The Bulwark Podcast - Saagar Enjeti: “The Joke Is on Me”

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

One of the biggest America First fans tells Tim that he thought Trump 2.0 would be different because like-minded, high-level personnel—including the vice president and top DOD staff—were supposed to stop Trump from doing stupid wars like the strategic catastrophe unfolding in and around Iran. And Trump’s mass deportation was supposed to crack down on the labor practices of big business and Big Ag, but POTUS instead is sticking with the Chamber of Commerce status quo. Saagar now regrets his vote for Trump. Plus, the difference between MAGA and America First, a different take on Epstein, Venezuela red-pilled Trump, and the U.S. may be facing a major shortage of munitions because of the latest shock and awe campaign. Saagar Enjeti joins Tim Miller.show notes Tim's livestream Wednesday at 8:30pm ET on YouTube or Substack Saagar's show, "Breaking Points" Carville's 2009 book, "40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule The Next Generation" Tickets for our LIVE show in Austin on March 19: TheBulwark.com/Events.

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Conditions apply. Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. Reminder, I'm live streaming tonight. You know, I'm coming for Hassan and Destiny. We'll see how it goes, 830 in the east. Come hang. one thing I've been wanting to do on the podcast.

I've told you guys this after the election is I've been trying to get a wider breadth of views on the show. But I have some policies, which is like no bullshitters. Sometimes people can slip through the cracks on this. And it's a little challenging on the MAG aside getting no bullshitters. Because like Trump, by his nature, forces advocates to bullshit because he's like all over the place in the issues. And he himself is a bullshitter. And he rugg pulls people like all the time on things by changing his views in two seconds. And so I've been begging to.

today's guest to come on the show for like months, literally begging. Our DMs are embarrassing. It's like the lover that you have sent nine straight DMs to. For this reason, he's an unapologetic right-wing populist. And there's a bunch of stuff we don't agree on, but he's not full of shit. And that's been evident recently as he's a lot of consistent criticism of Trump, as he has betrayed the popular base on Epstein and Iran in particular. So with that glazing intro, it's the coast of breaking points, Sagarin Chetty.

How you doing, brother? Hey, thank you for having me, Tim. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I'll take it. I'll take it. Okay, well, obviously you feel a little nervous because it's been months. I wouldn't say I was nervous. I won't be honest. I mean, I was conflicted about coming on your show.

Why? Well, you know, I think bulwark style politics has been kind of the antithesis of like everything I believe. This is not really a shot at you personally, but Weekly Standard and Bill Crystal, Jonathan Lass, a lot of the people who you work with, Sarah Langewell, I mean, a lot of these people I would consider like my ideological enemies. And also at a policy level, these are the very people who architected some of the types of politics, which I have basically dedicated my career to try to smash down.

So I was like, well, you know, what's the appropriate level? But at the end of the day, you know, I think at the, you know, some discussion across, across these lines is probably important. And I finally decided to do it because I thought I want to expose, hopefully your audience to, let's say, Trump criticism, which they may not have heard previously and to potentially get them to change some of their ideas or at the very least engage with some ideas, which they may think that they disagree with. So that's why I decided to do it. I love that. We are kind of on opposite sides of the horseshoe. You know, we and Graham talked about this a little bit as well, who's more of the left populace.

Sure. We'll get into it. There may be more areas of agreement than discredit than we think. And growth is good. You know, there's been growth. And, you know, events have affected people's views on things. So maybe events have certainly affected some of our views on things, some of the weekly standard types. And maybe increasingly events will start to affect your views on things. We'll see as we go over the course of the podcast. I also want to congratulate you for being the first person to do the Tucker Carlson podcast and the Bullwark podcast. So kudos to you on that. I know. I saw that. I was like, wow. You told me I should get a New York Times profile. I was like, I really, that's like the last thing that I want. I think that you should. I was like, that's, no, absolutely not. That's the last thing that I could, I want. At the end of the day, I'm pretty much the same person. You know, I wouldn't say anything differently on Tucker than I would say on your show. Explain your worldview to people for people who don't know. Like, you kind of just did it by contrasting against weekly standard world, but like what is it the proactive Sega world? Yeah. So, I mean, I think the way that I really see the world and this is why a lot of the stuff that originally, uh, well, let's talk about like so-called MAGA or Trump for me, really it's about ideas. And so my own personal worldview is I started in politics around 2014, 2015. I actually was much more originally aligned with people like Bill Crystal at all. And I started working at The Daily Caller in 2016, I believe.

And really the election of Donald Trump in 2016 kind of like shook me viscerally. And I said, I really don't understand my own country. I really don't understand the world. And clearly I'm so out of touch. And it's because I've been listening to a lot of the wrong people. And so I started doing a lot of reading and thinking really about, how I think America fundamentally should be and where it should go. And really, it came down to a principle of sovereignty.

And a lot of that comes back to some of the original ideas, let's say, behind the original America First Movement, whether it's a cult or not now, which you can talk about in a little bit. And unfortunately, I do think that has been the case. But that doesn't stop me from believing in a lot of the ideas. And so the ideas fundamentally are about declaration of sovereignty, independence, lack of adherence or, you know, giving sovereignty away to, let's say, multinational institutions, things like NATO, worshipping of the old order, trying to rethink what it means

to have an American social contract. Some of that involves immigration, dramatically, lessening or lowering immigration to the United States. A lot of it comes back to our foreign policy about intervention, tax policy as well. That's an element of MAGA and or America first, which doesn't get talked about enough because it's mostly dead. But it was a very live discussion, Tim, as I know that you are aware about dramatically rethinking our policy whenever it comes to economics and challenging some of the Chamber of Commerce status quo, which was, again, pushed by a lot of people who you currently work with. So it's a two of three time Trump voter for you?

For me? I guess it would have been two out of three. Two out of three. Were you an Evan McMullen man in 2016? I was very conflicted. I actually didn't vote. So in 2016, I tried to vote. And then I requested my ballot, but I was still in Texas.

It was complicated. Technically voter fraud, actually, because of where I was from. You committed voter fraud technically? Watch up for the SEVA. I think I tried. I think I tried to commit voter fraud because I didn't live in Texas anymore. And then something about my signature got challenged in the primary. And then I was like, screw it.

I'm just not even going to vote. Okay. So if you ever decide to run as the authentic America first, that's the first piece of opo that we're looking at you. Yeah, you've got me. You've got. I'm never running for anything. So don't worry about it.

Let's start with Iran. People are going to honestly think, again, as mentioned in that long windup that I wanted to have you on. It's like, finally, I get to use you to be a vassal to attack Trump on the Iran issue. but I'm trying to do this for a while, and Iran has just happened to come to the forefront. You have been almost, I would say, apocalypticly opposed to what has been happening the last week. Just give us a little summary of your view about what the administration's decided to do. I think it's a strategic catastrophe.

And I'll say from a variety of different levels. So obviously we've basically given up our sovereign ability to act to the state of Israel with the Secretary of State uttering, which I think is the most remarkable statement literally like in modern history saying that we had to do. it because Israel was going to do it, which apparently never entered in their minds. They couldn't say no. I mean, I'm not sure if you saw this. Former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken even came out and said that they tried to pull this same nonsense on Biden. They tried to pull it on Obama. They tried to pull it on, I mean, multiple different presidents. So it's shocking to actually see our sovereignty be sacrificed in this regard, specifically whenever it comes to Israeli interests.

But then let's look at our own strategic interests. I've been hammering home recently the munitions problem. We have a very finite amount of resources. Our defense industrial base is catastrophic. A lot of our munitions have been sacrificed on the battles of fields of Ukraine and now Israel. And now we are finding ourselves in a catastrophic shortage. We're already pulling out bad interceptors from South Korea, which is insane, considering the amount of bilateral trade. We do with South Korea some 240 billion compared to Israel, which is 50 billion. We have three carrier strike groups. Now on the way to the Middle East, We have oil prices, the largest release now this morning that you and I are talking of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve ever from the IEA. And then also the closure of the Straits of Hormuz.

It was a war of choice. It's something that I think is pretty explicitly, explicitly violative of a lot of the original principles of the America First Movement. And I also think I should clarify when I talk about the America First Movement because the natural liberal will say, you're an idiot because MAGA voters support the war. And you're right. I am not claiming in any way that there is some popular front anti-war movement. But I also think that would be a huge mistake, which all of you found out in the 2024 election, with how Michigan went, with how a lot of AOC Trump voters, a lot of young men. So for individual constituencies within the new MAGA coalition of 2024, what did you find? You found that the anti-war position was very significant.

Again, it's not the only thing, but it was certainly something which was important for them. And so watching, you know, this quagmire, these billions of dollars, $5.6 billion in munitions spent in the first two days, the straights of removes oil, sacrificing our sovereignty, the deaths of some seven confirmed KIA, dozens, dozens of people who were horrifically wounded already that we know of on the very first day of the war. God only knows what's being hidden. I think it's a catastrophe. And the best thing he could do is just end the war today. Even that would be a nightmare. I want to get into the politics of it in a second because I do think it's interesting to talk about kind of how MAGA voters versus other parts of the Trump coalition are reacting to this. But just on the policy itself, like,

And so your explanation it sounds like is the reason he got into this is because he was headwinked by BB. Because I'm still really trying to kind of process why he is doing it. Because it is to me, it just seems like such an obvious quagmire and political mistake and for no clear purpose that would benefit Trump himself personally. The explanation I have is unfortunately very simple is that Midnight Hammer was a quote unquote great success. Midnight Hammer for everybody who is not as versed in this was the 12-day war, the bombing, the B-2 bombers that took out allegedly the nuclear sites, although now they say they're going to obliterate them, and I thought we already obliterate them, according to the White House. So let's leave that to the side. So it was a one-day bombing run where we came in and we bombed it, and Trump was amazed by his success. The second thing, and you cannot underestimate this, is Venezuela. Venezuela was the red pill of all red pills for Trump, because so many people told him it would be a quagmire, it would be a disaster. is that, oh, who knows what could happen? All of these troops could get killed. And he was like, no, we're going to do it anyway.

Even though he had some praise and he had a lot of backup from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs staff, a lot of people warned about some of the bigger problems that could erupt in Latin America. And Venezuela, you know, in the interim, by the way, I hate when people say it's been a success. I've even seen some liberal pundits say this. Guys, I mean, does anybody remember how long it took Benghazi and Libya to completely fall apart or Syria?

I mean, the whole idea is you don't get involved because on a long enough timeline, pretty much every single U.S. intervention turns out to be a disaster. So in the interim, it turned out to be a quote-unquote success because we didn't have state collapse and we had some sort of deal with the oil. And he really believed. I think that B.B. and Lindsey Graham, you've seen this in some of the Wall Street Journal reporting, convinced him that it would be that easy. All we have to do is take out the Iatola. They'll cry uncle. But, you know, they didn't listen. And the military told them not to do this, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the vice.

Admiral Fred Cocker. He was literally fired by the Joint Chief Staff, I think, because he probably leaked a lot of that meeting where he gave a great warning, I think, to the American people. And he's like, guys, this is not the same thing. We're going to have to deal with Hormuz. We're going to have to deal with interceptors, munitions. Every warning that they said ended up coming true. But I'll give in an analogy, I'm sure your viewers will love. For anybody who has ever read a history of the Second World War, Hitler's dynamic with his generals was very similar. He was told that the phony war, that the invasion of France and Belgium, it was going to be a disaster. It could be very difficult, sir, we could do this, but not on this timeline.

And of course, what ended up happening? It was smashing success in the surrender of France in a couple of weeks and the takeover. And so what happens is you have Norway, you have all of these great wins and wins. I mean, it looked unstoppable in 1940. And so when Barbarossa comes around, they're like, no, man. like you really shouldn't do this. He doesn't listen. And so that's the same mindset.

I mean, I'm giving that one because I know your viewers will love it. This is great. I need a cigarette right now. Saggers is complaining to Hitler. It's the vice president and Sager doing it. I knew you would all love it. Thank you. But there are many other analogies, military analogies of this throughout the years

where people have smashing success. And that's what makes, you know, great men supposedly great, is that they, you know, the gamble, they gamble. I think the analogy I've heard, I mean, which is very aptest if you ever been playing craps. It's like sometimes you'll see people who are on a hot roll. And it's awesome. But seven's going to come up eventually, right? Statistically, you should, what is it? You should seven out after X amount of rolls. But sometimes I've seen a guy roll for an hour and a half, right? It doesn't really happen, but sometimes it does. And you go on a hot one. And then, you know,

at the very end, people are like, oh, he can't miss. He's got magic hands. And then they put it all on six or eight or whatever. And then boom, everybody goes bust on the table. So there are multiple analogies that we can all use here. I want to give you just some of the pushback I've seen online about defending him, not the Lindsey Graham pushback, but from some other folks. There's a guy named Ruben Rodriguez, who I follow with who I like. He wrote this. I know, Ruben and our friends.

I'm not surprised about it. He wrote this, Gulf War, the first Gulf War, 292 killed, 776 wounded, 75 aircraft lost, but it's still considered smashing success. You can be against war if you want, if you're a pacifist, but at present we only have six KIA. This was a couple days ago. And an adversary who boasted of a thousand missiles a day

is now launching like 10. We've utterly ruined a regional power in 10 days. What's your pushback to that? Well, Gulf War had a very specific purpose. It was for the removal of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. It had nothing to do with regime collapse like the eventual Iraq War, which, by the way, the Gulf War led to. It had extremely defined characteristics.

Also, this is where I hate to be a process liberal, but the process does kind of matter. You had the so-called coalition, which came into place where it was sold to the American people. The SPR was actually released. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was released on the very day of the invasion, specifically to mitigate problems on the home front. And then, you know, to bring it into politics, it was dramatically popular. It had some 90% approval rating. Not that that even matters, by the way, because as you and I both know, Bush went on to lose the election.

So the point is, is about the strategic ends. You know, we can blow shit up anywhere across the entire country. And the point about this is that there was no actual plan for what was going to happen if the Iranians did not immediately capitulate, which they haven't. Even right now, everyone's like, oh, Trump is going to taco? And it's like, is it really up to him? The enemy gets a vote. They have an Ayatollah now who is, look, the new Ayatollah, what, I can't even list the number of relatives that he has lost in this conflict. His father, his wife, his son, I mean, niece or what I mean, the number of relatives who are all killed.

He's a hardliner who was pushed by the IRGC. You have the entire IRGC that remains intact. The president of the United States has demanded unconditional surrender. And yeah, if we want, there's been this hilarious scandal where Ted Cruz and others have been attacking an interview that I just gave with Tucker Carlson, where Tucker Carlson said, unconditional surrender means foreign troops get to rape your wife and daughter.

And they were like, oh, you're disgusting. You're saying American troops. No, that's not what he's saying. He's saying, in history, as we saw during the battle of Berlin and the eventual mass rape that took place at the hands of the Soviet Union from Jenghis Khan or any other unconditional surrender, which has taken place throughout our history that we have been involved in, not saying our troops engaged in, nor would they ever, but that that is the implication, especially that is taken to heart by the foreign populace. We've already seen a huge

amount of reports of Iranian nationalism rising in the country, directly actually supporting the regime. I mean, there's videos. I can even send them. if you want, of people who are literally in the square being bombed, who are cheering as it has happened. And while the announcer says, we will never relent and we will continue to fight, pretty much the opposite of what was supposedly intended. The 40 Chess China people, some of those, there's some of that happening on MAGA, that this is really not even about Iran because Iran sells their gas to China and Trump is just on a different level as everybody else.

What do you make about? It's a beyond, I mean, I don't know how, I don't know how profane I can get here. You can be as profane as possible here. That is beyond retarded. Look, I gave you the example. Thad batteries are being taken out of South Korea. Now, little history lesson when those thad batteries were placed in South Korea in 2016, China put a full-on economic boycott on South Korea, almost tanked their economy,

closed down multiple of their stores, boycotted BTS concert, Chinese tourism for years, almost two years. I mean, they took billions in losses. But they decided, ultimately, our alliance with the United States is very important. And we need this battery. What these are, these missile interceptors, in order to deter North Korea. I've seen some mixed reports on this that they're like, that it's not the entire, like, system that is being taken, just some elements of it. But even, I'm not claiming that we took the entire system out. I just said the interceptors. The radar is still there, which is what the Chinese are really concerned about. But then why is it a political crisis right now in Korea?

The front page of the Korea Herald literally today is saying, can America do you? defend us? And the prime minister said, I, or the president, I apologize, said, I oppose this decision. You are already watching munitions from the entire Indo-Pacific, not just South Korea, because that was the second part of that report, is that Patriot missile batteries from all across the Indo-Pacific are being taken back to the Middle East, which shows you the exact shortage that people like me were warning about. This is why I advocate for a policy of restraint. I don't think that, you know, the vast swats of the American Empire are doing us any good. That's why I'm never supported funding the war in Ukraine. We did not have the munition stockpile or capacity,

and it's not that important to the United—in fact, it's less important than Israel. And I'm here sitting here sitting here this entire case around Israel and Iran. So it's shocking, actually, to watch this entire stockpile get depleted, which was so foreseeable for people who don't know, the situation is dire. So in the 12-day war, just in the 12-day war, the United States spent 25 percent of its stat interstapter stockpile in just 12 days. God only knows what that number is right now. God only knows. But that 25% was 150 interceptors. Do you want to know how many we acquired in 2025? 15, 12 the year before. It's a crisis. It's a crisis that money can't even solve. We have an entire downstream production problem. There's chemicals that are involved

munitions. Our entire industrial base, not only defense, but like broadly is catastrophic. And this is why I just said we need to acknowledge the problems of the Iraq War, which, you know, foundational really to my worldview, which I think really destroyed this country. And we need to acknowledge that we're no longer in living in some unipolar fantasy moment. And, you know, personally thought that that's what a lot of the people who were working in the Trump administration thought too. And so that's why it's especially galling, shocking, betrayal. We can use all the different adjectives. This episode of the Borg podcast is brought to you by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The founders understood something simple when church and state merge liberty loses.

is today's Christian nationalist movement isn't about faith, it's about power, and it's deeply un-American. The Freedom from Religion Foundation defends the First Amendment, so no ideological movement gets to weaponize religion against the rest of us. Separation of church and state is about protecting pluralism. It's about restraint. It's about keeping America a place where people of different beliefs or no religious beliefs can coexist peacefully. Visit ffrf.us. slash Tim or text the word religion to 511-5-11 to learn more and join. Help protect a country that belongs to us all. Go to f-fr-r-f.us slash Tim or text religion to 5-11-11. Text religion to 5-11-1-1. Message and data rates may apply. We're going to put a pin in Ukraine. I have a TDS-Never-Trumper section at the end

of the show. So we'll come back to Ukraine during all that. We'll hit all the hot button and never-trumper issues. What's happening inside the administration? I mean, I'm so far gone. Like in Trump 1.0, some of these people are calling me. I assume you have friends in the administration and people that are share your worldview, speaking in New York Times profiles are all the profiles about Bridge Colby and how he is in there, you know, influencing the administration and in restraint and pivot to Asia. I assume that there are some junior bridge Colby's in the administration that I don't know

who've come up through kind of the America First pipeline. Like what are they thinking? Like what is happening inside like the elite circle? Yeah, I can't speak for them. I can only really speak for myself. I could guess, really, at what a lot of us... But you're not in emails from inside the, like, please, Seager, get me out of here.

Do you need a producer at breaking points? I need an underground tunnel out of the Department of Defense right now. None of that is happening at all. By the way, people should leak to me more. I'd love to have it. Also, Tim, I'm sure that you know this. It's actually the people you least expect who will end up leaking to you,

which is always kind of faster. For anybody guessing about who the people who are leakers, you'd be amazed who they actually are. I do protect my sources. Do you have thoughts on JD? Like what, how, what's happening right now? He's been a little more quiet. He's given speeches. There have been some reports that said he didn't want to do it, but then he also said, if we do do it, we should go maximalist, which is like a pretty incoherent view. If it's a true, I don't know. What's your political sense? What's happening? I have no idea. I can only give you my guess. My guess is, is that we're living in Versailles and that

the ear of the king is the only thing that matters. And to protect the ear of the king, you have to tell the king what he wants, who's enamored with his victory in Venezuela. Everyone's on, I told you so tour right now. And that's fair. I think we deserve it. I think people like me deserve it. And I think let's talk about why did we think that this would not happen. And the first Trump administration, really all administrations, personnel is policy. We often say that, right? And so our belief of the first Trump administration is that the staffing of neocons, of John Bolton, of Jared Kushner, of people like this, Their worldview, especially with the departure of Steve Bannon, became the default policy of the United States under Donald Trump.

There were, of course, various different things were happening. Trump can say all things to all people. And he really is that, if anything, that's his superpower. Okay. So that was the framework, which we're operating. So there is a four-year project after Trump is gone after the 2020. It's kind of funny. Like a lot of us were telling people like me and Nicole Wallace right there telling people

that Trump 2.10 will be worse. Yeah. It's going to have all these other people in there. Well, worse from your perspective. The true belief, from our perspective, right? That's what I'm saying. For the true believers, the magotypes will all be in there. Like, that was our framework of it as well.

It's just like you thought it was a good thing. We thought it was bad. Well, it depends because here's how it ended up manifesting. So our belief over that four-year period, and again, my belief, at least, was that this professional elite project, so-called America First, professional elite project, which is very indifferent organizations, personnel, people. We've all met conferences over the years that those people would be able to transpose their ideas into the policy of the United States. Some of them became the vice president of the United States,

the Pentagon, you know, number three, like you're talking about. And then a myriad different other people who are all across the administration. And the belief was that those ideas would be professionalized into policy. But what I've ended up seeing, actually, is an inversion. And this is something that I dramatically underestimated, is that what it actually has translated into is that the so-called lesson of Trump won was that people were not loyal enough to him personally. And that means that whatever he thinks is the policy, the idea, or whatever, that will then be set through in terms of policy and that there will actually be very little pushback whatsoever if he disagrees or undermining, et cetera, because they don't want to be seen as disloyal to the president,

even though there were a lot of people who were disloyal, let's say, to the president in the first term. But on a policy level, this time it's inverted. A lot of it is like personal, and that's why I gave the Versailles analogy. And so, look, I have no idea what's going on with Jady. I have no idea what's going on with any of these people, but I can only speculate that for a lot of them, they have to maintain their access to the president. And you can look at what happened with Tulsi Gabbard. Tulsi Gabbard did, you know, what we thought people like her would do in the 12-day war. And she's like, I really don't think you should do this. I think this is a bad idea. And then she got, you know, DNI'd, as in do not invite to the

Venezuela meeting. And she got humiliated, right? On national stage, she got struck on by Trump around that Hiroshima video, which I didn't even think was that big of a deal, but it caused like some sort of problems for her. And now she's got to go galavanting around Fulton County, you know, searching for bamboo ballots or whatever just to try and prove some like, you know, some loyalty or whatever to Donald Trump. So that is the unfortunate story. The thing that we really got wrong is we really believed, you know, that this project, which again, let's be honest, and you can even go pull the tape from, I never said Trump was the anti-war candidate. I was super honest. I was like, look, if you're pro-Palestinian, I literally did a monologue where I was like, if you're

pro-Palestine, you should vote for Kamala. I was like, you're not getting what you want out of this administration. We knew that there would be trades whenever it came to the West Bank or Gaza. I don't think any of us, or again, maybe I can only speak for myself when the vice president of the United States in October of 2024 goes on a podcast and says, I don't think that it's within our interest to go to war with Iran. I believed it. You know, and it's one of those where you could say we told you so. Trump is a charlatan. Yeah, we know. Okay. It's not that we had any faith in Trump. Okay. Anybody who had faith in Trump is an idiot. We had a faith in Trump. We had faith in the personnel who were around Trump. And I think, you know, when I say it's a greatest professional

disappointment in my life, really what it is, it's like, it's been a hit on a multitude of areas. Because look, Israel, we knew it was going to happen. That was pretty much baked in, even though, by the way, they still took that way farther than even I ever thought that they would. But then Let's say we thought we'd end the war in Ukraine. Well, that hasn't happened either. We've, you know, whipsawed through this insane policy. We're like berating Zelensky. Then he's our best friend.

We're selling weapons. And then we're not. Then we're doing summits with Putin. They end up being totally fake. Basically nothing has really happened on that front. And then let's say, you know, on the Iran situation, for me, I knew it was basically lost in the 12-day war. And really, I mean, you have to give it to the neocons. What they have understood is that Trump is just enamored with the,

show of military force. And that that alone is the easiest way to sway him. And, you know, there were some bad signs in the initial days of the admin, the appointment of Mike Waltz, Marco Rubio, as Secretary of State. So I knew things were already not trending in the right direction, I guess, if you will. But let's say, you know, people like Pete Hegeseth, what did he say? He's a reformed neocon. You remember that? He said that on the Sean Ryan podcast. Again, look, call me an idiot. You're right to do so. I actually believed it. And it's not because I believed in Heggseth. I believed in the people. who were around Hegstad. I knew a lot of people knew him. They said, no, dude, he really believes

it. I trust a lot of these people. And the joke is on me. The joke is absolutely on me. I'm trying to reclaim both the words liberal and neocon. These guys are hawks. This is a warhawk war. They're not even claiming that they're trying to get democracy. They didn't try to get, you might have been able to sell me on Venezuela if we were putting Machado in there, not with Trump as president. But if Marco was president, he came to me and said, hey, we'll do this Venezuela gambit and we'll put Machado in there. or maybe that they democracy will flourish in our hemisphere. Out of it, like, some of my old muscles would have started flaring with that. See, that's not what they're doing.

That's not what he's doing. Well, that's not what he's doing. It's corruption. It's just like a straight, like it's a like, it's a shakedown. Yeah, I mean, that's what it's turned into. And things go boom. Well, don't forget. It actually, let's not discount the role that Machado and her entire cohort played in this entire operation.

Yeah, no, she is. We're upset at her now. You should be. She's a joke. And she wanted to bomb her own people. So congratulations, Maria. You didn't even get what you wanted. But let's put that to the side.

Now, you're not wrong, but let's parse some of the language. Remember, the original impetus for this whole thing goes back to the protests. It had nothing to do with the nuclear program. That became the Casaspellai, right? Originally, this was around which, again, I don't know, Bob's co-founder, Bill Crystal, supported. He's like, oh, we must go. What did he say? This is January, 2026.

He's like, oh, we have to go and free and liberate, you know, the great Iranian people, which, again, I think is a disastrous idea. And as we have all seen, isn't even going to work. What are they going to thank you as you rain down acid rain on their children? Yeah, that's definitely a very natural impulse. So that element of it was genuinely neoconservative. Now let's get to what you're talking about. And this is fair, you know, terms matter.

There is a robust, hawkish nationalist. I would call it John Bolton. So John Bolton is not a neocon. He is somebody who is robustly hawkish. Now, this is a hawk neocon. whatever you want to call it. Hawkeshish and Jinguis. This is a hog jinguists.

Actually, jinguis is probably the best term really for it. Because, I mean, I'm watching these Pentagon press conferences, and it's like military assistance command Tehran, which is a joke about the Vietnam War, because in the Vietnam War, it was called Military Assistance Command Vietnam,

and General Westmoreland would be like, today we have killed a 252 Vietnamese. And everyone was like, oh my God. And Operation Rolling Thunder has dropped more munitions, than all of World War II. And America was like, rah, rah, look at us.

We're beating the shit out of the North Vietnamese. Yeah, how did that work out? Right? And I mean, I'm literally feel like I'm taking crazy pills watching General Kane be like, we've dropped

double the amount of munitions as shock and awe. And I was like, oh, yeah, because that was a smashing success. That was awesome. And, yeah, if you're too young to know, even get the reference, shock and awe was the invasion of Iraq.

It was the bombing campaign on the invasion of Iraq. You said something in the middle of the rant, there about how if anybody like trusts Trump or doesn't understand that he's a charlatan, they're stupid. I'm a little concerned that you impugned most of the people that show up at the rallies right there because if you look at the polls right now, what do you mean? Look at the polls.

I think parsing the kind of cross tabs, which is there's some limits to that. But like if you look at when people ask like, hey, do you identify as a Maga Republican, do you identify this as a Republican? Are you an independent Trump voter? Like the independent Trump voters hate this. Like the newest people into the coalition, hey, a lot of people you talk to. breaking points. They hate this. Okay. Interesting part of the parsing, though, is when you look at people who say, I'm a MAGA Republican,

they're like, hell yeah, 94% whatever you want, Mr. Trump. And people who just say, I'm a Republican, but I'm not MAGA, they're a little more skeptical. I was interested in that because what that tells me is that the MAGA movement is actually like a lifestyle brand and that the people are in a cult and that they're not, you know, taking into the facts into consideration. It's just whatever Trump wants. It's rah, raw. And I wonder if that's how you kind of assess the coalition at this point. Yes, in a sense.

And by the way, I'm not impuging them particularly. I think that a lot of voters are like that. And I should also be clear, a core part of my philosophy is I don't blame voters. Notice all of my critique right here is not about voters. It's about individual parts of an elite network who should know better. And even, you know, my entire critique is really specifically about an elite project that has gone completely wrong. But let's talk about the voters.

You and I do these shows. Like me talking about my people eight years ago. Welcome to the, this is why I felt like we would get along so well. I gave that same speech on multiple podcasts in 2017. Oh, really? Okay, good. Look, it is important. People should know.

I don't blame voters. A lot of people are very busy. They go about their lives. If you're listening to the show, you're probably in the top, what, 2% of news consumers in the United States. I always say that on my own show. I go, guys, you need to check your bias. If you're listening to this, you are literally in the top 1%.

And it's not a compliment either. It means you're a news junkie. You're paying attention. you're like super locked in. And that's great for you. Obviously it's great for us. We're happy to have you. But, you know, the vast majority of people are not paying attention to this stuff. They also believe politicians whenever they say things. And that's okay. I mean, kind of think you should know better at this point. But look, I mean, you know, who really is taking the time to read platforms and assess internal dynamics of White House's? Like, this is not a game that you have to play. That's fair. I guess my question for you,

just to make it more precise, though, is it seems to me like the America first movement, is actually like vaporware. And like the actual MAGA voters, like the core Trump voters are part of a lifestyle brand and an occult. And they'll do whatever Trump wants. I'm agreeing with you.

Yeah, okay, got it. I'm just... I am agreeing with you, 100%. No, MAGA is about Trump, specifically. I've actually always believed that. That's why I notice. I'm not one of these people on Epstein or Iran who goes,

he betrayed the base. I'm like, the base doesn't give a shit about anything. They just care about Trump. There is a term called thermostatic public opinion where public opinion shifts depending on whoever's in power. There's reams of data on this for Democrats and for Republicans.

When a Republicans in power, Democratic outlook on the economy is low. When a Democratic is in power, Democratic output is high. Same for Republicans. Like a lot of voters are in cults, if we're all being honest. So the latest trend in hiring is skills-based hiring, which emphasizes capabilities over education and direct experience. According to experts, this leads to faster hiring and better job performance. So if you're an employer who's looking to adapt to skills-based hiring,

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And now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash bulwark. That's ziprecruiter.com slash bulwark meet your match on a zip recruiter. Let's talk about Epstein. Because you've done a lot of, you've been covering this, you're covering it before we were, just to be fair. Seven years. Yeah, you've done deep dives on this stuff. I'm wondering, I just kind of open-ended, like what you think some of the listeners

or viewers of this show might not know about the Epstein files that you guys are following. What are you guys covering that hasn't been covered in other places in the media? Well, Epstein was an Israeli asset, almost certainly. He was an intelligence asset for multiple different intelligence agencies. He was primarily a money mover and potentially even an arms dealer. He was a very important node in a global intelligence network for moving money around for very, very powerful people. And the reason why I always start with that is that his usefulness to this global intelligence network is what enabled him to get away with. his behavior for decades.

And really, I think the reason people elied, the first part of that story is it's politically uncomfortable for a lot of people and constituencies in various different elite networks. Are you sure that? Just can we just use the word asset really quick? Sure. Like, asset versus I read the emails, the Epstein

emails. And what I see is a guy who loves being around power who's like trying to set up dinners with people that he thinks is rich and famous. And some of that is whatever ego. Some of that's because they give cover for his gross activities, criminal activities, some of it is whatever. But like there are non-pedophiles that do that, right? Like they're like, they're like, this is, we know, I know this type. Like I read

his email and I'm like, oh, I know this type. It's like the hangers on of dinner parties and D.C. And, you know, he just expanded it out to globally. I don't really know the type for multinational arms dealing, but it's the same archetype. So how is that? Like, I look at it. That's what I see. Like, that is different than being like, I'm an asset of the of the, of the government. See, I actually think you're confusing the term. Asset is exactly what we're talking about. It's somebody who's like a flyby the night person who works and is convenient, whereas agent and or directly employed is kind of what I think you're assuming. That's not the correct use of the term. He was a hatchet man, a bag man, really, for a variety of these different elite networks. And what Epstein did is, and I mean, allow me, I'm sorry, this is, we're going to have to go back because I literally spent hours on this topic. But the U.S. and the CIA, the way that they would operate before the church committee, is they would never need an Epstein or Adnan Khashoggi or a Douglas lease to do Iran-Contra. They would just do it, right? So after the church committee, what ended up happening in events to try and have transparency

and oversight of the U.S. intelligence community is that the CIA had to start using all of these unsavory people. And that's specifically the story of Iran-Contra. Iran-Contra was a scandal because it broke the law, right? They were like, you cannot do this. Now, the way that they were able to move money and funds and all this to illegally fund these wars was specifically to use these outside, you know, hatchet men, bag men, arms traffickers.

And then what Epstein's note was that he was an expert in moving money around. This is where he primarily got a lot of his expertise at Bear Stearns, where he's eventually fired, and all in the early 1980s. So at that time period, what he does is he specializes in moving and opening illicit bank accounts and moving money across the globe. That really was his like reason for being important to a lot of these intelligence agencies. and that's why his name, you know, starts to pop up. I would also note, you know, in the Epstein files,

one of the craziest things that come out that nobody talks about is his false Austrian passport from when he was like 29 years old in the 1980s. Austria was literally known as the bed of spies. If you've ever visited Austria, or Vienna, specifically, Vienna was the nexus of East and West because of the treaty,

and it had to remain neutral, and it was one of the highest concentration of spies in the globe. And so this is long before he became a billionaire or any of this. So he was very useful to this, and also he had his disgusting kind of sexual proclivities that were going on. And there has been a long, long history of intelligence agencies who have these types of assets, like Jeffrey Epstein, who remember foiled his name in 1999 to the CIA, long before anybody even knew who he was, asking them to acknowledge his work with the agency or any of the name

in the agency that's come up in his files. But the reason why this is important and why I think this had some impact on his sweetheart deal in 2007 is there's a long history of intelligence agencies that when their assets or their agents or anybody gets involved in a criminal case, particularly involving underage children, is that they want to brush this under the rug. And the reason why is they never want this to go into open court. So we have multiple confirmed instances of actual agents, CIA personnel, who were actually caught, let's say with child pornography, where they will pressure the FBI and they're like, hey, this cannot go to trial. Sources and methods cannot come out in open court.

We need a plea deal. You got to cut a deal. This has happened multiple. different times. And there's a long, unfortunate, long history of a lot of this going on. So I do think people can get a little conspiracy brain saying that the government itself was running this or any of that. No, I don't think any of that is the case. Just conspiracy brain really quick on the Israel side of it. You see this, I'm sure, in your comments and from people like legitimate criticism of Israel, which there's a lot to criticize right now, can tip over into either conspiracy brain or straight anti-Semitism or, you know, using Zionist as a slur, like, all that kind of stuff.

I'm wondering how you try to, like, think about that, navigate it. That's very woke of you, Tim. See, I think it's the opposite. It is not my responsibility what other people do. And that's what I mean by that. But this is this implication that we have to be very careful or critical of our, or, let's say, lessen our criticism of a foreign state because we're worried about anti-Semitism is ridiculous.

Anti-Semitism is stupid, wrong, immoral, etc. I don't really don't even know why I have to say. that, but obviously, you know, for anybody who tries to smear me otherwise. However, however, it is often weaponized specifically, you know, the term anti-Semitism to shut down a lot of this legitimate criticism. Sure, but I mean, you would put, I'm not that woke. I mean, you'd police your comments if people were starting, were dropping the N-word all the time in the comments. Absolutely. But that's on them. And so if people in your comments are doing a lot of Jewish conspiracy theory or, you know, you know, Jewish slurs, like that would make me at least as the, as the, as the, I can't

control it, but it would make me as the person communicating, like, one at least say to them, hey guys, fuck you, there are the doors. Get out of here. Sorry. Sure. I mean, yeah. If we have to say it, I guess I will, but like the idea, you know, this idea that we're fostering it or any of that is frankly preposterous. We follow the facts

where they lead. And on the Israel side, I mean, how much more do we need? His relationship with the prime minister, A. Barack, the amount of funding between the two back and forth, the amount of time that they spent together, his own long history of, I mean, by the way, a lot of people I don't even know this, whenever he was negotiating

his little sweetheart deal back in 07, he fled to Israel for a while and where there was some speculation that he might have to actually stay there and take advantage of their extradition treaty. That's not anti-Semitic to say. I got to be honest, something you said there, bothered me a little bit, that this Zionist is a slur. It's not, I mean, it's a literal term, right? People use Zionist as a slur. Okay, but it is a term, no? Like, it is quite literally a definitional term about somebody who believes an expansion of the Israeli state in the Middle East, Like, I don't think that that's a slur. I mean, maybe you could use it as a slur, but I don't think that's a particularly good example.

Sure, I do. I see if somebody out there going willy-nilly, like, I hate that actor, like fucking Zionist so-and-so. I'm like, why are you, like, that's just you trying to say the K word without saying. Honestly, like that is happening out there. I disagree with that. I mean, there might be some cases, but I completely disagree. What's your Trump theory on Epstein? Why is he covering it up?

I have no clue. See, this one's more interesting than Iran. I think Trump is now caught in a basket of lies of his own making. And I think that his obvious, look, his obvious social relationship with Epstein that goes back decades all the way back to the 1990s, the infamous 2002, what is it, New York Magazine quote, where he's like, Jeffrey, he likes him young. He enjoys his social, something like that. I think that was the quote. I mean, they were obviously very close. And then what he said afterwards is he's lied about it, basically, he's like, no, I threw him out of my club.

not really true, or is true, but not in the circumstances, which he wants it to be true. It was over, like, Virginia Gruffray being stolen from the Marlaco spa and not about whether he was concerned about his own creepy behavior. I think, really, they buried him. He buried himself with a lot of the denials for the White House. The birthday book, remember? He said it was totally false.

Sewed Murdoch. A number of times on the plane. Ridiculous. It's ridiculous. It's obvious that their social relationship was deep. And that's a bad look, I think, for the president. He also knew these people socially, Gleine Maxwell, what did he say to Jonathan Swan?

He was like, I wish her well or something in that infamous interview. That was crazy. Melania, maybe. It would be mad. Yeah, I've seen the Melania theory floated by, what's his name, by Michael Wolfe. I haven't seen enough evidence around. I hate giving him any credit. Oh, yeah, I know.

I was more talking about her being mad than like Melania. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, right. That was very important on the Stormy Daniels front. So I really have no idea. I do think it is important. say. And, you know, in retrospect, it was really the people around Trump who were obsessed with Epstein. It really wasn't Trump himself. It was pretty obvious. He never really,

never really was into. He's like, yeah, sure, release it kind of the way, like, I'm a big UFO guy. Same thing. He obviously was just using it for cloud clicks or whatever. He knows people are very interested in the subject, but he never had any real enthusiasm for it. So that's my guess, for for why they've handled it this way. He has very little empathy, but one of the groups he has empathy for is men who are accused of sexually harassing people. That's another reason I think he's doing it. You've been pretty mean to Donald Trump, the president of the United States. We're 43 minutes in.

Two votes for him. So let's talk about the good stuff. Look at the last 14 months and you're like, man, he's really killed it on that. What would be the list? Shut the border down. Okay. Shut the border down. Yeah.

I would say that's probably number one. I mean, for a lot of people, that's essential, right? For a lot of the people who are, if you even look at some of the most diehard, like America First, MAGA or whatever, they're like, look, I don't care about anything else. That's number one. So you could say that. I would say that's probably as big as when. There's been literally no more incoming, you know, fake asylum refugees coming across.

Let's think. So let me think chronologically. So we have the border. Then there was Doche, which I would say was a failure. I don't know. It's tough. One win for Donald Trump. Yeah.

Well, it depends. I mean, it really depends because you're asking me personally. Let's talk about the border for a second. Let's talk about a border for a second. Then we'll go back to grading the Trump presidency. I give credit just on the narrow question of it's important that we secure our border. And I do agree with that. And I think that this has been a failure among a lot of past presidents.

And some of that's out of their control a little bit, but they've done a good job in the securing of the border. If you bring that into kind of the whole, you know, kind of immigration policy, though, like the fact that we have probably fewer people in the country now than we did when he was elected president is insane to me. Like that is not the sign. Why? It's not a sign of successful company. When you have negative net migration, when there are more people leaving than coming. But that was a declared goal of the campaign. Well, sure.

So obviously it was a policy success. But I'm saying is, okay, it's bad for the country. Like, he did it. Like, that's true. Yeah. But I'm saying that is, I don't understand why anyone would think that is a good policy. And it's going to contribute to inflation. It's going to contribute to, like, there's a lot of needs we have for a country.

Growth in a country is important. You know, I don't think we want to be Japan. in the 1980s. I don't think we want to be a country that people are fleeing. I think that it's good to bring people into the country. Maybe not the same way that they were brought in between 2000 and 2024, but we have to have some way to add people to the country, right? Well, I think it's kind of a neoliberal view, right? Kind of looking at as immigrants as utils, like economic utils and their plug and not really considering. But I think that they, I think that they're utils and I think we've done an assault on human rights. I think both of those things are true. Right. By the way,

you would find a lot more agreement between you and me on ice than you might even think. And there's also a political problem with all of this. I've talked about thermostatic public opinion. The way the Trump administration has carried out a lot of their immigration agenda has actually flipped support for mass migration more than I think ever before in history, including amnesty, which I think would be a catastrophe for the United States. But let's just think philosophically. So first of all, I reject the idea that human beings are utils and we should care about that.

But secondary, and I think that there are much bigger arguments. Now, let's talk about the border and really about the historical trend. So Trump, you can look at Trump as a singular force or as a historical force. I like both theories, but I also think that historically, if you're going to take a look at our own history, under the Biden administration, about 10 million people illegally entered the country, 10 million, the most, I think, ever in American history. You also had the largest foreign-born population of the United States ever since the early 1900s, which was met at the time by an organic, democratic pushback and shutdown of,

U.S. immigration, specifically because they were having chaos in their internal society from unmitigated mass migration over the last, what, 50, 60 years, I think at that time period. Also, to your economic point, at that time, we had much more industrial plug-in-play style labor where any individual human being could be reasonably expected to perform well in that economy. You cannot say that at this time, except we have the same level of mass migration. We're a service-based economy. A lot of this idea about basically turning, you know, people from Guatemala or whatever into home health AIDS, I think is like deeply actually almost like racist, honestly. And what it does is like basically import some sort of like slave class in order to serve all of us to keep, you know, our goods very well.

I think that there's a gap between importing a slave class and having negative net migration and having a similar type. There certainly is. But I'm, I'm, look, I in the same way that you gave like the maximalist argument, I'm giving you the same one here is that we don't need maximal number of home health aids. And I mean, the biggest growing sector of our economy, right now is health care and specifically home health care aid for old people. I mean, look, I'm not saying that's not a noble job or any of that, but if you want to drive the price down on that, it's a big argument for basically like low-skilled immigration, which I don't think that we need. We're a service-based economy. We have industrial-based problems of our own.

Wage growth, obviously, has been stagnant now for decades, a couple blips up in there over the years. But at a bigger, more important level, and this is really why, you know, Trump really shifted me on the immigration question and really just thinking about it bigger, is really like we need a cohesive social understanding of America. And finally you said something that made me mad. Great. 50 minutes in, awesome. That's fine.

I mean, I just think we look at Minneapolis, for example, and we've seen a very socially cohesive society that's had a lot of immigration into it. We had the society coming together, volunteering, helping their neighbors. I don't think there was any sense. And like there was some fraud, right? Like that's true and that should have been dealt with. But like as a society, I don't think if you asked people of Minneapolis, like, do you feel incohesive in your community? It's, I think you would hear right now exactly the opposite.

And you saw that these masked agents coming into the community to bully and harass people were the ones that caused social discohesion. I wouldn't even disagree in terms of the way that the operation went down. What I would fundamentally disagree with, though, is that there is not a chaotic element to tens of millions of people living in your country illegally. And specifically having people and their children have to be educated at the price of the state, while a lot of these people barely speak any English, 25% of the people that Biden let in literally didn't even have a high school diploma, not even literate in English, let alone Spanish. A significant portion of the population is not even literate in Spanish.

I mean, whenever their lawyers and other are having discourse with them, they're speaking like, you know, like native languages, that person is not going to succeed in the United States. This, you know, to your economic point, if we want to reduce people to you, Tills. Maybe. I did. I did some volunteering for people in the mom community in Guatemala. There were kids in high school.

I have nothing against these people personally. What I'm saying is that, let's say, again, to reduce people to utilities, what would you say for an American citizen who doesn't have a high school diploma? Statistically, that person is not going to do very well. Now, it would be madness to allow that person to come to the United States, legalize them, give them citizenship, and then just expect them to, like, flourish. Like, we know that it's not going to work based on the data. And really what it comes down to, again, and this is generally your point,

point around like social cohesion and like an understanding is we get to decide democratically. And I will say there was a, I think, again, I think immigration was probably number one, maybe number two reason why Donald Trump got elected is the people want to feel some sort of control over the border. And it was a popular vote, I think mandate really on the immigration question. Like I really think there's a lot of like, Felford Award stuff, whenever it comes to Trump. He stood in front of a sign at the RNC and it said mass. deportation. And he won the popular vote. And I think people like you have to reckon then that your

idea of Minneapolis then of some, you know, utopian vision is just not true. My reckoning is, I'm sorry, my reckoning is that I was right. And there was a big portion of people that voted for Donald Trump that didn't know what mass deportation looked like. And I did know what mass deportation looked like. And I knew it was going to be an assault on American citizens' rights and an assault on the human rights of people that tried to come here legally through the asylum process, even if you don't like that process. they weren't criminals that snuck across the border. They tried to go through the legal process. And now they're being assaulted.

They're being sent to foreign countries. And I think the people look at that. And that's why ICE, like the only thing less popular than ICE in the polls right now is AI and Iran and the Democratic Party. Well, look. So I think the people are now seeing what mass deportation really is. Maybe. I totally disagree. I don't think mass deportation had to look like this at all.

And in fact, my criticism on the immigration agenda of the Trump is that a lot of it is for show and it's not actually for affect. Don't forget that the White House itself just put out a mess. or something yesterday saying don't talk about mass deportation, talk about removal of, what is it, violent, violent criminals or any of that. I mean, the real story of the immigration agenda under Donald Trump is he didn't live up to the fundamental promise, which is that to tackle immigration, you have to tackle big business. And there has been an absolute courting of big business and allowance, really, of like farm labor or reduction in work raids, any of this. And this is where the economic question is. So how would I deal with mass deportation? I don't think it's very

difficult at all. Past mandatory verify for the entire country. Make it so that you have to verify citizenship whenever you're employed and then put a massive tax on remittances to any foreign country. Everyone will go home tomorrow. You don't have to lock anybody up or very, very few people. However, it will dramatically affect a lot of, you know, the house building industry,

I don't know, like the weed industry in California banking. It's not going to create the show necessarily, I guess some people in the Trump administration want, but I think that would be a much easier way to do, act frankly, a lot more effective, too. So he said he's done one good thing since he's been in there 14 months. Shut the board out. You have any regrets?

Any feeling like maybe you were a little too pro-Trump in retrospect? Of course. How could I not? No, definitely not. Especially, well, I mean, this is why. We'd be better off. If Kamala's president, we'd be better off right now. The country would be better off.

Okay. Well, we wouldn't be in the Iran war. We wouldn't have, we wouldn't have like the tariffs. Do you remember a segment? We wouldn't have mass agents in the streets. Those are three things we wouldn't have. Do you remember a segment on your show? where I think it was Jonathan last said

that the neocons are now in control of the Democratic Party. Do you remember that? I hate this. You all took that so far out of context. Why did we take it out of context? Because he was joking, because we have a, we have a clubhouse joke.

We were joking. He was laughing about the nature of how she talked about lethality at the, go back and watch it. I went back to and rewatch it. I actually will. I will.

The 17 seconds goes around and then we keep talking about it later and have a longer conversation. Fair point, because I hate when people clip me out of context too. By the way, please don't do that. for this episode. We won't do it. So, okay, let's put that clip aside. Let's talk about the DNC

platform from 2024, where they attacked Donald Trump from the right on Iran. I don't want to read that 2024. I mean, we're here in 2026. Do you think we'd be in Iran war right now? Do you think we in the Iran war right? No, no. You're right. And I'll give you that. Will we have some of the Israel policy? Yeah, I do think so. Actually, I was at the DNC. I remember how they treated a lot of those Palestinian protesters. I interviewed a lot of them, actually, with my colleague Ryan Grimm. Yeah, that was bad politics. No, but it was policy too. It was bad politics. policy too. I mean, these are people, like, again, but see, this is where I get frustrated. It is like we could only evaluate candidates at the time. And the time was Liz Cheney, it was a

DNC platform that attacked Trump from the right on Iran. It was somebody who had just come through this disastrous policy in the war in Ukraine, incredibly neoconservative. We're going to kill Putin. I mean, we had real reason to believe. This is a critique of the campaign, which is a legitimate critique. I'm not asking you if you would vote for Kamala based on the information that you had in November 2024, obviously, no, you voted for Trump. It's March 2026. I'm asking you based on the information you have now, having learned about what Trump was going to do the first 14 months, do you think Kamala would have been better. If I could have gone back, I probably just wouldn't vote, to be honest, because immigration is also a very salient question for me, too. And like, if anything, what I've seen

revealed in a lot of the current Democratic, like, legislative base is like, they really still believe in the same numbers, in the so-called asylum process that you just said, I think mass amnesty is the plan, was the plan, will be the plan whenever people come back into power. And like, that's a red line for a lot of us on the immigration question. Rapid Fire TDS and then Rapid Fire Fun stuff we disagree with.

Really, we'll just, you know, it's like a chess match. We'll have 45 seconds back and forth. Why was January 6th, not the end for you? What do you mean? Some people in the Trump administration walked away. Mike Pence walked away. They said, look, anybody that would sit there and watch on TV while a mob of his fans

stormed the Capitol and attacked police officers. It was a judgment call that was so horrible that, like based on a lie that he made up. Like the judgment call was so horrible, you could never trust somebody that has that judgment to do anything again, to run a fucking corner store to coach your kids basketball team. And there's no way you could ever make a president again. Why was that not your view? Well, there was lesser of two evils easy logic, watch Democratic leaders and can take cloth get on their knees and encourage one of the worst riots.

Can't take cloth? That's actually, the easiest answer is why January 6 was not. the breaking point was literally watching the entire Democratic Party and media encourage the mass looting and rioting and burning. I mean, I lived in D.C. literally where I used to live. There were riots that were going on. People were the crime rate exploded. It was a disaster. So no, that's, that's the easiest. Did I think it was bad? Yeah, I said so too at the time on my show. People, don't, not some Jan 6thologist or any of that. Like, you know, I'm not sitting here, me like, were actually in the election. Were you playing the choir? I wasn't playing the choir. I wasn't, you know, it didn't

QAnon Shaman or whatever was a hero. I said, well, whenever you have to choose between this and the people who encourage, I still think would encourage mass rioting and looting. Yeah, that was not, that's honestly the easiest TDS question. My least favorite Buller Kama I've ever written was that I thought that the punishment for the shaman was too much. So there you go. There's my consistency.

He actually was. By the way, that was true. That was true. I know. And I stand by it. I stand by it. I don't think we can actually do Ukraine rapid fire style. So why don't we just take Ukraine?

We'll do it another day. How about that? We can find about your kid another day. Let's go to the fun stuff. You are apparently against daylight savings time, which is a total affront on the human spirit. You have 30 seconds to explain why. It's bad for circadian biology.

It is bad for the productive class who actually does anything in this country. It's only good for boomers who want to golf later on in the day. And it is massively disruptive. You're a parent now. How old are your kids? Yes. My daughter is 10 months old.

10 months. Okay. We're going to redo this one in three years. When you have a three-year-old, you're going to the park. When you're going to the park after school, when school ends and it's already fucking dark and you've got to have your child running around the house, all that energy. We don't have 40 to 30 seconds to get into this. I've battled all of these bullshit arguments for years and years and years.

Okay, we'll redo it. If you want, by the way, for anybody who wants, I put out an entire essay where I destroyed Nate Silver on the DST question. You can go on, you can find it. Vite on vices. Yes. I've said that I'm not accepting Kalshi or prediction whatever advertising on the bulwark. I refuse to.

I refuse to endorse it. I think it's deeply pernicious. I do accept weed gummy advertising, though. You are, you're harshly against weed. And gambling, though, it seems like you did play craps earlier. So what are your, what's your weed and gambling and alcohol? Give me just kind of a run of devices. Well, first of all, I don't drink.

On the gambling question, I'm very against online gambling. I'm fine with in-person gambling. You need to introduce friction into the system. This is another reason why I'm against prediction markets. You know, my modest proposal on gambling is just make it casino gambling. You have to be able to go to a casino to place your bets. And when you go to a casino, you see all the other degenerates inside of a casino. Number one, you're like, God, I don't ever want to be like these people.

But also, you have to get into your car and drive. You can't just do it sitting in your underwear in your home, which leads to runaway addiction problems. Also, the sports books, I don't have enough time to go into this. they are robbing you blind. The types of bets that Kalshi, Polymarket, and Draft Kings, and Fanduel have, would make a 80s Vegas guy, he would blush red at the idea

of stealing that much money from you. And that's what's normalized now inside of the system. Okay. It's all of that. It's even worse than that. I have years of, oh, we've gum is 10 times worse because it's used by more of the population. Yeah, we have mass parts of our population.

I think, what's the latest number? 20 million? I think it is 20 million. I'm pretty sure. who are using high potency TNC on a daily basis. It's destroying your, for you, it's destroying your testosterone. It is destroying your sleep. Are you on TRT?

I'm not on TRT. Okay. All right. Some of your blood work. Okay. All right. All right. So it's destroying your testosterone, destroying your sleep.

It's bad for pregnant women. It smells like shit whenever people smoke it everywhere. But most importantly, you don't smoke cigars. Well, we don't smoke cigars in public, do we? When you go down to a park, are you going to smell a cigar? You're going to smell a week. When you get on a plane and a guy reeks, is you going to reek of, is you going to reek of cigars or me? Whenever I drop, walk down the streets of New York City, am I going to smell cigarettes or am I going to

smell weed? Same in D.C. where I can see cannabis dispensaries everywhere. What am I going to smell? You know it's weed. It's going to be weed and it's everywhere. It encourages you, legalization encourages teen use. It dramatically lowers IQ in the developing brain. Also in the adult brain, makes you slow, makes you lazy. It's just bad for you. It's a horrible product. It's the high potency THC, which you're probably encouraging people to use with weed gummies is, I mean, psychoactive to the point where we have a mass explosion across the globe in schizophrenia and the outbreak of mental illness. So the social costs of marijuana are so much higher than any of these stoners led us to believe. And in fact, Bigweed is, big weed, I would say,

is one of the preeminent threats to the country right now. Oh my God. Okay. One of the preeminent threats to the country? What about crypto? How about how does you compare it to crypto? We have a president running a crypto scam and people are doing gambling. in their wallets with ship coins. It isn't even gambling. It's actually stealing. It's theft. The president and his family are stealing from regular people with their coins. It is an abomination. Yeah, we didn't even get into corruption, unfortunately. We can do that at another time. No, crypto has gone completely out of control. I was a Bitcoin guy very originally. I really, I like some of the hype and some of the use case specifically around Bitcoin, the Bitcoin manifesto and some of the original theory.

But the way that the industry has now become, where it's basically just runaway ridiculousness and really gambling. whenever it comes to meme coins, shit coins, prediction markets. Remember, prediction markets started with crypto. It's not an accident, actually, that it did. And so I think it's gone completely run amok, and I think all of this needs to be shut down. I did this yesterday. I already made my case on why it would be fine for a basketball team

to have a strip club night. You disagree with that. People can go listen to yesterday's show if they want to hear my, me in favor, give now Sega on Khan. I mean, this, how, I mean, really what is I can. We still live in a free country, right? We still live in a free country?

I cannot even conceive of a sports league, which is watched by children trying to normalize celebrating a fucking strip club. You realize their tits aren't out at the game, right? It's just the logo. Their tits aren't out at the game, right? It just says magic city. Regardless, it's like this is a horrible. It's just like gambling, like weed or any of these other things.

These are industries which should be resigned to the gutter of American society. Just like gambling. You need to go find some fat. to go and place your ridiculous bet on the Cowboys for 3.5. You should not be able to do it on your phone with billions of dollars of advertising, normalizing it into your life. So I'll make the exact same case on the strip club.

I mean, I can't even believe this is up for discussion. Just absolutely not. So this sets up for my final question, which is listening to your case. You're against gambling, gummies, alcohol, strip clubs. Are you kind of low-key for Sharia law? Are you a low-key pro-Sheria law guy? People have asked me that before.

People have asked me for that. Look, I still believe in individuality and freedom and, you know, to a certain extent, there. But in the way, in the way that I... I'm not saying like you really want America to be a Sharia country, but are like, you low-key, Sharia, curious, though. I live my life more consistent with Sharia law than the American Degeneres, minus praying five times a day and some of the other stuff that would come with it. But listen, you know, those laws and those traditions, they come from good practice. I think. think. Liberalitarian, right-wing populist. We found a lot of common ground today. You never know. Things are shaking.

You have another podcast called The Realignment that you do. Let's listen to that. I've said this morning, on walk. And I was super with you on that. Like I wrote an article, you were before me, maybe like six months.

I wrote an article for the Bullock. One of my first articles was called The Trade. And I was like, we've had a full shift called Red Dog Democrats are now Democrats. And these, you know, working class folks are now Republicans.

It's already happened, like people pretending like it hasn't. I do wonder if what's been happening the last month is rejigling that a little bit. And I guess that's my final question for you. And I'm wondering, kind of looking into your crystal ball, what you're seeing as far as the restructuring of the coalitions right now. I absolutely think that that is happening. I especially think with the newly activated parts of politics, so like young men, right? We're going to see a dramatic reduction.

I think in that, I think that group is really going to be either up for grabs or maybe they be apathetic. They may just not vote. but there are also, you know, the Latino swings that have been wild all over the place from 2020 up until 2024, either reverting back to normal or changing in a different way. Coalition, I think one of the favorite things and one of the reasons I love about covering politics is that nothing is that nothing is that nothing is that nothing is that nothing is that nothing. I see James on Saturday. I'm going to order it and refresh myself. I will tell them that you said that. Tell them. I still have it. Tell them to sign it.

Because I use it as an example of how wrong you can be, is that demographics are not destiny. There is no such thing as a static coalition in American politics. And my faith in America is that they change their mind all the time. Go and look at the 96 electoral map to 2000. Look at 2000 or 2004, 08 to 2016, 16 to 24. And these are elections that I've just lived through. Okay?

I'm only 33. So think about that. How many times are America? has changed their mind over the years. And I love that. I think America's always up for grabs. Things are always changing. We're a highly dynamic country. States change. I love it. And I think it's, I think I would say it's the coolest part of our republic is watching, you know, for all of the black pill, Dumer, like, oh, people are in cults and all of that. Enough people on the margins actually do change their mind literally all the time. And they respond to

incentives, to politics, the news. And that's kind of what keeps me excited in doing this every day. Sager and Jenny, thanks for all the time, man. Go check him out on breaking points. everybody else. We'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the show. See you all then. Peace. Thanks for having me, Tim.