The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1058: Matt Yglesias: Elon's Smash and Grab

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Trump's and Musk's very public breakup may be amusing, but don't lose sight of the fact that DOGE was a failure—despite what the manosphere says. Elon's ego trip found no fraud and cut only a minor amount of spending. But those cuts are meaningfully hurting the global poor as well as scientific research at home. And now, Republicans are trying the same kind of DOGE sleight of hand on their spending bill, largely under the radar. Meanwhile, Megan McCain is getting in on the snake-oil gravy train, and the Epstein conspiracists may have it backwards. Plus, a deep dive into how Dems can win red states, fight the culture wars, and show how they're looking out for the little guy.  Matt Yglesias joins Tim Miller. show notes Action for Andry: Protest at SCOTUS at 5pm Friday, followed by Free Andry live show Matt on the failure of DOGE Lauren on the Dems weighing a high-risk plan to win the Senate Matt's piece from April on the Dem plan to win the Senate Matt's Daddy blog piece

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customize what you want the way you want, and manage your whole business from a centralized dashboard with expert AI tools. Build, scale, and enjoy the incredible results. You can do it all yourself on Wix. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Just one more reminder, we're doing the rally tomorrow, Friday, June 6th at five o'clock in front of the Supreme Court in support of the legal team that is fighting

for Andre Hernandez Romero, as well as the other Venezuelans that have been disappeared, Disacote. My guest today might think I'm raising the salience of that incorrectly, but I disagree with him and we can hash that out over the course of the podcast. So come hang out with us at five o'clock. We have a fundraiser at eight o'clock and a live show I think there are like three tickets left for it So you better get it if you want to come on to the guest he writes slow boring on substack He co-hosts the politics with an X at the end podcast with Brian Boitler. He's a columnist for Bloomberg. It's Matt Iglesias. What's up, man? Hello, what's going on? Good to see you yesterday You attended the welcome fest a forum for centrist Dems, which I was not invited

to participate in or moderate, despite my status as the podcast home of this faction. So I don't know if I've gone too woke for Welcome Fest or what happened there. Maybe invite was lost in the mail. I don't actually like going to these things, so I don't know why I'm complaining. Why you weren't there. It was good. I read in the New York Times today that I was greeted like a rock star there.

Was that true? Were you greeted like that? That was not my actual experience, but it was in the New York Times. It must be true. Did you sign any ladies cleavage? No, a number of people, men, gave me their business cards. That's conference going.

But we had some good people there talking, some frontline members of Congress, etc. Good. We're going to get into that. I want to get into what's happened with the Democrats, what they should do, how they can welcome people that voted for Donald Trump appropriately and strategically. But first, I want to do a little bit of what's actually happening this year in 2025 in the news.

You wrote, I don't know, maybe earlier this week about how Doge failed and why it matters. I think that is interesting, particularly also in the context of the Elon Musk and Trump breakup, ongoing breakup over the big, fuggly bill. So why don't we do Doge first and then the bill? Why do you say it failed and why does it matter? Yeah, I mean, you know, I think a lot of people,

sensible people, when Doge was rolled out, were like, this is stupid, right? Like, this is BS, this is just about Trump and power and whatever, but I think it's just important to remember that lots of people, people who I know, like technology industry people who are just not super political. They love and worship Elon Musk, who's a very successful, very smart businessman.

When he started saying, we are going to find hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars of waste and fraud in the federal government, there was real belief that he was going to do that. The president of the United States said in his pseudo State of the Union that there were millions of dead people on the Social Security numident, which is true, in fact. And then he suggested that this meant huge sums of money

were going out, being paid out in checks to dead people. And so he was gonna be able to massively reduce government spending without, you know, harming any kind of legitimate claims. That's not true. We've now seen that Musk has wrapped up, they cut some spending, a fairly minor amount. The cuts that they have done have inflicted some really big harms on people, although often foreigners. But they're now saying, right, if you listen to Mike Johnson, listen to anybody about this bill, they're claiming that they are gonna take

$800 billion out of Medicaid, but like somehow it's all gonna be fine. That it's just like illegal immigrants and fraudulent claims. I think Doge is important context for that. Like you must have seen Dave, right? The movie Dave? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah, I'm an elder millennial. Right, I mean this is like an incredible trope in American culture that if you just like brought a couple smart guys in to kind of go over the books. I gotta tell you, I loved that scene from Dave as at the time I was probably a high school Republican excited about the Bob Dole campaign

and I was like, hell yeah, let's cut the fucking red tape, let's cut the waste and abuse out of this government everybody tighten their belts a little bit this is how a lot of people see things and you know it's not true and not to say you couldn't cut government spending if you wanted to in the spirit of shared sacrifice or whatever else it is but like millions of people are gonna lose their health care when this bill goes through just as doge you know ultimately all they could do is like cut scientific research and foreign millions of people are gonna lose their healthcare when this bill goes through, just as Doge, ultimately all they could do is cut scientific research

and foreign aid programs. They just did not find these quote unquote fraudulent claims. So I don't know, I was looking at the news this morning and the headlines about this legislation which has passed the House and is pending in the Senate. They're like way down the page, you know, compared to other stuff, because Trump is such a volume player

in terms of like scandals and outrages and other different kinds of things. But I would like to get more attention to this. Thank you for not saying volume shooter. So I'm with you on getting attention for the bill. That's why it's gonna be in the B block of this very important podcast. By the way, we're one slot behind Meg and Kelly

on the new YouTube ratings. So tell your fucking friends so we can pass Meg and Kelly. Incredible, we gotta do it. And raise the salience of these issues. Just really quick on the Doge stuff first because there's one part of when we get to the reconciliation bill because there's one part of what you said is important.

And I was glad that you wrote the article because you, I think, have readers in this world. There are maintains, like people use the Manosphere as a shorthand for like a bunch of different stuff, right? Like it's everything from like, you know, Charlie Kirk and, you know, partisan MAGA blogs, you know, to like bro podcasts where they, you know, talk about boobs to like very dirty tech podcast. And it's like all up to comedy, it's all up to the other.

But there's a group of that, a subsection of that, that still just kind of maintains this idea that, oh, this was good. The Doge part was good, right? That it was important that they took a chainsaw to the government and they're going to modernize some things. It's going to be just like when a private equity firm comes into a dying business and we're going to refresh it. That myth, I do think persists. It is important to just be blunt about what actually happened with Doge. Yeah, and there was a good blog post written by one of the Doge volunteers who seems like a guy who

went into this in fairly good faith and came in and he, you know, he talks about like, it seems like he did like improve one software thing at the Veterans Administration. But he also said that he found out that a lot of things that it seemed to him are not being done there correctly is just like, because they're following the law, not because people are being inept or anything like that. And also just that there was much less waste than he had anticipated. And so what happened is, because he wrote some blogs about this he got fired from Doge which you know I sympathize with on some level you don't want people at just just blogging about their secret government work

I would sympathize it if it wasn't for like in the context of oh They also fired the DNI person that just put out the accurate memo about whether Venezuela is invading us and also fired the person That just accurately said the Kilmar, right? Like within the broader context, it looks bad. I think that if you look at this, and people should look at it, that like, there's just, you know, not much that has been achieved here in terms of any kind of real efficiency.

And you know, Trump has this total disregard for the legislative process. I have known people forever who are very critical of how sort of IT procurement is done at the federal government. This was a big thing in Obama era. Like there was a lot of folks talking about this. He talked about several times it should be fixed. The idea of bringing some outside people from business to look at it seems reasonable,

but you would have to propose a law and work with members of Congress and do it. And I kind of wish Obama had taken this on in a more serious way than just kind of talking about it. I wish Joe Biden had, I guess I wish Donald Trump would, but it's so inconceivable that Trump would engage in an earnest, good faith, bipartisan, good government initiative around contracting processes.

And the idea that what everything requires is this more smash and grab, I guess it resonates with some people. But all you're actually getting is this incredibly corrupt, incredibly lawless gang of people who just, they want to be able to operate have to engage with the process, which they're not doing. They have legislation to cut Medicaid and do a tax cut and some zany other stuff. So it's not like they can't write bills, but like this is what they have chosen to focus

on and doge is like a power grab and an ego trip and whatever, but there's no efficiencies forthcoming. Yeah. And as you mentioned before, but there's no efficiencies forthcoming. Yeah. And as you mentioned before, but just to put a finer point on it, it's not just that they aren't really making things more efficient. They also are doing material harm.

Yeah. There's some overlap in the Venn diagram between the effective altruist types, remember when that was in vogue, and the people who thought it was great that Elon was gonna bring in his tech guys to help make government more efficiency. And what they actually did was cause horrific outcomes for the poorest people throughout

the world to no actual end. Yeah, I mean, incredible chaos unleashed on USAID, which, you know, USAID runs a fairly mixed bag of programs, but is some of the most cost-effective public health interventions in the world. You know, I think credible estimates say tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of some of the poorest people in the world are going to die as a result of these disruptions in medical care.

Which also goes against the Elon natalism a little bit. Like I'm not as good at math as Elon, but having 10 Musk babies while killing 20,000 African babies, the math didn't seem to net out there on our demographic pyramid. It's not a great ratio. And this was also an area where the Biden administration had,

in fact, brought in a first ever chief economist office. They were doing more cost benefit analysis on the USAID programming, they were in the shifting funding to the sort of highest bang for the buck kinds of things. And you know, they just directed all on the basis, it seems initially of some kind of conspiracy theories about USAID and Ukraine, or I don't totally understand what they were saying. And then stubbornness, like they just didn't want to admit that they had this wrong and

they plowed ahead because, you know, Trump is a little bit cautious about political blowback, but these are things that impact foreigners. Foreign aid is not a super popular cause. I watched a focus group of like crossover voters who, you know, Trump voters who voted for Democrats down ballot. And, you know, some of the guys in that group just had a, I think a very callous attitude toward this. I mean, they were not in denial about the fact that this was this was bad for the global poor. They just didn't care. But I care. And, you know, I think there's a lot of people who at least profess to care about these kinds of things and it's you know

It's it's worth understanding them big level of damage that has been done while under delivering on savings by 90 to 95% All right back to the bill the big fugly slut the main takeaways for you is what well, I'll just let you cook well, it seems like the budget deficit will get bigger that I'll just let you cook. Well, it seems like the budget deficit will get bigger, that somewhere between 8 and 13 million people are going to lose health insurance, depending on how you count it. We're going to cripple renewable energy deployment, as well as the nuclear and geothermal industries in the United States. And in exchange, I've been doing pretty well for myself, so I'm going to get a hefty tax

cut. So that's nice. you know, I'm I'm excited kind of in the best spot here because you're salaried, you know It's like really the people are gonna do the very best are people at the top of the tax bracket who are salaried Yeah, maybe this is how we can get the negatively polarized these guys against it. It's like professional athletes Yeah, are gonna be the people that do the best guys against it. It's like professional athletes are going to be the people that do the best. Doing well. Yeah. The guys kneeling during the anthem are going to do the best. Maybe we can negatively polarize some Republicans against the bill by putting that out.

No, but I mean, it's very bad. And we are at a time when the budget deficit has started to have a meaningful impact on the economy, on mortgage rates, on home building, things like that. You keep seeing different things in the bond market and the dollar, etc. Trump has backed off a little bit from the craziest aspects of his trade policy, although he keeps then, I don't know what's the reverse of backing down. It's always two steps forward, two steps- Reverse talk going. Yeah, I don't know.

Right. Exactly. We don't know where that's going to land, but we're piling on very fiscally irresponsible and yet also very cruel. I mean, I'm talking about the deficit here. And if you want to reduce the deficit, you have to cut some programs. It takes some political courage, et cetera. But I think to do that by targeting the poorest people in the country for cuts in their programs,

that's really awful. That's not how serious budget wonks, whatever it is, think about the world. And yeah, it gets bad. This is something I've been struggling with all week. So back in the glory days of the blogosphere, when you were on Wonk blog and you guys, you and Ezra and others would hash out debates with nerdy Republicans and you guys would go back and forth on the merits of Obamacare implementation and various legislation. And like this time, I don't even know who's for this. It feels totally like inertia that Donald Trump just wants something

and so they have to give something to him, like a Christmas present. And on the merits of the bill, it's very challenging to find somebody who is like, I'm very excited about this on the merits. I think it will be good for people. That is true. There's also been, I mean, as you know, a lot of transition in and out of the party coalitions. I think the kinds of people who are capable of doing writing and math. The one guy in heritage to be putting out white papers about how great this is.

Does that exist? I don't feel like I've even seen that. Like it's very, I put out a tweet asking about this yesterday and somebody's like, the gun guys are very happy because one of the crazy things tucked into the bill is like they're getting rid of the excess taxes on various types of firearms.

A tax on silencers, right? Yeah. So you're going to be able to, I mean, that'll be good. You know, nobody wants loud noises as people shoot at each other. We want to make sure we're incentivizing silencer purchases as much as possible. No, but you know, I mean, it's true. I mean, I'm looking at like Heritage, right? And like, what are their top videos that they're pushing out?

Ending birthright citizenship, America's on track to lose a nuclear war with China, the truth about Trump's new self-deportation application, and time to shut down the Department of Education. They don't seem to have that much interest in discussing this tax secret Chinese links behind anti-Israel groups. I just pulled up national review They do have an editorial from the editors endorsing the modest Medicaid changes. So there you go It doesn't feel full-throated but there's something there Trump as art czar

You know, I mean, I think the most partisan Republicans are aware I think that this is not a strong Partisan Republicans are aware, I think, that this is not a strong topic for them, and they simply have material on other subjects, you know. But it's the only thing they're doing. Yes. And it's literally, like they did the Lakin-Ryliac, so that would be within the glaciest mode of passing something that is good for them from a salience standpoint, not that you're necessarily supportive of the specifics.

But like strategically speaking, then they decided this is the only thing they're going to do this year. That's crazy. Right. I mean, Trump in his first term, he tried and failed to do a giant health care cut. And then he moved on to just a deficit finance tax cut. And so now they are stapling those two ideas together into a bill. But the difference is, is that, you know, that fight over ACA repeal in 2017, that was

like a huge deal. Like I remember Jimmy Kimmel talking about it. There were protesters going. It was like a big focal point of discourse and it was very bad for Trump and Republicans. And they seem to me to have succeeded in kind of pushing a multi-trillion dollar piece of legislation into this kind of stealth mode. You know, some of this is just like,

Democrats are incredibly demoralized compared to where they were in 2017. There's just not the same level of resistance, energy, and vibes. This might be a gift from Musk, but this might be changing. I think it might be too early to render a verdict on whether this breaks through to the Jimmy Kimmel level of attention because, well, A, the Senate hasn't passed. I think that there's still some hurdles ahead. I hear you.

No, I agree. I mean, it's not a done deal. It's just we have gotten potentially close to the finish line without a lot of attention on, as you say, like, this is their legislative agenda. I mean, they do other things, obviously, but like, this is what Congress is doing. Well, I mean, Trump does other things. Yeah, right. Hey, y'all, with the uncertainty in tariffs, sometimes you just

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Can we just do two funny bits? Because the first one is one that I think is a shared interest of ours. And that is this. Jeffrey Epstein, major investor in Peter Thiel, a story from the New York Times yesterday. In 2015 and 2016, Mr. Epstein put 40 million into two funds managed by a firm co-founded by Mr. Thiel. That investment is worth nearly 170 million now, 2015 and 16.

That was well after everybody knew he was a pedo that Peter Thiel was involved with him. It's one of the important things for me and I think for you as well that we reorient the Jeffrey Epstein killed himself conspiracy theories towards Trump. Now we have Cash and Dan Bongino trying to claim that it was really a suicide. Yeah, they're part of the cover up, it seems like to me. I don't know what you think. Jeffrey Epstein was, this was before my time, but he was a math teacher at the high school that I attended. Really? Yes, and the head of school at the time who hired him

was Bill Barr's dad. Okay. So it goes really deep. It's interesting that Bill Barr's dad placed Jeffrey Epstein into a school. Yes. Where there would be underaged boys and girls. It is interesting.

I have a lot of interest in this. And yeah, so Bongino in on the cover up now, and I have a lot of interest in this. Yeah, so Bongino in on the cover up now and I have a lot of questions. I mean, in all seriousness, who was it? He was the labor secretary in Trump's first term. Yeah, a cosplayer. Was the US attorney who cut the mysterious sweetheart plea deal with Epstein. Then as soon as that became a big news story, he resigned from the cabinet and went somewhere. And then we just like never, never heard from him again.

Maybe he's on an island. Maybe. Yeah. I've got a lot of questions about that. I do too. I mean, the death did happen while Donald Trump was president in a federal prison. And you know, one of the biggest acolytes now of his vice president, we've learned, has had a big financial dealing with him. It's just something worth continuing to look into. Another in the fun story category, I don't know if you saw this this morning, Meghan

McCain is selling a bottle of COVID shot detox for $89.99. So if you got the shot and you regret it, you can pay Megan and her partner $89.99 and you'll get this kind of bottle of sludge that you can drink. I'm just wondering if you have any interest in that, if you have any partnerships that you want to promote right now? I'm open to it. It seems to me, I mean, you would understand this better than I do, but conservative media has a lot of

questionable product hawking as part of its core. Do you feel like you're missing out on it? I mean I do I mean back back when I was at Vox and hosted a podcast there we had ads for like mattresses and home security systems they seem like pretty normal products and I was always thinking like can we be selling some gold bars and like survival seed kits? Like this this good this good stuff out there that people might need I do wonder kind of how that would work Like that you took the kovach on in 2021 Everything turned out fine. You're fine

you're alive now unlike the million people that died of COVID and you now you take you drink something and you're like, that's going to cleanse your system of stuff that was in the shot. You took a half decade ago? Yeah, it's going to like unvaccinate you. I mean, I don't know. I'd like to learn more. This was Trump's vaccine in the first place. Yeah, I would like to learn a little bit more from that. So anyway, maybe Megan will come

on and talk about it. One last kind of hot button story. Do you see that this will transition us nicely into Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe,

maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, The reason for that is because people were too mean to Joe Biden. And so she doesn't feel at home in the Democratic Party anymore. And I got to tell you, my contempt for these people grows astronomic. Every day, it's like an exponential growth of my contempt for the people that were around Joe Biden. What are you doing?

It's a bad- What is this person doing? Bad situation. You know, this is ridiculous. The whole situation with her, I have no real opinion about her conduct as press secretary. It wasn't that great. But it was clear. You can just be candid.

It wasn't that great. It was clear that the president and the rest of his team did not have confidence in her performance. She was not being used the way that a normal press secretary is, and yet they did not want to fire her and replace her with somebody who they did have confidence in. Why do you think of this? I don't know. I mean, they were incredibly averse to making any kind of personnel changes, right?

I mean, the only cabinet change that happened across those four years was the Secretary of Labor left to run the Hockey Players Union. And so then the Deputy Secretary of Labor was put in as Acting Secretary of Labor. I'm not like- Continuity. It's not like you got to fire this guy, you got to fire that guy. But like, there's- There were some mistakes.

They could have moved. Nobody does it. I mean, I was in a management role once in my life, hired a bunch of people. I would say 90, 95% of them worked out great, but that still leaves you with 5 or 10% that didn't. It's awkward and annoying to get rid of people who are bad fits for the roles that they're in. But you had an administration that for whatever reason was incredibly averse to

moving people around, to firing people, to bringing new people in and you know, they clearly had developed a lot of groupthink and insularity around what they were doing. There are two things I want to throw out there. Two things you got to throw out there. One is Joe Biden There are two things I want to throw out there. Two things you got to throw out there. One is Joe Biden was not making really controversial decisions internally. And I think he was long time not a particularly great decision maker. I think that you can ask any of the Obama people from when he was much younger. That is what they say. VP about how he's kind of all over the map sometimes on stuff. And they did a lot of stuff where there was consensus and there's no doubt they achieved a lot. But like on

things like this, you need the boss to be like, we got to get rid of this person. He's not really that big of a decider. And as he aged, he probably seemed to be even less interested in making those kinds of decisions. That's one. And two, I get over concerned about identity stuff. Like if we fire a black woman press secretary, even though we have plenty of black people in this administration, obviously Joe Biden wants to have a representative staff

and cabinet. He spent a lot of time on that. But even still, I don't want to deal with one day of people on Twitter saying that we did something inappropriate. Well, the dynamic that you had, right? I mean, Biden is an old white guy. And his key team of advisors is also a bunch of old white guys. And they were clearly very sensitive about that.

And so they went forward, they really went hard on diversity in hiring for other kinds of things. In part because they believe that's important, and in part to shield themselves from criticism, from the fact that the president and his core team actually had very little diversity. Some of that meant that they hired people who, sometimes people who weren't good, but sometimes like Javier Becerra wanted to be attorney general.

He was the attorney general of California. Making him attorney general of the United States would have been super duper reasonable. But for whatever reason, Biden fell in love with the idea of Merrick Garland as attorney general. So then they like wanted to have- Real original sin. Well, they wanted to have a Latino person in a prominent cabinet role.

So they offered Becerra health and human services. It's a worse, less prestigious job than attorney general, but also one that Becerra wasn't as well qualified for. And then they didn't have confidence in him in that role. So the relationship between HHS and the White House became very, very kind of toxic. And in that case, it's not even like, well, they were like too eager

to elevate black and Hispanic people because they wouldn't give him the job he wanted and he was well suited to it. He was just being handled in this very sloppy kind of way. And it's true. I mean, if you go back and talk to people who I know from the Obama years, I mean, their critique of Joe Biden

was always that he is not a crisp decision maker who thinks things through in a kind of well-ordered sort of way. But, you know, Democrats, I mean, this is a podcast of its own, but like Democrats as a whole have a lot of hangups about identity that make it challenging, I think, to make clear decisions about different things and particularly personnel in different areas and I I know like my father-in-law's of old like, you know, George W. Bush Republican

Really didn't like Trump kind of reluctant to Biden Harris voter. So you're listening right now I just want to shout out your father. Well, fine him if you're out there Doug But like this stuff drives him crazy. I grew up in progressive circles. So it's normal to me. And this is one of these things. I think, rightly. I assume Doug isn't a fan of the alternate, which

is the reverse identity type of politics where you're hiring wrestling executives to run the secretary of the Department of Education Like an old-fashioned guy wants you to say you're hiring good people It makes a lot of sense right and so yeah now I mean we have just an administration run by like BT or Fox News hosts But you know Biden was not doing the best with this kind of stuff. And you know, Jean-Pierre's attitude toward this, I guess she thinks this will sell books.

But I don't think it will. I don't think anybody is coming out of this. I think it's just as likely she cancels her book tour. And who would want to talk to her about this? Oh, I'm a principled independent because people are mean to like what? What's the difference between DIY and doing it yourself? It's the difference between a part-time passion and a full-time business.

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Build, scale, and enjoy the incredible results. You can do it all yourself on Wix. There's an article you wrote recently, which is why I initially reached out to you, that I could not be more full-throated on your side of. And I think it's just important to talk about, which is the Democratic Senate. Yeah, it's not good. And Lauren Egan wrote about this for us in the Bullock on Sunday, if you want to check out her reporting. Very good piece.

And it does seem like at least there's some thinking happening about this, which is good because I think there was a period of time where there really wasn't that much thinking about it. And the Democrats put up a lot of like generic Democrats in places where generic Democrats have no chance of winning just because of inertia. And if the Democrats are ever going to win back the Senate, as your article lays out, they need to win in places like Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Texas, where Kamala Harris lost by quite a bit and where Democrats haven't won statewide in a while. And so that means doing something like not a little different on the edges, but like trying some things quite different. So anyway, talk about that.

Right. So I mean, you know, Kamala Harris lost the election to Donald Trump. That is a really big deal. And for people's emotional state, Trump being president, you know, is what, at the end of the day, it was the change it would have taken for her to win, to narrowly win. It was pretty modest. It's modest. So you could say, you know, if the message had been a little different, if

events in the world had been a little different, it's easy to- If she had been a little bit stronger. Right. If there had been, right, like there were very, I thought she was running a good campaign, but like, you could imagine a pretty modest change in events on an Earth two where we are- Where she would have won. imagine a pretty modest change in events on an Earth two where we are discussing the Kamala Harris agenda right now and with a lot fewer listeners. But Democrats in the Senate who ran ahead of Harris, right?

I mean, we had a number of people, Gallego and Slotkin in particular, like one seats in states where she lost. Gallego really particular. It's the one that won actually more votes than her. The slot candidates in Baldwin won a lot because of drop off. With under votes, right. But Democrats were nowhere close to winning a Senate majority.

No. That Sherrod Brown and John Tester are good candidates who ran well ahead of Kamala Harris, but didn't come close to winning those races in Montana and Ohio because Harris lost those states by a huge amount. And if you look back to 2020, right, I mean Joe Biden won the popular vote by a large amount in 2020, but he carried 25 states exactly. If you hold every single seat from a state that Biden won in 2020, you get a 50-50 Senate. That's hard to do because Susan Collins, for example, is incredibly difficult to defeat. Fucking Davos Dave McCormick just won.

So that can't happen for six years. You can't win Pennsylvania. And there's McCormick. So that can't happen for six years. You can't win Pennsylvania. And there's McCormick. And you want to win those 25 bluest states, but you also have to be having a viable campaigns in Florida, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, and Alaska. Those are the next six states. Now, you know, those are conservative states. But if you can win three or four out of those 12 Senate seats, you're in the game. You're also putting pressure on senators to like, you want to be in a situation where

if Ken Paxton defeats John Cornyn in a primary, that should endanger the seat, right? Where you can like punish the Republican Party for putting forward corrupt people and psychopaths and stuff like that, even if a nice guy who's doing an okay job can win. And the difference between Harris winning and losing would be small. We have factional arguments in the Democratic Party because people care about things,

but if you're saying we have to do X to win the presidential election, like that's not true. Like small changes could turn defeat into victory there. But in the Senate, we're very far. Like something has to be done that is a lot different. And some of that is the recruiting of the candidates. But I think that it is hard to be relying so much on people running against the national party. And I think that the leadership, whether that continues to be Chuck Schumer or becomes Brian Schatz or Chris Murphy in the future,

needs to like move the caucus in a direction where you're not running with a backpack full of lead against you. Because Sherrod Brown and John Tester, those are good politicians. Guys like Colin Allred, Tim Ryan, who've lost badly in recent cycles, those are good politicians. They're smart guys.

They know what they're doing. They run ahead of the national ticket. But there's only, particularly if you're not an incumbent, because if you are Susan Collins, you can do things to sort of credibly commit yourself to differentiating, but it's hard for a challenger to just be like, oh, I'm so different, and your opponent is like, well, no, he isn't.

I don't think that there's an easy answer to this. I think it's the important thing to say. Yeah, it's a hard problem. So I have my opinion right now about to share, but I don't think my opinion's a silver bullet. I agree with you that it would help for Democrats not to be, you know, running these states, not to be so burdened by having like whatever backpack full of lead by the by the party brand issues.

I think changing the party brand is probably tougher than what I'm about to suggest. I don't think the Democrats should try should not try to do it because it's hard, but I think it's a little tougher. Here's my thing with John Tester and with all of them. I love Claire McCaskill. She's my BFF on the MSNBC set. I love Heidi Heitkamp. I've had her on this pod before. My husband worked for her. But all of these people went down the same path, basically, which was they ran as kind of conservative Democrats. And then over time, because of national pressure or whatever, they really started to seem much more like regular Democrats.

Then they thought they could differentiate themselves by talking about local stuff. And that really worked in the nineties and two thousands. I'm going to, I took a very important position on the drilling and this random part of North Dakota, right? You know, whatever it is. That doesn't really work now. And like to me, I think that John Tester would have been much better suited to win and maybe he still couldn't have. But in the future, if the voters who don't pay that close of attention to Senate and congressional races, like they do presidential races, just know one thing about you. And the one thing they know about you is that

it's different from the Democrats. And I literally don't care what it is. I have candidates try to call me and that is my advice for you. I was like, I want you to pick one thing and have it not just be like kind of a thing you mentioned sometimes that you run ads about the last three months. I want it to be the one thing that people know about you. Like if they ask you one thing about candidate acts running in Iowa, JD Shulton, I guess just got in. I want the one thing people to know is that you think the Democrats are really stupid when it comes to ethanol, guns, whatever.

I don't know. You pick it. Like some cultural issue. And I just think that a lot of these candidates are reluctant to do that. And I've talked to one of them who tried this at a very local level and he was like, Tim, it's annoying. I go to the county meetings and people yell at me about this. I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's right.

People are going to yell and that's good because people are going to only know that one thing about you and you can still be a Democrat. On the other issue, I'm not asking you to be a troll who pokes Democrats in the eyes all the time. It's tough to do. I don't even know if that'll work. Well, and I think that these things have a feedback mechanism to them, right? So that it would be good to have people who are more strongly differentiated.

I think it would be good for the national party leadership, though, to address itself to the more progressive donors and say, look, the amount of squeezing that we did on these people was a mistake. That you wanted us to get Claire McCaskill and Heidi Heitkamp and all these people to walk the line for us. And we did it. And like the upshot is that now we don't have those seats. Right? Joe Manchin was constantly being set up to be this like huge villain. Which maybe helped him.

In some ways, but it ultimately just got him to quit. You know what I mean? Like he didn't feel like he was a valued and welcomed member of the Senate caucus, whereas Tester had a much happier time. But I remember, 2009, 2010, I was super frustrated with all these conservative Democrats who were out there. And I was like, oh my God, John Tester won't even vote for the goddamn dream act. Like what is going on? But that was the version of a good time to go back. It's complicated though

Probably would have been better for them to just jam through Like medic and whatever the public option was some healthcare stuff. Yes. Yes But the version of John Tester who had me tearing my hair out was the version who got reelected in 2012 and 2018 because as much as people on the internet may find that I'm some incredible villain, I voted for Kamala Harris. I voted for Hillary Clinton. I voted for Joe Biden. John T voted for Hillary Clinton. I voted for Joe Biden John testers constituents did not do that, right? Like you got it not just take like some like dipshit centrist sub-stack guy like me and be like

Well, we need people like that Like you got to be more conservative than that at least on something right in some key way and like maybe it's immigration Maybe it's got you know, like me, if it was me, like we could have English gun laws, French gun laws, but you know, I live in a city, like I'm a politically moderate person, but I'm not interested in owning assault rifles or silencers with non-tax silencers or having shootouts on the street, things like that. But the politics of national gun control have not gone anywhere for Democrats. You have Biden and Schumer and others talking about assault weapons bans, and then there's no way to win in the states that you're trying to target.

It's not progressives, number one or number two or number three or number four or number five, actual priority. And like, you're just gonna have to have, as you were saying, a bigger tent in which a lot of the candidates have one or two things that they are like clearly broken from the party with and where the party leadership

is saying, and that's fine. They're saying, I disagree with Governor Beshear, Senate Recruit Beshear about X, but we want him in the caucus. We want a bigger tent party that has more heterodoxy around cultural issues that reflects the breadth and diversity of the United States of America. We expect our Senate candidates in Kentucky and Louisiana and Montana and Texas to reflect the values of the people in those states, which are not the values of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries' constituents.

And it's tough. Some of the people that hate youakeem Jeffries' constituents. And, you know, it's tough. Some of the people that hate you on the internet would say this, and I think that they might have a point. The problem is I just don't know that this person exists. That the way to do it is not to do what Matt Iglesias is suggesting, but to run a candidate in Montana or one of these places, Alaska, who hates companies and wants to arrest bankers

that did bad things and who want socialized healthcare, but who also likes guns and is maybe a little bit more moderate on immigration and guns, but that the great differentiation is away from the democratic establishment on their corporate shilling. Yeah. What do you make about that idea? is away from the Democratic establishment on their corporate shilling. What do you make about that idea? I actually think that as sort of narrowly phrased, I mean, I think it is true that in rural America, if you can position yourself as antagonistic

to Wall Street, say, right, which is like a foreign kind of thing, that there is some real juice in that. At the same time, I mean, I was moderating a panel that Jared Golden was on. And he's got some of that like populist vibe to him on economics, he's a very pro-labor guy. But he was like talking about some regulations

that the Biden administration tried to put on the lobstering industry in Maine, related to saving right whales. And he was like very opposed to that. That was like part of his like local shtick. And I mean, I don't fucking care. But like, I think politicians, particularly politicians who are, you know, facing some some natural skepticism from the voters have to be supportive of their local businesses and local economic interests, which means, if you're talking about Alaska,

there's a really big oil and gas in Alaska. Do you think that your reply guys would really like a candidate that was about drill baby drill in Alaska and also was against the gun bill that Biden passed, but also as a socialist? I think that that is like a white whale that should be tried maybe in some of these states,

but I don't know that any of the people on the internet that hate Matt Aglacius would really like that candidate that much. That's my question about the economic populist strategy is like, how does it intersect not to the kind of like internet villain businesses, but to the kind of like internet villain businesses, but to the businesses that actually exist in the places where we're talking about running

candidates, right? Whether that's agriculture in Iowa, other kinds of things there. Because it seems to me that the relationship to the fossil fuel industry that the Democratic party has is just really tough. Like we know that Pennsylvania is a state that Biden won that Harris needed to win to become president. And, you know, we know like John Fetterman, Bob Casey, none of those

guys are for fracking ban kind of stuff. And Ohio is an even more important industry there. Texas, Alaska, it's a more important industry there. You can work that into an abundance framework that we're going to have an abundance of natural gas or you can work it into a populist framework where it's like, I'm going to get you cheap gas. Yeah, and fight for the workers there, the landmen. It's just a tough one. I mean, like the

climate movement has a lot of clout inside the Democratic Party, but I think does not have a realistic path to majorities in Congress. But to me, that's like a much more concrete and like actionable question than this sort of like vague anti-monopoly kind of stuff? I want to be clear. I think that the Democrats should try a fucking land man who likes oil but is also a socialist and hates bankers in one of these states and see if it works. I think they should try a Mark Cuban type candidate and see if it works. I think that it needs to be something different. Okay. What's the difference between DIY and doing it yourself? It's the difference between a part-time passion and a full-time business.

Wix gives you the power to turn your passion into a moneymaker. With a website that fits your unique vision, let your ideas flow with AI that guides you, but keeps you in the driver's seat. Manage your business from one dashboard and keep it growing with built-in marketing features. It's time to turn your daydream into your dream job. Go to wix.com. I guess it kind of overlays a little bit with Welcome Fest. A couple of things I saw, I did not watch all the panels.

Once again, wasn't invited, so I didn't get to see all of it. A couple of things I saw that caught my eye that are mad iglacious coded. One was some guy was talking about how Democrats in Florida really fucked up by fighting the don't say gay bills. I don't know. Reagan opposed the Briggs Initiative in 1978. So I think Democrats opposing it 47 years later, aversion of it being the thing that cost them in Florida, I'm not sure that's quite right.

This kind of goes though to your, your theory, your unifying theory of the case about salience of issues. And, and maybe there's some of these issues that shouldn't become as salient as they are and Democrats shouldn't fight about them. And I guess my issue with that is I don't share your view that random mid bench congress people's tweets matter at all as far as what the salience of issues are with people. I think that the salience of issues is driven a lot by the president, which at this point we can't control, and driven a lot by what people are actually interested in.

One example in addition to the Don't Say Gay Bill, and then all that she responded was, Ram, yesterday, was like, Democrats shouldn't talk about the transports thing because, you know, it's not a winner for us and there's only 11 trans... And this is a popular opinion among Democratic politicians. But my point is like, people like talking about the transports thing. And why do people like talking about it? Because it's something everybody can touch. Like everybody can grasp and understand that there's a girl who transitioned, who is born a male, who's in a shot put competition and wins the medal. That's an interesting thing for people to talk about it, whether we like it or not. Some people that are talking about it are going to be bigots, and some people that are talking

about it are just trying to understand and think through it. And that is just something people naturally talk about more than Medicaid work requirements, because people don't understand Medicaid work requirements, and not a lot of people experience it, a small group of people, it's really important too. So that's my main issue with all this. I think that ignoring this stuff is not really the right strategy,

but why don't you go ahead? I agree, particularly on the trans issues. You can't just tell people, no, you're wrong to think that this is important. People feel how they feel about things. I also did not see Andy Wutherham's talk. I just saw Dave Weigel tweet. His don't say gay take.

Quoting this one thing, but I do know Andy, and I think the steel man version of this is that Biden era Democrats from the president to the secretary of education on down seem to me to completely lose focus on the question of school quality and like actual education in the schools. And if I ask them about stuff like what about this city in California that's like getting rid of advanced algebra? Or what about this idea that like, we need to ban cell phones at schools or something?

The answer that they would give would be, but you know, like this is not really a federal policy issue. Like we don't wanna wade into it. But they would wade very aggressively into some of these like Southern library shenanigans and other kinds of things. Or the renaming of a school. Right.

Because what they were doing, I mean, this goes back to what your criticism of Biden's management at the top is if there was something that just united all Democrats, they would talk about it. But if it was something that was divisive amongst Democrats, they didn't want to take a position on it. And Democrats have always been the party that is more trusted on education. Like, Democrats fucking love education, love teachers, love schools. It's like to spend money on things, you know, etc.

And between COVID school closures, then all the problems that were happening once kids went back to school, a lot of these kind of culture war controversies that started coming out. The Biden administration was not like conveying that it cared about whether kids were learning in school and that this was like a point of focus for them. I totally agree with this. And so I guess maybe my issue is, I think sometimes there's like this idea that like, oh, focus on this on these like boring substantive things instead of these other things everybody's talking about. And I just don't think that's possible in this world. And so like, for example, on the school stuff, like you mentioned the phone saying everybody has an opinion on this, right? So like, Democrats really leaning in on that, and being like, I'm going to be the guy or

the woman that's like, we shouldn't have phones in schools for people under eighth grade or whatever it is. And I'm going to talk about that. I'm going to go and podcast about that. Like, that's interesting. People will talk about that. That's interesting. Or on the don't say gay thing, like maybe rather than not talking about it, or rather than calling them all the biggest or whatever, you can just say, do you really want the most racist mom in your community determining what books are in your kids' schools? I don't. I'd rather the principal do it. Right? I just think that there are ways, and there was this time about, oh, Greenland's a distraction. I'm kind of like, why don't you make it their distraction? You are having issues right now and Donald Trump is

sending spies into nuke. I don't think that's a good idea. I just think that Democrats should actually play the game and find ways to engage on cultural stuff that is more broadly popular. And that's Trump's secret sauce. He's tabloid. Play the tabloid game back at him, I guess, is my point. Yeah. It is just true that Democrats' strongest hand is on relatively boring, slightly technical stuff related to health care and taxes. And that's a problem for them because you can't force people to decide that Medicaid is- Is it true, though?

I think so. Is that true? Well, I mean, it's true that if you could get people to only talk about those questions, that would be advantageous to Democrats. But as you say, you can't do that. I do think, though, that you can try to tie things back to make sure that you are mentioning as these things go on. Because if you're trying to get a bigger tent of people, you're trying to try more things,

you're trying to shake things up, you're going to get the question. Those candidates are going to get the question. Those candidates are going to get the question. So why are you a Democrat? What's going on, Tim? And if it's you, the answer might be Donald Trump's fucking sucks. This guy's a dictator, et cetera, et cetera. But that's not a good message if you're running in a state where Trump won 56%, 57% of the vote.

Correct. That's why I'm not running for Senate in Louisiana. No, no, absolutely. Absolutely. But I do think the most natural touchstone to be like, why am I a Democrat running in a red state with some more heterodoxy and cultural issues? Is this stuff that goes back to health care, social security, tax fairness, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? That is the connective tissue that, you know,

amidst different kinds of factional controversies and like different opinions about guns and library books and all kinds of other things. Yeah, if a Louisiana person called me and said, how should I answer that question? I'd say, well, Jeff Landry just increased the sales tax here while cutting the tax on the richest. And like, do you want to pay more money

at the fucking grocery store and the gas station? Like working people are getting fucked. He says he's for the forgot. Like that's what I would say here. So you're right. Like that's how you kind of, you can kind of make that into a more, more cultural thing by being like working folks like me. Like I, I deal like you would find somebody in Louisiana that.

Yeah. It was credible and authentic and, and, and. That way and can just be like, I don't want to fucking pay more money at the gas station because Jeff Landry wants to give a tax cut to his pals, right? That's good. That could probably isn't going to get you elected, but that's plausible. It's something. It's something, right?

I mean, you want people to think of the Democratic Party as the party that looks out for the little guy, right? And I think most of the positions the Democrats have on cultural issues are ultimately downstream of that. People may lose sight of that, right? But the reason Democrats became the party of civil rights, the party of feminists, the party of environmental protection, the party of gay rights, et cetera, is downstream of an earlier identity as the party of the little guy. And so like, socio-cultural minority groups are little guys, like vis-a-vis mainstream society, etc., etc., etc. But it always works best when you can, like emotionally, intellectually, and coalition politics-wise foreground this kind of general commitment to the people versus

the powerful, something of that nature, rather than coming across as obsessed with micro identities as kind of individual considerations or as an elite diversity. We're caring about elite interests, right? And this is the issue of the democracies. Yeah, I agree with that. as kind of individual considerations or as like an elite diversity. We're caring about elite interests, right? And this was the issue with the democracies. Yeah, I agree with that. But also, I mean, I think we often get like diversity as an elite interest, right?

As like, we're really obsessed with gender dynamics on the corporate board of directors. Right, yeah. Well, this goes to the student loan thing. Like the student loan bailout was like, again, I mean, you could frame that as a helping the little guy, but like, it was probably easily reframed as not helping people that didn't go to college. Well, and you just, you would have to follow it up with like some kind of discussion of like what is higher education for us? Like why is this good? Like what are we trying

to do? And then the student loans can fit into that or not, depending on what it is you're saying. And look, I mean, we had a president who could not communicate on his own behalf and had a team that didn't. But, you know, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer don't have that excuse,

and it's not like they're doing light years better in terms of explaining, like, how do these positions that they've taken relate to our society and how they think it should work. Yeah. Okay. This takes us back to the immigration thing, which is one of my final... Well, we have one fun topic at the end, which is my final point. Once again, come to our rally tomorrow at five o'clock at the Supreme Court.

And maybe Democrats just aren't capable of o'clock of the spring court. And maybe Democrats just aren't capable of doing this, like the actual candidates. So this might be my version of the far leftists. Like if we only had an anti, you know, Wall Street candidate that also was a gun owner, then we could really win back the working vote. Like, I just think about the Joe Rogan thing. And I think about this in the trans context, right? Where it's like, in the same way that like, oh, it's only 11 people who, you know, only 11 trans athletes in college who are competing.

And the same way that argument doesn't really work because some people out there care about the 11 people in college that are trans athletes. Can't you flip it on this thing and be like, I'm focusing just on the 11 people they kidnapped. There's a makeup artist, there's a guy who has an autism awareness tattoo, you know, there is whatever. You find eight other people. They kidnapped 11 fucking people. And guess what? They might come kidnap you next time. You don't know. If they can kidnap somebody and send

them to a foreign prison, they could kidnap anybody. That resonated with Joe Rogan. And I think that that is a way into the issue that conceivably Democrats could win if they were disciplined about it. And I don't know that just like because immigration, generally speaking, is a better issue for Trump. I don't know if it means that that's smart to not engage on that in addition to the obvious moral principle that this is outrageous, which I know you share. But just on the strategic point, what do you think? I mean, look, I think the Romero case

that you are focused on has to be the single weakest ground for Trump in the whole immigration firmament. I find the facts of the Garcia case are just not quite as favorable as I think Democrats sort of want them to be at times. But I don't object. You don't object to our rally tomorrow? Will you attend? You're not going to attend, but you're not going to object. Yeah, yeah. No, but listen, I wish that some of the creative... Flying to El Salvador is a stunt, right?

Which is not in a bad way. Part of politics is stunts, right? I wish that we had some of the creativity around stunt generation that was put into that. Like, what is the flying to El Salvador of Medicaid cuts, of the impact on electricity prices that the energy provisions of this bill are going to have? Because you know, like, it just, it matters, you know? Like, you have to come up with ways, try to come up with ways to drive attention to stuff

and not just be purely sort of position takers. Because I do think it is clear that, like, Trump and JD Vance are eager to fight about immigration. And part of their eagerness to fight about immigration is that I'm not 100% sure that Democrats know what the answer, what their answer is to the question of what do they think should be done vis-a-vis the couple million people who entered the country during the Biden years.

And I would feel more confident about picking on these most egregious abuses that Trump is doing, if I understood what Democrats' bottom line was on this question. Yeah. There are a lot of issues that Republicans don't have a solution to that they fucking demagogue on because it's interesting. My argument is that in this particular case, you're overlapping something that's interesting that people can talk about and just chat about. Be like, do you think that it's really a gay makeup artist that we put into a foreign hole? And like, it's a fucking horror movie, you know, imagining like getting grabbed off the street. It's like, oh, we don't like your tattoos. We're going to send you to El Salvador and put you in a Robocop prison. Right? Like, so I don't know. I mean, there are other

examples about this. I'm just honing in on this because it's one I'm focused on. But like, I don't know. I mean, there are a decent number of things that the Republicans like lean in on that are that are niche issues that they don't have a solution to the fact that the Disney movies had lesbian kisses in them and they don't like it. They didn't like have a policy, like a global policy solution to that. They just were like, I'm fucking pissed that Buzz Lightyear had a lesbian kiss in it. And and I don't I, you know, I don't know that complaining about Buzz Lightyear was a great winner for them, though. You know, I mean, look, immigration, though, has become like a huge

bleeding sore for Democrats vis a vis public opinion. And it makes me a little bit queasy when I see elected officials. Now, look, if you can get Joe Rogan interested in this, which it seems like people did for a while, that's amazing. And if Chris Van Hollen was on the Joe Rogan show to talk about this, I think that would be great.

Okay, so whatever. Well, whoever it is, you know what I mean? Whoever's interested in it. I think that would be great because you're reaching an audience of people who Democrats don't have, but vis-a-vis somebody who is sympathetic to your point on here, you could make big new ground, etc., etc. But it seemed to

me that Democrats got their asses handed to them on the immigration issue in 2024. And then there was a lot of eagerness to be like, ah, Trump's gone too far. Like, we're going to nail him here. And Trump has gone too far. And that is an important point to make. But we have some work to do amongst ourselves in terms of articulating, like, what is the position that we have? Now, I think, I kind of think we were talking about, you know, things that would have made a difference.

I mean, I think if Kamala Harris, when she was asked on the view about disagreements with Joe Biden, I think if she'd said like, look, obviously, he was too slow to take these actions on border security. And like, once he did it, it started working. And by the way, in my fantasy world, when people are like, why are you so mad at Joe Biden? One of the things that I would fly back in my DeLorean to do, which I said at the time, was that Joe Biden should bring Kamala in to the White House and say, hey, kid, put you in a tough spot here. Here's what we're going to do. You're going to go say

this on The View. And then when people ask me about it in the next press conference, I'm going to say, you know, I should have listened to her. I don't know if that would have worked, but it would have been preferable to what happened, which was pressuring her to run cover for it. Right. Exactly. Exactly. If you had to pick one thing that could have been done differently, I think that would be the thing. But now I hear a lot of Democrats who are like, well, I'm for being tough on the border, I'm for border security, which is good. But like Trump has secured the border, right? So we're like now moving on to this secondary question

where like he is trying to get rid of this large population of, it's some long time undocumented people. It is some people who had pending asylum claims. It's some people who had temporary protective status or parole. You know, this is like a very miscellaneous bag, but it's millions and millions of people, and they would like to get them all to leave the country. And Democrats need to think about what they want to say about that, I think, like in a big picture way, right? And the closest I saw was Chuck

Schumer saying, well, you know, like our goal is to get a path to citizenship for all of these, however many million people it is. And I'm not sure that's a great take. That's much more complicated than opposing the kidnap. Right. I concur with you that it's much more complicated than opposing the kidnapping. I don't know, man. I just think that they don't actually have any pressure. My advice on this would be to say, hey, I don't think the government should be able to kidnap people because of their tattoos.

And I think that, and I agree with this administration that we should get out criminals. And it seems concerning to me that the administration is focusing on kidnapping people over their tattoos and taking police resources away from finding criminals and using it instead on raiding quinceañeras. That would be my message. If we can talk about crime.

I saw Kelly and Diego had a letter about this today or yesterday. I don't have any tattoos. All right. We've gone way over, but your article today was on daddy blogs. And so people should go check that out, but on Slow Boring. But I guess I have just two follow-ups. One, how much of the housework do you do around your home? And do you have any daddy blog?

If you did start a daddy blog, is there any topics you'd like to see explored? My housework is egregious. Abysmal. What about the parenting? What about? I'm like a filthy person. I like to think I'm like an okay parent. How many hours a week do you think you're spending parenting versus podcasting?

Parenting, it's too many. Too many? Not too many. Not too many. I mean, parenting is a joy and a delight. I spend many hours attending swim practices, which is one of the most boring sports for a person's child to take up as a hobby.

But it's a good time to get some reading in, et cetera. So assuming my daddy blog would be just like mostly about youth sports, like 10 year old soccer teams. You know, I've got a lot of questions about the coaches lineups and strategies. Yeah, you and JVL, that could be a mutual thing. JVL loves writing. He does it like one try out a quarter about youth sports. So maybe you guys can have a joint sub stack on that. All right. That's Matt Iglesias. His sub stack is slow boring. You should check it out, especially

if you find him annoying on Twitter, because sometimes he's better in long form than he is on Twitter. It's much more reasonable there. And so I hope to see you, some of you out tomorrow in DC and for the rest of you, we'll be back here for a Friday podcast, which I'll be doing from our offices in DC. We'll see you all then. Peace. I'm tired of your ill education, baby wanna reconnect with your elation this is your station, baby

look inside these walls and you see I'm having withdrawals of a prisoner on his way trapped inside your desire to fire bullets that stray track a tire, just tell you I'm tired and ran away ask your acts of choir, what do you require To sing a song that'll choir me to have faith That's the record spin I should pray For the record I recognize that I'm easily prey I got ate alive yesterday

I got Hanimosity building It's probably big, it's a building Me jumping off of the roof It's me just playing it safe But what am I supposed to do when the topic is red or blue And you understand that I ain't But know I'm a custom tool Just a couple that look for trouble and live in the street with rank No better picture to paint than me walking from Bible study and calling homies because

He had said he noticed my face from a function that took in place, they was wondering if I banged Step on my neck and get blood on your Nike checks, I don't mind cause one day you'll respect the good kid, Mad City Mass Elucination, baby. Ill-education, baby. Want to reconnect with your elation. This is your station, baby. The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with Audio Engineering and Ed editing by Jason Brown.