The Bulwark Podcast - Stuart Stevens: We've Got Death Squads on Our Streets

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

The Trump administration desperately wants the public to just tune out the shooting death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by ICE agents in Houston. But this roaming army of masked, armed men chasing people... down and killing them is tied directly into the administration's criminality across the board. Trump may pardon Stephen Miller, but he should be on trial in state court in 2029. Meanwhile, McConnell's choice to not convict on impeachment means Donald Trump is his legacy. Plus: Republicans showed with the housing bill that they could find a backbone, Platner is not who he said he was, Dems should talk about race more, some way too early Magnolia Bowl talk, Vance/Trump 2028, and which potential Democratic nominees would Stuart work for in a heartbeat?  Stuart Stevens joins Tim Miller. Show notes: Stuart's book, "It Was All a Lie" Stuart's "The Conspiracy to end America" Tim’s playlist

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:13 Welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. Delid, welcome back to the show. A former Republican media consultant, it's been a minute, though. He worked on five presidential campaigns, including his chief strategist for Mitt Romney. He's a senior advisor to the Lincoln Project. His books include The Conspiracy to End America, and it was all a lie. It's my buddy Stuart Stevens. What is up? Hey, Tim. Great to see you, man. Good to see you, too.
Starting point is 00:00:34 I was in my head, like, over the last month or two, I was like, I'm going to wait until fall to have Stewart back on. I was thinking maybe, I don't know. I might have them on like September 18th. I don't know if you have any plans on September 19th. You know, the 20th would be better because they're not to gloat. But that's okay, you know. We'll get to the end. That will be the payback game of Lane Kiffin, LSU going to Ole Miss.
Starting point is 00:01:00 We'll discuss at the end. But I just, I couldn't wait until the fall. So we can, we'll meet again in September. I want to start with you with this ice killing in Houston. Because I think that this is getting. a little less attention than the predi and good killings for a couple reasons. Number one, we kind of don't treat illegal immigrants as humans, even subconsciously. People are like, it's not as big of a outrage or whatever than killing a white American citizen. I think that's part of it.
Starting point is 00:01:28 And also just we've had less footage. Like there were just so many angles of the predity and good shootings, you know, that was clear for everybody with eyes to see that the administration was lying. But, I mean, I don't know how close you've been following this case, but it is crazy. I mean, the guy was killed. by ICE in Houston. He had three other people in the car. He had kids that he'd raised in America. He'd been here 35 years, no criminal record. DHS said that they opened fire after he ignored commands and attempted to ram the officer, but there are three other witnesses in the car. They all say that the officer fired at them immediately after exiting his vehicle. Driver didn't veer in that direction. One of the other guys in the car from jail, they're all still in detention center right now,
Starting point is 00:02:11 being pressured to self-deport. One of them, Jose Rojas, wrote, it's impossible for them to say they were going to get run over. There were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides. Photos show no damage to the van. I mean, this just seems like Renee Good all over again. Well, look, you know, we have a name for this.
Starting point is 00:02:31 We call it Death Squad. And that's what these ice stations are. They're just roaming death squads to feel that they have, and so far it's been proven right. if they shoot somebody, fine. There's not going to be any prosecution. One of my pet things here is how the Democrats have to erect a structure, the whole illegality of the Trump administration, the criminality across the board.
Starting point is 00:02:56 And it's going to be up to the state attorney generals, I think, because Trump will pardon everybody. And my model is like the tobacco twerk. When attorney generals got together, they picked it up. And, you know, if it's January and 29, and early into that year, and Stephen Miller isn't on trial or living in a non-extradition country, something will have failed.
Starting point is 00:03:18 And that's what you have to go after. You have to go after Stephen Miller. I have to go after Christian home. You have to go after these people at the very top. Yeah, maybe Stephen Miller can go to El Salvador. He was excited to send people there. I'm sure they'd house them. I'll just say to him.
Starting point is 00:03:30 Occasion I get depressed. But what consistently cheers me up is the thing to Stephen Miller's kids are going to grow up in a minority-majority country. And there's nothing he can do about it. except maybe like found a new Rhodesian moved there. Or maybe Iceland. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:03:45 He can move there with Tim Paxton. He's doing his best to, don't love Ken Paxton in with me. That's a Ken Paxton, sir. He's trying to stall it a year or two with the immigration coming in. You know, we're only letting in the Afrikaners. But I don't know that it's going to hold. You know, he's trying to make America safe for white people again, you know? I mean, it's really been such a, you know, burden that we've carried as white people.
Starting point is 00:04:08 I agree with your point that the Democrats for the next administration, really, and state attorneys generally are going to have to go after the people at the top. And I think that was an obvious mistake from the Biden administration. Also, though, like, there needs to be accountability for the people that perpetrated these murders in the street. So, for example, we still don't know who the anonymous masked agent was that shot and killed this man, which is crazy. Like in a free country, we should at least know who killed Lorenzo Oroa. And we don't.
Starting point is 00:04:44 And because these guys, as you mentioned, get to roam the streets. They get to act with impunity. After the killing of Freddie, the people that killed him got redeployed. Eventually, after weeks and months of pressure, you know, they were, it was publicized. But that's why it's important to talk about these things. And they want to sweep it under the rug. You know, like they want to get these other three men that were in the car to self-deport. they're pressuring them to self-deport, and they want the media and the Democrats to move on from this because the media gets bored and the Democrats think this is a winning issue for them.
Starting point is 00:05:16 And we saw in Minnesota that the only way to get any accountability is maximum pressure. Yeah, couldn't agree more. I refer you to the above. They're death squads. Desquads rarely have body cams. The squads rarely go unmased. This is the template that's being used. And, you know, one of the things, it just goes back to the inability to imagine Trump.
Starting point is 00:05:37 You and I sat here two years ago and said, look, there's going to be an army of masked men with the budget larger than the Marines, chasing brown people across the country and shooting them and killing protesters. We'd say, I don't know, man, maybe you've gone a little too far. That's not going to happen. Yep, here we are. Here we are. And I think that's a good lesson when you look at the elections, inability to imagine what Trump can do in the elections. Yeah. You know, consistently, you and I know a lot of these people, as bad as you think they are, they're worse.
Starting point is 00:06:07 They're horrible human beings. You're right. And we know that, I mean, this is a lot of people that voted for Trump would have said to us if we told them this is what was going to be happening with ICE because they say it. I mean, a lot of the manister guys are like, I didn't see this coming. It's like, well, they held the signs. They had the placards. Like, what did you think mass deportations now was, you know, letters, postcards? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:06:27 One other thing on ICE. And then I want to get to the election stuff you mentioned is, this is a new report out of Politico, Kyle Cheney was working on this. And in the one year since ICE adopted the massive expansion of their detention policy, which, as we know, is aiming at people in the interior of the country that don't have criminal records because they're just trying to reach the quotas that aforementioned Stephen Miller wanted. You know, there's been challenges to all these. Sometimes it's hard to get these people that are being detained lawyers. And it's a big endeavor. So shout out to all the immigration lawyers out there that have been working on this. the federal courts have overruled these detentions 15,000 times.
Starting point is 00:07:06 You know, DHS has only had a ruling in their favor about 2,000. So that's the ratio. 2000 in their favor to 15,000 against. A lot of these are Republican judges, Trump judges, some of them are. That shows you the degree of lawlessness of this operation. Yeah, I mean, gee, maybe habeas corpus isn't like a partisan issue. How about that, you know? So, you know, I have a little insight into this, that's the right word, because the Lincoln Project lawyer, who lives in Denver, spends a lot of time pro bono representing people, young people who are in ICE detention.
Starting point is 00:07:39 And he was working on one case of a 19-year-old who lived all his life in America, who had been in detention for 18 months. And he finally got him out on bail. But just listening to the process, how you have to go and you have to wait hours and hours. in court because you don't know when it's going to come up and you have one shot and if you're not there. You know, it's extraordinary. I mean, I think this guy's a hero and there's others like him. The idea that we're going to be locking up these people. I mean, look, say what you will about Ronald Reagan. He announced in front of the Statue of Liberty because he was celebrating immigrants. His last speech was an ode to immigrants. And now we're into this anti-immigrant. And it's just
Starting point is 00:08:26 extraordinary. I mean, Jady Vance is against the 15th Amendment and a 14th Amendment. And his wife is a citizen because of the 14th Amendment. So, you know, if they were going to reject that, I just wanted him to make it proactive so we could deport his family, you know, get these dangerous people out of the country. I agree with you. I never thought I'd be, there's a lot of things I'd be doing in 2026, but odes to lawyers is one of them. But you're right, Lincoln Project lawyer, Lindsay Toski, immigrant offenders, the people that are doing this work. Mark Elias. Look, who's also, the largest firm is another Lincoln Project law firm. It's absolutely critical to fight it at that level. You have to fight this stuff at all levels. So the housing bill news this morning is kind of
Starting point is 00:09:09 related to your concerns about the election for folks who have been following this. It's like the one bipartisan thing that Congress did all year was this housing bill. That's actually pretty good. I know there's some things that I quibble with like on balance. It's just trying to you know, incentivize more house building and the home building in the country. They'll lower costs for people, basic Adam Smith stuff, supply and demand. And this passes, Trump decides he doesn't want to sign it because he's having a temper tantrum because they haven't passed the Save America Act yet. And tonight we reach the kind of 10-day moment. We're going to do like the, you know, when a bill becomes a law thing. I was like, I had to call in the parliamentarian
Starting point is 00:09:48 this morning. And I was like, so at the end of the 10 days, if he doesn't sign it, what happens? It becomes a law if Congress is in session. But Congress isn't in session right now, but they're in a pro forma session. So long story short, if he doesn't sign it by midnight, it becomes law anyway. Here's the bleat that he sent this one. I will not sign the housing bill, which has been fully approved by Congress, in protest, all caps, over the fact that U.S. Senate is not capable of passing the Save America Act. The act states quite simply that to vote a person must show photo ID, prove of citizenship,
Starting point is 00:10:20 that there'll be no more crooked, corrupt, and destabilizing mail. ballots. I love this. In parentheses, exceptions, military, disabled illness, and travel. I wonder why I mentioned travel. Oh, it's because he, that's how he, that's how he votes. It's like the way, there's also a car about one carve out for me. Then he says, they've got to terminate the filibuster to do this. I mean, it's a pretty stunning thing. Like, the Trump is just basically like, I want help stealing the election this year or else I'm going to have a temper tantrum and not sign any bills even things that would help people. Yeah, he's abstaining from being president. You know, look, no one has ever in the history of sport changed the rules of a game they're winning.
Starting point is 00:10:57 No one at Tom Brady's a quarterback said, look, this whole forward past thing, it's like going too far. We've got to cut this shit out. And look, you know, Republicans know that we're becoming a minority majority country, despite all this stuff that, you know, 24 was some sort of watershed elections, total bullshit. Trump's coalition in 20 was 85% white. He did a little better. 24 was 84% white. in a country that's, what, 59% white and less so after we finish this podcast. And all the Stephen Millers in the world can't change that.
Starting point is 00:11:27 And it is the great failure of our former party to. I mean, in Bushworld, we failed at this. But at least Ken Millman, chairman of the party in 2005, went in front of the NAACP and gave a speech apologizing for the Southern strategy. Does that matter? Yeah, I think it matters. Better than just digging in and saying, you know, giving permission for people to be their worst race itself.
Starting point is 00:11:48 And, you know, it was so clear that this sort of Faberge egg coalition that Trump put together in 24, you had the MAGA people who were going to insist you have this army of mass men chasing gardeners through Brentwood or, you know, you're going to have Hispanics. These two were not going to exist together. So, you know, you look at the Virginia governor's race and New Jersey governor's race. It all kind of reset to what it was. And, you know, I don't think we talk enough about race in our politics, Tim. You know, I think it's late. We talk about how Trump does well with evangelical voters. Black evangelical voters vote against them 97%. It's his worst group, actually. We talk about how Trump does well with working class voters. Only white working class voters. For some reason, there's sort of reluctance to talk about this. But I think, you know, in our party, races the original sin since 1964. Goal order got 7% of the black vote. You go back to 56. got 39%. And look at the Virginia governor's race.
Starting point is 00:12:53 They nominate an African-American woman on the Republican side. She got 7%. Right. So you go to 64 to recent election. It's pretty much a flat line. Yeah. I agree with your umbrella point on principle about what's happening with race and how, you know, it doesn't get talked about enough in the context of what is happening in the country.
Starting point is 00:13:15 There's motivated reasoning for why people want to sleep under the rug. Like simultaneously to that, I do think that I'm curious just kind of putting on your strategist hat that you won a lot of races. Like I think that the Democrats don't have to rub it in. Yeah, all the sometimes they used it as a crutch. They looked at the stats that you said and they're like, okay, we don't have to try that hard. I always come back to Bobby Polito, who's just this great example. He's running in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas as kind of a, you know, a Tihano singer,
Starting point is 00:13:41 moderate left Democrat. And he's just like, you know, they took us for granted. They didn't listen to our concerns. Like, we don't want the mass men in the street, but there were legitimate concerns about some of the stuff happening in the border and the communities, right? And so it's kind of like both of those things are true, kind of, right? Like that race is the fundamental sin of what's happening with MAGA and that Democrats almost thought that they could just use like, you're racist as the only message to these voters. And obviously that's not it. Look, I think you can hold two things in your head at the same time.
Starting point is 00:14:12 You can say it's bad when Stacey Abrams says she won an election that she didn't win. But it's a lot worse when you have people storming through the Capitol trying to hang the vice president. So both of those can be true. Sure. And I think that the Democrats are often shamed and not use talking about racism enough. And you should be out there. You should be talking about the Voting Rights Act, which was a bipartisan act. And you should be talking about these fundamental principles of America as a melting pot and defending America as an ideal.
Starting point is 00:14:44 Because, I mean, look at J.D. Vance. He's just one of the weirder guys on the planet. He talks about these heritage Americans and look at his kids. No one's going to think they're like Kentucky coal miners. And I think that, you know, it's true that Democrats, look, we won a lot of races. We had no business winning because they screwed things up. And they would do this kind of stuff. Sure.
Starting point is 00:15:06 But I still think that it's proven over and over and over again that they are a party that aspires to something that is non-racist. And the Republican Party has become, really, to the large degree, it's painful to say, I mean, I hope to elect a lot of these guys, a white extremist movement. And, you know, it's not operating and functioning as a normal political American party. It's an extremist movement. And what do we know about extremist movements? They demand higher and higher purity test. Yeah. So, you know, Trump announces and he's attacking Mexicans as rapist. Okay, so just imagine this. You've been a staffer.
Starting point is 00:15:45 You're sitting around Jady Vance's office, and they hear about, like, there's thousands of these Republicans on the younger side, but they're not kids who are defending Hitler talking about Nazis, how great it is. And he goes, you know, guys, I'm going to defend that. Yeah. Oh, going after Indians, too, going after how the Indians are taking our jobs. That's a very common trope in that world. And so, Jadie Vance is, like, I don't know, boss, like defending Nazis? Is that right? I mean, maybe just let this one lie?
Starting point is 00:16:11 you know. But why does he do it? He does it because he believes, and I think he's right. And you had a great segment of like, why is J.D. Vance, such a weird guy has done as well as he did. But he believes that the way you advance in the party is to be the most transgressive. So now, I mean, we have an army of masked men going around chasing brown people and shooting them and killing them, saying Mexicans are rapists. That's all that. That doesn't get you anywhere. So it's like, okay, I'm going to defend Nazis. How about you? Marco? Marco, you're going to defend Nazis? I don't think so. Or he goes on Laura Ingram, and he's like, I'm going to defend the worst of what we're doing in these mass deportations as like the Catholic thing to do.
Starting point is 00:16:50 He literally is on Laura Ingram saying part of my faith is that we have to make sure that the normal Americans get a good wage. And normal Americans can't get a good wage unless we do mass deportations. So that's right there. It's in the catechism. And, you know, as an Ivy League hedge fund manager, I'm sure he falls in that category. One of the more sort of amusing things in life if it wasn't so sort of tragic and existentially threatening is the way that Donald Trump tortures J.D. Vance. The thing is no foreign wars. So, okay, we're going to have a foreign war. Go defend it, J.D. So J.D. does. And he goes, all right, how about this? I'm going to attack the Pope. You're going to say anything about that? You know, the Pope, J.D. He said, he's like, nah, that's cool, dude. The Pope, who the hell's the Pope?
Starting point is 00:17:40 You know, go at it. Which is why Jady Vance is going to be the nominee, mark my words, and he's going to pick a Trump on the ticket. A Trump family member. A Trump family member, either Ivanka or, you know, depending who's in and out of rehab, one of the sons. I think Eric's a sleeper on that front. I love that prediction, Stuart Stevens.
Starting point is 00:17:57 That's good podcasting. That's good podcasting. Jade advanced Trump ticket. That feels right. It's the only way that Trump will support the ticket. Yeah. That feels right. And I think, you know, you could say last time they needed Elon Musk millions.
Starting point is 00:18:14 So now the kids are making, you know, billions. So we don't need that weirdo Elon. We can just, you know, do it ourselves. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. We talk about mental health more openly now, but asking for help can still sometimes feel hard. And BetterHelp's research confirms that BetterHelp's 2026 state of the stigma report surveyed 2,000 Americans and revealed that 85% of us believe getting support is wise, yet 74% say society discourages people from doing so. It's good that more of us take mental health seriously
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Starting point is 00:19:40 the bulwark I want to talk about what's happening with the republicans of the senate we're going to get to Mitch next but the housing bill is funny there's a funny little subplot to it because it's this accident where the kind of Republicans on the hill like accidentally showed that they could have been standing up to Trump this whole time if they wanted to right because they thought that the white house was on board for this housing bill right so they didn't think that they were showing any backbone. Like they thought that this was blessed. And they surely thought that because they were told that. Yeah, exactly. So this was blessed. It gets passed. Big bipartisan bill.
Starting point is 00:20:15 Then all of a sudden, Donald Trump has a temper tantrum, decides he's not going to sign it. And what happens? What's going to happen tonight at midnight? The bill's going to become a law. Donald Trump's going to be bleeding into the ether about, you know, whatever fucking Venezuelans tampering with the voting machines and how we got to
Starting point is 00:20:32 pass the Save America Act now. And there's a. not going to be any harm done to any of those Republicans that kind of accidentally showed that they can stand up to Trump. In plain sight, now we can see that over the last 10 years, these guys have just been utterly cowardly. You know, you know it. You hear from all your old friends still, the ones that still talk to you that are just like, well, Stuart Tim, like, they can't, they can't, to survive, Tom Tillis, to survive, can't oppose Trump on tariffs or on Ukraine, you know, because then what would you do? You'd get Mark Robinson. You'd get the pizza Nazi in there. You have to,
Starting point is 00:21:03 You have to just go along to get along. And it turns out you don't, actually. Donald Trump can just bleed and life moves on. That's the exact. D.C. French, quisly Norwegians, that's exactly their arm. And if I don't do it, like you're going to have somebody else who's going to be worse. You know, okay, I'll be in the Vichy government. I'll help deport Jews.
Starting point is 00:21:21 But, I mean, if I didn't do it, it'd be worse. Look, you know, the thing that I think angers me the most. And I find myself a lot more angry than I'd like to be, is that these Republicans are aired to the greatest generation. and people like my father, my uncle. And they are not being asked to do, like, charge a beach, take a machine gun nest. After the 20 election, all they do is get their comm shop, put out a statement, congratulating the President of the United States.
Starting point is 00:21:50 It's pretty low bar, you know, compared to what's like the legacy they've been handed. And they don't have the courage to do it. And, you know, I have this theory. And, you know, it's unprovable, but that's why it's a good theory. you can't argue that it's not true, that in the party, we developed a unknowingly, to a large degree, without thinking about it, a culture that rewarded compliance, that if you were a Republican and you went along, you waited your turn, you were rewarded. And it's like a genetic experiment.
Starting point is 00:22:21 You do that 30, 40 years. What do you get? You get these Republicans in the Senate. I mean, you know what a painting is elected to the Senate? So you finally do it and to do what Donald Trump tells you to do? Really? But that's because they are the product of a system that rewarded compliance. And look, I knew John Dune when he's an executive director of the South Dakota Republican Party. Great God. Good baseball player. Everybody loved John.
Starting point is 00:22:47 Never in a million years. Yeah. When would that have been? Oh, that would have been when Bill Jankler was governor and it was back in the late 80s, I guess. You know. He must have been a handsome young man as an executive director. I loved working for Bill Jankly. He was governor for 16 years and had this tragic in when he actually kills someone. But anyway.
Starting point is 00:23:06 Wait a minute. How did he kill? You can't just leave a thing in on that. Bill Giancoe. We still hold a whole podcast on Bill John. He could do a whole series. But he was elected governor at a very young age. Serve for eight years, set out for, got reelected for another eight years.
Starting point is 00:23:19 Got out, was bored, ran for Congress, got elected, and home during a break. He was always a terrible driver. Terrible. He collected cars, like old muscle cars, particularly Cadillacs. And the first thing he did his governor was to put life. on the top of all of them. And he would drive himself. And he was driving and not paying attention.
Starting point is 00:23:39 I ran a stop line in a bunch of cornfields and hit a motorcyclist and killed him. And went to prison. So tragic, tragic on so many levels. I'm also a terrible driver. This is why I love living in New Orleans. I don't ever go more than 12 miles an hour. There you go. On this note, and I can't kill anybody that way.
Starting point is 00:23:56 Anyway, sorry. Back to John Thune. That was just a teaser. I needed to pay off of what happened to him. That is tragic. But so you knew Thune. I mean, everybody, it's just a good guy. And, you know, he probably still is a good guy.
Starting point is 00:24:08 It's just this sort of definition of cowardness. I go back to, you know, how do you have these people who spend their careers standing for one thing, saying they believe in all this? And then, you know, go and do the exact opposite. Roger Wicker. I mean, we were pages in Washington. My dads were friends. I have worked for his campaign in the Senate.
Starting point is 00:24:31 spent most of his very honorable career focused on building like NATO and alliances. He still wears a Ukraine pin on his suit sometime. Yeah. So all his life, Rogers wanted to be chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the way most of us wanted to be like athletes or rock stars. He wanted to be chairman of armed services committee. So now he is. What does he do?
Starting point is 00:24:50 He ushers in Pete Hegset, who literally, I don't think this is exactly, I don't think he let Pete Hexert cut his lawn. Like, you want this drunk with tattoos, this weird stuff about women. And with that guy around the house? No. And he could have very easily told Donald Trump, look, there's 317 million Americans. Pick a nice conservative will confirm, and we're not going to confirm this bozo. But nope.
Starting point is 00:25:15 And with tragic results, you know, Donald Trump is going to lose two wars. Most presidents only get to lose one war. And Pete wants to take all the troops out of Europe. I like all the stuff worker worked for, like all of it. Yeah, you know, that packs Americana. It's so old hat. And, you know, we're losing the Iran war over and over again. And America's going to lose the Ukraine war.
Starting point is 00:25:36 Ukraine's going to win. But America will emerge a loser because we, for the most part, spent too much time supporting Putin and not enough time supporting Ukraine. Unbelievable tragedy. Wicker, Thune, Collins, it's all the same type of character. John Corrin. Well, they are personally nice. And when you say they're still a good guy,
Starting point is 00:25:56 it means, like, I'm sure that they're personally nice. I'm sure they do nice things for people in their life and are generous, right? They'd be good neighbors. Yeah. But it's like in the biggest picture, they don't have the, they don't have the gumption to stand up to this. And they're going along with this. And I mean, it is, it's just the banality of evil is all of this. I mean, it's just Hannah Arendt.
Starting point is 00:26:16 Like, you know, it's not the first time of this. You mentioned the Ukraine thing. I have a category of topics here I wanted for you, which is like traditional Republican stuff. I wanted to talk to you about Ukraine was one of them. You're still like really rabidly posting and commenting on Ukraine. And so I just kind of wanted to let you cook on the state of play. Yeah, look, you know, I think Ukraine is the defining moment of our time. And if you live in a world in which Ukraine loses this war, it will be a generational change.
Starting point is 00:26:48 This thing that we've accepted that you can get in the car, well, you get in the car in London now and drive to Prague and drive to, you know, anywhere you won't. That's going to be over. You're not going to have Western Europe like that. And these border countries of Russia know it. This is as clear a good versus evil test as we're going to have in our lifetime probably. And, I mean, it's the smallest of things, but I work with this Ukrainian aid group. And one of the things they do is they acquire vehicles, particularly around Scandinavia, because there's a Finnish element to this, full of aid of various sorts.
Starting point is 00:27:26 non-lethal aid because it's a 501c3. And then we drive it down to Kiev and convoys, distribute the supplies, leave the vehicles, give them to brigades, and then take the train back to Poland. And look, I mean, you spend any time in Ukraine, it's just so obvious they're going to win. I mean, they know what happens if they lose.
Starting point is 00:27:48 And I think that they're winning at an accelerating rate, which will continue to accelerate because the technological, innovations that they have are particularly involving AI and drones. 80% of the chaos of these now are drones. You have these situations now for the first time of these battles that are all robotic, ground and air. And they're losing 30,000 troops a month. Russians are. For the first time since really the Civil War, I think, they are more dead than wounded on the side of a battle. That just doesn't happen anymore, except the Russian. Russians don't give a fuck about their people.
Starting point is 00:28:28 So, you know, I think about this, Tim, to grow up as a kid in Ukraine now, you could look at your leaders, not just the landscape, but across the board, and admire them. And what is it now to grow up as a kid in America? Who do you admire? Forget grow up as a kid. What's it like to be 25 in America? There you go. Like, I mean, you know, how old are you during the 0-8 campaign?
Starting point is 00:28:49 You're young. I'll give you a perfect example. There's this woman that I've gotten known in Kiev, who the day before the first of the full-scale invasion was the queen of Keith Knightley. She ran the biggest club, she was like, you know, the star. Next day, she enrolled in a medics course. Today, she has this flourishing charity that fills individual medical kits for soldiers. Wow. You know, she still has, like you walk into where they are, and it's like walking into a club. She still has purple hair. She's still, they're still blasting rock music. But this is what they do. And there is no element
Starting point is 00:29:20 of Ukrainian society that is not involved in this war on some level. And that is extraordinary. extraordinarily difficult to defeat. We should talk about Ukraine more. People should go to Ukraine. You go to Kiev, it looks like a big, normal European city. I mean, terrible things will happen, but it's a lot safer than a lot of American cities. And everything kind of looks different once you go there. The other Republican stuff topic I want to talk to you about is have you been following the freedom fuel story? Donald Trump is, and the administration is promoting a new, we think, privately owned network of gas stations. in Philly and New Jersey that are called freedom fuel. There's flags everywhere.
Starting point is 00:30:03 They're doing propaganda where they get, I assume, supporters to go fill up gas and talk about how cheap it is, even though even at the Freedom Fuel Station, it's more expensive than it was before the war started significantly. The only question, I think, about the freedom fuel stations is whether this is like corruption or socialism or both. I mean, is that the corruption thing? Can we really doubt that?
Starting point is 00:30:29 And look, as a Mississippian, I'm pro-socialism, pro-communism. We get 40% of our state budget from the feds. So if it wasn't for that. I mean, you know, I wait for most of your work. I just feel like I have to bring this up because I did ding Zohan several times on the grocery stores, the city run grocery stores, which I still think is a pretty stupid idea. On the grand scheme of things, I don't think it's that important, but it's a not a smart idea. But I feel like just to be an honorable podcaster, I should mention that now there's a
Starting point is 00:30:57 doing gas stations at a much higher rate. Also, doing from the feds. Your government owns 10% of Intel. So five sitting home grocery stores, 10% of Intel. I don't know. I think maybe like the real... Stewart, it's the only good stock purchase I've ever made. I'm a bad gambler and my dad was the stock man in the family.
Starting point is 00:31:16 But as soon as I saw the reports that we might buy some Intel, I went ahead and bought some stock in there. So I'm getting some trickle down. It's trickle down socialism. There you go, man. And, you know, if Tim Cook, when Iries left, thank God, you know, an Auburn guy running apples is really troubling. But if these people think they're going to stop with Intel, they're crazy. And there is no conservative party in America.
Starting point is 00:31:40 We're the pro-terror party. We're the pro-nationalized Intel party. We're the pro-Puton party. There's no conservative party. We need a conservative party. Freedom fuel. Listen, I prefer when it was French fries, because I'm not. at least then you could prove your patriotism by eating.
Starting point is 00:31:59 Freedom prize. Yes. That was funny. That was tongue and cheek. This is like this is a, they take everything from us, you know, like you just little kind of tongue and cheek
Starting point is 00:32:09 South Park style conservative humor. It was fine for time to time. This is North Korea. This is like dear, dear leader says you get very good, you get very good gas. 47 a gallon. And they'll probably have, you know,
Starting point is 00:32:23 cameras that are identify people and give you a special break on your taxes. Yeah. They're fucking paying. Whoever is running this on the back end. It's all scam. Okay. During the Senate section,
Starting point is 00:32:32 we talked about some of the alive and lucid senators, Wicker, Thune, and Collins. What's going on with your man, Mitch McConnell? You know, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:32:41 He's been calling people. He's been called John Barrasso, apparently, and John Thune and Scott Jennings. All of them claimed they talked to him for 20 minutes, and that he was very interested in deep policy questions about what's happening. in NATO? What do you think? I have two thoughts on this. One, I hope Ms. McConnell's fine. I hope this guy
Starting point is 00:33:04 is completely lucid and Kendall Pine owned NATO. That's great. I hope he is. I also think he's one of more despicable human beings walking around on the planet. A guy who can't even defend his wife when Trump attacks her with racial slurs. A guy who Donald Trump encourages a mob to come into its workplace and kill his colleagues. And he's like, no, I'm not going to vote to convict. I mean, the reason we have Donald Trump now is Ms. McConnell. And Mitch McConnell told senators vote to convict. They would have voted to convict.
Starting point is 00:33:38 We wouldn't have Donald Trump. The country would be a lot better off. I think the Republican Party would be a lot better off, but no. And, you know, Ms. McConnell, as he lies there in bed, thinks that all these things he's done are going to be his legacy. And it's not going to be that way. His legacy is Donald Trump. Just as all the segregationist senators, you don't remember like the bridge they got built or maybe, you know, like that's, you remember they were segregationists.
Starting point is 00:34:02 A couple people do. You know, there's a handful of people at like a fake library in Oxford that can remind, that it will remind you the good things that those senators did. You know, so there's a handful of people that remember. Yeah, well, it's, you know, and McConnell's a pathological liar as he lied about, you know, confirming Supreme Court justices, said we couldn't do it in an election year. And then Barrett was not confirmed in an election year. She was confirmed after people were voting in the middle of an election. Well, that's also true.
Starting point is 00:34:35 He also said that the courts had to take care of Trump and then opposed the court's taking care of Trump. And it was all fake. It was all power from the start. And then I just would add to your list of his crimes against his own self-interest is very meek opposition to the anti-vax takeover of the Republican Party despite the fact that he had polio. Yeah, he had polio. Yeah. One of the more telling impactful books that I read when I was writing, it was a lie, was a memoir as a friend von Patten, friends von Patten, who was a Prussian aristocrat who was
Starting point is 00:35:10 more responsible for usuring Hitler than anybody. He wrote his memoir, which you can get him kindle for some reason. I've no idea there's such a demand for it. In 1953, now you could say things, are going a little south in 1953. You know, World War II, 100 million dead, the Holocaust. He's still defending what they did. And there are lines in his memoir that are verbatim what Ms. McConnell
Starting point is 00:35:32 said in 16. We will change him. We needed someone to be in touch with the working class, but we were confident we could control it. And that's what McConnell did. And it's so ironic, the guy got elected by running an ad
Starting point is 00:35:49 that was against a long-time incumbent who had been in Washington too long. That's how he got elected. And here he is, you know, a century of service. I mean, come on. It's sad. It's sad. I haven't spoken to him. I tried to get him on the horn.
Starting point is 00:36:07 But I haven't had a chance to have a 20-minute briefing, so we'll keep people posted. I want to do some politics stuff with you. The parallel I'm about to make is obviously not exact. It's just when everybody to stick with me. You know, sometimes people struggle with this. But the Democrats are dealing with a populist uprising of some kind within their own party. I think that there's a lot of differences to the Tea Party. Be interested in how you would assess the differences.
Starting point is 00:36:33 But there are also some similarities. And on Monday's show, Bill and I were talking about kind of lessons that we could have learned from the Republicans to this. And one of the lessons that I was talking about was kind of like picking battles, you know, knowing who's worth fighting and who's not and how to demonstrate that you're listening to the complaints of the people that are voting for the populist candidates. So anyway, one of the examples that I gave was the Mississippi Senate race that you're deeply involved in with that Cochran and Chris McDaniel. And then Chris McDaniel is just this totally racist radio host, completely beyond the pale.
Starting point is 00:37:12 But it's like, okay, can we use this as an example in Mississippi that there is a red line? Right? Turns out Donald Trump kind of breaks through that red line two years later, but still, I think it's a useful kind of lesson. And so since I got you here, Bill and I kind of talked about it via how we kind of experienced it, you know, from our DC perch. But you're involved in the race. So just wonder if you have any thoughts on that race and broader lessons. My firm was doing it. I mean, I was, I went door to door for Thad when he ran for Congress for the first time. And he was the first Republican elected since Reconstruction to Congress. And he was a young sort of Rotarian Kwanis Club lawyer, very. very, very likable. And there really wasn't a Republican Party in Mississippi. And the Democrats were all like, you know, Stennis in Eastland. And unless you wanted to be like a county judge in Idlewamba County, why do you want to be a Democrat? So he ran, got elected. I was a page for him. And that last race, I mean, he shouldn't have run. You know, he did have health issues. My firm did the race. I went down to just check on how it was going, thought I'd spend a weekend. I spent a weekend. I spent
Starting point is 00:38:17 two months without leaving. It was one of the most bizarre, toughest races I've ever been involved in. And McDaniel was an example, basically, as Haley Barber said, of a hostile takeover of the Republican Party in Mississippi, because he was largely funded by outside groups like Club for Growth that were attacking Cochran for being there too long, but also being a big spender. So rather than fight that, we ran right into it. And we just made all these ads about, okay, Cochran got you this. Cochrane got you that. You know, the same when Haley ran, he was attacked as being a lobbyist, and we go, don't we need a lobbyist? This is what you did him. Yes, he'll be a really good lobbyist from Mississippi. And then when Katrina hit, it proved to be the case.
Starting point is 00:39:01 And it was a very dramatic, tough race. It went into a runoff where McDaniel led the runoff. You have to get 50%. And only by a couple thousand votes did he not get 50%. And then this thing that is not supposed to happen in politics happened, more people voted in the runoff than in the first election. Part of that was that there were a lot of people who were the Cochran supporters who didn't think he could lose.
Starting point is 00:39:27 So they left a lot of votes on the table. Plus, Cochran had very good relationship with the African American community. And in Mississippi, there is no party registration, as we famously say, it's a state of mine. And legally, if you didn't vote in the Democratic primary in the first round, you could vote in Republican primary in the second round. And we made an effort to get African-American votes. And you can go through precinct by precinct and see where, you know, we, we bandaged the sort of ding him here enough, ding him there enough. And Cochran was able to win, which was a big win
Starting point is 00:40:04 from Mississippi. McDaniel is just, you know, he ran spots with the still then Mississippi state flag, which was the Confederate battle flag. I mean, so it was a real precursor of of what happened with Trump. So from that race, if you have Chuck Schumer call you or whoever, call you and say, okay, how do I, you know, what are lessons that are valuable for the Democrats? Obviously, the Democrats don't have any Chris McDaniel-Dainel-style racist running. Say I was running. I was running in Maine against Collins.
Starting point is 00:40:35 I would attack her for not doing enough. I would say that you could do more. She should do more. And I think there's two elements here that you can say, I want to be an outsider. I want to change things. But I'm also going to really deliver for the district because this money is going somewhere. And I think Mondali's a good example of that.
Starting point is 00:40:56 You know, he can charm Trump. You know, everybody felt that Trump was going to be like, you know, attacking him. Like, no, the guy, he's an incredibly charismatic guy. You know, if I was running the Democratic Party, I would say that these are the kind of problems you want to have. You want to have the question of like, do we have too big of a tent? And I don't think it's an existential crisis that. that somebody like McDombie's getting elected. That's not a bad thing.
Starting point is 00:41:20 People can vote for whoever they want. I mean, do we really think the Democratic Party would be better off if Pomel was mayor of New York City? Really? So you don't have any worries? You're just kind of like, you know, looking at what happened with Platner and like some of the DAC and some of these candidates in New York. You're not getting PTSD at all? Well, AOC didn't endorse Platner, which has someone posted, I thought, rather cleverly. Maybe female bartenders no guys like Platner.
Starting point is 00:41:47 and can read them from a mile away. AOC's been super savvy. There's just no other way around it. The statement that Plattner put out is one of the most offensive, despicable statements. I mean, here's a small little rich kid. You know, father's Ivy League or grandfather and RV Liger, you know, flunked out of Hotskis, Hotskis, and had a tough war.
Starting point is 00:42:11 Okay. But he's not what he said he was. And he clearly has an issue with women. And, you know, this guy has one chance to not be the most hated man in America, and that is if a Democrat wins that Senate seat. If a Democrat loses, he will be blamed. He will be the – what's he going to write a book? I kept Donald Trump in power, the Grand Platner story.
Starting point is 00:42:33 And he's got a campaign for him. Yeah, no. The thing that I go, these power – I don't have the quote in front of me. It was something like these powers are trying to stop me, and they're preventing me from getting an office. It's like, man, take accountability for yourself. And if it's true that you were a people-powered movement, I thought the whole point was you didn't want corporate money and national money. You can still Donald Trump on a campaign without any corporate money or national money.
Starting point is 00:42:54 So did AOC, right? Like, the whole thing. Well, you know, Tim, Tim, there's a long documented history of the main state party, getting women to accuse candidates of rape to get them out, you know. I mean, it's the most absurd. I was like, wait a minute. Who is behind this conspiracy? Why haven't they found any women to accuse Abdul al-Sayed or Mamdani or whatever?
Starting point is 00:43:15 The whole thing is just ridiculous. Yeah, this guy should, this guy should shut the fuck up about himself. And he should say to the Democratic Party, I will do whatever helps you. If that means you want me to join Paxton and Iceland, I'll go. I'll leave the state.
Starting point is 00:43:28 You'll never hear from me. If you want me to go door to door, I'll go door to door. But, you know, I ought to start apologizing to people. One other thing in 26th, I'm just curious. Have you paid attention all to that Senate race, Scott Column? Yeah. What's your, how do you handicap it? Well, people should vote for Scott for.
Starting point is 00:43:45 obviously. But is there hope there? Is there any stretch, these stretch seats? The only reason Sidney Hodge Smith is in the Senate is that she went to Southern and all the U.S. Senators from Mississippi had either gone to, most of them had gone to O'Miss. The governor had gone to Southern. He wanted a female who had gone to Southern and there was Cindy Hudson. Okay, great. Israel is just sort of this local politics playing out. She's a do nothing senator, which is a real shame for a state like Mississippi that doesn't have a lot of congressmen, but does have two senators just like California. Column would be much better.
Starting point is 00:44:18 Can he win? Look, I think if somebody like Column wins, it'll mean that a lot of people are winning. Tolarico won. The main Senate race went Democratic. Yeah, right. But, you know, it's harder than people think to elect a Republican in Mississippi.
Starting point is 00:44:33 You've got to get, depends on African-American turnout. But I elected a lot of people down there. You've got to get about 70% of the white vote. And, you know, as Haley used to say, I can't get 70% at Thanksgiving dinner. And that's a lot harder than you think. And if you get a large African-American turnout, which he should, I think that there are a lot of suburban voters in, you know, Biloxy, Gufford, Jackson, Madison County, who find Trump despicable and have no connection to Sidney Hyde Smith, who, you know, I mean, she could walk down the street naked and people would say, who's that neck.
Starting point is 00:45:14 woman, not why as a U.S. Senator walking down the street. So, yeah, he could win. He could win. He ought to support him. I have a 15-minute limit a week I give myself for any 2028 hot stove talk. And I've used zero minutes this week. So I want to close the pod with Lane Kiffin and I want to pick your brain on 2028 stuff. Because you, as mentioned, you did this a bunch. You're there with Bush. You were there with Romney early. We lost. Yeah, well, okay. But, you know, that's true. but he was a moderate senator or excuse me governor from Massachusetts running against like two extremely famous American heroes at the time American heroes one of them ended up you know pissing his pants literally and becoming a traitor but I don't know you've kind of been in this
Starting point is 00:45:59 moment the summer two years out where people are starting to think about it they call people like you to fly in visit them at the state capitol chat about what it would look like and so my question for you is like you know if you're in a different world if you're a young younger man still, and, you know, you'd stay, you'd been a Democrat and you're still an ad man. Who would you be wanting to ring your phone? I think that the Democratic primary is going to be determined by who best can articulate what is the process to hold the Trump administration accountable. I think that's where the energy of the party is.
Starting point is 00:46:35 If you take, you know, Governor Newsom, not a bad politician. What was his immediate reaction to 24 to have Charlie Kirkland, have, you know, sort of tack right? Democratic Party threw up on his shoes. So he's like, okay, that's not working. I think I'll attack Donald Trump. And then he's rewarded for it. He's praised for it. That's where the party is. It's not going to be about issues. It's going to be about who best can articulate and focus this criminality and anger toward Donald Trump. And you can this debate in the Democratic Party, should it be about gas prices or should it be about ice shooting people? The answer is yes. And you can make it both and they are weirdly connected. because this criminality of the Trump administration affects the entire government. It drives me absolutely bad shit crazy that we have, you know, the president, who's a Republican, who's insane, pointing drunk stooges, communist, you know, agents across the government, and we have a national debate about what's wrong with the Democratic Party? Are we really having this debate?
Starting point is 00:47:37 I mean, you know, I spent decades pointing out flaws in Democratic Party, but it's still the only pro-democracy party in America. So I think intensity and anger is going to drive that primary. And it's not going to be about ideology in a classic sense. So who's going to be best at that? You know, one of the things we've learned many times is it's like sports. You never know do they get out there. Yeah, I know. But who if you saw their name on the caller ID would give you a little shoot up the leg,
Starting point is 00:48:08 would give you a little, this could be fun. This would be fun. You know, if you were going to do one more run around the base, Like, who sounds fun? You know, I'd work for Pritzer and a heartbeat. Not a lot of people talk about him, but I agree with that. Yeah, he has money. Illinois's a little bit of baggage for him on that.
Starting point is 00:48:22 But I don't know. The whole like, oh, he's a billionaire. It's like, I don't know, man. All these old rules, we elected a guy that talked in public about dating his daughter. I'm not sure, you know, these old rules still apply. His idea of church was, you know, every 12 years you go to church and marry a model. Go to Springfield. you know, start chatting them, what the strategies are going to be?
Starting point is 00:48:47 I think he could be a great candidate. But there are a lot more, I think, Josh Shapiro. I'd love to work for Josh Shapiro. I would go door to door. If Josh Shapiro is a nominee, I will go door to door for him. Now, probably they might ask me to campaign for the Republican because I'd cost him votes. But I think Josh Shapiro would be a fantastic, I think he's immensely talented and would be a fantastic candidate. This idea we're going to elect a Jewish president.
Starting point is 00:49:10 I mean, give me a break. We elected Donald Trump. the whole thing. I don't know. I mean, I do think that he's probably out of step where the base is with intensity-wise on Israel. How will that play out in a year? Hard to predict. But the Jewish thing is such a crazy smear. Like Bernie, who's Jewish. John Ossoff is a hot commodity right now, Jewish. You never hear anybody say that about him. I think Ossoff could get elected president. There's just so much more time. I think Newsom could get elected president. I would not downplay that guy. He is another tremendously talented athlete. And there is a very positive story to be told him
Starting point is 00:49:42 about California despite all these sort of, you know, negatives. Okay, well, he'd really need you to help with that positive story on California. He'd need some bad wizards to help. I found myself in the car listening to this long interview with Scott Galloway with Newsom. Okay. And I have to say, I was super impressed with Newsom. His ability to defend what he's done. He's good in that format.
Starting point is 00:50:03 Yeah, he's very good. His ability to say, okay, we didn't do enough here. We should have done more. You're absolutely right, which is the right approach. That's the problem Republicans have now. him, as you know, there's a template to get out of the mess they're in. But it starts with saying, give us a second chance, we need to improve. And you can't do that in Republican Party now because you can't admit that you made a mistake.
Starting point is 00:50:27 And that just sort of takes away one of the basic, it's like fighting and boxing match with one hand. It just kind of takes away one of the basic moves in politics. Totally agree on the Republicans. But I want to close some story time. What is that like? You know, we went to Boston to meet with Mitt. McCain's going to be in. Rudy's going to be in.
Starting point is 00:50:46 He doesn't have a national profile, but he thinks he has a message. Like, what was that? Like, what happens in those meetings? I had a very contrary pitch to candidates. I would always be asked, you know, not surprisingly, how do you think, how do we win? And my standard answer was, I have no idea. And anybody who tells you that now is going to be lying to you. But I know how to figure out.
Starting point is 00:51:10 how we can win as the race goes on. And I would always discourage candidates. I would say as bad as you think this is going to be, it's going to be worse. So don't do this if the day after the race, when you lose, you're still glad you won. Still glad you ran. Because that's the test, because most people who run lose. And, you know, the candidates I had found that appealing because it was honest. And they, you know, it wasn't like a bunch of bullshit.
Starting point is 00:51:35 And I think that the biggest trap as a consultant to fall into, when you start winning races, and the secret to winning races is consultant is to work for people who are going to win anyway and just don't fuck it up. It's like being a baseball coach or something. Baseball manager, you know, get good players. That helps. You know, it's good leaders to Lane Kiffin. But you start winning races. You start to think that you've figured things out.
Starting point is 00:52:01 And that is a huge, huge trap because no races are the same. And I will say this, you know, about Carl Rove, who I do think. think is a political genius. You know, Carl always stayed humble. And in Bushworld, we had a lot of flaws, but we stayed humble. And we used to joke. It seemed a little funny at the time after the 2000 race, you know, anybody can elect somebody president when you get more votes. It takes professionals when you get half a million less. But then in 2004, we almost lost, you know, half of a home game at Ohio State gone the other way. We would have lost. So don't think that you figured it out.
Starting point is 00:52:42 And I think that that ability to stay humble. And to look at a candidate, I've always thought the job of a consultant is look at a candidate and say, what is it that you do best? And I am going to help you do that better than anybody else. And I'm just going to take your flaws and make sure your flaws aren't so bad they defeat you. So with Romney in 2012, when he's running from the nomination, it was, okay, you're going to beat Mitt Romney, you're going to beat him on the economy. I say, who we're going to die on.
Starting point is 00:53:09 We're not going to get into these social. Wars. He was the only guy on stage when asked if Obama was a socialist. He didn't raise his hand. And you know, it's really amazing to think a party nominated Mitt Romney and then they nominated Donald Trump. And I
Starting point is 00:53:24 don't know, certainly in modern political history, there's ever been such a difference of a party. And you could see in the 12 primary, and I used to say this to Mitt all the time, look, man, if the party goes crazy, there's
Starting point is 00:53:40 nothing we can do. We can't chase crazy. You just got to let them go crazy. They're going to nominate New Cambridge. It's crazy. You have to be what you're going to do. You have to say. Yeah. The one thing ducked in there, you're right, was the met on the economy thing. And that's my message. It seems like the most basic advice ever. But it's pretty remarkable if you go back to recent Democratic presidential campaigns, maybe the last three, 16, and then you have a big primary in 20 and then 24. How many of those like candidates had like, here's the one or two things that they're going to own. It's going to be their thing.
Starting point is 00:54:13 And it's like, it's hard to think of too many. I mean, Bernie, obviously, Biden and 20 kind of, Restore Soul of America, Pete, kind of. And it's like about it, right? And that's my big thing. It's just like the basics. A lot of these guys just don't do the basics on the front end. Jeb didn't do it, by the way, hand up.
Starting point is 00:54:31 Like, it's just, that's just it. Yeah, yeah. I would have voted for Jeff, by the way. And he would have been a good president. And, you know, it's a fascinating subject. What if Jeb had been president? The party would have been the same party, but it'd be a very different party, which maybe goes back to that thing we used to learn. We still had civics classes that leaders matter.
Starting point is 00:54:49 Look, I think that the key in these things is to accept what the race is about. So 16 was about change. And we're in a series of change elections. Trump was more of a change agent than Hillary Clinton. Okay. Biden was more of a change agent than Donald Trump. Donald Trump was more of a change agent, even though we had an African-American vice president. She still was the incumbent vice president's vice president.
Starting point is 00:55:15 More of a change agent. And midterms are going to be a change election. Republicans are going to get slaughtered. And 28 is going to be a change election. So I think that the greatest danger, if you're a Democrat, is to run on the idea of trying to restore. It can't be about that. You could make a good case. I'm sure I did many times that if you elected a normal Democrat, that,
Starting point is 00:55:37 be such gratitude and appreciation like, thank God, we have a normal president and we can go back to that, that you would reward it. Well, that theory didn't prove to be true. Biden didn't win re-election. So again, I think that you have to go back to what is it going to, I would want on a platform the first day I was in, I would nationalize Starlink, I would nationalize SpaceX, I would pass a millionaires tax, I would erect a statue in the hall honoring those. police officers who defended the capital, you have to go for big stuff. I can hear you and J.B. Pritzker talking about this. Maybe you should fight a Springfield. That's good. That's a good platform.
Starting point is 00:56:17 You need national health insurance. Don't run away from it. And I've never seen a poll where if you're going to increase taxes over people who made over a million dollars who didn't test like 9010. And if you made that $5 million, it would test like 98, too. Don't be afraid of that stuff. Don't run away from being the party that is arguing that that these people should pay more. All right. Two football hot takes. Do you have an NIL hot take and state of play, college football?
Starting point is 00:56:44 It's a great time to be a player. You know, I just find it fascinating that it sounds like to punch on to a joke, but you have guys playing who can't afford to turn pro. Because they're making more money. And look, I think it's crazy. My advice is somebody, if you're in a big college town with a big town, university, when there's a football practice zone, just drive by the parking lot. You'll see more Lamborghinis than you ever believed possible.
Starting point is 00:57:17 You can drive in front of, like, you know, Apple and you will see, you know, they all drive periods, but they have Lamborghinis in their garage that they hide. But I will say this about Lake Griffin. My favorite Lane Giffon story, when he went to, you know, he was a big hot yoga guy. Yeah. And he constantly, you know, he goes there, he cleanses, everybody loves me. As soon as he left and he went in New Orleans, there was a series of women posting, like, on Instagram who went to hot yoga class. Like, thank God this creep is gone.
Starting point is 00:57:46 I don't have to wake up at 6 in the morning and go to hot yoga and watch this guy by checking me out and hitting on me. It was so, so classic. All right. Well, there you go. I was going to give you a full minute of Lane Kiff and hate. You just use 30 seconds. You have 30 more seconds? You want to throw on him?
Starting point is 00:58:03 Look, the problem with Lane Kippen is he's good at what he does. and he's going to be a really good coach. I think he's fatally flawed and character matters. And I think it's just so telling that all these star athletes didn't leave Ole Miss. Yeah. So, Ole Miss has a leading quarterback in the country and the leading running back and the leading kicker. It's not a bad start. It didn't a bad start.
Starting point is 00:58:25 It's going to be a fun September. I just didn't have you having fun. My view on the NIL thing is, yeah, they got to put some rules around it. It's gotten a little out of control, but they should be making money. They deserve it. We're all paying money. It's better that they're making some of the money than that. the money's going into the pocket of the AD and, you know, just the head coach.
Starting point is 00:58:41 It's fine. They've got to put some rules on it. But I'm glad they're making some money. We'll figure it out. And I'm just glad it's going to be fun again. My thing about the World Cup is I don't even give a fuck about soccer, but watching that Mexico-England game in Azteca. I was just like, this is amazing. Everyone's so excited.
Starting point is 00:58:57 It's such a cultural movement. Everyone's coming together. Everyone's united. It's a healthy tribalism. You know, we need an outlet for healthy tribalism to not do unhealthy tribalism. to not do unhealthy tribalism. That's that's SEC football. You can just throw on a game
Starting point is 00:59:10 and everybody's very excited and I think it's going to be fun this year. You need a bad guy. My team's going to be the bad guy this year. That's all right. And we'll see how it goes on September 19th. All right, Stuart.
Starting point is 00:59:21 All right, brother. Put September. So the 20th will be a Sunday, 21st will be a Monday because that's Monday's Bill Crystal. Put September 22 in your calendar. Okay. And September 22, if the, if the revs win,
Starting point is 00:59:33 I'll be in one of my buddies, Ole shirts, all right? Okay, that's a deal. And if they lose, I, you know, probably could have received enough therapy by then that I'll be coherent and be able to talk about it. Sounds good. We'll see you in September, man. All right, thank you. I appreciate you so much. Everybody else will be back here on Monday with Bill Crystal. Have a great weekend. See you all then. Peace. Hey, Louisiana woman.
Starting point is 00:59:55 Mississippi men. We'll get together every time we can. Mississippi River can keep us apart. There's too much love and it's Mississippi heart. Too much love. The Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Anzley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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