Nick Wright & Anderson Clayton: Did the Fever Break?

Hey, it's Mario Lopez from the All Mario Lopez Daily Podcast. All right. Quick question. You ever notice how some cars just steal the spotlight? Well, that's the 2026 Toyota RAV4. It's got bold standout style, intuitive tech inside, and now hybrid power standard, which means efficiency without the need to plug in. So whether you care about looks, smarts, or just everyday practicality, RAV4 brings all of it. If you've been holding out for the right SUV, this is your sign. Check out the 2026 Toyota RAV4 at your local Toyota dealer or visit toyota.com. See packages and options at toyota.com for feature availability. This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culture East. That's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Lost Culture East. We've been talking about Kewpie Mayo for a minute now. And wow, so many of you already love this stuff. And if you're thinking, wait, what is Kewpie? Do you not have the internet? It's the OG Japanese mayonnaise. The one with the red. The one with the red cap. What makes it different? Egg yolks. Kewpie is made with egg yolks only, giving it this rich umami flavor that elevates everything. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. Where chefs work, of course. Food and flavor lovers use it. You haven't tried it yet? Well, find the red cap and see what everyone's talking about, why don't ya? Kewpie. The original Japanese mayonnaise. Kewpie. Hey everybody, it's Tim. We have an awesome double header for you today. In segment two, it is Anderson Clayton. Chairwoman of the North Carolina Democratic Party doing a victory lap, she's fighting through a cold, and I interviewed her right before the election and wanted to circle back with an update. It is a glorious, glorious valedictory and celebration, and so do make sure you stick around for that. So she goes up first, we got Nick Wright, who I've been trying to get on the show for about a year now, who is, for people who are not into sports ball, a sports commentator, we do. A little bit of sports at the end, but a lot about his advocacy and about politics and the manosphere, and I think it's really good. You know, if you get bored with the Jokic talk at the end, make sure to fast forward to Anderson Clayton. Before I get to either, Nick Wright Convo is kind of meta, Anderson we focused on North Carolina, so I do just want to talk about the Pete Hegseth impeachment vote failing last night very briefly. I want to be a bearer of good tidings to people and ask for your patience a little bit. There's some people that I've seen who are frustrated and mad. Eleven Democrats didn't show up to the vote, I think four Republicans didn't show up to this vote, there's some procedural chicanery going on in the House, the impeachment effort fails, things are going to be a little challenging in the lame duck, things are going to be a little challenging. I see maybe a silver lining of Hegseth not getting impeached during the lame duck, they impeached him very quickly, would have given them a chance to rush through a replacement with the Republican Senate. Now, if he sticks around, any replacements will have to come through a Democratic Senate. The Democrats are going to have to come through a Republican Senate. The Democrats are going to have 260 members of the House come next year. Haley Stevens not showing up to a vote isn't going to be a problem next year because she ain't going to be in the House. So, I don't know exactly the story of all 11 of these Democrats. I know one of them had a medical issue, one of them is Haley Stevens, she doesn't count. And so, you know, I'm sure some of them deserve a big tsk-tsk. But I think that everybody should just take a deep breath. And if Hakeem Jeffries falls down on the job next year, we're going to be the first to be mad about it. But I think in the meantime, they had an overwhelming victory. We know that Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia are going to be doing good jobs. We've had them on the show. And so, I think that, you know, staying in a place of gratefulness and happiness is just probably best for everybody's mental health right now. And if there's something to be mad about, I'm going to be mad about it with you. But in the meantime, I think the Democrats are going to be preparing a lot of accountability for Pete Hegseth and the rest of these jabronis in the cabinet. So, with that up next. It's Nick Wright. Stick around. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. As mentioned in segment two, it's Anderson Clayton. Can't wait to talk to her. But first, he's a host of the show What's Right with Nick Wright and co-host of First Things First on Fox Sports 1. It is Nick Wright. Welcome to the show, man. Tim, thank you. Thank you for having me on. Thank you for cajoling me into doing this. I have wanted to do more things like this for quite some time. But for the better part of a decade, my spirit has been chipped away at. And I was a little invigorated eight days ago. And I decided this would be the perfect time. So, thank you for having me. I love that. I think I originally reached out in January because you were maybe invigorated. That was not the right word. But you were outraged and spurred into commentary about the killings of Rene Good and Alex Preddy. And you'd written that after the tragedy, you asked a very simple question to your audience. What are we okay with? And did a long YouTube on that. And I was like, this is an oasis in the sports world. The sports commentary world. I felt like we'd gone through this period where all of these guys who were MAGA or Trump-friendly, you know, felt emboldened to be able to talk. And a lot of folks who had your, you know, kind of values, you know, it's not like you were silenced. But we're like, I don't want to deal with the bullshit, basically. Like, there was a lot of that. You know, I was noticing it. And, you know, you were speaking out about Minnesota. And I was like, we got to talk about all this stuff. And I want to make fun of you about Diokic. We'll do that at the end. But why don't you just give people who don't know you just like a little bit of like a first date kind of backstory, like your politics and, you know, so why you wanted to talk. Yeah. So, my first date. My father was a Kansas City firefighter after being like barely graduated high school that, you know, his bio is insane. He has at this, he doesn't have a college degree, but he has a master's from Harvard and a law degree. He might be the only, but no undergrad. It's like a goodwill hunting situation. Yeah. And so, but it all, he was, he was also, you know, kind of a street kid, got on the fire department and they struck before I was born. And when they struck. When they struck, he and union leadership got sent to jail multiple times and got pardoned by the governor multiple times. And that spurred him into my entire childhood. He was the president of the Kansas City Firefighters Union. And he was, he ran for an international position in D.C. He, and one of my earliest memories is there used to be this, this competition that ESPN would air. It was like, it's like American Glasgow. gladiators, but it was firefighters. Okay. And, but it was fake firefighters. And I remember being like five years old and we, we set up a picket line around it. And I like that with me, my sister, my dad, and you pick it at ESPN's firefighter. He kind of picketed it again. I, so I remember that I remember as a kid, I remember when my parents got divorced and I went with my dad to try to set up his new apartment, we spent like seven hours because he was like, I'm only buying a TV made in America. And I'm like, I don't know, pops like that might not exist. Like, and so like, I am, I am like a union Democrat as a kid. Yeah. I also have always felt the otherization, if you will, of black people in particular, but you know, the last, yeah. Since nine 11, it was middle Eastern people. And then in the last decade, it's really been Latino people by very loud voices in the conservative wing of the Republican party was so anathema to what America was. And it was, it was so rallying for me that my career strategy was, I want to one day be a political commentator. I do not think. Yeah. I did. Yes. I did the GW basketball play by play in college. And I was like, I don't know if I want to do sports. I flipped. And so I, I mean, listen, I always wanted to do sports. Don't get me wrong. This is what I wanted to do as a little kid with sports talk, but I became so into politics and I saw what Keith Olbermann did. And I was like, he got famous enough in sports that people care, like cared about Keith Olbermann. And he then just went to stuff that was more important. And so I said, like, I'm going to, nobody's going to listen to a 24 year old, a 26 year old's takes on politics. But if I get a big enough name in sports at one point, I'll switch. And that's always what I thought I was going to do. I thought in my twenties and thirties, I do sports in my forties. I do politics in my fifties. Maybe I'd run for office. I didn't know. And then honest to God, 2016 kind of, and broke. I hope I'm not sending you fully down the KO pipe. No, I mean, we'll see. And 2016 kind of like broke me. Yeah. And I know that sounds so soft, but it's just the truth. And I just, I, I, I didn't leave my room for two months. I watched, I watched Manchester by the sea, like three times. I read a little life. I just like, kind of just got sad. Right. And so I then, I then kind of reoriented and I was like, you know what? I don't know if that's, if that's for me. And I'll just parachute in on things that are really stirring to me, like violence. or social justice related things is where I'll pop in. Because the other thing I thought I was like, man, the anti-Trump beat is well covered. Like there's not going to be a lot that I have to say that no one said yet. I was like, guys got that covered. And so, yeah, I mean, I've always been unapologetic. What I, you know, I'm a liberal Democrat. And in my field, what is frustrating to me is everyone's allowed whatever politics they are. I really, really don't like the folks who, you know, have the opposite politics of mine, who pretend they're centrists or independents. And there's a lot of folks in my space who the tell is, if they have like get, make a big mistake or a fact error or tell a story that's not true, accidentally. It's always because if you're a liberal Democrat, you're not going to be able to tell a story that's not true. It was fed from the right wing ecosystem. Like those guys who claim they're down the middle neutrals never tell like a crazy zany left wing falsehood that they stumbled upon because all they're stumbling upon is the, is like the right wing crazy stuff. And so I just. Do you have anybody in mind, like Bravis or Burb Street or anybody you're thinking about? I mean, listen, I, I think that, you know, one of my first TV things ever was with Clay. Yeah. And we went, we went to dinner after and he told me, he's like, you know, I worked for Obama and like, I just, you know, I just do this or whatever. And I told him, and luckily there was a third person at this dinner. So if he disputes it, I have a witness. I told him, I was like, I want to be very clear. If what you're saying is true, that you don't really believe what you're saying. It's just for audience and enrichment. I actually think that's worse. And it is impossible for me to ever agree with you. And I left and that was the last time I ever talked to him. It was 11 years ago. And I like, listen, the biggest name in my space, Steven A has more than flirted with politics. And I just want, I, I just would like him to actually be honest with himself and the audience about what his politics are. And so be it, but trying to play this, that he's like, basically, yeah. I mean, pretty obviously. Yeah. I mean, dinner with Trump. And so pretending like, oh, I'm just calling balls and struts. I'm like, I'm just calling balls and struts. Like, no, you're not like in my field. It's not, the job is not to be unbiased. The job, however, is to be honest with your audience about your biases and then let them call it how they see it. So that's a little bit about me. How many of those guys do you think are faking it? Cause I, and this is another thing that's been, you know, something that I've been monitoring and trying to figure out how to navigate over the last 10 years is, you know, like right after Trump won in 16, there wasn't like a huge circling behind him. Like there were a few people like clay who like grabbed on to opportunistically trying to talk about it, but it was really this last time, you know, that you saw after he won again, that you saw a lot of people in sports, a lot of people in kind of the man culture, MMA world, you know, start to either performatively, you know, in their content and their social media posts, like signal that they were at least Trump friendly or interested in it. Like how much of that was real? Like how much of that would, do you think was opportunity? What was driving it? I mean, this is, these are your people more than mine. So listen, I think it was a combination of, this is not for, I'm not painting everyone with this brush, but it is so much easier to get an audience and make money appealing to the lowest common denominator of the magosphere than it is to do it in sports. Like, I'm going to sound like an asshole here, but like actually like achieving at a high level in daily sports talk is a competitive space. It's a very competitive space. And you, and you really, really, you have to get lucky, but you also really got to be on it. And so I think it's a lot of folks who are like, I wasn't good enough to do. I wanted to do commentary about X pop culture. I'm like, I'm not good enough at that, but I know I'm comfortable talking into a camera or a microphone and I can calm these people. I do think there's an element of that. I also think that there was a, I have much older kids than people would expect. And so my middle child is 21. And so she was graduating high school. But listen, I'm 28. I'm a grandfather, Tim. I have a, I have a complicated backstory there, but that's neither here nor there. Are you using one skin? No, I'm 40. I'm 42. My wife's 45. But that's neither here nor there. I'm doing some quick math in my head. I kind of want to be like, hell yeah, Nick, right. But we'll do that another time. I wasn't, I wasn't, you know, in that world at 14. And so she, but my middle daughter, when she was finishing high school, starting college would tell me about, how these boys she would go on dates with would like bring up how they love Trump. And it felt like, and I'm not, again, I think some people like love him earnestly for reasons that they believe in, like principle, whatever. I'll disagree with them, but I think that, but these were 17 year old idiots. They did a good job of saying, we're the men, we're the masculine party. And that did really this second time around appear, to I think young, you know, 17 year old kids who are making parlays and, you know, the like getting ready to go to college. It was tied into crypto. It was, and they did well with young kids of all races, but for white guys in particular, I think there was a little bit of backlash to kind of like beat BLM D like that stuff, like was really in their face. I think that there was some, you know, for good reason in a lot of places, but I just think that it also, you have to be honest, like led to some backlash to that. You know, I think that that like was part of it. So what, taking us up to the midterms and you talked about this a little bit in your video, like, what do you think like caused the flip? Right. Because the cultural stuff, you know, I mean, Trump was still kind of culturally in vogue through most of the year. And, you know, I mean, I think that if you looked at the numbers and if you look at the Tallarico numbers in Texas are insane, like the 18 to 29 year old guys moved like 40 points plus to the left. What is your assessment for what happened with that? So I think there were a lot of, you know, young men that again, weren't dialed into politics and just thought, I want to be on the winning team two years ago and I want to be macho. And so that's, they were like, Hey, I guess that means I'm Trump. And I think that they then felt the culture shifting a bit. There was enough of things aren't going the way they said it would go. And enough of, I think, I do think even the social issues are probably the ones that I am the most left wing on that. Those are also the ones that I think can turn off a lot of like my audience, like sports talk audience, those had to descend into the background. You mean the progressive views on social issues like trans or whatever is what turns off the sports. I think sometimes, yeah, I think. And, and so I think that had to go to the background because. And so I think there was a little fickleness for the young people. The point that I made in my post election commentary was the things that bother me the most about our current government is not why I think they lost this election, but I hope because they lost this election, we can recenter. Like I, I am really intensely, bothered by how mean some of these fucking people are. I'm a hard guy for folks to try to just paint with like the liberal snowflake thing. Like, I don't know, like soy boy. Yeah. I mean, it's like hard. People aren't like, they're not going to say, oh, you want, you want high taxes. Cause you don't make money. Like, no, make, make a lot of money. Like I I'm in sports. I'm, you know, a semi-professional high stakes gambler. Like a lot of the things that like are not so, but, but despite all that, I think it's abhorrent when people are like, Hey, you're a retard. Like, what are you an adult? Like, I don't like it. And it bothers me at my core. And I do think it's important for men in my position to signal to other men, like, Hey, it doesn't make you weak to say to people like, don't act like a juvenile and don't be mean for no reason. I I'm not saying you've got, uh, every time somebody tells an off color joke in a group text, you've got to be like, Hey now and wag your finger at them. But there is a level of decorum that I think matters a lot and signals to America what we're about. And we have strayed so far from that. And I think that we can recenter now that I do think we have the public sentiment on our side. Yeah. You said something that I've been very, a phrase that you hear that I've been very hesitant to use myself, because I don't, you know, I'm tormented. I've PTSD, but, uh, you said you think the fever might have broken on all of that yeah and the fever does extend to just like this acceptance of a bunch of stuff that that was not culturally acceptable before and i look at you know you mentioned your video the uh you know the president and the senator for south carolina calling annie andrews tranny andrews and just like having that be okay in politics one little positive signal that you're right about the fever breaking that i saw this morning that i liked was vivek ramaswamy who ran one of the two most despicable campaigns of the year and really since trump 2016 has on his ex-account right now account not actively managed oh really vivek ramaswamy lost so badly that he is self-deporting from public life and i think that like there's some potential hope there that like you're right that the that at some level the fever is broken not that you're right that at some level the fever is broken not that i think that like there's some potential hope there that like you're right that the that at some level the fever is broken not that everybody's going to be kind to each other not that there's not going to be racism steven miller is the fucking chief of staff but that like there once again are some some boundaries in the public discourse like that are bumpers on the bowling alley for what is acceptable and by the way you said one of the two is the other one beau french oh i don't really count railroad commissioner but sure it would be him i was going to say no i didn't know i just didn't know if there was like my opponent is a terrorist jihadist like that was his campaign so here is something that i would like yeah and this is about the media because one of the things that and i'm not the first person to make this point but i really think the media needs to hone in on this especially over these next couple years and into the next election i found i like i said i'm a 42 year old grandfather so i don't watch any of the streamers so i'm you know i'm an old an old man so i'm not an old man so i'm not an old man asmongold you're not right so i don't yeah i i'm not into i i don't follow asmongold i don't follow like i i don't i haven't watched piker i i don't know i i know who they are obviously because i'm politically aware but i i've never i i don't i don't have twitch on my phone i don't really know how i'd watch it i did once play cards with i show speed if that counts neither here nor there that's pretty cool i was appalled by the media's flashback flat acceptance and decision that democrat candidates must answer for and disavow the extreme or ridiculous or in some cases awful things that people who support them in the media said and elected republican officials have no responsibility whatsoever to disavow awful things that people who support them in the media said and elected republican officials said and elected republican officials said every single time a democrat was asked about assam piker the equal time version of that is we gotta ask mike rogers or somebody about randy fine or whatever whatever absolutely out and it was just or i don't know the vice president of the united states or the vice president or or any like these i know everyone says that's a liberal media and i do yes i do think most of the people on news television probably vote for him but i don't vote democrat but the way they over correct that is they grade what is expected of maga republicans on such a curve it's like well we can't ask them to disavow the crazy shit because there's so much of it and i and i think that is hugely problematic and i just want some of these folks to be held to account in part because i don't know if they all have the courage to do it and i don't know if they have the courage of their in fact i do know most of them don't have the courage of their convictions to set actually disavow it like was it jd jd stood by vivek's ad right jd was asked about endorsed it yeah yeah i fully endorsed it and he said that he was upset that uh the republicans that were distancing from it right and you know said he believed the mother and and yeah i just just realized she was a homeless lady with her cats in a car that had facilitated the rape of her own daughter and jd was like i don't know what to do with this i don't know what to do with this i'm on her side it's great and it's crazy it's just so when you say it when you actually like if you were because there's god bless him there's obviously a lot of people that are not dialed in to you know to polly like the ohio gubernatorial race and i one of them happens to be my son who i host the podcast with during my political thing i told the story of vivek's ad and he had never heard of amy acton i don't know he's ever heard of vivek he's a new father he's waiting for gta to come out he's just living his life in southern california and the look on his face as i'm explaining what happened it was like what it just it would seem totally unbelievable to ignore me out there yeah my here's my media take on you and i don't this is maybe a strained metaphor but the problem with the bias in the kind of mainstream media is that you know basically mega and trump have been like working the refs for 10 years and it's kind of like one of these you know i remember i'm not really into hockey anymore growing up i was an abs guy and like the devils like there's all these things like the devil's defense is like we're gonna hack them on every play you know like we're gonna do the legion of boom seahawks defense exactly illegal contact every play you can't call it every time call it every play right and and i think that the media if every day the beginning of the abc nightly news was donald trump lied again today a republican said a racist thing today you know like then people would be like well people would feel like they weren't getting fair news even though they were like even though it was true like you could start the nightly news every night with whatever the president's lies were whatever their smears were of other people and so in order to kind of create this even perception of balance you know that is how you get the piker discourse where like every interview abdul does he has to get asked about this when no republican ever gets asked about laura loomer you know who is like an advisor to the president and an overt islamophobe and i don't really know how to fix that i mean everybody can become the bulwark but then you know then then you end up having regular kind of conservative people start watching other stuff you know what i mean i don't know the answer to you know torture the sports analogy further sure coach eric mangini is a you know a day one regular on the tv show and one of his phrases about what bella check would always say when he was d coordinator for the pats was once a game gets going and you see other refs are calling it we're going to do business as being done meaning if they're calling it tight we got to be real careful and they're letting us play then we're going to be more physical yeah my request to the media would be like everybody's okay with that what nobody likes in sports is it's called super tight for one team and the other team gets to do whatever they want that's the complaint about the oklahoma city thunder they hack on every play and then they get every flop call and that's what it feels to me like right absolutely right legit it is a fair shy is jd vance shay is jd vance and this tortured analogy that's the meanest thing i ever said about shay gilch is alexander so my my point would be if the media has decided listen we can't start the nightly news every night with some outrageous thing jd vance or laura loomer or the president said then those same rules must apply to hassan piker or i know if we have an official democrat politician or office holder similar to laura loomer i don't even know who that would be but but it can't just be here are the rules over here and here are the rules over here and i think it is definitively going to be like that for quite some time at least as long as there is the maga hold on you know the that maga has such a bigger position of the party which doesn't exist anymore it's kind of what you guys are right um not really i mean i guess uh you know now you're kind of asking me to like dive deep sorry to no no that's okay we're going to do you know kind of scientific analysis of the different phylum of conservatives but i guess that that was probably like the dispatch or the national review which is those guys like don't like trump but but have stayed functionally conservative and i think that what a lot of well i mean what a essentially you know we are the home of trump derangement syndrome and i feel that trump is so bad that anyone that supported him even like even if i would prefer their views on like regulation i'm kind of like like the top marginal tax rate being you know low 30s or high 30s like it's not that important to me when you know the entire democracy is in threat right that is a very succinct and fancy way of saying you're a good person okay and i mean that'd be nice you know and that to me that also distilled a lot of how i feel about this which is the nuanced details about a about policy that is actually what politicians are supposed to be doing have now been become so secondary for me to a recapture of you know sanity adults in the room and decency that I can't what all of political debate should be about, which is the top marginal tax rate. How much of a foreign influence should America have? Those things. Amazingly, that is dealing with whether or not you should renovate the garage and not the fire in the house. And again, maybe I am too optimistic. Maybe I'm still in the glow of last week. But I do wonder if starting in two years, if we can get back to the point of where we are arguing about the nuanced, boring stuff, which is what I think is super valuable and important to do. I'm not sure that that's going to be the case, because I think that that conversation is still going to be happening within the Democratic coalition. I think that's going to happen the next two years, right? Like, if a Democrat could win in 29, what does that look like? Is that Medicare for all? Or is it some more incremental change to health care, like all these kinds of stuff? I think that the way that we're going to be able to do that is we're going to have to do it in a way that's going to we had seen right left before, you know, in the construct where the right was kind of this classically liberal Reagan, three legged stool, which is like strong military, low taxes, family values, and the left is, you know, like more, less involvement in the world and more social services and more progressivism. Like, I just think that's been permanently scrambled kind of and like the rights, the new right, whatever comes after Trump is still going to be a very kind of nationalist anti-immigrant, identitarian party. It's I mean, it's probably right, unfortunately, it's probably right. One skin is nothing like your typical skincare brand. And that's why I keep coming back to them. Most anti aging skincare is built to react to smooth over lines and wrinkles after they show up one skin started somewhere different, working to address how skin ages in the first place. 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If you want to be the youngest looking grandpa on your block, if you're a straight guy that hasn't been moisturizing, this is the time I've been telling you for a while, start moisturizing, go to one skin, start slathering that on in the morning can look shiny and nice and fresh and young. And those senescent cells will be gone. Just listen, listen to your homie, listen to your gay homie. I got you born from over 10 years of longevity research. One skin is helping you unlock your healthiest skin now. And as you age for a limited time, try one skin with 15% off using code bulwark at one skin.co slash bulwark. That's 15% off one skin.co with code bulwark. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you one more optimistic thing. And then I want to do a little sports stuff with you. I do think another really uplifting thing from Tuesday that you had talked about that I think is relevant to what you said you wanted to engage in when you were going to pick your spots in politics. Politics is the backlash that we saw to the way that ICE carried out the deportations and to the Kalei ruling and the attempt to undermine the Voting Rights Act. And I think that the opposition to the Iran war and the backlash against the Iran war, I think is the big story and the big reason why the blue tsunami was so big. But the big supporting elements of that were people looked at the way the deportations were going and said, no, fuck this. This is not who we are. Like you know, we're not going to do this. We're not going to do this. We're mobilized to a degree that they haven't been, you know, since the Obama era to turn out and vote after, you know, Republicans tried to take away their representation and rights. And you see this huge shift among Latino voters in Texas, black voters here in Louisiana and Georgia, etc. And I do think that is like the thing that makes me feel a little warm and fuzzy about last Tuesday is that there was like, it wasn't really just about people's economic conditions. There was a sense from at least some of us that there was a sense that there was a sense that there was a sense that some of the country that like, this is not what we're going to be. I think that is totally correct. With that said, one of the things that I struggled with before I started executing people in the street was, man, they did say this was what they wanted to do. And they won. And I understand people don't really do like the back of the napkin math. But when they say, hey, we are going to deport 20 million people. It's like, okay, let's do the math on that. And how long that would take if you did, you know, 1000 deportations a day, that's going to take you 40 years. So if you're going to do 20 million, if you're going to do it in one presidential term, now we're saying you're going to do 10,000 deportations a day. And that is going to be impossibly cruel and unlawful. And harsh. With that said, that's what they said they were going to do. And then they won. So I didn't I didn't love when people were like, this isn't what America's about. And I was like, well, I kind of wish it wasn't. But they didn't they didn't slide this in the back door. The wanton crypto corruption and launching meme coins to enrich themselves. They slid that through the back door. They didn't campaign on we're gonna fucking dupe our supporters and steal money. They didn't care. But they did campaign on the deportation stuff. Yeah, it was like the signs, right? It was right there on the side was one of their strongest issues in the last election. And they started doing it. And I think there was a level of denialism from the generic American of like, well, I didn't think they were like serious, serious. It's like, no, they were serious. But the logistics of it made it to where the only way they were going to be able to achieve 10% of that goal was through not just wanton cruelty, but you had to bring in totally inept, incompetent enforcers, because there's just not enough, you know, quality candidates or whatever. So I do think people saw that. And it made them reframe what they actually wanted. They were like, I thought I wanted this. But turns out I do not. And I thought that I wanted to be on the side of the powerful and the kind of on the bully side. But then when you see how the actual bullies are acting, I mean, I wanted to be on like the kind of bully side, not that, like, that's too far for even me. So I think that happened. I think the black voters in the South thing is and this is another podcast entirely. I've always been fascinated by the fact that the following things are true. Reliably Democrat, part of our coalition is black women, obviously, primarily, but black voters, the most reliably Republican states are the states with by a huge margin, the highest percentage of black voters. Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, have more black voters per capita than California, than New York, than Illinois. And it always felt to me like, OK, listen, I get there is a massive amount of still like almost Jim Crow era disenfranchisement. But there is a real power there if we can ever tap into it. And I don't know enough about Cindy Hyde-Smith to know if she was just an inherently specifically awful candidate and if Scott Colon was a specifically great candidate or if that was a canary in the coal mine or if that was a great candidate or if that was a really good candidate or if that was a really good candidate. And I don't know enough about Cindy Hyde-Smith to know enough about her. I mean, I don't know enough about her. I mean, I don't know enough always going to be that the deep south does not always have to be deep red. And that, you know, Louisiana also almost like came within a few points, I think. And so I mean, both the answer is both. I mean, Scott Colon was an unbelievable candidate. And I, I still thought he's gonna come up short. I was amiss on that one. But even while thinking that during the show, I was talking about the ways that he was running a good race. And Cindy Hyde-Smith was awful, could barely talk. So it is a big candidate gap. But also, like, you know, if you look at Louisiana, where that was, you know, less the case, I mean, Julia Leto wasn't exactly a great candidate, Jamie Davis, as you know, has a good profile. But if black voters had turned out on election day, like at the same level, they had an early vote, Jamie Davis would want like there'd be 57 senators and it was that close. Like, it was like basically 53% of the available registered white voters turned up on election day and 47% registered black voters did there was a huge early vote for black voters. But had they kept that going through election day, people in Louisiana too. So that that shows you that it's doable. And I next year is an off off your governor's race. And I think it's doable. Both states have governor's races next year. And I think both will be in play. And this is where I get really, and I use a little bit of it yesterday, I get my, my backup a bit with some of the super centrist, Democrat consultant class types, you know, I got in a little tet atet not even ted atet i just pointed out how hollow iglesias is one of his many ludicrous tweets was yesterday and you were coming to the defense of abdul's honor are you more of an abdul democrat i guess i never really asked you that well because you said on the thing on tuesday that like there were you had some complaints about the democratic party the last few years like was that is that because you're more of kind of a populist lefty or were there other things cultural issues so let me answer all those questions at once i like a lot about abdul because i really care about for my politicians raw intelligence i think it's very important i think he's very smart i care about the fact that i find him genuine i i kind of like that he's a bit i think he's probably a bit of an asshole like not in a bad way but like the hailey you know what don't show up like that i don't know if that's great politics you it kind of reminds me how i would act so i like that that you know those pieces of it um and i also thought he was totally unfairly maligned so i don't know that he was like my if i went issue for issue do i agree with him more than talarico or asaf i don't know but those things i i did like about him my complaints about the democrat party is i think they have been the last two years far too meek and far too accommodating and i think that there there was not enough of a fight and i do think that it's always hard to tell what the american people latch on to like i found it interesting that of all the wild shit trump did 10 years ago while running for president the thing that actually dinged him almost more than anything not quite more than anything but was when he was running for president he was like i don't know what to do with him i don't know what to do with him when he made fun of the disabled reporter i don't know if disabled like the the guy he did the arm thing about the guy yeah yeah and so and that really people were like that was mean so like that america the american public reacts that the other thing that i feel like the american public reacts to is wait a minute i'm struggling to pay for groceries are you making hundreds of millions of dollars corruptly with regularity while i'm struggling and i thought there should have been a far bigger by smart you know able to think on their feet quick democrats of like guys they're stealing guys they are getting they are getting rich off this i thought there was some by the media i didn't think there was enough by the actual elected politicians and i was like man i think that'll resonate i'll give you one other little for instance because these things go viral on social media and i was like i don't think the american public is responding this way you think when every time somebody's coming up for some comfort i don't know if it's confirmation hearing but you would see these videos where there's six judges who want to be a judge and a democrat senator who i probably like is like who won the election yeah and then and then and then it's five minutes of the guy won't do it and it's all yes of course that is humiliating for the guy i get it i think the american people were like yeah we we fucking know that trump says he won he didn't win this is a waste of our time i think a better use of the time would have been in those instances of they're stealing from you bro yeah and they're laughing at you they are they are laughing at you and stealing from you so that's where i wanted a little more of a fight and i don't even know i was talking about iglesias but so like i don't oh i do want to say this because of the tweet i sent i don't know actually if i am more medicare for all or public option i haven't spent enough time really investigating the details on it sure i do know that i find it repugnant that someone who does politics for a one that one week after winning should abandon the things they ran on for political expediency you there is nothing inherently valuable about winning what is valuable is what you are able to do if you win i don't care if we have 80 senators it doesn't matter if they're not if they don't actually try to do the things they want to do i'm with you on this i got in a fight with another uh with my guy josh barrow i'll just i'll just say i'm with you on this i got in a fight with another it's fine because we're we're big boys the other day i do too i'm with you medicare for all the health care is not my hobby horse i'm not trying to pretend like i know the best way to fix our broken health care system like immigration is my hobby horse like i think what we're doing is it was absolutely disgusting i was horrified by the meekness of the democrats after trump won that they weren't fighting at truth and nail and there was just this kind of conventional wisdom that like oh trump won on immigration that's a winner for him we should not talk about that you know don't talk about conventionalism is coming back right now like i said this week i was like when the democrats get back in they should demilitarize ice and get all the people that are non-violent criminals out of the detention centers i think that's just basic stuff i think that that's what the where the american people are they said it i didn't say we should open the borders but like if we have a nurse who has not broken any laws in some detention center in louisiana like i was just reading about this morning who's an immigrant from nigeria like let her go be a nurse and you know and deal with her paperwork otherwise like i don't think anybody's going to care about this i don't think anybody's going to care about this i don't think anybody's going to care about this so and that's mine abdul's issue is medicare for all he's going to fight for it let him and like we'll see like eventually they'll have to be compromised on all this stuff that's how the system works but what not right now there also is a level of i think on the things that you truly believe are moral imperatives or are things that you campaigned black and white on yeah that you have to be with to say you know what fulfilling this promise or attempting to actually it's the right thing to do it will his you know on the long spectrum of history it will be looked at fondly in the meantime i might take a little hit for it and you know what i'm gonna be a good enough fucking politician to get those people to navigate it i'm gonna find other ways to to win those people back i i thought the democrats allowing trans issues to be center point of a presidential election was such an own goal in that i don't think and maybe this is you know it cost me some of my lefty bona fides i don't know why people care about it so much because it's such a tiny tiny tiny percentage but i do think as someone in sports that if somebody wants to say hey i stand for your rights to dignity and everything in life with that said i do understand why because of the physical differences and strength between 17 year old boys and 17 year old girls that at high level competitive sports we might have to have a conversation about what is fair and what is not for who's allowed to play on girls teams and i understand that is not maybe what everyone wants to hear but on a fairness level it seems kind of right and understanding that you know what even if that on the far left alienates some of my trans allies i'm going to win those people back with all the other good things i i do and i represent you don't have to agree with me on every single issue right and i think what they did a bad job of not getting that and i think the the centrists have done a bad job of thinking the goal is to win and then do nothing just just and i and i find that outrageous this is lavar errington from two pros and a cup of joe let me tell you about zero that's xero zero is a financial management platform that loves giving small business owners the clarity to have the confidence in their numbers it puts accounting payments payroll and analytics all in one place so you always have one clear picture of your business with visual dashboards zero makes it easy to understand your cash flow you know exactly what's coming in and what's going out so you can make smarter decisions that can help grow your business zero's ai can even offer insights to help you make your best move it's powerful enough for an accountant and simple enough for you zero is the all-in-one to get you started business done learn more at zero.com we're way over we're doing rapid fire sports are you ready sure are you capable of rapid fire oh it's not really your strength yeah i'll do it but whatever i mean i got nowhere to be so yeah uh just let you know one bridge sports politics question uh my guy kyle kuzma who you know i have a little bit of a crush on um he's been tweeting some bad tweets lately saddam hussein kept christians as his personal staff uh it's not late it's for years he used to have ai write his tweets i think okay and they were long and no he was impressed with donald trump 60 minutes interview how is this like what do people think about this in the locker room as i guess my question if you have bro doing pro trump tweets all the time when your team is one and nine i think in major league baseball locker rooms it probably does well yeah i think in nfl locker rooms it does a little better than you would expect and i think in nba locker rooms it does terribly and i also think kyle kuzma is i don't think people around the nba look at him as a thought leader but i think he looks at himself as a thought leader but i think he is i i think he's a bit of a doofus is how i would say it kindly yeah i mean he's bringing the podcast equipment on the road it's like my guy dude make some jumpers yeah no no and the team's terrible he is a champion what a champion you can do the crossover nick right because you're succeeding in your role as the five sports one co-host you know what i mean there you go you got to get the first part right okay uh give me an nba and nfl mississippi like do we have a surprising success um i'm looking maybe my bengals joe burrow and the bengals they qualify as surprising definitely like were they to win make the super bowl that would be yeah i mean listen i think they are i think the bangles are crazy dangerous and listen i'm a diehard born and bred kansas city chiefs we're getting to that next and but so i said on the show yesterday that of all the afc playoff the worst matchup for my chiefs is your bangles because of if you can't get to burrow like he's just they're gonna throw the ball 50 times a game nba surprise i don't know if right now it would still qualify as surprise but the rockets can win the championship and it would be wild for durant to do that in year 20 or whatever it is but the rockets can win the whole thing are you a spurs yeah no no i'm nuggets i grew up in denver and i live in louisiana yeah so we're about to get there so i'm brought to the end of the show i'm going to get to the end of the show i'm going to the end of the show i'm going to get to the end of the show i'm going to get to the end of the show and nuggets burrow is via lsu is the path your broncos are such such luck boxes make me so mad dude it's unbelievable let's pay back i was going to tell you one of my core lost childhood memory is we're about the same age you probably remember this 94 i was there for monday night football when montana you know had come to the chiefs late career and he leads to come back to defeat the broncos i walked out of their sad people in chiefs jerseys were rude to me as a middle school child and uh you guys in the 90s kind of got over on us a bit we did you guys kind of owned that matchup and you and your elway ripped our hearts out repeatedly yeah um so i don't have a lot of sympathy for one monday night football game the one year how about this so that year you're talking about with joe montana yeah was the chiefs between that year and the year before the game and the year before the game and the year before the game and my first season yeah won one playoff game that's your entire like you got coming of age high school you know it's like my high school buddies we were in the championship i was at the parade during high school in that time period you guys went to four super bowls and won three of them yeah two or three oh because no you won three the peyton one the peyton one was before your next uh yes exactly shit that was a long fucking time i was working for jeb during the peyton one that's my whole life yeah exactly yeah i do my other chief's trauma memory is the uh is right it was right after that is during the monday night football game where mahomes beats us with the side pass oh the left handed the left handed pass yeah i remember i remember messaging my brother i was like we're gonna lose to these fucking guys for 15 years after this and it was basically what happened until the until the luck box this year so i do think i guess we are gonna have to close with jokic though because you first came into my world view not with your kind of bold principled inspiring takes on the minnesota the worst mvp of the last 40 years yeah on my nuggets text chain here on the whatsapp you were exclusively nick wrong up until about two years ago yeah you've been blocked several people i think blocked you on social media because of your anti-jokic takes i'm in my i'm in my fat fat jokic shirt right now as a troll that was a big miss for you on the on the sports on the sports analysis one of my biggest one of my biggest ever talk what was that was that you know reverse racism anti-serbia bias no we just kind of so blinded by those things but i will say when at its peak i got some of like i think sports folks who are like i get death threats i'm like ah was it delivered to your house in scary letters then call it a death threat was it an anonymous account sending a dm pipe down i think you're okay with that said i got a few dms that i had to click the translate now button and i and i was like these are not anonymous folks and i don't think they're joking like they were big mad um and eastern european folks are known for being pretty tough uh listen i thought i was i thought he was being anointed to a level he had not yet earned and i cared immensely and caring immensely about the history of the mvp award and i thought we were consistently kind of readjusting the rules to award it to him before he had achieved at the highest level in the postseason and then he went on an all-time great playoff run and then continued to be he had a nice stretch i don't think he is of the best player in the world and i was just like i'm wrong as you know i i was i was at the very least i was very very late and i was probably just wrong and so i i have been ever since they won the title you know i've been you know i think fairly complimentary of him but i you know i as nuggets fan would say nuggets fans would say they made him bend the knee he finds have you been to the uh have you been to denver i was about to call it the pepsi center shows how i've been to denver i haven't been to a basket i've never been to ball arena or whatever you can probably come now we can probably do a game together i don't think you'd be booed anymore a couple you get some jeers but i think people are over general are pretty nice uh in person like i i get a lot of yo i was pretty better during that nuggets run i was there at the championship game one i forget who it was but i did kind of get in the grill of a sports guy i'm a sports commentator who'd been wrong about the nuggets i was just like what do you think about this baby do you know who it was who was it god i'm having a blank you live he lives in oakland he lives in the bay i'd met him before he was it marcus thompson uh or mark spears mark spears it was a good nature but i felt like i just he was like we were walking past each other i think i was like how are we looking now mark spears how's he looking now that's awesome i'd had a couple pops you know this game one is that i was our only it's probably the only nba finals i'll get to go to right is it over is our peak over it's over right i think any path back i don't think so i mean with a player as great as yo here's the other the sneaky thing and again now i'm gonna get back on those bad text chains even if this happens you probably don't have the pieces but something that has to happen is joker has to get back to right now he's like the fifth best player in the league for there to be a path he has to be the best like it has to be that he is back to being the best yeah but i still think team they need more athleticism man they just have looked so unathletic last year i just can't rely on them i just can't rely on them on aaron gordon's hamstrings and that's why i was so mad we lost p watt i mean p wants nothing special but he just was at least athletic i was like we need more athletic dudes around yokich yeah that's right that's right anyway all right you got anything for me anything any final this is your chance to become ko do you have any one last hot take or political question no i listen thank you first of all for having me on dude thanks for doing i i just want to say this to my friends and not friends in sports media that dabble or do politics because this i think is important and real and leave it on this in sports i try to be very like actually know what i'm talking about watch the games be educated with that said if you're not and you're talking about the nfl trade deadline or who's going to win the fucking nba finals to really if you're just bullshitting it's really low it's no harm done it's like it's all kind of make believe anyway if you are going to venture in to real life stuff you have a responsibility to actually know what the fuck you're talking about and it is fine to say not to pat myself on the back but on things like health care in america be like you know what i don't have enough info on it to give a strong take we in the sports media world are bred to give a take don't back down and that is that is fine in part because one of the things sports has on politics is political like no when we're arguing about the kansas city chiefs nobody does a political thing which is like why do you think the chiefs are good they've never won a super bowl and you're like wait they've won three recently and they're like no they haven't like we at least all agree on what has happened and then we argue about the other stuff politics we don't even have a shared reality on. So it is important that if you are going to be a thought leader or opinionist in it, that you have a baseline understanding of what you're actually talking about. If not, this is what I'll say, then stick to sports. And I never say that. But in that case, if not, then do it. You do have that responsibility to, you know, the American public, if you will. So that's my take. Nick, right. It's been such a pleasure. Come on back anytime. When you're educated, not, you know, football season, you got to lock in now. I got a lot going on, man. Football season's going on. Yeah, there's a lot going on. Next year, all-star break, maybe an all-star break check-in. Would love to. Thank you, Tim. All right, brother. See you soon. Appreciate it. Thanks so much to Nick Wright, man. That was a delight. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. But we got a firecracker coming next. It's Anderson Clayton. Stick around. This is LeVar Arrington from Two Pros and a Cup of Joe. Let me tell you about Xero. That's X-E-R-O. Xero is a financial management platform that loves giving small business owners the clarity to have the confidence in their numbers. It puts accounting payments, payroll, and analytics all in one piece. It's a great way to get people to know what they're doing. It's a great way to get people to know So you always have one clear picture of your business. With visual dashboards, Xero makes it easy to understand your cash flow. You know exactly what's coming in and what's going out. So you can make smarter decisions that can help grow your business. Xero's AI can even offer insights to help you make your best move. It's powerful enough for an accountant and simple enough for you. Xero is the all-in-one to get business done. Learn more at Xero.com. And we're back. She's chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, elected three years ago at age 25. She's the youngest chair of a state Democratic Party. It's my girl, Anderson Clayton. What is up? What's up, Tim Miller? Thanks for having us on. Holy shit. I know. I know. North Carolina calls a congressional race again yesterday. We still have a couple more to go. Do you? I mean, it's going to be 11. 11 to 3. Is it not? It's going to be 11 to 3. I had a couple people that are still not calling Chuck's race in NCO5 yet. And so a lot of folks are like, Anderson, is it going to? Is it not? And I'm like, no, Virginia Fox is done for in Congress right now, let me assure you. But I get that folks are watching recounts and everything like that that are going to be potentially happening in North Carolina. So people are anxious a little bit in the state. Enjoy retirement, Virginia Fox. Well, I do have to tease you. Obviously, I have to tease you at the start because we had you on the YouTube before the election. And I was feeling sleepers. I had so much faith in you. I had more faith in you than you had in you. And I was like, I think you're going to win North Carolina 6. I was like, it might be 9 to 5. And you were like, Tim Miller. You were like, Tim Miller, 9 to 5? Cyril Jefferson? No way. I was like, I'll bet you. I'll bet you. And so you're going to owe me a drink when you get down to New Orleans or in Denver this week. I guess I'll see you. I owe a lot of people drinks, I feel like, about congressional races this year. But it was inspiring because I got to hear a lot of our candidates talk about how much the county parties in their backyards really believed in them. And I was like, look, I was watching a lot of, I guess, a lot of polls, which, you know, not necessarily the best thing for, I think, a state party chair to get caught up in sometimes. But it's kind of hard not to when every donor apparatus is around you and also when everybody else is. And so it was interesting to me to see the surprises on Tuesday because I was like, God, it gave me a renewed faith in people on the ground in North Carolina, too. All right. Well, I had to tease you first. We probably shouldn't. We didn't really start at the start. But, you know, when I when I have one over here, I did. So let's just back it up for people that don't know your story. I mean, one of the main things that you were working on when you got in there at 25 was Democrats got to go talk to people everywhere all over the state. You know, it just can't be in the research triangle and Charlotte and the burbs and, you know, the other little pockets. And and like that work is what really pays off here on on election. Yeah, I think it goes back to 2022 in North Carolina. We've been known federally as the great white whale for a long time because we could not win a federal election since Obama won us in 2008. And in 2022, North Carolina left 44 state legislative seats uncontested. It was the most we had ever left uncontested in state history. And that was sort of how you got the insurgent party chair candidate Anderson Clayton, because I got really pissed off after 2022 election cycle, because we had left almost 3 million people across North Carolina without somebody on the ballot to vote for. And in 2023, when we ran for state party chair, and I say we because it was a cohort of 10 to 15 young people across the state that helped me run a campaign, I had a call time manager, a field manager, a campaign manager, and it was like we were running a legitimate race for state party chair in a lot of ways. And when that happened, the main focus that we wanted to do is saying that we don't want to cede ground to a Republican Party anywhere in North Carolina. And that meant we were going to contest every race in the state legislature, we were going to try to contest every race down ballot. And we were going to make sure that we were a state party that was active in all 100 counties year round. And in 2024, we got to contest 168 out of 170 races. And a lot of the folks that ran in 2024 ran again in 2026. And so people like Claire Kempner, who is out in Pitt County, ended up winning a seat that was a Republican plus 12 seat in 2024 ended up being an R plus two seat in 2026. And she was able to beat out someone who had been voting against abortion rights in North Carolina, who was a medical doctor in the state, and somebody who had honestly done a disservice to Eastern North Carolina. And so putting people like Claire Kempner, people like Yvonne Hopkins, people like Winn Decker, who ran originally, but also got to go back in the state legislature this year, I think it's just really exciting. But it's a fruition of that. We don't want to ever leave anybody behind. And rural North Carolina deserved every opportunity. So for those of you that don't know me, I love rural. That's what I'm about. I love it. You're out there. You are rural. You live in like, what's it called? Human County? Where do you live? Person County. Come on, Tim. I'm sorry. Chuck Person. I should remember that. That's my best. Come on. But Human County. I like that. It's a person. Yeah. Person County. What is that? Roxborough? Do I have that right? Roxborough, right? Come on. I got that. All right. I'm doing pretty good. Look at the memory. Look at the memory. I mean, you're out there. And when we were talking about this, you're like your neighbors are MAGA. You know, you guys were organizing in these towns or all these, you know, some of them will listen to this or these little blue humans and these red parts of the country. You talk to them and organize them. Like, what do you think was it that resonated with people? Like, was it I mean, obviously getting the candidates on the ballot, like that was step one. Okay. Like after that, is it turning out all the little blue dots? Was it persuasion? If it was persuasion, like, what were the, you know, things you're winning people over on? Like, give me a little political analysis about what was happening out in the roles in North Carolina. I mean, I don't think you can deny that this election was also a referendum on the White House in every way. And that, you know, something that I think Republicans have actually made possible is that folks are looking more local to elections right now. And honestly, that are more pissed off. And Republicans, to me, have really driven up Democratic turnout in down ballot elections because of the fact that Democrats are looking at everywhere as, as a line of defense against Donald Trump, or at least trying to. And so for us, it's been about how do we engage in communities year round? How do we show up and shake everybody's hand? And to the point that you made earlier about Mayor Jefferson, now Congressman Jefferson, one thing that I heard from folks, Congressman-elect, but one thing that I heard from folks afterwards is that they were like, look, I'm a Republican, but I've known, like, I've known Cyril, like, for a long time. And he's been somebody that's been in the community. He stood up for, for not just Democrats and not just independents and not just Republicans, but everybody. And I think that a lot of people knew who they were voting for on a ballot this year because they'd shaken their hand and met them. And I don't think that we can negate the power of person-to-person contact, especially when you're looking at districts where you had to win over Republican voters in order to be able to win them because they were on nobody's radar on election night. Yeah, I talked to Lakeisha Womack. I know you did, Tim Miller, one of my favorite interviews. Come on, my queen. I was like, she didn't even have. She didn't even have a staff. That race, like, there was, forget national money. You know, there's all the, in the DCs, there's always like these stories in the week after the election of, oh, the DNC didn't do this. So the DSCC didn't do that. It's like, she won with nothing. But nobody. It was her and her kid, volunteers. She had a plan. I mean, that is, that's pretty wild experience. No, it has to be. And now she's the fifth member of Congress or black woman from Congress from North Carolina that's ever been elected. And she's the fifth member of Congress that's ever been elected. And when you, when you think about it, it's the, it's, it's a huge, I think, showcase to power for people on the ground. And also what a good election cycle and a good candidate at the top of the ballot can turn out to be because I think that Lakeisha made her way. I was out there with her in Polk County and Burke County and Rutherford County. Tim Miller, I wish you could, this woman stood toe to toe with people who looked at her and said, you shouldn't put your face on your yard signs. Like you shouldn't because like this district. - Yes. - Like that was good. That was advice. - Yes. Like they were, like, that's how, I mean, that's how people felt. Maybe she would just have to put. We can just say this. It's okay. We're on a podcast. But, like, I mean, is she just going to do her last name? Like, I don't know. I mean, maybe Lakeisha in, like, really small letters. No, but. How are you going to trick people? Well, that's what she said. She was like, my name is Lakeisha Womack. I'm not going to hide from anybody about who I am. And it just, to me, it showcased even to our own party about who is electable, who can get in office. And it challenged people's narratives, especially in communities that, like, oftentimes we think we have to have a cookie-cutter type of candidate to be able to run in certain types of districts. And I'm like, actually, you need a candidate that wants to work hard. Find somebody who wants to visit all of your counties. Find somebody who wants to talk to everybody and isn't afraid of what type of party affiliation somebody has. Like, I just. It was the. How much, like, she had to deal with internally to be able to fight through to get to Congress is where I sit there now. And I'm like, she doesn't. She deserves every bit of this. And I'm so excited for her, to be honest. I mean, a lot of it is the work on the ground. We should also mention, I mean, having Roy Cooper at the top of the ticket definitely made a difference. And I think that he. When I had him on, we kind of talked about this. It's like, no, there's. Because of, you know, the nature of who he is and he's been around for a while, there's nobody that's like, we really should look to the Roy Cooper model for 2028. You know, everybody's trying to look to John Ossoff or Abdul or Chalrico or one of the younger people, right? But, like, Roy Cooper showed how to reach. I mean, this. This is a story that it's both turnout and persuasion. I mean, he reached out and Jamie Ager, too. Like, they created this permission structure, I do think, for a lot of people in North Carolina to feel like the Democrats aren't scary. They're listening to me. They have, you know, they're concerned about my issues. I don't know. Just talk about Roy's campaign a little bit. No, but I think what people miss about Roy Cooper a lot of times is the fact that he has been a 40-year public servant in the state of North Carolina. So, yes, rural people. My best friend looked at me the other day and he said, oh, my dad voted for Roy. And they're like, my dad. His dad is not a Democrat by any circumstance, right? He's a Republican in Roxborough and somebody that, to me, is like. He voted for someone who he had known throughout North Carolina politics. And what I think people miss is that Roy Cooper started in the state legislature. And when we're looking at what the future of the buildback for the Democratic Party is, it's got to be looking at uplifting those bottom-level legislators right now who are going to be the future U.S. senators. Because, to me, he wouldn't have had that trajectory had he not had an experience at every level of government. But he did. He was a person from rural North Carolina, Rocky Mount. He never forgot his roots. And a lot of the communities in rural North Carolina had also met him from his time as attorney general, as governor, when he would do visits out to their counties and wouldn't necessarily make a big headway about it, but would say, I'm here to talk to you about what you need and what needs to get done here. And I think the same thing for Jamie Ager. He was known in his community and ended up helping. I think he outran, honestly, Roy Cooper in his district by a couple of points. I mentioned a few times. People don't know. He was the farmer out in Western North Carolina. Fairview, baby. Come on. Fairview, North Carolina. I can't get all your counties. Jamie Ager represent. But, no, I think it's incredible. That's X-E-R-O. Xero is a financial management platform that loves giving small business owners the clarity to have the courage. It puts accounting, payments, payroll, and analytics all in one place. So you always have one clear picture of your business. It's powerful enough for an accountant. And simple enough for you. Can we do some schadenfreude? You're closer to this than me, so I really need you to, I need the, I need bad Anderson to come out just for like two minutes. Okay, just, just, just, just for a second. Because you had these Republicans in your state that put in one of the nastiest gerrymanders in the whole country. And we're going to get to the state senate in a second. But this is, you know, you guys hadn't won a state run since 2008, but like all these races are close. You know, any fair look at North Carolina, you know, would, would think this should be maybe an 8-6 Republican map as like the starting point, you know, based on what the results have been. They got greedy. They got greedy. They tried to put in an 11-3 Republican map. And now they have the biggest dummy mander, maybe in American history. And it is a dummy mander with a. A capital B in dumb. You guys are going to be 11-3. So they tried to make it so it'd be 11-3 Republican. It's going to be 11-3 Democrats. Who were the masterminds behind this? Can you just, can you let me have a little bit of schadenfreude about the Republicans that stepped in it this badly? Oh, you got two people to blame. And honestly, one of them already found their exit this cycle with Phil Berger and Destin Hall. So Destin Hall being my, my, my two, my two. My one term house speaker, actress, speaker of the house, because of the fact that he decided to get really greedy and actually put up a tweet back in 2025 about how good of a map redrawer he actually was. He said, I'm quite something at redistricting myself. And I was like, well, I bet you are because you just lost quite a bit in North Carolina. And even if they had just left the original map that they had, they would have actually had more. I was laughing yesterday because I was thinking about, wow, if they had left the 2022 map. They would have had four more representatives. Like if we'd had an even 50-50 split in North Carolina, like we did on free and fair maps, they would still have more representatives right now than they did on the dumbass map that they drew for themselves. I was like, y'all are idiots, to be honest with you. And I think it showcases. All right, Destin, you are such a good map drawer. We appreciate it. Thank you. The Democrats couldn't have even drawn themselves an 11 to 3 map. And no. I get only to like the only way to get here. It was through a greedy Republican trying to gerrymander. And that's pretty enjoyable. I will say that, Tim Miller, you never met Colton Browder. Colton Browder could draw the Democrats at 11 to 3 map in North Carolina. That man could figure it out if he needed to. Are there any other people you want to introduce me to? We've talked about Cyril, Lakeisha, and Jamie Ager. Do you have any other, you know, bulwark faves, incoming bulwark faves in the delegation? I think you're going to love Paul Behringer if you've not already interviewed him. That's going to be someone. Tell us about him. Former Republican lawyer, someone who also won Johnston County this year, which if anyone's listening to this knows North Carolina or knows Johnston County, you know that that in and of itself is a fucking miracle, to be honest with you. Because that county is one of the faster growing and reddest counties that used to be in the state. And Johnston County is really because of the population increases and sort of people moving out from Wake County has gotten more and more. But I think about it all the time of just Paul Behringer, it ran and he said, Anderson, look, I'm going to give it all I've got this year. He ended up putting, you know, a lot of his own money into helping finance his campaign originally, because to your point, Tim Miller, not a lot of people were looking at CD13. And it was Chris Hayes on election night. This was crazy. Chris Hayes was sitting there on MSNOW on election night being like, I've never heard of some of these people before. And then it was in C13. It was talking about Paul Behringer. And he beat Brad Knott, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes. And then I'm sure y'all have already interviewed Richard Ojeda. That man is becoming. I saw a tweet the other day that said we're all living in Ojeda the movie and we're just backlight background characters. And I feel that way, too. But he is. I haven't talked to either of them yet. I have to have both of them on the list. Richard Ojeda is the guy who ran in West Virginia, where my husband's from, kind of his populist left campaign. And he's told us just amazing story about how his dad passed away. But like after he got to see him win the congressional race, really moving. So so we'll have him on, too. All right. Let's get down to business. When we talked last, you know, you were like, it's going to take, you know, we got to win two straight cycles to fix the mess because we have to win all the Supreme Court justices in 2028. Looking ahead to 2028 now, you guys would have another Senate seat up. So, you know, we can talk about that. The state Senate was the one place where their gerrymander still worked is insane. You guys won. The Democrats won by 16 points. If you kind of added up all the state Senate races, Democrats won 58 percent. Republicans won 40. 22 percent. But Republicans are still going to have a majority in that chamber. 26, 24, which is just absurd and obnoxious and like barely democracy. We're not going to let that get us down. So you got to navigate that state Senate situation. You have a governor. As you mentioned, you have the state House. You're going to have to win the Supreme Court seats. Like what? What do you got to do now to finish the job in 2028? Look, I'm looking at the state Senate where Phil Berger, again, who is the Senate majority leader, got ousted in this cycle to Sam Page, who was a Republican that ran on helping make sure that public education, had school funding. So we're looking at private school vouchers in North Carolina this year and ensuring that we can reverse the amount of money that Republicans have dumped into unaccountable private school vouchers in the state. I believe we will have some of those Republicans in the state Senate who ran on at least fully funding public schools. And if they're not interested in a bipartisan effort to do that, I'm going to be excited to be out in their districts in 2028. Tim Miller side note on that one. Right. But just to say that that is my little like I'd love to see some of these people go up in there and vote against the Democratic agenda. in 2027. But we do have to be able to finish the job. Because anything that we do with, I've gotten 50 million messages about redistricting Anderson. When is that going to be first on your list in 2027 when Democrats have control of the statehouse again in North Carolina after they're sworn in? And what people forget about North Carolina is that the courts are still fully Republican controlled at the court of appeals level and also the state Supreme Court level. And that is where Republicans in the state, if we're trying anything with nonpartisan redistricting or anything like that, the Republicans are going to take us through the courts because they did still draw these maps for themselves in 2025. And so we have to be able to take back the North Carolina state Supreme Court in 2028. We have done two steps in one in 2024 by keeping Justice Allison Riggs on the court by 734 votes out of 5.5 million cast. 2026, Justice Anita Earls won with a incredible margin, just like Roy Cooper did in the state of almost 20 points to make sure that we had another Democratic justice backup on. We have three Republican state Supreme Court seats up in 2028. And we can in 29 reverse partisan and racial gerrymandering in North Carolina for good, because that is going to be the pathway to ensuring that we get out of the mess that Republicans have put us in for the last decade in North Carolina. But it is going to take winning back the courts. It's not just going to be winning back a chamber in North Carolina. All right. So the other big one, as I mentioned, you've got a Senate race. Who knows? You got a lot. You got 11 House members now. So who knows? Could be a big primary. You got Jeff Jackson. You've got a lot of stars. Now, so we'll see. You know, I was pushing it to be you, Anderson Clayton, in 2028. But it seems like you got a big you got a big bench that you can be the coach for for that Senate race. And then the presidential, of course. And so, you know, thinking back to like what we learned from this time, obviously, it's a midterm that is going to be a little bit more beneficial to the Democrats, you would think, just by the nature of the coalitions right now, presidential is going to be a little harder. What lessons from coming up just short in the Harris campaign, Biden, Cunningham, etc. Clinton, like what what lessons, you know, are you taking into 2028? What do you think you want the nominee and the Senate nominee to do differently? I mean, I want them to show up in places that are not just Raleigh and Charlotte, to be honest with you in this state. And I think that it's important to listen to people on the ground about where you need to be and where the energy that you carry is best placed, because I think a lot of people do surrogate trips to North Carolina. And sometimes they're sitting in a room of 15 people. And I'm like, look, if you're not a thousand, I've not done my job right. And we've not put you in the right places. And I think that's also a reflective point of just sometimes how people get connected into the state of North Carolina. And so making sure that regardless of what state that you're going into, you reach out to your state party, your partner organizations and and be actually being a principal that cares about hearing from the grassroots and also the infrastructure of the party, because I think oftentimes people make mistakes with that. And I've seen it time and time again on the ground as President Harris really make it out to Far Eastern North Carolina into the black belt of the state. And I don't think that that was something that she didn't want to do. I think it was something that her campaign said she didn't have time for. And to me, it's like, well, we need to figure out the ways to make time to go into areas where we need to juice turnout, especially in CD1, where Don Davis's seat is. And we see that district turning more and more red because of the way that it's been drawn. And I'm like, yeah, but if black voters in that rural part of the state turn out and feel like their votes matter, we can defeat that gerrymander in 2028. And we're going to have to keep our foot on the gas to be able to do it. And so I'm looking at Northeastern North Carolina and Southeastern North Carolina. And I'm thinking for the next year and a half, I got to get my ass back out into them. All right. Final question. I'm going to ask you to rank your favorite Democratic Congress members one to 11 and then your favorite presidential contenders one to 20. You can do that for me, right? Yeah, I'm Tim Miller, Tim Miller, Tim Miller. Come on. You know, you're not going to do you're not going to rank your favorite children for me, Anderson Clayton. I'm hoping all my children are going to work real hard for me this year, you know, because I've got I got to take my 11 members of Congress and get them all call time list for their local municipal offices in 2027 in North Carolina so they can go help me recruit people to be in their own backyard. So if you're listening to this and you're in North Carolina and you want to be the change in your own backyard, go to ncdp.org slash run for office because we want to recruit you. That is Anderson Clayton. We just need 49 more. You will be in good shape. All right, girl. I'll see you out in Denver and stay in touch. OK, thanks, Tim Miller. Thanks to Nick Wright and Anderson Clayton. Boy, howdy. We are rolling, huh? We are rolling. We got another good one coming for you tomorrow and another good one Friday. It is a murderer's row this week. So make sure you're catching all the shows. See you back here tomorrow. Peace. 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. This is Mario Lopez from all with Mario Lopez Daily Podcast. Let's talk about the 2026 Tundra in Tacoma. They're more than the MVP. They are the GOAT, greatest of all trucks. And it's not football season without them. These trucks are made to die for. And bring La Victoria home with gold standard power, craftsmanship and durability. They bring every possibility to life on game day. Learn more about the Toyota trucks game day sales event and score big by checking out your local dealer or visiting Toyota dot com today. See packages and options at Toyota dot com for future availability.