Trump Spent the Weekend Posting Truly Unhinged Stuff | Morning Shots

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Morning Shots live. It's Tuesday. It's the start of a week. Holidays are strange. We're all sort of scrambled and discombobulated, but we are lurching back into the news cycle with a scant. I believe 56 days left to go until the midterm elections. Am I right about that Bill? We're kind of in the home stretch now here. It's a two-month sprint to judgment day, or at least what we are increasingly confident and hopeful will be a certain kind of political judgment day for the president. He is going about coping with that fact in all kinds of his own special ways. We're going to talk about that in a little bit, Bill. How was your labor day, by the way? Did you -- Did you -- Eight weeks out as you were saying, it's 8-7, that's 56 days, so that's correct from Wednesday. I don't know why you're anti three-day weekends in Tuesday. I think it's good for the week to begin on Tuesday. I was thinking about writing something maybe later this week in the morning shots. Why aren't we going to a four-day week? Isn't that what a civilized country would do? I kind of enjoyed that three-day weekend, frankly, you know? So you're young, and you missed work, you missed going into the office, you know, the kids at home, a little bit tiring, but some of us enjoyed that three-day weekend. Anyway, it's great to be back. It's good to be back. It's a nice labor day weekend, and I hope everyone had a good labor day weekend, and I hope you had a better labor day weekend than Donald Trump, who seems to have spent the whole weekend unhappily posting insanity to social media, which I do think reflects unhappiness on his part, and some knowledge that things are not going well for him. Yeah, well, there's a whistling past the graveyard, I think, going by a little bit here. Let's get into this a little bit. The president, I mean, he has always been a crazy poster on truth social and on Twitter. The arrival of AI has seemingly warped his brain to a certain degree, and certainly his own diminishing political prospects, just keep pushing him further and further into this fantasy land, where he is still the sort of the world striding colossus that he believes himself to be, and that his base believes him to be, and that, you know, world leaders tremble when he walks past them and when his shadow falls on them. In the president's own postings, this is still the way that the world is. So let's just real quick go through a few of these things that he threw up on truth social over the weekend. We can do him in any order. Chris wants to put him on up there. We will talk about him. So this one's not AI. This is a real picture of happier times. The president and Hulk Hogan at the 2020, I believe, the 2024 Madison Square Garden rally right before he won re-election. So, you know, big, strong man likes to arm wrestle professional wrestlers and defeat them. This is the kind of alpha the president is. Let's just move through these quick. These ones, this is a little bit less real, a little less true to life. Donald Trump is not spending his time surveying the bombardment of Iranian vessels from the decks of U.S. aircraft carriers, but that's the sort of image he is trying to project. And this one's more just gross. You know, this is basically what the trade war is all about. This is, of course, Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who he is, I guess, bullying in a hockey match type way, deriding as governor, as is the ongoing barb that Trump considers Canada the 51st state in many respects. And, of course, this trade war is not really about getting anything out of Canada economically, delivering anything for the American people. It's just Donald Trump trying to push somebody around. So, there was a bunch more other than this stuff. The president tweeted out a number of maps that were sort of ego flattering in one way or another. He had new Mexico with Mexico crossed out, and I guess he's pretending we're going to rename that state New America. He actually had seven different AI-generated maps of New America that he sent out in rapid succession over the weekend. He had the Street of Hormuz, which he was labeling in American territory. He had all of North America with the U.S. flag draped over it as though we are going to permanently colonize both Canada and Mexico. He just doesn't, I mean, he doesn't seem to be doing very well, Bill. Yeah, no, I think if a friend of ours was doing this, we would, honestly, call that friend's spouse or parents or loved ones and say, can you get some help for this guy? And we joke about it in a way, and it is Trump being Trump at all that, but it's pretty bad. I mean, it is disturbing. He's president of the United States, and he's at best, he's indulging in extremely distasteful, stupid, foolish, counterproductive activities with these posts. And at worst, he's kind of lost it, right? So, there's something really unhinge about this in a way that I don't think for all the stuff in the first term about his tweets and all, it was nothing like this. Where did you level of unhingeous? Yeah, I just finished reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Rye class night, which dangerous, dangerous thing to do before, you know, for a political reporter or analyst to finish up a book like that and then be like, I've got some comparisons on the brain, but I am really struck. I mean, there's a Hitler in the bunker element to all this stuff, right? I mean, as just as the fantasy worlds that he has always seen in his mind and that he tried extremely hard to will onto reality and actually got further than people gave him any credit that are certainly then a lot of people expected or hoped that he would get in terms of just just bullying the world into the shape that he wanted it to be in. And then, you know, as you lose momentum, as you lose ground and all starts to crash down around your ears, the delusion, the just the level of delusion, the level of grievance and sense of betrayal and all of these things. I mean, I do think there are some parallels, some parallels to be made. Of course, he has two more years of presidency. There's a lot of game left to play. We haven't even had these midterms yet. So maybe I will look back on on this particular live stream as my own moment of maximum hubris and hopefully not, but I don't know. I was struck by that. It's not hubris was as you know, and we both said many times. I mean, he can do an unbelievable amount of damage in the bunker, so to speak, right? He can be half-crazed and his, you know, but the end of the day, Todd Blanche could tell us the Justice Department and Pete Exeth, the Defense Department and Mark Wayne Mullen, DHS, and they are doing things in a court with their own views and in a court with Trump's views and orders. And they're finate both either, but they're loyalists and lackeys and phatics. In some cases, Stephen Miller certainly at the same time. So the amount of damage is being done. Obviously, we go from Springfield, Ohio with the Haitians to what's happening with the military. Fantastic piece over the weekend about how Exeth got rid of extremely well-respected general, general daughter Hugh, and to matter damage is being done throughout the military. Anyway, so the insanity is not inconsistent with doing a huge amount of damage. I looked at this up at one point a few months ago. I was curious. I was also in the kind of world where two analogies, you know, we lost a ton of soldiers, no, Hitler had already lost and he killed a huge number of people. If you want to, this is not a comparison. So Trump accepted in the sense that losing and being somewhat delusional is not inconsistent with doing an unbelievable amount of damage, both to the world, but especially to your own country when when they when he controls the executive ranch of the federal government, which is a powerful set of levers to control. And no one seems to be telling him internally that he's crazy. I don't see much evidence of, you know, general Cain telling him, we can't stop. I mean, they're they're telling them a few things, but not as much as they should be. Anyway, so yes, but he is, but he is, but it's a good sign. I agree in the sense that he clearly knows. Well, it's a question. Does he not? What's your psychological interpretation? Is he in denial and delusional? What does he know that it's kind of falling apart, but this is his putting a brave front on or is that or was that even a distinction without a difference somehow? Well, I look, I hesitate to continue to belabor this Hitler and the bunker analogy. We're in plenty of trouble as it is. When you're in a whole keep on digging, you know? But I mean, I think it's both. I mean, I think I think he kind of toggles. There are moments when he is he is feeling good and feeling like all I need to do is to go out and tell the American people, remind them of my accomplishments, remind them about no tax on tips, you know? Remind them about the one big beautiful bill. And there's a political strategy connected to this, right? He's moving forward. He's spending a ton of money from his pack to make this case to the American people. And I think that that he wouldn't be doing that. He wouldn't be, you know, sending out millions and millions and millions of his own dollars that he could easily you know, push back into more personally enriching sorts of activities if he didn't think there was a puncture's chance. But there are other times when when he is really kind of despairing and really blackpilling. I mean, like I think we talked last week, at least we wrote in morning shots about him, him sharing some really remarkable content from a mega influencer named Matt Banswell basically saying, the hour is late, you know, Republicans need to wake up and they need to let this, like let the scales fall from their eyes and give the American people, you know, the Save America act and a whole laundry list of other sort of random things that Trump is not even really pushing for. Certainly there's no actual legislative path to passing any of the things that they were talking about in this post. But that if not for these things, Republicans would be walking into, you know, a bloodbath in the midterms. So I think it's, I just don't, I mean, it seems to me that he is at such a, such a level of sort of mental and psychological deterioration that there isn't one way to look at his mind. He's bouncing around quite a bit. No, that's well said. I actually don't, I'm not convinced he's going to see spending all that much money here. I mean, let's see, he said he is. I believe an actual expenditure so far are pretty limited. He's got this big convention, which they bet into with money baking operation. charging at point to go and they're charging business types who remain unbelievably complicit and cowardly, you know, huge amounts of money to have sit down with him with vans and so forth. So I still think for Trump, but my only caveat to all this whole discussion, including what I myself wrote, and this morning, Morning Shockers, all about 2026, and how important it is is I still think Trump can live with losing the house. I think he is worried about losing the set up, because which I think is quite possible now, in which he doesn't understand Crimson and his style much more, but it's still all about 2028 for him. He cannot afford to lose the White House. And so for me, that I will be curious to see how much of the $800 million in this pack or whatever it is he spends here in 2026 at the end of the day. And maybe you'll try to save a couple of set of seats, a couple of these states aren't very big. You can spend, you know, 10 million bucks each of them. You don't have to spend hundreds of millions. I am curious to see how much you really invest in 2026 and how much it's all about setting up a narrative where it got stolen from him. It was another rigged election. And you know, we have to double down on everything for 2028, including just basically trying to implement the Save America Act by executive action. All the stuff that he wants to do in 26, it looks like he, the clock might be running out on him. The courts have stepped up some. We'll see if the Supreme Court saves him on a couple of these things. But I just come back always to 2028. Anyway, that's a slight caveat to what we've been saying, what we've both been saying here and also what we wrote. I wrote this morning in one of shots. And obviously, well, but the next 2026 is very important to have excited about that. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to talk a little bit more in just a minute here about this, this big midterm convention that Republicans are having this week in Dallas. That is strategically interesting for a number of different reasons. You know, Trump has really put in his, his most Trump foot forward here, doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on the strategy. We're gonna talk about that, that more in a minute. But before we do that, I also wanted to talk about another way that that this, this sort of just online mania of the presidents is getting translated into physical space. And I mean, genuinely physical space in the DC area, especially as we've really seen this with all these construction projects. I mean, there was that big, that big, was it a New York magazine article over the weekend, Tim, Tim had the author on his podcast to talk about, it was just a really striking illustration of how much the ballroom, the used wing ballroom has come to dominate Trump's psyche. That is starting to move forward thanks to the Supreme Court last week. And the other giant legal and political fight that seems to be shaping up now is over the river in Arlington at the memorial circle, as that was called the memorial circle, that traffic circle right in front of Arlington National Cemetery where Trump wants to build his gigantic, you know, Mando 250 foot triumphant arch. It's been kind of weird. We were in this sort of a Schrodinger's arch construction phase, Doug Berger, the interior secretary said last week that that they're putting shovels in the dirt. It's time to start building this thing. Even though the legal challenges have not really been, you know, sufficiently dealt with yet for them, for them to feel like they're on good legal footing going forward doing so. A couple days after that, the New York Times reports on Friday that the administration is simultaneously telling a court that it's not happening, that all they're doing is some, you know, very preliminary excavation style work in order to comply with, you know, several of the preliminary red tape type steps before they can get this thing going. So the administration is speaking out of both sides of its mouth on this one. Bill, can you just kind of talk to us a little bit about the state of this political fight and how this is becoming also a locus of opposition to the president's building agenda? Yes, so there's been opposition in the courts. There's been opposition in Congress, which quite explicitly has legislated decades ago on its responsibility for these kinds of major decisions on federal land. The White House thing, Trump has a little bit of an argument that other people have renovated parts of the White House as pretty different from building this massive ballroom, you know, fixing up the office space or whatever in the West Wing, what other presidents have done, but changing the East Wing a little bit. But here, this is explicitly spaced at Congress, you know, if you look at all the great memorials, Congress's past legislation to authorizing the Congress's appropriated money for them, you know, whether or so. This is, I think Congress has, and people in Congress are picking up in opposition. We'll see if any Republicans break off. We'll see what the new Congress does with this Democratic House and certainly a Democratic Senate and does a force try to pass legislation and force Trump to veto it. So it is striking. I just saw the, well, on the DC thing, it is striking. I think it fits in with what you're saying earlier. Trump's not a DC guy. He never cared much about DC. In the first term, he cares more about Mar-a-Lago. So, of course, one can tell. In the first term, we got out of DC as much as possible. The second term it shows how different it is, really, right? That he has that kind of European dictator or Latin American dictator mode of thinking. The capital is mine. I'm building monuments to myself in the capital. As you say, it's the real physical equivalent of what he's doing online with all the ridiculous posts and fantasies, you know, with this is Ben Terrace's piece in New York magazine, which Tim talked to about Friday, I guess it was historic. So that's worth also looking at. But it shows how much he's preoccupied by that. As you say, it's sort of both crazy. On the other hand, it's also going to destroy Lumeau for Arlington Cemetery at a totally unfitting and, I think, damaging and really disgraceful way. Home of the Brave, which I'm a little bit involved with, joined with votefacts. And it's wilders to put up this video this morning, actually, with people, including a ghost or mother whose son is buried in Arlington and General Paul Eaton, whose father, I didn't realize this, had been killed in Vietnam and is buried in Arlington about how offended they are by it all. I think that could become a big issue. I feel like the White House, the ballroom already is a pretty big issue, you know, screwed up their legislation for a while. But I think the arch, if you're not from Washington or don't have visited here much, it's a little hard to maybe appreciate and see. But it's not on the wall exactly. But it interrupts the flow from Lincoln Memorial to Arlington. And above all, Lumeau will Lumeau for Arlington, literally put parts of it in the shade. People will be up there on this thingy intense to have up there a kind of a viewing platform, sort of to be looking down at Arlington when there are burials going on. I mean, it's pretty grotesque. And it's all, of course, just trumps idiotic vanity. One last point is, well, I'm going out about this, but I am struck by this too. Doug Bergham, who you mentioned, are fine. What is the interior secretary, I guess? That's right. Was quoted in that piece over the weekend. He also was like, I think one of his talking points was 70 other countries have imperial arches. So we should have one. I mean, I don't know how many of those countries are actually liberal democracies or how many of them, the arches were built in the non-liberal democratic periods of these countries, like Napoleon and getting the real arches, it's getting inspiration for that in France and so forth. But as he's been in the old days, we were all for American exceptionalism. I mean, we conservatives were sort of interested in it, and Trump pretended to be for the America first. We're not supposed to be like 70 other countries. Are we? Are we supposed to be like proud that we don't have certain things they have and do have certain things they don't have, like 250 years of constitutional republican democracy? And suddenly it's like, well, I mean, France or North Korea or Russia has these massive imperial arches. We have to have it too. I think it does show how much it's all become whatever sort of ideological germ there was there once, you know, in the whole America first thing and the America thing. It's just collapsed and yielded to Trump's megalomaniate at this point. Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. I mean, you're 100% right about that. You mentioned the home of the brave video. Let's just play a little bit of that so people can can see what you're talking about here. Paul Lee, Major General United States Army retired behind me, Arlington National Cemetery, where thousands of great Americans have their final rest. One of them is my father killed an action over the Ho Chi Minh Trail at night on 12 January 1969. What the Trump administration proposes is to plant a 250 foot tall arch right here to break the sight line between the Lincoln Memorial and the cemetery, which is entirely inappropriate and borders on sacrilege to the men and women buried behind me. I'm not the only one upset about this. I'm the proud ghost, our mother of First Lieutenant Ken Ballard. He was killed in the Iraq war. Ken is buried at Arlington. So for me, Arlington has been a nice quiet place. This proposal by this administration doesn't bear well with me. There will be an observation deck. We don't need tourists overlooking funerals. I'm just appalled. In front of me is the Lincoln Memorial Memorial Bridge Memorial Circle, an Arlington National Cemetery behind me. Memorial, the use of that word is not an accident. I'm Charles Burnham. I'm the founding president and CEO of the Cultural Landscape and Revolution. You get the idea. I mean, this is really becoming an actual political controversy for the president. I mean, I think he wants to make this a fade of compley. And I think it is important that it become controversial. Much like the ballroom already has. Much like the reflecting pool as silly as that was. Was. I mean, this is what the president is choosing to focus his time on. It is totally of a piece with basically everything else that he's doing. And so far as it is ultimately a temple to his own vanity and ultimately a testament to his own willingness to sweep aside any barriers that might exist because insofar as they stand between what between him and what he wants, they must be wrong headed silly red tape, you know. pointless stuff that should just be ignored. Absolutely. Okay. Well, such far, thus far, the monuments, let's play a quick add and then we'll talk about the midterms convention. This message is sponsored by Quince and I am genuinely excited to talk about Quince because I have been shopping at Quince for years since long before they were a sponsor. 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Donald Trump is convinced that Republicans can only win if he is on the ballot. He is begging. He's going to campaign rallies and begging voters who show up to kind of close their eyes and pretend they're voting for him when they pull the lever for whatever Trump enabling lawmaker they're actually voting for in these elections. I guess that's the basic idea of this Dallas convention is that it's all Trump all the time and trying to build stronger and stronger ties between Donald Trump and the Republicans on the ballot everywhere in the country, whether those Republicans on the ballot want that or not. What are you interested in watching for as the GOP takes Dallas this week, Bill? Yeah, it really is. Trump will lose. I mean, last week we were a little confused somewhere where we were editing something in morning shots, and it was a little unclear from what we were seeing whether Trump was speaking Wednesday night or Thursday night or the first night or the second night. And it turns out the reason we were slightly confused is that he's decided to speak on both nights. What are he going to speak? What is called the keynote for Vance who got originally was like in the normal conventions, Vance would speak the first night the Wednesday night and Trump the Thursday night. Now, Vance is speaking Wednesday night, I think still, or maybe he's moved to Thursday night or Trump is all speak anyway, Trump is going to dominate totally dominate that's what and then a whole bunch of candidates get to speak for five minutes of being gourd, you know, earlier on. So I don't know, you know, that's that's great. He's there's new polling with him at 32% and he's going to make it all about himself. My understanding right now is that yes, Trump is giving the keynote on Wednesday, Vance is giving the keynote on Thursday, which would ordinarily be kind of like an interesting pairing, but then Trump is going to return to the stage after the keynote. And I don't know what it's what he's going to do is he going to give Vance notes. Is this like a like a live audition sort of American Idol America's got talent sort of fun. He won't speak very much Andrea. I mean, he'll let Vance have this center stage on the on the closing that did you think he's not going to go on for 20, 30, 40, 50 minutes off the cuff, you know, with all of his grievances and all of his make them idea, I think it's going to be quite a scene. So anyway, it's all about Trump. I mean, literally, well, anyone pay attention to a single other speech. I mean, you could have a midterm where you highlighted some of your better candidates and choose the donors, right? So explain why Roger Marshall just needs to be reelected in Kansas or something, but and then I guess a fair number, I think Joe Purtica will already ignore this for us to someone. I think it's show a lot of the Republican incumbents at least aren't going, right? I mean, finding excuses, not very busy that week, those couple of days, or you know, yeah. Anyway, what are you looking for there? The phrase scheduling conflicts has been thrown around a hilarious amount, which is just, I mean, it's so funny because Congress is not doing a thing. I mean, they're done, right? They're they're they're they're out of here. They're literally out of this. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. They're they're they're they're going to be gone. There's almost nothing on the agenda. They got their spending bill through, and that's pretty much the only thing that needed to happen. The president may continue to shout the words, save America act, but there's not there's nothing they need to be here for here in Washington DC for. The only thing that they need to be doing is being out campaigning campaigning, and if they thought that being at the midterm convention would be an asset to that campaigning, they would put off, you know, whatever little, you know, meet and greet elbow grease kiss a baby type events, they are doing back in their own district slash states, and they would go and, you know, shake Trump's hand and and throw up the victory sign at the midterm convention in Dallas, but a lot of these guys are not doing that. Yeah. I don't know. I think it will be interesting to see because when when when I when I heard you know Trump's giving a Wednesday keynote, I kind of thought, well, maybe this will actually be the sort of thing where he consents to be stage managed a bit. I thought that the closest comparison would probably be all of the July fourth festivities. I remember he got up there. It was kind of a similar situation where there's like a big long run of highly choreographed programming where where it's, you know, random American citizens with inspiring stories that tie into whatever their political policies are where they're basically saying reelect us and more Americans will get to have XYZ happen. Stuff like that and then eventually a speech from the president and on the fourth of July on the mall Trump speech was extremely stage managed in certain respects. He went off on a couple little tangents here and there. But for the most part, he really did stick to a script and I kind of assumed maybe that's what this would be like on the Wednesday speech, you know, he talks about the one big beautiful bill. He talks about no tax on tips, no tax on social security, all these sorts of things. He talks about the tariffs who knows it would be amusing and I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that we get that on Wednesday and then on Thursday it's the it's the Mr. Hyde speech after Vance, you know, he comes up and he shoots from the hip and who the heck knows where he goes with that one. We're going to have to find out we're going to have to wait and see. We should not gloss over the fact that this is probably bad for Republicans this there's a reason people don't do these conference these conventions in the midterm it's actually kind of hard to do a one size fits all narrative when when there isn't a presidential contest when it's when it's it really is all these individual races that in theory will will will turn on the individual candidates. The Democrats want to make all of these races about Donald Trump that's been their strategy forever the Republicans did not have to lean into this very hard is always going to be that way to a certain extent because people kind of know that the Trump game is the game that's in town right now and the job of Congress is to either facilitate it or oppose it depending which side you're on. But narratively the president did not have to lean this hard into you bear hugging the entire party bear hugging all these individual candidates and it's just going to be interesting to see I mean the Democrats themselves are also going to have the spotlight very focused on the Republican convention this week they're going to be down in Dallas they're going to be counter programming a lot of the talk. One of them is right i'm not sure it's the president i'm not sure Trump is correct if this is good for for his for his parties re-election chances but but it is also very funny that as you mentioned he is he is making them all pay to come to come in there. Yeah I wonder what the actual financial rate was are because so much live lift up that rock and so would be hard to find out how much money really where's all this money going so going to the RNC is going to the Trump pack you know but anyway it will be yeah I'll be interesting see what he thinks the message is it was to say it'll be somewhat sage managed so presumably Tony for freezo and all the pros so to speak you know we'll excuse you I also have some say about what Trump says and then he'll of course have his own. They've answered away would be a little better window I suppose into what the official Republican establishment thinks should be said nice it will be the usual stuff about I don't know how horrible the Democrats are in tax on immigrants transgender people and stuff like that there's usually what percentage of something that advances speeches actually about the administration's accomplishments so how much of it is about attacking a cartoon version of you know the most left wing Democrats will hear a lot about the word Abdul El Said a lot I believe when they say there's there right it'll be like boy Cooper John all John Ossoff everyone else was shared round running everyone running in all these different states Hamilton the veterans running out in the upper round the country's Democrats they won't be mentioned we'll hear a lot about the Michigan Senate race I suppose yeah yeah yeah well the good news is that Donald Trump has promised there will be quote lots of great entertainment and referred to it as quote a rally like none other. Both of which are, I think, basically carbon copies of things he said about the America rally on the national mall at the 250th anniversary, which again, a little bit of a snoozer, very good fireworks show. I don't think we're going to get the fireworks in Dallas to the same extent, at least maybe a few people have saved some bottle rockets and they'll pop them off. Who knows? Yeah, the Trump Vance thing is interesting. Vance will not inherit Trump's coalition. Nobody could. He's Sui generis. He is one of one in terms of having put this thing together around himself and his own personal pathologies and his own weird charisma and the parasocial relationship between him and people who used to watch the apprentice and who see him as captain business and all these sorts of things. Jay Vance, nobody could inherit it in a sort of one of one way and JD Vance certainly is not the most capable politician even among the people who could theoretically try, but he is probably as good of an heir apparent as they've got and it will be interesting whether this is sort of seen as a dress rehearsal for the handoff to JD. Then, again, putting him on the stage day two ahead of what is likely to be a catastrophic midterm. There may be an element of they expect one of us in the wreckage brother, you know, kind of setting him up as a fall guy if and when things go badly. So, who knows? Who knows? Anything else on the midterm convention before we sign off, Bill? No, I think it will be interesting. And then, eight weeks ago, if I am voting against some states, obviously in two or three weeks, I think the mailing up ballots today, maybe in North Carolina or some place. So, there's a couple of very interesting things between court case, I think, on the proposal server and stuff, which can resolve presumably the next week or two. So, it's going to be, it's going to be a lively and interesting. I determined I discussed whether our history of involvement in wave elections on the Republican side. As a Republican operative, when Republicans lost badly in '06, we got to look back at '94, whatever I think about it now, was on the right, the winning side of that wave. I would just say, waves, they are waves, and so they're sort of predictable once they're building. You kind of can do the math and say, well, I've received this less than a Republican plus eight or Republican plus ten, conceivable, is at risk now, you know? But they also go, they break differently at the end of different states, and some people get surprised, and in other places, they hold on. And that's where I do think the playing, I guess my instinct is the playing field is expanded more even than people realize, so that the Kansas system, the world, but even concealing South Dakota, I got a text from someone who's very savvy in Idaho, I know slightly, saying, you know what, no one's paying attention to the Idaho, which was a Republican plus 30 seat for Trump in '24, but the Democrats have yielded the field to an independent, it was a very impressive veteran and moderate, you know, independent candidate. The Republican is Jim Rish, who's 80, I didn't realize this, I don't know, he's quite old. And so if you think voters are a little sick of old Republicans who just don't make a dent and go along with Trump and are open to an independent veteran, I mean, that's probably a state where the better, we'll get 45, I suppose, to the usual Democratic 35, but probably a little short, but not necessarily. So I do think the playing field expands a lot. It also incidentally could go the other way in some state like Michigan. So I think there's more in play than I would have expected, actually, at this point. Yeah, yeah. That independent strategy is interesting. It kind of seems like, you know, we've been building toward this, there have been a number of trial balloons of this strategy. It never is quite seem to work, but when you get a blue enough wave election and maybe that, maybe suddenly you are talking about the sort of thing where now that we've run this strategy a few times, we have it in the playbook and actually you do, you do see a payoff here. I'm not going to make any predictions about that sort of thing because I'd be way over my skis and also I'd feel really dumb to sort of have on the record that our Republicans going to lose in Idaho. If and when that doesn't happen, it's like, wow, you are really, you are really, you know, mainlining the Hopium there in a lot of ways. But, you know, people should keep their heads on a swivel. It's really blue out there. So it's going to be interesting. And you mentioned that Supreme Court ruling. That's something obviously we have been covering very closely for a number of weeks now. I mean, it's it is the one, I would say probably the biggest curveball about the elections, at least that we know of so far. There's plenty of stuff that Trump could actually do as the midterms arrive to cause chaos. Certainly there's a lot he can and probably will do to so doubt about the outcome after the fact. But as far as, you know, predictable monkey business that's happening right now, this stuff that's been happening at the Postal Service is, you know, the the alpha and the omega of that, I think in a lot of ways. And I and and we are going to get some news almost certainly out of the court in the next couple of weeks. So look forward to that. We will be all over it when it happens. We'll be covering this midterms convention this week. We may be on the ground. This is still a little bit unclear. Sunny Bunch and I, both he lives in Dallas. Of course, you know, he and I have have our credential applications in. The RNC's been a little bit cagey about it. They accidentally copied us on some emails suggesting that that maybe the press people at the RNC didn't want us to get credentials. But then we got some emails suggesting maybe we were getting credentials. So it's been a whole internal drama that you people don't really care about or need to hear about. But the point is we may be on the ground for the convention. We may not, but we will certainly be covering it on video and in morning shots. So that's probably a good place to leave it. You know, look out for that kind of stuff. We'll be all around. And of course, we'll be back here for morning shots live next Tuesday. One other piece of bookkeeping that I had. This is kind of a fun announcement. Exciting news about one of our upcoming live shows. Pete Buttigieg will be joining us in Charlotte on Sunday, October 18th for a good fight tour. You can get your tickets now at the bullwork.com/events. It's interesting. It's interesting. Charlotte is the one he chooses. He's not so interested in going to Georgia or North Carolina, South Carolina. He was the Bullwork South Carolina show. That's interesting. That's food for thought. Get your tickets now at the bullwork.com/events. If you can't make it to Charlotte, we will also be in Columbia, South Carolina on October 16th and Atlanta, Georgia on the 20th, Atlanta, Georgia. That's in our view. That's the show Bill and I are going to be out. That's the one we're at. That's the one. That's the honest. Pete's a good number two. I mean, it's good that he's doing the second tier event and we'll do the top tier event. The No Kings, the final No Kings before the midterm, it's going to be October 17th. They announced that this morning. I wrote about seven warning shots. So yeah, it could be a pretty interesting bunch of days there, right? It'd be fun to be on the road. Actually, we just need to be on the road a little bit and see what's going on in different parts of the country with the different No Kings efforts, which they intelligently, I think, have targeted on getting this is not about a protest as as as are 11 11 the the Oregon made by the main organizer of one of the main organizers set. This is about getting people to vote, getting people to vote early, making sure they understand how and where they can vote, making sure they're ready if they vote attempts to vote gets suppressed. So I give them a lot of credit. They've been pretty, I think, the whole No Kings group that's been chewed all along and this seems like a teller to think to do two weeks before the election. Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. I just realized I have egg on my face that whole riff I just did. I got Charlotte and Columbia mixed up Charlottes in North Carolina. So the thing I said makes no sense. Everybody point and laugh at me. It's not like I was a campaign. I was two fly years. I thought Charlotte, I kind of know. I know where Charlotte is. I talk one term, but as I said, I was like, wait a minute. Yeah, I know. It's very close. It's close to the border. Yeah, yeah. Well, he will be in North Carolina. So, so read nothing into that North Carolina. Not an extremely important presidential state, but you never know. He's heading out east, you know, but maybe he got confused too. I'm from Iowa. You know, he's from Indiana. He's living in Michigan. Maybe he made the same mistake. I don't think so. Anyway, I'm going to stop talking. Come to the Bullwork live shows. We're going to have fun. I will promise to have my cities sorted out by the time I get to Atlanta. Thanks, everybody, for watching. Hope you will subscribe to the Bullwork, by the way. I don't think I said that early on, but you can't say it enough. We're trying to get to two million subscribers people. And it's not a lot of labor. You just click that one button down under our faces. The one that says subscribe on it. And then you will, you'll see us more and more in your feeds. And I don't know why you wouldn't want that. We're fun. We're good to hang out with. You know, we're good content. We're informative. You know, what's not to love? All right, I'm actually going to stop talking now. Thanks, Bill. And we'll see you all next time.