, I think even his supporters assume that was an exaggeration, but for it to start getting worse beginning on day one and now be getting much worse as we go into day 150 or whatever this is of his presidency shows what happens when you have someone who doesn't know what he's doing and is incapable of standing up to Putin. Yeah, there's actually, in some circumstances, there's an important distinction between bluster and misjudgment, right? A lot of the Trump's defenders will argue that like a lot of what he says is just bluster and

negotiation and positioning because he's really going to be tough on the back end, right? This doesn't really feel like that situation. It feels like he genuinely got fooled somehow or whatever, or convinced himself that he and Putin were buddies because they went through the Russia collusion hoax together. I can't quite explain it.

That's right. I remember him saying something about how tough that was on Putin and how that really bonded them. I mean, look, one thing we know about Putin is he takes advantage of every situation that he can. He's extremely strategic. He's extremely cold and calculating. And he continues to see an advantage in being able

to run circles around this president. So there's already obviously just the weirdness of Donald Trump and Russia, but alongside that weirdness is a kind of weakness in figuring out how to manage this and even create the impression that he's making any progress. Because yeah, I don't think even his supporters believed him when he said, I'd solve this on day one. But whenever he says, I'm going to fix it on day one, I'm going to solve the war on day one. I'm going to get prices back down on day one.

I think that's supposed to be a proxy for, you're going to see quick results. And we're not seeing quick results. We're seeing it get worse, whether we're talking about prices here at home or whether we're talking about the situation in Eastern Europe. I mean, is there anything that I guess that can be done at, you know, and he won the election, has Congress, has the Senate. I do think that there's a contingent of Republicans in the

Senate that if there's a secret ballot vote, you know, would vote to be doing more to help Ukraine right now. You know, can Democrats on the Hill shame them, pressure them, or do you feel like Ukraine is sort of on their own and it's up to Europe to kind of fill the void here? Look, I think Europe is doing its best to step into the American leadership vacuum that President Trump has created, but I agree. I mean, I saw how much bipartisan support there was for Ukraine having been in the administration when the war, when the full-scale invasion broke out, seen in the Senate and the House, a lot of Republicans who know what the right thing to do is. But look, they know what the right thing to do is on a lot of these issues.

It doesn't mean they're going to step up and do it. Yeah. We'll kind of just pop around the world a little bit. I want to talk about the El Salvador situation. This has been something that's been very upsetting to me. We've been talking about a lot. I'm just, I've been working through like similar to that Ukraine question, what if anything can be done?

And one thing that a couple of people have mentioned to me is that maybe Democrats and our Western allies, Canada, you know, Western Europe, Canada should start signaling to El Salvador that, you know, Trump's not going to be around forever. And if they want to become a prison state where they just put people in a hole with no access to lawyers, no access to due process, then they're going to get treated like North Korea and Venezuela when it comes to trade, travel, et cetera, going forward. What do you make of that?

Like being more aggressive with El Salvador. I think it's appealing, but only if it's credible. I mean, in a way, it reminds me of all of the blowback directed at the Saudi leadership after the killing of Khashoggi. And look, they cared about that. Not enough that they completely changed their ways, but you could tell that the Saudi leadership was taken aback when they realized the extent to which the American public and the world were horrified by those actions.

So I do think there's something to signaling to El Salvador that their leadership could be isolated in the long run, not only in terms of a lot of other countries, but eventually in terms of the United States. If the number one thing people here know about El Salvador is that they did some of the dirtiest of this administration's dirty work. Should maybe Democrats in the Senate introduce like introduce a direct sanctions bill? I hear what you're saying about us, Saudi, but, you know, Saudi didn't start acting like I wish that they would act, but you're right.

I think they did start acting differently. I mean, they haven't killed any other journalists anytime recently. So that's a pro. Yeah. We know. I mean, look, this is, this is, this is all relative. Uh, but you know, sometimes those things matter more than you might guess that they would.

Yeah. Especially because the Salvadoran president emerged on the international scene as kind of a golden boy. I mean, he was being celebrated all around the world before he took a pretty dark turn. And I just can't imagine that you would want to be known in the long run. And remember, this is also a very young leader. I don't think you want to be known in the long run for this kind of thing. You have any other thoughts on what can be done in this situation? I mean, it's pretty,

it's quite unprecedented. I've looked back at the Bush administration, you think about some of the, you know, Abu Ghraib or, you know, what's happening in Guantanamo. I mean, there were black sites, like there are things that happened in the Bush administration that folks that didn't, weren't like privy to, but like eventually, we knew who was in Guantanamo, right? I mean, what is done here is a step beyond that when it comes to human rights, when it comes to like not lack of transparency. I mean, do you know what I mean? Yeah, not to mention rule of law. Not some like abstract international human rights law, American law, right? Says that you can't do this. Then when you put somebody in that situation, says that you can't do this, that when you put something in that situation, you got to bring it back, that due process matters.

And the tough reality right now is that as long as you have an acquiescent Congress, as well as a rogue administration, that third branch of government, the judiciary, can only do so much. Yeah. I do think we're going to get into your visit into the Manosphere in a minute, but I think it was notable that like Rogan pushed back on this, right? Like, I do think this is an area where you can

talk about it, like some Democrats are kind of scared to talk about it because immigration is for a good reason, but like this is unique, I think. Yeah. No, I think it is telling that this is where Rogan has parted ways with the president. And at the same time, I think it makes total sense. Look, something that conservatives and liberals

and libertarians in particular all ought to be able to agree on is that we're horrified by the idea that our government can, without due process and potentially illegally, just pack somebody off to a foreign prison. No matter what they're accused of doing, it is extremely disturbing that they could just decide that the president just doesn't like your stupid face and one day he shifts you to a foreign black site. I think the coalition such as it is that stands behind Trump sees the problem with this. But a bigger question I continue to have is libertarians of the world, like American libertarians, where the hell are you?

If you're not ready to stand up after years of saying that rules on water pollution are government overreach, where are you now that the president is trying to withdraw the broadcast license of a TV station that airs coverage that criticizes him or stuff people into a van and ship them off? Ron Paul. Pete's putting up the Ron Paul bat signal. Where are you? Where are you Ron Paul?

Do you still exist out there? I want to talk about the hill, what's happening on the hill. I guess I could ask a long wind up question, but I might as well just let you cook on the big beautiful bill and what you make of it. It has something for every part of the American political spectrum to hate. For conservatives, there's the fact that it explodes the deficit and the debt even more. One thing that I take seriously from the conservative perspective is the idea that we have to be more responsible about the debt, especially once you cross that 100% debt to GDP ratio and you add and add to it. Especially because

part of why we've been able to get away with that much debt is the rock solid reputation for political and economic stability that the US has enjoyed. Obviously, that's got some holes in it. So, not a great time to be adding trillions to the debt. So, I think conservatives can see how disturbing that is. Meanwhile, most Americans, and definitely most liberals, don't love the tax cuts for the rich that are in there, which is part of why there is such a big debt and deficit. And then you got something that is especially disturbing the liberals, but again, I think the whole country gets, at least most of the country gets, which is that kicking 8 million Americans off of health insurance on purpose is a bad idea.

It's wrong and it's going to make America less healthy and it doesn't make any sense, especially when we know that the reason that they're doing it is partly to fund these tax cuts for the wealthiest. So this is not incredibly complicated, even though a budget bill can fundamentally be very complicated. The facts here are simple. The fact is cutting taxes for the wealthy, destroying health insurance for millions of Americans, and adding to the debt while you're at it is bad policy. I think it's bad politics,

but it's up to those of us who stand in opposition to make sure there's actually a political penalty for getting on board with this sort of thing. Yeah. I think it's insane policy and politics, actually. I truly don't – I kind of think it's insane policy in politics, actually. I truly don't, like, I kind of don't understand it. I was talking to John Chait on Friday and he was like, Tim, you just were blinded by the fact that your whole life, like tax cuts for the rich is a religion among the Republicans since they don't need to rationalize it in any way. And so maybe that's true.

I don't know, like what, like why do you think that they have put forth like this only thing they're going to pass this year? And it goes in direct conflict to what we're about to talk about with regards to the politics of this country about how they are purportedly pivoting to being a more working class oriented party. It just doesn't make any sense. Yeah. It's terrible for working class Americans on every level, whether we talk about, because

take the debt, which sounds like very abstract, right? But working Americans who are hoping to buy their first home are among those who are most going to be paying the bill for the tax cuts for the rich, not just because the tax burden moves, but because you're going to be seeing that likely in the form of interest rates, right? To say nothing of Medicaid, one really important thing to point out about Medicaid, we're talking about a lot of people who any given month might fall out of the work requirements, not because they did anything wrong, not because they stopped working,

but because they don't get enough hours that week or that month. And working class Americans in particular understand that vulnerability, that you don't get to set your own schedule and you don't always get the hours. To have that not only mean you're losing wages, but also that you're threatening with being kicked off of your healthcare. Frankly, it goes to the almost caricature version of the worst of old school

Republicans versus the thing I most respect about old school Republicans, which is the extent to which they talked and cared about liberty. I was saving this. I had a, Tim used to be a Republican policy section at the end of the podcast. We'll just do it right now. Are we going to finally negatively polarize Democrats into really talking about the debt and deficit a lot? It has been an issue that sure, I'll just preempt your answer for me, which is that Bill Clinton handled this better than any Republicans did, but the debt went up significantly under Biden. We're paying a huge amount now in interest on the debt.

That's going to balloon significantly more after this bill, especially if interest rates stay high. That's going to mean that the government can't fund things that are progressive priorities. Yet Democrats sometimes will talk about it if they get asked about it on a new show, but it doesn't feel like it's been really an animating issue for Democrats for a while. Do you think that might change?

Look, Democrats, I think allergy to talking about the debt mostly comes from it having been used as an excuse to not make investments that we believe in. But yeah, now we've made enormous investments in the last few years in roads, highways, bridges, research, chips, all kinds of infrastructure. Some of that being at risk of being rolled back, but we've made massive investments. Those are the kinds of deficit spending that economists would say makes sense in the same way that it makes sense to take out a loan to build your business. But what we're talking about now is watching the mounting debt grow and adding to it with

a massive tax cut for the rich. And to your point, one reason I think it makes sense right now for Democrats to get more comfortable talking about deficits of the debt is that as a rule, we've been better at handling it. Don't get me wrong. I mean, both parties have added to the national debt in spectacular fashion, but- We're grading on a curve. You made it to Harvard, Pete.

We're not. You didn't get- Look, if you look at who's shown the best results of getting the deficit under control or even at certain points running surplus. It ain't Republicans. So Democrats should own that. Father's Day gifts are always the same story for me.

I don't know about you guys. For me, it's a biking jersey, a different bike jersey. My dad's a big biker. And so I try to get fun ones for him. It gets a little bit boring when it's a bike jersey year after year. So this year we're turning to Quince. They make buying a thoughtful gift easy. Quince has all the pieces dads actually want to wear. Polos, European linen beach shorts, and comfortable pants that work for everything from weekend hangouts to nice dinners. The best part, everything

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And I'd purchased a loose little Quince shirt and she was wearing the other day. Tyler didn't even know that I got it for her. And she was wearing it, looking cute. And she was like, where'd you get this? Who got this? Grandma buy this for her? And I was like, no, I bought it.

I got it with my Quince coat. And as it gets Tyler's endorsement, you know, it's pretty hip. So if you've got a seven-year-old looking for some summer shirts, Quince might also be an opportunity for you there. So for the dad or kid who deserves better than basic, Quince has you covered. Go to quince.com slash the bulwark for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's q u i n c e dot com slash the bulwark to get free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com slash the bulwark. onto the Harvard of it all. I'm going to steel man the other side of the argument. Okay. For this, because I went to a safety school, you went to Harvard. Maybe you can speak to

its value a little bit more. Should Harvard be getting all this money from the federal government anyway? Shouldn't Harvard be paying taxes? They have a huge, what is the line that Scott Galloway uses? It's a hedge fund that has a college put on top of it. Should the government be underwriting Harvard anymore? Do the magas have a point on this? So a couple of things.

First of all, when we're talking about this research funding, this isn't paying Harvard money that they get to just sit on. This is, in effect, hiring Harvard to solve problems. So when we've got funding, especially funding that goes to things like cancer research or preventing veteran suicide, which I believe was in the scope of one of the contracts that was put on the chopping block. I think that one was Harvard. We're talking about using the resources and the brain power of that university or any of the other universities that compete for federal funding to address problems that make the American people

better off. It's not about what can the federal government do for the university. It's about what value can the university bring the taxpayer? Because it turns out not just anybody can do some of the incredibly complex research, whether we're talking about what goes on at the medical school or physics or a whole lot of other things. So that's the first thing. The second thing that I think is really important is we're not talking about some clear-eyed analytical assessment of the value we're getting for contracts. I would be on board with that, right? If you're saying like, look, we're funding all this research, but we need to be more

rigorous about how much of that research is actually getting results. I think that makes total sense. But of course, this isn't happening because of anything related to benefiting the American taxpayer. This is happening because of anything related to benefiting the American taxpayer. This is happening because of politics. And if we become the kind of country where university is dismantled because it doesn't line up with the politics of the man who happens to be in charge of the government, we cannot possibly be the world's leading nation.

All right. Our smug vice president has a counterpoint to you on this, so I'm going to read you his tweet. He says, there's an extraordinary reproducibility crisis in the sciences where most published papers fail to replicate. Universities have massive bureaucracies. The voting patterns of university professors resemble North Korea. Many universities explicitly engage in racial discrimination against whites and also Asians.

Universities could see the policies of Trump administration as a necessary corrective or they could yell fascism. What do you say to the vice president? It's just ideological gibberish. I'm sorry, what does it mean to vote like North Korea? Do they even vote in North Korea? What is he talking about? This is ideological gibberish meant to justify an ideological war on American universities.

Look, is there frustration with the academy? Sure. I mean, I feel that. I would love, as somebody who believes in the relationship between big ideas and policies and politics, I actually believe that academia and American universities could be doing much better when it comes to developing ideas that benefit people. I actually think this is worse on the left. What I mean by that is the right, because they felt that there was a powerful liberal

bias in universities, built this extraordinarily rich constellation of think tanks over the last 50 years that aren't just worrying about things like the optimal healthcare subsidy from a conservative perspective. They're worried about things like what is the nature of liberty? Also totally random stuff like whether we're producing enough sperm in our young men. Yeah, obviously their priorities are not exactly my priorities, right? But my point is they're thinking about everything from the biggest of the big questions to very specific policy things. And that's how you get stuff like Project 2025, a very thoroughly

thought through plan, which I hate, but which is connecting their first principles, as they see them, to their political agenda. Meanwhile, on the left, whether we're talking about the think tank world or whether we're talking about universities, there's think tanks that I think are tending to focus on things that are much more narrow, specific and rather technical policy questions. Now, there's universities that are doing a lot of theories about theories that can get frustratingly abstract. So, I get all of that. That doesn't mean that it's okay for the government to go to war with the university because they don't like their politics or for the government to be watching the voting. Why is the vice president of the United States commenting on the voting habits of anybody, any student or faculty member, in

the context of whether federal funding should be going to help prevent veteran suicide in a research project at the medical school there. Why is that his problem? Hey guys, it's Tim and Sarah. We're here with my friend and me, John Lovett from Love It or Leave It. We're bringing you guys all a special crossover collab with the Bullwork and Crooked Media. The Never Trump Rhinos Meet the Self-Important Podcast, bros.

You are definitely the fucking self-important one. June is Pride Month, and we're gonna be live in DC on June 6th for World Pride for a very special live show fundraiser featuring the three of us, plus some gay special guests. This one's a little different. Proceeds from tickets will be donated to support André Romero, the makeup artist who the Trump administration wrongly disappeared to El Salvador and who is currently being held in Sikant.

Crooked and the Bulwark will be donating the proceeds from this fundraiser to the Immigrant Defenders Law Center. Tickets on sale now at crooked.com slash events. These are going fast. So get yours before they're gone. Go to crooked.com events and we will see you all on June 6th. We're about to get to the Democrats next. We've gone through the fact that we're disappearing people to a El Salvador gulag that we're going after universities because of their politics, banning foreign students for coming to universities for reasons, just a terrific tax and spending bill that makes no sense.

And I've listened to all your podcasts recently and you give compelling reactions to all of those things on the merits. What has pissed you off the most? What has gotten Pete's blood pressure up the most out of the last four months? Where do we begin? I mean, part of what is most insuriating is the extent of the insult to the American people. It's not just policies that are going to hurt people. It's insulting people's intelligence.

It's insulting the working voter who knows damn well that if you make these changes to Medicaid, millions of deserving people are going to lose their health care coverage. It's the insult to the American taxpayer with the idea that we're all supposed to pay hundreds or tens of millions of dollars to upgrade a jumbo jet handed over by a foreign government for the president to use that probably won't even be ready until his last year

and then would immediately go to his presidential library. There's a brazenness to this that is insulting. And so it's insulting by design, like to get us just so whipped up that we're kind of losing our minds and we can't be clear headed about a strategy to defeat it. But something about just how little he must think of the American people, and in particular the supporters who he goes to for money and for votes

all the time. He just doesn't deserve them. He doesn't deserve the loyalty of any of the people who trusted him with their vote. I think that's the most hurtful thing. Yeah, policies are bad, conduct is bad, but it's that bad faith that is the worst thing of all. And I think that's one of the reasons why so many people who are conservatives are as disturbed by him as the rest of us. It's just that those of them who are in Congress can't seem to bring themselves to say anything because they're afraid. Why do you think those people are stuck with them?

We're going to get esoteric now because I was listening to, in one of your interviews recently, you said these movements, you're talking about MAGA, doesn't come up in a country where things are going fine. And that sounds nice. That sounds right, that maybe the folks that have turned to him because they went through real struggles and they're just grasping around for any solution, even somebody that doesn't give a fuck about them. But then, the more I think about it, I'm like, is that actually true?

Because over the last half century, we've done better than Western Europe. They don't have a Trump. Yeah, growth-wise, we have. But look at the inequality, right? Anytime you see this level of inequality, usually that's the beginning of the end for a republic if it happens in a democratic country. The truth is, while I would like to think that my party has better policies to deal with inequality and is more concerned about it, the reality is it has gotten worse on the watch of

republican and democratic administrations in a way that I think motivates, maybe not justifies, but motivates an attitude that says like, burn the house down. Like there's this cynicism, right? Now there's part of it that I think, I think deserves to be taken seriously. There's another part of it that is just the way our relationship to reality and information has changed.

Right, the fact that we're not getting information mostly from sources that consult both sides and talk about what they have to say and subject everything they print or repeat to editorial standards. We're just not in that world as much. I think that's really made a big difference. You put those things together and it's a recipe for kind of cynicism. But it's one thing to get mad and say, all right, let's burn the house down. It's another to actually be around when that happens.

And I think what we're seeing is a lot of people getting hurt by it. They'll be hurt by it more, although, you know, there's been a show of political savvy by the Republicans setting some of these bombs to go off in 2029, which means they know that that policy is going to hurt a lot of people. And they don't want it. They don't want it politically to happen before the election, right? This is the kind of thing that I think translates that general frustration into a terrible consequence. I don't necessarily think that's wrong, but here's what's unsatisfying about it, right?

Is that if you look at the last, there's a New York Times story, if you look at the last three elections in a trend, only the counties with the smallest proportion of college grants have turned more Democrat. It's mostly suburban counties where I grew up, suburban Denver, suburban Atlanta, that have moved Democrat each of the last three elections. In two-thirds of the least educated counties, it's been the Republicans that steadily grew their vote share in each of the last three elections. And so if you're saying that the answer is that like, well, it's just been this widening

inequality gap that has turned these folks to Trump. The Republicans aren't even really offering any solution to that, right? So like why? So there's gotta be something else. There's gotta be something cultural. It can't just be money. Oh, of course not.

But this is what they do, right? So I agree on the cultural part, but just to close the loop on the money part, one thing they're very good at is taking a problem, seeing it get worse and using it, right. The more inequality there is, the better for somebody like Trump. Just like the worst things are at the border, the better for somebody like Trump politically. We've seen that pattern again and again, but I agree on the culture part too. Look, Democrats have created this impression, I think, partly because of the way we feel and talk about Trump, have

created this impression that that translates into the way we feel and talk about people who support him. And that's the thing that I think really is a cultural struggle in our party. There's this sense of condescension. I mean, if I hear one more time, like a well-off liberal doctor or lawyer saying, you know, that quote unquote, these folks are voting against their economic interests, I just wonder whether they were contemplated the fact that somebody could turn around and say, so are you.

There's a condescension that is imputed to Democrats that I think we really need to deal with. So much of politics is not just how you make people feel, but how you make people feel about themselves. So much of what they think of you comes down to what they think you think of them. Largely because of our very justified horror at the abuses of Donald Trump as a candidate and as a president, we've said and done things that make voters feel like we're talking about them when we're talking about him.

This is a conundrum. It is an easy thing to say, right, that Democrats should not be condescending when talking about folks that voted for Trump. And I get that it's like the right thing to do in the sense of like, if you're in fourth grade, that's what your teacher would tell you. Like you have to be nice to your fellow classmates that made a really dumb decision

and that we try to teach our kids that. And yet, like they've nominated the Republicans like one of the stupidest, most cruel, most like totally morally indefensible Americans for president three straight times. Like even after he's committed obvious crimes, even after he's like insulted people and he's so mean, it's like he's condescending and mean to people the way he talks about Baltimore or whatever the media, you just name the list of people that he talks about and he just

makes stupid nicknames up about people. So the Democrats have to be nice to the people that elected like the stupid, cruel biff from back to the future, and they don't have to do the same. The way I put it is that we need to call out to what's best in people, because we already, the lane for calling out to what's worst in people

is already taken. First of all, it's not for us. And secondly, we're never going to be as good at it as he is. So even the insulting and cruelty on his side is done in a way that I think a lot of people feel like, well, they can sort of get in on it, which is also a dynamic that takes me back to fourth grade or maybe seventh grade. One way to not be the object of insults is to side with whoever's throwing the insults around.

This is really classic schoolyard stuff, right? That we're being thrown back into. What would have been satisfying though for somebody just to punch the fucking bully in the face in fourth grade? Like isn't that after a while, after many years, that's one thing if they're mean on the playground for like one day, but then it's third grade they're mean, fourth grade they're mean, fifth grade they're mean, sixth grade they're mean, seventh grade they're mean, eighth grade they get elected class president.

Ninth grade, don't you want somebody to fucking clock them in the face? So look, bullies are powerful temporarily, but rarely durable, right? Like, yeah, sooner or later that catches up to them. And I think we will see that like this relationship that Trump has built with his people is not the kind of thing that builds a lasting political movement. I think part of another thing my side needs to be thinking about is when he exits the political scene, which one way or the other is going to happen, he will not be active in American politics 15 years from now. Fingers crossed, baby.

Fingers crossed. What would we want to see? And then figure out how to bring that a little closer into the near future. Barron is going to be the main figure 15 years from now. You know, you got to help me. You were 29 when you won the mayor's race, right? How old will Barron be in 15 years? 34? watch out.

All right, I mentioned Biff from Back to the Future. We're gonna play Back to the Future game. Was that a cultural touchstone for you as a child, as an elder boy? Not really. Not really? Back to the Future? Okay.

We won't spend too much time on it then. And there's a DeLorean in the movie, Michael J. Fox gets in a DeLorean. It's a car. He gets to go back in time. You use the DeLorean to go back in time. So I'm giving you a DeLorean and we are going to go back to like right after Biden gets the nomination in 2020. So, you know, you just endorsed him.

He hasn't picked vice president Harris yet where the whole, the world is our oyster, we're in the middle of COVID and you're Pete from today and you get to talk to Pete from back then or maybe Biden from back then and you get to give them some advice, give them some advice that would maybe prevent us from having this current president. What do you think you all should have done differently? One, for the love of God, figure out a way to get the schools open sooner. We got very knee-jerk about this and the costs were not just politically, but in a profound way, I think for the generation, the costs were profound. And I think anybody who was involved, who was by the way, obviously doing their

best to deal with the crisis that killed a million Americans, but I think most people involved would like to be able to have found a way to safely get more schools open more quickly. That was a great first answer. I had no idea where you, I mean, there's so many ways you could have gone with that, but that is a good, that's a good one. I didn't expect you to say that. Obviously pay more attention to the border. That's real.

And that's going to be something that you can't just like take your time to deal with. These are all things by the way that is super, you know, policy-wise and politically, we have the benefit of hindsight to point to a lot of this, right? Sure. Three, even though you spent your entire political lifetime believing that the economy and jobs are the same thing, and if you have lots of jobs, it's a good economy, and if you have a problem with jobs, it's a bad economy, remember that prices is just as big a part of the economy, it just hasn't come up much in the last 40 years.

Right? What would you have done differently in prices then? What could you have done differently? No country was able to save their economy from COVID without getting into some inflation, some serious and painful inflation. But I do think that there were a lot of moments where people kind of waved it away in the first

year or two, even just like the conversation about it, the focus. It is true that we had no choice but to bring back the economy by any means necessary. We forget how grave the threat of a depression was in 2020 or 2021. When I came in, I spent a big part of my time as secretary dealing with getting airlines to treat their passengers better. You could almost forget that the entire first year, our biggest focus was making sure airlines didn't go out of business. And that's just to use the airline sector as an example, right? So again, by definition, you set up this exercise, it's easy to say now.

Yeah, sure. But like, since it is, those are the things I'd be whispering into my 2020 year, if I had the chance. So not do less with BBB or not the inflation or whatever, what became the inflation reduction act. Look, if you had to choose between doing too little and doing too much, doing too much was the better answer. And so I don't think we should have built fewer roads or bridges.

Let's do some more maybe controversial political ones. Should Biden have been encouraged to pick an attorney general that would have more aggressively gone after Trump earlier, specifically over the insurrection? I don't know if Stormy Danielson was on this stuff, but specifically about January 6th. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to play out the counterfactual, right? It's like one of these Chinese finger traps where the harder you pull, the more you get stuck.

And there was a sense that the more aggressive the administration was, the more he would seem to be justified in saying that it was all political. Now, you got to weigh that against the fact that he was going to say that no matter what. But also there was an important principle at play here, right? Which I think the president really believed in, and which I believe in, which is that an administration, like a political body like a White House, should have as little to do as possible with anything to do with prosecutions. That's the principle that he followed, arguably to a fault. But I get the principle and it still matters. Should somebody have primaried President Biden or thrown their body in front of the tracks

of the re-elect? I mean, look, somebody did, and it didn't get very far, right? Well, Dean Phillips tried to recruit other people. Dean's defense, I was pretty harsh on Dean. So look, we're all reflecting. And I had him back on and I said this joke. I was like, I don't know if the way that he ran was really the right way. And I stole some nitpicks about it.

But like in his defense, he went and tried to recruit other people that were more famous and more better suited than Dean Phillips, and none of them wanted to do it. And in retrospect, maybe should folks have been more interested in those meetings, or should something else have happened? I don't know. I mean, look, again, easy to say with the benefit of hindsight, right? Of course, easy to say. And we can run all the different scenarios that could have happened.

Well, here's the thing, Pete, like I hear you. Sure. It's easy to say the benefit of hindsight. Like these are kind of important questions because it's like, how do we avoid this in the future? Right. And how do you, how do you Democrats be more clear-eyed about not losing to populist demagogues in the future?

And I listened to those answers and you go back and you say, well, we get kids in school earlier, that would have been, that's smart, that would have been better, but you know, on the edges, you do more stuff on immigration and prices. Biden still runs. Trump is still the president right now. And I just gave you a DeLorean. You get to go back in time and try to save us from Donald Trump 2.0. Yeah, but you sent me to 2020.

Where do you want to go? Where do you, you can put in the dots. You can put in a different date. Where do you go to? How do you stop it? In 2020, I literally did run in a primary against Joe Biden and he beat me. Sure. But how do you, but okay, so this is inevitable. The course of history is inevitable. There's no contingent thing we could have done to stop it.

I'm not so sure that if COVID had been handled a little differently, and again, this is easy to say now, and being on the side of vaccines and science was the right thing to do. But if we'd seen some of those other knock-on effects related to the COVID response and understood how the border was going to play out and understood in advance with a crystal ball, how to talk about and work on prices, I'm not so sure that things would have been the exact same in terms of an election outcome that swung by, you know, at the end of the day, relatively small number of votes in a small number of counties and a small number of states.

Yeah, maybe. This takes us to the Andrew Schultz podcast, which I listened to all three hours of. I don't get three hours with you, unfortunately. I'm going to take it up with your team, but maybe we'll do one hour a month or something. But it was really interesting. And I want to talk about those guys in a second. But one of the specific things they were asking you was about like, what's the Democrats version of build the wall? And I just kind of want to like add onto that, which is listening to this now, I don't know, like Trump for all of his

flaws is not limited by having ceilings on his imagination. I mean, the dude instigated a riot at the Capitol, got indicted four times, put a picture of his mugshot on a t-shirt, and got elected president twice when his only experience was a reality show host. He dreams big dreams. Say what you want about him. I sometimes feel like the Democrats, when I'm listening to interviews like this, we're like, what should the Democrats do differently?

It's very incremental dreams. Little things we could have done on the edge, nibbling around the edges. And I don't like, is that an issue? Like, don't you think that the Democrats could maybe have a little bit more imagination about things they could do? Yes. Look, especially at this moment we're in. And I think we see the big developments mostly in terms of the fear and the downside, whether we're talking about the political space and the rise of Trump, or stuff like climate, which is a massive problem, which we see mostly in terms of the harm,

or AI, which we're talking about mostly in terms of something to be afraid of. And there's plenty to be afraid of there. But I think that when we're confronted with that level of challenge, it requires an enormous level of imagination, the same way that colossal, horrific challenges like the Great Depression and World War II led to the set of policies and institutions that were built that we seem to still be clinging to, to try to save from destruction when actually they're already almost gone. And they will pretty much completely be gone by the time this administration is done with it. So what would we be doing not just to patch up something that we

inherited from three generations ago but to start over knowing that everything is different now in terms of our own political landscape, in terms of what's happening in the climate and importantly, potentially in terms of the economy. You look at AI and again, lots to be really troubled by. But we can't just run the same playbook that we ran in, let's say, the 90s to try to deal with what technology and trade did to manufacturing in places like Northern Indiana, where I come from. We could be offering a future where there's a dramatically shorter workweek and more money in your pocket

at the same time. That's a thing that could actually happen, if and only if we have the right set of policies. And unlike building a wall, that's something we'd actually get done. So we do need to dream bigger and talk boldly about it. And not just in terms of what we're trying to stop, which is all Democrats can think about right now because of the horror show that is Washington, but what we're actually trying to accelerate and deliver and build. I think there's something here, because this is what I'm interested in your take on this. So I'm listening to this podcast, these guys, and some of the listeners haven't heard. I can't imagine all of my listeners listening to all three hours of the flagrant podcast

with Andrew Schultz, but I'll just sum it up. These guys, man, I don't even understand why they voted for Trump at the end, really. Like over the course of the conversation, they were open to almost all of the policy items that you laid out. And it felt like there was this just huge culture. This is back to the cultural gap. Like there's this some cultural gap and I just don't know how to bridge it.

And you spent all that time with them. I'm wondering what you think about it. Totally. And it's true, not just for them, but for so many people, especially young men, that they are kind of a cultural stand-in for. It was true with a lot of students I've been spending time with.

I was at the University of Chicago. I was teaching there one day a week this spring. I made a point of spending time with college Republicans. And you would see a lot of people who voted this way, who are actually, they're not voting for Trump because they interned at the Heritage Foundation. They're not even conservative. They were, you know, for reasons we've talked about a little bit, like Trump may have spoken

to these guys, but they are not committed Republican voters. It will be habit forming if we don't earn their support back and it happens two or three times in a row. But when I'm talking to these guys, they went that way last time, they could totally go a different way next time. Because policy-wise, like most Americans, they agree with us most of the time on most of the big issues. What was it like off? And you talked to them for three hours, you probably didn't have much time off. No, it was the same thing. I mean, it was the same thing. We came in, yeah, we were hanging around, maybe a half hour before we settled in. It was the same thing as when the podcast was rolling,

we were just bullshitting and talking about stuff and swapping stories. And I mean, part of what I really enjoyed about that experience was that it didn't feel like being on a show. But part of what's important about it, like legitimately important about formats like that or Rogan, these three hour formats is it is literally impossible as a matter of physical and psychological stamina to stay on talking points for three hours. If you're even trying, that'll show pretty quick, which is probably why not everybody wants to do it. I think the kinds of leaders who aren't trapped in talking points and don't

mind just saying what they think about stuff, even if you say something wrong every now and then, are more the people who are going to thrive in that environment. For sure. And I should just say, as much as I want it, I would want to hang out with you for three hours, Pete, and bring the kids in and let Chas to come in and just bullshit about drag race or whatever's happening in your life right now, cleaning up after the kids. I do a daily pod, so Jason can't really turn around three hours at a time. So that's more on me than on you. I don't think there's a ton of editing.

I mean, the other moment that really demonstrated to me how truly different this format is, is when Andrew Schultz just like got up in the middle of the interview to go to the bathroom and we just continued the conversation with the other guys who were there. Oh, is that what was happening? I heard, because I was listening, not watching.

I heard some like scuttle, but I couldn't tell what was going on no he just yeah I think he had to go to the bathroom then he came back in a couple minutes we kept talking the whole time right I mean that nothing could better demonstrate the fact that this is literally has more in common with sitting around with friends over a beer than it does with going on CNN do you feel like there's a puzzle like to me it's just such a tough nut to crack though because like I've just I'm spending a lot of time thinking about this. One of my friends is friends with

Theo Vance. I've got to hang out with him just a little bit. He's one that's similar to one of these shows. And again, similar to Schultz. It's like, this is a totally different animal than Ben Shapiro or something, right? Like some are Charlie Kirk. Some like somebody with a coherent right wing ideological vision who would be Republican if it was JD Vance or Nikki Haley or whatever, they would contort themselves to it. Like that's not what these guys are. And it's but it's like okay so if the policies are aligned like what is it like to the Democrats seem to just find somebody who is like more culturally suited to them to go hang out. I mean I don't know like do you have a

theory? I get how do you crack the nut? What is it? Yeah I mean there's that's a classic dynamic, right? The message and then the messenger and like, turns out the tone and the messenger matter a lot. And even if the message is the exact same in terms of policy, two different people will take it to very different places and get, you know, cover a different distance depending who those two people are. So I think part of it's that.

I do think part of it is how this stuff kind of flows out in the information ecosystem, I'm growing obsessed with this question of how much the attention it's that. I do think part of it is how this stuff kind of flows out in the information ecosystem. I'm growing obsessed with this question of how much the attention something gets is organic, by which I mean like you say the right thing in just the right way and it just catches fire. And how much of it has to do with money being spent to amplify certain clips from certain people and certain getting to certain viewers, right? And like both of those things are going on, right? So strategists on my side shouldn't be naive about that part, like the paid part. What'd you make about that, that there was that memo going around,

it was a 20, we're sending 20 million bucks on reaching men, like they're kind of animals in a zoo. I can't even forget that. What was up with that? Look, everybody's scratching around the same problem. They're asking the right questions. I'm sure some of the answers and projects people come up with that? Look, everybody's scratching around the same problem. They're asking the right questions. I'm sure some of the answers and projects people come up with will be good.

Some of them will be half-assed. But I think the other important thing to remember is we have a way of always fighting the last war and dealing, you know, the same way that like in 2017, we were like, oh, we should be paying more attention to Twitter. I hope we can do a little more of the, you know, skating to where the puck is going. I want to, I just want to pull it up so I get it exactly right. The prospectus for a $20 million effort was codenamed Sam, speaking with American men, a strategic plan.

I mean, this is like, this is fucking ridiculous. I mean, what is that? What are we doing? Well, there's nothing wrong with a strategic plan for speaking to American men, but obviously, there's something, there's some questions about... maybe just speaking would not be the strategic plan. I don't know. My approach has been to like, go there. Again, we're always fighting the last war, right? I think what we really need to figure out is in 26, in 28 and beyond, what are the things that are really going to shape what it's like to be an American? And some of that is obviously what's going on in

our politics. And a lot of that is what's about to be an American. And some of that is obviously what's going on in our politics. And a lot of that is what's about to happen with technology. And I think even now we're underreacting because this AI stuff, it's not something most people experience as a tech issue. It's something they'll experience as a radical change in what it's like to get or do a job. And a lot of things that I thought would happen

in the 2050s are looking like thought would happen in the 2050s are looking like they might happen before the 2020s are over. And that's got to be factored into all the stuff we're thinking about that we learned the hard way in 2024. I want to ask about AI next, but I just have one more question about the bros. Because I'm just, again, it's a puzzle I'm trying to crack. I think that they're negative polarized against the progressives in their lives that they don't like that annoy them. They're like writing their finger at them and maybe like just kind of talking to them about policy actually doesn't, wasn't work. Maybe the right thing to do is negatively polarized them against Trump and make them

realize that the MAGA folks don't, aren't actually looking out for the best interest. They want to ban porn. They're like too stupid to, you know, address AI. I don't know, whatever. We can think about what the different negative polarization efforts are. Isn't that easier though than being positive? Of course, we should be talking about how, yeah, if, you know, Speaker Johnson got his way, it wouldn't be possible, not just for gay people to get married, but for straight

people to get divorced, let alone like birth control or how he would want to regulate porn or whatever most people would have a problem with. But you know, whether talking about that or cuts to Medicaid or cuts to veterans or any of the other like wildly unpopular stuff they're doing, no question, we should be all over it and I will be. But if you're looking at things we haven't done enough of as a party or as a movement, negativity with regard to Donald Trump is not one of the areas I would say is a big deficiency. Not to is a big deficiency.

Not to have to have some deficiency. Oh wait, I lied. I had one more thing about Andrew Schultz. Bernie also went on the show. He was asked this by Andrew, could we not also say ostensibly there hasn't been a fair primary for the Democrats since 2008? Are they not also a threat to democracy? Bernie replied, yes, fair enough. I'm not going to argue that point. And that's why I'm an independent. That's insane. I, isn't it, isn't that crazy that, that that was his answer? Yeah. I mean, it's Bernie being Bernie, right?

I mean, he, uh, says a lot of things that most Democrats would agree with, but he's not a Democrat and, uh, you know, has, has a very different way of thinking and talking about, uh talking about the party. You have had fair primaries since 2016 was a fair primary, 2020 was a fair primary. These were free and fair votes, right? I would argue it would have been a little fairer to me if they'd gone ahead and counted the Iowa caucus results more quickly and more accurately, but I don't feel like somebody's like nefariously rigging it to prevent me from, it was just everybody's got a beef with the DNC.

I'm not going to be somebody who says like everything was perfectly fine with that process. I was on morning Joe the next morning, calling you a winner. All right, I was looking out for you, but I'm also not a Democrat. So you know, maybe that was some clear-eyed ability there. All right, back to the AI thing. She said something interesting. I don't want to lose the threat. So what I'm worried about is information, people being able to figure out what's true and what's not. And what I'm also worried about is loneliness and like young people with CHAP GPT becoming their best friend and not actually getting on the world meeting humans. And what I'm excited about is some of the stuff you talked about, medical research and who knows what potential options are.

So talk about what your worries are and how you react to that. So I share the things you just said in terms of both the worries and the upsides. But I would say the biggest thing that I think could be ultimately the most consequential upside or the most consequential harm is what happens when machines can do so much more, including lots and lots of white collar work. So that all that really matters is who owns the machines. And by machines, I really mean, you know, it's the intellectual property as well as the server farms and all that. Because one of two things will happen. Either we have even more enormous concentration of wealth and therefore power into an even smaller

set of hands. I mean, if you think social media did a lot to drive wealth into a tiny number of pockets, think about what happens when a handful of people literally own technology that can do most things that workers now do. So that's a pretty terrifying scenario where we all, no matter what's going on with our campaigns and elections, wind up being just like the playthings of these oligarchs. Or another thing that could also absolutely happen is we figure out a way to deal more of the American people into the enormous value that's being created here in a way that means that for most Americans,

this means more economic security. It means less work, more money in your pocket. And then we work on the other big issue, which is what do you do with your time? Which Americans have really struggled on. Since World War II, we've gotten five times more productive just in pure terms, you could work one day a week now and generate as much economic value as it took all week then.

And yet we don't work fewer hours, right? We took all of that and used it to have a higher standard of living and just work more. But what if we actually had more time to do things that actually conservatives do a good job of talking about, you know, focusing on family and neighborhood and faith, community, whatever matters in your life, right? We can set ourselves up for that, or we can screw it up and get into a really dark place. I know it's out of the bed,'m on, but you're the politician. You have more optimism. Your job is to have the optimism. Why?

I don't know. I, that was a compelling answer and I was more, more drawn to the former as a likely outcome, unfortunately. Well, I mean, that's up to us, right? I mean, these, these are choices that societies make and, and we're technically a democratic society. So the choice is literally up to all of us, at least in theory.

All right. We're going to do rapid fire on a couple of quick topics and I'll let you go. This one, there's a narrow corner of the internet in my world, neoliberal, never-Trump-er, anti-red tape world that overlaps with something that you oversaw as Secretary of Transportation. This is the Jones Act. It's a US law that mandates that cargo transported between US ports must be shipped on vessels that are US-built, US-owned, US-flagged and crewed by a majority of US citizens. Yay, USA! Wave the flag. The problem with that is that makes things a lot more expensive for everybody. It's a 1920s law and it's 2020. What do you think of the Jones Act? The Jones Act exists to support that US industry, that we have more ships crewed by Americans doing shipping. Otherwise, we probably would have nearly zero US flag vessels. So

it's important. Is it a roundabout and complex way to achieve that policy? Yes, it is. Is it worth it? I think it is. But let me also say that we could be doing so much more to build up American shipping and shipbuilding. One of the handful of things that I would actually say is the right, at least the right body language. I don't know if they can pull it off, but the right theoretical idea is what this administration is saying about shipbuilding. We did some of it. When I was at DOT, I was constantly talking to the Secretary of Navy about how we could beef up a US shipping industry. We purchased training vessels for the US Department of Transportation that were built in the Philly

shipyard that helped create a lot of work and a lot of shipbuilding capacity in the Philly shipyard. But it takes too long and costs too much to build ships in the US compared to Asia and we got to get better at that. So we should have a much more robust merchant marine commercial shipping sector and US flag fleet in addition to the military side. That is clear and I think inarguable. The Jones Act is a complicated way that we support that but we could be doing a lot more and then we might be less reliant on it. All right so let's just build more ships let's do a chips act but a ships act. I love, but a ship's that I can get rid of the Jones Act The ships act and then we can meet us in the middle. This is how this is how things used to work

You know where two sides would get together you we'd meet in the middle. Yeah, where's the smoke-filled room? Okay, we're open to it All right. Do you have a pet policy? I brought up the Jones Act You have a random little niche pet policy having been in the transition. Yeah digital ID Tell us about it. One of the basic jobs of government is to establish that you are who you say you are authentication, right? We do it in the most jumbled, screwed up, antiquated and insecure set of ways. We have papers birth certificates in like drawers and county health offices to establish who we are.

And then in our day to day, we have drivers licenses that are different in every state and you're supposed to have one with you drive or not. And then online, the ultimate way that the kind of master password for everything is your social security number. But that means if somebody knows your social security number, which is the nearest thing we have to an ID number as a citizen, they can get to just about everything and you're screwed. This is insane.

And nobody would have come up with this on purpose, on a clean sheet. There are a lot of other countries that do better. Ukraine, actually, what you can do with like a QR code in a secure way with digital ID makes what we have in the US an embarrassment. A lot of the best countries on this are actually Eastern Europe, Estonia, Latvia,

they've been doing it, but India, they're rolling out stuff. And they got a billion people. Yeah, the Estonians are like, that's like, I feel like they're visiting us from the future when I talk to the Estonian data people. So I know it sounds like a nerdy niche thing. I actually think a lot of things that have intense political and economic consequence from the ability to access Medicaid and food benefits in a safe fraud-free way to voting and election security. Those are all implicated in the need for us to improve our screwed up upside down system of ID and authentication.

I love that one. Okay. That wasn't that rapid though. We're going real rapid on the gay stuff. Then we're out of here. We have a gay rapid fire section and then we're out. I received an email this morning from a trans person that's really concerned and upset about the all gender transition care that's being cut from Medicaid as part of this new bill. This stuff is really touchy. I think Democrats are afraid to kind of talk about it now for good reason, maybe politically, because what you saw happened to common love. I wonder if you have any thoughts on that part of the Medicaid cuts.

Healthcare is healthcare, and you should be able to get healthcare. And if you and your doctor agree that you need a service, then you should be able to get it. And attacking that as part of this legislation is just one more example of politicians stepping on somebody's face in order to try to get ahead politically. Pride is pride back.

I feel like we had a moment where we were getting, it was getting a little, it was getting a little stale. You know, you had the Lockheed Martin pride float going through town. Yeah, it's getting a little corporate. Yeah, a little corporate. So, but now that they're going after DEI and you're a little, there's a little bit of fear that the Trump administration will go after you. I kind of feel like pride is going to be back this year. I don't know. What do you think?

Yeah, maybe we'll have a little more of that political edge to it. I mean, it started out as a protest, right? So we'll see. The beard have, I don't know, Chastain, other gays on the internet. I mean, what, how's, how have the gays been responding to the beard? Yeah. So it's, it's basically Chastain and the internet gays seem to be strongly pro in our household. The, the other strong vote in the other direction is Penelope who says it's too, our daughter who says it's too scratchy when I kiss her at bedtime. Our son has yet to weigh in, interestingly,

so there's a swing vote here around the house. And, uh, my mother has been like very, like judiciously silent, which makes me think she's like on team no beard, but, uh, we'll see. That sounds like my relationship with my mother. All right. So then let's just end on the parenting. I have, I don't know if you've been able to

hear, unlike Andrew Schulte, I didn't get up to P, but I have the, uh, seven year old, I think has been playing the drums, like squeezing a loud chicken. There's some other unidentified noises right at the door. I'm working for home. I assume you've got, are they running around over there? What's it like? Yeah, they're, they're at school, but they definitely contribute sound effects.

They're still in school, May 27th. That's nice. We're out. It's over now. It's summer vacation. It's summer vacation. It's brutal. Oh yeah. Well, look, we still have the snow tires on around here.

So summer comes a little bit late to Northern Michigan. What has been the most just delightful part of, I guess we're coming up on year four, four for the kids. Yeah, we're coming up on four. They keep talking about it. Although Gus, for some reason, keeps talking about being five. He's like, wait, wait, birthday. And then after birthday it'll be five.

I think the most delightful part is like, how like there's, well, one thing I'm enjoying is that they're starting to make sense, but not completely. Like they can tell stories, but you have to like sift through the story to try to figure out what's at the bottom of it. Like Gus was asked, talking about leprechauns. He's like, do you know what a leprechaun is?

I was like, yeah. And then he told me what a leprechaun is. It's like it plays a trick and it takes something and then it runs so fast. And then the gingerbread man catches it and it turns into a zombie. And I'm trying to like derive like what the backstory was to why.

How I got to the zombie. So there's just all this randomness. But the other thing is like, they're just they're at this age, which can be like a randomness. But the other thing is they're just at this age, which can be a tough age, as you know. They're just like, they don't quite listen. They run around. They're always worried they're going to get hurt. But everything is amazing.

Everything can be wonderful. They can teach us such utter joy in, I don't know, blowing bubbles or seeing an excavator. And I try to get more in touch with that as a grownup and remember that, like we should, wasn't it GK Chesterton said we should imitate the wonder of small children? Like there's nothing like having small children around to help you do that. That's so delightful. Mine right now is on words. She's having, we're reading, we're learning the words and synonyms. It's a brain teaser for me. Like last night we were doing,

she was like the word season. She's like, we season the food, but also it's a season of a TV show. Yeah. And spring and summer is a season. And how do those things relate together? And do you spell them the same? And so it's just delightful. Like I just had my first one of those, we were doing right and right. And like Gus put it together that like the word we use for the right side is the same as the word we use for correct. And it, uh, I didn't have a great answer for him on how to keep that straight.

I know it's tough. Um, we need a, I need, well, you should be better at that than me. I mean, you do seven languages. You can't, can you not do language origins with him? Just trying to stay on top of English right now. Okay. All right. That's Pete Buttigieg. I appreciate it so much the time, man. Um, let's keep checking in and, uh and we'll see you soon. All right. Sounds good. Great seeing you. Take care. All right. Thanks so much to Pete Booterjudge. That was a delight. Maybe three hours in the

future. We'll see how it goes. Everybody else, we got a double header tomorrow. I will be doing it from Chicago where we've got a live show with Adam Kinzinger tomorrow night. So, you'll get Adam Kinzinger on the pod on Thursday. And I think there's still a couple tickets left for Nashville on Thursday. So if you, you know, I don't know, have a hankering, you have something happening in your life. You're like, I just need 24 hours with Tim in Nashville. You can just pop on a plane. I think you better get that ticket now. So thanks again to Pete. We'll see everybody back here tomorrow. Peace. How I said them so they would hurt But then, I regret my actions Hey, I regret my actions

If I could press rewind, rewind the tape Redefine the line, remake my fate Take it back in time, just one day Hey, hey So all I need is a time machine A one way track Cause I'm taking it back, taking it back All I want is a DeLorean

If I could go just like that I'll be taking it back, taking it back Hey Yeah, who's laughing now? Didn't think you'd actually go Stupid Hey, me and all my bitchin' Hey, me and all my bitchin'

Second thoughts and regrets Wanna alter, lead and miss it Open Hey, this ain't science fiction Hey, This ain't science fiction If I could press rewind Rewind the tape Redefine the line Remake my fate

Take it back in time Just one day Hey So all I need is a time machine A one-way track Cause I'm taking it back, taking it back All I want is an Orion If I could go just like that

I'll be taking it back, taking it back Taking it back, taking it back The Bullork Podcast is produced by Katy Cooper with Audio Engineering and Editing by Jason Brown