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- [00:02]
Senator Heidi Heitkamp
Rural communities are being squeezed from every side, from rising health care costs to crumbling hospitals, from attacks on public schools to the fight for paid family and medical leave. Farmers and small businesses are reeling from the trade war. And now Project 2025 is back with a plan to finish what Elon Musk started. Trump and the Republicans won rural votes, then turned their backs on us. Join the Country Project for the rural progress summit July 8th through the 10th. This free virtual event brings together leaders like Senator Heidi Heikamp, Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Governor Andy Beshear, and others for real talk and real solutions. Together, we'll tackle the most urgent issues facing rural America. Register today or learn more@ruralprogress.com.
- [01:01]
Richard Karn
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- [01:54]
By texting 64,000 you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Hose. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply. Available@pocket hose.com terms hello friends.
- [02:02]
JVL
I'm JVL here with my Bulwark colleagues Will Sommer and Andrew Egger and my best friend Sarah Longwell. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. We're taping on Saturday night around 8pm I feel like we can exhale. I feel like we made it. Basically if you are the type of person who is in full blown worst case scenario mode for this weekend and what it could mean for America, I think we're we dodged one. I mean we've also had a political assassination today so like not not fully dodged it but the parade, the military parade, the Kim Jong Un style Soviet style thing in Washington with tanks in the street, I think is a flop. Newsmax NewsMax is reporting 10,000 people showed up for this thing. And I just want to go around the horn and ask, was this an embarrassment for Trump? Sarah, let's start with you.
- [03:01]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, well, you know, Trump's the one who turns everything into a size matters conversation. He's the one who does.
- [03:09]
JVL
We don't make the rules.
- [03:10]
Sarah Longwell
The mind's bigger than yours. Yard sticking. And so I think that he's got to take his medicine here. On no one showed up to your sad birthday parade. And a lot of people showed up in a lot of places to register how unhappy they are with you. And I actually, I was thinking about it and like, obviously I'm tickled when I see the shots of, you know, there's only a few people kind of up front. There's not people in the back in the big park. It's just not filled. And you see the risers as they go by and they're just sparsely attended. I feel good about that. Sure. But then there's the other part of me that's like, this is such a stupid, like the level of conversation we have to have, which is just going to be us comparing the crowd sizes. Like Trump has led us here where, like, what matters to us is simply who had the bigger show of force today, but the good guys had the bigger show of force today. So we do have that going for us.
- [04:08]
JVL
Well, can I, can I push back against this a little bit?
- [04:10]
Sarah Longwell
Sure.
- [04:11]
JVL
Because it isn't just the size of it, it's the fact that it didn't become a flashpoint. Like, that's good, right? The whole thing, it was raining and the whole thing just felt kind of soggy and limp in ways which suggest a shrug and not, not like hot fire emotions, which I think is, again, best case scenario. That's good.
- [04:36]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think it rained.
- [04:41]
JVL
Oh, didn't rain. It didn't rain down in the D.C. area.
- [04:45]
Will Sommer
A little like drizzling over, over the general Capitol Hill area. I can't speak to the exact parade, but I mean, not like a downpour yet.
- [04:55]
JVL
Sure, sure.
- [04:56]
Andrew Egger
They rearranged certain parts of the programming too, in anticipation of maybe heavy rain later.
- [05:00]
Will Sommer
They moved it up 30 minutes. Yeah.
- [05:02]
JVL
Okay.
- [05:03]
Sarah Longwell
Is that why no one was there? Because they started early?
- [05:05]
Will Sommer
I don't think that's why. I don't think there was a big. I don't think there was a big group of people. I was like, we're getting there right on time.
- [05:12]
JVL
Tell me, what are, what are your thoughts on it? What? Well, I guess what do people in Magaland think? Are they excited? Do they, Are they like, honestly?
- [05:22]
Will Sommer
I mean, I, I think the unfortunate thing is, is number one, I think the murders in, in Minnesota have stolen a lot. Like, they're really focused on that in terms of spinning out, you know, vile conspiracy theories. But, I mean, I was just looking at the Gateway pundit before we started, and I had to scroll, like, I, I, I don't think the parade is on their first, like, 30 items. I mean, and so to follow up on, on the point you made jbl, the. I think Trump was really denied any kind of, like, imagery here. I mean, it's just this kind of soggy parade. I mean, you know, you look at these things and people are filming, you know, right up front and there's like, no one around them. I mean, it is really not, not a lot of people showed up. And Trump, Trump looks like, why did I do this? You know, I thought this was going to be cool. Uh, you know, Fox had a camera that was just watching him the whole time. He just looked like, you know, this is, this is $45 million. You know, I've seen enough tanks. So. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think if he was looking for kind of like a Kim Jong Un moment, it didn't happen.
- [06:20]
JVL
Very sad birthday party. It's like hiring. You know, your dad hires a clown, but he gets like, the janky clown. And the other kids in the neighborhood are like, andrew, what do you, what are you thinking there? Nice shirt, buddy. Talk to me.
- [06:33]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, thanks. We're going to dwell on that. All right. No, I think one big part of this is that it was a deliberate strategic decision by the no Kings folks not to do anything in D.C. today. And so I think a big part of what we were worst case scenario ing as we were gaming out possibilities, sort of the worst possible thing involved a lot of conflict in D.C. and I think a lot, I think that would have obviously completely reset the tone. And we would not be talking about, like, oh, like, we would not, we wouldn't be counting, like, MAGA hats along Constitution Avenue. We would be talking about potential clashes between, you know, protesters and counter protesters. This was kind of a nationwide thing, for one thing, that the no Kings protests were extremely kind of disciplined from the top down about the messaging of, like, we're not out here to tangle with people, we're out here to kind of show up and have our numbers tell the story and be really boring. Beyond that, like not getting clashes and things like that. Of course, we're recording at 8pm Classic. Classically. The way this tends to go is you have the protest and if there is any violence and unrest, it happens later. So, I mean, maybe tomorrow we'll wake up and this will all look different. But, but I think it was a good strategic move to steer clear of D.C. and show up literally everywhere else. I mean, like, I was kind of bowled over by. We talked about the, the difference in size, but I mean, the. One of my, or my brother, he, he was in Chattanooga, Tennessee today. He swung by their no Kings protest. You know, multiple thousands of people. He's. He said he's bad with numbers, but closer to 5,000 than a thousand people in Chattanooga, Tennessee. My sister was in Asheville, North Carolina. Another big protest in Asheville. I mean, like, you add up three or four of those, like small metropolitan, no Kings protests, and you are definitely bigger than the D.C. tRUMP 250th anniversary birthday bash with all the tanks. I mean, that's really striking. That's something we say bigger and smaller. And that doesn't even get at the scope of all of this. But I do think that, yeah, if there had been more clashes and you never know, knock on wood for later tonight. But that kind of deflating balloon of no conflict there in the show of all of this force was part of why I think this went over a little bit lame for the President.
- [08:50]
JVL
Well, how about the protests? I mean, I, you know, it's hard to get a sense of this from anywhere because as you said, there's so many. I, I went to the no Kings map the other day, just sort to look at it and there were, I mean, scores of these things all over the country. May maybe hundreds, I don't know, maybe a couple hundred. Just the video, you know, the anecdotal video I saw, it looked like a hundred thousand people in Philly. And I mean, that's, you know, it's not quite super bowl parade, but it's like not far off from super bowl territory. And I think it's deeply impressive. Am I wrong? Somebody. Somebody be cynical and tell me that I'm wrong and that actually, actually it's not that big a deal.
- [09:33]
Sarah Longwell
I mean, it's certainly better than the alternative, I think. No, I think it's great. I, look, I think there's a lot of pent up desire to do something. You know, I was up. I. Because I had half a notion to go downtown, but I was steered away from that by people in my family, good staff work. Didn't think that was smart. And instead I was up here in Maryland and like the, There were people everywhere, like, and not organized pig protests or they were clearly like micro organized by churches or civic associations or something, because you would, you'd be in a, you'd hit a circle and there'd be 50 people in one. And then you get up a little further and there's an intersection and there's a thousand people. And it was like really crazy that people were just sort of self organized gathering and then you just saw people walking and it was a lot of asking people to honk, which I was doing religiously. And, and so I think that there were the big crowds in the big cities and then like everybody got out today. I mean, it was. And so I think it, it matters. Look, things like that matter a lot for the people who do them to be with each other and feeling like they're winning in some way, feel like they're sending a message in some way to see they're being heard, their opposition is being heard. And so I think for Trump, and I guess this is where I started, what I mean is it's a stupid frame for us to get so enthusiastic about, except that we know how much it matters to him. And so the idea that he was humiliated today, because, I guarantee you, because it matters so much to him, this is deeply humiliating for him. And so that's one of those things that we just get to feel good about.
- [11:15]
Andrew Egger
Can I, can I tack on real briefly to that, please, as, as well, which is just that, you know, if you're asking first, kind of a downside to the, to the no king stuff, the only one I can really think of is protests tend to be particularly effective when they're organized around like a specific cause with like a, you know, a specific ask, like a specific action item kind of. And obviously this wasn't that, right? I mean, this was the broadest, biggest tent. You know, you'd see people with, with little signs for all for a million different things. You know, as you're scrolling, you know, through crowd pictures on Twitter or whatever, like everybody kind of showed up in this sort of very big tent way. But, but I think in addition to just being sort of psychologically annoying for the President, this, it strikes at a core of the argument that he has made, which is the thing that he continues to put before the American people as his justification for all of the Norm breaking and all of the kind of trampling over court orders and, and, you know, usurping congressional powers and all that sort of thing. It's always the same argument that this is the guy who's channeling the popular will, right? I mean, he is the sort of avatar and the embodiment of America as, as a, as a political unit. And I think that, that because he does that, because that's, that's the explicit argument that he's made the optics of something like this become much more important than they would otherwise. Where. Where There. You know, you can just anywhere in America, if you were in any of these cities, you could kind of go out your front door, go to the square and, and see a whole lot of America that. That isn't on board with that argument, isn't on board with that process. So even though there isn't a specific ask, I think, I think the split screen there is very healthy and helpful and I think I was glad to see it.
- [13:00]
Will Sommer
I have something the no Kings protest was lacking compared to the parade, the cool sponsors, the parade hat. You know, I don't know. Folks have seen the video where they say thank you to Coinbase.
- [13:11]
Senator Heidi Heitkamp
Special thanks to our sponsor Coinbase.
- [13:13]
Will Sommer
Responding YouTube Palantir. And then the one that I find shocking. And this comes from reporter Amanda Moore. I haven't seen a video of this, but I trust her reporting. They had, you know, soldiers in uniform handing out copies or cans of Dana White's energy drink. I mean, that is crazy. That, like, you know, okay, we're gonna have the, the soldiers run the booth here. I mean, just wild.
- [13:37]
JVL
What a world. I. So here I, I have a question for you guys because. So one of the things that I think this may have helped with is just making people feel like they're not crazy and that they're not alone. And this is sort of a proof of concept for a large nationwide protest, right? You do this once and there is always a little bit of like, is anybody going to come out now that you've done it? You've shown you can get people out, you can get people to show up. I, Again, this is anecdotal. I don't have any data on this, but I have a largest number of people in my life who have never gone to any sort of protest before. They are not protest people. And they like, they were dialed into this and they went out and like, made signs and stuff. For the first. Again, this is just, you know, this doesn't mean anything. This is like, hey, jvl Knows five people who went out to protest. Great, get a cookie. But I do get the sense that there's a little something breaking out beyond the type of people who normally are protesty types.
- [14:44]
Sarah Longwell
I gotta say, when I was driving, the number of sort of 65 year old, you know, middle, like, I don't know, they did not look like your. I don't know, maybe they used to be protesters and now they're just MSNBC parents and. But they're, I don't know, they didn't strike me as the kind of people who were used to jumping into the streets on the regular. I do think something that I wanted to add this on to Andrew's add on that's interesting is Trump ended up having to do this military prey got announced a while ago, but he had to do it at a real ebb in popularity, like at a time where, you know, he's just, he's just had this fallout with Elon in which he was called a pedophile and told to, you know, get it, he should be impeached. Right. So he has this dust up with Elon. That's a, that is real big. That's kind of demoralizes the Right. It's kind of splits them up and then he's got the, he's got Marines in Los Angeles, they got the Padilla thing. Like he was already between Israel and Iran. War between is right. Where oh no wars would start. A feeder. And we've had multiple polls in the last week that has his disapproval real high. Like there are a couple of them are like tickling 60, which feels too.
- [15:56]
JVL
Crazy, but like mid-30s approval in a few polls.
- [15:59]
Sarah Longwell
Right. Mid. And so to have to sort of have that kind of week and then on top of it have your parade be a flop and that will be the story. He's a, there's no, there's no spinning the empty seats. I mean, probably try. And so it just. This is a, this is a cap on a lousy week for this guy. But, but that did feature many instances of his misusing the American military as a visual aid in ways that I've never seen as an American.
- [16:30]
Andrew Egger
Can we just to put another extra fine point on that as well, roll back the clock just like three or four days to the middle of last week where we were coming out of the LA protests and Trump sending the National Guard and sending the Marines down there and coming off of that speech at Fort Bragg where he did just the nakedly partisan, just the Trump speech with all the nasty nonsense that goes on there, the lying about the stolen 2020 election and, you know, all kinds of just the absolute dunking on the political foes in front of an audience of active duty military who had been selected for ideological sympathetic sympathy to the president, like, hooting along with him. And like, it was easy to envision this thing going off this weekend as like kind of an explosive capstone to Trump, Trump's art, Trump's week, of Trump's army, right? Like kind of the, the debut at the debutante ball of Trump with Trump's army. And then you could imagine that, you know, Trump's army parading through the streets of D.C. in front of a cheering throng of, of Trump's, you know, populist base who are like, do or die for all this stuff. And it's just the, we just got the opposite of that. I mean, it, it did not materialize in the way that I think a lot of us potentially feared that it, it would have materialized. He got this, this, you know, sad air out of the balloon flop instead of on the back of all of that, which is also turning out to be unpopular in the way that all of you guys are talking about. So it's, you know, it's, it feels like something that he really swung for this past week in particular. And, and with Don, which I think is, is a relief to everybody, which.
- [18:05]
Sarah Longwell
You know, I'll just. This jvl, you're asking, like, what's the downside? You know, the downside is, is I feel like this was a week that the American military was diminished in the eyes of the broader public in the world. Like, I, I was watching the tank, you know, I was just watching the clips. It's, I don't know. I don't, it's, it's weird to say that a tank looked small, but, like, there was something about it. I love. I, I like the American military. I like a parade, like a good Memorial Day parade. You know, I like people waving American flags. But it, Trump is diminishing the whole thing by making it hyper partisan and by making it about him. And it, it made me, it's, it's, it's sad for the country, I think, to start feeling that sense of, hey, you're using these guys as political props. To the extent that they're allowing it to happen, it feels really icky. And so that's just, I think that's a loss for us. And I do think I will say kudos to the organizers, kudos to the people now who are really kind of pushing out the numbers around how many veterans we could have fed with that 45 million that Trump used to put on his parade. Um, and so you know that that was all well done.
- [19:18]
JVL
We're gonna need a lot more of these days though, is the problem. Cause we've got more than three and a half years left of this. Good luck, America.
- [19:25]
Richard Karn
Hi, I'm Richard Karn and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new pocket hose Copperhead with Pocket Pivot is here and it's a total game changer. Old fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's pocket pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease. All home when you're all done, this rust proof anti burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage. Plus your super light and ultra durable pocket hose Copperhead is backed with a 10 year warranty. What could be better than that? I'll tell you what. An exciting radio exclusive offer just for you for a limited time. You can get a free Pocket Pivot and their 10 pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size Copperhead hose. Just text water to 64,000. That's water to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase W A T E R to 64,000.
- [20:19]
By texting 64,000, you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Hose. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply. Available at pockethose.com terms hi, I'm Richard.
- [20:26]
Karn and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new pocket hose Copperhead with Pocket Pivot is here and it's a total game changer. Old fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's pocket pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. When you're all done, this rust proof anti burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage. Plus your super light and ultra durable pocket hose Copperhead is backed with a 10 year warranty. What could be better than that? I'll tell you what an exciting radio exclusive offer just for you for a limited time. You can get a free pocket pivot and their 10 pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size Copperhead hose. Just text water to 64,000. That's water to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase W A T E R to 64,000 by texting 64,000.
- [21:20]
You agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Host. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply. Available at pockethost.com terms.