Adam Serwer and Bobby Pulido: MAGA Got Proven Wrong

Don't you wish everything was more rewarding? With Rakuten almost everything is. You can earn cash back on those new shoes you've been wanting. You can save on the next trip you book. You can cash in on groceries. Rakuten is a smart way to save money and feel rewarded when you shop. Rakuten partners with all of your favorite brands across so many categories. Fashion, beauty, travel, concert tickets, electronics, restaurants, and more. Just join, shop your favorite brands and save. Target, Instacart, Expedia, Macy's Sephora, CVS. The list is long, save online, install, and add over 22,000 restaurants. And when it's time to redeem those rewards, get your money exactly how you want it. Choose PayPal, check, bill points, or cash out with gift cards. So go ahead, take a trip, fill a cart, or to desert. Rakuten is a world of rewards. Join today for free. Go to Rakuten.com or get the app. That's RAKUTN. If you are an RIA or looking to become one, Schwab advisor services is the Watson to your homes. Smart, dependable, always has your back. It's no mystery why they're the number one choice for RIAs who want to be the ultimate solution for their clients. With all the wealth services, technology, and support your firm needs, the difference is so obvious. It's Schwabbius. Follow the clues at Schwabbius.com. Hey, everybody, big news. We are going back on the road. We wanted to be with you all. Me and Sarah wanted to hug you. JVL wanted to greet you from a polite distance. So we're planning our spring bulwark tour. And we demanded to kick off with our friends in the Twin Cities. So we'll be there February 19th. I guess it probably won't be very spring in the Twin Cities, February 19th, but that's okay. We're going to be there for a one night show. Details are to come on that. Then after that in March, we're headed to Texas. We're going to be in Dallas on March 18th and Austin on March 19th. Minnesota tickets are going on sale Friday. The Texas shows will go on sale next week. Watch your inboxes. Thebolork.com slash events for more. Go to thebolork.com slash events. If you are not from Minnesota, by the way, come, come hang with us. It's going to be a big venue. We're going to plan some other stuff. February 19th. Hope to see you all there. Hello, and welcome to thebolork podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. We got a double header for you today. Up in segment two is Bobby Polito. He was running for Congress in South Texas. Super interesting guy met last week. I'm excited to talk to him about immigration. What the hell the Democrats are going to do if they're Hispanic voter problem. Or if they have one anymore. Stick around for that. But first, delighted to welcome back to the show. Staff writer at the Atlantic. He was in Minneapolis last week to report on ordinary Minnesotans who mobilized, or is this the occupation of their city? It's Adam Sarwar. What's up, man? Hey, how's it going? I guess I'd start here. Could you sum up the administration's actions in Minnesota and five words? An attack on an American city? I don't know if that... Say the line, Adam. I'll say the line. I'm not gonna air a fuse to do it. I want to give you the barred Simpson. Funny that that's exactly where you were going. And I didn't even get it. Anyway, yes. I think you'd have to say the cruelty is the point there. I mean, you just look at how people are talking about the two Minneapolis St. Paul residents who were killed by the border patrol and basically seeking two unperson them in order to justify the unjustifiable, which is the taking of the lives of people who pose no threat to anyone and who were, you know, when they were killed in the process of trying to protect or aid the people around them. I'm just jealous. I don't have a tagline. I mean, I've been talking 20 hours a week and nothing sticks yet, but one of these days. The article that you wrote, I think, had some really deep and poignant elements that I want to get to. And is maybe concernedly for you in line with some of the stuff I've been thinking about. You just put it better. But I just before we get to kind of the deeper elements of your analysis, what's happened? I'm going to sort of just explain for people. I was interested to kind of hear the more wrote in a play by play of what's happened on the ground. Like you were riding around with some of these ice watch folks. Like what exactly are they doing and what's happened? Yeah. So look, you know, I was riding around South Minneapolis in a neighborhood called Powderhorn that has seen a lot of ice activity. And what you'll see when you go to Powderhorn is there are a lot of people walking around on foot with their whistles. Sometimes they stand in front of particular restaurants that they know are vulnerable because they're Somali American owned or Mexican American owned or something like that. So they know they'll be a target for immigration authorities. And then you have people in cars and generally, you know, these people are referred to as observers or commuters. And you'll have a driver and a copilot. And a copilot will listen to, sorry, my cat loves it whenever I'm record. You two people love the cat. Oh, good. So the copilot will listen to a dispatcher who will identify locations where ice activity is occurring or the presence of an ice vehicle. Now ice came in and basically took all the rental cars in the city. I couldn't even get one. And so they have all these, you know, sport utility vehicles with out-of-state plates which made them relatively easy to identify. And so the ice watch folks which in their, you know, decentralized, organized by neighborhood, it's a very personal person thing. That's why it was difficult for conservatives to infiltrate although they appear to have successfully done that. And they operate using handles. So I don't actually know the names of the people that I was with. I know their handles and I can communicate with them and I can talk to them and I can confirm things with them. But, you know, they did not give me their names. At least in some cases, they did not give me their actual names. And they, you know, they go around a neighborhood looking for ice vehicles. When they found an ice vehicle, they report it back to the dispatcher where they follow the ice vehicle and they make noise to let everybody else in the neighborhood know that ice is around. Everybody knows that, you know, it's both ice and the border patrol and maybe some other federal agents. You know, everybody's masked. It's not like they're telling you who they are. But everybody just simply refers to ice, which may be a source of frustration for ice people who feel like the border patrol are the real yahos here. But the fact is that everybody just sort of refers colloquially to federal agents as ice, whatever agency that may be a part of. It's like a Xerox, you know, even if, you know, you got a brand now. Yeah, so what I would say is that they go around and sometimes these lead to confrontations, right? Sometimes the agents will get out of the car. They'll box somebody in, they'll threaten them. You know, I was told of incidents where they sprayed pepper spray into the heat vents and where to get the pepper spray into the car, especially if someone doesn't want to roll down the window. A couple of the people that I spoke to had actually been followed home or had their plates run by federal agents who came and said, you know, stop fucking following us. You know, there are lots of viral videos of federal agents saying things like, you know, did you see what happened to unrepeatable language, which is, you know, a death threat. And obviously, you know, they're willing to kill people, even people who are not posing a threat to them. So, you know, the thing that I was struck by was the tremendous courage of the people who are following ice around because they know that if they get killed, you know, the federal government will refuse to investigate. They won't allow local authorities access to the scene. And then, you know, the president, the vice president and their advisors will all say that they were a terrorist and murderers and trying to kill federal agents. So, they know that they might be killed and that whoever kills them will not be held accountable for their death and that they will be smeared by their own government. So, to me, you know, what these people are doing is profoundly brave their unarmed. They do not seek physical confrontation with ice agents. Their purpose is just to foil their operations by making everybody aware that they're occurring. And talk about why that is foiling their operations, I guess. I mean, is it because they're just going to leave the neighborhood as they're going to get harassed because it's warning people not to come outside? Like, what is foiling about that activity? Well, I mean, you know, ice wants the element of surprise. So, if people are ready for them, they might be able to escape or hide, you know, or something of the sort. And the thing is that what people have told me is that, you know, it's not just if you don't have legal status that you should be afraid because there are lots of stories of people stopping people who are citizens, who have legal status who are here legally and being mistreated. You know, I spoke to one Somali American activist who told me that her sister had been detained at the Wippel Building for hours, even though she's an American citizen. So, I think it's not just a question of, you know, they're trying to warn undocumented immigrants. They're warning anybody who might presumably be racially profile by ice because the Supreme Court said, you know, the 14th Amendment doesn't exist anymore and you can just stop anyone if you think they're an illegal immigrant because they have brown skin or they speak a different language. Well, the most apt group is people who did come here using the CBP1 app or people who came here seeking asylum, who've been doing their meetings. Like, Stephen Miller wants to disentangle that group from people that snuck across the Rio Grande or whatever, but like, that's a meaningfully different legal status. And those folks are being treated no different than somebody who is an actual legal immigrant who has committed a crime. Well, to be honest, I don't think that Miller and whoever's running the like DHS social media accounts distinguishes between American citizen undocumented immigrant person with legal status at all if you are of a demographic category that they don't want in the country. I think they do not care. You know, Stephen Miller is a big fan of the racist 1920s immigration restrictions that, you know, partially inspired the Nazis. He said that the big problem with the country was when they repealed those restrictions in 1965. You know, he talked about, if you import the third world quote unquote, you get the third world, which is you can't even describe it as barely veiled, really racist statement that does not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration. It says, the presence of people who are not like me in this country is wrong. And as long as that's your ideological, you know, North Star, you cannot have like a lawful legal immigration policy that distinguishes between categories of people because what you really want to achieve is a kind of ethnic cleansing demographic reengineering of the country. The text to article, which has been a set of proof mag are wrong. And I kind of want to go through the elements of the ways in which they've proven back or wrong one by one, but just give folks of it read it like the overall, you know, thesis. The overall thesis is that I think, you know, if you've ever seen the movie Fight Club, you know, there's that Tyler Dernline, where he's like, we have no great war. Our great depression is our lives. And this is the figment of an imagination of a disturbed person, but I think, you know, for a lot of like online, like far right, Moga types, it's actually a thesis statement. And so, you know, they thought of this, you know, mass deportation project as their great mask analyzing, you know, saving Western civilization thing where they would get to prove that they were manly men. They would finally get the manly execution of violence in defense of a great cause that would give their lives meaning. And instead, you know, this oppressive federal invasion of an American city has given their political opponents to show that they are brave, that they are fighting a great cause, that they are the ones who have a community that they will defend even at the risk of their own lives, that they are the ones who truly believe in their principles to the point of, you know, risking everything to defend them. And I think there's a kind of irony to that because this community in Minnesota, you know, the right has a social theory of that like multi-racial, multi-faith communities cannot be, you know, quote unquote cohesive, that our chaos is the result of the presence of people who are different from us. And then you see this multi-racial community in Minneapolis coming together in defense of each other in this like broad non-violent way. And it's just inspiring. And it just refutes the idea that the problem with quote unquote cohesion is the presence of people who are different from us. The problem is, you know, people who make an issue out of someone being different from you. You know, the way I sometimes describe it is it's like, you know, an arsonist setting a building on fire and then complaining about the temperature. If you're going to demagogue about how horrible, you know, ex-group of people are, of course, like there are going to be cohesion problems because you were saying these people are the enemy and they are a legitimate target of state violence in the way that Trump has said, you know, Somali immigrants are garbage and we don't want them. So I'm going to go through those elements one time. There's a social cohesion element that's kind of defensive western civilization who's doing that in the masculinity. The social cohesion thing has been an obsession of mine since I watched JD Vance's interview with Ross Douthat. Did you see that by chance when they were in the night? I did not see the whole thing. Yeah. Okay. You use a quote from JD on the topic of how immigrants ruin social cohesion in the article. But he goes at that in greater depth sitting in the Vatican with Ross Douthat after the Pope died. And I want to play for you a little bit of that. I think a lot about this question of social cohesion in the United States. I think about how do we form the kind of society? Again, where people can raise families, where people join in institutions together where, you know, what I think Burke would have called the mediating layers of society are actually healthy and vibrant. And I do think that those who care about what might be called the common good, they sometimes underweight how destructive to the common good immigration at the levels and at the pace that we've seen in the last few years. I really do think that social solidarity is destroyed when you have too much migration too quickly. And so that's not because I hate the migrants or motivated by grievance. That's because I'm trying to preserve something in my own country. Social solidarity is destroyed by migration. Yeah, look, I've heard this before, and I think, you know, it is an argument that makes sense on paper. You could disagree that you could think it's wrong, but you know, there's a there's a logical progression to it. Here's the thing. It's wrong. We know it's wrong because we could see in Minneapolis, we could see these communities of people who say, you are my neighbor, whether you were born in Minneapolis or Moogadishu, you are my neighbor and I'm going to protect you. I'm going to walk your kids to the bus stop so that they, you know, because I know you can't go outside. I'm going to bring you food if you need to stay at home. I'm going to help you pay your rent. You know, if I see ice, I'm going to blow my whistle or I'm going to take out my camera and start filming. I mean, when you look at the death of Alex Pretty, the reason that we are able to discount fully the lies that we're told about the circumstances of his death is that there were so many people filming from so many different angles. I mean, apart from Vance's argument being wrong in practice, in my view, wrong period, I mean, what you're actually saying is the pace of immigration might help people assimilate better. If you maybe, maybe, but you know, it's a little weird to say that when like you consider that like a substantial amount of, you know, the white population in the United States was segregated into ethnic enclaves where people only spoke their original language, you know, for much of the late 19th and early 20th century and it turned out okay. You know, and what we have here is like immigrants are actually assimilating much faster than in that period, like much faster. Like second third generation, you know, they only speak English. So it's not true. It has like a logical sense. It's not true, but it's also like just not true on the ground of Minneapolis. What is so moving about the sort of neighborhood is there is that everybody says it doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what Jenny you are. It doesn't matter what race you are. It doesn't matter what religion you are. You are my neighbor. I will defend you. And that is a level of commitment to social cohesion that I have yet to see from anybody in the entire Maga coalition who all seem to be about stating these things not so much as a matter of like principles they want to see lived in the world. But as a question of like brand-building and political identity, which is I think with JD Vance this deal. Yeah, exactly. I get my back up when somebody talks about how important social cohesion and social solidarity and the common good is to them and one breath and then and the next breath they smear and lie about their neighbors. Yeah, we're going to get to social cohesion eventually. But first, you know, we have to smear and you know, denigrate our neighbors. And then on the back end of that we'll get to friendship. We're going to get mass men to shoot people dead in the street and that's going to lead to social cohesion. No, look, I mean, what they are doing is they are trying to come up with a what sounds like a morally just fable argument for violence against undesirables people they want to leave the United States. People they want to force out the United States by means of terror whether or not they're actually citizens. Delete me makes it easy quick and safe to move your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. It's easier than ever to find personal information about folks online. Having your address, phone number and family members names hanging out of the internet can have consequences in the real world and make everyone vulnerable more and more online partisans and just regular assholes are looking for data and using it to target people over their politics or being randomly offended about something that you posted on the internet. Even outspoken citizens are dealing with this. And so delete me something I've turned to because of the stupidness of our time. Actually, I was having a convo with a security guy the other day who was telling me various things that I could do and he's like well one of the things you should do is use this thing to delete me. I was like oh great, well they're already a sponsor already done. Check that box. So don't take my word for it, take this. Take it to 12 year data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now to special this account for our listeners get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindelete me.com slash bulwark and use promo code bulwark at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindelete me.com slash bulwark. Enter code bulwark at checkout. That is joindelete me.com slash bulwark code bulwark. I want to go to the masculinity partner next which you referenced and this has been another hobby horse of mine because I just it's hard for me to understand how you can look at a group of seven masked goons pushing down a woman and then tackling like let's be honest kind of a liberal soy boy looking kind of guy and then needing seven of them to keep him on the ground and then shooting them in the back of the head and then shooting them six times after he's dead and looking at that and saying you know the real masculine people are the ones that did that. But that is Steve Miller's view of masculinity. You referenced this audio in the article but I think it's important for you to actually hear it to hear kind of the the menace in his voice. You know the the gangbangers that you deal with they think that they're ruthless. They have no idea how ruthless we are. They think they're tough. They have no idea how tough we are. They think that they're hardcore. We are so much more hardcore than they are and we have the entire weight of United States government behind us. What do they have? We are so hard. I'm so hard. I'm so hard. I'm so hard. I'm so hard. I'm so hard. I'm so hard. I'm so hard. That's a nice good man. There's nothing there's nothing like screaming. I'm so hard core while your voice rises and active. It's amazing. Yeah look you know I think part of the the cognitive dissonance here is that you know here's Steven Miller screaming about how hard but the people who are dying in defense of their ideals are people like Brunei good and Alex Pretty. They're the ones who have proven to be tough, who have proven to be brave, who have been willing to defend. You know the redeeming ideals of Western civilization like due process like equal protection under the law like individual liberty. Those are the things that are being defended by the people on the ground in Minnesota. They are not and cannot be defended by men with masks and guns who have quote unquote total immunity to exact violence on a civilian population. It's just not possible. The person who is staring down a gun with empty hands is always braver than the person with the mask and the gun. But what has happened is that MAGA has adopted this juvenile definition of masculinity where it's simply a question of dominance. They've replaced every redeeming quality of traditional masculinity or the traditional masculine ideal that they talk about heroism, sacrifice, bravery and they've replaced it with you know a capacity for violence and domination. That's it. I want to add one addendum to that. The person protesting is obviously more brave than they got the mask and the gun. But sometimes the guys with the guns are brave, right? I mean there is real police work that it has to be done where you do have to encounter actual bad guys, actual troublemakers where you do fear for yourself because they might lash out at you and they might try to harm you. A lot of those guys are out in the streets in Minneapolis and all over the country and they're doing it responsibly and they're doing it like real men do it and they are not pushing women to the ground and they're not unloading their clip into dead protesters. And I think that's important. I've had loved ones who have been on multiple deployments. But what is a reality is you cannot have people with mask and guns who are not accountable you know to the public because we don't know their identities who have total total total immunity to use lethal force that is just not compatible with the democracy because the lifeblood of democracy is accountability. If you give someone ultimate power the power over life and death and you say they can never be held accountable under any circumstances then you've defeated the purpose of democracy in the first place which is to find what the will of the people is and execute it. I want to ask you to expand a little bit on that point about Western civilization as well. I think this is important. I'd like to look if you spend any time online you see a lot of bravado from MAGA about defending the West against whatever is Radcliffe's Lomb or the you know Lid Tards whatever it is but they don't actually know anything about what the undergirds Western civilization. Stephen Miller's wife Katie Miller the podcaster and chief of the administration she she posted this week attacking a a I see EO who said that his deep loyalty is to the principles of classical liberal democracy. Katie seemed to either misunderstand and think that he was saying that he's loyal to liberalism like she thinks it it means like Democrats are libs yeah or she does know what classical liberalism is and is actively hostile towards it. I think either explanation of that post is it's pretty damning but you get into this bit in the piece about how it's actually the Minnesota and sort of defending Western civilization and classical liberal democracy. Yeah look I think you know when a lot of MAGA online people you know talk about the West they're not talking about great literature they're not talking about great art although they may sometimes invoke classical literature or classical art that they haven't read or cannot appreciate in order to defend what they really mean which is the West is a you know a racially defined thing it's defined by white people in the presence of people who are not white isn't is therefore an attack on the West. But with the people in Minnesota are defending are the actual Western values individual liberty due process free speech it's sort of extraordinary how much the people align with the Trump administration either don't understand as you pointed out or don't like these things. You know when I was at the march there was a young man I spoke to whose family was from Uganda and he mentioned that you know his mom had like made sure he knew where her passport was in case you got picked up by ice and what he said to me was like you know my parents are scared because the country they fled had men in the street with masks and guns and they never thought it would happen here. So when you think about Stephen Miller saying oh you know these third world migrants recreate the conditions of their broken homelands no you're doing that that's what you are doing and you're doing that because you have no appreciation of the quote unquote principles of Western civilization the good ones you know just to be clear not the ones that you know led to the industrialization of shadow slavery but the ones that say individual people have value and rights that must be respected and you know these people have nothing but disdain for those things and I think in part you know when you look at the people around the Trump administration and Miller is like an example like we have a society now that selects for people who are excellent at getting attention not necessarily people who are competent at the work that they do not understanding what classical liberal principles are is it just an example of that. I'm at regular price. Dear McDonald's your breakfast menu fire tens across the board I could be happy with anything even though I ordered the same thing every time thanks for not judging me I'll try something new next time maybe. Score a two for five dollar deal in a sausage McMuffin with egg and more limited time only price and participation may vary cannot be combined with any other offer single item at regular price. You started a reference it there so I want to get with you a little bit more into kind of the context of you know this more historic examples of state violence against folks here I mean obviously in some ways this is not new but I've been kind of like grappling with this a little bit about how to how to talk about it in the right way because in our lifetime we're about the same age it's pretty different I think it's like meaningfully different from like police violence against black folks right like I think that that is also an example of state violence against you know people where the government sort of covers it up and smears victims right so there's some similarities but the structural nature of this right like the degree to which this is like a top down stated policy but president of the United States and and Congress has funded it and now they're executing this policy in our streets like to me makes it a little bit more similar to kind of things from the deeper past and I'm wondering how you would contextualize it well you know Langston Hughes famously said that the south was a fascist government right during the rise of fascism in Europe and I think he was right about that you know even though we can distinguish between you know classical dictatorships and her invoke democracies but I think what is different here what is novel is that you know after the civil war the framers of the reconstruction amendments were like the thing we need to really prevent is oppression of people by their state governments because you know the the original founders thought oh the state governments will protect their residents from tyranny by the federal government but it turned out that philosophy you know was one that was employed by men who wanted to own other men as property other people as property they revised the constitution to say the federal government will protect the rights of the individual people so I think what's unusual here is we have sort of a reverse reconstruction where the redeemers are in charge of the federal government and rather than you know the sort of redemption era red shirts running around with guns intimidating people who are you know associated with you know local and state elites it's the federal government who's invading states and oppressing people there on the basis of their skin color or legal status or you know as we see in Minnesota there's no way to contain this kind of state violence to you know the quote unquote undesirables themselves American citizens who want to defend the ideals that they were raised to cherish are also in the line of fire and will also be killed as a result I want to just nitpick one sentence in your piece is that okay can we do that sure yeah it's maybe your best line is a literary line but I've just are trying to deal with whether it's accurate and you wrote this the secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common that they are the ones who are alone and you argue that fear is being realized by the trumpets in Minneapolis that may be true that that is a fear that these folks harbor inside but man it has to have been a swage to bit by the last few years and by social media you know what I mean oh yeah absolutely I mean I think I think the secret to this overreach is that they thought they had gotten a popular mandate to go full fascist got it I have a lot of different kinds of feelings about the choices that American voters made in the last election you know I know that people will say it was largely a result of inflation when you look at like global political trends but like guys do you understand now why voting on that was a bad idea in any case you know I think what these two killings have demonstrated is that the rest of the country you know whatever you think of that choice and I really find it baffling they don't want to see people gun down in the streets and there are a lot of people on the extremely online maga right who are saying things like you have two months and we're going to come get you you know like like this sort of I think sometimes the kids call it sepiroff posting after this the main antagonist of final fantasy seven like posting a video of a woman getting pushed to the ground by an agent being like I voted for this like yeah yeah I mean like this sort of like weird super villain shit you know I think most of the country actually doesn't like it you know the thing about the internet is that these people who are like weird and depraved have all been able to find each other and make a very loud cacophony of voices making it seem like these attitudes are normal and you know some of the richest men in the world are among them and encourage these voices to express themselves but I think you know the response to the killing of good and especially of pretty suggest that actually the rest of the country like doesn't want to like do whole a cost to and they're not with you on that I think you have a perfectly reasonable point about you know the choice that Americans made in the last election I think it was the wrong choice I do not think most of the country feels the way that Stephen Miller feels there's a you know a large and loud minority of people who feel that way but I think you know his level of bloodthirsty is actually relatively and strange that takes us to kind of the last thing and I'll leave you but I just having been there you know I'm trying to ask this without being clung like I'm wondering what your take is for like what the resiliency of this type of resistance is you know like obviously it's cold there obviously people have real lives attentions Wayne and I agree with you that the majority of the country isn't for this there's a concernedly big minority that is but in order to keep the attention on this this can't be kind of like a mission accomplished right like they move out of email yeah I mean it doesn't seem to me that they've really slowed down they've tried to change the face of the operation with Holman but from what we're seeing on the ground in Minneapolis in St. Paul and in Minnesota they don't seem to have like slowed down at all so we'll see what happens to answer your question I don't know what the resiliency factor is you know I can't tell you how long that they can keep this up what I can't say is that I was deeply moved by the level of concern that these people have for those around them I mean you know I walked into a church and saw palettes and palettes of food I saw a huge line of cars of people that had to be directed because there were so many cars there were so many people Minnesotans of all racist creeds colors were lining up to help other people eat people who were hiding in their homes I can't help but be moved by that you know you know these people who are going around tracking ice they're scared but they are doing it anyway because they care for the people around them and I think that you know that is the kind of community that I would want to live in I can't speak for anybody else but certainly you know for me it was one of the most moving things I've seen you know as a journalist oh man I appreciate you very much thanks for going out there coming on the show and we'll talk to you again soon all right thank you for having me up next value palito you did you know you can save up to 70% on the best brands just by shopping at from rebel.com we're talking about strollers car seats high chairs espresso machines cookware everything you need for way less here's how it works every single day rebel drops thousands of new products on the site for up to 70% off it is a constant stream of endless deals from top brands like up a baby noona baby Bjorn Breville Nespresso kitchen aid look crusade and more but you have to act fast because every deal is one of a kind so if you see something you love make sure you add to cart fast so stop paying full price when you don't have to whether it's baby gear kitchen upgrades or a treasure for your home you didn't know you needed rebel has it for way less up to 70% less shop from rebel.com and save big ready to launch your business get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs shopify especially designed to help you start run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand marketing tools out there integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale ups online in person and on the go shopifies made for entrepreneurs like you sign up for your one dollar a month trial at shopify.com slash setup. All right we are back he's a Tejana music star he's running for Texas is 15th congressional district south Texas secretly held by Monica Dela Cruz for Republican who flipped it in 2022 he's a Latin Grammy winner on his farewell music tour he took a minute for us he's up for an American Grammy at Sunday ceremony in Los Angeles it's Bobby Polito how you doing man good Tim how are you doing most importantly I hear you're a bullwork OG I hear that you were like our 19th subscriber yes I was a political science major in college and so I've always followed politics really closely and so yes sir I was one of your first subscribers we appreciate that buddy all right I guess got admitted at the top we're going to get to news in a second but I don't know anything about ton of music I'm a music person this is a blind spot for me so yeah I want you to like tell me a little bit about it and like give me give me a comp like are you like the Billy Joel of this world like the John mayor or like what is what's that something a little more hardcore like a jack white listen I'm I'm I'm probably at that one of the top in my industry and my industry is it's a regional industry that's grown you know Selena I'm sure you've heard of Selena that's what Selena was in my industry I knew her when we were kids we sing in Spanish but we're very acculturated to the American culture so my mother on my mother's side I'm eight eight generation Texan and so we've been here a long time but we're very very close to our cultural roots and mostly Mexican American roots and so it's kind of a bubble it's a unique area really the real grand valley is really unique it's different you're not going to give me a comp come on compare yourself to sound yeah compare yourself so come on it's okay you can brag you know like George straight in countries been around a long time I guess you know I guess in that industry I've been around 30 years and and we've been blessed to have recently won a Latin Grammy and we're nominated next week it's going to be really hard to win that one but I'm just glad to be there for the American Grammy all right George straight I like that I was we'll stick with George straight now I now I've got a baseline I want to talk about your campaign and I think that there's some real political implications for political nerds among us but you know we have to talk about the more acute issue of what's in the news first and that's everything's been happened in Minnesota and I guess I'm just looking for your your thoughts in general on what we've seen in Minnesota what you think the response should be from Democrats it's horrific and a lot of people down here people that I know that voted Republican or are also not happy with what's going on I think this is something that is unifying as for the most part you know they're unified against what you're seeing there's no way to spin that they they've tried to spin it when they try to go out there and say that he was a domestic terrorist and stuff like that I think people saw what they saw and it just takes away for their validity now they're changing all these things to try to get the people back but there's ice rates here Tim like it's not like it was just there this is something that's been hitting this community pretty hard the builder community has really been hurt by this the workforce is very scarce and so they're having trouble finishing their project and the realtors also need more things to sell so there's less houses and so it's it's really affecting our community down here too I want to talk about the funding side with enforcement with ice and CBP because yeah I think your perspective is probably going to be different beat on the border right it's like it's one thing to say get these guys out of Minneapolis abolish it they have no reason to be there it's absurd that CBP is in Minneapolis which is 300 miles from any border and that's the Canadian border where there's not a lot of crime coming through and so I think that's something that's easier for us to say it gets a little bit more complicated you know when it comes to your community right like there needs to be some kind of enforcement down there and so I wonder how you can think about that conversation about like what funding should look like and what should be done presuming you get in next year and the Democrats take control of Congress well I think there's there's several things that is problematic when they put quotas and they say go get me 3000 people and they basically chastise them for not having done their job like Stephen Miller did well then they're going to go to the lowest hanging fruit what they initially said we're going to get out the bad guys you know I'm all for targeting the bad people and getting them out that's what ice historically is always done but they're not trained and and the people joining ice are really suspect and they're getting 47 days of training right 47 days why 47 because they want to flatter the president I don't think that's serious to be honest with you and so I think the quotas are bad I think the way they're doing it and they're conducting it look don't go after gardeners and grandmas you know there's been more of the people like 70% of the people that they've deported don't have a criminal record and the racial profiling to him here in the Rio Grande Valley is a huge problem huge because think about this the number one rated TV network as univision a lot of people speak Spanish here and when you hear them say and well we're going to go after people we can go based on their accent guess what's going to happen here right they're doing it a lot of people speak Spanish and so I think in general the Latino community and Hispanic community down here they feel disrespected because you can't be yourself anymore seven democrats voted to fund ice in the house last week dhs where was your been on that look I would have been opposed to funding it and and I get it right they have the reasons why they voted and they've justified them say well there's other things in that bill but we needed to have pushed them to say no separate them or we're not going to vote for it because right now the biggest pressing issue in our community is this specific issue it just is and so I was not not for that and and I'm friends with them right so that doesn't mean that I would vote the same way sometimes you got to tell your friend they fucked up I have a lot of friends of you know made mistakes I've made mistakes you know that's part of being a good friend all right I some of those members I like too but it's like was horrific I agree and and a couple of note I shout out to Tom Swasey for example I mean you know would rather have been on the right side first but he came out and just said bluntly no I've I screwed up you know I screwed up right and you know what that's kind of rare and probably it's refreshing right to have somebody actually admit the thing hey with my bad or whatever we don't see that uh often in politics I'll talk about kind of another issue that is popped up related to in particular this latest killing of Alex Preddie which is the fact that he was carrying a weapon we've seen all of these supposedly pro-second amendment maga guys being very quick to say he deserved it because he was carrying a weapon as he was a monitoring ice yes then if you don't know he had an extra clip or magazine or whatever and Trump even said yesterday you can't walk in with guns you just can't you can't walk in with guns I'm wondering uh what your reaction has told that it's the same mega hypocrisy that's been going on ever since you got elected look it's not about principles anymore it's just not I mean I listen I'll be honest with you I'm pro-second amendment like down here in South Texas I'm a long range competitive shooter okay so you can tell me that did I use which one is it is it a clip or a magazine I don't know any gun terms all right I'm a gay from it's no it's it's it's it's magazine but but but clip is not it's accepted clip is okay great all right yeah so so so I'm very familiar with firearms because it's a part of our life down here which is just I'm in a rural area and and you know I have my fair share of guns like a lot of them but uh it's it's ironic right that that the second amendment was was exactly from to prevent a tyrannical government overreach I think if if Alex wanted to have done something he would have pulled the gun out right there and start shooting at them he obviously was not intending to do that uh he never reached for it they took it out and then they killed him and and that's not right that's not where we are right now and and you know principles need to be your principles they can't they can't waver it's just pretty ironic that that you know they they supported Kyle Rittenhouse you know walking around there going to approach this with a gun and yet they come and and and try to demonize Alex Freddie I know this just happened and like the tragedy is more important to the politics and it's just sick that the it's just it makes me so upset that he's dead and and that they killed him and that they lied about him we don't know who killed him but the reality is there is political elements to all this and so I guess I wonder like do you think that they're blaming him for having a weapon like it's something that can resonate like is it something that you can talk about down there uh you know when you talk about your second amendment commitment or you know do you think that people think it's hypocritical like what what do you what do you think about the politics of all that I think there's a lot of principled people that disagree with this I mean I don't know if you saw this statement from the NRA was it was kind of a rebuke from what he was saying yeah you know they're they're staunchly but I think they're starting to kind of realize that a lot of their principles are out the window and again it's just it's that tribalism of well if it's my team doing it we're okay with it and I don't think I don't think we should go that down that road ready to launch your business get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs Shopify especially designed to help you start run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand marketing tools that get your products out there integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale ups online in person and on the go Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup all right you're in a trump plus 17 district trump won it by 17 yep so what's the plan what's the plan how do you do that how are you competitive there I think Tim 2024 was an a big huge anomaly down here remember they jerrymandered the district again so 65% of the district is new area to congresswoman Monica La Cruz we've already traveled and gone and done town halls or meetings at all 11 counties in this district this district is almost 80% Latino Hispanic and my music and my father's music my father's also a singer we've traveled all these areas and met a lot of friends throughout the years and we've been going taking our message there now just just for context in 2022 Rochelle Garza ran against Ken Paxton and in this district this was for attorney general is stated Texas she lost by less than one point to Ken Paxton so this district isn't as red as people think it is Beto or Roark in 2018 won it by almost 10 points the people down here really really vote for the person more than the party just for context like it's in star county which is right neighboring on the border Henry Kuehoud actually won with a larger percentage than even trump did so the people here really listen to the to the candidate and really vote more that way than a lot of party line there's lots of split ticket voting I'd listen to that pitch and it sounds like okay well no I understand why the democrats feel good about your candidacy what you do you feel like this is something that you could potentially win but like the other thing I hear is Beto won this by 10 points come a loss to by 17 and that is a massive switch basically one in four more than that people in the district switching to sides how did the democrats fuck this up so bad you know what happened well you know I think I think every time you're running you got to listen to the people that's what we've been doing and the people were screaming at the top of their lungs make life more affordable for me that's that's the bottom line and and I felt like we prioritized other things over that they were obviously also concerned with the stuff on the border I think I think the Biden administration really effed it up really to be frank with you in not really addressing it till in year four now let's be honest right Trump also killed this bipartisan immigration deal right and we didn't do a good enough job at telling people he killed this for partisan reasons but for three years we didn't do anything about it and so that was a problem and and I think that if all of those things really just culminated in that ass whooping that that our party took and I'll tell you you know I'm not surprised what happened the last time in 2024 I saw it coming you saw it on the streets you saw people just talking about it and so having said that I can tell you right now there's a lot of disappointment there a lot of regret a lot of buyers remorse so I really don't think that that was a permanent thing so when Republicans said oh we're just going to assume that they're always going to be Republican that's a very very wrong assumption that they that they made I think that's pretty good political analysis you could be abundant if you ever decide to retire I don't want to be a father of other things on a throw at you okay and I think obviously the border stuff and and costs drive some of us the cultural stuff I think we shouldn't just totally rule out you know Carlos Espina he's like that young tech tech tech yeah yeah good yes I had him on I don't know a couple months ago now and I was asking him this question like what happened with young Hispanic men and he just thrown out of various reasons but one of the things that was interesting and I've heard from a couple other people in the community is is faith basically like that there was a period of time where Democrats were maybe more liberal on some social issues but it seems like the party was still you know had a lot of folks who went to church and you know we're religious and that you know there's this impression fair or not that you know that's not true anymore and you know I was talking to a guy the right-wing kid but you know he was obviously there's a lot of BS around this but just like this is what voters say so you know just like listening to him when he said his basically look I went to a mega rally and they began it with a prayer and then I watched the Kamala rally and they began it with Megan Lee Stallion twerking or whatever and obviously that's a BS argument and that the mega guys aren't genuine questions we can just look at their behavior but still like if that's the impression it's maybe something to think about so I don't know so what do you think about like faith and cultural issues also being part of it and how can that be mitigated somewhat it is your spot on you know I went to Quarrow High School they had a football game and and I was up there that's in the northern part they vote 80-20 Republican and I went to the football game Friday night and right before the game they said a prayer over the speaker when I was younger going on like they wouldn't pray they would just you know the Stars Bangalow Banger and let's go right and I have seen a definitely a big shift towards people and faith down here it's even bigger and yes I think we need to not shy away from our faith and I think you can also you know say I believe in God and I believe in being a good person and I think Teleriko is doing a great job with that right where he's talking about those issues because we got branded as Democrats as the party of a bunch of heathens that you know that that don't believe in God and and are not moral and you know in many many of these districts and these counties that they haven't seen a Democrat Tim in 10 or 12 years show up that it was probably last one they saw right yeah well Beto went to all of them in 2018 and and if you look at it like policy wise I'm different than him everybody's different sure but the blueprint of going there and showing up I think is a good blueprint and that's what we're doing here is we're going to these places somebody made a comment up there is you can fit all the Democrats here in a phone booth there's not that many Democrats so the thing is you've got to go talk to Republicans and tell them look you've been lied to you know that they're really good salesmen they'll tell you that the economy is really good and the Republicans are best for the economy but history shows us it's exact opposite Democrats are the best on the economy historically in the last 30 years in GDP job growth every inflation recessions have been started more under Republican administrations so I feel like we have to be better at at educating people and telling them like this is what it is and I tell everybody don't ask me just go chat to BT it right you go go look and you don't have to take my word for maybe tell them to ask you on say aye you know even you have even you know that's true yes and you can then maybe you can trust it right so like I think we need to make a better case as Democrats as to why why we're better on the economy and it's people would just have this thing of well Republicans are are better on the economy and it's not true what kind of reaction you're getting when you're up there at the football games when you're telling them they're you're a Democrat you'd be surprised man like it's been really positive I can honestly sit here and tell you I've gone into a room with a lot of Republicans and they come out saying I like what you have to say I agree with you there's one also one thing I noticed him is when I go up there and you go to like a takarilla or a restaurant or whatever and there's a TV they got Fox News on everyone right so everybody right now is in their information bubbles and they don't really see they only see one perspective and I think how we break that is good old fashioned get out there in front of their faces shake their hand answer their questions and and once you do that also going Fox by the way those Fox anchors are that smart all right they can't run circles around you like they're not that smart you can handle it you can give people it's a little dose of Ray I'm not opposed to it although it's it is pretty funny they've written four attack pieces on me already which shows me that I saw one of them that said you peed on a squit Hollywood square is that right to get drunk and pee on a Hollywood square it's only half true okay okay I might have had a couple of drinks in me like 10 years ago but I did not but I did not pee on Trump star I did not I it was a joke I had a water bottle I there was police officers there and I told them hey I'm gonna do this joke and I posted it and so they of course like always they do they start clutching their pearls and saying he urinated on Trump star and it was a joke yeah I thought we were I thought we were making humor legal again I don't know so they said that's what I thought right the real grand Valley I think is probably the most culturally separate part of the country from it I get all I can maybe I don't know I kind of maybe there's something else you could think of but I don't but people go to my amy right I'm guessing a lot of our listeners have never been anywhere near McAll I say Antonio is maybe the closest that they've been it's very it's a little bit about the real grand Valley and then give us a tourist assignment like where could we go you know give us some restaurants or or something to be fun to do the real grand Valley is really unique because it really is an integration of cultures of of Hispanics right that like my mother that her family was here since before Texas even was a state it was it's actually its own union right but and then there's a crossbreed where where like a grandfather of mine came from Mexico right and so it is a truly unique blend of cultures a lot of Spanish speakers down here it's normal to hear people speak in both English and Spanish and sometimes many times mix it you know you'll listen to a radio station where they play music being sung in Spanish but the DJ talks in English yeah it's it's truly truly unique and our food in our cuisine is really good because it is Mexican inspired but we also have we can barbecue the heck out of stuff here great great barbecue and and so Palenca Grill they're originally you know they they started in Laredo Texas on Friends of the Family they originally had a pollo local that you know they started that franchise okay and so they now have a place called Palenca Grill that's one of my favorite spots to go visit which town is that it they're in several towns actually in South Texas yes that there are in Edinburgh Texas in my home well which where should we pick I mean I guess you're in your district so you're gonna be biased but like where do people come to go to visit my cat like are there other well where do you have any tourist down do you have any green of course of course look of course that's they're called winter Texans and you know now with this ice freeze that that that happened right across the country we got to about 31 degrees okay are weather's really good in the summers it gets really hot but but our weather's really nice we have Mexico really close the border towns we have the beach South Padre Island about an hour away South Padre Island yeah yeah and then we have Ranchlands just north and and west of us so if you want to go do some hunting and there's good fishing we have everything it's really it's really truly unique it's it's it's a cool place and and you know what our businesses a lot of times are intermingled with Mexico right a lot of a lot of people from Mexico when the cartel vialists started happening years ago came to live here you know they're immigrants that came in here and enriched our culture here and made our made our area better I was hearing you know you know another interview we're talking about that and and they've truly like brought investment uh and it's growing like we're literally I tell people like we're San Diego but without the big old city but we have everything San Diego has you know we have the beach there in Mexico do you feel like the immigration from Mexico there has hurt the social cohesion there do you feel like JD Vance's view that having too many immigrants in a community makes things ruined social solidarity and you guys already each other's threats and you don't like each other that's right yeah no that's not the case Tim no not at all that's not the case here our economy really really depends on people from Mexico coming over and right now that's gone down and so immigration down here is not just it's not just an issue on its own it's economic as well for our local economy all right man how can people what what's your website how can people support you if they want to support the campaign Bobby Bolido for Texas and then we're on all the social media's the TikTok and it's a model campaign you might be down in zero game valley but you're still you know 2026 down there as you know as a bulwark person I take us out with a song and so I've never played the taana song is an outro so pick one for me you you can pick one of yours or another favorite if the year two embarrassed to do your own but give us one give us something to take us out with well there's a song that I that I wrote called algundia one day one day I'm going to buy me the car my dreams one day I'm going to buy me the house of my dreams because it's okay to dream and ironically the song was the video was about immigration and I was somebody in construction this is the irony in all of this this was about 12 years ago that I did this but it ends and it says say valesonia it's okay to dream and because that's our spirit here is as Hispanics we always want to do better than our parents did and our parents always want us to do better and that's our spirit all right we'll leave it there Bobby Bolido thank you so much man good luck on the campaign let's stay in touch all right all right then thanks all right everybody else thanks Adam surver as well we'll see you back here tomorrow for another good one please me the board podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown ready to launch your business get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs Shopify especially designed to help you start run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand marketing tools that get your products out there integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale ups online in person and on the go Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you sign up for your one dollar a month trial at shopify.com slash setup