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Olivia loves a challenge. It's why she lifts heavy weights and likes complicated recipes. But for booking her trip to Paris, Olivia chose the easy way. With Expedia, she bundled her flight with a hotel to save more. Of course, she still climbed all 674 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower. You were made to take the easy route. We were made to easily package your trip. It Expedia made to travel flight inclusive packages are ator protected. Okay, folks, we're going to do a little bit of Q and A because you like the Q and you like the A. All right, first question out of the box. Hang on a second. Oh, what's this? First question out of the box. The economy has shrunk by half a percent. What do you think Trump does next? Well, this is bad news for Donald Trump, and this is almost entirely driven. I'm speculating right now, but I'm waiting for some trained economists to tell me about a little more about this later today, actually. But it sure as hell looks like Donald Trump and his trade war has started to compress and crunch the economy. What he's going to do is blame George Soros. He's going to blame Joe Biden. He's gonna blame the Democrats, he's gonna blame the news media. He's gonna blame the Never Trump movement. He's gonna blame anyone and everyone because he can't help himself. You know this. You know he can't help himself. Trump is in trouble. His numbers are collapsing quickly. He is now upside down on trade. He's upside down on inflation. He's upside down on the economy broadly. He's upside down on who do you trust more on taxes, he's upside down on tariffs. One of the fundamental things we were told a thousand times in 2024, price of eggs is too high, price of gas is groceries is too high. Price of gas is way up. What you're seeing by the economy shrinking is people are voting with their feet, people are voting with their wallets. These numbers are down for a reason. They're down because Donald Trump has no leadership in the economy that doesn't have negative consequences. They're down because the economy, the economy took a bullet in the head from all of this trade stuff. Donald Trump now thinks Jerome Powell is going to be the bad guy and he's going to fire Jerome Powell or he's going to try to do some game with Jerome Powell. Jerome Powell's probably the one of the few people holding this shit together. They're also beginning to see that the Big, beautiful bill. The voters are beginning to see the big beautiful bill. It's not for them. It's for Elon and Peter Keel and Jeff Bezos and billionaire. You know, across the country, they see that it means we're closing rural hospitals. They see that it means we're hurting seniors. We're going to throw seniors out of nursing homes. We're going to hurt veterans. All this stuff has a consequence. Finally, once it, once it gets to a certain point, it starts to hurt. He's going to panic about it. He's going to throw every culture war thing out there in the world. He's going to talk about this new guy in New York, the communists are here. But that's a great question, actually. And it really is something that I think we ought to just watch the behavior and the distractions. He's going to try. He's going to try to stay in the foreign policy lane for a little while longer because the economy stuff is not that fun for him. Okay, speaking of the big beautiful bill, what can I do to help stop the big beautiful bill? The Senate has sent back their version. The House doesn't like it. It's shaky. But, but in the end of the day, MAGA party discipline is very strong. If you're going to do something about it, you need to call your congressman's office. Do not email. Do not email. They don't care. You call their office, you make sure you say, I am a constituent of Congressman Smith or Jones or whatever his name is or her name is, and tell them you're against it. It may not work. It may suck, they may blow you off, but that's what most people can do right now. Now, I will say at the Capitol today, they are arresting and zip tying seniors in wheelchairs who were there to protest the Medicaid and Medicare cuts. So let me get this straight. You can attack cops with flagpoles, bats, bear spray bricks. You can, you can lead to the deaths of several police officers. You can shit in the Capitol rotunda, You can demolish people's offices in the Capitol. You can go after and scream, hang Mike Pence and you're going to get a pardon. But if you're a senior in a wheelchair who depends on Medicaid and you go to Congress to, to protest against, you're going to get zip tied and arrested the fuck out of here. Unbelievable. Okay, next question. What is the Never Trump movement up to? I see some people are supporting Donald Trump's attack on Iran. Bifurcate this a little bit. The Never Trump movement. I'm a part, I'm sort of the OG in some ways. I'm a part of it. I'm not the only person in it. And there are many people with different ideas. Some people believe the attack on Iran was a, was a net positive thing, that, that it stopped their nuclear program. If you believe that, I can't help you. I, I, I, I don't think we have the data to know that. There are some folks in the Never Trump movement who are very much in the Israel, Iran dynamic, worried about the future of Israel and everyone else, I think. But what most of Never Trump is doing right now is gearing up not for this fight, but for a longer and bigger fight at the Lincoln Project. We're gearing up, we're gearing up for 2026 and some small races here in 2025. Not small really, but some limited races, Virginia and New Jersey and other places in 2025 to set the table for 2026. A lot of folks in the Never Trump movement are under tremendous pressure right now. Uh, we've got folks like Miles Taylor being investigated by the Justice Department in a most, the most illegal abuse of power I think I've seen in a long time. Miles has a legal defense fund, which I would encourage you to, to help out. I, I'm gonna, and you've got a lot of folks in the Never Trump movement who are frustrated that 2024 didn't happen the way we wanted it to. Well, it didn't. You know what sucks for all parties concerned, including everybody in America. It's important to keep up the fight, though. Every oar in this boat has to pull the same direction. And Never Trump is just one of those oars. Just one of those, one of those parts of the, of the process and the, and the dynamic of pushing us through this moment where Trump's got his fascist flag flying and the smart people around him. And remember, folks, as much as you hate them, Stephen Miller and Russ Vaught, Steve Band, these are smart people. They're not stupid people. They're evil, but they are not stupid. 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So you got to keep pressing and you've got to win the battle on a bunch of different fronts. And it's, it's, it's why we fight in all these different ways at Lincoln. We fight in the electoral space where we try to change the outcome of elections. We certainly were decisive in 2020. We moved 17 seats out of Republican control or Republic or protecting them from a Republican attack in 2022. Do I wish 24 was different? Yes. We actually moved more Republican voters in our system than in 24 than we did in 20. But a lot. About 15 million Democrats didn't show up for Harris. How y' all feeling now? You gotta fight in that electoral column. You've gotta fight in the narrative column. You gotta talk to people, you gotta tell stories. You've gotta be a storyteller and a communicator all the time. That's why I do substack. That's why we have Lincoln Square. Because you gotta. It takes more than just tweeting. God knows I used to love tweeting. It's so dull now though. God, it's so awful. But in all these things, you know, you've gotta also find ways to organize in your community. You gotta register voters. And, you know, it's funny. Cause I went to no Kings a couple weeks ago. It was kind of a shocking thing for me. I don't really get out into that grassroots stuff all as much as I should. And I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed meeting the people there. And it did feel something. You felt something there. You felt a community. You felt. Felt a connection to people. That was really important. Look, the Never Trump idea again. I'm one of the OGs of this thing. I was calling him out before he came down the escalator. I've never varied. I've never wavered. I've never blinked on that thing, and I never will. I've always been right about it. I don't always do everything perfectly, but I've always been right that he was a danger to this country. There are a lot of people in this fight, former Republicans in this fight. Everybody approaches it a different way. We're pretty independent. We're pretty. By a bunch of pretty independent gusses. You know, we're not cut out of the same. We're not like the magas who go, what is the marching order, sir? And, you know, march off into the. Into the battle. Everybody approaches it differently. I happen to believe that increasingly fighting this thing in the narrative space is just as important as fighting in the political space. You know, we started the Lincoln Project podcast back in 2020. You know why? Because we're looking at survey research data and polling data and voter behavior data. We saw 62% of voters were making their political decisions based on what they heard on podcasts like this one that you're listening to right now. So, you know, that's why. That's why I think that. That politics is evolving and the folks around the Never Trump movement, again, I don't speak for the entire movement. I speak for my part of it. Speak for me. I speak to some degree to my. For my organization and our allies. We will not quit disagreements over things like the Iran attack. It's a valid question, but it's not the big question. So thank you for that. It was interesting discursion there. Okay, I've got time, I think, for one more question here. It's a personal question. When are you getting married? We're working on it. Is the official answer. Okay. You'll know very soon. We'll get that out the door. Okay, that was a. That was. And there, there. You've had a personal question from Rick. We'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two factor authentication, strong passwords and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast for 40% off. Terms apply. And now back to the show. Okay, we do have time for one more here. Okay, the last one is, what do you think about the new mayor of New York? Well, he's not the mayor yet. He's going to be most likely. You know, while there are many slip twixt the cup and the lip, Mandani has a very good shot at becoming mayor. Now, the ranked choice voting has sort of put him in the right zone for that. Let me say this. I'm a former senior adviser to the mayor of New York City, 1998-2000ish. And everybody who runs for mayor of New York has to connect with the city as it is at that moment. In some way. In the 80s, Ed Koch connected with New York because it was a city in some significant trouble. But he had that scrappy, you know, happy bullshitter personality. And it was like, you know, what are you going to do a few years later in 1993? He tried in 89, didn't work. In 83, Rudy Giuliani came on the stage and said, I'm going to make the city safe again. I'm going to clean it up. And it was something the city wanted. And all the retrospective bullshit history now. And I'm making no current defense of Rudy, as you can well imagine. But people were scared. Their quality of life was terrible. And whether you agree with the way he did it, it was politically resonant. We did his reelection in 1997 and while you could start to see the cracks and the crazies starting to appear like late in the stage there it was still resonant with the people in New York. Mike Bloomberg, the super capable manager after 9 11, the, the, the guy who was the perfect technocrat, it resonated with the people in New York. Now, you'd had two Republicans there for quite a while. Mike Bloomberg for three terms. Well, two terms and Rudy for two. And what he wanted would to be three. Anyway, both of these men hit a moment. Now we've had a couple mayors since then. Bill De Blasio Democrats wanted the city back, they got it. Eric Adams, hard to make a case for Adams, but sometimes, you know, there's a lot of internal politics in New York that are weird. That led to Adams. But Mondani is right now touching a moment with young people. Rent control being frozen, free public transit. He's talking about city owned grocery stores. Every mayor comes in with a dream and they pitch that dream to the city. Rudy's dream, that dream he pitched was, we're going to clean up the city and everything's going to be great and we're going to have great economic prosperity. There's always a downside to every one of these guys hoop with their dreams. Rudy's downside was the police were pretty out of hand. The technocratic thing of, you know, reviving the economy and managing the city, it was a great city. If you were making money, you know, in that realm of if you had a Bloomberg terminal, if you were that kind of person, if you were very wealthy, New York was the best place in the universe to be during that period. Not so even across the board. So Mandani's going to face something in New York that the promises are going to have a hard time intersecting with the realities. All these things take money and cooperation. And New York is a very complicated, devious, shitty, backstabbing place. You're not going to end up with a lot of things he's put into promise. Could he be a good mayor? He could, but I will tell you, he's going to have to do a lot more. He's very charismatic, by the way, guys. And his campaign was brilliantly run, brilliantly done, Very charismatic, very fast moving, very on the money. No critique at all there. But I want to see what happens when he has to sit down with transportation department and deal with the fact that every day in New York somewhere a road collapses, a water main breaks. Every day in New York, generally speaking, building collapses somewhere, firefighter gets hurt, cop gets shot. Every day in New York somewhere in that city, there's something where the mayor's attention has to turn. It's a hard job. It's one of the most complicated and consequential executive positions in the country. Remember, New York is about a little under 800 square miles, eight and a half million people. There's a lot that goes wrong every day there's potholes every day there's streetlights out. Every day there's school roofs leaking. Every day there's something here or something there. Every day that goes south, there's a storm sewer that's backed up. Those things in the minds of voters at the end are how they're going to judge him. Those things are the complicated things, the hard things, the consequential things. And I know every Democrat in the country right now is like, this is the way. This is the only way. This is what we will do from now on. Democratic socialism is amazing. Have fun with, have fun with the, with the victory. But remember, if you're going to govern, a lot of it's not sexy, it's not romantic, it's not revolutionary, it's boring, it's hard, it's tiresome, it's stressful. He's 33 years old. He ran a fantastic campaign. Do you scale that campaign everywhere else? Hard to say. New York has a certain set of political conditions that led to him winning. Ranked choice voting was one of them. Brad Lander cooperating with him was one of them, which is, you know, God bless Brad. He is also running against one of the most unsympathetic, uncharismatic characters in a city that has had some unsympathetic and uncharismatic characters. Andrew Cuomo was just not a, not a guy that New York was in love with. They couldn't be. He was just not there. Not for that. His term as governor, scandal ridden harassment, all these things, it just wasn't, this just wasn't the world. Mondani should have lost to Cuomo under any circumstances. But again, Mondani ran a brilliant campaign. He has, as the kids say, Riz for days. None of that. And what I don't want my Democratic friends to do is say, okay, well, somehow he was stopped from doing all these great things he wanted to do. Those things he wants to do cost money. New York doesn't have it. The schools are in trouble. They need the money. I just don't want you guys to feel disappointed at the end of the day, when he's not the hero you think he is. He might be. I wish him all the very best. It's a tough, tough, tough, tough, tough job. But it is not a DSA meeting, folks. It is not a DSA meeting. It is a hard, hard job. We'll see what happens. You can catch me on the Lincoln Square network twice a week on streaming shows. On Tuesdays, we have the strategy session. On Thursdays, we have the breakdown. You can also catch my personal substack at the Rick Wilson. You can catch me once or twice a week over on Lincoln Square also. And if you are interested and curious go ahead and follow my various socials all at the rick Wilson, including YouTube. Like and subscribe folks. We appreciate it. Thanks everybody. It.