Tim Miller Has Some BRUTAL Advice for Democrats (w/ Lib & Learn)

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It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. hey everybody tim moe from the bulwark here uh i went on a uh live stream called lib and learn as part of my endeavor to become a streamer and you know when you get an invite uh to come on a stream from somebody called mr soy pill you really have no choice but to do it at least in my in my view um and so i reached back out to mr pill uh we're now friends so i can call him soy uh and uh said yeah let's do it and so i hung out with him and a couple other guys and unfortunately i missed one of their other co-streamers is i guess the guy from pretty fly for a white guy which is i don't know a millennial bro reference but um anyway so unfortunately he was gone uh but some of the other characters were there hutch and pisco and so we all just hung out and and talked a lot about the Democratic Party. We talked a little bit about the dinner and, you know, kind of all the craziness around the dinner at the beginning. If you've had your fill of that from me, you kind of scoot forward about 20 minutes. I was on with these guys for like 90 minutes. And then we get into, I think, a pretty interesting conversation about like how the Democratic Party should move forward. What are things they can do to appeal more broadly? You know, how do you balance kind of the left progressive flank with kind of what people more in the middle want. Is that a sustainable coalition? All that kind of stuff. And so I had a lot of fun vibing out with those guys on that. Hope you enjoy it. It's a little more kind of casual, chatty than my usual fare. So stick around. For me, SoyPill, Pisco, Hutch, characters of the internet. Enjoy. Bullard Takes is sponsored by Aura Frames. Look, Mother's Day is coming up and this is the last holiday where you want to get caught flat footed. Trust me, I've been there. It got ugly. 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Named number one by Wirecutter, you can save on the gifts moms love by visiting AuraFrames.com. For a limited time, listeners can get $25 off their best-selling Carver mat frame with code BULWARKTAKES. That's A-U-R-A-FRAMES.COM, promo code BULWARKTAKES. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. And terms and conditions do apply. Oh, and subscribe to our feed, by the way. We're trying to get to 2 million. Subscribe. Live and learn the only podcast that starts on time, every time. I'm the Soy Pill. With me as always, Hutch Pisco. And special guest today, give a warm welcome to Tim Miller of the World. What's up, Mr. Pill? How's it going? Mr. Pill was my father. Call me Soy. Hey, Soy. Good to have you, Tim. How y'all doing? I don't know I'm feeling pretty bad we don't have a ballroom and uh the events that just transpired show that we need it yeah you can't be safe without a ballroom on the White House grounds no one is safe anymore right it is it's kind of like a Mad Max environment we all we all need a ballroom of our own where we can feel secure a chicken in every pot in a ballroom on every house This is my campaign promise. Michael Tracy also talking about speaking. We're being safe. Did you guys see this little side plot that happened with Michael Tracy? Which one? The one where he showed up to Virginia Jeffries Memorial? The one he picked a fight with Jim Acosta. Jim Acosta and Juliana. Oh, now I'm not remembering her last name. Olivia Juliana. Olivia Juliana. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So apparently Michael Tracy, who I've had on to talk about Epstein stuff, and he's picking the fights, too. So it's a big security weekend for all the important political parties. I got to tell you, I was we got Jazz Fest here in New Orleans. So I was partying on Saturday night and checked out. We had other Bulwark people who were on duty. And so, you know, I didn't. It was kind of a downer to be receiving texts and getting content while I was drinking, watching trombone shorty about what was happening. but after I was like a little drunk and then people started sending me the Michael Tracy, like come and meet me outside the Hampton Inn. That was really enjoyable. And I did take a little break from the music just to kind of watch him demand that Jim Acosta meet him outside the Hampton Inn and send the Hampton Inn address, the photo of the Hampton Inn in case you wanted to get it wrong. I feel like we were really denied a good brawl in the, in the Hampton Inn like breakfast area. We had Dana White at the Hilton. Apparently, they're planning some sort of UFC event on the White House. I just don't know why we wouldn't involve Michael Tracy in that, either with Olivia Juliana or Jim Acosta. Now, was he trying to physically fight Olivia Juliana as well? Yes. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. It's kind of like, who's the guy that Jim Carrey played the biopic? Andy Kaufman. It's very Andy Kaufman-like. Yeah. Well, Tim, I'm curious. I mean, given your experience of how you learned about this news, I had a similar experience where I think after the first assassination attempt on Trump, I was freaking out. I was like, oh, my God, what does our country come to? And this is going to surge them in the polls and like just just kind of having a breakdown. And after this one, I think after 12 hours, I was like, yeah, you know, like it happened again. And it's weird to think of it as like this casual uh sort of brushed off news event which should in any other case dominate a news cycle for maybe a whole year so like how are you viewing this as like you know what is this the third i don't yeah i don't think you have to feel guilty about that i like not obviously it's horrible that someone was trying to shoot up the white house correspondence center and you can't you know give any um anything but just total condemnation to somebody trying to do But I know it kind of feels weird to say this, but like crazy people try to kill the president, like not irregularly. I mean, it has felt like it has happened more with Trump. And like the situation in Butler, I think, was a category difference. I mean, like literally had he not moved his head, he would have been killed. And that was not something that would have happened, I guess. Well, Reagan didn't die, but Reagan was the last time somebody got actually hit by a bullet. But like 13, I think, of the last 15 presidents have had an assassination attempt against him. Gerald Ford had two in 17 days. Nobody talks about that anymore. It's not like, oh, that was a big historical inflection point. The two times Gerald Ford had assassination tips against him. So I think that's kind of why you're feeling that way. And also he didn't really get close. Like I think that there was a moment that night where, you know, just it was a dramatic scene, right? Like it's on camera, it's live. You see him getting, you know, rushed out of there. You see all the journalists hiding under the tables. and it's like it feels like really you know dramatic and serious but then like you learn that and i've been to that dinner it's a the hill it's down the escalator at the hilton so if you go into the hinkley hilton in dc you kind of go around a corner then down an escalator and then through a long hallway he didn't even make it to the floor you know like you so he wasn't even he wasn't even on the same floor as trump so like donald trump was very far away from being shot this time um but not wolf blitzer yeah in theory i don't know there could have been other people that were like late for the dinner going down the hallway they might have been closer uh to that encounter so like in that way like this is more similar to like when a crazy person tries to jump the fence at the white house or whatever you know then like what happened in butler yeah and i bet there's a lot of attempts that we just never hear about because they're nipped in the bud you know like before anyone even gets close to 100 meters from the president um but i think what's interesting to me is in the same way Republicans were trying to capitalize off of this event back in last year, it's the same kind of thing happening now where you see, hey, this is the left's fault. Look at how they're talking about the president. And if anything, I'm looking at this and saying, are we supposed to not accurately describe how we're viewing the most negative aspects of this administration because a crazy person might capitalize off of it? And also, how much weight does that really hold when you've got your party calling us the party of pedophiles? you've got you know you know donald trump calling for the execution of his political opponents like it just all rings so hollow now for the third or fourth or can i pause you right there real quick i'm so sorry to do this but like i want to channel this question through the cnn question that dana did you guys see this yes um she asks um raskin i think um do you feel anything about the heated rhetoric that your side is using and then raskin's like well what do you mean she's like well how you call him terrible. It's such a joke that we live in this world where people are being called out for saying accurate things about the terrible job that the alleged president is doing. And then Raskin kind of backs down. And he says, well, I don't have anything personally against the president. I just hate his policies. So I was like, you don't? I have a lot personal against the president. And that's totally fine, by the way. And it's totally fine to make level personal attacks on him. It is so weird for me on multiple levels, like people whose business it is to exercise free speech and make arguments, like always immediately after something bad like this goes to what's maybe maybe our words were the problem. You know, maybe we just used a phrase that was a little too hot. And it's like, I just there isn't any evidence for that, really. you know I had somebody going after me today some Daily Wire person who's like condemn Hassan Piker he said that you know whatever Rick Scott deserves I don't know if I can know what he said about Rick Scott but you know something violent happened against him and I was like the shooter like was on Blue Sky shitting on Hassan Piker like three days ago so how is it Hassan Piker's fault that then he went crazy and tried to shoot the Trump you know words are not violence and i i bristled at this when it was like really hot on the left for a little while the college can't you know the cancel culture stuff we need safe spaces you know people can't hear you know you know from speakers that they think are too aggressive and it's just like we should be able to live in a vibrant society where people call each other dicks and you know say that you're an asshole or you're corrupt or you're a pedophile cover-upper or whatever like if it's appropriate, if it's true, if it's appropriate, if it's true, you know, or if it could be true, like people should be able to make those arguments and that's fine. That has nothing to do with a gunman shooting at somebody. And I think part of this I do think is it's like, we're so fucked in the guns situation. Like they're just, the proliferation of guns in the country is so great that it's like people are kind of bored with talking about that after shootings as a problem. You know, I was going back to Butler and immediately we did this after butler and everybody's like was it the rhetoric i'm like this is like a weirdo kid i don't think he was watching meet the press i don't think it was the meet the press rhetoric that was a problem wasn't jamie raskin yeah it wasn't jamie raskin and then like on the way yeah on the way to shoot trump he stopped i used to know what the store was i forget but he stopped at like some big box store and bought bullets like on the way and i was like isn't that actually a bigger problem like shouldn't we have a waiting period for buying a certain number of bullets. It seems like, you know, if we're going to try to stop this, that would have been a more efficient response than, you know, saying maybe the Democrats should should not say such mean things about Mr. Trump. You know, so like the whole thing is really is really dumb as far as I'm concerned. Apropos of your reply, guys, just a friend of the show and actually founder of Live and Learn, Josiah asks, Tim, are you going to talk to Megan Bosham of the Daily Wire because she's camped out in your replies and he also is asking me if i'm gonna go fight michael tracy but yeah i mean uh what is this beef with is it specifically that she thinks that you're enabling someone who's enabling a shooter i don't even know how the like this connection is i don't know yeah it all started because she was like the bulwark is responsible for this because you said people shouldn't even show up to the dinner and i was like yeah i said people shouldn't show up to the dinner not that they should shoot up to dinner those are two like those are two very different it's the opposite you have to arrive yeah maybe she thought you were like warning like hey guys don't go to school tomorrow you know sort of thing yeah and so i don't know no i was not and then she goes through my podcast history and it's like oh you one time you said luigi was hot and so this is your fault and i'm like luigi was hot is hot also is horrible and like he should go to jail for life like this like adults do not have you know i should not struggle to like navigate you know kind of complex assessments of people people can be hot and terrible you know like donald trump can be terrible and you not want to kill him so i i don't are you saying i'm not uh he looks horrible without the orange the orange looks bad but if you see without the orange looks horrible so anyway i don't i don't think i maybe i would go debate her if they wanted to be on the Daily Wire, but I'm not going to take some like C-list right-wing media person and bring them onto the bulwark just because they're obsessed with me. That feels like that's setting a bad precedent. You're enabling the reply guy behavior. That's apparently how they're going to bait you into media appearances. I don't think that what you were doing was a cryptic message. The award for cryptic message and the most unfortunate statement goes to Carolyn Levitt. I forget what it was exactly. Shots will be fired tonight? that's going to be fired tonight it's up there with oh go ahead sorry I was going to say in a time where America is just like peak conspiracy brain that was just the most unfortunate sequence of words she could have put together for that moment also the Kimmel joke was just like really awfully timed they're trying to exploit that maximally right now but I think like I think it is worth pointing out that you know every time some kind of event like this happens And I agree with Tim, like all political violence is like pretty horrible for the like social fabric and everything. But every single time they they very transparently and cynically try to, you know, exploit these kinds of events for some kind of boost in the polls or some kind of political benefit. And it never works like, you know, Charlie Kirk was largely kind of like out of the news, maybe like a week or two later. uh trump i think only got a boost of two or three points after butler and that evaporated with an important two points yeah i don't know i don't know how much it helped him i mean he only won by two points oh no no that's true yeah yeah no but i'm saying like when when you track the polls like he went up like a few points and then went right back down but you know it is kind of pathetic and sad that these guys can't even manage to you know cultivate sympathy from voters after events like these yeah yeah it's just who is the voter that's going to change their mind about donald trump because of a shooting attempt though like you know people have other concerns that they're focused on and you can understand you can have sympathy assessment in the poll somebody calls you three days afterwards you don't feel like you don't want to be a dick or whatever say you have an unfavorable view of the person that was just shot but i just don't think it's going to fundamentally change people's perspectives uh which is why my one of my other things if i'm I feel like if I'm on the Lib and Learn pod, I should rant about the libs a little bit. One of the other things that annoys me about the discourse this weekend is like the false flag nonsense. People are like, he did this. He did this because of Iran and his polls were flagging. And I was like, well, no, that wouldn't work. Like, that's not going to work. And number two, he just was about to enjoy like the, like this gift that for some reason the DC journalists gave him was, was supposed to allow him in front of cameras to shit on them for an hour and a half. Why would he do the false flag attack right before that? I would think that he would have done it after he would have had a chance to get his, you know, get a couple of shots off. No pun intended, but I, I just, the whole thing is dumb. I did a rant about this on the podcast today, and I have inboxes full of listeners being like, are you sure it seems fishy? There's some things that seem fishy, but you can't put anything past Trump. And I'm like, well, yeah, I guess you can't put anything past Trump, but these guys also haven't demonstrated a lot of deftness in hiding their behavior. I don't know what you want about Trump, but all of his malfeasance is pretty much right out there in the open. He's not a big secret keeper. and I just think... Ash Patel's getting like absolutely hammered and we're getting like leaks about it and all sorts of inside reports. Or like he's getting flat. No, I mean he's getting wasted all the time. Apparently he's drinking a lot and I actually agree with you Tim. I think one saving grace perhaps for the Libs is the administration really has lost all credibility to say anything factual. You know, their relationship with the truth is ephemeral at best. That said, there's like no evidence to suggest that this was a false flag. It really does feel, though, with the advent of AI, with the right wing all embracing like the Candace Owens style conspiracy theory, you know, slock for a better word. It does feel sometimes that there's like no limit to what people are allowed to allege without evidence. 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. Yeah, I mean, like none of these conspiracy theories survive like past a few questions. Like it's all the people messaging me that are like, well, maybe they recruited a disgruntled guy. And like he was like, again, he was posting on Blue Sky about Will Stansel like last week. Like, you know, this is all part of an elaborate plot. Like this was a CIA thing. They recruited him and they're like, OK, your cover stories are going to go into Blue Sky for four years, you know, and post Lib Slop. And like then you're going to go try to kill Trump and we're going to tackle you before you can do it. And you're going to go to jail for life. why would he sign up for that like why like that is a more compelling theory than like like a guy went fucking kind of crazy and we have too many guns in this country and like he tried to do something nuts like i just that seems like a much more you know much much you know like much more likely uh from an occam's razor standpoint like the butler thing that people always talk about his ear and stuff like we have the photos from the new york times guy i think They're unbelievable photos right underneath them. They take the picture, and it's like a kind of rapid fire, like multi-click, click, click, click, click. And you can see Trump turn his head. Then you see him put his hand up, and then you see him put his hand to his ear, and then you see him go down, and then a guy dies, and they all go to the hospital, and nurses and doctors see them. All these people are in on the cover-up. Like the nurse at the Butler Hospital that did the intake on Trump was part of the CIA plot to do this. These guys can't even get the fucking straight-up or who's open. They can't do anything. They're totally incompetent. They haven't arrested a single one of their political enemies, and yet they pulled that, I don't know. It stretches credulity. They have to be so competent that they can pull off a multi-year fall guy, like fake assassination attempt, but also that no one leaks this, and that just screams 2020 election fraud claims. It's like you are the people that are able to rail against these people for these insane claims that rely on affidavits from people who, you know, as soon as you put them under any scrutiny, they completely fall apart in front of a judge. And now you're saying that like this, the same thing is happening on the other side. Like you have to understand that maybe just some things are going to be capitalized and like trying to make the left look bad. And that has nothing to do with whether or not they faked it. They're always going to try to capitalize it. I follow like a decent like spectrum of people ideologically and pretty consistently I see conspiracy theories on the timeline from you know folks on my side of the aisle or thereabouts um I would say like it's probably a lot more intense with right-wingers I mean it is like a lot more intense and there's more of them doing it but you know there's a lot of people on the left that are prone to conspiracies you know Kyle Kalinske is out here just like day one just pumping out content uh you know just asking questions about things not adding up Never let a good crisis go to waste OK you doubters It might be the case that they didn plan this specifically to happen but maybe they going to use it as their right stock fire to implement a horrific policy agenda like building the ballroom in the White House. And that's what I found so... Because in the previous actual successful assassination of charlie kirk they were talking about like oh we're gonna go after every leftist group all these democrats we're gonna target all of their like institutions none of that shit happened but this time they're really just the limit of their ambition is building this fucking ballroom and justifying it to the public um so i think it's a a missed opportunity for them perhaps but to be honest i don't really think it's that big like the american people like tim said care about other stuff but it was i think fascinating to see ashley sinclair talk about how this unified messaging uh what happened in these chat groups and then everyone is on the same page like minutes after it happens to talk about the fucking ballroom she is spilling some quality tea on the timeline she spilled some tea today about cory mills is that his name republican representative from florida some crazy stuff yeah well tim you are a republican and you worked in a campaign oh you're not you don't identify that way anymore no i wrote an article about leaving in the period between trump losing in 2020 and January 6th when everyone was going along with the stop the steal nonsense, except for like Liz Cheney and Adam and Mitt Romney. I was like, this is over. I don't want to be part of the party anymore. But anyway, I was until 2020. Fair enough. Excuse my mistake. What I was going to ask is you worked on campaigns in like the early 2000s for Republicans. And I wanted to know your perspective, like on this dissemination of information through pundits or any sort of spokespeople obviously didn't exist to the same extent because we just didn't have phones and the internet to the same uh level but was there this media apparatus these talking points being kind of spread out or like can you speak to that a little bit um yeah i mean the the degree of cultishness that they have and like the like kind of the npc quality of some of these like big mega accounts i think is a category difference from what we have seen in the past i I mean, when I was at the RNC, when I was at Jeb, we had lists of people that we'd contact and try to seed stuff with. But a lot of times they wouldn't do what I wanted. Usually people, especially back then, journalists, even if they were bloggers, had at least a minimum level of dignity and would maybe post something kind of like what I'd asked store. If it was really good, they would flag it. There were some that didn't. And the process that I used to use was pick one of the more pliable Republican blogger hacks and have them write something and then send that link around to everybody. And maybe some of them would tweet it. But I do think that the... And Elon incentivizes this now. A big change is now on Axe, you got like they're monetized right so you're being incentivized to just post the the trump slop you know what i mean like if they if you get a text from whoever is the point person in the white house that's like hey ballroom uh you know you're but you're you're better best suited to just go ahead and do that so you can get all the retweets it's not even just the like you know the usual suspects who have the direct lines of connection i i know that they just added this location feature and you see, oh, here's like all the Indian and Malaysian and offshore accounts that are just capitalizing off of like, this gets clicks. This causes people to be angry. Just blow it up and throw it out there. So yeah, it's very transparent how it's really not about anything, but can I get this to go viral because I know it'll make people angry. And yeah. Tim, I want to dive into your politics a little bit more if you don't mind. Yeah. So we've, we've had a ton of discourse in our spaces in recent kind of weeks. Some of it has related to Hassan, but it's more been about like a bigger conversation about the future of the Democratic Party. You're obviously like a Republican defector. And so I'm curious to know what you think should be the playbook for Democrats in the short term to sort of maximize electoral wins and also like what you personally want to see and do those things overlap. Yeah. Can I just say one of the, on just Hassan briefly, uh, when I engaged in that discourse very early, which in retrospect was maybe a mistake because how the hell did I know that it's all everybody would want to talk about for weeks? But one of the points I made when I first engaged with it is that the establishment Republicans, or excuse me, the establishment Democrats, I'd talk about a Freudian slip, the establishment Democrats who are going after him were stepping on a big rake. This was a massive cell phone, putting out a memo that's like people shouldn't talk to hassan is going to absolutely backfire on them and uh you know the the base or like the active kind of democratic voter it's not does not want that and you know there's some category of people to do but if anything it will end up empowering him more to like as an anti-establishment figure who's fighting them because that's what people are looking for right now um look at graham Plattner and Janet Mills. And that's exactly what's happened. And it was really dumb of the third way to do it, just as a strategic matter. 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. My thinking, and I feel like I have good credibility on this, because what I'm about to suggest the Democrats do goes against what my personal political preference would be. If I could wave a magic wand to make somebody president, I would want Jared Polis or somebody like that, who has no viability as a national figure. But I think that the Democrats need to put forth a candidate. I guess we're doing this in the 2028 context, but even in statewide candidates and federal level who has some distance from the Clinton, Biden, Harris. Try out, Brit. And like they need some distance from them and it needs to be comprehensible and understandable to people, to dum-dums. like what the difference is. And I think probably it is a little bit more economic populism. What that exactly looks like, I think is up to the person, but mostly it is that they need to offer a critique of the Democratic Party establishment for being too cozy with corporate interests and saying that they're going to fight it at some level. Some of the some of those proposals will be very stupid, but like there are some that are that are good. And I think that the framing is more important than the actual policies. I imagine you vibe a little bit with Tallarico then, right? Because he's leaning to some populism, but he's not fully committing in the same way that Plattner is. I do vibe a little bit with Tallarico. I think that then on foreign policy, they need to be very clearly anti the stupid war, bluntly and clearly not like, well, the Ayatollah was bad. And this doesn't mean they need to be isolationist, but they need to say, hey, you guys are heard. You thought Trump was going to be anti-war. You're betrayed by him. We are, you can trust us. Like we're not going to get into stupid Middle East wars. It doesn't mean we're isolationists. We support our allies in Europe. We're going to try to mend fences with the countries on to mend fences with us, but no more stupid wars. We're not, we're going to pull us, get us the hell out of it. I think they should do that. And I think it would probably be beneficial for the Democrats to try to demonstrate some type of distance from their past to the like those two are kind of moves to the left as they move to the right just slightly on either immigration or public safety like demonstrating that there's like some feeling of hey things got a little out of control with the you know far left prosecutors in san francisco and some of these places and we need to make sure that violent criminals are put behind bars and that we need to make sure that violent, illegal immigrant criminals are behind the bars or sent home. And, you know, that doesn't mean going, being, becoming like bigoted or nativist, but just demonstrating that there's like a little bit of a pivot from where things were. I think that combination is probably the sweet spot for them. In your view, who's the most posed to do this that's on the playing field right now? Because so many of the current candidates I see are either linked i mean harris might run again to some of these things that you need to say we need to distance ourselves from and some of them she's a thousand percent gonna run right thousand percent yeah and so so like yeah who who is like then able to both distance themselves and make these shifts that you're you're uh i think it's tough i think it's pretty concerning um you know because the answer is to that question is going to people that haven't really been around i mean one of that is okay, maybe one of these guys wins a surprise Senate race and just runs again immediately, like for president. I know there'll be a lot of push against that, but that could be Tallarico, could be Plattner. Other people find that crazy, but I don't. I mean, Obama and Trump were both crazy, and they're the last people to win twice. And then, you know, maybe more reasonable to that would be somebody like a Wes Moore or one of the two Georgia senators, Ossoff and Warnock, both kind of demonstrated they've won in the South in a swing state. Those are kind of the names that come to mind. I don't, nobody's really knocking my socks off right now on this front. I like Pete personally. You know, again, like I think if this was like a wave the magic wand and let Tim have somebody he likes, like I would be totally happy with Pete. I just if the Democrats biggest problem is working class men I don't know I just think a gay polyglot it's like a tough pitch what the fuck is a polyglot what is that somebody who speaks a lot of languages exactly yeah I think that he would use a lot of words that they wouldn't know um and so John Kerry coded yeah maybe that's wrong I Pete has Pete has um exceeded my expectations at every step of the way politically so i don't know um if he ever becomes president i feel like he would have to be vp first and then you know following like a popular democratic presidency that could segue into that but it's hard to see just him winning the primary in 2028 yeah i don't think it's a zero percent chance but it's a little tough yeah i actually see a connection between what you just said about pete and your thoughts on hassan namely that it's not necessarily the case that your personal preferences ideologically personally are going to determine what you think is most politically useful such as appearing on people's shows with whom you disagree tremendously or um you know picking a candidate that perhaps you even differ with greatly because of their ability to win so talk us through that um sort of practical pragmatic sense of your politics Yeah, there's only two parties, you know, and if I was a podcaster in a European country where there's like kind of a, you know, the FDP in Germany or something where there's like a social left party and like fiscally kind of conservative party, like I would go all in for the party that most matches me. Like we have two parties and one of them is a right wing authoritarian party, which is a grave threat to the country right now. And so as far as I'm concerned, the best thing to do is, you know, try to encourage and advocate for an alternative, an alternative to that, that can be successful. And I think more than just being successful that can like wipe that out. You know, I just I always go back to Biden 2020 the morning after. I was sad. I was very sad. I didn't know exactly how bad it was going to get ahead, but I knew that this wasn't over. That we needed to beat him way more. That was too close and that either he would re-emerge or some facsimile of him would emerge and that we were going to be in this for a bit. And you didn't warn us about January 6th. That was very selfish of you. It sounded like you knew it was going to happen. I didn't know exactly. I kind of did. I did a lot of alarm sounding. And some of my never Trump or friends who are on the more conservative side, you guys are bringing alarmists. And I was like, no. And I will tell you on our Bulwark live stream the night of January 6th. So I like to dunk my colleagues over that many of them were talking about how like Trump was over. And I was like, by Valentine's Day, these guys are going to come back around February 14th. And I was wrong. I was sooner. Like we didn't even get to January before those guys came back around. So anyway, as soon as McCarthy took that photo up with him I was like oh no I was like oh no they're still behind him this is not good so because of that threat I just think it's important to be practical and I don't I kind of laugh I was like if you graded like how close a candidate to me was from like zero to 100 like McCain Obama like both of them were like decently close to me you know like I can various ways like they weren't too far apart from each other and both of them were way closer to me than like Trump and Harris were. Just if you're doing a checklist of policies. I didn't know how good I had it back in 2008. I was kind of like, I don't really like it. I didn't really think I liked it. I have just accepted that we're going to go through a period where there's not going to be a very Tim-coded candidate ideologically. That's fine. We're in a democratic system. There are only two options. Maybe an outside person can emerge sometime. It's not going to be this next time. And so I just think it's important to give honest analysis of that and also give honest advice based on that. For me to come on and be like, you know what people, you know what they should really do is we should have a Tim Miller-coded candidate who's for open borders and gay supremacy, red tape cutting. just like that'd be awesome if there was a majority of the country that was for that but like i just don't i don't think there is well you're talking about it like it's a like an arranged marriage like look i'm not happy about it but this is what's what's best for the the families and then the dowry is so big is that not wrong though no it's not kind of wrong i mean i mean you know i know the people some people are that they get politics and they get very i don't know starry-eyed about it and like it should make you know i feel like politicians should make me sing and I should be very passionate about advancing my ideals. I think all that's nice and stuff. I'm just more practical about it all. You're speaking my language, Tim. I have to ask though, because this is kind of an extension of this as the point of the coalition and who's in the 10 and who's helping us. And to me, quite obviously you are, right? You are fundamentally aligned with fighting Trump and the fascist wave that's happening right now. But it's clear that at a certain point, as the Overton window shifts, you will be opposed to the liberal candidate. Now, you won't be like, you know, tearing them down and backstabbing or doing some crazy Gen 6 stuff. But you will be saying, hey, like, this isn't who I want. This person is not my politics. So at what point I guess this is idealistic because like oh god what a world I would love to live in where we have to worry about whether or not Tim Miller's not on our side instead of the fascists. But at what point do the people that are currently in the coalition the never Trumpers the super far leftists at what point are we supposed to say okay and now we're opposed is it as soon as now that both parties have a candidate and they can separate from that tent or is it before that. Yeah, and I think that there'll be obviously some disagreements in 2028. But I like, you know, assuming it's J.D. Vance or Tucker. Or Trump again. I think people are discounting that he runs again. Or Trump Jr. Like, I'll be for whoever. Like, it was, I don't know. I did an interview back in, like, when Bernie was winning in 2020. Where the interviewer was like, well, who'd you be for in Bernie? And Trump's like, Bernie. And they're like, really? And I was like, yeah, I'll be for. I mean, I don't want it to be Bernie. I would rather be someone else. I ended up being Biden. And I kind of hate Biden now. So, you know, I don't know. Maybe we would have been better off with Bernie. What the hell do I know? But, like, I just, it's not a close choice against these guys. I mean, they're trying to turn us into a right-wing autocracy. It is, like, it is completely unacceptable. It's the worst possible option. Like, we can lower the marginal tax rates again if Bernie raises them too high. Like, that's not, I don't know. Like I understand how if you're a corporate business owner is worried about, you know, the narrow financial interests of your company, that might have that might be different. But like, that's not me. I'm happy to pay a little bit more in taxes. That's the only thing that a Bernie administration would do to me. Now he's going to be too old to run next time. So I just like obviously there'll be arguments and everybody will be making a case what they think is best during a 2028 primary. but I don't really see a path towards like me feeling passionately against the Democratic candidate until like the Republican side is defeated. I know. Or obviously if a Democrat is specifically bad thing, you know what I mean? Like, or there's, I mean, there's obviously uniquely corrupt people. Like endorse RFK Jr. Like Jared Polis or the pardon people. Can we get, so I want to talk about that real quick because there are, there's a kind of centristy or more uh i don't know enlightened candidate that is trying to paint themselves as being above the fray in a way i'm thinking people like jared polis or john fetterman who's willing to say oh my party's a little bit crazy here it seems that no one is other than perhaps some republicans no one in the democratic coalition is buying the fetterman act this enlightened centrist act where there's some kind of synthesis trying to be made with mag ideology i kind of agree with the base on that i don't think that maga is something that we create a synthesis or dialectic with but why is it the case that you give a pass to polis on the rfk stuff on the pardon um fair question i uh i'm dispositionally uh opposite almost of jared polis i don't know like we text i text and shit talk him over stuff when i i disagree with something that he says like I don't his tweets are not particularly great I was more just I was speaking like more about the way that he's governed Colorado that it was like really good I mean you know and there are certain things that like state level legislative you know compromises that are that are kind of needed I don't know there's some crazy you know in Colorado um for example you know uh there's a lot of natural gas pipelines and that kind of stuff there's some left sides of side of the party that wanted to like totally shut all that down and polis kind of brought people to a compromised position that's one kind of example of that i thought he was pretty good on covid was an example i thought that there was a lot of left crazy stuff i mean at fucking my neighborhood in oakland california before i moved to new orleans they had the they had the parks boarded up they had the fucking parks boarded up in the basketball court like i couldn't take my kid to the damn playground which was moronic and like polis was doing the policy that everybody wanted which was you know you have some rules around masking and distancing initially we get the vaccine then people can do whatever the hell they want and they're pro-vaccine they didn't advance vaccine disinformation so you know the economy's doing good in colorado he's pro-immigrant so i was more speaking about that i do i i i share your aversion to kind of this centrist above the fray you know attitude and like I'm dying for, I'm dying for like a centrist that has some, you know, blood in their teeth. Not literally. But, you know, somebody's willing to just like really fucking fight and gnaw and, you know, maybe they'll show up sometime. We'll see. How do you feel about Jeffries came out today and said that they're not focused on impeachment? I think that there's like an obvious logic there. You don't want to galvanize the opposition and fire them up to like defend their president, especially when we have some slam dunk issues like Iran and the economy. But I imagine that's going to piss off a lot of the base. I mean, that's something that comes up in this podcast a lot, the kind of disconnect between the democratic voter base and, you know, the more political center and just how that's, that gulf is sort of widening. And it seems like the political, the party base is, is demanding, you know, political blood, not real blood, but like they want fighters like you're talking about. Do you have thoughts on the Jeffries impeachment thing? Yeah, I'm pretty torn about impeachment as a question, just for the reason of like, if you're going to use it as a vehicle to investigate various things, then great. If you can do the investigations without the impeachment vehicle, I think that there's an argument for that. You know, impeachment is a political question, really, fundamentally. Say more about that. What do you mean? 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. Well it like I mean there are some people look at it like George Conway is on the other side of me from this right He sees impeachment as a legal question Has he committed impeachable acts And so if so, we should impeach him. And there's a logic to that, right? But like in reality, in the real world, impeachment is a political question because it's like, you know, it's not a legal question. This isn't a court of law. and if we can impeach him but can't convict him then what is it it's it's kind of just no different than the sternly worded letter you know that has like a historical stamp on it it's like you've been impeached and to me i think the most important thing that the democrats have to do when they take back power and i'm obsessed with this is as just absolutely max out on oversight and investigations like i the amount of corruption that he has undergone in this two years is just beyond people's imagination and if you look at the four years everybody clicks on merrick garland but i i just think that the oversight uh you know they decided that when they democrats took the house back during the biden years they decided to stop investigating trump and what had happened before and i and i just like did not understand that i wanted the i wanted to been this is where my like fighting moderate person that i want to to emerge as like i want to ben god i want to trey gowdy I want a Democratic trade gallery to have 30 Benghazi hearings. I want 30 hearings on the crypto corruption and 30 hearings on the business, the companies that Don Jr. and Eric are on the board of. They're getting government contracts. They're for sure going to do that. They're for sure going to do that. They did that during the first term. I mean, like when they took back the House, I mean, they were pretty aggressive in terms of. No, nothing compared to Benghazi and Hillary's laptop emails. like who did a better job that them or the democratic oversight folks i have some evidence the epstein thing they've been good on shout out to robert garcia the epstein thing they've been good on but i i just they need to me that is like the key and if you do that through impeachment and that's i'm okay with that uh you're open to impeachment in other words as a vehicle to for oversight i kind of see that there's an ability to reconcile your and conway's view So I initially think that as a threshold, as a necessary condition for any impeachment proceeding, there ought to be at least some legal, lawful basis to charge them with impeachment. But obviously it's resolved by the political branch of Congress in the first case of the House of actually impeaching and then in the Senate. And I think that everything the Democrats should be doing, assuming that they take the House or and even if they get a bare majority in the Senate, should be trying to bog this administration down. And oversight is one way that you do it. Subpoenaing and getting information is another way that you do it. Look at how we're able to manage people's social media feeds, manage the discourse through revelations of information. And we're going to have way more access to that when we have subpoena power, et cetera. and he deserves to be impeached and so I'm glad that you're not against it one reason why I think the base gets frustrated and here is me, Hutch is like the last samurai for Chuck Schumer and I'm over here trying to channel what the base is feeling I'm just joking, I'm fucking on this I think he should retire for the good of the party I think he should I'll samurai for Hakeem Jeffries for you in a second after this, go back to it the final thought on it is we just want someone to reflect back the anger the passion and the feeling of uh that some members of our congress are not taking it super serious and are kind of just like going along get along and doing the same kind of thing that a lot of the institutions were doing in the first few weeks of trump 2.0 was that about your self-actualization or is that about no it is it is partly i think uh psychological and partly about actualization but i also think that it's an indicator that they get it it's an indicator that they're on the right path right like this these votes on the budget or whatever or these votes on israel stuff like you're not going to be able to stop the funding to israel you're not going to pass a war powers resolution in this congress but why do people care when there's defectors why do people care when uh democrats sometimes even like sign on to a republican proposal that it's going to pass anyway. It's because it shows or doesn't show, crucially, that they get it and that if they were getting power, they would take the right approach. And so that's what I think is the concern for people like me is it's not necessarily the thing itself, but one, we want people to seem like they're fighting. Like what is Trey Gowdy doing in your example? Trey Gowdy is totally ineffectual at actually showing that Hillary Clinton did anything criminal, but he's able to get energy. He's able to get good optics. That's a tangible win and then also it's confidence in the future that you'll be able to do the right thing yeah um i i understand that having those concerns about the democratic leadership i and chuck i can't samurai for chuck i'm sorry you're gonna do that but on the hakeem side you're never um i'm gonna say this like i don't think anybody's ever gonna really vibe with hakeem what did what did chris matthews say about about obama he gives him he gives me a thrill up my leg I just I don't know he's corny he's a little corny okay and he just doesn't even when he is mad I don't know I I'm not feeling it right and so on like a performance WWE figure skate judging kind of thing like a game's not gonna have it I don't think but I mean the two shutdowns were like pretty crazy and like the first shutdown was over nothing basically and then he was like we're going to make it over the healthcare extensions, okay, which they know they're never going to get. And we're going to inject this topic into the conversation. And we're going to do it and succeed. And they all unified. They shut down the government. They pointed out the fact that your healthcare premiums are going up. It's Republicans' fault. And then when the moment came, you know, they got the off ramp. Most people thought that was a failure. I thought that was a huge win. Then this next shutdown is still going. People aren't even talking about it anymore, but we're still not funding ICE and CBP. That's a good, that's, and they're in the minority. Like, that's real. Like, they're in the minority. They got the Epstein files released. Not all of them, but like some, like they got Epstein back into the news. And to me, if I look at the House Democrats right now, and then obviously they were behind the scenes pushing what was happening in Virginia, California to a lesser extent, but these redistricting fights, that has been a huge win. So I don't know. I mean, I don't know what more, like, the base wants. Like, what do people want? Like they're in the minority and they've, they've, I think, demonstrated some real fight, particularly on the House side, have some wins out of it. I'm being, you know, that's, that's my kind of tepid defense. I'm with you, Tim. I share your perspective. And I think like, yeah, Pisco is going to disagree here in a second, but like, but I think like the tension and the anger that exists right now between the base and the party or more specifically the party leadership, I think that's kind of more or less baked in until we get the gavel back in January. And it's not going to completely fix all that anger, but that gavel will enable the Democrats to actually do things with that institutional power. You talked about like that vital oversight role. And I think once the base seize those kinds of actions, then they'll feel better about it. But there are a lot of people right now, you know, prominent voices on the left that are expressing frustration about things that the Democrats can't really stop. Like they just like when you're the party out of power, you just and they have the votes to pass things, the party that's in power. You really can't do much. You have these budget shutdown fights and that's kind of it. And so, yeah, real quick, Josiah wants you ask Tim if he knows what Green Lantern theory of politics. He also wants Pisco to ask Tim what his favorite color is, yes or no, but you can do that if you want Pisco. Do you know what the Green Lantern theory of politics is? I'm not off the top of my head. What is it? Damn, okay. It's just, it's a whole thing. Ezra Klein wrote an article in like 2014, and it's basically a theory of politics that suggests that presidents through either sheer force of will or charisma can basically like force the congress to give them anything they want and so any any president that doesn't meet that standard which is like every president um but mostly it's to shit talk about um democrats it's like a way to suggest that because biden couldn't do what like lbj could do you know that means it was like a you know yeah yeah go ahead yeah no that is similar to kind of just like they get shit like the idea that like you can just do things i guess it's more of the updated version of the green lantern theory of politics so you can just do things very um and i'm for i'm sympathetic to that i guess my point is as just a media commentary uh and i'll be interested in pisco you and and and soy's pushback on this but uh like there's a whole eco there's like two entire ecosystems out there that are built around talking about how democrats are pussies and like there's not a lot of of air cover for people there's only three ecosystems right like the mainstream media has to like knock Democrats from time to time to feel like they're being even. The right wing media exists to tear Democrats down. And there's this huge left wing media ecosystem that's all about how the democratic establishment sucks. And so it's like, I don't, you know, I just don't kind of know what all of these people want exactly from Hakeem. Like you see, like just using Zoran as a counterexample, like Zoran will go up there and they'll be like, Hey, our new grocery store is going to be here in 2029 and everybody's like yeah you know what I mean or like he'll put up like a look at this meme like we did a meme about how the roads have been we're going to fill the holes we did a gay joke we did a fill the holes meme about potholes like the last week he's like and then meanwhile gets the Epstein files out there and he's like what are you doing Hakeem he's like why can't you be more exoron he's filling the holes I just think that there's like a little bit of that behind it. And then you also have examples like Spanberger, who is like pumping out an enormous volume of bills, like meaningful bills. And she doesn't really get talked about as much as Zoran. And I like Zoran. I do. I like him a lot. I'm really impressed by him. But like, you know, you're right. Like a lot of his wins, well, pretty much all of his wins so far have been pretty symbolic. Even the childcare thing that they unveiled, that was Hochul had been working on that for years with the state legislature. And she decided to like rope him in on that and like, you know, give him, share that credit with him. And so it is frustrating to watch that. A bunch of categories of things. Oh, go ahead. So, Bill, sorry. Well, I was going to say, like, yeah, with the Momdani thing, I actually do understand the double standard of like, yeah, we haven't seen the direct effects of the best thing he's promised. And people cheerlead him far more than they'll cheerlead Spanberger, who's getting these really awesome bills passed. I think the issue is that, I mean, Momdani is speaking to things that in a positive manner that I think a lot of Democrats aren't right now. you know, they have their sort of messaging as this. We can't do much, which is true. But when you are the average citizen and you're looking at these things that are coming out, it's like, guys, we did it. We released the Epstein files. And it's like, oh, all of them, like the law said, no. Oh, is Trump going to get punished? Also, no. And it's like, OK, well, why should I care? And, you know, as much as people like us who are more tuned in and informed can say, like, this is meaningful and this is shifting the conversation, it just falls so flat for the average voter who looks at this and says, did anything actually meaningfully change? You know, how many five months after January when we released the second batch? Not really. I mean, it might have inspired some guy to try to do a crazy assassination attempt, which is not good. That's just turning up the rhetoric. So so its poll numbers are down. That's true. It is. And like, I don't know if maybe the Democrats, I'm sure, you know, they do this. But like, how do you make it salient to say, guys, we need to, you know, win in the midterms to be able to do the stuff you're asking us to do because that sounds so feckless but it's true you can't impeach until you win the midterms you can't pass these laws you can't block the legislation you want to you can never get a filibuster approved majority like how do you translate that into enthusiasm for democratic voters like it's almost impossible it's what chuck schumer said he's like guys we're not going to do the shutdown until trump's more unpopular and he did it when it when he was and it worked a lot better so he was kind of you know vindicated with that but like god that messaging sucked you know it's some old geriatric coming out and saying oh we're gonna win guys we'll do it in a few months and it's like what is this supposed to inspire me how do you do that a bunch of categories i want to respond to the first is like the box that i'm trying to create here isn't all democrats i think in general democrats have performed adequately a lot of them uh rank and file members a lot of particular members in press I think John Ossoff with his rhetoric and also in some of these votes and some of the sort of policy achievements that you've highlighted, including the Epstein files, as well as some of the sort of takes that the leadership has been given on things like the or some members of leadership, I should say, because they've been pretty bad on the Iran war. But Hakeem Jeffrey specific, I think, has been better on it than Chuck Schumer. So I'm not talking about all Democrats. It's also not it's not like ideological. I'm not saying that they need to pursue Medicare for all or some kind of leftist media messaging. That's not what I'm alleging either. What I think people are frustrated with is, number one, the and this is, I think, first and foremost, a kind of cringeness about a lot of Democratic leaders. When people go out and say we need to fuck Trump or Chuck Schumer with his kind of like cringe shit. Yeah. So there's one aspect of that in terms of this is 50% of your job now is being a good spokesperson and messenger. And you can say whatever you want to say about, oh, we're out of power or whatever. They're not good messengers and not the base isn't like all dem haters all the time. It didn't used to be this bad in terms of the polling for Democrats in terms of their approval. and there has to be something there in terms of how the public is responding to Democratic leadership specifically in terms of how they're talking to them. So that's one thing. Isn't the case, Pisco, that isn't like an integral part of like the Senate minority leader's job to eat shit? I mean, I don't, I can't think of a single, not to like, not to dismiss your point entirely because I don't like, I don't disagree that there's some really big messaging problems and cringe problems when it comes to like Schumer specifically, but i can't think of any democrat right now that would be like popular in that role i think they're always going to have to like absorb a lot of the anger from the base when they get angry it seems like in your on your view hutch i'm sorry to get into this in front of our guest don't embarrass what would it take for schumer to do something wrong right because if his poll numbers are wrong well that's just what's going to happen if you're a senate minority leader if he keeps like uh the caucus together for a vote you're like oh great wonderful Schumer kept the caucus together but when he doesn't it's like well he doesn't control these senators so it really seems like it's an unwinnable scenario with Hutch there's nothing to assess for when Hutch is going to say Schumer's doing a bad job and I want to get into the shutdowns because I think that those were losses we have to think about these in terms of opportunity costs yes the Democrats are relative to Republicans is doing better in polling in the matchups. But the question isn't, did we survive okay? Are we well positioned to meet the midterms? It's how much better would we have been if we stood tall? And I actually think we would have been better if we stood tall on the shutdown. But let's just take one moment, Hutch. The moment of the actual first shutdown fight during November, Schumer comes out and says, I'm going to vote against ending the shutdown. All right. So the official Schumer position is we're not going to let these Republicans walk all over us. We're not just going to end the shutdown. That's the official Schumer position. Right. And yet you have these quote unquote defectors, Tim Kaine and friends who go and make this separate side deal where there's no benefit whatsoever. What are we meant to believe from that, that Schumer really was and there's reporting that he was not even like trying to lobby the senators who are doing the negotiations to vote in favor of the Democratic position? Are we meant to believe that Schumer wasn't leading the way on that vote? Or is he lying when he says, I'm going to vote against the shutdown and he's operating behind the scenes? Which is it? I think there is more plausible, but I think like the more relevant question is, why do you, you know, is it a reasonable standard to expect that a political party is going to have perfect unanimity all the time? And I feel like that's the standard that you measure the Democratic Party against. And when you look to historical precedent, this has just never been the case. There's always, there's always been defectors at times in political parties. That's just the way. So when is Schumer doing a bad job? So on your view, when would you know that Schumer's doing a bad job? Well, I think he should resign for other reasons. That's the one I'm asking. Like when, when would it, what would it take for you to be like, oh, that's a bad job that Schumer is doing when he's voting like with the seven against the funding or whatever, the deals for the bulldoze or whatever. What does it take for Hutch to say Schumer is doing a bad job? What would you need to see? I didn't like that vote. I did not like that vote at all. Whether you like the vote or not, what is the kind of thing that you would see to be like Schumer is failing at his job? I mean, I don't know. That's a pretty broad question. Well, let's get Tim in here. Tim, what would you say? Yeah. You know, you're not a last samurai for Schumer. When did you flip on him? Well, this is a complicated question. I think that just policy-wise, Schumer has been a disaster on the Iran war and has led his own views, which are out of step with where the party is, where the country is on the threat of Iran, which I think he very much overstates cloud what was the right political move here. And so to me, I think that if there's that, that would be my answer to your question of like, I didn't think there was any last straw until the Iran thing. And it's just, it's been a total his handling that I think has been atrocious. my criticism of Schumer would be more on the performance side, back to the performance like, I don't really share your criticism about the shutdown, I think folks needed an off ramp at some point, but like, I agree with the criticism on where is the rallying of the base, you know, like where is the non-cringe messaging and I have, I'm kind of of two minds about it, right, because on the one hand isn't this really a Kamala problem, not a Schumer problem? Like if Kamala won. Would anybody be caring about this? Like, I don't think so. Right. Like John Thune isn't exactly lighting the world on fire. Mike Johnson is walking cringe. And like you don't see in the MAGA world, like a lot of criticisms of them, because it's like, well, Trump's doing everything. You know what I mean? Like, they're just functionaries in Trump. And so since Trump is the president and the Democrats don't have a leader, it kind of it magnifies the weaknesses, the tumor and Jeffrey's. have on the messaging standpoint and i think that i i've i'm starting to change my view on all this um i i used to make fun of this anecdote but i was on our focus group podcast years ago like three or four years ago um sarah was asking some mega voters and i have no idea i can't remember why she was doing florida and alabama but it's florida and alabama mega voters and like one of the questions was who is doing a good job in your state and they both said like kind of pragmatic republicans who are fixing the schools or doing you know whatever doing something they liked that was tangible and then when we got to the federal level they're like marjorie taylor green and matt gates are doing they're doing are doing well and i listened to that and at the time i really mocked it you know because i was like this is stupid like marjorie taylor green and matt gates aren't doing anything like they're you just see them a lot they're just fucking trolls and they're loud and like but now maybe they were onto something i mean like maybe that is kind of the job of congress in this day and age i don't i'm not saying that it should be but maybe it just is and maybe the chuck schumer workout video it's just yeah maybe democrats need more people like more firebrands more people that are good at messaging more people and and i and and and maybe that should be part of the job that's part of the job assignment for president now and that wasn't always, you know, I mean, and before the TV era, that wasn't the job of the president. And I think that we went through a period of time where people were like, oh, the president's the TV job, and then the Senate and House, like those are more Senate in particular is more of a functional job. Maybe that's changing now. And maybe the Democrats need to kind of adapt with that. And I think that's kind of how I'm coming around on it. Well, you've kind of spoken on this, but what are your views on And then Mom Donnie and his kind of like very clearly effective social media campaigning that is just super salient to people. These constant updates like here's the new tax I'm implementing. Here's where the status of this policy is. This more of the direction we should be headed in. Yeah. A plus. I mean, part of it is just that he's a natural. You know, not everybody has it. I don't know. I was I had Morris Katz on his advisor on the pod and was asking him about the Trump visits. and kind of asking about what the prep was for all that. And they did prep, but it was just natural for Zoran. You saw what happened to Gretchen Whitmer. She goes in there. Some of this is just an instinct. She's in the Oval Office doing basically the same thing as Zoran. Like, hey, can we find something to work together on? I still disagree with you. And she ends up hiding behind the folder. and everybody shits on her rightly by the way for for being too accommodating to trump and for not standing up to him when he like starts talking about how chris krebs should be hung or whatever he was saying and the fucking in the oval office and like and then zoran goes in and just like kind of smiles and buddies up with him and everybody's like you know it's like you know some people have it some people don't so i don't think everybody can just copy Zoran but I do think that like the principle of more is more more updates taking credit for shit like whatever the example is you said Hochul really did it it's like okay well like who cares like take credit for it you know uh with the old there's the old uh line if you got a shotgun and you're kind of shooting pigeons it's like shoot what flies claim what falls like maybe it wasn't your cartridge that hit the bird but you're gonna count it you know if the bird goes down you take credit and like I just think that that is the right mindset and I think that the other things around has done really well and i talked about this a lot because this is the thing i obsessed with is that so many democrats lately have gotten in the sour spot where like moderates like bullard people think that they're too progressive lib crazy and the progressive types think that they're establishment shills like that was hillary that was kamala that is schumer that is Jeffrey's. There's so many Democrats. I guess nobody thinks Schumer is so far left. But there's a lot of big Democrats that this fits. And Obama was the opposite. Progressive thought he was progressive. Moderates, not conservatives, but moderates thought that he was one of them. Progressive thought he was one of them until then eventually. And also from Plattner kind of code that way too. It's not necessarily ideological. It's what your vibe is a bit. I think that they're lacking vibes. And Zoran has done it. Zoran's done that very well. it's not just natural charisma with Zoran because his mom is a film director and you can you can tell like his you can tell the production value is I can't even begin to describe how important I think that was to his campaign just having all that polish in the videos that they produce with the different angles and just like really good cinematography and all the good like things that they didn't post I mean all that stuff matters and so in a way I think he's a little bit similar to Trump in that I think Zoran understands the value of the function of the camera, I think like really, really well. And that's just been a huge strength to him as a politician. Great. You sound a little bit like Pisco because Pisco has been proposing the idea of like a hybrid politician about how like, you know, he basically in different words expressed the exact same thing that you were just saying. And Pisco, I mean, if you want to 100% on that, and I just want to say, really, I want to stress all the time. I have ideological takes. You know, I'm certainly someone who has my own views on, you know, I believe that we should have, if not Medicare for all, a public option. I have my own particular views on foreign policy, et cetera. But for me, what matters a lot more is doing what Biden did not, which is fixing the soul of this country. And for me, fixing the soul of the country is defeating the empire, defeating the MAGAM elites who are taking over our nation. That's what I think victory looks like. And so in that respect, I will praise, and I have someone like Gavin Newsom on my Twitter feed, when I see him be a leader on redistricting and actually take a calculated risk and win and fight back, I'm all for it. And I see even downer leftists who I grown at say, I'll grudgingly say, okay, this was good that Gavin did that. And also, by the way, shout out to Spanberger and I'm now forgetting her name, which is a crime. The Senate majority leader of the louise yes yes and i don't know who was running her feed but some of it's on hinge but it's awesome um but these kinds of wins whether it's mom donnie putting his name on stuff or reaching out and being effective in the rhetoric department um with selling whatever this policy was from um kathy hokel or whether it's state leaders doing awesome stuff and undeniably based things even when it's just partisan and not necessarily ideological i think that you get the kudos that you deserve yeah i agree with that and i also just think um again this goes against what my preference would be but one thing that zoran's doing well that and i just don't know who would even fit this bill for 2028 but he has so much credibility with the progressive left in particular i think over the uh israel issue but also you know some of the public services stuff and healthcare and that he's been able to do things like keep Jessica Chish and like do some abundancy housing stuff. The cop stuff. He backed down on the cop scene. Yeah, the cop stuff. And like, and sure, some crazy Brooklyn leftist shit on him, but like nobody cares, right? It doesn't impact him at all, right? Like he has a lot more room to maneuver. And I do think that like model could make sense for a national politician, somebody that is whatever for Medicare for all and against the Israel funding and passionate about that and cares about it. And those are their issues. And the fucking Bernie people like him or her. But then also they're like, what we should also do is have a border. You know what I mean? Maybe they'd have some more room to maneuver that way. And that might be a better way to kind of get at the heterodox or more moderate voters. I don't know. But I do think that that model is working for Zora. Well, speaking of elections, the last thing I wanted to get into, I don't know if you guys saw the recent Reuters article about Trump. I mean, you know, they couldn't pass the SAVE Act, but they're still making moves to have federal control over elections prior to these midterms. And we often talk on this show about the guardrails and like what Trump will be able to get away with. To what extent do you think the fucking with the midterms from this fascist administration is going to directly affect our chances? Or is it just going to fall by the wayside like every other dumb thing they've tried in the past couple months? Yeah. My alarmism is on the upper end on basically everything except this of people in bulwarky democracy circles. I'm not saying that I'm not worried about it. I am. I just think that they are a lot less effective at this than there are other stuff. Like Russ voted as an efficient bastard when it comes to tearing down the government. They don't have anybody that is that good at this. They tried with the gerrymandering. That backfired. They tried with 2020. Like failed every lawsuit. I mean, you know, they ended up getting some people killed at the Capitol. But like they didn't really get that close to pulling it off. They're still trying now to go find 2020 stuff. Cash Motel is promising like last week to arrest the 2020 perpetrators. it's like okay like let's we'll see we'll see how that goes so he's fighting to keep that job yeah did you see him in the southern poverty law just real quick on the southern poverty law center lawsuit so um fucking the todd blanche comes out gives his rapport it's middling it's whatever but it's functional and then cashmite just comes on right after him after he's in this like uh media storm and basically says the exact same thing and they just trotted him out just to repeat what todd play said uh just previously so yeah he's fighting for it so i don't you know and a lot of times voter suppression stuff backfires draws attention to think it can work but like there there are lots of examples of backfiring too so i just as at a broad level of like them stealing the midterms or fucking canceling i i it's like that stuff i don't think is going to work i worry about the senate in a very narrow outcome situation. I really do think we could be staring down the barrel of a 51-49 Senate and where that 51st seat is in a state where Republicans control everything. And so to me, I think that that is... You mean something that would qualify as fuckery but it would be done through a legal mechanism? Yeah, or who the hell knows? They challenge the votes and they've got like some fucking mega election deniers, you know, secretary of state. And like that 51st seat could be Montana, Iowa, Alaska. But this would be a repeat of 2000, right? I mean, it's less, you know, fascistic, but you get the Supreme Court to essentially say like, hey, stop counting the votes and I've declared the word. Yeah, we're not going to count these votes, the mail votes, we're going to throw, you know, we're going to now go to the mail votes and if your signature doesn't match the signature that you signed the card with 10 years ago, we're going to throw it out. Who knows? There's a bunch of different stuff that they could do on certifying on the back end after the election. So I worry just mostly about the red state inflection tipping point Senate states, which is bad and something to be really concerned about, but different than some of the more over-the-top rhetoric you sometimes hear about them just canceling the midterms, the martial law, that kind of stuff. Tim, how bullish are you on America in the next 10 years? Not America, yes or no. honestly though i mean how do you how do you see this playing out realistically over the next five to ten years i mean is there any chance that the republican party could if not go back to mitt romney levels of normal but like drift in that direction um zero percent chance yeah i'm like so i am short term like pretty alarmist and pessimistic at least i just i think trump is like aging and he's his increase he's increasingly gonna have his numbers tanking and i he's erratic and i just i think that like it's hard to even imagine what the kind of crazy shit he's gonna get in his mind when he's 81 years old and like the you know the curtain is about to come down on all this like i'm very i'm very concerned about the next two years i'm kind of medium term optimistic like i i do think that like the the american economic engine is still like super powerful i mean it's kind of crazy to think but like and i saw something today it's like anthropic is like a trillion dollar has a trillion dollar valuation already and like we do the american innovation machine does just still keep kicking you know and we have a lot of like natural resources domestically it's like you know there's uh the joke about how it's like every kind of rare earth mineral you know that they think that they only have in alaska it's like one day a guy's in his backyard in pennsylvania and starts digging it's like oh we got it in pennsylvania too like i just we do have just resources and innovation ingenuity level enough to kind of like keep things rolling and i think that these guys are beat i think that they're so fucking stupid that they're beatable and you saw orban being beatable like we should have beat them last time i just think that there's some bad luck like there's bad covid the timing of things uh you know horrible choices by biden i knew i just think there was like a confluence of events that really worked against us and um and i think that they're beatable and i think that in the medium term that in theory we could find a quasi normal democrats um you know that can kind of get things a little bit back on track but i'm pretty sure they get rid of the filibuster i think probably yeah but then i'm back to kind of long-term negative though i don't know the ai stuff is pretty scary i'm pretty concerned about the youth not being able to read i don't think that the authoritarian right i think that the i don't think the republicans are going back to mit rom rip momney ever i think that they're i think that they're going to be a right-wing a populist authoritarian party that kind of like vacillates between maybe like a boris johnson in the best case like all the way over to i'll take you know over trump yeah bolson ro trump yeah or trump jr in the worst case like i just think that's like the trajectory over there um and uh you know i think that we've demonstrated a lot of weaknesses in in our system and i don't yeah so i don't know that's kind of that's uh that's my trajectory i think that america is salvageable right now and worth fighting for i have some concerns about the long term but like i don't know the future will take care of itself i totally agree with tim your outlook in terms of the white pill for the midterms in general i'm not as concerned that they're going to be competent enough i certainly think there's no legal basis as currently stands to fuck with the elections in the way they seem to be indicating they want to then maybe they'll try to get ice to different polling stations but i even think that could backfire on them in terms of uh public sentiment i am though however concerned for the country i am concerned for the direction of the republican party i like you think it's zero percent chance that we're going to see them go back to like the old republicans of old back when you were a republican literally zero percent chance i am happy to see that jd vance his chances are on the decline but i don't think that we should consider someone like marco rubio for example to be the marco rubio of 2015 or 16 i mean he's changed significantly and the party has changed uh significantly what i'm concerned about trump but like yes i mean like he has fully gone in on the populist right stuff and and i think might be also suffering from some megalomania with the uh venezuela success yeah yeah a hundred percent i go back to 2020 a lot and even though it was a great victory i was not happy during the election i remember it was taking place and it took like three days or so to get an actual uh announcement and that time lag where i was glued to my television just refreshing all the time it felt awful it felt almost in a way worse than uh 2024 that it wasn't a resounding defeat for trumpism and i want the country to deliver that um and so i am concerned for the scenarios in which democrats eke out this kind of like marginal victory um and that we don't ever get a full resounding repudiation of trumpism yeah tim you are too agreeable and i don't like the debt either i'm concerned about the debt i'll sound like a problem again yeah i was gonna say any pass back last minute you said you hate biden we're a lib podcast what's the worst thing you can say about those damn libs hit us about any libs i mean i could just go off all day on the fucking biden's i mean just the selfish you said the border was open that doesn't make any sense right selfishness it's not anymore uh the selfishness and the narcissism of the biden family is insane the identity obsession of the libs um i just like it's possible the original sin of all this was joe biden like feeling like he had to name a black woman as his vp like i like kamala personally but like why did he feel that way like why shouldn't he have picked the best person like really as old as biden was shouldn't you pick someone else old so that like they would have not been the next candidate or someone that said that they weren't going to run like a dick cheney type but like but good uh i shouldn't have done that cheney but anyway you end up with kamala and so now you end up like biden through his selfishness and narcissism stays uh well past it was obvious that that he could be the reason that we lose our democracy and that he was not like obviously he was not capable of being president until 2028 like anybody with with two eyes could see that and so he sticks around anyway embarrasses himself and then he drops out way too late and then it's like well, we have to go with Kamala again, in part because of the identity thing. Cause it was like, oh, if we have an open process, then it'll look like we're passing her over. And that's racism. And it's just like, I don't, I'm not, I think that sometimes like the libs, like get too wrapped around the axle around all this stuff, man. It's just, you know, it's like, hey, this was big boy business here. This was big boy business. We need to make sure we had the strongest possible person. Maybe that was Kamala. I don't know. but like shouldn't we have shouldn't we have had the best i go sorry to sound like elon musk with the meritocracy but shouldn't we have had the best vice president possible and the best candidate possible you sound like charlie kirk you're not going to trust the plane because it's a black woman no i love i wouldn't let i'm just saying like what why would why is that the reason to do it you know to pick to do it uh anyway so i mean like 2020 was overlooked because of they didn't want to appear racist or or or they didn't want to not overlook her it to me it was just hey you've got a hundred days we don't have time for a freaking primary right now just she's the only one anyone even knows right i guess i don't know i think there was time i i don't like most most countries elections aren't a hundred days i just feel like this the short day thing is if anything kamala probably would have done better if the election was 40 days after she was picked rather within 100 days, I would think. Yeah, maybe. Those first 40 days were good. Yeah, and she was good in those first 40 days. And so maybe she would have won the nomination anyway. I just don't know. I guess my point is that, like, a lot of this, I just, I think that there's too much, like, stepping on China, the libs. We don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. That's true. We can't hurt old man Biden's feelings, you know, by talking about the fact that, like, he can't talk. Like, he sounds like marble mouth when he's talking. Like, talking is kind of an important part of the presidency. or else we'll be ageist like we can't we can't at least discuss the idea of whether we should have an open process because that's going to be misogynistic i just you know i don't i'm not for anybody being racist or misogynist or ageist but like i i just am for honesty and truth and balls and that's on the libs sometimes they're a little short on and so that's also by the way the take of the obama staffers i don't know if you've like noticed the subplot about of the obama staffers versus the Biden staffers. The pod save people against it. So you take the firm stance of you're with John Lovett. Well, they're right. They're just right. But those guys, I mean, I love those guys. They weren't saying it. Ezra was. Ezra was. Right, right. Ezra was, but he's not an Obama staffer. Do you take the same malice to him with the Kintaji-Bron Jackson pick? Because I think that was even more blatantly id-pull from Biden. And I think she's done a great job and all of the she's given. I think that's fine. Again, like I'm a balance in all things guy. It's not, I don't think that all identity politics is bad. I think that people want to feel represented and seen. I have a black daughter and I like, I think that like the great part of the bloke was that like, it's way easier for my mom to buy her like black girl power, action figures and shirts and stuff than she could have. It was 10 years ago. And like, that's, you know, I was complaining. She was looking for like a what do they call it? The little box with the ballerina inside. Polly pocket. Yeah, and she couldn't find one with a black girl and it was making her mad. And I was like, 10 years ago you couldn't have found anything with a black girl. Like really, right? And it's 20 years ago. So there's good parts to all this. The Supreme Court only has nine people. Having a qualified black woman on the Supreme Court totally makes sense. That doesn't bother me. It's not that. It's just like I don't like the when it gets centered so much that the debate is silenced about it. You know what I mean? And I think that that was true. Well, Woke 2.0, we won't be silencing anyone. We'll just be so aggressively woke that no one could disagree with us because it's just the best possible version. Before we end, we have to ask him, to be fair and balanced, say something nice about J.D. Vance. Oh, okay. I would never learned the phrase recessed side profile. I thought I was using her clavicular describing J.D. Vance's face. And I love the phrase recessed side profile. I'm using it all the time now. So I guess I would say that about J.D. Vance. He is the most unappealing person I've ever encountered in my life. And it's not really, I can't think of a close second. I don't, I can't, I mean, I guess it was nice that he served his country, unlike Donald Trump. There we go. we got we squeezed out a win for jd we should just end the podcast saying i like balls that's that's some low-hanging fruit uh i do like balls tim thanks so much for coming on um at the end here we just do i mean shout i mean i i doubt anyone in the audience doesn't know who you are but you know what what do you got coming up other than the bulwark i mean the uh media appearances book plugs what's going on i'm not writing another book man that's a that's that's a burden um i you know the bulwark is what's happening i'm on every day um we've got jazz fest weekend too this weekend we got live shows in la what is it may 20th and no san diego may 20th and la may 21st so if you got any socal people come hang with me right here it's all good baby cool thanks so much my my shout outs are releasing a video this week, but on topic of, you know, voter suppression midterms, I've partnered with some former people and progressive victory. And there's a link in my pinned comments, go dot rally dot wind slash soy pill. And you can enter your information and go check your voter registration. Make sure you haven't been kicked off voter rolls. Make sure you're geared up for the midterms. Anyone could click on it. You know, I'm not going to sell your information. The only reason my name's in the link is because they're tracking like who clicked on it from where but just go make sure you can vote because i i'm i'm more scared than everyone else here and that's good by the way being vigilant is important being vigilant is important and we appreciate that so i yeah what about you hutch what's going on same old regular stream i just want to use this outro tim to tell you my favorite clip of you was your exchange with uh carrie lake the famous exchange where she touched you and you said don't touch me and I told my chat I was so excited to have you on because like like you I'm very emotive and expressive and I like that you are very like you kind of always know what you're thinking about you and the contempt that you showed for Carrie Lake in that moment was so appropriate and it was just yeah that's just one of my favorite people I really appreciate that people always do remember the me telling her not to touch or asking her why she's touching me uh but i i mean my personal favorite part of that was after that moment then she tries to like recover it and it's like hey well at least at least one thing that we can agree on is that we both love the country and i said i don't think you can agree on that actually i don't think that you love the country it was great thanks for coming on yeah all right we'll see everybody I just wanted to say real quick before you leave shout out IRI he couldn't make it today because he has to do some things with his side gig he's too famous for us but I know he would have loved to speak with you Tim because we all are huge fans of the Bulwark and it really is an honor for you to show up and grace us with your presence I recently did a longer car ride and I was listening to you and Ben Rhodes I think you guys did a collab or something it was really awesome so everyone i'm encouraging please check out the bulwark and tim's content it's really good thanks so much appreciate you guys so much have a great day seeing you around