The Bulwark's Tim Miller on What Can Stop Trump, JD Vance's Superpower, the Epstein Files Fallout, and More

Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox. It's Brian Curtis, along with producers Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. We are joined today by the man sitting across from me at Ringer headquarters. He is the only celebrity Denver Nuggets fan. i think that's true and um the nuggets made it to the nba finals uh famously two years ago became the champions i heard about that and uh the year before bill had had on oh who's the famous celebrity bucks fan that he likes to have on writes the newsletter anyway had that guy on and i was like this could be me next year when the nuggets are in this could be me but i didn't get the phone call and so you know we're hope i'm hoping uh i'm in my p-watch shirt um he's having a breakout year yokich is yokich you know it could happen again there could be another chance i'm hoping yokich needs one more i just want one more you're ringing so hard right now i didn't even get through the intro yeah this is tim miller by the way the bulwark podcast is here did we not did you not say my name no i didn't i started doing peyton watson people know me at this point people people know you i guess i don't know maybe not maybe not in a nuggets context but they they know you quite We're about to find out. Do you remember the last time we potted together? I remember that we have potted together. I can't recall the topic. It was right after Joe Biden debated Donald Trump. Oh, my God, yes. Yeah, that was a traumatic period. No wonder I don't remember that. I blacked it out. The only time I ever missed a TV hit my entire life on MSNOW, formerly MSNBC, was that next morning. I was supposed to be on Morning Joe. but i was i was chain smoking cigarettes and rage typing a bulwark article about how joe biden need to drop out and like maybe drinking a little bit until like 4 30 in the morning and i passed out and not only did i miss my alarm i like rolled way it was 10 it was like nine people were but they're about to send people to the hotel room to make sure i was still alive it was that level of i didn't just sleep through morning joe i slept through whatever's on after morning joe i slept to the whole deal. So it was a traumatizing experience to be there for that. And think about that. A traumatic moment in American politics and that seems, you know, now it's somewhere on the list of things that happened. I don't know. It's still pretty, it's still pretty high up there in the rankings for me. And it's largely responsible for why we're here. I've got a lot of, I've got a lot of Joe Biden bitterness that I could share. It's probably not right for the Press Box podcast. Well, I don't know. We might get there. So yeah, I think it's still it's pretty significant. I mean, the shit that has happened since has been obviously more harmful to. Yes, but we could blame a lot of it. A lot of it goes back to that. I mean, you know, look, a disaster like this has a lot of fathers, you know, and we could go back to Iraq and go back to the invention of the cell phones. I got the apprentice putting him on TV. I mean, like there are a lot of different things that had to happen, things that had to go wrong to get us here. but Joe Biden running again and then participating in that debate was, was one of the, one of the factors for sure. It indeed is somewhere on the list. Most important question I'm going to ask you, bad money or kid rock last night. Boy. Hmm. That's tough one. You know, as an elder millennial kid, rock was pretty influential when I was in high school. But I got to go with bad bunny. I liked that. I liked that. And wave of y'all that he ended with the set design was unbelievable. Oh my God. unbelievable so trees everything wasn't my favorite gaga song but it was a good it was a good set i don't you know this whole thing there's this guy um uh it's like a new orleans uh over the new orleans podcast guy called hold the mayo and he was posting today he doesn't do politics at all he's just a sports guy and he was just like you know i didn't know a lot about bad bunny and i kind of liked it it's pretty cool and his audience is like freaking out like the comment section is all either like fuck you you know what i mean like i don't know do we have to this is i guess a typical centrist squish bulwark view but like do we have to polarize around the halftime show and it could be pretty good i thought it was pretty good and it had some very significant you know themes um i thought it was moving at the end how he talked about the americas broadly and how we're one um and maybe he gets through to some people and trump did get some gains in the latino community so you know whatever but i don't know did we do this before like was it like this you know in the aughts it wasn't it wasn't polarized and i also don't think we all had an opinion about the super bowl half some people did some people didn't yeah you know it also takes it back to the phones you shared it with your friends at the party you know i don't remember i can't remember what it was was it mccartney i i remember being in high school with my buddies that you know one of uh super bowl party and you know some people liked it some people didn't we moved on my favorite last night would be the allies if you will the pro bad bunny crowd yeah they were watching and they were like i wish i spoke spanish i'm like you know we had we have middle schools and high schools that would have helped you accomplish that goal had you wanted to speak spanish but here you are an adult you don't speak spanish you don't understand all the lyrics and i gotta say and i hope that this doesn't offend any of like the bunny heads out there like the music is better than the lyrics actually i did do a lyrics deep dive um uh because i was playing a uh played a little game on the board podcast with david french and asked him if he could tell the difference between a bad money and a kid rock lyric and the bad money lyrics are more sophisticated than the kid rock lyrics for sure but it's you know it's not dylan okay i mean it's not sure it's not kendrick i mean it's good it's a part it's party music you know and so i don't know i think that people could could be could survive and be happy to just enjoy the music without having to know the lyrics that's that's an that's an okay experience totally i uh watched a little the turning point usa halftime show this morning well you know podcasting this is this is what we do content i'll just share one highlight with you it starts and was kelsey grammar really there or was that a joke i did not get to that i was watching a thread of things that happened and I think it was a troll. Like in the middle of them, they dumped in like Kelsey Grammer sang a rendition of tossed salad and scrambled eggs. That was actually pretty good. I'm pretty sure that did not happen. All right. So which part did you say? They did start with the national anthem. I don't know about where you come from, but in real America, where I come from, we play the national anthem at the beginning of the football game. And we don't come back around to that at halftime. Yeah. No one's ever said, hey, the national anthem, can we do that again? Yeah. No. Was it a good rendition? was it was it electric guitar okay you know kind of little hendrix-y yeah it's fine all right kelsey grammar's thinking i don't know i think it's pretty sad i think it's pretty sad that folks don't know about me like i i used to be a republican and i just like the grievance and the bitterness and the need to complain about everything it's just it's really just not healthy You know, I don't I don't understand what attracts anybody to this. Like they feel like they have to be so aggrieved by the halftime performance. They've got to create their own. They've got to go pretend to like Kid Rock. Who is this? Like, why? Why do this to yourself? You know, life is too short for these kind of quibbles. I agree. I totally agree. Yeah. Here's a question for you. Yeah. How has Donald Trump changed pop culture, do you think? Well, I mean, a lot of ways. career-wise unfortunately i mean you know i i i fucking hate donald trump right you know as much as anybody all right i i give no quarter to anyone in that competition but like you just have to acknowledge his success in this front i mean the the fact that he was so ubiquitous you know before he ran for president right like he's in home alone he's in how many rap lyrics is he in like he's in a lot of rap lyrics before FDT. Like, you know, when it was like, we're trying to be like Donald Trump, like that kind of, you know, rich guy, unapologetic, you know, um, brash brand, I think was definitely influential in, you know, his heyday before, um, obviously the apprentice had, i have cultural cachet and then i think now look like the um the way that people that elites like have to talk now this is i mean this is this is maybe a chicken or egg thing with donald trump and the phones back to the phones but like donald trump's just let it rip i'm gonna weigh in on everything i am going to be crude um people have now come to expect that and i just i was talking to a uh you know a class of uh uh at a college at tulane um and you know i asked him about i made a reference to the 2012 campaign you know one of my formative campaigns they don't they don't remember any of them anything from the 2012 campaign like this is like a political science right so trump was in the 2016 campaign so these guys they don't know anything besides him and so it's it sounds weird now i think if you are a ceo athlete a politician for sure and you talk in like press release talk now like you kind of sound like the weird one and so I feel like he has had a degrading cultural effect on the way people talk even and the way people communicate so that's not great we could probably come up with some more things yeah no I totally agree about weighing it on everything because if you looked at him raging on true social last night about bad bunny he eventually gets the NFL kickoff rule he has an opinion about that too he doesn't like that he doesn't like that yeah no good kind of agree with someone that i don't love it yeah you kind of have to hand it to him on the end of the call i don't have to hand it to him i just you know uh he's bound to get one right at some point you know another thing i was just thinking about this too like the end of the conflict of interest you know donald trump has trump meme coin sized conflicts of interest and i just feel that sort of filtered down to into culture like you just don't have to pick anymore yeah like in my world you know tom brady can be a part owner of the raiders and call games on tv and it's just you just shrug your way through it and go eh it's okay i do think yeah and vice signaling it's like internally use that like as sort of this reaction to virtue signaling where it's like almost good to signal that you like are a rule breaker don't care about people's feelings or you know um uh are doing an insult comic dog routine like that's good right like or to say something that you know will hurt somebody's feelings it's like seen as a value then i agree with you on the corruption part it's look if the president is unapologetically corrupt and they have totally hollowed out the part of the department of justice that looks into uh public corruption and white collar crime what is the case for you to not be corrupt and cheap i mean you know that's just like i mean janice joining calci for example as a board member i noticed that um recently it's like this feels bad i i mean you know people were just betting on whether or not you were going to get traded and two minutes ago and now you're now you're a board member of the financial stake so i look and i think not to do the whole like won't somebody think of the children thing but like kids like it filters down throughout the culture you know there's kind of a get mine like attitude where you know being a winner winner winning culture like being a winner getting yours um you know not not feeling like you have to follow the rules or care about consistency or virtue like that i i do think has trickled down throughout our society maybe there'll be a backlash against it probably you know there usually is backlash against things like this i mean i think the trumpism in a lot of ways is backlash against some of the excesses of like the dominant woke culture or whatever you want to call it. But boy, I don't know. It's kind of a long way back, I guess. How close is Trump's second administration to what you thought it would be? You know, in some ways worse, in some ways better. Like my biggest fear, like if you'd called me, what are we? If you'd called me last Super Bowl, you know, you'd just gotten in, right? when week one or two and so like what are your biggest fears that's probably about that time he nominated cash a little bit before and i was like man i look at that i look at that fbi and they're talking about matt gates for doj for a while and then it's bondy and i was like at the top of my fear list is the retribution campaign it's like the fbi has a ton of repower and resources i'm like knocking on wood right now um that they can use before you get to a grand jury to like looking at people's phones you know come to your house you know shake people like you know the bad old days fbi um did a lot of stuff that we had you know rooted out over decades through reforms and norms and you know having people that had their you know best interests of of the country at heart and i was just like man i think that these guys are gonna be ruthless and coming after their you know their enemies list and they have been like the keystone cops on that front and just a total they're just stepping on rakes everywhere cash seems to care more about like going to his girlfriend's country music concerts than actually doing anything pam bondy they can't find any lawyers to work for them they have like parking garage lawyers going you know trying to go after jim comey they haven't success like don lemon did have to spend the night in jail well not great bad you know but like i don't think anybody i don't think he's shaking in his boots that they're going to be able to take him down so that part has been less competent they've been way more i think competent than i would have expected in like the area of tearing down the government like what doge did and getting rid of usa id entirely was not something that was i had seen um and then i think that they've been about what i would have expected on immigration which is horrible um which is the worst part of the the term so far and then you would have expected some crazy trump stuff like would i have pictured greenland and venezuela invasions like probably not those probably wouldn't have been my picks but um like the idea that he would do something goofy like that um something like yeah it was about what you would expect so uh you know i think that um it's been bad i and and i guess i should have framed all that up by saying i was expecting extremely bad so if it's kind of in the ballpark of what i expected that's not great Trump isn't popular right now. Do you think he cares that he's unpopular? And his dad didn't hug him. And so that does matter to him. Okay. At some level, like he has a little bit of a black hole in his heart and he wants to be loved. It's, you know, and he does wants to be adored and respected. And so I do think this like very minor pullback we've seen in some of the ICE and CVP activities over the past few weeks as a result of like, unlike Stephen Miller and maybe J.D. Vance and other autocrats throughout the world I think that Trump is much more susceptible than other autocrats to like a couple of people calling him and being like dude like you don't want white people dead in the streets like that's not good it's bad you should stop and I do think that like you can get to him that way um and so that is a way in which he's different than you know some of the worst case scenario autocrats you hear thrown about for where we're headed. So, you know, from that standpoint, I think that he cares a little bit. He cares about the markets, right? And I don't, he doesn't, he's not acting like somebody who just is planning to stay no matter what. And he doesn't care if his approval rating is 18% and there's going to be blood in the streets. I mean, there'll be some people in my world, in the anti-Trump world, who will say that that's what he's acting like. That's not how I assess him. And I assess it very bad, but I don't assess it like that. So I think it matters. And I think that his numbers get worse and they lose both chambers of Congress, which is possible, which I did not really. I thought the Senate was probably going to be out of play. And I'm starting to change my mind on that just because of the unpopularity of his, you know, his agenda so far. So that would matter as far as like how much time are they going to have to spend doing oversight? Now, are they going to care? Are they going to testify? Are they going to stonewall? Like how do they act when he's a total lane dunk in 2027? You'd be a fool to try to predict, right? Because who knows? Right. And I remember on election night, I saw Chris Hayes and we were talking about this somewhere. And I think he made the point or I did, but we were both having agreement that like this term was the widest possible spectrum of outcomes of any possible term. You know, like he could have just decided to play golf all the time and been so happy he wasn't in jail and done nothing. like or he could you know try to be putin right like or anything in between and um and i still feel that way kind of about the last two years like as he's aging he's a lame duck he's gonna have a hostile congress almost certainly what is he how does he react to that right um not not great And so you know I think in the short term he more he cares more about his public image than he might like in the last year Yeah. And maybe there's a more precise way of saying, does he care about a number in the Gallup poll? Or does he care, as you say, about somebody calling him on his cell phone? Yeah. And saying like, hey, you don't want to do this. I think that's right. He cares about the markets. He cares about, you know, his rich buddies calling him. He cares about, you know, wanting to be able to get what he wants. Like to the degree that his numbers start to go down so much that other Republicans start blocking him from doing what he wants. And he might change his tune. But I agree with you. I don't know that he cares if he's at 39 versus 42. Tim Scott getting on Twitter after he posted the gross thing about the Obamas and being like, this is no good. Please take it down. Yeah, he took it down. He took it down. He didn't apologize. guys you know it was no you know he doesn't deserve a medal for taking it didn't say i'm going to be doing a lot of listening yeah going forward but you know it shows that like he's he's responsive to that in a way that i don't know i think that some people on the left don't appreciate i was thinking about moments he's kind of flinched or pulled back you mentioned ice after alex preddy to an extent he got rid of the sean penn guy and you know demoted christine home um If only the Sean Penn guy had the Sean Penn end, you know. Oh, my God. Find a nice corner office for him. So I saw that movie a little bit late, and then, you know, Minnesota happened, and I was like, oh, I didn't know who was playing whom. Who was based on the other guy in that scenario? That was very weird. But Minnesota, Greenland maybe, depending on what his ambitions for Greenland actually were at the beginning of that whole adventure. And then the Obama's post. Yeah. Those are moments he sort of climbed down a long. Tariffs sometimes. Tariffs in certain cases. Firing Powell. He waited that out. I think he wanted to fire Powell at the Fed. One I like to bring up because I think it's pretty important is that they wanted to use the El Salvador Gulag as like a holding place for a whole lot of criminals. and like they put sent that first group of it's been a while now so i'm trying to remember 400 or so i think um they said the first group of 400 or so there but but bukele comes to the white house after they're there and trump and them are joking on like a hot mic trump's like you're gonna have to expand that place threefold because we're sending so many more people there huge backlash um to the fact that they sent these venezuelans to el salvador with no due process nothing and they're in this, you know, essentially gulag. And eventually, because of like Central American politics, South American politics, not really to do with us, the Venezuelans get sent from El Salvador to Venezuela. And now there's nobody there. I mean, they're El Salvadorans there. But I think that's like telling, right? I mean, they were, that was going to be, you know, their holding place for the undesirables. And they've backed off that so far. what do you think the biggest restraints on trump's power will be for the next three years i'm sorry to be i'm sorry to be cheesy but like kind of us i mean regular people not you and me um you know podcasting doesn't hurt the podcast uh yeah podcast bros white podcast bros are actually going to be uh the thing that say uh stands in the brink um now i just think look um in minneapolis if people weren't on the streets people let that happen they'd still be there i mean they're still there but like the they the back down was because people basically spoke out and then sadly there have been two deaths as a result of that so it was not without real sacrifice um uh in like a less serious sense jimmy kimmel your buddy cousin jimmy got back on the air why because people said no fuck you like i had never had nobody talked about that i don't know i thought i might have been happy to leave jimmy hanging out to dry um i uh steve bannon uh was talking last week about how he wants to put ice agents outside of the voting locations i i kind of think that will backfire um i think they should try that if they want but i think that there will be more people who are um not always midterm voters you know maybe they're just maybe they're ringer sports consumers not ringer press box consumers you know they're all watching you know they're watching one of the other shows and like maybe they're like you know maybe i should vote this time um in the midterms because f these guys they're gonna put troops outside the ballot box no so i i just think that that um is is the best constraint on him there's not going to be a lot of constraints from inside um conceivably the supreme court i think we'll i think we're going to learn a lot in the next session because they've got they've got some pretty easy calls on birthright citizenship tariffs are they gonna back are they gonna let him do what he wants on those that'd be a pretty bad sign so i think um i think that most on the left have already checked off the spring court as a check i i you know i i'm a little bit torn on that because they because trump has done the most illegal things of any president so it's not surprising but the spring court has overturned trump more than any this spring court has overturned trump more than any court has overturned any president and since fdr and so i think it remains to be seen um they're political animals too do they start does amy coney barrett and them start to see the exit i don't know you But unfortunately, I think it's Kamala Harris' term. It's got to be people power. I think we're stuck with us. It sounds so corny when you say it. It is corny. It's corny, but there's not a lot of other good leverage points left. Who else is coming to save us? No, I don't have a list for you. They're not coming like Batman or superhero of your choice. Another topic, sort of. What did you make of the latest batch of the Epstein files? um i'm i i'm i'm starting to i think uh grow into my inevitable final form which is conspiratorial anti-government podcast bro because i um i don't know i i'm my take of that this is supposed to be political because that's you know my beat the politics but i just read through these emails And I hate everybody in there like so much. And the idea that like some of the most powerful, richest, influential people in the world could not turn down a dinner invite to hang out with Woody Allen and Larry Summers boggles my mind. It's just like, I just want there to be a few people in these emails to be like replying like, sorry, Jeffrey, you're a kid fucker. I'm not interested in dinner with Roman Polanski. Thanks for the invite. Lose my number. Like I want one of those emails and nobody does it. And this goes back to the, this maybe shows that maybe Trump didn't have this influence on our culture. Maybe we have a cultural rot, but like, this is all happening before him. But I just, the fact that in that period, after he gets out between 20, whenever that is 2012, 2013 and 2017, 18, and he just like slowly moves back into society and everybody just goes along with it. And he, and he just leverages other people's influence. and, you know, whitewashes himself the way the Saudis are whitewashing themselves with golfers. And it's sickening. That part is sickening. I think that, like, there is still a big question mark, which is which of these people were complicit in the child rapes? Because it isn't just Jeffrey Epstein and the prince formerly, the Andrew formerly known as Prince Andrew. Like, there's other people. just math dictates and so until that part is cleared up i don't feel like anyone's gonna be very satisfied but like that to me is the thing that it's like okay well we still got three million docs but it's like who else was who else was doing the kitty fucking you know we don't know and these files are just a massive grab bag of things yeah and sometimes it's hard suggestions yeah and it's also right and it's also just like the lack of trust in our media institutions like we're trying to do this i'm trying the best we can to be responsible as a podcast host and all this because you see stuff online and like i'll have 11 million views like i thought like here's one example i saw somebody was sharing all the times that a person redacted wanted to have pizza and grape juice with or grape soda pizza and grape soda with epstein and so a lot of people online were like doing pc pizza gate was real oh no like why could why would this guy be wanting to have pizza and grape soda with jeffrey epstein but then if you actually go and look at the files i forget who i'm cribbing this from so the chat out to somebody who like went through actually went through and looked at each reference and i'm like what at least one of the emails the guy literally sends a picture of eating pizza and grape soda maybe they just they're just old guys that like to go out for a slice and a grape soda so so you just don't know right like i do think that there were some people who used horrible judgment hanging out with him but weren't involved in the child sex trafficking and and and there are other people out there that know that their bread is buttered right now and trying to make you know whatever cream cheese turn into a code word and and that stuff's hard to kind of separate out the wheat from the chaff you know everybody was pointing to that john ossoff clip when he was on the stump the other day how do you How do you think the files will play politically? 26. I liked the way that he framed it. I think that's why people were pointing to the frame. And I think actually the Grocona coined this. So shout out to Roe as well. But he called he said Trump's cares about the Epstein class. I think that's right. unfortunately i think if your question is do the american people care that donald trump committed sexual assault i think that we can render a verdict pretty clearly that they do not and if it if evidence came out that he did so to a 17 year old or 16 year old would they care maybe i don't know he admitted to grabbing women by the pussy and no on tape and and a bunch of women gave credible allegations that he did exactly what he said on the tape and they like And our fellow Americans elected him twice. So I'm like less convinced that that part is going to be politically salient. I do think that this idea that Trump went in with the promise that he was going to care about regular folks, the forgotten man, the people that got screwed over by inflation, you know, people that that were that the elites didn't care about. I think that that was a powerful message. I think that the Republicans want to continue to deliver that with credibility. and I think that the Epstein thing in combination with some of the other policies they're putting forth give the Democrats an opportunity to kind of recapture the mantle of being like no actually we're not it's not us, this is the party of the elites like they said that but turns out that the richest cabinet in history is this guy and that what he cared about most was his new gold ballroom and redecorating the Kennedy Center and pardoning his fancy friends and his billion dollar crypto grift and making sure that the people in the Epstein files didn't go to justice. And we didn't, what he didn't care all about was the fact that you were struggling to pay rent, you know? And I think that that is potentially compelling. I think it's a remains to be seen thing, but I, I liked the way that Ossoff framed it up. It's the issue that's been vexing the Democrats since 2016. And this is the side door way to get around that. The list off everything you've just said and then add into that the epstein files yeah such as they are the epstein class and and here look the the dems got into this tough position which which i think was a genuine pickle which is like trump is promising to burn everything down and so just like naturally democrats kind of this position where they're like kind of the defenders of the status quo like okay we should make some changes to the fbi but like oh it's not a deep state conspiracy like we should, you know, do that, you know, you know, sure, we made some mistakes in foreign policy, but we shouldn't do that. And so the Democrats like kept always being people that were like defending a democratic system that a lot of people are frustrated with, you know. And so I do think that this is now opening the door for the Democrats to capture back being like, no, that's their system that's broken. And we want to make these changes to it. And they haven't had that really since Obama was able to run against Iraq in LA, right? That was like really the last time that the Democrats got to be, you know, an outsider in a credible way, like going after elites. And Trump made that very hard. It's like every college educated person is like repulsed by him. So naturally the Democrats, you know, picked up a lot of elites on their side of the ledger during the Trump years. And I think that that hurt the brand with folks. So I think the Epstein class thing might be a way to recapture some of that outsider-ness. It's cathartic to be mad at the Democrats. Yeah. Here in 2026, what exactly should people be mad at the Democrats for? Boy, I mean, the biggest thing to be mad at the Democrats for is just the lack, like, The rhetoric about the threat of Trump has not matched the actions for like a decade. You know, like if Trump was an existential threat, he already did this one, but again, should we be putting up an 81 year old that can barely talk as his opponent? Probably not. You know, like if Trump is an existential threat, should we hand the nomination to the next person in line who didn't run a particularly good campaign? Or should we, you know, have a contest where we where the cream rises to the top? And maybe it is. Maybe it ends up in Kamala Harris. Maybe it's not. You know, if Trump is a biggest, you know, this great of a threat, you know, should we spend two years like doing nothing when it comes to investigating him and just trust that the process will work itself out? Or should we try to jumpstart it a little bit? You know, if Trump is the biggest threat, should the Democrats, you know, I'm in Louisiana. So the Democrats try to nominate people in Louisiana and Texas and some of these other states where they've run before that have maybe some maybe some views that like Democratic elites don't love on various social and cultural issues. But in the hopes that they can win back seats in these states, you know, rather than putting up hopeless resistance wires. Yeah, should they, you know, should they be fighting about immigration like they finally are now? So I think that like the it took the Democrats about a year to get their running shoes on on like fighting the administration tooth and nail on everything rather than. Whatever the first plan was, which was kind of like focus on kitchen table issues only. So I think that they're doing pretty well now. I think that I like what we're seeing from from Democrats in D.C. right now. I think they're getting a little bit of a raw deal. I think they did pretty well in the first shutdown. I think they're doing pretty well so far in this negotiation over DHS funding. And I just wish that, like, you know, if your house was burning down and a firefighter showed up to the house, you wouldn't be like, hey, sir, will you see if you qualify, if you can check every box on my identity politics list? to make sure that we can, you know, let you put some water on the house. You know, I want to make sure you're not problematic before you save my house from burning down. Like, no, that's not really what you would do. You know, you would have you'd be, I think, a little bit a little bit looser and more forgiving. And I just to me, that's like the fundamental issue of the Democrats. It's just it hasn't they. They they've maybe they let their words have met their actions on the. trump threat which democrats i'm not officially running but we all know that i'm running for president campaign has impressed you so far i would like to be impressed more so um wanting yeah well this is not a cop-out um because you know i'm going to tell people what i really think is that once the campaign actually starts but i just uh to that last question I just I want to see some more creative thinking like I like here's what here's what I like about Gavin he's tried some shit like at first he tried the thing he's like I'm gonna do a podcast where I talk to Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk and I'm like a little nice to them and and I want to hear their views and treat them in good faith that didn't work out so well it was an idea no bad no bad ideas and brainstorm then his new idea was fuck these guys I'm gonna like go to the nail on them on social media i'm gonna be a warrior against trump i'm gonna redistrict the state in as aggressive a way as possible to fight their you know gerrymandering efforts and like that shit worked and so that good so i i have i think gavin has some other weaknesses but it like okay great that good a lot of the other people out there are kind of doing the types of stuff that you would do if this was 2012 And um I just think that uh I guess the exception of AOC is not like my cup of tea really ideologically, but, um, I liked it. She's out there every night after on the steps, given, given viral clips, responding, being unapologetic about it, being herself. When she posts on social media, you can tell it's AOC, like maybe a staffer vets it but you can tell she wrote it sounds like her yes is there another democrat who posts where it sounds like them like say you unread jd vance and trump but their posts sound like them trump's posts are insane jd vance posts like are like smug and condescending like i'm pretty sure both of them are doing the posts and and you know you would think there should be more important things for being president of the united states near 2028 but like not really kind People want to feel like they know the candidate. They want authenticity. They want to feel like the candidate is listening and cares about them. And one way to do that and signal it is to just be yourself and not be a talking point machine. So, you know, and I think the other thing is, I think that the Democrats, if you look back on the two, like, most successful candidates of the modern media era, Barack Hussein Obama and Donald Trump. like barack obama ran against hillary clinton against the establishment of the democratic party unapologetic about being the first black person running for president who didn't have that great of a resume but he knew what he was good at he's a great speaker he talked about like in weird ways he went to the left of the party on some stuff he kind of kept to the center on other stuff talking about how we should unite between blue states and red states like it was it was heterodox it wasn't Like, you know, oh, I'm the liberal candidate or I'm the progressive candidate or the moderate candidate. Like he brought something new. Then Donald Trump brought something super new. Like he ran to the right of the party on being a racist and on immigration and on crime. Then he ran to the left of the establishment of the Republican Party on foreign policy and on health care and social security. That worked, obviously. And so I'm a little confused why every Democrat I can think of that might run in 2028, their platform right now sounds like it would be not too dissimilar from the platform that Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton ran on. Why? Why not try something really new? So I'm going to hold back my compliments until I see somebody out there that's trying something really new and interesting, because I think that that is what the times call for. your point about thinking of a democrat who sounds like themselves on social media yeah and i'm racking my brain brian shots from hawaii can we give can we give him a yeah shout out to brian shots sounds like sounds like himself jasmine crockett does she sound like herself on social media i guess so i guess so maybe the exception of the rule there's another cul-de-sac that is the texas race but yeah she does that's fair but man that's about all i can come up with it's really challenging to think about somebody everyone else sounds like a statement So when you, and you say 2012 things, you mean media wise, speaking to people like a candidate would in another era of American politics. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. It's just not modern. I don't like, I don't look at, I mean, Zoran sounded like himself, right? Mostly on the short form video. So it could be that, like that could be people's platform of choice. um so i i just think that like any you know sometimes you get these one thing that bugs me about now you got me on what bugs me about democrats okay as like the focus group culture you get these one of these polls one of these focus group things will come out and they'll be like we tested 30 different tweets to see which ones had the highest rating you know and the person that'll have the highest rating is like jackie rosen senator from nevada and she wrote something that like the most people who were like playing their video games and then getting paid and like one bitcoin to like respond yes or no to their statement like said that they liked right and then that like and then you go to see this statement on twitter on x and it like has 12 retweets right and it's just like there's a place for testing language i i do i don't think it's unimportant to think about what people like and what's popular and to say popular things especially if you believe them is important but it's just also important to be a human like people want that they're looking for it and i don't you know maybe the democrats because they're all like what's it's i'm stealing from chris arnid because they're all like front of the classroom kids front row kids maybe they don't know how to do this but um but man we need a little bit more of it i think on the democratic side if they're gonna be successful now this is at the highest level i i do think that sometimes these lessons like it kind of doesn't matter what your tweets sound like if you're running for house of representatives you know depending on the districts that you're in right um some of these things like it's just some you know the governor's races i remember a focus group i sat through once where it was like from florida and alabama where people um liked their governor because they're actually it was yeah because they're actually accomplishing things they wanted their governor to do like they had real things like i like what they did at the schools or whatever and then when it got to their member of congress they're like you know the people that really think this is a republican focus group obviously people that are really getting things done are marjorie taylor green and matt gates like i'm seeing them they're out there they're fighting you know and so i just i do think sometimes it's different but for a presidential if you're a water on 2028 man like you shouldn't have you shouldn't have like a 24 year old like posting for you or like you shouldn't be putting out really long press releases that i don't have the attention span to you know you should talk tell people what you really think another question on political communication this has fascinated me about trump too is the way his administration tries to copy either his style on true social or do their own version of it you mentioned vance steven miller yeah pete hagseth when he's tweeting ice is greater than minnesota yeah right as a former comms guy what do you make of the shit posting era of american politics as a shit poster um i maybe am not the most credible person to say that's a comms guy and a shit yeah what do I don't love it. I mean, I wish it was not, but like, you know, whatever. What's the line? Wishes were horses. It just is what it is now. This is the House style now. This is the House style now. Democrat or Republican. I mean, Democrats shouldn't sound like, you know, Donald Trump and Pete Hexler write at like a third grade level and they should write for their own audiences. But yeah, like a little level of shit posting is good. But also, again, being authentic to yourself is right, is what you want. That's what people want. Like I just when Democrats call me, like, what do you think I should what do you think I should do? I'm like, this is this is going to sound like the stupidest, like most whatever advice ever. But I'm like, what thing is Trump doing that makes you the most mad? OK, a lot of options. pick that thing and talk about it all the fucking time and be mad when you talk about it like show me that you're mad no and and that can happen in different forms you had mark kelly on here he's gonna be more of a gruff military guy like his madness is gonna be different than me you know kind of aren't flailing arms gay you know like like we have different types of anger but like show me that you're mad and so i you know i think that there will need to be a little bit of that to the democrats i think the weakness of the republicans copying trump is people can see through it to a certain extent like it'll work in certain demographics certain places like there have been some trump copycats who win primaries in red states you know but i don't in a presidential um setting when the when the uh or in a swing state you know carrie lake tried to do a woman trump and she famously lost twice um so there are some limits to copying the trump style exactly yeah when i think about the democrats statement gavin newsom is trying to do a version of this yeah sure kind of a half tongue-in-cheek comedy version but he's trying to do shit posting he's trying to say i'm the benign shit poster yeah so those those guys and that's so good but i'm gonna do the i'm gonna do the better version of this he's trying to do shit posting that's working for now like what is the what again what what is the staying power though of something like like, Kevin won't actually say himself, you know, and that's what I don't know, really. Because in addition to being able to engage in the battle of ideas on X, like, also being able to communicate with people in other ways, right, is important, you know, and going on doing long form pods does matter now, right? Like, doing short form video, like Zoran does, does matter now. so you know how can they do that how can how can these candidates figure out how to do that in a way that feels in the ballpark of natural um and sometimes i'm calling for authenticity but you're really calling for a performance this is why it's easier said than done like zoran zoran seems authentic to me i interviewed him and he was pretty chill in the green room i thought like he was affable um he's busy so we didn't have a ton of time to talk but it seemed pretty authentic but like you can tell he's he's got a little theater kid in him when he's doing those videos for sure you know and that that that plays right so it's it's a little bit easier or it's a bit harder than it sounds what is the possible case for barack obama being on the sidelines at this point i it's hard for me to think of any and again and that's just i get my message to him i i it's just like why trump will call you a name and then every once in a while they'll put out a statement that is like you know that could be like the prelude to a novel you know and i'm like what what is this right a strongly worded statement yeah yeah just just call him a small dick vulgarian or something i don't care i don't know whatever i do something um i don't don't get it here's here's the thing about and i'd love to um have the chance to talk to the president i've been trying um former president um why it's i think particularly frustrating for me is like he can talk to a pretty key demo that the democrats have struggled with which is just guys um i think barack obama would crush the theo von podcast would crush it and i think that the oban would have him on and um i think that maybe you can get through to some people that way or at least you know put some bugs in people's ears or at least start to change a little bit you know for this younger group of people that don't even remember obama like change kind of the perception of what a democrat sounds like and um and you know what a male democratic sounds like another Another funny inside thing among a joke that you see sometimes pop up is that the Democrats could also use some straight men posting on their social media feeds. I feel like as a gay, I can say this fine. You know, I'm not trying to, I don't want to lose, you know, I don't want anybody in the game off you to lose a job. All right. But not everybody, not every Democratic politician's voice on Twitter should be indistinguishable from a Gaga Stan account. Right. Like you've got to like, I don't know, that might help to reach people if you had some Democrats who just talked a little bit more comfortable bro language, just regular guy talk. And so Obama does. and is good at that. So I would like, I'd love to see, even if you just did that, even if you're like, this is just like, you're just going to do two things this year instead of doing some panel at the University of Chicago. It's always on stage. Yeah. Get off the stage. In front of an audience. There's always like a kind of, you know, pretty good clip that comes out of it. Yeah. But he's not sitting one-on-one. He's not talking to the camera. Go hang out with Theo. Like bro out a little bit. The Theo Vaughn Obama podcast. Oh my God. That'd be unbelievable. You've just spoken this into existence. I would do huge numbers. Yes, it would do huge numbers. What do you think J.D. Vance's presidential campaign will look like in two years? It depends on whether he stays in daddy's good graces. You know, I think that I'm of two minds of J.D. He is the most unappealing person to me in all of public life for my entire life. like i find him like trump at least from time to time you know i'll get a chuckle out of trump or whatever i mean i feel bad about it afterwards and i hate him but like jd vance is singularly unappealing as a person and you know and i i really the other day i was like really racking my brain said this a couple times i was like is there anyone like from you know save it from my childhood i'm thinking about sports or nick saban yeah yeah i was like is there somebody i've hated more than this in the movies or in sports or in something else and i couldn't think of anybody and um he just like he has negative charisma for me negative juice so i have to like separate that and analyze him more objectively and i think that sometimes i think that there are a number of people particularly on the left or on the anti-trump side who share that view and so so it jaundices our ability to judge him as a political figure he has been pretty damn skilled at navigating a like insane political environment on the mega right like the fact that like he has survived to this date to this state um point and both sides of the ben shapiro tucker carlson feud like him trump some somehow some way doesn't seem to hate his company i don't i don't know eventually he's got to wear thin on trump you would think but no evidence of that yet or maybe some small signs that trump's like throwing rubio's name in the mix of them but um uh so he's managed that uh you know he ran a won a primary like won the inside game in a red state in ohio as a former never trumper when the inside game to vp like that's all not nothing i mean uh far you know people that had that were more appealing than jd vance have failed to survive in this republican party unless you know all the sharks swimming around so i don't underestimate his ability to kind of triangulate i also i don't know if this is allowed on a podcast like this you can your lawyers can check me i do think he's a sociopath which has some benefits in politics i i do think he would just if he felt like switching on a dime on something would help him he would and he's changed his name three times it's kind of weird changes religion and a lot of people have changed their name or changed their religion and like it's pretty strange that i've changed your name multiple times change your religion change your entire political identity um and uh in order to get power and he's done all that i just go back to his debate with tim walls which he won and partly i think his ability to be a shapeshifter i'm going to come in and be a conciliatory guy can't we all just you know have a nice common sense exchange of ideas here yeah and then on twitter he can play something completely different yeah he's good at that and he's good at again it doesn't work for me because repulsed but once i separate myself out from that when he does this thing like have you seen the racist thing you did about the neighbors where he's just like here's the thing guys like i'm not against immigration uh you know i want people to be able to come here if they do it the right way but if you're living in a house in a community and and and rents are going up the mortgage is going up and and one of your friends wants to move into your neighborhood but they can't afford it and then somebody else moves in and it's a it's people from another country and they don't speak the same language as you. And then you find out that there are three families living in one house and it's getting a little rowdy over there. It's not irrational to think maybe that's not what's best for my neighborhood. Like he gave that, like, that's how he kind of talks about this, which I hope everybody can see through, but I'm not sure. I think he has like a little bit of a skill at taking, like Trump's skill is taking like a really noxious position and like almost like joking about it and winking at at those voters and being like maybe i'll do it maybe i won't you know and so you know he can't pin me down and so the people that want him to do the racist thing are like hell yeah he's gonna do it and the people that don't are like oh that's just trump being cheeky like that's how trump manages this jd's trying a different approach maybe his approach won't work but um it's it might that might be his superpower though yeah ability to yeah just kind of like maneuver yeah try to make something that seems that pretty extreme seem not so extreme and and be and pretend like you like somebody be affable like jd vance kind of pretended like him walls yeah i don know walls got ran and he ran circles around him you had a great interview with marty baron on your podcast last week yeah thank you why does jeff bezos still want to own the washington post he and marty went back and forth in this little bit and so i i take marty's analysis because he worked closely with jeff bezos he saw this transition um he did say on the podcast i asked him if he'd spoken to jeff in the last year and i think he said some of the effect of i sent him one email about a year ago and the response wasn't great or something to that effect i don't have the quote in front of me but um so you know maybe so he doesn't have up-to-date insight on what's in jeff's brain but he gave like a pretty just straight like this guy is a capitalist he wants to conquer the world and there was a period of time where he felt like he could do that and also you know and also advance democratic principles um and uh and now that calculation is different and so he's acting accordingly and he doesn't want to give up the paper but he still wants to be able to make a lot of money and you know do blue origin and do all this other stuff that didn't really sit right with me that explanation like to me and i went back to him on was i think it's more about like it's less about the money and more about the ego like he doesn't he wants to like he wants to be the guy i own this i own that i own the other thing and um you know better you know it's a dick measuring contest with like elon and the other billionaires right like i just think that there's a little bit that is what's going on and um this is you know a little bit non-pc to say but you know we're here at the ringer and uh the wife the wife swap is also something to consider i do think that there is some ownership of the washington post well yeah i just think that the well i think that the previous wife was very excited about the democracy dies of darkness mission and i'm not sure that's the case in the new marriage. I just think that caring about the post might impact whether he cares about it or he has some kind of emotional connection. I think that it's one of those things where you can keep it. He's a mogul. He owns it. He also owns the Rockets, ships. Not the Houston Rockets. Yeah, the Rocketships and Amazon. I guess that's my assessment. Why take an L and sell it to somebody? and i saw the crazy story i wish i i think it came out after i interviewed marty was it like a group um oliver darcy wrote this over in status uh a group came to him bezos and said basically we want to partner with you we'll pay and we'll run i believe it was local sports and maybe one of the things i think it was three elements spin it off essentially yeah or and but like i think they gave my understanding based on this report is that like maybe there are ways to do it like it could be a total spinoff where we it's our own thing could be a thing where it's like you know whatever insert name here presented by the washington post and amazon you know license yeah license yeah some other thing and they said no and to me that just says okay well this isn't a business decision like there's no way to look at what he did as a business decision like the right if the right choice was trying to maximize profits out of washington post you know you are leaning in on politics that's what worked the last time you know you're leaning in on insidery dc stuff you're keeping high school sports and charging the parents who want to see their kids lacrosse stats you know absorbent amounts of money right like like they didn't do any of that like they got you got they got rid of um stuff that you think that they can make money on and they're keeping and that you know and they're like well we're going to try to appeal to a broader audience of more conservatives, I guess. It's just like, that's not going to work. There's no evidence that that's going to work. And I don't even think that they care. I guess that's my point. I don't think that he cares about the business of it. As a comms guy, I was thinking about you with this because all of us journalists have been like, hashtag support journalism, save the posts. These hashtags have not worked to the degree we want them to work. How would you advise a reporter to convince a person to subscribe to a newspaper like what's what's the affirmative case for that um i don't think the high-minded woodward and bernstein thing is the answer i'll start there uh some people will support media for that reason um i think we're supported at the board by a lot of people who like don't really care about our secret podcast offerings uh but they just want to support us because they built a relationship with us and like what we're doing and it's kind of like you know we're gonna support our guys here i appreciate it you guys are bringing me joy in the podcast in our ears and so we'll just you know throw you the 10 bucks a month that's not really a model for reporting right like and we're gonna we're building out so we do some reporting at the work but it's hard to do that at scale you know but i think that there's something to learn from that right like just actually building a relationship with the audience and providing value to them is a good first step but look how did how did newspapers bring money in the past and it's like classified sports stuff like that i just would go back to that i don't know like i think about my i think i made the shirt yeah my boys at dnvr okay okay um they started in denver kind of like uh almost kind of a simon's inspired kind of like a fan perspective uh but also reporting on denver sports um outlet and huge success they've expanded to a couple other cities now um and and i would i was thinking i went to a friend who runs like non-profit newsrooms i actually pitched this to a couple friends so if you have any non-profit newsrooms people watching and i was like you guys should do this backward like you guys should do this like create a thing you know like i'm a die hard or whatever for dnvr which i just you know it's kind of like again what do i get what i get i think a couple bucks off the t-shirt or something But like create that something that is community oriented that people care about. All right. And now now let's back in some investigative journalism onto it. Right. Like let's let's go. The old model did work. There's maybe something there still. Right. Where we can like make get people excited about this brand they're in for because they want to know about what the local new restaurants that are opening are or whatever and the local sports teams. and then you're also giving them some investigative journalism and and i don't i don't think that's a crazy model i i just i think that um like too many journalists do the you need to support us because this is crucial work for it's like a finger waggy thing and i does that do people do people respond to that i don't think so well i think some people do but i think we already have their credit card numbers yeah right they're in yeah and then now it's this big group that says you know and not only not only are they you know maybe turned off or just not that that message doesn't hit them they're also like man i got my tim miller podcast i got my pod save guys i got van lathan i have all these free things in my life yeah and i hear all this stuff about the news and it sounds like political news and they cite sources you know stories from those places but like why am i paying for this other thing right why is that important to me and that's that's a rubicon that needs to be crossed and it's hard right it's it's crowded it's super hard it's crowded and the times has figured it out the wall street journal has figured it out wall street journal provides people financial news which is why they do it insider stuff um information's figured it out in san francisco they provide insiders insidery stuff i like is there not a way to do that local i like mississippi what is it mississippi today they're doing it they're i mean i want i don't know again i'm just trying to think about like what are the stuff like i'm a goody two shoes now and i'm in the media so whatever i subscribe to the i don't we don't even know what it's called anymore maybe nola.com maybe the times pick you and maybe the advocate there's several iterations but i i i subscribe um like why like what am i getting from it it's like i want to know the new restaurant i'm paying for ian McBelty. I want to know the new restaurant that is opening in town. Like, I want to know what happened in the, you know, discussion about, um, how to, uh, about like charter school, um, availability, right. Like getting in the lottery, you know, like news you can use is what we used to call it. Right. And so I think that maybe just focusing on that is the way to go, um, to try to get some revitalization. It's tough, it's tough though, man, but I don't, I don't see what the answer is besides like providing people a service they really want or building a relationship with the community that is authentic. And, um, and you know, I'm, I'm getting some finance, some billionaires who want to do the nice thing. Like, unfortunately that's kind of the situation we're in. I think. I got a few more quick ones for you. Fire away. You interviewed Olivia Knutzi on your podcast. Uh, how do you look back at that interview? um probably i had the most uh feedback uh from any interview i've ever done uh everyone had a thought about my interviewing chops which is nice i'm i'm i did not grow up as an interviewer so i'm learning as i go on the podcast i'm it's hard you know you see this i was like i'm trying to get better and so i take feedback it was hard to kind of sift through the feedback of olivia because you know half the people are like you were too you're too uh mean to her half people like you were too nice to her um okay um had specific things they wish i'd asked uh look i don't think that olivia um was ready to do media this is what i really think i and i think that um i have some empathy for her i know olivia is just saying can and candor um uh personally and i have gone through i've been in the uh in the ringer uh tomorrow term i've been in the barrel uh of media firestorms nothing like what she has but i i've been there and it sucks and i know what it's like um and so i've like i have a little bit of empathy for her and i thought that people were a little mean about the book i thought there was like some really like if you if you're like tim you have to bring one political book or one book for like the last three years to an island with yourself like would you bring american kanto or would you bring like one of the million tiktok behind the scenes of what happened on the campaign books like i'd bring american kanto at least it has some some some you know je ne sais quoi uh you know there are some well-turned phrases there are some other you know other stuff that could maybe you know could have got at a few more rounds of edits but you know whatever i could say that about my book i look back on some things in my book and cringe so i just to me it was like she wrote this you went through this thing where she made some ethical breaches where she admitted and she's gonna go out and talk about it if you go out and talk about it, you got to be ready to talk about it. You got to be ready to talk about the things you fucked up and the things you, you think are unfair about the criticisms and whatever. And that's what people want to know. And she just kind of wasn't ready to go there. Or maybe she never will be. I don't know. And so I think that was kind of the, I think that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. What do you miss about working in politics? um i was about to say not shit but that's not exactly right i'm i'm much happier my new job i don't know pr wasn't great i i feel like pr was bad for my soul um because i'm very competitive and i and i found myself you know spinning a little too hard um and and and and and there I have some regrets about that. So I, what I don't, what I do miss is like as a kid growing up, I was never good at sports, but I liked sports, you know? And, and there's a little bit of time where I got my fix from campaigns and like part of it was in the stat side, which I can still do in this job. But part of it was like, you know, if you, your candidate just like really nailed a debate or just like i gave a good speech for the crowd is on fire you know um or you're at the convention and they you know one of the rare good speeches and you know people are the crowd is into it and you're like then one of the advisors that wrote the speech so that was you know one of the things i did you walk out of there like with a big skip in your step like it's a big rush you know like it feels good um and you know none of us are ever going to be rock stars right so it's like the like the tiniest little taste of that to like to walk up stage back hell yeah you know like the music drug we nailed that one and i miss that um and i miss a little bit like the road and people um you know i gotta do that with the circus r.i.p before that was canceled um and i like you know my job is great i love being in new orleans i love that my kids room is down the hall from my podcast room but i like people i miss a little bit kind of being out amongst the the folks and getting a huge podcast guest that just destroys and metrics that's not the same feeling as can it walking off the stage it's not it's not the same feeling no you can't get that high on on the podcast guests i've had a couple good i feel good at the end of a good politics you know this if you like feel like you really pulled something out of them and that the the audience is going to like it it feels it's fulfilling in a way you know like especially i don't know i had ta-nehisi coats on the other week and we disagree on some stuff particularly you know around you know peak woke if you will um but man it was just he he does good pod you know you got to shout out the guy like he does good pod like it was there's a good back and forth you know we're vibing i felt like he made some points that i that made me think um i don't know if i made him think but i made him laugh you know and and and we're able to get into some some touchy subjects but in a way that i thought what the audience would appreciate like that's cool like that's fulfilling in a way like giving a good speech is not you know because that's propaganda and this is like higher learning shut up man right and so that's cool but it's still not the same it's not the same rush uh i believe we're contractually obligated to call these sliding doors moments at the ringer so of the republican candidates whose campaigns you worked on or worked adjacent to who would have been the best president john mccain mitt romney or jeb bush um i think uh that the answer to that is probably mitt and i was the least close to him of the three um i love job the best he was a great governor really great governor but and he probably would have been a great president in 1988 if you would have you could have replaced hw as a great president you could probably replace them and get pretty similar results. But, you know, he just, like, the modern media environment is just different. And Mitt, like, Mitt was a terrible candidate in 2008. I cannot overstate this. Terrible. Awkward. Weird. And he got better. You rarely see this in policy. Ossoff has gotten a lot better. Actually, you mentioned him earlier. You rarely see this. People who, like, he got a lot better. In 2012, he was a really good candidate. and um you know i mean he beat obama in the first debate did like and obama would would would admit that and i think that he could have used the bully pulpit he had a he has a moral core but he also is adaptable and maybe too much in some ways flip-flopping mitt but i i don't know i think that he would i think that he would have been a really good president um last one uh you said you want to interview obama would interviewing donald trump be interesting to you not really because trump's full of shit i mean i i encounter me and him have had a couple of encounters in spin rooms and such i've been able to ask him questions but it's like it's so hard to follow him to a spin room i followed him around a couple spin rooms and uh and then he saw me in one and and so we've had a few like brief interactions um he just i guess i sure i would do it but like he's just so full of shit um and that it's hard to like get anything meaningful out of him and even if you do it's kind of like well you can change his mind in two seconds two seconds right it's just not i don't know i i don't feel like i would i would really enjoy it um but i would enjoy interviewing jd vance quite a bit so that's number one yeah number two by yeah i would rather do jd vance for sure yeah because he thinks he's really smart and he would And so in some ways it would be kind of a skills challenge. I feel like I would really be testing my skills. And I was a little mean to Tim Walz when I interviewed him the other week because I was like, you failed. And I feel like I'm kind of – there's a put up or shut up element to this. It's like, all right, whippersnapper, how could you do? And I feel like I do pretty well with JD. But I'm not counting my chickens. But you're open to invite, Mr. Vice President. Tim Miller, he gives good pod. I'm trying. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for coming on the Press Box. Happy to do it, brother. Good to see you.