1078: This is The Stupidest War You Can Possibly Imagine

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It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. nixon hit 24 of august of 74 okay see it's doable the dick line we got it hello everyone and welcome to the next level i'm sarah longwell publisher of the book i'm here with my best friends tim miller and sam stein sam the producer tried to make me say colleague but after JVL shivved us in the heart last week by calling Tim and I colleagues. I wasn't going to do that to you. I was just going to say JVL is not here. So we're just going to do it. I think he should be pretty nervous about losing his best friend status to Sam. Sam is in the office with you. I've been noticing you guys getting chummy. I've been hearing about some out of office hangs. I think JVL should be nervous about where his standing is in the best friends ranking. And frankly, I have a bone to pick with him a little bit today because he, his newsletter, his triad today which i know sarah didn't read i read it it's about my focus group is pro stoking the flames of conspiracy around the correspondence dinner and i've done like eight content activations against this and he did not tell me it was coming he's skipping tnl today so i don't get to fight with him over it and i'm a little i'm not really hurt but you know i'm a little i'm a little i don't know i'm a little hot under the collar a little hot under the collar about it so there we go so JBL, watch out. Third best friend status. I could have told you this was coming because he did this with me on secret last week. Why are we starting on this note of friction? Let's not. There's no friction. JBL's not here. All of us. This is great. This is the best friend circle now. So sorry, JBL. Okay. We love you, JBL. We miss you. Okay, guys. It's Tuesday, which means we have to talk about Iran again because the ceasefire that we had supposedly is unraveling again after a series of missile and drone attacks that appear linked to Tehran. The U.S. has also reportedly destroyed seven Iranian small boats because they were trying to stop the U.S. from helping commercial vessels navigate the strait. Pete Hegseth held a press conference this morning. I'm going to play a clip in a second. But he said the U.S. would be establishing a red, white and blue dome to protect ships going through the Strait of Hormuz. I've got questions about that. If it's a real dome or if that was a figure of speech, which I'm not Not sure. And then he said. Is that any red, white, and blue, though? I still don't know. I got questions. That figure of speech would be a little NC-17 if we were still in college in the early aughts. Oh. I don't understand that joke. Don't Google it. Giving dome. Don't worry about it. Oh, God. Why? Why did I do this? Just a little elder millennial humor. That's right. Right over my dome. He also said, this is my favorite part. Pete Hex said that this operation was a separate and distinct effort from the other operation we started when we went to war with Iran. I want to play this clip. We'll hit you guys on the other side. So last 24 hours or so, Iran's fired at us. We fired at Iran. I'm just going to ask you more directly. Is the ceasefire over? No, the ceasefire is not over. Ultimately, this is a separate and distinct project. and we expected there would be some churn at the beginning, which happened. And we said we would defend and defend aggressively, and we absolutely have. Iran knows that. And ultimately, the president's going to make a decision whether anything were to escalate into a violation of a ceasefire. But certainly, we would urge Iran to be prudent in the actions that they take to keep that underneath this threshold. OK, we're not getting distracted. this is a separate and just is this what is this we're not getting distracted we're starting a new war like what what is this what is this what is this attempt to to to tease apart operation epic fury and operation what is this red white and blue dome i it's got a different name project freedom which is such an offensive fucking name because it's like they originally started this with a at least i mean had it been competent at least a noble neocon notion that the people of iran needed to be free because they're being killed by the ayatollah and the regime that was how the war started they like to pretend like that isn't how but it was and now we have a new mission in iran which is called project freedom that has nothing to do with the freedom of the iranian people or the freedom of the american people it's about freeing south korean ships that's what we're free ink in project freedom we need a dome a red white and blue dome to free ships of oil for south korea ships that were moving very freely without a door this started 10 weeks ago and that's the project now we're doing project freedom we need to free the south korean ships there was a point in there where he was talking about how we just need to get back to the status quo that existed prior to the war and i just had to scratch my head being like that can't be the objective just returning to the pre-war status quo, but it is the objective. We need to get back to having ships moving through the strait. Also, I'll just say I quickly, Urban Dictionary Dome, while we were playing that clip to make sure I understood the right connotation. And I did. And we shouldn't talk about it. Good job. I know things are getting more rowdy. Once Tim said it, I remembered it. I was, you know, we all heard rap music. Yeah, it's been a while. I wasn't getting any in college. I was just hearing about it, just to be clear. the other thing the Daily Wire we don't have any real journalists in these briefings we have the Daily Wire Hexect was mostly taking questions from right wing outlets at this press conference surprisingly this guy didn't get fired like everybody else at the Daily Wire but he says can you clarify these reports of kamikaze dolphins that we've heard about Hexect's response says I can't confirm or deny whether we have kamikaze dolphins, I can confirm that Orion does not. And that just encapsulates how fucking stupid and childish this whole thing is. Time out. They don't mean the animal dolphins. It must mean it's a weapon of some kind. I think they actually mean the dolphins. No. Yeah, I believe they're talking about dolphins. Kamikaze dolphins. I'm not reading the Daily Wire. You think this is a question of whether— Dolphins are very smart, Sarah, okay? They're very smart. Of whether one side has access to dolphins who do kamikaze missions as opposed to it being the name of a weapon that we have and they don't. I mean, the New York Post— I assume it's some kind of submarine missile. No, it's a picture of a dolphin. It is a submarine missile attached to an actual— Attached to a dolphin. Yeah, I mean, this is— Yeah, there's a dolphin on Fox. you've been watching your jesse waters waters world lately um or secretary i only watched the clips of jessica tarlov yeah and so he's yeah that's dolphins like kamikaze dolphins and it's just like they do they're doing this like they're leaking this nonsense because they want the memes and they want to do the gi joe rambo thing and it's like you know we it's like trump where we won the war we won the war we won the war because they don't have any plan they don't have a strategy They don't know what they're doing. They're just like, we have this military that has cool toys that can do cool shit and we can make things go boom. And they can't make things go boom quite as much. We have more boom making things. And so that means we're stronger and we win. And it is just an unbelievable. It is about the stupidest war rationale that you could possibly imagine. Everyone is 12, including the people running the war. I think it's in some ways stupider and in some ways more sophisticated than that. But let me throw this at you because here's what I think is happening. I just think this is an attempt to evade Congress again, right? This is about if they reset the timetable. This is all about just rhetorically messing with the timetable in which the first operation was declared, right? And then that's only the War Powers Act is that can only run for, what is that, I think, 60 days without congressional authorization. And so now they're saying, no, no, no, this is a new mission, thereby resetting the clock so that they don't need Congress again for this. Now this phase in the Strait of Hormuz, doesn't that he was back? Trump was back today to calling it a skirmish, which he had not been using that word for a little while. So they clearly are trying to evade the idea that we're in a war. Obviously, it's silly because we have a blockade going and that's an act of war. And then, you know, there's been a fire exchange between the two sides and the Iranians bombed a facility in UAE. I mean, if any by any definition, we're in hostile confrontation with Iran in a war. But I don't think they want to have a vote for obvious reasons. Although I guess, you know, I was talking with Bill about this. Like, why don't they want to vote? Like, do they think they'd lose the vote? Or even in a bigger level than that. Why do they care? What is this? I finally Donald Trump cares about following the letter of the law. when it comes to this situation with the war? It's a really good point. Why do they care? Is it embarrassing if they lose two Republicans, which would probably be the most, or three maybe? Like, is that a big hurdle for Donald Trump? So I find it a little bit perplexing that they're just trying to evade this vote. That's a good point, in part because the vote, it actually puts Democrats in a tougher position. Well, I think Dems at this point would just say no. You don't think anybody would? I mean, and there are only like four of them. I mean, it was Moskowitz, who I think has come back around over the stupidity. It was Landsman. I haven't heard much from what he was wanting lately. It was Gottheimer, who I had on, who I think is still for it, even though he doesn't know why we're doing it. And it's like, that was kind of it, right? Like there were only four. I think there were maybe one or two others I'm forgetting. So, no, I think it's a harder vote for the Republicans for sure, because you have at least there's another layer of Republicans on both wings of the party that don't want this. If you're Michael Lawler, maybe you're for the Iran war but you're already very vulnerable you really want to have to vote on it. If you're a MAGA person if you're Anna Paulina Luna who's pretending you're America first do you really want to vote on this? I think that's probably why and there's probably some people, particularly the MAGA people that don't want to vote on it but I don't, you know, I mean, they're doing the rhetorical, like the rhetorical nonsense is ridiculous. Like this is a new skirmish. Like the war, the clock stopped when we did the ceasefire. It's like, why, why did the clock stop? We're still going on. Gas prices are still going up. We're still sending people over there. Clock seems like it's on to me. It's a soccer match. You add the minutes at the end of the extended time. You get the extra time. know. Let's talk about gas prices for one second. Because let's see, one week ago, we were at $4 and well, yeah, over $4, $4.175. Right now we're at $4.483. So it's jumped week to week. I don't know if you guys have been looking. I mean, I saw gas in DC for $5 that was over the $5 threshold. But in late February 2023, before Trump started this war, the average was $2.86. Yeah, it sucks. It's a big jump. It fucking sucks. Filling up your tank is a bitch right now. I was talking about this the other day. I was just sort of casually checking my phone, looking at Slack while the gas was rolling. And I looked over and it was $70. And I was like, what the hell is going on? I need to add it to you. You don't ever casually check Slack. You're intensely checking Slack. Aggressively checking Slack. Aggressively checking Slack. Not noticing it. Tim, you had the gas buddy guy on, didn't you? Yeah. The interesting thing the gas buddy guy said, and this is in line with what Joe Weisenthal on, who's more of like on the market's finance side. And basically the rule of thumb is they think that for every day the straight is closed, it'll take a week to get supply chains back to the level that they were before. Right? And so, you know, like we have now been in this war, what, 65 days or something? Yeah. And so it's like, think about 65 weeks is over a year. There's only 52 weeks in a year. Exactly. I can do this math. You don't have to be that good at math to do it. Hold on. It's over a year. Someone check Sarah's math. Hold on one second. And then these fucking morons at FDD that he's listening to, we can talk about them more if you want to. that uh i don't know it's called mark dubowitz runs it um they just brought a guy from this group onto the uh uh onto the negotiating team with uh with with kushner and whitkoff and and the fdd guy was posting yesterday you know if we keep the blockade in place for eight to nine more weeks the islamic republic will have total economic collapse and i'm like eight to nine more weeks like that's do that math fast sarah uh that's 60 days it's another 60 or so days which means another 60 or so weeks 120 weeks i mean like we're into 2028 election season before the gas prices are back down to where they were before and that is that it is that is if it doesn't hit like some people are saying that if it goes long enough you know and and there are enough gas shortages then the price is going to hit exponential growth because there are shortages so people start bidding up more because they don't want to be the ones that are that are short so i i mean i it is it's insane that these guys are still listening to people that are that are pushing him a direction that is going to cause just major economic pain and i was i joked about it on twitter i was like this is if they keep listening to mark dubowitz and fdd like we might the bush line is going to be in the rearview mirror like we're going to get trumped down into single digits i mean think what's coming up too uh got memorial day big travel weekend got obviously summer travel coming up all the vacations and the flights that people book july 4th obviously big travel weekend i mean like it's been bad obviously for obvious reasons i think it's going to get even more acute for people when they actually have to book these trips and take these trips and um i don't know if i it's hard to say apples to apples because i i kind of vaguely remember the sort of obsessive news coverage about gas prices during the Biden administration, but I do remember a lot of like news cameras out at the tank. Obviously there are the stickers all over the, you know, Joe Biden did this. I don't feel like we've had that type of saturation on the news about gas. I know it's definitely been in the news. I'm not going to say it hasn't, but I feel like it could get worse for him. Definitely. It's definitely getting worse. I think it's coming. And the other thing you mentioned, the air travel. So like jet fuel is different. You know, we're all pretending to be experts here i'm not a petroleum engineer the gas buddy buddy you know anytime this stuff happens i'm i am a i'm a crammer i was a crammer back in college and i'm a crammer now so if something happens like this i'll get nerd i'll follow like five different gas buddies and petroleum accounts and i'll read everything that they write for like four weeks and then i'm going to forget it by thanksgiving but like right now i'm up to speed and like the the jet fuel prices are such now and now i'm going to after i brag i can't remember exactly what it is but it's a certain type of Boeing jet, just like just using as a rule of thumb, just like it costs so much to fill that up now that the gas prices alone, or the fuel prices alone, excuse me, are like $400 per person on the plane, right? So if you're flying a certain length, right, like not like DC to New York, but like DC to New Orleans or whatever, like it's going to cost them basically 400 bucks a head. And so just like think about that. And you haven't paid stewardesses, you haven't paid the pilots, right? Like you haven't paid the, the, the idea that you are getting these $300 plane tickets to go to Disney world or go see grandma or to go whatever to go to Yosemite like it not if you haven booked those tickets like it not happening Like it getting worse I saw that I can remember which country it was but somebody one of the major countries is like rolling back the flights. Like they are not gonna let people fly. Germany definitely canceled flights. You know, America, it's both our, we're the ones who initiated this. We will also be some of the most insulated people on the globe, but it's still getting quite bad for America. And this is what Iran knows. They know that the American public's threshold for pain on gas prices is not high at all and that that is putting a ton of pressure on Trump. And they think they got the time. They got the time to hold us there. The other interesting thing about this is when you mentioned the geopolitics in those other countries. I was with our friend David Fromm last night. I don't think he'll mind me saying this because I think he's saying it publicly. but like we were just talking about around you know a couple months ago when there was i forget what was that big confab in europe where aoc gave a speech and marco gave a speech that all the speeches are being given and mark carney gives munich security yeah munich thank you it was munich um mark carney gives a speech where he's like you know we need to start thinking about a world without trusting the u.s like that was all over like these kind of more soft geopolitical choices like can we trust them like the tariffs like nato they seem a little more erratic like this is exacerbating that to a major degree right like if you're in these countries and you're like trump didn't even call us we get into this stupid war he's been tariffing us he's been shit talking us and now it's like my citizens are pissed at me because it's like my fault you know because people get mad at their local politicians like why is my why are my energy prices up and it's like fuck this guy and i was talking to from about this and she's like from could not be more of like a free market anti-communist person in the entire world like most free trade anti-communist person imaginable and he was basically just like it is rational for the canadians where he's from now just look at this and say hey i think they just cut some deal with china it's like they're getting chinese electric vehicles in now so they're cheaper for their you know for canadians and in exchange China's buying some Canadian whatever they make up their Mounties or wheat or something and uh maple syrup and it's like I and it's like you're gonna hear from our Canadians yeah I was just gonna say I've I do not endorse this message and he's like that makes sense he's like that makes sense now and and that is all like that all has anyway so it's just I I do think that like the the other kind of unpredictable ramifications about the ways that people you know are going to react to like the amount of pain that we're causing them like over the stupid war where we have our secretary of war out there talking about kamikaze dolphins and domes. Well, and he's coupling, he's coupling it with reintroducing auto tariffs. A jump is. So it's like, you know, the trade war shit's not over. It's a little confused about why and how he's doing it. Cause the Supreme court smacked him down on the tariff stuff, but maybe that's for another receipts newsletter. But like, you know, he's just at a time when he really could use international law, alliances and help in figuring this out. He's not taking any proactive steps to rebuild those relations. He's just making them worse. Well, you know, Pete Hegseth did say in his remarks today that the red, white and blue dome was a gift to the rest of the world from the United States. So, you know, why aren't they more grateful? Hey, you know, as we're talking, part of what is crazy about all of this is that for a normal presidency, Donald Trump would be really sweating the fact that his poll numbers are tanking, that gas prices are up, that people are unhappy. And in fact, you know, I think he just came out and said that they were fake polls when he was talking about, I think the Washington Post poll from this week, which has his approval rating, his total approval rating at 37 percent. His cost of living is at minus 53 percent approval. Inflation is at minus 45 percent. The situation with Iran is at minus 33% approval, which means 33% approve and 66% disapprove. Our relations with the U.S. allies are minus 32%, the economy minus 31%, immigration's minus 19%, the border is even minus 9%. Guy has nothing, so he's calling them fake polls. But this is where you start to think, is there nothing that would convince him that the choices that he is making are perilous. But then you remember, Trump doesn't have to get elected again. Trump doesn't really care. And the Atlantic had this great piece this week. I don't know if you guys saw it, the great man of history stuff. I think it was my friend Ashley Parker. She was one of his friends for Please Clap by Jeb. So, you know, we're just, we have a friend of me situation with Ashley. Let me just read a couple of key passages. And though Trump has long compared himself to America's two greatest presidents. We were recently told by two people who are in a position to know such things, a senior administration official and a longtime Trump confidant, that the president had in private conversations begun thinking about himself less as a peer of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Okay. And more in addition to Hegel's immortal trifecta, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte. And I read this whole piece. And honestly, part of it is a little bit of a joke about whether or not Trump would actually read Hegel, which of course, I don't think Trump's sitting there thumbing through through his Hegel. Does Trump know how it ended for Caesar and Bonaparte? I mean, what do you make of this idea? It's sort of like the YOLO presidency where Trump, Trump's whole MO now is, does Trump get to be in the pantheon of sort of great leaders because he does things that are, that would shake up the status quo that other people would see as, as having political downsides, but he just cuts right through that. Like if that's his theory of how he's behaving, I suppose at least that makes sense as to why he's not reacting to the negative stimuli he's getting back. Okay. Let me take this one. And then Tim can tell me if I'm stupid and wrong here, because you, you, the last thing you said, I think is the most important, which is, is he reacting to the negative stimuli? And my contention is one way to explain this, maybe not the most persuasive way, but one way to explain this is that he's not actually getting subjected to the negative stimuli, that he's got this kind of closed in echo chamber. The advisors don't tell him bad news. They just feed him good news. He watches only conservative media. He gets the clips that tell him how great he's doing. Even Fox News programming, which maybe in a prior, the prior administration would have gone and tried to like, you know, subversively send him messaging that things aren't going well. They don't seem to be programming in that way. And so when he does see the occasional negative stimuli. He thinks it's just fake or he bursts out and reacts in childish ways. So like he goes after Jessica Tarlov or Van Jones randomly on, on, on his true social account. And that allows him to do things like build a ballroom and an arc and, you know, focus on the reflecting pool and then talk about how he's the peer of Julius Caesar and then not have any sort of recognition that the path he's crafting is politically treacherous, problematic for his party and for him. I really do think he doesn't get a lot of exposure to anything other than reaffirmation. And that's a huge problem here. Yeah. And he is also even self-selecting the affirmation in a way, you know, that where before I do think that he was doing the thing where he was at Mar-a-Lago and he's having different people like giving different opinions. He's pitting them against each other. maybe there's a little bit of that but like there's that uh article by your boy max tanny at semaphore about how he's talking to mark teeson now like all the time like once a week so mark teeson is like he writes a horrific column like just literally unreadable like whatever you think about him as for his ideology like the prose styling is unreadable and and he's like a cd tier fox guest you know he does not even he's not even getting like the power panel at the brett bear slot and and so but but he is for the war and so trump's calling him you know and he's calling micro penis mark levin i think and lindsey and like that and so he's you know tucker said that he's not talking to him anymore so uh for when's the last time donald trump had a conversation with someone who didn't suck up to him when's the last time he left the white house and encountered a voter who did not praise him as the next coming of jesus it may have been when he went to that Joe Crab Shack and the Code Pink protesters were like capturing him. That literally could be the last time he was exposed to anyone who didn't absolutely worship the ground he walked on. Every time you have people at the White House, they tell them how great he is. Yeah. I think I told a story on this one source. I'll just tell it really fast. But I got a friend who was working for somebody that went to visit Trump. And Trump walks this person around. And they go in to see the cabinet. And it's like they walk into Besson's office. and he's like hey scott how are things for the economy scott's like great sir you're doing wonderful everything is great we're having a golden age and they walk down the hall they're like hey marco how are things going around the world great we're respected again sir thank you sir and the first i knew it was like what is this like we thought we were here for a meeting and like we're going around and just and and so to me like that just little anecdote says like that's kind of what's happening internally. They do it in public. The cabinet meetings are slob fests. It's a little more concerning. It's happening in private. I want to kind of think, and we have such smart listeners that will listen to that. I don't know. What was it called? The Hegel's trio? Hegel's. Yes. Hegel's trio. I want to put them in a different kind of group, you know, a different force of history. A different kind of trio? What kind of trio? Yeah. Well, it's like the people that ended empires, like Nero, you know, Perseus, Marcos. Like he'll be in history, but like you'll be on the names of those people. You know, Mugabe maybe. I don't know. I'm not as good at East Asia history. I don't know. I don't know who's responsible for the death of the Han dynasty, but I don't know, like maybe kind of a four, you know, four leaders that oversaw the fall of empires. And maybe that could be him. Yeah, when we committed super power, suicide. Donald Trump was there to usher us off this mortal coil. I don't think he appreciates how bad his polling position is. I mean, he's like, yes, he's at 39% in the aggregate for Nate Silver, but like Pew had him down to 34% and eight people had him at 33%. So like, if he keeps this up, I'm going to have to start talking about how, what we do below the bush line. Yeah. We're going to hit, we're going to go low. That's what I said. There must've been in history, someone below the bush line right or is bush the real bottom of the barrel no uh he he's the modern history bottom i think in modern polling so where was hoover hoover do we have those poll numbers from like uh 1930 yeah i mean that's that's kind of anything before dewey defeats truman i think sure kind of okay fair enough yeah all right uh before we move on to our grab bag of political topics next i have an ad for us to read. We got to pay some bills. This show is sponsored by Upwork. We know a thing or two at the Bulwark about scaling a business and how crazy it is. 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That is Upwork.com slash The Next Level to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com slash The Next Level. Upwork.com slash The Next Level. I've got your new line, sir. And it's ambitious. It's ambitious. Tell me. In August of 2023, Mitch McConnell's approval rating was on YouGov. It was 14% favorable, 74% unfavorable. So that's a minus 60. It's minus 60. I think getting down to 14 is tough, but could he get to minus 60? That would be, that'd be like 2080. 2080 is not possible. 2080 we'd have to get to. that's not happening technically 21 79 we could count it at 21 79 the mitch line that doesn't count that's 58 gas is at seven bucks for over a month i could see it okay all right well we'll see dude if i had told you that trump would be this low would you know like you know six months ago that we'd be at this stage in polling 34 six months ago we were talking i remember with jvl about the firmness of his base, the immovability of that 35%, 36%. And it looks like we're kind of pushing it a little bit lower here. It would take a lot. I mean, Nixon in the worst days of Watergate never got down to 20. So it seems like that's... My grandmother never left Nixon until our grave. She defended Nixon to the grave. So she was there. Look, Sarah's got to pop another bottle here. I do. You're making me... You're forcing me to drink multiple Topo Chico's here. Nixon hit 24%. It's always in August. Something to throw out there. August 1974. Nixon hit 24% of August of 74. Okay, see? It's doable. The dick line. The dick line. We got it. I can't believe I didn't even get a smile from you out of below the bush line. I can't believe I got nothing. I did it with a straight face and everyone just let it happen. I'm sorry, speaking of 12-year-olds. Speaking of 12-year-olds. All right, I want to move on to the DNC. That's going to be our new one when he was living at 32%. It's a low-hanging dick. Okay, so everyone is still, I don't know if you guys have been following a bit of the freakout over Ken Martin's leadership there at the DNC. Lauren Egan had a great piece this past weekend that you guys should go check out. This is really about a couple of things. One is lackluster fundraising for the DNC. I think that the, I can't, I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but my recollection is that Republicans, the RNC has raised about $109 million to the DNC is like 23. Like it was something like a 7X. Republicans are 7X what the DNC has. But it's also about this not releasing the autopsy. And so he sat down with Favreau over on Pod Save, gave an answer that didn't seem to satisfy people. What do you guys make? Is this warranted? Do we care? What do we make of the freak out about the DNC leadership? I want people to give the other point of view. So I'll be quick because Bill and I did this yesterday. And I think it's possible that I'm biased from having worked at the RNC and seen too much of the sausage. I don't think these jobs really matter anymore. He's not doing a great job. does whether he has a does a good job does that impact elections not really that much the campaign committees matter more and i think the dscc has really mixed bag they made some really bad mistakes i think going in with janet mills and hayley stevens and maina michigan but then they kind of redeemed themselves a little bit recruiting mary peltola and some of the other recruits in some of these other states so i the dnc just i can almost just exist as a punching bag And so, like, sure, he should do better. Like, his interview on Pots of America was bad. But I just, I don't know how much, like, actually matters at the end of the day. That's a really, it's funny that you mentioned that. Because just to sort of pull back the curtain a little bit on Lauren's piece. The origins of the piece were she and I were talking about Kemar and what was going on. And, you know, initially I was like, hey, just go check out what he's doing in terms of expenditures to red states in the 50-state project that he said he's going to do because I want to see if he's actually fulfilling the mission. And she came back and she looked at the numbers and they were like, there was no real story there. And then we sort of talked about, to Tim's point, I was like, maybe the piece is like, does this even matter? Like in the modern age of politics, why do we need the DNC? Like candidates can raise money on their own super PACs, can raise a lot more money than the DNC can You know do you need this stuff And I think we came back with a little bit more of a conclusion that doesn completely jive with what Tim was saying So the DNC is, and obviously the leader for a story was that the DNC members are not happy. There's been this effort to potentially replace him. Then the question is, well, why replace him with what? And they couldn't find anybody and then replace him. Why? And the why is because the DNC's function is to, yes, raise money and, yes, support the state infrastructure and other entities that may not get support from the big-time donors because they're concerned about the flashy races. Whereas, for instance, the Mississippi State Party is not going to get a lot of money sent its way, but the DNC can help that. But secondarily, it's about coordinating, messaging, infrastructure needs, investments, resources. You can't talk as a campaign to a super PAC. You can signal and they do in creative ways, but like having that sort of centralized coordinating entity that's well-funded and can drive messaging is still important. And Martin has not hit the metrics by any stretch of the imagination. I'm not trying to be mean to the guy, but he has not. They are severely outraised. They aren't driving messaging. And honestly, the state investments are there, but they're not at like this incredible robust level that it could be materially different. So that's where we ended up with the item. That is interesting. I did a take on this a while back when the Q1 numbers came out for the candidates, because to me, what seemed very clear is that it is not, oftentimes people take the money not really as a reflection of money per se, but as enthusiasm for the party. The candidates, the Democratic candidates, It's your Tau Rico, Mary Peltola. I mean, Cooper, they're all putting up boffo numbers. They are wildly outracing their Republican counterparts at the candidate level, which to me makes perfect sense listening to voters in terms of the mood that they're in, which is not to give to the institutions of the Democratic Party, but to give to the candidates they like themselves. And so I'm not sure. I understand your point about that the DNC could have an important role in coordinating messaging if they were good at that. And I'm not sure that they are. And I'm not sure you're not better off at this point with having James Tallrico decide what James Tallrico's message is going to be in Texas. Except James Tallrico can raise $27 million, and it's great for James Tallrico. But there's a host of state legislative races in Texas where those candidates aren't going to go viral and get the same type of attention that James Talrico is. And the fact remains that Democratic donors, you know, they've been educated more on this and they are funding more lower level races, including judicial races, which was a big problem back in the day. But like in Wisconsin, they raised a ton of money for those. But that's because those races all kind of broke through on the cultural zeitgeist. And that's just not possible across the board. They still chase shiny objects. And when you do have that, you do need an entity like the DNC to actually say, hey, you know, we need to make concrete investments. We need to do the type of candidate recruitments. We need to do the type of party building. All the stuff that's the grunt work that won't go to a, you know, that James Tallarico cannot handle. Right. I guess the truth is that what I really think about this is just a little bit of a middle ground for my maximalist position. This doesn't matter. it is that the role is really overstated by people on the internet like there's this view that like the dnc represents the party as a whole and they have all this power and like they kind of don't but like there are things they can do and i'm pretty sure i said this back when the dnc campaign was going which is like like a party chair in this day and age like somebody that's good can i mean ideally do both of these things well but would do one of these things really well which is either be a spokesperson for the party and go on tv and drive a message and get people excited and and and raise the salience of crazy stuff that republicans are doing whatever like and or like be really good as an operator behind the scenes and ensuring that the mississippi state party or whatever example you have of like a state where the democrats might be able to swing the state senate but it's going to be harder for them to raise money that they can go and ensure that they have the resources to do so and it's it does kind of feel like ken martin is bad at both of those so that's not good ben wickler would have been good at this my my buddy ben wickler he that was a missed opportunity folks all right i want to move on to reconciliation um because this is an this is an important one you've just been waiting for reconciliation i have actually been waiting for this i've actually been waiting for this it's insane i is just let me set it up okay uh so senate republicans they released the text for a reconciliation package that would provide billions in funding for immigration enforcement, as well as a billion for the Secret Service for the purposes of security adjustments and upgrades related to the president's ballroom project. For those at home, budget reconciliation allows for budget-related bills to pass with a simple majority, and it's how a lot of the big legislation is getting passed these days, like the big, beautiful bill and the Inflation Reduction Act. According to Punchbowl, this package includes $38 billion for ICE, $26 billion for the CPB offices, that's Border Patrol, $5 billion for DHS overall, another $1.5 billion for the Justice Department, so they can go prosecute seashell cases, I guess, and $1 billion for the Secret Service. Okay, Tim, this was you. And that's it. That's what it's funding. That's just the DOJ component. That's just the DOJ component. No, no. No, that's the judiciary. That is the judiciary committee. The 72. It's a 72 billion reconciliation package that from the judiciary. Each committee is going to add their own components. Right. OK, but like that's what they're going to do. Yes. 72 billion. This is a midterm election year. We just were talking about how people are upset about costs of the economy is is shaky. At best, it's going to get worse. Trump's numbers on the economy are terrible and we have this opportunity this year to put forth one bill that we can get passed without the pesky Democrats and that can be reflect what our priorities are for the American people and like the first thing they've put out is $72 billion for immigrant detention centers and a new ballroom for Trump and more money for the Justice Department to go after political phones like that's that's it that's what they're gonna do like what who who is who wants that that that is not for anybody like that if it was a primary and he's back in the primary it's like but in this context now or if it was in 2025 i in the context where we are they have this big midterm up where people are fucking pissed about prices and costs like we're gonna take your money this year and our plan for it is to disperse it to alligator alcatraz and and fucking Todd Blanche and whoever is building the gold ballroom. That's what we're doing with your cash this year. Your hard-earned taxpayer dollars. And you're pinching pennies now because the gas, it's costing you 70 bucks to fill up your tank. And you're paying a gas tax on that, actually. And that's what we want to do with your money. I will say, the Seashell investigation, you laughed, but it took 11 months. Okay, that doesn't... It was expensive. It was expensive. It's a big investigation. Those things don't just fund themselves. On the ballroom, I thought I was like incredulous. The ballroom thing, can we just like focus on the ballroom for a second? A billion. A bill. Let's remember where this thing – let's just remember how this thing started. He said he was going to fund it privately. It started at $200 million, went to $300 million, went to $400 million. Then Lindsey Graham put together a bill for Congress to pass a $400 million appropriation. Now they want a billion dollars. And the funniest thing was, is that when this broke last night, Chuck Grassley's spokesperson, because this is Chuck Grassley's committee that put this out. We're like, no, no, no, this has nothing to do with the ballroom. It's about Secret Service, and we're just getting all these upgrades. And then the White House today is like, thank you for authorizing this for the ballroom. So they just completely stepped on it. And I'm legitimately shocked, to Tim's point, that they're doing this. to think that this is what you would spend, I mean, a billion dollars. If you were thoughtful about the politics of the moment, you would say, you know what? Let's give a million dollars, a billion dollars. Let's just do a rebate so people can buy gas, like a gas rebate, some sort of. Some gimmick, even if it's stupid, even if Catherine Rappel would be like, that doesn't actually help. At least that would be good politics. Yeah, this, and I was talking with Bill Crystal this morning about this. sometimes you ask your party to take uncomfortable votes in an election year because you're trying to further an ideological project right like and my example of this was democrats in 2009 2010 voted on cap and trade they all knew it sucked politically but they did it because it was furthering an ideological project this is not furthering an ideological project at all it's furthering trump's vanity and he's making them vote on this and they're getting nothing out of it Nothing. It's like the California high-speed rail budget. I thought that the Republicans were doing these things efficiently. It's like the number keeps going up, the amount of time it's going to take to do it. I got to tell you, these ads write themselves because this is what voters are upset about. They don't care about the ballroom per se. They care about the idea that he's focused on the ballroom while he's not focused on reducing their prices. And so to me, every Democrat right now should be caterwauling about the idea that Trump is making you pay for a ballroom while you you are paying for it. You regular person are paying for his ballroom while you can't afford gas because of the war he started. The rest of the money is going to make sure that the masked thugs have more have more money for for deportations. We've got to make sure we have more prisons and detention centers for people. And a red, white, and blue dome. It's very critical. We find the detention centers. We're going to make sure we're holding more people in detention centers that you're paying for that with your tax dollars. And I just want to refer you really quickly to his numbers on the border and immigration, which are not. It's down. And so it's not even like he's doing it at the point where this is a really politically popular proposition. No. Like, what are you guys getting? Are your schools getting better? Are you getting more job opportunities? Are there things coming to your community? No, no, no. The only people that are getting money. It's from the infrastructure bill that Biden passed. It's like, you're not getting anything. But, you know, the little Nazis running CBP, like they're going to get fancy new weapons and we're going to have more detention centers and we're going to have a fancy gold ballroom. That's what their priorities are this year and the election year. I just want to mention, Sarah, I could tell you about to move on. But I'm kind of a keen observer at this point. We've been working together for a long time. And I know when you're pocket vetoing an idea. And so I just want to say to the listeners out there, if you happen to have done well in life, you know, if you're not one of the people who are tightening your belts right now because of gas prices and you want to fund yourself, the JVL, you did it stickers and you want to bring them to the events. I land them out. I land them out. We can do it. We can do it. It's kind of like at the panic shows where people have the lot tees. We can create lots. Yeah, where do you hand these out? What are you doing here? We'll hang out to San Diego. We have live events coming up in San Diego. Get your tickets at thebord.com slash events, San Diego, May 20th. But I thought the idea here is to go to red states and just hand people stickers saying you did this. Well, that's true. I live in Louisiana. So I'll take them to Baton Rouge. It's not to hand them. It's to put them on the gas. It's about sticking them on the gas tanks so that when people are filling up their gas who voted for Trump, JBL wants to make sure. Oh, I get it. Don't worry. I get the concept. I thought you wanted to hand them out to people. The distribution is what I'm coming to you. I don't know. They could create a network. We have a community. they could create a network where people mail them to each other for the people who live in red states. I'm organized out there. All right. Yes, I do want to move on. But first, Tim, you have an ad to read from our friends at Green Chef. Eating right is hard, especially when you live in Louisiana. Our old friend, who is our nanny in California, who's with Toulouse from like day one, came to visit us for Jazz Fest this year. It was so nice and so special. She's vegetarian. When we lived in California, that was easy. 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Head to greenchef.com slash 50nextlevel and use code 50nextlevel to get 50% off your first month and 20% off for two months. That's code 50nextlevel at greenchef.com slash 50nextlevel. Thanks, Green Chef. Okay, last week, Janet Mills dropped out of the Senate race in Maine, leaving Graham Plattner as the presumptive nominee against Susan Collins. This is one of the most important pickup states for Democrats in the Senate. we then proceeded to do what we did do a whole weekend about Graham Plattner's tattoo the the the Totenkampff the Nazi tattoo how are we feeling about Plattner as a general election candidate boys I wish we were trying this out in a different state you know I keep saying to the populist lefties if you want to try this idea I'm maybe it works maybe they're right I don't what the hell do I know maybe the right thing to do is to go after the Obama Trump voters go after working class voters have a rough around the edges working class socialist adjacent guy with some some kind of strange reddit posts and weird tattoos like maybe that would work I don't I'm open to ideas I'm a little nervous about it in Maine Susan Collins is pretty tough and she knows what she's doing and he's gonna give them a lot of fodder for advertising I think Trump's making the world really easy for him right now and making it tough on Susan Collins. Like I was watching a Graham Plattner clip where he was, he was like, watch Susan Collins is also looking old. I should say, like it wasn't just Janet Mills, Susan Collins. She was never really the best speaker. Like I remember like meeting her in person in 2016. And I think she's got a paralyzed vocal cord is what it sounds like to me. It's just kind of halting. But like, as you get older, like you just look at it. So anyway, it's Plattner watching this, kind of one of these reaction videos and just aesthetically she, it's just you know she's looking old and but like the content of it is she's trying to explain the iran war vote that she's she supported and and she's uh it's it's not really that coherent because it's hard to come up with a coherent defense of what trump is doing and then platner just you know flays her like knocks the cover off the ball and and replying and it's like that's good i don't that's a good contrast for him like i think that i thought that this this i was much more nervous about this race before the iran war than i am right now i'm presuming it's platner like i think that he's certainly the favorite it's not a guarantee um i think that we've done this a million times but i just i think that the nazi discourse is like for the internet only and totally stupid and there's like no evidence that he's a nazi he's like never done anything that's nazi-esque like he has one skull tattoo and people are like nazi and i'm like i just don't think that that works i don't think that works anymore it didn't work in the democratic primary we've seen all his Reddit posts. He was pretty mean to rural people and talked about how black people didn't tip. He had some other off-color comments. No other evidence that he's a Nazi. I'm going to need a second and third data point for him being a Nazi. That doesn't ever come up. I think that he's probably in good shape, but TBD. That's where I'm at on it. Off the top of your head, do you remember who ran against Susan Collins in 2020? Yeah, Sarah Gideon. Sorry, you're talking to some real nerds here. So did you want us to not remember? Did you remember anything she did on the trail? No, but I remember how much money she raised. Raised a lot of money. He'll raise a lot of money too. I guess the reason I'm bringing this up is the case for Plattner is what Tim's talking about, which is you need someone who has got a stylistic contrast not an ideological contrast and for better or worse the guy is definitely distinct from Susan Collins He younger He male He codes differently He definitely ideologically different than she is. And he's going to run a far more aggressive campaign than Sarah Gideon ever did, but obviously more than Susan Collins ever did or will. And I just, I don't know if it works, but you can see the path for it working, right? Like he's just in an, he's just going to have a real contrast with her in a way that certainly Sarah Giddey never did. And I, I, I mean, very clearly Janet Mills never would have because Janet Mills, you know, they had to kind of drag her into the race. Then she did it. And then she spent a lot of time sort of praising Susan Collins. And frankly, I don't think that's going to cut it this year. I just don't think that type of approach is going to cut it, even in Maine. And so again, I'm not going to make a prediction or anything like that. But I do think the people who are saying this is a real fumble by Democrats are probably wrong, because I do think he's got a stylistic case to make against Susan Collins that's both generational, attitudinal. And then in a time when people are just kind of fed up with Trump and want something different, he's going to hold her to it in a way that I don't think Gideon could have, and I don't think Janet Mills would have. We did a focus group about the Democratic primary that we ended up having to scrap because there's no primary anymore. So I did a take that'll be out later today where I went really deep on what the voters in the Democratic primary said, both about why they weren't feeling Janet Mills. And it really comes down to two things. One is age. And I think that Democrats really need to internalize this, which is younger candidates are just it now. Like people are not interested in older candidates, not just because they're old, but because they don't feel like the older candidates are talking about things that are relevant to their lives in the same way. So that's one. And then two, you know, I think a lot of people kind of are framing this up as a moderate versus a progressive. Certainly the very online progressives are like, see, you know, a really progressive message is what wins. That's not really how voters are thinking about it. They're not, they don't think in terms of this, like more moderate, more progressive necessarily. Like that's how activists think about it. Voters are just in the mood for somebody who is going to light up Susan Collins, right? They're in the mood for someone who is going to go hard and they just see him as being able to do that. And so we asked, you know, about the tattoo, uh, about cause, uh, you know, a lot of misogynistic comments, like all the Reddit stuff. So all the baggage kind of went through with the voters and they all had the same reaction, which is, you know, like they have heard him explain it, which is, you know, he was young, he was in the military, uh, you know, and, and he says, you know, he said, he's sorry. He's, you know, he, he's grown up and like, they just see it as the, and they also talk about him as like a character they know from Maine, like, oh, he seems like a guy from down East. and this is kind of how they talk. And so like he does not, the way national politics is talking about him in all across all different vectors, both progressive versus moderate, as well as, you know, Nazi, not Nazi is like, that is just not how main voters are thinking about it at all. Can I ask, this is a forced analogy and it's odd and ironic because they now appear to really despise each other. but um the fetterman corollary here where you had when he was running and he had the stroke and you know there's questions about whether his brain was rotting and if he was just like we can have bernieing it but like pennsylvania voters sort of trusted him and knew he knew that knew a guy like that and you know it wasn't really ideology it was sort of attitudinal again and just the way that they wanted a different type of politician. Is there some sort of analogy to be drawn there, Sarah? It's great that you bring this up because what was funny is the one thing that was giving the Democratic voters in the focus group pause about Plattner was that they were worried he might be like Fetterman. Like, that was the big concern. It wasn't about- Really? In what sense? It was about this idea that the coding, the authenticity, that they feel like he's bringing more that he could just turn on them. And they were saying, you know, Fetterman is more like a Republican now. And I think when you get these guys are at the bottom of the horseshoe a little bit, right? There is the more populist candidates sometimes seem a little bit like also the populists on the right. And so they worry slightly that like, actually they could be part of that. It's not an illegitimate worry. We should just say to the populist lefties, If you look at who are the Democrats that have gone most towards MAGA in Trump 2.0, it's not the establishment Democrats. It is Fetterman. It's Tulsi Gabbard. It is RFK. Yeah. So it's not an irrational fear. 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. i don't know my um uh there's two other things i'm gladder i one thing just as a political science observation i'll be interested to see how much he does actually improve the turnout with working class people and people that don't um uh you know aren't as engaged in politics these trump people like and part is that just branding or does it actually work because when i watch the videos i've now watched quite a few of his town halls like the audience doesn't really seem any different than the town hall would have been for Janet Mills town hall. Like it doesn't seem that different to me. It's like kind of older, white, liberal, progressive main voters. So that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Can he expand out? I think he's a TBD. The thing I would say to the establishment folks that don't like Graham Plattner, having lived through this on the Republican side, is I'm seeing a lot of actions that are like meant to be attacks on him that are actually empowering him. and not to complain to compare plattner to trump because i don't think that they're similar um but like a lot of times the establishment types like like me right again this comes from personal experience like would drop oppo on trump and it would make him stronger because it was not necessarily because the people agreed with whatever crazy thing trump had said in the past but it was like they're coming after my guy like this is my guy like he's fighting the other side like he's built trust with me like you don't seem like you're fighting the other side that hard you seem like you're a little bit of a wet noodle and this guy over here he's fighting the other side and you're fighting him and so what that means is that makes me want to come to his defense you know like i honestly i think about it like a family member context or a friend it's like somebody goes at somebody you like i get make it makes you get your backup and i think that trump in a lot of ways like built a lot of power actually by having the mitch mcconnell uh the Mitch line wing coming after him because voters didn't trust Mitch. And, and I see this a little bit, this mistake happening from the democratic establishment where they're like, Oh, we're going to attack Latina or we're going to attack so-and-so. And it's like, I don't know. You might be creating, you might be, you might be creating your 2028 nominee if you keep this up. So maybe for better or worse. I don't know. We're in, we're in strange times or at a time right now where people are looking for outsiders. And I think that going after Graham Plattener for something he did 20 years ago is probably going to make him stronger, not weaker. Yeah, let me just, I'm just going to throw one thing on top of this. Because I watch, you know, the online discourse and people fighting about the Nazi tattoo versus, and what is, what's interesting to me is just how much that discourse is not, like, these were doctors, like in this focus group, it was like a doctor. It was a lot of women, like middle-aged women. And this was not a, like nobody's having that debate in Maine. Like they're not debating whether, nobody thinks he's a Nazi. It's like not just not a, they think he got a, and I, you know, you read sort of the Republicans thing on it. And they might be right. Like they might be right that he has changed his story about the Toten Conf. But like, and I think he had an aide that left and said, but like the, The voters, and I think they are like throwing, they see Republicans as having thrown out the rule book when it came to Donald Trump. And they are simply not going to be lectured by anyone about any foible on like the Democratic side. Like they're like, no, you guys have tolerated all of this stuff. Like we just don't care. And that's why there's like a, Republicans online try to kind of be like, we're going to shame you with the Graham Plattner stuff. And none of the voters that might like be that's online discourse that the voters are totally cut off from also again i got i got rid of this fight with phil klein about this online but i'm like we could we ended up being a laurel and costello meme but i was like okay what are the implications of you thinking he's going to be a nazi it's one of these things it's like if somebody had a nazi tattoo and then we think they're going to do nazi stuff like they're going to try to put sam in a camp or something then i will be against them extremely vociferously i'm against that thank you what is like what is it like we'd be in camps too if they're Nazis yeah yeah I was like is there anything else he said are there are there other evidence that he has racist feelings and it's like there's nothing and so it's like okay well then it's a skull it's like if it was a swastika I don't know the whole thing to me is just like you can understand why voters are just like okay well he doesn't seem like a Nazi he's not saying Nazi stuff like you guys are just screaming Nazi and Again, it's such a parallel of the other side. I mean, and I don't understand why Republicans don't get this. Like, how often did Republican voters feel this way? Where it was liberals, like, screaming at Republican candidates, like, Nazi, racist. And they're like, I don't know. I see this person, and he seems like a good Christian person to me. Like, you know, I just, it doesn't work. Like, there has to be something else there. All right. Last thing before we get out of here. I want to talk about Texas just really quickly because the runoff in Texas is pretty fun. There's a new poll out in that Senate runoff showing Ken Paxton up three points over John Cornyn. And Cornyn obviously got sort of surprisingly the narrow plurality during the first thing. And then Trump was supposed to endorse. He was going to endorse Cornyn. And then Paxton kind of headed him off by saying he would drop out himself if the Save Act was passed. And then sort of nothing happened. And so, like, why do we think Cornyn's hanging in there? Why doesn't he get out? Why do you think Cornyn's going to lose? I mean, I think he'll lose, but it's not totally out of the realm of reason that he wins the runoff, right? I don't know, but this is so much money. It's a lot of money. It is so much money to spend for them to spend because then they're going to have to play in Texas. Like, they're going to have to actually compete. I do wonder, though. This is actually a question I had for you guys. This is a political question. Tim, put your political hat on. They've got Alaska. They've got North Carolina. Like, they're going to focus on Maine. Like there's a bunch of places where 70 million in Ohio, in Ohio with Sherrod Brown. Right. Like, yeah. Should they, should they focus? Should Democrats focus on Texas or is Texas fool's gold? I mean, they could even focus on Nebraska, maybe like more so than, well, I think Tallarico is going to raise a lot of money himself. Um, as you said, so that, that makes that, that changes the dynamic a little bit. You know, I had Asaf on last week. I'm interested to see if Republicans play in Georgia or if they, Icosov might be doing so well that they end up just seeding that, which would be pretty remarkable. No. You don't think so? I mean, the campaign is that good. You think the NRSC is going to spend, or the SLF is going to spend their money in Georgia? Maybe. I mean, maybe early, but I don't know. It's possible you get to the fall where that looks out of reach. I think that Michigan is going to be another thing the NRSC is pretty long enough to look at, depending on who wins that primary on the Democratic side. so you know there's a lot of options out there and i do think it would certainly be appealing i think if you're a democratic super packer d sec to look at the field and say ohio iowa nebraska alaska montana those are all pretty cheap states like ohio is pretty expensive uh all right so if you look at that it's like could you compete with like the same amount of money could you give yourself many more outs by going into iowa nebraska montana alaska like that probably costs as much as texas right those four states i would think yeah um and so i do think that there'll be real real questions there back to the republican side for a second i am waiting to see when when or if the reporting will drop about what they tried to do behind the scenes to get one of these guys to leave the race So like over the weekend in Kentucky, Trump just bleeded out that he'd given one of the candidates, Nate Morris, I believe his name is, an ambassadorship just to leave the race. And surely they have dangled something in front of either Paxton or Cornyn. There's a cabinet position open for AG. I mean, surely they've dangled something in there to get one of these guys to cut bait. and we haven't seen it yet. That's why the Paxton thing is such a wild can't get Paxton confirmed for anything. And Cornyn's already in the Senate. And so I don't know. I mean, Cornyn said this tweet yesterday. He's like, gas 369 in Austin today. It's just like I don't know. These guys are in really tough straits. No pun intended. I'm having to defend this stuff right now. And Trump has not given them a lot of good outs. And I think that They obviously would have felt a lot better if Paxton would have just got out. But this is kind of a you created the monster situation, Dr. Frankenstein. Trump could have ended this whole thing by just endorsing Cornyn, right? I mean, like, it's kind of odd the way he's handled this. I think he doesn't want to go against his base with Cornyn. Right. But Paxton. But he did that in Kentucky. Who knows what's going to come out about Paxton? And, like, I don't know. cornyd is just i i like bannon and that crew when he was talking about doing this when he soft launched that people were in were very upset i think cornyd like never goes anywhere near far enough for us right but like if you just package together his eight most trump skeptical quotes from the past 10 years you know he doesn't he sounds a little bit he sounds a little bit squishy you know he sounds like you can make him you could do an ad that makes him sound a little Mitt Romney-ish you know um he never in the big moments showed backbone or did anything that merited praise from for me but I just think that like that that was a pretty that was a hard one for Trump because it was like a guy that's very MAGA versus somebody that was like very not and so to endorse the not guy I think you probably could again this is why his political standing This is why the push line matters. Because, right? Because I think he could have done this in 25, right? He could have bullied him out. He could have bullied him out in 25. But he's in a weaker position. The shit on Ken Paxton is unreal. I mean, unreal with the stuff. And I don't think it's like really gotten to the level that people actually know the entirety of it. But, I mean, the scandals upon scandals upon scandals are incredible. I want Ken Paxton to win this primary. I'm not going to lie. I want him to win because, number one, that gives Tal Rico the best chance in, like, an incredible year to eke something out. But also, that's going to be a fun general election, just the amount of garbage on him. Okay. Guys, good show, long show, 110 minutes. 70 minutes, 60 minutes in an hour. Okay. What did I just say? 110 minutes. I meant an hour and 10 minutes, an hour and 10 minutes. I got the calendar right before. 52 weeks is a year thing, right? That's right. I also forgot to do the housekeeping up front and say tickets are on sale now for the Bulwark's upcoming live shows in San Diego on May 20th and Los Angeles on May 21st. If you liked this show without JVL and you want the three of us, we, the three of us are going to be in California. So come see us. Go to thebulwark.com slash events. That's it. Love you guys. We can find it. All right. Thanks, everyone. Good luck, America. Bye.