Michael Weiss: The Clown Car at the Pentagon

I love a brighter smile. What I don't love is that little wince when I take a sip of something cold or even breathe in cold air. You know that feeling that takes your breath away that, ouch, eek. That's why I like Sensodyne Clinical White. Its triple action formula whitens, polishes, and helps protect against sensitivity. Plus, it protects against new stains for up to six months. So I can keep enjoying my iced coffee and everything else I love without the sensitivity. Whiter teeth without the wince. Try Sensodyne Clinical White today. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We've got a double header for you today. In segment two, I've noticed a little bit of a gap in the political commentary at Marketplace. The Democratic consultants, we get called to go on TV and talk about politics, are people from the Clinton-Bush-Obama era. We love them all. A lot of experience, a lot of judgment, you know, comes from, you know, successful presidential campaigns. But, you know, I'm getting a little long in the tooth. A lot of things are changing in politics these days. And then the younger people who talk about Democratic politics are mostly like 23-year-old Instagram influencers. And we honor Instagram influencing. That's a noble pursuit. But, you know, it isn't like a lot of experience in the field. And so between now and the midterms, once a week, I'm going to bring somebody on who's like actually doing campaigns in the Trump era on the Democratic side and chat with them. And so we're bringing on my old friend Roderica Applewhite in segment two. She's unbelievable. Please stick around for that. But first, I've got an exciting announcement. He's an old friend. He writes at Foreign Office on Substack. But I'm pumped to reveal to you right now that he's the co-host of a new Bulwark podcast, Reporter and the Spy, with Mark Polymeropoulos, which is going to be launching soon. It's Michael Weiss. We're officially colleagues and buddies and life partners now. Common law marriage has been sanctified. That makes Mark my side piece, which is, I think, what his wife already calls me. That sounds right. The great news is now that you're officially in the fold, we'll have the budget to get like a high quality blackout blanket for the birds. The birds are covered in a blanket. So my daughter decided these are her pets, but they're moving into our bedroom. So I now have dog, fish, and birds surrounding me at all times. In the house. In the house. Okay. We might have to get you an office. We'll see how well the podcast does in the ratings. Now we're getting highfalutin already. Okay, cool. Do you want to give people before we get to the news? What's the pitch? What's the elevator pitch? The podcast? Yeah. So basically, Mark and I have been friends and he's been a source for my reporting for a long time. And he's been a source for my reporting for a long time. We talk all the time about the state of the world, national security, spy stuff, war. And I thought it would be fun to click record on some of these conversations just because he brings a perspective that's obviously different from my own, but parallel to my own. I mean, doing the work of journalism, I liken it to being a case officer, right? You get to know people, you cultivate them, you get them to tell you things that they otherwise might not want to say, and you advance an agenda. In my case, I'm a journalist. I'm a journalist. I'm a journalist. I'm a journalist. What's in the public interest? In his case, national security and the great state of America and making it great again or keeping it great. I don't even know what stage we're in now. But anyway, yeah, it's a fun one. The way I see it is akin to, there was a great conversation between John Le Carre and Ben McIntyre in the New York Times at the height of the Trump-Russia saga. I thought it was the best thing I'd read about it. I'm like, that's what I want to do, right? A historian, reporter, talking to a practitioner, and it's sort of like talking shop, but as I say, from slightly different perspectives. I love it. All right. It's going to have its own feed soon. I'll make sure to announce that for everybody so they can subscribe to it. In the meantime, there's going to be some rogue YouTube episodes, but it will be up this fall. I'm pumped. All right, to the news. Dan Driscoll, Army Secretary, has resigned. This is interesting for a couple of reasons. I'm not usually covering what would be HR moves inside the military on this podcast, right? But this is relevant for a lot of political reasons. He's been a foil of Peg Seth for a while. He's an old friend of J.D. Vance. He's been at the center of a lot of the turmoil behind the scenes in the White House. According to The Atlantic, when he went to inform Trump that he was leaving, Trump was surprised to hear how many generals and other top officers had been fired, pushed out, or passed over for promotion under Peg Seth. He was surprised to hear how many generals and other top officers had been fired, not surprising. He's pretty focused on the marble and the new ballroom, not on this sort of material. The Army now has no secretary, no deputy undersecretary, no chief of staff, no Senate-confirmed top general, no confirmed Army general in charge of operations, or confirmed commander of Army troops in Europe. That's right. Boy. And we're in a state of war with Iran, so no biggie there. I mean, there's a lot of things to say about this. Number one, the scuttlebutt is this has been long in the making, and Driscoll is most likely to be part of, if not leading, J.D. Vance 2028. So expect to see him involved in the vice president's presidential campaign soon. They're best friends. They went to Yale Law School together. Driscoll seemed to be pretty well regarded, though, in spite of his attachment to J.D. Vance. The thing that impressed me about him is, you remember he was sent to Kiev several months ago to kind of deliver this ultimatum to Zelensky and the Ukrainians, you know, sign on the dotted line, we got to wrap this war up, basically shaking them down, make concessions. He came away favorably disposed toward the Ukrainians because he's a military tech guy. He's into drones. He's into 21st century warfare. He wants to modernize the state of the U.S. military. And the Ukrainians have a lot of know-how and sophisticated tools with which to do that. So he kind of came back more pro-Ukraine than I think he went in. There's a missing piece to this story. I've read all the reports. I've read all the reports about this and, you know, great stuff in The Atlantic and great stuff in The Wall Street Journal. But there's a guy who keeps not coming up with respect to all of the shenanigans going on at DOD. Like Pete Hegseth is, we've talked about him on the show. Everybody knows him. He's probably one of the most reviled secretaries of defense since Rumsfeld, maybe even more so than Ricky Berea or Rasputin Ricky as DOD sources have dubbed him. Ricky Berea was a U.S. Marine. He retired at the level of colonel, even though he didn't do the full three years of service. Signed his own papers, by the way. This was a guy who was not supposed to be chief of staff, not liked by Susie Wiles, not liked by Carolyn Leavitt, not liked by anybody in the White House, but somehow has managed to Geppetto himself into a position of power. And essentially, from what I'm given to believe, he's kind of controlling Pete Hegseth. There's a report in the New York Post, they went on some clandestine whiskey soil when Hegseth was living in Pentagon City. He was in disguise, you know, he's not supposed to be drinking at all, because Trump kind of read in the riot act, you know, if I catch you with the, you know, the booze, you're out of here. And so he's doing this on the side. Was that a real thing where they were actually drinking in disguise? Or were they pretending? Well, we don't know. But why? Well, why were they pretending to sneak out and not, you know, go on some kind of like boys night? I don't know. Maybe they don't know much about Ricky Maria. And I don't really believe in physiognomy. Now, we judge somebody based on the shape of their face and skull, right? But he's got a bad one. He's got a concerning one. You look at he's got an untrustworthy face. Yes. And but the the noose item here is you remember Signalgate? Of course, yeah. When Hegseth was basically putting in classified about bombing the Houthis in Yemen into Signal and whoopsie daisy, Mike Waltz had added Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic to that chat. Ricky Maria was the guy who was putting in Pete Hegseth's messages into signal. Okay, and he thought he was going to be fired as a result of that. And instead, he climbed over all the corpses, including of Mike Waltz, and slotted himself in as chief of staff, failed a polygraph, by the way, which is slightly concerning. You know, the US Air Force is the one that does counterintelligence for the military at the moment, and he's in this position of great influence and power. And from what I understand, you know, a lot of the reporting that Driscoll is at odds with Laniv, the general. He's acting chief of staff, just to be clear, I don't acting is important, because I never like to give Rick Grinnell his fake title as national security advisor, because, you know, Marco Rubio is acting national security advisor. But like, I think, well, actually, that role doesn't even exist, I think, in this administration. But long story short, what I was told this morning, is, you know, people wanted the hell out of DOD, because of Berea, and the kind of clown car that's being run there. And his his sort of, I use Rasputin, right, but his his kind of weird control over the Secretary of Defense. So I would encourage people to dig into that story more. We don't hear the fact that we don't hear about him at all is interesting. Did people know that Ricky was the one that typed it into Signal? Has that been reported? No, I'm reporting it now on your podcast. Wow, confirmed by two DOD sources, by the way. So it's the kind of it's one of these things that that a lot of people know this stuff, but it doesn't get said or put out there. And I think once it is, people will come and confirm it even more. He's a Democrat too, which is bizarre, because how does Donald Trump let somebody like this be acting chief of staff to the Secretary of War, Mr. Anti-DEI, Anti-Woke, Macho Macho Man, Pete Hegseth? It's a very strange state of affairs going on there. But anyway, this is the reason you have a Pentagon press corps, you know, that usually, or did, that don't consist of influencers and people who used to be on the Russian state payroll, like Tim Poole. You have actual journalists digging into stuff like this. Yeah, at least 20 generals, admirals, and civilian defense leaders have been fired or left their jobs since Hegseth became defense secretary. Correct. Including the Army, Navy, and Air Forces' highest ranking officers, leaders of key units. I like, this is crazy. Like you got a weekend, talk show host, and Ricky Berea putting emojis into signal chat with Jeffrey Goldberg, like, kind of running things. Yep. While we're in multiple, multiple conflicts. We're in multiple conflicts and possibly getting into new ones in future. So yeah, I know. I mean, it's, it's a total shit show. What can I say? We do have a replacement over at the Navy. So if you're concerned about what's happening on the seas, I've got bad news for you. You should be, you should be even more concerned. A man named Hung Cao. Hung for secretary is being nominated today. I encountered Hung. I've encountered several Hungs, but I've encountered Hung Cao. I was waiting for it. I mean, if you didn't, if you didn't walk through the door, I was going to have to do it. I had to do it. You know, we've got, we've got some fans out there that just, that, that, you know, want me to sneak that in. I encountered him, not in that way. And I got to tell you, he is a weird dude. He's one weird fella. And, uh, he ran for Congress and Senate failed Senate campaign. Uh, over the course of those campaigns, he said, we don't need NATO called NATO officials in Europe. Lazy. So they don't do shit. A lot of conspiracy theories about the elections. Obviously he, uh, was big on freeing the insurrectionists. He's very concerned about witchcraft and the Wiccan community. He's Vietnamese, but he said he's African-American because he lived in Africa. I like, I don't know, man, the dude is, it's not, we're not doing our best. Yeah. Not the best and the brightest, huh? Yeah. I mean, look, you know, you, you tick the boxes, you play to the kind of conspiratorial base. You don't have to have the qualifications. In fact, it behooves you to kank the people who do generals who've earned their stars, right. But are telling you what civilian leadership needs to be told. Like we don't have the capacity to do the things you want to do. We don't have the capacity to do the things you want to do. We're running low on critical munitions to fight a war against Iran, which is now unfortunately impacting other wars going on, such as the one in Ukraine. There's a float of Brian Mast, his army secretary. I don't know. This is a leak. Um, that is a Congressman from Florida. I did a media training forum once back in the old days when I was a Republican, uh, he was a dick and a crazy person then. And he's gotten worse since I guess he was where I volunteered for the IDF was wearing around an IDF uniform. And, uh, he was a dick and a crazy person then. And, uh, he's gotten worse since I guess he was wearing around an IDF uniform on the floor of Congress. I, as a American representative, I, this is where the, I don't know if he gets read the room given the current political environment, by the way. Yeah. We'll see if he gets picked. We know that hung cow has been picked. I was asking Hertling about this this morning and he's like, you know, we've had some good army and Navy secretaries. We've had some mediocre ones. We haven't really had total clowns in those roles, but we're putting on the clown nose right now. Yeah. I think that's, that's pretty accurate. So, okay. Meanwhile, over at the Pentagon, when there aren't a lot of people in the building doing the works, you know, it's pretty easy to slip things through the cracks, such as this story from ProPublica. Last year, a $620 million alone was announced to a small North Carolina startup to do some military contracting. The startup was linked to Donald Trump Jr. Uh, there were some reports that, you know, the possibly this was cronyism, obviously just another example of Trump corruption that was getting batted down. By the Department of Defense. ProPublica has done some interviews and reviewed some defense records and they showed that the loan to the firm, the request for this loan was made by Peter Navarro, White House advisor. He's looking jacked out of prison, according to Don Jr. Right? Yeah. So again, it's just all this stuff starts to pile up, right? We just look at what's happening in the defense department. You have like Hegseth maybe being under the spell of his like unqualified sputum, all qualified military leaders being pushed out, contracts being handed out to Don Jr. on Peter Navarro's wreck. And 1789, the what is the private equity or venture capital firm that he runs with? This guy's name's Omer Malik, who's fundraising for JD Vance in the Hamptons or was this summer raised like $5 million for the RNC. Yeah, no, look, I mean, it's it's corruption all the way down, which is why after the midterms, everything is going to be gummed up because the Democrats are just gonna have hearings into, you know, the violation of the emoluments clause, just payola and cronyism, the Kushner's cashing in on things, Witkoff, what kind of side action is he doing, either with the Russians or with Russia aligned countries? And as well, they should, I mean, you know, this Pentagon deal is basically US taxpayer money going to enrich the children of the President of the United States. And, you know, the interesting thing, too, though, about Don Jr., I mean, you got to love the grift here. So he's one of the most outspoken, anti-Ukraine people in the President's orbit, right? Denounce Zelensky as a dictator and all that stuff on social media. He's an investor along with his his brother, who looks developmentally disabled, but that's another story in a company called Power Us. It's a Florida based drone company. And guess who or what Power Us is going to invest in? Ukrainian drone technology. They want to buy licenses. They want to acquire the kit that the Ukrainians are manufacturing. So it's OK to cash in or capitalize on this country that you despise and would have no problem seeing overrun by the Russians. Oh, but maybe you do now because it's going to affect your bottom line. Well, this is, I mean, the classic Trump story going back half century now, you know, putting your name on other people's work and taking money for it and then screwing over people on the back end. And that was that's basically the business model of the Trump work. And you know what, Tim? I mean, I would be all for that kind of corruption if I thought it was a good idea. I mean, I think it's a good idea. I think it's a good idea. I think it was going to actually change the president's mind about Ukraine. But unfortunately, it doesn't. So there you go. This segment has been sponsored by the New York Times. When I'm doing podcast prep in the morning, you know, I'm always looking at that morning shots newsletter from Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger. Go subscribe. But going to the New York Times homepage, scrolling Twitter, making sure I am up to speed on all the latest. This morning, for example, I was reading the The nominee for Navy secretary. It's like, it's hard for me to keep track of everything that's going on today. So, you know, scrolling through my little NYT app and I'm going, oh, oh, fuck, it's hung cow. And, you know, you got to have the reporters out there. They're doing the work that are informing us on what's happening behind the scenes of the Navy. We've got Times reporters here all the time. Ton of Maggie's reporting has been informing the podcast recently. Obviously, I had David Wallace Wells on a couple of weeks ago. Who is doing such important work reporting on what's happening with the climate as well as AI and other issues. It's tough. It's tough to get good information out of the White House these days. It's tough to follow just the avalanche of shit that is being dumped on us from this administration. And you need outlets that have the reach of the resources that have the sources to go out there and do that reporting so that I can bring it to you so we can contextualize it. Fire off some hot takes. The basic building blocks that undergird all that is the reporters out there doing the work. I mean, for example, this is the New York Times, but how would you have known about the woman that was running as a Republican in two different states and also was allegedly under indictment for wire fraud if it wasn't for Andrew Eggers reporting? I'm not doing that reporting. He's out there doing it. All of us depend on fact-based journalists. I'm informed when it comes time to sling takes. It can take a week, months, or even years of work to put a good story together. So support their work wherever you seek it out, nationally, locally. Support fact-based reporting. Thanks to our friends at the New York Times. Let's go to that in Ukraine. There's a bunch of stuff actually happening in the war that I want to get your take on. There's a G20 meeting in Asheville. So I'm going to start with that first. Russia Finance Minister Anton Sulinov. Is that right? Anton Sulinov. He was there at the table. It was the first time there's been a Russia representative at the G20 since they invaded Ukraine in 2022. Europeans were pissed. Reporters were banned, so we don't really know why. You got the side deals you're talking about with Wyckoff and all this. It's a little alarming timing. Yeah. So Trump's been banging on about bringing the Russians into the G20 from the beginning. And it seems like he's done that, right? So the way this was couched with me, Besant was telling reporters we're not sure anyone's going to turn up and we've extended invitations to everybody. That's obviously bullshit. You know, the Russian finance minister doesn't come to the United States without getting visas sorted and the State Department involved in all of that. I'd like to say that this is in isolation of other things like Ukraine war policy and so on, but probably it's not. I mean, look, how many times have I come on the show? Trump is desperate to do a deal with the Russians. He would love nothing better than to have rapprochement, but the Russians cannot give him that which he requires to present to the American people and to the institutions that still do exist in this country, a rapprochement deal worthy of whatever concessions he's offering. And, you know, this should be twinned to the other big thing that happened in the last week or so, which was John Ratcliffe, CIA director, going to Moscow. I did my own reporting on this because there's a lot of contradictory stuff floating around. One set of pieces said that he went there to threaten the Russians. Beg like a dog. Yeah. Or, you know, facilitate rapprochement in his own way, like maybe like join our coalition against Ukraine. No, it was to do two things. One, and then the New York Times got this right, to tell the Russians, look, the war is not going well for you. Your economy is even worse. Now is the time to wrap it up. Let's make a deal. And then two, by the way, we know that as a result of the war not going well, we're not going to be able to do anything about it. We're not going to do anything about it. Well, for you, you're doing a lot of other provocative things like escalating your state-sponsored terrorism campaign all throughout Europe, sabotage operations. Just yesterday, the German government came out and blamed Russia for this attempted drone attack in Leipzig airport. By the way, the Germans blame the GRU, Russian military intelligence. The culprits responsible came in to Germany. This is also news for you. So break up your ears. Through Serbia and Turkey, that's been confirmed on the German side. And this could have gone very, very badly. Our NATO ally. Yep. This could have been a mass casualty event. And I'm waiting for that to happen, because what the Russians are doing, they're not sending their own trained operatives into the field, because most of those operatives have been rolled up, and their biometric data is on every border guard database. They're recruiting organized crime, riffraff, teenagers, what I call gig terrorists or gig saboteurs, you know, finding them on Telegram, the internet, offering them a few thousand quid in cryptocurrency and saying, go, you know, sometimes they do it under this veil of plausible liability. Go deliver this parcel. Don't worry about it. It's just a, it's an anodyne thing, cosmetics, sex toys, whatever. And it turns out there's a bomb inside. And another case is telling them you're going to detonate an incendiary device. But these attacks have been skyrocketing in recent weeks and months. To your point, I noticed this yesterday. Mark Ruda, head of NATO, said, Russia has grown increasingly reckless in these efforts. He had met with Elbridge Colby last week. Anytime Elbridge Colby is involved anywhere is concerning to me. I'd like to keep him in a basement. But that is unusual. Like, you know, it's the type of thing you do if you're worried about increasing threats. So this is another sort of piece of the puzzle here. So months ago, CIA briefed the Poles, the Scandinavians, and the Balts and said, we have intelligence that the Russians are going to do something. We don't know what it is. It could be cyber attacks. They do that. That's just Tuesday for them. Sabotage operations, again, see above, already ongoing and now expanding. Or more provocatively, more worryingly, an incursion, quote unquote, into NATO territory. So either little green men pour across the border into Latvia or Estonia, or they send a regiment of conventional troops, and they do it to test the viability of Article 5. And I was told as well, and this is what kind of bugged me, CIA basically said, if this happens, you're on your own, telling our eastern flank NATO allies, we ain't coming to the rescue. So that's on the one hand. This, of course, leaked in Poland, and now it's all over the place. And on the other hand, because of the war in Iran, we are running dangerously, critically low on key munitions, including and especially interceptors, Patriot interceptors at incoming Iranian missiles. So now we're down to maybe 600 or 500. We don't have the missiles to give the Ukrainians who need several hundred of them to survive what's going to be a really miserable winter. I mean, every night, barrages of Russian missiles and drones, killing civilians, they're targeting population centers, not military facilities, in order to terrorize the Ukrainians to weaken their resiliency and resolve and make them basically give up, which I don't think they're going to do. But that's a different story. Anyway, we go to the Europeans and we say, hey, Russia might invade you. And then we say, hey, can you spare some Patriot interceptors for Ukraine? And Europeans are like, no, because we need them in case we get there. There's no sort of whole strategy here, right? We don't have any military leaders in the army in Europe. So there's no military concerns. And you know, when you send a guy like Bridge Colby out, who's already hostile to the Europeans, and it's sort of like, I mean, he's the Janet Jackson song. What have you done for me lately? Right? It's like, what are you spending on? No nipple flip, though. No, well, keep it under. I don't know. He kind of looks the type to me. He goes to them and he Hector's them. He lectures them. He berates them. You know, and then says, are you a model ally or are you not? And we will decide who we're going to defend, who we will support in any military confrontation on the basis of how much money you're spending. So he's not the guy you send. No. Sending Ratcliffe to Russia, I will say, you know, we've discussed this as well. And this has been confirmed to me by the Ukrainians. The only reason I believe it. You know, Ratcliffe is the most pro-Ukraine actor in the administration. Ratcliffe is responsible for giving the Ukrainians intelligence, how to bypass Russian air defense systems. So when they bomb oil refineries or now logistics hubs, warehouses containing dual use equipment like the Russian Amazon, they can get their drones in and they can hit the target. Right. So Ratcliffe is responsible for blowing shit up in Russia to send him to Moscow to say it's time to make a deal is itself an implicit threat. Right. Because they know that Ratcliffe is doing this. That's an improvement on. Right. Yeah. Very mixed messages. That's the problem. If it's kind of a low bar, just because on this point, I want to play this for you. This was this morning, the treasury secretary who's kind of playing like a military role also lately as well. Yeah. They're sending out a fit Scott Besant to be the heavy on the Iranians economically. It's an interesting choice. Operation outcast. Yeah. He did take a five billion dollar in hedge fund investment fund and and end it with gentleman's five hundred twenty seven million. In the bank account. So that was pretty good. So he's threatening the Iranians. Also, the Ukrainians. We are late. This was him this morning trying to explain why gas prices are up. And they we are going through an energy shock right now due to both the war in Ukraine, because Ukraine has decided that they want to blow up Russian energy assets and refine products. So that is creating upward price pressure. On a global basis, Ukraine has decided to do that. So Ukrainians. Yeah. I wonder why. Yeah. They just took that random decision to to do this. First of all, this is the guy who allowed waivers that were implemented on the back of the Iran war to allow Rosneft, the Russian state oil company, to sell oil in the global market there. So we put in these waivers to bypass the sanctions that Donald Trump did impose a year ago or whatever. Those waivers have expired. So if he's so concerned. If he's so concerned about Russia not making money from selling oil, he could simply re-up the waivers. He hasn't done that. So when you talk about mixed messages, yeah. And the onus here is not on Ukraine. And as I said, the U.S. intelligence community is helping Ukraine in this effort. I've confirmed that to within an inch of my life on both sides, the American and the Ukrainian side. So, you know, which is it, man? Like, you know, you want to blow up oil refineries in Russia, but you're like, hey, you know, that's that's the reason. It's that meme. You know, we're all trying to find the guy. Who did this? Right. Right. Maybe that's just politics and lying. And, you know, you got anti-Scott out there being like, I'm looking for somebody else to blame. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, look, I'm trying to get a handle on. There's now a debate about how much oil is getting through the Strait of Hormuz. Goldman Sachs says it's returned to about two thirds of the pre-war level. Yeah, I saw that. Another oil tanker tracker, which is highly reputable and relied upon by journalists, say it ain't close to that. So there's a debate. There's a debate about this. It does seem, though, that the blockade is having an impact and it's making life more difficult for the Iranians. And the Iranian economy is already in the toilet. So the question is, is this going to alter their calculations with respect to how they talk to the Americans? I'm very skeptical it will. But this is, you know, Operation Outcast and or maximum pressure, as it used to be known. Right. You sanction them. You block their ability to make revenue the only way that they can, exporting their energy. And you hope for the best that maybe, you know. Been working. They become more kittenish and decide, like, as J.D. said, they're just a bunch of cool. Revolutionary Guard terrorists now who want to make a deal with the United States. I don't know. Let's be clear. This is a crisis of our making because we went to war with Iran. It's not Ukraine's fault that they're fighting back against Russia. It's true and blunt. I don't think that's what Scott Bassett is trying to be when he's trying to explain why gas prices are up. It's like, well, you know, it's out of our hands. The Ukrainians, it's the straightforward moves. We got that under control. I want to talk about Iran, but there's a story in the FT about the kind of nexus between these two conflicts and Russia's kind of increasing involvement in trying to help Iran. The FT is this. They're secretly helping Iran develop a supersonic cruise missile. Some of Russia's most experienced missile specialists kind of laughed when you hear that phrase. So I do think about like a kind of mockumentary where you have Russia's most experienced missile specialists, such old guys from the Sputnik era coming through. But anyway, they're helping Iran develop a new class of weapon capable of threatening U.S. aircraft carriers and warships. Yeah. I mean, nobody should be surprised by this. That's just one story. And there are a bunch of. Russia is cooperating at a degree really unprecedented with not just Iran, but also China. We did a story at The Insider about how the Chinese came to them and said, you know, we're very worried about Starlink and what it can do to, for instance, disrupt our ability to invade Taiwan. So let's come up with a joint air defense and aerospace defense because this is happening in low orbit to maybe, you know, shoot down Starlink satellites out of space or do cyber warfare or somehow interdict these systems. The Russians sharing this kind of tech with the Iranians is absolutely an escalation. It doesn't surprise me so much. So, you know, one of the other things we noticed is in the last several years, the Russians were sending their Black Ops team, Unit 29155 of the GRU. These are the guys that poisoned the Skripals. And Salisbury, these are the guys who are responsible for all of these state-sponsored terrorist attacks happening throughout Europe, beginning in 2011 before the first invasion of Ukraine, all the way until now. They sent their top men from that unit, including the founding commander, Andrei Avryanov, to Tehran to liaise with basically the IRGC counterparts. And the question we had at The Insider when we were investigating this, what the hell are they talking about? You know, these guys don't do arms deals. They don't do, you know, intelligence liaison services. They do kinetic things. So we were kind of waiting to see what's the grand reveal here of this Russian-Iranian partnership. And look, I mean, our intel community has concluded that both the Russians and the Chinese are sharing intelligence with the Iranians to target American soldiers in the Persian Gulf. And you might say, well, the Russians would do that because, as I just mentioned, we're doing the same thing with the Ukrainians inside Russia. But, like, why are we not talking about penalizing the Russians for trying to kill Americans? Right. We're inviting the Russian finance minister to the G20. We're talking about how it's the Ukrainians' fault the gas prices are up. We're doing, like, simultaneously the fact that Russia's trying to help Iran kill our men and women. It's a pretty weak, frankly, posture. Very weak. And, you know, you had this Lindsey Graham sanctions bill, which passed the Senate and was rewritten to be pretty robust and also, frankly speaking, written in such a way that it would be hard to get rid of. And, you know, it's a pretty weak posture. And, you know, it's a pretty hard for Donald Trump not to enforce certain provisions in this thing. And it wouldn't have passed the Senate if Trump hadn't allowed it to, because the Senate, like the House on the Republican side, is just hostage to this personality cult. But now it's gummed up in the House. And it's gummed up in the House because. How's that doing? Yeah, the House went back into session yesterday. They voted on some things. Did that make it? No. I mean, I haven't seen the latest this morning. But last I heard, there are a lot of sticking points for people, including, I mean, on the Democratic side, it's the cudgel here, right? Which that party does not like and is against Donald Trump in doing this sort of trade war. But it's the best thing you're going to get out of this administration to hurt third parties importing Russian oil, gas, uranium, petroleum products, right? And that's what you would want if you were interested in strategically defeating this country. Yeah. And my guess is that it's Mike Johnson sitting on this because they don't want to do anything that's going to hurt the oil market. Correct. And so, you know, you have a situation where the President of the United States doesn't want to do anything that's going to hurt the oil market. And so, you know, you have a situation where the President of the United States doesn't really care about his party's political fortunes in the midterms. He cares about his, quote, legacy. So he will do things to advance what he sees as his legacy. So if he can defeat the Islamic Republic of Iran or denuclearize it, as he puts it, that's going to be for him, that will trump, no pun intended, Republicans losing perhaps both houses of Congress, right? He just doesn't care. But they, of course, care. And they're very nervous and worried, and which is why they want the Iran war to end. Any other thoughts on the latest from the Iran war? I mean, this is, you know, more kinetic action this week than we've seen in a little bit. We had targets in Iran on Tuesday. Tehran fired missiles and drones at sites across the region yesterday. Yeah. I mean, look, I said at the beginning of this thing, you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound. It's easy to start a war like this, but it's going to be incredibly difficult to get out of it. And once they close the Strait of Hormuz, that's not, you know, that's not a modus of any of the United States can live with because, you know, 20% of the world's oil bypasses that waterway. We can't allow the IRGC to take it hostage. But, you know, our strategy thus far has failed. I said the blockade is, operationally speaking, it's being met with some success. But I don't see this thing being wrapped up. And, you know, I said at the beginning, the Israelis have this doctrine called mowing the lawn or mowing the grass, right? So they have a conflict with an adversary. It's either a state like Iran or a non-state actor, Hezbollah, Hamas. And they don't try to strategically destroy the adversary. They contain them. And they contain them when they feel that they're being armed with weapons that are just not sustainable for the Israelis to allow them to be armed with. They go in and they bomb. And they do this periodically. You know, they did this in Syria for 10 years during the Syrian civil war. The Israelis would bomb Hezbollah and IRGC weapons transfers going to Hezbollah. And they did this with impunity. I think the American strategy, and I saw Axios reported some US official called it mowing the lawn. So the question is, how long can we allow this lawn mowing operation to continue? Because as I said, our resources are very straightened. We're running out of munitions. If we expended 100 Patriot interceptors in one night, and we're down to like 500 of them, do the math. How many of these sort of, you know, tit for tat exchanges? Five nights. Yeah. Yeah. Unless we start knocking on the doors of our allies and saying, you must give us your interceptors. Oh, and by the way, the Russians might invade you. So you're on your own if that happens. You see? Yeah. There's a Wall Street Journal report that like, that this was really impacting Russia's thinking on some of this stuff. If you're, if you're Putin, if you're she, I mean, you're sitting there saying, okay, well, our adversary is running out of kit. So now is the time to start probing, getting provocative and seeing what we can get away with. So for a guy like Putin, for Ratcliffe to go to Moscow, by the way, according to Russian media, he was meant to meet with Putin and Putin declined the meeting because he had told Naryshkin and Bortnikov, the heads of the SVR and the FSB, the war is going miserably. Putin doesn't want to hear this. Putin doesn't believe this because he's being lied to by his generals and by his intelligence services. The war is going fine. He just has to bide for time, press on, and eventually all of Donbass will fall. If you're Putin now, the intelligence you're being fed, which is accurate, it's terrible, is that the United States does not have the resources to sustain this war in Iran indefinitely, much less do they have the resources to sell to third parties, NATO allies in Europe, to then donate that kit to the Ukrainians. So this is why the Russians are escalating their missile attacks on Kiev and other population centers on a nightly basis, because they know that we don't have the missiles to give the Ukrainians. According to one Senate Armed Services Committee source, I don't know if you've heard of it. I don't know if you've heard of it. I don't know if I've talked to you. They need about 200 plus interceptors to withstand the winter. They're not going to get anything close to that. So a lot of people are going to die in Ukraine. Now I say that and I don't mean what I'm going to say next. I don't mean to be callous or cynical. I'm just kind of giving you an objective reading. That fact does not change the military dynamics at the front because these missiles are not being directed at Ukrainian soldiers. And that front is largely governed by unmanned systems, drones. But it does affect the humanitarian crisis. Citizens. Yes. Correct. Yeah, it's brutal. And I don't know, you mentioned earlier that there's a lot of ghost ships and such going through the strait. And so there is analysis saying that we're at, what, two thirds. I even saw one person said three fourths of before the war. But still the cost is so high. Correct. Insurance costs, how much we're paying. If you look at oil prices right now, they're back up over $90 a barrel. And it's like, who wants to do this? Who wants to ride a ghost ship? Through the Omani side of the Strait of Hormuz, there's a chance that the Iranians are going to fire a drone at you. Right. And I mean, you've seen the reporting on the state of the USS Lincoln and the morale and the mass sort of psychological state of the sailors on by me. I had poor things just pulled into port in Thailand. I mean, you won't hear from them for a while. It's going to make hangover part two look like a fucking walk through kindergarten. Yeah, no, I mean, these things have costs, right? We're paying for this blockade on a, on an hourly basis, but also our servicemen and women in the field are, they're not seeing seeing their families, you know, and they're being told, you know, they're being rotated in and out, but a lot of them being told you're going to be in there till 2027. And of course, this doesn't even account for the fact that in these little series of escalations, I mean, what if the Iranians hit a ship and kill dozens of American sailors? That's the kind of thing where I could see Trump and I could see General Kane and I could see whoever's left in the Pentagon to hold our military together saying we have to put boots on the ground, right? So, yeah, this is not happy times right here. Another uplifting report from Michael Weiss. Abraham Lincoln sailors, when you hit port in Thailand, if you see Sam Rockwell's character from White Lotus season three, go the other way. Okay, that's just trouble. That's just trouble. My love to Mark. I'm very excited about the new show. Thanks, man. Reporter and the Spy. Everybody get ready for it. It is going to be great. Up next. We're doing some politics with my friend, Roderick Appley. All right, we are back. She's a rapid response director for Majority Democrats, a group dedicated to growing the Democratic Party so that it can compete everywhere. Previously, she was the White House's director of black media during the Biden administration. She worked for Pete and a bunch of other campaigns. She's been a member of the White House for a long time. She's it's Roderick Applewhite or just Ro to me. What's up, Ro? Hey, Tim. How are you? I'm doing great. Thank you for doing this. I already gassed you up in the intro, so we don't need to go over that. But I would like to introduce you to people. Maybe give us a little bit of your political origin story, how you got into all this, how you ended up in South Bend. And I checked your LinkedIn this morning. I knew it was early, but April 2019. So you were like one of the OGs in South Bend. Yes. So to cut a very long career short, I got my start as an opposition researcher and actually transitioned to comms over this campaign. I was one of the first hires because I am a psycho and sent my resume cold to readjobsat, infoat for all of the exploratory campaigns. So that was like 20 of them. And I was like, I've worked at every level of campaign except for presidential. So it is happening this cycle. Liz called me out. Out of the blue and the rest is kind of history. Pete actually left me a voicemail when I accepted the offer. It was it was that early in the campaign. He got his own name wrong in the voicemail, which was kind of funny. And he mispronounced it. He tripped over it a little bit. And as someone with a difficult name, I get it. So we won't hold that against him. But yep, April 2019, I was in South Bend a couple of days before the launch and got into the rocket ship. And then that's kind of how it remained until we dropped out in March. And that's how we got to where we are now. And that's how we got to where we are now in 2020. Was your family or your friends like this is crazy? The gay South Bend mayor? Like, what are you doing? You're gonna finish in last place? Yeah, I was, you know, I told my my boyfriend at the time, I was like, Hey, I'll be back in six weeks. Like this is I don't even know who this guy is. But it ended up being such an incredible ride. I still talk to a lot of people I worked with every single day. What were they? What was like Pete and Chaston like in the early days? Do you have any fun behind the scenes goss for me? I mean, it's heartening to see in this line of work, a lot of people switch up when they get more eyeballs on them. But Pete and Chaston have always been unbelievably sincere. You know, there are so many different things to point to. But anytime he or Chaston, or the dogs were in the office, it was just it felt like you were the only person in the room, he would take the time to kind of go around to all of our pods and ask us how things were looking. What are some things that we're hearing online and things that he should be thinking about ahead of the next debate. But yeah, I was the keeper of his debate Bible, which beyond the book was just the catalog of drama between all of the other campaigns happening. So he would know when to jump in and when to jump out. And so being one of the last people he would kind of hear from before getting on stage is personal importance to me. Keeper of the tea. Did you ever get drunk brunch with Chaston? You know, do you have any drunk Chaston story? I do not know. We tried to let them have normal lives as much as possible. Okay. I have drunk Jeb story. So I was going to trade one for one. But we'll do it another day. All right, let's talk about the news. Yesterday. There was some weirdness on the hill. Like there was some drama over a rule vote. Anytime someone talks about a vote on the rule, I immediately start to pass out. So I like it seemed about a lot of nonsense to me. The thing that I did notice was Bill, Chris, when I talked about this on Monday, the house did vote to vote. They did vote to pass is like bipartisan continuing resolution, which which basically funds the government after the election. A couple of no votes from friends of the pot. Brendan Boyle, friend of the pod majority damn Robert Garcia, but a lot of dams voted for it. I don't really get it. Like my personal take on it is I just I feel like there should be more foot on the gas pedal, more aggression, more, you know, using every tool in the toolkit to like draw attention to the corruption and all the stupid shit. funding and just really vote on principle just being like i'm not funding this fucking corrupt government the counter argument to that is kind of basically like well things are going well like we don't who the hell knows you have a government shutdown we could get blamed and and you know we don't want to rock the boat you know whether about that vote in particular in general like my concern is sort of about like this prevent defense i think bill called it on monday like what do you think about all that and like how the how the dem should be handled in the next couple months yeah i mean i think there's a real reticence to rock the boat a little bit especially from leadership i mean we've been conducting focus groups across the country and i'm shocked as someone that's been doing this for a minute how specifically voters are naming these are everyday voters these are not freaks like you and me these are people that are just living their lives and and feeling how the trump administration and how congressional republicans have been impacting their lives and they are naming and shaming quite specifically so i mean to put myself in like what specific like tariffs like the ballroom yeah so one of the first questions that is asked is you know how are you feeling about the economy in the world and they're like well the iran war it makes my gas expensive i go to the grocery store it's expensive health care is up all of these cost of living issues are making are putting the squeeze in me and my family and my communities and it's because trump is not addressing any of these things and getting us into long drawn-out conflicts so the fact that people can name that i think has democrats in a situation of maybe we should just continue to let the main thing be the main thing and not get too involved in procedural fights that honestly for the most part end up making democrats look bad the last shutdown that we had was over health care which voters gave that to us of like oh you know this was a win right it was a win but when you drag it out especially as we're in the middle of an affordability crisis i think it makes it kind of hard to square that with democrats also saying that they're trying to make your lives more affordable the party that's in the minority tends to be the one that takes the blame when you have long drawn-out shutdowns and if you're going to instigate one you know eight to nine weeks out from election day i don't see how that helps democrats show how they're going to actually be functional i'm in yolo mode over here like okay i just i want to start going in like multiple guns blazing like screw these guys i understand that but i don't think that's going to be on that perspective i think that there's a broader you know putting aside like that specific point tactical vote because i don't think that democrats success and whether they take the senate is going to make or break on whether this budget passed or not but like i i do think that in a mindset of let's not rock the boat things are going our way like risks like leading like falling up short because like there are like these red states and we're going to get into some of them that you need to win in the senate the texas is the iowas oh like you could outperform harris by nine points not win any of them yeah i think that's absolutely right but you know the still have to show voters that they're actually going to do something and i think there's not going to be a lot of patience and rightfully so the voters are going to have for democrats if we retake both of these chambers so i think losing the battle to win the war i do think is a calculus that's worth considering when we're this close to election day okay let's look at the trump ad he's making life easier about for democrats for going on offense because he's not really on offense either i don't know how you'd explain this this just popped today they're spending a million dollars on this the trump super pack they got a ton of money yeah i mean they've got it yeah this is the thing the iowa dems are the most concerned about the local strategists i was talking to that they're just like look turk and and rob sand are running good races but like it's a small state they could just blow it out with money just just smearing turk and sand and so to spend a million dollars on this i would be curious let's watch we gave you no tax on tips no tax on overtime and no tax on social security the largest tax cuts in american history the price of eggs is down 60 percent i took prescription drugs from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest we're telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power need so that no one's prices will go up he's fighting for you every day help him finish the job it's strange that it's about trump it's just like a million dollars yeah i mean i think what's interesting and i would love to i wish i knew exactly when this audio was from but i'm gonna guess it was from a while ago, because Trump has been kicking and screaming, not wanting to talk about affordability, calling it a con job and a hoax by Democrats. I think this is the result of probably very long discussions of, sir, we need to do something like we are getting killed on affordability and cost of living arguments. Folks want to see that we've got something. And Trump said, fine, but no more than a million dollars, which if you know how much he has in his coffers, it's like a penny. I guess that's true. It's just been even him talking about how things are getting better. Like in some ways, like part of that ad, the Democrats could have run. Right. Absolutely. I think he's got kind of nothing and they know that they have to address this in some way. So they're doing the best they can with what they've got. Yeah. I just think that any million that's not spent trying to turn whatever, James Tallarico into woke one Kamala or whatever, you know what I mean? Like trying to turn him into like a crazy far left activist is a million dollars that I'm happy that they're spending on something else. Republicans. They're basically begging for Trump to do something and to support Ken Paxton in Texas and Ashley Henson in Iowa. And it's very interesting that we are not seeing any movement there. Yeah. And it's September two. Like it's kind of late, you know, to normal people, right? It feels like, well, you know, the election's two months out, et cetera, et cetera. And like, we've seen this. I remember, um, God, it was all the years get mixed up. It was 2020 now where Adelson came in really, really late and spent like a ton of money. for Trump in the last couple of weeks. Obviously, that didn't end up working. Biden wins. But like, you know, the Texas has so many media markets, I guess they're kind of like losing valuable time here to use that war chest, it seems like to me. It's a very expensive state to run in. And, you know, for all his faults, Trump does like a scoreboard. And at the end of the day, James Talarico has outraised Ken Paxton significantly. And there comes a point where you don't want to throw good money after bad. And that might be where Republicans are in Texas right now. It's crazy. It's a plot that has a coin flip. And it just it is really expensive versus Iowa. But there was this Atlantic story, maybe last week from Ashley Parker about how like Trump had a meeting in the White House where he's like, I want more ads featuring me. And then this ad came out. I don't know, maybe that leaked because they knew the ad was going out. And so there's some CYA. But to me, this is like this Trump ad is, if anything, a net plus for the Dems. All right, I want to go through the map. Not the whole map, just a couple of the races that you have your eye on. And I'll get into some of the majority Dems races over in the Michigan Senate, though, first, where there's a lot of a lot of buzz around that. I try to be out of the prediction business ever since 2016, when I made some very bad, very public predictions that ended up on like MAGA highlight reels on YouTube of like, of like Dem pundits crying. And I was one of the criers. And so I try not to do that. So I'm hedging a little bit. But I just I think that the pundits are really wrong about what's happening in Michigan. I think that Mike Rogers like appeals mostly to like people that show up in the CNN green room. No offense. I saw you on CNN recently. But and like he does. And like, you know, there's a handful of like rich Wall Street young Republicans and some Jewish Democrats that there's maybe some crossover there 1%. But I think this idea that he is this he's like a moderate and this has this huge crossover, I just don't buy. And I think that Abdul has a lot of skills that don't map along what like traditional what people you know, want from politicians. So I look at that race. And I think that that race will end up being a clean victory for Abdul ends up being, you know, I will probably end up being closer. What do you think about that? I certainly think this is the cleanest shot he's got. I mean, it's no denying that voters are very much looking for fighters and doers this cycle, and you know, it's going to be very difficult for him to do that. But I think he's doing a great job of doing that. And I think that he's doing a great job of doing that. And I think that he's doing a really good job of sticking to the message of, you know, money out of politics, money in your pocket and Medicare for all and anywhere we would go in Michigan, people were able to rattle that off. It's effective, it's good. However, when he strays from that, that's when he gets into trouble a little bit, you know, this proximity to Hassan Piker, you know, just now getting to the White House and apologizing for his comments after a synagogue got attacked earlier this year. All of these things make it, they trip him up and makes him distracted and spend time apart from talking about the issues that Michiganders care about. Mike Rogers, also very distracted. He's been going after all of this culture war stuff. I think any of the points he might have about, you know, the dangers of electing somebody as far as the left as a duel get really buried under all the Islamophobia and all of this other stuff that he's been tapping this campaign around. It's going to be hard for him to separate himself from Trump, especially in a state like Michigan that is getting particularly squeezed on this tariff war. We decided to start with the Canadians getting squeezed on manufacturing, just a lot of these issues that it's going to make it hard for Mike Rogers to actually tell Michiganders how he's going to be, you know, a senator that's going to act independently and not necessarily just be a rubber stamp for Trump. He's done nothing. He's offered no independence. Having worked for Mallory in the primary, I noticed, shout out Mallory. I mean, she's been out campaigning for Abdul. We have seen that not happen in Texas, for example. So, you know, good on her. Well, like, what is your sense, though, not at kind of the politician level, but like the voter level, the McMorrow voters, the Stevens voters? Like, is there any risk there, any vulnerability? I can understand there's some hurt feelings, you know, among the people that know each other. But like, from the actual voters, I don't know, Sarah's Michigan focus group, it's just one focus group, like, didn't really seem to, like, indicate that the same thing was true among just average voters. What's your sense? No, I mean, the primary was very messy, but primaries are also inside baseball. For voters in Michigan who have actual lives and aren't like us, just, like, pumping this into ourselves every single day, yes, it looked very cohesive, especially right after Abdul was elected. I mean, Michigan has a very late primary. It was not even a month ago. So you need to be able to turn around very quickly, demonstrate unity, to focus on hitting Mike Rogers and making sure he has a bad day every day between now and November. And I think Mallory McMorrow and Haley Stevens, to their immense credit, came out for him very strongly. And they've been also, I'm sure, working behind the scenes to get some of the other folks on board, like Jeremy Moss, who has been very pro-Israel, but also has said that he's been open to talks that he's been having with Abdul Sayyed that, for the most part, have seemed productive until until, of course, then Hasan Piker threw a whole bunch of cold water on that. So I think as much as he can focus on his race in Michigan and keep it about what Michiganders are going through, it'll make it a lot easier for him to show really good, sharp, effective contrast against Mike Rogers. Yeah, I'm bullish on it. I'm a mission against interest. So I think it's useful to hear from me, but I'm bullish on Abdul. Any thoughts on Jasmine? What's happening with her? I have. Oh, okay. Let me find it. Let me find it. Let me find it. Okay. On Jasmine, look, she does not have to endorse James Tallarigo. Let me say that up front. She doesn't? No, no. Against Ken Paxton? She doesn't. She is allowed to manage her legacy in the way that she sees fit. I don't see the value in having somebody who's like going to do half-assed endorsement work when we need people who are enthusiastic about defeating Ken Paxton. If she doesn't want to do that, that's on her. However, she's dragging. This out in a way that is making her look bad. At the end of the day, if you want to just say asked and answered, I will not be supporting James Tallarigo. Thank you so much. I'll be supporting these down-pilot candidates. It would be helpful if you could actually name those candidates and point to some events you've been showing up to on their behalf. That'd be really helpful. But she can manage herself however she sees fit. I, you know, I am a Black woman myself. I hate when people come in and tell Black people what to do. So I'm not doing that. But just be honest. If you don't want to support him, just be honest. If you don't want to support him, then okay, that's fine. We got a lot of other stuff to do. James Tallarigo has been making very productive inroads with the Black community. The polling has been very positive for him. It's around like 75, 76% of Black voters will be supporting him. Obviously, there's still a lot of work to do. I trust that his campaign is sophisticated enough to do it. I do too. Very diplomatic of you. That's nice. I don't know. Ken Paxton is the other choice. I keep coming back to this with Trump. People kept being like, well, I didn't. I mean, I voted for fucking Hillary. Okay. I started an anti-Hillary super PAC, all right, and then voted for Hillary. Like sometimes it's like the choice is the choice. I don't know. You're right. She can do whatever she wants. I can do what I want to. And it's insane. And she's really kind of embarrassing herself. Yeah. I mean, I think this is very emblematic of one, Florida, and two, that this is a big tent party. You have David Jolly, who's a former Republican, running for president. Yeah. You have David Jolly, who's a former Republican, running with Glenn Graham, who ran statewide for governor a few cycles back, running a very no-nonsense adult in the room. room, Republicans are crazy and not meeting your needs, very straight-laced, kind of like quintessential Florida Dem campaign. It worked for them very well in the primary, and I think it's the exact contrast we want to see going into the general. And then you have the complete other side, which, you know, to your point, like Alex Bindman maybe should have won that primary based on, you know, where he was ideologically. However, Angie Nixon was the person who people were actually seeing show up to their union halls and their women's Democratic meetings and all of that. She's been a staple in Florida politics for quite some time. She's a staple in her community, and she shoots straight. I mean, I've been really happy to see the no-nonsense attitude she has when she's been doing some of this national press, when they try to tie the worst facets of DSA's policy of, like, platform to her and Hassan Piker. And she's like, I don't know about any of that. Here's what I'm hearing in Florida, that people can't afford health care, that their roads are messed up, their education is bad, and they can't afford to go to the grocery store. And she's stayed laser-focused on that. When they try to get her on to fund the police, she's like, I want to defund Flock, which more and more seems like a bipartisan issue. She's been doing a really, really good job of staying focused on what she's hearing on the ground from Floridians, and that's why she won her problem. Yeah, total media training. Daria Liza and some of these folks should just watch Angie Nixon videos. Even if she doesn't win, she's doing a service. She's doing a service. She's doing a service for DSA candidates as far as how you handle this stuff. She's been awesome, I think. But there's also another race in Florida, if you'll allow me, that I want to highlight, being that the bench is one of the organizations I work with. Pia Dandia in Florida's 22nd district is running as well. I know nothing about Pia, so just give it to me. Give me the. Let me tell you, she's a teacher, she's a principal, a private sector leader, and a rising star. She is extremely passionate about why she's running for office, what she's going to actually do in Congress, and she's been doing a really good job laying out how she's going to get that done and building the coalition necessary to. What is the district? The district is Florida 22. I believe it's in the Fort Lauderdale area. That's kind of by Trump. It's part of Mar-a-Lago, I think. Yes. So it got redrawn, and it was a district that Trump won 55% of the vote in 2024. In a normal year, this would be kind of a done deal, and Pia would not be successful, but this is kind of a testament to the type of candidates that we've been backing across the country with the bench. Let's do more about that, because that race. I did an article a couple of months ago now. Wait a minute. Is the Pia race. Is she running against the guy that's trying to rename 75 Trump Highway? Yes, that's correct. That's Casey Asker. He's a self-funder, wealthy Naples businessman that has run. He's run before, although very interestingly, and I think this is finally reflective of the dam starting to burst a little bit for Republicans, he's been slowly wiping mentions of his working with Trump off his website. Sorry, once you come out for renaming things Trump Highway, you can only do so much with your website. People remember that. He's hoping nobody notices, but this is me outing him right now. We see you. A lot of these candidates, as I mentioned about a month ago or two, and I'm going to update this, the primaries are finally fucking over next Tuesday, so I'm going to update this here in a week with some other candidates, so maybe you can make some recommendations to me. I wrote basically about that 55 is right on the outer edge. I was trying to look at districts that Trump won 53, 54, 55, maybe 52, maybe 52, where it's a Democrat, and if there's a strong candidate in particular, this could be a wave year where you can win one of those seats. I wrote about a bunch of them. We'll put the link in the show notes. I was wondering, you just mentioned Florida 22. What else are you either working on or monitoring that you're interested in if people are looking to support these stretch candidates, in particular because I think the big swing candidates, I know that you guys also have Kate Conley's running against Mike Lawler. There's nothing against Kate. She's going to have plenty of money. She's going to have a ton of money in that race because everybody's going to go in because that's a big swing race. There's that next layer, like that Florida 22, that I think that I want people to look at. Is there anything else you're monitoring in that vein? Yeah. A lot of overlap with the candidates that you mentioned in your piece, so it was nice to see that, but it's same four-stag in Montana 1, Jamie Ager in North Carolina 11, Bobby Polito in Texas 15, and Johnny Garcia in Texas 35th, Mary Peltola running for Alaska Senate, and Josh Turek running for Iowa Senate. These are all candidates who are running very different races, but all in the same vein of building the coalitions necessary and showing their voters and their constituents what they're actually going to do for them in Congress versus being focused on tenure, leadership, whose name is on what door, who gets what office, just actually focus on delivering wins for their people. Right. One of the other candidates that I highlighted was in the news this morning, Brian Poindexter, Ohio 7. Allegedly, in 1998, police, I guess, were going to some, you know, some young guys hanging out, getting in a little trouble, and allegedly, he swallowed a crack cocaine rock in 1998. Yeah, that's kind of like, cool. I don't know. Like, that's not so dissimilar for my, how my aughts went, not maybe 1998, but shout out Brian Poindexter. He's running against Max Miller. Yeah, I was four, so I won't be speaking on those. Fuck you. I was four. Just in general, in these races, like, just is there any big picture of, from your focus groups, from these campaigns that you're helping out with, like, what is working, like, in these kind of red districts, you know, kind of besides, like, obviously, everybody's talking about affordability, but is there anything else that, like, jumps out as, like, candidates that are resonating? What's working is not getting caught in the binary of progressive versus moderate or Democrat versus Republican. I think Republicans are caught a little flat-footed this time because they're going after all this culture war stuff that, frankly, voters only care about when the economy is good. Like, they can focus on that stuff. But right now, they're like, all right, okay, but, like, cut the bullshit. What are you actually doing to lower costs for me? And what has been so effective across the ideological spectrum on the left has been the candidate that makes that argument the most effectively of what they're actually going to do for people upon election is the candidate that has survived the primary, regardless of, you know, if they're a progressive or a moderate. So it's really, I think, the binary we're seeing here is doers versus sitters. And those are the people that are really, you know, they're the ones that are the most effective. And I think that's the making Republicans have to answer for why they've given Trump a rubber stamp to do everything but tackle the issues that voters actually care about. I just think having that outsider thing, I mean, it's a little eye-rolly sometimes, but it's like, that's what voters react to when you hear from them. They don't, like in this day and age in particular, like they don't want to see normal politicians. And like, just sometimes people talk about it in like the sister soldier context, where it means you're punching left, but I don't even mean it like that. Like, I just mean like, I just differentiating your brand in some way from the party. And like, even in some ways, it could be left ways, right? Like where the party's too tied into corporate interests or whatever, like it doesn't even have to map. But like, you just see that that either it's bio, it's policy, like getting some separation from this is important. Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think a good case study of that was the race that we saw in Connecticut between Representative John Larson, and Luke Ronan, who challenged him, not from the left, but just from the issue of gerontocracy, the issue of how older representatives don't necessarily understand the issues that voters are facing today, and don't seem particularly open to understanding how to pivot for the world we're living in right now. That's the argument that Ronan focused on throughout the primary. And I mean, you saw in the results, it was pretty significant. I have two more hot takes for you, and then we're good. I want from you. Actually, I have no more hot takes left. I want you to provide hot takes. One is really to kind of what were the lessons from these primaries broadly, because it's obviously, you know, anytime one faction or another gets a win in a prime, they're like, see, you know, but like, it was kind of a mixed bag, right? Like in that, in that sense, like Bronin wins at that Connecticut race you mentioned last night, Seth Moulton loses to Markey, where it's kind of a similar, you know, type bios of the two candidates, you know, Abdul wins, and then Hong loses, right? Like, so like, you're seeing kind of a mix. Out there. I'm wondering if you're looking ahead to 28. I know you're focused on November, everyone's focused on November, but you know, somebody might call you somebody, one of the 30 people that run for president might call you, you know, and say, Hey, you were engaged in all these primaries. Like, what did we learn? Like, what is the electorate want right now? The Democratic primary, we're often talking about swing voters now, like the Democratic primary electorate, like, why did some lefties resonate and others didn't? Why did some, you know, some of the lefties resonate and others didn't? Why did some, you know, some of the lefties win and others didn't, in your opinion? Yeah, I mean, it really comes down to candidate authenticity. I think voters were very, very savvy, more savvy than I think a lot of people in the Beltway give them credit for, of really taking the time to understand and, I mean, in a voter way, feel the vibe of the candidate that is running. And the candidates that were successful in these primaries are the ones that did that most effectively and were the most authentic. Voters aren't engaged in these ideological battles. They're not. They just want things in their community to feel like they're solved and at least, or at least getting addressed. And being able to show some wins. wins especially going into hopefully a congress that is controlled by democrats being able to point to that is going to be really effective for candidates considering running for president pointing to their own wins throughout the two trump administrations will also be really helpful i think anything that really shows voters and i know this seems pretty common sense but i'm i'm saying it anyway anything that shows voters that you actually care and that you see them those are the candidates that you're going to see emerge victorious so i want to put a finer point on that because i think it's some of it is like actual wins like also over republicans like democratic voters are mad at trump right and so like i think that in a weird way i took this a little bit with roads on friday about how like the resistance candidates didn't do that well what if whatever nothing obviously george has a new podcast coming on the bulwark platform we love george i love dan goldman but like trump got back in right so obviously the impeachment thing didn't work you can't see that say that as a win right and so it's like okay what are other things like i think a lot of the left candidates were saying okay well we're providing a new framework for how we can win by focusing on popular stuff correct you know you saw in in bronin or some of these other center candidates that have been successful like they were offering okay well i have a different path for fighting trump that's going to be successful right like and i think that to me is what was like missing from some of these other campaigns yeah yeah absolutely i mean this was this was no no none taken this was vinman's downfall as well in florida like nobody cares about impeachment like yes it didn't work bad bad for the arc of justice sure but at the end of the day people are like what is an impeachment proceeding going to do for my bottom line and the answer is like nothing and so you know people who can actually say not just i oppose trump and trump's bad but here's what i would do instead here's what i'm actually going to do for you versus just help you continue to yell at trump these are the these are the candidates that voters are gravitating towards and they more more often than not having to be progressive just because i think progressives have done a really good job of nailing that messaging they have a lot of people who are going to have a model and they also have the white board you know abdul you mentioned it abdul had the fucking hat people knew what he was for that matters okay final hot take you did black media this feels like very outside my wheelhouse right because like i just you know it's it's hard for me to kind of like grasp like what the undercurrents of this are like trump does do better with black voters last time than he did in 20 yeah right with harris at the top of the ticket so it's like is that just same economic trends as every other voter demographic or was there something about biden and harris or was there something about the message you mentioned the talarico number in the polls like that's still a little soft from where you would like want democrats to be like what what's your take on that it does feel like democrats it's on the margins and it's mostly black men it seems like you're looking at the numbers not like women but like you know like you're still winning overwhelming numbers but it does matter if this is the base of the party if you're winning 88 versus 82 like that matters right so i don't know what your what is your take about that softness and whether whether that's reversing at all or what democrats should do it could be the difference between a win and a loss for a lot of these races that we're seeing especially the very tight ones i fully understand that the black community feels a little bit baited and switched that you know you see candidates in your churches and barbershops eight weeks out from election day and then you don't see these candidates or hear from them again until the next time they're on the ballot that's a problem and it's something that the democratic party is specifically work to fix. It is not on Black voters to just show up to bail out Democrats every single time that we're on the ropes. That's not how it works, and we should not expect that because it's not fair. What we need to do, and this was a lot of work that I did at the White House working directly with Black-owned and operated outlets, is engage those outlets way more. These are outlets that fully understand their communities. They write like their communities, and they tell stories that are being overlooked by more mainstream type of outlets. So that's really important. And then I think something that really hamstrung us in the White House is that there was a reticence all the way from the top to really own and name wins. A lot of Black Americans did not know how much we did for the Biden administration, Biden-Harris administration, did for Black Americans because there was really just not a willingness to kind of talk about it from the top. Like, sure, I could do my job and did talking to these outlets as a spokesperson, but it was really important to the community to hear that directly from Biden-Harris because when you don't hear it from them, it's not, no one says, oh, look how humble they are. They're looking towards the noise of Republicans saying that they're not doing anything for them. And so I think that's why, especially with Black men, you saw a lot of them vote for Trump last cycle because they didn't hear what was happening on their behalf. Yeah. All right. Any mayors out there you're going to go fly and visit in April 2027? Uh, I won't be getting into that. I'm focused on November 2026. No mayors. Nothing exists after November 2026. No unknown trans, LGBTQ plus mayors out there that might be on their eyes. Okay. I mean, anybody is welcome to give me a call and we would be happy to talk to them about how they can work and further the bench's mission going into the next cycle. I appreciate you, Ro. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks also to my friend, Michael Weiss. New show coming up soon, Reporter and the Spy. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow with my bestie, C.L. Bennett. ♪ You can see right through the ground ♪ ♪ If you want to be a spy, then you must really see ♪ ♪ And you must really see if you want to be a spy like me ♪ 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. Thank you.