Adam Kinzinger: The United States of Dystopia

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. I'm in DC, delighted to do this in person. With my buddy is a former congressman from Illinois. He was in the Air Force in the Air National Guard. He's got a sub-stack. It's Adam Kinziger sub-stack. He's doing the Adam Kinziger report on there. It's Adam Kinziger. - Hi. - What's up? - Hey, all you were listening to yesterday and you were promising people this great guest today. It's not me, that was who was promising. - Yeah, we flipped. We did a little switcheroo, okay? So you sent some mail-back questions. I made kind of a mistake. Which is I asked for mail-back questions at the beginning of the podcast. And you know how podcasts are. People listen at the beginning and then they oftentimes start to do a swap-off for those who do errands. And so if you give a prompt like that, at the end of the podcast, you get a manageable amount of responses. But I gave it at the beginning. So my inbox is just overflowing. I appreciate it, everybody's notes. We'll do the mail-back on tomorrow's show with Sarah. So if you have a really, really, really good question for Sarah, email me. But otherwise, I've already got a lot of questions. - It's good to see you, by the way. And we'll see each other. - I have one of the two we might do for you. At the end, we'll see. - Okay, cool. You know, we see each other renown again. But I don't know if people know that you and I kind of work together on the job bush campaign. Like that's where we really met. - We were on the road. This is, I guess maybe we can do a little Lindsey Graham Death Talk, which wasn't a high plan. But like, I say to people, like, you know, the job campaign was a slog. - Yeah. - And me and Jim got along really well, personally. And so like I initially was going to be like the guy at the office, like running the response. But like because the polls were so bad, like we wanted good vibes on the road. Like I ended up going on the road with him a lot. Because you know, we just would drink Scotch and have decent vibes. And I was always like, give me Kinsinger and give me Graham. - Yeah. - Because sometimes they wouldn't have other people, like Eric Cantor, at this side of fucking, I just remember one time in the car with Eric Cantor announcing a poll to us from like all else where in the SUVs and guys. You see, you see Sienna, you're at 4% right now, Jab. And I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? I shut up. Why are you in the car? - Yeah, what are you doing here? But why are you talking business in the car? - Yeah, but we're always fun. And we did. - I have a funny memory and I think the people, I think it was you that said this or it was Jeb that said it in your respondent. But anyway, we were having a glass of Scotch at the hotel. And I remember you, Jeb may have said like, I think we're gonna get maybe 10, 15% in Iowa. And I would think that as a good staff or you'd be like, well, maybe, you know, whatever. And you just go like, really? No, we're not getting anything with something like that. And I'm like, oh man. And I could tell you had a good relationship with Jeb 'cause he wasn't like hurt by it. - No. - People call me rain cloud. But I was like, we're in last place. I'm reality cloud. I was like, this is I'm the weather man telling you it's raining. I'm not like bringing the bed anyway. We had a good time. It's good to see you. We're gonna start with dystopia watch. It's just the chapter here at the start of the show. Maybe I'm overreacting because I don't know. It's like a non-military guy. It's like a libertarian, you know, somebody who has just a visual version to fascist theater. Like the dudes in the fatigues and the military trucks around town are freaking me out. And in my hotel, there's a lot of dudes stay in there. And it's like, okay, I'm not staying at the four seasons or anything, but I'm not at the embassy suite. See, they're like, this is expensive. I'm like, I'm paying for this. Like, are you getting room service on my tab right now? So, you know, there's the physical conservatory, but also it's just like, this feels crazy. We're in DuPont yesterday. And it's like, the guys are circling DuPont. Marching around DuPont Circle. And I was like, this is where I smoked pot and did Hockey Center in college. I'm like, what the fuck is this? You were in the National Guard. Like, do you have like, what's your view on like seeing it? I think if guard goes somewhere, it needs to be like kind of break glass, you know, in case of emergency scenario. I don't think the guard should be out patrolling a common city, you know, look, I mean, crime in DC at one point was bad. And I have no issue with a temporary search guard. But like, so some of these men and women want to be here because they're on active duty orders. They get paid pretty well. You think about it, they're staying in a nice hotel and they get per diem on top of that. It's like a couple hundred bucks a day. And if you're like, you know, newly enlisted person, that's fantastic. But we're also coming up on another school year. Some of them are going to be taking off of school. And ultimately, what are they doing besides making the president happy because they have to know the terrible. - They have to know the terrible. - They have to know the school, right? Like, I don't know. What's happening if the other parent worked? - Well, that's a huge deal. And even if the other parent doesn't work, I was, we may talk about it, but the, you know, the aircraft carrier story. - Yeah. - The one thing I was talking to somebody trying to explain is I said, look, when I deployed in the Middle East, it was like, since I was a pilot, they were like three month deployments 'cause you would fly and then you'd have to rest of it anyway. And I'm like, but even that three month deployment, and I was single during the time, if that got extended a week or anything like that, it was morally, or my morale would get crushed 'cause you feel like trapped, isolated alone, and the damage it was doing to marriages. You know, if you imagine these army guys, they were there at one point for 18 months. This is a much milder version of that, but it's the same thing. If you're a married soldier here on active duty and your family's from, I don't know, Alabama or something like that, you're taking away from your time with your kids and everything else. It's fine if it's necessary, right? Everybody knows that, but this is, it feels like theater. I think it's best to put it. - Yeah, I posted about this in social media, and I got a lot of pushback. Frank Lundz was like, there aren't tanks, it's other military vehicles. And I was like, like a camera app. - Like a camera app. - Whatever. - Yeah, all right. I'm like, still it's weird to walk in military vehicle at the LaDroit Park Circle. - Well, let me say on that, there's no reason to have an armored military vehicle here. There's no reason. - And the other thing people were saying is like, okay, crime is down in DC, it's working. And so I'm open to hearing that, but my reaction is like, crimes down a lot of places. Crime was up because of the pandemic. So I think there are a lot of different reasons that are happening there. But also, it's like, couldn't the same thing be achieved? Cheaper, more efficiently, less fascist, by just like giving more money to the MPD then. - Yeah, yes, that is true. Also, you could surge, maybe the Virginia State Police want to send a small company out to help. Maybe you can do anything like that. I just, when people use the crime has gone down argument, that to me is such a bad faith argument. Because yeah, crime does go down. Guess what? If we had 10 million members of the US military that were deploying in every city in this country, we could probably get down to no crime, right? - Crime's really down in El Salvador. - Yeah. - A lot of people are in prison who didn't do anything. - Exactly, you know, you live in a military state. - That's a question. I mean, literally I could put somebody on every block in America and there probably wouldn't be any crime, right? That's not the point though. Do you really want to live like that? And I think that's what we're wrestling with. - The other big story in dystopia watch is electric shot gloves. - Oh yeah. - This is kind of like, to me, it's like when you see these stories in social media, like is this kind of like when Trump said he wanted to alligator's in the Rio Grande or is this like a real story? It feels real. Ice officers will soon be outfitted with gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks intended to gain compliance from combat of individuals. They plan to spend up to 20 million to purchase thousands of these and they'll give them to agents by March. - Shock, I'm gonna shock you with something. - Okay. - A no-bid contract. - No, it's another no-bid contract. - Okay, keep the hand away from me. - Yeah. - It's a no-bid contract. And, you know, ice had something, it was either body cameras or like mace or whatever they had that was another no-bid contract that just happened to be connected to somebody close to the administration. - I mean, this feels robo-copish to me. It's one of these things where it's like, okay. I don't know. Is there a situation where electric gloves is appropriate? I don't think this is my libertarianism is coming out here. Like, I don't think so. I'm just thinking through it, like, these guys have shown no discernment, no judgment. As like, we're gonna give them other weapons to go after people and then lie about it. And there's the video I played on yesterday's show, the woman, yeah, who has a gun in her face. Like, gun barrel in the face of her at a traffic stop. - Yeah. - And it's just like, if these guys are pulling their guns on US citizens, women driving around and screaming at them, what do you think they're gonna do? With their fucking electric gloves? - Did you see all of that video where she had like, the dash cam at the beginning of it and stuff? And like, she literally did nothing but shit talk 'em, right? And they got mad and pointed a gun at her. - And it's free country, by the way. - Yeah, you can say whatever you want. - You get a shit talk, people. That's allowed. - Yeah, it's on real and there will be no accountability for this guy, probably. But the electric gloves, I mean, I would encourage you all, if you haven't looked up a demonstration of these gloves, and you'll see an end was playing 'em, but look it up. And I thought, when I read about this, I thought it was like, you know, when you touch an electric fence and you get a little E, right? I thought it was like that. And I saw the demonstration. - You kinda did it just for fun, after a while. - Yeah, yeah. - No, you're just like, go on. - Are you actually zapping yourself in the, you know, you put the fork in the thing or whatever? (laughing) But I saw a demonstration. - We reported me again, it's like, my kid wouldn't do this because she's just an iPad. - Did you ever do the ants like fry ants with a magnifying glass? - Okay, no, I wasn't a sociopath. - That was a pretty cool though, man. - You did? - Yeah. - Let's see this. You're killing animals. - You're killing little-- - No, animals, I wasn't like magnifying glasses, puppies. - Okay, those are insect comrades, Adam. - Yeah, well, you know what, judge me, you know? Everybody listening has fried ants with a magnifying glass. Except you. - Okay, sorry, little gay boy wasn't frying ants. - You were dressed away? - Where are we? Oh yeah, you're watching the video. - Yeah, it's a big cop and he's like, you know, he's doing the demonstration and they, they electric gloves him and he like screams and just drops. This is not a small thing. It's like 330 volts, your typical volts are 115. This is scary and like what are they gonna do run around and just zap an entire crowd down? And do you really need it? That's the point is this is just disgusting behavior. I think they've used those audio weapons before that give them like screw up your inner ear. It's nonsense. - It is the cruelty is the point thing. Like they want this. Trump wants this. Like, you know, it's goes back to why he goes mad or reportedly a Markoyne Mullin after they, you know, shot the person in Maine, killed the person in Maine and then Markoyne Mullins, like, well, we're gonna take a break on traffic stops and Trump's like, no, Trump, they want it. Like, I mean, they're pussies, it's like they don't. Like Trump wouldn't want to do it himself or see it or like he's scared of blood. You know, he's hiding in the, he's hiding in the heart, we'll get to that. But he likes the stories about it. - Yeah. - You know, he likes the perception that he's got other people out there doing violence stuff. - I mean, it's like a problem you see on the right and like the alpha-bro community is like the crueler you are, the more of a man you are. And that legitimately is toxic masculinity, by the way. I hate the term toxic masculinity and I think it created a huge backlash but that legitimately is. Remember this is the same president that was asking, you know, I think Secretary Esperer just to shoot the protesters in the legs. Like a 10-year-old boy, you know? So yeah, I think it's disgusting and you know, the first person gets shocked by these electric gloves, I hope is a big story. I mean, but again, I wouldn't even be surprised to him if they bought this and never used them because it's a no-bid contract. And it's probably Steve from down the block that has this. I mean, there's so much corruption it's on right now. - It's the guy that did the reflect for. - Oh God. - You know, by the way, don't just say, I have been thinking more and more about how Donald Trump said that somebody walked with a razor blade on the reflective pool and how absolutely batch it insane that is and one-third of the country either chose to or actually believe that. - Well, it's kind of like a malicious version of when he drew the hurricane. You remember that from the first term where that he was like, "No, really the hurricane is an Alabama." - Look, here's proof. - Yeah, and it's like that, but instead of there like being no real consequences, they tried to ruin a guy's life over it. - Yeah, yeah. - He's a power of the state to ruin a guy's life. - And they might do it again. - The other Trump crazy thing, I mean, they're million, but I want to talk about it from this week is he's on with Wayne Ellen Root, which itself is ludicrous. - Yeah. - Do you know the Wayne Ellen, he ran for president, right? - He's an insane Nevada right wing nut job. - He's like a fraudulent dude or whatever. - Yeah, he was like the old, like the, what was Joe Ferris website called World Net Daily? - Yeah. - It's like an old school conspiracy theorist Republican before it was cool, yeah. - He was like doing the birtherism stuff with Trump back in 2012. So that's who this guy is. Trump's on with him. He says this, Mr. President, you know, you have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections. If you do this in the next month, we'll get photo ID proof of citizenship and limit to male ballots. Trump says, let me just say stranger things have happened. I'll leave it at that. So I know you've been talking about this in your sub stack, but it's alarming. - It is, you know, in the past, I've kind of been like, hey guys, let's take this seriously, but let's not lose sleep over it. I'm still at the, we don't need to lose sleep over it, but we do need to take it very seriously. And, you know, I think as much as anything, let's just say the best case scenario with what he's doing here is just breaking people's faith in the election system, which to me, when you convince people that their vote doesn't count, that the elections don't work, that's how you end up with a country that falls apart. You've done a little traveling in your life. I have, and when I go to countries that are like failing democracies, most of them what they have in common is people don't believe they can be heard through an election. That's what he's doing here. And, if he declares a national emergency, and let's say he does it three days before the election, and deploys ICE agents to certain ears or whatever, how does that get stopped? Because you can't vary, I mean, I'm not the Supreme Court expert, but I don't think you'd get a court injunction against it within like 24 hours. And I think he will desperately do anything he needs to screw that up. And then I mean, there's a whole host of things after the election that can happen, right? Including Mike Johnson choosing who he seats. And this is why the most important thing is it has to be a blowout this year. Because it's like, when you think of Hungary, Orban would have definitely tried to stay in power if it was a close election. And it was such a blowout. This is why it is important for people to look at this. I always use example of Pennsylvania, right? Doug Masteryana, one against Shapiro, the first time, was like, and insurgents. And now going to be the ambassador to like Switzerland or some kind of, yeah. Total insurrectionist election denier, but like not kind of one of those that didn't have hardly, like he was always in the whole deal. And it's like, well, he lost to Shapiro, you know, there's just storming of the capital in Harrisburg. Why? Well, it's gonna Shapiro beat him by 20. - Yeah. - You know, and so I totally agree with you. That's why to me, the biggest places to worry about are the red states that the Democrats are gonna need to take over the Senate. 'Cause I think it's hard to imagine like a blowout in Iowa, for example, or Alaska or Texas, which I wanted to go, right, with you next. Like those are the most important states. And I think that is where Marka Lies and that crowd, like everybody should be kind of focusing resources because like that's where some of the stuff could happen. Texas is interesting though. You're there now if we go down now. I'm worried almost a little bit that things are going too well right now for Telleriko. - Mm-hmm. - Thank you. - Because Paxton has been a disaster. I mean, Paxton, during America 250, like was with his mistress in Europe. - You're okay. - Like what? And he was like yelling at people, videotaping him. There's a story I talked about this week about how I guess he is grifting off a hospital in Texas, the where he's on the board, where he put a cell tower on top of it, and he's cashin' in. You know, he's just making a little profit off the roof of the hospital that he's on the board of. He's a nightmare. Nate Silver analysis this week at the most, I think, surprising. No one for everybody is that he had Telleriko as a 63, 37% favor. Not expecting him to be a 63% vote, but like, you know, basically two-thirds chance to win Paxton one-third. I don't know, you're there. Like what's the, what are the vibes like? - Personally, I don't see a ton of enthusiasm for Telleriko, but that's because I live in a, I would call it kind of a probably Republican area of Houston in the woodlands. But I do not see it for Paxton, which is a big deal. - A lot of Paxton signs around the world. - Yeah, none of them. - Nothing, I haven't seen anything. And I think the Republicans there are embarrassed of Paxton. They voted for him, but, you know, they're embarrassed of him. I legitimately think it is a, I would say a toss up. I would say the thing I worry about if I'm being honest is, you know how this goes. - You're always honest on the show. - I try to be 50% of the time. 50% of the time. - I'm the most honest. - Every time. (laughing) - The thing I worry about is if this race gets nationalized, which they all are gonna be, that at the end of everything, there's gonna be Republicans that come home to the party because it's closed in the Senate and you always see this, right? There's like that false hope and then it breaks. At the same time, the independents are breaking so much for Talarico that you could see the opposite. So. - Paxton is just a uniquely bad candidate. - Just a hero. - I think that this is, I'm stealing this point from somebody. I apologize so I'm taking it from, I said I don't remember. But like, I think there are a lot of Democrats liberals. Like look, I have a false memory of the better race. - Yeah. - Like, and that the memory is the better it was winning, that we had all this hope and the rug got pulled. And like, the reality of that race is that Beto was down the whole time. He did build a lot of excitement. You ran a great campaign. His first campaign was really strong. Because he's like out there in rural Texas, so kind of doing this sort of unifying one Texas campaign. He's trying to get his crews to everybody in the left hates, right? But like, crews in Texas, his favorability that like, you know, the month of the election was 51%. He had 51% favorability in Texas. Paxton's is like in the 30. - Yeah. - Like Paxton got impeached by a Republican legislature, not a Democrat, like a legislature, his own staff turned him into the FBI. It is a little hard for people to process. Yeah, it's a little hard for people to process that they're like, but like Paxton is actually like a meaningfully worse candidate than crews, even though they might seem the same to some of all the centers, you know? I think if you're a typical Republican, you may not like crews 'cause he's a smarmy. - First of all, yeah. - If he's a shit, ass hat, whatever. But in terms of his job, you're like, okay, he's probably not super corrupt. The guy does the job before the stuff I thought he should do. The King Coon stuff was after the battle, you know what I mean? - Yeah, but he's like your cookie cutter. Paxton is bad. And Paxton is now going around complaining about the fact did he has less money than Tallariko? Which can have any way because Tallariko's kind of dynamic. But you know, at the same time, he was in the UK having a vacation in the summer. I couldn't imagine him, you know, three months before a very serious election. My staff would literally beat me up and leave me in an alley if I decided to take a vacation. - With your mistress. - Yeah, with my mistress. Exactly. - I mean, what would you've done if Trevor had done that? He's like, "I'm gonna take a little, "take a week off." - Yeah, Trevor's car than everybody. - Yeah. - This is how it was supposed to be, you know? I was the one that felt bad as the staffer, like, you know, sneaking away for like a little weekend with my buddies. - Yeah. - So I'm taking two days. - It took Sunday off. - Oh boy. - Yeah, exactly. - Doing conference calls hungover. My brother's bachelor party. - How do I lose those days, man? - True. - I've thrown up before a few conference calls. Let me tell you. - No one on mute. - I've thrown up before a few candidate briefing calls. - What are my hobby horses recently? It's not just Paxton is just focusing on how terrible the Republican nominees are at these places. 'Cause I do think, I don't know, there's something about we've done a lot of hung discourse this week. There certainly are some questions about some of the Democratic nominees, but I do feel like the media feels like, like the Democratic in fighting, like gives them an excuse to do some balance, right? It's like, okay, we're not, this way we don't have to talk about Trump crazy all the time. And so there's this like over emphasis on these random Democratic candidates, and the Republicans have insane people running everywhere that nobody even talks about. Like Mo Brooks organizing insurrection, he's the governor nominee in Arizona, right? There are examples such as this. In Florida next week, the Republicans have a primary. They have a gripper white nationalist candidates. James Fishback, he is likely to lose. The candidate's likely to win Byron Donald's former Congressman. Did he work with Byron? Where do you guys have that? - Maybe once. - We didn't want to turn him on hand, one turn together. - Byron's not great. There was one clip of him I saw this week that made me chuckle that I would like to play for you. - Where the reason why people are fleeing New York in California in Illinois, because they are stupid and they needed a place to go and that place was Florida. (laughing) - That's not what you know. - The people who are moving to Florida are fucking stupid. (laughing) And plus, the people that are moving there are probably Republicans, right? Like, what has he been doing? I think it's just Byron Donald is really stupid. And he's also extreme. He's got a lot of terrible positions and all that. But it's like, man, across the board, it's not, it's a pretty motley crew. - It is. I think like, it's interesting 'cause if you look at like, bad or crazy Democratic candidates, it's kind of the exception. - Yeah, right. - And the GOP, it's the rule, right? I can't really think of many normal Republican candidates out there. - And the normal ones are have their own side of terrible 'cause the normal ones are like microtters, right? - Yeah. - There's like a normal person. - A sell out though. - But yeah, totally knows the truth, but sell out. - Yeah. - And so it's like, okay. Well, so you might be normal and private if I had you, but like, what good is that if you're just going to go along with everything Trump says? - And it's almost worse. Like to me, I mean, I obviously have huge disagreements with people that are like pro insurrection. - We are sure. - But if they legitimately believe it, it's wrong, but I have a weird respect for that versus the ones that nobody. - Obviously, Donald's by the way we should mention is running against our guy, David Jolly. - Yeah. - I think David could win that one. - I did too. - I think Vinnman could win the Senate race there too. - Do you? - I think it's possible. - The Senate race, I do think it's tougher. I got nothing to respect for Alex. As opposed into a little bit stronger. And also, people just, there's some percentage of voters that like do look at governors races, differently than they look at national races. You know, like for the national races, like Team Jersey, you know, I want somebody that's going to go there and like burn down my enemies in effigy. You know, like I want somebody that is going to make my opponents cry on the Senate floor. But then for governor, you're kind of like, I need the schools to be good. - Yeah, I need somebody that actually does a good job. - And I do think that helps David a little bit, particularly with Byron Donald, this is upon a calling people stupid. - Speaking of idiots, we have. - You could start every segment there. - Yeah, Carolyn Levitt is out as the press secretary. She's leaving, she's not an idiot. Some of the people that will be discussing as possible replacements, on the other hand, she's just a liar. - Yeah. - I saw some people that I said it was Edgar actually. I said, Edgar said that he thought that she was the best of his press secretaries, which is like not necessarily a compliment, but I do think that she was pretty talented. - I think she was, I mean, it's weird because it's like, okay, I'll take the quality of the work versus like the morality. Quality of the work, I think she was actually pretty good. I mean, she had an ability to stand up there and lie to your face and look like she's telling the truth. - And how often did she embarrass herself? And just thinking about like the clips. I played many, we don't play Trump's voice on here, but I talk about all the crazy things Trump says. Many clips of the cabinet saying really stupid things. Everybody in the cabinet struggling to defend him. I didn't play a ton of Caroline. - Yeah, I don't think they have any SNL, you know, recurring skin, like Sean Spicer. - So she survived it. There are placement lists on the other hand. - I mean, it's cliche to say Star Wars bar and it's an ugly group. - And this is a list from the New York Post. I thought it'd be fun that we did, you know, you and I, we just do some brief word association with the characters that are being considered. I wanna mention, neither of us or the listeners probably don't know Anna Kelly. She is the deputy to Caroline. She is a person that is, that'll maybe get a try. Besides her, I think everybody's gonna be familiar with all of the characters. So we'll start here with, I think, the front runner, Alina Habba. What comes to mind when you think of Alina Habba? - Shallow. - Shallow. I think parking lot, because I understood that she was a parking lot attorney. And I was gonna see her, yeah? Maybe doing some other stuff in a parking lot. That's not what I should. - Yeah, I thought she went out on bad terms with the administration. I don't remember, but like every one of 'em, they always come back. - They always come back, okay. - Katie Miller. - Why don't you go first on that one? - Katie Miller. - Actually, I'd say mayonnaise. And the only reason I say that is because she made this big deal about how Steven Miller loves mayonnaise and it made me sick. And I don't know why, but that's when I think of her, I think of her with a big jar of mayonnaise. - I was going less funny because I had Ava Braun. (laughing) I don't know Himmler's wife's name. - Janet Himmler? - Janet Himmler. (laughing) - Karen Himmler, oh, okay. We've also got here, Matt Boyle. - I don't know Matt. - Do you not know Matt? We'll pull this up in the screen for the YouTube viewers. Matt, for me, always comes to mind is Ralph Wiggum. (laughing) He looks in sounds like Ralph Wiggum. - Is a crayon of his nose. - He's a bright-bart reporter. He doesn't really look the part. So it's a confusing choice, but he's on the show that's going to the New York Post. My favorite Matt Boyle story is, I feel comfortable comparing him to Ralph Wiggum here because I did so also in my book, doing bookshotted, why we did it, travel out for the Republican road to hell. And he called me after the book came out and told me he appreciated that I wrote about him because I wrote about how Matt Boyle and Brightbart, like they were the ones that were driving the ship, not the establishment. And so, despite the fact that I called him a grown-up Ralph Wiggum that looks like he eats crayons, he still took it as a compliment. (laughing) So that's the type of person that might be the next one I'll show you today. We've also got Steven Schum, big Steven. - A job. - A job. - The first one. - Bond, the big guy on Bond. - Oh, I'm not a Bond man. - All right, I'll show you here. You do yours in all of them. - Send this up by Sumo. - Sumo, you'll recognize Rinkley kind of. What's like a big, wrinkly character? Who is like, isn't there, isn't there a movie of like a big like poop character? - Oh, there's a lot of job. - A job, that's a good nice for Steven, I think. What's more like a Star Wars character? - Job of the hat. - Job, maybe he's maybe a job of. - Yeah, I'd also say like, what is a word for somebody that is desperate to be liked, but pretends like they aren't. - Whatever that word is. - There's a German word for that. - Yeah. - And there's a wife that could tell us. - I think my pick for most likely person to get is Rachel Campos Duffy, wife of Sean Duffy. So she's on the list. Another person, we got three more. These are all long shots, but they were included in the New York Post list. Carrie Lake, ambassador to Jamaica. What do you think of when you hear Carrie? - She's got that. - That would be total clown, just clown. Because she does put on clown makeup. Don't touch me is what I think of. With Carrie Lake. - It's got ginnings for odd. - For some reason to go T is what. He has a horrible go T now. Why? - I don't know, man. You know what? - You've seen a datum recently. - What's out? - You've been debating a couple of times. - Not really a little bit. I mean, we've gone back and forth. But like, you know these people that like get, start to get famous and everything about them changes, right? You like, there's an aura and it's, I get that sense sometimes with them. Like, there's a, oh my God, I'm on TV and people know me at the airport now. - Yeah. - I'm gonna start wearing a go T and. - Yeah, go T and GLP ones for Scott Jennings. That's what comes to mind for me. Can you find a person that they've thrown out there? Spence Pratt. - Is he the white bear? - Spence Pratt, no. - He was the reality TV gatherer and for Mayor of LA. - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, third place in the Mayor of LA, - You're a fly. good luck to Spencer Pratt. The hills, wasn't he on the hills Katie? The hills. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine. Good luck. Spencer Pratt, the RT probably. Okay. Do you have a pick for you to think it's gonna be the most likely? I actually think the most likely would be, I actually think Rachel Campo's stuff. Imagine. Yeah. I think it's right. I think she's the favorite. Molly Hemingway maybe. She would love to be thrown in. She was not on the short list. Nobody loves the tension. She would rather. Did she use to be normal? I don't believe. I can't believe so. I don't know. We were never friends. I have the sense that she's a federalist writer. She kind of tries to do the intellectual insurrectionism. Yeah. Doesn't really look the parts that I speak. It's okay, but lots of Fox time trying to look the part going on Fox a lot. I just, I don't see it for. Yeah. I don't think it's gonna happen for. She did a tweet the other day where she talked about how Uber drivers should have to speak English. It's just like that. Let me just say something. This is something that I've been stepping up on lately is just the amount of boomer rage that like Fox News and the Republicans do every day. So she's sitting around like, God, I haven't had a good tweet. There's been retweeted in a while. Uber drivers should speak English and just like boomer rage. It's just, oh my God. It's fatiguing. It is fatiguing. Likely, she blocked me like seven years ago. So I don't actually have to see most of her rage, but some of the same to me. I'll send you her tweets. All right. I want to do some serious military stuff. Well, I'm going to do a fun, some funny military stuff. And then some serious military stuff. I feel like I have to get, you know, your take on what you think the smell was like on Trump after he got out of the food cart. I can imagine what's in the food cart for the airplane. It's probably like a hot chicken parm. It's like a chicken parm hot dish that they're feeding to people. He's hiding underneath the broccoli. Yeah, some broccoli. He's hiding underneath there. Whatever he's putting on his skin, crying, his personal stink, the crying. I just kind of want you to paint a picture for us of what you think was happening. So I've said that I consider a smell to be like a mix of armpits and butt. It's like, you know, a makeupy ketchup smell. Okay. What I kind of figure is like a little bit of soup, the waft, even though I've had it and have soup on it. It's just I think of like a soup smell. Yeah. So if you put together pits, but soup, yeah, some ketchup smell. Yeah. And we're just kind of like, you know, that hits you with that tangy like, yeah, at first, right? And then the depth of the in of the aroma kind of real man. Can you imagine a situation where as your security told you that you needed to hide underneath the, you know, the warm meals that are being served on the airplane, you've got to get, you've got to go on your hands and he's in hide under there to avoid potential Iranian airfire. Can you imagine doing that? No, no, and I can't imagine going, you know, how my wife would react if I'm like, I'm going to take me, Natalie, you're going to, right? Marco had to stay on the danger plane. The secretary of state stayed on the danger plane. The caddy, the human printer who leaves love notes for Trump everywhere. Yep. So it was caddy, human printer, hegg, Seth, and Trump. I think that's crowded. It's a crowded catering, right? You know, maybe I've said on people's laps, I don't know. The whole idea of Trump going and being put on the other plane, like that's not my issue. My issue is the depth of the lies from day one. You remember they brought the old Air Force one out and he's like, well, we have the old Air Force one because the new one, we want to show the troops, the new Air Force one and everybody knows it's a lie, but we just are so numb to the constant line. And Java, the chung, like it was sent in a tweet that day. Yeah, like after Carol Lennig, friend of the pod, and I called her a liar for she and she was the first reporting that Trump, that there was security reasons why Trump had to give them the other planes. So she didn't even have the depths of the story, like about just how much scourity Trump was hiding from potential Iranian fire. And they stripped the old Air Force secretary of his security clearance, which they don't really do it. But anyway, because supposedly he talked about that Air Force one, not having the right countermeasures, which everybody knew. Right. And then they sent FBI agents to, I don't know, Washington Post or some reporters. Yeah. New York Times at times. Yeah. Those times, like, this is insane. And it was all true. Donald Trump is delusional. He makes up things. His team does the same thing now. To the point where when they're caught in the lie, they actually use the legal system to create a new reality. Yeah. I also just think that like, it's important to not going to keep talking about it because, you know, the machismo with which they started the war, like this idea that's like, we decapitated them. We took out all their leaders. They can't even hide for us. Our intelligence is so great. We're going to overthrow the government in three days. Like this was how we started the war. Like, we are so dominant. And it's like, that's how the war started and how the war is going is Trump is like getting underneath the food cart inside the catering. Yeah. Putting a tray. He's got a tray on top of him. Fancy hides from Iranian, I guess, missile drones. I don't know. Probably drones and missiles. It's a pretty, it's a pretty notable fall. It's kind of hard to say we're winning. It is hard to say we're winning. The more serious tragic story, which you referenced earlier, that I just didn't want to get your take on was this was military.com. It was having the USS Abraham Lincoln. Three sailors have tried to jump overboard. They've been saved by other crew members. The Lincoln's roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines have been on a deployment that began November 21st. The carriers have been deployed for more than eight months. It's supposed to end in May. But even more than that, it's not just that they're being deployed. It's not coming in too short. The carrier has been at sea 250 straight days. Yeah, no port call. No port call. Normally, it's like every 30 to 45 days. You at least get a port call 250 days at sea. Three guys are trying to kill themselves. Is that bad? Yeah, I mean, this is tragic. And I think if we were in the middle of a war with China or a war with Russia or World War III, you know, you could look and be like, yeah, it's too bad. We are at war. This is a war. Or something that was a cute threat to our country. Right. It was just like, this is something that was absolutely necessary because of the scale, the threat to the country. And according to the president now, we're going to be doing this blockade situation for in theory ever now because, you know, that's our new brilliant plan. And it's interesting because during the initial strikes with Iran, when, you know, we were starting to realize that actually the counter attacks at Iran were actually having some impact. I'd have friends that were flying still. That would say like they were out of food at one point. They couldn't shower because the water facilities were hit. That was being hid from us on the ships. It's even worse because they're ships that come out to supply them. One of the things I read says they're not even getting fresh fruit and vegetables because by the time the resupply ship can hit, it's basically their rod. And so they're eating like, you know, rice and in boxed goods. You know, I like I said, for what? This is something like literally for what? Yeah. And by the way, we just recently, we may still, we had an aircraft carrier in the Caribbean, right? Are we really prioritizing correctly? Should we be doing these anti-boat ops right now when you have this going on? It's really, it's really tragic. And I'm glad the information got out because it feels like the Pentagon has no interest in telling the American people the truth with this. No. Again, it's the machismo. It's like the warfighters. The warfighters out there. It's like you signed up for this. Yeah. What are we doing though? It's like it's like, so we need to keep this blockade going to get the straight-of-hormouse open. Like the straight-of-hormouse was open. Yeah. Yeah. It was. And imagine Tim living in a base of the size of about two football fields for 200 some days. And then your bunk, I mean, you live literally, they hop bunk or you have a literally about as it's about as big as as you can stretch out. And you have about a foot space in there. That's your own personal quarters. Like after 200 some days, you're going to start to get pretty damn depressed. 200 days to three days. Yeah. That sounds horrible. Yeah. Yeah. Three hours, man. Yeah. I mean, that's just like literally my health. Yep. Like I'm on a fucking ship. Yep. In a tiny space. And I thought I was going to be there for 30 days. And I'm now on 250 with no end in sight. And that's the other thing is if they said we guarantee you September 15th, we're going to be home. That would be one thing because you would have an end date. If right now it keeps getting extended. So you feel trapped. I feel trapped talking about it in there. I know. And it's like, it does. It feels like like Guantanamo kind of. So Pete talks about the war fighter and, you know, and Pete acts like this tough guy. Here's how you take care of your people. Right here. You rotate them out. If we need an aircraft carrier, they're fine. But have that plan for. But when you have real mental health crisis in the military, it's not weakness. It's not weakness. Yes, you can break the strongest man on something like this. There's some relation with what's sapped in Iran now in Ukraine and in a number of ways. Obviously, Russia giving Intel, to Iran, Ukraine, the attack of Iranian, was it a boat? Was it a ship? Yeah. And the material issue is part of the problem, right? And some of it is just the will that we have not been giving Ukraine what they need doing in the war, but also some of it is like everything that's been wasted unnecessarily, could have been sold to Ukraine. I saw you posting in Gary Kasparov and others posting about how there have been recent Russian drones and attacks on Kiev, on other cities in Ukraine, and how Europe should be putting a no-fly zone on what's your sense of the kind of the state of play there? Still, on day one of this war, I said NATO should put a no-fly zone at the invitation of Ukraine to defend it on skies. There's nothing war about that. Ukraine's like, this is our skies we'd like to have help. And what was the story that came out a couple days ago was that Vice President Vance set down with Zelensky or called him and said, you need to stop these attacks on the oil tankers in the Black Sea and elsewhere, because Ukraine was taking out like 10 or 15 oil tankers of the Russians every few days, and it was having a massive impact. But they were worried about further destabilizing the oil market, Russian oil, by the way. And Zelensky, because they are so desperate for air defense to protect their people, did it, even though that was a successful attack, it was being very successful. They are dangling a little bit of a few Patriot missiles over Zelensky's head to control him. And it's working. And I guess it don't blame Zelensky because he's like, my number one priority is especially coming the winner to protect my people. But instead of us actually saying, okay, here's what you need, we'll send literally five Patriot missiles and so you just keep them kind of dangling there. And it's really disgusting, especially when the guy calling him and asking for this is the guy that said, his greatest achievement in office has been to defund the Ukraine war effort. That's JD Vance. Look, if we would have given Ukraine everything they needed from day one, this war would have been over years ago. There's some blame for Biden for that, for sure, but this Trump administration has been disgusting. And by the way, Russia, Iran, China, are in an alliance. And how many people know that North Korea has already sent 30,000 actual troops into Russia to fight Ukraine and they're supplying Russia every day with ballistic missiles. And yet South Korea does nothing. The rest of the world does nothing. And everybody just sits around like we need to de-escalate. Yeah, we need to waste all of our weapons and material at Iran for nothing. Our Middle East partners would fire four Patriot missiles to take down a drone. That's like $10 million, a $20,000 drone. They wouldn't have been coming their way if we wouldn't have started a stupid war with no blame. Exactly, exactly. Whole thing is fucking impure. And by the way, just quickly, Zelensky has begged for the licenses to build a Patriot missile. So far, it has been denied. We have, we have Japan that can build Patriot missiles. We're gonna help us out. He's got a nuke. Yeah. Exactly. And we need more Patriot missiles. Give them the license. It's unreal. All right. You did a video the other day. I just want to let you cook on that. You're already cooking. So just keep you going. Get in the kitchen about accountability day one and some ideas for that. So I think this is so important for Democrats to talk about. And it should be day one for the new Congress. And then day one for the new president that, you know, you get asked all the time. I get asked all the time, like, should we just move on? Should there be accountability? And I think accountability is essential. So I would, I'd do this from the perspective, like, if I was president, here's what I would have done on day one or I would do on day one. I'd put together in the Department of Justice, a team that is going to search for every corrupt deal that's happened in the United States. Everywhere the president or his allies have profited off of the American people or off of corruption. The Department of State, I would put together a group to find every untoward deal with any other country. So the guitar jet brings number one, right? What did the guitar get for that? What did they expect for that? And I would, on day one, seize that jet from the Trump library, seize it. And then either, you know, use it for something for America and drive it off a cliff. I don't care. But he does not get to keep that. And so I would do that. I would have a commission. Sell it. Yeah. The money. I would have a commission that would find everywhere that Trump's name was placed. And I would remove it from everything. Take down Trump's picture on the walk of shame and put up Joe Biden's picture. All of this is about like, we need accountability and for anything. It's not like scratching the edge of unpisted these people. It's like, we need to make it clear to the next guy. It comes along that wants to do this, that it doesn't end well for you. That's what I worry about. There's one of the things I was thinking about. Trump compares himself, you know, to like Napoleon and Stalin and all those guys. This is in the book. And obviously, like, the really dark way to think about that is who knows what he could do the next two years. I kind of think how Trump thinks about that is like, those guys, they brand it. And so if you look at Napoleon, for example, when I was in France, France, it kind of of really France. France. France. France. I've rode my trip to the Arctic triol. Arctic triol. Yeah. Because I was looking at it and I was just like, this is Napoleon doing Trump's thing. Like Napoleon, there's this large effort, right? And it's not too different than the Confederates, right? Like the lost cause, right? Like this effort to memorialize things. And I agree with your point for that reason that like, it's important to stop it immediately, you know, because memories fade. And then people start to feel like what's the point of fighting about those who cares, his names on the fucking ass. Presidents. Presidents. Presidents, any more. And then like 30 years for now and 40 years for now, like the brand persists, a continued fight to ensure that his brand is accurately portrayed by which I mean, solid, I think is a necessary effort and not just like Sour Great. Yeah. And how numb have we become to corruption? I mean, even me, like, you know, we hear about a new corrupt thing or, you know, early access to truth social. And it's like, I'm outraged, but I'm also like, whatever, what can we do about it? That numbness is the thing that we have to be very clear like we don't tolerate corruption in this country. We have to fight it. All right. Really quick mail back questions. Rapid fire. We're going to do bigger mail back tomorrow. But I promise people today. So here we are. There are two funny ones I wanted to give to you, which is so we can close with a little bit of some laughs. Some levity if you will. This email from Tyler, people, this is how you do it. This is the type of email I'm asking for. It is. It's short. It's funny. It asks for advice and it ties to a news item. All right. Tyler, Tyler. Tyler's doing it correctly. Here we go. Tim, if you happen to expect you had psychosporiasis, fake, low sporiasis. This is the diarrhea, right? That's the diarrhea. Okay. If you happen to suspect that you had the diarrhea for the last three months and you had three months. Holy crap. High quality health care provided through your job and you got a fecal task that came back negative, but it cost 543 bucks after insurance covered at share. And then you learned that apparently up to 50% of fecal exams for psychosporiasis can be false negatives. And you coincidentally had a family member currently taking the suggested antibiotic, quite enough extra for you to take a full course of it. Would you just take the antibiotic and see if it went away or would you continue to take 543 dollars, 50% accurate fecal exams until there was a positive result? So Adam, what would you do if you had the antibiotic, man, take the antibiotic? Because if you've been having explosive diarrhea for three months, I don't care what it is, take an antibiotic again. I agree. Take the antibiotic and our health care system. And please let us know what happens. I would like to follow up on this. Our health care system is also a disaster. Yeah. By the way, I read an argument. Somebody wrote, and I'm going to put it out at some point, about the conservative case for single payer, and it was extremely compelling, by the way. I'm going to tell you even what, when back in Obamacare, it was happening. And the argument that I made to my friends and private, you know, because like what are I was a spokesperson for candidates, they had various positions. But like when we were just talking about this trend, DC, because we're dorks in DC, you'd have a couple drinks and you start talking about stupid things like, what do you think about Obamacare? My case against it was that it was like the worst of both worlds. But like, you know, I wish that we lived in a world where there was like some kind of free market transparent system, where there's catastrophic coverage for people like that. They're problems with that, but that would be my deal. Like the single payer system though, would also be better than this. Yeah, this is bad. Yeah. This is the worst of both worlds. It is. And so, you know, here we go. I'm becoming social. And it's been in the middle of this for no reason, just taking profit. All right. Here's the other one. Blair golden. Again, short, funny, relevant to the news. Good question. She asks, or he, I guess Blair could be either they, them, hello, my question from Wisconsin is what holiday should be canceled and why I heard you kind of crap it on Thanksgiving yesterday. I, I understand your point a little bit like it's kind of like, yeah, but I don't know. I think it's okay. You think it's okay. Oh, that one times day, buddy. Valentine's Day. I hope Sophia's not listening. Valentine's Day. It's just you're stocking all these love holidays on top of each other. You birth days, we do it like Valentine's. The guys don't do Valentine. Well, some do. But I don't do it already in my house. That's fine. I cancel Father's Day. Mother's deserve a day. Mother's put in a lot of work. Father's golf all the time. Most Sundays or Father's Day is already. And it's like, I have to get a present for my dad again. Yeah. And he doesn't want any money. He doesn't care. I got to come up with something. And then I go through a motion. I don't feel guilty. Yeah. Yeah. And so you went up getting them a $50 or $100 gift card to Amazon. Right now to get another back. Seriously. Yeah. He's got 13 of them already. Yeah. I get my dad and I basically exchange the same Amazon gift card back and forth all the time. Like, here's a hundred bucks. Oh, thanks. The next thing. Here's a hundred bucks, dad. Thanks. Like, let's just call it a day. Let's call it a day. All right. That's Adam Kinzen here. Anything else? No, man. It was great to be with you. Good to be with you guy. We could do this in person. Everybody else, both today and tomorrow, we're doing this in person. We don't want to talk about what's happening back in New Orleans. But we're taping it a little late. It's summer. It's August. Ponds coming out a little later and usual. It's okay. You know, please be generous to us. We'll be back on a good schedule again soon. Appreciate to you, Adam. You back. Everybody else to see you back here tomorrow. Send good, funny questions like Blair and Tyler. Take the end of back. I just want to say one thing. Happy Valentine's Day. The board daily has brought you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzaly Skipper and with video editing by Dante DeChica.