Return of Kamala?

Summary

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Ruthless Podcast

Episode: Return of Kamala?
Date: February 6, 2026
Hosts: Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, John Ashbrook
Special Guest: RNC Chairman Joe Gruters

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Episode Overview

On this lively “Fun Times Friday” edition, the Ruthless crew delivers their signature irreverent and biting conservative commentary, focusing on the breaking political headline: Kamala Harris's oddly executed campaign “relaunch.” They skewer both Harris's strategy and delivery, diving into what her return signals for the Democratic Party at large. The fellas also dissect the implosion of legacy left-leaning media (with a special roasting of The Washington Post’s layoffs), riff on a planned “free” grocery store in NYC, and welcome new RNC Chairman Joe Gruters for an inside look at midterm strategy. The energy is high, with non-stop jokes, rapid-fire anecdotes, and plenty of memorable moments.

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Main Segments & Key Discussion Points

Return of Kamala Harris: The Relentless Rebrand

[03:59 – 19:00]

• Kamala's campaign accounts return:
  The crew analyzes Kamala Harris reactivating her “Kamala HQ” account (now “Headquarters Six Seven”) and releasing a vague, meme-heavy video aimed at the youth.
  • Josh Holmes: “A good first step of any relaunch is to ensure that you look like Grimace from McDonald's right from the jump.” [00:06 & 10:02]
  • Michael Duncan on the “gen Z” / “67” branding: “It doesn't really mean anything.... It is so fitting that Kamala Harris’s next election theme is: I don't know, it doesn't mean anything. That is her theme.” [04:44-05:31]
  • The crew riffs extensively on Kamala's rambling announcement clip, dubbing it “words slapped together” and making fun of her demeanor.

Kamala's Communication Style & Political Baggage

• Smug: “She's not beating the drunk allegations with the video.” [06:52]
• They play and dissect the campaign video twice, emphasizing how it “says nothing” and only reinforces Kamala’s image as vacuous and detached.

Kamala as Symbolic of Broader Democrat Weakness

• John Ashbrook: “The important thing here is not what the relaunch of Kamala means about Kamala, but what it means for the Democratic party writ large about how bankrupt. Just entirely bankrupt.” [09:14]
• Discussion of Democrats’ historic drop in youth and minority turnout; the guys roast the Party for sticking with the architect of their failures.
• Callbacks to Kamala’s most infamous gaffes, namely her condescending remarks about 18–24-year-olds (“they are stupid…” [11:52]) and the notorious child actor-filled space event video (“They couldn't even find normal kids. They gotta start paying kids…”) [13:07–15:57]

The Kamala vs. Newsom Dynamic

• Kamala is positioning herself against rival Gavin Newsom; Smug and Holmes argue that, despite her embarrassing image, she may actually be the Democratic frontrunner.
• “Democratic voters at a base are like hostages that suffer from Stockholm syndrome.” —John Ashbrook [19:00]

Digital/Tone-Deafness of Democrats

• Smug brings in an “exhibit” showing how Biden staff almost tweeted a bunny meme about George Floyd ([20:05]–[21:12]), highlighting the disconnect and internal confusion of digital Dem operatives.

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Mainstream Media Meltdown: Washington Post Layoffs

[25:27 – 45:21]

• The team reacts gleefully to The Washington Post firing 300+ journalists and losing over $100 million annually, roasting journo calls for Jeff Bezos to keep funding their salaries as “philanthropy.”
• They revisit infamous WaPo headlines (“Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi...an 'austere religious scholar'”—Smug [29:25]), COVID “lab leak” skepticism, and coverage double standards (contrasting terrorist and Republican obituaries).
• On journalism’s self-importance:
  • “If they dance on the graves of conservatives, I will dance on their layoffs. I will dunk on them.” —Smug [31:03]
• Debate on whether reporters are “victims” of newsroom bias (Duncan) or just ideologically programmed from college onward (Smug).
• The infamous Post layoff GoFundMe—”essentially for Washington Post journals to buy booze”—gets special ridicule, with Kara Swisher’s $10,000 donation lampooned as shameless signaling. [43:05]
• Michael Duncan: “These organizations do not reflect this country. Until these organizations have half Republicans and half Democrats working inside, they will not reflect the coverage that readers really want.” [44:41]

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Democratic Nomination Odds: Kamala, Newsom, or Someone Else?

[45:36 – 48:37]

• The crew debates who is really poised to win the 2026 Democratic nomination: Kamala, Newsom, Pritzker (“Fat boy from Illinois” —Josh Holmes), or Gretchen Whitmer.
• Josh Holmes: “If the election were today, [Kamala] would not be close. The question is, what happens from here on out?”
• General consensus: Kamala remains the accidental frontrunner by default, showing Democratic inertia and lack of bench.

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NYC’s “Free Grocery Store”: Supermarket Sweep (But for Real)

[53:07 – 58:43]

• Polymarket is opening an actual “free grocery store” in NYC.
• The crew bets on how long until it’s “ransacked” or sees its “first murder” ([55:03, 55:37]), comparing the likely chaos to Black Friday and “Supermarket Sweep meets American Gladiators.”
• Smug: “I'm hopeful there will be some assaults.”
• Discussion of livestreaming the opening as a social experiment in economic delusion.

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Absurd Headlines & Lighter Variety

[58:43 – 66:02]

• The gang reviews the latest absurdity: A Frenchman hospitalized after getting a WWI artillery shell stuck in his rectum.
• Endless jokes about “fire in the hole,” French hospital specialties (“accustomed to treating victims injured during sexual games”), and the “Hurt Locker dude” bomb squad being called in. [59:39–63:50]

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Midterm Strategy & Interview: RNC Chairman Joe Gruters

[66:03 – 85:25]

• Joe Gruters joins to discuss the GOP’s midterm groundwork:
  • Fundraising: RNC’s cash vs. DNC's debt, breaking records, and legal strategy.
  • Grassroots: Building national, state, and local coordination for voter turnout and election integrity (over 110 active lawsuits focused on ballot handling and non-citizen voting).
  • Midterm “Trumpapalooza” convention plans: Working to bring spectacle and energy to an off-presidential cycle.
• Transparency about the challenge: “Only four times in the last 150 years has the incumbent party been able to be successful holding the majorities. We have a real chance to defy history because of the president.”
• Final call for audience involvement and enthusiasm for GOP momentum.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

(with timestamps)

• Josh Holmes (re: Kamala): “A good first step of any relaunch is to ensure that you look like Grimace from McDonald's right from the jump.” [00:06]
• Michael Duncan (on Kamala’s branding): “Her theme is she means nothing. Couldn't find a better [description].” [05:32]
• Kamala Harris (clip): “Age is more than a chronological fact... [young people] are stupid. That is why we put them in dormitories.” [11:52]
• Smug (on Washington Post layoffs): “If they dance on the graves of conservatives, I will dance on their layoffs.” [31:03]
• Michael Duncan: “These organizations do not reflect this country. Until these organizations have half Republicans and half Democrats...they will not reflect the coverage that readers really want.” [44:41]
• John Ashbrook (on Dem prospects): “The Democratic Party can’t stand on its own feet with DS anymore. It's all downstream of us.” [48:02]
• Smug (on grocery chaos): “I'm hopeful there will be some assaults.” [56:17]
• Josh Holmes (re: French bombshell butt story): “Talk about some explosive diarrhea. That is tough stuff.” [60:22]
• Joe Gruters (on being RNC Chair): “When you have the president doing the job that he's doing and you have the vice president as your finance chairman, it makes your job as chairman a lot easier...Because if you don't have the resources, you know, you can't file the missile.” [67:00]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Kamala Relaunch & Mockery: [00:00–19:00]
• Media Layoffs & Washington Post takedown: [25:27–45:21]
• Democratic nomination speculation: [45:36–48:37]
• NYC Free Grocery Store segment: [53:07–58:43]
• Oddball headlines (WWI shell story): [58:43–66:02]
• Joe Gruters RNC Interview & GOP strategy: [66:03–85:25]

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Tone & Style

• The conversation is relentless, sarcastic, mocking, and fast-paced.
• Unapologetically partisan and often gleeful in the face of Democratic/media woes.
• Tar-in-barrel joking, exaggerated hypotheticals, and abrupt changes in topic for comedic effect.

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Summary Takeaways

• Kamala Harris’s attempt at political relevance is seen as both farcical and symbolic of the Democratic Party's fundamental staleness.
• Mainstream media is in decline—deservedly, per the hosts—due to years of bias and narrative-driven reporting.
• The panel is convinced Kamala is the unintentional Democratic frontrunner, only by virtue of default and internal party dysfunction.
• “Free” left-wing economic ideas (like a free grocery in NYC) are lampooned as naive, destined for immediate chaos.
• The GOP, under new RNC chair Joe Gruters, is portrayed as energized, flush with cash, and taking nothing for granted; midterms are “all-out war.”

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Transcript

[Josh Holmes]

Kamala's back.

[Michael Duncan]

Her delusions of grandeur have continued. She has always thought that I'm Obama.

[Josh Holmes]

The good first step of any relaunch is to ensure that you look like grimace from McDonald's right from the jump.

[John Ashbrook]

The important thing here is not what the relaunch of Kamala means about Kamala, but what it means for the Democratic.

[Josh Holmes]

Party writ and large about how bankrupt?

[John Ashbrook]

Just entirely bankrupt.

[Smug]

Kamala's running again, and she wants to make sure people don't just, like, forget about her. I think Newsom's there not letting it go.

[Josh Holmes]

She might be the front runner.

[John Ashbrook]

For years, the big health insurance companies have been raising the price of insurance, denying care and delaying treatments while making record profits and receiving trillions of America's tax dollars through federal programs. When they get asked why health insurance prices keep skyrocketing, the big insurance companies dodge, distract, and blame everyone else. But the American public isn't buying it. Recent national polling shows that voters are concerned about affordability and most importantly, want Congress to prioritize lowering the cost of health insurance. That's why Congress recently grilled the CEOs of the big health insurance companies to answer questions. After years of denying responsibility and pointing fingers everywhere but at themselves, the big insurance bosses are finally being asked to answer for skyrocketing premiums while they make record profits. It's an important first step, but Americans are demanding action and accountability, not more excuses and denials from big health insurance companies. Learn [e-mail].

[Announcer]

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please.

[Smug]

Keep the faith, hold the line, and own the libs.

[Michael Duncan]

It's time for our main event.

[Josh Holmes]

Fun Times Friday. Welcome back to the Ruthless variety program. I'm Josh Holmes along with comfortably smug Michael Duncan and John Ashbrook. Left to right across your radio dial. As always. As you know, on Funtime Friday, we save some of this stuff that we've witnessed throughout the week, and, well, it's worth laughing about.

[John Ashbrook]

And today especially, it's curated over, like, a week of the worst, funniest content that we come across on the Internet. It's really curated. It's like, it's artisanal, I would say.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, there are things that we could fit into the Tuesday show and the Thursday show, and we decide, like, no, this is way too funny. Yeah, we gotta do it on Friday. So that's why you're here. And that's what we're doing. We're gonna cover some things. First of all, Kamala's back.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, boy.

[Smug]

The gift that keeps giving.

[Josh Holmes]

She's back in a very real way.

[Michael Duncan]

It's not even Valentine's Day.

[Josh Holmes]

And so we're about to get into all of that. There's also, I don't, I don't know if you've noticed the end of the mainstream sort of corporate press, left wing media that has happened right before our eyes. Unless you work in this particular line of work, you probably didn't notice.

[Smug]

No.

[Josh Holmes]

Right. Because when's the last time you logged in on the old Washington Post? But if you did, you notice there's some disruption, Some of your favorite authors no longer journoing over there. We're gonna get into that and we've got some variety. We're gonna have some fun. And then we've got a great guest, the RNC chairman, Joe Grutters. It's the first, I think, big interview that he's done. In fact, that's, I think, what he told us on our interview, which is somewhat of a tradition here on the ruthless variety program. When you have a new chairman of the rnc, they come on in, we have some yucks, and then he can tell us all the serious stuff that they're doing and how we're winning stuff. And he does that. Great guy. Really appreciated the interview. Appreciate the RNC for sending him on over. But let's get right into Kamala.

[Smug]

Yes.

[Josh Holmes]

So it turns out, and this is according to the New York Post. Let me just read the headline and then we can jump off from here. New York Post Kamala Harris activates long dormant campaign accounts to announce headquarters rebrand. Okay, I'll see you out there. She says. And that's the, that's the headline in the New York Post. Their lead is the former vice president Kamala Harris announced a rebrand of her long dormant campaign account on Thursday after teasing a mystery announcement the day before. Her Kamala HQ account on X, which was silent after her loss to Donald Trump in 2024, was renamed Headquarters Six Seven.

[Michael Duncan]

Which is so fitting, fellas. They're talking about how this is like a Gen z play. But 67 is a gen Alpha thing, which, as a lot of people know, is the generation underneath Gen Z. And when you ask anybody from that generation, and my children are among them, what does 67 mean?

[Josh Holmes]

They don't know.

[Michael Duncan]

And their answer is like, you know, it doesn't really mean anything.

[Smug]

They do the hand thing. For sure.

[Michael Duncan]

They do the hand thing. They kind of try to like spin the wheels and explain it and then they laugh and then they text their friends. But it is so Fitting that Kamala Harris theme for her next election as defined by the demographic she's going after is. I don't know, it doesn't mean anything. That is her theme.

[Smug]

That is good.

[Michael Duncan]

Her theme is she means nothing. Couldn't find a better.

[Josh Holmes]

It fits. Well, I mean, we used to play Veeper Veep and we would pull the quotes from Selina Meyer and the quotes from her. We ran out of content on the HBO comedy show Comedy show because she had too many and we could no longer play the game. But I think if you were to have a through line of what all of her quotes meant. Nothing.

[Michael Duncan]

Nothing.

[Josh Holmes]

It was words slapped together.

[John Ashbrook]

Funny to announce this like the moon landing with a tease of what's to come. And it's like, oh, we just got a different hand and there's a meme in there.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, the 6, 7 thing we're gonna come back to in a second. Cuz I just, I can't get enough of that. But let's just take a look at the video, huh? Yeah, they put some work in this.

[Smug]

This is her announcement for what she's going to do with this headquarters.

[Josh Holmes]

This is the new thing. Clip one.

[Smug]

Madam Vice President, what's going on with Kamala hq?

[Kamala Harris (clip)]

Well, I'm so glad you asked. I have good news. So Kamala HQ is turning into headquarters, and it's where you can go online to get basically the latest of what's going on and also to meet and revisit with some of our great courageous leaders, be they elected leaders, community leaders, civic leaders, fake leaders, young leaders. I'm really excited about it. So stay engaged and I'll see you out there.

[Josh Holmes]

Thank you.

[Smug]

So you really should go to the YouTube to see this because she's not beating the drunk allegations with the video. Like, it's kind of like just like a. I'm glad you asked. That's definitely take like 932, right? Like her staff's like, kamala, just the video thing, right? And then she's like, I'm glad you asked. Just like swings back and forth. It's a place for, you know, all the things online is where we're gonna be. And that's the best take they got. That's the best take they got all day out of her.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, you definitely want to go there.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, and then there's another thing in this that I think is hilarious and that is like, it was received in certain quarters within the Democratic Party establishment is like, what a magnanimous thing to do, you know, like all of the assets of the Kamala Harris campaign now being put forward to the cause. You know, like, she's opening up Fort Knox here. And it's like, you know, because, like, after Barack Obama didn't work, was elected, right? He turned a lot of that stuff into organizing for America. It's like, we're gonna be building the infrastructure for the future. Of course, then all that's wiped out by the tsunami that is Donald Trump. And then, you know, he goes and gets his Netflix deal and whatever.

[Josh Holmes]

And they're still working on a library, I'm told.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, I'm told.

[Smug]

And their lesson was like, we don't need ofa. We'll just wire the money to Eric Holder and he'll give it to Barack.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, but it is so funny.

[Josh Holmes]

10% off the top.

[Michael Duncan]

It is so funny to hear you say that. She's like, oh, well, that's what Obama did, so that's what I should do. Her delusions of grandeur have continued. She has always thought that I'm Obama. I'm just like Obama. And now she's turning over the assets to her organization. That video, dude, I think we should play it one more time.

[Smug]

Can we?

[John Ashbrook]

Can we play it one more time?

[Josh Holmes]

Play it one more time.

[Smug]

Madam Vice President, what's going on with Kamala hq?

[Kamala Harris (clip)]

Well, I'm so glad you asked. I have done so. Kamala HQ is turning into headquarters and it's where you can go see this way to get basically the latest of what's going on.

[Smug]

This is the latest of what's going on.

[Kamala Harris (clip)]

Revisit with some of the latest of what's going on. Courageous leaders, be they elected leaders, community leaders, civic leaders.

[Smug]

She just says nothing.

[Josh Holmes]

Six, seven.

[Kamala Harris (clip)]

Dude, I'm really excited. So stay engaged and I'll see you out there.

[Josh Holmes]

Thank you.

[Michael Duncan]

It's where you get the latest. You just log into the Internet. There's this thing and then you find out what's going on. You know, you go to hq.

[Smug]

The latest on what's going on.

[Michael Duncan]

I think Google.

[John Ashbrook]

I think the important thing.

[Michael Duncan]

Just go to Kamala HQ or HQ.

[Josh Holmes]

6, 7, 6, 7.

[John Ashbrook]

I think the important thing here is not what the relaunch of Kamala means about Kamala, but what it means for the Democratic party writ large about how bankrupt. Just entirely bankrupt. I mean, you gotta remember that in the last election they did historically poor with young voters, with voters of color, with informational, low voter, you know, low propensity voters who, like, get their media through alternative sources like Kamala.

[Smug]

6Av.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, but instead of doing a full autopsy, a thing they suppressed and they didn't release about why they had this huge problem with young voters and whatnot, the architect of that failure, Kamala Harris, is gonna now solve the problem for him.

[Josh Holmes]

She's relaunching.

[John Ashbrook]

She's relaunching. And she's gonna be a hub of news for those people who didn't wanna vote for her.

[Josh Holmes]

And as we know, I mean, a good first step of any relaunch is to ensure that you look like grimace from McDonald's right from the jump. Look at that suit. Can we toss this up? Look at this.

[Smug]

Oh, my God. It does look like Grimace.

[Josh Holmes]

What are you doing? What are you doing?

[Smug]

And also, I mean, everything about this is wrong. Everything about this is wrong. Like, if you're trying to reach out to youth, do you want to be in the most, like, staid, sterile, sterile office, nondescript kind of. You know what I mean?

[Josh Holmes]

It's like a wework.

[Smug]

It's a dude, right? That's what it is. Doesn't it look like a wework? This whole thing is a sham.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Smug]

She doesn't do real work and she says nothing.

[Josh Holmes]

Hold on. Pop it back up. Cause I can't have it. Look at the pictures in the background. It's like a picture of just the sky.

[Smug]

It's like a square of a square, bro.

[Michael Duncan]

It's the last thing everybody sees before they get fired. She is exactly the thing that everybody voted against. This is the out again.

[Smug]

This is the HR office, and you're about to lose your job.

[Michael Duncan]

Everybody. It's reminding everybody, like, the bullet we dodged as a country.

[Josh Holmes]

So, like, literally, one of my favorite things about this whole rebrand is that somehow it inspires the youth, which for the first time in Democratic history, she didn't capture the youth. First time ever, right? First time ever.

[Smug]

Incredible.

[Josh Holmes]

As we always know. Like, you know, the youngest, most idealistic of all of us are more likely to be Democrat than Republican because, you know, they still have dreams. They don't understand the real world works and a lot they haven't been cut down. And, like, they don't understand the cynicism that all of us have been subjected to. Even those people were like, I can't do it.

[Smug]

Right?

[Josh Holmes]

I can't do it. So she's like, I'm the youth movement, right? I'm gonna do all this. Let's just, like, take a trip down memory lane. This is how she treated the young people.

[Kamala Harris (clip)]

Clip 2 what's the other thing we know about this population and it's a specific phase of life. Remember, age is more than a chronological fact. What else do we know about this population? 18 through 24? They are stupid. That is why we put them in dormitories and they have a resident assistant. They make really bad decisions.

[Michael Duncan]

A leader for our time. Exactly what the young people are looking for. Somebody to call them an idiot.

[Josh Holmes]

Inspiration for Gen Alpha. I mean, incredible, right? But then I was thinking more about this because I was reminded of that clip. And the absolute best of her tenure during the Biden administration as vice president was when they decided she was taking too much heat and she needed to start going on offense and start doing events. And like, they were going to do youth movement on all this. And like, I don't know, space, maybe space is a thing. And as you recall, what happened, which ultimately became public, was that they had paid, put out advertising to get child actors to interact with it.

[Smug]

They couldn't even find, like, there wasn't.

[Josh Holmes]

A preschool in America. Yeah, There wasn't a preschool in America that wanted to be sat with, with Kamala Harris and talk about. So they had to pay people legitimate actors dollars to sit down and do clip two, please. Or three.

[Kamala Harris (clip)]

I think about so much that's out there that we still have to learn. Like, I love that. I love that. And so I'm very excited about the Space Council.

[Smug]

We're going to learn so much.

[Kamala Harris (clip)]

We're going to learn as we increasingly.

[Josh Holmes]

I think, remember this is all an.

[Kamala Harris (clip)]

Ad and interested in the potential.

[Josh Holmes]

None of the people she's talking to.

[Kamala Harris (clip)]

The discoveries they're being paid.

[Smug]

It's incredible.

[Kamala Harris (clip)]

That's one of the things I'm most excited about.

[Josh Holmes]

Look at these kids.

[Kamala Harris (clip)]

Yeah, you guys are going to see.

[Josh Holmes]

You're going to look at these kids.

[Kamala Harris (clip)]

Craters on the moon with your own eyes.

[Smug]

You're going to look at the moon with your own eyes.

[Kamala Harris (clip)]

I'm going to telling you, it is going to be unbelievable.

[Smug]

They're like, dude, that is so amazing.

[Michael Duncan]

And you know, the producers for that ad are like, kids don't talk. You might make her sound stupid.

[John Ashbrook]

Kids play it bigger, act like she's exciting.

[Josh Holmes]

They're like, oh, the moon with her own eyes.

[Michael Duncan]

I can't imagine.

[Smug]

That's such a crazy line.

[John Ashbrook]

And what a crazy time, right? Because remember, she was saddled with, you know, I'm gonna find the root causes of migration. She's gonna be the borders are.

[Josh Holmes]

She.

[Smug]

The borders are.

[John Ashbrook]

And solve this thing.

[Smug]

They made the space.

[John Ashbrook]

And you just know, like in the office at the time, they're like, you old son of a bitch. Giving me this intractable problem that you created that you now can lay at my feet. And so there was this time during the Biden administration, in order to dig out of that, where she became like, a broken arrow.

[Smug]

Well, no, no.

[John Ashbrook]

Like, assistant director of special projects, dude.

[Joe Gruters]

Yeah.

[Smug]

It was like, take your kid to work day, where they're like, can we just find a book with some crayons for Kamala here? And she still found a way to blow away.

[Josh Holmes]

She's like, I'll be damned if I'm not gonna ribbon cut for a while.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, right.

[Smug]

They're like, so we to sit down with some kids and just talk about space. You know, that's easy. Like, this is like, you know, anybody can do this. Kamala. And she's like, I got it. And they sit her down with some normal kids, and she was like, so we're gonna look at the moon with our own eyes. And the normal kids will look at each other like, what the hell is happening?

[Josh Holmes]

Well, the first thing I was told.

[Smug]

This is extra credit. Now I feel threatened.

[Josh Holmes]

The first thing they're thinking is, I hope this check cashes.

[Smug]

Yeah, well, this is. They couldn't even find normal kids. They gotta start paying kids. Because kids are like, why is the lady smell like liquor? I don't feel safe. And they're like, well, we can find some kids. We'll give money to sit with Kamala. I mean, I'm sure Biden's folks are good at that, right? So they got to sit her in a room with a bunch of child actors, and she still sounds like a moron. And like, for those child actors to try, they just have to keep a straight face. Did you see that? They're, like, completely expressionless. They're like, don't even make eye contact with her. She'll come to you in your nightmares.

[Josh Holmes]

A collection of Haley Joel oddspot.

[Smug]

It was like, just don't move over and your parents will get the cash.

[Josh Holmes]

It's so good. So I forget. Hey, Wolf, is this is graphic 6? Is that a current iteration or is this a blast?

[Smug]

It's a recent one.

[Josh Holmes]

Okay. Cause I didn't remember this.

[Smug]

She just put this stuff, like, within the past month or two.

[Josh Holmes]

Okay, can we put graphic six? That's her playing board games now. She doesn't have the grimace outfit on, which is an improvement. It does look like she's playing Connect 4.

[John Ashbrook]

Connect 4. I mean, it's not a board game. No critical thinking going on here.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, you don't you do critical. It's tic tac toe. It's in the eye of the beholder. You got to be able to count to four.

[Smug]

I think the interesting thing about it's diagonal too.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, so you got to watch out for that. Yeah, you got to watch out for that.

[Smug]

The interesting thing about this is yet again, not beating the charges. Can we get graphic seven? Boom. I mean, like, dude, this is just.

[Josh Holmes]

I missed that in the first graph.

[Smug]

Dude, that's just. To be able to sit and play Kinect 4. She needs a tip topper.

[John Ashbrook]

Honestly, I think that's the. I think that's the realest thing about her. As someone who experienced a whole week of no school with my kids.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

And I did multiple, like 300 piece puzzles. Yeah, bourbon helped a little bit.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, it helped a lot. No question about it. I wish she would embrace it. You.

[Michael Duncan]

You do wish she would embrace it. But instead they insist she's coming up some kind of, like, gumshoe. She's going to get to the bottom of the root causes of immigration problems.

[Smug]

Here's my thinking is my theory is her drinking is so out of control, they can't even. They're trying to hide it so hard. They can't even be like, well, she occasionally has a glass of wine. Cause, like, let's be serious, everyone knows she's slurring non stop. So they're trying to be like, no, no, how dare you. And trying to hide it when really, I mean, every story I've heard, I mean, there's horror stories.

[John Ashbrook]

Many people are saying.

[Smug]

Many people are saying, oh, allegedly horror stories.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, she's the worst candidate. But here's the thing. If you look around smug, you brought this up earlier before our show today, she might be the front runner.

[Smug]

That's the thing. That's the reason that this happened, is, number one, she's seen Gavin Newsom is out there trying to take this thing before the race even begins. Right. At the same time I mentioned it maybe a week or two ago, there's a lot of chatter going around in D.C. about how, listen, people say, oh, they don't want Kamala. But during this book tour she's on, she's been filling up venues and a lot of Democrat operatives are talking about that. They're like, well, she's still putting together bigger crowds than, like, Newsom does. All Newsom's doing is, like, going out and like, Newsom made a fool of himself at Davos.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, I mean, Bessant just body bagged him, sent him home in a fricking coffee.

[Smug]

And I think this is the most obvious and cynical thing here is Kamala's running again, and she wants to make sure people don't just like, forget about her. Dude's happy. Newsom's there. She's not letting it go.

[Josh Holmes]

No, it's happening.

[Smug]

It's happening.

[John Ashbrook]

The reason why her poll numbers are so good is because Democratic voters at a base are like hostages that suffer from Stockholm syndrome. You know, I mean, these are the same people who, if you went on X during the Biden administration, they were like, he is a genius.

[Josh Holmes]

There's never been a more Villa president.

[John Ashbrook]

He is certainly not a cadaver. No, like, in processing that trauma, they're like, we need to go back to Kamala.

[Smug]

I'm very glad you brought that up, because I have something here. There was a very strong online wait.

[Josh Holmes]

Did you bring some secret prize exhibit?

[Smug]

It is. There is. So there was a lot of chatter when this Kamala HQ thing got teased. And yes, conservatives were hilariously laughing and making fun of it. But an unexpected thing was a lot of Democrat operatives came out feeling like they have nothing left to lose and started calling out this kind of horrible, like, online digital work by Democrats. Could I get exhibit 7A, please?

[John Ashbrook]

We have a secret exhibit here. What is.

[Smug]

This is from Stephanie Feldman, who worked on Biden's campaign in their digital, and she says, here's my fave example of something the Biden 2020 digi team wanted to tweet out from the Biden campaign account. I vetoed it because it is such an outrageously unserious reaction to a serious moment and not Biden brand. Lots of digi people were upset with me. Can we zoom in on that image? It's the bunny that holds the sign up saying justice for George Floyd. They were about to tweet that out from Biden's account.

[Josh Holmes]

No way.

[Smug]

It gets even funnier. Look at the bottom half. They have to get sign off from.

[John Ashbrook]

All these people, written sign off from.

[Smug]

All those people, to be able to send up this emoji bunny holding up a sign saying justice. Imagine if Joe Biden o Biden sends out a bunny holding up a sign saying justice for George.

[Michael Duncan]

Can we go back to this? Maybe your note. Go ahead, Josh.

[Josh Holmes]

No, I was just gonna say if the comms team's production is a bunny holding up justice for George Floyd, presumably in 2024, this is 2020. I can understand why all of those sign offs are necessary. Like, this is. This is the creativity. I mean, I would Want to double check that kind of thing?

[Michael Duncan]

I would too. And, you know, can we just put it up one more time? Because as I'm looking through all of those different verticals for approval, one of them has a question mark.

[Smug]

That's hilarious. Right?

[Michael Duncan]

Need VP approval, question mark. So they're not actually sure whether it's required to have Kamala's say on anything that they do on her account. It's just comms policy.

[Smug]

The only research that has the question. Exactly.

[Michael Duncan]

They're like, ah, you know what?

[Josh Holmes]

She's probably not gonna. Does she need to see it?

[Smug]

It's after 4pm she's really too drunk to sign.

[Josh Holmes]

Her husband's working his way around the building. He's pissed.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, like, yeah, we don't want him to get mad. We've seen what happens with that.

[Josh Holmes]

Let's bypass that.

[Michael Duncan]

He makes the Irish look peacemaking.

[Smug]

And so, like, I think the big takeaway here is the song Remains the Same. Kamal is running again. The Democrats are still stuck with the disaster of idiots that they're of their own making. They've allowed such idiots to rise up within the ranks. Right. This is what you get when you're a blue state. Like, Kamala was a senator for California.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. Yeah. There's no competition, and there's certainly not any sort of thought leadership or none of it.

[Smug]

It could be Tubby in Illinois, Gavin Newsom, the psychopath boot.

[Josh Holmes]

I love you.

[Smug]

It's a murderer's row of losers.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Smug]

But that's what they have. And I predict she's running. I mean, this is the clearest sign possible.

[Josh Holmes]

Why wouldn't she?

[Smug]

Anyone who. I mean, she has a lead. That's the thing. That's the thing is it's so sad. It's hard to understand as a Republican because we demand so much.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Smug]

That it's like, Yeah.

[Joe Gruters]

I mean, we.

[Smug]

Let's run the drunk again.

[Josh Holmes]

We go through a quarter of not getting exactly what we want. We're like, fuck it. I'm not voting anymore. I'm turning Democrat.

[John Ashbrook]

And this is not like. This is seriously. This is not just us saying that we now. We control the White House. We control the House. We control the Senate. We're having more contested primaries in the Republican Party.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Than the Democrats.

[Josh Holmes]

They don't want to change direction.

[John Ashbrook]

Right. Even though. That they ate shit and they suppress their own autopsy for why they ate shit.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

They're still like, all right, again, stay the course.

[Josh Holmes]

It's like Herb Brooks and Miracle again. Until the American people just stomach Our insanity again.

[Joe Gruters]

It is.

[Michael Duncan]

That's exactly what they are. It's just like. It's like a theater show before George Soros to who's gonna be the best person to do what he wants.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, it's amazing. All right, so when we come back, bad news for the libs, bad news for the journos.

[Smug]

Oh, no.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, we've talked about it a lot, but it's not getting any better. Catastrophe is struck in the center. The very heartbeat of Lib. Journal left right after this.

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[Josh Holmes]

So you may have noticed that the traditional corporate media, broadcast media, the four major dailies, all of this stuff other than the Wall Street Journal, seems to be doing pretty well. Everything outside of that has been untroubled. And it turns out that the vast majority of Americans have demanded actual information at some level, and they can no longer find it through this network of corporately funded operations that have been going since the beginning of time, that have decided that we're all just sort of pawns in their game and they're going to filter information through a partisan lens and deliver everything. So people have gotten frustrated and you've seen this receding over a 10 year period of time. It's the reason why things like Ruthless exist, because you get the real story, whatever. But never could you imagine it hitting like it did. The Washington Post this week. That's an institution. It's owned by one of the richest people in the world. It literally is in terms of what journos care about. It's like a Mona Lisa type thing. I mean, there's like seven wonders of the world and for journalists, this is one of them. Washington Post. Well, tough times. New York Post reports that the Washington Post fired over 300 journals as Bezos ignores correspondenceless, please. So what's funny about this one that they've richly earned any sort of retraction in their workforce because they have annually lost 100/4 million dollars. And I actually saw one journo, a guy that's been around for a long time make a straight faced argument about how Bezos is worth.

[Smug]

Like, was it Peter Baker? Yeah, he's a piece of garbage. Him and his crazy wife. Him and his crazy wife. And what's the word for if you got your job because of daddy?

[John Ashbrook]

Nepotism.

[Smug]

Nepotism and his little Nepo baby. Also in journalism. Catch that Baker dude.

[Josh Holmes]

I'm just saying like the argument was the most unbelievable thing.

[John Ashbrook]

Like he's so rich, he should be comfortable losing all this money.

[Josh Holmes]

He's only losing 100 plus million dollars. He's worth 50 billion. And so like it should just be his duty.

[John Ashbrook]

It's a philanthropy to, to pay these.

[Josh Holmes]

Worthless sacks of shit. That's the thing to report lies to you.

[Smug]

Every day is for them, Obama, for these journals who spent the past decade, decade plus during the Obama years when there were folks in West Virginia losing their jobs mining coal. They're like, learn to code. Learn to code.

[Josh Holmes]

They had no sympathy.

[Smug]

Before Elon bought Twitter journals were hunting down conservatives who would reply to journalists who got laid off with Learn to code and getting them perma banned from Twitter.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, even before that, they think there.

[Smug]

Are a special protected class that are not only owed your undivided attention, they want to be the only source of information for you. You are deserving of only what they want you to know and through what prism of bias that they have on every subject. And they think, oh, he's the richest man alive, his money belongs to me. That's why I write about all this socialism shit, really.

[Josh Holmes]

And the implicit bias is so strong they don't even recognize it. But they only operate in information silo where they're talking to each other and people in the similar line of work. And so it just reinforces all their biases all along. And they think that that is the absolute truth, the only truth and like the only thing worth discussing. Meanwhile, they just miss the forest of the trees every possible way that they can. Let's take just a trip down memory lane and some of the golden oldies that we've seen out of the Washington Post, who can forget? Graphic 1 There's a terrorist, Abu Bakr El Baghadi, who as you recall, was one of the most horrific terrorists.

[Smug]

He was a rapist, terrorist, murderer has ever seen.

[Josh Holmes]

And the way that they characterize him in their obituary is a austere religious scholar.

[Smug]

Think how deranged you have to be to think like that.

[Josh Holmes]

That's the thing, right?

[John Ashbrook]

It's like, Jeffrey Dahmer just invited people over for dinner. I mean, like, that's.

[Josh Holmes]

He likes to share meals with friends.

[John Ashbrook]

Just delusional stuff.

[Josh Holmes]

Here's another one, one of our favorites from an old friend of the program. Graphic 2. Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus fringe theory that scientists have disputed.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh. It turns out his foot nuts on about what happened. And we now know that the FBI is copped as such.

[Smug]

They're like, tom Cotton said that it leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China. And they're like, that's racist. It actually came from one of these crazy markets where the Chinese people eat animals. That's the lesson.

[Josh Holmes]

Racist.

[Smug]

Take there.

[Michael Duncan]

Can I go back and just. You mentioned the terrorist obituary headline. Can I just read you the headline that they gave to a very long serving Republican senator from Oklahoma, Jim Inhofe.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

James Inhofe, Oklahoma Senator and climate Change denier dies at 89. That's what they gave. That's what they gave a guy who dedicated his life to delivering the message of people from Oklahoma to Washington. And they're like, no, fuck you. Here's what we're gonna do for the terrorists.

[Smug]

And that's why. So when we were having such a good point, we're having a meeting about this show and Ashbrooke's trying to walk us all back because he's friends with all these journalists. I said, if they dance on the graves of conservatives, I will dance on their layoffs. I will dunk on them. And I encourage our audience to. And I don't care, Ashbrook, that they're all your friends. We're gonna hold these people accountable because they've lived their entire lives without accountability. They're demanding Bezos money. That's how bad they are at accountability.

[Josh Holmes]

Look, he's gonna have like four investigative reports in his panty drawer by week's end.

[Smug]

Bezos bought this newspaper for $250 million, and it loses over 150 million a year. If you have a boat and think that's a bad investment, try owning the Washington Post. That is a bad investment. I lose 50% a year compounded annually.

[Josh Holmes]

So Russiagate, it was pervasive amongst this class of journal. New York Times, Washington Post, you name it, they were all about it. There was never any sort of hedging about what the story was. Graphic 3, Washington Post, the case for Trump, Russia Collusion. We're getting very, very close.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, it just ridiculous.

[Josh Holmes]

It's ridiculous. But again, so now you see all these people being laid off because people no longer trust the information that they provide. And, you know, for those of us who have worked with these people, like, I remember how it used to be, it was never a friendly place to anybody who was right of center, but it was people you could work with at some level. It has not become that like it is now. Just what it is. But they act as though this is the end of democracy itself. The journo's protection of their own thang is like no other industry in America. You know what I mean? Like, you can be laid off from your manufacturing job.

[Smug]

They don't give a shit.

[Josh Holmes]

All that shit shipped to China, all that shit shipped to Mexico, they don't give a shit. And there is no effort to sort of highlight the story and do this, that and the other thing, there's no efforts. But when it comes to one of their own, oof. There's a real problem with that because the echo chamber of which they hitched their Georgetown cocktail party to and their livelihood and their trips up to, you know, Boston and Martha's Vineyard and Palm beach and all of their lifestyle.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, well, that is the grand irony is they would wax poetic about increasing worker productivities, you know, by streamlining things if it was any other industry but their own, as a sacred cow that you could never reduce the headcount, you know, and hundreds of people needed to be in a newsroom at the Washington Post in order to tell you what's happening on Capitol Hill. And of course, we know that to be not true. In fact, if you just kind of look around the media ecosystem, there's plenty of people who've gone and left, you know, major publications to start their own thing, to report the news on a specific vertical. Like Punchbowl comes to mind. Or semaphore. Your buddy Ben Smith. You know, I mean, like, there's people in journalism, they're doing pretty well, you know, servicing an audience. Like, if maybe media got back to, like, providing information that people are interested in.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, you mean like, you know, facts and.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, evidence that, like, maybe they succeed.

[Smug]

Is they had such a simple job and they had a monopoly. Like, they had a monopoly. There was a time when, I mean, it wasn't like, if you have a good viewpoint and a micro and you can build an audience and you can be compelling, there was a time that just didn't happen. The democratization of information is the worst thing that happened in media because it turns out they were all just a bunch of untalented hacks who their moat was. We've got the printing machines.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, it's no different than the people that we highlighted on yesterday's show of people who have no clue what it is they're talking about, but they have a narrative that they like to confirm. So they just throw out stuff, have you consume it, and move on to the next thing.

[John Ashbrook]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, that is what has become of modern day journalism. I'm not saying that there aren't exceptions. There are good reporters. I believe that, and I'm gonna stick up from Smash on this. I know you disagree, but there are people you can work with. This is a rag that has gone so far downhill that when they tried to turn the ship away from the iceberg, they revolted from within. And that's where this whole thing had completely tumbled, is that you had a newsroom essentially at war with its leadership about the direction of actually covering news, and they just refused to do it.

[Michael Duncan]

Right. And this monopoly that Smug is talking about, and I don't disagree with you at all on that dynamic, but it was abused by people whose names you will never know, pushing people whose names you saw at the top of stories, stories to write things that they themselves knew. There was a counterpoint, and yet they were, like, told that you need to put that counterpoint at the bottom of the story. Because what's most important is trying to drive an ideology, trying to convince people of something that I think in my head that I'm sitting here on this laptop and I'm trying to shape the way people think. The worst possible thing that ever happened in journalism was this push against objectivity. We've talked about it on this show.

[Smug]

NPR was. I mean, the lady said straight up, she was like, I have a problem with objectivity.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, facts are only facts.

[Michael Duncan]

It's the worst thing that ever happened in journalism. Because the reason why people read stories is so they can get information because they have too many other things going on in their lives. They have five minutes to get informed about what's going on in your world. And you want to know that you have credible facts in front of you. You're not getting a lecture from some leftist who is trying to lead you to believe something that isn't true. And I really think that there are so many reporters who are victims of a culture.

[Smug]

Of course. He said, reporters are the victims here.

[Michael Duncan]

They're not. I do.

[Smug]

They're not the victims.

[Michael Duncan]

You can Hate it.

[Smug]

The victims are the American people who when they lose their jobs, none of these journals gave a damn. And you know what we're supposed to feel like? 300 journals losing their job is the worst tragedy to befall fall America. These people are calling terrorist rapists austere scholars. I don't feel bad for them. I think Don Lemon should be an example. The only good journal's a jailed one.

[Michael Duncan]

Listen, buddy, listen. I mean, there are an awful lot of people who would agree with that because the stories that were written, particularly Josh, mentioned coal country, you know what I mean? Like these major publications crushed the American coal industry. And there are people who are working very good paying jobs who are completely out of work. Their families have nothing because of what these major mainstream outlets did to them. And nobody will ever argue with you on that.

[Smug]

You are right now as we speak.

[Michael Duncan]

I do think that there are reporters who are victims of a system.

[Josh Holmes]

I kind of agree because of.

[Michael Duncan]

Because they're just trying to rise up.

[Josh Holmes]

Here's where I agree with you. Reporters are. Reporters are reporters and you're trained one way or another. But in a particular era, the one that we've all now seen result in record journal job loss, they were trained under assignment editors that give you a very specific idea of what it is that you need to cover. That's where the media bias exists. It's not so much the reporting of the story, although that's bad too. It's what you choose to cover.

[Smug]

Like for example, these journals, they were just following orders. They're just following orders.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, I think it's an entire maniac.

[Smug]

Is telling what to do. They're just following orders. When we have the trials, that's not going to work.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, I'm not saying that like, I'm not saying that like a mid level terrorist is not a terrorist. I'm saying what you're trained to do at some level in any line of work, you learn based on what people teach you to do. And what happened to this generation of journos is that they would teach you that the news and the story are not the news and the story. And so where you would get the plaudits, the pats on the back, the raises, the better assignments, all of those things were all as a result of taking those orders to like, you know, if you have a Senate race somewhere in the world, the story is not who are the candidates, the story is how much dirt can I dig on the Republican candidate.

[Smug]

Yeah, so that's what I want to clarify is I don't feel like the journals are in any way a victim. I don't feel like they show up to a workplace and all of a sudden they have an assignment. Ed, who's like, I want you to be a lunatic. I think it begins way earlier. When they arrive at Northwestern, when they arrive at Columbia, when they arrive at Chapel Hill, they begin building the operatives. These are operatives marching off to war. And they're wars against the American people. These are propagandists. When they show up to Chapel Hill, they're already maniacs. When they show up to Northwestern, they're already maniacs. When they show up to Columbia, I mean, look at what happened. They're already maniacs. And then they get their job and they're. And the germanos.

[John Ashbrook]

Now just look at the revolving door between Germany, journalism and Dem politics.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it's one to one. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, if they leave, that's where they're gone.

[Michael Duncan]

Look, I don't disagree with what you're saying. I'm just simply trying, like, if anybody's trying to understand how we got from 2005 when it was left of center, and like people trying to write something that was useful and today.

[Smug]

I don't think there's any.

[Michael Duncan]

I think there's.

[Smug]

We should not try to understand or humanize the journos. All right? For God's sake, they're trying to destroy us.

[Michael Duncan]

You made that point.

[John Ashbrook]

You're telling me for the first time.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, yeah. Do you think he cares for them?

[Smug]

Can I make. To further my point of view? Can we get Graphic four? Ashburn, could you read what this is he just sent me?

[Michael Duncan]

I will do it. This is graphic four.

[Josh Holmes]

Ashley Parker, former WaPo journo.

[Michael Duncan]

Long time quote, the murder of the Washington Post. Your argument, buddy.

[Smug]

Can you read it?

[Michael Duncan]

My argument is that we want the Voice.

[Smug]

Can we get the Voice? The people want to hear the. The Voice. Please read.

[Michael Duncan]

The call is coming from inside of the house.

[Smug]

And can we get.

[Michael Duncan]

That is my point.

[Smug]

The graphic back. But I want to. I want it in the Voice. Okay, what did she write?

[Michael Duncan]

I will read it.

[Josh Holmes]

This is it feels like a hazing technique.

[John Ashbrook]

This is great.

[Josh Holmes]

I will read it.

[Michael Duncan]

I will read it. Yesterday, wet eyed Abvi on the metro. Abi wearing my Post beanie, Abvi and a woman, a stranger leaned over and hugged me. Which is to say the entire city understands the scope of this devastating.

[John Ashbrook]

And then everybody stood up and clapped.

[Smug]

Can I say the Washington Post wasn't murdered? Irina Zarutska was murdered. But they didn't write about that did they?

[Michael Duncan]

Well, but therein lies the problem. You know what I mean? That's why I say the call is coming from inside of the house.

[Josh Holmes]

But it's the assignment. I mean, look, the role of journalism is not that we do just doesn't look like it used to. And these people want it to work in the same top down, elitist, aristocratic assignment way that it always has, in that they determine what's important to you or not. And they determine the narrative by which you consume the news and information. And they're so dogmatically committed to it that it blows my mind. This GoFundMe page.

[John Ashbrook]

Yes, I saw this.

[Smug]

This is absurd.

[Josh Holmes]

So just pop this bad boy up. This is graphic five, the top donation. This was, we just checked like a few hours ago.

[Smug]

This is essentially for Washington Post journals to buy booze. That's what this. I'm not making this up. This was. They said, buy us a drink. We got laid off.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, but they put together this gofundme for all the people who got laid off. I wish that America's manufacturers over the last 30 years would have something similar. But of course, nobody's gonna publicize this. But all the people with hundreds of thousands of people who follow them in left wing politics, there's a way to raise money for this sort of thing. So here the journos are top donation. Kara Swisher, which she donates $10,000 to this effort.

[Smug]

And she doesn't give it anonymously.

[Josh Holmes]

No, no.

[Smug]

Right. It's not about a gift. It's about. I want everyone to be like, hey, Kara Swisher's still around. Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Standing up for journos.

[Michael Duncan]

I've got $10,000 to send.

[Josh Holmes]

And she's a journo. Like a left wing psychopath in and of her. It's amazing to me that she's had the career that she has. If you listen to her for 10 minutes, it's actually shocking that people listen to what she has to say. But she's got the wherewithal to drop 10k on a news story that morning. Imagine, dude, just imagine living a life for all of you. Listening, where you're like listening to your radio or you're listening or you're reading the newspaper and you see some development and you're like, yeah, well, I mean, I'll just cut a check for 10k to all of that. Like, I mean, it's just, it's.

[Smug]

And to cut that check not to like feed America or someone trying to help those in need, you know, here's these journals have gone hours without being drunk. I have to fund this.

[Michael Duncan]

Here's the thing, guys. We don't need to imagine it because we know what the Washington Post wrote when mitt Romney invoked $10,000 on a debate stage. Okay? When Democrats are passing $10,000, it is a gift generosity. My only point about these organizations is, and I've said this so many times on our show, these organizations do not reflect this country. A country where 77 million people voted for Donald Trump. And yet the organizations that are tasked with covering what matters to America are all Democrats. Until these organizations have half Republicans and half Democrats working inside, they will not reflect the coverage that readers really want.

[Josh Holmes]

It's well said. I mean, nowhere you can scroll down through the list for yourself if you ever want to see it. I mean, in no place is there like a notable conservative who's contributing. And there's a reason for that.

[Michael Duncan]

No, in the only conservative relationship, the only conservatives they have, the only Republicans they have are people who are anti Trump. Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

You know, like, oh, yeah, totally. It's like, oh, no, I'm a Republican. I'm very, very conservative. No question about it. But I think Donald Trump should be in prison.

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

They're like, okay, well, you're, You're. You have a worthwhile view because it's temporarily accommodating.

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

You know what I mean?

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

That is the way it goes down.

[Michael Duncan]

That's not how our country works.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. Anyway, I'm not crying a lot of tears about this whole situation, but I don't think that's the end of it.

[Michael Duncan]

I don't either.

[Josh Holmes]

I think it's just like the beginning.

[Smug]

I'm glad to see Ash Brooks have stopped. You can soldier on, buddy. They'll be fine. All your buddies will be fine.

[Josh Holmes]

The writing of Smash on the journo buddy thing is the best bits.

[Michael Duncan]

It's okay.

[Josh Holmes]

It's good. All right, so it leads to our question of the day. It goes back to the first segment on the Democratic nomination. Who's going to win this bad boy? Who's going to win the Democratic nomination? Is it Kamala? Is it Gavin? Is it somebody like Pritzker?

[Smug]

Fat boy from Illinois?

[Josh Holmes]

Fat boy. Fat, fat Pritzker. You know? Is it somebody else? What's the broad from Michigan? What's her name?

[Michael Duncan]

Gretchen Whitmer.

[Josh Holmes]

Whitmore, yeah. You know, I mean, a lot of people talk about her too, but I mean, it's an interesting discussion.

[Smug]

She needs a Twitter account because apparently that's the thing. You gotta come up with a 67 account, they think that's how they're gonna.

[Josh Holmes]

Get the number six' seven, six' seven. It's like, okay, well the eight year old is definitely gonna vote you in. He doesn't know what it means for, but he's gonna show up. What I find so fascinating about this question is that process stories sort of drive politics at this stage in the game, this far out from a presidential election. And for a long time Newsom's been dominating the process story. It's like, well listen to what he said. Or oh, he talked to Steve Bannon. Or oh, he showed up in Davos and got fucking body bagged by Scott Besson. Like all of those things, it's all been about Gavin Newsom, which led me to believe at some level, if you're a lib and you consume these mainstream media things, this guy's running away with it, certainly making more news than anybody else, which is helpful. And then all of a sudden this broad gets off the mat, you know, for the first time she activates her ex account since she lost.

[Smug]

I mean it was great to have. And then people are in a moment of clarity after Newsom got owned by Bassett, cuz he's weak now, now's the time to strike. I'll give her credit for that.

[Josh Holmes]

But it's interesting, right? She shows up, reactivates a dormant account that she was too timid to use after she got her doors blown off. And like she, it's hard to argue she's not kind of in a front runner position.

[Smug]

Can I, I mean, we're asking our audience, who do you guys think is going to get the nomination? Can I make my prediction, please? I think she beats Gavin.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, I mean, I, I, to be honest with you, if the election were today, would not be close. The question is, what happens from here on out? Is there somebody else who captures that left wing imagination you're watching a lot of these primaries play out Maine, you know, elsewhere where you've got the AOC Bernie crowd who is far stronger electorally than the establishment Democrats have ever been. But they've always been crushed under the weight of the establishment Democrat. And it doesn't feel like they have the same leverage that they used to.

[John Ashbrook]

I think it all depends on who we nominate. Cuz I don't think the Democratic Party can stand on its own feet with DS anymore.

[Josh Holmes]

It's all downstream of us.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Like the existence of the Democratic Party in some extent in today's age. Which is sad. But I think you're right.

[Smug]

He's not wrong is about Trump or.

[Josh Holmes]

Trump acolytes versus whatever they think that they can do to match up against that.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

I mean they're scared of their own shadow. They couldn't go out on a limb and nominate somebody because they think they are good on their own merits. It would be a reflection of us.

[Josh Holmes]

It's enough to make to drive you to drink. Which is why I firmly endorse Z Bionics.

[Smug]

Good seg. Great seg.

[Josh Holmes]

I gotta tell you about a game changing pre alcohol drink. It's something that we have endorsed here on the Ruthless variety program because we know it works. We've been through a ton of events. Philadelphia last week, a bunch of things before that. But when you take ZBiotics, there's some science behind the next morning feeling a little better than you ordinarily will.

[Smug]

That's right. So first off, what I want to say is when you go, when you're going to have a big night, when you're going to have a couple beers, when you're going to go out, but have a Zbiotics first because it actually does work. For the longest time folks have thought, oh, you know, I'll chug a Gatorade when I get home or if I drink three glasses of water. Well, how's that worked out? It hasn't. It never works because it's not about being dehydrated. When you have alcohol, your stomach breaks it down. There's this toxic byproduct, that's what's making you feel miserable in the morning. But Zbiotics knocks that right out.

[John Ashbrook]

And when you travel as much as we do, it's important that you feel good that next morning. You know, we were in Philadelphia recently and we had a good time. Very good time.

[Josh Holmes]

We did.

[John Ashbrook]

But we had some issues with travel related to the weather and everything and we ended up in a car driving all the way back for three and a half hours. Philadelphia, yes.

[Smug]

Which the train and the plane got canceled.

[John Ashbrook]

Not an ideal situation. Once you've had that big night, Zebiotics rounds that right out.

[Josh Holmes]

It sure does. It helps an awful lot. It's backed by science, right Smash?

[Michael Duncan]

It sure is. And that's why we always say there's no tomorrow without Zebiotics today.

[Josh Holmes]

Exactly right. So if you go to zebiotics.com ruthless you can learn more and get 15% off your first order. When you use Ruthless at the checkout, Zebiotics is back with 100% money back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason at all, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com ruthless and use the code ruthless at checkout for 15% off. All right, we want to get back into your commentary on yesterday's episode, which by the way was a good one.

[Smug]

Great episode.

[Josh Holmes]

Every once in a while we do serious shit. It's not just yucks. Like we try to break things down because if we weren't involved in this line of work, these are the answers of things that we would want to know and the perspective that we would want to know. And like we really got into it, which I loved a lot. And our question of the day was what is it gonna take to get elected Democrats on board with voter id? We asked you to have some fun. Let's see how you did. We always start with a voice first.

[Michael Duncan]

One from Jeremy Kincaid. And Jeremy writes, to get the democrartel on board with voter integrity initiatives, we're gonna need three things. Sturdy rubber gloves, industrial lube and a pry bar.

[Smug]

My God.

[Michael Duncan]

Jeremy says these are the necessary tools to perform a cranial rect. An automaty. Yeah. Jeremy knows the terms.

[Josh Holmes]

Well done. Comment too.

[Smug]

Doug's.

[John Ashbrook]

This is from Woods Precision Arms. They write the only way you will get Democrats to vote for voter ID is to trick them. Tell them voter ID is an acronym for violence on the Elderly Republican Instant Devastation Act.

[Smug]

They'd be like wait, that's on the floor. Count me in.

[Josh Holmes]

I'm all for it.

[Smug]

Unbelievable.

[John Ashbrook]

I like that.

[Josh Holmes]

Smugglesworth.

[Smug]

Comment 3 is from Kendall Barrett. Kendall writes the only way elected Dems will get on board with voter ID involves usually a two step process. One, several mid morning trips for good old fashioned electroshop therapy and if mixed results two, a rendition to Gitmo for some aqua therapy. Otherwise they are hopeless.

[John Ashbrook]

Calling waterboarding aqua therapy.

[Smug]

Yeah, aqua therapy. That's good.

[Josh Holmes]

So good.

[John Ashbrook]

I love that.

[Josh Holmes]

It's very, very good. I love it. Your comments are great. When you like and subscribe to the Ruthless variety program, we read every single one of them, get back to the very next episode and we learn a lot in the process. So thank you all for doing that. We come back very, very quick like lightning round because we want to get to our special guest, the RNC chairman. Ready for this? Okay. We always like to have a good time with a little bit of a lightning round here. I. I must confess that the one that smug has been most insistent upon. I'm not sure that I. You didn't see the value in this one I didn't. I didn't understand. So I'm going to let you open this thing up and just guide us through.

[Smug]

Absolutely. So this is about the prediction market. Polymarket is opening a free grocery store in New York. Remember, there's all this talk from Donnie being like, oh, we want, like, city grocery stores. And so Polymarket is planning on building a free grocery store. They're launching it.

[Josh Holmes]

Is it a troll?

[Smug]

So that's. Can I get graphic 11? The post reads, after months of planning, we're excited to announce the Poly Market is coming to New York City. This is not troll. This is real. New York's first free grocery store. We signed the lease and we donated 1 million to a food bank for NYC, an organization that changes how our city responds to hunger. There are also images of inside it. They've, like, stuck the shelves. This is separate. They gave a million to the food bank, but they have taken out a space that they're going to have. And they've followed up to people's questions. They're like, no, but really, what are you doing here? And they're like, they're gonna fill this grocery store and they're gonna open the doors and it's free.

[Josh Holmes]

Wait, so there's no, like, checkout? You just come in, take the shit?

[Smug]

No, it's an actually. So that is where I thought it'll get interesting is I want Kalshee or someone else to be like, create a market. How long before this store is ransacked to hell is it gonna be one hour? Is it gonna be three hours? Will it make it 24 hours? Because that's the question. Like, when Mamdani and these people come with this idea of like, oh, you know, we're gonna have a free grocery store, and then we'll have unicorns that'll be working the shallow, and it'll be rainbows and lollipops for everybody. Right? And anyone who has spent time in New York City, especially lately, you know what it's gonna look like. It's gonna look like the subways.

[Josh Holmes]

It's gonna be a real problem.

[Smug]

It'd be deranged, silent people.

[Josh Holmes]

But this is. This is actually a real thing.

[Smug]

This is. So that's the thing is I read this and I was like, maybe this is a stunt. This is just something they're doing. This is real. They really are convinced that it's gonna be a normal experience having a store that's just free stuff.

[Josh Holmes]

We may need to send Eddie P.

[Smug]

That's what I'm saying. Is I want to see the video of when the doors open because first it's gonna be like Supermarket Sweep.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Smug]

Like you're gonna probably have some like normal zoomers who think it's kind of like a fun little thing. And they're gonna run in there and they're gonna try to fill their bags with all the stuff. But then you're gonna get the real New Yorkers. And by that I mean the like anh animals, right? They've heard about this. They're gonna crawl out of the subway and there's gonna be problems in there. There's gonna be violence in there. That's what is the over.

[Josh Holmes]

What do you think the over under is? On time for the first murder in the poly market.

[Smug]

That's what I was like, how soon before the police have to be there? Yeah, I think it's gonna be fast.

[Josh Holmes]

I think 72 hours has gotta be the.

[Smug]

I think within 24 hours.

[Josh Holmes]

So you take the under on the.

[Smug]

70 depending on the hours.

[Josh Holmes]

When does it open?

[Smug]

That's the thing is I think it opens in the morning.

[Josh Holmes]

Are they saying when they're actually launching it?

[Smug]

Yeah, it's like within the next two weeks, I want to say. So we're going to get, we're going to get this information soon, dude. I think within 24 hours.

[Josh Holmes]

Real time odds here and just have a friendly wager.

[Smug]

That's what I'm saying.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, I think we need to open a few markets because I am interested. Like when's the first murder, right? Like when's the first fistfight?

[Smug]

I think it's going to be a salt. I don't think. I'm hopeful there won't be a murder, but I'm hopeful there's be some assaults.

[John Ashbrook]

But I think there's other.

[Josh Holmes]

I'm hopeful there will be some assaults right here. Comfortably smoking the ruthless variety.

[Smug]

Because as a country we lost something. Black Friday, it used to be a celebration of deals and mayhem. You know, like are you brave enough to go to the Best Buy and you have to punch this guy in the face for that microwave? Is that you? Are you gonna get this deal also in? But now it's all online. This polymarket is our last hope to have that kind of like a gladiatorial meets shopping, but it's all free and so there's gonna be violence.

[Josh Holmes]

And is polymarket betting on this?

[John Ashbrook]

I don't know.

[Smug]

I don't know. I don't think they are. I think they would feel that came off as cynical. But Kalshi, what Do you mean they would feel Kalshish, do you see the.

[Josh Holmes]

Shit they've put up? It's like how many towns the Russians are taking. Not exactly like a real reticence, not engaging.

[Smug]

But I think they'd have an issue because they're actually, actually have liability in this sense. You know what I mean?

[Josh Holmes]

Well, they can't create the environment by which they wager upon.

[Smug]

I mean it's basically Hunger Games. Yeah, their lawyers would not be pleased with that situation. But for kalsheet, if I'm Kalsheet, I'm making so many markets.

[John Ashbrook]

So many markets.

[Smug]

Should I be publicizing this?

[John Ashbrook]

I'm interested in which section gets sold out first. Is it produce?

[Smug]

Great question.

[John Ashbrook]

You know when dairy. Is it dairy? Produce. Is it meat?

[Smug]

Is it meat? See.

[John Ashbrook]

Cause my bet would be meat or alcohol.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, meat. Oh, alcohol is gonna. Dude, if they have alcohol in this story.

[John Ashbrook]

Two people fighting over a beef tenderloin. Like that's happening immediately. There's gonna be like a standing rib roast and someone's gonna chuck it at somebody else.

[Smug]

Dude, it's gonna be like a violent super. It's gonna be Supermarket Sweep meets American Gladiators. Like what we've always wanted to see. Just pure mayhem. I missed the real Black Friday. I think this is gonna be it.

[Josh Holmes]

We should try to find out when this thing opens up and see if Eddie P. Can go in and. And purchase whoever live streams.

[Smug]

This is a genius. Someone should go in and just live stream this because it's. I'm telling you, as soon as it's dark, it'll become violent. Like that's when they come out of.

[Michael Duncan]

It's a 24 hour store.

[Smug]

Well, I don't know what their hours.

[Josh Holmes]

Are, but like the sun sets in nighttime hours.

[Smug]

That's what I'm saying. Like if it's open past 5pm when the sun's setting. Dude, they're coming out of the subways and there's going to be.

[Josh Holmes]

Man, I'm going to advise against any of that. Not even.

[Smug]

We should send somebody to wear like hockey gear and stand there and just witness these monsters dress Eddie P. In.

[Josh Holmes]

Kevlar and send him into the polymarket. God, can you acquire something and can.

[Smug]

We take a life insurance policy out on it? Make a bunch of side bets.

[Josh Holmes]

He's very valuable and I'm not sure we should do that. Okay, that was better than I expected. Good, good take. That was very, very good. All right, so I have some cold variety here. I've been given a manila envelope and generally speaking, when this happens, it's not good for me. But I don't know what it is. Oh, wait, the headline. I do recognize. You will get a kick out of this graphic one. Okay, so what you're looking at there is a World War I artillery shell. And just in case that you thought perhaps this was in a museum, this is something that has been carefully cultivated and protected over time to demonstrate to a younger generation about what kind of primitive weaponry we have. Nope. It was found in a patient's butt.

[Smug]

I remember. I remember.

[Josh Holmes]

This was in someone's slack.

[Smug]

Can I get the nationality of the individual whose ass that was?

[Michael Duncan]

It.

[Josh Holmes]

It was in a hospital in France.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, Frenchman.

[Smug]

Now we're surprised.

[Michael Duncan]

Nothing quiet on that western flight.

[Josh Holmes]

It was evacuated.

[Joe Gruters]

My God.

[Josh Holmes]

Nothing quiet. Hospital in France was evacuated. This is according. I think this is the New York Post article. Was evacuated after a male patient arrived with a World War I artillery shell lodged in his back.

[Michael Duncan]

You think it's been in there all this time?

[Josh Holmes]

It's a secret of life. What has kept this man going other.

[Michael Duncan]

Than walking around for 100 years?

[Josh Holmes]

Talk about some explosive diarrhea. That is tough stuff. According to a bombshell report. Oh, is this the Post? Yeah, they got away with words, but they talk about. Daily Mail may have first gotten this thing because they had similar style on it. The unnamed 24 year old had been.

[Smug]

24.

[Josh Holmes]

24. A real historian.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. You got it from a museum? You think he got it at a museum?

[Josh Holmes]

I don't know where. Well, maybe we'll find out. He'd been rushed to this emergency unit in Toulouse late Saturday night. The Daily Mail reported the poor fellow was in an extreme state of discomfort, having inserted a large object up his rectum. An insider source. Oh, you want to go on background with that kind of thing? You don't want to be on the record talking about the anal munitions.

[Joe Gruters]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

You know, guys, life in France isn't what it used to be. You know, strength is extremely.

[Smug]

France. Dude seems like a French guy. You know, like the hospital's like, all right, surgery. Get in line.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, he must be a local.

[Smug]

Is it like an enormous thing in your ass?

[Michael Duncan]

Okay.

[Smug]

Dude, is that for real? Is that a real X ray?

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, that's it. So. So what you're looking at looks like a picture. You said surgeons conducted emergency surgery.

[Smug]

This is why you get the YouTube.

[Josh Holmes]

Which they discovered a shocking source of the pain. A live 8 inch bombshell from 1918 that had been launched inside of him. Fearing a potential fire in the hole. Hold on this is great writing. Fearing a potential fire in the hole and hospital medical personnel alerted the bomb squad and fire brigade and evacuated the facility. Meanwhile, a security perimeter was formed around the medical center and authorities investigated the explosive situation. Fortunately, the retro munition, which was also pointed and over an inch wide. So there was a. As you can see, if you want to top that.

[Smug]

Yeah, See, they said in there, they're like, okay. So, like, they evacuated and the bomb squad shows up. And imagine you're like the Hurt Locker dude. Like you were in Iraq. You're like, saving people's lives, taking apart IEDs. And then you show up and you're like, okay, what's the situation?

[John Ashbrook]

We got a freaky Frenchman.

[Smug]

This guy grabs his ankles, and you're like, man, fuck this. I've been through way too much. I didn't sign up for this.

[Josh Holmes]

This frog just jammed a tomahawk up his ass, you know, like. So the bomb disposal experts took the shell with them while the patient, French national remained in the hospital so he could recover from surgery. He required surgical. They couldn't just remove it. They had to take it out. It was unclear how the antique ordinance ended up in the man's ass. Is it unclear?

[John Ashbrook]

I think it's pretty clear he wasn't shot in there 100 years ago.

[Smug]

Yeah. Like, I love.

[Joe Gruters]

I love.

[Josh Holmes]

This is my favorite journaling. It's like, we don't have all the answers yet. You know, it's like he's.

[Smug]

Fuck.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, we know he's not fucking.

[Smug]

Also, like, the less. It's crazy, the less embarrassing answer for him to be like, I just tried eating it. I ate. Just didn't digest. I ate a bomb. I ate the bomb.

[Josh Holmes]

It would be less embarrassing.

[Smug]

That's insane.

[Josh Holmes]

In fact, that is not the way it went down. It went up instead of falling down, which there is.

[Michael Duncan]

I'm not gonna ask a question.

[Josh Holmes]

Please. No, no, no. This is what this show's for.

[Michael Duncan]

Gravity is a thing. Okay. Why did it require a hospital for it to. For it to come out?

[Josh Holmes]

Because it was lodged in his, like, all the way.

[Smug]

Yeah, it's a bomb. It's a bomb.

[Josh Holmes]

It's not like he just jammed a cucumber up there. I mean, this is like a.

[Smug]

This is not a prostate exam. That's a goddamn ordinance brother.

[Josh Holmes]

This used to kill thousands of people.

[Michael Duncan]

What is wrong with the French?

[Smug]

Yeah. I mean, that's the theme of this episode.

[Josh Holmes]

Keister.

[John Ashbrook]

Keistering. He's keister in it.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. It's like, with people who Smuggle drugs or whatever.

[Smug]

Or in Pulp Fiction, like with Dad's watch.

[John Ashbrook]

Remember Dad's watch?

[Smug]

He hit this up his ass.

[John Ashbrook]

He hit it up his ass all the way from Nam.

[Josh Holmes]

Keister did.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, keistered.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, they speculated in this article. This is very good. They speculated that it could have been the result of a party stunt gone riot. What kind of party is that? French parties are off the hook.

[John Ashbrook]

And here's our bomb. Anybody want to shove it up their ass?

[Smug]

Hey, Pierre.

[Josh Holmes]

Pierre, come over here. For our next event, I'm going to shove a World War I munition up your asshole.

[Smug]

And also, how long does he try to play cool with that? Because, like, the party's over. People have already left. Are you. People are like, no, really, Maybe you should go to a hospital. He's like, it'll be fine. It's gonna come out, like, in the morning. It'll be cool.

[Josh Holmes]

Wait, hold on. The kicker. The kicker in this article is fantastic. The particular hospital that you went to, this Tule.

[Michael Duncan]

Toulouse.

[Josh Holmes]

Toulouse outfit, they are, quote, unquote, accustomed to treating victims injured during sexual games.

[Smug]

Oh, God.

[Josh Holmes]

That's a hell of a specialty, huh? You know, some people, they go to school to be, you know, I mean, so like chiropractors.

[Smug]

Every doctor in France is like Hurt Locker dude. Like, everybody, they're showing him to work, they're dropping the helmet and digging in.

[Josh Holmes]

You know, you can't really practice unless you've practiced the removal of the patients from a butt.

[Smug]

My God.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, that is something I.

[Josh Holmes]

You know. Once again, our guest is going to be entering.

[Smug]

They're thrilled.

[Josh Holmes]

It's somewhat of an unfortunate circumstance, but this guy's fantastic. It is a tradition here on the ruthless Friday program that we have a new chairman of the Republican National Committee on as one of the first people to interview him. That's where we sit. And this is RNC chair Joe Cruders. We have the distinct pleasure of welcoming a very important man who's got a lot to do with the upcoming midterms. He's the RNC chairman, Joe Grutters. How are you, sir?

[Michael Duncan]

Hey.

[Joe Gruters]

Doing fantastic. Thanks so much for having me on.

[Josh Holmes]

Of course, it's a tradition. We have to have the chairman on and talk through all kinds of range of things. And now that we. There's rumors about a midterm convention, we also have to lock down our real estate. So we're gonna be real nice to.

[Smug]

You on this deal.

[Josh Holmes]

But listen, relatively new to the job, everything looks from a cash standpoint and from a management standpoint, You've gotten the hang on of things pretty quickly.

[Joe Gruters]

Well, I like to say I've spent the first 22 years of my life basically in the minor leagues of party politics. And so. So I was waiting for the call to come and I finally, the president finally called me up and said, hey, Joe Whatley is going to the Senate. We need you to come up here and help us win these midterms. And so I said, I'm ready. I've literally been waiting my entire life to do this, and I'm so thankful to have the position. And listen, when you have the president doing the job that he's doing and you have the vice president as your finance chairman, it makes your job as chairman a lot easier over the years. You know, the mo. You know, you could judge success of a chairman really by what they bring in and the resources they have. Because if you don't have the resources, you know, you can't file the missile, so.

[Josh Holmes]

Right, exactly. So tell me about that call. Did you know it was coming or did he. Like, you're laying in bed and all of a sudden you get like Besant was talking to us about all hours of the day. The phone rings, you pick it up and he's like, what are you doing?

[Joe Gruters]

Well, I got a strange call from. I think it was James Blair saying, hey, are you somewhere where you could talk? And I think, I think that's an ominous side. Yes, I think we're going to call you back. And I said, okay, yes, I'm ready. And I told my wife, because she was sitting out, I was in the living room, she was in a different room. And I said, hey, I think, I'm not positive, but I think the president's about to call me. And she said, okay, but she said, you better go outside just in case because we have bad reception in the House.

[Smug]

Oh, yeah, it's not the last thing you want.

[Joe Gruters]

And I said, well, do you want to come listen to this? And she said, yeah, but she didn't really know it was the President. So then I'm talking and the president starts going, listen, we're going to let Watley go be the run for Senate because we know you're going to do a great job or you're going to do a better job than Whatley. Don't tell Whatley I said that.

[Smug]

He won't hear it.

[John Ashbrook]

Safe, secret, safe.

[Josh Holmes]

It's not like he to listened.

[Joe Gruters]

So from that standpoint, you know, listen, he was trying to sell me on the job. And I said, listen, you don't have to sell me. I said, you're asking me to do this, I'm all in. I said, I know what's at stake. You know, I think what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, if you go back to that incident where he moved his head, I think God saved him that day. I think he saved him not only to save the country, but to save the world. And now I hear him saying that, listen, he is saving the world every day. He's literally been on fire the first nine months, year in office. Basically, he's firing on all cylinders. Everything he said he was gonna do, he's doing. I mean, I'm so thankful to be able to go to bat for this president and administration, and I'm not gonna rest until we win these midterms.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, you don't have much choice. He's a pretty hot pace of play.

[Joe Gruters]

There'S no question. Listen, I took the red eye two nights ago. I'm always on the road. I said, you know, that was the biggest surprise of this job, more than anything else is the time that you're on the road. As chairman. And even as a Republican Party of Florida, the longtime chairman, we were always busy. But when you assume the position at this level, everything is so professional and it's so dialed in. The team always says that the most important asset of the party is the chairman's time. And so because we always have to be, listen, we have to. We have to raise, you know, just to break even $10 million every month. So we're. And those are all hard dollars. It's not easy. So we got to be asking people all the time. And it's just so. It's a.

[Josh Holmes]

You lose your bashfulness pretty quickly in that gig, right?

[Joe Gruters]

Well, listen, the first couple of days, you're scared to death. Ask people for a quarter of a million to half a million, you know, and then within I think the first three or four days, I no longer have any issue asking for any amount of deposits, any amount of money.

[Michael Duncan]

That's the thing, Chairman. I mean, you talk about going to bat for this president, looks an awful lot like you're hitting it out of the park. You look at the contrast between what you have raised and what Democrats are stuck with.

[John Ashbrook]

Michael, let's go through those numbers real quick to start 2025 just. Cuz I love this. It demoralizes the left. Start of 2025, RNC had 38.1 million in zero debt. DNC had 22.1 million on hand and zero debt to the end of 2025. The RNC has 95.1 million 0 in debt, DNC 12.6 million and 16 million in debt.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, they seem to keep adding the debt. They're finding more commonly bills every day over there. It's unbelievable.

[Joe Gruters]

Listen, they're in big trouble. But we're. Like I said, even the party's firing all cylinders. And I will give Michael Wiley a lot of credit because he set the bar. I mean, he was an absolute workhorse. And that's why I think he'll be successful in North Carolina. He's an Eagle Scout, he is totally focused, and he. When they first sent me his schedule, I said this.

[Josh Holmes]

What?

[Joe Gruters]

Yeah, I said, I thought I was playing golf all day raising money. I didn't know. As a matter of fact, one of my employees I brought with me from Florida, I said, don't worry, we're going to be playing golf all day raising money. And I said, we haven't played golf once. I said, man, but it's a.

[Josh Holmes]

He's in a boiler room.

[Smug]

Yeah, telemarketer.

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[Joe Gruters]

It's wild.

[Smug]

But.

[Joe Gruters]

It's a. But, yeah, we're. We have a lot more than 95 thing where we may be at almost 105 million right now. Every single day, we're building on those numbers. And the reason why it matters is the Supreme Court's about to give a ruling on coordinated campaign limits. Yeah. And so it's a great time to be chairman because all of a sudden the party is going to be able to coordinate directly with campaigns, almost take over the campaigns right off the bat, and we're going to be able to buy dollars at the candidate rate. So it means our dollars are worth four times as much. And so the Democrats, you're right, they're minus 4 billion. They have 12 million in the bank, but 60 million debt. So that means our dollars are really worth, let's say, 300 million, 400 billion.

[Smug]

Right.

[Joe Gruters]

And it used to be the Democrats were able to have a couple of big donors and they'd write these big checks and they'd be able to equalize it. Now they won't be able to do that. If that case rules how we're hoping it's going to be, how the Supreme Court, how we think it's going to be ruled upon. And so all of a sudden, what we're doing every day. And listen, Wally is great. Vice President Vance, the fact he's our finance chairman, first time in the history of the Republican Party that we've ever had a vice president as finance chairman all we're doing all day is preparing. And people, you see all these races that the DNC chairman talks about, their wedding. I hate to say it, I care about those races, but the only thing I care about is holding the majorities of the House and the Senate in the midterms. We are going to be locked and loaded and ready to obliterate the Democrats when we need to do it. And that's what we're working on every single day.

[Josh Holmes]

I like that a lot. You got a couple of Supreme Court interests going on. You also have. That was that Watson case.

[Joe Gruters]

Yeah. Which is a major home run. So this from an election integrity standpoint, you know, Remember back in 2020, they obviously stole the race in every cycle. What people don't know is, but I was asked to lead the election integrity effort after 2020 to find out exactly what happened. So we spent six months with a ton of people.

[Josh Holmes]

There's an enviable job, by the way. You know, you could trust this guy, put him in charge of this.

[Joe Gruters]

And the goal was to make sure that what happened in 2020 never happens again. And obviously, I think I was picked partly because I was from Florida. And if you remember the 2000 election controversy, Gore versus Bush, you know, the Florida was the spotlight and we were disaster. The hanging chads, everything else.

[Josh Holmes]

Broward County.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Joe Gruters]

And what you've seen is every cycle of the Florida legislature has gone up there and they've worked it. They've tweaked the laws. Now we have a state of 23 plus million people. We could deliver results quickest with 90 minutes.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Joe Gruters]

Democrat, Republican, supervisors, no fraud. Everybody's happy. And why can't we do the exact same thing everywhere? But this Watson case is interesting because we have 110 active lawsuits right now. People always say, what does the RNC do? Well, one of the things we do, we're the overall. Don't forget, we are the political arm of the White House. We are. We work with the administration hand in hand. Obviously, my relationships being from Florida, working with James Blair, working with Susie Wiles helps, but we're working with them on a constant basis, and we have 110 lawsuits. And that Watson case, what's so important.

[Josh Holmes]

About that is it's essentially about counting ballots after election.

[Joe Gruters]

So there's 17 states across the country that count absentees after election day. They could be received. So that means these races can go on for four weeks, two months.

[John Ashbrook]

We're familiar and do.

[Smug]

And they do.

[Joe Gruters]

And the problem is they know exactly how many votes they need. To go and then they'll go find them and pull them in. This lawsuit is, this is a major historic victory. If we get at the Supreme Court, the fact that it's being heard, the fact that it's all the Republican National Committee and we actually had a sue Mississippi, if you could believe it. I mean it's a. But we're going to go coast to coast. We're going to, you know, we're not taking a reactive approach. We're going to be as aggressive as we can. Anywhere where we could find an advantage or where we could take, you know, where we could take aim and focus on non citizens voting, you know, equal access for poll workers and poll watchers cleaning up voting rolls. We're going after everything coast to coast, 110 lawsuits right now. We spend a ton of money on election integrity efforts. But we have to, because we have to do everything we can to make sure it's easy as possible to vote and the hardest possible to achieve.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, it's well said. Well, the President also likes a good show and typically in the midterms has a lack of pageantry, you know, in comparison to presidential elections anyway. And one of those missing pieces is a convention. A lot of talk from the president and others about a midterm convention style thing. Where are we at in that?

[Joe Gruters]

Well, listen, I'm so excited. I'm not going to announce anything today, but it looks like, come on, let's.

[John Ashbrook]

Just go do it.

[Joe Gruters]

Okay, let's note almost I will tell you, two weeks ago, I will tell you that we had the opportunity, we actually changed the rules of the RNC that gave the chairman, myself the ability to call this ceremonial special convention to pick the delegates to do all this work.

[Josh Holmes]

It always like rules changes that give you some power to do stuff.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, it's nice.

[Joe Gruters]

Yeah, that's great. Listen, some people were having, some of the members were having their doubts, but I said here's the bottom line. There's, I always call it like a Trump of palooza. You know, it's going to be a four day, three or four day marathon where all the great things that this president's doing, we're going to be able to showcase it to the American people with real life stories with some of our battleground candidates. And you know, by the way, it's a, it's going to be right before the ballots start. And there's no better delivery of the message on the Republican side that these low propensity voters than the President, United States. That's why I call it trumpapalooza. We're going to, we're going to win with him. We're going to lead with him. And in our, you know, I'm banking, you know, my career as chairman on the success of the president because he's so good at touching and getting these people to show up to vote.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, you can count us in to help with that endeavor when it comes to fruition, because it sounds like a lot of fun.

[Joe Gruters]

It's going to be great.

[Josh Holmes]

All right, so midterms just backing off. Historically difficult, right? I mean, anytime everybody knows this, but anytime you've got a president in both chambers in Congress, first midterm gets a little dicey. History tells us. But on the other hand, not everyone do you have President Trump a cash advantage, Some really good candidates out there. We're hoping to defy history here because we kind of have to.

[Joe Gruters]

Well, only four times in the last 150 years has the incumbent party been able to be successful holding the majorities. We have a real chance to defy history because of the president. But if you look at the overall space, if you want to go through some of the races real quick on the Senate side, Rogers in Michigan, Sununu in New Hampshire, we have a real strong chance in Georgia. And our holds, Houston, Ohio, I think is fine. Collins, great candidate. Watley is going to be probably the toughest race, probably the most expensive race in the country. But like I said, I think he's up, up for it. He knows what to do. He's, you know, I'm out there every day. He's out there either right before me, right behind me, raising tons of money. And, and on the House side, because of the redistricting fight, you know, we're going from 50 to 60 competitive races down to 25 or 30. And what you're seeing is you're seeing the president engage early, trying to pick the, the candidates that could win those specific districts. And then don't forget the financial superiority that we already have that we're going to continue to build upon. And so you have fewer races, our ability, hopefully, that we'll be able to work directly with these campaigns moving forward. And then, of course, having the right message because these individual issues that the President's been president of, peace, the fact that the economy is getting better every day, and then the president himself willing to go out there and hit the campaign trail. I've talked to him numerous times. He's ready to brainstorm the country. And I think that we are going to be, like I said, the President knows what's at stake. We saw on the shutdown 43 days of the Democrats holding the country hostage. If they somehow win the House or the Senate, they're going to impeach, they're going to investigate, they're going to obstruct and all the good momentum that we have is going to be flushed down the toilet. So we have no option other than to win. And so that's why, that's why we're gearing up and really preparing for this massive war that's coming. And we just have to make sure that we're going to be, you know, on top of our game and we have to run a perfect campaign. And if we do that and if people, you know, sign up to help [e-mail] and they join us either with their time or their, or their, or their resources, with everybody's help, you're making use of them. Yeah, we will make use of them and we will defy history. We will win if everybody comes together and works together.

[Michael Duncan]

Dallas. Yeah. I mean here's the thing. We have so much ammunition to use.

[Josh Holmes]

It turns out they provided some things from a time period.

[Michael Duncan]

Democrats are terrible. It just takes one second of like scrolling through the things that they want to do to ruin our country and all the momentum that this president has built in his first year and he's going to continue to build on in this second year. Everything you said is exactly right. But I wonder if you could just talk about how the RNC is going to approach specific races. I mean you mentioned Maine, you mentioned Georgia, you mentioned, you know, Iowa. We've got a big race, you know, great candidate out there, Ashley Henson. And I know that in the past RNC has been very, very good. And I know that you're continuing this, focusing on regional efforts and everything as opposed, you know, with that. I know that you, you've got a big push on grassroots and I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about the grassroots effort.

[Joe Gruters]

Well, listen, as the, as a 22 year chairman heading into this position, I say that I'm one of the few chairmen that have actually has been a chair at the club level, at the county level, at the state level and now at the national level. And you can only be successful. Most chairman lasts 2.1 years. I think that's the average. I always tell people it's the worst job in politics but you could survive and you could do well of you focus on the fundamentals and that's basically red shrink people to vote, turning those Voters out now, protecting the vote. And I think that when you focus on that, everything else comes together. But I always say, from a financial standpoint, all these different raises we have is. And when I talk to donors all the time, I say, don't give the candidates who can't win and don't give to candidates who can't lose.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Joe Gruters]

And as chairman, I have the same philosophy we have. You know, we're building up our missile silo, and we have to make sure that when we launch, we launch effectively, and we make sure that we have precision strikes and that we're winning the battles we need to win. And so what we're doing at the party, and we're always planning, and I have a huge list of the. The races that we're targeting in green light, red light, yellow light in terms of where we are with candidates where we are. And so that's.

[Josh Holmes]

That alignment is a big part of your role, too, to make sure everybody's pointing in the right direction, which is, you know, look, in primary season, he gets a little dicey. The fact that you're doing as well as you are while everybody's fighting amongst each other here for the next 90 days is great.

[Joe Gruters]

Yeah, exactly right. And you're exactly right in the terms of the. In terms of the grassroots. I always say whatever faction, whatever party could bring their factions together the most and unite, Unite them, they will be successful. But we've already started as chairman. You know, I always say we're the largest conservative organization in the country. Right. And sometimes we lose. Lose sight of the fact that we're. We're giant. You can call us a giant bureaucracy, which a lot of people say that's a weakness. But I look at it as a strength from the standpoint of we have all the organization that we already need. We just need to empower people to go out and do their job. I always say, if you build it, people will come. If you create a path for people to volunteer and be successful, people will take you up on it, and people will do it, and we could win. So we've already, you know, and I'm not looking at just a, you know, 11 state strategy. I'm going out and talking to all the chairmen and all the grassroots leaders and trying to make sure that we have a battle plan at every level, not only from a grassroots standpoint and putting in new chairs everywhere and an election integrity standpoint. So I think that the party, from a grassroots standpoint, I think we're building on the successes that we had and we're going to be ready for this cycle like we've never seen. Because when I would Certus chairman, you know, we do these calls to action, right? I said, we have the VS race in Tennessee. So I put out an email to our team saying, hey, ring the bell. We need people to call in, use these sites. And we got some response, but not nearly as good that we could have if we're more robust. And so we're actively working every single day to make sure we have this structure in place. So when we need to turn the button on and flip the switch for some race, we could focus all resources across the country, including volunteer hours in the right races.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, a lot of encouraging stuff. And you're doing a whale of a job here in a pretty short tenure all of a sudden. But it's going to feel like it's been a long time by November. I'm sure it is the first of what I hope is many conversations with updates from you and chance for all of our listeners to get involved and all kinds of different things that you guys are up to.

[Joe Gruters]

Well, thanks so much. I appreciate you having me on. I said, this is the first big podcast, the major podcast I've been on, and you guys are doing a great job of improving your location at the midterm convention, I hope.

[Michael Duncan]

Did we say how handsome you are?

[Josh Holmes]

Yes.

[Joe Gruters]

See, you're moving to the. To the front every single time, Wolf.

[Josh Holmes]

Get the gift basket. Can't let Grooters walk out without that.

[Joe Gruters]

Mr. Chairman, thank you so much.

[Josh Holmes]

Appreciate it.

[Joe Gruters]

Appreciate the opportunity.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, this guy has raised so much money, he's crushing Democrats. And I cannot wait to see a little bit more what they're doing. Can't wait for the news about where this convention might take place.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, Yeah. I felt like we did some good advocacy on our behalf on that.

[John Ashbrook]

We'll be there with bells on.

[Josh Holmes]

We will be there with bells on. I do. I like this guy a lot. You know, I mean, in a business. And I can just tell you guys who are listening to this, like, we've all. We talk about this with some frequency. A business full of stiffs. I mean, you have no idea how many losers are involved in politics. It's like nine out of ten people you encounter. You're like, ooh, the worst person. You know, just tough to. And then you encounter somebody like this and you're like, wow, that's fantastic. I mean, it just over indexes because this is a guy that you would want to hang out with.

[Smug]

That's the thing.

[Josh Holmes]

Super trustworthy, has a resume of success, understands the job, is working super hard, wants it more than anybody else. And it's just so refreshing, you know, just great to see. Anyway, follow on up on what these guys are doing because I think they're doing really good work. And we're going to follow up, too. We'll keep you updated on what it is that they're up to and how you can get involved. Remember our question of the day? What was our question of the day?

[Smug]

Who's going to win the Democrat nomination?

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, who's going to win the Democratic nomination? Love to hear it. We'll get back to you on Tuesday on all of that. When you like and subscribe to the Ruthless Friday program.

[Michael Duncan]

Might be that French guy.

[Smug]

It.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, the munitions Mr. Mr. World War I, probably. I mean, I think he's met a threshold of qualification.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. No, citizenship is not an issue for them.

[Josh Holmes]

With that, fellas, I think we did it.

[Smug]

I think so. Absolute banger of an episode. Gentlemen, thank you so much. Chairman Greeters and thank you to the listeners. Remember, if you have not yet, go to the YouTube and hit that subscribe because it's more fun in videos. So until next time, minions, keep the faith, hold the line and own the libs. We'll see you on Tuesday. Stay ruthless.