Trump Makes Multiple Wild Claims During Pre-Election Fox Interview | Morning Shots

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to morning shots live. I am Andrew Eger with the Bullwork. That is Bill Crystal with the Bullwork. We write the morning shots newsletter. We write it every morning, but we especially wrote it this morning, the morning of election day. It's finally here. Holy Moses bill. How you feeling? What's going on? What's going through your head? How are you? How are you coping? Is coping the right word to describe what you've been up to? Are you? Are you remaining pretty zen about this whole thing? No, zen is not me. I'm going to tell the truth here. Yeah, I'm sort of doom scrolling and trying to cope and just trying to get through the next few hours till we get actual results. You know, you're looking at the Florida reports, which they make seem to have every 20 minutes of the actual vote as it comes in on election day and the party break down. Maybe the party break down, changes over the day because Democrats vote later or they don't vote later or I mean, that's really too much. So, yes, I'm looking forward to 6 p.m. Election day is always very strange. Everybody who has worked in media or in politics knows this. It seems like it should be a day of sort of hydrogen and frantic activity and doing the last, doing the remaining. But really, the cake is baked. There's nothing really you can do, short of something catastrophic to emulate your own campaign by, you know, killing a clubbing a baby seal to death on live stream or something like that. There's not that much as a candidate, as an operative, even as somebody like, I don't quite, I mean, I think that's a media point of view. Honestly, I mean, really, when I was in campaigns, there's a time, I mean, the four people who were working in campaigns do have a time to do because you really got to get your vote out. And voters who were watching this should go vote and they should get their friends to vote. So, the cake isn't quite baked and it's really important. I agree with you very much. The media is like a nightmare because there you are, I suppose to pontificate about all this and you have no idea what's going to happen a few hours from now, but here we are. So yeah, yeah. And I agree to stop people at the campaigns, they're sitting around twirling their homes. But I want to pay a little shout out here to the worker bees who are working, got a ferry early this morning and are driving people to the polls and calling people who haven't voted yet. And to the voters who are, where it's raining especially, which it isn't a lot of these competitive states, it seems like, you know, are dragging themselves to the polls and dragging their friends relative. So go watch a vote, picture it out as good. I don't want to say that no matter who you're voting for, but it's certainly a salient will. I'll be, I'll be nonpartisan in this and say, go out and vote. But you're right, Andrew for us, it's kind of a, it's a bit of a some tour, weird combination of thumb twirling and stomach journey, right? Yeah, yeah. No, you're right. That is good pushback. I had not, I feel like I had kind of imbibed the lesson as we're all doing that, but it really is really as kind of a media phenomenon. We are here simply to kill the time. I guess, you know, alongside of many of you today, until we finally start seeing stuff coming in tonight, I should say, by the way, we'll be back then. The bullwork will be live streaming from I believe 7 p.m. until, you know, question mark, question mark, question mark, probably, you know, around midnight at least. And, you know, we'll go till we drop because we have to get up and and keep processing it all tomorrow. But do feel free. Please do at, in fact, come by and hang out with us tonight. We've got people on the ground all over the place. And it's going to be a good show. Donald Trump has been on a tear the last few weeks. He has never rallied harder. He's never done this concentration of events that we've seen from him basically throughout the month of October. Even, I believe this is the case, even at, at, you know, the, the thickest parts of his own presidential campaigns when he himself was on the ballot. He has not quite done this level of drop everything and do a rally or two every single day. But the last couple of days he has finally been back home in DC. It's been doing more media stuff. Did a crazy stint at the reflecting pool yesterday that Sam and I did a video about where he just sort of talked through all his renovations and showed a bunch of, you know, big blown up pictures of, of reflecting pool pipes and algae and, you know, cracks in the granite and all these sorts of things and talked about the triumph large and talked about the golf course, East Potomac that he is renovating, real, real urgent day before the election stuff. We got a little bit more of that this morning because he called into Fox and Friends. And man, this guy just doesn't sound like a guy who is confident. I don't know. I don't know. Like, maybe I'm wrong about that. We're going to play a couple of these clips. Bill, I'm curious to know what you think of them. I believe you haven't heard them yet. So, so I basically feel like Trump is out of gas at this point, especially after this really grueling schedule that he has done. But maybe you feel differently. So let's just start. I mean, this is pretty good. This is Donald Trump's just sort of like bird's eye view of the vibes of the country right now. And it's basically like, what problems? What are y'all talking about? Everything's going great. So let's hear a very short clip from the president here. I mean, given the inflation is solved, you know, well, you saw oil came down $10 a record yesterday dropped $10 and the hormones straight. We have total control of it with the Navy blockade. I mean, everything is going good. Everybody respects this again. We have a great country. Seems pretty good. Everything's fine, right? I mean, what do Republicans have to worry about, Bill? I guess that has to be your closing message when you've controlled both House to Congress and the presidency and exerted that control so aggressively. Interesting. He brought up the war, though. And I don't know, maybe that was probably a question, but he seems to have gone back to it quite a lot the last few days and therefore gas prices and the straight-of-for-roos and the shopping's shippings fine and everything's fine and everyone respects us. I don't know. He knows at some level that the war is what was a key turning point, right? You ate this point in warning shots this morning. And I think before you got to Minneapolis, you said the war probably was the single moment where the numbers just went, started to go to size up the South for Trump and really for the Republicans. I think that must be in his head somewhere, don't you think? Definitely. And there's been a lot of reporting. I mean, he's been, obviously, like I said, just flogging the campaign trail, but when he has had time to turn to actual matters of governance, have actual affairs of state, there's been a lot of reporting that he is thinking a lot about Iran, that he is sort of caught between the idea that he needs to now re-escalate and start pummeling Iran again right after the midterms, once he has finally gotten the monkey off his back of this one point of sort of electoral comeuppance. He's freed up. He's lame duck. It doesn't matter so much. I can't say everybody that everything's completely under control, at least in the immediate term. And then maybe he goes back to hitting Iran, but also he's been making a lot of noises about potentially striking some sort of deal. This is obviously the dilemma that he has been caught on the horns up now for six months. But the interesting thing is that it is very front of mind for him. We could see strikes as early as the next couple of days. Our Arab allies, our Gulf State allies, are bracing for that possibility themselves. We've been reporting in the Wall Street Journal about this. And there's other reasons to think too that Trump's mind is on the Middle East. And one of them is that on this very Fox and Friends call, he broke some news about the U.S. posture toward Israel. So let's Israel, obviously, very involved in getting the United States into this war against Iran in the first place. And has been widely reported remains by far the biggest cheerleader of Trump going back into Iran continuing to strike them after the midterm. So let's hear Trump talking about U.S. military aid to Israel here just this morning on Fox and Friends. Now as far as paying Israel, the BB Netanyan, I have made a deal that we give Israel $4 billion a year. And we made a deal months ago that we're stopping and at their, they're fine with it because, you know, they become a very successful country that are needed. And we won't be paying anymore Israel. So it's just a waste of thing because we've already agreed that by the end of this year, we won't be paying Israel. That will help Israel if they need it. You know, they've been a great ally. And we've been the greatest of all allies to many, many countries. We've been great to many countries. President, you're saying you're not giving them $4 billion worth of weapons? You're not. You're no longer control, Brad. You're no longer control of the Harmo state. Total control of the Harmo state. Should we just do you want to weigh in their bill or should we just play his second elaborating clip first and then we'll play the second. Yeah, let's let's hit that second clip as well. Mr. President, I just want to clarify something you said earlier when it comes to Israel aid is we don't understand we've cut off aid to Israel that we were giving them $4 billion and you're no longer going to be giving them $4 billion. We are giving them $4 billion. We are, but it gets cut off at the end of the year. Why? Why? Because they don't need it, Brad. I mean, I asked them because they don't need it. And because why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like in El Sayat when they don't need it? It's a bad, it's a bad talking point because we say, why don't we give everybody $4 billion those. Israel's our number one. We give them more than anybody else. And they no longer need it. We've been doing it for years. I've been doing it, but Israel is a very thriving country that are needed. If they did need it, I would say keep it going. Seems like a lot to just unveil on Fox and friends on the morning of election day. What do you make of a bill? I mean, it's been talked for a long time about, well, it is real move from being economic and military aid. I think the only military aid a few years ago. And it's been talked about cutting it back or cutting it off. And there been hawks in Israel who have felt too dependent on the US. US is at a lot of leverage over Israel. I think they would we would honestly even so if the aid goes away, but especially because of this military aid. So there's been talk about cutting it off. And then by some people here, both anti-Israel types and a few pro-Israel. talks, but I don't believe it was agreed. Congress has agreed to cut it off. It is in legislation and in appropriations. And I believe there's a memorandum of understanding actually between the U.S. and Israel about the kinds of weapons that will be trans. And I think that goes through another two, three, four years. I came up with a sign. There's a tenure, MOU memorandum of understanding as I recall. Anyway, there's a complex legal and structure for this. And it's in law. And it's very Trump-like to think that he just gets to have a phone call with Bibliotanahu allegedly agreeing that it should be cut off. Incidentally, Bibliotanahu may not be Prime Minister of Israel two years or two months from now, right? So it's all, yes, it is nice of Trump to drop this. And I'm a nice, it's just characteristic, I suppose. And maybe he thinks it vaguely appeals to some of his voters who weren't happy about being too pro-Israel. I'm just certainly sensitive to that. He must hear about that from his various friends and ex-friends and mega types. He must be a little sensitive to that criticism, I think. Were that to the criticism from Abdul-Elsaid, I think, about, we're just a pawn of, he's a pawn of BB and all that. But the war is, you know, what they're just thinking about is to play the earlier clip on him talking about the straight and about and all the reports that we might take military action very, very soon. Trump's somewhere responsible. He's willing, he's capable of doing this kind of thing just to change the topic, don't you think? He's a big topic changer and he's been pretty good at that over his career, you have to say, you have a big midterm, let's assume it's not even a massive tsunami, but just a normal wave and they lose control of both houses still, I think. Pretty certain, actually. And how do you change the topic? Well, you know what? Military action will get on the front pages on Thursday, right? I mean, if he does something tomorrow or Friday or something like that. So yeah, I wonder if he's got other things in mind, too, and other people close to him about, you know, I would have Trump could end up being very, we sort of assume to put it this way. I've, normal years, you get the election returns, you get some late returns from Alaska and other and close congressional races, you stew over them, you've watched to see who's elected to leadership in the new Congress, there's a million things to talk about, right? You don't assume that the income, the administration power does a huge amount in the next three days or two weeks, frankly. I wonder if Trump wants to do a lot, though. And I wonder if that would be interesting to see if he tries to change the topic in that way. Yeah, yeah. I mean, to me, the most interesting thing about this is we've talked plenty of times before about how whatever normal brain function allows a person to talk about things while leaving the subtext unstated. Trump seems to lack that, at least to a great degree. It is very interesting that he brings up Abdul Al-Sahead and just the growing anti-Israel sentiment in America right now. I mean, he doesn't actually mention that there's growing anti-Israel sentiment, but he alludes to that as a political winner for enemies of his, for opponents of his guys like Al-Sahead and says, you know, if Israel doesn't need it, why would we, you know, why would we fall on our sword for Israel, but it's not even really helping them and it's hurting us politically, domestically? Which I do think is, I mean, that's interesting in like a bunch of different ways, right? I mean, and the thing that I keep coming back to think about, and maybe I'm not sure if this is fair or accurate, you can push back, but like, it is so interesting to me thinking back to Biden and how much sort of domestic pain in his own coalition Biden swallowed because he actually had that very old school belief that, you know, Israel is a very staunch, firm good ally to America, America must remain a very staunch, firm good ally to Israel. And all through, you know, the war in Gaza and the growing calls in his own coalition for, for, you know, him to do more terrain in Netanyahu, first of all, Netanyahu was never particularly interested in in giving Biden any kind of domestic cover, unlike what Netanyahu appears to be willing to do for Donald Trump. But second of all, Biden mostly just sucked it up and ate that, right? I mean, there was that one shipment of bombs that he, that he paused during some of the, some of the most controversial and most ferocious bombing of Southern Gaza, I believe. But I don't know, it's just so weird to think back just a few years to how intractable this fight was, how much Israel hawks, how much guff Israel hawks were giving Biden, even for, you know, pausing that one bomb shipment. And now here we have, here we have Trump just casually saying, yeah, you know, it's, it's basically done and over. And I get your point that there are people in Israel who want this to be the case too. No, I think that's really a good point. It does show how much the center of gravity, I guess you'd say, center of debate on Israel has probably moved in a couple of years, maybe due to what Trump has done in the Middle East and due to other things as well. You know, one thing I was just thinking about when I just heard the Abdulazayik clip and it just thought about it for a second, he's speaking, I mean, ever with Trump, I can just speak totally off the top of his head and meeting less, you know, but he's speaking like someone who was briefed by his political people last night, I assume they did talk to him as he flew back from his last rally. So was he, or maybe yes, they was just at the point of all, so he was just hanging around the White House, I guess. He says like someone who assumes LSA, it's going to win, right? I mean, it doesn't make sense to say, this is a good talking point for Abdulazayik, if Abdulazayik is about to lose to microtures on this issue, right? And that's kind of what Haley Steve, this is core complaint about it as LSA, and what Trump's core complaint has been that he's an Islamist energy hottest and all this stuff. So I feel like they must have data for Michigan that would confer it would be go along with public data. So it's not like a huge revelation, but still that LSA, it's a pretty good shape there in Michigan. Yeah, yeah. It is really striking just given how much this exact flashpoint has ignited in that Michigan race. I saw a tweet from a free press reporter, Olivia Ryinggold, last night, who I guess was at an Abdulazayik event, digging him for saying this. This is LSA at last night. It shouldn't be this hard to pay taxes and know that that money is going to be spent on you and your kids instead of dropping bombs on somebody else and their kids. And she says that is the essence of the highly controversial ad that caused Haley Stevens to break with him and spark condemnation from Jewish leaders across America. There's not a lot of distance between that thing that LSA had said that you have folks like the free press condemning and what Trump said this morning. Well, and also don't you think I'll say it's talking I don't know the context. He could well be talking about our dropping bombs on Iran. I mean, that's the most immediate taxpayer use of money to drop bombs. I don't think that so it's very free press if I could say in very Olivia Ryinggold who spent the half the day with Haley Stevens to think why don't I just say it seems that way to me to think this must be anti-Israel because everything I've do a LSA had must have a I mean, he's not pro-Israel looking at me wrong, but must be about Israel. Maybe he just doesn't like the fact that we've been bombing Iran for seven months and are doing it yesterday, I believe, for some of their news about it. I mean, so yeah, so you know, that could be what he's I think I think that's the more natural implication of what of what else they ever saying. So it's very it is in a way therefore revealing that people are taking that to be about issues. Well, it's very stupid. I mean, just honestly, as a pro-Israel person, the pro-Israel community to assume that this whole thing in Michigan is just a up and down referendum in Israel. It's not a whole ton of issues. The most obvious one being Donald Trump and the most obvious one being that in a purple bluish, blue, purplish, blue state that a referendum on Trump is probably going to go to the democratic candidate for said it. And that should be really the Israel talking point that and if Jocelyn Benson runs better than I'll say in a little bit of maybe it's a little too extreme instead of they're now making it into a referendum on Israel. They shouldn't want to do that. I don't think. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to see. I mean, this this is perhaps going to be the single most revealing outcome tonight is what happens in Michigan. I guess I guess what happens in in Texas will be interesting for its own reasons in the Taloriko Paxton race. But if the New York Times pull from did it come yesterday the day before that has LSA at, you know, 10-11 points up. If that's anything close to right, that is seismic in terms of. I don't know, though. For me, it's yeah, seismic for us is about tonight, I think, but I think I guess I've always had the view and this is a little bit. I'm probably too much in this direction. What Brownstein calls a structuralist direction in a wave. The blue states can have good candidates, they can have bad candidates, they can have George Jackson, they can have Abdul Al-Sahead. They could have had Haley Stevens incidentally in McMorrah. I just think blue states are going to both blue in a blue wave election. And therefore, I, now 10 would be a big margin. I mean, six would be more obvious kind of and may will probably be in more like that range, I would guess. But that's why I've always thought those states, you know, are just going to go the way they go when you get a blue wave. You know, and there's a lot of history in these wave elections that you don't lose any of your own states. Then the question becomes, do you pick up the Texas and the Iowa's in the Kansas City of July? Obviously, and that tells you how much of a wave there is. But you're right, I hope the interesting, they're all be interesting. It's going to be, there are a lot of interesting races that each have their own character. You know, I was thinking about that this morning as I just looked over some of them. Some of them have very good candidates for the Democrats. Some of them have, you know, so so candidates, some of them are controversial candidates, same with the Republicans. Then there's which, which you have to add on to the general Trump wave question, right? Moves a couple of points at the end, probably some of these states have their own dynamics. Yeah, pretty interesting. Yeah, yeah. Let's do one more real quick Trump clip on the way out and then we'll then we'll talk what we'll do a little bit of retrospective here here on the morning of election day. But let's just, I mean, the guys out to lunch, I feel like we all know this, but it's worth reminding ourselves every once in a while. Let's just do this Greenland clip from Fox and Friends this morning real fast. And Mr. President, we just want to thank you so much for this. So we're all for that, Europe has been good. Remember, they just gave the United States the greatest gift we were ever given. Do you know what it was? Greenland. What can you say? I mean, I do think don't you think I think it shows how much he's internalized the imperial notion of what success would mean for him at his second term. I mean, remember that Washington Post piece to measure this on our, on his podcast yesterday when I was not with him, that, you know, there's that piece six, seven months ago, so I think I can't remember who interviewed John, maybe he was, he was the post, maybe it was Maggie Habermont, I can't remember. And Trump was going on about being a world historical figure and the most powerful person in the world since Napoleon. I do think, and this is unlike the first term where he was wary of foreign interventions, it was just they got previous presence and trouble, he wanted to look strong, but he didn't want to actually do much. But he is really into the notion that his legacy is a much, you know, a bigger America, an America that's slightly taken over Greenland, that's not what the agreement said, of course, an America that's can just pulverize Iran at one stroke and no problem. It is, it is, I guess maybe that was inevitable with a guy with his psychology. You think I'm that just, you know, the ego wants to go there, you know, there were some constraints on it in the first term, but now it just goes to where it inevitably ends up in these countries. Yeah, yeah. It's the ego combined with a few other things, I think most notably, the lack of really trust in others, I think it's that same interview that you're talking about that had perhaps one of the most revealing lines from Trump that I have read this term where I think it was about him putting his name on things, which is the domestic version of the same thing you're talking about, just the, just the trumpification of the lay of the land of the stuff that's around us, where he's basically, he basically said, you know, why I've got to do this stuff because like, who's going to put my name on things, you know, later, right? I mean, he's not going to leave it up to history to render its judgment on Donald Trump and decide to put Donald Trump on the currency and decide to put Donald Trump on buildings and, and all of these things, he is getting busy doing that now, you know, while he still has the, while he still has his own personal control and his hands on the levers and, and I think that says a lot about him too. It's the same, same kind of impulse. Right. All right. Let's do an ad and we'll talk a little more. So I feel like life insurance is one of those things that you just don't really think about until you get older and then you realize there are a lot of people who depend on you. It's also one of those things that is really easy to put off. You tell yourself you'll figure it out eventually and then eventually never comes. But the reality is that having a plan in place really does matter. 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I've been I've been putting off getting life insurance myself. I should do it. I should do it. I got a lot of kids. The other thing we want to talk about today, we kind of we did the map last week on this show. People might have seen it. We kind of went over what we think is interesting on the Senate map. Here have not been a lot of giant structural changes. I guess there's been the upheaval with with Haley Stevens in Michigan and we've talked plenty about that. God knows. Is there anything else like before we kind of do a little bit of a look back? Anything else about the map that has that has moved in your mind, Bill, just since last week when we talked about this stuff going into election day? No, I mean, I think some of us who are hoping the bottom would really, really, really obviously fall out that hasn't happened. Those who are hoping Republicans coming home would be very visible hasn't really happened either. So it's been pretty steady at a very bad number for Trump and Republicans, but maybe not quite as bad as the most optimistic or pessimistic type of stuff. It could be pretty bad. Anyway, no. The short answer is no. I think it's pretty much what it's been. Actually, the whole race has been a gradually sloping down of the Republican number in the generic ballot, but a pretty steady move, which makes one think that we'll end up sort of where the final polls suggested most of these races. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've been astonished by this all year long. I remember coming out of those off-year elections last year, year ago, you know, basically this week, where Republicans did so poorly across the board, and I remember writing and talking about on our stuff. Okay, he's got a year. He's got a year to sort of stop the bleeding and to write the ship. And every day spent wasting time and not actively re-wooling the voters who you have already begun to lose from your 2024 coalition is a day wasted. And in fact, he didn't even have that many days wasted. It was mostly days spent actively worsening his own position, right? And I just think it might be good to take just a couple of minutes here and kind of walk back through some of that stuff. I did that in morning shots this morning. Obviously, the war has been huge. We've been talking about that all year. That has been the biggest electoral disaster of the president's second term so far, just in terms of shooting himself in the foot. Everybody knows why energy prices are so out of control right now. Everybody knows that the president has done the opposite of what he promised to do, which is to rain prices back in after inflation under Joe Biden. So everybody, you know, that is the single biggest reason why he's losing his coalition. But this morning in morning shots, I didn't write about that. I wrote about something that happened, you know, a couple months before that, which was also quite a big swerve in terms of the president's plans for his term, in terms of his actual policy agenda, which was Minneapolis. It was the, it was the, the ice occupation of Minneapolis in St. Paul. It was all of the, you know, officer on protestor violence that we saw there. It was all of the, the just bad ice behavior that we only know about because of the organization among citizens in Minneapolis, things like the, the Vietnamese man who was dragged out in his underwear in the snow because they thought he was some other guy out of his house. You know, that we would never have really known that that had happened if it weren't for the fact that there were, there were these people on the ground who were just documenting everything. So stuff like that had already been, been, you know, bad optics for the administration. And then of course, what it all culminated in was the, the cop killings of, of René Good and Alex Freddie and the administration tried very hard to spin those according to the same playbook that it had been trying to use for a year at that point because it was not as though the White House was shying away from these sorts of confrontations. They welcomed these confrontations, they, it was all part of a narrative that they wanted to push of them being on the side of law and order, we're the guys who are on the side of the cops and our opponents are on the side of, you know, the rabble, the protesters, the people who, you know, mix it up and, and, and, and you know, run riot in the streets. And they tried to do that with, with Freddie and Good and they failed because it was just impossible. They were clear from, from the various videos that that was not the situation that these were, these were law abiding people who were protesting ICE and, you know, making life annoying for ICE, but, but who were fundamentally killed for, for being there for protesting. And particularly Alex Freddie, who's, who's only provocation in the video of his killing was stepping passively with his, with his arms straight up in the air, stepping between a, an agent who had walked across the street to, to assault a woman, a protester, and, he stepped between the, the officer and the woman and then he was mobbed and then there was a scrum and then he was shot and that was, that was, I, I think that that really did force a kind of retrenchment at least from, from the White House. I mean, they, they got out of Minneapolis and they changed their whole strategy for, for how they were going to go about these things. They were not going to seek out these confrontations with protestors anymore. They were not going to try to focus their enforcement efforts in these blue cities and states where, with a goal of sort of breaking the will of the local populace and breaking the will of local politicians. That's not to say, you know, they've stopped trying to deport people that they've stopped being cruel to migrants or, or any of these sorts of things far from it, but it did force a real change from, from the sort of openly militarized and hostile approach they had been taking so far. So I do think that was a big turning point in where we get to where we are today in terms of the President's domestic agenda. Yeah. In terms of politics too. I mean, I do think they were on the offensive now. We can say that that offensive wasn't working so well based on Virginia and New Jersey and there's also last November, but they were still in January as you say. It was Bavino, it was Kristinaum, it was two seconds after the shooting of both Friday good and Alex Freddie, the most senior White House officials, including Vice President, as I recall, and Stephen Miller and Trump himself pretty quickly too, denouncing these people as terrorists, slandering them, smearing them. I mean, that shows what they thought they could do and what they thought, not just their base water, but they thought they were influenced. I think voters weren't paying that much attention as you say there. The forces of law and order and the protesters are the forces of not just dissent, but of disorder and chaos and anti-Americanism. and so forth. And that was that that narrative went across several different, let's say, areas, though by most dramatically in immigration. And yeah, and they had to back off of that, and then Bovino gets fired. You know, the people I mean, what forgets Bovino was being heralded, by the way, has this total lunatic jackass, you know, basically something close to a neo-Nazi, to be honest, you know, was strutting around in all these cities, you know, and proud of what he in his people were doing. And so I think that was very important. I think it actually just got to combine it with the war. I think we have the one two puns. I think of Hexath at the beginning of the war. They they they were riding high on Venezuela. They thought not just not just that they're like doing this kind of thing, but they thought it would help them to be to sound the way Hexath sounded in those first weeks. And I think in a way that one two puns you're not just what they did in Minneapolis, so what they did in Iran, though that's obviously most important reality matters, most I suppose, but that they thought the rhetoric, the most aggressive and vulgar and demonizing your opponents and celebrating pure force and strength and macho and all this, they thought that would help. And that yeah, that may have been a real moment when when it started not clearly not to help. And the public was like, I don't even think I think these things spill over one to another. Yeah, photos don't make decisions based on the issue of something that most don't have this issue with that issue with that event. It's a general sense. And the sense went from, look, I don't like everything he's doing, but he's strong. And then the enemies are critics are bad to, I don't know, they're kind of one in one after another thing, they're making claims that are kind of obviously false and attacking people, some of whom don't deserve to be quite attacked in this way. And you know, sounding like kind of maniacs, you know, or Hexath, I do feel like there was a pretty important flip there in that January February window. Yeah. And again, again, like I just to reiterate what I said before, this is right on the heels of some pretty stinging electoral losses that they had just suffered. And you could imagine a world almost anywhere else you would imagine a world where the strategists sort of get together and they're like, it is not completely clear that the American people are totally picking up what we're putting down here, right? It's a, we kind of charged into this thing like we had this mandate of heaven where where you know people are going to be running in the streets to support basically anything we would ever do. We were saying like it's it's unconstitutional for any judge to ever try to restrain us on anything because we have the, you know, the will of the vogue in the person of Donald Trump. And like they could have, they could have set aside the hubris. But I think hubris is the word to describe everything you just said. It's the word to describe their posture going into Minneapolis. It's the word to describe their posture going into Iran. It's the word to describe their posture for the third thing we were going to talk about, which is just all of the stuff they have tried to do in court, you know, the these, these various illegal policies, things like the tariffs, things like birthright citizenship that was this summer, stuff that that they never had a prayer of getting through in terms of policy, but that they just kind of crossed their fingers and hoped that having a six three majority of conservatives on the Supreme Court would would ultimately prevail for them. And then not just in terms of the big policy stuff, they got it to the Supreme Court, but also down lower at the level of trying to get various political prosecutions off the ground. They had a lot of trouble last year getting anything to stick to anybody. You know, even though that was a very high top priority for them coming in is to is to get the people on Trump's shit list, get them indicted for really anything, but they never stopped. They did not. It was yet another thing where even though they had already seen how, how basically impossible it was to just manufacture these charges and get them to stick, even though they were already starting to fall apart at the grand jury level to say nothing of, to say nothing of getting any of these things to trials. Despite that fact, and despite again, the fact that Americans clearly did not like the political prosecutions, you're absolutely right. Nobody's really voting. Nobody's not many people are going to the polls and saying, you know, what I care about first and foremost right now is what he tried to do to, you know, James Comey or whoever. But when people were presented with that news, when they encountered that news, they did not like it. They did not like it at all. They repeatedly said this in polls. And so that could have been the kind of thing that they left by the wayside given that there were warning signs electorally that could have been, well, we will not test Americans' patience on this specific thing, but no, but no, they've done exactly the opposite. They have continued to try to resurrect these charges against people like Comey. And we've seen that all year as well. So I don't know. I mean, I just, I do think I had not planned on making this point coming in, but really it is kind of this hubris, this inability to put their finger up in the air and realize how much they were already squandering their coalition. That has marked so much of what Trump has been up to this year, leading to what looks like it's going to be a shellacking tonight. No, I think that's really such an important point. And I hadn't quite focused on it either until we started talking about it. Another way to say it maybe is that it's important everyone's going to assume I think after tonight, whatever happens. It was inevitable. It was always on path to a course to this, you know, from the very beginning. And there's some truth to that one could say, since these were deep psychological aspects of Trump and of his move. But having said that, let's just say JD Vance is president of the United States after Virginia and New Jersey last November. I don't like the JD Vance. I don't adjust them at all and all this. On the end, one can imagine JD Vance deciding, you know, let's be a little more careful on the mass deportation stuff, at least how it looks. Let's not have Vino out there. Let's not, I mean, he, of course, went ahead and slandered to Syria at the wall. So maybe I'll be giving him too much credit, but JD Vance type even isn't charged. You know, let's not do Iran. Let's not a point Todd Blanche to be attorney general when we get rid of Bondi. Let's appoint some very bad, from my point of view, Red State AG, who would do an 80% 90% of the same things in court, but wouldn't look quite as belligerent and wouldn't maybe would stop short once or twice at the most egregious cases. You can imagine an altered history, I do think, that is where they avoid, you know, a real wave. They just have less of this or a normal midterm setback. And I think it is interesting that that is, so that was a choice. I mean, it was, it was a choice in the sense that, it wasn't a choice in the sense that it kept on doing what they were doing. It was a choice as you put, as you correctly said, not to change course at all. Usually administrations do change course after that kind of review. They're also just looking at the polls, right? It's all that you know. And so I don't know, would be as if I'm thinking about administrations. I was closer to and since George W. Bush decided after, you know, 2006, I'm going to keep Rumsfeld and keep the same strategy. Whatever one thinks of the surge of Petraeus and Bob Gates and all that was, he adjusted, right? It would be as if he kept that guy in Louisiana, who was the guy who pushed, there was a good job. They're down there at Hurricane Katrina, you know, so if he just kept him in there instead of letting him leave a week after, you know, Bush embarrassingly said he was doing well and stuff. So, yeah, I feel like they didn't make even those adjustments that might have helped them some electorally, but it is who they are, right? I guess that's what comes down to. No, I think that's it. I mean, the point you made earlier about how yes, like in theory, they could have made different changes. It's kind of funny. Like what could quite mean? Because one could have, you know, but could Donald Trump have? Could Donald Trump have actually, is it actually within his personal nature? You mentioned the psychology to make any choices other than the ones that he has made. And I might say probably not, right? I mean, like this is the game we've all played since 2016, is like, well, Donald Trump doesn't have to do this stuff, except he kind of does. He's a slave to his nature. He's a slave to his own appetites in a really obvious way. And so, it's an interesting parlor game to say, you know, it could have happened differently, but maybe not with this guy in charge. The one other thing that we should bring up in addition to the political prosecutions. And this is kind of flip side of the same thing. And I think it lodges in the same way in voters' minds. It's just the corruption, just the open money making. I mean, there's been so much of that just this year, just this year that we've already almost half forgotten about. I mean, you mentioned Todd Blanche. One of the one of Todd Blanche's big initiatives was going to be that that slush fund to slush fund for J6ers that that was going to be paid out of the U.S. Treasury. There's been all of the self enrichment, you know, the billions of dollars that Donald Trump has made himself out of amazingly ill-gotten financial pursuits, where you have, you know, random Arab cheeks just buying 500 million dollar stakes in his crypto empires, because obviously that's a really good investment for them. And they think it's going to it's going to bring a big return. Does anything you do with affecting his his approach to their countries at all? And, and then I mean, just in the last couple of weeks, we've gotten such amazing stories about like, I mean, we have we have not in our newsletter actually, I feel bad that we have not done justice to this Alina Haba story. Have you been following that little bit? That story is insane. It's truly like it's every single bit of it is crazy, because she she gets married to this, this Turkish, you know, sion of a billionaire family is like this 25 year old billionaire from Turkey. And then she comes in and she accuses Rick Grinnell of stealing a bunch of money from the Kennedy Center and they have this big fight in the Oval Office. And then because of this fight, it comes up, I guess, I don't know if it's Rick Grinnell who wanders this dirt to get back at Alina Haba, or if it just kind of she's back in the spotlight and it kind of becomes known that she has entered into this agreement with the family of this Venezuelan. This is this I believe Italian Venezuelan billionaire. where this guy also wants a pardon from Donald Trump. He's going to pay Alina Habba $50 million in order to kind of be his voice on the inside. He in fact does receive this pardon. This guy got pardoned last year. And but it's only now coming to light that he had retained Habba in that way. Habba, who by the way, if the Trump administration had gotten its way, would be serving as a US attorney right now. I mean, she would be running one of our main federal prosecutorial offices on Donald Trump's behalf. But, and then Donald Trump gets wind of this, gets wind of this $50 million payout. And he's so mad about this. He's so furious. He's so incensed. He thinks it's ridiculous that she's getting $50 million. And he thinks he, so he has two recommendations. One is that the guy just stopped paying her. He's like, I want that guy to know he should just stop paying, you know, Habba despite this contract that they have. And then two, he says that Alina Habba ought to donate all that money that she got to a Trump cause. Probably his presidential library. But really, that money is his by right, you know, 'cause that was money, that was money that was rightfully paid for a pardon. And so he ought to get it, not some random carve out like Alina Habba. And then when he's asked about this in a follow-up interview, he says, well, you know, I'm not necessarily sure. She should pay it. Maybe the family should pay it. He's like, I'm not quite sure what's going on here, but the one thing I do know is somebody ought to be making a big donation to my library. I mean, it's just corruption on corruption, on corruption, just so many layers. And it's like weeks before the midterms. And this is just like the 50th of these stories that we've gotten out of this White House this year. I mean, it really does just blow your mind. It beggars belief. - And it is who he is, as we've been saying. I would say that I was thinking about you simply before. Hard to imagine Trump changed the course, but I would say in the first 73 year old, 72 year old Trump, I don't know whatever he was, I'd say, after Charlottesville, there was a little bit of a, you know, kind of a backing off, right? After the 2018 midterms, you know what, we're working very hard with Jared and Ivanka, working with LePols on criminal justice reform, or various things, a little bit of a kind of toning it down. And a little bit of what he replaces Jim Madness, after he takes a stab at some Trumpy person, as I vaguely recall, he ends up with bark Esper, totally respectable, defense department employee. And you know, I mean, there was this, the 73, 74 year old Trump was more willing to check some of his insum, of his inner impulses, where let others talk him out of going too far with them, or at least only go too far with them on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, and not every single day of the week, you know it. Whereas the 80 year old Trump, with the people who's got, he's got around him, and then the administration is, is really, yeah, it seems just unchecked entirely, right? The, his own internal filter is gone, and the external guard reals are gone. Heck of a combination. - Yeah, yeah. Well gone for now, gone for now. I mean, that's what's gonna be interesting about tonight. So I guess that's as good of a place to leave it as any, right? I mean, it's hopefully, I feel like it's a pretty good show. Thanks Bill, thanks Bill for coming on and talking. Hopefully all of you guys out there enjoyed it. Hopefully you learned something, but here's the good news. Even if you didn't enjoy it, and even if you didn't learn anything, it did succeed in one thing, which is bringing you 43 minutes closer to actual news, actual results that are gonna start coming in, you know, 12-ish hours, no, less than that. Nine-ish hours, eight-ish hours. We're gonna start having some news. We're not gonna get anything out of Alaska until nearly one in the morning, out here on the East Coast, which is just brutal, but, but, you know, it's not that far now, not that far now. So I should tell you all, come on back. We're gonna be here tonight, seven PM, Tim, Sarah, JBL are gonna kick it off right at seven. They're gonna do their show, we're gonna do the next level on Substack YouTube, on Facebook and on Twitch, we are everywhere now. The bulwark will swallow the world, as I like to say. We're all over all these platforms, starting at seven. Bill's gonna be on, I'm gonna be on, Sam's gonna be on, we're gonna have a bunch of people on the ground in a number of these interesting swing states to do on the ground reporting. We're doing like a whole, it's a whole big bulwark media blowout for the midterm elections tonight. It starts at seven, goes until Democrats win everywhere, or we fall asleep, and it'll be a lot of fun. So hopefully we will see you all there. And if we don't see you live, I don't know. I would say you could watch it later. I feel like that'd be a weird one, maybe to watch the next morning, but you never know, you never know, might get a tail on the back end as well, but it'll obviously be up on our platforms after the fact as well. We can leave it there, thanks Bill. Thanks to you all out there for watching. Hope you will subscribe to the channel, subscribe to the feed if you're not already. How else will you be notified at seven PM tonight to get back online? How else will the algorithm learn to put us on more and more screens other than that they seize man? The suits at Google Man, the bull work. Those numbers just keep going up. We better keep giving them more run on the algorithm. So thanks everybody. We'll see you all the night. And good luck, America. I think it's going to be fun. See you.