Dog the Bounty Hunter Is Now a MAGA Keynote Speaker

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Bulwark Takes

Episode: "Dog the Bounty Hunter Is Now a MAGA Keynote Speaker"

Date: July 1, 2026
Host(s): Charlie Sykes, Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller
Guest: Will Sommer (False Flag Newsletter)

Overview

In this irreverent and insightful episode, the Bulwark team sits down with Will Sommer—chronicler of the MAGA media universe—to debrief on the surreal state of right-wing politics, including the state of the recent "Great American State Fair" and a competing gathering, "Freedom Fest," featuring Dog the Bounty Hunter as keynote. The panelists dissect the fading boundary between political farce and reality, the persistent toxicity in the right-wing political ecosystem, and how journalists and citizens can respond. The episode closes with a Q&A focused on combating hate and holding on to hope.

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Major Topics and Key Insights

1. The Weirdness of Modern MAGA Culture

• Nixon Memes and Online Subcultures
  • Will Sommer pulls back the curtain on a niche community of young, right-wing men who idolize Nixon, calling him “baby girl” and making Nixon/Charli XCX meme edits.

  “There is actually a vibrant community of young Republican men who love Nixon memes. They call him Nixon, they say he's baby girl. And they post like Charli XCX edits to him…” – Will Sommer (00:55)

2. The Dismal State of the Great American State Fair

• Lackluster Event Described
  • Will reports from the ground: state rooms are dull and underwhelming (e.g., the highlight in Colorado is a stationary kayak).
  • Food quality is abysmal, described as “Costco non-prepared food” and “worse than a minor league baseball stadium.”

  “It looked like they went to Costco and they bought a bunch of food. …It's like, we got one pizza, OK, and we got a hot dog. I mean, it looks like worse than, like a, like a, like a minor league baseball game.” – Will Sommer (03:28)

  • The Ferris wheel broke down, trapping people for an hour.
  • Security and surveillance have increased, with robots urging visitors to “keep moving” at the reflecting pool.
  • General consensus: “Pretty depressing overall.” – Will Sommer (05:17)

3. “Freedom Fest”: Dog the Bounty Hunter as MAGA Keynote

• Lineup and Scene at Freedom Fest
  • Features conspiracy theorist speakers (Lara Logan, Nick Shirley), Fox’s Greg Gutfeld, and most notably Dog the Bounty Hunter.
  • Local MAGA figure Tina Peters is treated as a hero for her attempts to breach voting machines.

  “Dog was actually one of the better ones. …He claims he's being haunted by his late wife because he found love again with a new woman.” – Will Sommer (08:20)

• Commentary on the State of the American Right
  • The presence of such eccentric keynote speakers underscores the deepening insularity and performative nature of the movement.

4. Current State of GOP Primaries

• Catalogue of Extremism
  • Discussion of Victor Marx, leading Colorado GOP gubernatorial candidate, who claims (without evidence) to have killed a man at seven and to perform “phone exorcisms.”

  “This is a guy, he claims that he murdered a man when he was seven years old... He's had all these other weird claims.” – Will Sommer (09:35)

  • Other candidates cited for bizarre or extreme behavior, e.g., Mike Collins (Georgia), Iowa’s “cock ring candidate,” previous Colorado nominee obsessed with students “pooping in litter boxes.”
  • Takeaway: GOP primary voters increasingly reward performative extremism.

  “They want the demon exorcist that killed somebody at age 7 that believed that the election was stolen by China. That's my assessment.” – Tim Miller (13:40)

5. On Media Coverage and Political Lying

• Media Fatigue and Accountability
  • Sarah Longwell and Kyle Clark (local journalist) note that politicians now lie so consistently it’s hard for journalists or the public to keep up, causing “asymmetry” in scrutiny.

  “For those who lie day in and day out, getting accountability from them…it’s like you’ll call them out on one lie, but if they do it every day you just get bored and move on. And I do think that's what's happened with the Republican Party.” – Sarah Longwell (13:50)

6. Audience Q&A: Hate, Hope, and the Future

Are we stuck in a country that increasingly hates people like me?

• On Hate and Leadership
  • Sarah responds with a Cherokee parable about the “two wolves” inside every person—one good, one bad—emphasizing the importance of leadership in feeding the better instincts of citizens.

  “The one wolf is goodness and light and truth… The bad wolf is avarice and greed and hate... Which wolf wins? The one you feed.” (18:06)

  • Trump is named as a “uniquely malignant” force feeding the dark wolf nationally.

Is hope possible? What can individuals do?

• Hope and Agency
  • The panel acknowledges technology and social media have accelerated division but hold that “most people aren't that horrible” in real life (Tim Miller, 22:12).
  • The solution is to resist fatigue—authoritarian lies are designed to make citizens give up.

  “Authoritarians want to make you tired. The lies are meant to wear us down and to make us feel like we don't know what the truth is and we're too tired to fight them so that we give up. …Don’t get tired. That's what they want from us.” – Sarah Longwell (24:54)

• Potential for Change After Trump
  • MAGA coalition is “incredibly unstable”—likely to fracture post-Trump (Will Sommer, 24:34).
  • The way forward: keep building communities of democratic engagement, refuse to normalize hate or dishonesty, and “don’t get tired.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the state fair food:

  “It looked like they went to Costco and they bought a bunch of food...worse than a minor league baseball game.” — Will Sommer (03:28)

• On unraveling Republican primaries:

  “They want the demon exorcist that killed somebody at age 7 that believed that the election was stolen by China. That's my assessment.” — Tim Miller (13:40)

• On leadership and the two wolves:

  “Everybody has two wolves inside of them...the one you feed [wins]. ...I think we've been feeding the really bad parts of us.” — Sarah Longwell (18:06)

• On journalistic accountability:

  “For those who lie day in and day out, getting accountability from them…it’s like you’ll call them out on one lie, but if they do it every day you just get bored and move on.” — Sarah Longwell (13:50)

• On optimism and activism:

  “Authoritarians want to make you tired…the only way anybody got out of anything bad … was by not getting tired and continuing to push forward.” — Sarah Longwell (24:54)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:55: Nixon memes and right-wing online youth culture
• 02:07–04:19: Will Sommer’s state fair dispatch—lackluster exhibits, poor food, robotic surveillance
• 06:58–08:34: “Freedom Fest” report, Dog the Bounty Hunter’s keynote, Tina Peters’ hero’s welcome
• 09:35–11:08: Profile of Victor Marx, bizarre CO GOP candidate
• 13:50: Discussion of journalistic challenges in covering perpetual political lies
• 17:46–21:04: Q&A—addressing hate and the psychological impact of MAGA politics
• 22:41–26:26: Q&A—sources of hope, resisting fatigue, recommitting to communal democratic values

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Tone and Style

The panelists maintain a sardonic, wry tone—balancing comic disbelief ("They call Nixon baby girl!" “Do circus performers work with quarters like peep shows?”) with real concern about the fraying of American democratic norms. They combine insider political knowledge, direct audience engagement, and earnest reflection.

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Even once-mainstream conservative spaces now regularly feature self-parodying levels of extremism.
• GOP candidates at the state level are engaged in escalating right-wing performative outrageousness, but even this seems insufficient for some in MAGA media.
• Despite bleak trends, hope resides in active local engagement, calling out lies, and not succumbing to fatigue.
• The importance of community—both in-person and among those resisting the right’s slide into extremism—remains critical.

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Transcript

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[Charlie Sykes]

Alright. Will Sommer, False flag newsletter you write. Do you guys know Will Summer? Some people don't. For those that don't.

[Sarah Longwell]

Guys, Will's a big star for us now.

[Charlie Sykes]

Mixed bay. Thank you. Will Sommer monitors the Magarite. He wakes up in the morning, he feeds his children breakfast and then he watches tiktoks of maga influencers and consumes live streams from masturbating Uncle Sam's and

[Tim Miller]

then watches Candace Owens show.

[Charlie Sykes]

It's quite the life.

[Tim Miller]

Sarah, I hope you're paying him well enough.

[Charlie Sykes]

Is that right, Will? Is that the gist?

[Will Sommer]

Well, and to that point, Tim, I'd just like to correct you on the Nixon thing. There is actually a vibrant community of young Republican men who love Nixon memes. They call him Nixon, they say he's baby girl. And they post like Charlie XCX edits to him going like, you know this.

[Tim Miller]

What the.

[Will Sommer]

I'm not a crook.

[Charlie Sykes]

There is a community, a subculture of right wing groipers, young youth that post Richard Nixon videos under Charli XCX songs.

[Will Sommer]

Yeah, that's right. Now look.

[Charlie Sykes]

And they call him baby girl.

[Will Sommer]

Yeah.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah. Really?

[Sarah Longwell]

Are you making yourself call Trump daddy?

[Will Sommer]

Yeah, well there's something to that. But no, this is real. This isn't something I just cooked up backstage. But when you were like, oh, you know, it also suggests that JD Vance is plugged into like some really deep worlds online, right?

[Charlie Sykes]

Which Charlie XCX is like from Brat or is it like Deep cuts?

[Will Sommer]

I think it's Brat.

[Charlie Sykes]

Brat, huh? This is why we've hired Will for the Bulwark. Because as much as the best as I do to follow the right wing world, there's just stuff happening.

[Tim Miller]

It's like an onion.

[Charlie Sykes]

There's just layers upon layers. Will, I want to ask you first about the Great American State Fair. You were there, you were on site. What's the vibes?

[Will Sommer]

Yeah, so I went on Friday I gotta go to these things because people are saying online, oh the food sucks. Whatever. Well, I gotta go to all the food halls, right? I gotta see. Maybe it's good Maybe it's cool. It's not. It really sucks, I'll say that. I mean, I was there and I was like, why did I do this? This is a total waste of time. So each state has its own little room. And most of them are like, they just say the name of the state. I will say Colorado had one of the better ones. You can sit in a. You can wait in line to sit in a kayak. You can probably do that without going to station, obviously.

[Charlie Sykes]

Did they offer weed gummies?

[Sarah Longwell]

I'm sorry, wait, hold on. Just like a stationary kayak.

[Will Sommer]

Yeah, that's right.

[Tim Miller]

And that was one of the better ones.

[Will Sommer]

You could do that. Like an REI perhaps. But, you know, in this case. Yeah, and that was one of the better ones. Yeah. Because, you know, some states didn't participate. So the experience is just going into a room and then all these, like, tourists go like, oh, why is this? This is. This is so boring. You know, they go, I know, I know. And then, then they have the sponsors. And so it's like true social, I think the Heritage foundation, you know, all these, like real right wing organizations as well. And so you can, like, you can dress up like a founding father.

[Charlie Sykes]

So did you make it down to the state fair? Bring your kids?

[Sarah Longwell]

Absolutely not.

[Charlie Sykes]

That's kind of sad. That's the type of thing you really

[Tim Miller]

would have been at.

[Charlie Sykes]

You would have had your two boys there. You like a fair? You like America?

[Sarah Longwell]

I love America.

[Charlie Sykes]

You like them all. You like the Declaration of Independence?

[Sarah Longwell]

I also like corn dogs and all. Chicken corn soup and the things they normal. Did they have anything like that at the fair?

[Will Sommer]

Well, yeah. Let's speak on the food situation. So they had. No, no, it was really bad. It looked like they went to Costco and they bought a bunch of food. Now, to be clear, not the prepared food at Costco, everyone loves the hot dogs or whatever. No, this is like, they went and we're just like, I need a huge bag of tortilla chips, you know? And so Steve or Pete Ducey on Fox News, he got up and he was like, people said this fair is a bust, but look, we got some food. And they hold it up and it's just really sad. It's like, we got one pizza, okay, and we got a hot dog. I mean, it looks like worse than, like a, like a, like a minor league baseball game or something like that. I mean, it's really rumbled.

[Sarah Longwell]

Is it like a 7 11?

[Will Sommer]

Yeah, yeah, it was just like spinning.

[Sarah Longwell]

It had been in there for two weeks and you Were just getting to the Taquitos or.

[Will Sommer]

Exactly. And, you know, to the. Is it like a regular fair? I mean, they do have a Ferris wheel, Right? That's cool. Unfortunately, it did break down and people were trapped on it for an hour. So, you know, vandals.

[Sarah Longwell]

Vandals.

[Will Sommer]

They struck again.

[Charlie Sykes]

Did you check in on the reflecting pool while you were down there? Any ducks, live or dead?

[Will Sommer]

Well, you know, now they have the voice that says, keep moving. Don't loiter at the reflecting pool. Have you seen that?

[Charlie Sykes]

They do.

[Will Sommer]

It's like a robot and kind of

[Charlie Sykes]

like the airport where it's, you know,

[Tim Miller]

the moving walkway is coming to an

[Sarah Longwell]

end and it's like yelling at the National Guard. That's, you know, they're doing the perimeter to keep bad people away.

[Will Sommer]

That's like an armed camp down there. I'm sure y' all saw the videos. It's like people, like, touch the water and then they're like, hey, prove your hands dry, you know?

[Tim Miller]

It's crazy, huh?

[Charlie Sykes]

It is kind of a sad reflection

[Tim Miller]

on the state of America.

[Charlie Sykes]

The 250 Great American State Fair. Do you see any parallels between what was happening on the mall and what's happening?

[Will Sommer]

Well, I mean, I do, and you kind of broke the seal on bringing this up and just. I mean, there was a man dressed as Uncle Sam who was arrested, you know, giving himself kind of a special treat. Right, as it were.

[Charlie Sykes]

He was just playing a little pocket pool at the acrobatics.

[Will Sommer]

And this is kind of like a minor MAGA live streamer. And I think that metaphor certainly, like, kind of sums up the moment. You know, it was pretty depressing to me overall.

[Sarah Longwell]

I have a question about this. I have not been participating in this content for a variety of reasons, but now I have some logistical questions about this.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah, he's in overalls. I had a couple of follow ups on this as well.

[Tim Miller]

He's in overalls. Yeah.

[Sarah Longwell]

So he was inside his own overalls.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Sarah Longwell]

But here's my other question. Like, so you're saying this was a sad affair. Like, it's not good. So, like, what's he reacting to?

[Tim Miller]

Oh, boy, Great question.

[Will Sommer]

So, yeah, so they have some circus performers, and so there were some acrobats or what have you. And yeah, I mean, that's what it was.

[Tim Miller]

Female acrobats.

[Will Sommer]

But, you know, I mean, also to the point about the performances, I mean, there's like three or four people watching each of these things. I mean, there's really very few people a few nights ago.

[Sarah Longwell]

So what they, like, put a quarter in and they stand in front of a booth and just go after the performance. What's. So I keep forgetting we're in Aspen at the Ideas Festival and not a regular show.

[Tim Miller]

It's the night show.

[Will Sommer]

One thing to point out about these, you know, because there's a few people. I think there's been a lot of, like, fake rain cancellations. There's like a light drizzle in D.C. and they go, oh, my gosh, you know, we're gonna have to. We can't do Vanilla Ice tonight. And I think it's Vanilla Ice kind of peeking out. And he goes, I'm not getting out there.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah, there's a. We have a competitor event to this in Colorado. Did you guys know that there's another Ideas Festival of sorts happening? And I thought, will. It seems like nobody's aware of that. So I thought it might be useful to kind of get everybody a sense

[Tim Miller]

of what the scene is like.

[Will Sommer]

I'm grateful y' all came to the Ideas Fest because there is, like, a rival event in Castle Rock, Colorado, called Freedom Fest. And now this is a pretty sordid group of people, right? You've got Lara Logan, big conspiracy theorist. You've got Nick Shirley, the guy kind of terrorizing Somalis in Minnesota. You've got Greg Gutfeld from Fox News. He's kind of one of the nicer ones in that crew, I guess. Oh, you have the Secretary of Energy. Okay, that's a little odd. But then the keynote speaker. It's Dog the Bounty Hunter. Who else is it going to be?

[Charlie Sykes]

Dog the Bounty Hunter is the keynote.

[Will Sommer]

Yes, keynote. And also Colorado's own Tina Peters as well. So it was quite a gathering.

[Tim Miller]

We're not going to fight about this again, Sarah.

[Sarah Longwell]

Well, I have some follow ups on Tina Peters.

[Tim Miller]

I did promise a fight. Go ahead, just do it.

[Audience Member 1]

Is she.

[Charlie Sykes]

For people who don't know I was

[Tim Miller]

in favor of the Tina Peters pardon? I'm sorry. You can throw fruit at me if you want.

[Sarah Longwell]

I know Sarah's always right, but is Tina Peters. Is she doing a contrition tour? Is that what she's there speaking about, talking about how she was wrong and she's sorry. Thanks for the pardon.

[Will Sommer]

You know. You know, it's funny. I feel like she's not much of a speaker. She kind of stands up and then everyone just goes like, yeah, you know, she got out of prison. They're really excited about it.

[Sarah Longwell]

And so she doesn't say anything. She just gets her. She gets her overture for trying to Hack a bunch of voting machines.

[Charlie Sykes]

Cool.

[Will Sommer]

They applaud. They love it. I mean, I watched a couple of the speeches. Dog was actually one of the better ones. I felt really he's been this prompting.

[Sarah Longwell]

Did they get him there by saying there was a bounty at the podium or like, what did

[Will Sommer]

you know? He's been up to some interesting stuff. He claims he's being haunted by his late wife because he found love again with a new woman. He said a ghost has come back. Essentially, he's feuding with his nephew who has a rival bounty hunting business. So there's been a lot going on with him.

[Charlie Sykes]

Speaking of the haunting, we didn't prep for this, but we'll see how good your memory is. We have talked about the leading Republican

[Tim Miller]

candidate for governor in Colorado, Victor Marks.

[Charlie Sykes]

And I want to talk about this because we did in segment one, we

[Tim Miller]

did a little DSA talk and there

[Charlie Sykes]

is, there's some pearl clutching out there

[Tim Miller]

about some of the pretty bad takes, if we're going to be honest, of

[Charlie Sykes]

some of the DSA candidates in New York. And there are a couple crazy dumps. I feel like people are a little bored with the crazy Republican candidates. They're not getting the attention anymore. There was a lot of attention on Kerry Lake. It's like another one.

[Tim Miller]

We have another one that doesn't believe elections are real.

[Charlie Sykes]

Victor Marks, who is the leading candidate for Colorado governor, is really kind of

[Tim Miller]

pushing the boundaries of MAGA Republicanism and

[Charlie Sykes]

will maybe share with the out of

[Tim Miller]

staters what's happening here in Colorado.

[Will Sommer]

I mean, I do have to thank Colorado because Victor Marks is a true contribution to the national discourse. So this is a guy, he claims that he murdered a man when he was seven years old. He was kind of asked for any proof of that. He's like, look, I don't want to get into it how many other people he's murdered. You know, I'm going to have to keep that quiet. He's had all of these other weird like claims.

[Sarah Longwell]

I'm sorry, just real quick. So this is, he's, this is, this is part of his, like, you should vote for me. I killed a man when I was seven. Not, not.

[Charlie Sykes]

It's kind of like when Corey Lewandowski

[Sarah Longwell]

had the oppo on him. That's the pitch.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah. Remember when Corey Lewandowski was at the

[Tim Miller]

addiction awareness fundraiser at the Benihana in Las Vegas and he started hitting on a woman who was married and he told her that he had stabbed people in the past?

[Sarah Longwell]

I do remember.

[Tim Miller]

It's kind of like that? Yeah, it's kind of like a pickup move. Yeah.

[Will Sommer]

So I think he calls himself, like, the world's most dangerous man or something along those lines. Oh, no, I think he calls himself the dangerous gentleman, which is even better. And he does, like a kind of quick disarm move. Like he'll go on a podcast and be like, here's a gun. You know, he goes, oh, got it back.

[Charlie Sykes]

So didn't he also. He did something in the netherworld as well, though, also.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Charlie Sykes]

Doesn't he do. He takes the demons out of people. Doesn't he do some of that?

[Will Sommer]

Yeah, he does. I think some phone exorcisms, like, he'll do. It's not like in the Exorcist, Right. Nowadays you can do it over zoom or like a phone, I guess. And so he kind of doesn't get into it too much. Explain it. He also claims he's, like, rescued, I think, thousands of people in like, a dozen countries. And when he was asked, like, okay, so, like, you know, name one country. And he's like, oh, my gosh, I can't even remember, you know, who.

[Charlie Sykes]

Uzbekistan.

[Will Sommer]

Who's to say?

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah, the last Colorado governor candidate was the one who was really concerned about the kids pooping in the litter boxes in the school.

[Tim Miller]

In the school. They weren't using the bathroom. Cause they're identifying as cats. It was kind of like they. You know, kind of they them, but meow.

[Charlie Sykes]

And so that was kind of one

[Tim Miller]

of her key planks. She lost to Jared Polis.

[Charlie Sykes]

And I don't. It doesn't seem like things are gonna

[Tim Miller]

go well for Victor Marks.

[Charlie Sykes]

And it's a representative example. I mean, you guys talked about this

[Tim Miller]

a little bit with Jeff Lake and

[Charlie Sykes]

the Arizona situation, but, like, the Republican

[Tim Miller]

nominee list around the country this year, not that impressive.

[Charlie Sykes]

You know, you got Mike Collins in Georgia. He was the one that posted the

[Tim Miller]

video of the Ole Miss kids making monkey sounds at the black woman. You know, you've got the guy in Iowa, the cock ring person that you like to talk about.

[Sarah Longwell]

That I like to talk about. Yeah. I bring that up.

[Tim Miller]

That's me. He made a big investment and a conquering empire.

[Charlie Sykes]

And he lives in Kansas.

[Tim Miller]

He's the Iowa governor candidate.

[Charlie Sykes]

I mean, like, there's a lot of

[Tim Miller]

craziness happening out there in those primaries.

[Charlie Sykes]

I'm just.

[Tim Miller]

I don't know.

[Charlie Sykes]

What do you. Do you assess any.

[Sarah Longwell]

Do you guys know who Kyle Clark is? Yeah, right. He's a local news guy out here. So I had him on the pod for focus group pod, and we were doing the Senate and gubernatorial races out here, and I was mesmerized. I didn't know who this guy was, but he's a local person who he. He hosts the debates out here. And he's. But he's the one who's like. He said to this demon hunting gentleman, he was kind of like, you know, why should we believe you when you're such a liar? And he had. He had a real way of sort of pinning him down that you look and you're like, see, that's. That's all you have to do. Why can't more people do this? And so I think that I had something else about Kyle Clark that he said that was so important that I'm

[Charlie Sykes]

like, I have a follow up for you.

[Tim Miller]

Maybe I'll come to you when you're talking. That happens to you sometimes.

[Charlie Sykes]

But in the focus groups, I have a slight disagreement with what Ambassador Flake

[Tim Miller]

had to say about kind of like the trajectory of the Republican Party based

[Charlie Sykes]

on what we're seeing in these primaries. Right. And I just. I don't think that there's any interest

[Tim Miller]

in going back to anything that looks anything akin to when he was a senator.

[Charlie Sykes]

And while there is all this consternation

[Tim Miller]

about what's happening with the dsa, you're

[Charlie Sykes]

just seeing what people want in the primaries. And they want the demon exorcist that

[Tim Miller]

killed somebody at age 7 that believed that the election was stolen by China. That's my assessment.

[Charlie Sykes]

You're actually listening to the voters, is that right?

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah, but that's different than what I was gonna say. What he would do both. Take both or I'll do both. So what he said that I think really made a lot of makes is true, is he's like, what's really unfair to normal politicians or even a politician who gets caught with one lie is that for those who lie day in and day out, getting accountability from them, it's like you'll call them out on one lie, but if they do it every day, you just get bored and move on. And I do think that's what's happened with the Republican Party and is that they have lied so much. It's like, you know, they say, well, the election was stolen.

[Audience Member 1]

And it's.

[Sarah Longwell]

I think people just get bored being like, no, it wasn't. And as a result. And his point was, no, you do have to keep doing this. And I think that part of what Democrats really do struggle with is at some point, the Republican Party is so off the Rails. And I also disagreed with Senator Flake. I appreciate the optimism, but I just don't think that's where it. But, like, I don't. Journalists do have to figure out how to. They try to do this sort of fake asymmetry right. Where it's like, well, I'm gonna really hit this Democrat on this one thing and just ignore this buffet of stuff on the right. Because we're all bored with it. Cause they all do it all the time now.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Charlie Sykes]

I just think it's pretty. Could we. Are we gonna do. If we're gonna do Q and A, I think this might be the time to get people prepared for that, get folks out in the aisles with the microphones. But I think it's pretty telling. Like Colorado, it's like a pretty mainstream place. The Democrats have been nominated here.

[Tim Miller]

And we'll see what happens on Tuesday. They do have some DSA challengers, but

[Charlie Sykes]

say what you want about poll lists, about Bennett, about Hickenlooper, about Jason Crow and Jody Goose. The Democratic electeds in Colorado are very center left mainstream. And the Colorado Republican Party for 20 years now has been putting up the biggest lunatics in America. And it's because that's what they want. Like, that's what they want.

[Will Sommer]

Well, I was just gonna say, to that point, this Freedom Fest crowd, they don't like Victor Marx. They think he's like a moderate squish. I mean, they were like, victor Marks won't dare show his face at Freedom Fest. Yeah. Because he's not signed on to the Candace Owens theories about Charlie Kirk's death, among other things. And so they're like, you know, and look, I mean, they look at what he says about himself and they're like, this man is clearly a CIA operative or what have you.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah, I just laugh.

[Tim Miller]

And we're gonna go to questions, text. But Sarah, I just laugh again with

[Charlie Sykes]

love to Senator Flake. It's like, if it's not J.D. vance, that's like, not.

[Sarah Longwell]

It's Tucker.

[Charlie Sykes]

It's Tucker. Yeah, it's somebody crazier. Like, that's what they want. Like, and it's just until we get proven otherwise. That's kind of the trajectory we're on. Sorry if that's disappointing to anybody. Okay, let's do some Q and A. We want to hear from you. Right. You came out on a Sunday night. Do you guys have thoughts, questions? Whoa, lights are up.

[Tim Miller]

We got to look at you now.

[Charlie Sykes]

Up in the balcony. They got some questions. Anybody in the lower section. Is there a balcony microphone? I don't know if there is one.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah, we got somebody right here.

[Charlie Sykes]

Lower section, people. Can I just say before she hands the phone over or the microphone, we're running out of time. We're gonna go rapid fire. Questions and answers, not speeches.

[Tim Miller]

Thank you.

[Charlie Sykes]

Hey.

[Sarah Longwell]

Hi.

[Charlie Sykes]

Can you hear me?

[Tim Miller]

I gotcha. Great.

[Audience Member 1]

I am concerned, a huge fan of all of your work. Huge Bulwark fan. I love your podcast, Sarah, especially the focus group. It's amazing.

[Tim Miller]

Ouch.

[Sarah Longwell]

And I love your podcast, too.

[Audience Member 1]

I listen to all of you.

[Sarah Longwell]

No, you're good. You're good. Just keep going. You're right.

[Audience Member 1]

We don't have time. I sometimes worry about hate in our country. And I'm curious if you feel like. I grew up in a town where it's a conservative town, and for the first time, the man who used to sell flags, where I'd wait at the bus stop, he went from selling, like, American flags to Confederate flags. And the level of. Sometimes I feel like I want to save a country that hates people like me. And I'm curious about if you feel that's true from your focus groups. If these scary thoughts towards trans people, towards black people, towards immigrants, if it's really hate, if it's solvable.

[Sarah Longwell]

It's a big question. Yeah, no, it's okay. I can. This is. I got it. Because, yep, hate's bad and there's a lot of it. But here's the thing. I talk a lot about how listening to voters all the time, what you hear is people filled with good and people filled with bad.

[Audience Member 1]

Right.

[Sarah Longwell]

Everybody's sort of got light and dark in them. And this is why leadership matters a great deal. You know, sometimes I tell this parable. I do sort of use this in my book and kind of close with it, that everybody. There's an old Cherokee parable about everybody has two wolves inside of them. And I know it's a little cheesy, but just rock with me and that, you know, the one wolf is goodness and light and truth and all that stuff. And the bad wolf is avarice and greed and hate. And they're always fighting, they're always in tension. And little boy asks his grandfather, well, which wolf wins? And he says, the one you feed. And I think we've been feeding the really bad parts of us. And part of this is the information environment that we're living in, which is new. Right. We are not meant to know what goes on in the brains of everybody around us. Right. And we are the amount of. And Donald Trump's leadership has had an enormous impact on us as human beings. He is dragging out the worst parts of us all the time, highlighting the worst parts of us. And I think that a better country with better leadership will draw out the better parts of us. And so we are not so dominated by hate all the time, but, like, it lives in people. And that's why us having leaders with character matters a great deal.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah, I just had one sentence.

[Tim Miller]

This really quick. I agree with. All that snaps is I think that there was a hopeful, nice sounding thing that was going around 10 years ago, which, like this idea that demographics are destiny. Right. That the next generation was going to be more diverse and going to have more diverse friends.

[Charlie Sykes]

This is all true in a lot of ways. They have more diverse friends, and so

[Tim Miller]

they know more cultures and so they're less likely to hate.

[Charlie Sykes]

And it's like, turning out that that's not quite right.

[Tim Miller]

And the biggest racists and white nationalists in the country is a Mexican gay boy. And a lot of other. I know, look at the Andrew Tates of the world. And I just think that the wolves are in everybody, and we're going to have to have a more concerted effort to stamp it out, rather than kind of like assuming that there's going to be a generational change that solves it,

[Sarah Longwell]

which is going back to something that Tim said earlier. Why I think Democrats saying, like, we need to be bigger dicks like Donald Trump is is the wrong lesson to take, because I do think the person who will win. It's why I'm. I'm sort of. I really like what I'm seeing from Jon Ossoff. I really like what I'm seeing from people to judge because they. Where Gavin Newsom was doing kind of a performance art to reflect Trump back to himself. I think that those guys are trying to say, like, we can be fierce and kind, like, we can be decent and push and radical. And I think that that's the right direction.

[Charlie Sykes]

Other questions.

[Audience Member 2]

Right here, Right here.

[Tim Miller]

Go.

[Charlie Sykes]

Hey, man.

[Audience Member 2]

Yeah. God bless you for the work you do to Traffic and all this craziness, because I can't do it. I watch you. No, I watch you a lot. But I have to ration just because I want to get away.

[Tim Miller]

That's healthy.

[Audience Member 2]

Yeah. But what gives you the most hope? Not that we can move entirely past it, but we can make the progress that we need to. And what does it take from each one of us to help us get there?

[Charlie Sykes]

You want me to do hope or

[Tim Miller]

do you want to do it?

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah, I mean, I've got two answers to this. Number one is just that Donald Trump is uniquely malignant.

[Tim Miller]

And even if I don't think that what's going to replace him is something better, like the old Republican Party, he has a lot of unique characteristics that are very much his alone. The shorthand I always use for this during the campaign in 2024 is nobody is going to storm the capitol carrying Ron DeSantis flags. Trump has a unique ability to manipulate the media and do this. And so him going away won't solve all of our problems at all, but it would solve some for sure. So that's one.

[Charlie Sykes]

And the other one is just.

[Tim Miller]

I don't know, this is maybe Pollyanna,

[Charlie Sykes]

but there is some of the backlash

[Tim Miller]

to the tech culture that we're seeing right now.

[Charlie Sykes]

And I do feel like I live

[Tim Miller]

in a red state. We did a big bayou weekend last week when we got to Lafayette, and

[Charlie Sykes]

it's like when you're out with people and actually communing with humans, even if they're MAGA Americans, most people aren't that horrible.

[Tim Miller]

There are a lot of bad people. The guy with the Confederate flags, there are gonna be badness out there. But I do think us having a backl to the like, eventually you would think that there would come an end to the phone hatred and like, reconnecting with people in society. Maybe that won't happen. But, like, that's, I think, what we

[Charlie Sykes]

have to push to.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. Just to plan. Like Trump is he turned 80, and so that's great. There's just. There's sort of like both constitutional and actuarial limitations to how much longer Donald Trump is going to be around. And I do think the thing that I think about a lot, and it's the reason, despite the fact that Tim begged me not to do it, I decided to. I really wanted to write the book is that I feel like we are at. And people have been saying it's the most important election of our lifetime. So sometimes this can get you feel like you're constantly at 11 and it's hard on our nervous systems. But Tim is right that you cannot what Donald Trump did, the parasocial relationships that he's had with voters, the way he's been in our lives. I remember Donald Trump, to me is like the guy who was in Home Alone too. Right. Who was like on Howard Stern, like he was on the Apprentice. He's been around for so long and he is unique. JD Vance. Nobody can replicate it. And like I was saying before he brought all these people in, they Are Trump only voters? It is not clear. And Trump has spent the last 10 years ensuring that voters love him and hate the Republican Party. And so I just think it's a really important time for Democrats to figure out how to be a coalition again. And I do think one of the ways that you can build a community is to be a community. And so one of the things I desperately want from Democrats right now, like, if you want to talk about something that's bumming me out, it's that Jasmine Crockett is not going all in on James Tao Rico to support him. Because I do think Democrats have got to figure out, like, I hope that at some point, instead of just having debates, Pete and Ossoff, whatever, they go around together and meet with people like that, they start to build a sense of community out of voters, to say what we can, can be different. And I just. I think there's a moment here to really overwhelm what we have seen the last 10 years. And if Democrats can seize it, I do think they could be a real force for good.

[Will Sommer]

Yeah, I mean, just build on Sarah's point. I mean, I think the MAGA media or the MAGA coalition is incredibly unstable. I mean, I think there's just so much demand for. For just craziness. These people are constantly tearing into each other. So I think once Trump is gone, whether he's out of office or whatever, I mean, I think it's all really going to split apart.

[Tim Miller]

Sarah, do you want to end with one more hopeful thought? Because the clock is telling me that our time is up. No.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. The one thing I know this isn't like a regular Bulwark show and you guys are here for a conference, but there is something that I say at the end of every show for the Bulwark crowd, because we take a lot of our. The real answer to your question about what makes us optimistic, being with the Bulwark community is incredible. Like, we have built a group of people who love being together and come to the shows. And what I like is that they still have energy for what's happening. I think that authoritarians want to make you tired. Right. The lies are meant to wear us down and to make us feel like we don't know what the truth is and we're too tired to fight them so that we give up. And so the thing that I want everybody in this room and all the rooms to think about is, like, don't get tired. That's what they want from us. So don't get tired. And whether you agree with with Senator Flake about his particular optimism do believe that there is a better outcome. But like I'm not saying that just because I'm inherently optimistic. I'm saying I'm optimistic because I believe we have agency and that we can do something about this moment. And so when you say like what can we do as individuals? It is not getting tired and it is still acting. It's not just like saying, oh, I give up, it's all so bad. People are terrible every day remembering that like the only way anybody got out of anything bad that was happening in history, whether it was the Civil War or whether it was slavery or whether it was the civil rights movement, was by not getting tired and continuing to push forward. So I hope that everybody feels that coming out of this event. And thanks so much for having us.

[Tim Miller]

Thanks, y'.

[Audience Member 1]

All.

[Tim Miller]

It's so good to be home in Colorado.

[Charlie Sykes]

We'll see y' all around Aspen.