The Bulwark Podcast - Sam Stein: We Got Ourselves a Mad King

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Trump’s use of his pardon power is downright crazy, and that’s not even counting his rescue of a convicted drug kingpin. He’s also sabotaging his own redistricting plans in Texas by pardoning Rep. Henry Cuellar, and wasting taxpayer money absolving a sports executive who was indicted by his own Justice Department earlier this year. Meanwhile, down in NOLA, two men with a Napoleon complex are unleashing misery of the psychic and economic kind on the city through its ICE and Border Patrol operation. Plus, someone needs to scour the immigration history of Phil Mickelson’s family, and why is Tucker so obsessed with the gays? Sam Stein joins Tim Miller. Sam's 'Bulwark Take' on the DOJ attorney fired for not restoring Mel Gibson's gun rights Lauren on the Dems itching to go after AI Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARK. Promo Code BULWARK Go to https://zbiotics.com/THEBULWARK and use THEBULWARK at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics.

What if this was someone in your family that had a chronic illness that they could not get away from? Millions of Americans live with a disease that has no cure. I was diagnosed with a rare form of sarcoma. The most immediate findings indicated that I should lose my leg. It ended up taking four clinical trials in 25 years to get me to this point. Cures are within reach. if we invest in funding for life-saving medical research that's needed to find them. Even if they're unsuccessful in my treatment that they will have learned from my treatment

that will be able to allow others to stand on my shoulders to be able to be helped. Join the Fight for Cures. Tell your elected representatives to support American medical research. Visit Unitedforcures.org slash action to send a letter today, paid for by Unified United for Cures Action. Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm in D.C., so who else is I going to bring in here besides the repugnant, the interrupting, the managing editor of our here outlet, Sam Stein? What an intro.

Thank you. Interrupting Cal Samstein. As I have been all week, I'm taking personal privilege to begin by talking about New Orleans. The invasion of my city has officially begun now. I saw images of the wee little guy, little Nazi guy, Bovino, the haircut and the hand signals. He was walking through the French quarter. I'll tell you, if any of my friends who are like Nader Ds in the French quarter, you just give this guy the Sarah Huckabee's Sanders red hen treatment. Okay.

No fucking gumbo or jambalaya for this guy, okay? Anyway, that's the funny part. The bad parts are actually happening. It's mostly out in the suburbs, but I got this text from my buddy that I want to read. Basically, every Hispanic person legal or not has completely stopped working in New Orleans. My friend, I'm going to redact his name. Can't get anyone to do any work at all. He's a contractor.

He's a ton of clients who needs roofs done. All the people he works with at other companies in the city say the same. I don't think anyone's thinking about the impact. having on the economy of the Republicans here who are trying to run their businesses, womp, womp. Then he sent me pictures of a random crew that was on a roof in the New Orleans suburbs. Mass dudes jumped out, surround the house for YouTube. We guys will put up the picture here. And Amanda Moore, who is down there's a reporter covering this, saw the same incident. I asked her what she observed, and she said that the only silver lining here was that there was one

guy who refused to come down from the roof. And so they just left him up there and brought the other guys in, which shows you, I think, the limits of their powers here. They don't have a ladder? They did have a ladder. Did you see? I don't see it. I don't think that these guys actually know how to use a ladder. They had a ladder, and they're, like, holding it up, and they had guns.

Like, the guy who's climbing the ladder, carrying a gun. Like, this feels unsafe. Like, is this really necessary to have mass dudes drawing down on guys in the suburbs? There's got to be some OSHA regulations. Up on the roofs. But there is no probable cause. happening is evidence by the fact that the one guy got out of us like they just are driving through the neighborhoods where there's a lot of hundred mostly Hondurians and New Orleans but also

Mexicans and others and and like going up to people doing yard work show me your papers yeah wearing masks this is what this is like essentially what happened in Chicago I remember Adrian was there for a couple days where it's not like like they're just grabbing people uh indiscriminately they're doing that obviously but people just stop showing up like people just don't show up at their businesses, people stop bringing kids to school. There's a lot of fear, obviously, but, you know, the ripple effects are pretty astronomical from an economic standpoint. Because why would you leave your house?

Like, what is the, if you could be detained and you couldn't be a U.S. citizen, but you would have three weeks of just absolute horror not knowing what's going to happen to you? Why would you leave your house? Yeah. Or if you're mixed family, right? Right. You know what I mean?

Like, you have one person in family that is, you know, inducted or is a green court. Why are they in your home city? Because of that, because the other little guy. It's small Napoleon syndrome is I guess the answer, which is appropriate for New Orleans, the French Napoleon syndrome, yeah, the governor. He just wanted it. Yeah, he's been asking for it. And I think that Trump basically, I think that they did see the limits of what they're able to do in Chicago.

Having Pritzker there did matter. Sure. It was terrible what happened, but like they were looking at, you know, places where their red states, you know, where the governor was going to let them come in and act with impunity. And so, the ones is it. It's scary stuff. And they're just going to go from city to city to city. It's sort of tongue-in-cheek, my buddy is texting me about, like, the Republican business owners

who are, like, don't have employees. Like, the economic ripple effects are real. Why is that tongue-in-cheek? I feel like that's a very real thing, right? These are smart. Yeah, it's like, tongue-in-cheek and that he's like, I'm mocking them. They're not the real victims here, obviously. Or yeah.

Shed some tears for these guys. They ask for this. Yeah, I get it. But it's going to, it will hit them, right? I remember sort of the first moment that was, like, semi-viral around the stuff was that he's either Fort Lauderdale, the Miami Keys where the guy, like, the six-time Trump vote or whatever that was like, all his construction crew

had like been taken away from the site. And he's like, what the hell? Like, I didn't vote for this. He's like, no, you voted for this. Like, this is it. By the way, not to Adam Smith. Like, you know, this is, this does have an affordability effort, right? Like, you know, if you don't have people to,

if we're worried about housing affordability, you don't have people to construct the homes that is going to have an impact on affordability. I'm just going to remark that you Adam Smith. Do you say not to Adam Smith? Yeah, you know, supply and demand. Does matter. So, you know, economics still works.

On top of the health care, I think I mentioned this earlier in the week, but it's just worth mentioning again. Like, you know, you just don't think of all the downstream facts. I was talking on some of the Thanksgiving who works for company does like the dialysis services and stuff. And it's like they don't show, you know, if you are undocumented or have an undocumented family member, you're not showing up for your appointment. And so then.

I was thinking you're going a different direction because John the Cohn has been talking about this. It's like, you know, the caregiving industry. Oh, yeah, no, that too. Like that is. Either both was. Yeah. It's like they're going to be decimated. made about it. So there's incredible downstream effects.

You know who doesn't care about that? Our buddy? Phil Mickelson. Lefty? Lefty. What a guy. Before we talk about what a guy is, I got to say, sometimes, you know, I know I have this like hard candy shell, Sam, you know, where I seem like I'm a dick.

But deep town, I'm softy, okay? I am. Softy. And it allows me to sometimes. I don't know. I think it's in the inverse, buddy. You think it's in the inverse? What's the candy with the soft egg exterior?

Almond joy? Yeah, you're the nut. You think I'm an almond joy? You're the nut and stuff. Okay, well, the Nuget part of myself did get snowed by Phil Mickelson as a child. I wouldn't have to. Yeah, I was a huge Phil fan. Huge a fan.

And he was the guy at the local golf tournament in Denver who'd hang out, signed the golf, you know, balls for the kids. Yeah. Well, he probably had him over under bed on how many balls he could start. So, you know, I don't know if he's changed or if that was just part of his megalomania. This was his tweet yesterday. yesterday, which was, I think it's probably the most appalling. It's more appalling than anything Megan Kelly has said for me.

I think I'm putting it below Megan Kelly in the Dante's Inferno. If we're going to make some, we're going to do Dante references this week. What level is this? Here we go. The U.S. is way too lenient on illegal immigration. Singapore, six months in prison, caning, then deportation. Malaysia, one to five years in prison, caning, then deportation. Qatar, three years in prison, forced labor, then deportation, Russia, two years in prison, forced labor, then deportation, North Korea, no deportation, just execution.

Oh, that's the good stuff right there. It goes on from there. It's like, what? These guys want to be like, oh, we're pro America, like USA, USA. Like, this is, you want us to copy the most repressive regimes in the world? You want us to do fucking caning, Phil Mickelson? What's the punishment, I wonder, for insider trading and illegal gambling, does he think we should do? Singapore. Should we do it be handing? Maybe we should be hand his left fucking hand. If that's what he wants, if he wants Old Testament justice for people, maybe we should look into Phil Mickelson's actions. I was thinking, does he know that these posts go public? Is he aware that Twitter is a public posting service?

Because it seemed insane. Also, it seemed like probably like some AI generated stuff. He's like, what are the punishments for illegal immigrants and all the repressive regimes? It did seem like a grok. Yeah, Grog. Tell me how nasty I can be towards illegal immigrants if I lived abroad.

I mean, I don't want to make fun of it because it's like if this is an honest reflection of how he thinks, like he's a disturbed dude. Like, if you're thirsting over the idea that you can cane somebody because they're here illegally, then you need to, like, go get help, honestly. Just go move to Riyadh. Yeah, yeah. That's the better. Let's go move to Riyadh.

Exactly. You want to be paid by the Saudis. You want to play in their golf courses. You want to, like, yuck it up with them. And go, go live in their repressive regime and have fun. Like, just enjoy it. you can make a lot of money you can plan a lot of golf tournaments

I'll even like this come back for the Masters you can come back for the Masters okay I'll allow it if you make some bad bets some bad illegal gambling bets and you can't pay off your debts I'm not sure you're gonna like the

I just wish someone in his life would just say yo you've made hundreds of millions of dollars you live you play golf for a living like that's the envy of every dude out there you don't need to be a dick to like the least fortunate people in the world.

A lot of them came here because they were fleeing the repressive regimes that you're now thirsting over. Caining. Yeah. I'm interested in caning, Phil Mickelson. You know what else I'm interested in?

Denaturalization. That's something that has come up this week. That's like the new fad for the Trump guys. What do you think, Mickelson, that feels Irish origin? Scott Irish. Yeah. Something like that.

It's fucking denaturalize him. No. Go back through. I wonder if all the paperwork was filled out perfectly about his ancestors. And we could sort of start looking through that. The Saudi idea is the best one. I want a bill.

If we win again, get back in 2020, I'm going to have a Bill Pulte in the Immigration and National Naturalization Services. They're going to look at all the maggots, and we're going to go through your family history and we're going to look through how everybody got here. And if the T was not crossed on every immigration paper

going up through your grandparents, I'm sorry, we're going to fucking have to send you home. It's a good idea to have every party needs their own bill. Pulitzer, just a shameless hack willing to use the levers of the government and also be public about it. Do you any other immigration texts before I move on to parties?

No, that was a good one to end then. I was really upset by Phil's tweet last night. Me too. I've been, my blood's been boiling this week. Sorry, who's your favorite golfer now? Do you have one? Rory, obviously. My brother from another brother.

Exactly. Roy's the man. He also stood up to the Saudis for a while. He got a little weak. Did he get weak? Well, I actually think what happened to Rory, I'm sorry for the non-sports people, you can just fast forward a minute. But there's a moral lesson here, even if you're not a golf person. It's kind of a sad statement about our culture, actually.

And Rory is sort of a, what's that word, like, synectady, synectity, synecchity, synecchic. Seenecta key, people make fun of me for my pronunciation. Seenecta key for our societal. Wait, wait, hold on. Let's spend 20 more seconds on this word. Syneciki for our societal rot. And that is that the Saudis came in and offered this alternate golf tour. We're there to give all the golfers way more money.

And a lot of the PGA guys were like, great, let's merge this in. We're going to take all this fucking Saudi blood money. Rory was like, I think the most vocal golfer that's saying, no, like, we're doing well. Well, my favorite Rory Crow was when he was trying to explain why he's like, I have a huge house and I spend all my time in three rooms. Like, I don't need a second house. We loved that. And it was like around the time that, like, Trump is, you know, running again and getting back in. And basically the PGA just sort of folds to the Saudi Live Tour.

And Rory gives a press conference where he just, like, half-heartedly kind of apologizes for taking a moral stand. And, like, apologize to the other golfers for, like, impugning them, you know, saying to them, like, I was judging you and blah, blah. And it's like, they fucking deserve to be judged. And it was kind of a statement, I think, about what has happened to our culture in Trump 2.0. Yeah, but I'm just like, yeah, you can't. You can still be, you know, moralistic and judgmental of them. It's fine. Especially now.

No, I'm not judgment. I love for it. No, no, I'm saying he can still be moralistic, judgmental of them. I'm saying virtue signaling is good. That's one of my best articles I've ever written for the bulwark. People can go find it. Virtue signaling is good, actually, I think, was the title. This episode is sponsored by Better Help.

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Yeah, I feel like it deserves just a little more focus. Sure. President Trump formally pardoned President Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras Monday evening. The ex-president was at the center of what authorities characterized as one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world. Yeah, that was a weird one. But that wasn't even like the weirdest of the week. I know, we're going through the rest of them.

But I'm just, how do you do this the same week that you're bombing boats in the Caribbean because they're allegedly drug dealers? Tim, if there was like a consistent throughline to this, the only through line I actually can think of is that, actually, it doesn't even make sense. Like, he's clearly got like a little addiction to issuing pardons, like he kind of likes it. And he sympathizes, I think, with, if you're going to say I was unlawfully prosecuted and it was like, you know, a political prosecution, it was rigged or it was a hoax against me, he'll probably be empathetic to your cause. Like, you don't even know if you need to now give a million dollars to his pack or, like, buy all the crypto his family's offering. It's like, you and me, buddy. We were both prosecuted illegally, right?

And it's like, cool. It's kind of like how I give the benefit of that to gays. You know what I mean? Like, it's sort of like you have an affinity for that. Yeah. You have an empathy. Yeah, he has affinity for political critics. Is there any gay that you would not give the benefit of the debtor?

Yeah. Rick Grinnell comes to mind. And that's like Bob Menendez. Yeah. We're going to get to Bob Menendez. One more thing on the Honduras thing, though, because I've just been thinking about this. If you're Democrats, like, how do you make the best use of this? Like, because the argument, I just, I don't, people just don't, I don't know if they care about the hypocrisy.

Like, and I feel myself rolling the eyes at myself, and I'm like, well, he's, he's bombing these guys because he says they're drug dealers, but he's pardoning this other drug dealer. What a hypocrite. It's kind of like, okay, we're past that. I wonder if the actual better way to go into this is like, this guy got a pardoned because he was in league with the fucking oligarchs. And he was giving them, you wanted to give them their little Bitcoin city in Honduras. And I think this is how you get into the MagRoges. You saw some of this from Marjorie Taylor Green and others. And Spanan has been saying this, which is like, is Trump looking out for regular people

or is he looking out for the tech billionaires that actually hate MAGA Americans? Yeah. And I think maybe that is, it's a little bit more of a bank shot, but I feel like that's what the Democrats should be. Well, I agree. The hypocrisy, knowing gives a shit. Like, who the fuck cares about hypocrisy at this point, right? So there's either doing your way, which I think is probably the smart way, or you just say, like, we got a Mad King on our hands, folks.

Like, this guy's out of control. Like, he's just, he's handing pardons to drug dealers and drug lords and, like, you know, George Santos and shit like that, and J-Sixers. Like, the J-Sixers doesn't fit into your rubric because they're not, like, crypto billionaires, but it does fit into the Mad King umbrella, right? It's like, this guy has just, like, lost his marbles. That's fair. Tim Lai Wiki.

Yeah, this was a good one. This guy was charged with doing basically insider deals on the Austin, on the new stadium down there in Austin. Yeah, yeah, for Texas. You Texas? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the UT Stadium. And he was indicted by... I read about what he would do, which was kind of clever.

He had someone who was bidding against me and you just go to them and be like, yo, I'll give you money for my subcontract, just let me win this contract. Brilliant, so easy. Why don't more people do that? Yeah. That's a great idea. Because it's elite. You can't do that.

Yeah, you just want to make sure you're screwing the taxpayer of Texas as much as possible. Fuck the competitive bidding process. Ringing every cent possible out of the people of Texas. Another time where Trump doesn't care about the mega-Americans that we're paying this rich fuck. Indicted, it's worth noting, by the Trump Justice Department. Not the first Trump justice department. When I read it, I was like, oh, yeah, he was indicted in 2019. And then I looked at it as like, oh, wait, no.

It was July. He was indicted in July. So ridiculous. By Pam Bondi. And so, like, obviously it's the principle of this, but I'm on like, like, where is Doge on this? Like, the amount of money that we get spent to prosecute this person, our justice department goes out to this guy. He was robbing the taxpayers. And then we spent, it's like we kind of compounded the crime.

We're spending taxpayer dollars then to prosecute them. Yeah, that's a really good point. Then we prosecute them and we let him off the hook. A condition of the pardon should be that he has to pay. pay us back. All the money we spent prosecuting him. Yeah. Do you think that's going to be in there? I don't, I have to check the fine. There might, well, I guess maybe if it goes to the ballroom. Yeah, it's got to go to the ballroom. Add one more layer or story to the fucking

ballroom. Why are we doing this? Why is he doing this? I don't, like, what was the upshot of this? This guy's, because you, Matt King, but like, he kind of likes it. It's like in one area where he's got actual control. He can't make prices cheaper, but he can make people say, thank you, sir, and he can make rich guys come to the Oval Office and say, sir, you are the greatest president of all time, and I'm going to contribute to Michael Dell and his weird wife's, like, Trump bond. The $6.25 billion gift to the Trump accounts. But, like, why it's like, why George Santos?

Like, do you really need to, like, get George Santos to come kiss your ass? So you can do a cameo for you. Five cameos in exchange for the pardon, George. Here's the most interesting one on the pardon. because there's just a lot of... Do you want to rank your pardons? Like, what's the most outrageous? We should do that at some point,

but I'm not prepared for that right now. The Henry Quayar pardon, he's a Democratic congressman from Texas. He was accepting bribes from Azerbaijan, allegedly. Allegedly. $600,000, allegedly. In 2024, also there's a Mexican company

that might have been throwing him some cash too through a wife's LLC, throwing a wife's S-Corp. Allegedly. Democratic congressman from South Texas. The wines always get roped in on this. Yeah, like Menendez. Yeah, like South Texas.

The, like, the political layers of this are so, like, there's so much to unpack. Why did Trump do it just because he's tired of people saying he's biased? Did he do it? Because, like, you said, anyone that's targeted by the government, now he sees as a comrade in arms. And so he's going to defend any corrupt politician of any kind. The House GOP got cucked by this. That's the best part. Mike Johnson found out on Twitter, so did Richard Hudson, the NRC chair.

That's the group that is in charge of the campaigns for the Republicans in the House. Hudson said this pardon certainly makes it tougher for the GOP to flip Claire as South Texas seat because he's going to run again as a Democrat. Yeah, everyone's waiting to see what the quid pro quo was here. It's like, oh, yeah, surely he's going to switch parties. And then he, like, ran it. He filed literally like 10 minutes later. And when he did the filing, he did an attack on Joe Biden.

He was like going to thank Trump for the pardon. I'm sure this one wasn't done by the auto pen. You see that? Maybe that was the condition for the pardon. You had to make an auto pen joke. But that, like, gives him more. credit with the maggot people. I mean, like Trump, again, it's interesting. So they do this. I'm back to my Mad King theory. What is the point of this? They have this whole plot to rigged Texas,

right? Like that's like this whole gerrymandering thing is all based on this like corrupt plot to rig Texas districts in the mid-cycle redistricting. This was one of the seats that they were trying to steal. Yeah. They made it more Republican in South Texas. And, and, and now Trump pardons the guy that is the most likely to win it for the Democrats. It doesn't make sense. And he didn't tell Mike Johnson. It's like, I'm mad. It's like, it's, it's, you're being a bad criminal.

Yeah. Like, I was like, at least, you know, I'm upset. It's like, if you're at least going to do this, at least do it pure so we, I can look the evil in the face. It's like so incompetent. Yeah, no, I maybe, now I'm coming to the belief that he did it so he could like avoid the criticism that it's purely Republican. Yeah.

Like he needed one Democrat and they found this guy. Yeah. Yeah. But why not Menendez then? Menendez would have been a better person for that. He's not going to win in New Jersey. I don't know. God, you're asking me to get into this man's head. I have no idea it's wild.

Menendez might be coming. We don't know. The other thing is you can't just do them all at once. You've got to kind of like, you know, you have it. If you've got an it, you've got to scratch it, but you've got to wait until it starts itching again. I have to pick on Hakeem Jeffries just a little bit. That's fine. He's on CNN yesterday on this.

And he says, Quare is a beloved member of the House of Representatives. The indictment was very thin to begin with, in my view. I think the outcome was exactly the right outcome. You didn't need to say that. That's not right. Come on, man. Now you're giving cover to what is an absolute abominable abuse of pardon power. Like, you cannot, that's just not appropriate.

And frankly, look, we're joking a lot about this, but I've talked to the ex-parton attorney at the DOJ who was fired because she wouldn't give Mel Gibson back his guns. That was why she was fired. And like this is, yeah, this was early true. Trump second term. They pushed her out because they wanted to restore Mel Gibson's gun rights. I missed that bull or take with Sam's time. It was a great one. She was like, why are we doing this? And they're like, go. So we're talking a lot about- We'll link to that in the show now so I can remember to go back to that. This is like a real problem because this is a constitutional right. There's no one who's arguing that he can't do this. But everyone basically with the same mind

thinks that they have to fix this. Like there's no, like a functioning society cannot have one man and like just undoing all the Justice Department's work because he's like, like, wakes up and feels like he wants to. There is constitutional ways to do it. I forget who I'm stealing this from, so my apologies. Would you have to do an amendment to the Constitution? Yeah, well, yeah. But I think it was Jonah Goldberg.

If it wasn't Jonah, I apologize to whoever I'm stealing this from. But he made a point that, like, when the pardon powers put into the Constitution because he can only do federal pardons, right? Simultaneously to why he's doing all these problems, he's ranting about my boy Jared Polis for not pardoning. Tina Peters out. Transferred to a federal prison. Polis isn't doing it.

Good on him. And Jonah's point, I think it was Jonah, was saying that, like, when this was put in the Constitution, there were, like, three federal crimes. You know, it was basically like treason, you know, not paid. I don't remember what the other two were. Forcing a soldier to live in your home. And so it's like, are there ways to kind of do part and reform that kind of just, like, defines within the Constitution, like what constitutes it?

I don't know. And there's probably some lawyer out there who might argue. Yeah. And people, look, the point I guess with Jeffries is, like, it is just from a fundamental moral ethical standpoint, like, what Trump is doing with the pardon is horrible. And, like, you should not be doing anything to, like, make it seem like he's doing justice, right? Also, from a political standpoint, to the point of what we were getting to earlier, like, making the case against him on corruption is critical. Sure. And so, you know, this is, it's a minor thing, but it's, it's, it's, it's. undermining it in a minor way. And it's like, I understand that Hakeem, this is, I don't understand

that Hakeem has to, like, manage the conference. And it's, to me, it's kind of like, you know, call Henry if you need to. If you're on CNN talking about this, you're like, I spoke to him privately and, you know, we're going to, we're looking at. You know what I mean? You can, you can avoid it. Yeah, I agree with that. Y'all, if you're a last minute shopper like me, you know the feeling, ideas are running dry, getting stressed. You're feeling that little stress in your chest. You know, you want the loved ones in your life to be happy. You want to see them have joy when they open their presence.

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Picks, a few in your college buddies, a great gift. Or I think I mentioned this. I know it's in Sarah Longwell's office. She's got an or a frame featuring, you know, pictures of all of us. It's like we're kind of her work family. So a lot of options, a lot of different ways to, you know, give a personalized gift to somebody. We'll give them something to smile about. With an orrame, you can upload unlimited photos and videos, and you can share those photos and videos effortlessly straight from your phone all year long. A gift box is included if you're an competent rapper like me. For limited time, save on the perfect gift by visitingoraframes.com to get $35

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There's another new data point in this whole conversation about the war crimes and the Caribbean. And this is that the Wall Street Journal confirmed something that we've kind of suspected for a while. Back in October, Admiral Alvin Holsey was, at the time, they said, resigned. He was the head of Southcom, which was overseeing these attacks. He was only one year into his command, so raised some eyebrows. The journal is reporting that Heggseth asked him to step down. Hegseth met with Holesy on a secure video conference, and according to notes from a participant on the call told the admiral, you're either on the team or you're not.

When you get an order, you move out fast and don't ask questions. So I think that brings some interesting context also to the conversation about the Mark Kelly and these congressmen who are saying why they're encouraging people to not follow legal orders. Hags Seth has basically said to him, you will follow an legal order, and if you won't, you should leave. He's out. And he left. Yeah. And I do think that's pretty interesting context around the whole Mitch Bradley discussion and what's been happening with the...

When are they going to call this guy before the hill? Wouldn't that make sense? Yeah. Have you called Roger Wicker about that? Have you asked Roger Wicker's office? So I asked, was it Kelly, Mark Kelly about it? Or was it, it was either Kelly or Mark Warner? I think it was Warner, actually.

Right when it happened, I was like, are you guys reaching out to this admiral? And they were like, we can't get in touch with him. That was a couple months ago. So we'll see. I mean, obviously, this is like, I keep saying like I got to stop saying that. This is a really serious matter. And it's been interesting to see the fallout around this double tap strike. So obviously we want to know if they are doing something illegal, if they're committing war crimes.

That really does matter, obviously. And there's been another slew of reporting that's added more nuance into the situation. but I think we're losing a little bit of the forest for the trees here, which is that we are engaged in acts of war, but there's not really a war. I mean, we are actively... There's not a war. There's not a war. Not a really.

There's no war. We have a pretend war. We have killed 80 people. We have killed 80 people. And there's been almost no... We don't know who any of them are. We don't actually have, like, really good evidence for why, whether they were smuggling drugs.

We're just supposed to take the deity's word that there's drugs on the boats. and maybe there were. The sheer lack of inquiry, oversight, hearings, explanation, briefings is staggering to me. This is going on for months. 80 people are dead. We've launched multiple missions. Now we have a highly controversial double-tap strike that we don't really know about. We have an admiral that left.

I mean, this is not minor stuff at this point. The piling up of very important stuff to get to the bottom of is now a mountain high. And I can't think of one actual hearing that's happened. Maybe I missed it. Maybe I just don't know. I've not seen anyone be held to account for this. We have a Pentagon press corps that's filled with, like, you know. Maga bloggers.

Yeah. And they asked interesting questions, but we did they? Well, some of them were interesting. Yeah. Or whatever. It was in their own era. What about the guy doing the selfie with Pete Exeth? That was not interesting.

Yeah, I saw it. Okay, we don't need to get, but you get my point. I do get your point. I want to actually one thing that would be your perspective from back when you were doing, you know, full-lib journalism. Yeah, full-lib journalism at Huffo. You might have some insight on this. But, you know, some of the defenses I've seen of this, Dan Crenshaw was out basically being like, we do war crimes all the time. It's basically, he's like, we always kill people, you know, do double taps.

I don't know if that's a great defense, but that's where Crenshaw was. Then you see other people like trying to do the Bud Obama defense, which was, what about the drone strikes? You know, Al-Waki, and his, was it his kid or his nephew, whatever. It was his family member that was killed in the drone strike. And it was like, well, this wasn't a big, you know, there wasn't a big oversight over this. And I was like, my recollection is like, this was a massive scandal at the time. There was Democrats on the Hill that were calling the administration over. Rand made some, like, major speech on the floor.

I think he shut down the Senate for a while. It's funny that you mentioned the sort of liberal perspective at the time. So I was at Huff Post during this. Yeah. And this was our cause celeb. Like this was like the thing that, and it was mostly led by Ryan Grimm, who was sort of intellectually consistent about this stuff. But we spent weeks railing on the Obama administration over these drone strikes.

We went after Holder incredibly hard. We were, you know, doggedly in pursuit of what the justification and rationalization was for doing this. And the Obama White House hated us for it. They hated us for it. And so, you know, yeah, I mean, obviously we had a perspective politically at the time, but we were very much willing to just stick it to them. And there were some Democrats, that's what I'm trying to remember. It's hard for me to remember that were also.

There was definitely, so look, of course there's some deferentialness in the party to the president, and if you're going to get lawmakers who rally around him and defend him. But there were people speaking up at the time who said that they, This is an abomination and also, you know, potentially illegal and wasn't this guy running, like, is someone who was going to end the wars and all that stuff? It's like there are some analogies, actually. I had it right. It was Al Al-Olocki's son, a 16-year-old son. Yeah, I remember this.

Because he was American. Yeah. And there are other examples of that, but that was kind of the most memorable one. Hey, everybody, I have to tell you about this game-changing product I used before a night out with drinks. It's called pre-alcohol, from holiday parties to festive toast by the fire. The holidays are full of moments to share a drink with friends and family. Whether you're celebrating the year ends win or just relaxing after a busy day, being ready for the next morning still matters.

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Okay, I want to do, we'll just do any just a brief economy talk, not great, payroll, process, incoming ADP's latest jobs report is out. We don't have real numbers. I know, I know. I want to hear you caveat that's what I'm asking you. But we should just say, private sector employment, according to ADP, fell by $32,000 in November, third decline in four months. There's some issues with ADP, but usually we're able to compare it to government data,

which we don't have because of this government. Yeah, I mean, even if ADP is off. and they're almost always off. It's obviously the situation is not great. And it's going to get worse. Like that, I think people are kind of, I mean, I don't want to, you can hold me to it, whatever I said it, but people are going to about to have health care premium is just skyrocket.

Millions of people are about the health care of room is skyrocket because Congress can't figure out what to do about this stuff. You mentioned the immigration stuff. That will matter. I mean, that will matter. And then, of course, everyone's just sort of waiting around to see how much of this economy he's just propped up by, you know, artificial intelligence and people, you know, blowing smoke about how important they are.

What we really need is we have to get E.J. and Tony at the BLS. Because if there's one way to fix this, it's by finding someone to fix the numbers. Yeah. And if he cooks the books. They pulled him. They pulled them. Do they have a replacement for him yet? No.

Why would we need that? Yeah, we don't need numbers. You mentioned the AI. I want to talk just a little bit on the Dems. Then I've got some funny stuff. We can get out of here. But the funny stuff is all. I always say it's funny.

That's kind of like it's dark. It's darkly fun. It's macabre. But anyway, we'll get to it. That's my specialty. The Democrats, just because you mentioned AI, it sparked a thought about our colleague Lauren Egan's newsletter, the opposition, which is about this. It feels real that the Democrats are starting to, I feel like there's like a pundit class

Democrats that's like really excited about the idea of going after AI and these AI executives and thinking that that's going to be a useful political tool. And then I think that there's a lot of like traditional establishment Democrats that I think are going to be very hesitant to do that. We need their money? Well, you just said it's also hard, I think, when a lot of the jobs are being created that way. You know, I think that this is going to be real tension in the Democratic Party, but how to how to engage with that.

I don't know what you think. When the tension's furthered by what we were just talking about, which is if they're all aligned with Trump or if Trump's rewarding them or, you know, how do you then say, hey, we like you too? I read Lauren's piece is a little bit sort of broader than, hey, we're going to go after these tech oligarchs. It's also like phones and schools, right? It's the idea that our lives are just being sucked into our screens and that maybe there is a sort of nostalgia for a life when we weren't just doom scrolling all the time. I don't have any nostalgia for it.

I want to scroll more. You're a poster. Yeah. Which is why I'm so excited about Lane Kiffin. People are like, are you upset about LSUs to coach Lane Kiffin? And I was like, Lane Kiffin, after Ole Miss beat LSU this year, hosted from the locker room, shitting on us, three minutes after the game ended. And I was like, that guy's my soulmate.

Well, so I don't, he's not Lane Kiffin because he's not texting 19-year-old girls. But Dan Hurley has got a similar vibe. We just beat Kansas. And he tweeted afterwards, was the Ted Lassow guy in the tennis? Because Jason Sadegis had gone to the last Kansas-U-Con game. I was like, this man's in his 50. these, and he's just, he can't help it. He needs to ship post.

Back to the point. No, that's me, yeah. But I think the idea here for Democrats is that maybe there are parents who are really worried, and they should be honestly, about the phones and schools, and maybe there are people who are really worried about AI companies taking over all the energy in their town and building these database systems. And you're seeing sporadically here and there that this pops up in campaigns. Could you tie it holistically together?

Can you put it under this populist umbrella where it's like, these guys are full of shit and they're promising the world. And in fact, they're taking all your energy and they're, you know, poisoning your kids' brains and we need to be different. Sure. I can see that. I can too. And despite being a poster at heart, I am very sympathetic to that point of view. And it's interesting. That seems right now, I guess, is like way more popular in the liberal podcasting class like us than it is among politicians.

And it'll be interesting to see how much politicians actually, like, really embrace it. Someone actually told me they're like, you know, there's been a lot written about these data centers. And it's really not a big deal. Like, it's a couple places where they actually exist, but it's not, you know, it's not national. I think it will be a local issue in those places for sure. Yeah, yeah. But I'm not like the next president's not going to run in a hay. Yeah, but maybe they might.

And that takes me to the other hot stoves I wanted to talk to you about with the Mad King. I've been reticent to do 2028 hot stuff. I don't want to do that. I know. I know. I just want to make one point, though, because I've been thinking about this. And it's related to how the Democrats should act. And it's a little bit counter to what I think has been the bulwark conventional wisdom on what we want from Democrats, which is like, fighting, fighting, more fighting. And it's like, in the contrast to the Mad King, you know, there's an Atlantic article in Josh Shapiro, maybe the cases people are looking for stability. I was thinking about maybe a different way, Tim Wilburne wrote that article. It's quite interesting. bumped into Westmore at the airport.

Yeah. And the guy is just like... Chill. Happy. Yeah. Happy. Handsome. Yeah.

Nice. Friendly. Able to talk. Yeah. You know? And I'm kind of wondering, you know, we do all this and it's like, well, gosh, the Democrats are really going to need to, like, take on the oligarch. So, like, the Democrats are going to need somebody like really as backbone going up to Trump.

And I do wonder just at first blanche. Like, what is, is that right or, like, is it possible that really politics is very simple and we usually elect the handsomer person and the Democrats really can just kind of, like, go back to, like, somebody that doesn't seem crazy, it seems stale, seems happy, affable, can go in the bro pods. And it's really not much more complicated than that. It's just a counter theory I'm throwing out there. People have always pointed out that the more telegenic candidate almost always wins. I don't know if that's like causation, correlation. it probably has something to do with our mediums of communication, right? I think it's unimpeachably true up to 2016.

I just, I don't know how you judge who's more telegenic between Donald Trump and Hillary? And Joe Biden. No, and Hillary, because they were both in the basement. I feel like 2020 doesn't count because the COVID election. Then 24, it's like, I think Kamala is objectively more, more telegenic than Trump. But it's like, you know, it's like, are we counting Biden also as part of that? Yeah, yeah, okay, fair enough.

But up to 2016, I'm very. The other theory that is at play here that you're talking about is how this is all reactive, right? And I've mentioned this a million times, but George Bush begets Barack Obama because Obama's not, you know. Well, you can go about Clinton against Bush. Sure, right. But Obama, I mean, people, I don't know. I mean, the Obama allure was, we're tired of all this shit. Like, we don't need to be in the Middle East, but also we don't need to have politics that is just cutthroat.

I'm going to be a reconciler. And then, of course, Obama begets Trump, which is the, you know, absolutely we need to cut throw. Like, this, this lunatics actually Muslim. And then, you know, then Biden does the store. So if you look at it from that perspective, then, yeah, you want someone who is just, oh, you're normal. Affable. Yeah, affable. And I can, like, not have to be staring at my phone every two minutes to wonder who you pardoned, right?

So maybe that is the case. I think the, and I can't believe we're already talking in 2028, but does that get you through a primary? I mean, that was the issue. Obama was able to get through that 2008 primary, not because he was promising a new type of politics, but because enough new voters believe that you could get a new type of politics. And I don't know if that's the case now where, you know, let's say Josh Shapiro, Westmore comes in and said, we got to do politics differently. Are like the youth going to get jazzed about that? I don't know. No, probably not.

Probably not. Yeah, that's a tension. I'm with you on that one to do this early. I have a job for a listener, whatever listener wants to do this. I want to give myself like a buzzer where I have, I get like 10 minutes a week allowed to talking about talking about 2020. And that's it. And once we hit the 10, I get buzzed. Okay.

I think that's a smart idea. And then when we get to the year 2026, you can go to 15 minutes and we'll just keep it. You don't want to overdose. You got up in gradual increment. here. What if this was someone in your family that had a chronic illness that they could not get away from? Millions of Americans live with a disease that has no cure. I was diagnosed with a rare form of sarcoma.

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United for Cures Action. All right. We're going to end with Tucker. Great. Somebody sent me a text. I've not seen this. You've not seen this first. I'm going to pull us up.

This is pretty alarming. I'm just going to pull this up live here. Everybody had their Spotify raps out yesterday. You can see mine on my Instagram if you want. I'm obviously an indie gay. So it's pretty pretty the trendy indie indie gay music is what I'm listening to. But in the rap, they also have the top 10 podcasts in the U.S. Okay. I'm not on there yet. We're working on it.

I thought you were. No, not there. We're working on. We're going up. Rogan, Theovan, Call her Daddy, blah, blah, blah, number seven, Tucker. Okay. Are you surprised by that? No, it's just, it's alarming. Yeah. Well, yeah. This is why you've got to tell your friends about this podcast. We've got to make it, we've got to go up the list. Yes. Tell your friends. This is a pretty alarming list.

It's a pretty alarming list. Good, Amy Poehler, good hang with Amy Poehler's number 10. So she seems sane. But the rest of the list. It's a little shaky. Tucker last night, get home back to the hotel, scrolling as I do, have the Nuggets game on, the Nuggets game on the TV. Phil Nicholson said what? Scrolling on the phone. I see Tucker has his new drop. He's got Milo Yiannopoulos.

Remember Milo? He did the dangerous faggot tour back when you were at Huff Post. That was his big thing. Then he got D-platformed. It was like the only actual successful D-platforming. He really has a lot. I love that out. I think that ended up.

The whole de-platforming move was a failure. With the exception, here's the exception that proves the rule. It was the one de-platforming that worked. I don't know. Do you remember that woman who made the terribly offensive AIDS joke? When she was boarding a plane, she was deplathing. Okay, but we didn't know her before.

So deep-platforming didn't make any difference to society. Success. When does she land? That's what that was. When did she land? When did she land? That was a really horrific joke. Anyway, Tucker's trying to bring Milo back.

And they did two hours on homosexuality. Oh, my God. And so I was like, I got to watch this, obviously, at 2X speed. You went 2X? Oh, yeah. Well, it was 2X with just Tucker. No, 1.5. Well, yeah, no, with just Tucker, it's 2X.

And I like doing it, especially because his laugh is even funnier at 2X. It's really funny at 2X, so I do like him at 2X. But then Milo talks really fast, so I'd move it back down to 1.5. Anyway, the premise was about the Ugandan interviewer who was like, why are you gay? And about how that person was correct, the Ugandan interviewer and the anti-gay Uganda bill. Tucker's pro that now, the death penalty for gay, for certain gay acts. So Tucker explains why he has issues with homosexuality, then Milo explains his. I want to play the Tucker one first.

Tucker, Tucker's trying to demonstrate how he's being reasonable, but he's not really anti-gay. He just wants to bring us back to a different year. Okay. Let's listen. Let's listen. And what does it mean to live as a gay person in the United States? What exactly does that look like? Like, what's your life like? How many people do you have sex with? How are those unfair questions? Since you're the one throwing it in my face and telling me I'm not allowed to be against it, maybe I'm allowed to ask the questions. I don't really want to ask. Don't really want to know the answers to. But since you've made it the North Star of our moral system in the United States, since you're willing to starve an African country because they disagree. agree with it, maybe it's time for me to ask those questions because you push me to. On this and a lot of other issues, if you just back off a little bit, if we could just return to the status quo of, say, 1985, where, yeah, they're gay people,

they're great, they're off, you know, whatever. They're here, they're there, whatever, but they're not pushing gay sex on my kids in school. 1985, we're just going to go back to the glories. I was listening to it, but those are the best years for the game. the rewind because I was like, did he say 1995? Because at least we could start as a, like, we'll have a debating point. I'd have some disagreements. I couldn't have my family in 1995,

so I'd be opposed to that. But 1985 is what he choose to say. When gays were dying from AIDS and nobody was helping them. Yeah. No, that was... So let's just go back to that status quo. You guys, we don't bother you, you don't bother us. You die. We don't give you health care services. And that'll be fine.

And you have to tell me how many people you're fucking, by the way? Sorry, I couldn't... At one point I was having trouble just following who he's talking about. Like, who is telling him he can't talk about gays or AIDS or something? No, he is saying that, he's arguing that the gays, we're all pushing it on every face and that we've made gay the moral cause. Okay, so we can't, we cannot credit, he's upset because we can't.

We can't make it a moral good. Like, it's like, if it was a moral neutral, he wouldn't care. Tucker is upset that we cannot ask questions about gays, basically. Well, he's upset that we, that we are doing, yeah, he's upset that you can't ask questions about, like, why are you gay? Like, how much sex you're having. How much sex you're having? Because that's rude.

He's upset that we have cried. I don't know. This is like the most obvious case of someone. I can send Tucker my body count if you wants. This is clear projection, right? Like this is someone who wants to explore homosexuality. It seems like it. I don't know.

Has he talked about whether he's had a gay experience before? Has anyone asked him? Someone should ask him. It feels like I could prep school. It seems like an obvious question. It's like, hey, you're, you seem like, utterly obsessed with homosexuality and your desire to be mean to them. Have you ever tried it?

Like, is that why you're upset? I feel so possible. I know a little prep school. I'm not trying to be Freudian about it, but it does seem like, you know, perhaps one of the reasons he is like, can't get over this and wants to go back to a time where gays were dying from an unknown disease and didn't talk about it. Like, maybe it's because something happened to him. Makes him uncomfortable.

Yeah. Maybe. Or maybe he's just being a prick. Well, that too. Those can be totally related. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's interesting. There's a substantive element of, like, just like how he's mainstreaming anti-Semitism.

He's, like, trying to bring this back. He's like, okay, you know, he's like, we're trying to roll up back. Yeah, what do you think his booking processes? Like, you know, no one told him he had to bring Milo on. I'm sure Miles not like the most, you know, I don't think Miles is getting him huge numbers, but. I don't think it's actually that hard if you look at his recent guests to figure it out. Tucker wants to, he's like, what is the thing that everybody says? I can't do, and I'm going to do it.

He's like a baby. And so that's how I'm like, I don't know if it's actually, but maybe he had a gay sex experience in prep school. We should ask him. But I think it's any less about that than just like, I'm a brat. Like, Tucker is real, like, the prep school element of him is like, I'm still, I'm just embracing my 17 year old self and I'm going to say whatever thing is because he's done.

It's been like that forever, right? Crossfire. He's done like 9-11 stuff recently. Hitler was the good guy in World War II, obviously pro Putin. You know, I mean, like, chemtrails recently, I believe that he did. Well, that one, I understand. Yeah. Now it's like, why are people gay?

So anyway, yeah, I don't know. I think that's a good follow-up for him. Maybe it's we do a trade. Maybe I'll send him my body count if he tells us if he ever had a gay experience. Because he does seem interested. Yeah, seems fair. One more thing that they went up that, sorry, we're going to be up to our 10 minutes, because it's slightly related to 2028.

But we're going to end there. He asked Milo his thoughts on Mayor Pete. I mean, isn't Buttigieg's just the most interesting character of our age? Like, I mean, it doesn't look like he looks like an intensely boring homosexual, like everything gay people shouldn't be. But it's so interesting the fact that, I mean, clearly he wasn't gay, like at the beginning. Well, he had girlfriends. Right. So he wasn't gay, but he made himself gay.

I made that point because actually I had gay men who worked for me who were more in tune with this than me. I'm not in tune at all. I just didn't. At all. Again, I'm telling you. Something that's going on here. They said, well, he's not really gay. No.

So, but what does that mean? Well, his sexuality, like all homosexuality, like all homosexuality, is a function, a product, a symptom. What is his homosexuality a symptom of? It's of his vaulting ambition. Buttigieg timed it perfectly so that post-Obama, the gay guy with the black kids, perfect presidential candidate. I'm not sure Miles got his finger on the pulse of the public. The timeline is also a little off there.

Yeah. The guy got out with the black kid. I mean, his kids are like two. Yeah. So, I mean, when he ran for president, he didn't have black kids, actually. So, I mean, I'm just saying if we're to take this theory at face value, that Pete is pretending to be gay, he's pretending to have sex with Chastin, just because he's so ambitious that he's like, I've got to do it. It's honestly, quite the long con here. It really is.

Pete, you can break character. And the only way to do it. to adopt kids. It's really, it's sick. And then they go on to do a lot of negative stuff about gay adoption, which is really sick

and disgusting. I'm not saying, I feel a little icky about this. Like, these people are not well. And, you know, again, I think a lot of this is just projection. The idea that, you know,

oh, of course Pete Buttigieg would, like, engage in this decade-long fake cover-up where he's gay and has black kids and it's because he wants to be the president. It's like, it's because you think in this way. Not everyone thinks like this.

Yeah, that is really. right. That is right. And, you know, it is interesting. Tucker is like, I'm going to have a gay sex expert come on and work to be like, and it's going to be like, well, if he had girlfriends before. Sorry, but what's a gay sex? Do you get credential? Yeah, I don't know. Bring on Dan Savage movie. If it's like, I had girlfriends before, that means that he must be faking it. And I can just say, no one's ever, no one's ever had difficulty figuring out their sexuality, buddy. I know, I know, I know that you don't really know. I know you don't know at all, at all. I know at all.

You don't want to care of this. You don't have any issues. But I just want to say, I also had a girlfriend once. And it's not fake. Wait, is this fake right now? I'm going to do it. I know. It's just a rise in the podcasting charts.

Exactly. A straight never trooper. Get this man to number six and then he can finally get back to being straight. That's right. This is why I was beating Michael Steele in the podcast charts. Okay. If Michael Steele had pretended to be gay, okay, then he would have touched all the buttons. We love you, Chairman.

That's amazing. Sam, anything you want to leave us with? No, I got to go. I got to go. Where do you got to go? We got big business today. Come on, you know that. All right.

Well, the people like the banter, though. I know. Well, I love being here. Everybody else, I don't know who the guest is tomorrow, so hopefully they'll be good. It should not be big again. It might be Sam. We got to figure that out. But I promise you we'll do a great job with it.

We'll see you back here tomorrow. Appreciate you all. Peace. Peace. We're rum on super stars She rolled my hair With my lipstick on In the glass of her boudoir

There's nothing wrong with loving who you are She said because he made you perfect babe So hold your head of girl and you're no far There's a new at the same I'm beautiful in my way Because I make no mistakes I'm on the right track Baby I would fall in this way

Don't I still the regret This love is still being dead I'm on the right track Baby I was on this way Oh there ain't no world way Baby I was born away Baby I was born this way I ain't no world

Way Maybe I was born way Right track Maybe I was born this way Don't be a drag, just be a queen. Don't be a drag, just be a queen. Don't be a drag, just be a queen. Give yourself prudence and love your friends.

Subway can rejoice your truth. In the religion of the insecure, I must be myself, respect my youth. A different law is not a sin. Believe capital age I am. I am I know my love love this friend could end Me amor if I'm laid by eye

I'm beautiful in my way Cause got me no mistakes I'm on the right track Baby I was born this way Don't have yourself to regret This love itself in a sense I'm on the right track Baby I was on this way

Oh there ain't a one way The Bullwark way, baby, I was born this way. Oh, this way. There ain't no road away. Baby, I was falling out on the right track. Baby, I was on this way. Hey, I was on the right track. Baby, I was born as way.

Hey, I was boneless way. The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.