Adam Kinzinger: The People of Minneapolis Won

I know that you want to listen to your podcast, so I will keep it short. Because if you think it's important to make a duurzame keuze, can ASR maybe help? Well, I think, how then? Well, for example, when you're doing something to do with the things you love to do with Schade. Will you know more about the instructions where a duurzaam schade-restal can be? Go to asr.nl slash duurzamekeuzes. This does ASR for you and a duurzame samenleving. ASR does it. So, then you can now listen to your podcast. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. hello welcome to the bulwark podcast i'm your host tim miller uh delighted to welcome back one of our faves he's a former member of congress from illinois he served in the air force and air national guard he's the founder of country first they got a new campaign to push back on the politicization of the National Guard. He's also on Substack with the rest of us. He's in the gym a lot. He's doing peptides. It's Adam Kinzinger. Hey, buddy, what's going on? Good to be back with you, man. It's good. It's been a minute. Yeah. You know, we just put this on the calendar. We didn't know it was going to be happening. And this is insane. We could do nine hours of podcasting today with all the shit that's out there. Just pick a day, though. It's like insane every freaking day. I mean, you know. Yeah, much to cover. We've got to start with Pam Bondi, unfortunately. it's unpleasant having to listen to her talk just to be candid but I'm going to punish people we're going to listen to a little bit from yesterday's performance on the hill so I really have just one question for you how many of Epstein's co-conspirators have you indicted how many perpetrators are you even investigating First, you showed it. How many have you indicted? Excuse me. I'm going to answer the question. Answer my question. No, I'm going to answer the question the way I want to answer the question. Your theatrics are ridiculous. You don't tell me anything. I did tell you because we saw what you did in the Senate. You're a lawyer. Not even a lawyer. Have you apologized to President Trump? Have you apologized to President Trump, all of you who participated in those impeachment hearings against Donald Trump? You all should be apologizing. You sit here and you attack the president, and I am not going to have it. I'm not going to put up with it. And none of them, none of them ask Merrick Garland over the last four years one word about Jeffrey Epstein. How ironic is that? You know why? Because Donald Trump, the Dow, the Dow right now is over. The Dow is over $50,000. $50,000 the Dow is over. That's the Attorney General of the United States of America having a temper tantrum on the Hill because she's not investigating any of the perpetrators of child sex trafficking. Well, you know why nobody asked Merrick Garland? Because Joe Biden didn't run on Epstein Files transparency. I think they should have released them, but that's not what he ran on. Trump did. Here's the crazy thing, Tim, is they're like, hey, we're just going to take what Donald Trump ran on. OK, and I'm going to ask you if you've fulfilled that. Well, screw you. And I've got to just say, so let me just take the broad view, which is when we end up in a situation like we've had over this last year where these people from the administration come in, speak before Congress and have complete and utter disdain and disrespect for Congress. I get it because people hate congressmen and women and it's fun to watch them combat if you're on the side of MAGA. But this is honestly how democracies can die. When you do not respect the oversight of the people, keep in mind, Jamie Raskin, love him or hate him, represents 700,000 Americans with a right to a voice. Every one of these folks, and she comes in and basically refuses to answer the question. And what I really think is going on here, and I'm not a psychiatrist, but I think there's something to this, which is, and I've seen this in kind of MAGA folks too, particularly my old friends in Congress who got mad at me because really they were mad at themselves. Like they know inside what they should be doing. And when I was doing what they should be doing, in essence, putting a mirror up to them, their anger at themselves would be projected outward. And I honestly kind of see this in Pam Bondi where she knows what's going on here. She knows what she promised. She knows that she tried to cover up in March. And now she's being called out by it and not impolitely, quite honestly. And her anger at herself, maybe at Trump, maybe at the situation she's in is projected outward. If she thought that she did anything good for herself, I think she came out of that hearing quite the opposite. I think even MAGA's were sitting around going, this was a pretty bad presentation here. And I think it's only going to make it worse. Honestly, I think it's only going to grow the interest into why is she so defensive? Why are they so defensive? Yeah, I agree. And Eric Erickson said she should be fired or resign. I was getting mocked in the manosphere. It was an extremely unhelpful performance. I would also like to answer her rhetorical question about why Merrick Garland wasn't up there. Another key difference is that Joe Biden did not lie about being on a plane with the child sex trafficker and the victims. So Donald Trump was in the files more than anybody. So that is another key difference between him and Joe Biden when it comes to oversight of what was happening with the files. Yeah, it's kind of a big deal. And also people forget this. Donald Trump was president during the Epstein suicide, right? Yeah, right. There's a lot of people I see in the monosphere. It wasn't Hillary Clinton. She was not the president when he killed him. They think it's Hillary or they think it was Obama or they think it was Biden. It was Donald Trump. And again, I'm not making the accusation that Epstein was killed, but there are questions. And certainly in these files, like you said, I did not see Joe Biden's name. I think you said yesterday, I didn't even see Hunter Biden's name in there. I've seen Trump a lot. So there's legitimate questions. He's the president of the United States. And, you know, that's kind of creepy. Yeah, Epstein preyed on dorks that needed help with women. And, you know, Hunter Biden got his prostitutes all by himself. I guess just from your vantage point, having been a member, just like how different this is. Because there are a lot of people who kind of came awake to this in 2016, came awake to politics, are not sure how this is supposed to go, or maybe they've seen some, you know, the British Parliament's pretty rowdy. Like this performance by her yesterday, both just like the style of her presentation, but also like the idea that I guess they were looking at what the members were searching for in the Epstein finals, And she had like an oppo briefing on each member. I mean, that's very different than anything you would have experienced even in Trump one point now. Right. Oh, completely. And this is like this is big brother stuff. Now, I'm not going to give them the credit to say that they're building some well-oiled machine surveillance state because I don't think they are. But I think they are so insecure that instead of looking at it and saying, well, let's just get the files out there. Let's have transparency. transparency, let's, you know, if somebody deserves to be prosecuted, let's prosecute them. It becomes like it always does with MAGA and particularly with Donald Trump. They automatically insert themselves into the position of victim and they automatically insert themselves in the position of defense. The only way to defend themselves is to attack somebody. It can be crazy. It can be real, but that's all they know. And so, yeah, I mean, look, if I was a member of Congress and I found still, and I found out this happened, I'd be furious, not because I necessarily have a reasonable expectation of privacy that other people don't, but the idea of what I'm doing in my position as a member of Congress should be completely separate from the knowledge of the executive branch, if I so choose, comes down again to the basic thing of separation of powers. And I think we, unfortunately, because Congress is unpopular and because people say, look, only 15% of Americans approve of Congress, which has been that way since the founding of Congress because it just is a faceless institution. But ever since that, like we have been okay with chipping away at their power or their ability to do what they need to do. But that is really the only voice you have. And that's an important thing for people to remember. You do not have a voice through the president of the United States. His job is simply to execute the laws that you through your member of Congress have created. That's his job. You know, we've changed that a lot, but that should be offensive to every American, honestly. I mean, there were some pretty mild mannered Democrats that were like, this is fascist. You're spying on me in the skiff. And it's really chilling. On the other hand, it's also extremely ham-handed. And she got called out for it and literally had the spy papers in her binder. And the Getty photographer caught her. Keep in mind, too, when you're in a skiff, because I assume that probably most of your folks listening haven't been in a skiff. I've never been in a skiff. My candidate's lost. Yeah, that's right. Sorry. We'll get you in a skiff someday. It is very sanitized. You are allowed to walk in with a, basically a notebook and a pen, but you cannot take your notes with you. I've seen people take notes with them. So I guess it's gray area, but you technically can't do that. So you walk in basically defenseless, you know, as it should be, because your job is then to just see what's presented in front of you, commit it to memory and leave. And for them to do that is just, it's, it's disgusting and they probably violated skiff rules to be honest with you and how they did it yeah but they don't care one other thing that came up yesterday that it's a little bit of a tale as all this time but it's worth not not letting people forget that they're doing this bondi was pressed by jonah goose congressman from colorado boulder actually on how she hired jared wise jared wise the january sixer who was there storming the capital and he was shouting kill them to the police. Bondi's excuse for hiring this insurrectionist was that he was pardoned by Trump and so everything's okay now. That guy works for the Justice Department, the guy that was shouting kill them to police. Separate news item yesterday, another January 6th rioter who had been pardoned by Trump was convicted of sexually abusing children, including an 11-year-old. Andrew Paul Johnson tried to bribe one of his victims by promising to share expected January 6th restitution money from the Trump administration. So, you know, while she's testifying yesterday, two of the people they pardoned, one, you know, one works for her and the other one was convicted of child rape. If you take the universe of January 6th pardoned defendants and you say, what is the recidivism rate of them? And quite honestly, the recidivism rate, although it's not recidivism per se, but the rate of being arrested for child abuse, sexual child abuse, it is higher than illegal immigrants. Like this is the thing. You remember how they're, it's the whole reason they're saying we need to go after those that are here illegally is because of crime, because they commit all these crimes. And, you know, we always push back with the real statistics and say they're more likely to actually start, if they could do it legally, immigrants are much more likely to start a business and hire people than a second, third, et cetera, born American. But they would always bring up, They're bringing their rapists. They're bringing their druggies. I guarantee you, if you picked up 1500 random people that are here illegally and you said who is doing more child sex abuse, it would be the January 6th defendant. So why don't we have ICE go after the January 6th defendants after that? Because we really do want to – I mean this is like the 10th, 15th, 20th person that has been arrested for this crime, Tim. Not just for shoplifting or breaking and entering, for child sexual abuse. And she's literally at this testifying in Congress and getting questions about how they're covering up the investigation into the biggest child sexual abuser, you know, in modern times. And simultaneously, they're pardoning people that are committing child sex abuse. It couldn't be more on the nose. Well, and let me ask you. So, you know, you were talking about the guy that was hired by the DOJ. And she said, well, he was pardoned. So the question is, five seconds before the guy who was soliciting children, who also was pardoned, was arrested, would he have been qualified to work at the DOJ simply because he received the pardon? Because it goes both ways. I mean, yeah, it sure seems like he would be. All right. Hey, guys, here to tell you about our friends at Aura Frames. Aura Frames, the easiest gift to give. We're kind of past Valentine's Day season. But look, what about a teacher at school? What about a colleague? week sometimes it's nice to give a gift for no reason you know it feels a little better to as a gift recipient to receive a gift for no reason than to feel like somebody was checking a box and a great way to do that is is with aura frames aura frames offers free unlimited storage so you can add as many photos or videos as you want so you can go up to your work colleague and just give them a bunch of you know photos from last year's christmas party where they're acting a fool or go to one of your college you know if you go through a you go through your archive on your phone you know find some old college pictures put them together throw them in the aura frame send it to one of your college buddies that's a good gift grandmas are the key though grandmas great aunts great uncles baby pics kid pics put together a little collage couldn't be easier you can preload all the photos for it ships they open it up they can put it on their mant mantle is that what you call it whatever mantle side table they throw it up there looks good they have good memes it's a great idea you should go do it right now named number one by wire cutter you can save on the perfect gift by visiting aura frames.com for a limited time listeners can get 35 bucks off their best-selling carver mat frame with code bulwark that's a ura frames.com promo code bulwark support the show by mentioning us at checkout terms and conditions apply kind of related to this because he he had worked in the federal justice department Dan Bongino. I got an email today from Dan Bongino that I want to mention because he back to podcasting He a competitor now We wish him the best And I somehow got onto his list And this morning email says this FBI bombshell Fulton County affidavit And it goes in to talk about all of the evidence that they had of the alleged theft of the 2020 election. And I got to tell you, I just think that is such a good encapsulation of this Justice Department. They hired a podcaster to be the number two person at the FBI, and he left the FBI without successfully investigating anyone that allegedly stole the 2020 election, without successfully investigating anyone that was involved in Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring, without investigating anyone that was part of the Russia gate hoax against Donald Trump. And now he's back to podcasting without successfully arresting or indicting or investigating anyone. And he's advancing the same conspiracies he was advancing before. Like, are the people this stupid? This is really going to work? Aren't the listeners like, Dan, if the evidence for the Fulton County affidavit was that great, why isn't anybody in jail yet? Why didn't you get anybody? You are the number two person at the FBI. You had agency here. You knew you had the intel. And if it's so great, you don't think they'd be all over Fox News right now presenting the evidence? You think they'd sneak it to Dan Bongino to be the guy to leak it? This, like, fame addiction they have. I mean, I would like to think if I was ever hired to be the director of the FBI, that I would very happily put my doing media and podcast thing aside with pleasure and focus on being the FBI director or the deputy. I would really miss you. If the next Democrat puts you in charge of the FBI, I would miss you. But I wouldn't ask you to come on. I'll text you, but I'm not coming on. We'll keep a good friendship. But unless you do something illegal, then I'll come after you. But I'm going to kind of go a quick different direction, but it'll make sense. One of the things that we didn't have the time in the January 6th committee to really flush out for the American people, It's in the report a little bit, but is the role of emails, fundraising, and kind of clickbait in actually radicalizing people. So one of the things we came to realize, so between the period of the election in 2020, in January 6, the Trump, which I'd love to know where the money went, but the Trump campaign and Stop the Steal combined raised close to $400 million, I think, in just three months, keep in mind. And they did that through five to 10 emails to everybody on their list every day that basically would say, imagine the headline, they're stealing this. The Democrats are coming for you. Nancy Pelosi said this. Boom, boom, boom. Right? And you get 10 of these messages to your face today. You don't even have to open the emails. Miles Bruner, who you know, who wrote for The Bulwark about leaving, he talks about his role in some of the fundraising and stuff like that. all of those emails, those headlines, you do not need to open the body of the email. Each one is a dopamine hit. So if 10 times a day you get a dopamine hit for three months, you become radicalized. And that's what Dan Bongino is doing. Of course, we know that he doesn't have any specific evidence that proves the Fulton County case. But if you see that and you get that dopamine hit, you will watch him, you'll listen to him, you'll go to his YouTube feet or whatever, and he makes money off you. This whole thing, all of politics on the right has become the opportunity or the operation of basically sucking every bit of wealth away from people that don't have wealth to be drained from them to give to the most wealthy. The Candace Owens is all these people. They're worth millions of dollars, but they're going to get that person on a fixed income to give them money or to pay attention so they can drain that further wealth from them. And I think we have to talk about it in that term. So Dan Bongino, screw you. You're a con artist as well. You're a con artist. I like you snuck in there that you're demonstrating no fear or favor. If you get appointed to the FBI director, you'd come after me if I did a crime. And I appreciate that. I'll come after my own mom if she did. Dan Bongino is a con artist. I just also want to say clearly that Dan Bongino is a loser and he is a loser. He got into the FBI and totally failed. Think about this. Jim Comey walks free. Tish James walks free. Don Lemon walks free. I was on his live stream earlier today. The people who supposedly stole the 2020 election, none of them have been arrested. None of them are in jail. None of the people that were part of the child sex trafficking ring that he talked about all the time are in jail. He got nobody. He arrested nobody. His successors at the FBI seem to have detained the wrong person in the Nancy Guthrie investigation, but like they, they did nothing. Like he was in there for a year and he advanced all of these theories about how they're all these criminals out there, Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, and you guys were all going to get arrested. There was all this bluster. Nobody, nobody's behind bars yet. Total loser. Nobody. And, and I just want to say one more thing. If you're like, I'm, I'm all for health and physical fitness. Okay. One of the things you won't see me do is like, yeah, damn. Um, one of the things, man, guns, ladies, weight class paying off. Yeah, there you go. I got my two pull-ups in. Uh, listen, one of the things that like drives me nuts is be in good shape, be healthy, please do it. Everybody. Great. But when that becomes your image and you're a 50 or 60 year old man, I'm sorry, you're a loser, right unless it is your specifically your job but when you become one of these like i do mma and i'm gonna and wear my shirt and i'm gonna have velcro and i do my like and you're 60 i'm sorry you are trying to compensate for something i'm sorry you're trying to i mean wear a revealing shirt whatever a tighter shirt i don't care about that but like when you when you're out there just all you're worried about is how people perceive your physical prowess at 60. I don't know. I'm sorry. Yeah. And that's Dan. It makes you think there's some other deficiencies too. We won't get into that. All right. Delete Me makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everybody vulnerable. Delete Me does all the hard work wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. Delete Me knows your privacy is worth protecting. Sign up and provide Delete Me with exact information you want deleted and the experts take it from there. They send you regular personalized privacy reports and update it. this is something that we've been using to try to scrub out some of my information online. And, and I appreciate that. I've gotten an email bomb lately, like I had a couple of months ago. So that's a win. I was also reading the other day, one of the areas where AI has been advancing really quick, you know, contributing to the incentivization of our society, but their tech overlords is in, is in the scams department. It's a lot easier for just regular people to, you know, start grabbing information, send you texts and emails as part of a scam. Usually that was left to professional scammers. Now we're democratizing the scams thanks to AI. So having something like Delete Me that updates constantly is a good way to protect you and your loved ones. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeleteme.com slash bulwark and use promo code bulwark at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindeleteme.com slash bulwark and enter code bulwark at checkout. That's joindeleteme.com slash bulwark, code bulwark. uh there's some other news this morning a bunch of other news tom homan white house border czar said he's going to end the aggressive immigration enforcement operation in minnesota homan cited increased cooperation by local officials and announcing the end of the surge but he didn't actually cite any concessions or changes that they've made but you know got to do some face saving we'll see i'll believe it when i see it but it does seem like just a total failure in their Minnesota operation. Completely. And here's the thing is we have this tendency to believe that Donald Trump and actually you guys talked about that. You guys talk about everything, which is great in your show. I got a lot happening over here. Totally. The assumption that they want you to think that Maga or that Donald Trump wants you to think is he doesn't care about public outcry. He doesn't care about public opinion. He does. And he cares about it more than a regular democratically elected person because it is key. His facade of power is key for the fear because if he loses that facade – and one way to lose the facade is public outcry. You don't have as many people on your side as you think. And the ability of the local Minnesotans to have pushed back as hard as they did, as peacefully as they did, as kind of neighborly as they did, is absolutely incredible. They went into these ICE operations. They went into Minneapolis with the assumption that we would see the equivalent of George Floyd 2020. And by the way, full disclosure, I got activated with the guard for the George Floyd riots. I was flying overhead in Minneapolis, and it was very violent. Half of the city felt like it was burning. This is something completely different. And they wanted to provoke this. And the discipline that freedom-loving Americans have shown in this, I think has been incredible. And I think we need to take a victory lap here. Now, inevitably, this operation would have ended, right, at some point, but it ends when they lose their talking point value on Fox News. The whole reason there was an ice surge to Minneapolis was because of the Somali issue, and they wanted to go on Fox News and stir up that fraud issue and then say, we're reacting by sending ice, and it was really going to give the feel of goodsies to everybody on Fox News. and they failed at that and they lost the value of that and they're pulling out. That is the role of ICE, by the way, is to be a Fox News talking point. And so I think we as the kind of pro-democracy coalition should take a victory lap here. We won and the only violence was against us and our people and as terrible as that is, that the discipline has been incredible. Yeah, that is tragic. But I agree on the victory lap. I mean, we're in Minneapolis next week for two shows excited about it and 18th and 19th and was planning when initially we'd planned it, it was like, you know, we're going to be there in a, in a wartime setting. And now it's kind of a victory lap, which is nice. People deserve that. So hopefully we can bring everybody some attaboys and some joy. And by the way, Minneapolis is such an amazing city. I was there like right before all the ice stuff started and it's cold and just an amazing city that really is. I don't know why anybody would act like it was anything but that i don't get it insane kind of related on this immigration stuff is something i haven't talked about yet because it happened last night and you're the perfect person to talk to about it uh little greg bovino was posting late last night maybe drunk posting i don't know um but uh he was tweeting at amanda moore who's been a journalist friend she's been on the ground covering the cbp and ice actions doing great work and um he was tweeting a bunch like controlling her i thought they took his password away but i guess he found it or i don't know steven mille give it back to him among the things he said to her to amanda was i'd love to see you bustling around the governor's kitchen fixing us a pie i truly would he also tweeted that he'd really like to try beaver um i don't know what i'm just i'm just telling you what he was tweeting last night. Not great. Dude, you have to have been, he has to have been hammered. Right? I don't, yeah, I guess. I don't, I don't know. The little guy, little, you know, the Sean Penn from one battle after another. He's probably lonely. I mean, you know, he found his purpose, which was menacing and intimidating people in the streets of the cities. And that has been taken away from him. And now he's just doing gross reply guy material. it's gross and should be condemned but it also feels like a victory feels very sad yeah that's like sad like that's what he's been reduced to now it's very sad you know it's interesting so everybody i know that's been in politics for any length of time has been through something sim not similar to greg bovino but you'll see where i'm going on this something where you kind of hit some dark months right some months where you're kind of depressed you maybe don't know you're depressed and you're covered up by drinking or you party too hard or whatever maybe that's tim's entire life you know whatever it is right i went through a phase like this in my life and and i think frankly it's kind of thing like you see nancy mace going through right now where the pressure is i've never been through the nancy mace thing okay i've had some dark moments okay i've had some dark moments and i've made some bad calls after a few pops okay that's true but come on let's just all right all right i'll revise that yeah him too much he's only half nancy no but you go through a point when you hit like i don't know professional walls everybody's kind of done this in their own way you hit a wall and you kind of go through dark moment this is probably what he is going through he was just recently pictured in vegas got kicked out of a bar in vegas not because his behavior but because he was a disturbance being in there because he looked like him there with all it's hard to find him in the pictures actually i saw people like these are the pictures of greg bovino and then i'm looking like where is he and it's like oh wait he's the guy that Oh, yeah. He's just that's the best thing is when I can call people short. You know, they're really short. Right. And he's but I don't I just remember one time he's walking in Minneapolis and he was surrounded by other short guys. And I'm like, he literally had them recruit people that were also five, four to walk with him. And because he'd seen all the pictures anyway. Yeah. I mean, I would say what you're seeing here is just a guy that got fired, probably is in a pretty dark, depressed place and probably had a couple pops and hopped on and said that. I know you want to listen to your podcast, so I'll keep it short. Because if you think it's important to make a lot of choices, maybe Acer can help. Now I hear you think, how then? For example, to pay for the things you love to pay for. Will you know more about the insurance where a lot of pay for? Go to asr.nl slash duurzamekeuzes. This is ASR for you and a more expensive community. ASR does it. So, then you can listen to your podcast now. Starting a business can be overwhelming You juggling multiple roles Designer marketer logistics manager all while bringing your vision to life Shopify helps millions of business sell online Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. I mentioned in the intro the country first campaign you guys are talking about. I want to hear you talk about that. And there's, I assume, you know, there is overlap with the other big news item of the last 24 hours, which is the grand jury rejecting the Trump administration's effort to get an indictment in connection with that video featuring six Democrats who are urging members of the military intelligence community not to comply with unlawful orders. This is another, I should say, another group of people who walk free that this Justice Department tried to indict. I've had just a disastrous record on this. I thought one sick little side effect of this was that Mike Johnson was asked about this. Yeah. Basically said that he thought that his colleagues deserved to be invited, which is extremely low blow. And I think a beginning sign of the death throes of the Johnson speakership. But anyway, I was wondering what you made of the grand jury rejection and also kind of talk to us about the campaign you guys are doing. I've actually testified in front of a federal grand jury. And I'll tell you, you're not even allowed to as a witness, you're not even allowed to take your lawyer into a federal grand jury, much less the defense has absolutely no presence. So this is a uninterrupted, you know, infomercial for the prosecution. And so to reject a indictment is incredible. It's happened so many times. And in this time, this was obviously the right thing to do. Now, keep in mind, again, the prosecution is presenting the case against these six. There's not a defense attorney sitting there saying, yeah, but, and the jury on their own go, no. And so that's an amazing thing. And I think that should give us some faith in not just the grand jury system, but frankly, our judicial branch. The point, though, is achieving what they wanted to achieve. I don't know if they ever thought they were actually going to be able to keep rank from Mark Kelly or if they ever thought that they were really going to be able to indict or at least get a conviction. The point is the countless number of retired military members that are scared to speak out right now. And I know two particularly that are, you know, generals that are retired that everybody would know their name that are not speaking out because of their fear of this. So that has done its job, sadly. And that's, you know, part of the reason. They're afraid they're going to get court-martialed? Yeah, it's all of it. Court-martialed, security concerns, have their rank stripped. Or actually, and I'll tell you, this is the sick thing, and this is actually why you also don't hear a lot of retiring members of Congress speak out, because they have to have jobs when they get out. And their job relies on their ability to have relationships with people in power, whether you're a four-star general or whether you're a former member of Congress. Why are these guys retiring, but they're still voting party lines because they want to go back and lobby and they need to have access to their friends to do it? That's a sad thing, by the way. Thank God. We should just shout out my colleague, our colleague Mark Hartling now. Yeah, absolutely. Not being bowed by this because there's risks for everybody that are doing this. I see him and people like Ben Hodges, who was the general for Europe, has spoken out. There are a few that are willing to speak out, and seriously, they get high comments from me on that. On the country first side, just to be very brief, look, our goal is just to remind people of the role of the National Guard. You can see it at country1st.com. And we have a commercial that's out there that's basically talking about, imagine the floods actually hit your district, but the Guard's not there because they're being used by a politician to suppress people. One of the things we've seen in polling is that one of the things that actually compels people to the guard the most is the idea that if a natural disaster hits, their guard is doing some political thing off somewhere. And so we talk about that. It's information for guard members and for the public. And so I'd encourage people to take a look at it. And that's all I'll say on it. I think that's good. It's a good and important because a lot of people don't know what the natural guard does. Yep. Right. And so just even as an education effort, you know, the more people learn about what they're supposed to do, I think the more mad some of them will be for good reason about how the how the guards being used. As I asked you this question, I just got this text. We have a breaking little item from Senator Slotkin who's saying that she hears that they're going to another grand jury tomorrow. So they're trying to go back at them again. Good Lord. How many L's do these guys need? Good Lord. When we talk about what can we do in the future to put up guardrails, I will tell you there should be some rule against double jeopardy in front of grand juries. You cannot – like they've done to Letitia James, James Comey, now these six. OK, one grand jury says no bill and now you're going to go to another one and another one and maybe we'll find one in the south. I'm sorry. You can't grand jury hunt. That's got to be on the agenda in three years. well we're kind of running down the list of their rake stepping i want to talk about the situation in el paso yesterday so i was flying home in the morning i was a little nervous about this because they're saying that the they're shutting down the flight area around el paso for 10 days and i was thinking my head i was like i don't know los angeles to new orleans that kind of flies over el paso then there's some misinformation out there about how new orleans had a no-fly area but that's mardi gras related you just can't fly drones you know over new orleans during mardi gras you know safety first. But anyway, the initial claim from the admin was that Mexican cartels had deployed a drone across the border. Sean Duffy declared that threat had been neutralized. And so then they reopened the airport. It turns out it was a Mylar party balloon that was shot down. And this has not been confirmed, but we're hearing that it was not shot down by the military, actually, but it was the Border Patrol who were given some weapons to use, some experimental weapons to use so the border patrol guys shut down a party balloon and as a result they shut down the airport in el paso well look i want to be fair and say i understand i once shot down a party balloon by accident as well i did it in an f15 it was okay no i i want to be fair and say like the actual like it's comedic that they shot down a party balloon i understand it right because there are real, I will tell you one of the things that was eye-opening to me because I have worked the border in the Air National Guard, particularly against cartel operations, and they are better funded, maybe not than now, but they were better funded than us back then. And they had better intelligence and stuff. And so the idea that there would be drone defense against that is good, because you'll see a lot of cartel drones come and spy, look for where Border Patrol isn't, look for right times for crossings, drugs, you know, people, stuff like that. But the 10-day closure of the airspace is what's indicative of what happens in this administration, which is instead of there being a mature discussion about what's happening, I mean, first off, if you're going to shoot down a drone, you really don't need to shut down airspace. What you have to figure out is simply, are there aircraft in the flight path? No? Okay. And we can know if There's aircraft in the flight path. This overreaction happened. People woke up. WTF. I got a ton of email or texts from people that wondered if it was aliens related. I'm dead serious. Okay. Because it is kind of near where this happened was near. What's it called? I'm not an alien conspiracy theorist. The thing in New Mexico. Some alien thing. Whatever the thing in New Mexico is that they're at an independent state. Oh, yeah, yeah. Roswell or something. Yeah, it was near there. Yeah, but anyway. And no, it was just an overreaction. But on the issue of this drone defense, this is a good thing. in general because it's laser. Laser is returnable and cheap right now to shoot down a drone. In many cases, we're using massively expensive weapons. It's a kind of a mismatch, right? Like a drone's $300. The weapons we're using are 50,000. So this is a good thing. But this is comedic in that I'm not sure the Border Patrol should be the first using this. I actually think the best use of a weapon like this is to send it to units in ukraine who are actually defending against a real drone war right now and see what happens there similar to what the brits are doing they're creating an anti-drone weapon that's a laser maybe further along than we know and they're deploying that in ukraine before their own side because uh there's a real life-saving benefit to it also it was uh communications fuck up it doesn't feel like they've got the a team here Right. Like there's a, you know, CBP is not communicating with the military, not communicating with DOT. They're shutting down the El Paso Airport for 10 days. That's what they initially had said before they pulled it back. Everybody is scared to underreact. And so they're overreacting. Everyone's worked at an organization like this, right? If you've been in the military, it's like, hey, the boss says we have to line up for formation at 7. So your squadron commander says, let's all get here at 630. the flight commander says let's all get here at 6 15 because the commander wants us at 6 30 and you end up with that way front loading thing and that's i think what you see here like hey we need to shut down the airspace temporarily it's like okay 10 days 10 days seem tough we're tough the cartels can't send any balloons our way we'll stop people from flying to see their grandma it is perfect though that it was a balloon just perfect you met ukraine we went deep on this with ben wittish yesterday but i just i want to give you a chance to cook on the latest study ukraine if you want to. I thought Ben gave a really good rundown. This war is by no means over. This war is even close to over. It is a industrial fight right now between Ukraine and the West, I will say, and Russia. Who can produce the most stuff, who can produce it for the longest, and who can continue to put men on the front lines. And what Ukraine has been able to figure out is how to reduce their footprint on the front line, thus how to put less people in danger. You're only seeing movements now in groups of one and two people, not platoon movements, not massive armored movements. So you're seeing a lockdown frontline because anywhere within 50 kilometers, basically, of each side of the line of contact is now under complete control of massive amounts of drones from both sides. So this is now a matter of who can strike medium, who can strike deep into each other's territory, who can defend themselves, and quite honestly, who has the industrial capacity to win. I wouldn't have said this last time I was on the pod, but I think it's possible that in five or 10 years, there is still this thing going on. And unfortunately, we have to come to grips with it and not get numb to it. I know. Yeah. It was that economist article that really sat with me. I mentioned with Ben yesterday where they kind of painted out a way that like it's 2030 and we're still in the stalemate in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus have more formally united. Maybe they pick off a little island in Estonia. Like this is just where we're at now. And I just want to add to that real quickly, which is in February, Lindsey Graham was talking about his sanctions bill that's ready to go. And Trump is going to try one more time. It's February right now. You mean he was doing that this week? A year ago. Oh, a year ago. A year ago. And he's constantly talking about his sanctions bill. And then Trump wants him to hold it back because they have this one chance to do something. It's been a year, Lindsay. I know you or your people listen to this. It is either get that bill done against the wishes of the president or shut up and just admit you're only going to do what Donald Trump wants. But you cannot have your cake and eat it too anymore. I'm sorry. I don't think Lindsay listens anymore. I got to tell you, I did bump into him, I don't know, maybe a year ago now. And it was one of those situations where he remembered me from the old days. Like when he saw me walking up, he did the politician. A smile came across his face. It's like, oh, good to see you again. And then you saw it like click in his brain like eight seconds in as I started to talk. He was like, oh, wait, this person hates me. And so he's like, come out of it. And then he started yelling at me, which is fine. I like that. He should have to deal with more exchanges like that. He shouldn't be hiding in the airport. He was a job guy too. He was a job guy too. I know you want to listen to your podcast, so I'll keep it short. Because if you think it's important to make a cost-free choices, can ASR maybe help? I think, how then? For example, when you're selling a cost-free products that you love, you want to know more about the insurance where cost-free cost-free cost-free cost-free cost-free cost? Go to asr.nl slash duurzamekeuzes. This is ASR for you and a sustainable community. ASR does it. So, now you can listen to your podcast. selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. I want to do a little politics. Should we do the Republicans or wussies first or should we end with that? Maybe let's end with that. That'll be a little fun place to end. So let's talk about the Democrats real quick. Two areas that you're in Texas, you live in Texas, and then you were in Indiana yesterday. So I kind of want to talk about both. let's start with the Texas Senate race. It feels like a shit show to me and a huge opportunity to pick up a seat. Yeah. And it's part of the reason why I'm talking about it a lot. It's just extremely frustrating that we are where we are, but you're on the ground there. I'm hoping maybe it isn't as bad as it seems to me from my podcast studio. It feels like it's bad. I mean, first off, let's just on the Republican side, it's basically a three-way tie, which is crazy. And if I was Cornyn, I would be embarrassed about that. Right. Just for people who aren't paying attention. So It was John Cornyn, the sitting senator. Ken Paxton is a MAGA tea party guy who has a million issues, corruption, cheating on his wife, everything. The whole gambit of MAGA foibles. He's done all of them. And then like a third kind of MAGA-ish guy, Wesley Hunt, got into the race as well. And that's, I think, the only thing really keeping Cornyn alive really kind of because it's dividing up the vote a little bit. So anyway. Yeah, I think so too. And so that probably I think good money is going to bet that Paxton is going to win That bad And it good if you a Democrat because Paxton is the one that Democrats could potentially beat And keep in mind, in 2018, it was Beto who ran to the left, actually came within a point of winning statewide in Texas. And so this is the equivalent of that election cycle. It is equivalent. But I think it's important to correct the record for people to be clear-eyed on what Beto's 2018 campaign was because it was not as left as his second campaign. And he was he wasn't running as a moderate or anything, but he like he was really focused on like, I'm going to go everywhere in Texas. I remember he did that thing with Will Hurd, right, where it was like the two of them were in Congress on the road trip. So on the policy wise, he was running still as a liberal Democrat. But his brand, he was trying to cultivate a brand that was more bipartisan in 2018. Yeah. I just think that's important to remember when you think about the fact that that's the closest the Democrats have gotten to success. Yep. And like within a point, I mean, incredibly. And so you have a situation, it's Tallarico against Crockett, both very well spoken in terms of passionate, kind of getting everybody fired up. The polls show that Tallarico would have a much better shot against Paxton. And I think people in Texas need to simply know, I haven't obviously taken a side in the Democratic primary, but people need to know that if Paxton wins, if basically Paxton wins the primary, it has to be everything unleashed to be in. That is the only thing that matters at that point, because if you think Corden or Ted Cruz are bad, holy cow, wait till Paxton comes. So unfortunately, it looks like it is a bloody fight, and I'm not sure that the guy that probably could do the best in the general election, Tallarico, is going to win. I don't know, but that's the situation we're sitting in. On the other hand, on the House side, there's like Texas 9, my buddy Terry Virts is running, astronaut running in the primary there. If he can win that primary, I think that can be a takeaway from – it wouldn't really technically be a takeaway from the Republicans, but it would be one of the districts they counted on to go Republican at 60% Hispanic. So there's real opportunity for Texas. Yeah, similar to Polito, Bobby Polito, who I had on a couple weeks ago running down there in South Texas. So no, on the House side, there are opportunities. This takes us into the Indiana thing that I want to talk to you about. And so I want to frame it up through this poll. And this is kind of why I'm obsessed with the Texas thing. This is Trump net approval. Morning consult did that. This is, he's checked his approval in every state, state by state. You know, there's margin of error in all this. And, you know, so I don't want to get overstated. But directionally, you can get a sense for what the battlefield looks like. And you look here at the states where he is just a little bit in the green still. Montana, he's plus four. Nebraska is plus six, I should mention, because I think that Dan Osborne Senate race is interesting. South Carolina only plus three. Florida plus two. Texas plus two, Kansas plus one, Indiana, where you were even, Ohio, even the big Sherrod Brown Senate race there, Alaska and Iowa, two other places where there are conceivably competitive Senate races. He's minus one. And then you kind of jump into the blue states. But I just think if you look at that batch, and those are all states he won by 10 points or more, Iowa, Alaska, Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, Texas, Florida, and his approval is between plus two and minus one in those states could get worse as the year goes on. We'll see. But Democrats need to be very serious about competing in those states and winning in those states in the Senate and need to have the type of candidates that can appeal in those states. So anyway, you were in Indiana. Let's see. What do you think about the broader picture and what you saw in India? Yeah. So I met with Indiana Democrats in Anderson, Indiana. It was one of the congressional districts. Here's the thing is, I think back the best example of what this year could be is 2010. And you were part of 2010 with me, which is, you know, look, I ended up running against a Democrat that had won my district by 23 points and I beat her by 15. Okay. Now that gives you an idea of that kind of swing. And it was without a scandal. She didn't do anything scandalous. I'm sorry. Just, I've discalculated there. She had won by 23 and you won by 15 or she had won by 15. She had won by 23 and then I 23. Yeah, it was a massive, massive flip. And then I ended up serving with a lot of people that had no clue they would actually win. I mean, honestly, people that were showing up to freshman orientation, like looking around, they knew they'd probably only be there two years. But they're like, what in the wow, this is incredible. I didn't think I'd be here. That is this year. Yeah. Except on the potential for a blue wave here instead of a red wave. There are going to be people that win races in Indiana or Texas or any of these states that we're going to look at and be like, that person was never on the DCCC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign, never on their radar, never on the NRCC's radar to defend, and they won by 5% or 10%. So this is why it is essential to put good candidates in place to elect the best one to compete in the general election out of a primary, because this is not the time to pass a purity test. This is the time to defend our democracy by taking power away, not just barely, but crushing the Republicans so that Mike Johnson never does anything public again, because he's so embarrassed by how much they lost the House. And by the way, now the Senate's in play, which is insane. It's insane. Just to your point, and it's not over. That's why I'm continuing to talk about this. It's February 12th. And filing deadlines have passed in some states but not others. Like California is still in March. Colorado is in March. Kauai's in June. I'm just kind of scrolling down here really quick. You know, Iowa still. So the Democrats have a lot of candidates. The House recruitment is going, I think, much better. You know, I think those stretch districts are still going to be so critical. And that's kind of what I'm focused on as well, just encouraging people. It's not too late to decide to run, to choose to run, and to think about different types of candidates that might fit those districts a little better than what a typical Democrat is. Amen. And vote strategically in the primary. I get it. Somebody may have a different view on one thing than you or five things even. Vote strategically because in many cases it's that versus a MAGA and I'm sure I know who you would prefer. I want to say this every time because as a former Republican people, like people here vote strategically and you're like, oh, vote for the most moderate person. And in some districts that does mean moderate. But I also I want to see more like working class Dems running who have backgrounds who like are from the community who maybe, you know, maybe they're economically way more to the left of me. But like they were a cop or something, you know, and so they have some cultural cachet that's a little bit more in the middle. I, you know, I just think that that more more of that type of thing is better. Anything in particular from Indiana strike out to you from the conversations from your time? Just energy, man. And I mean, honestly, I went there thinking, well, it's probably I'm probably going to have to deal with, you know, people are going to be down and kind of, you know, muttering. It's Indiana. And I even had made a comment once to somebody like, you know, I know it's a red state. And their response wasn't. No, it's not. We're really close. It's not as red as people think. And that is exactly what I wanted to see because they have a fighting spirit, which was pretty cool. Was it weird for you to speak at a Democratic rubber chicken dinner? I've been doing it for about a year now. How does it feel? it feels much more welcoming than if i went to a republican line that's for sure nobody's telling you you're the devil satan has entered you're on the epstein files actually no i'm not well you should be on the commerce secretary is not look is um yeah all right last thing that i teased um i don't believe i've played nick fuentes's voice on this podcast ever and you don't ever have to hand it to white nationalists and racists. Nick Fuentes, I have no love for him at all. I think he's deeply pernicious. Sometimes, though, deeply pernicious people that say what they really think occasionally have some clarity that the hacks don't have. Sean Hannity never has any clarity because he's just a hack. He's just saying whatever the party wants. Because Nick Fuentes is a gross incel, he occasionally says stuff that the party doesn't like to hear. And every once in a while, it's right. And this happens to be one of those cases. I'd like to listen to him. It's not funny anymore. It's not edgy. It's really just become a drag. At one point, we were the trolls. And now we're the butthurt ones. There was a point in time when we were having fun and we were laughing and we were trolling and we were making jokes. And now our side are the biggest butthurt faggots of all time. The far right has become the biggest butthurt faggots ever. Everybody's mad all the time. You can't make jokes. Everyone's moral fagging about everything. Purity spiraling. At the end of the day, people don't even really have a vision for what the country should be. The Republicans are butthurt. They don't have a vision. They're not fun anymore. They're whining about Bad Bunny and all the Olympians. I just think that like that in summation explains why J.D. Vance is going to have a really hard time. I agree. Because all those things, all those complaints he said just define J.D. Vance. Like he is just, he's constantly butthurt about everything. And Trump at least has some fun sometimes. And I think it is a correct assessment of the problems with the right right now. As a right in the middle of X and millennial, some Xenu, I can understand the idea of why trolling has such a draw to people, although I can't really explain it. Right. I will say he's right on in that whole thing about they used to have fun doing this. They love to take people off. They love making people victims. And now, listen, this is the party. I can't tell you, even up to my last year in Congress, we would talk about the ruggedness of the individual and the Republican Party that believes that men should be able to, you know, provide for the family and whatever. We have created an entire generation of victim sissies. I mean, I've got to tell you, watching, you know, 50 year old white men who are complaining that they're being pushed out of society. Look, you can have real issues with things like hiring preferences. I understand that. But to say that you now are being discriminated in society, this is not it wasn't just bad bunny, Tim, that they were upset about. They've been upset about every halftime Super Bowl since I was like one year old, every halftime Super Bowl. That didn't include Lee Greenwood. I mean, we are creating an entire generation of men that sit on the Internet. They watch other men talk about how unfair their life is and how things are terrible. And my grandfather stared down Nazis in World War II and came home and never talked about it. He wasn't the nicest guy ever. So I'm not saying we need to be exactly like that. But for once, practice what you preach. Grow up. Be rugged. Stop being a freaking whiny victim. And my advice to Democrats is keep calling these people out as whiny victims because it drives them nuts and it makes them more victim-y. And ultimately, Americans hate whiny victims. okay that's my diatribe yeah it's not appealing yeah no they're diaper babies it's not appealing and like you think about the people the the gains that they made among men between obama and trump a lot of those guys like they're not signing up for like they were upset at the woke scolding you know and like i don't think that they're going to take any better to jd vance's like you know patriotic hall monitor yeah i don't i don't think that nobody wants a hall monitor in chief it's it's not fun it is not in the american spirit or tradition frankly and um you know i just grow up they're diaper babies i'm not gonna say the words that the next time like just grow up like be a man grow up i don't care yeah or no don't keep whining about everything or keep bitching about bad money we'll see how it goes for you we'll see how it goes you know you made all these gains among hispanic men and it's like it's like oh the society is over if there's a Spanish halftime show. By the way, we only speak English in America. English is American. Actually, English is from England. We imported that too. Did you see the other guy, not Kid Rock, the other guy at the alternate halftime show? It was the saddest, most pathetic thing I've ever heard. It was this fat country fuck up there doing a sad song. And I like sad songs. Sad things happen to people. There's a lot of great history of the blues music. It's talking about all the bad things that happened to folks. like legitimately bad things because the blues musicians like were descendant of slaves and they were in Jim Crow South and it's like they have legitimate things to complain about this fucking whiny bitch was up there just going like it's hard being country in this country I just want to fish and mow my lawn without having to turn on the news and hear people being mean to me and it's just like I'll kill you don't turn on the news dude yeah right just fish if you want you I'm tired of having to take this fish and knife and stab myself in the leg. Well, you could also just not do it. And then you wouldn't be stabbed in the leg. Good Lord. Just an idea. Something to think about. All right. Adam Kinzinger. It's always a joy being with you, my friend. You too, man. Hope to see you soon. And everybody go check him out on Substack, wherever else he is. Go support country first. And for the rest of y'all, I'll be back here tomorrow because it's Friday for another edition of the show. We'll see y'all then. Peace. We used to have fun. We used to have fun. But something's changed. We used to have fun. We used to have fun. Things don't feel the same. The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side.