Stuart Stevens: Republicans Are Desperate

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The U.S. St. Croix's annual Christmas Festival is the perfect getaway and no passport is required when traveling from the U.S. hacks and the hatchet men behind you like fed her this line where she starts going after troy jackson's wife and you know she just comes stuttering while she does it and it's like this is such a sad way to end your career yeah no it is it's you know it's like this moment when you're like lost and you're driving by a casino that you didn't know exist and there's a band that's playing there that you remember oh yeah the 90s they had a hit and now they're selling cds out from behind their van uh while they play at the casino i mean that's susan collins he's just somebody that just stayed too long at the dance and another person who never believed what she said she did you know it's like i say to matt schlapper old pal and all these people you're either lying when you said that you were for bush was for or you're lying now so which is it yeah so you know the woman who gave us brett kavanaugh more than anybody else scott reed is also in the story another old bushy who like whatever uh you know he was at the chamber of commerce and he quit the chamber over like the chamber was trying to endorse more democrats because there are some free market democrats now running against maga republicans and he quits over that now he's strapped up in this too and it's just the same story over and over again for all these people i've known scott you know i feel like i've known scott all my life before you were born we worked on a dole campaign together and he ended up running the dole campaign and you know he's just another one of these guys that i think just lost his way there's so many of them out there that we know and you didn't tim to your credit you didn't oh yeah i still remember after after trump got elected you call me up and said sir i don't know what to do all our friends are going to try to pretend this didn't happen it's just like okay we're just going to ignore this yeah and keep making this up and making money and keep doing this and you said to your eternal credit and to the benefit of the whole country in the world you said i'm not going to do that i just can't do that well not that much of a benefit to the whole world because here we are stewart it's 10 years later and we're still talking about it so maybe had some of these other people joined things would be different but you're you're though just just kind of close loop on this i mean you think that susan collins chances are are nil are minimal like what do you think about the main senate race state of play you're up in vermont that's your neck of the woods now yeah i'm in vermont you know she should have lost last time her opponent uh lost with you know seven figures in the bank which you know there should be some special little dante circle for candidates to do that i know people who are working on that campaign the susan collins campaign that morning they had one of these calls and i've been on them hopefully you never have but okay we we tried we're gonna oh i've been on plenty of those calls we're gonna lose but look yeah no backbiting everybody gave it their best and you know it just didn't who's got the pen on the concession speech that's miller you know i've i've had several of those and then you know i think they were like literally like you know could not believe that she was losing or winning yeah so i i think she'll lose you know one of the big factors that i think is underappreciated in the new hampshire race and in the main race is the price of heating oil heating oil is now hit seven dollars a gallon and two years ago it was 325 so that means if you're say it takes you know typical home 900 to a thousand gallons to get through the winter you're going to have a lot of people who are not going to be able to heat their homes and they're not going to be able to heat their homes and they're not going to be able to heat their homes and they're not going to be able to heat their homes and they're not going to be able to and because of this iran war more than anything else and susan collins supports that so i hope the jackson camp is really hitting on that um it's something we're going to talk about in the lincoln project but it's just one of these micro if you call it micro ramifications of a macro policy the canada stuff really hurts her you know a lot of the economy in northern maine is fueled by canadians well and it undermines our whole pitch which is like hey you know i'm not fully trumpy you know i i went against him on a few things but you need me here because for to protect our interests it's like okay well where were you on the canada tariffs that are you know that's hurting all these industries it's hurting tourism where were you on care yeah i you know so so i do think that that really undermines her pitch in a way that in 2020 you know things were a little different yes again i don't think a good campaign was run against her in 2020 right so i'm glad the grand partner's not the nominee because he would probably i might even win this thing would be an interesting one you know bribery against sexual assaults maybe would have been what america deserved but here we are troy jackson i think i think troy jackson's pretty handle it you know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself wearing on repeats definitely not this old miss shirt okay it's going to goodwill after this podcast but i have some other stuff that i do wear all the time you guys recognize a little navy blue sweater shirt with the white piping love that it's got some we got some cozy tees some basic button downs that look chic and feel comfortable and where do those come from our friends at quince quince focuses on high quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials like 100 mongolian cashmere organic cotton and merino wool styles are timeless versatile and designed to become the dependable pieces you reach for day after day quince also makes premium pants fitted tees and polos i was in that black polo yesterday for people who don't know what i'm talking about that was from quince that looked good everything at quince is probably 50 to 80 percent less than similar brands they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middleman so you're paying for high quality not brand markup i feel like i should maybe start wearing more color again my my mother you know dressed me like a polo prep kid when i was a child in pastels and i feel like even in middle age i'm still like internally rebelling and my closet is full of blacks and and i just i love my quince blacks and grays i've got the black polo i mentioned i've got a little black short sleeve button down they all look good but i i think we'll see i think the next time i get my little quince code i might try something with a little pop i've been liking that purple shirt lately that wasn't from quince but that looks good so maybe i should try some quince color but but if you're if you're like me and you just like blacks and grays i mean how good did i look yesterday i thought i looked great find your next fall favorites at quince download the quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash the bulwark get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in canada and the uk too that's q-u-i-n-z-e.com slash the bulwark i want to do some counter hopium first and then we'll get into the hopium on the midterms lauren egan my colleague that's a great newsletter on the democrats basically talked about the one thing that all the democrats are worried about which is there's just ungodly amounts of money on the gop side right now and the playing field particularly for the senate is really red turf and as an ad guy i want to posit something and you're an ad guy and you can tell me whether or not you think this is right but i i think in this day and age of 2026 tv ads it's tough to convince people to vote for your person with a tv ad it's still workable to convince somebody to vote against somebody that they didn't really want to vote against in the first place and so i'm talking about these trump voters in iowa texas alaska all this money coming in trying to turn the table and trying to turn the table and trying to turn the table and trying to turn you know josh turek into kamala or whatever to tamp down the types of voters that they need to win to get over the hump like what do you think about that as like the main concern for a long time now people have said that television advertising is sort of a dinosaur that doesn't which always like i don't know like apple still advertises on television and they're not stupid why are they doing that so now here you have these massive amounts i mean entire new colonies of beach houses are going to be built with the commission on these ads oh yeah i you know my feeling about this is i don't think in any of these races an additional 10 000 gross rating points 15 000 gross rating points it's going to make a difference but i'd rather have 10 000 15 000 gross rating points you know we have to kind of look at these contradictions people don't know just that's for inside that's that's how you measure the ads you know that's how you measure and it's about the frequency of the ad you see on tv so what what's the rule of thumb it's been a minute for me it's like if there's 10 000 gross rating points on air that means the average person sees the ad 10 times over x period uh a thousand a thousand gross rating points got it there you if there's a thousand gross rating points you see the ads 10 times though that's never really been true but we just kind of we established that to feel that we had some sort of sense of uh quantitative ability to quantify the unquantifiable but anyway you know 24 we said it was a podcast election yeah so now all of a sudden we're saying well it's going to be ah it's we're back in 1998 okay great i don't think it is going to be determinative i think the key for all of these democrats is to keep this message very simple because in a crowded cacophony loud environment your best bets are to stick with a simple message and the message should be if you think things are going right you should vote republic Republicans. They run everything. If you think that we can do maybe a little better, give the other guys a chance. if you don't like it in two years, vote us out. I wouldn't get into what you're going to get when you get Democrats, all this stuff. I mean, I'd save that for debates or something. It's just a straight up referendum, right track, wrong track race. And no incumbent party in modern politics has ever won elections when the right track was under 45. It's now 25. And the number that I really look at is Trump's most favorable and most unfavorable. Those who are very unfavorable, very unfavorable. Because ultimately, those are the ones that are going to be determinative. It makes sense. You feel the most passionately about it. So Trump's very favorable, the last poll I saw was bouncing around 15. And his very unfavorable was hitting 50. You look at these numbers of fave, unfave, national, or whatever. Well, there's that approval count. He hit the low watermark. It was ARG, which isn't the best pollster. But even still, it was the first time he hit 29. And it was like 29-68. That's total fave, unfavorable. And you're saying that like of the 29 favorable, only 15 are very favorable. And of the 68 unfavorable, 50 are very unfavorable. Well, you know, in all these polls, I would do a screening. To the extent we are polling Lincoln Project, do a screening question. Do you believe Trump won the 2020 election? And if you say yes, we just say thanks and hang up. Because. What do you need to know about these people? They just pollute the sample. There's nothing you're going to tell them. One of the odd little statistics, among those who believe that Trump lost a free and fair election, you know, his favorable is probably, I don't know, 18? Maybe? So I think these numbers are getting actually inflated higher than they really are. But, you know, Democrats, they just don't take the campaign. They don't take the campaign. They don't take the don't get into debating all this stuff about democrat socialists and attack attack attack attack in 24 which just blows my mind trump campaign never ran a single positive ad not one which is pretty amazing like on you mean on paid tv yes on paid tv and paid media they never did and you know usually you've had clients clients tend to think that they've done some important shit yeah most of them have so they want that ad so you go like dude nobody cares well it's funny he's doing it now he's asking them to do it now in the midterms you know yeah yeah yeah now but they talked him into it they scared him enough that this isn't you know la savita this isn't going to move numbers so you know and i can't say how many campaigns we've okay and we'll make a positive ad and we'll run it like at midnight you know worldwide wrestling and show it to the candidate and go okay you got your positives it's great you know and i think the democrat need to attack attack attack attack this is a referendum on trump and you need to tie together corruption and all of the cost of living stuff the reason that you're paying 90 bucks to fill up your car is because of corruption we wouldn't have an iran war without corruption yeah don't separate these two yes and talarico and asaf are doing this so well i every once in a while i see some i sometimes have conversations with friends who are in den politics or i'll see these things in politico where some of the other candidates are still doing this oh we should only talk about kitchen table issues oh i don't want to do trump you know do as much about trump at any time i hear that i i want to stroke out it's like trump's rules and he's underwater even in texas like james talarico is doing it right like what what is what is it about john asaf who's running 10 points ahead in georgia that you think isn't isn't right for your house exactly you know um what are you worried you're going to win by too much you're trying to cover the spread or something you know but this is why as republicans we want a bunch of races we never should have won because democrats couldn't get out of their way you know there is something about the democratic party's dna still and i say this you know as i believe the democratic party is the only pro democracy party in america the only real american political party but uh a need to talk more about policy than emotion and an inability to keep to a simple message uh you know you go back to when kerry ran against bush kerry took the attitude he was going to talk about whatever was negative in the press to try to drive a wrong track message remember at one point in that race he was talking about flu vaccine shortages and they were like i don't remember that actually but i'll take your word for it yeah i went to some of these rallies they were hilarious people were like holding up you know syringes i don't think that's gonna win god i don't know it was right up there with the john kerry rally i went to in ohio they had bruce springsteen played and some advanced guy had springsteen play first and let me tell you i remember that one they had to lock the doors to keep people but um whereas bush and you know o4 said look there are a lot of bad people out there in the world we ought to kill them before they kill us and that was it a very simple message obama was very good at simple messages but i hope they can not make this overly complicated all right guys eating well can be difficult when life gets busy and you live somewhere like new orleans and uh making time for meal planning or cooking can be a challenge as soon as i finish the day and i think about cooking and i'm like i don't really want to what should we order from delivery but you know the delivery order is probably not going to be healthy we've got a couple healthy options but a lot of them are unhealthy one thing that we started to turn to that makes it easy to do food and drink and i'm like i don't really want to do 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know i try to do a steak from time to time it just wasn't any better put all the time and effort in and instead i could just turn to forkful's chimichurri filet mignon and it's yummy and scrumptious and easy why not just do that all the time do that with me explore our plans and the menu of fresh ready to eat meals at forkfulmeals.com and use code the bulwark to get 50 off your first order that's forkfulmeals.com slash the bulwark and use promo code the bulwark for 50 off thanks to forkful for sponsoring this episode to that point i was trying to be cautious and you immediately went to you know positive radical optimism and so i appreciate that but we'll get to the parts where i'm optimistic now the the iowa race i guess i have a little bit of nerves i've i do have anselts or ptsd so i'll just say that and i don't know who npr and marist is hired for their poll but out this morning josh turk 50 ashley hinson 42 and if there's one data point that makes me think well maybe if that's not exactly right there's something to it it's a tweet and i don't know who should be doing to help iowans including suspending the gas tax pausing diesel exports diesel relief program etc etc um there's some problems with this of course ashley hinson voted against a bill to end the war four times and congress is on vacation until after the election so i actually so it's like it's a it's a little late to come up with proposals to help iowans for ashley hinson you know my feeling about polls like this is i always think it's important to step back and go does what you're seeing make sense looking at the poll so if ashley hinson wasn't eight points behind she sure as shit wouldn't be doing this the other thing she's saying is you know she put out a ad saying that you know bipartisan used to it's become a bad word we need to reach across the aisle you might as well have like a red flashing iron sign that says our numbers suck and this is what we're doing because if they weren't sucking you wouldn't be doing that and you know i've said for a while that the classic moves is not you know looking profound but when you're this far behind what you need to do is go out and say look we've made mistakes give us another chance and the problem is that trump can't do that right but you see that he's kind of trying to do that yes which is interesting and i think it's a classic case you know these sports you know it's the right play it's just they can't execute it right because it has to come from the top and trump you know would rather invade canada before he you know admitted that he'd done anything that wasn't perfect yeah so but look you know i some of us have lost presidential races in iowa well sure and i mean i think and again so i i want to make sure no speaking to our editors here no youtube thumbnails talking about how we're definitely winning iowa because we did that last year and i still have mega people sending it to me after i trusted too much in seltzer okay so god love her nice woman not really her fault but uh anyway that said like like to your point it's just like i don't know ashley answered the behavior is matching the pulse and the economic numbers the right track wrong track numbers particularly in the plain states particularly in rural america match the numbers the other numbers tim where are they spending money they've stopped spending in georgia basically you there's two things you can't lie about in politics where you're spending money and where you're spending time and those are the ultimate truths and all this other stuff you sit in these rooms you come up with spin but this is really where you know you bet on your what you believe and they're spending all this money in texas kansas even now yeah and you don't do that if you're not desperate so take them at the word and what the democrats should start talking about this being a huge win you they should not shy away from that people follow momentum there's actually interesting data on that where nate silver wrote about that in his first book uh the kind of bandwagon effect people want to be with the winner my daughter we had a we had a mixed crowd for the lsu ole miss game including my bestie who went to ole miss this is why i have the shirt by the way it's my godson's shirt he's a very big boy he might be on ole miss's team in a couple years but uh you know my daughter about halfway through that by halftime she was rooting for the rebels she ditched me you know so that's that it's a human it's a natural human instinct you know if if i ran derrick party i would wake up every day and everybody chant we're right they're wrong there's more of us than them and walk with a little swagger you know nobody wins a super bowl going out there going you know i think we got a shot like you know we're not going to get blown out here ossoff has that yes and people are drawn to it yep and confidence is contagious i'd add to that just on the war i yes i think the swagger but also i still see a little bit too much reticence to kind of rub their face in the dirt on the war and all of these candidates i mean paltola did it very good in the debate against sullivan i played that i think last week there have been some good examples of that but like this war is extremely unpopular extremely and if if if you already see somebody like ashley hinson and a state trump won by 13 trying to back away from it that should tell you all you need to know and honestly it's just i don't know if you're watching this but i don't know if you're watching this but i don't know if you're watching this but i don't know if you're watching this but i don't know if you're watching this but i don't know if you're watching this but i don't know if you're watching this and honestly i said this couple weeks ago i was like if a democratic strategist calls me he's like what do you think my candidate should do should say go back and watch cindy sheehan videos and be as close to that as possible because like that's just where people are right now on this they think it's stupid it's hurting them they don't understand if i was coaching a debate a candidate in a debate who was running against an incumbent senator who had voted for the war uh and voted to confirm pete headset i would say in my opening statement i find that very sad but there's no other conclusion he should resign this man is not a patriot he voted to confirm pete headset you cannot be a patriot and believe that the united states in america deserves the best and is a beacon of hope and uh without and vote for pete a weekend talk show host to be in charge of the most political military in the world you know his own national guard unit wouldn't let him be around washington and they go oh well that's outrageous you're not you're you know you're saying i'm not a patriot you know you go yes that's what i'm saying yes and then take it from you certainly don't have judgment you know you certainly i would go right there i would go i would go i do too i just think you could i think you can keep adding to it because that's where the people are say that to my old friend roger wicker you ushered in pete said you're not a patriot i'm sorry you are what you do you can't say you care about the military and put this clown in charge of the military and we're seeing the results it's not enough american flag pins you can wear on your jacket to get over that amen so i like having you on stewart every time i'm like i think i'm pushing the democrats to be more aggressive and and i'm frustrated you come on and you're like tim that's pretty good but i think i want to i'm actually lapping you even further like it should pedal to pedal even harder further to the middle and get away from testing these spots yeah you know i mean oh my god do you think willie horton tested will seriously yeah i really like that this is this is my biggest pet peeve stewart it's like as soon as i got it because i was never in your business i was a comms guy and an ad guy so the first time we did we started doing a super pack in 2020 we were doing ad testings that's what the donors wanted and i really got to see what the ad testing process is and it's stoners playing video games like and there's an ad in the video game and then they've got to watch it and then they've got to reply about like what their emotional reaction to it was so they can keep playing their game you know and that's just one tactic they're other i don't know what you're talking about i don't know what you're talking about exactly there are other others but it's like people don't know themselves like how many friends do you know in your life where they're making life mistakes and they can't identify what it why they're making the mistakes it's hard enough to know yourself it sure is hard enough to know whether an ad is going to influence you or not in a split second while you're sitting like the whole thing is stupid like use your gut yeah i mean look if if ad testing worked everybody would have great campaigns it's it's sort of empirical proof it doesn't work you know look the first presidential campaign i ever touched just a little bit was bush in 88 and i went into the bush headquarters and there was a giant gun safe in the media section and i said guys why do we have a gun safe and they go that's where we lock up the ads at night so that bob teeter can't test them i love that story my final hopium's just in the mississippi uh theory is they aren't spending money you said we can judge where the republicans are about where they're spending money they're not spending money in mississippi yet but there's a little bit of a stir around scott cologne do you do you have any any hope there and you've run a bunch of races there yeah look you know it's harder to elect a republican in mississippi than people realize it's like everything in politics about math but depending on the african-american turnout you have to get 65 to 70 of the white vote in pretty high numbers it's hard to get 65 70 of anything i mean haley used to say i couldn't get that at thanksgiving dinner it's a lot harder she's a good candidate she has no base the numbers for trump in a lot of these suburban areas um in jackson vicksburg the gulf coast which has always been a different world and now you look at you know the fastest growing county in the south in mississippi is desota county which is basically south memphis it's a commuter camp for memphis and they're not thrilled about data centers up there so look my feeling about a race like scott's wins he's a terrific candidate would be a great senator mississippi basically has one senator 0.75 in a state where it's the only thing that levels the playing field with california you know uh you need two centers it could happen but i think if he wins you're not going to win the senate because of that it's going to mean you're winning a lot of stuff it's going to mean it's 1980. you know tala rica will win they'll win across all of these races yeah sure this is how paula hawkins got elected to the senate from florida in 80 nobody thought that any any republican could win so she ran and democrats have some good candidates out there so i i would take scott and give the points really how many points are we given three and a half what's the line for the game on saturday three and a half something like that look uh i think this race will be a three-point race if he loses i i don't think it's gonna be a blowout yeah right and anytime you're in that sort of margin of error you have a shot little trinidad chambliss scott cologne trinidad you know kind of ferris state to the senate type story for scott cologne we'll we'll see how it goes this show is sponsored by perplexity computer if you ask five different ai experts about which tool is best to use you'll get about seven different answers and the answers are always changing every ai seems to be better at something different one is better for research 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perplexity computer is completing full projects i want to talk about russia stuff with you obviously you visited ukraine a couple times now first i want to talk about the domestic side before we get to the war uh john curtis center for utah his little inner jiminy cricket is firing you have noticed this the mormons the mormon republicans have had have had the most kind of moments of moral clarity um john curtis has not been a hero by any means um i don't know have it right in front of me i'm pretty sure he failed your pete hegseth confirmation test for example here uh he is this morning on the don jr wedding gift uh from omar kremlev the russian gangster mobster oh yeah a toaster is a wedding gift a private island party paid for by a putin connected oligarch is something else republicans nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating hunter biden we should not unplug it now trust up was not enough then and it is not enough now and you kind of have to do the hunter biden thing i guess if you're a republican but whatever it's better than nothing and as and to me i think it's pretty important because subpoenas are coming next year and and having even just a couple republicans in a couple of places saying sorry just because you're a trump family member doesn't mean you're above this i do think is meaningful i agree look um i think the great untold underreported story of our time is the degree to which the russians compromised our old party and it happened in uh on the financial fronts with or like the nra it happened on the think tank front with paradise foundation and i think it's one of the great maybe the great story of our time that the party that went from being the most you know anti-soviet union anti-expansive russian federation became the pro-putin party and for some reason we just had this inability to say the russians wanted to elect a president and they did what are they getting a lot and more than you can imagine and um you know a mass murder under indictment came to the united states and the republican party had american military get on their knees and roll out a red carpet i mean if the head of isis came he has a lot less blood on his hands than putin um they should have arrested his ass i think the great test for democrats across the board is to erect a structure like we've never had before to pursue the criminality in the trump administration and part of that should be deep investigations to how many of these people are compromised by russia and i say look trump is compromised by russia if you vote the way trump wants you to you're compromised by russia i mean this is how it classically works if you know guy philby was was compromised and he got a lot of people to come around to his opinion without realizing that they were being compromised by a russian asset that's how it always works in this case you look at trump and he is a russian asset so yeah i mean he's got his main point man on the negotiation steve wickhoff flying to moscow talking about how great it is to see putin and how it's great memories of his life when he's on his deathbed will be all the time that they got to spend together i hope that deathbed i hope that deathbed is in the penitentiary yeah because he's a criminal in addition on the things that russia is getting this is something from this week this is such a dog bite man story part of this is like people don't bring it up anymore and i think it's important just to like actually read what trump's words are and see what's happening he bleeded this russia has unfortunately lost control of its diesel oil industry due to the fact that it's not going to be able to get rid of the oil industry due to its war with ukraine why is that unfortunate i'm not sure he goes on a large number of their diesel refineries have been blown up and are at least temporarily out of commission this ridiculous and never-ending war with ukraine must be ended passive voice must be must be ended by who trump does not say and and you know you posted this and i'll put it up on the screen for video people but you don't have to actually see it on the screen because it's a hockey stick like the chart of drone attacks and you know it's a hockey stick and it's a hockey stick and it's a hockey stick and it's a hockey stick and it's a hockey stick and it's a hockey stick and it's a hockey stick and it's a hockey stick and civilian deaths in ukraine since since 2024 since he won the election i mean it's skyrocketed and um obviously the war was going on before that and there were deaths on the front but like russia's ability to act with impunity going after ukrainian citizens has i was in ukraine a couple of weeks ago when the russians changed their tactics they were you know coming in in kiev drone attacks at night missile attacks at night mostly then they changed their tactics and they went to near 24 hour attacks and it was very interesting because reading about it it sounded like a city under siege it was like stalingrad or something you know but being in kiev it was beautiful weather the streets were full when there were air raid sirens which i was there the day when there were the most air raid sirens of any time in the war i never felt unsafe they are out there spending hypersonic missiles to kill two people i mean good luck with that trying to win a war and you know you you are not going to beat the ukrainians because they know that they would become slaves and their innovations that they are uh across the board are the future of war it's what america is desperately going to need it's you know pete has had to canceling drone units it's as if it's a trump wish list so arguably i think the greatest achievement you could argue of the american military and vietnam onward has been casualty evacuation we have the highest rate in the history of the world of those who are wounded who survive and why is it because we erected this conceived executed the system of you know the golden hour getting out someone who's been wounded within that first hour get them stabilized get them downstream to a sophisticated hospital how is most of that done a helicopter you send a helicopter 40 kilometers near the zero line in ukraine that thing is going to last about maybe maybe five minutes at the most you're going to have maybe 100 drones attacking that helicopter it's the whole system is dead so what are the ukrainians doing they've brilliantly evolved this new system of land-based drones that have these armored sarcophaguses over them and they send them in and they can go up to 100 kilometers big tires i've seen these things they go very fast and they load soldiers that are wounded and evacuate them wow and the united states i don't think there's anything like that and you've seen how unprepared we were for drones with the devastating attacks in the mid-east that the administration's trying to hide well and pete's i'm pete's pretty focused on getting rid of all the trannies he talks about trannies a lot and push-ups and doing trt hormone therapy those are the main things that are going to happen and i think that's going to be a big deal i don't i don't understand how it is that the united states military is now in the hormone replacement business um i mean i can't think of anything more woke than that and you're gonna you're gonna go again it's someone who wrote uh extensive piece about performance enhancing drugs it's a great piece by the way i'm gonna i'll relate to it for people who are interested and what is the single highest testosterone level of any societal group prison really yes why well because you know young men who tend to commit crimes all right tend to have jacked up testosterone there it does affect you of the military who has the highest testosterone the marines what is it self-selecting what a shock you know if you've got some guy and you've got 900 you know testosterone and you're 19 years old and you want to blow up shit and kill people i'll join the marines you're not gonna go say i want to be an air force intelligence or you know i want to work for the nsa uh put me in front of a computer but the idea that you're going to like somehow convert people to warriors by testosterone you know when i was in ukraine people were just laughing their ass off about this you know keith was saved in a large part in the battle of keith by a bunch of accountants and advertising executives and lawyers and bakers and sushi chefs who came out in a terrible way and they were like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die in a territorial defense and fought the russians because they believed in it are there worries about winter when you're there oh yeah very much yeah yeah it's going to be a very very very very hard winter last february i um you know we work with this finnish american volunteering with this finnish american a group and they did a sort of emergency convoy taking generators down we drove down from helsinki and a lot of warm gear and stuff but it's going to be very tough but you know i was there in february when there were a lot of blackouts more often than not and walk around on saturday night the bars had little generators in front of them people were out drinking they adapted but it is going to be a very very hard winter losing weight is one thing but looking and feeling better as we hit september that's the real goal that's why weight loss by hymns now offers access to the fda approved wagovi pill and wagovi pen wagovi is designed to help you lose weight and keep it off so you can show up feeling like yourself i've got i've got a wedding coming up soon you want to look good at the wedding do you feel of a wedding coming up make sure you just kind of get a little sun kissed and ensure that your body is feeling as fit as it could with wagovi and hymns lose up to 20 of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise it helps you regulate your appetite eat less and keep weight off plus 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trump's voice on the show as you know but um i'm gonna make an exception for this case because he had an important press conference where he was unveiling the helicopter pad ahead of the meeting let's watch couldn't quite catch that um the pool the pool video is not covering trump right now in protest and kicking out cnn ms now in politico so trump was just trying to scream there over the din and didn't quite get it a helicopter pad yeah i mean if you're working in a race for a republican and you're on the bubble and you're you know putting in your 19 hours a day and you wake up and you see the fucking president united states out there celebrating a helipad it's like are you out of your fucking mind i think everybody with a helipad can really appreciate it he's probably going to carry the helipad and the way they did the boat parades you know though some of the boaters might be trying to get a helipad but they're not going to be turning against them with the price of fuel well i think some of them sunk too and didn't i'm not sure they quite made it i remember those parades they weren't so do you have uh any other deep thoughts on the china summit we're kind of coming on thursday all this stuff that you know we work for a party we were kind of right about this stuff i mean some things yeah um particularly foreign policy some stuff you know i had a couple of wars that were wrong but how are you sitting there in china in the middle of a war and you're like oh my god i'm not going to be able to do this in the leadership and in the military and look at what we've done for ukraine and think that we're going to come in and defend taiwan it's just i mean it emboldens every bit of aggression and the chinese who are most on the cutting edge of of drones russians chinese ukrainians but those three and the united states is way behind the taiwanese are trying to catch up and it's interesting to me that they're trying to catch up and they're trying to catch up and it's interesting they should be doing more i'm sort of perplexed why they haven't done more the taiwanese yeah because you know they have all these you know every chip factory everything and there are taiwanese who are fighting in ukraine interestingly but you know it's it's weakness invites instability so the other end of it if i'm she i'm just kind of like you know why you know stop what's what's the old line about you know why interrupt your opponent when they're when they're destroying yeah and there's an element of that to it yeah who's the last prominent american politician that i can think of who went to taiwan nancy pelosi right you know i think that this is an historic opportunity just in the greater moment that democrats reclaim what we would call uh the party of strength and foreign policy and they had that at one time you know when nixon ran against china or ran against uh kennedy kennedy was to the right of him on foreign policy nixon attacked him in the debates for having a secret plan to invade cuba and that is right right you know uh kennedy attacked nixon for uh allowing a missile gap to develop kennedy was the right-wing foreign policy candidate and the democrats need to get back to that and if they do i think it'll have a generational impact on our politics democrats have struggled to find somebody that can and i think that harris had an opportunity to do this you know a lot of times the left people create a new policy and they're not going to criticize her and and i think it's not an illegitimate criticism for focusing the convention too much on like the lethality of the military and for me it's like being able to combine arguing about lethality and american strength and and alliance with allies with also being the person that's like but i'm not gonna get us into stupid fucking wars i'm not gonna do stupid wars of choice it was those guys that did all the stupid war you know you have to be a little dexterous to be able to do both but they're not necessarily in conflict you know if if we can live in a world in which democrats own the iconography of patriotism that would be a much better world safer world and they should not shy away from that you know flyover should not be a republican thing they should be out there and this is why again they need to use these broad sweeping condemnations of what republicans are doing because it is anti-military they're the military's going to emerge from the hegsett wicker trump era weaker than it's been any time since the vietnam war call it out it's it's you're destroying the military you're not pro-military you're not you want pete hegsett in the foxhole next to you really i mean you know give me a break the aggies didn't need him this weekend all right final topic the vice president is working on his insult comic routine to kind of get ready for 2028 he's bulking up he was out there on a campaign stop yesterday i do want to play one glip for you and because we need somebody who will fight back against the fart left we need michael whatley in the united states senate now you may not have even heard that but i actually i usually don't misspeak but i just called them the fart left not the fart left that i promise that was an accident so to the fake news who will accuse me of bad language i promise i did not mean to call them the fart left i meant to call them the fart left i don't know about that one yeah um you know i i just you know if i was a friend of jd's i would just say jd think about your kids they're gonna have to spend the rest of their life watching this stuff they're gonna have to spend the rest of your life listening to you attack the 14th amendment which made their mom a u.s citizen listen to you talking about heritage americans and by the way guys look at us dad we don't look like kentucky coal miners you don't think vivek vance is a heritage american yeah you know well actually i do think he's a heritage american in my definition of a heritage american um and it's just you know normally most politicians will defend their own family it's very rare to come up with a guy that much of his entire political uh structure is attacking his own family you know he attacks his wife's religion and says she doesn't really believe it and he makes it much more likely that there will be another wave of anti-asian american hatred we've had this before in america it's just extraordinary this is a very very sick broken guy i think he'll be the democratic nominee republican nominee a republican nominee and i think he'll run with demarco trump i like that prediction we'll leave it there stewart stephens you're a winner baby i've never been happy to lose a bet be with you for an hour today hotty toddy all right and uh we'll catch you uh after the midterms all right bro okay take care appreciate you so much everybody else will be back here tomorrow with another edition of the show see y'all then peace the bulwark daily is brought to you thanks for the work of 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