The Bulwark Podcast - Sam Stein: Can Trump Avoid Humiliation in Iran?

Episode Date: April 22, 2026

Trump's madman antics got him into a game of chicken with Iran, but he's up against people who are even crazier than he is. And he is not likely to get a deal with Tehran that is any better than Obama's nuclear agreement—which Trump called the worst deal in the world. Plus, the Virginia win is another reminder that Dems can effectively play hardball, Kevin Warsh is looking like an alarming pick for the Fed, the media coverage of the mass shooting in Shreveport was almost non-existent, MAGA is obsessed with Mamdani, Sam and Tim have new Cabinet rankings, and is there a way to stop Kushner from making deals with Sharia law countries? Sam Stein joins Tim Miller.show notes Catherine on Warsh failing the big test in his confirmation hearing Will Saletan on the latest anti-MAMDANI bill Jonathan on the national media largely ignoring the mass shooting in Louisiana Tim, Sam, and Sommer on Candace vs. Loomer Tim on the Nuggets pod, CSG Tickets for our Bulwark Live shows in San Diego and LA in May: TheBulwark.com/Events Our listeners get the Harry’s Plus Trial Set for only $10 athttps://www.Harrys.com/THEBULWARK #Harryspod Learn a new language and get up to 60% off  your subscription at Babbel.com/BULWARK

Every time I grocery shop, I end up spending more and getting less. And it's not just groceries. Everything costs more. It adds up and soak in the debt. So that's why I reached out to the Credit Counseling Society. After my first call, I felt the weight lifting. I bet they can help you too. Don't wait.

The sooner you call, the more options you'll have. And the weight, leave that for the grocery bags. The Credit Counseling Society. When debt's got you, you've got us. the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. A few housekeeping items. We have the live shows coming up in San Diego and Los Angeles, downtown San Diego, downtown L.A., May 20th, May 21st, make a little weekend out of it if you're not from Southern California. If you live on the west side in Venice or Santa Monica, it's going to be a long drive either way. So you can pick your poison. Tickets are

available for both. Go to the Bullwark.com slash events. I do hope to see you in California. My guest today will be in California with us. Also, for the YouTube people, we subscribe, we're getting mugged by some of these terrible conservative influencers on getting to 2 million subscribers. So we need a subscriber boost. So if you're on YouTube, subscribe right now, tell your friends. All right, today's guest. This is unusual for me.

I don't usually do this, okay? I don't usually get bullied into having a guest on the show. I usually get to pick. But in this case, our guest today was upset because he had been. In poll position, the most downloaded episode ever was right before I went on vacation last summer. Our guest today was the special guest for that episode. I think that the reason of the most downloads was mostly because most of you missed me while I was on vacation. You kept kind of downloading it to see if I was coming back.

But it was a point of pride for him. And as of a couple days ago, that has been passed. Now the episode of Jane Koston, when we talk about Melania, not being able to speak English, Catholic school has passed it. I don't know why you guys loved that one so much, but there it is. We all love Jane. And so he's back. He wants first. He wants to be first again. He wants pole position. It's the managing editor of the Buller exam time. How you done? Just to clear things up for it to start out here. I did not beg to come on. You asked me to come on. You bet. You bet. You bet like a dog. Like a dog. Like a dog. No, but I mean, I'm I'm deeply offended that I've been

passed by Jane. So it would be nice to reclaim my title, but I did not ask to come on at all. That's not the report that I got. We'll have to go to the transcript on that and hash that out another time. We'll start with some Iran news, much to get to. Our cabinet rankings will be coming at the end. I know you guys are clamoring for that. The current position is best I can tell from the President of the United States is that we're going to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed and let gas prices continue to rise for Americans until Iran figures its shit out. That's basically how I'd sum it up. His bleat was this, based on the fact that Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly

so. And upon request of Field Marshal, Munir, and Prime Minister Sharif of Pakistan, why is Pakistan telling us what to do? We have been asked to hold our attack on the country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal, directed our military to continue the blockade and remain ready and able will therefore extend the ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted and discussions are concluded one way or the others the ceasefire ends we've unilaterally decided to keep it the straight is still closed oil prices are up again

this morning and our current position is you know Iran's irons got to figure out their shit like we get it we get it they got a potential coup happening there I don't know the Ayatollah might be in a coma We don't know. We're going to give them a little extra time. A little bonus time. If you read that truth, it did not sound like Donald Trump to me. There wasn't like a lot of all caps or exclamation. You think it was an auto pen situation? Someone authored it.

It wasn't Donald Trump. Maybe he put a few flourishes in there. Do you think BB? I don't think Bibi. Maybe Bibi's writing the truth these days. I don't know. But also, I think there's one thing that's kind of getting lost is we're not actually in a ceasefire. we're in a ceasefire that Trump claims we're in a ceasefire, but the Iranians aren't saying

this is a ceasefire. They think the blockade is an act of provocation or war. And so they're not treating this as a ceasefire. And they apparently have boarded to vessels this morning in the straight. That's the stuff that we're seeing this morning while we're recording. They're not going to the talks in Islamabad so long as there is a blockade. So we're not actually in a ceasefire. We keep calling it a ceasefire. We're in a place where Donald Trump is not. pursuing more aggressive military action, but it's still an act of conflict or war, whatever you want to call it with the Iranians. And that's the problem is that if you can't get a, if you can't get a, to the point where you can actually talk about a diplomatic off-ramp, you obviously don't have a

diplomatic offer. Yeah. And as you mentioned, this is a quote for an advised of Iranian speaker. The extension of the ceasefire by Trump has no meaning. I mean, isn't that right? I mean, by wrong here? No, no, no, that's right. It seems right. There's another statement about how the loser doesn't to set the terms, just, you know, a little bit of muster and a provocation. And then they've got another Lego video out in the Lego videos. The Iranians got to try a few different means here. I don't know. The Pulitzer is going to go to whoever figures out who is doing the Lego videos.

The Lego videos, yeah. There's a 23-year-old intern in Tehran in Tehran doing it. It's some guy in Malaysia probably doing that. Some guy in Malaysia who's like DMing them to, you know, the foreign minister. I don't know. clearly Iran isn't particularly trying to escalate at this point. Are you sure? Well, they did board the vessels this morning.

But I just mean like they're not droning natural gas facilities in UAE or Qatar or the other types of things that they've said they're going to do. They said that they said that they're planning other types of disruptive attacks. The Trump position here, I guess, and it's not I guess. It's what he stated is that Iran is losing $500 million a day because of the blockade. And so eventually they're going to cry uncle. There's some conversation about how Karg Island, if you can't get the oil out of there, and there'll be some kind of logistical issues that would really cripple Iran's ability to transport oil outside of the country. But like the Daily Mail is reporting this morning that there have been a couple Iranian ghost ships that have bypassed a blockade.

We'll see like these things are all developing kind of as we're talking. But it seems like a bad bet to me that it's going to be the Iranians that are going to be the ones that cry. uncle over economic concerns. I don't think the Iranian leadership cares that much about, I mean, they care about their long-term economic interest and getting a good deal in negotiation. But I think that, you know, if there are shortages in Iran for a little while and their people were suffering anyway, I think that there's much more room for pain than there is in the, in decadent America. Neither outcome is great, but I tend to agree with you. The regime doesn't particularly have a sterling record of caring for their citizens. So I have to imagine.

imagine they're okay with more economic anxiety in the short term, at least. It's unclear to me, though, also, I'm no expert on this, but to the degree that the Russians and the Chinese are helping them out, I would be curious about that. Weren't we allowing the Russians to help them out at one point in time? Is that still happening? I will say this. We in America have not felt the pinch to the degree that the Europeans have and other countries have because of these fuel prices. I saw a story this morning about some German airliner canceling. a bunch of flights because the fuel costs for jet fuel is just out of control. We haven't really had that here.

And yet at the same time, gas is pretty damn expensive. I had to fill up on the way in today. It was crazy. Were you filling up at that one gas station that the morning news always uses because it has the highest gas prices in the country? And for some reason... There was a famous gas station right outside the Watergate in D.C. Forever had the highest prices, but they changed ownership. And now there's a famous one near Union Station that always has high.

prices. I tend to try to avoid those two locations for those reasons. But even this morning, I was like just kind of filling up my tank and I was checking my phone. And, you know, I was like, committed to keeping it under $50. I don't know why. And then I look over as $70. I hadn't even filled up. I was just, you know, it's like, that's going to add up for a lot of people. And then you have rising food costs, which we were talking about in Slack this morning. So it is going to hurt. And it's starting to hurt really badly. And I, you know, Trump may be totally, you know, a sadist about this stuff. But he's at 33%. What was that AP poll? He just lost redistricting in Virginia. We're going to talk about that. The house is looking completely gone. I think he clearly is

tired of this shit and wants to figure out a way out of it. Obviously. So it's not that he's not feeling the acute political and economic pain here. It's just that he's in a game of chicken. And there's a larger thing here, theme through all these stories that I'm going to get to later. But it boils down to this. Donald Trump starts shit without ever knowing what the off ramp is going to be. It's the same with Virginia and redistricting. It's the same with Kevin Warsh and the Fed nomination. He always starts something and he has no idea how to figure it out and finish it off.

And this is just what's happening in Iran. And he lives day by day. He's a survivor. It's the thing. Edgar wrote a good morning shots about this couple days ago or weeks ago. Who knows, time is flat circle about the end of Madman theory. And I mocked madman theory because we can see the limits of it. we can see how stupid it is here.

But like, you have to acknowledge that there were times where it was effective. It was like Trump was so crazy that other country leaders just like gave him shit that they wouldn't have given to Joe Biden just because it was like, who knows? Like this dude is too big of a pain in the ass and it's like whatever. We'll cut some deal with him that we wouldn't have cut otherwise if we just had two bureaucrats negotiating. Like that it did work a couple of times. But like one of the limits of madman theory is that you always have to be the craziest man. and like right now he's in a game of chicken with we don't even know who sometimes right like there's a they have an internal negotiation happening and among the people on the other side of

the game of chicken are the craziest sons of bitches in the world i mean you know and so it's like okay now what and you can see what happens which is now what which is like he he says oh i'm going to end their civilization or oh i'm not going to extend the ceasefire oh we're going to go back at their power plants and then when push comes to shove it's like he doesn't want to do it This doesn't mean that you might not ever do it because he got himself into this fucking game of chicken with the craziest sons of bitches in the world. But you can tell he's trying to veer off. He's the one with the itchy turnhand. Yeah.

It is a weird situation where it's like who is the biggest nihilist and we have to live with that. I was talking with Sarah about this over the weekend too because I grapple and struggle with how to handle these threats that he makes about ending civilization and bombing power plants and bridges and stuff like that. because obviously he ducks out of them time and time again. And now I think this is like the fifth time he's done it or something like that. And yet I don't want to not take that seriously, if that makes sense to you. No, you have to take it seriously. Yeah. Yeah.

But like. And he gets backed into a corner. The other thing about Trump is that he is susceptible to whatever the last person told him. You know, I don't know who around him wants to end Iranian civilization besides Hague Seth. Lindsay. Yeah, sure. But yeah, no, I think it's worth taking it seriously. for that reason. I mean, you have to take it seriously. And then I guess the real nightmare scenario is where he's

just like, okay, I've tried everything else, and I'm looking like a big old pussy, and I have to do this, and boom. That's a real risk, because he is looking like a big old pussy. We can say that now. We can. And honestly, congrats to the hedge fund guy after the election 24 said to the FT or whatever that he's excited about being able to say pussy again. Because, you know, what's been a great run for him. I mean, it was worth it. Hopefully. Hopefully. Hopefully. he was long oil. Hopefully he was long oil and wanted to say the P. Look, gas is 430, but at least we can say post. It's a couple other just things in Iran really quick. There's a podcast pull out last night,

which I think speaks to his, the political problems that you were getting to, which is they just asked open-ended, like, why are we doing this? What exactly is it that we're doing here in Iran? And the top answer was to prevent Iran for getting nuclear weapons, but that was only 22%. 20% said it was for taking their oil. 13% said it was a show of power. 9% said regime change. 6% said distraction from Epstein.

6% terrorism prevention. 5% helping Israel. Nobody knows what we're doing. And it does compound the political problem where it's like, hey, I'm paying more at the gas tank and I truly don't know why. I mean, does Trump even know why at this point? Trump's been all over the map.

No. What is the objective? If you went to Islamabad right now, let's say they were going to Islamabad. They're not. We don't have ongoing negotiations. But what would be the objective? It kind of seems like the objective right now is just reopening the straight, which it was already open before this all started.

Right. Well, then here is the real conundrum. Right. It's like any off-ramp, any resolution to this is itself going to end with embarrassment for Trump. What's the best realistic deal he could cut right now in your estimation? I think that they help them save face by saying that they can take some of the enriched uranium out of the country. Not all of it.

They open the strait, but then they get sanctions relief. Some cap on their nuclear ambitions, some IEHX, things like that. Yeah, commit to not funding prox that they lie about. Yeah, that seems like the best deal, right? Great. Cool. First of all, Iran won't agree to taking all of the nuclear material out of the country. They wouldn't ever do it. That's a red line.

But even in that scenario, the rosiest scenarios, they reopen the strait. It was already opened prior to the war. So, congrats. And everything else you described is the JCPOA. Right. And it's like Trump blew it up. And we spent years trying to figure out what the hell to do. And then we end up back in the place where Trump started.

It's a humiliation. Maybe he gets a cut off the straight. U.S. gets a cut off the stretch. That's the difference between the JCPOA. We get a 10% vague on the oil now. Right. And it'll be in some sort of Trump family crypto. And it's awesome to be great.

And he'll fund the ballroom. And what a deal. And fine, like, I'm at the place now or like let him crow about some stupid deal that's just the JCPOA and he can pocket a few mill here and there. But like it is objectively going to be some version of that deal that he killed. And it's a humiliation. And I think he sort of knows a little bit that it's going to be difficult to sell any of the stuff because if you, now that we're like three or four deals ago. But the first deal was that 10 point principal plan that they apparently had struck. and if you looked at the sort of specifics of it,

it was actually quite worse than the JCPO. It was much more sanctions relief. It was basically, you know, the type of, you know, allowing Iran to essentially control this trade and charge. And they backtracked instantaneously when the commentary turned negative on that. And so they're not ready. They're not ready to swallow their pride. So what we said for the start, I said,

I don't know how to give the guy advice, don't want to give him advice, but after the first weekend, Monday after the first weekend, he should have said, that's a huge victory. we've obliterated them that's not recoverable. Good luck to you and all your endeavors, people of Iran. That was his way out of us and he didn't do it this time. I totally agree with that and it would have fit the pattern of what he had done before with Midnight Hammer and Venezuela and all that stuff.

I think the issue was the Iranians responded by basically bombing the entire region. And at that point, you're at that point, you're sort of stuck because you've basically drawn in your regional allies and the gas prices are skyrocketed. and you got to figure out what the hell to do with the straight, which gets me back to my original conceit. He starts things and has no idea what to do after the first day, and it happens time and again. I had one last important Iran thing for you to Virginia. We like to call it straight here at the Bullock. Sam, that's why we brought you in. You know, we wanted to do real journalism. And I do think, to be fair to Trump, he does care about human rights for hot people.

Oh, yeah. He cares about human rights for hot women. I don't know if you saw this bleat. He posted a bleat with a picture of eight women. They were all pretty good-looking, I will say. You know, I just as a gay man, I just says an objective thing. I'm not objectifying them. I'm just saying they look pretty. They're younger women. They look pretty.

And he posted this. To the Iranian leaders who will soon be in negotiations with my representatives, fingers crossed. I would greatly appreciate the release of these women. I am sure that they will respect the fact that you did so. Please do them no harm. Would be a great start for negotiations. I'm pulling up.

I just pulled up the blue eye I didn't dream for her. It's unreal. Come on. And it is literally like, this same thing happened to Zoran. Yeah, it was the Columbia student.

Yeah, it was the Columbia student and she was pretty. And like within two seconds, she was out of ICE detention. Yeah. Human rights. Human rights are bad. We've got an old,

you just have a creepy, old, fucking card in the White House. And you can get human rights relief if the victims are hot women. Well, this actually brings up a possible end route for this conflict here, which is the Iranians can use AI and start creating these like MAGA women in Iran saying, we love you, Trump. Just, you know, open the strait, but also agree to sanctions relief. I love you, Trump.

Done. Yeah. Maga women. Iranian MAGA AI women. They should actually be the point people on the negotiation. Yeah, you know, the Lego shit is enough. Stop doing the Lego stuff. We need to switch it up a little bit.

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And after you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Big win in Virginia for the referendum to redistrict the state. There were a lot of concerns about this. And I had a sub-Romanium on the podcast a couple weeks ago. And like they were basically saying the internal polling was shown it as a coin flip. Virginia's not California. Virginia is a blue state, light blue.

And they elected Glenn Yonkin not too long ago. You know, there's good government types in Virginia, a lot of military types in Virginia, and the gerrymander that they put forth, I just want to steal this from a guy that I follow on election Twitter named James. He called it the 10-1 map looks absolutely insane. And it's wildly unfair and the public had full knowledge of it. And that's like, right, that map looks ridiculous. It's a ridiculous map.

And it's like you're in the same district if you're in the Shenandoah Valley. And if you're like right across the Potomac and Roslin, I mean, It's an absurd map, and they pushed it through as an FU to Trump for trying to play hardball and trying to Jerry rig, to be honest, the midterm elections. And they get a win on this referendum, the people of Virginia 51 to 48, three point victory. I was supportive of this. I think that this is the way you got to do it. You got to punch these guys back in the nose, even if it's a little messy. But I was wondering what your takeaway was on it.

Just to underscore the map and how absurd it is. It's like you take the Northern Virginia Arlington District and then you just have like bacon strips all the way across. It is really a ridiculous gerrymander. I mean, in the most comical sense. And in a normal universe, which we are not in, you'd find it abhorrent. In District 11, there's like a tiny little straight of Hormuz that goes through Alexandria. And that goes all the way down to Southwest Virginia. It's unbelievable.

It's unreal. I don't feel bad. per se about it because I understand why they did it. But like, you watch this happen and you're just like, this is just, it cannot be this way. We cannot have a functioning government in which basically the lawmakers are drawing their voters. And yet, what is the alternative here? Is it for Democrats to basically be morally righteous about everything and then get their clock clean? I've seen a lot of complaints on the right about this. And they're like, well, you know, this is just abhorrent. How could They do this. They started this stuff.

And like, no, that is not true. You have to look at what happened in this cycle, mid-decade redistricting. It was started by Texas at the behest of Trump. And the only obvious outcome of this, again, was that Democrats were going to retaliate. And this is what happens. People who are complaining about this on the Republican side are full of it. They're full of shit, honestly. This is what you brought on yourselves.

The Democrats' retaliation was stronger than, I even expected. Tim, it was stronger than a lot of them expect. I talked to a lot of Democrats about this heading into this. They did not anticipate Virginia was going to do something like this. And if Virginia, I mean, it was a surprise when it first got floated for a lot of Democrats. And then the original idea was they were going to go for a 9-2. Yeah, or 8-3 even, or like 8-2 in a swing, you know?

Right. I remember I was talking to a Virginia Democrat prominent one. I'm just being like, I'm the podcaster prick. I can do this. and be like, push it for 10-1. I was like, fuck these people. I was like, I've been on election Twitter. And they were like, yeah.

I was like, you know, what I was talking to is like, I want to do it. But you got to get everybody on board. You got to get the state Senate. Abigail just got elected. And so my understanding is Kane and Warner were not supportive of this at all. Yeah. No, there are a couple of House Democrats, Virginia House Democrats. And then Louise Lucas would Lauren Egan did that great profile in her state senator.

This was a revenge thing for her. Yeah. In addition to Trump, they redistricted her out of a. out of a congressional seat, she wanted to run in like six years ago or something like that. And they're mean to her about it. And she was just basically like, F you guys. All right. It's good for the goose.

It's good for the gander. The way which they went for the jugular, I think is important. And like my two big picture takeaways on this is, it's number one good on Spamberger for doing it. And then because she just gets in. She's not Gavin Newsome. She's not running to lead the resistance. She spent a lot. And she spent a lot of capital on this.

I mean, it's going to hurt her ability to go. Yeah, but the moment called for it. And that ties to my broader point, which is there's very few people in the ecosystem out there who are incentivized to say, you know what? The establishment Democrats really played hardball and did a great job in one. And the Republicans want to paint Democrats to look like wusses. And Democrats help them with that a lot. And I think a lot of the left-wing ecosystem wants to paint the establishment Democrats to look like wusses so that they can overthrow that. have more progressive people in charge.

And in some cases, they have legitimate critiques on that. And the mainstream media is never going to be out there doing like, woohoo, Abigail Spanberger for good reason. And so, like, there's not a lot of incentive for anybody to do it. And it's just worth saying that, like, the Democrats, you know, Hakeem Jeffries, whether it was on both shutdowns and on this redistricting battle, like did what Democratic voters wanted their leadership to do. Like, played hardball against Trump.

push back at them and won. And I do think that, you know, they should deserve credit for that. They're a little too late, I think, for a lot of our tastes to respond aggressively to Trump, but come like towards the end of 2025 and now into 2026. Like we've seen the Democrats show a lot of spine and succeed and playing political hardball back against Trump and it should be noted. Yeah, I mean, there's just not many opportunities to do it, but when they've presented themselves, you're right.

Like the shutdown fights, this. I know Jeffries has been trying. trying to get even more. He went into Maryland. I wasn't able to do that. But they've basically been clear-eyed about it. And, you know, it is a little bit easier to operate from the minority position, right? Like, you don't have anything to lose. But, you know, you could have, he could have done exactly what the warners and the canes of the wood want and said, you know what, let's just do a three and we'll be happy. And Jeffrey takes a lot of shit for the various times in which he has, you know, not, you know, gone to the mat and done with a lot of the base wanted.

And he had internals. Like you said, the senators from Virginia weren't so excited about it. A lot of the congressional black caucus was excited about it because these sort of things dilute the percentage of black vote in some of these districts. So in theory, that could mean pure black representatives in the future. I don't really think that's a real risk. I think they were being a little overcautious, but still, like, he had to navigate all that. So kudos. Isn't the more interesting story on the Republican side here? Like, Trump opened up this can of worms. Trump's super PAC is. sitting on like $300 and some odd million dollars, they spent nothing. Unbelievable.

Zero on the Virginia redistricting fight. What are they waiting for? What's the money for exactly? That's insane to me. I mean, the Trump family, Devin Nunes, the Senate, I guess. I'm not sure. And I know that they're going to start spending on Senate ads early. They've seen those reporting.

But I agree with you. And I think the other thing that's insane is just the way in which they failed to press their advantage, just kind of taking back the clock. because you kind of forget this stuff going news cycle to news cycle. But there was at least one of these podcasts where I sat here where the Texas thing looked like it was going to happen. Missouri, Indiana, Florida, we're talking about getting on board. There was a concern that the Voting Rights Act would drop.

I remember I had a conversation with Mark Elias about this. And it was like there was an inflection point before the Gavin thing literally looked for certain. Where it was like, actually, they might be able to gerrymander their way into almost a full-proof majority. Like, had everything gone right for the Republicans and had the Democrats dithered. They could have, like, built themselves up like a 26-7-seat cushion. Who knows? Like, maybe that in a wave, the Democrats still eke out the House barely.

But they could have almost like gerrymandered their way to a full-proof majority. And there was like a week a couple months ago where it looked like that was maybe the median outcome. And to go from that to now the Democrats probably end up netting one or two seats. out of this whole fight. Crazy. It is crazy. Again, Trump starts something, doesn't figure out how to finish it off. And I think the other big inflection point was when Indiana decided they weren't going to do it. And then Trump basically just like flailed and said he's going to prime the hell of these people.

And nothing's really happened. Speaking of primaries, the other thing I thought was interesting showing Trump's weakening position in these sorts of things. So Massey is the other one that there is a primary. And they are spending some money against his primary opponent in Kentucky. That's coming up. But yesterday I just saw, remember our old friend Kyle Rittenhouse? Yeah. Old friend Kyle Rittenhouse endorsed Thomas Massey yesterday.

And this might seem like a silly thing, right? It's kind of like, okay, who cares? But there's just all these little data points that the conservative grift class is not scared of them anymore. Yeah. You know, like 10 months ago, there's just no way that a conservative grifter would have endorsed Thomas Massey. You know, unless they're personal friends with Thomas Massey or a libertarian or something. But like, why risk Trump's ire when Massey is his number one foe right now? We'll see how that primary shakes out.

And I think I've talked to folks around that race. And, you know, I think they're legitimate concerns that Massey still goes down in a close race. But the fact that Massey is not only surviving, but getting endorsements and not backing down an inch and not doing the kind of campaign where he's like, I'm the real endorsed Trump candidate. You know, like some of the people who have, like that's what Bill Cassidy's doing here in Louisiana. Like, he voted to impeach Trump. And every time I turn on the fucking NBA playoffs, it's like, Bill Cassidy is the real Maga Republican. Julia Letlow is a woke, bulwark lib, you know? And it's like, okay, that's not what Massey's doing.

And I think that's pretty telling. Are we going to talk NBA playoffs, by the way, or no? Sure, we can say, I got potpoury at the end. I will say you're right about that. And it's only going to get worse after the midterms. I mean, he's a lame duck. That's just what happens with these people. And he has a lot of power.

Still, I'm not going to undersell it. And he can, you know, get a social media hoard sicked on someone. And he's got that money. And yet, after the midterms, he's not up for re-election. No one knows where that money is going to be placed. And I think you're just going to see a lot of these people who would have been scared of Trump just like Kyle Rittenhouse. Just be like, you know what? I don't really give a shit anymore.

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I've been doing Babel with my daughter while you wait for food at dinner. You know, go out for a dinner or, you know, you're walking into the local burger joint, and waiting for your number to get called. It's better than watching Italian brain roch. What else the kids are watching these days? We just pull out Babel, do it together, a little five minutes, a little 10 minutes, learning our French. It's nice. It's cute. I recommend it. I'm seeing the progress. More on her than me, but I'm seeing the progress. You can make fast-lasting progress with Babbel,

the science-based language learning app that actually works. And so here's a special limited time deal for our listeners. Right now, get up to 60% off your Babel subscription at babble.com forward slash bulwark. Get 60% off at babel.com forward slash bulwark, spelled B-A-B-B-B-B-E-L.com. forward slash bulwark rules and restrictions may apply. What will happen for people that are in the administration, though? I think it will be the real question of the post midterm. What do you mean by that? Yeah, what are the incentives for people who are in the administration and now how

loyal will they be and will they go down with the ship with him? And so to that, I want to start with Kevin Warsh. All right. He had his confirmation hearings yesterday to be the new Fed chair. Kevin Warsh is the Nepo son-in-law of Ron Lauder, of Estee Lauder fame. He is the billionaire who is behind the seasoned Greenland plot. He's also in a lithium deal with the United States government right now. Epstein friend, Latter and Epstein were friends.

Warsh was also invited to some Epstein parties. So that was the choice for the Fed chair. Somebody was like kind of serious on the economic stuff, but also has been a Trump hack. And his performance yesterday, I've got one clip I want to play, but what was your big takeaway from Kevin Warsh's confirmation hearing? Having read Catherine Rampal's piece on it,

I'm kind of struck by how hackishy is. If you looked at his resume, not sort of with great detail, but just saw all the stuff on the CW. Like, he does play the part, right? And yet he's contorted his views of fiscal policy just to get the job. I mean, he's basically been an inflation hawk his entire life, except for when Trump's the president.

And then he becomes someone who wants. to cut rates. And there was one moment, it's obviously got you from the hearing. And I didn't think the senators did particularly great, but there was this one moment where Elizabeth Warren asked her traditional question. And it's, you know, the thing that they do now at all these hearings where she's like, who won the election in 2020? We actually had the audio on that, Sam. Let's take a listen to Elizabeth Warren, Grill, and Kevin Warsh. So independence takes courage. Let's check out your independence and your courage. We'll start easy. Mr. Warsh, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?

We try to keep politics, if I'm confirmed, out of the Federal Reserve. I'm just asking you a factual question. I need to know, I need to measure. Your independence and your courage. Senator, I believe that this body certified that election many years ago. That's not the question I'm asking. I'm asking, did Donald Trump lose in 2020? Man, I'm suggesting you in 2020, the Fed made a huge inflation problem.

And so I watch this and I'm like, at first I was like, why is she asking? This is like you should be focusing on fiscal policy and the independence of the Fed and the investigations into Lisa Cook and Jay Powell, obviously. And then I thought about the reason she said it, which is obviously you have to be able to like stand up to the guy. That's pretty much the biggest part of this job is can you be independent from the present? Because they're going to have tons of pressure put on you. Yes. And if he can't just basically answer that question, then he failed the test. He did.

And so I thought in this case it was a very useful use of that gimmicky question because it shows that he just is going to do what he can do and say what he has to say to stay on the job, which is concerning. He wouldn't condemn the Cook and Powell investigations too. Right. And this is one of those things where, you know, my point of view is just if you ask you to ask you won the 2020 election, you just say Joe Biden and move on, like the degree of which he's like, I would suggest whatever. Just like, shut up.

Stop being a douche. Yeah, do you think Trump would act? I mean, maybe Trump's so petty that he would be called the nomination. Right. He's already been nominated. He's already been nominated. Yeah. So what are you worried about?

And this is what worries you about him being in there in this role. You know, you'd roll your eyes at it. If that was him on CNBC and Andrew Ross Sorkin asked him that two weeks before he's nominated. And it's like, okay, this guy wants to get the job. He shows himself out to be a big wuss. But like, now it's alarming. It's like you've already been nominated. and you're testifying under oath.

Like just, and you're supposed to be the independent Fetcher, just say it. And again, it would have maybe been different if he was, if then, at least in the areas under his remit, he was clear that he'd be independent, right? And he was just like, no, there's investigations went to cooking power wrong or, you know, yes, I will abuck the president if he ever tries to pressure me,

but he wouldn't, he didn't do it. None of those. He weaseled out of all of them. Weasled out of all of it. And the most charitable view of, of this is that he's just saying what he has to say and once he's in the post, he'll be fine. There's nothing that's given me any indication.

And I really trust Catherine on this, but she was watching and she's just like, there's nothing really that comes to the surface to suggest that he will be independent. And Trump's been very explicit that he wants rate cuts, no matter what. And Warsh has been pretty explicit that he recognized that the reason he didn't get the job

in the first Trump administration was because he wasn't forcefully advocating rate cuts enough. So it's all pointing in the same direction, which he's going to go in there. He's just going to do Trump's bidding. Yeah. The other thing he said,

I would say that the broad contours of the economy are improving. Really? Yeah. I'm like, really? Are they? What parts? Yeah, it doesn't.

What's the broadest contours? The crypto. The crypto market is looking great. It's kind of down. Okay. Private prisons. Private prisons is improving. If you're a landman character,

things are pretty good right now. I don't know. Other than that, question mark. I want to highlight two bulwark stories and we'll get to our cabinet rankings. Will Salleton, I'll step it in for Joe Perticoan. Shout out Joe Perticoan having a baby.

A lot of Bullwark babies out there these days. Had a baby. Yeah. Had a baby. Didn't I say that? Had a baby. Beautiful. And obviously.

Obviously. Great jeans. Yeah. Not that we're doing caliper stuff and like jeans stuff. The new baby, Joe Perthico's new baby really looks to part. Okay. Really looks the part of a good looking baby. sitting in forum on the

Prespast Newsletter. We're looking at the various Mamdani acts going through Congress. Three of them. Republicans really think they're clever with various things that are have the Mamdani acronym. The couple of them that really jumped out at me

was one was the Chip Roy Act about measures against Marxism's dangerous adherence and noxious Islamists. And it basically was saying we will deport people who are immigrants to this country who are socialists or Islamists or believe in Sharia will not allow immigrants to come in if they believe in Sharia or if they believe in socialism. Chibriwa is a separate act banning Sharia in the country.

I got a couple thoughts on that, but I was wondering what your takeaways were from the story as the editor. I feel like, yeah, I feel like we could get to five Mom Dani acts. The afternoon game could be, yeah, at least. Mom Dani is just really, I turned on Hannity the other night. Literally, not like a little funny bit, like we do a little bit for five seconds. There's a full segment, like commercial segment commercial dedicated to the Mamdani

Kurtz, which was that the Mets have not won a baseball game since he hugged. They've lost 12 games. The mascot. He had a guest on to discuss it. And it was like an eight-minute segment. I'm just like the Mombani derangements and no, I'm not dead serious. I sat there. maybe it was four minutes.

I don't know. It was a length. It was a full guest. It felt like eight minutes. It was a lengthy segment on this. And it's like these guys are just... Well, the conclusions they drew that he actually... He's a socialist and he's bad for New York and he's cursing the city.

But he's responsible for their bullpen collages. I don't really understand this. The grocery stores. I don't know. But the obsession and there are no chinks in the armor. It is kind of like it's very Trumpy. Right. There's a little bit of like,

Madani has some, like, for a long time, there were no chinks in the Trump armor. Like, it doesn't feel like they can land a punch. Anyway, sorry. Three Mondani acts. One other problem is that Trump seems to be totally obsessed with the guy and love with him and he just can't get enough of them. These acts, they're so stupid.

This is so dumb. But I will say the Chip Roy one is particularly done because if you actually read it as Will did and you like take it to its logical conclusion, it's not that you're like a self-identified socialist or something like that. It's like you believe in socialism. And that would be enough. to provide your entry to America. So it would be, if you took it to its basic conclusion, like, AOC would be thrown out of the

country, Bernie Sanders would be thrown out of the country. It's so dark and silly. And worse than that. I mean, it's un-American. It's just fundamental against the basic tenets of America. We live in a pluralist society. It doesn't actually matter what your political beliefs are. We live side by side as neighbors and work in a democracy and you can vote for your side and we can vote for our side.

Like, do you think people really believe that we're about to be overrun by Sharia law in this country? I'm glad you asked that, Sam, because I don't know. But if you were, if you were, if you were genuinely concerned about Sharia coming to the country, I would think that you would also be pretty alarmed that the Sharia law dictators in the Middle East seem to own our government. Yeah. We're getting a free Air Force One from a Sharia law government in Qatar. Donald Trump's kids are in business with the Sharia government

and the UAE, his son-in-law is in business, the Sharia government and Saudi. Apparently those Sharia governments were pushing for us to get into this war in Iran. We're sending our young men and women over into harm's way because the Sharia governments that Donald Trump has buddied up with

are concerned about their safety. It's like, okay, you know, they've fought our sports leagues, so maybe they're getting out of golf now. They're getting into our movies. They're investing in the movies. in the movies. I just, I would think that if, like, you were serious about combating the influence of Sharia in the country, like, rather than talking about, like, deporting a handful of immigrants,

you'd be talking also, or maybe not rather, maybe in addition to that, you'd also be talking about, like, limiting the ways in which these Sharia dictators can invest in, and get their, you know, tentacles into our economy and into the president's family. Someone needs to put together the Kushner Act. I can't come up with the acronym right now. Or the Wittkopf Act. Yeah. Someone in the comments give us a good acronym for that. But like, yeah, why does Jared get to hang out with all the Sharia dictators and take their money?

But we can't incorporate some of their grade laws. I should say, for full disclosure, you're going to make fun of me for this. But I may go to the Qatar Embassy Party for the White House Correspondency. That's a Sharia party. Yeah. Cutter? I think it's Qatar. I think it's pronounced cutter. It's to each his own, Tim.

Don't go to the fucking cutter party. Don't go to the fucking cutter party. Are you going to throw blood on? Take some red paint and throw blood on the wall. Hold on. There's the grinder party and then there's the cutter party the same night. I'm trying to go between them and see if there's any difference. You're going to be a bridge, if you will, an Eiffel Tower between the grinder party and the cutter party.

Maybe we can intermingle the two. How would that go over? I don't know. Final point. I think that Sharia is much more dangerous that Sharia has integrated itself into Mar-a-Lago than into local governments across the country. Which they have not done. Just to be clear, they are not in local governance.

I do hope that the chip roy's of the world will get on that. If they're concerned about Sharia. I just want to mention this because I appreciate Jonathan Cohn's article about this. And I felt bad at it and talked about it yesterday. There's this horrible mass shooting in Shreveport. Arkansas, Louisiana. We kind of, Shreveport's basically Arkansas, though. I don't like to on it. But Shreveport, Louisiana, just this horrible mass shooting. One guy killed eight kids, age three to 11 in various houses. It's horrible. And Jonathan Cohn wrote about how it's the worst

mass shooting we've had in quite a while as far as the number of deaths and then for all the us to be children. And it's just, it just didn't, like, the news coverage of it was basically non-existent. Sad. Yeah. No, this, I'm really grateful that Jonathan wrote this piece. Because it's, it really does get to me. You and I were at the same age, and obviously we're around during Sandy Hook. And I remember that day very vividly. Sandy Hook is a town that's about 40 minutes from where I grew up and also just the sheer horror of it. And I remember walking around that day and just kind of like days, it was just awful. And you couldn't really comprehend it.

It didn't compute that something this horrible could happen in our country. And then, you know, we had a big gun control debate afterwards and it failed and all that stuff. And it was just demoralizing. And, you know, I wrote a lot about this, about how this was the toughest day at the Obama White House and how they had to go about trying to figure it out. And I say that all because, you know, that wasn't that long ago. I mean, it was long ago, obviously it was 2012, I believe. But we cared then.

And now you have eight kids who are just slaughtered. And it didn't even, and Cohn was looking at the major news outlets. It didn't even make like top six stories. And we live in a society where we basically become totally callous to the idea that someone can gun down eight kids in two houses. And that's just the way of life. And we deal with it and we move on because we have become accustomed to it. Now, there are circumstantial differences here, obviously. This was two homes.

It was a father. He was suffering from clear mental issues versus a school where anyone's kid could be. But at the end of the day, eight kids died, three to 11. And nobody seems to have cared. And this is not a unperventable situation. There are things you can do to prevent these types of tragedy. from taking place. We just choose not to do it.

That's the problem. Yeah, and the guy had had another gun crime in the past. I continue to just say that I think that there is a sense of political fatalism around this issue, which I understand, I think particularly after Sandy Hook and then after Parkland, like this idea that's just there's nothing that can be done. But stuff can be done. A Republican governor, Rick Scott, is now a senator, signed the red flag law after Parkland. Yeah.

And since then, Florida has gone the other way. Like, they've loosened gun laws. under DeSantis, right? They can be pressured. And I do think, I continue to think that there was a period for good reason, you know, there was a lot of, I'm for criminal justice reform and there are a lot of reforms that were needed to our criminal justice system and continue to be there. But I think that the focus on that on the left, people are a little bit scared to come out for like harsher, you know, kind of penalties and restrictions around people that have been violent criminals in the past or done gun crimes in the past. And I do think that like pairing something that is a little bit stricter

around violent criminals and gun crime, like crimes using guns, you know, not drug crimes or whatever, but like, you know, crimes were improperly so gun was what the person did. Paring that with gun reform, I think it's popular. I think most of the people in the country want that. And nobody's really done it or tried really hard on it. I don't know. I think that that's a viable policy platform for a 2028 dem if they want to have the courage to do it. Well, I mean, what you're talking about is a different version, but similar to the 94 Crime Bill. It is.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the 94 Crime Bill had. You hate to bring that up because there's some bad stuff in there, but like the basic contours of that deal, which is like cracking down on criminals and cracking down on guns. It was tons of money for cops, after school programs, much stricter penalties for those who were convicted. and that was the issue that got a lot of people.

But in exchange, real gun control legislative reforms, including the assault weapons ban. And look, it worked. But the assault weapons ban, this is irrelevant to this situation in Louisiana, but the solvins ban lapsed because it had to be on a 10-year window. But yeah, you're right. Like, this is the combination legislation you're going to have to do.

And no one's putting it forward because there is a fatalism about it. All right. To the cabinet rankings. Everyone's favorite part of the show. Hell yeah. I just want to go back into history here. Me and Sam, I've been doing this since the beginning of the administration. We ranked the worst cabinet members. It is so competitive. And I agonize over my place. It's so challenging. If you go back to the end of the year, for example, our Christmas time rankings. Sam's worst. Okay. Christy Noem now gone. Our rests in power. Christy and Brian. Boy, the Brian story really got dark. Yeah. Tough.

Yeah. That's tough. I mean, when you like literally are Sam Rockwell and White Rose, things are getting a little rough. Christy Noam was Sam's first. RFK was number two, Hegset 3, Russ Vote 4. For me, it was Noam, Rubio Bessent at the end of the year. And then a couple months ago, after Noam was defenestrated, my list was Rubio Hegsetth Bondi was my top three.

rest easy Pam Bondi and Sam's was Hegsef Bondi RFK So Bondi is now Out of the picture We've put Russ vote Out of the picture

We're not counting him in the cabinet I think just because of all the attention That he has received in the past week I'm going to throw cash in So he's not in the cabinet No no no no no no No we can't do that Throw fucking Stephen Miller

That's our game we can make No, no, no, no, no, no. There have to be rules. No, absolutely not. Market zero. Market zero. Smoker. Smoky, who was it?

Fept over the line. Can't deal. Market zero. Okay, fine. We won't book cash in. Where would cash be? We'll discuss it as a post script. Clear one.

We'll discuss it as a posts. That's why you can't put them in. All right. So the worst cabinet officials, as it stands right now, we are going to include, obviously, as an option, the new DHS secretary, Mark Wayne Mullen. And then I would like to include acting attorney general Todd Blanche. Is that okay for you? Yeah, acting attorney general, Todd Blanche.

So they're both in there. Sam, are we going to do a power four or power three? Power four. Power four. Okay, fourth place, the fourth place cabinet member for Sam Stein, fourth worst. Okay, wow. see the my top ones now being gone

makes this a little complicated obviously I'm going to go with the ones who I think are the words I'm not going to rank them yet okay can I do that? I'm just going to throw my

because I want to think this through a little bit okay we're going to talk it out okay like who is even in the who could even be in the nominated category I mean it's so

it's very clear that Hegseth is obviously in top four that's no one's no one's Heseth and Rubio and Blanche and RFK

I think are obviously in the nominating category. You don't have to include them, but they're all in the nominating category. You know, are we just going to take Lutnik out? I guess. He's kind of falling off the radar. Chris Wright's had a really bad run. Chris Wright's had a bad run.

Like he's talking about bringing back coal as like our main source of energy. Yeah. And he's just testifying. You're just like, yeah, you know, I mean, the gas price were high among the bottom. It is what it is. I keep wanting to get Brooke Rollins in there. I knew you're going to say Brooke Rollins. I keep wanting to get her into my top four.

Make the case for why she should be. Who has been harmed were, and I guess immigrants, if you're just kind of trying to categorize groups, all right? I know we don't like to do identity politics from the board. But if we're going to do identity politics, which identities have been most harmed by this administration, materially harmed? Immigrants, recent immigrants, people, asylees, like anybody in that category would be number one. Farmers might be two. I mean, like the farm economy, the Iowa's economy is in shambles.

The farm economy is only going to get worse. Fertilizer prices now are skyrocketing. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Brook Rollins is like, you guys should just have a chicken in your backyard and do your own farms. They're not doing anything to help them. I just, I just, I think that you have to throw it out there. Okay. And we obviously, Laura Chavez, Doremer is no longer around. So we can't Did you see the picture of the strip club that she went to? No. I got to tell you, I haven't been following the Department of Labor drama that closely because, you know, there's just a lot happening in the news. But there's a lot of weird stuff happening.

I mean, her husband and her dad were sending inappropriate text messages to staff. Her dad, too? Yeah. I did not know that. I'm going to put this. We'll put this on the screen for YouTube people, and I'm going to share this with you right now in Slack. This is a post from the person that you're trying to dethrone right now, Jane Koston. And she visited this strip club.

That is a. Angel's strip club. Angels dancers lottery food. It is the most depressing building I've ever seen in my life. The Secretary of Labor was in there. Well, you haven't tried the food there. You don't know. Could be top cuisine.

Now open play. That's a rough joint. I wish I could describe this. And we are in what looks to be a rural to ex-urban strip mall where everything else is empty. There's a part store. And then there's kind of like a concrete, a small concrete square with like some shingles on top of it.

It says Angel strip club with a lady's, the outline of a booby lady in the picture. And there's no window. Yeah. Do you say a little sandwich sign? It says, food to go. In case you just want to grab the food. In case you know, you just want the food, but not the strippers. The secretary of labor was just vibing. The Angel strip club. Imagine you're working that club and the labor secretary kind of rolls up. Madam Secretary? This is in Portland. This is in Portland, Oregon. True. Okay.

So we can't include her. She's out. No, no. But we do have our next assignment for Jared Polin's video series. To go to the angels. All right. She's out. All right.

Here's my four. And the economy is still not going that well. We can't let Nutlick out. So I would say that the nominating category would be Hegg Seth, Rubio, Blanche, RFK, Wright, Rollins, Bessent, and Nutlick. Those are the eight potential nominees for worst. Okay. I'm going to go by first. The worst.

The worst. I'm going to work it down. Worse is heck, Seth. Absolutely. And the reason that he's bad, even more bad now is that he's taking some of the RFK shit and just adopting it as his own. Like getting rid of the measles, sorry, the flu vaccine requirement was a real stroke of fucking genius.

Let's just get everyone really sick. That's smart. So he's my number one. It's not even close. And we should just say, I think that at the end of the year, like following, you know, the murders of Americans is in the streets. Christy Nome really solidified herself as the worst cabinet member, a lot of competition, a lot of discussion.

I think now pretty clearly Pete Hankseth is the worst. It's not really even a close second. It's hard to even provide a secondary nominee. I totally agree with that. I continue to put Bobby up there as my number two. I can't just quit him because he sucks. Well, I'm going to make the pitch for Rubio as number two. Okay.

He was your number two last time too. He was. Yeah, I think Rubio stays in my number two slot. He's the reason all this shit's happening. Yeah, that's a good point. He's the reason all happening. The Venezuela Keeper was a Rubio deal, and it succeeded, and he's the neocon in the administration.

He's the one that wants to overthrow these regimes. I do think that there's some reports that he was a little bit skeptical, at least with the BB presentation in the situation, room. Unfortunately, if we could include BB as the cabinet member, he would be number two for me, but I think that's a little bit of a stretch. And so, you know, Rubio

to me is like supposed to be the adult in the room and the thing that is in his portfolio is the policy item that is wrecking the president's standing, wrecking the economy, resulting in the deaths of American service

members unnecessarily. I just think he's a clear too for me. Okay, fair enough. I'm going to to go top five because I have a couple things here. Top five. Yeah, I just, I'm thinking it. I was going to make you, I was going to make you do only three. I was going to leave this hard choice for you in the third, third slot. There's a lot because you made a compelling case by Ruby.

He's going to be my fifth. Rubio is going to be my fifth. My third is going to be Besson. I just think the economy is not great. Yeah. I mean, do you like the economy? Are you happy with how things are going? No, the economy's a nightmare.

Yeah. No, and I hate Bessent. I just have to look around and, you know, I can't let my personal distaste for Scott Bessent, you know, affect my rankings. And the sanctity of the rankings need to be most important. You were Besson at three last time. I know, I know. And I mean, look, I find him totally repulsive in every way. And he's a horrible representative of homosexuals.

But it's got to be Todd Blanche. It's got to be Todd Blanche. I guess I'm not saying Todd Blanche isn't bad. but he's just started and I need a little bit more material to work with. Dude, do you watch Todd Blanch's press conference yesterday? I watched it.

I watched it. He was like, he's like, he's, I have a press conference about the Atlantic article about how Cash Patel needed the SWAT team

to break down the door because he was so drunk and he's just like, I didn't read the articles. He is responsible for the going Maxwell move to clubbled. Trump obviously trusts him more.

He moved. As insane as it sounds, the reason why Bondi got moved out is that Trump didn't think she was doing a good enough job of going after his political foes and he felt like Blanche could do better. I don't even really think it's close for Blanche in the third.

Look, when we revisit these rankings soon, I will have more material to work with with Blanche. I'm going to give him a little bit of space here. Also, I thought the press conference was awesome, but I thought Cash was the real star. I mean, Cash just absolutely getting killed under questioning and refusing to answer whether they're like, were you worried you're going to get?

get fired because you couldn't lock into your system. He's like, couldn't answer the question. Refused to answer the question. Shout out to Ryan Riley at NBC for pushing him on that. All right, four for me, four for me. Because five is Ruby. Four for me is going to be Chris Wright. For the reasons I explained, this man is in over his head.

Like, we are in an oil crisis. He's talking about gas, never coming back down for a while. And then he's like, well, we got coal. And I just feel like, we need someone a little. little bit more in their depths at this moment at the Department of Energy and this guy in it. So he's not ever been in our rankings before. Chris Wright. So this is new.

Yeah. Chris Wrong, you might want to call him. Okay. Chris Wrong is not going to make my list, but it's a good nomination. For my fourth slot, I mean, it's really, RFC. You know, Tulsi was not in the nominating category because she's against the war and she's going to be fired. So I was like looking for another foreign policy person because since the foreign policy thing is driving everything,

it's hard for me to blame Scott Bessent for the economic situation right now in this moment because it's really driven by the war side of things. And so for that reason, I think he's going to fall out of my rankings this time. I'm going to put RFK number four and close. I've been dying to get Brooke Rollins into a ranking, so I'm going to close her out at number five.

So I'm Heggseth, Rubio, Blanche, R.FK, Brooke. Brooke. I'm really proud of her. It took a long time. You think about how bad you have to be as Secretary of Ag to even get a sniff as one of the worst cabinet members in this administration. And she's done it and she's earned it. You made a really compelling case for her.

And I'm really proud of her. Final pick for you, you at Rubio. So your final ranking is Hegseth, R.FK. Bessent, Wright, Rubio. I like my ranking. Rubio, Blanche, R.F.K. Brooke. Okay. Well, that's good. We'll check back in a couple of months. We're to close in the Popery section. I'm going to...

Sure. So two items for you on Popery. One, you posted this. Why aren't we talking more about down to fuck St. Louis? Dude. Have you not watched it? I watched a couple episodes. It's okay. You know, it's a baitment. I love it. It feels kind of like Ozarks, but in St. Louis. It's a little Ozarky. The reason I liked it is because it was both funny. It's because it's making you and the Mrs. Talk about it.

about maybe whether there's some ways that you could open up the marriage. Because that's the thing about DTF, San Luis. It's like married couples are trying to, you know, mess around a little bit. Is that why? That's not quite right. Titulating the marriage? Not, that's not it. It's a really, it's funny, but it's also incredibly sad.

They managed to do the combination of that. And then, I don't know, I thought it was really well done. Bateman's great in it. And, I mean, obviously, like, it's probably one of the more interesting shows when it comes to the concept of like midlife loneliness. especially male loneliness. I'm not saying I'm suffering from all this, but I thought it was a really provocative. I'm not.

I'm really happy. I don't know. I left every episode sort of thinking about it. You know, when a show's really good when you're, when you stop the episode and you're like, damn, I want to just stew over what,

what I just watched. And I really liked it. Now, when I posted that, the responses, I was curious for the responses, a lot of people did not like it. And I was surprised by that. Yeah.

My husband did like it. We watched one or two episodes. And I'm like, way, but he's, I'm kind of deferring to him on shows now because he did not like it. Yeah, I'm either doing podcast outlines or falling or fighting with someone on Twitter or dozing off during the shows now. So it's kind of like we're going to let do what he wants. I do have hacks is back. I haven't, I haven't checked out yet.

No spoilers. Okay. The one exception to that is obviously the NBA playoffs. Yeah. I'm kind of down about it right now. My Nuggets, my Nuggets fans, my Nuggets media pals. I did a Nuggets podcast with my boy Jeff Morton. If you want to hear my Nuggets takes, go check the,

that out but Jeff's more positive than I am. I don't know. I just doesn't feel like the Nuggets got that dog in them. Feels like we need Peyton Watson. We've had some great games though. The plan was great. Wemby just got hurt. That was what I wanted to talk about. Wemby. You saw the concussion. Yeah, brutal. I know, and you're that tall

and you fall and hit your head. Right on his shin, yeah. Chin right on the big fall. He might be out the whole series. Yeah. I still think they pull it out because the Blazers are fine, but they're not. They're just on the come up.

They're just on the come up. Yeah. The new Blazers owner is funny. Have you followed this story at all? He's like, he didn't let the team have a late checkout. Yes, I saw that. He didn't let the team have late checkout. So the team had to hang out in the lobby for a couple hours.

Apparently super cheap. He paid $4 billion for the team. All right. Let everybody get late checkout at the Hilton. Not great. Not great. The other series that's very, the other series that's really intriguing is Hawksnecks. I don't know if you've been checking that at.

I have. Yeah. I got a lot of nicks out of my life. Again, this is one of the things where it's like, somewhat similar where I feel like the hawks are plucky and they're good, but they're not going to pull it off. But man, these two can both go seven. I would not be shocked by that.

Yeah. Well, and I think that's like it's Timberwell's good too. I mean, it's been like that game too. But that's more realistic. I could have seen that even before the place, whereas these two series, I was like, okay, yeah. Spurs might sweep. Yeah, I'm a little down because I just, it feels inevitable that we're

hurtling towards Thunder Celtics. And I just can't. I can't do it. I can't do Thunder Celtics. Celtics just lost. Can't do Thunder Celtics. Just the East feels weak anyway. I don't know.

The East is weak. Detroit looks weak. Celtics look weak. Nicks look weak. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. It's the Thunder aren't. Who are you rooting for?

Well, it's rooting for the Spurs because my boy, Steph Kassel's on the Spurs. Yeah. And I love. The Klingens on Portland. It's a UCon. I know. It's a little bit hard. But Steph, I don't want to get too into it.

But if you watch Steph, just for a little bit, you really start to appreciate just the defense he has. I mean, he does this kind of shadowy defense on these players where it looks like he's just totally beaten and then he can catch up with them and get in front of their shot. I just think he's so gifted. And then obviously, Wemby's generational. And I'm worried that Wemby's not going to come back in a while and who knows what happens. But yeah, I'm ruining for the Spurs, for sure.

It was really cool what they did with the uniforms in the stadium. Yeah, I got love for the Spurs. Hate for the Thunder. Sorry. OK, C fans. right, that's Sam Stein. I don't know if it's going to happen for you. I know you really wanted to get back into the first place slot on most downloads, but the Wednesday one is tough. We got a lot of competition out there in the content space. I'm hoping for you, though,

because you really elevate the show when you come on. You do. Well, that's why you invite me and beg me to come on. You beg me. On tomorrow's show, we got a double header. We got a double header. We're going to bring a little Chris Micah, a little Chris Micah in April to tomorrow's show and and have a new member of the Bullwark on. It's a fun double header. Come out. Hang with us then. Make sure that podcast has more downloads than Sam

so I can really rub it in his face. We'll see you all tomorrow. Bye, Sam. Bye, everybody. Peace. Later. The Bork Podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper,

Associate producer, Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.