Mike Murphy and Mark Hertling: Vivek Is a Despicable Creep

Hey, everybody. It's Tim. We've got a good show for you today in segment one. We got Mike Murphy and we just kind of go around the map do some politics talk and then we'll give you a little bit from our live show in Atlanta last night in my conversation with Mark Hurtling. You know, I tried to keep it as serious as possible, but I did have a slip and I did take a shot of Sam's whiskey right before the interview. So, you know, give me give me a little bit of grace. I've just landed it back in New Orleans and I wanted to add an addendum to some of the things we've talked about because we had two news items overnight that I wanted to cover one in raging one uplifting. So, a little bit of balance. First thing, raging item, we have some discussion with Mike Murphy about this ad featuring Amy Acton's monstrous mother. At the time of the taping, we're kind of discussing it was like an unclear what the providence of this was or this was a campaign ad, you know, whether it was allies on the internet where they leaked it out and what we've learned overnight is that Vivek's campaign is going to put four million dollars behind this ad on television in Ohio. It is I think the most despicable act that we've seen from a campaign in recent memory. Amy's mother was complicit in her sexual abuses of minor. Amy's stepfather, well, a strange stepfather, abused her when she was as young as nine years old. Amy and her brother had to be separated from her parents at age 12 because of the scale of the abuse. The stepfather was indicted and then fled the state and lived out his life on the lamb and Amy's mother sided with the pedophile abuser on the run from the law over her own children. The abuse is not limited to sexual abuse from the stepfather. The torment and torture that Amy's mother put her own children through is just unconscionable and unimaginable. And this woman is just straight from the pits of hell and they were locked in a basement the two kids for long periods of time. They're in and out of CPS. They had severe abuse and neglect both from the mother and the stepfather according to court documents. This woman tortured her own child and was complicit in the pedophilic abuse of her. She should be ashamed to show her face and instead we have the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign putting her face on TV's all over Ohio to try to you know attack Amy acted and say that oh her own mother doesn't even trust her. It is unbelievably unconscionable. The donors to the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign are funding this. Everyone that gave a scent to Vivek is now complicit in putting this monster on TV and letting her retraumatize the child that she put through hell. It's hard to even imagine how somebody could find it within themselves and within their own conscience to put this ad on TV and yet Vivek Ramaswamy is doing it. He's just a despicable, despicable creep and I think that in the coming days we'll be continuing to cover this and go through who all the supporters are of this campaign that are part of this just repellent attack on Amy acting that the good news is is going to backfire and at least now we really have somebody to root against in a personal way in the Ohio governors race. If you're in Ohio I'd encourage you to you know spend an extra hour knocking on Doris Ramy acted this weekend. Here's the other news item. If a bush sibling endorses a Democrat I don't know where else you're going to get coverage of that besides the Bullwork podcast. So here we go. Neil Bush, brother of Jeb and George W. We've got to meet a few times. Good man. A state out of the political wine light at least in the past couple decades and he posted to Facebook last night. This was a pleasant thing to get home to after I've shown Atlanta the following message that I'm going to read from liberally. I've never posted a political message on Facebook. W and Jeb's brother says he didn't want to offend friends who's used maybe very different than his. He's breaking that tradition because he voted early today and Neil Bush voted for James Talleriko for United States Senate. He said his vote was motivated by two things. Deep concern about Ken Paxton's record but also genuine admiration for the character and principles. He sees in Talleriko. He goes on listing out all Paxton abuses. Then he goes on to say more broadly. I believe Donald Trump and those who have enabled him have done enormous damage to the Republican Party. I worry about a political culture in which loyalty to an individual takes precedence over loyalty to principle. And with those who hold power begin to believe they're no longer accountable. But my vote today was about much more than opposition to Ken Paxton. I've never met James Talleriko but I've been enormously impressed by the way he approaches, complicated and controversial issues. He speaks with respect, seeks common ground and seems genuinely interested in bringing people together rather than driving him apart. His faith appears to be a deeply rooted source of humility, compassion and conviction rather than a political weapon. I've seen him the qualities that admire most in public service, integrity, civility, humility, and a willingness to listen to those whom he disagrees. He goes on I've been a Republican for most to my life. I still believe deeply in many traditional Republican principles, but character matters more than party affiliation. Our democracy depends on leaders who respect our institutions, tell the truth, accept accountability and seek to unite rather than divide. Today I voted against a style of politics. I believe has damaged our country. More importantly I voted for the kind of character and leadership. I hope we'll help heal it. That's Neil Bush on his support for James Talleriko and Fuck Yeah, Neil Bush. Thank you. This is what we're asking for. You know, I'm not asking for everybody to change their views on things, but we've had some harsh words in the show for his brother W recently, who is also voting for James Talleriko. We can just admit it. We all know that that's what he's doing and he's out there instead of speaking just plainly like Neil did. He's out there raising money for all the other Republicans besides Ken Paxton running for Senate. I don't know. I think that the minimum that you can do is just speak plainly about the clear contrast between James Talleriko and Ken Paxton this race. I appreciate that Neil did that. I think that's good news. And hopefully there are going to be a lot of Neil Bush is out there over the next two weeks. All right. Thanks for sticking around. There is my rant and rave intro. Stick around two good conversations with Mike Murphy and Mark Hartley. Hello and welcome to the Bullock Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. We've got a little bit of a double for you today in the D segment. We're going to give you some of our Atlanta show last night. I sat down with Mark Hartling to discuss affairs of the world and we had a blast in the ATL. I had to fight back to New Orleans on Wednesday morning for daddy, daughter lunch. So we're pre-taping and segment one. You know him as a veteran political strategist. He's a coast of hacks on tap and co-director of the Center for the Political Future at USC also runs the American EV Jobs Alliance. It's Mike Murphy. What's up, Murphy? Hey, man. Tim, good to be here. We're in an interesting time. We're we're waving. Let's see if the wave actually makes it. Indeed. We're cursed. We're cursed to live in interesting times, I think. But we will see. Let's do that. Let's do a big picture. You think we're riding the waves. You're out in California. Give us I want to go through a couple of the races, but why don't you just give us your big picture of Murphy Stick as we as we sit here two weeks out. Yeah. Well, it's pretty simple. You know, these off your elections are normally bad. Though we jerrymandered our way to we don't have the 60s seat losses like Obama had. But midterm losses are natural. Trump's numbers are crap. He used to always be propped up by the perception that yeah, he's an asshole, but he can run the economy. That's gone. His economic job approvals and you know, the high 20s. We're paying many bar prices for diesel. The farm belts in revolt. The stupid tariffs are killing the industrial Midwest and it's clear he's lost his mind. So put all that stuff together. Dems are going to win the house probably by enough of a margin that their lunatics won't hold it hostage like our freedom caucus will. And the big miracle would be because most as you know, most of the fighting is in Republican states that the D's can actually they actually have a real shot at winning the Senate. Yeah. So I plan to have a very fun election night hearing the pain screams well-deserved from some viral Republican friends that we're ending the near of the foul story here for them and it's going to be a hell of a fun night. I like the mini bar prices line, but I does tie to one of my complaints. I still have from Dennis Miller. But you're used to say that during the California recap. Yeah, you can tell it's pretty COVID because we don't get many bars anymore. It's a complaint I have. I want you to charge me seven dollars for sneakers right now. I come home hungry at the end of the night and we don't do it anymore. It's worth it. Yeah. You gave us a maybe on the Senate. I mean, I think you just look at the big, you know, states we've got Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Alaska and the Democrats basically need to win four of those. Five really to be federal improve. Then you get to other states like you got to keep an eye on Federman too, who may play his own election night surprise. But yeah, yeah, those are the ones. So why don't you want you just kind of went through those. Why don't we start with the blue ones first? What are you looking at in Maine and Michigan? You know, I'm a revert to mean guy. In other words, in the end, people tend to do what they normally do historically. So Maine is always hard. There's always a bit of a race there. And in a wave, I think they're going to get her even though the Democratic candidate is, you know, be minus quality better than the creep they had before. So I think Maine's going to pop. I think also next door, New Hampshire, it will be held in kind of blue world. You know, Collins is KG and everything, but she's hit her sell-by date, I think. I think a lot of her, her stick is kind of spent. And it's just the wrong year. So yeah, I feel pretty good about Maine. You spent a lot of time in Michigan. I was in, I'll tell you before you get to your Michigan assessment on here this, but it was you that influenced me a little bit during the primary, because, you know, by nature, I wouldn't call you maybe a part of the Abdul Al-Sahead Coalition by ideology and temperament. Yeah. But you were commenting a lot about how you thought people were underrating his candidate skills. This was very early in that three-way primary. You turned out to be exactly right about that. I started to kind of lock in on him more and agreed with you. I do fact the last week or two, I don't know, he feels a little prickly. Yeah. No, I think he's growing up. I'm with you. Huge skills, terrible Trump time in Michigan. Mike Rogers is kind of a dud of a candidate. He was better 10 years ago. And, you know, compromise about a Trump thing. The problem is when, when he won the primary, if you look at where he did well, predictably college towns and wine and cheese, wealthier suburban Democrats, where did he not do well? The manufacturing counties, Detroit, you know, downriver, he did okay, of course, and deer born in all the areas where the huge American population, but McComb, North of Detroit, not so good. So he's got certain weaknesses. I think in a way, he'll still probably make it. But he's locked into this kind of cocky, broke persona thing. When this is a very easy race to be a Democrat, it, hey, screw Trump. He ruined the economy. He's had 12 bankruptcies. Now he's working on yours. What does gas cost? Instead, he goes off in this stuff like you did with the tracker kid, where he's just irksome. It's egotistical preening. And a lot of talk about what he's going to do when he gets there already. Culturally, that's a bad thing for Michigan, particularly when the electorate is ornery, ornery at Trump and very easily ornery at him. So I think he's still going to make it, but I think it's going to be close. And I think he needs a little less of him, a little more fire Trump would be my free advice to Elsa yet, but he, uh, he's got talent, but it's like all super talented people that they can be a handful too. You know, they get a little drunk on the spotlight. I agree with you. That's really a dual thing. And the other thing is like, in addition of all the things you said about Trump, he has his big meatball down the middle of the plate on the Iran war. And Mike Rogers is like the most, you know, aligned with like the pro-oran war wing of the Republican party. Maybe if any of the Senate candidates. And, um, you know, I had a comment or I take this feedback that they're like, Tim, you're always asking the Democratic candidates to show more hootspun, show more fight. Now I'm dual-studs yelling at this tracker. What's wrong with that? And I was like, well, I, you know, I want you to fight smart about it too. You know what I mean? And if I'm a dual, I just am spending the last 13 days being like, I told you the Iran war was stupid. I told you we should spend more money on you here. These guys got us into a stupid war with no strategy and no way out. And we're going to stop it. But that's it. Like that's it, you know, and he doesn't have to like give the tracker the Kennedy lecture and, you know, at the front, he didn't do the Muslim brotherhood thing strong. He never really did the piker thing strong. He keeps leaving breadcrumbs for people who want to run the shakaboon campaign against him, which is the last card they have left. He's making it a little easy for those guys. So I was watching Fox. They think if you look at what they think are there opportunities based on their behavior. When I'm on the road, I watch Fox's. I don't subject my husband and child to it. And I mean, it's like they talk about Abdul with Islamophobic undertones, overtones, after time like three X more than all the rest of the candidates and the Senate race combined. So they see an opportunity here playing that card. I agree with you. I don't think it's going to work. But, you know, tighten it up the last two weeks. Yeah. Right. He could have he could have made it harder. You know, quit. It's about Trump. Not about you. Yeah. Speaking of people making it harder on themselves, the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign seems to have done that. That weird situation here. It's a on Tuesday morning, a bunch of right wing online influencers put out what like looks like a professionally done ad. I'm not going to play like it's gross. And it's Amy Acton's birth mother, direct to camera, 60 seconds spot, like a real TV ad would be talking about how she doesn't like her daughter. Basically, the backstory here is Amy Acton was sexually assaulted by her stepfather and her mother sided with that man. And like at age 12, her and her brother were emancipated from them. Yeah. And took him away because it was an ounce of horrors. So they've got lady Dracula now doing an ad for Ramaswamy. I think it'll back. And so I think that they thought that they were going to be cute with this, but like not actually putting the ad on TV. They made the ad and then they because they're not denouncing it and then they leaked it out to places. They wanted it to kind of go viral on the internet. And I just, and this is really disgusting. It's like a rare incident where it's incidents where you even see a lot of Republican types thing like what are you doing? Yeah. It's desperate creepy stuff. Oh, how it seems to be moving well. The center race is competitive. You know, Acton is originally appointed by the Republican governor, Mike DeWine, who I would bet you a thousand bucks in the privacy of the voting booth is going to vote for her. Not that insect Ramaswamy who, you know, I kind of hated since he ran for president, at least from afar. But this thing is so clumsy and so gross. And you know, you're going to see her and her brother on a couch on an internet spot explaining exactly what happened when the state troopers have to come in in 12 to rescue you from the monster boyfriend that the mom stuck with after that. So I think Silly late gross and will not derail Acton, who I believe is going to win. Yeah, totally depraved and it's how probably ends up backfiring and helping her. And it's just the Ramaswamy campaign has been just a nightmare. I mean, he ends up kind of, yeah. Hey man, who stood position themselves as the biggest data center guys in the country, right? As this backlash starts, the MAGA right has some reasons to just trust him that are maybe, you know, maybe not the most principled reasons, maybe based on his name, but even still, he didn't hasn't short that up. And that then kind of bleeds over into the Senate race where you've got shared Brown and who stood. And, you know, I think I guess if you look at those other four, would you say that's the most likely of the red states for a Democrat to win or maybe Alaska? You know, it closed for the last, because yeah, I would tip it to Ohio, you know, sure, Brian, I probably disagree with a lot of issues, is still right for the moment with economic pain for the working class. And he's an old pro and he's run a very tight smart campaign. So I, yes, I would say that's the most likely red one. The next two, Alaska, and I would actually say Kansas are kind of perfect storm over Texas. Yeah, you're right. You know, six months ago, people thought, God, do you think it could happen now? I think most people think, God, do you think past and could ever win? Texas is moved. So they're all kind of in a blur, and they all have one thing in common, which is good Democratic candidates. So it makes it harder to revert to the mean, Paxton, the Penn Stealer and all the corruption versus Stellariko, who's it's hard to hit them with the left wing stuff and the, you know, all the creepy trans things are trying because he's Mr. Rodgers. You just don't believe he's a wild eyed fanatic. It just doesn't fit. And Paxton is like, we're in a Velcro suit for crap because he's guilty of essentially everything. And then Marshall in Hamilton and Kansas, Marshall's probably the worst incumbent Republican candidate for just lack of story, lack of message and lack of skills. And Hamilton is really a Bush Republican, Bush one Republican at heart, is perfect to be the alternative. If I Bush won't you mean HW Bush, maybe. But you know, he's a, I would think of his compelium, but apparently as a largest method discharge, but he is pre-credentialed. He is non-threatening. He's anti-politics. So it'll take a hell of a crowbar to get a state like Kansas over the top, but they've done it in governor races. The growth there is the suburbs. You know, again, Trump and Ag, no love affair with the diesel prices and a bunch of the tariff stuff. So I think Kansas could be kind of the remarkable win. In Alaska's similar, he's disconnected to the state Sullivan. And she's got a little special sauce. She's native. So you're going to see hyper native turnout, which will be a real number up there. So yeah, I mean, the Democrats have a lot of perfect storms going on here. The Alaska situation is so weird. It's like an inverse of every other state in the country. It's like I'd have the right the right choice. It's like the The rurals are going to vote for her because she's native and it's like in Fairbanks, it's like oil business guys, so it is not at all like the trends everywhere else. But I do think that to the extent that you can get a Schwami crystal ball out of the ice up there, it seems like she's the favorite to me. Yeah. No, it is upside down land. They do everything but the drain going the wrong way. But I agree, I agree. You know one of my life lessons, one of my aphorisms, I tell you about it a lot, ABC always be charging. And I'm always looking for different ways to charge. I'm plugging in to random, you know, kind of wall outlets. Sometimes you'll catch me in the corner of a store or an airport sitting on the dirty ground, phone tied into the wall. But you don't have to do that anymore with Ridge is doing ABC a lot easier than it has been in the past. 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You can find Ridge's power bank at Best Buy and Amazon or head to Ridge.com/thebullwork for Ridge's friends and family sale where you can buy two Ridge power banks and get a third one free. That's Ridge.com/thebullwork, shop smart this holiday season with Ridge, after you purchase they'll ask you where you heard about them, please support our show and tell them we sent you. Speaking of Swami, Swami Murphy, what's your number right now, as we said here today, of Sendet Seats? You know, I'll be honest, I've been looking to seat the seat and I haven't added them up, but I think these plus one or two probably, I even think the Lindsey seat could pop. You know, and there's some interest now in Mississippi, the great dream. Let's talk about South Carolina. I was going to ask you about this. You're there on Friday, I think Annie Andrews has a lot of energy, also is running. You know, sometimes the Democrats have run some of these people in these dream states, even Jamie Harrison and Amy were graph of everything, and when they were kind of running as conventional Democrats, Annie Andrews is not, you know, I mean, I think that she's definitely running as a South Carolina Democrat, that's the difference is from the national party. She has personality, she has charisma, darling Graham has nothing. And now she gets dealt with this week, the legacy bill of her late brother, Trump just rips it up the executive order and says, screw it, I don't know. I think I'm going to do a deal with Putin, we're going to do a prisoner swap. We might do some data centers, I'm going to buy his diesel, we're going to have a summit. And you know, the sanctions bill you're talking about, this is dumb stuff. And she just sitting there holding the back. Yeah, she's got a whole bunch of problems, trumping the biggest, the Lindsey legacy being totally pissed on by Trump huge. She doesn't have artful candidate skills to trying to wheeze a lot of it, you know, good sister, lousy candidate. And then, then she's got a special South Carolina problem, which is, as you well know, South Carolina primaries are like, you know, real snake pits. And you got a whole bunch of ambitious polls there thinking, if the dem wins this time in six years, we got an opa, a primary where I can grab the seat about eight of them. On the other hand, if she wins, they may stick with her because their senator, senator incumbent Republican school in the Republican state. And you know, there's a chance she'll be there for a while. So killer now and have a seat for me, that's not many voters. But in the Byzantine court of South Carolina politics, it's a real deal. And then you've got a, you know, a 25% or so of South Carolina primary voters always hated Lindsey. They could never beat him, but there was a current there. So she's got none of those friends. Right. And remember, you don't have to go vote for the Democrat. You can just not vote, drop the line. And mathematically, that's still a huge impact. So I think she is kind of like the old Looney Tunes cartoon. I see the saw going in a circle around the floor. I'm not sure it'll get all the way around the circle, but that one is probably my biggest upset since I'm so cocky about Kansas. Yeah. If not, I would say Kansas is the biggest upset. But I think there's something going on on the mirror. I mean, at some level, this is not a policy switch. You know, those of us on this program and listening to this program, I've had Trump's number on Russia for about a decade now. But, you know, I mean, he did the, there were always people around them that were nudging them or run one direction of the other and, and like, you know, at times, you know, there have been moments where the administration has, you know, acted to help Ukraine. But I know past week, and I guess besides JD Vance, Shouting's a once key down in the Oval Office, I mean, this has been, you know, the most extensive list of betrayals of Ukraine that we've seen. And I'm just kind of, I mean, I'm wondering, you think about that on the merits and then be, you know, if this Murphy wave comes to pass, like, you know, do, do the remaining husks of the Republican senators do anything about this? Or what do you think? Yeah, no, that is the question. I think you're totally right about Ukraine. The betrayal is unbelievable. I mean, think about it. Right now, Russian satellites are helping the Iranians prepare target lists where they can kill Americans in military installations in the Middle East. We're like paying for the satellites now. Trump is just trying to buy some oil to save his ass in the midterms, so it's too late. It's so transactional and so evil. It's stunning. We'd never had a president like this, you know, and Trump won for all the craziness. There were grownups around people who'd read history books. Now everybody's read a comic book essentially. There are no serious people other than some Wall Street buddies, and even there at the low end of the serious spectrum. So he's running wild, and we're going to be digging out of a foreign policy hole here for quite a while, and it's tragic for the Ukrainians. So I do think the world is going to change if the Democrats win the Senate. And I mean, I think the Democrats are going to have more power even if they come one short in the Senate. I mean, we're four votes down or the Republicans are known independent. They're four votes down in the Senate and they've had to bring in Vance on a couple of tough votes because they couldn't get the whole caucus. If it's down to a one vote margin, the Demserts don't have much more power. And I do think some, not all, but some of the senators are going to feel the leash slipping in that Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall and shattered into a bunch of orange pieces. And the whole center of gravity in American politics will move to what's next on the repub side and on the dem side, which is going to be wide open. Very important. We got to figure out what we are in both parties. But you've seen, like, look, speaking of OK, how that power shifts. This is why I don't have a ton of hope in the Republican senators because we'll see what happens. But the likely heir apparent the vice president to data points from this last week. He's on with Mark Halperin. He's made a reappearance. They didn't interview on an airplane. And JD said to him that he was really upset at the Ukrainians for what they're doing, bombing, you know, the oil facilities in Russia. He's asked by a reporter about whether he agrees with Trump on the endorsement of BB in the Israel election. JD said, no, he doesn't want to get involved in foreign elections, even though he had just endorsed AFD and Orbán like two minutes ago. So if you look at all four of those together, JD distancing from Israel, distancing from Ukraine, cozying up with the far-right parties in Germany and Eastern Europe. If people think that's where things are going, like, why would these senators act in the differently in 27 than they do right now? Well, good point. I think most of the polls smell death on JD Vance because he's going to have all Trump's enemies, none of his friends, including probably Trump who being Stalin will hate the attention he'll get as a preemptive, very vulnerable front runner. I think it's going to be a turn to change election. That doesn't mean Trump populism has gone from the party. I think we're going to have a lot of flavors out there of kind of more Trump, Trump hybrid, a little less Trump-y. So that's going to be litigated. But Trump's going to be- Less filling. Yeah, well, less everything. But Trump will be screaming from the crazy room at the White House watching his World Cave in. And I don't know, you know, Trump's brand is built on winner and he's about to be the biggest loser in American politics. So I think there's now kryptonite in the water. Not a total wipe-up. He'll be a factor. And you know, the big rule in politics, as you know, is winning doubt to that own self-betrue. And they're going to be- If they lose the Senate, they're going to need some Republicans looking at the carnage thinking how do I survive this time for a little independent? I mean, you got it in campaigns now. Yeah. Sinunu in New Hampshire is up with this spot. You know, when that Trump is wrong, I'll be right now. I'll tell him. late. I think. Yeah, Marco did that spot in 2016, actually. I remember that. Yeah, looking at him now. Yeah, exactly. And of course, he's there sneaking around, hoping to be the advanced pullback. But the bottom line is politics is always changing. And we're about to have a big shockwave that'll have a lot of implications. I'm not expecting a lot of courage from these guys. That I agree. It'll only be the save their own ass. Yeah. And if there if there is a thing, maybe it's Ukraine, hopefully it's Ukraine. I might be the first thing on the list to dip their toe in the water. Yeah, dip their toe in the water. So Elon is also involved in all this mess. No, that's your guy. You know, he's EV coalition. He sells some EVs last time I checked. Here, wait a minute, you'll buy association smear. I have never done this before. I'm not a big Elon. Obviously, though I do have star link. I wish I could sign mine over to the Ukraine. What do you think? What is happening with him? And not in the Ukraine part of this. We obviously know it's happening in that story. Domestically, you know, he had backed away from Trump in part because of policies related to the business. They didn't like what he even like what he's doing with the big bill. It was hurting, you know, some of his business interests. In addition to his like stated concerns about the debt, whether or not there's a real, and you know, he starts his America party. And now here he is. He's the biggest donor to Ken Paxton. And he's trying to drag, you know, Ken Paxton across the line in Texas. What's your assessment of what's happening with that? Well, he, you know, he moved to Texas. That's his new beloved state. So I think he's taken a parochial interest in, you know, having stupid and corrupt leadership. He wants to make sure he has a corrupt thief as a senator there that would make his life better, you know, alignment. He's kind of winding down the electric car stuff. There's still a very powerful brand, but his interest is humanoid robots, starlink, you know, AI. So I don't know. When he got very political, it was terrible for the car brand. And then he kind of got out of political. The car brand came back a little, but I think the next chapter of Elon's going to be less about all that stuff. The other problem he's going to have is if the Dems, I think, will take the house and again, if they get the Senate to, but the Dems can go investigation happy now. They can take a look at his military contracts and all sorts of business stuff that benefited from his on again, off again, friend of me, thing with Trump. So I think Elon's in for a bumpy road is my prediction. When I have you on, we have to look to do a little bit of grumpy. I used to be a Republican California stuff. We don't have to, but the news calls for it, at least in this moment. Basera wins his primary for the governor's race kind of by accident. And I don't even see him. Maybe he's more visible in California, but this is not an energized candidate. And then in your LA, you've got, you know, this Karen Bass versus Nithia Romain race. And Nithia is trying to run as an outsider, even though she's on the city council that has did all the things that they're complaining about. She's been there longer than bass. Yeah. And it's like, where are the Daniel Lurys? I mean, like, at least Lurie, that seems to be working. The San Francisco turnaround, but it's a pretty depressing state of affairs at the LA mayor of governor's race, no? Yeah. Well, Basera was kind of the acceptable everybody's second choice in the governor's race. Swahwell blew up the kind of more interesting candidate. Mayhem can ever put the money together. That's who I was for. And so the question for Javier is governor because he's going to win. I'm kind of soft on Steve Hilton as a personality, but there's no way, you know, it's California. Will Javier try to do some of the reforms that California needs in our dysfunctional state? Or will he just water the existing democratic special interests garden? My guess is the former, excuse me, the latter. It'll have to be the former. So we're see, but, you know, he's won a big wonk allottery there. He's walking into the governorship of the biggest, most important state. He ought to do something with that. Do you think so? But there are a lot of special interests there. I'll stand up. People are going to kill the billionaire tax. That's going to lose for all the hype and everything. Even though that's turning me into Bernie. Can I say, can I do this for a second, Mike? Like this is turning me on. Just like the surgay brand putting in a hundred million on the billionaire tax has negatively polarized me into being for the billionaire tax. I mean, these guys, particularly in California, the gap between the wealth that they have made, the day or their kids or their grandkids could never possibly spend in all of their lives. And the average person in California is insane. Maybe this wasn't designed the right way. That's fine. Like offering a criticism of this particular ballot initiative. But I don't know. The degree to which they are now going all in. I'm like aligning themselves with Trump. It's spending all this money to protect themselves from taxes. It's turning me a little red. No, we would joke during Mayhand when we dealt with a bunch of these guys who were, let's just say big egos. We owed all joke after some abuse from them. We're all going to vote yes on the stamp billionaire tax now. Yeah, there's a real issue. It can lose without a hundred million from surgay. That's the thing. It was flawed from the beginning. It's bad policy. People want to tax billionaires more, but it's a horrible way to try. Nobody thinks it'll work. And instead, they have gone with characteristic amateurs with the printing press full of money, enthusiasm, which will work, but it was unnecessary. And you might see other stuff that's more doable come down the path. As far as the mayor's thing, you know, Rahman has been around City Hall longer. She's to the left of bass. Bassman has had a lot of incompetent problems. That said, about a week ago, Rahman was maybe seven points ahead, new. You know, people don't really know her that well. And she got in the spotlight and didn't do well with it. So I just saw a private poll out of the field this morning. The race is tied. 44 zip. Wow. And so I would still bet on Rahman winning because there's so much antipathy toward bass, but Rahman's unfavorables way up because people are looking at, okay, who's this next woman who's going to beat that? Oh my god. She was doing a lot of get rid of the police chief and, you know, vashism and the LAPD stuff. So keep an eye on Rick Caruso, disclosure client of mine. He didn't run this year. A lot of people wanted him to, but he could be the lawyer in four years, particularly if it's the LAPD turns into DSA social experiment. If not, maybe you can find somebody to support who has, you know, who's younger and an outsider has some views. I don't know, but like the, it's just crazy that we spend the first 25 minutes of this talking about how strong the democratic candidates are in Alaska and Kansas and it's like an Iowa. So if the Democrats can recruit some good people, some reform-minded, fresh faces in these red states with small populations, you think you could Russell somebody up in California, better than Karen Vass and Javier. You would think the smart money in city of LA knows the city council has huge power. The people who built LA in the beginning were refused from the York and Chicago and they didn't want a machine. So it's a weak mayor. And so it's hard to do big changes, a weak mayor. But if we're at a tipping point, so keep an eye on Los Angeles, the other big race among us would do a plug is city attorney. Because that's who decides what to do with the misdemeanors, all the quality of life crimes, vagrancy, simple assault, drunken disorderly, and a lot more. We have somebody who makes ramen look like General MacArthur running Marissa Roy, who's super hardcore left versus a Democrat experienced prosecutor, African-American, self-made guy named John McKinney. And you will feel it in LA, which one of them wins in quality of life crimes. Right now Roy is a bit ahead because of course labor is pouring every dollar they have into her because of the, you know, they believe the ability to totally control how she enforces city contracts. So that's the one, if we got LA listeners, McKinney, please, or by a tank to drive around it. All right, Marth, we did a what's grand in your gears, segment with Mayor Pete and Charlotte. He was complaining about the pumpkin carving, business. He's got two young kids, the classic complaint about somebody with two young kids. Is there anything grind in your gear? She want to leave us with right now? Any complaints? No, I would just grab a steak knife and stick it in the penguin and tell my kid it was blinded by a goblin. And we'd leave that a little easier because nightmare to carve those sins. You always have some friend who's like a surgeon genius at it with little wire cutters, annoying. It's like the show off skill for once a year, the two to seven year olds, other than that, the most useless skill in the world. You can tell I'm jealous because I can't do it. Same. No, what's what's grinding my gears right now is everything. But I'm think I'm going to be a happy, a happy camper on election night. Your lips to God's ears, Murphy, I appreciate the time, as always. We'll be checking in with you the next few weeks and my love to your wife and everybody else stick around for General Mark currently, live from at night. Take care. Man, it's been so great to have you as part of the team and I want to talk about [BLANK_AUDIO] I want to start by talking about a couple of the news items that we have today. The aforementioned Elon Musk, the Wall Street Journal, a couple of hours ago reported that it was, in fact, shocker, Elon Musk that asked to throttle the Starlink Internet access for Ukraine that has resulted in unnecessary deaths of civilians in Ukraine. It's a little bit unclear exactly whether that's people throwing Elon under the bus. I mean, even in the story, it says that he called Trump and he called people in the administration, but Rubio was out there yesterday acting like this was just like, "Who the hell knows?" It was a technical difficulty, but it seems like that's not actually the case. No. No. Here's the thing, you know, it's interesting to transition from a whole lot of fun to some of these serious questions, but this guy is using his equipment. It's a Starlink technology, and what I'll say is you have something that's subordinate to that called Starsheel, not to get too technical, but it's a suborbital Wi-Fi. So when you have a little spinning dial on your computer because your Wi-Fi is not working, on Starsheel it just goes dark. And when you're talking about military operations that's using a piece of technology for command and control, for controlling air defense systems, for feeding you intelligence. When it goes dark, your battlefield goes dark, too. And it really creates a situation where the commanders on the ground don't know what's happening. And having been there before and never had that kind of a shutdown to him, I can't imagine it. And it's putting the Ukrainian forces in just horrific position. You had Hegseth out there today saying, well, the Ukrainians didn't follow the Starlink terms of service. And so it's an Elon thing. And I mean, you were. What's he wanting them to do? Just reboot? Who the hell knows? I don't know. Maybe they said something wrong about the vaccine or something, and so they had to change their terms of service. But you were working collaboratively. You wrote about this this morning for us. And it goes when you're Commander in Europe with the Ukrainian military, what is it like for the people that are actually doing work trying to collaborate across military with them? When they've got the leadership just like making up lies about how they're hampering our supposed ally. Well, first of all, it just undercuts trust. And what I'll say, we talked about this a little bit before the show. My partner in Ukraine back in 2010 through 12, when I was Commander of the US Army Europe, was a Ukrainian soldier who had been at one time in the Soviet army before they dissolved. Guy named Colonel General Henadi Vorobyov. We became very good friends. He has since died. I think it was because of cancer. The claim it was because of a heart attack. But he was just a terrific guy. In 2010, he came to me and said, you know, I've transitioned from the Soviet army back to my country of Ukraine, I want to turn them into a Western force. I want to transform them. I want to get rid of corruption. And he literally gave me a yellow legal pad piece of paper saying, here's the things I need you to do to help. And the Ukrainian military goes through a war college where they have to write a PhD dissertation. And his dissertation was westernizing the Ukrainian army. This was in 2010 and he had a list of things he wanted me to do as the commander of US Army Europe to help them out. All different sorts of things. Send his senior officers to our war colleges, create an NCO Corps, help them train. So we did that over a couple of years and then they were invaded in 2014. They weren't quite ready at that point, but man, oh man, have they kicked some ass since that. No, I think I can't remember was the first thing that you wrote for us, but one of the very first things was kind of right after the Ukraine war started and you wrote about this experience and you said that like the conventional wisdom out there is that Russia is going to be able to move through Ukraine quickly, that I was there. And like I saw what's happening on the ground in Ukraine and I saw the kind of operation that they were running on the Russian side and you're like, these guys aren't as good as people think. So I went to the hotel room and in order to do military analysis, you have to first understand what the political strategy is. So I made some stuff up in my hotel room, I mean I said, this is what I think Putin wants to do and there were five strategic objectives. I won't go through the first four because they had to do with defeating the Ukrainian military, but the fifth one was further divide the U.S. and NATO. That's the only successful one, they're one for five. And that is the only successful one they've achieved. The first four that had to do with supplanting the Ukrainian government, destroying the Ukrainian military, subjugating the Ukrainian people and establishing transport points out of the black in the Azov Sea, the Russians have failed and it was because of an end's ways means disconnect. They had an end state, they knew what they wanted to do, but they didn't have the ways and means to do it, okay? And it was because their military, I think there's a doctrinal term for this term, they sucked. They sucked. Their leadership was terrible, their soldiers were awful, they had a recruited base and they didn't have enough people. They had 190,000 people, what they were attacking, and I hate to get geeky on you here. They were attacking on eight different axes with one commander, Grasemov, a guy who was in Moscow at the time, commanding the battlefield for a thousand miles away. So my conclusion was, they suck and they're going to fail. And the Ukrainian forces which we had trained and helped train and helped meet Colonel General Verobiost's vision were in pretty good shape. They didn't have the equipment, but they knew what they wanted to do. And from the very beginning, and I've kind of watched it over the last almost six years, there had been different phases to the campaign, and Russia has failed in each phase. And right now they're failing again, and Ukraine more than any of the other first ten phases that they've been through are succeeding in a way that is different from the last nine. And here's the point, we are throttling that success. Yeah, basically we've succeeded in one thing this week, which is winning over the Americans. Right. And divided NATO. Yeah, and divided NATO. And you had the Secretary of State, Marco, who's supposed to be the one part of this administration that you would think would be the one that would be promoting, continue to alliance with NATO and talking about the importance of all this. And he's been out doing interviews the last two days. He sounds no different than JD Vance. He is fully on board with totally spinning for Donald Trump. And where was Secretary Rubio when he said all these things? Well, we have Jared Kushner and Steve Wyckoff in Moscow. Right. Makes a whole lot of sense. And he does the thing with Trump, where he's like, well, why is it such a big deal that Trump is going to have a summit with Xi and Putin? Why is the media making such a big deal out of that? Well, you have three dictators trying to decide the future of Ukraine. Like I thought that you were a person on the side of free people in the world, and apparently not anymore. This is the thing you mentioned, the article I wrote this morning in the bulwark, and it has to do with, it isn't just an abrogation of responsibility. It is a countering of what we hold as American values for. We're celebrating our 250th year of freedom. And if you take a look at our history, we have always helped individual nation-states to achieve democratic processes and protect their territorial integrity, and we're not doing that right now. It makes no sense. It's sick. The other news item today was moving out to the Iran War. And what we learned happened in Bahrain and how we treated our soldiers and their family there. I was asked to be on MS now this afternoon, and this never happens, but when I came on the computer from my hotel room and they said I was roaming with Sam Stein because we were in the same hotel room the last night. But yeah, we're bunking. We're doing bunks. It's kind of like being back in the military. It's kind of cool. Like you and Sam, me and Sarah, we have a gay bunks. And it's Sam's duty to clean the room tomorrow. Anyway, what they said to me, and I've never had this happen before, we're breaking news right now. We can't tell you what it is, our reporter Priya, who many of you know, who has just been awesome, has broken a new story, and you'll hear it when we go on air. That's not a good spot to be in when you're the military. But what she said made all kinds of sense, and I didn't know this. But what happened is the base in Bahrain, which was the main base for the naval forces in the Middle East. When it was struck, what I didn't know was there were family members there, spouses and children. And they were quickly scurried away after the base was struck. They watched the drone strike, the cruise missile strikes, and they were brought out of there. But when you consider yourself as a military family member in a base where you have a house and you're in this case, sailor spouse is doing work, senior ranking. And suddenly you're told, get the hell out of here and leave everything behind. One spouse said that she had told her three children to huddle together in the room while the bombs were dropping. So if one of them were killed, all of them would be killed. Imagine that. Now, what I got to tell you is I grew up in the Cold War. When we were in Germany, our spouses were prepared. You know, in the early part of my career, we were required to have a half tank of gas in our cars in case the Soviets came across the border so our family members could get their Frankfurt airport and get the hell out of there. It was a plan. And we rehearsed it. In this case, there was no plan to get the family members out of brain. And I just find that to be a dereliction of duty and the fact that it not only happened, but they haven't reported it for about five months, just tells us where we stand in terms of candor. Let's keep the military analyst hat on and then we'll get into our feelings a little bit. How does that sound? It's just a broader situation with Iran in the Middle East and I was watching JD's smug face on CBS over the weekend. And he was responding to, he was asked to respond to Abdul Al-Sahed's critique of what's happening with Iran. And JD says, basically, he's like, well, anybody can criticize what happened seven months ago. Yeah, no shit. Yeah. What's your idea for what we should do now? And I'm kind of like, well, you made the fucking mess seven months ago, so shouldn't it be your job to figure out what to do now? But let's take his smug comment seriously for a second. What can they do now? What options do they have? If they're asked if they call Jan as a military analyst, said general, what are our options? When you're talking about creating options for any kind of campaign from a strategic perspective, there are four elements of national power. And it's what they teach the work college called DIME, diplomacy, information, military, and economics. We have used nothing but the military element of power. And unfortunately, Tim, I'll say that for the last 20 or 30 years, we've been doing a lot of that. There hasn't been the diplomacy aspect, the economic aspect, the information aspect, the public relations aspect. And the blockade, I guess, is a little bit of the economic. It could be, but it's being conducted by military forces. That's true. So you have sanctions, but they were applied after the military element. So when you only use one tool, you're going to get yourself in trouble. I don't know, truthfully, I've been asked this question before. How do you step back from the mistakes we've made? It's going to take hubris—I'm sorry, it's going to take humility as opposed to hubris. And we haven't seem to have achieved that concept yet. It's going to take diplomacy. That's another thing that we've thrown out, the window, not just diplomacy with Iran. But we've got Jared. We've got Jared. So about a real estate agent. But we have also hurt all of the alliances that for four decades as a military guy, we've built up. So over 38 years of service, our major effort was to do something called theater security cooperation, TSC. And that is, how do you build a stronger alliance? Churchill said in World War II that there's only thing worse than going to war without an alliance, or going to war with an alliance, and that's going to war without it. We are now completely devoid of any other nation that wants to work with us. So let's look at kind of what's the stress how they've been doing overall. And we were talking about this a little bit, I was talking about this a little bit on my buddy's backstage. It's like the first term—I mean, if I could totally disaster, ends with the sacking of the capital. So bad first term. But you at least have the Abraham Accords. There are some things that Mattis did that you could say had varying degrees of success. Like, obviously, Ukraine, we just went through a disaster, Iran, they don't even know what to do. China is stronger. Our own military preparedness now weaker. I mean, is there any—as you just kind of look at it across the board from a military standpoint, all failures? Is there—how would you assess? Yes. I would say the Naval campaign, if you look at it in isolation in the Middle East, the Naval Air Force, some Army elements conducting an operational campaign has been exceedingly good. However, it's not tied to a political end state. And that's what military people do. That's what's called the operational art. Okay, boss, you're the president. Tell me what you want to achieve. And when you're talking about denooking Iran, opening the straits of Hamuz, replacing a regime, destroying their navy and the Air Force, I've just named—and there's many more—I've just named four operational requirements. And as a military guy, I'm thinking, "Dude, which one do you want me to do?" Because each one of them has different elements to it that are very challenging and difficult. But it keeps swapping back and forth. We don't know what the administration wants to accomplish. And I would suggest it's because, Tim, to go back to your point, they haven't thought it through. What exactly do they want to achieve? And how are they going to use that dime method to achieve the objectives of a political end state? It's not there. All right, let's now go to the feeling side. Are we having good time yet? No, we're about to get there. Can we start drinking now? Yeah, can we get the general some whiskey? We're going to do feelings, and then we're going to make fun of p-texas. So at the end, we're going to have fun. I know what I'm doing here. You know, we take people down, and then we build them back up. Can I do one thing real quick? Please. Renee, where are you? Renee? We have a Renee out there? Renee over there? Renee Bates? Right over there. There she is. Renee Bates is an Orlando friend of mine, and she came all the way here to Georgia to be with them. What's up, Renee? Shout out. All right. Go ahead. And this whole thing's going to piss you off. I mean, at a level of, I mean, A, the amount of years you put in, the relationships that were built, particularly as commander in Europe, you know the folks that are over there. You know what it's like to be a soldier, we're abandoning these soldiers out there. Trump is, we're receding from the world. He is basically sucking up to Putin and Xi while they're helping our enemy, kill our soldiers in Iran, like unbelievably weak and humiliating. Like, what's happening in there? We might bulwark soon. By the way, I'm the only guy wearing a bulwark swag. Tonight? That's okay. It's happened underneath. What I'll tell you is this. I retired in 2013. When I did, what you do as a military leader is you build the bench. You turn it over to the next generation. And I have a son, our oldest son is a soldier. Our youngest son is in government, and it pains me because I hear stories from those who are currently serving. And the stories I'm hearing are not good. We, I believe during my 40 year career, we built something good. There were, I mean, there were some down moments. We did some things that we probably shouldn't have done as a military at the direction of our government. But truthfully, over the long term, I was proud of what I did, but that doesn't matter anymore. Because truthfully, here's a sad part, and I thought a lot about this. It's all been, I don't want to say destroyed, but it's been really harmed. And I'm concerned about the generation that are wearing the cloth of the country today, because they are confused. They know what they're supposed to do. They know they're oath to the Constitution. They have their values, which have been imbued in each of them. And they're being asked to do some things that are very unusual. And I use that term deliberately, because I don't want to insult anybody. But they're being asked to do it by people who don't know what the hell they're doing. And that's the sad part. That's got to piss you off, though. It does. It does. It does. And you ask a pointed question, so I'll give a pointed answer. Yeah, pisses me off. Because I feel the 40 years of my service and my colleague's service, we have all served together, building alliances, building the strength of them. When this administration took office, they proudly proclaimed the military was the best in the world, which by the way, that's a little bit too much hubris for me. It's the best in history, it's the best in the world. Okay, so why all the fucking changes? Why, if it's the best in the world, why are we throwing people out to do something different? Why are we saying diversity is a bane when I got to tell you, you know, before I commanded US Army Europe, I commanded US Army basic training. 160,000 soldiers coming into our organization every year at 27 different locations. And what I saw was the diversity of America. And I continue to think that that is our strength. All different kinds of people, genders, race, color, creed, sexual orientation. If you raise your hand and say, I want to serve by God, good on you for doing that. Yeah. Well, maybe the military was the best, but the dude's running out of the problem because they're getting circles running around them by some guys and caves. To that point, we're going to close with this, the secretary of war, renamed the Department of Defense, the Department of War, started one war, lost it. That's great, you know, I don't know, from a gay non-soldier's perspective, let me tell you this. There's a guy walking around a lot of makeup. You are, by the way, the diversity of our country. In what way? In very many good ways. Thank you. You're weird, not because of your sexual orientation, but because of your ideas. And I love you for it. Thank you very much. You're normal. I'll say this. I'll just let you know that the gaze would be saying a brunch. There's a guy that's walking around, you know, wearing a lot of makeup, doing testosterone, calling people, "Traini's Femmes, Fatties" all the time. We look at that guy and say, "Tiny Dick." Tiny Dick? And I'm going to say, my gay dars aren't that good, but my dick size jar is pretty good. Sorry, General. But your son and the people serving them, they've got to see that too, right? They've got to look at this and be like, "This isn't fucking manhood, this isn't leadership." That's a question. That's what the. What do these guys think about him? Do you think? I serve as a military analyst. Yeah. An analyst, what do you think the soldier sailor's airmen think about their makeups leader? I try and address things from the standpoint of Aristotle, where he looked at pathos, ethos and logos, the passion, logic and reason. And what I tell you is, Tim, I got to say this to this audience. If I had gone to a formation and saw a young captain as a colonel, as a lieutenant colonel, as a two-star general, as a three-star, if I had walked into a formation and seen the performative politics or the performance acts that this guy commits in front of soldiers' information, standing at attention, I would have known there are going to be some soldiers in that formation that really are eating this up, but that's not the kind of leadership we want. That is not the leadership that shows. The military has a manual, believe it or not, Tim, about leadership. It's called ADRP 6-22, leadership, I'm not making this up. And it talks about a leader's attributes, their competencies, the way they influence and their context. There are some that are working from a context perspective at the lieutenant level when they're supposed to be strategic leaders. There are some that are showing their attributes as a lack of character and a lack of presence and a lack of intellect, where they're trying to influence people using those things. That there are executive presence, which is a term that's used in the business community, is just not present. And they're making every speech a patent speech in front of a flag and that's only one method of influence and it doesn't get soldiers to do the things, the hard things that they have to do. You're not going to tell a bunch of soldiers, take that hill by standing up in front of them and tell them how screwed up they are and how they're fat and they got beards and their weirdos and all those kind of things. That's not how you influence people. That's not leadership. All right, well general, I am so grateful that you're part of the bulwark team. Thank you for dealing with my dick jokes. I wish we had leaders like you. I appreciate you very much. Give them some love. Please continue to be back at the end. That's general Mark Herling. Thank you my friend. Yeah, you can put your clothes back on, she's leaving now. No time to apologize for the things you do. Go into Ferrari and sing the blues, believe that Clapton was the second coming. I'm going to sing the blues, believe that you're part of the bulwark team. The bulwark daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzali Skipper and with video editing by Dante DeCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.