Sarah Longwell: Dems, Go on Offense FFS

Summary

The Bulwark Daily – August 14, 2026

Episode Title: Sarah Longwell: Dems, Go on Offense FFS
Host: Tim Miller
Guest: Sarah Longwell
Theme: Encouraging Democrats to go on political offense, analyzing GOP hypocrisy, the challenges of communications strategy, and answering audience mailbag questions.

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Episode Overview

This episode features Tim Miller in conversation with Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, touching on recent political controversies, the need for Democratic aggression in messaging, focus group insights, the double standard in party scandal responses, and cultural trends impacting politics. The back half is dedicated to a lively and engaging mailbag segment, with listener questions ranging from recommendations for political history reading to dynamics between gay men and lesbians.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “Restore and Rename” Controversy at the Kennedy Center

Timestamps: 03:12–07:24

• Trump’s allies on the Kennedy Center’s board voted to inscribe and rename parts of the center after Trump, facing legal obstacles since the center must be named for President Kennedy.
• Longwell’s insight: Such performative actions are emblematic of Trump’s focus on self-image over substantive policy, contrasting what voters want or expect from a president.

  "This is the example of how we are all being dominated by Trump's ego... He pays attention to these things. He doesn't pay attention to the material needs of Americans." (Sarah Longwell, 05:24)

• Political resonance noted: Swing voter focus groups reveal frustration with Trump’s prioritization of personal legacy over real issues, especially amid war and economic strain.

2. GOP Hypocrisy on Scandals: The Max Miller Case

Timestamps: 08:02–13:44

• Tim highlights Republican Congressman Mike Lawler’s past actions (traveling to troll victims’ families at the Michael Jackson trial, using blackface) and refusal to return money from Max Miller amid abuse allegations.
• Contrast drawn with recent Democratic action to distance from Graham Platner after credible accusations, versus Republicans closing ranks around Miller.

  "Democrats did the right thing and they tossed Platner overboard when he was credibly accused of rape. Republicans... just weeks later have this Max Miller situation, right? And Republicans basically be like, no, we're gonna stick with him." (Longwell, 11:09)

• Longwell criticizes the right’s ability to go on offense over Dem scandals, while Democrats struggle to match that energy with GOP scandals.

3. Democratic Messaging and the Challenge of Offense

Timestamps: 13:44–17:07; 27:16–34:08

• Miller and Longwell lament Democratic timidity: Opportunities are missed to hang GOP scandals around Republican necks, while intra-party nitpicking predominates.
• Notable Example: The need for memorable, even “cringe” stunts to break through media noise—e.g., the “Blue Bunny” idea or comedic mail-in ballot skits.

  "I want some more big stunts. And occasionally I will say it’s not the first time I’ve offered this... there's a limit on the creativity of how to get these stories about Trump's corruption to break through." (Miller, 27:47)

• Longwell emphasizes narrative dominance: Trump practices it, Dems need to counter with their own offensive, clear, and attention-grabbing narratives.

4. The Manosphere, Joe Rogan Phenomenon, and “Bro Culture”

Timestamps: 19:20–26:38

• Discussion of how podcasts like Joe Rogan shape news consumption: Rogan’s “blank slate” ignorance allows mis- or under-informed takes to reach millions.
• Longwell: The left shouldn’t mimic Rogan, but needs to embed messages in non-political cultural spaces.

  “To be a Joe Rogan is just to live in total blindness to the world... That’s not what Joe Rogan does. Joe Rogan sits there like a pure little baby, just getting this information as it comes to him.” (Longwell, 20:42)

• The “bro culture” New York Times headline is mocked for treating basic workplace banter as a gendered phenomenon.

5. Reflections on “Woke 1” and the Costs of Overreach

Timestamps: 37:45–47:34

• Responding to criticism that their “anti-woke” stance is overstated, both hosts clarify: They see value in representation but criticize excessive identitarianism and illiberal trends.

  “I just think that fundamentally, like, I'm a moderate balance in all things. And I think that when it comes to identitarianism and identity politics, like, making everything about that, like, making it the central part... is, like, pernicious.” (Miller, 40:17)

• They recount real-world harms during COVID (school closures, business loss), BLM protests' uneven rules, and policing rhetoric ("defund the police") causing backlash.

  "Those excesses created a backlash that I think allowed Trump to come back." (Longwell, 47:18)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Focus Groups:

  “I was genuinely a little surprised at how angry these voters were at Trump right now. And it is the war and it is the tariffs and it is the fact that he is not paying attention to the economy.” (Longwell, 06:49)

• On GOP Scandal Hypocrisy:

  "I've never heard anything like this. I really wanted to talk about the Max Miller thing because it is an example of a bunch of things that bother me in the moment. But Lawler's really highlighting one..." (Longwell, 10:11)

• On Democratic Performance:

  "The line between performance and cringe is thin. A little cringe isn't bad, though, you know what I mean? This is something that Trump learned." (Miller, 30:00)

• On Political “Bro Culture”:

  “We also like sports and pop culture. We also give each other nicknames... It's how normal people just engage with each other.” (Longwell, 25:44)

• On Approaching Joe Rogan-Style Audiences:

  “If I were Hakeem Jeffries ... just, I mean, go on, talk about aliens, talk about the way that Donald Trump is betraying us...” (Longwell, 24:36)

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Mailbag Segment Highlights

Starts: 37:24

Changing Political Identity & Shame

(49:15–51:20)

• Don’t feel guilt or shame about changing your political views: It’s a sign of growth, not failure.
• Therapy wisdom: "Guilt means you feel bad that you did something bad, and shame means you feel like you are bad." (Miller, 50:28)

Bulwark Cast Superlatives

(51:53–54:08)

• Fun segment on which Bulwark podcaster is most likely to win/lose an election, serve in an administration, or show up with “biceps and sunglasses.”
• Sarah notes Will Sommer's “sneaky fit” biceps; Bill Kristol is praised for his work ethic and office presence (“mayor of the office”).

Gay Men & Lesbians

(56:46–58:56)

• Playful, honest discussion about the dynamic: Women and men typically have different cultural affinities, but “maybe as queer spaces are starting to dissipate, it’s like maybe we might be coming back together now in community with one another.” (Miller, 58:56)

Abolishing ICE?

(59:56–61:55)

• Both hosts support abolishing ICE, arguing it’s unnecessary and redundant—border security can be managed better without it.

  "Homeland Security is like brand new... We do not need fucking ICE. Right? Abolish ICE." (Miller, 61:15)

Political History Reading Tips for Gen Z

(65:01–68:41)

• Longwell and Miller recommend:
  • The Federalist Papers, “Letters from Birmingham Jail”
  • John Heilemann’s “Game Change”
  • Richard Ben Cramer’s “What It Takes”
  • Mark Leibovich’s “This Town”
  • Movie: “Primary Colors”
  • Classics: Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”, Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War”
  • Fukuyama’s “The End of History”

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Most Memorable Moments & Quotes With Timestamps

• Trump’s focus vs. voters' priorities:

  "He pays attention to these things... He doesn't pay attention to the material needs of Americans." (Longwell, 05:24)

• On contrast in scandal response:

  "Democrats did the right thing... Republicans... just weeks later have this Max Miller situation... and Republicans basically be like, no, we're gonna stick with him." (Longwell, 11:09)

• On performance and ‘cringe’ politics:

  "A little cringe isn't bad though, you know what I mean? This is something that Trump learned." (Miller, 30:00)

• On the responsibility to acknowledge overreach:

  "Those excesses created a backlash that I think allowed Trump to come back." (Longwell, 47:18)

• On being proud of changing political views:

  “Don't feel ashamed... reevaluating things in light of new information is a sign of intelligence, not something you have to be ashamed of.” (Longwell, 49:34)

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Useful Timestamps for Key Segments

• Kennedy Center / Trump naming fight: 03:12–07:24
• Max Miller and Lawler scandals: 08:02–13:44
• Dems need offense, stunt discussion: 13:44–17:07; 27:16–34:08
• Joe Rogan/manosphere/media critique: 19:20–26:38
• “Bro culture” NYT critique: 25:37–26:38
• Woke 1/Overreach, COVID, defund the police: 37:45–47:34
• Mailbag begins: 37:24
• ICE and border policy: 59:56–61:55
• Pop culture and political reading recs: 65:01–68:41

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Summary

This episode is a robust tour through current controversies—Trumpian self-obsession, ongoing GOP hypocrisy, the missed opportunities and communication failures of the Democratic Party, and the need for bold, creative offense in politics. Miller and Longwell deploy a sharp, often irreverent tone while offering genuine insight into voter perceptions, campaign communications, and media strategy. The mailbag section injects levity and listener engagement but also explores personal reflection, movement dynamics, and the politics of memory and change.

Bottom Line:
Sarah Longwell’s rallying cry is clear: Democrats have plenty to work with—so stop fighting among yourselves and go on the offensive, FFS.

Transcript

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[Tim Miller]

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[Sarah Longwell]

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[Tim Miller]

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[Sarah Longwell]

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[Tim Miller]

They're all yours. All you have to do is book early book with vrbo. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Friday as promised. We got a mailbag and I'm here with the publisher of this year Bulwark. She has a book out.

[Sarah Longwell]

I do.

[Tim Miller]

September 8th, how to eat an Elephant One voter at a time. We'll put the link to the show notes. If you haven't bought it yet, I don't know what you're doing. Please pre order it now. Also in the show notes, a friend of Mariam Tomasebe whose just horrific story I talked about on the podcast earlier this week reached out with a GoFundMe for her and her family. They've been in the Dilley internment camp for like four months, even though they're legal residents. So we'll put that in the show notes as well. Appreciate any support. You have double duty today, girl. Thank you for doing this.

[Sarah Longwell]

I just finished a long slog secret pod with jvl. Actually, it was a great secret pod. Go listen to it.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, this is what you're getting as a bulwark plus member the secret pods. You might as well take advantage of it. I have one overlap topic. Just because we have to do it with the secret pod, but besides that, it's all freshies for people. Okay. That's what we call it.

[Sarah Longwell]

Skiing Freshies.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, skiing. When you're skiing, when you go on the mountain, you know, if it snows a little bit overnight, you get freshies.

[Sarah Longwell]

I never heard that. No.

[Tim Miller]

Seem like a little Colorado slang for you. Gotcha. The Kennedy Center. There were some announcements yesterday. The board of trustees, such as Trump and his pals, approved a resolution calling for a new inscription beneath the center sign that would read restored and renovated by President Donald J. Trump. It also voted to close the venue for tears of renovations and rename the center's grounds President Donald J. Trump Plaza. This decision faces some legal obstacles for people who pay attention. Trump had added his name to the building already. The court said that was not allowed. The judge, I think, said the law makes crystal clear that the center is to be named for President Kennedy. They've had a tarp over it, I guess, since then.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yes.

[Tim Miller]

Do you ever drive by?

[Sarah Longwell]

I do.

[Tim Miller]

The tarp is up.

[Sarah Longwell]

The tarp is up. They don't want anyone to see the building without Donald Trump's name on it. And because people, including our people, went and camped out there when they were supposed to be taking his name down, they didn't want anybody to see that. Right. Because the only thing Trump cares about this is sort of fragile little ego. And so, yes, they've tarped it. And now they basically. They clearly went back to the drawing board and said, how do we get his name on this? And one of the things that this is the board's doing. But if you remember, they stripped, they took, kicked everyone off the Kennedy center board when Trump came in, put Rick Grenell in charge of it, I believe, and then stacked it with a bunch of other sort of Trump toadies So their big goal is. Has been shutting down the Kennedy center and figuring out any way possible to get Trump's name on it.

[Tim Miller]

That was Rick's consolation prize after he lobbied to be Secretary of State. And they're like, you know, I think we'll put the gay over at the theater. One of the things I promised people after Trump won was that I was, like, not gonna pretend to be outraged about things. You know, like, we all only have so much kind of room in our heart for rage if we're not gonna stroke out. This has been a story that I've struck. You know, I'm not a theater queen. It's just, you know, it's one of my weaknesses. You are. Should I be really mad about this? I mean, aren't we just gonna take his name off the fucking plaza as soon as we win again? And so it's kind of like, this is stupid, or is there a reason for me to be really more mad about it than I am?

[Sarah Longwell]

So I think all of the reflecting pool, the ballroom, the Kennedy center, they all sort of don't matter substantively, but they matter a great deal, sort of metaphorically, because this is the example of how we are all being dominated by Trump's ego. He pays attention to these things. He doesn't pay attention to the material needs of Americans. He walks us into a stupid war. He will go on the record and say, yeah, I don't care if Republicans lose. I don't care if inflation is up. Like, I don't care. I love the inflation, he says. And so he won't pay attention to those things that matter. He does pay attention to this. So I think it matters in that regard about where Trump's attention is.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I think it matters politically. I cheated on you a little bit and monitor a focus group that was not one of yours.

[Sarah Longwell]

Whose was it?

[Tim Miller]

Just a friend works for a campaign and was just giving me a readout of their focus group in one of the House races. And this notion really has broken through with Trump voters, with swing voters. Like, the idea that he cares only about this shit.

[Sarah Longwell]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

And I do think that that's meaningful. Right. And I think that, like, this stuff, if the economy is good.

[Sarah Longwell]

Exactly.

[Tim Miller]

If you hadn't done the stupid war, maybe, you know, he'd get away with it. Yeah, he'd get away with it. You know, the Resist Libs on Substack would be mad, but maybe that would just be it. But I don't. I do think this has more resonance for that reason.

[Sarah Longwell]

I mean, this is where the contrast. I talk a lot about contrast because I think that when you hear this in my focus groups all the time, where people are like, I expected to have the economy of Trump's first term and the fact that they aren't and the fact that there is this war and I cannot stress enough, I just did a bunch of focus groups in Florida when we were on Nicole, she played some sound from the Florida focus groups. I was genuinely a little surprised at how angry these voters were at Trump right now. And it is the war and it is the tariffs and it is the fact that he is not paying attention to the economy. And that is why these things now matter.

[Tim Miller]

And then there was the one Cletus who was mad that we're not deporting

[Sarah Longwell]

enough people yet, but he was mad about both. It was funny that she played that clip of a guy being like they're not doing enough mass deportations. And also the war is really stupid. Where his. And he was like, I wanna give Trump an F cuz he's not deporting enough and he got us into a stupid war.

[Tim Miller]

Those people are meaningful. Cuz it's like, is that guy gonna vote? Very possibly not.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. I mean, this is where the enthusiasm gap gets real. Going into 2026 is like when these Republicans are just frustrated with Trump. If you're a Republican and you love Trump, you're like, well, I wanna protect his agenda. If you hate his agenda, you're much less motivated to do it.

[Tim Miller]

Speaking of things we're mad about, yesterday when we were thinking what we're gonna chat about on the pod, I asked you kind of like what you're upset about. You mentioned the Max Miller situation simultaneously yesterday. For people who are not on X.com, i created a little bit of a stir, which when I did the thing I do about once a year, which is remind people that Mike Lawlor, the congressman from New York when he was 18, even still, I did some weird stuff when I was 18, but nothing like this. He traveled from New York to California to go to Michael Jackson's trial where he trolled the parents of the children that were alleging molestation. Yeah. He also is dressed up in Michael Jackson blackface. That's pretty weird. So these two topics merged.

[Sarah Longwell]

They did when.

[Tim Miller]

Shoot. When Mike Lawlor was on Dana Bash yesterday. And I want to play a little bit of their conversation.

[Sarah Longwell]

I am not breaking his ex wife is his ex father in law. And I am asking you a purely political question. Purely political question. Why not just give it back, it's only $10,000 because this is, this is

[Tim Miller]

the typical Washington, this is the typical Washington media game where it's always an allegation comes up, you must return the money. It's, it's the typical game everybody plays and it doesn't actually do anything to further the situation. If there's evidence that Max did something, then obviously there should be a thorough investigation of that. But thus far there's been nothing to verify any of the claims that have been leveled. I think it is a tragic family situation. We all know people who have gone through nasty divorces. Do we? Do we all know people who have gone through nasty divorces where the wife says that the husband scalded her and there was domestic violence and the husband kidnapped the child's beloved bunny. And there are two other women that say that the husband has roughed them up or done other kinds of domestic violence.

[Sarah Longwell]

I don't think that's typical divorce.

[Tim Miller]

I don't know anybody who's been in a nasty divorce like that, actually.

[Sarah Longwell]

No, plenty of people who've gotten divorced. I've never heard anything like this. I really wanted to talk about the Max Miller thing because it is an example of a bunch of things that bother me in the moment. But Lawler's really highlighting one of them, which is we're like six weeks out from the Platner discourse. Cuz he, like every other Republican, when the Platner thing was happening and the accusations were coming out, condemned Platner, condemned all his supporters, condemned anyone who was backing him. And so Democrats did the right thing and they tossed Platner overboard when he was credibly accused of rape. Republicans in extraordinary close proximity to that same thing happening. Who you may remember, Tim, our friend Kevin McCarthy and Kellyanne Conway going on TV regularly to say we don't defend abusers in our ranks. Now, at the time it was already absurd because of course, Donald Trump renders all of that stuff. The hypocrisy is already there. But to then just weeks later have this Max Miller situation, right? And Republicans basically be like, no, we're gonna stick with him. And for somebody like Mike Lawler, who likes to pretend like he's one of the good guy moderates, to say this is just divorce, the hypocrisy is staggering and they are willing to brazen these out. This is a difference between Republicans and Democrats. And it is not just Lawlor and the elected officials. It's the entire sort of right wing Twitter brigade who came for us over platinum, who came for Everybody over.

[Tim Miller]

Mainly Graham Platner.

[Sarah Longwell]

That's right. And they're all heads in the sand on Max Miller. Which brings me to the second thing that really bothers me about the maximum.

[Tim Miller]

I get some likes. I do want to tell you, when I criticize Max Miller, I do get some likes from Republican world, I believe. Harmeet Dhillon.

[Sarah Longwell]

Oh, they don't speak out, but they're willing to signal to you.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. They don't like him. And so, you know. And likes are private. I should probably out them. I probably should have done that already.

[Sarah Longwell]

You should.

[Tim Miller]

Anyway, Harmony Dillon is the one that comes to mind. But, you know, I was making fun of Max Miller. Cause they all hate him. He's a douche, and he fucking beat up a Republican senator's daughter. And the spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

So it's like, they don't like this guy.

[Sarah Longwell]

They're always a scumbag.

[Quince Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Sarah Longwell]

You and I did a take one point where we laid out all of the times Trump was willing to. Interestingly, Michael Jackson came up in that one too, where Trump goes to bat for any abuser who shows up. Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson.

[Tim Miller]

You know, Eric played with Michael Jackson.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. He talks about how his kids played with Michael Jackson all the time. Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

It's kind of a weird one.

[Sarah Longwell]

Okay, that's one part of it then. I want to talk about Democrats and offense. So one of the things that is driving me crazy right now is that in light of this hypocrisy, right. The way that the right came together around Graham Platner to go on offense, not just against Platner himself, but against everybody who might have tacitly supported him. They came at me, even though I wasn't tacitly supporting him. Like, they made. Tried to make a tie everybody to their behavior around the house.

[Tim Miller]

When I was at my dad's retirement party, some family members that are maga, you know, were like, asking me about Graham Platner, like, quizzing me about Graham Platner. And I was asking them, I was like, do you know who Mary Patola is or Roy Cooper is? And it was like, no, I never even heard any of these other names. Right. Because to your point, because the right is really good at, like, surfacing, you know, these bad examples of Democrats and going on offense, forcing Democrats to have to defend it.

[Sarah Longwell]

The psychology of this is they hide from themselves their own disgusting acquiescence to Trump and all the immorality that comes with that. Right. They don't wanna tell themselves that story. So what they focus on offensively is any Democrat who behaves poorly as a way to say what about? What about? And to inoculate themselves right from that criticism. But it is wild to me in this moment when they are so close to the Graham Platner situation. Republicans are standing by Max Miller and Democrats aren't in a brigade themselves going on offense against Republicans for doing this. They should be hanging it around Eric Erickson's neck. They should be hanging it around every Republican who has made the platinum thing such a big deal. But they can't cuz they're fighting with each other.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, that's right. And Lawler Pride's a good example, you know, and this is an easy opportunity and I assume Kate Connelly and her campaign will take this opportunity. But it's like you can tie it back to the Epstein issue totally. Like all these guys except for what mtg Nancy Mace are like four of them, like all of them blocked the Epstein files release. So you've got Mike Lawler who's so into Neverland Ranch that he went like flew to defend this was brand new information Michael Jackson and troll the victim's parents. So big defender of Neverland Ranch Epstein cover up in favor of running, you know, cover for Max Miller who is credibly accused of domestic violence by Republicans. Like there is a good story to tell against these people. And like Mike Lawler, I mean who is. Who was on CNN I guess doing the hum and a hum and a like this should continue to nag him. And that is replicable I think in other situations with the example that I don't know that anybody else is that huge of a fan of Michael Jackson's pillow fight parties with children.

[Sarah Longwell]

I know people have very strong opinions about the Michael Jackson stuff and let's just say forget which side of that maybe you're on.

[Tim Miller]

How? I don't. Why would we forget?

[Sarah Longwell]

Well I just.

[Tim Miller]

You're neutral.

[Sarah Longwell]

Oh no, I'm not neutral. No, no, no, I'm not neutral. But I still think that my only point is is that even if you were neutral, the idea that you would put on blackface and go down there. Now granted he was 18, those are two separate incidents.

[Tim Miller]

One incident he put on blackface. We'll put the picture up on the screen for people.

[Sarah Longwell]

Oh, it's not the same thing.

[Tim Miller]

No, two things. He just was a big Stan. He's making a stand culture. So one time he did Michael Jackson blackface, which is kind of weird because Michael Jackson kind of did white face.

[Sarah Longwell]

Well he had I think he had a disease. I saw it on Oprah when I was young.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, okay. Well, even still, you could dress as Michael Jackson without darkening your face, given how Michael Jackson looked. But anyway, he went the extra mile and did the black face. That was for a party. And then also went to the trial.

[Sarah Longwell]

Okay, well, I didn't know any of that until I saw your tweet, and that was fun. My point is that that is a wild thing to do to, like, go down to a trial. That is an intense thing to do regardless of how you feel. I want to see Democrats. Like, guys, mail Mike Lawler a million blue bunnies. Like, put the blue bunny in your Instagram profile. Like, can we not make this a huge issue? Can we not discover what offense looks like and go after the bad guys?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, look at that Michael Jackson blackface photo. Katie, just put that up on the screen here in the studio. Look at that. What a look. He's doing the dance.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

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[Sarah Longwell]

The corruption.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, the corruption that's happening. But he particularly tells him about the example of Trump selling for $100,000 access to his tweets early so people can inside your trade on him. Let's watch a little bit of that exchange. I don't know what's happening here at the beginning of the clip. Looks like a man is drinking out of a American flag boot. We should get one of those.

[Sarah Longwell]

No, I think it's an eagle's butt.

[Tim Miller]

It's an eagle's butt.

[Sarah Longwell]

I'm not sure.

[Tim Miller]

You might be drinking Truth Social tweets to people, and then they can bet on it. What I think. Yeah, selling access. Selling access. He's selling faster access to his tweets, and then you can bet on it better. What? It's on the markets because. Wait a minute. It's literally insider trading. It's Kashi. Everything you could fix.

[Sarah Longwell]

Wait a minute.

[Tim Miller]

Is that real? You get access to a tweet before he makes it, and then you could bet on that tweet.

[Sarah Longwell]

How is that legal?

[Tim Miller]

Great question. Trump sued over Truth Social advance access sale. I'm online in the Oval Office. Who's telling him this is a good idea? Who's failing? Donald Trump.

[Sarah Longwell]

I know. It couldn't be Trump himself. The corruption couldn't be coming directly from Trump.

[Tim Miller]

It's not as if he hasn't been a scam artist for a fucking half century. Who is. What is the incoming news that Joe Rogan is receiving?

[Sarah Longwell]

Listen this. This clip is also a perfect example of a phenomenon that I need people to get their heads right about, which is people are like, the left needs a Joe Rogan. And I'm like, guys, to be a Joe Rogan is not to be on the left or right. To be a Joe Rogan is just to live in total blindness to the world. You. You sit at your computer, you get really high. You lift a lot of weights and like you don't actually tap in to the news much, which is why they keep failing. Cuz they keep bringing up people who are of the left but who are consumed by politics, who know a lot about politics when they talk about it and argue a lot about it. That's not what Joe Rogan does. Joe Rogan sits there like a. Like a pure little baby, just getting this information as it comes to him. And he's like, that news about Trump selling access to his truth socials has been out there for weeks. And it was big news. Rogan, brand new information to hand.

[Tim Miller]

Top of Drudge. Yeah. I would like to learn a little bit about Rogan's kind of media diet. I'm a little bit less like hair on fire about like, sometimes I feel like the rhetoric, the anti manosphere rhetoric can be a little bit overblown. It's like it's a comedian's podcast, right? Totally. And I always felt this way about like, Theo Vaughn, my Louisiana guy. It's like we have a mutual friend. And I said to him, I was like, we pass on to Theo, maybe we can clip this now. You can send it to him. Like, his podcast is hilarious. Like when he has on like an Amish kid and he wants to ask the Amish kid what's life like as an Amish teen? Yeah, he's funny. He's funny. It's like the problem is when you have the Vice President of the United States on because you don't know what's happening in the news.

[Sarah Longwell]

That's right.

[Tim Miller]

So the Vice President of the United States comes on and starts just fucking gaslighting you and lying to you and you're like, oh, really? Huh? And like your fucking huge audience listens to that. Like, that's the problem. And like, that's like the Rogan thing. It's like, okay, like, if you're gonna talk about aliens, great, that's fine. But it's like, if you're gonna talk about the news, if you're gonna go to the White House, like Rogan has done multiple times, do free PR for Trump, you would think that you should at least like, I don't know, know

[Sarah Longwell]

what's up, know what he's up to, do I like what he's doing? Cuz actually every time Joe Rogan, as best I can tell, gets a new piece of information about what Donald Trump is doing in this administration, that's really not good. I don't like that at all. You're like, yeah, man, Trump's bad.

[Tim Miller]

Lovett does this thing where he's like, it's annoying that, like, the Democrats are the only people who have any agency in the world. Like, it's a terrible thing happens out there. And it's like, why aren't the Democrats doing something to resolve it? That is an accurate critique. That said, we all do have agency in the world. And it's like, do you have any thoughts as a communications professional about, like, if Joe Rogan doesn't know that Trump is selling insider trading tips to Wall Street, I assume that lots of people don't know, right? Your focus group people don't know. So, like, do you have thoughts on how to address that problem?

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah, this is where when people say, we need a left wing Joe Rogan, I'm like, no, what you have is a Joe Rogan who is an uninformed dude, but who likes to dabble in these political issues. Right? And he basically wants to talk to people who will talk to him or go talk to the Joe Rogan that exists. Right. He clearly likes getting this new information. He takes these inputs. And so if I were Hakeem Jeffries or okay, fine, but I'm just, I mean, well, this is the problem, right? I mean, the problem then comes down to do you have people that can go on Rogan? And I think this is where the Democratic Party does struggle a little bit. Is like JD Vance for. I find him, you know, repellent as a, as a person talking. But, but lots of Democrats could say, like, yo, Joe Rogan, I want to come on and talk to you about whatever and think about how you go on, talk about aliens, talk about the way that Donald Trump is betraying us. They keep saying they're going to show

[Tim Miller]

us all the UFOs. Where are they?

[Sarah Longwell]

Where are the UFOs? I mean, just whatever, just do that. And like, Theo Vaughn is funny, but. So this is why it's not just. Look, I think that Democrats do need to build their own communications infrastructure the way that the right has, but I also think they need to avail themselves of the existing infrastructure. That is not political. That's the key. The key is that it's not political.

[Tim Miller]

I'm gonna do the positive first and then a critique. This is just another thing that Zoron's good at. I had a big laugh this morning in the New York Times. Let me actually just pull this up because it's funny enough to read it. Our friends in the New York Times, they sponsored the episodes, but sometimes we can make Fun of them, too. Happens to the best of us in the media business. Here it is. It's a headline in today's New York Times. Mamdani's bro culture in City Hall Sports memes. Nicknames. As much as Zoran Mamdani's team runs on leftist idealism and social media hits, its style of governing also relies on humor and sports references and pop culture. It's like, so they're guys. They're just. Nor they're just.

[Sarah Longwell]

Sorry, not even guys. Not even guys. I have multiple women run companies, me being the woman.

[Tim Miller]

And like, you can talk about sports and pop culture.

[Sarah Longwell]

We also like sports and pop culture. We also give each other nicknames.

[Tim Miller]

And it's like, so Maudani can do this. He could go. He should. You know, he can go on these shows and he's fine. He's great. And he's super talented, able to kind of mix it up, you know, get his universal healthcare and free grocery stores or whatever. Government owned grocery stores. Mix that in and talk about other stuff like, this is doable. But it is. I just think it's telling that it's like the fact that Mamdani can do it and that he has a staff that is fluent in all this stuff. The fact that that is, like, surprising enough to merit a story in the New York Times that kind of tells you that is.

[Sarah Longwell]

That is telling that the other part of it is that they identify that specifically as bro culture, as opposed to just culture. Like, people like to tell jokes. They like to give each other nicknames. They like to treat each other like human beings. Razz each other a little bit, have fun. You may have noticed this happens on the Bulwark podcast.

[Tim Miller]

They like the Knicks.

[Sarah Longwell]

They like. Yeah. And so, like, that's not bro culture. It is how normal people just engage with each other. And this is when you think about Democrats and their stiff talking points. And I think that the Thanksgiving thing now has been sort of done to death. But, like, that sounds alien to people, right? That is somebody being like this thing that you love that you celebrate in culture, which is part of your vacations every year, when you see your family is like a bad thing and you should feel bad about it. That's just a weird thing to say where joking about sports and liking comedians, showing runs and memes, just how people want to exist.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. So that's part of it. Being able to do that. Just being a part of the actual culture is part of the thing that leaves me a little bit wanting. And I feel bad for the comms people. I used to be a comms person, and it's kind of easy to sit here in the big comfy chair and say what I'm about to say. I get that you get an organization. There's always reasons not to do stuff. I just like Trump is so bad and there's so many opportunities that, like, I want some more stunts.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

I want some more big stunts. And occasionally I will say it's not the first time I've offered this. And I think some of our. We're getting into a mailbag ladder. Some of the negative feedback we receive sometimes is like the Democrats will do a stunt and it'll be bad and then I'll complain about it. That's a risk of stunts, for sure. Okay. Like, just because I like stunts doesn't mean that every stunt's a good stunt.

[Sarah Longwell]

Okay.

[Tim Miller]

But I don't know, I do feel like there's something. There's a limit on the creativity of how to get these stories about Trump's corruption to break through or. I don't want to pick on Seth Moulton. Good guy, and I hope he wins in his primary against Markey. I was talking to Bill about this yesterday when we had lunch, and I was like, I want Seth Moulton almost chaining himself outside the ICE facility in Massachusetts. I want really dramatic gestures. And rather than what you were saying earlier, kind of the nitpicking within the party, like nitpicking each, I want very over the top gestures going after Trump. I am still left a little wanting on that front. Just kind of across the board, basically.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. I think that. Look, not to reference my book, I'm sorry that I am in the phase of, as I say in my book, but it is true that a bunch of what's in my book is about communication, narrative dominance, the way that Trump practices narrative dominance, and the way that Democrats can go on offense to push back. And a lot of it. I think that because the line between a stunt and cringe is like a. You never know where you're crossing that one. But I do think that Democrats should spend a lot more time, even if it's. Just be serious about it. But, like, call a press conference, all right? You're in the middle of a contested election. The press will come. If you call a press conference to say, I wanna lead the charge against Max Miller, my colleague Max Miller, who needs to go, he's a lousy guy. Like, pick up the mantle of something, stand for something. It doesn't all have to be sort of performance art. I go back to my Blue Bunny idea. I like the Blue Bunny idea. That's one off the. But like, think about what are the things that you can do that harness people's attention and they like, they don't. It's like they flounder in that space.

[Tim Miller]

The line between performance and cringe is thin. A little cringe isn't bad though, you know what I mean? This is something that Trump learned. If your people like it and the opponents are making fun of you, then more people are seeing it because everybody's talking about it. And so I think that that is the advantage of shooting more shots in this. Right? Here's an example of the thin line between performance and cringe. This was Abdul El Sayed a couple weeks ago. It's a video trying to get people to send in their mail in ballots. And Fox was making fun of him for it yesterday. Let's play a little clip. Here's the mail. It never fails. It makes me wanna wag my tail when it comes. I wanna wail mail. This is him doing a Blue's Clues riff.

[Sarah Longwell]

Uh huh.

[Tim Miller]

A little cringe. But Fox is making fun of him. And it like this works, right? I mean a, this was a couple weeks ago. People were learning about the mail ballots. But also it's like, I don't know. On the one hand, Fox wanted to call him a terrorist, a very scary jihad. I think Trump called him a jihadist in the White House. And then like the next minute, Fox is showing a video of him like, doing corny dad jokes.

[Sarah Longwell]

First of all, that is the most that I have liked Abdul El Sayed since I've become acquainted with him. Because most of what I've seen from him, right, comes from the primary where he's like, you know, crapping on Haley Stevens, who was like my. Who I had a preference for. But I watched that and I'm like, I think he's adorable. First of all, he looks great in that shirt.

[Tim Miller]

He does.

[Sarah Longwell]

And second of all, maybe he should wear more colors.

[Tim Miller]

He's always in that black V. Yeah,

[Sarah Longwell]

he does a little bit. It did. It looked nice on him. There's something about him. He's doing like a civic action, which I love. A good civic action, I love. Right. That's the way you get to my heart. Like telling people to send their bouts in. He's taken a swing. It's funny. He's appealing to, like, I'm a little old for Blue's Clues, but it was a cultural thing. My younger siblings liked it. And so I Think that that backfires on Fox and that that is a good thing to do.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. There's a lot of this with him in particular. And actually maybe I should kind of revise and extend my earlier point where some of my frustration on the failure on the performance side is like with our people, like the center left Democrats and like the establishment Democrats, because the left candidates, at least a handful of them are pretty good at it. We mentioned Zoran, which said Abdul, so that's a more cheesy version of it, but his really passionate arguments, going after money in politics, going after what's happening in the Middle east, going after the healthcare executives, the actual policies are probably not exactly what you and I would want. But like he's defining a clear foe.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

You know, and you can tell he's passionate about it. It resonates with where Democratic voters are. And then it creates this response I think is so funny from the right where they are like, you know, calling him names, being like, oh, Abdul El Said hates Israel so much. And I'm like, this is a little bit reminiscent for me of the mistakes we made as like in the Jeb campaign and everybody campaigned Marco Scott Walker where we were like, Trump is a racist with his Muslim ban. And it's like, well, that was true. Right. But like, was that a good message? Just looking at this strategy wise, not morality wise. Because like that means the voters heard about it more. And the voters, the Republican voters were like, hell yeah, yeah. And like in this case, whether it be whatever, single payer, healthcare, less money and weapons for Israel, et cetera, it's kind of like they're like, they're calling him a socialist, they're calling him anti Israel. It's like, I think this is helping him actually. I think that there's like a Trump element to that. It's a reverse Trump is in the Jeb shoes and El Sayed is in the Trump shoes. That I guess I'm not comparing them on a moral level, but just from their role in the discourse. And it's like they didn't learn what worked for themselves on the MAGA side.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. And this is where, look, if what voters learn about you as you are getting your profile raised is that you're anti Thanksgiving. And I gotta tell you, people gonna be like, sarah, stop talking about that. But I'm telling you, that is the thing that did her in. Right. With voters. But they were like, well, that's too weird. But so that's one example where like not all press is good press. Right. If it's too far out there. But the fact is there are a lot of Republicans that are anti Israel right now. There are a lot of people that will suddenly go, oh, I'm interested in you.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, yeah, you don't want us to get in this stupid war.

[Sarah Longwell]

That's right. And that's why this is in part. There's a different game afoot now, which is about just the attention economy overall. And it can work for you or against you. But I do think you're right that there's a bunch of these issues that are broadly more popular than the Republican establishment thinks they are.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Kinzinger, yesterday, right here sitting in the chair you were in, was saying he's getting socialist healthcare. Curious.

[Sarah Longwell]

So am I. Not so. But I do think single parent health

[Tim Miller]

care or some Medicare for all that.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah, I think, I think that there is. I won't go into like a whole policy thing, but if you ask me, one of the main things that I have shifted on, I think that, look, presidents, there's not that much they can do to like lower inflation. Like these are big economic forces. I think that we are at a point where health care is so complicated and I think that there is a grand bargain somewhere between securing the border and offering. Every American when they are born comes into a health care plan and you can purchase additional services as you need them or additional layers, but that basic access to healthcare is both where we should be going as a country and I think where we are going.

[Tim Miller]

All right, guys, got an announcement for you. Fall tour is happening. If you're in the Confederacy, save the date because we're coming for you. The Bulwark is headed to the Southeast in October for our Good Fight tour. We want the community to come together before the 2026 midterm election. Sarah, JBL, Sam and I will be headed to the Carolinas and Atlanta in October. Some other Bulwark folks are coming too. Make sure you subscribe to be a Bulwark member to get your pick of seats while they last. This is important. First seats go out to Bullord members. People get very excited. They get the seats down at the front. If we do audience participation, if there's call and response, they're right there. If you're not a Bulwark member, you might be up in the nosebleeds. Who wants that? Become a Bulwark member. Come hang out with us. Tickets go live for the presale for subscribers on Tuesday. They go live for everybody else on Friday. We are going to be in Colombia, Charlotte and Atlanta, Columbia, Charlotte, and Atlanta. That's Columbia, South Carolina, not Medellin. Columbia, South Carolina. So excited to be back. Love Cola. Hope you all come and hang with us. Keep an eye on the bulwark.com events for the latest information. All right, I promise, people, a mailbag.

[Sarah Longwell]

Let's do it.

[Tim Miller]

Well, before we get to the mailbag, actually, why don't we play Abdul one more time? Why don't we have Abdul take us into the mailbag? Here's the mail. It never fails. It makes me wanna wag my tail when it comes. I wanna wail.

[Sarah Longwell]

Mail,

[Tim Miller]

mail.

[Sarah Longwell]

Adorable.

[Tim Miller]

We have a lot of actual emails that I got. I did use the best one yesterday, thanks to Tyler about his explosive diarrhea. I felt like that was more appropriate for Kinzinger. I'm gonna get to specific mailbag questions, but there's a more general piece of feedback that we got from the next level that was everywhere in my inbox, on Reddit, in the comments that I want to address first before I get to the specific mail questions. And that was this question about Woke one. So crazy and a little behind the curtain here. I do a lot of prep for this show. You do a lot of prep for the illegal news and for the focus group tnl. Sometimes we're just kind of shooting from the hip. We are.

[Sarah Longwell]

We're fine.

[Tim Miller]

It's just like, hey, whatever. What are the topics today? Let's spitball. We're hanging. We're friends. That's why you guys like it. The negative side of that is sometimes I'm giving opinions that are more secret Podcast rules. They're not fully formed. And so I just wanted to revisit the woke thing for a second because there were a lot of people that were like, why are Tim and Sarah so mad about Woke one? It wasn't that big of a deal. So people said, Latinx, whatever. Who cares who was hurt by that? And I hear that. And so I wanted to kind of explain myself, but do you want to go first or do you want me to?

[Sarah Longwell]

Well, why don't you go first, as I think we feel pretty similar.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Here's my view about this. And for people who do really care about this, I've now had Ta Nehisi Coates on the pod three times, and each time we've done Woke one revisited as part of the conversations. I think you could learn a little bit more about my kind of quibbles with it from those conversations. But just to sum it up, I think that there are some really good parts of It I think that the idea that we should have more visibility for different marginalized groups is like, yeah, obviously it shouldn't just be fucking white ballerinas in the store and having different characters that more reflect the full country. In kids books, all this sort of stuff in the C suites. It's like, I kind of think we're not even really there yet. Some of the DEI stuff in office and HR stuff is stupid, but I laugh at the tech guys that are like, woke is so stupid. We're past racism. Then I'm like, okay, well then why is every CEO of a tech company a white guy or an Indian guy? Literally? So there is, I think, good progress that could be made both when it comes to race and gender. And I also, as somebody who was long time kind of an ACAB on cops, I was never a big cop guy. I was more of a libertarian on the Republican side. I think a revisiting of the relationship between the police and the populace is also positive that that got overboard. Here's my, like, here's my main issue with it. I just think that fundamentally, like, I'm a moderate balance in all things. And I think that when it comes to identitarianism and identity politics, like, making everything about that, like, making it the central part of assessing every person's character, every decision that is made in an organization is, like, pernicious. And it's not how our society should be. Like, I don't want to, like, we're gonna, like, whatever, people are gonna cringe. And this is corny, but, like, the idea that people should be judged by the content of their character is, like, fundamental to the country. And that does not mean that we shouldn't, like, address structural racism and all that. But, like, if we move away from that framework where we're not judging people by the content of the character, it becomes problems. And I still see to this day people like, throwing around things like attacking. Like, I saw this on Twitter just this week. Somebody was like, I don't wanna hear what a white woman thinks about that. And it's like, that's a bad thing to say.

[Sarah Longwell]

I get a lot of white woman comments.

[Tim Miller]

I'm sorry, you cannot use white woman as a pejorative. That's not okay. It would not be okay if you said, I don't want to hear what a gay has to say or what a fucking Asian person has to say.

[Sarah Longwell]

I get that one from the right.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, sure. That's just not okay. That is not in the spirit of liberalism and it has a negative impact on society. It also creates a backlash. It also is strategically stupid. I was always like, okay, you want identity politics? Well, that's interesting. We'll see how you like white identity politics. And we've seen that. I think so. I think it's morally wrong and strategically wrong. And the last thing I'll say is all that is a little bit up in the clouds, esoteric, cultural. And that is not a substantive harm like we've seen from Trump's policies. And there's nothing to compare all of this. Obviously, it's like we're doing this and, you know, I think that's why we

[Sarah Longwell]

started an entire media company devoted to

[Tim Miller]

trying to going out right wing authoritarianism. But there also were tangible issues. Crime did skyrocket during the period, and part of that was Covid, but part of that was the changes in policing and prosecuting. And there were victims of those crimes. That's just true. That's a real consequence. The school stuff, we can all debate. Covid was hard. I know JVL doesn't like it when we do this, but kids not going to school for a year for no reason was bad. That's just bad. I lived in Oakland at the time in California, so maybe I was more into this. And the example I gave on TNL was kind of stupid. But, like, a more serious example is, like, people in our community that I was friends with that were not as well off who, like, have both parents working or have single parents and they work. Like, what were their kids doing? You know, like rich people's kids, like, they paid like a nanny or somebody to come to their house and like, sit with them on their class computer while the parent did their laptop job. Like, that wasn't possible for regular people. So that's like my answer. Like, I think that to not acknowledge that there were real harms is bad. And to not acknowledge that just like fundamentally it's illiberal. To be so extreme on identitarianism is also, I think, not acknowledging reality.

[Sarah Longwell]

I agree with all that, but I'm gonna take a. I'm gonna talk about some different things because one of the things that I think happens is that we all have a kind of survivor's bias that I, and I don't mean, like, we all lived through, but I mean, we've all, like, we only remember the things that really bothered us and we've let a lot of the things go that perhaps were the excesses of our side. And so I think when people look back at Covid, a lot of people don't maybe realize or remember. But if you think about it for one second, you'll be like, too many businesses went under during COVID Like a lot of people lost their livelihoods. Now it was a once in a generation pandemic. And I think that like the attacks on Fauci and all this aren't seen. Everybody was trying to do their best, but every single.

[Tim Miller]

There's also bad stuff in the. Right. I just wanna say really quick, like more people died in Florida after the vaccine. Cause they did anti vaccination stuff and like those are lives lost. So like that. So that's true.

[Sarah Longwell]

And so I mean, part of this, I think my overall point is that like grace sort of needs to be extended across the board at some of these times when it was really difficult. But there are certain flashpoints that come up over and over again from voters where they decided that they hated the left on Covid, like the backlash. And it was things like during the Black Lives Matter protests, all the scientists who were telling them they had to stay in their houses suddenly gave a dispensation to go protest that broke a level of trust with a lot of people between them and sort of the scientific community.

[Tim Miller]

And that's related to woke because like that was the point, right? It was because it was, you know, people felt like during that period that they had to make these kind of racial identitarian concerns like prime. Right. One thing to be concerned about amidst,

[Sarah Longwell]

you know, so if you, if you've lost your business or you couldn't go visit your dying parent in a, in their, in their home, their sort of, you know, their elder care facility, things like that, like the level of anger. And this is the thing that I lived through. I remember being in my basement doing focus group after focus group after focus group, going to like during the pandemic and the pain that I heard across the board from people who were being robbed of like every milestone of life, whose parents died and they couldn't go to their funeral, whatever. And look, I think. And I think part of what people were frustrated by, so. So there's the scientific community. But then one of the reasons that I think Gavin Newsom will never be president is because people don't talk about it anymore, but they will if he runs, which is him going to the French Laundry and eating with his friends while everybody else was being told they couldn't go anywhere. It is those kinds of things that I think really did. And Marc Maron has this great set around how we are annoying people into fascism, which Goes to the sort of backlash effect and the strategic part of it, which is, and I think that on every spectrum, right, so when you think about woke up, you laid this out, so I don't need to relitigate it. But there's like this part of the spectrum that is like the good hearted part, the part where people's intentions are both pure and righteous and in the right place for humanity. And then there's the excesses, right, where it goes too far, right? The idea of we need a police department or we need police departments that are more that aren't shooting people, you know, in the streets or whatever, that are better trained or whatever versus defunding the police. Do you know who the main people against defunding the police are?

[Tim Miller]

Black people, People in dangerous neighborhoods, racial neighborhoods.

[Sarah Longwell]

They thought that was insane, right? And so like those excesses created a backlash that I think allowed Trump to come back. And so I think to me there were a lot of harms done. I don't like dismissing it just as like, oh, people are annoyed that there's like a barista with a nose ring

[Tim Miller]

in Starbucks and they them pronouns, whatever.

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[Tim Miller]

This one is from Anonymous. And they say growing up, my dad's conservatism largely shaped my politics while my mom was a Democrat who tried her best to expose us to her values. Now that my views have changed, how do I reconcile who I was politically with who I am now without feeling ashamed of my past?

[Sarah Longwell]

Oh, buddy, don't feel ashamed. You know, I think sometimes people. People think that it is a mark of bad character or something to change your mind. It is not. It is a mark of good character. Oftentimes people think of something like regret as a negative emotion. But regret is a positive emotion because it is you saying this thing from before was wrong and I've reevaluated it of new information. Taking in new information and changing your mind. Like, that's what we did. We were like, no, Trump, this is a bad thing. And reevaluating things in light of new information is a sign of intelligence, not something you have to be ashamed of.

[Tim Miller]

Free yourself of this baby. I'll give you one little therapy note. This was useful from when I was in therapy. Shout out to Dr. Sharp. He told me that. Do you know the difference between guilt and shame?

[Sarah Longwell]

No.

[Tim Miller]

According to Dr. Sharp, I guess I've never actually really looked into the psychological literature. Basically summed it up as guilt means you feel bad that you did something bad, and shame means you feel like you are bad.

[Sarah Longwell]

Okay, yeah, sure.

[Tim Miller]

And so like, shame is an emotion that you should work through in therapy because assuming that I assume this person, the type of person that would send this email, is not somebody that is fundamentally bad.

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[Tim Miller]

So guilt is something that everybody deals with about a bunch of things. And of all the things to feel guilty about, the fact that. But before Donald Trump, you had different political views than you do now or different values. Is not one to feel guilty about or shame. Of course. So anyway, free yourself. Anonymous. It's great. Growth is great. This is something that I really value in people, actually. I connect and resonate with people who don't get stuck in their ways.

[Sarah Longwell]

Me too. And whenever somebody says, I have no regrets, I understand that they are Meaning to be like, look, I'm wheels off and whatever. I actually think it is so weird. If you have no regrets, it means that you have never reevaluated a thing in your life.

[Tim Miller]

I'm gonna get it wrong. There's like an Avett Brothers lyric that was like something to the effect of, I want friends that love me for the man that I've become, not the man that I was. Yeah, I think that's the line always moved me. I was like, that's good. All right. More mail. Okay. I asked these questions to Jane Koston about crooked media universe.

[Sarah Longwell]

Okay.

[Tim Miller]

So we're gonna turn this on to you or us? We'll see if I wanna weigh in. It's from Sarah in Portland. Which bored podcaster is most likely to run for office? Win, run for office and lose? Most likely to appear at an event wearing sunglasses at night and showing off their biceps. That's something. Abdul Al said that Bullet podcast are most likely to be appointed to serve in the next Democratic. Yes, Democratic administration.

[Sarah Longwell]

Am I the answer to all of these?

[Tim Miller]

All of them, I think definitely. Most likely to run for office and lose to you.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah, that's right. Who has biceps? Oh, you know what? Will Sommer has biceps.

[Tim Miller]

Sneaky fit, he is. He was in a T shirt yesterday when we were driving around town for a video that's coming out next week that you people are gonna like.

[Sarah Longwell]

And I was like, will Summer, he's got big guns. So I think if you put sunglasses on him and showing off his biceps.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, that's a good pick. But that could also be you wearing sunglasses at night showing off my biceps.

[Sarah Longwell]

I don't know about that. What do you.

[Tim Miller]

The most likely to serve in the next administration, I think, is Bill. I think Bill deserves to be the ambassador to something or the undersecretary of something.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. To like, Barbados or, I don't know, somewhere. Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Not in the Department of war.

[Sarah Longwell]

But give Bill Crystal his flowers and let him be. Have a late in life ambassadorship. But wait, who do you think is the podcast are most likely to run for office and win? Are you any of these?

[Tim Miller]

No, I don't think so. I'm much more likely to kind of force Tyler Toulouse to run for office as a stalking horse for me than I am to actually run for myself. Run for office and win. Do we have any winners around the office?

[Sarah Longwell]

I mean, we got a lot of great folks, but, you know, I don't know that many of us have the right temperament. I don't have the right profile. Like no, Please, no.

[Tim Miller]

Maybe video editor Rupert. Rupert is a cheery guy.

[Sarah Longwell]

He is a cheery guy.

[Tim Miller]

He lives in Arkansas though. It's not gonna be a good match.

[Sarah Longwell]

Maybe like mayor, as much as I like that some of these sort of never trumpers are going and running as Democrats for office, I'm not sure that I think that's a real viable lane long term.

[Tim Miller]

While we mentioned Bill Kristo, I want to go to one of my favorite emails. This was from Jusso, which is a cool name. Juso says this. I remember hearing Sarah say that Bill Crystal likes to bumble around the office with his shoes off in his socks. WTF is that about some sort of eccentric power play? Didn't the old guy in Mad Men do the same?

[Sarah Longwell]

He did.

[Tim Miller]

P.S.

[Sarah Longwell]

love Bill, first of all, I love Bill with like the heat of a thousand suns. Okay. But he does, and he's wonderful. But he's in the office. And now that you're in the office, you see, right? He like, he does sort of walk around and he grabs the young guys and he's like, not working here, you know, whatever. He does that. But sometimes he does take off his shoes. He will sit and tweet, he'll take off his shoes and then he'll get up and do his walk around thing. He's like the mayor of the office and the young guys love it. But he wears Bomba's socks. He doesn't do it all the time, but every now and then when he's just getting comfy, cozy, he'll walk around in his bombos and chat.

[Tim Miller]

Bill is working hard. Bill is the best. God love Bill. Like, if I had to rank, which maybe I should do at our next all staff meeting, based on my perception, the people who are working the hardest here, like, Bill wouldn't be number one. Like, we've got some 24 year olds that we're really kind of cracking the whip on.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

But like, he would be in the top six, I think.

[Sarah Longwell]

I mean, he gets up early in the morning and rides the hats and teases people on the slack.

[Tim Miller]

And the sex thing, I'm fine with. Some of the people might find that weird. I think it's great. I don't think it's an eccentric problem. I think it's just Bill being Bill to this. I did something the other day and I was worried about his minor notable in New Orleans, which is Toulouse and I were walking around barefoot in our neighborhood and then we got like on concrete.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah, okay. I don't know.

[Tim Miller]

Sometimes I like to Be barefoot. And then she got the notion that we should go get a treat. But then I was teaching her about no shoes, no shirt, no service, but she was like, out of it that we get the treat. So we did walk into a store in our neighborhood barefoot. And I did get spotted by somebody, like, immediately. Somebody was like, love the podcast.

[Sarah Longwell]

Not spotted by somebody who was like, hey, put on your shoes and get out of the store.

[Tim Miller]

No, I got spotted being.

[Sarah Longwell]

And I'm just kinda like, I live

[Tim Miller]

in New Orleans, just barefoot. Be themselves. Okay, what's next? Hi, Tim. Or whoever's screening these. Tim is screening these in this case because producer Ansley's on vacation. Your friendship with Sarah notwithstanding, is there any truth to the stereotype that gay men and lesbians don't get along? If so, what do you think the reason is best?

[Sarah Longwell]

Jessica, Great question. Here's the thing. Take all of the things you know about women, then take all the things you know about men. And then there's this, like, Venn diagram of overlap where, like, men and women come together to share a bunch of things, not the least of which is like, they make babies together and nature has suited them towards each other. Gay men and gay women have none of that. We are not drawn together by biological necessity in any way, which I think takes away some of the imperative of getting along. And so culturally, we often don't share a lot of affinities. That being said, gay men and lesbians are also just people. And so oftentimes people decide they like each other and it can be a solidarity piece.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, this is what I was gonna say. I think gay men and lesbian might be coming back together again. I think we might be having a moment right now. And here's why I always used to say that, and this is true, that gay men and straight women are natural allies. Like, in nature, they are natural allies.

[Sarah Longwell]

And I think straight men and lesbians are often natural allies.

[Tim Miller]

Here's the problem, though. Like I said earlier about woke one, everything in moderation, right? The straight women have gotten a little too into us, the gays, and they've taken over our bars like locusts. And, you know, sometimes gay men want to be in a gay bar with other gays. That's the point. You know, there's a big gay party, or it's actually a straight in gay party called Red Dress Round in New Orleans. It was last weekend and it was like the gay bar was like half women. And there was a woman that a straight woman literally came into the gay bar and looked at all of us in our red dresses, me and my friends and, like, pointed at us and said, do a circle. You guys are looking so cute. I'm like, get out of here. And I think that the revulsion against the straight women overstepping into our spaces is kind of giving us a new appreciation for the lesbians that would never do that to us.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah, we don't want to be there.

[Tim Miller]

Exactly.

[Sarah Longwell]

And we don't want to be in a red dress.

[Tim Miller]

I know. And so it's kind of like, I do feel like maybe as queer spaces are starting to dissipate, it's like maybe we might be coming back together now in community with one another.

[Sarah Longwell]

That's a very interesting take. I will say. I never go to lesbian bars anymore, which is why lesbian bars don't survive, by the way, is because women, the second they're sort of like, oh, now we're together forever and we're gonna have kids and we're never going out again. But I went, this is probably still a couple years ago. And I was like, there's all these straight couples in here. It was like men with their braided belts with their girlfriends. And I was like, where did they all come from? And everybody's like, oh, well, this is now. Everybody's so accepting or whatever.

[Tim Miller]

That too much allyship.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. I'm like, but there's a gajillion bars on 18th street where all the straight young people can go, why just let all the lesbians be here?

[Tim Miller]

Get outta here. Okay. We're just kind of veering. I'm drunk driving all over the course between fun questions and serious questions. Here's Jordan. This is what happens when producer Anzi Scott probably could have organized these in, like, serious to silly. But we're just, you know, we're just

[Sarah Longwell]

going, oh, yeah, it's gonna be a vibe shift here.

[Tim Miller]

Hello from Southern Oregon. What happens to ICE when Trump loses the House and Senate or 2028? I assume abolishing ICE isn't realistic or ultimately desirable. What do you think about that?

[Sarah Longwell]

So this goes back to our woke conversation a little bit, where one of the problems, I think sometimes with the excess is that you get to the excess part too early before people are ready, and then it diminishes the opportunity when that thing is really necessary. Because I actually think that when a Democrat, God willing, wins in 2028, one of the things they should do is probably dismantle ICE and reimagine our border security. I think abolish ICE in the early days led to some of the kind of backlash, it was seen as an overreach. But at this point, a culture of an agency that has masked agents in the streets where there's been no accountability. I do think it is one of the agencies that has to be totally revamped.

[Tim Miller]

I would say. We did our critiques with the wokes earlier. Shout out to wokes in Woke one. Abolish ice. Correct. Absolutely correct. They should abolish ice. This is the easiest one actually. There's so many tough challenges. It's like ICE started during the W administration. Like this is not a necessary organization.

[Sarah Longwell]

Homeland Security is like brand new. Basically.

[Tim Miller]

We can have border patrol do border patrol and fund border patrol. We can through all of the other federal law enforcement agencies do any necessary interior enforcement of violent criminals and everybody else. If you're here legally, we can have INS take care of you. There's a whole agency called that ins. They can send you a letter.

[Sarah Longwell]

Limited government guys, limited government INS can

[Tim Miller]

send you a letter. It's like, sorry, you've overstayed your visa. You need to go home. If in six months you haven't gone home, they can knock on your door, say, sir, you really have to go home. If they don't go, then the third time. There are just humane ways to deal with this. If these people aren't violent criminals, we do not need fucking ice. Right? Abolish ice.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yep.

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[Tim Miller]

what you do in any way? What do they think? Or do they just kind of know you're a podcaster? Always. Enjoy, you guys. Karen.

[Sarah Longwell]

I think my kids know that I don't like Donald Trump.

[Tim Miller]

Same.

[Sarah Longwell]

And they also know that people recognize me places and they find that odd. Right, that people just come up.

[Tim Miller]

That's interesting. Tulis doesn't care about that at all. Like, it happens, but it doesn't seem like it even registers in her brain as unusual or something she has to reflect on in any way.

[Sarah Longwell]

Well, that's it. So my kids, like, my kids have belatedly come to realize. And I think part of it is I take my kids to the no Kings protests and not the sort of ones downtown, but kind of the ones up here where it's a lot of older people. And so a lot of people say things to my kids like, do you know that your mom does, like, it's really great. It is really sweet. And so they are at an age now where they seem to be like, they don't know what they're proud of, but they're proud that people seem to think that what we do is nice.

[Tim Miller]

That's cute. Yeah. Toulouse knows that I hate Trump and did with my dad in the car recently was like, I want him to die.

[Sarah Longwell]

Oh, no.

[Tim Miller]

And I was like, whoa, whoa. Okay. So, you know, maybe overcorrected on that one a little bit, but kids are gonna be kids. But she doesn't, I don't think, really, like, get it beyond that. It was really funny. She told me, you know, we're at the phase where you have a different thing that you want to be when you grow up every week.

[Sarah Longwell]

Sure.

[Tim Miller]

And recently, to Tyler's chagrin, she was watching when I was in charge, when there are less rules around the screens. Some streamers who do video games, like, for kids, like, Kids, games, streamers. And she was like, I want to be a YouTuber. I want to be a streamer. And I was like, oh, you mean like me? And she was like, no, like, not like that. Video games, the kids, YouTube. She almost thinks there's two different YouTubes even I'm on some other YouTube for boring people. And she wants to be a YouTuber on the cooler YouTube. So anyway, all right. I'm a 17 year old who closely follows politics. That means I was born during Obama's first term and really only started following the news during Biden's term. Sometimes I feel like I lack historical context from before. Do you have any recommendations for things to read, watch, listen to? I'd love to get an understanding of the last 20 to 50 years that is deeper from when I get in school. Love the podcast and other content across the bulwark. Bring back fypod. Luke. Luke was a 17 year old. Shout out, Luke. Give him some stuff. We have grown ups. I think that a decent number of people decided that they should start caring about politics either 2016 or 2024. So I think this is useful for even our non Gen Z listeners.

[Sarah Longwell]

Look, if you haven't young men, go watch Idiocracy, because that was meant as a joke. Like that was a comedy with some slight cultural commentary. But I think if Mike Judge had realized he was making a documentary about 2024. But actually, the one thing I wanted to comment on is I want more than what I'm learning in school. I don't know what they're giving you in school, but I am begging you. Actually, all people go read the Federalist Papers. Go read the Constitution. Like go read Martin Luther King's I have a Dream speech. Go read Letters from Birmingham Jail. There's a bunch of the basics. Yeah. Foundational texts that seem to have been lost to history.

[Tim Miller]

Those are the ones probably people read. But the Federalist Papers is a good one. I was gonna do more modern politics.

[Sarah Longwell]

Okay.

[Tim Miller]

Our guy John Heilman's book on the 2008 campaign, Game Change.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. So good.

[Tim Miller]

Unbelievable. Or you could just watch the movie. You go Back to the 1984 if you want to really nerd out what it takes. It's probably the best political book ever written about the 1984. Oh, my God, it's unbelievable. That's really good. Richard. Ben Kramer.

[Sarah Longwell]

Oh, now you're getting me going. A Face in the Crowd is a great movie that you should go watch. Sorry.

[Quince Advertiser]

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[Tim Miller]

No, that's okay. Our guy, Mark Leibovich's this town.

[Sarah Longwell]

This town is so good.

[Tim Miller]

It is really kind of a time capsule of the pre Trump DC excesses, which I really loved. Another one that came to mind. I was gonna suggest this because it's fake, but it's Bill Clinton and it's just such a good movie. Primary Colors was so good.

[Sarah Longwell]

Primary Colors was the best. What a good movie, man. What's his name From Landman.

[Tim Miller]

Billy Bob Thornton.

[Sarah Longwell]

Billy Bob Thornton. Great, great turn by Billy Bob Thornton as the Ragin Cage in there. Primary Colors is an excellent movie. I've watched it over and over again over the years.

[Tim Miller]

We are very long, so we're gonna skip through the Tim questions. We'll do a bonus Tim mailbag later. I will do two more. Okay, here we go. One is a music one. We've already been talking about our kids in the car. What's a family car ride like? Who controls the tunes? Do we have the same musical taste? Do the kids get to pick? Are they introducing us to artists or vice versa? What's your car ride like? I kept this one because I want to know what it's like in the Longwell family car.

[Sarah Longwell]

I will say we listen to a lot of Imagine Dragons, which is the boys. Although recently my younger one, I got at least into Zac Brown a little bit. And so we're on Zack Brown. The other thing I introduced them to is newsies, and then I took them to see Oliver when we were in London because I see boys singing and dancing. My goal for them. I used to think I would want kids that were athletes, but what I really want is musical theater kids.

[Tim Miller]

So gays just. No, you want a gay.

[Sarah Longwell]

Whatever. That part doesn't matter to me. I just want to gay.

[Tim Miller]

I saw a stat the other day that was like, with the gayest and straightest majors. It was like business was like 98% straight and musical theater was 27% straight.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah, that's. But I want them to because my kid now wears the little newsies paperboy hat. It's amazing.

[Tim Miller]

One of my proudest parenting moments is that we had a complete ban on kids bops. She doesn't even know that kidz bops exist. We succeeded in that front. So we just listen to pop music mostly. And I'll put on other stuff. She does Oasis, but she's requesting lately Olivia Rodrigo, his new record. And she likes Kelsey Ha's record, which has a lot of cusses.

[Sarah Longwell]

Oh, no.

[Tim Miller]

She was singing this is My Second Dad Car Story, which is so weird. She was singing. She also sang One of Olivia's songs has some curses in it. And she was singing the lyrics with my dad in the car in the backseat the other day.

[Sarah Longwell]

Did Papa get mad?

[Tim Miller]

No, it was just, you know, he's trying to play it cool. You know, it's a different childhood than mine. My parents were keeping a pretty tight leash on my incoming.

[Sarah Longwell]

Mine too. Really tight leash. Whereas Zak Brown got my toes in the water. My ass in the sand is a favorite line.

[Tim Miller]

Kids like that for the kid to excuse to say ass in the sand. Final question is for you. Anonymous Kenyon alum. I had the great fortune to argue with Sarah Longwell in Quest for justice every day my freshman year at Kenyan. I thought she was deeply thoughtful and I've always held her in high regard. I want to know what books, especially novels, have been meaningful to Sarah since we left Gambier or if any books we had to read at Kenyon still sticks with her. They made us read Things Fall Apart in so many classes. That's a great one, Sarah Chebe. Yeah, but I still think about it. What books do you return to or find yourself thinking about?

[Sarah Longwell]

We love you all so this. Thank you. Hey, hey. Quest for Justice.

[Tim Miller]

What was that?

[Sarah Longwell]

So that was our freshman. So you know, I went to Kenya thinking I was gonna be an English major. Cause I wanted to be a poet when I grew up. Little known fact. And I took Quest for Justice, which was like the Intro to Political science class. Had the most incredible professor, her name's Pam Jensen. And I became a political science major. And so like it changed my life. And the things that I read in Quest for Justice, there's a couple of things. One of them was the Federalist Papers. Like it was a close. Close. It's like one of the early things.

[Tim Miller]

So this was a class or like a club?

[Sarah Longwell]

It was a class. It was like a year long entry to what political science would be. And it turned a lot of us into political science majors. This person from this class, I don't know if this person also stayed a political science major, but we did read Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Read the Federalist Papers. Do you know what actually I remember from Quest was we read Francis Fukuyama's End of History. End of History. And now I know Francis Fukuyama. Like, you know, like he's like in our world of democracy, people.

[Tim Miller]

But that had much maligned essay, by the way. Read it. It still holds up.

[Sarah Longwell]

You have to read it again.

[Tim Miller]

Still holds up. Actually people, this is where the headline's Bad.

[Sarah Longwell]

The headline is bad. But if you read the whole thing, it actually is, like, incredibly prescient.

[Tim Miller]

It's kind of like Mitt Romney's op ed, let Detroit go bankrupt. There are some good points in that headline was not good.

[Sarah Longwell]

The headline was not good.

[Tim Miller]

The headlines are important. Any other readings?

[Sarah Longwell]

I'll tell you, I just read the Correspondent. If anybody has this is just now, I'm just going to throw out fiction that I like. Correspondent is wonderful. If you haven't read it. I'm also reading Stoner right now by John Williams, which I'm loving. This is a dorky one. But if you haven't read History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. That one has Thucydides. Yeah. Go read some Thucydides.

[Tim Miller]

Thucydides.

[Sarah Longwell]

We'll give you some things to think about in terms of modern foreign policy.

[Tim Miller]

The Thucydides trap has held up compared to the end of history. Speaking of books, how to eat an

[Sarah Longwell]

elephant, one voter at a time.

[Tim Miller]

It's right there. I'm number three in the acknowledgments.

[Sarah Longwell]

You are number three in the acknowledgments.

[Tim Miller]

Number three, which was pretty important to me.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yes.

[Tim Miller]

If it was outside the top five. We were bumping you from Mark Hartlep today on the podcast. So glad I'm in there. People should go pre order the book.

[Sarah Longwell]

They should go pre order the book. It's coming out soon. And we're gonna be at 6th and I on September 3rd. And then we're gonna be. JBL and I are gonna be at New York. What is it? 92nd Street Y in New York. And there's still some room left in the balcony.

[Tim Miller]

Maybe I'll come. All right, everybody. So on Monday, I'll be back in New Orleans and we'll be seeing y' all then. Thanks for doing this, Sarah.

[Sarah Longwell]

You bet. Good to see you, Timmy. Bye.

[Tim Miller]

I wanna have friends that I can trust, that love me for the man I've become, not the man that I was. The Bulwark Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.