The Bulwark Podcast - Stuart Stevens: Say They're Not Patriots

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

Democrats need to learn to fight like Republicans. So when senators with serious foreign policy chops vote to confirm a middling weekend talk show host as secretary of defense, Dems need to call them out for being unpatriotic. And when they allow an ex-junkie to sabotage vaccines that have saved millions of American lives, say they're destroying the legacy of what the Greatest Generation built. The party of Putin-philes is no longer a normal political party with whom Dems can hammer out a compromise. Stuart Stevens joins Tim Miller—and pulls no punches. show notes Lincoln Square on Substack Stuart's piece on trying steroids "The Conspiracy to End America" Stuart's book, "It Was All a Lie" Stuart's "The Last Season" Bulwark Live in DC and NYC at https://www.thebulwark.com/p/bulwark-events. Toronto is SOLD OUT 

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to have back a former Republican media consultant, New Yorktown five presidential campaigns. He's a senior advisor at the Lincoln Project co-host of the podcast strategy session, produced by the affiliated Lincoln Square on Substack. He's from Mississippi. As books included, It Was All a Lie, The Conspiracy to End America, and my favorite, even though it's kind of as sad as the other ones, the last season, a father, a son, and a lifetime of college football, it's Stuart Stevens. Welcome back, brother. How you doing? Hey, Bradley. Great to be here, man.

We'll get to football at the end, of course. I obviously will not let you off the hook without discussing the weekends events on the college football field. But we need to start with the conspiracy to end America. I mentioned this one of the other times you were on, but for the new listeners, I think it's worth bringing back. because I didn't mean to double book you back to back with JVL, and I'm a little concerned about the darkness that people are going to get, because I remember, this was before Trump even won. This was the fall of 2016.

The New Yorker is writing a big profile on the never-Trumpers, as if we mattered, you know, all 20 of us are 15, however many there were. And Brian Liz, I was also got a substack, interviewed all of us, and he interviewed me in a coffee shop in D.C., I remember where I was sitting with him. And at the end of it, he just goes, whoa, man, you're in a, you're in a dark place about where things are going. There's only one guy I interviewed that was darker than you. And I was like, who?

He said, Stuart Stevens. So here we are, baby. Here we are. Everybody just buckle up. You know, when I get depressed, I listen to you because I always get shored up because you're such an optimist, you know? So tell us about your state, how you see things right now. What are you most worried about? Yeah, where's your alarm?

Think about it. A year ago, you and I were on here, and we said, a year from now, you're going to have army of mass men chasing gardeners through Brentwood with the funding larger than the Marines, larger than any military in the world except for two. You're going to have a former Miss Snow Queen of South Dakota, head of Homeland Security. You're going to have a lunatic, a longtime heroin addict, who defends being a heroin addict, by the way, in charge of America's health, who's also a steroid freak. And Casper Tell run an FBI, who said, no, look, that's not going to happen, dude. So I think it's actually worse than I thought.

Hmm. And I would have thought that some element of Republican responsibility would have held. And I go back to my, you know, longtime friend, client, Roger Wicker. Is he still in the Senate? He's chairman of the armed service. Oh, right. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. I saw his little Ukraine pin. I remember his Ukraine pin during the confirmation hearing. It's funny you say that is he still in the U.S. All of his life, Rogers, wanted to be chairman. of the Armed Services Committee. He finally is. He spent his entire life building up alliances, pro-NATO, all of this, very serious human being. And he ushers in Pete Hexon. Like, I don't get it. He's not up for re-election. He's going to be 80. He's not going to run again. Why do you care?

And I think it's just indicative. And I've said this, you know, I don't think you can call yourself a patriot and vote for Pete Hexed or Christine Aung. No. And I think Democrats, needs to get about using that kind of language. It's the language we used to use. Also, just like on its face, I mean, there's so many examples of this, but Joni, she was in the military, has personal backstory with sexual assault. You know, there are ways in which she's on serious, but there's a serious person on this front.

You know, if she wasn't going to run again, could have held a line in the sand on this with her and Wicker and McConnell. I mean, he's a weekend Fox and Friends co-host, and now he's going to be arming the military as it goes. after their alleged enemies within instead of without. I mean, it's really bleak. Generally, we should leave appointing the town drunk to run the military to Russia.

Yeah. They actually do that better. But, you know, my theory about this is that Trump does this, not because he doesn't know the Petey said, it's a moron, not because he doesn't know Christine O'm still, not because he knows Kech Patel. He does it to humiliate the senators,

to prove, I can make you vote for a drunken weekend talk show host to run the largest military, the greatest military in the history of the world. You will degrade yourself to that degree. It is like the way Saddam would make families that he'd executed dissent's faith of the bullet. It's just that little extra, see, see, I control you. I think it works. I think it's humiliating and it works. And I think they all get together and tell themselves it's not that bad, which is the same thing the same thing lynch mobs do. Yeah. And they justify it. And, you know, Republican parties become a functional element of the Russian Federation. So that might be a part answer to my next question,

because I wondered what was worrying you most. I like to ask that to people. So we can kind of look ahead, because we have a lot, what, three and a half years left of this? You know, that's an assessment of where we are, given that. What has you, you know, keeping one eye open there in Vermont? Well, look, I'm actually, you know, an optimist in one sense. I don't think that the 24 election was in any way, endorsement of Trumpism. On election day, the right track of the country was 27%. No incumbent parties ever won when it was lower than 45. You had a job approval from the incumbent president 40. Nobody's incumbent party's ever gotten two points higher. So actually, you know, did a lot better. And we know

that like other people, Nikki Haley would have done better probably. So I don't think that it's an endorsement of Trumpism. They knew that Project 2035 was poison. Now if they're making people drink it, it's not going down any easier. And that Trump coalition that existed was always

kind of a Faberger egg. Because you had MAGA over here that would demand you chase gardeners through Brentwood with mass men. And if you did that, you were going to hurt yourself with Hispanics without a doubt. And they did a little better with African Americans, only 87% voted against them, you know, probably on this crusade to rehabilitate the Confederacy isn't particularly helping them with African Americans. We've seen, you know, that little

boomlet they had with young voters, particularly male voters, seems to have collapsed. You look at the polling. So I could make a case. I wrote an article that November 24 will be sort of the pickets charge of MAGA, you know, can't get over the wall, get right there, they all get killed. now the exception to that is if you can curate the election so you know in very simple terms the base of maga is non-college educated white people which you know we did bush in 2000 that was 60% now it's 39% and it'll be less when we finish it means the fastest declining large demographic so 60% of the country to 39% of the country 60% of the electorate the 39% of the electorate 39% of the electorate.

So Ronald Reagan wins this sweeping landslide, right, and 80, with 55% of the white vote. John McCain loses with 58% of a white vote. It says it all. So just in a crude sense, you say, okay, if you know that your base is non-college educated white voters, what would you do? You try to make the electorate wider, which clearly they're trying to do, and clearly they're going to continue to do with all these sort of intimidation tactics and all the stuff they're doing and all the stuff that Clea Mitchell's out there doing with $1.3 billion funded to Leo Leonard that we don't talk enough about. I mean, it's really dark, bad stuff. They don't believe in democracy. And what would you do? You'd also

try to make them less educated, which I think a lot of this whole war on higher education is part of that. I mean, it's not just that they convinced themselves that higher education was an owner to socialism. I think they literally know that they do better with less educated voters. So in a crude sense, they go, okay, let's make them less educated. We'll do better. I still think there is no such thing as voter fraud. It really doesn't exist. I mean, I did this for years. I saw more elephantitis cases than voter fraud. And elections are still run locally. It's still going to be very difficult to do. So probably Democrats should have a very good election. I don't see anything Trump is doing to expand his vote.

I want to give you a counterpoint to what you're saying, which is maybe you're right, right? Maybe this was a confluence of really bad luck, you know? I mean, the dude almost like gets assassinated by a centimeter. You know, the economy, inflation is persistent, you know, and I'd say, like, there's like a bunch of bad stuff that happens. A lot of people that vote for him, vote for him out of wrong track, out of pocketbook feelings, not out of endorsement of authoritarianism. But maybe like the kind of why they voted for him doesn't matter that much. And that in a couple of years, like he'll do too much damage to be able to rebuild it. And so I want to play for you, the counterpoint from somebody, I found one person even darker than both of us.

It's former Judge Michael Ludig, really credible jurist, conservative jurist. Somebody was on the short list for Supreme Court back when you were working for W. you. Here's Ludig with Terry Moran over the weekend. If the courts can't stop this and there are three plus more years of it, who does? It cannot be stopped now, Terry. Again, the discussion that's going on is this. Can it ever be stopped?

and the only answer completely unsatisfactory and unsatisfying is, well, at least in a year and a half, there'll be in another election, and hopefully the House will change hand. To which I say, the first thing I say is, to my friends, there'll be nothing left in a year and a half. but suppose it changes so what the damage has been done now i hate to laugh but uh ludig's i just i love the bluntness of ludig there where are you out on so what okay maybe you're right maybe they are at their strike but maybe too much damage has been done where you out on that i think to quote lawrence of alabia destiny is a choice and i think it's uh how the democrats handle it once they win. So, you know, if I, if I wanted to go to you, if I could say to you, okay, look, very

reasonable. Trumpism went too far. What we need to do is elect a normal governing party who is going to go out there and do very positive things for the middle class and remind people that government can play a positive role in their lives and that that will be enough. That sounds reasonable. The only problem is Biden tried that. He did that. I mean, Every way, he was a very successful president on the economy and everything. I mean, I say to my- Well, not inflation. Not inflation.

I mean, the inflation got out of control. I mean, what is it? Is the record low unemployment or the record stock market that bothered you the most? 21 highs in the stock market. I mean, it wasn't bad. I don't think it was people that were benefiting from the record highs in the stock market. They were the reason why I lost, though. But, you know, Trump's best group is, like most Republicans,

those to make over $100,000 a year. Sure. But so I would say we ran that experiment, and it failed. So Democrats have to, to quote Jonathan last, act like a dissonant movement. And I still think that piece of Jonathan wrote, I don't know, months ago is going to be one of the pieces people are going to look back on and read and I read it regularly. I just wrote a piece and quoted from it. So what I think they do, they have to give up on the idea that they're a governing party. They have to give up on the idea that the Republican Party as a traditional political party of which you can have some sort of meeting in the minds and some sort of compromise.

You can't. What they need to do on the first day is they ought to cut off all funding for the executive branch. They ought to pass legislation to nationalize Starlink, nationalize SpaceX. They ought to defund ICE. And then on the second day, they should get more aggressive. And they need to have a vote on whether or not Maxwell should be sent back to a real prison. Put everybody on the record. They've got to start using these broads.

sweeping categorizations of MAGA. Right now, racism is working completely to the benefit of the Trump people. They get out there and they can talk about, use all this racial stuff, and it works. And no one on the Democratic Party is calling their number on it. No one is making them pay for being racist. And this whole idea, I get why Harris did this, you want to be post-racial, all of this, but the whole idea that we don't talk about racism, I think, is leaving a very potent, on the table for the Democrats. They need to wake up every day and say, we're right, they're wrong. There's more of us than there are of them. And if you support Pete Hecksett, you're not a patriot. So you say that, does that mean you're saying that John Dune's not a patriot? Yes. That's what

I'm saying. And he can prove it today. He can vote to have him resign. Now, does a Democratic party have that ability? I don't know. I think there's a very positive sign. You look at what Newsom's doing, and he's being positively rewarded and is, you know, better than most. Politicians tend to do what's in their best interest. So it's a positive sign that you can go out and do this stuff and the market and your base. This whole idea I'm going to be a president for all of America and all of this. It's a great idea, but you just have to quit acting like it's true. You have to write off that.

I mean, look at everything that Biden did for red states. I mean, the majority of the infrastructure, act in a lot of categories went to red states. And rural areas, tremendous efforts there, it didn't mean anything. So we've got to be passionate. They got to have courage, they got to have conviction, and they have to not hesitate from saying these are not good people. I want to be with you. In my brain, I'm with you. I get a little like centristy, normie, Tim, gets a little uncomfortable when I start to hear all of that stuff. I worry that we end up in a zero-sum situation that takes us back to the Liddick, like, we can't really get out of it. I guess my response to that is, I think that

you are right, that that is the right short-term political move for the Democrats, is to cause as much pain as humanly possible for them when they get back in. I don't know if Hakeem Jeffries and these Democrats are actually up for doing that, but I think that in a vacuum would be their best short-term move. Don't you worry, though, that we, like, we just end up, you know, in this death spiral, like that the Republic ends up in a death spiral over? I think we're on a death spiral. So, you know, the person who's in charge of intelligence for the U.S. in World War I famously said, gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail. So then cut to 1984, that same person is now Secretary of War, as was then called, and he's sitting in his office trying to decide if they're

going to blow up Hiroshima and Nagasaki first. That's a transition. So I would urge Democrats to get to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki stuff quickly and get out of this gentleman, don't read other mail. So you don't get to pick the fight that you're in. You have to fight the fight that you are in. You have to adapt. It means the story of the Ukraine war. It's still going to be up there rolling tanks across, you know, no, you have to adapt. Newson showing signs of that. They're fumbling around trying to learn how to do this. How to play around with it. Look, I mean, maybe this is just my campaign side

because to a fault, I never worried about governance. It was like, that's what they do. We do elections. You know, as Arthur Finkelstein said to me once, when I asked him, why someone who's gay could elect so many rabid anti-gay guys, he goes, hey, they're on their own after I elect them, you know. Which is kind of what lawyers say, by the way,

everybody here, they have a nice little moral out. Yeah, I'm the same. And so I say this as throwing myself on the mercy of the court But that mindset is so endemic. Like, you would hear that after Trump won, that was such a common thing for, like, the strategists that stuck with him to say. Like, they would compare themselves to defense lawyers. And I'm like, this isn't actually like a defense lawyer. You don't have to take a client in politics.

You can choose not to take a client. Like, there's no, you know, right to a fair trial if you're running for president of the United States. And this idea that this is what the people wanted. Well, where I grew up, they wanted slavery. That didn't exactly mean it was good. The rest of the people that could vote wanted slavery. You know, one of the things that always fascinates me is why in the 30s didn't America become fascist when we had this huge fascist movement? And probably it's because FDR was president, not Limburg or Henry Ford.

So maybe we go back to that old thing we used to learn in civics when we still had it. Leaders Matter. So what would have happened if Romney had won? It would have been the same party, but it would have gone in a different direction. Or maybe they overthrown four years later, yeah. Listen to him. I think something happened inside the Republican Party that we evolved a system that rewarded weakness and compliance. And it probably goes back to the facts in 64 when, you know, Eisenhower 56 gets 39% of the black voter gets 7% right. Trump gets 8% and 20. That's one point every 56 years. So you become a predominantly white party. It evolves a certain kind of. of way of operating where the next person's turn, it's your turn, you're rewarded by weakness, by compliance. You know, the mavericks of the world aren't really rewarded. I mean, McCain called

himself a maverick, but he really wasn't that much of a matter. And I think that that, as opposed to the diversity of the Democratic Party, which is a great problem for him in many ways in messaging, but it's also a great ultimate asset because it's more like the country. How is it we ended up with such weak politicians in the Republican Party, that Trump understood that if I gave them power, they would go against everything they swore they were for. You have to give Trump credit for that, that kind of feral weakness, a sensing of weakness that he has. And look, we used to say you can't negotiate with terrorist organizations for a reason. The Republican Party is an extremist movement. You can't negotiate with them. The only thing they're going to respect is fear and

force. And once you cross a line that I'm going to be for the guy who organized a mob to come into my workplace and try to kill me and my colleagues, you're not going to have it. It's like, well, I don't know, his position on the law of the sea treaty. That's too much. I'm not going with that. You know, you've reached the point of compliance. And, you know, if you ask someone like Marco Rubio, you know, Trump wanted one of his children for tribute, his might work up the courage to say if he could ask if he could pick the kid. Yeah. Yeah, not the one that made the flow of the football team.

That's it. Yeah, it would be. You've got to tell you about this game-changing product I use before a night out with drinks. It's called pre-alcohol. Let's face it, after a night with drinks, people in their 40s don't bounce back like they used to. I have to make a choice. You either have a great night out or a great next day. That is, until I found pre-alcohol.

Let me tell you, there's a sure-fire way to wake up feeling fresh after drinks with friends. It is with pre-alcohols. Probiotic is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic biproduct in the gut. It's a buildup of this byproduct, not dehydration. That's to blame for rough next days after drinking.

Pre-alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre-alcohol your first drink of the night, drink responsibly, and you'll feel your best tomorrow. You've got to tell you know that you have solidified. your relationship with a brand when something like this happens. I was going to see Beloved Betta in New Orleans a couple weeks ago. And he was playing the local music venue, the Holland Wolf. Shout out to our friends of the Holland Wolf.

You know, he's still going. The town hall is taking a while. I was like, oh, you know, I'll have one drink, right? One drink. You head back to the bar, lean over for the bartender, ask him for a bourbon and Coke. And he looks back at me without missing a beat and says, have you taken your Zibiotics yet? And so I appreciate you, Holland Wolf blogtender, for supporting our program and listening to our ad campaign. You know, a handful of people have given me negative feedback about the drinking chat.

And I've got to tell you people, we're performing out here. We're out here, Zbiotics. We're coming in every morning, delivering new A-plus content. Be happy with what you got. And thank Zbiotics for their contribution to it. Go to Zbiotics.com slash the bulwark to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use the bulwark at checkout Zeebobiotics. Baddix is backed with 100% money-back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money.

No questions asked. Remember to head to Zbaotics.com slash the bulwark and use the code the bulwark at checkout for 15% off. Special shout-out Rudy Giuliani for this product. I have a couple more news items going to, but I just like while we're campaign dorking and thinking about the Democrats and what they can do, you mentioned Newsome. I'm looking out there right now and you see like a bunch of different models for how to handle the moment.

there's a lot of people on social media like to pretend like they know what the exact one is and I think the re-insers we don't really know like what the right one is and so I want to give a couple of you and see what you like about each. Look at this guy in Maine, the planter that's running kind of just this populist

a burn-ish but maybe with a little bit more of a working man's vibe. Maybe burn-ish policies, maybe a little bit different of a vibe. Slokkin is out there trying to do this sort of centrist Butch, like, we got to fight harder, but I'm going to do it from the middle. You got Gavin, who's, like we mentioned already, who's also doing the fighting thing,

but is more of kind of a siffer. Like, the ideology doesn't really even matter. It's sort of an American psycho fighting version of it. You've got some of the governors that are, you know, trying to do, I think, this tactic that you rejected earlier, but I want to throw it out there, which is a lot of these Midwestern governors, Whitmer, Shapiro, that are doing more. I'm going to pick my spots. You know, I'm going to govern well.

I have a high approval rating. Maybe there's another model I'm not mentioning. What of those tickles your pickle? I'm for all of them. I think this idea that you need one message is, well, first, I mean, you remember from campaigns when we were trying to have an education week or jobs week. We never even could do it then. And then they only had like three or four streams of media influence that really were going to matter.

I mean, I remember vividly in 2000, New York Times are going online at midnight, every night, East Coast time. And it's 11 o'clock Austin time. You can look at your watch, by 1115, you'd be getting calls from every reporter. that basically used what the times put on their front pages are assignment editors. You know, those days are over. So I think you could and should do all of those things because the people that are drawn to it are going to hear you.

People who are shopping for that will hear it. Why do people go to AOC and Bernie? It's not so much their ideology is their passion. They're fighting. That's what they're for. So I think that there's not one clear way to do this. And I think, you know, when I see the Democratic Party having 250, focus groups to determine what young men want. To me, I mean, it's like sending the best

journalist to America to figure out why men go to strip clubs. I think we know. I don't think you need to have focus groups. I even figured it out eventually. Not my cup of tea, but I can figure it out, you know. I didn't need a pollster to tell me. So I think the illusionary search of a perfect message is always in a campaign, a terrible challenge. A terrible. terrible trap to fall into. You know, it's the idea there's the perfect spot syndrome. There's not. You have to do a lot of different

things. And I think that ultimately, the test for each of those candidates, politicians, office holders, is, what do you do best? I always thought as a consultant, your job was figure out what your person did best and make them do it great.

And the other stuff just make sure they don't do it so badly it's going to be disqualifying. That's what it should be. So, you know, a guy in Maine is going to be different than Josh Shapiro should be you know different market different backgrounds sock and you know was a warrior she should run as a warrior queen

do you think that and I'm talking more like long term you know like building appeal improving the party image which is low right now I'm not really talking about if you're a generic house member running in some you know against whoever's replacing Don Bacon I'm talking like a house race but but for the

the bigger names. Do they have to like run against the party at some level? And you look back and like Obama really ran against the party in Iraq. Obviously Trump ran against the party. Do you think that they have to do that? He was a different kind of Democrat. Turns out he's a conservative just for the death penalty. He was going to end welfare as we know it. Look, I think that I don't think people really care about parties anymore. Yeah. So I think trying to rehabilitate the Democratic parties sort of like trying to boil the ocean. You know, you get in the camera. campaign and you're in primaries and you're losing. The only thing you can do is to win.

You can't talk your way out of it, you know. And either you're going to win or you're going to not. So I think that's, you're in the bear. Yeah, you can't, you know, like, well, let me tell you what worthy of either. So you have to win. And once you win, it starts to heal itself. And I saw an interview with Jake Tapper and he was saying, you know, that observing his like 16, 17-year-old son who plays football and Democratic Party doesn't have anything to offer him.

I'd say, well, I don't know. This is any party of anything. offer some 17-year-old guy playing football? I hope not. I mean, what does the Trump Party have to offer him? The ability to say the word pussy without feeling ashamed about it? Like, okay, great. Thanks. I don't think that's a test. Look, I think with all of that largely symbolic stuff that I was really often, they need to do, they also need to do very tough class warfare. They do need to go out and say, we're giving a tax cut to billionaires to cut Medicaid. They should talk about that. They should put a thing out there that they want to have a 10% wealth tax on every person worth over, pick a number, you know, half a billion dollars.

I mean, I love that Stuart Stevens is a wealth tax man now. I love that. Well, I mean, look, my party now has embraced nationalizing industries. So that just seems like a logical next step. Plus, we're the pro-putin party. So, I mean, I just trying to, you know, be compliant with the party now. you know every poll i ever saw that said like even polling people over a million dollars you know was like 95 to five and you wondered who the fuck were the five were that really that many millionaires so i think they need to do that stuff look how many house members is it are going to run bragging about stuff did Biden pass that they voted against a whole lot they're already doing it

all that infrastructure stuff all that money they got spent it's getting spent so i'm i'm saying Mace doing this the other day? Yes, they're going to do this. And I think that's a tremendous opportunity. You go out and attack them. Learning a new language opens the door to new friends, new cultures, and maybe even a whole new life. So why not start that journey today?

You can start speaking a new language with confidence, thanks to Babel's conversation-based technique that quickly teaches you useful words and phrases about the things you actually talk about in the real world. There's over a dozen languages available to learn at your own pace so you can achieve your goals with material tailored to your individual proficiency level, interest, and time availability. I was talking with one of my buddies, when I was in New York, went out for a little meal, we were chatting about his life. He was talking about his job, he was going to be in flexibility. It's live overseas, which is awesome. How many people in America are thinking about living overseas

right now, quite a few. And one of the problems that he had was he's like, he would spend a lot of time in France and the French, he's fucking French. They're pretty prickly. about their language. And he knows a little bit, but the, you know, the friend groups he was hanging out with, the people he's trying to flirt with, they're all speaking French all the time, felt very ostracized by it. And what do you know? He's come to the bulwark.

He's using our code. He's using Babel. He's getting updated. So the next year when he goes, he can, as aforementioned, make new friends and see new cultures. Handcrafted by over 200 language experts, Babel's lessons are voiced by real native speakers and built with science-backed cognitive tools like spaced repetition and interact interactive features to fit any learning style. They also have Babbel games for sentence building and spelling reinforcement,

culture bites that deliver content and insider knowledge about the language. With over 60 million subscriptions sold, Babel's 14 award-winning courses are backed by a 20-day money-back guarantee. So get talking with Babel. I want you to learn another language. I'm team out with Babel to gift you 55% off subscriptions, but only for our listeners at babble.com slash bulwark. Get up to 55% off at Babel.com slash bulwark.

get up to 55% off at babble.com slash bulwark spelled bababbell.bbl.com slash bulwark rules and restrictions may apply. One more thing on the class war. Now that Stuart Stevens is a class warrior. I've got some of Mith's friends. I'm going to call Bob White and let it make sure he sees that clip. Just want to make sure you're a class warrior now. I want to ask you about Zoron really quick because there's this Politico story that says this. I didn't write down who said this. Some Democratic strategist. Mondani is the greatest threat to Democrats, probably since Reagan, because he's everything Democrats have been accused of being and, in fact, is to the extreme. He goes on, Republican ad makers will know what to do with Zoran. You were a Republican ad maker. What do you think of that? So the guy who wants to, I think I'm quoting you, you pointed this out, the guy that

wants to maybe open five city-owned grocery stores is the socialist versus the party that's out there taking 10% of, you know, massive industries like Intel, really? I think you run right at that. I wouldn't run away from that. First of all, I think there's a chance this guy might actually be a successful mayor or ran into him at NBC the night after he won. I think he's someone who likes to be liked. He's not Bernie.

You know, Bernie revels in not being liked. I mean, and look, it's not like, you know, he came out of the desert as El Cid. He said, you know, Upper West Side Liberal went to Bowden, you know, Mother's Academy Award winner, his wife from this, you know, vastly wealthy family. You know, this is not, he's not Bernie. And I think that if he does stuff and it's proving to be very unpopular, he'll change. And I think he's fluid enough to do that. He'll say, okay, learn, you know.

I'm like, you know, 10 years old, I'm learning. And he's likable. So I would say the Democrats, you'd rather Andrew Cuomo? Really? When Bill Clinton endorsed Andrew Cuomo, I guarantee if you were tracking from Indami, that's the night you went ahead. It was like a T-Rex endorsing a, you know. It will to be. It's like, really?

Or some guy who seems to have confused being a character in the wire with being mayor, that's the choice. You know, you're really going to be better off. I don't know. So you don't think the ads, the Republican ads, because this is what they worry about. And I am 100% with you on everything you said. When Zoran came on the show, obviously all the Intifada stuff was what made all the news. But I think it was the most notable thing was like he tried really hard to win over, work people like he was thinking about like what are the policies that he cares about that would

appeal to centrist type folks he wasn't giving away his values he was just like I think government should work I want to cut red tape like he let's do a couple of things so you could tell he was try and to your point about he wants to be like that's a good trait actually and he's obviously very charming which is what the Democrats could use that who the hell knows if he'll be a good mayor or not but I think that his instincts are more towards wanting to be a good mayor than wanting to be an ideologue or he's not a crazy person like the Chicago guy anyway what about the ad so I mean, he did, like, you know, he was tweeting some crazy shit about queer liberation. Like, we don't need cops because of queer liberation.

He had some bad tweets at the height of the awakening. He goes. He's kind of like our first president. Look, I think if you're a party where you have a lunatic of declining mental powers as president who's put Russian stooges, drunks, former drug addicts who are destroying the country, if you allow your party be defined by a guy who's made. of New York, because he wants five grocery stores or something, the only honorable thing to do is just when you wake up to the next day is just kill yourself. Because if you allow that,

so how is it that we're having a discussion about what is wrong with the Democratic Party? When you have this, the Republicans, look what they're doing. It's insane. I do not understand how the Democratic Party allows us just to happen. You lost an election. Okay, get over it. We lost elections. People do lose elections. That's actually why we have them. It's a good thing you lost. you know, somebody's got to lose. That's an essential element of democracy. But you lost with the candidate. It would have been a perfectly reasonable president who wasn't out of the American mainstream. Okay, come back. You win. And you should be prosecuting the Republican Party for its complete failure. I mean, it has taken the legacy of the greatest generation and it's completely

trashed it. And this is the pro-putin party. I mean, I'd be taking J.D. Vance's family. He's got these nice kids and saying, how's he going to feel if his kids are kidnapped? Really? You're for Putin? You're defending Putin on national television? Really? I mean, they need to just go at this stuff, and they need to very personalize it. I mean, I would be putting billboards in front of Mike Johnson's church saying, you know, does Mike Johnson support a pedophile, child sex trafficker, and a club fed? You know, make them answer it. Same in Tom Holman's hometown, where he tried to deport some guy that people actually liked into town. Right. personalize it

Hey y'all I warned you I warned you our Toronto show has sold out the Canadians love Sam Stein so much that you know there are lines around the block to get tickets to it but the good news is we still have tickets left for our live shows in Washington DC and in New York coming up

in early October so go get those tickets now at the bulwark.com slash events I'm missing LSU or South Carolina for you guys I'm going to be in New York for that and so assuming that's an afternoon game, I might have a couple of bourbons in me by the time we get on stage on Saturday night. So that one could be a rowdy one. So if you're looking for an excuse to get to the big

apple, go see a show Friday night, come see us Saturday night. Could be a fun little weekend. Go get tickets. Like I said, the borg.com slash events. The borg.com slash events. See y'all soon. I'd like to end the podcast on you telling some whining Democratic strategies to kill themselves, but we have a couple of news items. I need to ask you about and football. You've several times brought up how this is a party of Putin files at this point. Even if you steel manned their case for like nationalists foreign policy and America first foreign policy and like what their stated goals were and you don't include like any theories about, you know, the Trump Putin love, you just take them all at face value. Like their strategy is failing miserably. Like this weekend, Xi, Modi, and Putin had a chummy summit in China.

Like, we have driven Russia and China back together and driven India into their arms and gotten nothing for it. And it's, like, really remarkable. Well, maybe that's because J.D. Vance is married to someone whose parents were from India. You know, that's what Laura Luma would say. How can you get a American? Look, I think Trump likes that. I think that's what Trump wants.

I think Trump wants this. I mean, clearly, I mean, it's nothing new. You obviously wants to be a strong man. And, you know, I think a lot of Republicans, they look at Russia. They say it's all run by white men. What explains just how soft he is on China, though? I was watching, he didn't read The Daily Collar, that very important journalistic outfit over the weekend. I was reading this. Most of the questions she asked Trump were like, shouldn't you be on Mount Rushmore? But they're like, one or two issues that she actually challenged him on.

One of them was the Chinese students. And she's like, why are you bringing in Chinese students? That's not America first. And then Trump goes off in his thing about how he and she have a great relationship and how she does a good job for his people and how they're working on so many great deals. and it's unbelievably pathetic. Well, yeah.

I mean, if you pet Trump, he'll follow you home. You know, it's not a hard thing to figure out. This is a guy who can't resist attacking the Lincoln Project. You know, we make an ad and we run it Marlago on a golf channel, and he responds. What if you had like the apparatus of a foreign intelligence agency to manipulate this guy, not just buying a few ads on the golf channel? How difficult would it be? I think the great underreported story of our time is Russian compromise of the Republican Party.

On all fronts, it goes back to the NRA. It goes back to the fact that, you know, we shouldn't forget Russians tried, and they did help, as Marco Rubio proved, they wanted to elect Donald Trump president. They got him. What did they get? They got more than they could imagine. So that's how people end up being compromised. So even if you're a Roger Wick or John Thune and you really do believe in your heart for Ukraine,

You're compromised. You can't go out and do what it takes to force that to happen. That's what's happened to the party. It's just nothing like this has ever happened in history. It's like Churches Party became a pro-Nazi party. Did you know that we let the latest Russia deadline has passed? The latest redline to pass today. Here we are.

I don't know. Maybe after we tape John Thune and the Republican Senate will come down hard and force Trump's hand on a sanctions. The only way to get Trump to care about this is if you pointed out that his next wife, who's probably in high school somewhere, maybe in Eastern Europe, may be suffering his next beauty queen. Look, it is evil. It is evil in our time. One of the two major parties in the United States and America is supporting a genocide award of kidnapping and rape and torture.

I'm older than you. My dad, you know, spent three years fighting the South Pacific. My uncle was wounded in France, never really recovered. You think all those people who lost their lives were buried across Europe. But they came alive. You think they'd want to fight for Putin or they didn't want to fight for Ukraine? And it is evil. RFK Jr. is evil.

And we should be saying that. I have one other potential theory on how to maybe win Trump over on this. That's a Wall Street Journal story this morning. So yesterday, the Trump crypto token officially started being traded on the open market. previously had been only private deals. The Trump family has notched as much as $5 billion on paper as of Monday after its flagship crypto venture open trading. It is now the Trump's most valuable asset exceeding all of the property portfolio.

They raise $750 million in cash from investors to buy the cryptocurrency. The investors are private. The market for one of the coins in this little bucket of tokens is the dollar peg stable coin. That's being propped up by Binance, who's convicted founder Chang Peng Zhao. He can wonder where he's from if you want. He's been seeking a presidential pardon. This is one of the things that Democrats need to do. They need to open investigations into all of these crimes.

These are crimes, as was a lot of what Elon Musk did. It's a crime. It's against the law. Agnew resigned over 100K. 100K and a paper bag. I think it was actually the last maybe, in a paper bag. I think it was 10K in a paper bag, and then there was some other, you know, if you add it all up, some other side deals.

But this is $5 billion. I risk my case. And no one in the Republican Party will say a thing. So one of the things they need to do is they need to go in and they say, you know, end all stock trading of members of Congress. They need to pass a law demanding you release your tax returns. And they need to open basically a 9-11-style commission into the crime. of Trump. And they need to start using it in that language, and they're hesitant about it.

We might offend people or something. This is actually worse than what Putin did as he rose to power. He cut more people in on it because he didn't have the power base that Trump has. He needed to cut in the former KGB thugs to form his kleptocracy. You're right about the threatening. And I don't, you know, Trump's so old and at this point feels like, you know, he shits gold or whatever. And I don't think is going to be intimidated by any of this, but other people might be. This is Malinowski this morning, Synthes, former congressman, Democrat from New Jersey. He writes, any Democrat interested in being president today should say that they'd slap Magnitsky Act, anti-corruption sanctions on any foreign person or company that bought the Trump crypto to get some value out

of the U.S. And it's just like one idea. Other people should be scared and realize that the party is going to be over. Or the party might be over. The party might be over. We don't know. But in In 2029, the party might be over. The Democrats win. It won't be Merrick Garland again. And they'll be coming for you. And so if you're fucking El Salvador or you're one of these crypto guys that is, you know, running a scam, recognize that the cops are coming for you if the new guys get in charge. And maybe that is a way to intimidate other people who have concerns about their self-interest.

Absolutely. Trump, you know, these executive orders he puts out are just press releases. Right. But he puts them out. You know, Democrats need to learn from that. If they control the House, they can pass a bunch of symbolic stuff that makes Republicans vote on very uncomfortable stuff. And they need to do that.

And they need to make it clear they are going to go after these people. And they are going to go after their families because that's where the money's going. And not just the Trump family, all these other people that are making it. They have to go after them. You can't look at it as a normal time. I mean, we say that it's not a normal time. Well, then you can't respond in a normal time.

Last topic before we get to football. So this morning with Judge Breyer, found the Trump administration violated the Posse Comitatis Act by using the military for domestic law enforcement in Los Angeles. You were on one of the Lincoln podcast talking about how Trump is doing, basically what the Jade Helm conspiracy was on all this. I want to play for you. I played this on the podcast a couple weeks ago.

I want to play it one more time. This is a mega comedian type podcaster that's in this rare case, contradiction in terms, Tim Dillon. I just want to play this for you really quick. They've already got the cops on the street that are, I mean, that are not cops or that are the military, they've already got the National Guard on the street. They already have all your information, D.C., and now they just get to decide what is and isn't over the line.

That should scare everybody. You're fucking nuts, dude. If this doesn't scare you, you're nuts. All of these things that Alex Jones, you know, and I've had Alex on, I like Alex, but all these things that Alex Jones was, like, worried about when I listened to him in the late 90s, early 2000s, are coming to fruition, military in the street, the FEMA camp, the tech company that monitors everything, the surveillance. This is all of that. And what the Democrats should be saying is, and we intend to use it, and we will be coming after you. We do have lists.

Thank you very much. We now have this masked force. We've accepted that, funded largely in the Marines. They're government employees. They'll do whatever the fuck we order it to or we fire them. That's how they should be responding to it. Like, yes, you've created this powerful, powerful chief executive

with an armed military, and we're going to use that, understand that. And they ought to be thinking of inventive ways to do that. It's the only way. You have to just sit in a room and not say, okay, what sounds reasonable? You have to say, what is it that it will take to stop this? How do you instill fear? And fear is the only thing that will teach them. Absolutely the only thing. That's one option. I'm listening to that. I'm open to that as a good option. I do think installing

fear is smart. I think another response to that is, is this not a way to get these guys back? And to start talking to them about this. And just the crank realignment really hurt. the Democrats, where every single person that had strange conspiratorial thoughts all voted for one candidate, that used to be dispersed among both parties kind of equally. We both had our cranks in the corners and Trump aligned them all. And I feel like going after the Trump masked thugs and language that resonates with cranks is not maybe something for every single Democrat to do, but certainly for some of them. And this is why the Epstein stuff works so well. Because it is exactly everything that they said. I mean, it's like that, you know, that classic cartoon that

Maga God dies and goes to heaven and meets, you know, St. Peter. And the first question he asked, who killed Jeffrey Epstein? He goes, it was suicide. And his response is, this goes deeper than I thought. So we're going to be running something in the Lincoln Project. Trump's, I think, universally accepted greatest achievement was warp speed. And you have this former lifeline Democrat, radical lefty RFK Jr. is attacking the MAGA great achievement of vaccines. Really? You're going to let this guy, this ex-junkey trader, ruin the legacy of Donald Trump's first term? Really? I'm surprised to hear you disparaging RFK's steroid use, since you famously tried steroids. I used the word abuse.

Okay, got it. As a former steroid trier, we'll say Trump. I heard RFK, how do you assess him, but it was based on your expertise? Well, his voice is affected by steroids. All these things were affected by steroids. His weird sort of manner that he has, a lot of these ice guys, they seem to be roid rage more than any kind of law enforcement. It's like they went to Gold's Gym at last call on Free Story's Day and just like said, hey, you want a job guy.

And RFK Jr. is a tragic figure in American life, right? I mean, horrible, horrible tragedies in his life. His siblings have adapted to that and been, you know, positive lives. If you've never read his defense of using heroin, how it worked for him, quote unquote, how he'd still be doing it if it continued to work, that's pretty weird. This is something deeply off about that. And who's it going to hurt, you know? The kids go into Exeter and Lawrenceville and Chope.

They're going to get vaccinated. I don't think their parents are going to say, well, you know, they're going to find doctors who will do it. If they have to pay under the table, if they have to put them on a plane and go to, you know, Mexico, France, wherever. It's, you know, the people who are the most vulnerable are going to get hurt. All right. Most importantly, both wins. I mean, Ole Miss had a cupcake this weekend. LSU goes on the road to Clemson. LSU defense looks as good as it might have looked since 2011. I worry a little bit about the Rebs. Last year, felt like it was their year. They blew a cup. couple of games. Could have been it. They had the talent. Jackson Dart is looking good

in training camp for the Giants. I worry about that for you. Yes, you should. But we can at least have one joy together, which is that the Alabama Empire is over. They didn't just lose. The empire is over. It is done. The best start. Yeah, I agree. I think last year was the greatest choke in Ole Miss history, one of the greatest jokes in sports football. I mean, they had nine guys went to the NFL, first round draft pick quarterback. And they lose to Kentucky at home? It's tough. Really?

Now, give LSU credit. But Kelly has said, to his credit, I guess, he's open about it, the payroll for this year's roster is $18 million. And it's fucking worth every penny, Steve. How are these people going to take pay cuts and they go to the NFL? I mean, literally they are. They are some of them. Once they get past the first, you know, four rounds.

It's worth every penny. They're paying in front of 100,000 people. You know, they're playing on price. time time as texas a and m proved you can spend all that money and still play like shit so that's true you know well i've already blocked out january i'm so this is where i'm at i need a destruction i'm high on my own supply and i'm already blocking out some playoff travel that's where i'm at after one game knocking on wood over here you know they're but by the grace of garret nussmeyer's knee go eye on this but uh they look really good man i'm not a kelly fan i don't like his whole affect

Yeah, I don't blame you. I love life. They look good. So how are you feeling about Ole Miss? You know, it goes to what I say about sports. You know, it will always break your heart, but at least it reminds you, you have one. I think there'll be one great moment and some disappointment. All right.

Well, I hope they exceed your expectations. That's Stuart Stevens. Go read some of his books. And I hope to have you back again soon, man, holler at me if you find yourself in New Orleans. Not very often. You got to, though. You got to. Come see your mom's old.

stomping grounds, all right? We'll have a drink together. I'd love that. All right, we'll see you, brother. Everybody else, see you back here tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. Peace. Go Tigers. Oxford Town, Oxford Town. Everybody's got the heads bad down. Sun don't shine above the ground. He ain't going down to Oxford Town. He went down to Oxford Town.

He went down to Oxford Town, guns and clubs followed it. him down all because his face was brown better get away from oxford town oxford town the boarckstown around the bed come to the door he couldn't get in all because of the color of a skin what do you think about that my friend the board podcast is produced by katie cooper with audio engineering and editing by jason Bill, my gal, son, we got met with a tear gas bomb. I don't even know why we come, going back where we come from. Oxford Town in the afternoon, everybody's singing a soft tune.

Two men died beneath the Mississippi moon. Somebody better investigate soon. You're going to be able to be.