Bill Kristol: You Can't Hide Your Lyin' Eyes, JD

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday, October 19th. And so we're here with editor-in-a-large Bill Crystal a couple weeks out for the midterms. How are you doing, Bill? - I'm fine Tim, how are you? - I'm doing well. I'm coming at you live from Charlotte. We've had a nice weekend and our southern tour. We were at Columbia Friday, Charlotte last night with Pete. Did No Kings Saturday, went to the Rock Hill No Kings in South Carolina, which was fun. What about you? - I went to the South No Kings here in McLean Virginia, which was fun, all the ex Reagan and Bush administration, people, all the McCain operatives there, rallying in McLean for No Kings. But it was nice, it was a nice spirit and a good crowd and a good natured. - I also met with Anderson Clayton, who's the North Carolina Democratic Party Chair. She's 28 years old, she's awesome. Our interview's gonna be up on YouTube here this week. So keep an eye out for that. But we were joking 'cause Virginia edged out North Carolina for being one of the early first five or six states in the 2028 presidential nominating process. And I was like, you should have run a heavier op-o campaign on the McLean Democrats. Like we cannot let the political class choose our nominee. Why we should be disenfranchising McLean in the presidential primary process. - It's even worse, right? Because Virginia has an open primary, which I assume South Carolina doesn't. So people, all the extra publicans can now vote in the Democratic primary. So they should issue it. - It would have been an interesting op-o campaign. Keep those bull-worked people out of the Democratic primary. - Out of the early primaries in 2028. And I'll join you guys in Atlanta tomorrow. So we'll go through the winning states of the South, right? South Carolina and North Carolina and Georgia. Did nanny Andrews come to the events Friday night? - Yeah, Annie Andrews is there on Friday. Her and Sarah started off the show. She's spunky. It's hard to know who Sarah had a bigger crush on. Actually, Annie Andrews repeat. But she was smitten with the tour altogether. I like Annie Andrews. I mean, we were talking backstage. You know, their internal polls are margin of error. Like it's possible. I think that it's obviously a long shot compared to some other stuff. But it's much closer than certainly we would have thought a year ago. And I think that she's running a really smart campaign. And it was high energy. And that was good. And then we went down to, he said to Rock Hill for the No Kings. And I met a fellow named Jim, who is Bullocker. He's a lifelong Rock Hill resident history teacher or something. He said voted for every Republican from 1964 to 2020. - Well. - Until the insurrection. So some misses in there. But he was out there at the No Kings. And he is fired up to vote for Annie Andrews. I mean, he had about his choice words as you can have as a genteel southerner for Lindsey and darling. And so I don't know. I mean, like, I do think that there's something to that. And I think that I like being in like in red or parts of the country because sometimes when you go to places where it feels politically hopeless, you know, that you haven't won in a while, there's just it's dead. And in this moment, it definitely feels like, you know, in South Carolina, and then I mean Charlottes, you know, Metropolis, but still, you know, North Carolina. So it's 10 to 4 in the house congressional district watch. We'll talk about in a minute, but there's a lot of, I think, excitement and energy. And I think the people that are, you know, can kind of smell a rebuke to Trump or excited to get out. And, you know, I was asking a lot of them. And I think a lot of their neighbors who are Trumpers are, you know, taking down their signs and a little less excited. And do those people actually turn out to vote or not, you know, becomes that they're going to be an important question. - I was giving this talk in New York. There's some in there I should disguise this a little, but he's actually an actual kind of prominent Republican in South Carolina, who was publicly supporting Darling Graham. But he said he thought any Andrews could well win. But he would bet a little bit of the 50/50 thought. He said, air all of his friends who are not actually in elective office and have to support the ticket. We're basically planning to vote for any Andrews, whatever that's worth. And he said, I don't know the state that well enough to recognize the counties from, but he said, it's a conservative part of the state. He said, you know, so. - Whereas he's from Spartanburg or something. Greenville, Spartanburg, probably. - Yeah, Greenville. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't know, that would be interesting. And then, and how is Pete Sunday night? Buttigieg, he pulled you aside privately, gave you the whole, the whole 2028 strategy, which states he's focused on. What, what groups he's going to pick off, you know? - Pete is very focused on 2026. - He's even thought about 2028. - He hasn't even thought about Pete. None of those guys has thought about 28 at all, you know? Blower and plus members can watch the whole Pete exchange of Sarah and judge themselves, but boy, Pete, I don't, I said the start when he came out, we had a little surprise gag where he came out to address Sam's airline complaints. And I don't think that Norman Meneda, her past Department of Transportation, secretaries have gotten that kind of applause. So, if you can go watch that all for itself, we posted the whole live show from Charlotte for Blower Plus members at theblower.com. We got a bunch of news we got to talk about. I have a lot of folks who are kind of Ukraine, Russia, experts, military experts on this week. So we'll go much deeper on this, but I do want to at least touch on it. Trump Friday waved the sanctions via executive order that had been passed speaking of darling and Lindsey Graham and the Lindsey Graham bill. So, you know, basically that means is that won't be enforcing them for like 60 days. Marco is asked about this on the tarmac yesterday and just like, well, you know, we're just, we're kind of looking at it, et cetera, et cetera. Meanwhile, there was the reports that in Ukraine that was loss of access or throttled access to Starlink and Marco also was, I gave a very strange answer to that where he's like, well, there's the business product Starlink that we have nothing to do with and there's the defense product Star Shield, which Ukraine doesn't have access to, but Ukraine has had access to Star Shield before. And Marco, you know, is really kind of dancing around that. And in the meantime, there's been just an uptick in violence and Shahad Drone's attacks on civilians. So, it's really in buses, civilian apartment buildings. I talked to Kaila Robertson over on YouTube over the weekend about this. He's reporting from Kiev. It's just an unbelievable outrage what the subministration is doing right now. - Yeah, really horrible. And Trump really came out of the closet in that post on true social, was that Saturday? - So speaking. - Or Sunday. He's just for Putin. I mean, it's not even like I'm trying to work out a piece deal. I need to keep leverage. He's just on Putin's side now, basically. And he always has been, I suppose, people like us always thought he was, but there were various constraints, I guess, and things that made him not quite go all the way, but that post is pretty remarkable. - Yeah, here's the true social post you're referencing. I believe my decision on Russia is a very simple one. I mean, the process of negotiating peace and the war between Russia and Ukraine. I don't want anything that will drive Russia away from the bargaining table. But he says that Russia is not doing anything to help the Islamic Republic of Iran and compared to what they could be doing, whatever that means. He then attacks Zalensky for bombing the diesel refineries and blames the Lensky. So Zalensky doesn't care about the damage he's doing, even though we've given him all this money, you know. I mean, it's just, it's a straight siding with Putin. And then I guess the other report from this morning is that on a phone call, I guess 10 days ago, Putin suggested to Trump a trilateral summit over Ukraine with she, Trump and Putin, but not Zalensky. And I get apparently Trump and them are considering this. They're talking about doing some kind of summit about the future of Ukraine without Ukraine at the table, but at the table is two dictators. And I guess I want to be one. - Yeah, but what's amazing is the White House didn't immediately shoot that down. And so that's a little ridiculous. But no, no, they're considering that. That is literally Munich, and sadly, right? I mean, one of the disgraces of Munich or what laid the predicate for the disgraceful Munich deal was that the checks were cut out of the negotiations. So it was, you know, and Chamberlain went and capitulated to Hitler without involving the actual people who were being thrown to the wolves. And I guess Trump wants to do that. He was totally wants to do that in Ukraine. I don't think Zalensky and the Ukrainians will let him. Yeah, this is a degree of capitulation and flattery and of inciting with dictators that's unusual. They're very unusual. I'm going to say just unprecedented. I mean, they're railpolitik times where we don't take on dictators as much as we should and they're times when we, you know, pull out punches a bit. But this is just going to the other side. - Yeah, I said less than in Charlotte. And I think this is along with the dismantling of USAID and, you know, kind of lumping in the deportation camps and El Salvador Gulag. This is the third, I think, most significant outrage of the administration. It's just, it's unbelievable that we are inciting with Putin in this moment as he is murdering Ukrainian innocents like for no clear reason besides, you know, Trump's affinity for. - And Trump is lying about at least according to our intelligence services, you know, reports in many media outlets which have never been refuted or contested by the intelligence community that Russia has been helping Iran in a big way. And certainly the European intelligence services we've even been our own to do. I wonder where, I don't even see any consequences where the other from our excellent, you know, directors of national intelligence and all these characters commenting on this. But Trump is just lying what he says that they're not helping Iran. - Oh yeah, we've got a really strong director of national intelligence. So we put in there like the banker if sure he's on it. Who's got time to go to the store anymore? 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Right now, we could call out a window treatment to fit your budget with three day blinds. Head to threedayblinds.com/thiballwork for their buy one, get one 50% off deal on custom blinds, shades and drapery for a free, no charge, no obligation consultation. Just head to threedayblinds.com/ballwork. One last time that's buy one, get one 50% off. And you head to the number three, d-a-yblinds.com/thiballwork. All right, I wanna go to the vice president. I think started to maybe kind of test out his muscles for a 2028 run and what that would look like in a CBS town hall with Tony DeCopel. That was, I guess I should say, a bit testier than I would have expected. And they certainly had some questions, some questionnaires that are asking very tough questions, which ADVance, Tony's follow ups were level. And I think, you know, there's a gentleman, for example, whose wife died, whose own service members who died and kind of asked JD if there was gonna be accountability for the mistakes that made the lead up to her death and JD kind of acted like he didn't know what he was alluding to with the mistakes. And then there were a couple of other clips that I wanna play for you. This was one in particular with regards to the war in a strange way, 'cause of everyone, 'cause the obsession in this crowd with Abdul, they can have framed this as like a, well, here's a criticism of Abdul Al-Sahead about your decision to go into the war. And let's listen to JD's response to that. - Now I see what Abdul Al-Sahead says about the war in Iran. I see he criticizing decisions that the president has made, the military has made. But fundamentally, we are where we are. And you have to, in my view, I'd like to know what is Abdul Al-Sahead's solution for the problem that we have right now. It's easy to criticize something that happened seven months ago. (laughing) - I mean, the hoodspot. - Well, I was a little struck both by the hoodspot. Also, he doesn't defend the decision. There seem to be two or three issues on which he's basically retreating to a kind of attacking the Democrats obviously, defending Trump nominally for one sentence. But basically, he does not want to be a big defender of the war in Iran. And on some other issues as well, on deportations, didn't he back off some? And well, yeah, we might have overreached out a few things. I mean, it's all totally disingenuous. And if you don't aware of this video, it's a real creep, and that's a loathsome guy. But he has a real creep. Yeah, I just mean like the goal is to be like, okay. I mean, it's not as if something happened a month ago. You know, it's not like that there was just, you know, whatever aliens invaded. And now like we've decided what we were, it was like, they decided to go into the war. Everyone was against it. 90% of Democrats were against it from the start of elected Democrats. And they chose to do it unilaterally. It was a total war of choice. And now like he's trying to do the, well, we need to have an honest debate of ideas between the different sides about where to go from here. It's like, why? No, we don't. As you're a fucking mess, you clean it up. It's perfectly rational and appropriate for a Democrat running for the Senate to say, I oppose the war. I think that we should turn around to come back like, you know, I think we shouldn't have done it. It's not up to Abdul Al-Sahed as one out of 100 senators to help them dig out of their mess. But it shows how toxic the war is as a political issue. Vance did not say, to my knowledge, the one obvious sentence you should say, if you're the vice president of the United States defending a decision, the president made it seven months ago. It was the right decision, Tony. Here's what the, why? He did, you know, all the bullshit Trump says, at least he sort of says, you know, he stopped them from getting the nuclear weapons or something. Vance isn't even, he's even given up trying that. We, you know, and I, we've been against the war from the beginning, we've thought we heard him politically, the Trump politically at the beginning. But I've got to say, even I underestimated just how much damage the war would do to the Trump president. I think it just really was the key to the collapse of this in 2026, I think, of everything he made it drove up. The gas prices, I said, direct effects, but also the indirect effect. The one thing Trump had going from us, thinking about this going into 26, especially as a Venezuela at early 2026, was, you know, he's not doing great. Inflation's higher than it should be. We don't like this, this, and this, that he's doing. People might have said, but, you know, he is strong. And we're strong in the world. And look what he did in Venezuela and he bombed Iran. And we haven't had any troops, you know, basically lost overseas. So we're blowing up those, fish those drug boats. If you like that kind of thing, but whatever, you know, some people do. And so in that respect, Iran sort of took away the last pillar. I think people could look to as a justification for sticking with Trump. And then when the gas prices kicked in on top of Iran, or as a result of Iran, really, I do think that's led to a much more fundamental meltdown of Trump's political support than there was obvious would happen just in January, February, in 2026. And the fact that advance won't just say, this was the right decision is pretty striking. It kind of tries to explain. He's like, well, he does the, he pulls back. He's like, well, here was the reason why we did it. But I don't know. I will say there's some themes. I'm going to play two other clips here. They are in the same vein of the particular slate out there, Bill. But part of me thinks that JD's playing a bad hand, well, a little bit. And I do think that folks should take that seriously. I mean, if he's making me this mad that I'm screaming at my phone, I just think that's probably five feels like that's a win. And he's slippery. I'll play this clip on immigration, and I'd cut it down. But in the middle of this two segments that you're about to hear, he kind of gives a lengthy kind of explanation for the H1B policy and why he, why it's not working and why it's broken. And he is an ability to try to make really not just racist nationalist policies sound rational. And he does have an ability to do that. I don't like to play those because people can go watch the whole CBS part if they want. But anyway, here's him talking to a young immigrant woman on CBS over a week. My family and I immigrated here about 20 years ago, and I became a citizen about five years ago. So you were the first person I voted for, actually. Oh wow, congratulations, and welcome. One reason, because of the reasons you just mentioned, I was concerned about border safety as in the trafficking and the drugs, not because I think immigrants actually take away jobs from Americans. But after seeing ICE behave like military police, and you recently call H1B visa workers for an indentured service, I think Americans are anything but safe. So I'm just curious, why are you scapegoating immigrants for the issues you're supposed to be solving as a vice president? So first of all, I appreciate the question. And I would say, and to the extent that my rhetoric has been imperfect here, that's on me. I think that our immigration system has to balance the fact that obviously we have duties of charity to people, people who want to come to the United States of America and build a better life. But if you're not talking about the system or the policy, they're talking about the rhetoric, the language, what they see as dehumanization of immigrants. Sure. And Tony, I will tell you that nobody's perfect. Certainly not me. But my goal here is not to dehumanize any immigrant. In fact, I love a number of immigrants. My goal here is to make it so that we can have a country with some baseline of social cohesion and sense of community. Three kinds of activities, the fucking social cohesion. It drives me up the wall. He is being slippery. And I'm not sure it's not slightly successful. I mean, is that a crazy tact for him to take, looking at where Trump's numbers are now and looking at where these policies have gone and how unpopular they are? I mean, just he's such an opportunist, obviously, that I mean, it is somewhat nauseating, but I'm not sure it's politically. I don't know, could you pull that off? Can you do that for a year and a half? It's our company, vice president. It's just kind of this delicate balancing act that's pretty hard. Yeah. That young woman has kind of a wake up call for, I think, though, some people also online, who don't just think that every Trump voter is just some unrepentant racist and ungetable. And it's just like, that's kind of crazy that this young immigrant woman voted for him because they're worried about drugs at the border. But like, could that happen? And so you have to make a argument that rebutts those guys. And I do think, and like his whole social cohesion, thank God. well, I just get thrown back into a Lindbergh dustbin of history because it's such a enough affront to what the country is. Our old country is that we cohere. People who have different religions, different faiths, different, different backgrounds, like that's what America is. And this like notion that we have to have masked men and streets storming into Kinsenieras to create a sense of cohesion is sick. So anyway, at least that young woman is coming around. I have one more clip I do want to play from JD because I think this might be the one that I feel like he answered in a way that is the most problematic for him going forward. Let's watch. The issue that voters see and that gets on their mind and that I hear what I'm out there is the president is making a lot of money off of crypto. His own IRS is barred itself from looking into his tax returns. Do you have this recent issue with the ambassador degree seeming to sell access to the White House? That's why people are concerned. And if there's nothing to hide, you say you've seen nothing. First of all, somebody's still in access to the White House. That's disgusting and despicable when they should suffer consequences. What I'm saying is-- That's an isolated thing, though. I want to make those judgments based on the facts and not based on a random news media report that I read. Fair enough. Would anybody look at what happened to him from 2016 to 2021? They tried to throw him a jail for like 900 years and say that Donald Trump has personally enriched himself. You can make all kinds of criticisms of our policies and decisions, but I don't see a single-- I've not once seen evidence that Donald Trump has enriched himself. That's a little too slippery by half, I think, for JD. And I do think that that one is going to be something that he's going to be in between Iraq and the hard place on this for the next two years, because of a separate interview. He said that the Republican nominee in '28 is going to be whoever Trump endorses. It's just an interesting admission, but true. And this is in his hat, right? Maybe he can kind of try to squirm away a little bit on Iran or maybe he can try to make a little daylight between Trump and some of this other stuff. But the corruption, which is going to God willing to be the Democrats focused for the next two years and be in the news, he doesn't have any room to wiggle. He has to pretend that Donald Trump has been all on the up and up. And so I do think that he is going to carry that baggage. And people are going to be seeing that clip in some more clips, I think, for a long time to cut. No, I agree. Makes you wonder, really, even if it's a Trump-y for Republican Party, man, they'd be better off nominating someone who wasn't part of that administration. Who doesn't have to quite carry that bag. Right, a Trump-y or outsider, for sure. Do you think could just sort of profess an ignorance about it? I don't know. I wasn't involved in any of that. Real Trumpism hasn't been tried, type candidate. You know? It's good. I think so. Don't give them ideas. We're going to hear this about it by everybody. I give 24 hours until that is a popular theme on the Trump-y, the out-of-office Trump-y, right? True, mega. Hasn't been tried. This segment is sponsored by The New York Times. I'll look, I'm relying on The New York Times for a bunch of stuff on the reporting from Ukraine. You know, they're doing stuff on the ground that as good as Michael Ly says with his sources, it's tough to get to. If you're not there, I was just reading this morning something about how Ukraine's going to use F-16s now to try to shoot down these jet-powered drones. That one was by Lara Jakes, who's reporting from Romania. I think we discussed. Last week, the work that David Sanger is doing, covering Trump's increasing Putin feel. He's increasingly a Putin-of-file. And Sanger's been reporting on the plans to ease Russia's sanctions. They're working on a hostage deal, I guess. I don't even get to that during the podcast today, but the amount of stuff Trump is doing with Putin is extremely alarming. And The New York Times is all over it. I'll set down with my guy, Michael Cruz here while I've been on the road. He was covering the Mary Peltola race in Fairbanks. I don't got time to go to Fairbanks. I married and invited me up to Alaska. So maybe I'll have to hang out, I don't know, in the future. When I have time, 2029 or something, but this is what they're doing. This is what they're doing at The New York Times, because they've got the reporters on the ground. And we need that to be able to help provide you guys information, to contextualize it, and to do good podcasts. We've got some reporters doing that, too. Here at The Bol work, obviously. It's something that we're looking to grow and expand. And we appreciate all the work that every reporter is doing, putting themselves at risk, if who knows what this administration's potentially being targeted by them, if you're willing to do the investigative work. So thanks those reporters. Stories I was just discussing today are just a couple of the examples of the fact-based reporting that The New York Times is doing. And now you get to decide what to think. And we get to decide how we want to talk about it. Wherever you seek it out nationally, locally. Support fact-based reporting. Let's do some interim stuff. Just a biggest picture, there's a pull over the weekend on the right track, wrong track. 29% to the countries on the right track, 71% on the wrong track. I thought this was an interesting data point in that pull, too, because it doesn't really have the political valence that some of these other questions do. And they asked about people's personal finances. Do you think your finances are better or worse than they were a year ago? 18% said better, 82% said worse. And to me, if you ask people how you think the economy's doing broadly, sometimes there's some political tinge to that. If you're a Democrat and there's a Republican in there, even if you think it's fine for you, you might say it's going badly, because you see news reports about it being bad. I'm like, you want to defend your team, right? That question isn't that. That question's like, how are your finances? 82% say worse. And then there are a bunch of specifics about like number of people who are or not going on a vacation or scrimping on entertainment or buying different types of groceries, etc. No, it's striking. Makes you wonder whether the economy is a little worse than the macro numbers suggest. Not even saying they're chicken numbers or anything. I just think these numbers can be deceiving. You know, you're averaging that billionaire making 10 billion dollars and a lot of middle-class people having a decline in their standard of living by $500. And it matters a lot to middle-class people that the overall number can be, you know what I mean, can have for sure, in an adequate way. So I kind of wonder what's happening in the real economy. If those numbers aren't pretty overwhelming. And real wage growth has flipped. I forget who we had on recently when we were talking about that. Which is because that was then there's like all this discussion about kind of the vibe session during Biden and at the beginning of Trump, where it's like, well, the macro numbers are still pretty good, but people are feeling negatively because of inflation. Like that isn't even true. I mean, like some macro number, like you're saying stock market, like there's some GDP, there's some good numbers. But like between real wages growing down and bond yields interest rates being up. Like those are just like tangible macro numbers that reflect people's real experiences. Young people have a trouble buying houses, because interest rates are up. Older middle-class middle-aged middle-class people are spending a ton on gasoline, which is a major expenditure for a lot of people. Obviously, especially if you live in a place where you have to drive a lot, which a lot of these Senate races are in states like that. And for senior citizens, I was struck as I actually am both enough to be on Social Security and no choice actually, I guess. So I think we're getting a 3.6 percent increase next year, which keeps up more or less with a 3.7 percent. I think the CPI inflation index. But of course, I'm not complaining about myself at all. But if you're someone who's living off the Social Security money you're getting, or it's a very important part of your budget, one of the things you do do is you'll just drive around, or you go out to occasionally, like, to go out and have a dinner or something. And those prices are not a 3.6 percent. Those prices drop a heck of a lot. So it doesn't feel like it's balancing off, even if, as they say, the macro numbers somehow balances. And I do think if you add up all these things, people are experiencing challenges in their own personal finance. And that's hard to argue away. People know what their own lives are, you know? What are you going to do with your extra 3.6 percent next year, Bill? No, I don't know. Susan and I were just going to. I'm having a long discussion about that at the kitchen table. But you know, people that I'm focused on, I think, kitchen table. Well, those grandkids, maybe they're a little Christmas present, might get out, then I might get the second doll that Trump didn't want them to have, but that 3.6 percent. I want to put some of the races on focus on Michigan in particular. It's the one where Republicans, I think, feel like they have a chance to get a win, maybe main as well. I was watching Fox News Sunday yesterday. And it's insane how much time they spent on the Michigan Senate race. I like there was a segment about whether Abdul has appropriately distanced himself from the Muslim Brotherhood. There was a segment on AOC, and I had a press Lee, the squad, campaigning for him. There was a segment that got a commercial. They come back. There's another panel discussion about whether Black voters and Detroit are going to turn out for Abdul, or whether Mike Rogers is doing really well with that community. Then there's the Elon Omar should be deported segment. I mean, like the degree to which Fox is in on Islamophobia, and using Omar and Abdul as cudgles was pretty striking to me yesterday. I'm just watching it. And, you know, I don't know. There are some other signals that maybe that's right. I stand by my view. I think Abdul is going to win handily, but more national money going in today, into that race. They've pulled it out of North Carolina. For example, state progress has haven't won in two decades in the Senate. The national party is not spending any money here, but they are spending money there. So I don't know, what do you make of all that? - I think Democrats win Michigan and Maine, but you know, if I had to, could they lose water both? It's not, in both, there are special circumstances which could overcome the wave as it were, you know, it would be build up some additional bricks against the wave and maybe build them high enough. I don't know, I don't have a really good feeling, either for either in a granular way. I'm dubious that it works, ultimately. The Michigan thing too, he just seems like a pretty good candidate. I mean, I wouldn't vote for him in the primary, but he's run a good general election campaign, I think. So he's not making many unforced errors, do you think? - I think it's getting a little bit caught up in the discourse and he seems a little prickly sometimes in the Q&A. I don't know, to be honest, in the primary, I think I was from Valerie, but I thought he had a very clear message, you know, the country is spending too much on foreign wars and our involvement in foreign policy is too great and we should be giving people health care at home. Like whenever you think about that message, his was like super clear and in line with where the democratic base is. And I do think that some of that like, you know, his, he likes to fight, you know, and his desire to like go be pugnacious with Jesse Waters. And I think his points were good and when he was going back and forth with the plant and the crowd, it's like, is that really what, you know what I mean? Like, is he getting a little bit off? So maybe just, you know, a couple of degrees off of what the message could be for the home stretch, but I mean, I bet on balance. Yeah, I think he's run a good race. - I think in both cases, thinking of the little thing I wrote in warning shots this morning, I mean, it's to the more problematic races, which I would say the two toughest of the 47, they have to hold and the two, they were supposed to pick up North Carolina and Maine, the two toughest are obviously Michigan and Maine, they need to emphasize that you need a Democratic Senate to check Trump. And I don't know if Abdul himself wants to say this, but others can say this, you know what? You may not agree with him, I'd everything. You may not have been your favorite in the primary. I mean, helly Stevens can certainly say this, but Maura can say this, but we need to have a Democratic Senate and this is to check Trump. I think that gets you that extra point or two, maybe, that might overcome the concerns or cautions about the candidate himself, both in Maine and Michigan. - Yeah, Mallory has been really out there doing that and campaigning hard, really, it was good initially and then lately, not quite as much. Mike Rogers, I do want to talk for a second about how horrible Mike Rogers is. And I have some audio, there's some leaked audio from an event of his that I want to play. - We're going to do this again. I don't want to wake up at three, you know, go to bed and do a winner and wake up at four a loose, kind of dumb thing. And so in a van full of ballots that shows up in the middle, I wish didn't happen to me. So what we got them to commit to was, they're going to have a healthy voter integrity program. The fact that they've already hired a deputy told you how far ahead of the game, we weren't that far before. And I've been telling them, you know what, let's put police officers retired for all duty police officers as our poll watchers in Detroit because they're going to go ahead and try to intimidate them. - This guy's such a piece of shit. As truly, like he is in that audio, doing 2020 election denialism. Like he's doing this whole, that's the whole story. They're like, oh, you went to bed and then there was a late night dump and a secret van. And it's like, no, that's how the votes get counted in Michigan. And he knows this, he's run a million times in Michigan. He knows that those were legitimate ballots. He's playing into the MAGA conspiracy theories. And then he's saying we, I guess it should intimidate people at the polls in Detroit, we should have cops, off duty cops, retired cops there. It's like this guy is like the worst of both worlds, honestly. Like he has the old country club Republican, I'm fully on board with the Iran War and the new MAGA election conspiracism. And like people act like, you know, he is like some Mitt Romney Republican. And it's like, no, no, no, he's not. - I knew him back in the day. And he seemed to be responsible, you know, hawkish Republican. And yeah, this is disgusting. And maybe he always was a little bit, I'm sure he knows what his character really was and all that kind of thing. But recently, he lost in 2024, it's like, right? I mean, I don't recall him making a huge fuss at the time. There was not, it wasn't even like an Arizona situation or a 2020 fake situation where they had fake, you know, claims of ballots, boxes being stuff. I think Michigan was counted. - Do you know what it was Trump won? - Trump won, yeah, exactly. He lost. There was no A, and so A, it's total utter bullshit. You know, since he didn't raise those claims at the time, I mean, at a serious way. And they aren't serious and they aren't real. And B, if we could just be honest, he's just playing the race card. What does Detroit mean? Right? I mean, that's just saying, you know, those blacks in Detroit, they steal votes, right? And that's what he's seeing, you know, that's why we have to have the off-duty cops there. - Yeah, to intimidate them, right? Because otherwise apparently the local election officials in Detroit are just dishonest people who are happy to have votes stolen. I mean, so he's just trying to play the race card out of state in Michigan, which God knows happens. A lot of states like that against the big city, which is predominantly African-American. And I don't know, it is disgusting, really. - So yeah, I don't know. Fox News doing the whole thing about like, oh, blacks might hate Arabs. So that might hurt them a little in Michigan. And like meanwhile, Mike Rogers is like, yeah, we need cops at the polling places, but just in the black parts of Detroit, just to make sure it's aggressive. All right, we've been doing our long shots to be in the stereo. I have, as mentioned, at a great conversation with the North Carolina Dumb party chair here, Anderson Clayton and she flags to races for me that I'm gonna talk about. And I think they're worth looking at. Both in the strong Republican category and cook. So these are stretches, but we have North Carolina 13. The Republican is gonna name Brad Not. It's just a total zero, whatever, Trump wants. Just a rubber stamp. The Democrat is gonna name Paul Berenger. I like this bio. A lawyer, a Sunday school teacher, a tree farmer, a healthcare consultant, and an endurance athlete. So okay, that guy's got a lot of interests. All right, the district is, it's absurd, gerrymander. It's like a claw around the research triangle basically kind of goes around, rally around Durham and kind of covers the excerpts, areas up there. So it's a pretty red area, but Berenger's a good candidate, campaigning hard, Anderson really liked him, and whatever she told me I'm on board with 'cause I, 'cause she's fucking, the Democrats need to clown hard, they need 50 of her in every state. And then North Carolina 7 is a little less red of a district, but still I think it was R plus 7. The Republicans David Rouser, he's been there for like a decade, you never even heard of him. He isn't held a town hall in 10 years. That's not held a town hall in 10 years. Democrat is a woman, Kimberly Hardy, black woman social worker from military family, also at their campaigning hard, and you know, putting in the time, that district is like basically Wilmington and Fayetteville, other two cities, but then it clues like the coast over there, surf city, right spill. I mean, I do think that North Carolina is the kind of place for a Cooper really runs up the numbers that you can get a surprise win in one of these districts. And so, I was going to 7 and 13 or my two races for this week. - That's great, that's good. Carville said, I can't remember if this was on the show yesterday or off the air, that Ethan Kentucky 6 was very doable. So he's with you, that was your pick last week, right? - That was on a race couple of weeks ago. - Yeah, so he's on board with you on Ryan Demba. - Great. - I think I picked South Carolina already, but I'll reiterate it, and I wanna move on in the South to say that I think Mississippi could be in play. I mean, the polls, I looked it up this morning. Hidesmiths, in the two most recent polls, I think one of which is sort of Republican-ish poll, actually, plus four and plus six. They don't know what turnouts gonna be, obviously, this year. And if Black Turnout really is up in both South Carolina for that matter, but especially Mississippi, it just changes the numbers pretty radically in Carville made this point yesterday to me. I mean, it really is, and it does look like Black Turnout is up, and God knows Blacks and the South have a reason to co-vote. They have been totally screwed by Trump, by the Trump Supreme Court, and by Republican state legislatures in the rollback on voting rights, really kind of extraordinary. And those are what's happened or what they've tried to do in those states. And so I wonder if you could really, it would be something in Mississippi flipped. So I'm bullish on Mississippi, outside shot, but what the heck? And then-- - That was how Lauren Egan's choice last night with the live show in Charlotte, by the way. - Oh, I didn't even know. I didn't say that. - There's a lot of buzz there. Scott Columbus is also-- - Very good candidate. - Yeah, very strong candidate. He put out a very funny ad based on a clip of Cindy Height Smith basically telling people that if beef's getting too expensive, they should look to get another protein. Let's watch that. - Go on a price of beef continuing to go up. - You know, you have so many proteins to choose from. - Pick another protein. - Shit, I'd rather pick another senator instead. - Shit, I'm lost and down my ass. I'd rather pick another senator. What the-- - Pick another senator instead. - Yeah, I mean, I'm sure people really love that Mississippi. You know, like go get some chicken. All right, no, okay, she's like, all right, you can't afford the beef, like be a patriot and get some chicken. - Chicken's okay, what about the tofu? I was like, yeah, it seems like something that in the old days we used to. you know, make fun of Democrats for this kind of stuff. But now it's the Republicans who are a gantai. You know, I need you to pronounce that. Joe Foo, Joe Foo, you can tell you're not a Tofu leader. I know. I sometimes I was a Thai restaurant, so you get the Tofu dishes and stuff. A bad Thai. Exactly. Right. And the other Senate race that looks again a little closer than people realize is South Dakota. Whether again, not much polling, but Brian Banks was the independent, but there's no Democrats. So he is the de facto Democrat as well, is again within a very few points of my grounds. So I don't know. I'm bullish. It would be nice to pick up one or two of these long shot Senate seats to partly to really get a big margin in the Senate, which would be very much very good to get a big margin of various actual reasons of what's going to happen over the next few years. And also to ensure against the, you know, a main or Michigan going the other way. Speaking of the Carville conversation and margins, he got us into a little trouble called the Rage Incasion, do you see this? No. That's okay. Yeah, I know. He was rant about the DSA. He goes on a long rant and he's like talking about how margins matter. And the margins matter point is correct, like having a big majority, particularly in the Senate. And Carville, to his credit, is really putting a lot of work and trying to raise money on these stretch Senate seats in Mississippi, though you mentioned, and some others. So, you know, he recognizes like, look, it's important to run up big margins so you can actually have the room to maneuver and do stuff. As part of that rant, though, he also said that he's like, having a five seat majority would be worse than having the Republicans have a five seat majority. And in the House. In the House. Yeah, he said, it'd be better. Might as well I let the Republicans win than only have a five seat majority. And I do just want to say, that's wrong. That is a bad point. We want Robert Garcia to have the gavel, and Jamie asking to have the gavel. And, you know, I think James maybe is getting a little too wrapped up in his internal factional politics on that one. You know, you shouldn't always take James too literally. Sometimes you have to take him seriously, but not, you take James seriously enough. But not literally. Yeah, that's like the Trumps. He was wonderful. He was a generally wonderful and I didn't know that had gotten him or us in trouble, but whatever. You do concur, there'd be better to have a narrow democratic majority. Yes. I know that, but you know, generally, it's better to win than to lose, which I think is also something Carvel usually says. Yeah. Just win. All right. I only saw that clip that somebody sent to me being a dick about it. And so I haven't got to see the rest of the conversation. Was there anything else? No. I think it made one point that Billy Rancon, he said, you know, you really was praising a lot of these candidates in House races, and who is now mad, I suppose, and dealt with, all around the country. Not very well. I hadn't really heard of running kind of long shot-ish races. But now they're in play if we're at a plus 10 generic, which we could well be. And what he admired about them is they didn't get to decide to run when they saw the polls in the last two months, right? They decided to run a year ago. When no one was that confident, when the generic ones, you know, plus three or four, not plus eight or ten, when there was a lot of notion that was hopeless and maybe they should wait and whatever. And so I thought he made a good point. I was a nice point to make. He was a nice tribute. I would just say to these individual candidates who I probably don't give enough credit to because I'm sort of a, the way he was going to carry everyone in type person and what Brownston calls a, you know, structural list in that respect. But, you know, these people are out there, they've been out there working very hard when it looked very, very hard, very difficult. And now they may make it and they deserve to get the breaks here at the end. I want to also say the same about No Kings since we mentioned that earlier. I really feel that way about No Kings, you know, they started that June 14th. Trump was riding so high. Remember those first six months everyone was so demoralized and a lot of the Democratic party, big wigs were working very careful, cautious, this, that, and No Kings which just went right at them and got millions of people out there in June 14th and then again in October and then again in March and now again, I mean, I, I admire the people who were willing to fight whether it didn't look so, so Sunday out there. And I think it's just kind of an answering side benefit, God willing of that wave crashing in some of those candidates getting in as you do this kind of interesting mix of people like both ideologically and, you know, in their backgrounds, right? I mean, like looking to send in Florida in the Senate. It's like Angie Nixon, all of a sudden is in there and it's like, holy cow, it's like, you know, so there's a really lefty kind of you had some more moderate, you know, candidates in other places. There's a big Bobby Polito down in Texas, the Tejana singer, he had his final concert this weekend and some friends were sending me some pictures from that. And it's like to me, it's, it's, it's crazy, you know, it's like, this was a Trump plus 17 or something district. We discussed the last week with Jackie Rosa and it's like, okay, we look to Hano singer. It was kind of moderate. And then the next couple of districts over, there's Johnny Garcia. There's like a law enforcement Hispanic guy that's, it's kind of moderate. And the two North Carolina districts I just mentioned that are both like, you know, basically R plus 10 you ever take, you, you know, have a black social worker, you know, woman is kind of more left. And then you have this guy that's like a business guy that also is a Sunday school teacher is a little more moderate. You know what I mean? Like, you end up get, and that's how the house should be, by the way, right? Like the house and the, that's what the Democratic caucus should be. Like the Democratic caucus should not just be, you know, the one person from every town that was the valedictorian that went to law school, that went to McKinsey and then came home to run for office and who's in the middle of the party. Like it should have like a weird mix of people and like, that's, if you have top down recruiting from the party, it doesn't work like that. You end up just getting, you know, lawyers, veterans. We love all lawyers of veterans. But you know what I mean? Like that's who you get, right? And if you have to do this other way, where just sometimes people are just running, what run for something? I mean, the litman runs that, you know, encourages regular people to run the bench. My friend list is doing that and like they've encouraged some of these other people different backgrounds to run. I think if the wave happens and you get that group in the house, that's, that's healthy, I think for the party too, to have just like that different type of person. Carval made one point in passing that maybe this will help, I guess, I guess we can't say if it's reputation with the DSA types, but this, this was a DSA-ish point, which is he said, you know, we've recruited all these moderate Democrats, white Democrats to run in these sudden states assuming they could get the most do best with the swing voters and they've unfortunately fallen short, though they're fine people, many of them. And this, in this case, in Mississippi, he sort of made the point you just made. We've got this black guy who just decided he's a farmer, fifth generation farmer or something in Mississippi and sort of a real regular guy who's just thought this is an outrage and he's running a heck of a good campaign and that ad is wonderful. And he sort of said something like it would be ironic or it would be interesting, you know, if, and if he gets, if he generates a little more even black turnout because he becomes to sort of symbolize just the assault on them in Mississippi by the Republicans, it would be ironic if he wins after the sort of blessed, you know, the white moderates who were more blessed by the establishment didn't, you know, so. That's fair. You might be also like combining both the Mississippi and Louisiana, the Louisiana Canada is the actual farmer. Oh, okay. No, no, no. It's got to grow up in a farm. Okay. And like came from the farm part of Mississippi. No, but you're right. Just one of Carville. I didn't even go quite a source. Carville also thinks Louisiana's an outside possibility, and he loves that guy. It's Jamie Davis. Jamie Davis. I think you're right. I was conflating the Louisiana farmer. Yeah. But I think this is similar. Similar point down the background. I want to close by doing little talk about what's happening with big tech. It's funny. Like these guys are going to be like the last ones off the Trump train, like besides the people in the house, you know, which is pretty crazy. This is like supposedly this populist movement, nationalist populist movement. And it's like the type of the CEOs of the tech companies that like most of their employees are immigrants, you know, are going to be the ones that are the final ones along with them because they need the government because they don't want free market capitalism. They want an oligarchy, you know, they want to be able to grow as fast as possible and not have any limits on their ambitions. It's a end up with these ridiculous things like the Microsoft CEO and Mark Benioff at Salesforce, now calling it SI and, you know, Zuckerberg sucking up to Trump and Sam Altman at OpenAI sucking up to Trump. Then over the weekend, we had TikTok, which that Trump gave to his buddies, the Ellison's shutting down the accounts for the anti-Elon documentary, now it's just like a French revolution thing. They're just working together against the masses. And then, and there's also sort of the no-kings Instagram got taken down. That one's a little bit less clear to me, whether that was like just kind of an actual accident or not. But anyway, I mean, regardless, you have just, you know, like full alliance right now between Trump and the tech oligarchs. Yeah, it is striking a lot of them with some of them were always kind of pro-Chomp obviously, Mosque and Teal and all these guys, and they are genuine, you know, whatever they are. Anti-Democratic nationalists of a certain type. There's like Zuckerberg, which is, I don't know, conventional liberals, I guess one would have said, right? Yeah. And not on board in the first term. But yeah, right. Once they went all in, they realized, I guess, I don't know, they seem to have internalized I kind of agree with even people like Zuckerberg, or the kind of the anti-Democratic illiberal spirit of Trumpism, more than, and of Silicon Valley actually, they sort of merged those together, more than I might have explained. I do think just on the meta thing, it's not, I mean, they certainly, no kings lost, everyone lost access to the no kings Instagram account. And then they lost the ability to actually put things up there for a, for longer, for several hours, three hours. They certainly were, I was, we in touch with them while I was happening, if they were not, meta was not responsive. Their initial explanation, which their flat put out, turns out just to be wrong, was 24 hours later, they put out a totally different explanation. And in no case, if they actually explained anything, and if they haven't really explained how they're going to prevent. This from happening two weeks from now. So I have become totally radicalized. I'm now, as you say, French Revolution, you know, where attitude basically towards these oligarchic plutocrats who want to not just make a ton of money, but also stop democracy from working. I mean, it's really-- - Feel like a control of the government. They want to be a special class where they are above the law, the rules, and they can manipulate the public to the degrees that they need to to advance their end. So something we're going to be monitoring for a while, and I think that over the past week, we've seen this coming, but it's pretty stark. And-- - Yeah, Judd, like I'm on, didn't you? I think-- - Yeah, we did on the YouTube video. - On the YouTube video. I mean, he has an excellent, just summary this morning. People don't look at it. Just everything Zuckerberg has done since, just in two years, to suck up to Trump. And it is really extraordinary, actually, the degree of personal, the money, of course, the ball, we went on all that kind of stuff. The appointed people, he's put on the board of meta, and he's made your close friend, Dina Powell McCormick, president of meta, you were even, I wasn't fully aware of this. I don't know what they're-- - I think he was just on the board, yeah, I don't know. - Yeah, no, no. And so I mean, I don't know what that means, really, but it means just getting paid extremely well by meta and getting all the options and so on. I mean, I don't know, I did agree to which, they have just gone all in on Trump, not just on Trump personally, but on Trumpism. - On the program. - So it's bad, I mean, it's bad for democracy, and it really needs to be confronted. And you add onto that, the whole AI issue and everything, it's gonna be an interesting next few years. - It's a big fight ahead. All right, that's Bill Crystal. Appreciate it very much. We have two more Mondays with Bill before the midterm elections. So I'm looking forward to those. And we will see you tomorrow night in hot land. I think it's the only show in like two years that hasn't sold out. I don't know what's happening down there in Atlanta. You guys got stuff to do. All right, like there's multiple races. It's a Tuesday night, the traffic's really bad. I don't know, but they're like 30 tickets left. So, you know, if you're here in this right now and you're on one and you're with Anish drive at Atlanta, come on down and see us. Bill will be there tomorrow night. It'll be a good one. And for everybody else, we'll just see you right back here for tomorrow's podcast, peace. (upbeat music) ♪ When you can't make it all right ♪ ♪ I was here in the world, the world that you gave me ♪ ♪ Give me time ♪ ♪ You can see it, you're running ♪ ♪ Like I'm gonna be on the street ♪ ♪ While I've been here when we both gonna fake it ♪ ♪ And it really is me ♪ ♪ Me ♪ ♪ I'm gonna drive here, killing your goal ♪ ♪ Means I can be good ♪ ♪ And I don't know ♪ ♪ And I'm running ♪ ♪ I've suffered a lot ♪ - The Bullwork Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzali Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeCicco, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.