Trump Has No Strategy as the Iran War Widens and Blanche's Confirmation Falls Apart

Support for this show comes from ODO. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing ODO. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier, CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce and more. And the best part? ODO replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try ODO for free at ODO.com. That's O-D-O-O. dot com. Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway. Jess is off today, but we're fortunate to be joined by Sarah Longwell, the founder and publisher of the Bullwork, host of the focus group podcast and author of the upcoming book How to Eat an Elephant One Voter to Time out in September, also a friend of the pod. Sarah, it's great to see you. Thanks for doing this. Hey, Scott. Thanks for having me. So before we get started, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube page to stay up to date on all the political news. All right, let's bust right into it. The U.S. launched a round of heavy attacks against Iran overnight. Saudi Arabia has stepped off the sidelines carrying out joint strikes with the U.S. on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. The drone campaign that pulled Saudi Arabia into the conflict also spilled over the border into Jordan. Authorities in Egypt say that a drone attacks struck several vessels in port. Meanwhile, Trump officials reportedly can't agree on a strategy on how to move forward. Sarah, there was some well-earned skepticism around the ceasefire, the memo of understanding. We knew this temporary pause and fighting might not last, but are we at a moment now where things really can't tip into a broader conflict? Yeah. I mean, look what's happening there. We have a broader regional war. And this was always the thing for Trump and this administration was they seemed to not understand that Iran was going to have a vote in this. That Iran's behavior wasn't something that we could control. And so when you have all of these other countries being brought in, I mean, I don't want people to get over their skis and it's not World War III, but it is something that can break containment and is breaking containment, that makes it much harder than for Trump to just do his war on, war off, SNP SNP, because it's not just about Iran. Every time one of these other countries gets attacked, you're bringing, you know, there's new sort of rage in the conflict from new people who now need to retaliate. It's just, you can see how easily it can spin out of control. Yeah, it doesn't feel like it's de-escalation, it feels like it's the war is metastatizing and Saudi Arabia or the Kingdom just went from the sidelines to combat and with its joint strikes and also the drone war jumping borders into Jordan and Egypt. This is, I mean, this is not a regional war, it's not bilateral by any stretch of the imagination. Just last night, you talked to some Trump voters in South Carolina about the war in Iran. Let's listen to some of what a couple of them had to say. He doesn't get a deer enough because I do think he's trying. I do think there's more to Iran than me. Do I want to be there forever? Does it suck because I own a diesel truck? Heck yeah, it does. Every time I fill it up and it's $130, it's like, I want to vomit. But I think there's more there than we see on our level. I wish he just, excuse my friends, had the balls to just go in there and get it done. And, you know, I don't want to sound like a war monger or anything, but he could get it done very quickly. I'm real concerned. It's just going to keep dragging and dragging and dragging and our economy is just going to go to shit. Yeah. And so I have a diesel truck, but he's trying and I think that, I think that could be a monger sticker from Magga right now. What are your thoughts to your observations coming out of these focus groups? Yeah. So it's not just this focus group. I mean, the Iran war comes up in all of the focus groups, but specifically among Trump voters, people are sort of breaking into two camps. There are the Trump voters who are angry that the war is happening because Trump promised not to get us into any new wars and they want us out and they want us to, they want us to stop because it is costing them money at the pump. It's having, you know, personal consequences. And then as you heard in that other guy, that is another strain that you hear, which is, no, he needs to bomb harder and Trump has set himself up for this, right? With his saber rattling, we're going to end your civilization, the way Trump threatens them every time there's, there's not a deal imminent. You know, he set up his own voters to sort of, he is in the sour spot with his own voters because either now he's sort of ratcheting up one part's demand that he go harder. And the other side just wants him out and to have it over. And he and just sort of staying in that middle ground of, we're going to keep doing sort of tit for tit bombing, you know, people are just getting frustrated and they don't follow the ins and outs. These voters, they never follow the, the machinations super closely. But they know the wars back on and they know it's costing them money. Going from voters to the actual administration, based on your contacts and I know you have a lot of relationships still in the Republican Party, what do you think, try and put us in the head or in the room in the situation room right now. Do you have any sense for what their strategy is or what you think, how this is going to unfold over the next few weeks? I mean, they don't know what their strategy is, but I can tell you this, if you think about the situation room and who's in it and you just take a Marco Rubio and a JD Vance, the two of them have, if you have sort of old school Marco Rubio, they have polar opposite views on foreign policy. Like JD Vance has made it very clear. He's leaked a lot of things to say, I am, I'm against this war. I mean, JD Vance really staked his reputation on the idea that Trump wasn't going to do any more stupid wars. Marco Rubio, on the other hand, is a voice saying, well, we're in it now, we're going to need to finish it. There are also, I don't know if you've watched this, they're sort of using the ghost of Lindsey Graham because that part of the party that is still very sort of Neocon that does want Trump to sort of go hard at Iran. And look, those voters that we talked to, that schism between the voters exists in the administration, too, because this Republican party now tries to hold those two groups together. But the conflict in Iran is drawing up, you can't have it both ways. And so if I'm in the situation room, I think it's people making an argument to Trump that they need to cut and run, get out, that's probably the JD Vance side, the America first side. And then there's the Rubio side and a lot of the other people in the administration who are saying, well, now we've got to, we've got to finish this because we're here. And just finish this means boots on the ground. And what do you think is the likelihood that we do put boots on the ground? I don't think Trump has ever had an appetite for boots on the ground because Trump, he likes bombing things from far away. That is just his preferred way of doing things. But you know, I mean, at some point, somebody's going to say to him, now it's gone too far, and the only thing we can do is go in full force because he only has a couple of options. His options are to get out and then lie to Americans to say it's a victory when it's not, which I think is what he was trying to do. But that is getting closed off because they've staked this idea that they can't, Iran can't have nuclear weapons. So like, how are you going to ensure that that happens? And they need the straight-of-form who's open. They can't, like, he's caught in an escalatory trap of his own making. And I'm sure he doesn't want to put boots on the ground, but they may have no choice at some point. Yeah, it's just, I mean, this is, it feels like this is literally the definition of the word quagmire, and that is, the IRGC is not just going to let him declare victory and leave. It strikes me they've been playing him perfectly. They do just enough to ensure that everybody knows it's a victory for the IRGC over, you know, this great devil, the West. At the same time, not quite enough to inspire a full-throated Republican supported or American supported response, you know, antagonize them enough, make sure they know, you know, we're on top. You've lost, but don't, or don't, don't do, create as much chaos, such that even the American reticent American people are going to have to support some sort of escalation. I, it's straight, I just, I wonder, do you have any sense for what the military leaders are saying around the idea of boots on the ground? Is there sort of, I mean, the thoughtful people in the defense department, many of whom, it feels like all of them are contributors now to one network or the other. What do they say? Is the rubio wing of the party getting, getting traction around okay, we are where we are. Let's go in and try and finish the job. I don't really know the answer to that. I don't have any contacts with the generals, but look, I, what I do know from spending time and the Republican Party is that that wing of people. that has long wanted something done about Iran is still there and is still represented in this administration. And the one thing, just you made a point just a second ago about how they're playing Trump. One of the things that becomes clear over time is that they are learning. There was this phrase back in Afghanistan where they would say, well, you know, you may have the watches but we have the time. And it feels like that with the Iranians right now where what they're doing is they can gather information every time, like they are learning more about us. What have they learned so far in this conflict? They've learned that the American people get really unhappy about high gas prices and that it creates a political problem for Trump here at home and for Republicans here at home to have high gas prices. But they've also learned that Trump will tweet about ending civilizations and then not do it, right? Like they are learning from all of this and gathering information about us. And so they're getting better all the time at managing Trump and managing the United States and getting, I think, more in control as they go. Yeah, it's worth noting that a new Quinn Impact poll had Trump at 32 percent of approval, which is the lowest rating he's registered. So moving on, Todd Blanche's nomination to be attorney generals on shaking ground, a committee vote to advance the confirmation has been delayed after two GOP senators expressed concerns about Trump's IRS settlement deal. The sticking point, they want a written guarantee from Blanche that the immunity from audits granted to Trump and the deal would only cover past act returns, tax returns, excuse me, not future ones. Here's corn and speaking about the reasoning. This is about making sure that even if you're the president of the United States, you don't get favorable terms from the government and a settlement of a lawsuit that ordinary citizens would not get, like protection from audits by the IRS into the foreseeable future. So I think this is about making sure that we maintain the integrity of our justice system and fairness for everybody involved. Sarah, your thoughts on Senator Cornon's comments? Well, Cornon's interesting here. I saw another comment from him where he talked about loyalty going both ways where sort of, you know, Trump is demanding and the Republicans are demanding loyalty in this Blanche confirmation. And, you know, Cornon, who Trump famously did not endorse in the Republican primary in Texas, he went with Ken Paxton, the very corrupt Ken Paxton. Cornon basically by just being a semi-normal Republican from the olden times drew a lot of iron from Trump. And so, Cornon, what he's doing right now, first of all, his position is imminently reasonable in this case. But like, he's doing something to stand up to Trump. But I also, it seems not nearly enough considering how much leverage he has. And like, he is a, he's not, he's not going to be a senator ever again. He's got one chance to, and you know, something else about Cornon, I didn't know this about him. He actually has a long history of working on sex trafficking legislation. Like, that is something that was important to him. And so, the fact that the Epstein part of Blanche, you know, a big part of what Blanche did, and I was disappointed Democrats didn't make a bigger issue of Epstein during the confirmation hearings, because Blanche is the one who went down and gave the sweetheart deal to Gislaen Maxwell. And so, I think Cornon should absolutely torpedo this guy. Like, he should be doing it in much stronger terms, so should Tillis. But, you know, I'm, I'm so long past my disappointment with these Republicans that I guess there's just a part of me that's just happy to see any kind of backbone. And it is important, this idea that Trump could get immunity from any prosecution for him and his, his family going forward from the IRS is insane. And he shouldn't be allowed to do it. And the fact that Blanche isn't signing something to say, yes, this IRS slush fund is a dead letter, goes to show you that Trump doesn't want him to. Trump wants to keep that alive option. And I do appreciate that Cornon is setting it up to be like either Blanche has to put it in writing, that Trump cannot have this, or we're not going to confirm him. And they canceled the hearing this morning because they don't have the votes right now. It's just so, I mean, obviously, Congress has one of the lowest approval ratings of any institution in America right now. And it just seems so obvious that they kind of earn this when Republican senators only do their job after they block their job. It just, it just stinks. It's like, okay, how does a Republican grow testicles? He loses his primary. And one testicle after a primary, one testicle, one testicle. There you go. My, I'm curious to get your thoughts on my bad here, the overrunner is that Trump will give and tell him to sign the letter because he'd rather have his personal lawyer as the attorney general than go through this with someone else, even if it means getting only kind of the immune part of an immunity deal. Your thoughts? Yeah, I think you're right. I saw Trump, you know, making a comment about Cornon saying, oh, well, maybe he's still mad at me that I didn't endorse him. You know, Trump doesn't like to give up in these negotiations. And so it might drag on for a little bit longer, but I do think you're right that ultimately starting over with somebody else that is acceptable to Trump and Republicans is not an easy task. And he wants somebody who's going to make the Epstein stuff go away and go prosecute his political enemies. And so ultimately, yeah, he probably gives them what he wants, but it's interesting, isn't it? How scared? How much he doesn't want to sign to sign away his ability to have this immunity? Like he is nervous about prosecution when he's out. So just some breaking news as we sit here and record this. Per Axios, Trump just said that he would have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd Blanche's nomination until his Republican opponents are out of the out of office next January. This strikes me as an opportunity for Democrats to say a vote for this Republican in the center race is a vote for Todd Blanche, which is a vote for Epstein. This feels like a messaging opportunity, your thoughts. Yeah, it's a huge offense opportunity. That is, boy, that's Trump back on his heels. This goes, my immediate reaction as it goes to my point before about how much Trump wants it to be blanch that he's willing to wait until, you know, February of 2027. But that's dicey too. If you, you know, that you have to be really sure that Ken Paxton is going to win in Texas and not Tauriko. That's interesting. I wonder if you will withdraw it. And then because I guess he still gets Blanche's the acting through that, but that is that is him blinking. Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odo. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part? So why not you? Try Odo for free at odu.com. That's odo.com. So let's move on to the C-shell's case against former FDI Director James Colme, where defense attorneys are seeking to get the charges dismissed. They alleged Trump directed illegal secret service surveillance of Colme and the secret service agents were told to surveil Colme as he drove through North Carolina and send information about him to President Trump to review. Sarah, your thoughts on this case and what it means for the way the DOJ is conducting itself under Trump? Well, it's been horrible to watch them prosecute their political adversaries and people that Trump is personally angry at, especially under something so species as he took a picture of C-shells. He didn't even put the C-shells there. He just took a picture of the C-shells that said 8647 and then tried to say that that was a threat on the president's life, which is, of course, preposterous. There's 8647 merch all over the place. Nobody's trying to find every individual t-shirt maker and prosecute them. They're just going after Colme. And I like the Colme's fighting back. And he has been fighting back this whole time and he is somebody I do know personally and I've been, I've been impressed with how he has handled himself because in so many other instances, when Trump has gone after people, personally, with the full weight of the Department of Justice behind them, you know, that rattles people, it chills people and that is not happening with Colme. And so I think that's, but look, using the Department of Justice for vindictive prosecutions, this is the, when people say, oh, he's not an authoritarian, you guys are exaggerating, this is, this is authoritarian stuff. This is what they do. Some more importantly, Sarah, let's bring this back to me. Sure. I'm in Los Angeles and I was born and raised here and I have been fired from some of the best restaurants in Los Angeles, Monty Steakhouse, the Chart House, Stratton. None of these you'll know. But what I never understood about this, I don't know if you've ever worked in a restaurant. 86 is a a common term for we're out, you know, we're out of the house. of it, and we'd have this chalkboard that said 86, and we'd put the things that we were out of. It wasn't, I've never heard it in the context of a call for violence, and then it's out, or it's done. Anyways, most importantly, what summer jobs did you have in college? And two, is this, it feels to me like this has absolutely no legal merit whatsoever, and it's nothing but harassment to try and discourage other former officials from speaking out. It has absolutely no legal merit whatsoever, and it is absolutely an effort to chill other officials from speaking out. 100%. That's all it's about. And Trump's sort of lust for the prosecution of people he doesn't like. My first job, or my job in college, the whole way through high school in college was, I worked on the pride of the Susquehanna, which was a stern wheel paddle boat that went up and down the Susquehanna river, and I was a server, and an ice cream scooper, and a crew member for like five summers. That's awesome. I don't even know where that is. What is that? So I'm from Central Pennsylvania, and in the big city of Harrisburg, the Susquehanna river runs, you know, through Harrisburg, and kind of separates Harrisburg from the other side of town. And Hershey is not too far away where the chocolate factory is made. So it's like a red and white boat that would go up and down doing little tours that would tell you things about the area. That sounds like an awesome job. And you just inspired, I don't know if you spend much time in Hershey, but we went as one does with boys to the amusement park there. Hershey Park. Hershey Park. And I actually, in my last company, I had a strategy firm we did some work for Hershey. And I found out that I believe all the money from Hershey, the foundation goes to this wonderful organization where they have houses spread all over foster homes, spread all over Hershey. And they take care of these kids. They find a couple and they have six, 12, 18 kids in these homes and all do quite frankly, I buy Hershey bars now. It made me feel so incredibly good about these people. Did you spend any to ever spend any time in Hershey? Yeah, so I lived in Hershey. My brother was born in Hershey hospital and Milton S. Hershey, who is the namesake, did all this work where he took the money and he built and actually when I did the tour on the riverboat, you know, would have one of those audio, those things that played every single tour. You'd get the same, you know, history of the area. And it was mainly about Milton S. Hershey and all of the work that he did with orphans and foster children. And that legacy continues. I do really resent that they changed. They bought Cadbury here and they changed the Cadbury chocolate. So that's kind of my beef with Hershey. But it was a, you know, when I grew up, they, they, the first of all, the town smells like chocolate, absolutely smells like chocolate like for real. And then it had Hershey kisses as the, the street lamps, like when you would go down, it's cool. Anyways, I, and now that I've taken this way, I'll, I'll pull it back here. Yesterday we learned about domestic abuse allegations against Max Miller, the Republican Congressman from Ohio, but this gets very thick, very fast. Emily Moreno, who also happens to be the daughter of a higher senator, Bernie Moreno, is he the guy who decided it was masculine to say who the fuck do you think you are? Was that the same guy? He did that to Fauci yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. What an impressive dude. Aren't you a man? Anyways, his daughter says Miller violently attacked her on multiple occasions and get this and fractured their two-year-old daughter's collarbone. Miller, who is running for real action, has denied it all and said that his ex-wife quote, "Sadly isn't all there." So these are obviously really serious accusations and, you know, sad for this family. In the wake of the Graham Platner scandal on the Democratic side, will we see more Republicans speaking out against Miller? I wouldn't count on it, but, you know, it's funny you bring up Bernie Moreno and how, what a, what a tough guy he was in that hearing because you know where he hasn't been a tough guy and standing up for his daughter. I mean, Max Miller, both abusers, I mean, the allegations are that he poured scalding, boiling water on her chest and stomach. Like, it is a sick, it's like allegations, and that's not the only person alleging abuse. Stephanie Grisham, who worked in the Trump administration, she worked for Melania Trump, she also dated Max Miller and said he was abusive. And so now there's multiple allegations, including from somebody in the Trump administration, and Bernie Moreno's not even standing up for his own daughter and granddaughter in this, but don't worry, he shouted the F word at Fauci. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about. I'm curious to just get your top line impressions and takeaways from the hearing. Um, you know, I think for people, it was a little bit of a war shock test for people who love Fauci. They feel like he was done really dirty. And for people who hate Fauci, they feel like him pleading the fifth sort of over and over again as an indictment of him. I mean, I thought the hearing was terrible in part because there are genuine things we should learn from what happened. 100%. I was, I had lots of, lots of issues. I had a three-year-old at the time or I had two kids that were pretty little. And I, look, there was, there was so many things that I think were poor decisions, but also are maybe, could be understandable in light of how difficult it was to make decisions during that time. But like, it would be good to have a valuable conversation about what did we do right? What did we do wrong? What did we learn from it? And instead, it's just gotcha, gotcha, gotcha stuff over and over. Um, and so he's taking the fifth and, you know, America gets nowhere from it. Yeah, I found it especially cynical of Senator Rand Paul, who filibustered for 10 hours, calling the Patriot Act a surveillance state. He seems to be comfortable with this surveillance state when he's holding the flashlight and gets to out cringy diary entries from an 80-year-old man. And let's just assume that Fauci got COVID wrong. And by the way, I think he got it no more wrong than any other health official in any state or any leader globally. This was a very difficult adversary. Yeah. The guy also got pet far right. And I know that you're, I believe you, did you work in the Bush administration? No, but he also got AIDS right. He cut hates right. I mean, the guy forgot sex, give him a gold watch and, and, and, and a dinner and a party and the notion that somehow you, we've, the Republicans have uncovered that a senior level official is a bit of an ego maniac and impressed with his own celebrity. It's like, well, congratulations. You've solved Washington. Yeah, right. And to your point, these hearings could be productive, you know, Dr. Fauci, give us a sense for what, give him immunity. What did you do wrong? What would you do differently? How do we do things more right or less wrong the next time a pandemic comes along? And I think the broader theme here that's really damaging is that we're now the common theme for getting up in the algorithms and getting more fundraising is to should post our institutions. And when we continue to do this, 25% of the scientists have left CDC, the CDC. And there's no, it's no accident that we have one of the worst outbreaks of cyclosporin in years. And measles is making a comeback. So rather than, as you referenced, doing something productive that prevents the next natural health crisis, you know, we should expect kind of exploding diarrhea and measles. So such, it doesn't seem as if anyone is really concerned with, okay, how do we make sure this doesn't happen again? Or it, we're prepared for it as opposed to trying to shame, you know, an 80 year old. And I'm disappointed that the public doesn't see this. This goes to my kind of basic notion that we kind of get the leaders we deserve in social media is making voters, quite frankly, just more and more stupid every day. Your thoughts. I think you're absolutely right that this is a, the media environment is very difficult for average people to navigate now. And they, the algorithms put you in silos. They are all optimized for rage and for fear. And for the polarization that we're already experiencing. I think that because we are so polarized, like I said, I think people sort of saw what they wanted to see out of this. I will say, though, for Republicans, RFK, RFK thought COVID was a bio weapon. And they all confirmed him. And, you know, he like cut a whale's head off and strapped it to the hood of a car. That guy's running our current health agencies. Yeah. So meanwhile, in Texas, amidst a notably extensive political campaign season, Democratic Senate candidate James Talleriko has proven adept at filling his coffers. Talleriko has spent 12 million on TV outs since June. His Republican opponent can Paxton, however, is yet to get a substantial influx of cash from some of the Republican party's biggest money committees. Trump backed Ken Paxton and Republicans are expected to outspend Democrats and most states is cycle. Sarah, you've, you've spoken of voters in Texas about this race, including the woman who voted for Trump in 2024, but finds herself supporting James Talleriko. Let's take a listen to the clip from mid-June. I will be voting for James Taylor Ego. I like him a lot. Even though I disagree with him on some things, I strongly prefer him to him, Paxton. To me, whether he's a Christian or not is not a huge deal that really doesn't influence it, me at all, I'm looking for integrity and character. I really like that he has agreed not to take any pack money. He seems like a really honest fellow, not just the way he talks, but his record. He doesn't have scandals and he seems very much like he's trying to make the world a better place. So curious just to get how you would handicap the. I mean, we continue to get our heart broken when I say we progressives. I don't know how you identify yourself. I identify as a progressive, but we continue to get our hearts broken in Texas, but I've been here before. It feels really good this time. What are your thoughts on the Texas senatoral race? I would never get too excited about Texas, but I think having a smidge of cautious optimism, look, if the only way for a Democrat to ever win in Texas would be basically with the conditions that we have right now. We have a pretty good Democratic candidate that especially women in Texas find to be like perfectly kind and reasonable and normal. You have a terrible Republican candidate who has been impeached by his own party, has multiple corruption scandals and has cheated on his wife a bunch of times, who then divorced him for biblical reasons, and everybody in the state knows about that, which means Trump may be happy to endorse Ken Paxton because he's as corrupt and vile as he is, but there are a lot of big donors that don't necessarily want to be on his FEC filings. Texas is a really, really expensive state to campaign in, and so Paxton is basically banking on the fact that Texas is a Republican enough that he can get through, but I think with Republicans as disillusioned as they are and Democrats has fired up as they are, and the fact that Tal Rico is, except for some of his, he has some peak woke stuff that they keep bringing back, but I think he's going everywhere, he's trying hard, he's reaching for swing voters. If it was going to happen, it would happen in this race. So going to the economy, the Federal Reserve has decided to hold interest rate steady for now, but pressure is mounting to face the country's inflation problems head on. It's expected that oil and gas prices will remain high as a comfort in the Middle East continues into a economic growth also slowed in the second quarter of this year. By the way, folks, low growth and inflation is something we used to freak out about when I was an instructor in macroeconomics and something anyone under the age of 45 is not experienced is called stagflation, and it is literally the worst of all worlds. Fed share Kevin Worst says they will not hesitate to take action against inflation. It was shocking that, well, anyway, what are your thoughts on the Fed right now and interest rates? What any reaction from this meeting? I mean, Trump wants the rates cut and he didn't get them cut, so I think that's good. There's no way they can cut rates. Yeah, I just don't think there's any rate in curates right now. Yeah, and that's the thing about the Fed is like, Kevin Worst was obviously Trump's pick. I think he wants to be as helpful to Trump as he can, but there's still just economic gravity is right there. For Trump, this is the thing about with a run and with inflation, like people only wanted Trump to do one thing. Trump ran on that he was going to lower prices, it's going to get inflation under control, and this was a super power for him because in his first term, I hear it from voters over and over and over again. They basically write off 2020 in COVID when everything went south and they think Trump had a good economy. Trump knew how to do the economy. This is like, this is what Trump can do. He's a business guy. And the fact that he's been able to make no headway on the economy doesn't even focus on it. He's not, he's focused on his ballroom, he's focused on the reflecting pool. He's now launched a war on run that's making things harder. He's launched the tariffs. This economy has Trump stamp all over it. Yeah, it's and as much as I think Fed Chair Worst wants to please the president, he does not want to be the guy that inspires an upward spiral of inflation, which I think cutting interest rates right now would potentially risk. I want to go off script for a second here, Sarah. You're the founder of the bullwork, which people often, people often talk about us in sort of the same sector as being, I don't know what you would call us, new media companies or new media media companies in the political realm. I'm just curious what for, we have a lot of creators to listen to the podcast. You're an entrepreneur. You've built this great kind of new new new new era media company. What trends do you see out there? Like what do you see happening with the bullwork? And I'll be transparent as well. That's good. And it's bad. I'll start our viewership and listenership and especially viewership on YouTube is way up. But it does seem like a lot of advertisers are really allergic to political content, which I understand. Like half, half of advertisers just won't get near political content. And so our CPMs on this show, that's the cost advertisers are willing to pay for a thousand. And our ability to monetize this content is much lower than our other offerings in tech and in business. Anyways, that's my, that's my appraisal of what's going on right now. I'm curious as an entrepreneur in this space, what you're saying. Well, you know, the bullwork built itself first on subscribers. Yeah, it's not an advertising. I mean, we basically are advertising model came second and our subscriber model came first. And I'm grateful for that. And some of it was just a confluence of events where we had been building this community, this audience kind of right before substack arrived. And then when we jumped on substack really early, we were able to grow as substack grew. And so I think that that was a good synergy for us. Obviously we also have like a ton of written products. And so the subscription made sense. And we've been able to sort of both push substack and use substack to say like, Hey, guys, we're really going to, yes, we're doing all of our newsletters, but we're also doing video. And so we need you substack to be able to also do video, which they can now. But I think a big part of what what we found useful was kind of meeting people on the platforms where they are. So you can subscribe to us on substack. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube, can also subscribe to us on Apple. And I think being able to sort of build products for people where they live, the audio products, the video products, the written products. And then try to sort of, yeah, give people things that because some people are just audio only. And so we have an audio only subscription. Tear, I will just say on the advertiser thing, you're 100% right. People are allergic to political advertising. But what I keep telling them, I'm convinced I'm going to be able to brazen through this. At some point, these advertisers are going to say, these, especially the more AI slop there is, the having a parasocial, committed, sticky relationship with your listeners and with your community, you just advertisers aren't going to be able to keep sneering at the political stuff. They're going to have to say, I don't know, this is, this is what all they're, they can keep wasting money on CNN, which nobody's watching and where nobody has a relationship with people or they can go where people are connected to the people talking and start investing there. And I think eventually they're going to figure that out. Yeah. And at some point, the numbers get big enough that advertisers have a tough little time ignoring you. And we're seeing, we're seeing that on the subscription side. So the great white whale of this type of media is subscriptions. But you're competing against Netflix when you ask someone for their credit card, who gives them a billion dollars of content for every dollar a month they spend. We launched a subscription offering about four or five months ago. It's been successful. What's interesting for us that the thing that drives subscriptions is not the ad free podcast or quote unquote, the exclusive content. We do these almost like classes where someone, the woman who miss a barrier who runs our data group will do a one hour session on how she prepares my decks and storytelling. Or we have Catherine Dillon who runs our firm do a thing on visual storytelling. We found the sort of more educational kind of TED Talk instruction feeling talks have actually been the biggest subscribers or the biggest catalyst for subscribers into a certain extent newsletters. And I wonder if some of that that was just good. Well, what if you for creators out there who all want subscriptions, subscribe. By the way, subscription revenue folks is valued at three to five times what advertising revenue is valued at in an in an acquisition market. It's just more dependable, easier to plan against a business stickier. What do you find moves the needle in terms of getting people to actually pull out their credit card? Well, so part of what is I think a bit of a miracle about the bulwark is that we don't gate that much of our content relative to a lot of other media companies like the daily wire or somebody else where they sort of drop a pay wall all the time. I don't think max max 25% of our stuff is pay walled. And so the reason that people ride with us and pull out their credit card. Two reasons. Number one is that they support the mission. They feel mission alive. You know, we're a pro-democracy media company. And then the second thing is sometimes people want to like they want the commercials gone, right? Because when you subscribe, you get rid of the commercials. But the bigger thing they get is commenting. right? Then they can comment on sub-second. So that's where the community aspect kicks in. I sit in the chat. I try to ignore kind of the YouTube comments because a lot of those people are not, they're just people. People who are angry. Angry people are not people at all. And that's fine. But I really try to focus my energy on reading the sub-stack comments because those are people who read everything we do. They've got the broader content. They know all of us as different people and what our focuses are and they're really thoughtful and they're really smart and they like each other and they meet each other and they connect with each other. And I think at a time when people do feel lonely, like there's a lot of loneliness out there and they're looking for good intellectual homes and communities. I think being able to give them a place where they can gather has been really special and meaningful for people. And so we don't talk about our folks as subscribers. We talk about them as a community, as our community, the board community. And that leads you then to, you know, we do live shows. They're all sold out. People come. They're raucous. They're ready to hang. And it's really, really fun. But I do think building a community is different from building an audience. And if I was giving advice to creators, I would say, think about it in terms of like, what kind of community do you want to build? Not just how do you find an audience? I think that's, I want to just stop and highlight that because I do think that's, I didn't, I've learned from that or what you just said. And that is, you know, I understand the need, the importance for community. And I do, I do think that probably a third to half of the people who sign up for our subscriptions, just like us and want to be supportive of us. But what you said that I think is really struck a tone is something I hadn't thought about. Is that a great weapon for building community is engaging in the comments. And I do agree on sub-stack. It does feel more authentic. And I do think that responding and fomenting or catalyzing a conversation makes sense. All right, well, listen, let's leave it there, Sarah. Thanks so much for joining us today. Everyone be sure to follow Sarah at the Bullwork. She's no longer on the pride of the Susquehanna. You have to check her out at the Bullwork. Sarah, again, thanks so much for pinch hitting here. Thanks, Kat. Super fun. [MUSIC]