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- [00:13]
A
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday, but Bill Kristol finally gets to go on vacation. The eldest member of the Bulwark team has been the one working the hardest and most diligently this summer while the rest of us gallivant about. So finally he gets a break and sitting in for him is our very own White House correspondent and his co author on the Morning Shots newsletter. It's sweet. Andrew Egger. How you doing, Andrew?
- [00:40]
B
I'm great. How are you, Tim?
- [00:42]
A
I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing pretty good. It's good to be back in New Orleans. It's good to be termiteless in the helm. And we're just pressing forward. We've got a lot to talk about today. You have some bad takes that I hope we have time to get to at the very end. And you have a couple of things that you've been really excited about and angered about righteously that I've not talked about on the podcast at all. So I do want to get to those as well. But I want to start on the corruption beat. A couple of things that really caught my eye over the weekend and late last week. The first one is this Trump crypto bank story. This might seem niche, but I think that it is the most tangible example of the administration's corruption. And I feel like in the year, I don't know, 20, 30, 40, for when we're looking back on this, I feel like this and the internment camps are going to be the things that we look back on. I mean, who knows what horrors are ahead of us between now and then. But like from the period of 2024 to 2026, like the internment camps and this are going to stand out. Does that feel right to you? Before I get into the details of the story, like, don't you just think there's so much we don't know on the corruption side of us?
- [01:54]
B
Yes, 100%, I think that's right. I mean, you say like the, it seems niche, but like all businesses are sort of niche. Right? I mean, the whole point is that like he is going into these quote unquote, niche industries where there's still billions and billions of dollars to be made and he's getting his beak wet on the powers of the presidency and the access that, that, that is involved with that. So, yes, I 100% agree that the, the broad overarching corruption story is going to be a major, major part of the legacy of these years.
- [02:21]
A
So here it is on the bank. So World Liberty Financial, which is the like Trump family's main crypto venture, they have several side ventures in cr received preliminary conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to become a bank. Now I'm sure we have really people of high integrity at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in the Trump administration. A lot of people with deep expertise and no conflicts at all. What this means. This approval means that World Liberty will be able to issue Redeem and safeguard USD 1 their dollar backed stablecoin. Jeff Stein who used to be at the Washington Post now went to notice will translate that for people who are not into crypto world. He writes this. A Trump appointee has approved Trump's personal crypto firm to operate as a bank. This means corporations can conduct transactions using the stablecoin where the Trump family gets a cut. The public will not have to be informed. There's no precedent for this. Think about it this way. It's kind of like the Venmo now or whatever where the Venmo company takes whatever 3% of a transaction fee on certain types of transactions. Now people can make transactions with the Trump coin and get a fee and then they just get to operate. No different than whatever if you're zelling on your Citibank account. Important to note here, Chinese born scammer and current UAE citizen Changpeng Zhao cz He had purchased half of these stablecoins in circulation and got a pardon for the Trump administration. The UAE and Pakistani officials have also invested Pakistan's negotiating the MoU which we'll get to in a second. Seems bad. I don't know. Seems bad.
- [04:13]
B
Yeah, yeah. To me this is interesting in part because Trump has already extracted enormous amounts of value from a lot of people in and connected to the crypto industry with this exact corporation with World Liberty Financial. And this now seems to be a way to, to just expand the net of somewhat extortionary sort of behavior much more widely. Like the idea here is, is if you yourself are already like big in the crypto space, you're probably already kind of all tied up with World Liberty Financial. But now this is just yet another way for unrelated businesses, businesses that are not primarily crypto businesses necessarily. It's just another new place where you can curry some level of favor with the Trump administration. Get, you know, for, for, for whatever business purpose that you might want. Like you might be a random, you could, you could be any kind of corporation who might have any kind of business before the White House One really easy way to make Donald Trump look favorably on your business will be to just conduct transactions on this platform instead of whatever other banking platform you might have been inclined to use. Obviously, I'm sure there are. I'm, I'm not a financial reporter or a financial analyst or anything. I'm sure there are many reasons why you, you might prefer a longer running, more stable sort of platform with more services on offer, more professionals in the building, all these sorts of things. But this is the offer that's being made is why not come transact over here, let me collect your fees and show that you're, you know, a good patriotic corporation while you're doing it.
- [05:45]
A
I like the word bribes because that's what's happening here. I mean, there are just bribes happening. I mean, CZ got a pardon in exchange for purchasing these stablecoins. We talked on Friday with Sarah about the thing. Joe Rogan was surprised to learn that the Trump Truth Social is taking bribes from financial investors who want early access to Trump's tweets so they can then bet on the reaction in the markets. Just a little insider trading out in the open. And what situation that is not corrupt would make you want to bank with World Liberty Financial, if you just put it that way. If the only point of this is you're looking for, you know, a vendor with which to exchange, you know, currency, like there are a million options out there in the world, like there is absolutely no reason that you would want to go with the company that, that was run by Devin Nunes that is not stable at all. Right. That's are people that don't have history, you know, safeguarding money. Even if you're going to do it in crypto, even if you're going to buy stablecoins, like there are other options that are more professional than this. Right? Like the only reason to use this is to curry favor with Trump.
- [07:00]
B
Yeah, no, I think that's basically exactly right. And, and that is a pretty compelling reason for a lot of companies, given how much of the economy right now, in large part because of tariffs, but also because of different regulatory decisions and all these sorts of things. So much of the current, currently constituted economy relies on the sort of personal blessing and say so of the President. So it's a, it's a, it's a pretty grisly situation all around.
- [07:25]
A
Our colleague Katherine Rampel wrote another article. This is a story. I think it's also important to cover the stories where the Trump corruption does not just extend to his personal wealth. I mean, like Most of these stories, he is, as you say, getting his beak wet. But he's also looking out for white collar scammers and grifters of all types. And here's one example of it. Catherine wrote about this in a receipts newsletter last week. Treasury announced that it's going to stop the government's. Excuse me, not stop, destroy the government's registry of shell company ownership. This was an anti corruption database that treasury was required by law to maintain and actually was signed in the first Trump administration. This, this database, it was a bipartisan effort. Among the people pushing it were the current Secretary of State Marco Rubio. They're not just going to stop requiring registry, they're going to destroy all the data that it's collected already so that no future administration or any local police department can use it. Tom Malinowski, a former Democratic congressman from New Jersey who was instrumental in getting this passed initially said this is like Trump ordering the deletion of the FBI's entire fingerprint database. There were some pushback I saw to Catherine's article on kind of the Winnie the Pooh and the Tuxedo, right. That tried the anti antis to try to come up with it. They're like, well, you know, this was, this database was a little burdensome on some small business owners, but it's kind of like, I mean, I could see that it probably was burdensome on small business owners to say like you're a real estate company and you have a million shell companies that you're using to purchase various properties everywhere. And I'm sorry that you have to deal with that. But like most companies was not burdensome for the Bulwark. For example, we're not operating several, several shell companies. You know, it's like a 15 minute paperwork filing. So I just, I don'. Any reason? Well, a, this is illegal and it's passed into law. Like, I don't know why we think the Treasury Department can just veto it without having Congress veto something that was passed by Congress and signed by the President. But in addition to that, I think that any explanation for this that is not centered around corruption leaves me a little wanting.
- [09:39]
B
Yeah, and I mean this is one of these stories too, where just the raw overarching facts of the open corruption of the administration from top to bottom, I mean it just, it bleeds through, makes it so impossible to even tease out stories like this where, where, I don't know, maybe, maybe if it were a different administration that was doing this, you know, lawfully, if they were actually pushing to overturn the law or something like that. You might be able to put some stock in those sorts of explanations. Again, I'm. This is not exactly my area of expertise. I've never drilled down on the second and third order effects of the functioning of this database. But, like, you would have to be so blinkered, you would have to stick your head so deep under the sand to look at a story like this through any other light than the overarching light of, of the, of the open corruption, of the open sympathy, the weird personal sympathy that the President has for, for people accused of white collar crime, where he just, he just goes out there and he pardons them sort of like out of the goodness of his heart. A lot of the times this, this, this just seems to be so obviously of a piece with all that sort of stuff that, that maybe you can cobble together these post hoc justifications. Maybe there are some businesses out there that will be grateful that, that, that did, you know, really struggle with these compliance costs. But on the other hand, come on, like, let's wake up and see what time it is.
- [10:55]
A
Blinkered coverage of Trump policy from National Review is the corner. Andrew. I never, I would never make that accusation. All right, as referenced today, the Treaty of Versailles to Electric Boogaloo was signed how many days ago? Now, I want every listener in their head to think about how many days ago they think it was, because it is. It's hard to kind of orient yourself in time during the second Trump administration. Okay, do you have your guess? It was 60 days ago. Today is the 60th day, which is when the MOU is set to expire.
- [11:26]
B
Important number.
- [11:27]
A
Yeah, yeah, I believe it lasted 60 hours, maybe, but it was supposed to last 60 days. The various elements of the Memorandum of Understanding signed with such great fanfare was the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, removal of the naval blockade completely open, and de mined Strait of Hormuz. Iran was going to get an economic reconstruction fund. There'd be a deal on enrichment and nukes. No, no, no, no, no, nothing. None of that.
- [12:01]
B
Yeah, we didn't get any of that. It turns out it is kind of crazy to look back at the President's tweets right at that moment. You know, the Strait of Hormuz is now open to all. Let the oil flow. Congratulations to everybody. And like, even then, it was a lot of fanfare over what was essentially an agreement to agree on a bunch of things later. And yes, it did blow up on the launch pad very quickly after that, but it is just sort of I don't know. We've been at this, we've been at this for quite a while now, a long, long, long time. And it just sort of seems to keep on persisting.
- [12:32]
A
I was rewatching the video of my guy Adam Mochler serving it to Scott Jennings on cnn. This was the video for people who are sickos like me and just consuming way too that politics slop. You'll remember this at the time that Scott Jennings said get your fucking hand out of my face on primetime CNN just kind of had a meltdown and he was defending the war and condescendingly talking to Mockler about how like, oh, you can't handle eight weeks. It's a forever war now because it's been eight weeks. And I just want there's a deliciousness to watch it now. Thinking back to the Trump fluffers spin when this MOU was happening and prior to that, JD Vance, the vice president, talking about how only stupid presidents in the past got us into into these wars that that didn't have any resolution. And like here we are at the end of the MoU period with a war still on ish and nothing to show for it. And actually it's worse than nothing to show for it and like negative consequences to our troops, to consumers here in America, to our alliances.
- [13:44]
B
If you ever roll back the tape on the various kind of moments in the early development of this conflict, just the remarkable level of smugness at every single stage. Right at the very beginning when we were going over there, when we first launched the war and we had total aerial supremacy and domination, we were blowing up all these military targets and you had all of the hawks who were like yeah, we should have done this decades ago. You it's like usa, usa. And can you believe these these sort of naysayers and these wet blankets who are like, oh gosh, like what, what we're war with Iran all of a sudden was were we talking about this? Are we sure we've really thought this one through? And then they closed the Strait of Hormuz and, and there's all this reporting that they hadn't really thought this through. And again, just the smugness of do you honestly believe that the United States government didn't contemplate the possibility that Iran would retaliate with the Strait of Hormuz? We've known they would do this if we ever did this forever got them right where they right where we want them. And then like the forever war stuff again, like we're just like four, five, six weeks into this war and you and, and the same people are basically like, really, you're out of juice already. You're out of steam already after these amazing victories that we've had and we've got them on the run. And you know, what are you, like some kind of subversive or like, and, and just over and over and over again you get to the memorandum of understanding and it's the same thing where it's J.D. vance being like, look, I think we all need to put a little trust in the President right now. President Deals who has landed the plane on this thing. And like again and again and again. I feel like maybe I'm just looking at different sources now. I feel like a little bit of the smugness has leached away the last couple weeks. Couple weeks, maybe month or two here, as it really has just turned into another one of these boondoggles with no real way out. I feel like maybe they're not leaning into it quite as much. But I have not seen a lot of, I don't know, I haven't seen a lot of come to Jesus moments about where, where these people were predicting this conflict was going to be at this point versus the boondoggle that we're
- [15:41]
A
in right now commentary podcast, guys. They've seen some things that they don't like. I don't know if they've had to come to Jesus exactly, come to Yahweh, but yeah, they. I definitely have seen some. Well, this didn't turn out like we'd hoped, guys.
- [15:55]
B
And so I admire that. Good turn around commentary, people. I should start the commentary podcast.
- [15:59]
A
On the other hand, you don't say, but okay, it's good, it's good. I mean, you know, I'm just saying if you missed something that was very obvious, get a little less credit for mentioning it. But I agree. It's good to acknowledge. Good to acknowledge. I'm sorry, I was, I was letting bad JVL get in there for a second. Sometimes you have to. This is why I have Andrew Iger on. You went to church yesterday. I'm trying to think about my better angels right now. Good for those people, the few who have admitted that this thing was a total disaster from the start. One thing I've been agitating for is for Democrats to really rub the President's nose in it, you know, about how humiliating this is and how much of an affront it is to the country and to the troops that he got into this stupid ass war with nothing to show for it. And, you know, the New hotness. The man that everybody seems to be getting a thrill up their leg for lately. Jon Ossoff did exactly that at a campaign rally over the weekend. Let's watch a little bit of it.
- [17:04]
C
There's something uniquely despicable about lying a nation into war, treating citizens as fools. And those who serve as pawns aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, they've now been at sea for 240 plus days without a port call. It's a Navy record. And still.
- [17:32]
B
And still.
- [17:34]
C
And still, they serve with excellence. And still they serve with excellence. While he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the President sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. So he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.
- [18:06]
A
Ouch. Ouch. Dots.
- [18:10]
B
Where did all this Natalie Harp discourse come from all of a sudden? I thought we had done, like, the Natalie Harp thing, the Regime Changed book. Years ago.
- [18:17]
A
It came from the Regime Change book. It was all of the MASH notes. I interviewed Maggie about this when she came on the show. When I asked her, I said that her book did something which I think is important in reporting. It changed one of my priors. I had previously thought that Donald Trump was now impotent because he was so old. And I thought that explained the fact that we haven't had any sex scandals with Donald Trump. His whole life was sex scandals up until now. And now reading the book and reading all the love notes that Natalie Harp wrote to Trump started with maybe not. Maybe not impotent.
- [18:54]
D
Yeah, I'm not.
- [18:54]
A
Maybe something's happening.
- [18:56]
B
I'm not gonna touch that one. I do think there is. You know, things change. Things change. You get a little older. Maybe it's not the physical thing quite so much as it is just liking to be adored by young, attractive women. Who knows? Who knows how it all holds together? But on the Ossoff thing, another thing
- [19:15]
A
you don't have expertise on that I brought you to talk about when you stop wanting to grab women by the pussy against their will. That's something that Andrew doesn't have. You know, it's hard for you to kind of get your head in that brain space, and I appreciate that. So you can move on from that.
- [19:28]
B
Never started.
- [19:28]
A
But just as a.
- [19:29]
B
Never started. Wouldn't know. Wouldn't know when to stop.
- [19:31]
A
But as a strategic question for Ossoff, instead of putting it as a question, I'm going to put it as a statement that I want you to react to. This is kind of what Sarah and I are asking for. Like on Friday we were talking about how we want and there are different ways to go about this. There's ways to go about getting attention in the media about Donald Trump's horrors by being extremely outraged about something. There is like actually going to places to advocate passionately. Chris Van Hollen, for example, going to meeting with Kilmore Garcia. Right. There are ways to do it. There are also ways to play this game by saying and doing things that point out Donald Trump's offenses, that titillate people, that draw attention, that might get interest from, you know, people who are not, you know, reading the news day to day, but are just kind of scrolling clips on Instagram. They're kind of like, what is this? Trump has a girl named Natalie's flying around with. It's a tactic. I think it's a smart tactic. What do you think?
- [20:32]
B
Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting too that that was such an applause line even in the room because like on the one hand, all the aesthetics of ASAF are like sort of recreating the Obama strategy, right? Where it's like this soaring oratory and these big rooms and like in theory all of that is geared toward like normies and non political obsessives. But in terms of the content, it's plainly a lot of people who are tracking this stuff online. Right. I'm sure there's a lot of like bulwark people in that audience who are like, oh, the human printer, he went there, you know, that kind of stuff. So it's an interesting combination of things there.
- [21:07]
A
I had somebody text me the other day, who is Natalie the human printer? And I was like, you just revealed you haven't been listening to my podcast.
- [21:14]
B
Hey, it's never too late to learn about the human.
- [21:17]
A
I know it is never too late. I'm just saying sometimes friends reveal that their engagement with my content isn't as fulsome as they might want me to think.
- [21:26]
B
Yeah, I'm grateful to Ossoff in one level. I do not know. Just as a factual matter, I don't know whether this is going to be the sort of message and the sort of strategy and the sort of politician that ends up resonating with Democratic primary voters and just the electorate in 2028. I can see an argument, I've seen a lot of people make the argument that it reads as a little slick, it reads as a little bit overproduced. It's all very somber and solemn. Even the moments that are like a little bit of a joke. Like he himself plays them very straight, doesn't crack a smile. I can see those sorts of things doing well and I can also see them bouncing off in our more irony poisoned age. But I, but I am grateful. I think it's good that we have a guy who's plainly, like, pushing this strategy as far as it can go. He is owning it. He is a perfect fit for it. He's like a former documentary filmmaker himself. Like, he's. He is very suitable to this strategy and to this role and to this lane that he's trying to run in. You don't want to end up in a situation where, like, Republicans were in 2024 where it's like, oh, you know, somebody is putting together a perhaps interesting and perhaps plausible alternate narrative to Trumpism and his name is Ron DeSantis and he has all these interesting good things going for him and then it just all falls apart because you are like a bag of oatmeal up on the campaign stage. Right? Like, it's so. It's. It's good. I hope we get a lot of good and interesting sort of like successful possible avenues to fight against each other in the 28 primary.
- [22:52]
A
Try a bunch of different things. I will say this. One of my other priors has been updated by. This is like, this is a 2028 speech. I mean, he is running away with his Senate race. And this is not to say that he's taking his eye off the ball on that because he's been doing a similar strategy to this for a while now and it's obviously working. His opponent is an insane person. I did. I'll put in the show notes. I did a single video on Friday. I'm going to do it. I feel like there's just been so much attention on the Hongs and the El said of the world, the media. And like, I think that, like, the media is kind of bored, like, crazy Republican story. So nobody even like, talks about Mike Collins, like, tweeting white nationalist shit and being the nominee for Senate in Georgia, like, not and not an economic swing state or Andy Biggs being the key, like, one of the key men of the insurrection being the governor candidate in Arizona. So I'm doing a little series on. You could go live, do a deep dive on the Mike Collins. But to me, this sort of stuff is demonstrating, is modeling what a 2028 campaign could look like. And like you said, whether that is the one that works or that resonates, who knows? But it's Hard to think about the value of bringing up Natalie Harp in the Georgia Senate race context. It is good for. For narrative domination, attention gathering. I wish that there were 20 Democrats doing this kind of thing, trying different. Doing it in different ways, going about it in ways that are authentic to them, because I think that that is important for breaking through. But it feels very 28 to me.
- [24:26]
B
Yeah. And like, look, I've covered a lot of Senate campaigns. This is just not the typical sort of aesthetics that people reach for when they're running for Senate. It's just small. It's a smaller ball sort of thing. You want it to seem more kind of personal. You want it to seem more like you're in the room, like you're standing on the ground may a podium with a bunch of people in chairs or something like that. I mean, this is. This is a specific aesthetic that they have been chasing. They've been chasing it for months. You know, he keeps doing events like this. They have a constant drip feed of Ossoff, you know, like. Like the chiaroscaro lighting. And he's up there on stage. And the cameras, the different camera angles are cutting between the shots.
- [25:04]
A
Friday nights, the campaign events are always on Friday nights. So it's like you can. We can like, share the videos over the weekend, talk about it on Monday. Like, here it is. You know, extend the narrative.
- [25:13]
B
Every word out of the office is. I don't know what you people are talking about. I'm running for Senate. It's all I want to do. And it just seems kind of like a lie, which is fine. But, yes, I'm with you. It really seems like they have their eye a lot bigger than that.
- [25:28]
A
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- [28:45]
B
Yeah, Yeah. I did not think that the story of the catering truck could get any funnier with, like, Donald Trump back there. Just sort of like with the chafing dishes. But the presence of Natalie Harp and Dan Scavino, chaperone, really does kick it up to a new level. I'm glad we're getting these sorts of details. There's a lot of narrative meat left on the bone of Trump 2.0.
- [29:06]
A
I agree. There are a couple types of Dem campaigns. I feel like I talk about the ones that are going very well, like Ossoff, and we talk about the ones we have concerns about. There's this kind of donut hole middle campaign where it's an important campaign and they're doing good enough that I don't talk about it. And I feel like it's on me because things like the Ohio Senate race, like the Ohio Senate race is absolutely critical. The Democrats are going to take back the Senate. I've been talking about Sherrod Brown very little, because he's just nose to the grindstone, running a more typical Senate campaign like you referenced earlier, you know, more localized campaign. But he's winning in a state that Trump won three times. Right now, if you look at the polls, and there's an interesting ad he put out this weekend going after his opponent, John Husted, over tariffs.
- [29:56]
E
I've been doing this 25 years, and it has never been this hard. So many of these things are out of my control, and they're at the whim of some bad political decisions. John hust has voted 13 times for the war in Iran, and it's had a direct effect on farmers. Diesel fuel has doubled since last spring. Cost of fertilizer tripled. And John Husted supports the tariffs, which have driven the prices down, which we can sell our crops. At a certain point, it's not just politics anymore. When you start taking money out of my pocket, it becomes personal.
- [30:24]
B
I'm Sherrod Brown and I approve this message.
- [30:27]
A
And it was particularly interesting because Sherrod Brown has been kind of on the pro tariff protectionist side of the Democratic Party in his career back when he was in the Senate. And I thought that A, it was very savvy strategic move to just go for it. Right. I do like that kind of politics. And B, could there be a better encapsulation of how disastrous the Trump tariff policy is that even the pro tariff Democrats from the past, like the anti free trade or the protectors, whatever you want to call them, did they feel like one of their opening ads is talking about how disastrous the tariffs have been?
- [31:05]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it did. It did take them a little while to get there, right? Like all, all last year it kind of felt like, or at least maybe not all last year in the early part of last year when the tariffs were going on and like it was just insane and the bond market was going crazy and it was like, is the United States going to have to economically decouple from China? Who knows? Probably doesn't seem like it should. But that's the policy on paper right now, as, at least as of this moment. Like all through that, like Democrats were a little slow to go after the tariff stuff in part because of this, because they have liked protectionist policies for, at, at some level for a long time and none more so than, you know, guys like Sherrod Brown in sort of post industrial rust belt Ohio who want to see some sort of resurgence of, of domestic manufacturing, who, who have, have a gigantic part of their political brand being, you know, the dignity of work, the dignity of blue collar work wanting to, wanting to create a world where people can work with their hands and provide for their families. And, and now we've had, you know, 18 months of Trump Tarif Topia and it's just, even these guys now see it as a clean hit because it has just not succeeded on its own terms in any of these ways. I mean, it's been unbelievably chaotic in its rollout. It's been, they have slammed new tariffs on and pulled old tariffs off voluntarily. That's been a large part of the strategy. But then also, you know, some of that's happened to them because they have gone way overboard with, with the, with trying to squeeze too many tariffs onto tariff authorities that don't support them. And so the Supreme Court yanked a bunch of the tariffs and they've had to try to slap new ones on. They've had to refund a bunch of collected revenues back to the companies and like, it just all has not added up to anything. There. There's nothing to show for it, nothing to show for it at all. And, and, and really they have just turned the page to different economic matters by now. But, I mean, manufacturing has not been coming back, like, to the, to the extent that, that anybody wanted to. It's interesting that this ad was not about manufacturing tariffs. It was about the impact on farmers who have been hurt perhaps worse than anybody by all these tariffs. So it's a giant mess and it's a clean hit.
- [33:08]
A
The lack of resurgence of rust belt jobs and manufacturing jobs is also like, the key data point in point of the failure. There's no progress on the horizon. Like, the only growth in manufacturing jobs are data center jobs that have nothing to do with the tariffs.
- [33:26]
B
Have you heard Trump talk about this where he will, like, explicitly make this point where he's like, oh, you know, we've seen, you know, construction and manufacturing come back like we've never seen. When you look at factories and also data centers, he connects them on the trail. Yeah, very different thing.
- [33:42]
A
You offered a little light media criticism this morning. This is the Egger mad and right section of the podcast because our friends over at Politico had this headline, taco no More How Trump won on Tariffs. You laid out, I think, the weakness of the argument, of the idea that Trump could have won on tariffs there just by highlighting all of the failures and the fact that even Sherrod Brown is campaigning against it. The media, the meta criticism of this is just the degree to which Trump gets curve graded. The fact that this is continuing 10 years in, or maybe even worse, it might even be getting worse than it's ever been. The curve grading.
- [34:25]
B
Yeah, I just, I just kind of thought we were all collectively past being sort of wowed by this gimmick that Trump does where he. He proposes something that is ultra insane. Like, so insane that no human being has ever contemplated it before. Like, you know, 40 to 80 to 110% tariffs on, like, 60 different nations all at once last April, including China in, you know, massive new tariffs on China. And, like, everybody freaks out, because that would be insane. And then he says, well, you know, I've decided to pull back, you know, the six worst, most damaging, most insane parts of this. And everybody sort of breathes a sigh of relief. And all his boosters are like, art of the deal, you know, you. He got you again. But, like, he didn't do anything. He didn't actually get a win. There's been nothing. Yeah, it's worse than baseline. And the entire framing of this article is, is that Trump won on Tariffs by not crashing global economy with tariffs, as some people expected that he would, and that now when he, you know, continues this, you know, 10% ish on most countries, higher some places than others, tariff regime, and the markets sort of tolerate it. That, that is like a big victory, but it's not a big victory unless you're actually getting something from those tariffs. Like, you're sacrificing a certain number of jobs, you're sacrificing a certain amount of economic growth. Like, what's the payoff? The payoff can't just be didn't crash the economy again today. But, like, that's the frame of the article. And I just kind of couldn't believe it.
- [35:56]
A
It's the way people get slave to narrative on all this. And Trump and his boosters play into this excellently. And like far too many, he'll just go along with it where it's like, well, the doomsdayers. Wrong again. Think about all those people with their hair on fire, the people with the Trump derangement syndrome that said that this was going to crash the economy. Well, the stock market's up, so you got to hand it to them, got to give it to Trump. It's like, well. But no, he was the one with agency. He was the one that instituted the policy and said that it was going to bring about a golden age and it made things worse, on balance.
- [36:29]
B
Yeah, yeah. The stock market is way up, by the way, off of the back of a gigantic AI buildout which may or may not pan out. First of all, like, that could end up popping. Still, I think that the odds of that have come down a lot because these technologies just truly are astounding and do actually have a lot of applications. So I think that they will create a lot of value. But in terms of the present leverage of the market, we could have a bubble pop still on AI. But the other amazing thing about that is that the AI sector, far and away more than any other part of the economy, has been exempted from the President's tariff regulations. I mean, we have brought hundreds of billions of dollars of chips into the country. The kind of exact stuff that, that, you know, these tariff policies are supposed to help us encourage, encourage people to build here. That's the whole point of them is like, that you would put tariffs on these gigantic industries in order to force these companies to build these things in the United States of America. And instead, you know, we have been allowing the economy to pop off of free trade when it comes to GPUs and other chips that these, that these data centers need to function. And that is, it's just so weird like that we, well, you know, the tariffs must not be doing too much damage because look at that stock market. Well, the stock market is going bananas off of the one part of this that is least affected by the tariffs. So it's just, I mean, it's just all so stupid.
- [37:48]
A
The tariff damage offset by the corruption growth.
- [37:51]
B
Right?
- [37:52]
A
Yeah, that's the working part. The working part of the tariffs is the corrupt part where Trump gives a carve out to the richest people of the country who supported his campaign and are paying for the ballroom part of it. We're paying for a lot of it and have sucked up to him gratuitously. So there you go. You've heard me talk about our friends at Sol because I love those out of office THC sparkling beverages. But if you haven't given SOL a try, I'd say maybe check out their new Mood Gummies. Sole is a wellness brand that makes delicious hemp derived CBD and THC products to make feeling good simple. Sol's new Mood Gummies have precise dosing, clean ingredients and formulations designed for predictable effects so you can choose how you want to feel while staying in control. If you're looking for a bright, social and energizing buzz, go with the Uplift gummies, which are perfect for daytime plans or beating the afternoon slump when it's time to wind down. The mellow gummies are ideal for cozy nights and fully unplugging. And if you're looking for that just right anytime vibe, try Sol's Balance Gummies for an easy, versatile feel. Three moods, three intentionally crafted formulas, same great taste. Whatever the moment, there's a Soul Mood gummy to match. Make today a good day and get yourself some soul gummies. Right now, Soul is offering my audience 30% off your entire order. Go to getsoul.com and use the code thebullwar. That's getsol.com promo code the bulwark for 30% off. You've covered this a lot, so some people I'm sure have seen this elsewhere. But for the Bulwark Pod listeners only, I just want you to do a two minute hate on the topic of There's a story going out in right wing media about how in the Fauci diaries he had said that he was keeping an eye on whether the Jaffa had any impact on miscarriages. And this story just totally just explodes in right wing media. Republican senators pushing it. Meghan McCain I saw, for one example, sent a tweet about how she was blaming her miscarriage on this jab based on this one story. I mean, this was everywhere.
- [39:56]
B
Joe Rogan says he personally knew five women who miscarried after getting the shot.
- [40:00]
A
Yeah, yeah. So you were hot on the collar on this. And so why don't you just give us a two minute rant?
- [40:04]
B
Man, this is crazy. This is like a greatest hit of like, all of the stories that have spiked my blood pressure in the last, like 70 trying to do 96 hours. I hope I make it to our editorial call this morning. Yeah, I mean, it's bogus, right? It's. It's made up, it's invented. It is. What they did was these guys have. Have had a bone to pick with Foushee forever. You know, it kind of seemed for a while like he was pretty low down the target list. But, you know, you work through all the other ones and eventually it's Rand Paul and Ron Johnson's turn to put some, you know, resistance figure in the barrel to take potshots at. They've been. They released his diary a few weeks ago. They all kind of pointed and laughed at him about how he was glad he was on shows. This is a bigger thing even than that. They released some of his text messages. They grabbed one text message from January 2021 where he, you know, before the vaccines had really been rolled out at all and before there was a lot of data on how pregnant women would respond, he raised the hypothetical possibility of a theoretical pathway that if these vaccines are giving high Fe fevers and creating cytokine storms after. After you take them, that could in theory be linked to miscarriage. So it's a thing they need to watch out for. In the data is essentially what he was saying. This gets immediately blown up and distorted, taken out of all proportion and turned into a claim that Anthony Fauci knew that the vaccines were causing and would cause miscarriages. That he covered that fact up and that then he had a bunch of pregnant women get it, you know, without knowing the risks. And it's just, just. It's just a complete lie and exaggeration of, of what was actually happening on the ground. It gets coupled with a piece of bunk science that came out later which, which Paul and Johnson also turfed up that. That they claimed that the vaccine would go on to cause a miscarriage rate of more than 80% in women who got it in the first trimester, which is completely incorrect. It just never happened. Millions and millions and millions of These women got the vaccine under these circumstances. It was never linked to miscarriage because it just never resulted in. So the CDC was not recommending that pregnant women get the shot at first for exactly these reasons because they didn't know yet. They didn't have a full picture of the risk profile. So they, they didn't recommend it. They waited for some to go out and get it. They surveilled them. They waited for some more to go out and get it. They surveilled them. They got a better and better picture of what the, the miscarriage risk and other side effects risk was, which thank, thank God was extraordinarily low. The vaccines worked. It was great. We all went back to normal. Like the, the. We landed the plane, we landed the Pand, and five years down the road we've just hallucinated and constructed from lies and misunderstandings a complete revisionist narrative that slanders people, slanders Anthony Fauci on ridiculous grounds, blames him for a holocaust of first trimester babies that never happened. You can see in the data there was no surge in miscarriages that was ever linked to the COVID vaccine or that happened at all during this time. There was not even some unexplained surge in miscarriages at this time time. So it's just, yeah, it's just a remarkable testament to the power of the right wing infotainment machine to just gin up anything on anything about anybody and sort of throw it out there as chum for the piggies. And it was really appalling to see.
- [43:23]
A
We're snapping now. Snaps for Andregor. You did another tweet. I liked moving forward. That was good. That was all I wanted.
- [43:29]
B
I went on a Twitter bender like I haven't in years. The day all this went down, I was, I was reading tweets and getting mad about them and tweeting myself deep into the night, which is like, I associate that behavior with like 26 year old me.
- [43:43]
A
More so than the 10 children rage. Tweeting from bed is a concerning sign and something I try to reflect upon when I do it. Notice I'm not saying I've stopped doing it, but I try to use it as a sign that maybe I should read a book. The other tweet you sent, that was good. While we're just complimenting you, that just piqued my interest. I was like, I can have him on the pod and I want to hear Andrew tell the story. I wanted more. It left me wanting. There's this discourse about whether there's some people on the right who were saying there's no actual equivalent to woke on the right when AOC said woke on was crazy. There's no equivalent to this of something that where the right got all wrapped up in something that caused harms. This is obviously absurd. The entire Trump cult is something that would fit the bill there times a million. And God willing sometime in the future there'll be a Republican Republican who is in Congress right now, who is on a Sunday show that says Trump too was crazy. And hopefully that happens in the future. But anyway, you pointed out that, you know, the delusions around the, you know, 2020 election fraud did actually have tangible consequences for people. Some people who got wrapped up in them. And you wrote this. I have vivid memories of talking to women whose husbands, boyfriends had told them in early January 2021 they'd be back in a couple days, ended up going and storming the Capitol and then got themselves multi year sentences. I just wanted to hear more about that.
- [45:12]
B
Yeah, I can tell this. Yeah, this was in Iowa and I can't remember at what point in the primary it was, but it was pre Iowa caucuses In summer of 2023, I would guess maybe fall of 2023. And I went to what was supposed to be a Trump rally in Des Moines which ended up getting rained out. And I don't remember exactly whether there were thunderstorms in the area or whatever, but. But it was canceled at the very last minute. So I was there and there were a whole bunch of people just kind of milling around who had intended to go there. And I was just talking to a bunch of them because I had to write some story. And I just happened to start talking to this group of women who were, it turned out were all there and had kind of found one another over this insane shared experience of their spouses or boyfriends, their husbands and boyfriends having been J6. And I just talked to them about the very strange surreal lived experience of these people who were not necessarily that political themselves, probably pretty conservative in sort of an unconsidered way, but were not like obsessives or junkies. And just the way that their people had, this is not really the way they put it because they were still more sympathetic, but had really just fallen into an Internet rabbit hole on this stuff and felt like they were know, had this calling to go out east and help Trump, you know, expose the fraud and save the country and then had gotten pulled into the mob. I mean these were not like proud, proud boys. These were not like people who went out there intending to do harm at first, but who did end up doing harm. I mean, they had them on real charges, real charges of doing damage and violence. You know, they could prove in court and that they did prove in court. And these guys are serving long prison sentences.
- [46:56]
A
Well, were serving love for instances.
- [46:58]
B
Yeah, were at that time serving. And that was why they were there. They were like, Trump gives us some hope that if he gets back in there, he may let our guys back out, which I guess, good for these women. That is what ended up happening.
- [47:10]
A
I would have maybe moved on if I was them. I don't know. And I know you're in there as a reporter role, but I think that there might have been a Good Will Hunting situation here. You might have wanted to do the Robin Williams and hug them and be like, it's okay, there are other men in the sea.
- [47:25]
B
You know, it was a very strange interaction. I mean, because they had become more militant right wingers themselves after maybe understandably, where, like, first of all, they're like, hey, we feel like our guys kind of got a raw shake for this. They were just caught up in the moment, you know, that kind of stuff. And then also, you know, anytime they themselves had tried to, like, poke their heads up online or anything like that, they had been demonized as sort of the, you know, the spouses of these January Sixers. And so you could. You could sort of see their own sort of unfortunate path to a certain unusual kind of radicalization. I mean, I don't know, there's just so many different kinds of broken people in the Trump coalition.
- [48:04]
A
I'm sure they had that same empathy for the people that got caught up in the moment at the Kenosha riots, et cetera. I'm sure that they had the same empathy applied. That's why I'm always like. Some of the left sometimes get mad. The prime example of this is Rob Portman when he comes out for gay marriage after his son comes out. And you see, on the left, I think a valid point is made this. It's like, why do the Republicans always only find empathy for these people when it affects their personal lives matter sense? That was kind of like, well, at least he found the empathy for other people. I don't know. Like, that's.
- [48:37]
B
Yeah, you could do worse. It turns out. It turns out you could do worse than unevenly applied empathy. And it's being a total sociopath to everybody all the time.
- [48:44]
A
That's good. Oh, no, no. Evenly implied empathy where. Yeah. Once you experience it then projecting that out that's better than you experiencing it and then only having empathy for the person that you knew that was getting screwed over but not everybody else or sociopathy. It's a sliding scale. They are back in the lineup. It's that game changing product I've been telling you about. It's called Pre Alcohol by Zebiotics. Zebiotics Pre Alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to break down acetaldehyde, a byproduct of drinking alcohol. Pre Alcohol produces an enzyme that is designed to break down this byproduct. Make Pre Alcohol your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly and enjoy your next day activities. Zebiotics has sold more than 14 million bottles, including to some of our listeners who have called me and given me their stamp of approval. One power listener got some for their whole family on a beach vacation. They were £ and Z biotics before the they all shared their roses or whatever it was they're drinking at the beach coming up. For me, I'm excited. Zbotics is background in the lineup because we're a few weeks away now. I'm going to be drying out, but we've got Labor Day weekend, we've got Decadence in Louisiana and we've got Clemson coming to LSU for Lane Kiffin's inaugural game in Tiger Stadium. That's going to be a big weekend for me and I am going to be having Zebiotics by my side. Try one for yourself today and if you're unsatisfied, they'll refund your entire order, no questions asked. Head to zebiotics.com the Bulwark Code the Bulwark for 15% off your first order. I have one news item and we've done your good take, so I have your bad take. I want to end with unfortunately, I guess you call this a news item. Some people only get their news from this show. So when things happen it's like, I guess I should just tell them that this happened. Donald Trump sent a tweet about how much he loves Kim Jong Un. We're having military exercises in South Korea today. They're ongoing as I think as we're taping right now. And Trump said this, I am not happy with the fact the United States has long ago agreed to participate in these joint military exercises with South Korea. They send a sign that is totally inappropriate and hostile. Hostile to a country that as long as Donald J. Trump has been president has been unthreatening. And respectful. So South Korea, inappropriate and hostile. North Korea, unthreatening and respectful. Therefore, based on the fact that it's too late to cancel, I instructed Pete Hegseth to substantially reduce the exercises. And then he goes, while somewhat unrelated. Question mark, I recently asked the president of South Korea if they could join us in the denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And they said, no, no, thanks. So I guess we're going to punish South Korea because they're not getting involved in the stupid war that we started without informing them that it's causing real economic damage to their people. And instead we're going to cozy up to the dictator running a prison state.
- [51:48]
B
I think that. I mean, there's a lot that you could unpack in this statement. I think my personal favorite bit about it is that it's too late to cancel. This has been in the works for who knows how long, but the president is only just getting around to being like, oh, wait, let's not do that one. And it's like, actually, it's a little. It's a little late for that. And so, well, I don't know, make it smaller. I've been busy.
- [52:11]
A
If your kid gets, like, gets a report card that's really bad on a Friday, but you had a birthday party planned for them on Saturday, and it's like, you're in trouble, mister. But it's too late to cancel.
- [52:21]
B
Yeah, but he could have before. I mean, like, what's he spent his summer doing, right? I mean, he's been working on the reflecting pool and putting his name back on the Kennedy center and, like, all this stuff. And it's like, he didn't get around to ever telling Pete Hegseth, hey, cool it with those South Korea military exercises. But now that they're happening, he can't just be like, well, we'll get him next time, next year. We won't do it. He has to make a big, weird diplomatic incident out of it. So that's not good, actually. I don't know why I'm laughing.
- [52:47]
A
Yeah, well, no, I mean, part of the rationale here is he's in the market for some friends and some wins in the foreign policy space. And there's a moment where he's talking about all the wars the ended. And now it's like, well, the Russia, Ukraine war is spiraling out of control. The Iran war, we've got sailors that are, like, jumping off of ships, and we like to have no plan MOU expired and we've achieved nothing. And so I Don't know, maybe detente with North Korea can. Maybe him and Kim Jong Un can. He can invite him over to the new ballroom. Maybe Kim Jong Un can be the one to christen the new ballroom. That's something to look forward to.
- [53:20]
B
Did you see that he threatened to bomb Oman today or yesterday? Yeah.
- [53:25]
A
Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, it's like, okay, so, I mean, he's been threatening to end Iran over and over. The day I came back from vacation, the big news of that weekend was that Trump was like, I'm giving you one more chance before I really. We do the big one. Bigger than anything since World War II. And here we are today and it's like, well, maybe not. Maybe not bigger than anything since World War II in Iran, but maybe we might just. Just throw a little bomb at Oman. That might happen. Yemen, the Houthis, an ever expanding world. What would be another word for that kind of an ever expanding war in the Middle east that you don't know how to stop?
- [54:06]
B
If it goes on long enough, it becomes a forever war. It's like a baby forever war right now.
- [54:10]
D
Right?
- [54:10]
B
Prepubescent forever war.
- [54:12]
A
Your bad take, which I need to share because some people are mad at me who are listeners and you will give them the comfort food that they're looking for. There is this geographic engagement bait that goes around that just all of us are susceptible to. We're all weak. I love maps. We're map people. I don't know. We're all. And I'm weak. I know it's engagement bait, but I can't help myself. And it's like they'll divide up a country. You'll see this online, and it's like there'll be a pie or various circles, and you'll say, where would you want to stay if you had to stay there the rest of your life? Okay, here's one of them. There are what it looks like nine circles in America. And you have to stay within one of the circles for the rest of your life. One of the circles, New England. The other one's the Mid Atlantic, New York City. There's the Confederacy. Southeast, my people. You get New Orleans, you get Charleston, you have Florida. There's Texas and Mexico. There is Arizona, California, Alaska and Hawaii. Weirdly, you've got Washington, Oregon and Northern California. That's an appealing one. You've got the Plains States with Denver in there at least. You get Denver, you get the mountains, you get the weird one, which is E in the middle, which is just like Jefferson City and Little Rock, I don't know. Branson, if you really love Branson. And then there is F. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Eastern Iowa, Illinois, Indiana. This was chosen by Andrew Egger as the easiest choice of your life on social media. Last week, I made fun of Minnesota, said that there's no good places to vacation in Minnesota. We had at least one person unsubscribe over that show. I'm just having fun people. Okay. You know, it's not for me. Different things are for different people. Vacationing in Minnesota, not for me. Some people liked it. That's good. That's. That's part of the beautiful society. That's part of the bounty that God's given us in a pluralist society in America, people like to do different things. If everybody likes to do the same thing and be a very boring country, even still, of all the places to be stuck in America for the rest of your life, Dubuque, Minneapolis, Wisconsin and Michigan, I think was a poor choice. Defend yourself.
- [56:28]
B
I don't know if you've ever spent any time at the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes are perhaps America's most underrated region for a billion different reasons. I could, I could take the easy way out and tell you that this is a very easy circle for me personally, because it happens to loop in basically my entire extended family. St. Louis just barely makes it into F. Eastern Iowa, Southern Iowa, all in circle F. I didn't even see that Minnesota was in there. I'm sure Minnesota's fine. You know that little toe of Minnesota that's there? I, I'd, I'd head there, but the crown jewel here is, is Michigan. It's the Great Lakes. It's northern Ohio. I, I don't actually want more people to start vacationing at the Great Lakes because that would make it a little bit more crowded and a little bit less pastoral and idyllic. But people sleep on that region inappropriately, in my view.
- [57:12]
A
Okay, well, obviously the only possible answers are B, D and G, which goes across the South. Your desire for winter and you're going to be stuck there. Where are you going to be? Where are you going to be in February? Okay.
- [57:27]
B
Ride it out in St. Louis.
- [57:28]
A
You're gonna be. Ride it out in St. Louis. I've spent February. I've spent February in St. Louis. It fucking sucks.
- [57:35]
B
It's different for you. You're from. I mean, like, really?
- [57:38]
A
I'm from.
- [57:38]
D
I grew up in Saint.
- [57:38]
A
I was born in St. Louis. I grew up in Denver.
- [57:41]
B
Yeah, but you have self selected. You have self selected for the south you're just a different kind of person. It's a big country, a lot of different climates, a lot of different regions. Everybody can win, you know, we're not all crowding into one circle. That's not the point of this exercise.
- [57:52]
A
Thank God that's true. There'll be some people who've decided to go to the Great Lakes. You're going to ride it out in the Great Lakes. That's Andrew Egger. I appreciate you wonderful job substituting for Bill Kristol. I have a little rant that I need to deal with at the end with just me, so I'm going to let you go. The rest of the listeners can stick around with me for a few more minutes and we'll be talking to you soon. All right, buddy.
- [58:17]
B
Thanks. Always fun.
- [58:35]
A
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- [60:04]
D
Week.
- [60:07]
A
All right, I want to do a little primary talk. I just want to respond to some listener feedback I got that was totally legit before I do the Democratic primary talk. And that was when I came back from vacation. I gave this big monologue at the start that was like, can we keep our eye on the fucking ball, people? I was so annoyed with the politicians, the commentators, even some of you lovely commenters who are so focused on the fight between the moderates and the DSA and the Democratic Party that they've lost sight of what's happening in the broader war and the real threat that we have in front of us. And so I offered that critique of those factionalists. And then over the ensuing couple of weeks, I've engaged in that and critiqued Democrats and complimented Democrats who are on various sides of that depending on the situation. And I've had some feedback. It's like, Tim, I thought you said we need to keep our eye on the ball and we shouldn't be criticizing Democrats. And I thought that was fair feedback. And I just want to be a little bit more specific about what I meant and what I'm trying to do on this show. My critique was of people who have decided that their foe within our coalition is the proximate foe they should be focused on. If you are a politician or a commentator and you're spending 75 plus percent of your time, time attacking other people within the tent, or in the case of third way, spending $15 million going after somebody else within the tent, and that is your main focus. I reject that. I think that that is a really stupid focus. And I do think that you've lost sight on the true foe. I think simultaneously to that. We all want to win. I don't think putting your head in the dirt and saying, oh, everything the Democrats do is great, I don't think that helps either in the mission of trying to figure out how to counter this authoritarian movement. Right? Like, sometimes people on our side screw up. Like, obviously, the prime example of this was Biden. And I think that there was a lot of people within the pro Biden kind of group that were telling those like Bill Crystal and James Carville and others who were saying, he's too old, he shouldn't run again. They're like, shut up. And that wasn't helpful, right? So, you know, like, there's balance in all things, right? It's one of my favorite sayings. Right. It's like, okay, I think we should keep our eye on the ball, keep the focus. I, I think I'm doing that on this show. I always take feedback if you guys think I'm falling down on that. And in addition to that, like we have to also, you know, like look inside the tent and, and see where we're making mistakes and try to improve and try to be strategic and try to be smart about how to move forward. And, and in my view I try to make suggestions based on strategy that are not always in line with what my priors are on policies. My policy views are not the most popular things. I think if a Democratic Senate candidate was taking my views in some of these states they would probably lose. That's why I'm not running for Senate in Louisiana. There are a lot of reasons but I wouldn't win. So I think it's important to be strategic, assess ways that the pro democracy movement can approve broadly and to talk about that. That's the other ethos of the show which is radical candor, which is we know who the bad guys are are. But I'm also going to be candid about what's happening and trying to strike that balance. Not always going to nail it. 100 and I appreciate feedback on it anytime. Here's one strategic example I want to talk about and it is a primary happening tomorrow in Florida. Jared Moskowitz, sitting congressman, is up for reelection but he's had to move to a new district and there's a DSA challenger who is primary him. And I think that this primary is very unstrategic and misguided. And I've seen a lot of people on the left really promoting this primary against Jared Moskowitz and really smearing him and spending a lot of effort on this. And I think that frankly, if it's successful it will probably cost the Democrats a seat and let me tell you why. So I just want to back this up. If you are a single issue anti Israel voter, you're going to be going for Oliver Larkin, the DSA candidate against Jared Roscow and that's fine. And you can probably just move on from this and we'll see on tomorrow's show. I don't actually agree with Jared Moskowitz on his Israel position. I've expressed my dissatisfaction with some of his comments on the Iran war both publicly and privately. And so I disagree with him on that. And I think that because of my disagreement with him on that I think that is a big part of why I want to explain to people why I think that, that it's important that he win tomorrow because he is running in a district that Trump won by nine and a half percent. Jared was gerrymandered out of his seat by Ron DeSantis. Some on the left like to smear him as like a pro DeSantis guy or whatever because DeSantis had hired him to do emergency management in the state and he did a good job at it. And that's an important job in states of the Gulf South. So that's a, to me, that's a qualification, not a demerit.
- [65:08]
E
Right.
- [65:09]
A
But Ron DeSantis gerrymandered him out. He could have stayed in a more blue seat. His seat was like D plus 2, I believe, previously in South Florida. But instead he did not do a primary with another Democratic member. He went to a new district that had a bunch of people that he had not represented before. That was a Mar a Lago district. Basically, it's Trump +9 and a half. It's going to be a tough district to win with anybody. Okay. It's going to be a really challenging district. And Jared Moskowitz was a team player changing to go into this district, this harder district, because he thought as a moderate he could win it. And his DSA opponent followed him to this district. And I got to tell you, it just makes no sense to me. There are two other Democratic Congress people, Lois Frankel and dws, who are also pro Israel Israel, who are in Democratic districts, the Democrats going to win no matter what. And so if you wanted to pick somebody to fight and you wanted to be strategic about it and you're on the left or you're part of the whatever uncommitted movement or whatever is unhappy about how pro Israel the Democratic Party is, those are two options that are kind of clean, right. Where they could have tri married them and the DSA candidate won, they would have likely won. And there are other examples of this. I didn't really engage in the show, even though I'm from Denver, much on that Denver Congressional district that, that M. Kiros won against Diana Dex. It's like it's a, it's a Democratic seat. Diana dequette's been there forever. I understand why younger people in Denver might want a congressperson that more represents their views. I think Malat's actually been pretty thoughtful on a lot of stuff. Again, we're not going to agree on everything issue wise, but like, I, I, I, I think that people might underrate her and she ends up winning that seat against Diana to get and like that's a no harm, no foul. I think think that that's interesting that the people of Denver will now have candidates more on the left and we'll see how that shakes out. If she ends up being a bad rep, somebody can primary her from the center. That's how democracy works. This is not that this is a kamikaze primary. This is an effort to take out Jared Moskowitz because people don't like his position on Israel and they would be happy to have a Republican in the seat instead because the influencer that's running against him is not going to win that seat. I could see that Trump won by 10 points with a lot of Jewish people in the district. Let's just be real. Jared Moskowitz could win that seat. It's going to be tough on him. Like I said, he took one for the team to run there. And by the way, if you just go outside of the issue of Israel, Jared Moscow brings a lot to the table for Democrats on the one hand, and he's not as anti left as some of the left people want him to think. I mean, he was on the Medicare for All all bill. Jared Moskowitz was on the Medicare for All bill. Pramila Jayapal's Medicare for All PAC endorsed him when he first ran and he's still for it, still for Medicare for All. And then in addition to that, if you go to the hearings, Jared Moskowitz has been doing exactly what we want Democrats to do. He's not like a John Larson or a Diana Deget, these kind of older Democrats who aren't up for the moment for what is needed in know pushing back on the right. From a messaging standpoint, Jared's been awesome on this. I picked up just a few of my favorites of the highlight reels of him in congressional hearings and doing media. And I just want to play that for you really quick.
- [68:37]
D
Well, obviously Jeanine Pirro is hitting the box wine again. You've called Corey Lewandowski a special government employee. I understand what government means. I understand what employee means. Okay. But I don't know what makes him special.
- [68:49]
B
Attack conservative women and you say that we're either stupid or I haven't said anything.
- [68:53]
D
We keep referring to Kristi Noem's dog as a dog, but actually it was a PUPPY. It was 14 months old. And so. And that puppy had a name. Say its name.
- [69:07]
B
Cricket.
- [69:09]
D
Okay. That puppy had a name. Trump's name appears more times in the Epstein files than God's name appears. Appears in the book about God. Okay. By the way, this is the Trump Bible. Move over, King James. Now that the national divorce is happening with. With Elon Musk, and I'm a child of divorce, okay? I mean, who's going to get big balls? I'm worried about him. In the divorce, the children always get caught in the middle. I appreciate the. The kind words the chairman said about me on Newsmax the other day, calling me the court jester. So thank you, my liege. Madam Attorney General, I have like 25 seconds left, so because I'm curious and I'd like to see you flip to the Jared Moskowitz section of the binder. I'm interested to see what staff provided on the oppo on me. And because we're in the Olympics, I'm gonna give it a grade. I just wanna see how good it is. So give me your best one.
- [69:59]
A
So there it is. I mean, he went to war with James Comer over the fake Biden impeachment nonsense. He went to war with Christine Ohm was probably the best Democratic congressman in taking on Kristi Noem and her excesses at dhs. He was the point person for trying to strip the 700 million that was going to ice bonuses out of the budget. He went after Pam Bondi, Judge Jeanine. As I just played, this legit dude, he's been fighting and he's going to have to fight to win a really tough district in Florida. That election is tomorrow. And, you know, if we got listeners in South Florida who happen to be in that district. My argument is from a strategic perspective and from perspective, hey, supporting somebody who's been a team player and who's been legit in doing his job in Congress. I like Jared Moskowitz in that race. That's my opinion. All right, I appreciate everybody very much. Thanks for checking in. Thanks to Andrew Egger for subbing. Wasn't he great? We'll be back tomorrow with another edition of the show. We'll see you all then.
- [71:01]
B
Now we wear some colored yellow uniforms.
- [71:18]
A
The Bulwark Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.