The Bulwark Podcast - Stuart Stevens: Republicans Are Desperate

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

The party has been busy playing defense in Trump states, and now comes the news that Susan Collins is corrupt on top of being a loyal MAGA supplicant. More Democrats should walk with Ossoff's swagger and keep their message simple: attack Trump on his corruption and the war. (And in colder climes, the price of heating oil.) Meanwhile, subpoenas over Trump Jr.'s Russian mobster-funded wedding are coming, and even some Republicans are likely to get on board. Plus: Ukraine is showing how to fight wars now and how the U.S. under Trump and Hegseth is not ready. And Tim keeps his promise and puts on a hair shirt after LSU's loss to Ole Miss. Stuart Stevens joins Tim Miller.show notes: ProPublica’s reporting on Susan Collins Lauren on how Dems are dealing with the Republicans’ huge war chest Tim’s interview with Wright Thompson last week Stuart’s books, including “The Conspiracy to End America” and “The Last Season” Stuart on performance-enhancing drugs The Bulwark’s campaign to help the Haitian community of Springfield The Bulwark store Head to https://forkfulmeals.com/thebulwark for 50% off your first order today!

Welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted welcome back to the show. An old friend, former Republican media consultant. He worked on five presidential campaigns, including his chief strategist from Mitt Romney, senior advisor to Lincoln Project. His books include The Conspiracy to End America, and it was all a lie. And he also wrote a book about Ole Miss Football. And so he's back to talk about that.

My first question for you, Stuart, is, are you ready? Ready. Oh, yeah. I'm in my shirt, as promised. It's probably historic first for the bulwark to have two people in Ole Miss gear. As soon as we hang up, I'm going to be talking to Keith Carter and see if he can sponsor the bulwark now. You know, it's an official Ole Miss platform. I'd love to come visit the Grove, and this would be as good as time as any, as a loser,

so everybody could rub my nose in the dirt. Or it's time to go back, you know, go see Square Books again and get a proud Larry's, haven't been to Oxford in a hot minute. So handy Andy, maybe. But it was a hell of a football game. And I had planned, you know, what, three, four months ago now to bring you back during Old Miss LSU week. We had Bright Thompson on last week. I do have a little favor for the audience.

Love that guy. Dude, he's so great. That pod was so great. And I've said this for it. It's just worth repeating. The podcasts, like this one right now, where we're about to talk about Trump derangement syndrome and how Trump is crashing in the polls and where we do opium for the midterms, the algorithm does the work for us on those podcasts.

All right. People are going to see this out in the world. The Wright Thompson ones, you know, the thoughtful, the literary ones. The algorithm doesn't know what to do with that. So if you enjoyed Wright Thompson, you've a friend in your life that thinks they would have liked that podcast. Please send it to him. He was fucking hilarious on Game Day with his little voiceover, you know, talking about how important the game was. So, you know, a loss is a loss, but it was a great theater.

I enjoyed myself. Well, look, you know, I think that I've long time, Mississippi is sort of the Ireland of America. this green, poor place that overvalues riding, fighting, and drinking. And Thompson is in that mix. A guy like he could, it's wonderful how much he is respected amongst, at least I think all writers, but Mississippians, you know, he, he's not an unknown guy in Mississippi. And, you know, this is a place for Willie Morris, former writer, famous writer from Yasser City.

When Willie died, he laid in state at the state capital. So Mississippi does still know how to honor riders. And it's great to see Wright continuing that tradition. We'll have a little bit more Mississippi in a bit. I want to start with a bombshell report out of Republica this morning regarding Susan Collins. Senator Susan Collins helped steer millions in federal defense contracts to Navitech, whose CEO Martin Cowell, illegally funneled thousands of dollars to our campaign, or to our super PAC through a fake nonprofit.

The FBI was about to launch a probe, was I in college. Collins, maybe some other lawmakers, but then Trump gutted the unit that was in charge of corruption probes when he came in. The nonprofit, I love this, was called Society of Young Women Scientist and Engineers, which has no relationship to the Derek Zoolander Center for kids who can't read good. But look, there's a lot of this. A lot of times this stuff is a little gray Stewart where it's like, you know, you have a special interest that pays money to a pack. And then they get treatment when you're in there and this is the tale as old as time. In this case, though, it's pretty stark.

I mean, as a government contractor, you're not allowed to donate through the company to politicians. So they went around it, created this fake nonprofit with a ridiculous name. And then when they got caught, Cleita Mitchell, who was part of the insurrection in Trump's effort to overturn our democracy, like hatched a plan post hoc that was like, hey, what if the society for you? young women scientist gives money to schools in Maine to make it seem real. And the whole thing is pretty cut and dry. Republic did a great job with it. I don't know what your thoughts are. I find that it's astounding that Clea Mitchell is still walking around free in this world,

unindicted with a law license. You know, in the famous Oval Office call when Trump called Secretary of State of Georgia, you know, if you read that transcript, at a certain point, Trump wasn't making it clear enough. And Clea Mitchell, who was there, sort of started telling him, this is what you need to say. This is what, you know, she is a force of any democracy evil. She is devoted her life now to changing how we vote in America, to curating the vote. It is the continuation of the Federalist Society after they received

$1.3 billion. And she does this very much under the radar screen. I wrote about her my last book. and she goes around the country giving these seminars to local election officials, volunteers, on how to curate the election. I think an aggressive attorney general could get some sort of restraining order against her because she's trying to teach people how to break the law. So it's no shock to Clea Mitchell, who is another one of these people, not to go too much in the weeds, but there was a time when Clea Mitchell was a very different person. She ran the ERA campaign in Oklahoma as a state legislature.

And I think, not to get too personal here, but I think events unfolded in her life that changed her and made her, let's say, a very different person. And it's really disappointing. But, you know, when the history of this Trump era is written, And she's going to be there, you know, along with the quiet bureaucrats that made this possible. Yeah. We're part of the conspiracy to end America, as you might have called it. Yeah.

I mean, Susan Collins, I mean, look, this is somebody who has a great future behind her, you know. I mean, she's sort of like the ingenue stayed too long. And she's never been what she appeared to be. You know, when I first encountered her, she was a died-in-a-wolf bushy who wouldn't be seen with any of these people she now frequents with. I don't understand why doing what Jeff Flake did, saying I'm not going to play this game and resigning, is in a better life path. And so what is she got? She's going to lose this race and she's going to be remembered as a maga supplicant. That's all these people are going to be remembered for it. And corrupt now.

Corrupt. So how's that working about? The other thing is sad part of this. Her interview with Jonathan Martin a couple weeks ago I mean, she just doesn't look good. And obviously she looks like she should be retiring. You can tell that the hacks and the hatchet men behind her, like, fed her this line where she starts going after Troy Jackson's wife. And, you know, she is kind of stuttering while she does it. And it's like, this is such a sad way to end your career. Yeah.

No, it is. It's, you know, it's like this moment when you're, like, lost and you're driving by a casino that you didn't know, exist and there's a band that's playing there that you remember, oh yeah, the 90s, they had a hit. And now they're selling CDs out from behind their van while they play at the casino. I mean, that's Susan Collins. He's just somebody that just stayed too long at the dance. And another person who never believed what she said she did. You know, it's like I say to match slapper, old pal and all these people.

You're either lying when you said that you were what Bush was for, or you're lying now. So which is it? Yeah. So, you know, the woman who gave us Brett Kavanaugh more than anybody else. Scott Reed is also in this story, another old bushy who, like, whatever, you know, he was at the chamber of commerce and he quit the chamber over, like the chamber was trying to endorse more Democrats because there are some free market Democrats now running against MAGA Republicans. And he quits over that. Now he's wrapped up in this too. And it's just the same story over and over again for all these people.

I've known Scott, you know, I feel like I know Scott all my life. before you were born, we worked on a Dole campaign together, and he ended up running the Dole campaign. And, you know, he's just another one of these guys that, I think, just lost his way. There's so many of them out there that we know. And you didn't, Tim, to your credit, you didn't. I still remember after Trump got elected, you call me up and said, I don't know what to do. All our friends are going to try to pretend this didn't. happen. It's just like, okay, we're just going to ignore this and keep making money and keep doing

this. And you said to your eternal credit and to the benefit of the whole country in the world, you said, I'm not going to do that. I just can't do that. Well, not that much of a benefit to the whole world because here we are, Stuart, it's 10 years later and we're still talking about it. So maybe some of these other people joined, things would be different. But you're, though, just kind of close loop on this. I mean, you think that Susan Collins' chances are nil, our minimal, Like, what do you think about the main Senate race state of play? You're up in Vermont. That's your neck of the woods now.

Yeah, I'm in Vermont. You know, she should have lost last time. Her opponent lost with, you know, seven figures in the bank, which, you know, there should be some special little Dante circle for candidates to do that. I know people who are working on that campaign, the Susan Collins campaign, that morning, they had one of these calls, and I've been on them. hopefully you never have but okay we we tried we're gonna lose oh i've been on plenty of those calls we're gonna lose but look yeah no backbiting everybody gave it their best and you know it just didn't who's got the pen on the concession speech that's miller you know i've i've had several those and then you know i think they were like literally like you know could not believe that she

was losing uh winning yeah so I think she'll lose. One of the big factors that I think is underappreciated in the New Hampshire race and in the main race is the price of heating oil. Heating oil is now hit $7 a gallon. And two years ago, it was $3.25. So that means if you're, say, it takes, you know, typical home, 900 to 1,000 gallons to get through the winter, you're going to have a lot of people. who are not going to be able to heat their homes and because of this Iran war more than anything else.

And Susan Collins supports that. So I hope the Jackson Kim is really hitting on that. It's something we're going to talk about in the Lincoln Project. But it's just one of these micro, if you can call it micro, ramifications of a macro policy. The Canada stuff really hurts her. You know, a lot of the economy in Northern Maine is fueled by Canadians. Well, it undermines her whole pitch, which is like, hey, you know, I'm not fully Trumpy.

You know, I went against him on a few things, but you need me here because to protect our interests. And it's like, okay, well, where were you on the Canada tariffs that are, you know, that's hurting all these industries. It's hurting tourism. Where were you on? Yeah. I, you know, so I do think that that really undermines her pitch in a way that in 2020, you know, things were a little different. Yes. again, I don't think a good campaign was run against her in 2020.

Right. So I'm glad the grandpatterner's not the nominee because he would probably might even win this thing. Well, it would be an interesting one. You know, bribery against sexual assaults. Maybe it would have been what America deserved. But here we are, Troy Jackson, I think. I think Troy Jackson's going to win pretty handily.

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and then we'll get into the hopium on the midterms. Lauren Egan, my colleague, that's a great newsletter on the Democrats, basically talked about the one thing that all the Democrats are worried about. which is there's just ungodly amounts of money on the GOP side right now. And the playing field, particularly for the Senate, is really red turf. And as an ad guy, I want to posit something, and you're an ad guy, and you can tell me whether or not you think this is right. But I think in this day and age of 26, TV ads,

it's tough to convince people to vote for your person with a TV ad. It's still workable to convince somebody to vote against somebody that they didn't really want to vote against in the first place. And so I'm talking about these Trump voters in Iowa, Texas, Alaska, all this money coming in trying to turn, you know, Josh Turek into Kamala or whatever, to tamp down the types of voters that they need to win to get over the hump. Like, what do you think about that as like the main concern?

For a long time now, people have said that television advertising is sort of a dinosaur that doesn't, which always like, I don't know. like Apple still advertises are on television and they're not stupid. Why are they doing that? So now here you have these massive amounts. I mean, entire new colonies of beach houses are going to be built with the commission on these ads. Oh, yeah. My feeling about this is I don't think in any of these races an additional 10,000 gross rating points, 15,000 gross rating points is going to make a difference. but I'd rather have 10,000 and 15,000 gross rating points. You know, we have to kind of look at these contradictions.

People don't know just that's for inside. That's how you measure the ads. That's how you measure. And it's about the frequency of the ad you see on TV. So what's the rule of thumb? It's been a minute for me. It's like if there's 10,000 gross rating points on air, that means the average person sees the ad 10 times over X period.

A thousand, a thousand gross rating points. Got it, there you. If there's 1,000 gross rating points, you see the ads 10 times. though that's never really been true, but we just kind of, we established that to feel that we had some sort of sense of quantitative ability to quantify the unquantifiable. But anyway, you know, 24 we said it was a podcast election. Yeah. So now all of a sudden we're saying, well, it's going to be, ah, we're back in 1998. Okay, great. I don't think it is going to be determinative. I think the key for all of these Democrats is to keep this message very simple because, you know, crowded, cacophony, loud environment, your best bets are to stick with a simple message. And the message should be, if you think things are going right, you should vote Republicans.

They run everything. If you think that we can do maybe a little better, give the other guys a chance. If you don't like it in two years, vote us out. I wouldn't get into what you're going to get when you get Democrats, all this stuff. I mean, I'd save that for debates or something. It's just a straight-up referendum right-track, wrong-track race. And no incumbent party in modern politics has ever won elections when the right track was under 45. It's now 25.

And the number that I really look at is Trump's most favorable and most unfavorable. Those who are very unfavorable, very unfavorable. Because ultimately, those are the ones that are going to be the Trump. It makes sense. He feels the most passionately about it. So Trump's very favorable, the last poll I saw, was bouncing around 15. And his very unfavorable was hitting 50. You look at these numbers of fave, unfave, national, or whatever.

Well, there's that approval candidate. He hit the low watermark of those ARG, which isn't the best pollster. But even still, it was the first time he hit 29. It was like 2968. That's total fave unfavorable. And you're saying, though, like, of the 29 favorable, only 15 or very. very favorable. And up to 68 unfavorable, 50 are very unfavorable. Well, you know, in all these polls, I would do a screening.

To the extent we are polling Lincoln Project, do a screening question. Do you believe Trump won the 2020 election? And if you say yes, we just say thanks and hang up. Because what do you need to know about these people? They just pollute the sample. There's nothing you're going to tell them. One of the odd little statistics, among those who believe that Trump lost a free and fair election, you know, his favorable is probably, I don't know, 18, maybe.

So I think these numbers are getting actually inflated higher than they really are. But, you know, Democrats, they just don't take the candy, don't get into debating all this stuff about Democrat socialists, and attack, attack, attack, attack. In 24, it just blows my mind, Trump campaign never ran a single positive act. ad, not one. Is that true? Like on paid, you mean on paid TV?

Yes. On paid TV. Paid media. They never did. And, you know, usually, you've had clients,

clients tend to think that they've done some important shit. Yeah. Most of them have. So they want that an ad. So you go, like, dude,

nobody cares. Well, it's funny, he's doing it now. He's asking them to do it now in the midterms, you know? Yeah, yeah,

yeah. Yeah. But they talked him into it. They scared him enough that this isn't, you know, Lassa Vita, this isn't going to move numbers. So, you know, and I can say how many campaigns we go, okay, and we'll make it positive ad and we'll run it like at midnight, you know, worldwide wrestling and show it to the

candidate and go, okay, you got your positives, it's great, you know. And I think the Democrats need to attack, attack, attack, attack. This is a referendum on Trump, and you need to tie together corruption and all of the cost of living stuff. The reason that you're paying 90 bucks to fill up your car is because of corruption. We wouldn't have an Iran war without corruption. Don't separate these two. Yes. And Talariko and Asop are doing this so well. Every once in a while, I see on some, I sometimes have conversations with friends who are in Dem politics or I see these things in Politico where some of the other candidates are still doing this. Oh, we should only talk about

kitchen table issues. Oh, I don't want to do Trump, you know, do as much about Trump. And anytime I hear that, I want to stroke out. It's like Trump's approvals. He's underwater even in Texas. Like James Tala Rico is doing it right. Like what is what is it about John Osloff who's running 10 points ahead in Georgia that you think isn't isn't right for your house seat? You know, what are you going to win by too much? You're trying to cover the spread or something?

You know, but this is why as Republicans, we want a bunch of races we never should have won because Democrats couldn't get out of their way. You know, there is something about the Democratic Party's DNA still. And I say this, you know, as I believe the Democratic Party is the only pro-democracy party in America, the only real American political party. But a need to talk more about policy than emotion and an inability to keep to a simple message. You know, you go back to when Kerry ran against Bush, Kerry took the attitude. He was going to talk about whatever was negative in the press to try to try to. drive a wrong track message. Remember at one point in that race, he was talking about flu vaccine shortages. I don't remember that, actually, but I'll take your word for it.

Yeah, I went to some of these rallies. They were hilarious. People were like holding up, you know, syrenzes. I don't think that's going to win. I don't know. It was it was right up there with the John Kerry rally I went to in Ohio. They had Bruce Springsteen played and some advanced guy had Springsteen play first. And let me tell you, they had to lock the doors to keep people. But whereas Bush and, you know, O'Four said, look, there are a lot of bad people out there in the world. We ought to kill them before they kill us. And that was it. A very simple message.

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That's forkfulmeals.com slash the bulwark and use promo code the bulwark for 50% off. Thanks to Forkful for sponsoring this episode. To that point, I was trying to be negative, cautious, and you immediately went to, you know, positive radical optimist. I mean, so I appreciate that. But we'll get to the parts where I'm optimistic. The Iowa race, I guess I have a little bit of nerves. I do have Anne Seltzer PTSD, so I'll just say that. And I don't know who NPR and Marist is hired for their poll,

but out this morning, Josh Turk 50, Ashley Hinson, 42. And if there's one data point that makes me think, well, maybe if that's not exactly right, there's something to it. It's a tweet that Ashley Hinson sent yesterday, the Republican running for Senate in Iowa. She wrote this, The war needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end. She then lists out a series of things she thinks,

the administration and I guess I don't know who should be doing to help Iowans, including suspending the gas tax, pausing diesel exports, diesel relief program, et cetera, et cetera. There's some problems with this, of course. Ashley Henson voted against a bill to end the war four times, and Congress is on vacation until after the election. So it's a little late to come up with proposals to help Iowans for Ashley Hinson. You know, my feeling about polls like this is, I always think it's important to step back and go, does what you're seeing make sense looking at the poll? So if Ashley Henson wasn't eight

points behind, she sure shit wouldn't be doing this. The other thing she's saying is, you know, she put out an ad saying that, you know, bipartisan used to, it's become a bad word. We need to reach across the aisle. You might as well have like a red, flashing orange sign that says, our number suck. And this is why. we're doing because if they weren't sucking, you wouldn't be doing that. And I've said for a while that the classic moves is not looking profound, but when you're this far behind, what you need to do is go out and say, look, we've made mistakes, give us another chance. And the problem is that Trump can't do that. But you see that J.D. Vance is kind of trying

to do that. Yes. Which is interesting. And I think it's a classic case, you know, it's the right play. It's just they can't execute it. Right. Because it has to come from the top. And Trump, Trump, you know, would rather invade Canada before he, you know, admitted that he'd done anything that wasn't perfect. Yeah. So, but look, you know, I have lost presidential races in Iowa. Well, sure. And, I mean, I think, and again, so I want to make sure, no speaking to our editors here, no YouTube thumbnails talking about how we're definitely winning Iowa because we did that last year. And I still have MAGA people sending it to me after I trusted too much in Anne Seltzer.

Okay, so God love her, nice woman, not really her fault. But anyway, that said, like, to your point, it's just like, I don't know, Ashley ends up the behavior is matching the pulse. And the economic numbers, the right track, wrong track numbers, particularly in the plain states, particularly in rural America, match the numbers. The other numbers, Tim, where are they spending money? They've stopped spending in Georgia, basically. There's two things you can't lie about in politics.

Where are you spending money and where are you spending time? and those are the ultimate truths and all this other stuff you sit in these rooms you come up with spin but this is really where you know you bet on what you believe and they're spending all this money in Texas Kansas even now yeah and you don't do that if you're not desperate so take them into words and what Democrats should start talking about this being a huge win they should not shy away from that people follow momentum there's actually interesting data on that judge where Nate Silver wrote about that in his first book, the kind of bandwagon effect.

People want to be with the winner. My daughter, we had a mixed crowd for the LSU Ole Miss game, including my bestie, went to Ole Miss. This is why I have the shirt, by the way. It's my godson's shirt. He's a very big boy. He might be on Ole Miss's team in a couple years. But, you know, my daughter, about halfway through that by halftime,

she was written for the rebels. She ditched me, you know? So it's a human, it's a natural human instinct, you know? If I ran Derek Party, I would wake up every day and everybody's right. We're right. They're wrong. There's more of us than them. And walk with a little swagger.

You know, nobody wins a Super Bowl going out there going, you know, I think we got a shot. Like, you know, we're not going to get blown out here. Aossoff has that. Yes. Big time. And people are drawn to it. Yep. And confidence is contagious.

I'd add to that just on the war. Yes. I think they'd swagger, but also I still. see a little bit too much reticence to kind of rub their face in the dirt on the war and all of these candidates. I mean, Paltolla did it very good in the debate against Sullivan. I played that, I think, last week. There have been some good examples of that, but like this war is extremely unpopular, extremely. And if you already see somebody like Ashley Hinson and a state Trump won by 13 trying to back away from it, that should tell you all you need to know. And honestly, I said this

couple weeks ago, I was like, if a Democratic strategy just calls me, it's like, what do you think my candidate should do, should say, go back and watch Cindy Sheehan videos and be as close to that as possible because that's just where people are right now on this. They think it's stupid. It's hurting them. They don't understand. If I was coaching a candidate in a debate who was running against an incumbent senator who had voted for the war and voted to confirm Pete Headset, I would say in my opening statement, I find it very sad, but there's no other conclusion. This man is. This man is. not a patriot. He voted to confirm Pete Hacksett. You cannot be a patriot and believe that the United States in America deserves the best and is a beacon of hope and without, and vote for Pete.

A weekend talk show host to be in charge of those political, powerful military in the world. His own national guardian, it wouldn't let him be around Washington. And they go, you know, let's outrageous. You're not, you're saying I'm not a patriot, you know, you go, yes. That's what I'm saying. Yes. And then take it from there. You certainly don't have judgment, you know, you certainly. I would go right at the, I would go. No, I do too. I just saying you could, I think you can keep adding to it. Because that's where the people are. Say that to my old friend, Roger Wickery. You ushered MP, said, you're not a patriot. I'm sorry. You are what you do. You can't say you care about the military and put this clown in charge of the military. And we're seeing the results.

It's not enough American flag pins you can wear on your jacket to. Get over it. Amen. So I like having you on, Stuart. Every time I'm like, I think I'm pushing the Democrats to be more aggressive and I'm frustrated, you come on and you're like, Tim, that's pretty good. But I'm actually lapping you even further. Like, you pedal to, pedal even harder, further to the metal.

And get away from testing these spots. Yeah. You know? I mean, do you think Willie Horton tested well? Seriously. Yeah, I really like that spot. This is my biggest pet peeve, Stuart. It's like as soon as I got it, because I was ever in your business,

that was a comm's got an ad guy. So the first time we started doing a super pack in 2020, we were doing ad testing. It's what the donors wanted. And I really got to see what the ad testing process is. And it's fucking stoners playing video games. And there's an ad in the video game. And then they've got to watch it.

And then they've got to reply about like what their emotional reaction to it was so they can keep playing their game. And that's just one tactic. There are others. But it's like people don't know them. How many friends do you know in your life where they're making life mistakes and they can't identify why they're making the mistakes? It's hard enough to know yourself.

It sure is shit hard enough to know whether an ad is going to influence you or not in a split second while you're sitting. Like the whole thing is stupid. Like use your gut. Yeah. I mean, look, if ad testing worked, everybody would have great campaigns. It's sort of empirical proof. It doesn't work.

You know, look, the first presidential campaign ever touched just a little bit. was Bush in 88. And I went into the Bush headquarters and there was a giant gun safe in the media section. And I said, guys, why do we have a fucking gun safe? And they go, that's where we lock up the ads at night so that Bob Teeter can't test them. I love that story. My final hope you was just in the Mississippi theory is they aren't spending money. You said we can judge where the Republicans are about where they're spending money.

They're not spending money in Mississippi yet. But there's a little bit of a stir around Scott Cologne. Do you have any hope there? You've run a bunch of races there. Yeah, look, you know, it's harder to elect a Republican in Mississippi than people realize. It's like everything in politics about math. But depending on the African-American turnout, you have to get 65 to 70 percent of the white vote in pretty high numbers. It's hard to get 65, 70 percent of anything.

I mean, Haley used to say I couldn't get that at Thanksgiving dinner. It's a lot harder. She's a terrible candidate. She has no base. Cindy Hidesma. The numbers for Trump. in a lot of these suburban areas in Jackson, Vicksburg, the Gulf Coast, which has always been a different world. And now you look at, you know, the fastest growing county in the south.

And Mississippi is DeSota County, which is basically South Memphis. It's a commuter for Memphis. And they're not thrilled about data centers up there. So, look, my feeling about a race like Scott, and I hope he wins, he's a terrific candidate, would be a great senator. Mississippi basically has one senator. 0.75. In a state where it's the only thing that levels of playing field with California, you know, you need two centers. It could happen, but I think if he wins, you're not going to win the Senate because of that.

It's going to mean you're winning a lot of stuff. It's going to mean it's 1980. You know, Tallinnu'll win. They'll win across all of these races. Yeah, sure. This is how Paula Hawkins got elected to the Senate from Florida in 80. Nobody thought that any Republican could win, so she ran. And Democrats have some good candidates out there.

So I would take Scott and give the points. Really? How many points are we given? Three and a half. Well, it's the line for the game on Saturday? Three and a half? Something like that. Look, I think this race will be a three-point race if he loses.

I don't think it's going to be a blowout. Yeah, right. And any time you're in that sort of margin of error, you have a shot. Little Trinidad Chambla, Scott Cologne, Trinidad, you know, kind of fair estate to the Senate type story for Scott Cullum. We'll see how it goes. This show is sponsored by Perplexity Computer. If you ask five different AI experts about which tool is best to use, you'll get about seven different answers, and the answers are always changing. Every AI seems to be better at something different.

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First, I want to talk about the domestic side before we get to the war. John Curtis Center for Utah, his little inner Jiminy Cricket is firing. You have noticed this. The Mormons, the Mormon Republicans have had the most kind of moments of moral clarity. John Curtis has not been a hero by any means. I don't have it right in front of me. I'm pretty sure he failed your Pete Higseth confirmation test, for example. Here he is this morning on the Don Jr. wedding gift from Omar Kremlev, the Russian gangster.

Momster. A toaster is a wedding gift. A private island party paid for by a Putin-connected oligarch is something else. Republicans nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating Hunter Biden. We should not unplug it now. Trust up was not enough then and it is not enough now. And you kind of have to do the Hunter Biden thing, I guess, if you're a Republican. But whatever, it's better than nothing.

And to me, I think it's pretty important because subpoenas are coming next year. And having even just a couple Republicans in a couple of places saying, sorry, just because you're a Trump family member, doesn't mean you're above this. I do think is meaningful. Yeah, I agree. Look, I think the great untold, underreported story of our time is the degree to which the Russians compromised our old party. And it happened on the financial fronts, like the NRA. It happened on the think tank front with Heritage Foundation. And I think it's one of the great, maybe the great story of our time,

that the party that went from being the most consistently, anti-Soviet Union, anti-expansive Russian Federation became the pro-Putin party. And for some reason, we just had this inability to say, the Russians wanted to elect a president, and they did. What are they getting? A lot. And more than you can imagine. And, you know, a mass murder under indictment came to the United States, and the Republican Party,

had American military get on their knees and roll out a red carpet. I mean, if the head of ISIS came, he has a lot less blood on his hands than Putin. They should have arrested his ass. I think the great test for Democrats

across the board is to erect a structure like we've never had before to pursue the criminality in the Trump administration. And part of that should be deep investigations to how many of these people are compromised by Russia. And I say,

Look, Trump is compromised by Russia. If you vote the way Trump wants you to, you're compromised by Russia. I mean, this is how it classically works. If, you know, Guy Filby was compromised and he got a lot of people to come around to his opinion without realizing that they were being compromised by a Russian asset. That's how it always works. In this case, you look at Trump, and he is a Russian asset. Yeah, I mean, he's got his main point man on the negotiation, Steve Wickoff, flying to Moscow,

talking about how great it is to see Putin and how it's great memories of his life when he's on his deathbed will be all the time that they got to spend together. I hope that deathbed. I hope that deathbed is in the penitentiary. Yeah. Because he's a criminal. In addition, on the things that Russia is getting, this is something from this week. This is such a dog bite man's story. Part of this is like people don't bring it up anymore.

And I think it's important just to like actually read what Trump's words are and see what's happening. He bleated this. Russia has unfortunately lost control of its diesel oil industry due to a, it's war with Ukraine. Why is that unfortunate? I'm not sure. He goes on. A large number of their diesel refineries have been blown up and are at least temporarily

out of commission. This ridiculous and never-ending war with Ukraine must be ended. Passive voice. Must be ended by who Trump does not say. And, you know, you posted this. And I'll put it up on the screen for video people, but you don't have to actually see it on the screen because it's a hockey stick. Like the chart of drone attacks.

civilian deaths in Ukraine since, since 2024, since he won the election. I mean, it's skyrocketed. And obviously, the war was going on before that, and there were deaths on the front. But, like, Russia's ability to act with impunity going after Ukrainian citizens has... I was in Ukraine a couple of weeks ago when the Russians changed their tactics. They were, you know, coming in in Kiev, drone attacks at night, missile attacks at night, mostly. then they changed their tactics and they went to near 24-hour attacks. And it was very interesting because reading about it,

it sounded like a city under siege. It was like Stalingrad or something, you know. But being in Kiev, it was beautiful weather. The streets were full when there were air raid sirens, which I was there the day when they were the most air raid sirens of any time in the war. I never felt unsafe. They are out there spending hypersonic missiles to kill, two people? I mean, good luck with that trying to win a war. And you know, you are not going to

beat the Ukrainians because they know that they would become slaves. And their innovations that they are across the board are the future of war. It's what America is desperately going to need. It's, you know, Pete Hessex has to canceling drone units. It's as if it's a Trump wish list. So arguably, I think the greatest achievement you could argue of the American military and Vietnam onward has been casualty evacuation. We have the highest rate in the history of the world of those who are wounded who survive. And why is it? Because we erected, conceived, executed the system of the golden hour, getting out someone

who's been wounded within that first hour, get them stabilized, get them downstream to a sophisticated hospital. How is most of that done? A helicopter? You send a helicopter 40 kilometers near the zero line in Ukraine. That thing is going to last about maybe five minutes at the most. You're going to have maybe 100 drones attacking that helicopter. The whole system is dead. So what are the Ukrainians doing? They've brilliantly evolved this new system of land-based drones that have these armored sarcophysis over them. And they send them in, and they can go up to 100 kilometers, big tires. I've seen these things. They go very fast.

And they load soldiers that are wounded and evacuate them. Wow. And the United States, I don't think there's anything like that. And you've seen how unprepared we work for drones with the devastating attacks in the Mideast that the administration is trying to hide. Well, and Pete's pretty focused on getting rid of all the trannies. He talks about trannies a lot and push-ups and doing TRT, hormone therapy. Those are the main things he's focused on. I mean, I don't, I don't understand how

it is that the United States military is now in the hormone replacement business. I mean, I can't think of anything more woke than that. You're going to, you're going to go again. It's someone who wrote an extensive piece about performance enhancing drugs. It's a great piece, by the way. I'm going to like to it for people who are interested. What is the single highest testosterone level of any societal growth? group. Prison. Really? Yes. Why? Well, because, you know, young men who tend to commit crimes tend to have jacked up testosterone. It does affect you. Of the military, who has the highest testosterone? The Marines. What is? It's self-selecting. What a shock? You know, if you've got

some guy and you've got 900, you know, testosterone and you're 19 years old and you want to blow up shit and kill people. I'll join the Marines. You're not going to go say, I want to be an Air Force Intelligence, sir. I want to work for the NSA. Put me in front of a computer. But the idea that you're going to somehow convert people to warriors by testosterone, you know, when I was in Ukraine, people were just laughing their ass off about this. You know, Keith was saved in a large part in the Battle of Kiev by a bunch of accountants and advertising executives and lawyers and bakers and sushi chefs who came out in a territorial defense and fought the Russians because they believed in it. Are there worries about winter when you're there?

Yeah, yeah, it's going to be a very, very, very, very hard winter. Last February, I've been working with this Finnish American, volunteering with this Finnish American A group, and they did a sort of emergency convoy taking generators down. We drove down from Helsinki and a lot of warm gear. and stuff, but it's going to be very tough. But, you know, I was there in February when there were a lot of blackouts more often than not.

And walk around on Saturday night, bars had little generators in front of them. People were out drinking. They adapted. But it is going to be a very, very hard winter. Losing weight is one thing, but looking and feeling better, as we hit September? That's the real goal. That's why weight loss by Hymns

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The China Summit is coming up this week. Trump was unveiling his new helicopter pad, which is excited to show off to Xi and Delta. I just don't. I don't play Trump's voice on the show, as you know, but I'm going to make an exception for this case because he had an important press conference where he was unveiling the helicopter pad ahead of the meeting. Let's watch. Couldn't quite catch that.

The pool video is not covering Trump right now in protest and kicking out CNNMS now in Politico. So Trump was just trying to scream there over the din. Didn't quite get it. A helicopter pad. Yeah. I mean, if you're working in a race for Republican and you're on the bubble and you're, you know, putting in your 19 hours a day and you wake up and you see the fucking president of the United States out there celebrating a helipad?

It's like, are you out of your fucking mind? I think everybody with a helipad can really appreciate it. He's probably going to carry the helipad. And they did the boat parades, you know, though some of the boaters might be turning against them with the price of fuel. Well, I think some of them sunk, too, and I'm not sure they quite made it. I remember those parades. They weren't so. Do you have any other deep thoughts on the China summit were coming on Thursday?

All this stuff that, you know, we work for a parking party. We were kind of right about this stuff. I mean. Some things. Yeah. Particularly in foreign policy, some stuff. You know, had a couple of wars that were wrong. But how are you sitting there in China, in the leadership and in the military, and look at what we've done for Ukraine and think that we're going to come in and defend Taiwan?

It's just, I mean, it emboldens every bit of aggression. And the Chinese who are most on the cutting edge of drones, Russians, Chinese, Ukrainians, but. Those three, and the United States is way behind, the Taiwanese are trying to catch up. And it's interesting, they should be doing more. I'm sort of perplexed why they haven't done more. The Taiwanese? Yeah. Because, you know, they have all these, you know, every chip factory, everything.

And there are Taiwanese who are fighting in Ukraine, interestingly. But, you know, it's weakness invites instability. So the other hand, if I'm Chi, I'm just kind of like, you know, why, you know, stop, What's the old line about, you know, why interrupt your opponent when they're losing? They're destroying themselves. Yeah. And there's an element of that to it. Yeah.

Who's the last prominent American politician that I can think of who went to Taiwan? Nancy Pelosi. Right. You know, I think that this is an historic opportunity just in the greater moment that Democrats reclaim what we would call the Party of Strength in foreign policy. And they had that at one time. you know, when Nixon ran against China, or ran against Kennedy, Kennedy was to the right of him on foreign policy.

Nixon attacked him in the debates for having a secret plan invade Cuba. And that he's right. Right. You know, Kennedy attacked Nixon for allowing a missile gap to develop. Kennedy was the right-wing foreign policy candidate. And the Democrats need to get back to that.

And if they do, I think it'll have a generational impact on our politics. Democrats have struggled to find somebody that can, and I think that Harris had an opportunity to do this. You know, a lot of times the left people criticize her. And I think it's not an illegitimate criticism for focusing the convention too much on like the lethality of the military. And for me, it's like being able to combine arguing about lethality and American strength

and alliance with allies with also being the person that's like, but I'm not going to get us in stupid fucking wars. I'm not going to do stupid wars of choice. It was those guys that did all the stupid war. You know, you have to be a little dexterous to be able to do both. But they're not necessarily in conflict, you know? If we can live in a world in which Democrats own the iconography of patriotism, that would be a much better world, safer world, and they should not shy away from that.

You know, flyover should not be a Republican thing. They should be out there. And this is why, again, they need to use these broad, sweeping condinations of what Republican are doing because it is anti-military, they're destroying the military, decades of progress in the military. The military is going to emerge from the Hegset, Whicker, Trump era, weaker than it's been any time since the Vietnam War. Call it out. It's you're destroying the military. You're not pro-military. You're not. You won't Pete Hegset in the Foxhole next to you? Really? I mean, you know, give me a break. The Aggies didn't need them this weekend.

Final topic, the vice president is working on his insult comic routine to kind of get ready for 2028. He's balking up. He was out there in a campaign stop yesterday. I do want to play one glip for you. And because we need somebody who will fight back against the fart left, we need Michael Watley in the United States Senate. Now, you may not have even heard that, but I actually, I usually don't misspeak. But I just called them the fart left, not the fart left. I promise that was an accident.

So to the fake news who will accuse me a bad language, I promise I did not mean to call them the fart left. I meant to call them the far left. I don't know about that one. Yeah. You know, I just, you know, if I was a friend of JD's, I would just say, JD, think about your kids. They're going to have to spend the rest of their life watching this stuff. They're going to have to spend the rest of your life listening to your attack the 14th Amendment, which made their mom a U.S. citizen.

Listen to you talking about Heritage Americans. And by the way, guys, look at us, Dad. We don't look like Kentucky Coleman. You don't think Vivek Vance is a Heritage American? You know, well, actually, I do think he's a Heritage American in my definition of a Heritage American. And it's just, you know, normally most politicians will defend their own family. It's very rare to come up with a guy that, much of his entire political structure is attacking his own family. He attacks his wife's religion

and says she doesn't really believe it. And he makes it much more likely that there will be another wave of anti-Asian American hatred. We've had this before in America. It's just extraordinary. This is a very, very sick, broken guy. I think he'll be the Democratic nominee. Republican nominee. A Republican nominee. And I think he'll run with a Monica Trump. I like that prediction.

We'll leave it there. Stuart Stevens, you're a winner, baby. I've never been happy to lose a bet. Be with you for an hour today. Hottie-toddy, baby. All right. And we'll catch you after the midterms.

All right, bro. Okay, very. Take care. Appreciate you so much. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow with another edition of the show. See you all then. Peace. You know I'm somewhere better.

No, Mama, say I'm all right. Bull Work Daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeChico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brow.