Michael Weiss: The Clown Car at the Pentagon

0:00Hello and welcome to Bullwork Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. We've got a double header for you today in segment two. I've noticed a little bit of a gap in the political commentary at Marketplace. The Democratic consultants that get called to go on TV and talk about politics are people from the Clinton Bush Obama era. We love them all. A lot of experience, a lot of judgment, you know, comes from successful presidential campaigns. But getting along the tooth, a lot of things are changing in politics these days. And then the younger people who talk about Democratic politics are mostly like 23-year-old Instagram influencers. And we honor Instagram influencing. That's a noble profession. It's a noble pursuit. But you know, it isn't like a lot of experience in the field. And so between now and the midterms, once a week, I'm going to bring somebody on who's

1:02like actually doing campaigns in the Trump era on the Democratic side and chat with them. And so we're bringing on my old friend, Radarika Appleweight in segment two. She's unbelievable. Please stick around for that. But first, I've got an exciting announcement. He's an old friend. He writes at Foreign Office on Substack. But I'm pumped to reveal to you right now that he's the co-host of a new Bullwork podcast reporter and the spy with Mark Polymeropoulos, which is going to be launching soon. It's Michael Weiss, we're officially colleagues and buddies and life partners now. Common law marriage has been sanctified. That makes Mark my side piece, which is I think what his wife already calls me. So that sounds right. That sounds right. The great news is now that you're officially in the fold. We'll have the budget to get like a high quality blackout blanket for the birds. The birds are covered in the blanket. So my daughter decided these are her pets, but they're moving into our bedroom. So I now have dog, fish and birds surrounding me at all time. In the

2:06house. In the house. Okay. We might have to get you in office. We'll see how well the podcast does in the radio. Highfalutin already. Okay. Cool. Do you want to give people for you to the news? What's the what's the pitch? What's the elevator pitch? The podcast. Yeah. So basically Mark and I have been friends and he's been a source for my reporting for a long time. And we talk all the time about the state of the world, national security, spy stuff, or and I thought it would be fun to click record on some of these conversations just because he brings it perspective that's obviously different from my own. But parallel to my own. I mean, doing the work of journalism, I liken it to being a case officer, right? You get to know people, you cultivate them, you get them to tell you things that they otherwise might not want to say. And you advance an agenda. In my case, what's in the public interest in his case? National security and the great state of America and making it great again or keeping it great. I don't even know what what stage we're in now. But anyway, yeah, it's a fun one. The way I see it is akin to there was a great conversation

3:12between John LaCouray and Ben McIntyre and the New York Times at the height of like the Trump Russia saga. I thought it was the best thing I'd read about it. I'm like, that's what I want to do, right? A historian, reporter, talking to a practitioner, and it's sort of like talking shop, but as I say, from slightly different perspectives. I love it. All right. It's going to have its own feed soon. I'll make sure to announce that for everybody so I can subscribe to it. In the meantime, there's going to be some rogue YouTube episodes, but it will be up this fall. I'm pumped. All right, to the news. Dan Driskel, Army Secretary, has resigned. This is interesting for a couple of reasons. I don't know. Not usually covering kind of like a random low would be HR moves inside the military on this podcast, right? But this is relevant for a lot of political reasons. He's been a foil of Pegseth for a while. He's an old friend of JD Vance. There's been kind of a lot. He's been the center of a lot of the turmoil behind the scenes in the White House. According to the

4:12Atlantic, when he went to inform Trump that he was leaving, Trump was surprised to hear how many generals and other top officers had been fired, pushed out or passed over for promotion under Pegseth. Not surprising. He's pretty focused on the marble in the new ballroom, not on this sort of material. The army now has no secretary, no deputy under secretary, no chief of staff, no Senate confirmed top general, no confirmed army general and charge of operations, or confirmed commander of army troops in Europe. That's right. Boy. And we're in a state of war with Iran. So no big you there. I mean, there's a lot of things to say about this. Number one, the scuttlebutt is, this has been long in the making and Driscoll is most likely to be part of, if not leading JD Vance 2028. So expect to see him involved in the vice president's presidential campaign soon. They're best friends. They went to Yale Law School together. Driscoll seemed to be pretty well

5:13regarded though, in spite of his attachment to JD Vance. The thing that impressed me about him is remember he was sent to Kiev several months ago to kind of deliver this ultimatum to Zalinsky and the Ukrainians, you know, signed on the dotted line. We got to wrap this war up, basically shaking them down, make concessions. He came away favorably disposed toward the Ukrainians because he's a military tech guy. He's into drones. He's into 21st century warfare. He wants to modernize the state of the US military and the Ukrainians have a lot of know-how and sophisticated tools with which to do that. So he kind of came back more pro-Ukraine than I think he went in. There's a missing piece to this story. I've read all the reports about this and, you know, great stuff in the Atlantic and great stuff in the Wall Street Journal. But there's a guy who keeps not coming up with respect to all of the shenanigans going on at DOD. Like Pete Hegseth is, we've talked about him on the show. Everybody knows him. He's probably the one of the most reviled secretaries of defense since Rumsfeld, maybe even more so than Rumsfeld. Nobody talks about

6:21his chief of staff, a guy called Ricky Berea or Rasputin Ricky as DOD sources have dubbed him. Ricky Berea was a US Marine. He retired at the level of colonel even though he didn't do the three years of service. Signed his own papers, by the way. This was a guy who was not supposed to be chief of staff, not liked by Susie Wiles, not liked by Carolyn Leavitt, not liked by anybody in the White House, but somehow has managed to jipetto himself into a position of power. And essentially, from what I'm given to believe, he's kind of controlling Pete Hegseth. There's a report in the near-course they went on some clandestine whiskey soil when Hegseth was living in Pentegon City he was in disguise. He's not supposed to be drinking at all because Trump kind of read in the riot act. If I catch you, the boo was around here and so he's doing this on his side. Was that a real thing where they were actually drinking in disguise or were they pretending to? We don't know, but why were they sneaking out? Why would you pretend to sneak out and not

7:26go on some kind of like boys night? I don't know. Maybe they don't drink much about Ricky Berea. And I don't really believe in a physiognomy. Where you judge somebody based on the shape of their face and skull. But he's got a bad one. He's got a concerning one. He's got an untrustworthy face. Yes. But the news item here is you remember signal gate? Of course. When Hegseth was basically putting in classified about bombing the Houthis in Yemen into signal and Wipsy Daisy, Mike Walsh had added Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic to that chat. Ricky Berea was the guy who was putting in Pete Hegseth's messages into signal. And he thought he was going to be fired as a result of that. And instead he climbed over all the corpses including of Mike Walsh and slotted himself in his chief of staff. Failed a polygraph, by the way, which is slightly concerning. The US Air Force is the one that does counterintelligence for the military at large or the Pentagon rather. And somehow he's in this position of great influence and power. And from what I understand, you know, a lot of the reporting that Driscoel is

8:31at odds with Lenief, the general. He's acting chief of staff just to be clear. I don't acting as important because I never like to give Rick Grinnell his fake title of national security advice. He's acting for a national security advisor. But like, I think, well, actually that role doesn't even exist. I think in this administration. But long story short, what I was told this morning is, you know, Driscoel wanted the hell out of DOD because of Berea and the kind of clown car that's being run there. And his sort of, I use Rasputin, right? But his kind of weird control over the secretary of defense. So I would encourage people to dig into that story more. We don't, the fact that we don't hear about him at all is interesting. The people know that Ricky was the one that typed it into signal. Is that been reported? No. I'm reporting it now on your podcast. Wow. Confirmed by two DOD sources, by the way. So it's the kind of, it's one of these things that, you know, a lot of people know this stuff, but it doesn't get said or put out there. And I think

9:37once it is, people will come and confirm it even more. He's a Democrat too, which is bizarre because how does Donald Trump let somebody like this be acting chief of staff to the secretary of war, Mr. Anti-DI, Anti-Woke, Macho, Macho Man, Pete Hegsett. It's a very strange state of affairs going on there. But anyway, this is the reason you have a Pentagon press corps, you know, that usually, or did, that don't consist of influencers and people who used to be on the Russian state payroll like Tim Poole. You have actual journalists digging into stuff like this. Yeah, at least 20 generals admirals and civilian defense leaders have been fired or left their jobs since ex-elpocane defense secretary. Correct. Including the Army Navy and Air Forces, highest ranking officers, leaders of key units. I like, this is crazy. Like you got a weekend talk show host and Ricky Berea put in emojis into signal chat with Jeffrey Goldberg, like kind of running things. Yep. While we're in multiple, multiple conflicts. We're in multiple conflicts and possibly

10:40getting into new ones in future. So yeah, I know. I mean, it's, it's a total shit show. What can I say? We do have a replacement over at the Navy. So if you're concerned about what's happening on the seas, I've got bad news for you. You should be, you should be even more concerned. A man named Hung Cao. Hung for secretary is being nominated today. I encountered hung. I've encountered several hungs, but I've encountered hung. I was waiting for, I mean, if you didn't, if you did walk through the door, I was going to have a new set of things. I had to do it. You know, we've got, we've got some fans out there that just that you want me to sneak out and encountered him not in that way. And I got to tell you, he is a weird dude. He's one weird fella. And he ran for Congress and Senate, failed Senate campaign. Of course, those campaigns, he said we don't need NATO called NATO officials in Europe lazy. So they don't do shit. A lot of conspiracy theories about the elections. Obviously, he was big on freeing the insurrectionists. He's very concerned about witchcraft and the

11:46wicked community. He's Vietnamese, but he said he's African-Americans. He lived in Africa. I don't know, man. The dude is, it's not, we're not doing our best. Yeah, not the best in the brightest, huh? Yeah. I mean, look, you know, you, you tick the boxes, you play to the kind of conspiratorial base you don't have to have the qualifications. In fact, it behooves you to kank the people who do generals who've earned their stars, right? But are telling you what civilian leadership needs to be told? Like, we don't have the capacity to do the things you want to do. We're running low on critical munitions to fight a war against Iran, which is now unfortunately impacting other wars going on, such as the one in Ukraine. There's a float of Brian Mast, his army secretary. I don't know. This is a leak. That is a congressman from Florida. I did a media training forum once back in the old days when I was a Republican. He was a dick and a crazy person then and he's gotten worse since I guess he was where a volunteer for the IDF was wearing around

12:51an IDF uniform on the floor of Congress as a American representative. This is where the, I don't know if we can read the room given the current political environment, by the way. We'll see if he gets picked. We know that Hong Kong is in fact. I was asking hurtling about this this morning. He's like, you know, we've had some good army and Navy secretaries. We've had some mediocre ones. We haven't really had total clowns in those roles, but we're putting on the clown nose right now. Yeah. I think that's accurate. So okay. Meanwhile over at the Pentagon, when there are a lot of people in the building doing the works, you know, it's pretty easy to slip things through the cracks, such as this story from pro-publica. Last year, a $620 million alone was announced to a small North Carolina startup to do some military contracting. They start up with linked to Donald Trump Jr. There were some reports that, you know, the possibly this was cronyism, obviously, just another example of Trump corruption. That was

13:51getting batted down by the Department of Defense. Pro-publica has done some interviews and reviewed some defense program records and they show that the loan to the firm, the request for this loan was made by Peter Navarro. White House advisor. They're looking jacked at a prison according to Donald Jr. Right? Yeah. So again, all this stuff starts to pile up. Right? We just look at what's happening in the defense department. You have like Higgs Seth maybe being under the spell of his unqualified, resputant, qualified military leaders being pushed out contracts being handed out to Don Jr. on Peter Navarro's wreck. And 1789, what is the private equity or venture capital firm that he runs with Sky's name's O'Mear Malik, who's fundraising for JD Vance in the Hamptons or was this summer raised like $5 million for the RNC? Yeah, no, look, I mean, it's corruption all the way down, which is why after the midterms, everything is going to be gummed up because the Democrats are

14:52just going to have hearings into, you know, the violation of the emoluments clause, just payola and cronism, the cushioners caching in on things, with cough, what kind of side action is he doing either with the Russians or with Russia-aligned countries? And as well, they should. I mean, you know, this Pentagon deal is basically US taxpayer money going to enrich the children of the president of the United States, right? Again, again. You know the interesting thing too, though, about Don Jr., I mean, you got to love the grift here. So he's one of the most outspoken anti-Ukraine people in the president's orbit, right? To announce Salinsky is a dictator and all that stuff on social media. He's an investor, along with his brother who looks developmentally disabled, but that's another story. In a company called Power Us, it's a Florida-based drone company. And guess who, what? Power Us is looking to invest in. Ukrainian drone technology. They want to buy

15:56licenses, they want to acquire the kit that the Ukrainians are manufacturing. So it's okay to cash in or capitalize on this country that you despise and would have no problem seeing overrun by the Russians. Oh, but maybe you do now because it's going to affect your bottom line. Well, this is I mean, the classic Trump story going back half century now, you know, putting your name on other people's work and taking money for it and then screwing over people on the backend. That's basically the business model of the Trump work. And you know what, I mean, I would be all for that kind of corruption if I thought it was going to actually change the president's mind about Ukraine, but unfortunately it doesn't. So there you go. This segment has been sponsored by the New York Times. What I'm doing podcast prep to the morning, you know, I'm always looking at that morning, Sean's newsletter from Bill Crystal and Andrew Ager, go subscribe, but go into the New York Times homepage, go in Twitter, making sure I am up to speed on all the latest. This morning, for example, I was reading the Times takeout on a hung cow, the nominee for Navy Secretary. It's like, it's hard

16:56for me to keep track of everything that's going on today. It's us, you know, scrolling through my little NYT app and I'm going, oh, fuck, it's hung cow. And you know, you got to have the reporters out there. They're doing the work that are informing us on what's happening behind the scenes of the Navy. We've got Times reporters here all the time. Ton of Maggie's reporting has been informing the podcast recently. Obviously, I David Wallace Wells on a couple of weeks ago who is doing such important reporting on what's happening with the climate as well as AI and other issues. It's tough. It's tough to get good information out of the White House these days. It's tough to follow just the avalanche of shit that is being dumped on us from this administration. And you need outlets that have the reach of the resources that have the sources to go out there and do that reporting so that I can bring it to you so we can contextualize it so we can fire out some hot takes, the basic building blocks that undergar it all that is the reporters out there doing the work.

18:01I mean, for example, this isn't the New York Times, but how would you have known about the woman that was running as a Republican in two different states and also as allegedly under indictment for wire fraud if it wasn't for Andrew Eggers reporting. I'm not doing that reporting. He's out there doing it. All of us depend on fact-based journalists easily breed their beets of the rest of us are well informed when it comes time to sling takes can take a week months or even years of work to put a good story together. So support their work wherever you seek it out nationally locally. Support fact-based reporting. Thanks for our friends at New York Times. Let's go to that in Ukraine. There's a bunch of stuff actually happening in the war that I want to get your take on. There's G20 meeting in Asheville. So I'm going to start with that first. Russia finance minister Anton Sulinoff. Is that right? And Sulinoff. He was there at the table. There's the first time there's been a Russia representative at the G20 since they invaded Ukraine in 2022. Your pens were pissed.

19:07Reporters were banned. So we don't really know why. You got the side deals you're talking with Wiccoff and all this. It's it's a little alarming timing. Yeah. So Trump's been banging on about bringing the Russians into the G20 from the beginning and it seems like he's done that. So the way this was couched with me, Bessent was telling reporters we're not sure anyone's going to turn up and we've extended invitations to everybody. That's obviously bullshit. The Russian finance minister doesn't come to the United States without getting visas sorted in the State Department involved and all of that. I'd like to say that this is in isolation of other things like Ukraine war policy and so on, but probably it's not. I mean, look, how many times have I come on the show? Trump is desperate to do a deal with the Russians. He would love nothing better than to have Rob Prochman. But the Russians cannot give him that which he requires to present to the American people and to the institutions that still do exist in this country.

20:09A Rob Prochman deal worthy of whatever concessions he's offered. This should be twinned to the other big thing that happened in the last week or so, which was John Rackliffe CIA director going to Moscow. I do my own recording on this because there's a lot of contradictory stuff floating around. One set of pieces said that he went there to threaten the Russians. Doug like a dog. Yeah. Or facilitate Rob Prochman in his own way. Maybe like, join our coalition against Ukraine. No, it was to do two things. One, and then the New York Times got this right to tell the Russians, look, the war is not going well for you. Your economy is even worse. Now is the time to wrap it up. Let's make a deal. And then two, by the way, we know that as a result of the war not going well for you, you're doing a lot of other provocative things like escalating your state sponsored terrorism campaign all throughout Europe, sabotage operations. Just yesterday the German government came out and blamed Russia for this attempted drone attack

21:09in a life-sick airport. By the way, the Germans blamed the GRU Russian military intelligence. The culprits responsible came into Germany. This is also news for you. So, perk up your ears. Through Serbia and Turkey. That's been confirmed on the German side. And this could have gone very, very bad. I need an ally. Yep. This could have been a mass casualty event. And I'm waiting for that to happen because what the Russians are doing, they're not sending their own trained operatives into the field because most of those operatives have been rolled up. And their biometric data is on every border guard database. They're recruiting organized crime, riffraff, teenagers, what I call gig terrorists or gig saboteurs. You know, finding them on on telegram, the internet, offering them a few thousand quid and crypto currency and saying go, you know, sometimes they do it under this veil of plausible annihilability. I go deliver this parcel. Don't worry about it. It's just a, it's an anodine thing. Cosmetics, sex toys, whatever. And it turns out if there's a bomb inside. In other cases, telling them you're

22:13going to detonate an incendiary device. But these attacks have been skyrocketing in recent weeks and months. Chair Point, I noticed this yesterday in Mark Ruta, the NATO said Russia's grown increasingly reckless in these efforts. He had met with Elbridge Colby last week. Anytime Elbridge Colby is involved anywhere is concerning to me. I'd like to keep him in a basement. But that is unusual. Like, you know, it's the type of thing you do if you're worried about increasing threats. So this is another sort of piece of the puzzle here. So months ago CIA briefed the polls, the Scandinavians and the bolts and said, we have intelligence that the Russians are going to do something. We don't know what it is. It could be cyber attacks. They do that. That's just Tuesday for them. Sabotage operations, again, see above already ongoing and now expanding or more provocatively more wearingly an incursion, quote unquote, intonato territory.

23:14So either little green men pour across the border into Latvia, Estonia, or they send a regiment of conventional troops and they do it to test the inviability of Article 5. And I was told as well, and this is what kind of bug me, CIA basically said, if this happens, you're on your own telling our eastern flank NATO allies, we ain't coming to the rescue. So that's on the one hand. This of course leaked in Poland and now it's all over the place. Then on the other hand, because of the war in Iran, we are running dangerously, critically low on key munitions, including and especially interceptors, Patriot, missile, PAC-3 and PAC-2. According to analysis by CISIS, that's the TC thing, Techno, the Canadian spy service, we're down to like 758,800 of these things. That was before the latest round of tit-for-tatt strikes between the US and Iran, right? Where in one night, we apparently fired close to 100 Patriot interceptors at incoming Iranian missiles. So now we're down to maybe 600 or 500. We don't have

24:19the missiles to give the Ukrainians who need several hundred of them to survive what's going to be a really miserable winter. I mean, every night, barrages of Russian missiles, and drones, killing civilians, they're targeting population centers, not military facilities, in order to terrorize the Ukrainians to weaken their resiliency and resolve and make them basically give up, which I don't think they're going to do, but that's a different story. Anyway, we go to the Europeans and we say, hey, Russia might invade you, and then we say, hey, can you spare some Patriot interceptors for Ukraine? And the Europeans are like, uh, no, because we need them in case we get invaded. There's no sort of whole strategy here, right? We have a- We don't have any military leaders in the army in Europe, so there's no military leaders in the army. And you know, when you send a guy like bridge Colby out, who's already hostile to the Europeans, and it's sort of like, I mean, he's the Janet Jackson song, what have you done for me lately, right? It's like, what are you spending on- No, nipple flip though. No, well, keep it under. I don't know. He kind of looks the time to me. He goes to them and he

25:21he hectares them. He lectures them. He berates them, you know, and then says, are you a model ally or are you not? And we will decide who we're going to defend, who we will support in any military confrontation on the basis of how much money you're spending. So he's not the guy you send. No. Sending Rackliff to Russia, I will say, you know, we've discussed this as well, and this has been confirmed to me by the Ukrainians, the only reason I believe it. Rackliff is the most pro- Ukraine actor in the administration. Rackliff is responsible for giving the Ukrainians intelligence how to bypass Russian air defense systems. So when they bomb oil refineries or now logistics hubs, warehouses containing dual use equipment like the Russian Amazon, they can get their drones in and they can hit the target, right? So Rackliff is responsible for blowing shit up in Russia. To send him to Moscow to say, it's time to make a deal is itself an implicit threat, right? Because they know that Rackliff is doing this. That's an improvement on- Sitchtik mixed messaging, right? Yeah, very mixed messages. That's the problem. And Rackliff, it's kind of a

26:23low bar, just because on this point I wanted to play this for you. This was this morning. The Treasury Secretary, who's kind of playing like a military role also lately as well. Yeah. They're sending out a feat Scott Besent to be the heavy on the Iranians economically. It's an interesting choice. Operation Outcast. Yeah, he did take a $5 billion in hedge fund, investment fund, and end it with gentlemen's $527 million in the bank account. So that was pretty good. So he's threatening the Iranians. Also, the Ukrainians, this was him this morning trying to explain like gas prices are up. And we are going through an energy shock right now due to both the war and Ukraine. Because Ukraine has decided that they want to blow up Russian energy assets and refine products. So that is creating upward price pressure on global basis.

27:25Ukraine has decided to do that. It's the Ukrainians. Yeah, I wonder why. Yeah, they just took that random decision to do this. First of all, this is the guy who allowed waivers that were implemented on the back of the Iran War to allow Grossnaf, the Russian state oil company, to sell oil in the global market. There's other way we'll put in these waivers to bypass the sanctions that Donald Trump did impose a year ago or whatever. Those waivers have expired. So if he's so concerned about Russia not making money from selling oil, he could simply re-upped the waivers. He hasn't done that. So when you talk about mixed messages, yeah, and the honest here is not on Ukraine. And as I said, the US intelligence community is helping Ukraine in this effort. I've confirmed that within an inch of my life on both sides, the American and the Ukrainian side. So, which is it, man? You want to blow up oil refineries in Russia, but you're like, hey, that's the reason it's not me. We're all trying to find the guy who did this.

28:25Maybe that's just politics and lying. And you got anti-Skott out there being like, I'm looking for somebody else to blame. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, look, I'm trying to get a handle on. There's now a debate about how much oil is getting through the straight-of-war moose, Goldman Sachs, as it's returned to about two-thirds of the pre-war level. Yes, I'll bet. Another oil tanker tracker, which is highly reputable and relied upon by journalists, say, and ain't close to that. So there's a debate about this. It does seem though that the blockade is having an impact and it's making life more difficult for the Iranians and the Iranian economy is already in the toilet. So the question is, is this going to alter their calculations with respect to how they talk to the Americans or Nika? I'm very skeptical, it will. But this is, you know, operation outcast and or maximum pressure, as it used to be now, right? You sanction them. You block their ability to make revenue the only way they they can exporting their energy. And you hope for the best that maybe, you know, been working. They become more kit-nish and decide, like, as JD said, they're just a bunch of cool

29:29revolutionary guard terrorists now who want to make a deal with the United States. I don't let's be clear. This is a crisis of our making because we went to war with Iran. It's not Ukraine's fault that they're fighting back against Russia. It's true and blunt. I don't think that's what Scott Bessett is trying to be when he's trying to explain my gas prices around. It's like, wow, you know, it's not out of our hands. The Ukrainians, it's the straight-of-form. Who's we got that under control? I won't talk about Iran, but there's a story in the FT about the kind of nexus between these two conflicts and Russia's kind of increasing involvement in trying to help Iran. The FT is this, they're secretly helping Iran develop a supersonic cruise missile. Some of Russia's most experienced missile specialists kind of laughed when you hear that phrase. So I do think about like a kind of mockumentary where you have Russia's most experienced missile specialist. It's old guys from the spot in the car coming through. But anyway, they're helping Iran develop a new class of weapon capable of threatening U.S. aircraft carriers and warships. I mean, nobody should

30:34be surprised by this. It's just one story in there. Russia is cooperating at a degree really unprecedented with not just Iran, but also China. We did a story at the insider about how the Chinese came to them and said, you know, we're very worried about Starlink and what it can do to for instance, disrupt our ability to invade Taiwan. So let's come up with a joint air defense and aerospace defense because this is happening in lower orbit to maybe, you know, shoot down Starlink satellites out of space or do cyber warfare or somehow interdict these systems. The Russian sharing this kind of tech with the Iranians is absolutely an escalation. It doesn't surprise me so much. So, you know, one of the other things we noticed is in the last several years, the Russians were sending their black ops team unit 29155 of the GRU. These are the guys that poisoned the script balls and Salisbury. These are the guys who are responsible for all of these state-sponsored terrorist attacks happening throughout Europe beginning in 2011 before the first

31:36invasion of Ukraine all the way until now. They sent their top men from that unit, including the founding commander Andrei Avryanov to Tehran to liais with basically the IRGC counterparts. And the question we had at the inside of when we're investigating is what the hell are they talking about? You know, these guys don't do arms deals. They don't do, you know, intelligence liais on surface. They do kinetic things. So, we were kind of waiting to see what's the grand reveal here of this Russian Iranian partnership. And look, I mean, our intel community has concluded that both the Russians and the Chinese are sharing intelligence with the Iranians to target American soldiers in the Persian Gulf. And you might say, well, the Russians would do that because, as I just mentioned, we're doing the same thing with the Ukrainians inside Russia. But like, why are we not talking about penalizing the Russians for trying to kill Americans? Right. We're inviting the Russian finance minister to the G20. We're talking about how it's the Ukrainians fault the gas prices.

32:37Or like we're doing like simultaneously the fact that Russia is trying to help Iran kill our men and women. It's a pretty weak, frankly, posture. Very weak. And you know, you have this Lindsey Graham sanctions bill which passed the Senate and was rewritten to be pretty robust. And also, frankly speaking, written in such a way that it would be hard for Donald Trump not to enforce certain provisions in this thing. And it wouldn't have passed the Senate if Trump hadn't allowed it to because the Senate, like the House on the Republican side is just hostage to this personality cult. But now it's gummed up in the House and it's gummed up in the House. How's that done? Yeah, the House got it went back in the session yesterday. They voted on some things. Did that, did that make it? No, I mean, it's I haven't seen the latest this morning, but last I heard, there are a lot of sticking points for people, including, I mean, on the Democratic side is the the the cudgel here tariffs, right, which that party does not like and is against Donald Trump in doing the sort of trade war. But it's the best thing you're going to get out of this administration to hurt third parties importing, it's Russian oil, gas, uranium, petroleum products, right? And that's

33:42what you would want. If you if you if you were interested in strategically defeating this country. Yeah, I guess is that it's Mike Johnson sitting on this because they don't want to do anything that's going to hurt the correct. And so you or you know, exactly. You have a situation where President United States doesn't really care about his party's political fortunes in the midterms. He cares about his quote legacy. So he will do things to advance what he sees as his legacy. So if he can defeat the Islamic Republic of Iran or denuclearize it as he puts it, that's going to be for him that that will trump no pun intended Republicans losing perhaps both houses of Congress, right? He just doesn't care. But they of course care and they're very nervous and worried and which is why they want the Iran war to end. Any other thoughts on the latest from the Iran war? I mean, this is, you know, more kinetic action this week than we've seen in a little bit. We hit targets in Iran on Tuesday to run fired missiles and drones at sites across the region yesterday. Yeah. I mean, look, I I said at the beginning of this thing, you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound. It's easy to

34:43start a war like this, but it's going to be incredibly difficult to get out of it. And once they close the straight of foremost, that's not, you know, that's not the motives for any of the United States can live with because, you know, 20% of the world's oil supply bypasses that waterway we can't allow the IRGC to take it hostage. But, you know, our strategy thus far has failed. I said, the blockade is operationally speaking, it's being met with some success, but I don't see this thing being wrapped up. And, you know, I said at the beginning, the Israelis have this doctrine called mowing the law or mowing the grass, right? So they have a conflict with an adversary. It's either a state like Iran or a non-state actor, his bala Hamas. And they don't try to strategically destroy the adversary. They contain them. And they contain them when they feel that they're they're being armed with weapons that are just not sustainable for the Israelis to allow them to arm with. They go in and they bomb. And they do this periodically, you know, they did this in Syria for 10 years during

35:46the Syrian Civil War. The Israelis would bomb his bala and IRGC weapons transfers going to his bala. And they did this with impunity. I think the American strategy and I saw Axios reported some US official called it mowing the law. So the question is, how long can we allow this lawn mowing operation to continue? Because as I said, our resources are very straightened. We're running out of munitions. If we expended 100 patriot interceptors in one night and we're down to like 500 of them, do the math. How many of these sort of, you know, tit for tat exchanges? Five nights. Yeah. Yeah. Unless we start knocking on the doors of our allies and saying, you must give us your interceptors. Oh, and by the way, the Russians might invade you. So you're on your own with that happens. You see? Yeah. Well, there's a Wall Street Journal report that like that this was really impacting Russia's thinking on some of this stuff about potentially. Yeah. If you're if you're Putin, if you're she, I mean, you're sitting there saying, okay, well, our adversary is running out of kit.

36:48So now is the time to start probing, getting provocative and seeing what we can get away with. So for a guy like Putin, for Rackliffe to go to to Moscow, by the way, according to Russian media, he was meant to meet with Putin and Putin declined the meeting because he had told Nareeshkin and Borknakov the heads of the SVR and the FSB, the wars is going misery. Putin doesn't want to hear this. Putin doesn't believe this because he's being lied to by his generals and by his intelligence services. The war is going fine. He just has to hide for time, press on, and eventually all of Donbass will fall. If you're Putin now, the intelligence you're being fed, which is accurate, it's credible, is that the United States does not have the resources to sustain this war in Iran indefinitely. Much less do they have the resources to sell to third parties, NATO allies in Europe, to then donate that kit to the Ukrainians. So this is why the Russians are escalating their missile attacks on Kiev and other population centers on a nightly basis because they know that

37:49we don't have the missiles to give the Ukrainians. According to one Senate Armed Services Committee source I talked to, they need about 200 plus interceptors to withstand the winter. They're not going to get anything close to them. So a lot of people are going to die in Ukraine. Now I say that, and I don't mean to, what I'm going to say next, I don't mean to be callous or cynical. I'm just kind of giving you an objective reading. That fact does not change the military dynamics at the front because these missiles are not being directed at Ukrainian soldiers and that front is largely governed by unmanned systems drones, but it does affect the humanitarian crisis. Citizens, people in Kiev. Correct. He had sprueodle. You mentioned earlier that there's a lot of ghost ships and such going to the strait. So there is analysis saying that at what, two-thirds, I even saw one person that said three-fourths before the war, but it's still the cost is so high. Correct. Insurance costs. How much we're paying? If you look at oil prices right now, they're back up over $90 a barrel. It's like, who wants to do this? Who wants to ride a ghost ship through the

38:55Omani side of the Strait of Hormuz? There's a chance that the Iranians are going to fire drone at you. Right. You've seen the reporting on the state of the USS Lincoln and the morale and the mass sort of psychological state of the sailors on by me. Poor things just pulled into port and Thailand. You won't hear from them for a while. It's going to make hangover part two. Look like a fucking walk through kindergarten. These things have costs. We're paying for this blockade on an hourly basis. But also our servicemen and women in the field are they're not seeing their families. They're being rotated in and out, but a lot of them being told you're going to be in there till 2027. Of course, this doesn't even account for the fact that in these little series of escalations, what if the Iranians hit a ship and kill dozens of American sailors? That's the kind of thing where I could see Trump and I could see General Cain and I could see

39:57whoever's left in the Pentagon to hold our military together saying we have to put boots on the ground, right? This is not happy times right here. Another uplifting report from Michael Weiss, Abraham Lincoln sailors, when you hit port in Thailand, if you see Sam Rockwell's character from White Lotus season three, go the other way. That's just trouble. That's just true. I love to mark. I'm very excited about the new show. Thanks, man. For the order and the spy. Everybody get ready for it. It is going to be great. Up next, we're doing some politics with my friend, Roderick Affleley. All right. We are back. She's a rapid response director for majority Democrats. A group dedicated to growing the Democratic Party so that it can compete everywhere. Previously, she was the White House's director of black media during the Biden administration. She worked for Pete and a bunch

40:58of other campaigns. It's Roderick Apple Light or just Roe to me. What's up, bro? Hey, Tim. How are you? I'm doing great. Thank you for doing this. I already cast you up in the intro. So we don't need to go over that. But I would like you to introduce you to people. Maybe give us a little bit of your political origin story. How you got into all this? How you ended up in South Bend? I checked your link in this morning. I knew it was early, but April 2019. April 2019? You were like one of the OGs in South Bend. Yes. So I took a very long career short. I got my start as an Obsession researcher and actually transitioned to comms over this campaign. I was one of the first hires because I am a psycho and sent my resume cold to every jobs ad info ad for all of the exploratory campaigns. So I was like 20 of them. I was like, I've worked at every level of campaign except for presidential. So it is happening. The cycle Liz called me out of the blue and the rest is kind of history.

41:59Pete actually left me a voicemail when I accepted the offer. It was it was that early in the campaign. He got his own name wrong in the voicemail, which was kind of funny. And he mispronounced. He tripped over a little bit and someone with a difficult name, I get it. So we won't hold that against him. But yeah, April 2019, I was in South Bend a couple days before the launch and gotten to the rocket ship. And then that's kind of how it remained until we dropped out in March 2020. Was your family or your friends like this is crazy? The gay South Bend mayor? Like what are you doing? You're going to send us in last place? Yeah, I was you know, I told my my boyfriend at the time. I was like, hey, I'll be back in six weeks like this is I don't even know who this guy is. But it ended up being such an incredible ride. I still talk to a lot of people I worked with every single day. What were they? What was like Pete and Chaston Mike in the early days? Do you have any fun behind the scenes? Goss for me? Yeah, I mean, the same as they are now, which is really heartening to see in this line of work. A lot of people switch up when they get more eyeballs on them.

43:00But Pete and Chaston have always been unbelievably sincere. You know, there are so many different things to point to, but anytime here, Chaston or the dogs were in the office, it was just it felt like you were the only person in the room. He would take the time to kind of go around to all of our pods and ask us how things were looking. What are some things that we're hearing online and things that he should be thinking about ahead of the next debate. But yeah, I was the keeper of his debate Bible, which beyond the book was just the catalog of drama between all of the other campaigns happening. So he would know when to jump in and when to jump out. And so being one of the last people he would kind of hear from before getting on stage is personal importance to me. Keeper of the tea. Did you ever get drunk brunch with Chaston? Do you have any drunk Chaston story? I do not know. We tried to let them have normal lives as much as possible. Okay. I have drunk Chab's story. So I was going to trade one for one. But we'll do it another day.

44:01All right, let's talk about the news. Yesterday, there was some weirdness on the hill. There was some drama over a rule vote. Anytime someone talks about a vote on the rule, I immediately start to pass out. So I like it seemed about a lot of nonsense to me. The thing that I did notice was Bill of Christ when I talked about the Sun Monday, the house did vote to pass. It's like bipartisan continuing resolution, which basically funds the government up to the election. A couple of no votes from friends of the pot, Brendan Boyle, friend of the pot, majority damn, Robert Garcia. But a lot of damn voted for it. I don't really get it. My personal take on it is, I just I feel like there should be more foot on the gas pedal, more aggression, more, you know, using every tool in the toolkit to draw attention to the corruption, to all the stupid shit we're funding. And just really a foot on principle, just being like, I'm not funding this fucking corrupt government. The counter arguing to that is basically like, well, things are going well. We don't know who the hell knows. We have a government shutdown. We could be blamed. And we don't want to

45:06rock the boat. You know, about that vote in particular in general, like my concern is sort of about like this prevent defense. I think Bill called it on Monday. What do you think about all that? And like how the how the damn should be handled in the next couple of months? Yeah. I mean, I think there's a real reticence to rock the vote a little bit, especially from leadership. I mean, we've been conducting focus groups across the country. And I'm shocked as someone that's been doing this for a minute. How specifically voters are naming and these are everyday voters. These are not freaks like you and me. These are people that are just living their lives and and feeling how the Trump administration and how congressional Republicans have been impacting their lives. And they are naming and shaming quite specifically. So I mean, to put myself in like what specifically like tariffs like the ballroom. Yeah. So one of the first questions that it's asked is, you know, how are you feeling about the economy in the world? And they're like, well, the Iran War, it makes my gas expensive. I go to the grocery store, it's expensive. Healthcare is up. All of these cost of living issues are making or putting the squeeze in me and

46:10my family and my communities. And it's because Trump is not addressing any of these things and getting us into long drawn out conflicts. So the fact that people can name that, I think, has Democrats in a situation of maybe we should just continue to let the main thing be the main thing and not get to involved in procedural fights that honestly for the most part end up making Democrats look bad. The last shutdown that we had was over healthcare, which voters gave that to us of like, oh, you know, this is a win, right? It was a win. But when you drag it out, especially as we're in the middle of an affordability crisis, I think it makes it kind of hard to square that with Democrats also saying that they're trying to make your lives more affordable. The party that's in the minority tends to be the one that takes the blame when you have long drawn out shutdowns. And if you're going to instigate one, you know, eight to nine weeks out from Election Day, I don't see how that helps. Democrats show how they're going to actually be focused on. I'm in yellow mode over here now. I'm in. Okay. I just, I want to start going in like

47:12multiple guns blazing like screw these guys. I understand that perspective. I think that there's a broader, you know, putting aside that that specific, like tactical though, because I don't like the Democrats' success. And whether they take the Senate is going to make a break on whether this budget passed or not. But like, I do think that in a mindset of let's not rock the boat, things are going our way. I grisks like leading to like falling up short because like there are like these red states when we're going to get into some of them that you need to win in the Senate. The Texas is the Iowa's. Oh, you could outperform Harris by nine points, not win any of them. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. But, you know, the still have to show voters that they're actually going to do something. And I think there's not going to be a lot of patience. And rightfully so the voters are going to have for Democrats if we retake both of these chambers. So I think losing the battle to win the war, I do think is a calculus that's worth considering when we're this close to election day. Okay. Let's look at the Trump ad. He's making life easier about

48:16for Democrats for going on offense because he's not really on offense either. I don't know how you'd explain this. This just popped today. They're spending a million dollars on this. The Trump super PAC. They got a ton of money. Yeah, I mean, they've got it. Yeah. This is the thing the Iowa dam is with the most concerned about the local strategist I was talking to. They're just like like Turk and Rob Santa, right? Good races, but like it's a small state. They could just blow it out with money, just smearing Turk and sand. And so to spend a million dollars on this, I find curious. Let's watch. We gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on social security. The largest tax cuts in American history, the price of eggs is down 60%. I took prescription drums from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest, which are the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power need so that no one's prices will go up. He's fighting for you every day. Help him finish the job. Strings if it's about Trump.

49:20It's just like a million dollars. Yeah, I mean, I think what's interesting and I would love to, I wish I knew exactly when this audio was from, but I'm going to guess it was from a while ago, because Trump has been kicking and screaming not wanting to talk about affordability, calling it a con job and a hoax by Democrats. I think this is the result of probably very long discussions of Sir, we need to do something like we are getting killed on affordability and cost of living arguments. Folks want to see that we've got something and Trump said fine, but no more than a million dollars, which if you know how much he has in his coffers, it's like a penny. I guess that's true. It's just, but even him talking about how things are getting better. Again, some ways, like part of that ad the Democrats could have run. Right. Absolutely. I think he's got kind of nothing and they know that they have to address us in some way, so they're doing the best I can with what they've got. Yeah, I don't, I just think that any million that's not spent trying to turn whatever, James Talleriko into Woke One Comma, or whatever, you know what I mean, like trying to

50:21turn him into like a crazy far left activist is a million dollars that I'm happy that they're spending on something else. Republicans are basically begging for Trump to do something and to support Ken Paxton in Texas and Ashley hence in Iowa. And it's very interesting that we are not seeing any movement there. Yeah. And it's September two. Like it's kind of late, you know, I infer to normal people, right? It feels like, well, you know, the elections two months out, etc, etc. And like we've seen this, I remember God, it was it all the years get mixed up. It was 2020 now, where Adelson came in really, really late and spent like a ton of money for Trump in the last couple of weeks, obviously that didn't end up working by the winds. But like, you know, the Texas has so many media markets, I guess they're kind of like losing valuable time here to use that war chest. It seems like to me. It's a very expensive state to run in and you know, for all his faults, Trump does like a scoreboard at the end of the day, James Talleriko has outraged Ken Paxton

51:23significantly. And there comes a point where you don't want to throw good money after bad. And that might be where Republicans are at Texas right now. It's crazy. A lot today has a coin flip. And it's just it is really expensive versus Iowa. But there was this Atlantic story maybe last week from Ashley Parker about how like Trump had a meeting in the White House for he's like, I want more ads featuring me. And then this ad came out. So like, I don't know, maybe that leaked because they knew the ad was going out. And so there's some CYA. But to me, this is like this Trump ad is if anything in net plus for the dams. All right, I want to go through the map. Not the whole map, just a couple of the races that you have your eye on and getting some of the majority dams races over in the Michigan Senate, though first where there's a lot of a lot of buzz around that. I try to be out of the prediction business ever since 2016 when I made some very bad, very public predictions that ended up on like mega highlight reels on YouTube of like, of like, damn pundits crying. And I was

52:25one of the cryers. And so I try not to do that. So I'm hedging a little bit. But I just I think that the pundits are really wrong about what's happening in Michigan. I think that microadgers, like appeals mostly to like people that show up in the CNN green room. No offense. So you won't see an unreasonably. But, um, and I key does. And like, you know, there's a handful of like rich Wall Street Journal Republicans and some Jewish Democrats that there's maybe some crossover there, one percent. Like this idea that he is a, he's like a moderate and this has this huge crossover. I just don't buy. And I think that I've built a lot of skills that don't map along what like traditional what people, you know, want from politicians. So I look at that race. And I think that that race wind up being a clean victory for up to winds up being, you know, I will probably end up being closer. What do you think about that? I certainly think this is the cleanest shot he's got. I mean, it's no denying that voters are very much looking for fighters, endurers this cycle. And he's messaged himself very successfully. And I say that is somebody that

53:28worked for what his opponent's not a bit more. He did a really good job of sticking to the message of, you know, money out of politics, money in your pocket and Medicare for all. And anywhere we would go and Michigan, people were able to rattle that off. It's effective. It's good. However, when he strays from that, that's when he gets in the trouble a little bit, you know, this proximity to Hassan Piker, you know, just now getting to apologizing for his comments after a synagogue got attacked earlier this year. All of these things make it, they trip him up and makes him distracted and spend time apart from talking about the issues that Michigan does care about. Mike Rogers also very distracted. He's been going after all of this culture war stuff. I think any of the points he might have about, you know, the dangers of electing somebody as far the left as a duel get really buried under all the Islamophobia and all this other stuff that he's wrapping this campaign around. It's going to be hard for him to separate himself from Trump,

54:29especially in a state like Michigan that is getting particularly squeezed on this terrafore. We decide to start with the Canadians getting squeezed on manufacturing. Just a lot of these issues that it's going to make it hard for Mike Rogers to actually tell Michigan there's how he's going to be, you know, a senator that's going to act independently and not necessarily just be a rubber stamp for Trump. He's done nothing. He's offered no independence. I don't have to work for Mallory in the primary. I know to shout out Mallory. I mean, she's been out campaigning for a duel. We have seen that not happen in Texas, for example. So, you know, good on her. Well, like what is your sense though, not kind of the politician level, but like the voter level, the McMorrah voters, the Stevens voters. Like, is there any risk there, any vulnerability? I kind of understand there's some hurt feelings, you know, among the people that know each other. But like, from the actual voters, I don't know Sarah, Sarah's Michigan focus group. It's just one focus group, like didn't really seem to like indicate that the same thing was true among this average voters. What's your sense? No, I mean, the primary was very messy, but primaries are also inside baseball

55:33for voters in Michigan who have actual lives and aren't like us, just like pumping this into ourselves every single day. Yes, it looked very cohesive, especially right after Abdul was elected. I mean, Michigan has a very late primary. It was not even a month ago. So you need to be able to turn around very quickly and demonstrate unity to focus on hitting Mike Rogers and making sure he has a bad day every day between now and November. And I think Mallory McMorrah and Hayley Stevens to their immense credit came out for him very strongly. And they've been also, I'm sure, working behind the scenes to get some of the other folks on board, like Jeremy Moss, who has been very pro-Israel, but also has said that he's been open to talks that he's been having with Abdul. So yeah, through the most part, have seen productive until of course then Hassan Piker through a whole bunch of cold water on that. So I think as much as he can focus on his race in Michigan and keep it about what Michiganers are going through, it'll make it a lot easier for him to show really good,

56:37sharp, effective contrast against Mike Rogers. Yeah, I'm bullish on it. I'm a mission against interest. So I think it's useful to hear from me, but I'm bullish on Abdul. Any thoughts on Jasmine? What's happening with her? I have. Oh, okay, let me let me find it. Let me find it. Okay, on on Jasmine, look, she does not have to endorse James Tallerigo. Let me say that up front. She doesn't have no, no, no, she doesn't. She doesn't. She is allowed to manage her legacy and the way that she sees fit. I don't see the value in having somebody who's like going to do half-assed endorsement work when we need people who are enthusiastic about defeating Ken Paxson. If she doesn't want to do that, that's on her. However, she's dragging this out in a way that is making her look bad. At the end of the day, if you want to just say, ask, ask, and answer, I will not be supporting James Tallerigo. Thank you so much. I'll be supporting these downpilot candidates. It would be helpful if you could actually name those candidates and point to some events you've

57:38been showing up to on their behalf. That'd be really helpful. But she can manage herself however, however she sees fit. I, you know, I am a black person myself. I hate when people come in and tell black people what to do. So I'm not doing that. But just be honest. If you don't want to support them, then okay, that's fine. We got a lot of other stuff to do. James Tallerigo has been making very productive inroads with the black community. The polling has been very positive for him. It's around like 75, 76%. A black voters will be supporting him. Obviously, there's still a lot of work to do. I trust that his campaign is sophisticated enough to do it. I do too. Very diplomatic of you. That's nice. I don't know. Ken Paxson is the other choice. I keep coming back to that with Trump. People are kept saying, well, I didn't, I mean, I voted for fucking Hillary. Okay. I started an anti-Hillary super PAC. All right. And then voted for Hillary. Sometimes it's like the choice of the choice. I don't know. You're right. She can do whatever she wants. I can do what I want to. And it's insane. And she's really embarrassing herself. Let's talk about that Florida race. I had another

58:40contrary view from my moderate rap on the Angie Nixon win. I thought, Vennman is really good honorable man. I know personally and to hero really. I also thought the campaign was kind of like today's a cool and having Jolly and Vennman on the ticket. It's kind of tough to motivate some demographics to the Democratic Party. This is kind of like my just hot take view as an outsider though. I don't actually have any evidence of that. So I'm wondering what you think about Nixon Jolly, whether there's any hope for Jolly and the governor's race. And don't what you think about how Nixon's been running. Yeah. I mean, I think this is very emblematic of one with Florida and two that this is a big, a tent party. You have David Jolly who's a former Republican running with Glenn Graham, who ran statewide for governor a few cycles back. Running a very no nonsense. Adult in the room. Republicans are crazy and not meeting your needs. Very straight laced kind of like quintessential Florida dem campaign. It worked for them very well in the primary.

59:42And I think it's the exact contrast we want to see going into the general. And then you have the complete other side which, you know, by your to to your point like out's Vennman maybe should have that primary based on, you know, where he was ideologically. However, and you Nixon was the person who people were actually seeing show up to their union halls and their women's democratic meetings and all of that. She's been a staple in Florida politics for quite some time. She's a staple in a community and she shoots straight. I mean, I've been really happy to see that no nonsense attitude she has when she's been doing some of this national press when they try to tie the worst facets of DSA's policy of like platform to her and Hassan Piker. And she's like, I don't know about any of that. Here's what I'm hearing in Florida. The people came to Fort Healthcare that their roads are messed up. Their education is bad. And they can't afford to go to the grocery store. And she's stayed laser focused on that. When they try to get her on to fund the police, she's like, I want to defund flock, which more and more seems like a

1:00:42bipartisan issue. She's been doing a really, really good job of staying focused on what she's hearing on the ground from Floridians. And that's why she won her program. Yeah, total media training. Daria Liza and some of these folks should just watch Angie Nixon videos. Even if she doesn't win, she's doing a service for DSA candidates as far as how you handle this stuff. She's been awesome. I think that's also another race in Florida. If you'll allow me that I want to highlight being that the bench is one of the organizations I work with. Pia Dandia and Florida's 22nd district is running as well. I know nothing about Pia. So just give it to me. Give me the. Let me tell you. She's a teacher. She's a principal, a private sector leader and a rising star. She is extremely passionate about why she's running for office, what she's going to actually do in Congress. And she's been doing a really good job laying out how she's going to get that done and building the coalition necessary. What is the district? The district is Florida 22. I believe it's in the Fort Lauderdale

1:01:48area. That's right. That's probably our logo. Yeah. So it got redrawn and it was a district that Trump won 55% of the vote in 2024. In a normal year, this would be kind of a done deal and Pia would be successful. But this is kind of a testament to the type of candidates that we've been backing across the country with the bench. Let's do more about that. Because that race I didn't I did an article a couple months ago now. Wait a minute. Is the Pia race? Is she running against the guy that's trying to rename 75 Trump Highway? Yes, that's correct. He that's Casey Asker. He's a self-funder, wealthy, navels, businessmen that his run before, although very interestingly, and I think this is finally reflective of the dam starting to burst a little bit for Republicans. He's been slowly wiping mentions of his working with Trump on his web office. So I want you to come out for renaming things Trump Highway. There's you can only do so much with your website. People remember that. I hope you know, buddy, notice this. But this is me outing him right now. We see a lot

1:02:51of these candidates as I mentioned about about a month ago or two. I'm going to update this. The primaries are finally fucking over next Tuesday. So I'm going to update this here in a week with some other candidates. So maybe you can make some recommendations to me. But I wrote basically about that 55 is like right on the outer edge, right? Like I was trying to look at districts that Trump won 53, 54, 55, any 52, maybe 50 second. Like where it's like a Democrat and if there's a strong candidate in particular, like this could be a way of year where you can win one of those seats. And I wrote about a bunch of them. We'll put the link in the show notes. But I was wondering, you just mentioned Florida 22. What else are you either working on or kind of monitoring the you're interested in if people are looking to kind of support these stretch candidates in particular because I think back the big swing candidates like I know that the bench you guys also have kick-con these running its mic law or like that's nothing. It's okay. She's going to put any money, right? She's going to have a ton of money in that race because everybody's going to go in because that's a big swing race. There's that like next layer like that Florida 22 that I think that I want

1:03:53people to look at. So is there anything else you're monitoring in that kind of vein? Yeah, a lot of overlap with the candidates that you mentioned in your piece. So it was nice to see that. But it's a same four-stag in Montana one, Jamie Aker and North Carolina 11, Bobby Polito in Texas 15 in Johnny Garcia in Texas 35th. Mary Peltola running for Alaska Senate and Josh Turek running for Iowa Senate. These are all candidates who are running very different races, but all in the same vein of building the coalition's necessary and showing their voters and their constituents. What they're actually going to do for them in Congress versus being focused on tenure leadership, whose name is on what door, who gets what office, just actually focus on delivering wins for their people. One of the other candidates I highlighted was in the news this morning, Brian Point Dexter Ohio 7. Allegedly in 1998, police, I guess we're going to some young guys hanging out,

1:04:55getting a little trouble. And allegedly he swallowed a crack cocaine rock in 1998. It was kind of like cool. I don't know. That's not so dissimilar for how my odds went, not maybe 1998. But shout out Brian Point Dexter, he's running against Max Miller. Yeah, I was four, so I won't be speaking on the. Just in general in these races, like, just is there any big picture of like from your focus groups, from these campaigns that you're helping out with? Like, what is working? These kind of red districts that kind of besides like obviously we're talking about affordability. But is there anything else that like jumps out as like candidates that are resonating? What's working is not getting caught in the binary of progressive versus moderate or Democrat versus Republican. I think Republicans are caught a little flat foot at this time because they're going after all of this culture war stuff that frankly voters don't care about when the economy is good. Like then they can focus on that stuff. But right now they're like, okay, but like

1:05:59cut the bullshit. What are you actually doing to lower cost for me? And what has been so effective across the ideological spectrum on the left has been the candidate that makes that argument the most effectively of what they're actually going to do for people upon election is the candidate that has survived the primary regardless of, you know, if they're a progressive or moderate. So it's really, I think the binary we're seeing here is doers versus sitters. And those are the people that are really making Republicans have to answer for why they've given Trump a rubber stamp to do everything but tackle the issues that voters actually care about. I just think having that outside or thing. I mean, it's a little eye roll sometimes, but it's like it's so it's what voters react to when you hear from them. They don't like in this day and age in particular, like they don't want to see normal politicians. And like just sometimes people talk about it like the sister soldier context what I mean, you're punching left. But I don't even mean it like that. Like I just mean like, like just differentiating your brand in some way from the party. And like even in some ways, it could be left ways, right? Like where the party's too tied into corporate interests or whatever.

1:07:03Like it doesn't even have to math. But like I you just see that that either it's bio, it's policy, like getting some separation from the is important. Yeah, absolutely. I think I think a good case study of that was the race that we saw in Connecticut between Representative John Larson and Luke Ronan who challenged him not from the left, but just from the issue of Jaron Toppercy, the issue of how older representatives don't necessarily understand the issues that voters are facing today. And don't seem particularly open to understanding how to pivot for the world we're living in right now. That's the argument that that Bronin focused on throughout the primary. And I mean, you saw in the result it was it was pretty significant. I have two more hot takes for you. And then we're that I want from you. Actually, I have no more hot takes left on you to provide hot takes. One is really to kind of what were the lessons from these primaries, Brawlicks. It's obviously, you know, anytime one faction or another gets a win in a prime they're like see, you know, but I

1:08:05get what's kind of a mixed bag, right? Like in that sense, like Bronin wins at the Connecticut issue mentioned last night, stuff molten loses to Markey where it's kind of a similar, you know, type bios of the two candidates. You know, you have dual wins and then hung loses, right? Like so, like you're seeing kind of a mix out there. I'm wondering if you're looking ahead to 28. I know you're focused on November. Everyone's focused on November. But you know, somebody might call you. Someone one of the 30. What's 2028? Yeah, one of the 30 people that run for president might call you, you know, and say, Hey, you were engaged in all these primaries. Like what did we learn? Like what is the electorate want right now? The Democratic primate, we're off of talking about swing voters now. Like the Democratic primary electorate, like why did some lefties resonate? Now there's didn't. Why did some generation arguments win and others did it in your opinion? Yeah, I mean, it really comes down to candidate authenticity. I think voters were very, very savvy, more savvy than I think a lot of people in the belt wake of the credit for, of really taking the time to understand and I mean, in a voter way, feel the vibe of the candidate that is running.

1:09:10And the candidates that were successful in these primaries are the ones that did that most effectively and were the most authentic. Voters aren't engaged in these ideological battles. They're not. They just want things in their community to feel like they're solved and at least, or at least getting addressed and being able to show some wins, especially going into hopefully a Congress that is controlled by Democrats, being able to point to that is going to be really effective for candidates considering running for president, pointing to their own wins throughout the two Trump administrations will also be really helpful. I think anything that really shows voters and I know this seems pretty common sense, but I'm saying it anyway. Anything that shows voters that you actually care and that you see them, those are the candidates that you're going to see emerge victorious. So I want to put a final point on that because I think it's something that is like actual wins like also over Republicans. Democratic voters are mad at Trump, right? And so like I think that in a way, I tried this a little bit with Rhodes on Friday about how like the resistance candidates didn't do that well. Whatever, nothing. Obviously,

1:10:12George has a new podcast coming on the bull or platform. We love George. I love Dan Goldman. But like Trump got back in, right? So obviously the impeachment thing didn't work. You can't see that say that as a win, right? And so it's like, okay, what are other things? And like I think a lot of the left candidates were saying, well, we're providing a new framework for how we can win by focusing on popular stuff. You know, you saw in Bronin or some of these other center candidates that have been successful. Like they were offering, okay, well, I have a different path for fighting. Trump that's going to be successful, right? Like, and I think that to me is what was like missing from some of these other campaigns. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this was this was no, no, none taken. This was Vindman's downfall as well in Florida. Like nobody cares about impeachment. Like, yes, didn't work. Bad for the arc of justice, sure. But at the end of the day, people were like, what is an impeachment proceeding going to do for my bottom line? And the answer is like nothing. And so, you know, people who can actually say, not just, I oppose Trump and Trump's bad, but here's what I would do instead. Here's what I'm actually going to do for you versus just

1:11:16help you continue to yell at Trump. These are the, these are the candidates that voters are gravitating towards. And they more often not have to be progressive, just because I think from Russia, done a really good job of nailing that message. They have a model and they also have the whiteboard, you know, I've told you mentioned it. I've dual had the fucking hat. People knew what he was for. That matters. Okay, final hot take. You did black media. This feels like very outside my wheelhouse, right? Because like, I just, you know, it's hard for me to kind of like grasp like what the undercurrents of this are. Like Trump does do better with black voters last time than he didn't 20. Yeah. Right with Harris at the top of the ticket. So it's like, is that just same economic trends as every other voter demographic or was there something that Biden and Harris or was there something with the message? You mentioned the Talleriko number in the polls. Like, that's still a little soft from where you would like want Democrats to be. Like what's your take on that? It does feel like Democrats. It's on the margins. And it's mostly black men. It seems like you're like the numbers, not like women, but like, you know, like you're still winning overwhelming numbers, but it does matter if this is the base of the party. If you're winning 88% versus 82%,

1:12:20like that matters, right? So I don't know what you're what does it take about that softness and whether whether that's reversing at all or what Democrats should do? It could be the difference between a one and a loss for a lot of these races that we're seeing, especially the very tight ones. I fully understand that the black community feels a little bit baited and switched that, you know, you see candidates in your churches and barbershops eight weeks out from election day. And then you don't see these candidates or hear from them again until the next time they're on the ballot. That's a problem and it's something that the Democratic Party is going to have to specifically work to fix. It is not on black voters to just show up to bail out Democrats every single time that we're on the ropes. That's just that's not how it works. And that's not what we should we should not expect that if indeed because it's not fair. What we need to do and this was a lot of work that I did at the White House working directly with black owned and operated outlets is engage those outlets way more. These are outlets that fully understand their communities. They write like their communities and

1:13:24they tell stories that are being overlooked by more mainstream type of outlets. So that's really important. And then I think something that really hamstrung us in the White House is that there was a reticence all the way from the top to really own and name wins. A lot of black Americans did not know how much we did for the Biden administration Biden Harris administration did for black Americans because there was really just not a willingness to kind of talk about it from the top like sure I could do my job and and did talking to these outlets as a spokesperson. But it would it was really important to the community to hear that directly from Biden Harris because when you don't hear it from them it's not no one says oh look how humble they are they're looking towards the noise of Republicans saying that they're not doing anything for them. And so I think that's why especially with black men you saw a lot of them vote for Trump last cycle because they didn't hear what was happening on their behalf from the left. Yeah. All right. Any mayors out there you're going to go fly and visit in April 2027. I won't be sitting into that. I'm focused on November 20th. No I know.

1:14:31November 26th. No I know. Trans by LGBTQ plus mayors out there that might be on the ice. Okay. I mean anybody is welcome to give me a call and we would be happy to talk to them about how they can work and further the bench's mission going into the next cycle. I appreciate you. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks all my friend Michael Rice new show coming up soon reporter and the spy. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow with my bestie. See you all then. Through the ground. If you want to be a spy let me know.

1:15:33The board daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper associate producer Anzali Skipper and with video editing by Dante DeCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.