Michael Steele: A Total and Complete Schlonging

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You can return it for free if you don't like it with their sleep trial. That's www.sleep.me slash bulwark. The headlines will still be there in the morning. You might as well wake up ready for them. Hey, it's Mario Lopez from the All Mario Lopez Daily Podcast. All right. Quick question. You ever notice how some cars just steal the spotlight? Well, that's the 2026 Toyota RAV4. It's got bold standout style, intuitive tech inside, and now hybrid power standard, which means efficiency without the need to plug in. So whether you care about looks, smarts, or just everyday practicality, RAV4 brings all of it. If you've been holding out for the right SUV, this is your sign. Check out the 2026 Toyota RAV4 at your local Toyota dealer or visit toyota.com. See packages and options at toyota.com for feature availability. And if you're interested in buying a Toyota RAV4, check out the link in the description. If you're interested in buying a Toyota RAV4, check out the link in the description. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It's going to be a fun one today. We're welcoming back to the show co-host of MS Now's The Weeknight, Also former chair of the RNC and was lieutenant governor of Maryland. It's Michael Steele. What's up, Chairman? What up, what up? Hey, man. How you doing? Looking good, baby. I'm looking good. I'm feeling good. I got a skip in my step. Me and Bill Kristol just have been so aligned all year, though. I guess, I mean, he was the one that thought we could win Mississippi, so he's been a little ahead of me, but we've been mostly aligned all year, which is nice if you have synergy. And once again, we're aligned this morning. He opens up his newsletter like this, and this is exactly how I've been feeling this week. So by saying, you know, on Wednesday, I said we deserve one day of celebration. But as we get to Friday, I've decided we need more than one day of celebration. We can get back to work soon enough. There'll be no shortage of struggles and challenges and difficulties. There'll come a time very soon to think and worry and argue. But how often do we get to celebrate something like what the American people accomplished on Tuesday? The breadth and depth of the popular repudiation of Trump and Trumpism deserves more than a mere 24 hours. From Mississippi Delta to the Alaskan tundra, from the Outer Banks to the Great Plains, a kind of iron curtain has been lifted from across our continent. A feeling of dread has given way to a sense of possibility. That's where I'm at, baby. Who cares about January? I'm living in the moment for this week. Will you do that with me? I think we savor it, dude. I think we do. The faith in the American people, especially after 2024, when they went back to crazy, to put it rather frankly, 10 million people decided it wasn't worth their vote to go to the polls and stay at home. They roused themselves out of out of the Trump stupor and they they looked at their lives. They recounted the promises made, the promises not kept. They realized that their their sense of the American dream had been forfeited for their children and they wanted change. And, you know, look, I think the last time you and I can really say we've seen this kind of epic change, you know, you're really talking about three distinct periods. You know, the 2006, 2010 period, 1994, and certainly going back to the Reagan shift where the ground moved in 1980, those type of epic moments where the country kind of leans in, you have to pay attention. But to Bill's point, you also have to take a moment and go salute, baby, salute, you know, because it really it really said a lot about the potential here. Democrats are, I think, in a much better position than we were in 2010, after the 2010 cycle, where we saw massive pickup of state legislative races, state houses, governorships, and Congress. And the big driver here is they've laid down some really strong policy predicates on accountability, for sure, but affordability, the ability to, you know, work together to bring prices down for families across the country. So I think it's going to be exciting for them. If they aren't true to form and screw it up, they should be putting themselves, I think, in a good position to go forward at least well into 27. I think you kind of understated the feeling after 2024 a little bit. I think that there was a deep doubt that the American people could ever arise from the slumber. Fair point. A lot of us were looking around and going, well, shit. Maybe our neighbors aren't exactly what we thought they were. Maybe there was something about that. I need to change my neighborhood. Yeah, exactly. Maybe there was something about the character of the country that was permanently broken. And so to me, I just think that is the big relief and also the thing to celebrate, right? Like this notion that, you know, even in 2020, after the Biden win, I was sad the week after the Biden win. Like I was happy he won, but I spent most of the week sad because it was not a repudiation of Trump. Like it was an eked out victory and we knew that there was a fight ahead. And this feels meaningfully different from that. Just a total, absolute schlonging, as the president would like to say. And it will be a long time ahead, kind of like one of them, the Irish wake or the Jewish funeral. It's going to be a long funeral. It's going to be a long one. Yeah, but it's starting ahead. you know, it's been 10 years. And I don't know, have you had a chance to kind of think about that this week? Just kind of the 10 years? Yeah, no, I think about it all the time. I think about my party, you know, basically desiccating itself and, you know, sitting there wondering how it happened and why it happened and not fully understanding earlier on that the man that they follow has no allegiance, loyalty, has no desire to be with them or want them the way they think he does. They're a tool for him. They always have been. And so you see this sense of confusion. That's part one. The other part though, which I'm, this is going to be very hard because i i'm that son of a bitch you're not gonna come up in my face down and pretend like this shit didn't happen and you had no role to play in it so all you republicans who now sitting there coming out talking about oh yeah it was the war and and we should have done this and we should have done that and you know we should have had better you know candidate quality matters bitch shut the fuck up i don't want to hear that shit from you please don't get up in my face saying that don't please don't even pretend because you will get called out in a very embarrassing right way just just know that because i'm not i'm not in the mood after this win to countenance your bullshit and try to gloss over my eyes what you did for the last 10 years to put the party and the nation in this position in the first place. So don't even, all you soft ass bitches out there who were sitting back and wouldn't come to the microphone and say, Donald Trump, this war is illegal. I will not stand with it. I will vote for the War Powers Resolution. All you soft bitches who got out there And said, oh, Pete Hex says we'll make a great secretary of defense. Oh, Kash Patel. Oh, my God. The FBI will never be the same. Well, you got that shit right. Don't even don't even come up in my face with that Joss crap. Don't even do it because there is no room for that. And so these two pieces for me, how how the party starts to reconcile itself with the country and all the little, you know, running those bitches who who allow this to happen, who are going to be trying to to clean their act up to think they're going to run for president in 28. And that we're just going to put the last 10 years behind us and blindly say, Marco Rubio, you had no role in this war. Marco Rubio, you had no role in in the breakup. Of our European alliance or Ron DeSantis, you had no role in in in what happened, not just in your state, but around the country with this cultural war bullshit. Don't even pretend, people, please. Well, you're going to make my job easy this morning, which is nice. You got a lot to say. I love how I brought up feelings. What are your feelings about the last 10 years? And you could go anywhere with that. Like for me, I've got glee. There's a little bit of wistfulness. I got a little teary with Adam Hamilton yesterday. I'm thinking about our immigrant neighbors. Michael Steele's response is righteous rage and double middle finger. That's the feeling that came up for you. Double middle finger. And I like that. There's a part of me that's there as well. We're going to come back to the double middle finger. I promise. But I want to give people a little bit of just kind of get us up to speed of where we are in some of the election stuff. So Mississippi, as things stand right now, Scott Colom is leading by about a little over 1,800 votes. He flipped Forrest County. Named for Nathan Bedford Forrest. That's kind of nice. That's very nice. That's a nice little fact. Cindy Hyde-Smith posted yesterday in the third person that Cindy Hyde-Smith is going to represent Mississippi in the United States Senate for the next six years. Based on all the data nerds I've talked to in Mississippi and around the country, I think Cindy Hyde-Smith is going to be representing the Biloxi slot machine for the next six years, actually. I think she's just going to be sitting there with her toe firky, pulling the slot. Because she's going down. And that will make for 55. And Mary Paltola is looking pretty good for 56. But any thoughts on Mississippi? You know, I have to give shout out props to Bill, our friend Bill, and my colleague, Simone Sanders-Townsend, who on our show about two and a half, three months ago, raised the first prospects of what could happen in Mississippi. And, you know, I had a year ago on our show. Said that Republicans would lose the Senate and everyone thought I was out of my mind. But I said to people, then I said, I know my peeps. You're following Donald Trump. This does not end well for Republicans in the Senate because they're going to be baggaged with a whole lot of stuff they can't carry. And that proved to be true. Mississippi, you know, Chuck Schumer very early on and looked at Mississippi and really had a hand in sort of shaping that race in a lot of respects. So, you know, credit to him for seeing something there that people didn't see at the time. And so it takes that kind of, I think, intuitiveness when you're looking at certain races. I know this from 2010. I got into a lot of fights with official Washington because they didn't want me to invest in places because they didn't think people were going to win. I'm like, no, they're going to be good. And so that that's how you get to a Mississippi. Yeah. Taking that political risk. The same is true in Alaska. In Alaska, candidate quality matters. Investment in that candidate matters. It's not just what they say to connect with the people. It's all the infrastructure behind them to support that message and to support them. And the Democrats were very good about this. I've been bullish on Texas, Tim, since the year 2000. Since 2000? 2000. My first trip to Texas as a party chairman. I was state. Party chairman. I went down there for some stuff and I just I just talked to people then and saw some things going on over the next few years that reinforced in my mind that Texas was a place to watch. And, you know, a lot of the work that I do with the national popular vote, folks, I've been saying Texas is going to be a battleground state for the last five years. And here we are. I declared it the other night. It's going to be it's now with the governorship and the Senate. And in the statehouse races that they've won, it's in play. So all of these dynamics sort of inform us about Mississippi. Yeah. And they inform us about Michigan. I think we should take the plank out of our eye when it comes to Mississippi, because I think a lot of people got caught up in the racism and they didn't look at the facts on the ground and they didn't listen to what the people on the ground were saying. And they certainly the response to that horrible ad afterwards also was I think it was very telling in so many ways. So there are a lot of pieces that when you sort of look at the totality of this election, you begin to understand why Mississippi is happening. I want to hit on two things you just talked about, because I'm glad you mentioned the national popular vote, because I've been wanting to bring this up all week. It's just a little side fact, because. Though tsunami was so large that, you know, at the state legislative level, we're talking about this in the green room a little bit. You know, there are a bunch of surprises. Like I was in North Carolina, for example, a couple weeks before the election. And even in the bull case, I was talking to some guy that consults for the statehouse. He was like, right, maybe we can get to a tie. Like, maybe we can get down one. And the state house now is like going to have a huge Democratic majority in North Carolina. Right. So a bunch of that stuff happened in a bunch of places. And just an interesting, fun fact. So for you to understand. There's this thing called the compact. And the deal with the compact is that if enough states that add up to over 270 electoral votes put into law, you know, that they will give their electors to the winner of the national popular vote instead of the winner of their state. That is kind of a functional workaround of the electoral college. And you would have a functional national popular vote. Functionally, a direct election of the president. Exactly. And that for the first time ever. That. The Democrats now control enough states to do that. Yes, we are. We are 22 electoral votes away from 270 right now. But yeah, but I think with the results this week, I think you might have passed them. Yeah, we may have passed them. And, you know, we'll see. There's still a lot of work to do in this space. But I think the reality of it is 2028 could be the first time that people directly elect the president United States. We know there will be lawsuits and all of this. But this has been constitutionally tested. It's black letter. It's the law of the Constitution. The power rests with the states. The compact, so folks understand, is the exact same type of compact that states enter into on the lottery where they agree that the winner of the lottery in Louisiana gets to benefit from the money that I in Maryland put into Powerball. Right. And if I win your money from Louisiana comes to me. Same thing here. States agree. OK. OK. We will focus. We'll put our money into the electoral bucket. I mean, our electoral votes into the electoral bucket. And whoever wins the national poppy vote gets the votes in the bucket, regardless of who wins our state. And so that's the compact. And so it's a way that transform how you run for president, because now you can't play to the extremes. I need California as a Republican. I may not win the state, but I can I can mine five, six million votes out of California. California, which will add to my national popular vote total. So now I've got to go campaign in California. I got to raise money there. I am a Democrat. I got to go to Alabama and Mississippi and try to raise money and dollars and votes there. So it transforms the process. There'll be more conversation about this. But I just want to put on the table straight up so people don't get confused. This does not eliminate the Electoral College. I've listened to a number of people the last 24 hours. On the news, talk about in some headlines, you know, this could, you know, eliminate the Electoral College. It does not. That's bullshit. It does not. It uses the Electoral College structure. The only thing is, is the compact of the states that are part of the Electoral College that agree. Maryland's 10 electoral votes are in the bucket. We were the first state to go in and 20 years ago. And so those are in the bucket. So if a Republican wins the national popular vote. If a Republican wins the national popular vote, they get Maryland's 10 electoral votes, even though they may lose the election here in Maryland. It's an interesting thing. We'll keep monitoring it. It is related to what you also said about Blexus. And you kind of went viral on MSNOW, doing a version of what you just said, talking about how you think Texas is really in play in 2028. So if the compact doesn't come through and we're still in Electoral College mode in 2028, Texas. Still is a battleground state. Becomes a battleground state. And I think it has to for this reason. Yesterday, Rob Flaherty and I were talking about this a little bit, and he was a little skeptical because of how much it costs. But the reward is so great for Democrats, I think you end up having to play. Because if they win Texas, you basically lock the Republican. out, right? Can I just make that point for you real quick? Please. To be clear, to be clear, America. So y'all know if Texas is a battleground state and the Republicans don't win it, there's no math. There's no math. There's no math that gets them the presidency. They can win Ohio. They can win Michigan. They can win Florida. All those big popular battleground states, they can win them. Democrats start with 40. They add California. It's game, set, match, baby. It does not change. Yeah. Care about privacy? Get yourself to www.joindeleteme.com and let me tell you why. Your digital footprint, it's bigger than you think. It's much bigger than Donald Trump's footprint. Between the social media usage, the apps, the texts, online shopping. Just think about the amount of places. That you've given your personal information. Well, your privacy is worth protecting. And any one of those places, new AI bot swarms could go in there, break it out, jailbreak of your info. So sign up for Delete Me. 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The only way to get 20% off is to go to www.joindeleteme.com slash bulwark and enter code bulwark at checkout. That's www.joindeleteme.com slash bulwark code bulwark. Tallarico beat Ken Paxton by so much that if not a single person showed up to vote for him on election day, he still would have won. The early vote for Tallarico was greater than the total vote for Ken Paxton. Totally insane. Okay. And you know, it's a 12 point victory. Hinojosa wins by seven. Ted Cruz is the only statewide elected Republican in all of Texas. So like there's the positive and, you know, some of this stuff seems very durable. The Rio Grande Valley, you know, that feels like it really was a short blip for Trump. And it was a response to the border being out of control with Biden and some other factors. And that it's hard to imagine that going back at any time soon, maybe who the hell knows what the future holds. So that's durable. A bunch of the, you know, the Dallas sprawl, becoming Democrat, like that's the same thing that happened in other cities. It just happened a little later because it was Texas, you know what I mean? So there's no reason to believe that that isn't. Right, right. That there's kind of this suburban, exurban sprawl around Dallas and Houston wouldn't stay as Democratic. So to me, I think it's a real possibility. The one thing, the one flag that's worth noting is it was a turnout story in Texas. There was about a million fewer people that turned out, a little over a million than in 2024. And I think a lot of those were Trump voters. These guys at Broom Street Labs, I was looking at their analysis. The Democrats' net gain, it's a little over a million than in 2024. About 75% of it was from Republicans not showing up, was from turnout. You know, it was different state to state, but you know, seven, eight, 9% of Trump voters did sweat. Like there was some persuasion too, but a big part of it was not turning out. And so you do worry that in a presidential year, those folks come back, depends on who the candidates are, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, I mean, obviously it would be still a big uphill battle for the Democrats, but you know, that's kind of the state of play in Texas. I don't know if you have anything to add to that. Yeah, no, I think that makes, I think that makes a lot of sense. So let's start with the last point first. What that says to me is if I am the chairman of the Democratic party of the state of Texas, I am working with the chairman of the national party, Ken Martin, to build an infrastructure in Texas off of the good vibes, the good feelings, the narratives, the messaging, the history, all of that, to lock as much of that vote as I can, but also to grow the vote. There are a lot of people who still need to be registered, who still need to be organized, who now watch this storyline unfold, and they can be a part of what comes next. So creating that interest. Now, a lot of that's going to hinge on two things, how Tallarico and, you know, Hossa are doing, how, particularly for the governor, particularly for the governor, the Senate is a different play for a whole lot of reasons because of national implications, but how people feel in the state about the, because they will project what they think about the Democrat party on how, you know, Hossa is doing. So if Gina's doing well, they're going to like Democrats. If they find their cost of living is a favorably impacted, they're going to like the Democrats. If they find their access to healthcare is favorably impacted, they're going to like Democrats. So there's an opportunity here to sort of create a little bit of a pincer around emotional, an emotional high and policy basics to bring voters a little bit closer and a little bit tighter, because you're absolutely right. When you have a million people on the other side who didn't show up in a presidential election, they're likely to do that, particularly if there's, you know, someone that excites them on the Republican side for president. So you want to begin to counterbalance that now, not 18 months from now. Yeah. To your first point, you know, I think that there is a lot of, and this is sort of broadening out on what I just said, a lot of other national implications that will drive storylines in Texas as well. Because at the end of the day, Texas is no different than any other state, even though they think they're outsized and they're bigger and they're better. It's a lot like New York. They have this sort of mind thing going on. I like to hang with folks like Louisiana and Maryland myself. But, you know, the reality of it is they, they, they're going to be, you know, global, global factors that are also going to drive. So the price of diesel and the price of gas that affects a state like Texas, imports, tariffs, all these other things, then that's where Telerico can begin to level up a different kind of voice than what we've heard from, certainly from the Republican leadership of the state. So I think Democrats are in a good position when it comes to Texas. But to your point, there are yellow flags, not red flags, there are yellow flags right now that they need to pay attention to, but not just in Texas, I would say nationally as well. Yeah. Because you, you don't want to forfeit this moment and momentum the way we forfeited it coming out of 2010, because by 2012, we started to lose a lot of the seats that we had gained in 2010. Yeah. I'll talk a little bit more 2010 in a second, but I do just want to do one more state update. And it's all green flags in this state. And that is Georgia. And we talked about John Ossoff's win. We talked about Keisha Lance Bottoms win. But I hadn't really locked in on what had happened. Yeah. And that's what happened down ballot. And it is insane. I would like to put this graphic up on the screen for YouTube viewers who can get a visual look at what happened to the statewide office holders in Georgia. I'm going to read it for the audio listeners. On the left here, you have a bunch of guys named Butch, a bunch of Republicans named Butch. It's all white guys that were all the statewide office holders. And now on the right side of the graphic, it's the new statewide office holders, Governor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Lieutenant Governor Josh McLaurin. Yeah. Secretary of State Penny Brown Reynolds, black woman. Attorney General Tanya Miller, black woman. State Superintendent of Schools Lydia Powell, black woman. Agriculture Commissioner Katherine Juhon Arnold, black woman. Insurance Commissioner Keisha Waits, black woman. Labor Commissioner Nikki Porcher, black woman. It's seven black women out of eight are the statewide office holders. There was always a thing in D.C. where it's like, the Republican caucus is a bunch of guys named Mike and Georgia. Now we got two Keishas. Two Keishas. Go figure. Go figure. Oh, my gosh. It's such a beautiful story out of Georgia when you consider the history of Georgia. The same in Mississippi when you consider the history of Mississippi. To have Black leadership emerge this way, particularly in an era where you have a president and a government that is trying to excise right out the history of Black people in this country. So, voters around the country gave us five Black governors. They gave us, in states like Georgia, Black leadership. We got Hispanic governors, a Hispanic governor in California, Hispanic leadership, and in Texas. Native American governor in North Mexico. Native. Oh, my gosh. I mean, that story there is just amazing when you consider the history of the country and sort of wiping out the Native American story the way we have now to have the first Native American governor is profoundly, profoundly important. Yeah. Deb Haaland in New Mexico. Yeah. yeah it's interesting i'm still monitoring one of the races that um you know i kind of had a bunch of these stretch house races that i was encouraging listeners to support and uh one of them was um uh that leader of the president of the navajo nation running against eli crane in arizona and this is a super big stretch his name's jonathan ness because you know this is a very safe our district but eli crane is such a douchebag i put it on the list anyway because i thought it'd be cool for him to win and we're in recount territory right now i got eli's still a slight favorite but it is possible that that he that he wins that race too so this this for me tim was america's uh middle finger on to the government on dei yeah i said oh you don't want okay all right deal with all these black and brown and and you know uh native american people who are now going to be leading significant swaths of the country not and not insignificant states on merit by the way merit you can't get more merited than just winning more votes you can't get more merited than just winning more merit than three quarters of this cabinet yeah that's for sure so you know i so i just think it's i think it was a profound moment on so many levels what the american people did the way they pushed back and we can say yeah a lot of it was you know affordability issues but there was also this thread about the country itself uh you and i have talked about this especially over the last six or so years uh about how this country is going to be able to move forward and how this country has to reconcile itself to its own history and how it has to come to grips with where it is we are a pluralistic society and culture and i'm sure you know there you know a whole lot of white folks are sitting there crying in their whatever they're crying in right now but that's okay boo we still love you you're still we we all here together where you going what are you going to do benny johnson was crying about how texas this has happened to texas because texas isn't white enough anymore and i was like you're talking about texas it's like it's like have you ever been to a chevy it's like texas you know the the cultural milieu of texas is not it's not the white we're not talking about north dakota right like from the start it's been like this but but that's that's a failure of our educational system because these mofos don't even know what how the country was created and what parts of it came from what other parts it is time to start holiday shopping and when in doubt i always go for cozy that's my gifting philosophy and quince bedding makes it easy the quality is exceptional and it's the kind of gift people actually use and they'll love for the holidays they'll keep bringing it up to you you know they think about you when you go to bed at night sometimes that could be a little creepy but most of the time that's nice so think about who you want thinking about you when they put their head on their pillow 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quince has other stuff too if you don't want bedding or sweater shirts mongolian cashmere fine jewelry leather bags chef grade cookware five-star luggage and more go check it out give the gift of quality this holiday season download the quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in canada and the uk too and when quince asks you where you heard about them let them know it was the bulwark daily that sent you it's the best way to support our show we're gonna take a little halftime break to laugh to point and laugh is that good is that for the show i prepared some clips for you it was it was shout out to our friends at decoding fox news ateo and rupa our bulwark clips team i i we just i did a little highlight reel for you this morning of fox news election night and uh it's gonna start with brit hume before the results come in and end with sorry it's gonna end with dana perino getting sad let's let's let's listen one of the questions we will get an answer to tonight i think is whether donald trump in his fervent effort to get out his voters um a will it be enough if it succeeds if it has succeeded which we'll find out i've been talking to some very very high up people inside the white house and they are not nervous yet because they haven't seen enough about texas it sounds like there is some frustration that georgia was such an early call for asaf over collins because one so easily in georgia but they think that things are pretty even and that we will know a lot more about whether or not things are going to turn away from uh their direction here at the white house you could argue that he might have saved some seats that we haven't even called you so i think the iran war was an issue but i don't think that there's any way that these democrats can end it brett you remember how do you end a war how do you try to end a war defund the troops and i'd love to see them try and i asked about that will not happen that couldn't happen the big news there is james talarico but also perhaps bigger as far as the impact in texas is greg abbott going down i mean not since ann richards has there been a democrat governor the republicans spent two weeks suggesting that he went to a mental institution when he said he had the flu and so they just wasted all of the time and they're not going to do it again and they're not going to do it again all of this time and you can't just jump in and elon musk can't buy a seat for 168 million dollars this time around you had speaker mike johnson on air telling everybody that the polls were completely wrong and i feel like it gave a false sense of security to republican voters um who might have turned out if they thought things were going to be differently a little sheet a little sheet all right you know oh my god johnson still tone deaf still completely tone deaf don't understand what the country's push back to the war at all they think that they can do that oh you're going to defund people would love for us to defund the troops and let them come home that would have like an 88 approval rating if they pass that through congress bring the troops home we're defunding the war people would love that then it's like oh people didn't turn out because it's just like no people didn't turn out because they didn't like the shit you were doing wasn't it it wasn't the spin not complicated not complicated and and the reality is those snippets are just a sort of you could just see it over time the devolution of really kind of understanding what the country was doing and not being able to fully respond to it and so yeah defund the the war uh yeah okay no one's saying that but now that you've said that i'm going to defund the war you've mentioned it maybe you know i'm full i'm pro i mean we will take care of our veterans when they come home but yeah they shouldn't be over there um they've come up with something though michael just so you know i just by wednesday they had a chance to get a little bit of sleep and uh think through it and then yesterday afternoon the middle of the day of the news program this is the news hour not the opinion at night not what now you're doing they're in the news hour in the middle of the day they they've turned to some something else that i think they're going to be focused on let's watch that west hollywood unanimously passes ordinance granting protections for polyamorous relationships what's going on out west to be clear it is west hollywood which is where the star wars cantina goes to feel normal okay if you've ever walked around west hollywood it's you know extraterrestrial life uh they're trying to offer some type of legal protection for people who are in throppas so you're throuples sleep throuples throuples come on you sleep with what two or three more people they're doing throuples in la watch out that's the new that's let's talk about that says the guy whose jawline meets his hair what the he's like they're the star wars continues like have you been to west hollywood it's great they got a little lemon they got some juice bars it's normal you're the weirdo talking about throuples but see this again go back to the thing that you think will will will get people fired up let's start talking about polyamorous relationships okay um if i can put that in my gas tank let's talk about it what what are you taught what are we doing here but this is where this is where you are that's what they got what are they gonna talk about i mean they can do the news which is that you know the code their coalition is falling apart that donald trump has to grapple with the total rejection that the war is unpopular that the economy is bad they could do the news right but like that's not good we want we want to scare you with culture bullshit yeah i live in prince george's county maryland tim why the fuck do i care about what the city council in west hollywood did and and by the way we know it doesn't work because we just saw on tuesday like i was i was with my buddy um my favorite place in austin is love barbecue so i stopped by there um on the way out of town after talarico one and my college buddy lives there and you know he's like that bad political political person and, and you know, we're just having lunch and, and he's like, my kids like my sons are like learning about trans from ken paxton's ads and he's fine he like i don't have anything against trans people but he's like now i'm explaining this stuff to my eight year old and it's like the whole this whole idea this whole scare tactic was like oh the left is transing your kids but like the people in texas were like no actually it's you guys that are teaching the kids about trans and throuples they wouldn't know about this till they went to college but you won't shut the fuck up about it and so like you're the problem that you're trying to solve that is so true it is so true oh my god they're so stupid tim they're so stupid they can't help themselves all right guys i don't know about you but we're two weeks out from the election and sometimes my blood's pumping a little too high at night yeah i've been have a little afternoon power drink a little energy drink so i can turn out the content then i get to the bed the brain's moving my heart's beating and i'm thinking to myself you know what i wish i had right now i wish i had the chili pad the chili pad 2.0 is a water-based mattress topper that actively controls your bed temperature from 55 to 115 degrees all night long no new mattress no renovation it fits right over what you already have chili pad 2.0 actively cools or warms if that's your cup of tea your bed it does it using water and water is the key here fans just move the chili pad uses actively chilled water to pull heat away from your body it's the difference between standing in front of a fan and jumping into a cold pool one actually works it's one of the most efficient and natural ways to 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with their sleep trial that's www.sleep.me slash bulwark the headlines will still be there in the morning you might as well wake up ready for them no data no ai it's just a simple until now the data your ai depends on has been trapped behind ever increasing cloud fees wasabi created hot cloud storage and is redefining cloud storage for the ai era delivering simple predictable cloud storage for ai analytics media and more your data is free to move fast to access and ready when your ai needs it giving your business a competitive advantage when your data moves freely innovation moves faster giving you the freedom to build train and do more with your data hidden fees add up fast as ai workloads grow wasabi's flat pricing eliminates all of it one rate no surprises with global scale enterprise performance and predictable pricing wasabi helps organizations focus on innovation instead of cloud bills companies that are paying more in fees than in actual storage costs can fall behind don't let it happen when your ai needs your data and you have a budget to meet get wasabi learn more and try now for free at wasabi.com wasabi the ai storage cloud proud partner of the iheart podcast network let's do a little history and then forward with republican party stuff so you've been mentioned 2010 a bunch you're a chairman there i i went back and looked at this morning so republicans their national house win was plus seven like if you added up all the house votes we're still counting but it's going to be dems around 13 this time so almost double this time than last and there were actually more republicans winning seats than democrats because of the nature of gerrymandering all this stuff so that's a little comparison on the bulwark reddit you know a lot of times we get some heat from our fans and so i like to check you know i miss stuff from time to time i got a really nice post so so i want to read about that because it relates to my experience after you after you left the rnc tim miller and the gop autopsy wasn't wrong they were just early let's go back to the autopsy and we talked about how the voting rights crackdown was going to cause a backlash among black voters how romney's self-deportation plan was going to having a bunch of tv ads from super packs that were a waste of money and weren't landing with voters and how primary elections and the way we do it are yielding loser candidates that's a pretty good assessment of what went wrong this time yeah 14 years later you know nothing nothing worse in politics than being mistimed but uh i don't know what thinking about 2010 and the successes than 2012 and the failures like what are some lessons from that and how they think about it now well look you know the a big lesson from from 10 i mean i've always been honest about that uh i looked at what howard dean did uh with a 50 state strategy and i said we should do that that's i mean i i had to in my political experience because i've always been in a very difficult political spot i grew up in washington dc where you know republicans are outnumbered 10 to 1 i live in prince george's county i was party chairman with 58 000 republicans registered republicans in a county of 800 000 people and yet we won you know ballot initiatives on tax policy and and housing policy um because of how we connected issues to voters and so i learned very early on the importance of that and i brought that to the 2010 cycle which meant that we weren't just going to focus on winning federal races but we're going to focus on winning local races and empowering a republican voice in a way that we're going to focus on winning local races and empowering the people of this country and i think that was a lesson that played out very nicely here ken martin for all the shit that he got and you know people say oh you got no money well of course he didn't have any money because he didn't have a white house if joe biden were in the white house he'd had a lot of money joe biden wasn't in the white house i didn't have a white house at the time the worst thing for me i had citizens united which was brand new and everybody wanted to flock to super PACs and so i had major donors who weren't giving so guess what the next thing i borrowed was obama's uh you know small dollar donor program and instituted that at the rnc we never had one before so the reality of it is um politics is about what you learn as much as what you achieve and the lessons i think are going to be very important for democrats coming off of this cycle please just don't stay stuck on the high of the wind yeah figure out what it is you learn very much like what you guys now look i didn't need an autopsy no disrespect to that effort to tell me that we have just doing a job maybe black and brown voters all right i didn't need i didn't need an autopsy to get the hispanic governors and a black congressman elected in 2010 um but the the reality of it is there were some important lessons in that and in 2016 brian's previous shat all over that autopsy and i remember telling him dude tell donald trump to bring his fat ass down to washington sit him in the rnc office because he's just a guy running for president you are the chairman of the party and tell him i'm sorry you see this thing right here this is our autopsy this is how we're going to run for the hispanic vote we're not going to call mexicans murderers and rapists or bad people you can't do that then you're going to have a problem with me he didn't he capitulated he tore up the autopsy and it worked for a minute it worked for a minute did and it worked but that minute was just that yeah because look at the only person in the last 10 years to win is donald trump doesn't work for anybody else yeah it doesn't work for anybody else and a party is more than one person well it might not be for the republicans by 20 they're running out of people left the bench is pretty thin right now i think that's right and to your point on the howard dean and i think this is hopefully the democrats get this now some people got it before i've been i've been praising anderson clayton for a while scott colomb del rico hamilton some people got it by accident um here in louisiana it's like all of a sudden it's like oh shit we could win maybe you know what i mean right so i look the lessons come into different times different places but i do think the democrats have got it now which is like oh wait actually the the folks that are living out in the south we could they could vote for us if we tried you know if we put up compelling candidates and had a message for them you know and had effort and made sure that their concerns were heard so i do think that i kind of continuing that rather than letting it die on the vine is going to be super important well i think what's important about what you say there is lead with your values don't be afraid of your values didn't run from his eyes or tell her or gina hinojosa or adam hamilton or or hamilton right lead with your values don't be afraid of that. I mean, you can, you can be a Democrat and a Christian. You can be a Democrat and a Jew. You can be a Democrat and a Muslim. You can be a Democrat and unaffiliated to any faith tradition, but lead with what your values are. Your mom and your daddy raised you some kind of way, didn't they? All right. So you lead with that because that's where America is. And so that's why the culture war bullshit runs its course because the, how you inoculate yourself against that is when you, to your very point, you're raising your daughter and you're teaching her values and you're looking around the leadership of the country. And you're, you know, as she gets older, you're like, you can point to people. This is, this is a good person. And they're there. They have your interest at heart. They have, your health, your welfare, your, your economy, all those things at heart. Those are part of the value sets. And so that's what a Hamilton represents in so many ways. You know, when you, when you see a candidate standing at a mic on the night that he wins and the placket in front of him is love thy neighbor. I mean, come on that, that resonates with a lot of Americans at the end of the day, no matter where you stand on the political. That's the only thing Christ asked you to do. He didn't ask you to, to shit on trans people. He didn't ask you to, to go all, all ballistic on trying to make an army army look, you know, a young man coming into the military and look like an Aryan war fighter. He just said, love each other. Yeah, no, that was one of the hard parts of 2024 too, was my, was thinking about my daughter cause I was like, Oh, she's going to be able to remember Trump now. And the modeling does matter. I mean, people can grow up and, and courageous and, and strong and valued and principled with bad role models everywhere, but it still makes it harder. It still sucks. You know, she had a chance to meet the vice president Harris and it's just like, and she just would have, we would have been in such a better shape if we were there right now. But, but here we are better late than never, you know, well, look at the role model. Look at the role model that vice president Harris represents to her. She doesn't see Democrat or Republican. She sees a, a strong black woman in a position of power and leadership. And what does that say to her reinforced by you? Right. That can be you if you want it. Yeah. All right, guys, I don't know about you, but we're two weeks after the election and sometimes my blood's pumping a little too high at night. Yeah. I've been have a little afternoon power drink, a little energy drink so I can turn out the content. Then I get to the bed, the brain's moving, my heart's beating and I'm thinking, you know what I wish I had right now? Chili pad 2.0 actively cools or warms. If that's your cup of tea, your bed, it does it using water and water is the key here. It's a different way of doing it. It's a different between standing in front of a fan and jumping into a cold pool. One actually works. You get dual zones. Get back home to a chili pad. No chili pad here at the Atlanta hotel, but it's coming for me. It's coming soon. If you visit www.sleep.me slash bulwark to get up to 640 bucks off your chili pad 2.0 with code bulwark as an added holiday offer. Chili pad is a three-year protection plan for free. The special offer is available for the Bulwark listeners and only for a limited time. No data, no AI. It's just that simple. Until now, the data your AI depends on has been trapped behind ever cloud fees. Wasabi created hot cloud storage and is redefining cloud storage for the AI era, delivering simple, predictable cloud storage for AI, analytics, media, and more. Your data is free to move, fast to access, and ready when your AI needs it, giving your business a competitive advantage. When your data moves freely, innovation moves faster, giving you the freedom to build, train, and do more with your data. Hidden fees add up fast as AI workloads grow. Wasabi's flat pricing eliminates all of it. One rate, no surprises. With Google Cloud, you can create global scale, enterprise performance, and predictable pricing. Wasabi helps organizations focus on innovation instead of cloud bills. Companies that are paying more in fees than in actual storage costs can fall behind. Don't let it happen. When your AI needs your data and you have a budget to meet, get Wasabi. Learn more and try now for free at wasabi.com. Wasabi, the AI storage cloud. Proud partner of the iHeart Podcast Network. I want to talk about the GOP future now. Marco, some scuttlebutts, some mixed reporting, some scuttlebutt that he might be trying to leave, trying to get out of Dodge. Oh, he's out. He's gone. He sees what's happening with J.D. Vance. I mean, Marco, people have a little bit of a misunderstanding about Marco. Marco is as calculating as J.D. Vance, just he's smoother about it. Like the OG Marco in the state legislature, he was like a bushy establishment guy in the state legislature. Then he saw an opportunity to run as a Tea Party guy. That 2010 year, he runs against Charlie Crisp. Opportunistic, smart thing to do. Opportunistic, smart thing to do, by the way. But then he gets in office and then the autopsy happens and he becomes autopsy Marco. He's Tea Party autopsy. Tea Party, but also I'm kind of immigrants. He tries to do that game. And then Trump gets nomination. He's like, maybe I'm a never Trumper for a minute. Maybe that's going to be the new hotness. Then Trump wins and it's like, oh boy, I need to be nationalist populist Marco. Now I need to be Trumpy MAGA Marco. And it's worked for him. He's Secretary of State. It's worked for him, but it would not be out of care. It would be very interesting. It would be a very interesting character of Marco to look at this result and say, maybe it's time to table towards something else. Yes. And that's what you can fully expect to happen. And, you know, I just remember having a conversation with Marco and he worked with me when I was chairman of GOPAC. He just finished up his leadership of the Florida House. And we were talking about stuff and he got involved with GOPAC. Remind me what GOPAC's posture was. GOPAC was founded by Newt Gingrich in the 1980s. And it was state legislative development. So it was, you know, all the down ballot races, you develop candidates. And he had those training videos and all of that stuff. And it was very, very effective and sort of, it helped build the army of folks who came into Congress and 1994 and all of that. So I became chairman of GOPAC in what, 2007, after I left lieutenant governorship and then served until 2009 when I became RNC chairman. But got to know Marco, work with Marco. Marco was a good guy. Like you said, real good Bush guy, you know, just straight down the, you know, everyday kind of conservatism. What has been disappointing for me is just, you know, I've been in the military for a long time. I've been in the military for a long time. What you described. I get opportunism. I get, I get wanting to be in the room where it happens. But whatever room you walk into, I should at least know who you are. And I don't. Because you've just illustrated in just that little bit. Because his ears keep growing and you don't recognize them or, or are you speaking more at a personal level? Right. It's like a Pinocchio situation. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, you're, you're, you're telling me who you are now. What's your core? There is not. If you're on a stage with a man who says that your father was part of the plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy, dude, if you're on a stage with a man and he's basically saying your wife is ugly and, and et cetera, et cetera, I'm like, okay, we fighting, right? Now, I, they ain't shit you and I can do at this point. Yeah. What's your core? And, and so a lot of these guys, this goes back to what we were saying a little bit earlier. A lot of these guys are going to try to remake themselves and think we're deaf, dumb, blind, and stupid about them. No, we are not. And we will recount your words. Recall what you said. So J.D. Vance, we have what you think about women. Marco Rubio, we have what you said about MAGA and, and Venezuela and Ukraine. This, you, you were one of the biggest staunch supporters of Ukraine. What happened? Yeah. When did you become a Putinian? putinista so i'm gonna close with one putinista thing but i just i want to cover jd vance first then we'll get you out of here jbl wrote this yesterday the conspiracy to push donald trump aside um it's a good piece you're already seeing it yeah it was good and he's talking about how jd puts out this statement that basically talks about all the things trump did wrong without saying his name and that explains that for why we lost with iran and the economy and then trump jr quote tweets it with this is right so he's kind of alibying himself a little bit you can tell this was a work behind the scenes so he's like don jr i need you to do this so it doesn't seem like i'm going against the don and so as jbl looks at it he's like basically jd has a couple options if he wants to take over the first is to try to cajole trump to behave the next two years right and to be responsive to this good luck with that that's number one that's tough the second option which nate said this is possible is just kind of cajole trump into retiring why don't you just go back to monologue and pope vanadik did it like and uh good luck with that i think as well that's another option the third option for jd um is resigning himself and you're just saying if trump won't end the war then i you know have to follow my own principles and try to run as an outsider really tough we saw what trump did to mike pence and trump's popularity is at its low ebb but you know he's still in a republican primary betraying him like that is still going to be really challenging none of those options seem great to me get out your crystal ball for me what what do you think how do you think things look forward for jd and trump i don't think jd will be the nominee of the republican party i don't think i don't think the president will put his imprimatur on him i don't think the president likes him quite honestly and has no real intentions of of leveling him up jd came out and did a little mini heisman with trump um sort of creating a little distance trump for whatever you may think about him does not like that and even though junior probably went around into the back room and said hey dad this is going to happen just be cool about it it sticks with trump it sticks with him you don't have to mention his name he knows so i don't i don't think this plays out the way he thinks it does i think the battle for the nomination is going to be rife i think it's going to be ugly it's going to be fractured you're going to have the folks who want to be trump 2.0 or 3.0 you want you have the people who are going to you know try to rebrand the party and rebuild it the way it once was later for that shit you're going to have the people who are going to come in with a fresh set of eyes and says the future is this way and and it now runs through a place called texas and nevada and mississippi and you know um and given where the democrats are now begun to amass some strength so you're going to see these factions i think begin to emerge here's the bottom line tim you know this very well from your time in the party in 1989 when reagan left we never resolved the question the answer to one question who's the next reagan and that that never being resolved has led to where we are right now because trump answered the question actually it was kind of resolved which is there is no next reagan and i'm going to do this there is no next i'm going to do this new other thing right exactly yeah so the reality then becomes one of uh resolving that because that is at the heart of what the republican party is right and that's an extended question right which is is there a new trump is there a new is there a return to reagan there isn't or is there some other third thing or is there a period in the wilderness that's the fourth option is there a period in wilderness where you try to do a fake trump and that's what basically you know and i think that's where we land yeah initially yeah and i think there's a third thing i think there's going to be something else there's going to be a new i mean a new republican party or what we know as a republican party will emerge um the maga stuff i think has has hit its ceiling it there is no more growth in it um and and so you know i may wind up eating these words in a few years sure maybe maybe not but the reality of it don't be doing a montage of you like we were just doing a fox right exactly exactly so listen to these two fools back in 2026 but the reality is i think the party is going to i've said this for a number of years now it needs probably the biggest political enema it could ever have yeah and it just needs to clean all the shit out of itself and really look with a set of fresh eyes um to mix metaphors yeah at what its future is are we the party of lincoln we throw that that phrase around but fundamentally the assholes who now are part of this maga cult bullshit in the party don't even know what that means right they call you and me rhinos all right when you were republican i still am why because i stand in the in the lane with lincoln and eisenhower and bush and reagan what what the are you talking about get the fuck out of it don't come on my face with that crap you just showed up you weren't you weren't you weren't knocking on doors with me in washington dc trying to win some damn city council race or in prince george's county trying to run a party with 58 000 republicans against 800 000 democrats get the fuck out of here so you know all this rhino bullshit i think a lot of republicans like me no more and so you're going to have this tension which i think is necessary part of cleaning out the crap and settling on who we are and if we don't settle right okay i guess not i'll go do something else but the reality of it is that's the fight for me right now going forward i'm gonna play as much of a hand as i can and who the next nominee of this party will be and along with a lot of folks the folks that are republican legacy you know uh senator danforth's group of former electeds and party leadership are looking to settle in that in that third space uh with some good with some good ideas and good candidates so we'll see it's gonna be fun baby you're gonna be talking about it i know that we will be talking about it and i just want to close it ties everything together and i couldn't let it go from this week it made me so mad but speaking about the way that things have distanced from the old republican party and speaking about the way that this donald trump's not going to change his tune as much as jd wants him to um there was one news item that happened in the white house this week and that was they invited the russians right and um carol dimitrov who has been the one trying to work over and steve wickhoff into get into creating this deal does everything putin wants yes he is there at a press conference with milania and i just want to play this for people to take us into the weekend dear milania you saved and touched so many lives as a token of appreciation we'd like to give you a small gift which is a painting by 11 year old gold lydia from oleshki who chose to be living with your family in russia in tuopsia and this beautiful drawing says just three words i love milania carol thank you for your cooperation and professionalism my deepest appreciation to miss anna lantratova commissioner for human rights in the russian federation your dedication brings hope and dignity to those devastated by war thank you for people who missed that carol said that the painting was from an 11 year old who chose to live in russia that's a fucking kidnapped kid they gave the painting from a kidnapped ukrainian kid to milania as a gift milania then accepts the kidnapped child's drawing and then thanks russians human rights leader for all the great work they've been doing like are you is this like what the fuck are we doing and and why why are we showcasing the fucking russians in the middle of a war what what are we doing that is their response why are we even doing this and all of this all of a sudden you know milania is the the the patron saint of ukraine and and all of this conversation about you know what she the pope is the one who's who's been back ending a lot of this bullshit trying to clean this crap up and trying to move these parties vladimir putin isn't about anything he's not about anything he's not about anything he's not about anything he's not about ending this war we what are we doing a russian child thief and war criminal to the white house to give the first lady a a an honorary drawing and she was just i thank you in her broken english and it is that is totally insane and unreal and the only thing that i mean it is enraging but the other half of it is like they ain't fucking changing the tigers ain't changing their stripes and so i don't know maybe it'll be 60 senate seats in 2028 if they keep this this is what i'm saying this is why 2026 happened yeah and just wait for 2028 baby we'll see you that is the chairman michael steel i always love the time with you thank you so much hopefully gave people a little some joy some laughs some some righteous rage for their weekend and we'll be talking to you soon all right brother you got it player you take care my friend everybody else will be back on monday see you all then have a great great weekend have a drink for me peace yeah it's a winner baby The Bulwark Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DiCicco, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. 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