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The Bulwark Daily
No One Has Seen McConnell in Weeks—and His Office Just Recycled an Old Statement
00:19:58
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my best friend, Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark. Sarah, happy Friday. Also happy Friday to people who are hearing this show for the first time. If you are tuning in to get the Bulwark Pod, you. You're getting this little secret thing while Tim is on vacation.
- [00:22]
B
Sarah, it's a real treat for you.
- [00:24]
A
What a treat it is because Sarah and I tape at 7 o' clock in the morning and so you get this weird Bedh show. So this is a show that you may not be familiar with. Sarah and I do it every Friday. We do it in secret. It's, it's just for members of Bulwark plus. And this is a little preview of it. Maybe you'll love it. Maybe you'll decide that just taking Tim for free isn't enough and you want to become a Bulwark plus member and get all of the stuff. Sarah, they should do that, right?
- [00:56]
B
They should. Look, we don't pay well very much. And listen, listen to how my voice sounds. This is a, this is an authentic morning. The first person I've spoken to is JVL on this podcast and all of you, it's. We do a punchy show. But I got to tell you, the Secret Pod is one of the earliest podcasts that the Bulwark has. It's one of the very few things we put behind a paywall. JBL and I talk about some news of the day. Our first drafts. We have Secret Pod rules, guys. Part of Secret Pod Rules is that we're allowed to be wrong on this show because we're going to tell you, we're not sure if we think a thing. It's a great show. People love it. It is. It is the member staple for this show. And so if you are not yet a member and you want to know what happens on the other side with the commenters, and I'll just say this too. We only read comments from our community. The people who are rocking with us. You guys want to comment for free on YouTube and yell us. We're not going to read that.
- [01:49]
A
Maybe Tim does. But I, I'll just be very honest. I don't am like, in terms of my time each day to engage with community. Like, I, you know, I try to give like at least an hour, an hour and a half every single day to community engagement. And so I do have to prioritize it. And so I, I tend to prioritize it with the board plus members. And like, again, this isn't, this isn't a value judgment. It's not saying I don't like you guys.
- [02:16]
B
I spent a lot of time in the chat this past couple weeks because I've written some triads. And how's that going? Did you read those? Nope. Did you read those
- [02:27]
A
literally? I didn't. Just so I could troll.
- [02:30]
B
My favorite comment is somebody was like, sarah finally figured out how to read the triad. She started to write the triad. Hey, I. Okay. Yes. So people go, do. We're going to jump into the show because, jb, I got something I want to say to you. I've been. We've not. You've been out and I missed you.
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A
Missed you, too.
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B
Best friend Tim is out. I got to. I've been carrying this whole thing. You guys all.
- [02:55]
A
You have been. Nobody's put the bulwark on your back and just carried the whole thing.
- [03:02]
B
I'm in the comments. But. But I got into this thing with Bill and you know how sometimes your best content ends up being like a throwaway thing that you ended up going down this rabbit hole on. But I got into it with Bill about something that's just been on my mind. You and I have talked about sort of my broken man theory before, but I. I started to talk to Bill about the inverse, which is one of the reasons I get sort of obsessed with how terrible the men leading us are right now is that I've always really loved a good man. And, And, And I went on a bit of a rant about this on the. The Monday show with Bill. And then. But I've been thinking about ever since it got a big reaction. A lot of people emailed me about it and I. I was reflecting on what it is about, like, why I feel this. And the thing is, is I've been very lucky. I've been surrounded by good men. And sometimes people think lesbians. I don't know if people watched Chasing Amy, but there's this, you know, some of the stereotypes of lesbians, they're. They don't like men. You know, they're. The. The feminist stuff gets. Makes them hostile to men. I. I don't think that's true. I do think that straight men and lesbians are natural allies. But also I have always, like, from my dad to my brothers to. To the, like, totally idiot dudes that were my best friends from, you know, middle school on, they've all turned into these really great men. And I love a good man. And I think that it doesn't like. And, you know, now I'm raising a couple of Boys. And I say to them a lot. I'm like, hey, you're going to get big someday. I think about this. I'm a small person. When people meet me at the shows, they're always like, you are shorter than I thought you were. Tiny. Like a five, two.
- [04:54]
A
Tiny.
- [04:55]
B
Yeah. And so men are these, like, big things to me. And always height moggin me. But I say to my boys, like, when you get big, like, your job is to help people. Your job is to use the fact that you're big. Like, I don't. You got to get stuff off shelves for me, obviously. But in life, like, you should look to be someone who helps because you will have this sort of physical advantage over a lot of people. And. And I try to really put that in there because I've been surrounded by men like that, and to watch us be governed by men who are the opposite of that has genuinely been jarring. But I did want to say, you are such an example of a good man. When I think of good men. And it's funny, people who don't know you, sometimes people get the. The cranky version of you, and you're cranky about this stuff.
- [05:52]
A
The only version I got.
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B
No, no, no. I mean, you are cranky about this. But, you know, sometimes when we're off camera, the thing you will get. I've heard you just go on these benders about, like, men who leave their families or the. Like you. But you're like a great dad, a great husband, and you think about how you care for people. Yeah.
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A
And job.
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B
That's the job.
- [06:18]
A
That's the job. We can talk a little more about, you know. Well, let's do some man talk at the end of the show.
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B
Okay.
- [06:26]
A
We've got a lot of stuff we got to get to today. We're going to talk a little bit about streamer. Jvl. That's a new thing that's happening. The ICE vehicle stops. They're back. Iran, we have all sorts of. It turns out that we have two wars in Iran, not just one. That's really interesting. And we're going to talk about the Michigan primary, where you are going to continue to educate me about the attractiveness of Haley Stevens as a political commodity.
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B
That's not what I'm gonna do.
- [06:57]
A
It is something that is. Again, this is probably a me problem, not a judgment on her. We're gonna get to all of that. First of all, I did a streamer show yesterday. Do you know what streamer shows are, Sarah?
- [07:12]
B
Unfortunately, I do, but only because I got inadvertently dragged into the great streamer war of, you know, 2026 because of the. Like, I didn't know who Hasan Piker was until somebody put me on a panel with him last year. And the thing was, he couldn't. He ended up being. Not in person. And I. They were like, trying to explain to me, like, yeah, he can't be here in person because. Because I was like. I was like, I don't know who this guy's. Yeah. Because they wouldn't let the venue, wouldn't let him stream on camera for the event. And then I learned about how there's Destiny and then there's these other streamers, and they all fight with each other and they're on camera for like, eight hours at a time.
- [07:56]
A
Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing that sort of blew my mind. So I believe the origins of streaming come from the gamer community. And so there's a message, a platform called Twitch, that back in the day, like, you'd be on Minecraft or League of Legends or some other game, and you'd just be streaming, and people. It turned out that people would just watch other people play video games. Like, that was a thing that people would do on the Internet. It's like 10 years ago, maybe. And some of that just sort of expanded to other things. They're like baseball card streamers who will just literally open packs of cards on camera and talk about them as they're opening baseball cards. There are political streamers, like your friend Hasan Piker and this guy Destiny. And I went on Destiny's show because Barry is a big Destiny fan, our friend Barry Rubin. And Barry was like, you should do Destiny's Show. Would you do that? I'll hook you up. And I was like, well, I don't know who this guy is, but if you like him, Barry, I trust you.
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B
Oh, you trusted Barry. I love Barry. This is not a value judgment in my life. Okay.
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A
Is that a mistake?
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B
I mean, love me some bear. Bear and I've been together for 15 years, but if Barry gave me a suggestion about a streamer, I don't know, I would take that as gospel.
- [09:21]
A
I went and did it, and it was fine. It was. But here's the thing, because. So I'm doing this over zoom with him, and. And so I'm not seeing the river of comments that happen on a stream. And so for me, it was just like doing a podcast. Right. But whereas he. I got the sense that he was maybe, like, playing video games, like, in the background while talking to me, while Also looking at his comment stream and like multitasking. But this is very clearly an age divide medium because. And I think that this is. Maybe I'm wrong, but this is a lot of. Is just like where you are in the season of life. Because once you pass a certain age, I don't think it's possible to keep up with streamers because you just have too many other responsibilities between your, your job and your family and driving kids back and forth to soccer practice and all like, you know what I mean? Like, people must age out of streaming consumption.
- [10:22]
B
I think that's a good question. I, I certainly, I can't understand the appeal of sitting. Like some of these guys, they're like, I'm gonna go to sleep now and the camera will just stay on me. Or like while I'm eating. I, I don't know exactly why this is a thing, except I will say America has an enormous loneliness problem. And I do think that this is part of the manifestation of that. Right. Is this is how people form community and that typing that everybody's doing, as best I can tell, like there's just a hyper conversation that comes. So people do feel sort of connected to it at all times. But anyway, okay, whatever. You went on the streaming show.
- [11:04]
A
I went on a stream that was basically my takeaway is that according to many of the America's most popular streamers, I am very based. And that's good. I think it's good.
- [11:16]
B
Were you like, I, I could see you going on one of these streamer shows and going full jbl, like just, just the whole end. And JBL is all I've got. That's true.
- [11:28]
A
Yes. I did do America is Doomed. Yes. When he, when, when Destiny. I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm calling you. His name is Steven. I was just like, do I call you Mr. Destiny? Can I just call you by your, your, you're given name? Stephen? He's like, yeah. People in my real life call me Stephen. I was like, great, thanks, Stephen. Yeah. He was like, you know, but you're a little hopeful, right? Yeah, no, not really.
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B
Great. It was KBL to America's Chronically on Online Youth. Give up now.
- [11:56]
A
Give up now. No, but that's what I said. I was like, here's the thing. You've got to, you've got to go down fighting. We're going to lose. But that doesn't mean you give up. You keep fighting all the way down. Okay, so here's the thing that happened. You recall when we did two Weeks ago, the next level I opened by saying, we have some good news. And the good news is that ICE had like an hour before we taped ICE had said, we're going to stop doing these vehicle stops since our agents keep murdering people when they do vehicle stops.
- [12:31]
B
That got reversed real quick.
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A
Well, it did take almost nine days. Tom Homan says that we're doing vehicle stops. They're back on because he's concerned that people will, if they don't use vehicle stops, that people will use their vehicles to hurt ICE officers.
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B
Sarah,
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A
I would pay any amount of money, any amount of money for a responsible news reporter. The next one who is interviewing Tom Homan on News Nation or whatever, to when this subject comes up, ask him, should the Capitol Police have started shooting January 6th protesters when they did not follow commands to step back from the barricades? Should they have? Because that's his. Tom Holman's thing is basically, look, look, if a police officer tells you to do something and you don't do it immediately, well, I mean, you're gonna get killed, right? That's his thing. If you don't want to die, just do what they tell you to do. When should the Capitol Police have started firing and murdering January 6th insurrectionists?
- [13:46]
B
Well, Mr. Homan, you're missing a critical distinction, which is the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6 were homegrown terrorists who supported Donald Trump. And so you gotta understand that for them, that's very different than any, literally anyone else, but especially people that they deem to be illegal immigrants. Although part of what. Part of the reason this did get pulled off, there's two reasons. One is Susan Collins called Mark Wayne Mullen because it's hurting her electoral chances there in Maine, because one of these shootings was in Maine. And the other reason is, is they keep getting the wrong person.
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A
Like they are also a problem.
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B
They are. The people they are killing are not even the intended person they were trying to go get to deport.
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A
They're not trend agua members.
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B
They are not. And so we're running into this situation with ice. ICE is now so wildly funded, they have so much of our money that they can go. And this is happening all over the place now where they are. They are trying to meet quotas, right?
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A
2,000 a day.
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B
2,000 a day. So they've got quotas. They're just trying to get anybody they can. And I think that unless it happens right in your backyard, this is one of those things people don't really see or until it happens to one of the people where you're like, wait a minute. This guy's been here for 20 years. He's like. He's part of the community. And then suddenly everyone goes, well, I think this is going too far. But unless it's happening right in front of you, it's an easy thing, I think, for Americans to not. Not see, which is why Minnesota was so important, because the way that the community itself pushed back led to it being, you know, white Americans who got shot, which I think changed the way. And it was caught on tape. I do keep thinking that this matters a great deal. Oh, yeah, the fact that Alex Preddy and Renee Goode shootings were both caught on tape so that we could see that the government was lying. Which is the other important thing about ICE is that they're not telling us the truth about anything. No.
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A
Right. It's huge. It's a huge problem, isn't it, that, like, I mean, whatever. It's. It's very, very bad. But can you explain to me why nobody. No, no straight media reporter would just ask Homan the January 6th question when he. When he says, I don't think. Well, you know, people just have to. To comply. I mean, okay, so, sir, could you critique that? Why were the jam. Were the Capitol Police wrong to not open fire on. On the January 6th insurrectionist? They didn't comply with orders. We have videotape of them not complying.
- [16:43]
B
Media, if you're listening, if Tom Holman is going to talk to you, you should ask him this question.
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A
If you're interviewing Tom Homan, ask him when they should have started shooting.
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B
This is one of the reasons why I would never say abolish the police, but I might say abolish ICE is. ICE is playing by very different rules. Like, I've heard this. A lot of people who are in law enforcement who have done sort of critiques of the way ICE did the shooting is that their rule is to not. They are not supposed to just unload on anybody who's fleeing.
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A
They're not supposed to walk purposely in front of the vehicles either.
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B
That's right. They're supposed to get out of the way.
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A
You're supposed to not. You're supposed to stay to the side of a vehicle, not go in front. Because you go in front, you are inviting yourself to believe that you can be in danger. I mean, I just sort of take it as a baseline fact that ICE has to be deleted, like completely deleted. And it isn't to say that you don't have those functions. Right. And I think the entire Homeland Security Department should be disassembled. And just. It didn't. The Homeland Security Department didn't exist until 10 minutes ago. And it turns out to have been a mistake. And so it doesn't mean that all those functions go away, but you reapportion them to the other parts of the government where they had been before. And for the types of functions that ICE is supposed to do, you just got to start over, stand up a new agency, build it from the ground up. Because this is a rogue agency. There is no, like, well, we'll just weed out the bad apples. It's all bad. There might be a couple good apples in there somewhere.
- [18:23]
B
I just think at this point, the amount of money, like, they have been out there recruiting new people, like, it is now filled with people who came into it for the purpose of. I would like to fill the hole in my soul with dragging. You know, people who've been here for 20 years and who are being pushed
- [18:40]
A
out onto the streets without any training. Right. Or without adequate training. And so the idea that, like, well, in four years you could reform that you can't.
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B
Right.
- [18:48]
A
The entire culture is just broken. And so start over. Okay, so this is a moment, this segment, not what you just heard. What you just heard was done by me and Sarah because we want to talk about it. So, Sarah, we've had some developments in Iran. You may have noticed that on Wednesday, the Pentagon had a list of casualties from American service members in Iran, and there were 18 service members killed. And then on Thursday, there were only 14 service members killed. You will not forking believe what their explanation for this is. And we're gonna talk all about that. Do you know where we're gonna talk about it, Sarah?
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B
Other side of the paywall.
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A
The other. The other side. Yeah.
- [19:33]
B
Yeah. Guys, come hang. It's a good time.
- [19:37]
A
It's not a good time. It's the bad place. But you should come and hang at the Bad place with us, because that's, like, the only way to do it, right? Nothing worse than being in the bad place by yourself. Be there with your friends.
- [19:51]
B
Yeah, look, we give a lot of stuff away for free. There's not that much behind the paywall. This is one of the things. It's one of the best things. Come do it with us.