District Club: Trump & AI Leaders Sign Accord, Hegseth Makes Sweeping Changes, and Key Issues Weigh on Midterms

Okay, first, before we give you the facts of the day, Run, Hide, Fight! Infidels is streaming now only on Daily Wire. It's an ode to the great action movies of the 80s and 90s. There's even a love story, which nobody expected. And you can support Daily Wire's mission to continue making movies that people actually want to watch. Go check it out. Just a little more than a month to go until the midterms, and the political landscape is only becoming more volatile under added pressure from policy shifts at home and a war abroad. The war in Iran enters its eighth month with no end in sight as Secretary of State Marco Rubio sends Iranian negotiators packing after they rejected U.S. terms for a deal. President Trump hints there may be more bombing after Election Day, but how will growing fatigue over the war weigh on Republican voters at the ballot box? And major changes at the Department of War as Secretary Pete Hegseth announces sweeping reductions in the number of senior officers and plans for the future of warfighting. We'll look at how Hegseth. Hegseth's speech is playing with the public. Plus, the Supreme Court's new term begins Monday. The high court has agreed to review Trump's ICE detention policy as Democrats once again put ICE in the hot seat. In just a few weeks, voters get to weigh in on all that and more. They've got a lot to decide, and we've got a lot to discuss. This is the District Club. Welcome to the District Club. I'm Ben Domenech. Happy to be joined, as always, by my colleagues Tim Rice, D.C. Bureau Chief, White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olihan, and happy to welcome back to the District Club Amisha Cross, a former Obama advisor and Democratic strategist. Great to have you back, Amisha. There's a lot to talk about today. I think that we can get into all of the different things that have happened on the foreign policy front, on the Department of War front. But to me, it seems like the biggest story that was dominating things here in Washington was really built around this attempt by the administration to reestablish a more comfortable attitude toward AI. They brought in all of the different key figures into the White House for this luncheon that got a ton of attention. They signed on to this morally binding agreement, which is to say not so much. Everyone was there except for Apple. And the president issued an executive order rebranding everything. For official purposes, as superintelligence instead of artificial intelligence. Given that AI emerged as a major issue in this election that I think nobody really saw coming a year ago as something that would be a major factor, do you think that any of the things that this administration did this week on the AI front will assuage the concerns that voters have had that we've heard in a lot of different fights and in the context of data centers and in the context of all these other things that have really created some problems for Republicans? No. I think that we saw the president try to do a good faith effort. However, there has been nothing that has come out of it. Nobody really knows. The argument from the American public was guardrails. They wanted guardrails for safety. They wanted guardrails when it came to some of the price gouging we're seeing at places like Walmart and other places where, you know, AI is deciding by zip code how much it can charge people. What, you know, extra pricing that they can add to make you buy more things. They are determining the children's ages within your household. There are a lot of things that are going on even outside of the data centers, outside of. Corporations saying that they are not hiring because of AI and we've seen the slashes and the issues that people have with actually getting employed at this point in time. But none of that has been alleviated by the conversations held at the White House. It seemed like a party for AI. In addition to that, there actually was a party in D.C. for it just last week. So I think that what the people are asking for and what they're getting aren't necessarily coming together. Mary Margaret, yeah, I know you have concerns about data centers. Do you think that anything that the president or the administration did this week, does that make anybody feel a little more. Comfortable like maybe they're at least entertaining the idea of guardrails. Well, I think, you know, the public sees all these CEOs, these leaders in the tech industry, these leaders in the social media companies. I don't think that goes unnoticed and I don't think it has no effect. Obviously, this happened literally this week. So it's a little early to tell what kind of effect that had on the public. But I wouldn't say it's a negative one. I think that, you know, for your average American seeing Mark Zuckerberg, seeing the head of Palantir, all of these different companies at the White House with the president. It's intriguing. It's interesting. And it does cause them to have questions and wonder where these kinds of things are going. I do have to add, though, on the data center party front, I was just shaking my head all weekend seeing this post from the data center party because it feels so out of touch in the way that a lot of these DC years are looking at this issue. I don't think any person from my hometown out in Virginia is going to see those pictures of, you know, Virginia is for data centers or Virginia is for, you know, whatever these signs were promoting data centers as Virginia's haven. I don't think anyone's going to see that and be particularly persuaded by that. It felt very online. It felt very D.C. central. And so I think Republicans would do well to shy away from that front. And I actually would point out that it was mostly libertarians at that. I would also say that it is very demographically based. So the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus just a couple of weeks ago had their conventions here in D.C. Palantir was a sponsor of both. CHCI, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, actually eradicated them, basically knocked them off as a sponsor. So because of the community outrage, the Congressional Black Caucus did not. I think the one thing that might prove useful coming out of the big AI event at the White House is America.gov, which is not to say that it's this, like, grand, you know, this brilliant. You're talking about this very efficiency-minded website, if people haven't heard of it. Yeah, it's a website. It's basically just, like, chat GPT tailored for the government. So you can pull up any record. You can ask questions if you're a veteran about how to get your benefits or things like that. And it's not that innovative. I mean, it's innovative relative to the federal government, but relative to what AI is doing, it's pretty much just a super-efficient cross-government search engine. Except how you can change your name after you get married. Sure. Which is my favorite part. But this is, I think there is, we can't discount that people hate new technologies until the second that you can find a kind of quotidian and helpful use for it. Until it's efficient for them. And so it's, but I think that that is, I mean, if this makes it easier to look up information about filing taxes or enrolling in Obamacare, getting a passport, changing a name, it's like how we all sort of became okay with surveillance capitalism if it meant that we could get Amazon to deliver anything to our house in two days. So here's the, I think you're actually right about that, but I don't think it's going to benefit them in this election. No. The reason I think you're right about that is because I had to go to six different departments and places in order to get my daughter's social security number that she had never received because she was born during COVID and it just got lost in the mix. I had to go to so many different places. I had to make a scheduled appointment. I had to make an appointment, everything like that. This is supposed to make everything streamlined. So I do think maybe down the road it can benefit, but to me, the problem with that AI thing or the way that it sort of played out was clearly this is meant to assuage concerns. It's clearly meant to say people are freaking out about this, they don't get it, they're worried about the job things, they're worried about, they're worried about the fact that everything, you know, all the promises of things getting cheaper doesn't seem to be happening. I think the problem is that there was nobody really at the table who represents the people who are going to get the short end. Like, that is a classic mistake of, you know, the way these tech guys talk about people who are going to lose their jobs, it sounds like they're looking at an Excel sheet and they're just like, okay, this is a bunch, there's a long list of people who we're going to treat like widgets and they're just, you know, this is just going to go away and they're going to have to figure out something new to do. Who's the person at the table there who's like, I don't know, drinking a Bud Light out of a bottle? Which I think points to or could suggest just how much it's the tech guys that are leading the administration on this. Because that is like, right, as you said. The administration's following them. It's a classic mistake, but the other way to put that would be it is Washington 101 that if you're going to have a, you should be happy about the disruption party, you have to have the one guy who says, I'm pretty happy about the disruption. You know, I'm a factory worker, but I'm okay with automation. We're ready for it. I'll learn to code. It's going to be okay. You've got to have the plan. But you can't count on the AI leaders of the industry to regulate themselves. There's another issue there because the people who are the smartest about AI that he invites to the table are the people who are creating the various systems. That the American people are extremely frustrated. Well, the other thing that is going on there, when you talk about them regulating themselves, and in general, I think that they have different degrees of willingness to do that across the industry. So I don't want to paint it all. But they also have different fundamentally attitudes toward AI. We saw this reporting this week from the New York Times about the behind the scenes back and forth between one of the leading founders of Anthropic and the Vatican that led up to that people statement on the matter. And I think that's a really important point. and that is just financially at odds. - If you say corporations are people too, then I guess we can do it. - Only for like, no, but just to, I think one of the points that you just made there, which is important, is that I don't think that that, the papal encyclical, whether people read it or not, I don't think that it is, it should be lost on us that non-Catholics are also starting to get worried about this kind of stuff. Like the idea that these, that you've built a person, that you've built someone who's gonna have, are they gonna have constitutional rights? What are they gonna do to our republic? How are we going to treat this differently? And so I think that is starting to enter the conversation too in sort of a creepy way, and a 300 word thing that misspells United States is not going to, I think, actually make anybody feel more comfortable about it. But that was obviously not just the only thing that we saw happen in DC this week. We saw a lot of other things going on. One of them was, you made mention of this, Tim, is this new attitude being brought by Pete Hegseth at the Department of War. Can you contextualize this for me? Because as much as this election is beginning to feel very much like a replay of 2006 for me, is Hegseth in the Rumsfeld chair? Is he like trying to do something here to like get in the president's good graces in advance of a midterm where a lot of people could be saying, "We gotta do something. "Somebody's gotta fall." - Yes, but I would even quibble with, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. I was just gonna say, I understand your question now. No, 100%, and I think it's just Hegseth doing Hegseth, right? That's sort of, he's off on his own island. But yes, I think this is very much him positioning himself to say, "All right, well, we're gonna lose in the midterms, "and the president's gonna look to fire somebody. "How can I make it be Bobby Kennedy and not me? "How can I make it be Brooke Rollins and not me? "And how do you do that?" - It could never be Bobby Kennedy. - It could never. - Everything about this, this was-- - It's gonna, wait, wait, wait, wait, you just said there, I mean, if you're gonna actually rank it, do you think Brooke Rollins is top of the list right now? She's had several bad moments. - I think she's up there, I think she's up there, but I haven't actually considered it that much, so yes, with an S for us. - You can eat chicken, I mean, come on. - I think she's up there, I think Mullen's up there. Nevertheless, I think Hegseth, if you look at what he did, and obviously the context is that he was giving his State of the Forces address at Quantico, so he had a proximal reason to make changes, but the changes that he made, establishing a religious liberty commission, firing all the, getting rid of tenure for civilian professors, the no fatties, no trannies, like whatever, it's like, this is like Just Play the Hits, talking to an audience of one, and he's saying, "Please, Mr. President, do not fire me on November 6th." - No, I would fundamentally disagree with that. For starters, he was talking to a massive audience of all these troops gathered at Quantico who gave him a standing ovation because they love him. - Yeah. - Very well received, and also a lot of these initiatives, I mean, we broke one of them, you edited it, on-- - I know. - On the War Department saying you have to have your own grids now at all of these military bases, which a lot of the reasoning that they had for explaining these things, I thought was really sound. It's great for our military bases to be on their own grids. It's great to show that 95% of the military is Christian and they're gonna cater to that in the future, hopefully not just to certain denominations, also to Catholics and all these other, you know, Christianity-affiliated viewpoints. But I think a lot of this is great. I think it's really interesting coming ahead of what we know is that another aircraft carrier heading to the Middle East, they increased hazard pay only a few days ago. We wrote about that too. So there's a lot going on at the War Department, and I don't think Pete Hegseth thinks he's on the chopping block. I think he knows we're getting into it. Things are escalating. We're gonna make sure that our boys are paid. We're gonna make sure that we have the ability to be self-sufficient if we get a cyber attack, and lots more. And honestly, I was inspired, and I thought it was really cool. I wouldn't say it was inspiring. I don't think that he believes he's on the chopping block. I do agree with that. I think that he is also trying to set himself up for something after this. Pete Hegseth is somebody who wants to have a very long run in politics, well beyond the Trump administration. He's also somebody who recognizes that those greatest hits still play well to a certain demographic, and that's a demographic that he would need. I wish he would stop talking about testosterone every chance he gets because it's just weird. But beyond that, like, this is a guy who is trying to build his own campaign, and a campaign that exists long after this administration is over. Yeah, that's true. And you can 100% see that among everything about it. One thing that really strikes me is that, at the beginning of this administration, it always seemed a little bit silly when he was talking about war fighters and war fighting and combat 'cause we weren't really at war. Now we are, and he's still talking about it in exactly the same way, like, not the way you would think that a wartime war secretary would. Like, it's still all about being based and running while chanting Bible verses and boosting your T, and it's like, no, dawg, we're actually at war. Like, we are legitimately in a ground war in the Middle East. And it's very strange because he's having that conversation to actual military leaders, those in the ranks. Now, it would be different if he was just having it to the general public, but when you're doing it to people who know the work, people who have invested in this, people who have taken the oath, they know exactly what's at stake. That is not the same as if you're talking to a teenager who's, you know, whatever they watch in the middle of the afternoon, having those conversations. He's gearing his conversation outside of the rank to ranking members, and that is a little strange. But I don't know that any of them are resisting it. I mean, I actually- - Well, they can't. - I know personally many members of the military, I know people who are deployed, and they like it. They like what he's saying. They are appreciative of it. They tell me, like, we could not believe how we were, A, like, being forced to be vaccinated under Biden. Even if we had religious objections, they were just tossed out the window. They hated how they had, like, transgender performers on their boats as part of drag initiatives and things like that. They hated how they were forced to subscribe to all these DEI ideologies. They're very happy that things have changed. And I think he's beating that drum to remind them, we're good now, we got you, we're gonna continue to do this. And they all know that if we have another administration come into the White House, it could be very different very soon. - But the demo that doesn't like Pete, the demo that does not respond to this- - You mean the old fit not fat generals? - No, no, no, it's the old guys right across the street who work on the Capitol, especially on the Senate side, who are furious with Pete for a lot of different reasons. And I just think that there is gonna be, I don't think, the president may or may not listen to them, because he's fed up with a lot of these people. - And he does love Pete. But the logical thing to happen after an election in which you feel that a war that is going badly, in which certain people behind the scenes may have over-promised the ability of the military to achieve certain goals, what usually happens after an election like that is that somebody gets fired, okay? - Or- - I'm not saying that that's Pete. - I'm just saying that there's a need for things to ramp up after the election, which very well could happen. - It definitely could. - Ramp up in what way? I mean, a terrorist attack, unfortunately? Like, I'm confused what the ramp up would be. - Ramp up in that the United States is more aggressive. - I mean, we've tried to be more aggressive thus far, and it's failed us at every turn. We've walked into an adversary that we did not plan well enough for in this administration. I think that's one of the reasons why the general public is so fraught against this. If we were winning, I think that you would have a different statement and a different push from the public around our engagement, because if you're severely not winning, and it is extremely costly, you continue to have people get more and more upset. I don't see that changing in the next four months. And honestly, I don't think the president does either. - You made the '06 comparison, which I think is apt, but it is striking and kind of coming off what Amisha said, that, you know, I think it's probably fair to say that the war in Iraq in 2006 was going worse than the war in Iran now. - Oh, much, much worse. - But we had a White House-- Listen, the messaging might not have worked, but say what you-- say what you will about the Bush administration's messaging on the war in Iraq, at least they were trying, right? Like, I feel like this White House isn't even really-- right? I mean, am I wrong? - Well, the other thing is, the other thing is, I don't think that there's a logical-- you don't go from Pete Hegseth to Bob Gates. You know, like, this is not-- this is like, there's not, like, a logical kind of thing, you know, and, you know, again, at the time, Rumsfeld was the oldest member of the cabinet. He was also, you know, frankly, not a guy who was beloved on the Senate side. - Right. - You know, as well, for different personality reasons. But the thing that I think is really people should start thinking about is, what is the takeaway from this administration going to be for this midterm? If it plays out the way that things currently play out-- and I'm not even talking about the worst-case scenario for Republicans-- if it plays out the way that things are currently trending, you would expect in a normal administration that someone would get chopped, okay? Because the war didn't go well, they over-promised, they under-delivered, you know, et cetera. And I'm just kind of looking around and looking for what that is. - And it has to be somebody with rank. It can't be a lower-level person. - Well, but the other thing is, I think it could be that the president just says, "I am totally invested in this war, and I don't want to admit that this isn't going well, and instead, I'm going to make this about the fact that we had some cabinet members who tripped over themselves when they were talking about affordability." - But it's also-- yeah, that's the other thing, is that none of the-- - I think he'll opt for option B. - Yeah, I think you're right for that, and also another reason for that is that, you know, the-- Rubio and Hegseth have both sort of not-- they don't have their fingerprints on Iran as much as they could have, right? And obviously, they do. But Hegseth hasn't really-- - Rubio said, "Absolutely not." - Hegseth hasn't really been on the scene. Rubio's-- - Rubio just wants to talk about Cuba. - Yeah, I was just going to say, Rubio's liberating South America. J.D. Vance is out there, you know, criticizing the war. Like, it really is Trump's war in a way that, again, with-- in '06, with Iraq, you had Condi and Rumsfeld and Powell, and they all were kind of knifing each other back. - Yes. - But, like, they all watched-- - Yeah. - Wanted their hands on Iraq, and their complaint was, "The other guys are messing it up here." - Yes. - It's like, Hegseth's like, we're boosting the war riders and rubio's talking cuba and you know what's going on there was this interesting uh time magazine did a cover this week uh with the president obviously there was an interesting long form you know they ran the full transcript of the interview which i really appreciate whenever an entity does that um there were some bangers in there from the president as they as there always are uh the last line in the interview is i don't know what the hell's going on which is summation well he's talking he's talking about the media in the context but i but i one of the things that really came through was how much he cares about his legacy and how much he cares about being known as a builder and he you know focusing on building in the white house we we know these different things do you think that the attitude that he has essentially is people should stop whining about the war and they should start paying attention to all this good stuff that i'm doing because he clearly is very proud of the stuff he's yeah well i think he's been very clear about what his attitude is and i'd actually argue that jd vance pete hagseth marco rubio have all been very much on the same page with him is that the president says the war in iran is ongoing we're going to suffer a little more the gas prices aren't going to come down yet but we're going to get to the point we need to and it won't be before the midterms it might be after and he literally said yesterday if we find out that this terrorist attack that took place on this plane from dubai had anything to do with iran that he's going to pummel iran hard now jd vance maybe he doesn't like the war in iran the way that the president does in fact we know he doesn't but he's still out there echoing the president's talking points pete hagseth is literally leading this war he is the secretary of war marco rubio will say all the same things that the president and the vice president are saying so i'd say they're unified in their approach to the war i'd say they all have their fingerprints all over it they're all going to have to answer for it eventually but i don't think the president is too worried about it because he's looking bigger picture than just you think that lasts after the midterms i think it's bigger picture than the midterms and i think that's why he's not so anxious because uh look we don't know what's going to happen we have an aircraft carrier going out there with many more of our troops we have i want to say 50 000 troops out there already um we can't predict what's going to happen after the midterms but trump is not the kind of person to just posture needlessly and i think to to scoff at him and say since his whole administration since his entire part of his record is posturing endlessly no matter what and i'll give him that that the man's bravado is you know up there however it is not translating now like it used to it used to actually benefit him to be that way it doesn't when americans can't afford to live well i mean you're forgetting to look back even i'm not forgetting people's personal economic situations and neither should the president of the united states i mean he went into venezuela and kidnapped a dictator and has him sitting in jail and great but that has not put that hasn't put food on the table that's just one example of the many things that he has done successfully and positively oh in the last six months so i think you know on the war in iran yeah there's a lot of things to criticize there's a lot of uh i think americans sentiment would be much more with him he said america is at the last among that list of of obligations for him at this point americans are saying what about us they don't care that you kidnapped the president of venezuela they don't they don't care they did care a lot what about our gas prices truck drivers are crying about diesel farmers can't you know they can't tend the land you're seeing more and more americans who are suffering in places that are traditionally more red who are literally making videos every single day about how they voted for trump all three times he voted for him he voted for him three times he voted for him he voted for him he ran i think they're not saying they're not saying they're not saying they're going to vote again yeah they're saying most of the time they're going to stay home well i think they're not going to help well i think i think that one there are two things that i think uh can be true here one can be this administration is showing a lot of loyalty to each other that not that did not occur in the first trump administration and has not occurred in prior commendable especially but i would point out that people who are breaking from that message are the people who are actually running in these competitive races mike rogers breaking away on iran in michigan i mean stunner there in terms of the way that he's messaging this you know and you mentioned you know the farmer situation there's a reason that iowa is a place that people are actually spending money from the republican side this time which is not something that they should necessarily have to do so i think that part of this is you know they're going to be some new people here in washington after the election including some new republicans i'm wondering what their attitude is going to be toward the iran situation as they come in because i don't think this is going to be over before they get sworn in in january well but think about some of the i just saw this washington post story some of these democrats who are toning down their radical stances on transgenderism or abortion for example um candidates who formerly said they supported child gender transitions or they supported unrestricted abortion who are now toning it down because they understand that it's not going to get them elected they've got these far left groups that are furious with them and privately they're saying don't worry once we get back in office um we will be good we will be on wonderful terms again but they know they have to do it to get elected and i think you're seeing a little bit of that all over the country depending on the state well i i mean i don't disagree with that but i i just think that what we're going to see is going to be interesting because again in a typical administration there would be consequences and i don't know what that's going to look like just given the fact that this administration seems to behave so differently uh and and has i think fewer people at each other's throats you know do the knives come out do people start to try to you know say hey this was his fault i don't know but i think that it's something that we have to do and i think that's going to be interesting you know considering going this is also i mean it's the first midterm in what 12 years that we've really had a clear vice presidential heir apparent who a and b who has a markedly different position on a major issue than the president he's looking to succeed right i mean by in 2014 biden was pretty much off the table and then it's been the mess of the past 10 years where it's trump and you know whatever so i think to your point then those new republicans who are coming to town who are moving forward are going to be the ones who are going to be the ones who are going to be the moving away on the campaign trail are also probably thinking well i get there and it's basically just one more year of the trump administration in a meaningful sense i mean it's going and then it's going to be and then it's going to be the vance campaign and the vance campaign is going to i would expect attempt to distance itself from the war go back to that america first rhetoric now i don't necessarily know how he does that i don't know how he pulls that off but i can i can't see a universal which jd vance runs for president on we are going to continue the war right right he's not able to dig the hole deeper when it comes to the war in iran because he never supported to begin with he's been labeled as the czar i mean trump gave him that which is interesting in and of itself but he has not full-throatedly gone out and changed his previous stances we know that he was against it he's not out here you know uh that to a point you made earlier like i do think that there's an interesting uh there's an interesting uh thread he has to weave here because he can't go full throttle against the administration he is the vp but on that same token he recognizes that his legacy goes beyond president trump's so if he is going to have to stand he's going to have to take that stance because the war is not getting any better the american public stance is not going to change they're not all of a sudden the next few months six months seven months going to cheer on the war in iran that is just not going to happen jesus will be back on and i think on the on the vance point he i don't see him ever saying donald trump was wrong on this no i see him saying we were that administration because he's not the kind of politician that would you know throw trump under the bus and then pretend like he wasn't there all of us know he's there he's on the record supporting the war supporting the president as a good vice president i think what we might see from him is him saying all right we tried this it didn't work what else can we try how can we finagle this and that's kind of the the approach he takes to a lot of politics i mean the vice president will say like look i'm one of you i grew up in mid middletown ohio you know i suffered in this this um dysfunctional family i see where you're all coming from from my pov here's why we're doing this and he's gotten really good at explaining things that way maybe not to the satisfaction of his critics or even people in the republican party but he's gotten really good at explaining things that way maybe not to the satisfaction of his critics or even people in the republican party but that's how he approaches it so i don't see him or any republicans for that matter saying oh we're done with donald trump he's gone now this is a new era i think he's going to try to find a way out he's going to try to find a way out i think he'll try and find a way to finish it and he also is a veteran too i mean he's a he's a uh they say once a marine always marine but he was marine so i think i think that one of the things that's going to be an interesting question as well coming out of this is we saw in the time interview how proud the president is and he called it the most difficult thing that he's fighting on deportations, fighting on delivering on the immigration promises that he made. And of course, the ICE issue is something that has turned into a difficult issue for Republicans to navigate as well, partially because they've seen a backlash from Hispanic communities, particularly in states like Texas, that have come to resent a lot of what they view as overkill within this space, even though that's what, frankly, the Republican voters who elected Donald Trump demanded. We've seen a handful of people break on this, but certainly they're trying to massage their rhetoric. One of the things that I wonder about is what post-midterm there is going to be in terms of the reaction to how the immigration issue played, particularly given that some of the places where Republicans are likeliest to underperform or not see the kind of vote come out that they were relying on in this new coalition have this as one of their issues. Republicans are still overwhelmingly, it's one of their top trusted issues in terms of immigration, crime, all that kind of stuff. But the problem is that for them, they're running an election where that's like the ninth or tenth issue in terms of the things that people care about. Tim, you said Mark Wayne could be somebody that gets the shaft over this. Should we be thinking about this differently? Maybe it's not going to be Iran that there's consequences for. Maybe it's that. Maybe. And I really want to see, that is something that I do think we're going to see what happens in the next two to four months will change things kind of not irreparably. irrevocably, but more, you know, that can move faster, right? That there can be a change from inside DHS that can make things better or worse in the eyes of the public, in the eyes of the president. Mullen has been, I'm very interested in his tenure so far. He's, again, been a little bit behind the scenes, not really talking that much, some sort of, a lot of verbal directives, a lot of, oh, you know, stories of he's telling people to pull back. No, actually he isn't. Tom Homan's back in the mix. He's a very, you know, targeted kind of laser focused sort of guy. So I don't know. And this is where it's interesting, right? Is I think I understand where Mullen is coming from, right? Not trying to, learning from the mistakes of his predecessor, Kristi Noem, who loved the camera, trying to stay away from the camera, trying to focus on the actual deportations. But is that placating Democrats? Probably not. Is it annoying the base? Because at this point, do they think that the deportation effort is only moving forward if they can see it? I think maybe so. Is the president thinking that way? I think there's a strong possibility of that. So, and again, to your point, Ben, the fact that it also moved kind of down the ranks in the headlines and in just sort of the public ranking of issues also, I think isn't doing Mullen any favors because if we were all talking about it all the time, he would have more logical opportunities to say, well, this is what I'm doing and why I'm doing it that way. But instead it's like a couple of days go by, you forget about immigration. What's DHS been doing? Doesn't seem like much. The Rene Good and Alex Pretty cases that are going to be filed against the federal government, one is already happening. That's those lawsuits shake down. In addition to that, the more Americans themselves that are being detained, that are being injured, up to and including death, the families, and not in terms of family separations that happened under the Obama administration as well, several families got separated. But this is a little bit different because we're also watching- Yeah, we had the kids in cages under Obama, right? There were kids in cages under both of them. I didn't support kids in cages under Obama either. However, the numbers that this president has promised he cannot get to without extreme extrajudicial action. He just can't. Those numbers are so high that they're going to be people who are everyday American citizens, who just may be a Latino, who just may be Black, not Haitian, just Black, or Haitian American, born and raised in this country, who are going to have detrimental effects because of this. And because they are looking at people based on skin color, sometimes based on accent, and that is how they are making their determining decisions, that is going to get them- I know Mary Margaret wants to respond to that, but before we move off of this from the Democratic perspective, Amisha, one of the big lessons that I felt like came out of this most recent presidential election, and I heard a lot of Democrats in the immediate reaction to it, basically say, "We can't be successful as Democrats if we're not in favor of a strong border." That was the main number one lesson that they took, was Biden's border policy totally screwed us. It made us the agents of chaos. People hated it. We imported all these people. It's bad. Gavin Newsom said some things. A bunch of other prominent Democrat politicians basically said, "Okay, the border issue, we're setting that aside. We are not going to be soft on that." I feel like it's back with a vengeance. I feel like now all these Democrats are like, "Yeah, no, it wasn't really that bad. We can be soft on this issue." Yeah, they are. I think that's true about the border. To give President Trump his due, he did drastically decrease the crisis at the border. Where he went wrong was continuing into multiple neighborhoods. I was not finished yet. He did, and he could have taken his rise in the sun, hit his hand, clap, whatever he wanted to do on that. He did that, point positive, great for him. When he started descending upon communities, and the apartment building I used to live in Chicago was one of the ones that got hit in his first overreach. When they did the zip lines and they tied people up and they put Black people in the back of one band and Latinos in the back of the other one, that building had 80% American citizens in it. Yes, there were Black and brown people living together because that's Chicago. Many of those people were born and raised right here in this country. They zip-tied kids in the middle of the night. It was 2:00 AM when that happened. I think that when you see something like that in communities, people are like, people are going to screen file, and they screen file because they should. Now, you're talking about the border crisis because there was one. We all saw the caravans. We saw the people who were moved to places like Chicago, to Martha's Vineyard for some ungodly reason, and several other cities. New York saw them as well. DC got a few of them. There was major pushback from the mayors of those cities, all of them Democratic mayors, because it overwhelmed the system. I do think that when it came to the border, those issues needed to be taken care of. Again, kudos to Trump on that. When he decided that he was going to continue into communities, scare the hell out of people, have ICE agents run up in daycare centers, have them at stops where people are picking up their young people from school, those are particular problems that push the American people in a different direction. If he had stayed at the border, nobody would have said anything. The rest of this, if you want to talk about path to citizenship, if you want to talk about immigration reform, that can be handled in Congress. We've seen the can kick down the road, administration after administration after administration, but you're not going to be able to do a quick fix by just putting ICE agents in masks in our communities. That is something that's going to have to have to handle at the federal level. It's not going to be quick. I would argue it's not going to even be in this administration, but I will give him the border. Well, I think you're skipping a really important part in this conversation in that the reason the ICE agents are in our communities is because we have illegal criminals in our communities who are raping women, who are raping young girls. There was one woman who told the story to all the reporters in the White House briefing room of how this illegal immigrant scratched her daughter's body all over a stone wall in a cave to the point where there was brain matter and blood all over this cave. After he raped her daughter on a Maryland trail like an hour from the cases where that and I'm actually not done yet. Well, those are very slim. Absolutely. In Fairfax right now, 50%, 60% of the 10 murders this year were illegal immigrants. That is how bad it is in our communities. And I, for one, as someone who runs as a woman, do I want to worry about running in the D.C. area and getting my brain smashed out by an illegal immigrant? Hell no. So I think the fact that an American citizen in this. All right. Well, if you want to have that view of it, that's fine. But on your. Run next time, I want you to think about Lake and Riley. I want you to think about all these other girls who have been brutally murdered by illegal immigrants. And that is why we have ice in our communities, because they're looking for these illegal criminals. And absolutely, they should be doing this, because how scary is it that in the United States of America, you or your family could be brutally murdered in this way by someone that's not even supposed to be here in the first place? On those running trails by American citizens, the average person, unfortunately, who was murdered in this country is murdered by someone, one who comes from their community. Two is somebody who is American citizen. Those are national. So you want to say to Lake and Riley's mother, I'm not saying that actually that. This isn't about the lake. I say an average. It is about this is a good this shows the kind of the pressure points of immigration as an issue for both parties. Right. Because to your point, Amisha, for the president, the president really does stick to his plan. And to get to that level, it is going to involve going beyond securing the border. It's going to involve going into communities. There are, I would say, you know, reasons. For that. But right. This is any time you see a federal agent in a community, it is going to make people feel some kind of way. Maybe even people who did vote for this and support it. Right. It's sort of the inverse of what I was saying at the top of the show with the technology. Right. The quickest way to get somebody to did not support a government policy they once supported is to have it, see it up close and see maybe, oh, you know, I don't like that. I don't like the impact. So at what point is it prudent for Republicans to pull back? Should they make this try to go back to making it about the border and not about deportation? Well, they can't do that. Or do they just have to go through? Yeah, do they have to go through? Voters won't let them do that because their voters want these deportations. Right. So the only way out is through. Well, but I also think that one of the things that has really hurt Democrats on this, I think, is the the level of institutional support that existed overwhelmingly coming from the Soros family for these prosecutors across the country who have enabled so much of this. Right now, you mentioned Fairfax County. Right now, you have, you know, a controversial, you know, attorney there, Steve Descano, who has led to all of these different releases, including ones where literally the next day the person commits murder of illegals that ICE has been, you know, trying to to catch once they once they are arrested for other things. And he is currently facing a primary challenge from a woman in the you know, in the Democratic Party who is getting a ton of financial support from other people, meaning the non Soros faction basically coming in and saying this is an this is an embarrassment. We can't have this guy continuing to do it. To a certain extent, I think that the problem that Republicans have, though, is that there is a massive portion of their voter base that really does want to see this happen and does not care about the negative consequences when it comes to media reaction or when it comes to immigrant community reaction or anything along those lines. And I don't know how that is navigated by, you know, I know how the president's navigating it. I know how the administration is navigating it. I know how the president's navigating it. I know how the administration is trying to navigate it. But when it comes to normie Republican running in normie district, you know, this midterm, I don't know how you respond to those types of questions. I mean, it's a good question. I think the thing they've struggled with the most is explaining why they would deport people who are merely here illegally, which Caroline Leavitt, the president, have all talked about how they are criminals if they're in our country illegally. They did break our laws, but that is what they campaigned on. And I think our colleague Jenny Tehr had this great scoop about a week ago where she broke that there was a directive saying stop deporting people who are merely here illegally. Obviously, the White House walked that back. There was a lot of drama all week about it. CNN had a big story earlier this week where they tried to say that Trump was really angry with Mullen. White House told me that he's not. I do think Mullen is on the chopping block over this. I do think if the midterms go badly and there's a reason to pin the blame on immigration, it could be Mullen that heads out the door next. But like you guys said, he's laying low. He's not doing that much media. He's being careful. So so if we if we can kind of put these different things together, We have, in this midterm election, we have a number of different issues that are not necessarily playing the way that we thought they all would a year ago. You know, a year ago, the Iran war wasn't happening, obviously. Gas prices were, you know, certainly much lower. The affordability question was still a question, but it was also something that was, you know, the price of eggs was cheap, you know, that kind of thing. And they are still cheap. But the point is that that is something that we didn't anticipate. We didn't anticipate that AI controversy would be something that within this, within both parties, but because it's the Republicans in charge, that it would play in the way that it has. And I don't think that we anticipated that the immigration issue could become a heavy enough drag that it would hurt Republicans in Hispanic districts or districts that have sort of an outsized population that is aware of this. Of those three things, which do you think is going to get the most blame after this midterm from Republicans in Washington about that's the reason that we lost? Well, you're presuming immigration, AI, and you can, you can dispute that they're going to lose. I'm very emphatically. I mean, look, we can't always predict in the past polls have proven wrong. I, I'm happy to say, look, we don't know which way these midterms are going to go. If we're going to point blame, if we're going to point fingers afterwards, it will be the war in Iran. That's, that's very easy, very easy thing to pin the blame on. And I think across the board, um, that's what Americans will view it as. I think that's what Republicans will view it as as well. I don't think it will be immigration. It's just too close an issue to the president's heart. And it's too close an issue to all of the, the, these Republicans that have messaged on it so adamantly. And like you said, it is what Republicans want. I think maybe it's affordability, but like affordability as an outgrowth of Iran, not to, not to like, not to do the thing where I cheat at the question, but I, I think it's very hard to separate those two things. I think it's very hard to separate those two things. And I think that to the extent that people talk about it when they're talking about the blame, it's going to be couched in terms of, yeah, because what you're basically saying is if Iran was, if everything was happening the same way in Iran and gas still cost under $3 that you would not. Yeah. I think I agree with that a hundred percent. I would say it's going to be Iran, but it's going to be Iran because of costs. Um, and you know, we've seen some of the other changes, uh, obviously they're the segment of people who care about immigration or still the segment of people who care about immigration. I don't think that that is going to flip the needle in either way. We still see people who care about immigration at least on the left who are trying to peel people off to come to these no Kings rallies that a lot of folks are tired of at this point. It's more so pocketbook issues and they're driving their pocketbook. What's your confidence level as a Democrat? Uh, what's your confidence level about your capacity to take the Senate today? Oh God. How's it definitely the Senate. The Senate is a much taller peak because, uh, in my estimation, if you get Michigan, you don't get Texas and vice versa. I don't, yeah, I don't, I don't think that Democrats win vote. Isn't it funny that only a few years ago we would be talking about abortion and immigration. Those be the biggest issues that anyone cared about at all. Yes. Well, I, I, I think you're, I think you're right. I do think it's going to be interesting the impact that this has on the conversation because I think if Republicans are able to hold the Senate, I think that means that most people's jobs are safe. I think that the, I think that the, the, the real, the real issue here is that like, you know, if they lose the Senate, somebody, somebody has to take the blame. You never have something like that. You never have something like that, that, that, uh, that goes on in Washington without someone, uh, getting the ax. Can you say more about, because I, I, I agree that I think that it's going to be Republicans and Democrats each take one of Michigan and Texas, but I hadn't thought about it as like causal like that. Why do you think it's only going to be one? For a couple of reasons. Um, El-Sayed has a lot to overcome in, in Michigan in particular, um, not only in terms of religion, but also in terms of the, he's doing a lot of work in the black community, but there's a lot more work that he has to do. We know that they are significantly, and that I don't know if you are able to catch that up within the timeframe that he has. And that was also where he lagged. If I, if I recall, when it came to the primary vote. Exactly. And to be fair, even in Michigan, Kamala, you know, obviously failed as well. So it's not that Michiganders are just going to come out and vote. Black Michiganders are going to come out and vote just because the candidate is black. We've seen that downplay as well. So I, I am a little flummoxed as to why that campaign happened together, because again, she didn't do that well. Black people in the same area. Um, but that's going to be extremely hard for him. Tallarico is actually now pulling better amongst black people than, uh, we see LCI doing in Michigan. Uh, I do think that both of those races are going to be tight, but for different reasons. I'm glad you brought up Tallarico cause I, I need to get these guys take on it. How do you think he's going to do? I think he, I think Tallarico loses. I think it's very close, but I think, I think Paxton pulls it off. And I think LCI Edwin's in Michigan. That's my, that's my take on the president. And I think he's going to be in Michigan again out there, nagging Ken Paxton in this week. The nagging is going to continue as long as Ken Paxton keeps going every weekend to a college football game where he does not campaign. But Paxton, but Paxton's punching back. He said that the RNC was a disaster. Yes. He's now- Yeah. Well, I don't think that was an intentional punch back. And he also said, also, he said his numbers went down after that. I don't think the RNC was the reason that, I mean, is it like, you know, I don't think that was the reason. I don't think she was either. Yeah. The RNCs have chosen a very, very bad cycle to roll the dice on Texas with this guy. I think, I think that Tim, you're probably right. He probably does pull it out. So in that case, it would be pour one out for Mike Rogers if Amisha turns out. All right. Well, we're going to have to leave it there. You've been watching the District Club. We'll be back with you next week. See you next time.