Sam Stein Used to Be a Thief

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to The Bullwork Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. We have a vanishing under Sam Stein back in the show, and here's why, I'm gonna tell you why. We're still at the end of the August doldrums, okay? With the end of August, I don't know what Trump is doing if he's getting a facelift, he's just bleeding all day, but like he has been like a little less on the crazy lately, as far as the new news is concerned, that's one thing. Where everybody's kinda getting back in the school, they want a little fun, so I was like, "What can we do this week to loosen it up a little bit?" Sam's laugh is one thing. People have been counting that it's new beard, and they're a little worried about him. I received some texts with concerns that Sam has (laughs) - He was on vacation. - He was on vacation, getting into the hard drugs. And so what we're gonna do here is we have a mailbag for you and the cabinet rankings, we're just gonna have fun, and we might dabble in some conspiracies, 'cause it's important to have fun and dabble in conspiracies, 'cause I was looking at the YouTube rankings, and the shit that is still in front of us, Sam, there is lefty conspiracy theories. Jimmy Doar is beating me. Do you know Jimmy Doar, he was doing a segment about whether Charlie Kirk was hit with a drone this week. That's beating me. Okay. The right-wing nonsense. - Sorry, once again. - Was the segment that Charlie Kirk this week was hit with a drone? - No, okay. - No, but the death. But the assassination wasn't really a gunshot. It was a drone, and it was a pretty precise drone. I gotta say, just the neck. Okay, didn't hit anybody else there at Utah University. - How big was this drone? - Small. And then you got all the right-wing losers beating us, Candice, Megan, and so I'm just like, this is not be the path, Sam, begging people to subscribe if you're watching on YouTube, click the subscribe, and also doing the types of content that people want, which is Natalie Harper conspiracies. (laughing) - Yeah, I don't wanna be, I don't wanna beg people, 'cause that looks a little desperate, but like, you guys should be out there. You guys should be subscribing as a way to bolster the idea that you don't have to dive so deep into the conspiracy land in order to be a success in this industry. Help us prove the premise that you can be sane and still attract an audience. - Just some like thoughts about, I am traveling in some like thoughts about whether Natalie Harper is Russian or about her health, history, her story, her brother, the communist. I've got, I have a lot of thought, anyway. We'll get into all that at the end. - Okay. - Serious news first. - Yes. - Almost like 15 minutes of seriousness, 40 minutes of Sam interrupting me in laughing. New York Times this morning has done the analysis on the soaring number of arrests that ICE has done for non-criminals. It's been happening this summer. Thousands of people who had not previously been the focus of the Mast deportation campaign have gotten rounded up. They included people married to U.S. citizens, who were the one that we sent to Central African Republic. People who had entered legally and were pursuing an asylum claim. And then obviously the Haitians and others with temporary legal status, that the administration pushed her a vote. We have a chart we'll put up for the video folks right now. And you can just see it's just like hockey stick go up of people who are being detained who have no criminal history, no issues at all. And that's what they're doing to get their numbers. - Well, I think they're doing this. I mean, I thought that was a question I was kind of asking. I had a couple theories. - What's your theory? - Well, one is that Mark Wayne Mullin had this brief period of time where people were mad at him. There was those two deaths. And then they made some sort of policy change where they weren't gonna do the traffic stop arrests. And then everyone freaked out on the right about Mark Wayne. And so I think he recalibrated. That's one theory. The other is that Trump's got nothing else really going on. And all the foreign policy stuff is distracting. And so he's going back to his bread and butter. But those are the only ones I have. And I don't know if you have any other profound thoughts. - I would add to that. I mean, look, this is basically immigration and trade with the two things where there's any ideological coherence at all. They're very committed to a white-somely immigration policy and they're very committed to deporting people. I do think that there's a genuine ideological effort. And this is the easiest way to do it. I mean, if you want to get people out of the country, the easiest way to do it is to go nab the people that you have in the system already, right? Like if you are a TPS, like you filed for TPS, we have your address. If you have a job, you're paying taxes. Like the government can find you very easily, right? I mean, they can find like the worst criminals too, right? Because that you went into jail. But like there's this, that gray area of trying to find people who's stuck in the, right? Like who, that's a lot harder. - That's a good point. So like you start with the people who are in jail already and you ask the states for the records so you can go and get them thrown out, low hanging fruit. You go after people who have work visas or who are here with some documentation, TPS status. And you go after them because you contract them down. Then it becomes a little harder and you can't just use the vehicle stops, you can, I guess, but it's gonna backfire. But then you start looking for different ways to nab them. And so one story in particular stood out to me, like literally yesterday, and I guess it stood out to me 'cause my home state can etiquette. But Senator Chris Murphy tweeted that there were ice arrests happening parents at school bus stops. So like that seems both sick. Sick and cruel and awful and humane. But to your point, it's like if you are trying just simply to get numbers and you know you got a fine people and you can't just knock on the door and enter. But like you start looking for places like bus stops at school districts that have a lot of immigrant kids. And it's awful. I mean, what they're doing is a collective trauma and the idea that a parent has to wake up, you know, you're a parent, I'm a parent, getting your kid ready for school is a pain in the fucking ass. And it's chaos every morning. Imagine adding to that the additional moment of whether or not you're gonna ever see your kid again. And just think about that. - Second, the other people have been showing up for ice check-ins, you know, the Asylees, right? Racial targeting, Kavanaugh stops, like that's it. So that's what they're doing. Like they're doing less of like the ASMR porn of like, hey, we have these people in chains or putting out social media. They are doing less of that. But like, they killed two people this summer, right? I think it's just that like because of some of the circumstances they're immigrants, you know, you're gonna have more outrage and backlash if it's white American citizens that are being killed, which is be honest, right? And the video element, like the videos of good and pretty were just so, there's so many angles. It was so striking and it was summary execution in the streets. But like there are still continuing on with the other parts of this too. With Maine, Houston, what do you say? - And the other thing is they haven't like seemingly unlimited funds to do this, right? And this is why it was so pernicious to give them all this money. Because if you have like a resource check on you, you start prioritizing, you do the things that actually matter and you don't just like, it's brand pride. But they have so much money to spend. You know, it was a story yesterday that kind of got under the radar, but Kimura, Gregor Garcia, the sort of original big immigration story. You know, he's still not deported. Like his case is 16 months in, it's still going on. And it really comes down to this, which is, the government wants to send him to Liberia. His lawyer says he has no attachment to the Liberia. - They want to send him to Siberia? - Liberia. - Oh, Liberia. Might as well, just kind of hot. - Keep going and keep going east. He wants to go to Costa Rica, Costa Rica, so they tell. Take him. Literally the government can just say cool. We'll send you to Costa Rica and be done with it. But because they can spend unlimited money, they're just willing to incur the cost of litigating this thing for, I don't even know what the reason is at this juncture, but they can just take the lieu of cost and eat him. And so you have stupid shit like this happening all over the place. - Yeah, a little rumor, the slide for us this morning that, you know, we know this type of stuff is happening, but like whether it's actually happening on Friday, but some immigration advocates had reached out and said the government has a flight for Afghans and Iranians that are going to the Central African Republic on Friday, including Afghans that helped us. - Why are we sending them all to these African countries? We have some sort of mineral deal that like, you know, we're getting an exchange. I feel like that's probably the other side of it. - Yeah, I mean, look, well, part of it is like they avoid, you know, any issues to Trump, I know all these places have huge human rights violations. - Right. - I incentive African Republic like the story of the man that, as aforementioned, like has a US citizen, wife, Cuban immigrant. I just was like, these times people, I thought that the Republicans were four, like the people fleeing communism, and they didn't send them to Cuba, they sent them there. He doesn't know, he has no money. He said in the middle of the Central African Republic, you can't get work there. Like what is it, what are you supposed to do? - I think it's fucking insane. What we're doing is-- - It's wild. - Okay, so rumors that's happening on Friday, and I do think this is, again, we've seen, you know, this is a whack-a-mole thing, but we do see reactions to this when there is public outrage. So I do encourage people to continue writing their representatives about this. - You know, we got Katie Ritt actually, we got her to put out a statement. [BLANK_AUDIO] you did. I know. And thank God, I was on vacation when you were doing this whole thing. But I noticed, and I was very happy. And honestly, and I don't mean this in like a shallow way. I was proud, like that you were doing this shit. Because Katie Britt, like, it bothers me that she glossed on to this poor kid in Texas as like something she was crying about and couldn't stop thinking about. And then she stopped thinking about it. Did a whole New York Times take out? I can't stop thinking about this guy. Until Friday, when I'm gonna stop thinking about this guy. The beautiful, the classic New York Times picture of the, you know, person looking longingly at the window. They love that picture. It's like a pin-up picture of her. Is she like, what? You know, she had the, I think she had the state of the union response. I forget what she had some speech or something like that. She had a horrible state of union response during the Biden era, where she was in the kitchen. And it was like scream too. It was like scream too. They're the knives. There were some other, there were some other speech she gave. I was thinking about that one. But there's some of the speech she gave where she was like, didn't mention this kid who she apparently couldn't stop thinking about. She deserves all of it. The knives in the kitchen with the state of the union response. That was one of the weirder things that will stick with me for the 2020s. I deserve texting my friends being like, do I have Trump's arrangement syndrome or is this the weirdest shit you've ever seen in your life and everybody like, it's so weird. Yeah, it was the airy voice. Yeah. I want to talk about the midterms a little bit. There's this report in the Atlantic. It really tickles me. Trump had noval office meeting about how to spend their Super PAC money. What I've kind of the less covered elements of the corruption of this administration is how they're driving people, corporations, but also rich people to just give huge amounts of money to their Super PAC. And in part because it's like administration's always did this kind of like on a small level, which like, well, you know, one good way to get response back from the candidate is to like donate to the Super PAC. So this isn't so different. Like some a lot of the other stuff that Trump is doing is like unprecedented corruption, but he is doing it on just a hypercharge scale. Like the reports I hear of like people, you know, like Brian Ballard, like the close lobbyists, like clients call them, be like, can we hire you to lobby? And it's like, yeah, the entry fee, it's whatever, 50 grand a month or whatever, but also you got to give a million dollars to mega and I'm like, mega and Super PAC. And then we'll take you like just crazy levels of so they have all this money. They just they one unprecedented part of this is just how much money is in their Super PAC right now. For the midterms, a lot of Democratic strategists, I've talked to are worried about this. And we have maybe a silver lining because Trump called all the strategists in the oboe office, according to three people familiar with the meeting, according to Atlantic, he he told them he thinks that they should spend the money on ads that focus on him. The president wants a series of ads focused on his own record. He suggested the ad makers mine his own on camera statements as the building blocks, quote, go look at the clips the president told the team. I cite accomplishments all the time. You're in comms for this. Like, come on, how many times have you been with the candidate who's like, we just need to advertise better about me. Right? That's like a classic. That's the problem. We're not doing the vans about how great I am. Why he's got like 400 milli effort. I don't want to get the figure. 100 million, I think is it. Yeah. It's something crazy. I've been wondering like why he hasn't spent this. It we're what 68 days away. He spent some of it, they spent I think 800 grand to help Darlene Graham. 800 grand. He spent some money to be Thomas Massey. Not even one hundredth of the total. He speaks of money to be Thomas Massey, I think. So they spent a little bit in the primary. He's got a little late in the game. I mean, what are they waiting for? I found a Republican. I'd be a little bit upset. You're sitting on all this money and it's like, you're going to let us just get killed here. The strategy that I was talking to was what about I'm thinking of one conversation ahead in Iowa in particular. I'm talking to the Iowa Democratic Party folks. And they're like, look, we feel pretty good about sand. Obviously running a good race. I've had the polls we talked about that was near yesterday. Turek, kind of a coin flip, good candidate, bad year. Like the thing that they're the most worried about though is like, you know, Iowa still went to Trump by 11 or 12 last time. And they're worried that they have this huge, you know, war chest that it's hard in advertising to like convince people in farm country that things are great when they're shitty. But it's kind of easy in advertising to go talk to Republicans about how the Democrat is crazy. Right. And so that's what they were worried about. They'll just be able to keep a lid on the Democratic ability to win over Trump voters because there'll just be so much advertising, you know, talking about how their sharia law communists that you don't want to, you know, seize their farmland and give it to China or whatever that they do. And if they don't use the money for that and they use it instead for these ads that could maybe even backfire that are just like Mr. Trump and like, things are great. Well, can I imagine the best economy ever, golden age. Like that would that would be a dream come true, really. I would love to see the ad that Trump, if like Trump actually got into the business of making the ad himself and picking the accomplishments. I mean, you said early up top that it's been like less than crazy week for Trump. And I guess so. But I was also sort of perusing his true social feed yesterday. He put up five posts in an hour about how clean the waterfall is at Meridian Hill Park in DC. I was just like, whoa. This is what I think is happening. I think he's getting the hair transplant. He's sitting around, you know, you can't go out. And so he's just bleeding. Sure. Well, my point is would it would an ad that he crafted for the midterms include a lot of footage of Meridian Hill Park. And the eye winds being like, what the fuck is this park? Why this is not, this is not an look at the big beautiful fountain. Look at the beautiful fountain. It used to be homeless people and drugs. And they called it Malcolm X Park. Obviously, if it's a bunch of ads focused on Trump, and that's how they spend their money, Democrats would be positively thrilled. Both because they want to make the election about Trump. And then to your larger point, which is more interesting is that I think the only way Republicans do pull this thing out is to figure out a way to somehow both depress Democratic votes, which I don't think is going to happen, because I think Democrats are at this point willing to just absolutely do anything. But to more or less compel those fence hitters to just say, I'd rather not vote than vote Democrat. I don't think they're going to be able to juice turn out that much on their side of the aisle if I had to. Trump won. If you look at this, Sarah was really good on this 2024 talking about the double haters. Not to trigger everybody by going back to 2024. But basically what happened is like Trump won in 16 and 24 because he won the double haters in Biden won in 20 because Biden won them essentially is like what happened. And I mean, obviously it's more complicated than that, but that is true. The thing here is there's no there's not a second person to hate, right? I guess the point is that like if you get these like Republicans that are unhappy with Trump that also don't like the Democrats, if you can get them to turn out anyway and hold their nose for Trump. And in a place like I, well, I think that's a tougher sell in some of these states. In a place like I, well, even older electorate, they're used to voting. I mean, I could vote anyway. And it's like, okay, well, I'm unhappy with Trump, but I'm not going to vote for two Democrats. Maybe I'll vote for Rob Sand. I just think that that's the best case that they have. What Sand sells are pulling this right? Two soon. Two soon. Two soon. Two soon. Two soon. Two soon. Two soon. Sorry. Sorry. I almost had a stroke right there. Hold on. What am I supposed to talk about next? Oh, I'd run another thing. Yeah. Fucking hands, Alter, dude. Honestly. I'm going to be I'm going to be an old old man. I remember exactly where I was when that poll came out. And I remember slacken with you and Sarah. And we did a take right away. And we were just like the vibes were so great. Yeah, the take only is my picture in the thumbnail. It's a good sent to me about once a month by mega people. Not upset at and at all about that. Okay. Though other bleat, the Trump sent. This is hilarious. I love Trump is so mad at Congress. He simultaneously thinks he's done all these things he's not getting credit for and that the Republicans in Congress are cucks, right? And so Trump doesn't realize like how this looks, I guess, but he re bleats whatever you want to call it a post from a guy who writes the file. This is on Trump social media. Matt is the guy's name. Right wing, that job. And he wrote this. I don't think the GOP fully grasped how badly they're fucking up right now. I'm talking to people who normally have zero interest in politics who are legitimately pissed off. They're not seeing the major reform. They thought what happened and they're really mad about it. No true accountability, no true mass deportations. Okay. No meaningful decrease in the deficit. Lots of very long vacations and no work. People are pissed. They vote to Trump in the office and the GOP continues to slow walk every reform people want. Where are the doge cuts or is the save act? People are looking up. They're not happy about it. People bleed. They're voting for the Trump agenda instead. Then he feel like they're getting the same old Washington. If Republicans in Congress don't start producing results, they're going to discover that frustration has consequences. And the time they realize that it might be too late. Trump boasts of that. Do he sees that as an attack on Congress? Yeah. I mean, so the most predictable thing is what happens and when they lose in November. Trump's not going to be like, yeah, that was on me. You know, I shouldn't have done that. It's going to be like John Thune fucked up and should have passed the save act and we would have won. And like everyone can see this one coming a million miles away, Thune can. So it should be fun. It's pretty encouraging actually because if Trump has already accepted that it's a loss. And he's just going to blame John Thune in Mike Johnson. And he doesn't even care about Congress anyway because he does whatever he wants on the things that he cares about, the ballroom, the executive order. And that is kind of disincentivizes the cheating process. And I do think that sure, They're already trying to cheat with the gerrymandering and they'll keep trying to cheat But like to have the will to really create problems like you need Trump to be fully locked in on that like he was fully locked in on the stop the steal right and it kind of seems like He's like pretty locked in on the east way. Well, let's be clear by that though because the fully locked in on stop the steal came After the election right right like so we don't know like it's possible that yeah It's possible. We wake up on November 4th or whatever and it's relatively close and Trump's like oh man I could really fuck with this shit. That's true. You know for sure I've been more worried about the post the parade for a while. Yeah, this is just a story I just wanted to cover briefly because we haven't talked about it and I guess You did an interview. Was it you the two? Yeah, I re-listened to it. It wasn't gonna say go this story's been kind of on the low simmer for months. It's about around the Sanctus I guess people just don't care about around the Santa's any more he's on his way out He has no hope to run for president anymore You know, it's kind of like okay, so it's hard to to kind of get people to dandruff about outrage But it's free-shocking story A state grand jury found that the Sanctus administration quote misappropriated taxpayer money when it diverted 10 million from a Medicaid settlement Into the Hope Florida Foundation From the Hope Florida Foundation. They had a sophisticated scheme where they passed that money through multiple organizations Before landing in the bank accounts of two packs and the Republican Party of Florida Those funds were then used to defeat a legalized marijuana ballot initiative So to sum up like the grand jury found basically that they took Medicaid money should be going to healthcare for poor people And use it instead to give to the Sanctus friends political consultants to do ads Against a legalized marijuana ballot initiative to which I ask where is Nick Shirley? Where's Nick Shirley? Where's Nick? Where's my man? He's got to get on this one. It's such a convoluted story and that pretty much summarizes it But there are a few components. I re-listen to the so I re-listen to the interview I did with the um reporter who broke this story and it's even crazier in a way So basically this Medicaid settlement happened with this company that overcharged states for prescription drugs And a lot of states trumpeted the fact that they had this settlement once they that did not trumpet the fact that they had this settlement Was Florida? They kept it very quiet. No one knew that Florida had gotten 67 million dollars in this settlement It was just not there and then they were talking about separately this hope Florida initiative which To summarize more or less is like we're going to use state administrators To take people who would normally be on food stamps or whatever government assistance programs And send them to churches. That's what hope Florida does. It was a Casey DeSantis initiative Some most hope Florida got a 10 million dollar infusion and no one really knew where it came from Well, if you dug into it What happened was is that they took 10 million from the 67 million dollar settlement that they never announced Sent it to hope Florida, but then they didn't just keep it in hope Florida They took that 10 million as you know and put it to these anti marijuana initiatives that they were trying to defeat in the state of Florida And all this which is crazy and undocumented and done basically by executive fiat Had the sign off of really big players in the de Santisorba including the current state attorney general apparently and then Ashley Moody who was now now a senator the attorney general is just like Basically, I grew up I had some random guy that was like, you know, one of these you know that person people who wants me to be to call more balls and strikes Be like why aren't why don't you go up to the Democrats more like well after Trump is going to go on in two years What kind of Republicans are coming behind it? I was like you have no idea the type of Republicans that are in these Yeah, that are in the wings. Yeah, go look at the New York Republican party. Yeah, no George H. W. Bush is the attorney general of Florida Let me tell you I look at this stuff and it's like so transparently corrupt and It's unbelievable and they're all like well, I don't remember ever signing someone obviously fucking remembers that It's like do the Flurdians look at this stuff and say man, maybe we should try something new, right? Like I guess I know I understand the Florida Democratic Party is in shambles And the people that they're putting up are quacks and crazies too not all of them Um, but like do you look at it and you're like, oh, you know, like do we want this is this right? Like maybe we should like Dabble in something new. I don't think David Jollyland that governor's race is crazy Like Donald's if that's it like what has happened inside his brain It's just like they're other day he was talking about how people who moved to Florida from blue states were stupid And yesterday as a clip of him where he's talking about how they're gonna one thing is gonna work on is the roads and make sure There's no potholes so that the ladies have a nice smooth drive when they go to get their hair done I'm like what? I'll move for that. Hell yeah, okay. No one wants to have their hair bobbin anyway. I don't know. I think he's got a chance All right, we're about to get to the fun part But before we do tomorrow's pod. I'm like obsessed with what's happening in Russia right now The Russians and the Iranians are having a meeting trump might have stumbled into world with three We sent our CIA director to Russia. I guess to warn them not to invade NATO But simultaneously reports seem like Russia is indicating that That since we're running out of material. Maybe they are gonna try and we got serious foreign policy matters tomorrow So do you have any other serious matters before we get to the cabinet rankings? No, I've been waiting for to do this the fun shit for a while. This is too much serious shit already. Yeah Do you need do you need a shot or something? You're a little you're a little low energy job right now. Are you ready? I am not fuck I'm not fucking I am not low energy. I will start with this before we get to the counter rankings Boy, do we love our fans in Canada, you know Sam Came with me and Sarah the three of us have those live shows trying to I want to go to history with Canada. That's true Canadians to get madty. I want to go back in 2027. I want to go back to Canada We love all the listeners. We have up there see it in the numbers And I don't know for sure if this reporter is a listener of the show But they were at the Doug Ford press conference yesterday And it seems like they probably listened to us just based on context clues. Let's listen You talked yesterday in your interviews about your confidence that a deal can be reached But today you were talking about the problems that people like how would not look how would let Nick another members of the administration present Nut like as you can at the you've got international How are nut like scuttle the deal we'll see if he makes a little counter rankings if you have missed it Sam and I've been doing this for a while now every kind of quarter So we update our rankings of the worst members of the Trump's cabinet very competitive category You know, it's really tough to narrow it down to the top five. You know, you got to do a lot of pruning The April rankings. I just want to remind people I'm just going to set a baseline Sam had worst cabinet member Pete Hegseth second worst RFK junior third best-ent fourth Chris Wright sleeper fifth Marco Rubio In April. I also had Hegseth first. We had the same there. I had Rubio to Todd Blanche three RFK four and Brooke Rollins Was my sleeper in the fifth slot secretary of agriculture Who is bankrupting farm country and telling all of us that we should grow chickens in our backyard So you don't grow chickens mother fucker I don't like plant them in the ground. They don't grow You get a chicken you beat it it grows you grow a chicken. Is that not right? So like a fucking bush. Okay. So counter ranking said I'm going to give you The members of the cabinet that kind of made my consideration list So these are these are like there's no way for the nominees. These are the nominees. There's some not there who we just we never put in the five and yeah Well, it's just Mark Rubio, best-ent Hegseth and Blanche yeah in the four power ministries. Obviously we're going to consider all them Rollins isn't going to make the cut this time. So I didn't want to mention her. Okay nut lick. Of course RFK Jr. Sean Duffy Has really been making an ass out of himself lately. Linda McMahon at education I felt like she had to be nominated because just yesterday Did you see this? No the Department of Education posted a video a comparing Trump to Hitler. Oh, I did see that. Yeah And then he did it. Yeah, so you know that's where Linda McMahon is right now. We're doing Trump to Trump Hitler videos Russ vote I want to throw in there and I did want to mention she's never made a top five. I don't know she will this time But small business administration administrator Kelly left was just cuz that did put out a did put out a video where she I believe that she's not a human I think I'm now increasingly think the aliens exist I think that they're throwing us off the sand by releasing somebody's supposed alien files And I think the Kelly leftner and Jared Kushner are non-human beings They don't look comfortable at all in their old's own skin They could be from men and black and I think having an alien in the cabinet is concerning So those are kind of the nominees. Do you want to start with your fifth or first during your first to fifth or fifth or first? You didn't listen to who I have in my top five. Oh really who's that? Mark Wayne Oh Mark Wayne Mullin. Yes, he should have been in the nominee list. You're right Yeah, it's an oversight. Okay, so then we have so one more time with you with the possibilities Kelly left LaRus vote Mark Wayne Mullin, Linda McBand, Sean Duffy, RFK Jr. Nutlic, Blanche, Hegseth, Bessent, Rubio Right, but he's not a my top five. I do. I think he could have maybe cracked your, we should consider him rotation. Bergen, for all the reflecting pull nonsense and how shady the America 250 thing was. Thank you for bringing that up because he also has been managing the department of interior horribly. They're firing all kinds of people randomly. What's going on in Texas in this in around the big bend? Yeah, big bend. He was defending the big bend wall. Yes, it is despicable actually what he was doing to that man, the Olympian that did nothing. And after he was, it was announced that they weren't going to investigate him anymore. Bergen publicized that they still want to go after him more and that he did it. He's just is me lining this guy. So, but yet he's not in my top five. I would put him six. So I'm just putting it out there. All right, you on my five? Well, I think we'll just go one at a time here. We're going five to one as in like the least worst to the worst. Let's do that. Yeah, okay, sure. Who's your number five choice? Blanche. Blanche. Number five. Boy, that's tough. That shows you how competitive the category is. It's a great field when Blanche is number five. There's a lot going wrong, but Blanche, you know, he sucks. What can you say? The weaponization shit, the fact that he wouldn't back away from it, the settlement on IRS auditing with Trump, just the way he kind of bulldoze the senators in the confirmation. And then, of course, obviously, DOJ is just, isn't that even like hiding the ball that the DOJ is an arm for Trump? In fact, he's embracing it. So like, yeah, he probably could have been four or three, but there's just, there's just real stuff coming. It's hard. I mean, it's just really hard. The people that you had to cut. All right. Let's hear your number four. Duffy. He makes the top five. He makes his debut. I can't swallow this dumbass series that he put up about him vacationing across the country, not because the content's so shitty, which it is. And the way he's like, he's like, you know what, like, he's like, he's dropping infomercials in for like credit cards and stupid shit like that. And then on top of that, the way he's treating his daughter who wants, just wants to like be able to say, hey, can I apply to Harvard? Harvard? No. No, they're going to indoctrinate you. Like, it's just, it's corrupt. It's just so corrupt. He's just taken bribes. So yeah, he cracks my top fork. And also it's personal. It's personal. It's personal. I've flown a couple times this summer. It fucking sucks. I'm sorry to curse so much for those in the car, but I've had horrible experiences. And I know that's not necessarily justice fault, but I blame them. I thought you were to say it's personal because you're still mending fences with the Canadians. And you know, like his smearing of them is not having a military when dead Canadians, you know, were buried because they came to our defense after we were attacked in 9/11. We did nothing except try to steal their land and make fun of their beauty little eyes. Horrible. Yeah, that was bad. I didn't like that. I should have put that in there too. Thank you. Not for okay. All right. You want my three? I do. Mark Wayne. For all the reasons we are articulated. Yeah. I mean, ICE's record setting or us in terrorizing parents and rumors of them like going now into, you know, Springfield or how with the Haitians there. And it's like, yeah, no, not good, buddy. Not great. Obviously. We led the segment with ICE. I did a whole video at this morning over on YouTube. You can watch about like just some specific horrifying stories. In spite of all that, Mark Wayne doesn't make my list because the cabin is so bad. And I really, and it's really Stephen Miller. Like this is Stephen Miller. Mark Wayne is a vessel for Stephen Miller in that experience and that why I don't use them. Duffy also didn't make my list. So we have two different members. And my top two are the same as last time. I got RFK at two. My brother. We got measles deaths in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And he's talking about natural measles being great. I want to pause here because I feel like I was just going to self-assessment of my work on this podcast. The RFK beat is the one that's the toughest for me to follow. I'm not only am I not one sixteenth of a scientist like JVL. Like my ACT score was brought down by like three points just based on my science category. Like I was at the top of the, of the chips pops on on math and in all the other stuff. Science, I was like down at forest gump levels. So I just, it's hard for me to understand this stuff. And, and so I don't cover it as much. And so I'm as and you do you and cone. This is kind of your, you know, among the things you're really locked in on. If you're going to put RFK at number two, I want like a two-minute RFK hate where you explain what's been happening with them. I don't know if two minutes is going to suffice, but there has been two thousand eight hundred cases of measles this year. That's the most in three decades. And this man has the audacity to say that's because of Joe Biden. Okay. He won't take ownership for the fact that he spreads nauseous, problematic, anti-vaccine nonsense across the country. And when kids die, which is happening, he then has the gall to go out there and tell the governor of Pennsylvania, you know what natural measles may actually be the way to do it. On top of that, he oversees a bureaucracy that's tasked with making sure that our food supply is protected. In fact, this is a big feature of his political appeal. I'm going to make food great. And I can't buy a bag of fucking lettuce without worrying I'm going to have explosive diarrhea. So food's not particularly great. On top of that, beef's not particularly great. On top of that, food prices aren't particularly great. We don't know if we have proper food inspectors. If that was it, that would be enough. But it goes so far beyond there because we're standing on the cusp of incredible breakthroughs in cancer treatments. mRNA technology could make us have personalized immunotherapies for cancers if all goes according to plan. And RFK Jr. hates mRNA and is launched to campaign against it and is sad on top of a bureaucracy that is systematically gutted. The federal investments in groundbreaking research, including into cancer research. And he has the audacity to say he wants to make America healthy again. That to me is an abdication of leadership. It's an indication that he is not fit for this role and it's a sad, sad commentary that he somehow has stayed not just in the cabinet, but atop our healthcare bureaucracy. So he is number two. I'd never want to use Pete Higgseth. Great job on that on RFK. Andy has a fucking brain worm. Well, Andy, you've seen his diary and what happened to his life. Okay, never mind. That's your top five. Sam, Higgseth, RFK, Mullen, Duffy, Blanche. Wow, we're going to have some divergence. So we're going to get to see some comments and let people know who's who they think is more in touch with the incompetence in this administration and who's doing the most damage. You do not even list my number one. Come on. You don't even list my number one. I'll just leave it like that. I'm going number five, RFK Jr. You covered it. I kind of didn't want to include him. I wanted to include Bessent. We discussed Bessent a lot on Tuesday. I've got some more Bessent material coming in the mail bag. The two measles deaths this week pushed RFK over Bessent. Once you start causing actual deaths, you got to make the top five. Number four is the aforementioned Howard Nutlick. I mean, he created a trade war single handedly. I mean, I was too handedly with Trump. There's also this insane Vanity Fair story that people should read this week, which is like he has gotten himself in the Department of Commerce involved in this like real estate deal with a Pietta tear issue. And he's kicking Tory birch out of her house. He's wrecking havoc everywhere he goes. And his kids are corrupt. And Howard Nutlick is number four. He's back in the ranking. I think it was my very first ranking he was in. It hasn't been in for a while. Number three is Todd Blanche. You kind of covered this. I'd be like having the Department of Justice be an arm of the president's vengeance. It's extremely bad. And any other administration Todd Blanche would be far in a way the worst attorney general option. And all we can do is hope that he suffers the same fate that Nixon's attorney general suffered. Number two is Pete Hegseth, which we didn't really cover that much in years. But like we both have him in the top two. He changed the name of the Toronto Defense Department of War. Started one war lost. That way, yeah. I don't know what else to do really with him. Like he was in Iowa. He's doing push-ups. He's like, has this new thing where he keeps saying trannies. Like you think that's going to help. He's like, oh, if I use a pejorative about trans people and talk about how tough our military is and how we have real men, real fighters. And it's just like, man, maybe, maybe you'd be better off if you had trans people running the military because what's going on right now is a fucking disaster. People are jumping off ships. So Pete exists too. And as you mentioned, my number one is Ruby. You love shit. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. He is the national security advisor. Like Marco Rubio is the secretary of state and the national security advisor. I think he might also be like the grand marshal of the spring court, like the auditor of the post office or something. Okay. I don't know what's happening with the archives. I'm sure it's not going well because nothing he's doing is going well. Everyone just kind of wants to like, oh, he's the fixer in here. He's the serious one. Marco's one people turn to based on what? Like the job of the secretary of state is to be the chief diplomat. How are we doing in diplomacy right now with our allies? His Marco done really a great job of navigating diplomacy with our NATO allies. No, they all hate us. How about our Middle Eastern allies. They're all banging Trump not to continue escalating the war that he started. The Kuwaitis are like, what the fuck is happening? We had thought we were close allies and now like the Iranians are bombing our infrastructure. We might have to kick your military bases out of our country. That Kuwait started talking about that this week. They might kick our soldiers out of the country. And then how are things going in Central America? Well, we're doing coups. All the governments besides El Salvador, Hades and Argentina will see what happens there. We're bombing things in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Caribbean. What are the points to point to from the diplomacy side of things where he's improving things? I guess we're improving relationships with North Korea that that seems to be a one-to-one Trump to Kim Jong-un thing. South Korea, they hate us. Like so Marco has totally failed as chief diplomat, as Secretary of State. National Security Advisor, I would think would be the main advisor for the stupidest war that I've ever thought of. I went back and relistened this morning to our podcast from before the war started. I had Jonathan Chaydon, and before it started, I was literally on the show being like, I don't understand this, there's no objective. This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. What are these guys doing? Marco Rubio was the national security advisor that advised Trump, you would think, to get us into this war that had no objective and that's been a total disaster. At least JD Vance has been leaking that he was against it privately. Marco, I kind of half-ass leaked that he was worried about this, but that seems like he didn't do anything to stand in the way of it. He's still the national security advisor. Do we feel more secure right now? Is he doing a good job at that? Marco has been just an utter catastrophe. I guess the only thing people would point to is that the coup in Venezuela was like successful for a military standpoint, but we'll see how that goes long-term. I don't think things are going that great in Venezuela right now. For me, it's not like a mark of a good thing that we did a coup and now we're stealing oil from another country. Okay, that's the feather in his cap that he's going to run for. Everybody's like JD, such a clown. Marco is really the guy to watch out for. What record is Marco running on? The worst foreign policy since the Iraq war? Sorry, though. Yeah, but the national archive says never been better. Fuck Marco, that's where we're at. He's doing a horrible job. Marco, Hegseth, Blanche, Nutlick, RFK, Jr. I'd have to check the archives, but I think that's the first time we've had Rubio as your one. So this is new ground here. Welcome to the list, Marco. Welcome to the top of the list. Well, people can vote in the comments and who's who made a more compelling case for their list. Do you have any critiques of mine, anything? No, you're making me reconsider, Marco. That's a very bad case. Thank you. It was tough not to put Kelly left for on the list. I mean, if you can't walk like a human, it's pretty concerning about what's happening inside the cabinet. Honestly, if you hadn't seen it and you're an audio listener, go watch it. Please, please watch, please do. Please come to the video and watch us. And then we get double counted, you know, that's nice. All right, we're on to the mail back. Yeah. Are you ready? I'm ready. Pod's already been logged. It's gonna be a good show long show. Do you got anywhere to be? Probably. (laughs) You are the managing editor of the site, right? Well, whatever. And you're doing a note. Pulling up the calendar. Yeah, I got an 11, but I'll push it back, though. Okay, you're the Camarco of the website. I guess Jared Polind is really the Marco of the board. Jared is. I want to start with number one just because it kind of, it's a little, it just kind of gets us ready for all this. Sarah had a very innocent question, which is what's your go-to morning routine, coffee, Twitter, sunshine, best wishes, Sarah. I thought it was interesting because Sam asked me to provide him the questions last night, but my morning routine is like this. I get up usually on 6.30, sometimes 7. And I don't leave the bed, okay? I don't leave the bed. I have a great life. Listen to how amazing my life is. My husband who gets up like the crack of dogs, he doesn't sleep, brings me an iced coffee. Oh, come on. Yeah, and then I sit in the bed and I go, (mimics coffee) what are we going to talk about today? I'm reading the news, I'm reading all the newsletters, I'm creating an outline. And I sit there for two hours and then I take the podcast at nine. And during that time, you know, I'm thinking about what, what you all are going to like. I'm having two iced coffees. I go and brush my teeth and put on a shirt like this, you're all going to the shirt and then I come upstairs. And that's it, that's my morning routine. Sam must be much busier than me. 'Cause last night, like 11 o'clock, he's like, where's my questions? And I'm like, you're going to get them in the morning when I do the outline, but you must have had a lot of things going on because you didn't review the outline until like five minutes before we started. So what's happening for you? - Slightly different morning routine. I get up, I go downstairs, I cook my kids breakfast. I, I don't know, that sounds horrible. - Yeah, I got a dog, let the dog out. Make sure dog peas, discover that because the dog's urine is absolutely destroying my lawn, I often then have to take a hose, pocket hose, and spray the lawn, like just to wash out the urine. This is all in the morning. Then, you know, get my coffee, sit down, make sure that with my wife, my loving wife, make sure that the kids' lunches are prepped for school, jump into morning shower. - Seems like she does the lunches and you're just kind of, you're just there for quality control? - No. - Okay, the way you said, make sure the lunches are done. I kind of, just the way you phrased it to me. - Yeah, she might, she might. There's a couple of implications there that my wife is absolutely burning so she'd add a kid's lunches and I got to make sure. That's not true. Then I get on the computer, I got to make sure the morning shots is decent, or at least I hope it's decent. - Our morning newsletter, sign up for the board talk. - Yeah, absolutely, sign up, it's a great newsletter. We spend a lot of time working on the headlines, Tim is aware, and then I drive into work and make a couple phone calls to reporters to talk about what they're working on on the way into work, get into work, and do my 10 a.m. call. Oh, sorry, I forgot. I also walk the kids to school, so I got to- - Kind of late. - You show up at 10 a.m. - No, I get, I show up for the 10 a.m. call. - That sounds like a peaceful morning. One thing I forgot to mention, just 'cause I don't wanna, it feels rude 'cause I don't leave the bed, right? So it's like, you're hard to nit-peck my husband when he's doing all those things that you do. But there's a lot of yelling, like between the two of them, as Yarder shoes on. - Brush your teeth. - And I'm like, I'm doing my outline. Shut up. - They're blaring Dalley Part in this morning, Kesha off and so is your peaceful, or is your deal of yelling also? - No, and it's not peaceful ever, and usually it sort of just falls all apart about 10 minutes before they need to get out the door. One of them doesn't have socks, and the other one has to go poop. They start screaming at each other. The dog's getting a little antsy. I forgot to feed the dog so I gotta go feed the dog. You know, there's always like chaos right there, and then you start getting anxious, like, "Key, we gotta get out the door!" - Can I get out the door? What a pleasant morning. One thing that doesn't happen is drinking. I had some people that have been suggesting for time to time that I'm drunk on the podcast or that a guest is. There's never a drunk guest in it. We taped this podcast at 9 a.m. Central time, okay? Everyone suggests if we're getting a little loose, it's just because we're creating fun content for you guys. - Okay, question two, that was from Sarah. Thank you, Sarah, for caring about our lives. We're getting sillier from here. This is Nick in Erie, Pennsylvania. It was this email from Nick that prompted me to say we've gotta do another mail back, just so you know, it's such a good email. So we'll start with him, shout out Nick. Not sure why Scott Besson can be so triggering. Obviously, there's the smugness and smariness, but also he sounds like his mouth is full of saliva when he talks. I think there might also be something about someone who either thinks they're good on TV or just likes being on TV but isn't good at all, can't put my finger on it. Also, I have an indelicate follow-up question. Could you give special dispensation to the Straits to use the F-slur for Besson? I think you have the authority to do that. Nick and Erie, I do have the authority and I will feel that in a second. Sam, what do you have any thoughts? - He raises an interesting question about who, does he sound, I don't can't tell if he sounds like he's got his mouth filled with saliva, kind of does. - Kind of, yeah, but who are other people who, I think they're good on TV but are not good on TV? - Sam. - And I noticed, yeah, I noticed in the Google Doc, no one's using me. So thank you for that. - You're so much better on YouTube than on TV and it's a compliment. That's why people come here to theborque.com. - I guess, I feel like I'm good on TV. - You're pretty good, like a B on TV, but you're an A here, you know? - I'm an Andy too, okay. I thought the audience is here. (laughing) - Fuck off. I thought the obvious answer here was JD Vance, right? - Like JD is someone who has supreme confidence. - There is a JD and best in parallel across all of those things. Like they're both extremely smug and smarmy and condescending. They both think that they're way better than they are. And you can kind of see them laughing at their own jokes and like, and for JD it's one of his own jokes. For best in it's like, you can see him kind of smirk at how clever his little maneuver is. Like he thinks he's come up with a clever little spin on whatever terrible economic news there is when he goes on TV. He thinks he's got one over on Kristen Welker and that is off-putting. - I would also, I'd also put Steven Miller in the carry, but I don't think Steven Miller thinks he's good. - I don't think he thinks he's good, yeah. - Yeah. - And he's just mean. He's condescending in a way, but it's kind of in a, there's something about the smariness that he can't even get that. He can't even reach that register, you know? - Yeah. I got you. - Like Scott and JD think they're pulling one over on you. - Yeah. - Steven doesn't. - He's just like, he's just like send the browns back. Okay. - Yeah. - To the question of whether I can give dispensation of the straights to use the F-slur, I do have that power. - Congrats. - And I take it serious. And I thought about this, I laughed, because if there ever was somebody that deserves the F-Slarer, it's really Scott that sense. I mean, he encapsulates the word in every possible manner, like the way that he carries himself, he used to live in a Barbie house, like he's almost like a stereotype of like in a different era, he would have been on the TV show, it's like the rich uncle that is always a confirmed bachelor, that they don't ever say that he's gay, but he has all of the gay stereotype traits. So like you want to say it so bad, and I have bad news for you, Nick, only I get to do it. Sorry. Sorry, only other guys get to do it. It's close. I thought you were going to give him that? Yeah, I know. I wanted to give it to him. Unfortunately, we got to protect our ability to say the F-Slarer, and yeah, I was in the LSU tailgate once a couple of years ago, and that's kind of in a little small group of like my closest friends, and then a couple of their friends. And one of them dropped the F-Slarer to make fun of, I think the opposing team's coach or player. And I looked at him and I was like, and you know, he looks back at me and it's like, well, I thought we were cool though. And I was like, you know, Blake and Grant could do it. Like they're in the inner circle, but like, you're not there yet, you know, you got to really protect it. So Nick, maybe you can grow into it. Sam, the next two questions are for you. I'm going to weigh in on the first one. You had a show, this is from Joe and Casper. You had a show called Candidate Confessionals. He's a big fan. I talked to losing candidates and staffers about their races. Talk to me once, actually, about the John Huntsman race, I believe. No, we talked about Jab. What do we do, Jab? And there are two questions you have. Because I talked to Huntsman. Oh, that's right. Yeah, that's right. I think I'm going to connect to you with Huntsman and did Joe. Yeah, I think that's what happened. Yeah. Two questions from Joe. Which of those losers ran the worst campaign, as they may have been able to win, had they had a better strategy. And number two, as a Jew, you've never experienced a joy of a real confessional and he's wondering if you want to confess to your Catholic priest, Tim, right now. So it's hard to say who ran the worst campaign because they all lost. Like the most torturous, there's different variations of this as I was thinking about it. One of my favorite episodes is, and this is actually appropriate because we talked about Doug Ford. His brother, Rob Ford, famously, was caught buying or taking crack and it was a remarkable scandal and yet somehow managed to win the mayorship of Toronto, even with that happening. And we interviewed the guy he beat, like how do you lose to Rob Ford when you got caught with crack. But that wasn't even like the guy who had a compelling reason for why he lost, which was very hard to actually tack Rob Ford for the crack because people were like, yeah, you know, you fucked up, but we all fucked up. So I would just say, yeah, so I would just say in terms of like looking back at all the interviews we did for that series, and I love that series, and I'm kind of want to bring it back. The obvious answer is when we interviewed Ron Claim about Al Gore. That is a race where it feels like if you did two things better, you're really good. It's exactly. There's like a very, like, it's not just a butterfly effect. It's like 50 butterfly effects, right? It's like there's just little things here and there and if we had just filed it this day and like done this, and he thinks about it all the time, he's like, of course, I think about this stuff. And then of course, obviously the consequences of that are profound. Yeah. You know, I'm going to do my answer to this too, just of the races I was in since I didn't get to confessional Fred Thompson is the answer. The '08 primary was so like he really could have won. Nobody liked any of the candidates, the Republicans of the field, the Democrats. This was kind of proto-T party Democrats, conceivable, we could run up against this next time. But it's like McCain, it's Mitt's first time, it's Rudy is still pro-choice Rudy, and then the conservatives like Huckabee is just like, you're not going to make Huckabee your nominee. There wasn't anybody that was like the perfect fit to get the kind of populist or the Christian voters or the Chamber of Commerce voters and get them all together. Fred Thompson comes in late and kind of like has it, like he's celebrity, like he'd done some culture war stuff and like really tried. I think he could have been the nominee, but he ends up like wearing $400 floor shine shoes to the Iowa State Fair and like riding around in a golf cart and he doesn't even try and like he doesn't learn anything on the debate stage, he looks like Admiral Stockdale, so I'd be him. If you've enjoyed this, want more flashbacks? Me and Bill have decided we are going to do the 1994 2006 retrospective episode for the Labor Day podcast. So we're going to do a midterm preview looking back at past waves, people wanted it. For many people. Question two is you've never experienced the joy of a real confessional. What would you like to confess to Father Tim? I think the question is what sin would I confess to and it is something that's kind of haunted me a little bit and it's a crime and it's not like I wouldn't say it's totally victimless but it's some of victimless and it's a great shame in fact in my family that I got caught doing this. But back when I was in DC when I was very young and I was not making much money in this industry. And I was obviously in the news occasionally every now and then I would go into a bodega on Sunday and I would steal the Sunday New York Times. It was very expensive and I didn't and I was like I can't spend this money but I also need this information. So I was like that guy and layman has taken bread. We're known a writer. I mean, I was bad. You're stealing the New York Times. You asked me for a confessional and that is the nerdiest confession I've ever had in my life. Do you still need SIGs or a 40? No, I didn't. If I wanted SIGs, I'd have an older person buy them for me. But I got caught by my parents doing it once and so they saw me steal. Did you pay for that? I was like, no. I was like, new should be free, right? I was working for Huff Post. So I made some intellectual argument about it. Anyways, I'm embarrassed by it. New should not be free. Subscribe to the board. I told you that. You're a grown up when you're doing that. What a bad boy. Hey, I confessed. I've been having some wrong thoughts. You know, everyone says confession makes you feel good. I just feel worse. Yeah. No, I feel much worse. I wish we can edit that out. You should feel good. Now that's off your chest. You're going to feel good later. There's a period of time where you're embarrassed and you get over the embarrassment and you're like, huh. That was freeing. Kind of like right now. I don't know what I'm going to have to say. Like, moving guilt and shame. This is awful. It's horrible. Yeah. You're right. I don't know why I'm spending it. It's terrible. I've had some wrong thoughts about Nikki Haley's son lately. Okay. And moving on, we'll save the last one directed just at Sam for the, for the very end. Two more fun ones. I like to shout out the people that send creative emails. This is Earl. Earl says this in an alternate universe Natalie Harp would have made an incredible kindergarten teacher. Her devotion, her devotion to the children would be unmatched. She would constantly have a positive attitude. She also has experience dealing with a man with the mentality of a five year old. Plus, she probably has experience with the occasional potty in the pain and situation. What are other jobs for people in the cabinet and extended universe? That's a brilliant email. Very email, bro. Absolutely. Thank you, Earl. Fantastic. I know what you're talking about. It's funny. It's a funny email. The premise is funny. But like, if Natalie Harp was my kids teacher, we would be transferring school. It's a muster. I'd be like, who? This is degree B. Hey, well, knowing what you know about her now. Yeah. But if you just happen to stumble upon her, you'd be like, oh, my God, she's so caring. And she's carrying this printer. She's carrying this portable printer for the little Johnny's printer. Yeah. A little Johnny gets a print out every day. I have one. I have a. Okay. So I thought about this a little bit. I could have done like stupid, spooky stuff like, oh, Steven Miller should be a Rogan spokesman. But the real one is Hegseth. I think you'd be fantastic as a gym teacher who like sells Coke on the side. You know, like. Right? And you could see it too, like he's, you know, he's like, he's like telling me he's getting your kids to like climb the rope and then he's selling weed to like the seniors in the parking lot. He would have been great at that. Yeah. White school though. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah. Of course. No, that's fine. My personalized experience. Yeah. White public school. Yeah. I think that's right. That's a good one. Pete Hegseth is a gym teacher. I have three. Okay. I think that the one's most obvious. Howard Lutnik is just a used car salesman. Heads. Lutnik doing the ads is a regional car dealer. Perfect. Was meant to be a regional car dealer. What would his tag on be? Come get your nuts licked with lutnik. It'd be something related to the truck nuts. Sure. Yeah. You know, truck nuts, nut lick. Someone come up with something good. Sknot peasant. Antique dealer. Scott Besson is an antique dealer. Not just any antique dealer. He'd be the best and he'd go on those shows where they're like, you know, all these great discoveries. He'd be so fantastic at that. Yeah. You'd feel really good if you went to an antique shop and you saw Scott Besson. Lastly, RFK Jr. Voice actor. Voice actor. RFK Jr. You need a bad guy, he needs a very unique voice, I mean, that allows good to do the RFK Jr. Voice. Yeah. Holly was like, I guess we got a good RFK again. He's got that one voice. Great jobs. All right, we've also got here, this is from Clayton. If all members of the bulwark were arrested by the administration, and you can only get one of them pardoned, who would you pardon and how much Trump coin would you buy to make it happen? I thought a lot about this. I have three criteria. Okay. Wow. Three criteria to determine who deserves all the Trump coin in the realm for their pardon, okay? Okay. I have a lengthyish life ahead of them if they get pardoned. Oh, no. No. No more boomers like this. It works. On the spot, yes. We honor. You can take, you can take your turn. But like Bill, we honor. We honor. But like Bill got pardoned and he's not as much time as Andrew. Oh, come on. We honor every day equally. Disagree with you. Second criteria. Could they handle being in prison or not? Could they have a steely resolve or do you need to get them out of there? Like that's an obvious criteria. And third is would they make a profound post pardon contribution to society? Wow. And I went through everyone on the list and it was very clear. I went through the entire staff. I went through the mass that it was very clear who hits all these criteria and who would be the best to receive the pardon. There's no runner up. I just, because you took this so seriously, I do want to just, I'll just, do you want to know who it is? It seems. I'm wondering if there was a runner up though. It's, it's, it's far and away obvious to me. Again. Do they have a semi decent life ahead of them for the pardon? And would they make a profound post pardon contribution? I deserve the pardon. I'd send it all on myself. I hit all the criteria. What, what contribution would you be making in the post pardon world? We're already had an hour and five minutes, there's no need to list all that. Take you long. I have two criteria. One, Catholic guilt and two, would that person be able to get me out? Because I didn't consider myself, you know, would they have the skills and the wherewithal to get, to be able to get me out? And that left me with two candidates, producer Ansely, Skipper, who I brought here. And I was like, I would feel really bad. If she was still in the detention camp, I mean, she had a good life, young person, life ahead of them. I feel bad. But then I was like, lawyer Heather, also good opportunity, because she would really make it her life's duty to get me out after I saved her, I think. Yeah. She wouldn't just be in, the lives beans are very resourceful also. So both would be interesting choices. Your second category, could they survive in prison though? Those beans would do well in prison. So that makes me think maybe I should also pick, he picked ourselves to me. No. All right. Rapid fire. This question is, how about Roger Clemens, not being in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and Cooperstown, New York, all because a bunch of jealous people. It's far less talent voted that he shouldn't be there. He was also not convicted or admitted to taking drugs. Roger is one of the greatest pictures of all time. No wonder baseball is in trouble. That came from Donnie and Queens. Oh, Donnie. The first time, long time. Yeah. No. Do we have to engage in that? Roger Clemens. That was Donald Trump bleeding that yesterday. I know. He bleeding that yesterday. I was trying to figure why? Like was Roger on TV or something like that? Roger is probably Megan. Now Roger fucking sucks. I would trade any person that was not a violent criminal who is currently in a detention center for Roger Clemens and a heartbeat to just snap my fingers. I would send Roger to Dilly and take out Agariana. Very easy choice for me. All right. The final question is about you in particular actually, we never get life advice. So I'm going to do the one life advice question really fast. Mike and Nebraska. This 100 year old Omaha house I'm in is a big old money pit. This week it's the water heater. Last month it was the kids bathroom toilet leaking to the bathroom below. I'm tempted to just move and go rent. But we got that sweet 2.75 COVID finance rate. A bigger city like Chicago or the Twin Cities to rent downtown for a few years so the kids go to college could be great if we can find high schools I don't know AI in our future jobs and economy. It's all scary out there. You asked for life advice and I just rambled. Love the show is Mike and Nebraska. That's tough. You want me to handle this in rapid fire? I don't know. What would you tell Mike and Nebraska if he asked you for your advice on that? I guess the only thing I would say is that the grass isn't always greener. That rate is fucking dope. I'm at 3.25. It's awesome. And yeah, houses are money pits and I'm dealing with a leaky roof right now myself which is annoying. But you have to understand that comes with a biz and you just salvage it until you get to the next problem. So, you know, stay put for a little bit. Let's hope that things get a little better. But I don't know anything else other than what you send me about your shopping stances. I have a couple thoughts. A lot of people are in this circumstance and it's an underrated reason why people hate the economy right now. People feel very stuck. The interest rate situation is so bad. And Trump could have gotten what he fucking wanted, which was lower interest rates if he had just done nothing except golfed. And instead, every decision he's made has made has put more pressure on the bond markets and interest rates are higher. Now, everybody's stuck and he's going to get punished for politically. And that is a silver lining that you should think about Mike when you have a leaky bathroom. The Donald Trump has been punished at scale for other people suffering like you. But I don't know. You live in Nebraska. I don't know. I might sell that fucking house, moved to the south, slander, get to the house, rent. You know, we get a great rental out here and like, canner and metronome. You got a real estate in Nebraska is much cheaper than anything. Yeah. Baton Rouge. Kind of Baton Rouge rent. Go to LSU games with me on the weekend. Something to think about Mike. Yeah. All right. Final question is just for Sam and it's from a former employee in the Valley. Why does Sam have a Labredoodle? No offense to Martha who is very cute, but why is it now a right of passage for bougie podcasters to get a Labredoodle? It was odd enough when John Favreau, Tommy Vittor and John Loveett all decided simultaneously that they should get the exact same kind of dog, a Labredoodle. But I thought we'd moved on from that. Why not a nice ugly mutt from the pound? Genetic attributes not bespoke enough for you? You know who I bet as a Labredoodle. Steven Miller. Oh, hang up and listen. Wow, that last one was really wind up long story short, well, long story. We had a we had a beagle, a mutt beagle, another pure bread for 14, 12 years. He was 14 when he died, rest in peace, Bennett. He sucked. I loved him to death, but he was just awful. He bade. He was food obsessive. He towards the end of his life was peeing all over the floor, and he shed. And the shedding part was like. That was kind of like Trump really. We needed a nut of the time for him. And we didn't have a nut of the heart, but we gave him a lot of love and care. And I loved the little guy so much. And when he passed, I didn't really want to get another dog for a while because it tore my heart out. Like I just lost my buddy and my kids were really upset. And then for a couple of weeks, it felt really good to like not have a dog. And then my wife was like, "You know, I said it would be a couple of years, but what about like six months?" I was like, "Oh, really?" And then the next day she came and she was like, "You know, I said six months, but what about six weeks?" I was like, "What the hell?" And then she was like, "What about six days?" And so eventually I was like, "Look, fine. We can get a dog." But she's like, "Actually, there needs to be a condition. I can't deal with all the hair. It's causing like, you know, my throat to clench up and it's just everywhere. Labyrinth rules don't shed. It's like the one breed that really doesn't shed. And so we decided that we are going to get a dog and we decided to do a Labyrinth doodle. And we have Martha now. And Martha is the best and I love her to death. And I have no qualms or regrets whatsoever about getting the dog of the podcasts. I got to tell you, I think you're going to be sleeping in the guest room tonight because I think the person who's caught the most straights on this podcast is your wife. You're my wife. You're making breakfast. You're walking the kids to school. It's her fault that you couldn't get the dog. You wanted it. No, no, no, no, no, no. My wife is unbelievable wife and I love her to death. And I'm so glad she made us get that dog and I love the dog. It was one of the great decisions we made. And I am so grateful that she walks the kids to school, including this morning, which I didn't do. I do supervise lunchbaking. I'm not going to lie about that. That's Sam Stein. He's a managing editor, former New York Times thief thief thief. I will pay them back. I'm a subscriber now. We'll be back tomorrow. We'll have a laugh or two, but we'll have some more serious fare. But it's it's going to be good. So please come back for tomorrow's weekend podcast. We'll see you all then. Peace. Thanks, Sam. Bye. [MUSIC] The Bullwork Daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzaly Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.