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- [00:00]
Bill Kristol
Foreign.
- [00:08]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the bulk podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday, February 24th.
- [00:13]
Dan Bongino
We are in the Upside Down A One of my competitors in the podcasting space, the borderline literate Dan Bongino is taking over as the Deputy Director of the FBI. So that is our big news item for this Monday, and I'm happy to be here with Bill Kristol to discuss it. How you doing, Bill?
- [00:30]
Bill Kristol
I'm fine, Tim. Yeah, I don't really follow Dan Bongino that much. I said in morning shots that I thought he was one of the more clownish of the trumpists. Was that unfair?
- [00:39]
Dan Bongino
No, that is not unfair. And we're about to just listen to a little clip from him that's going to show it and we're going to get into more.
- [00:45]
Tim Miller
In the second part of this podcast.
- [00:46]
Dan Bongino
I interviewed Jared Polis at the principal's first conference, which ended up having a lot of drama and fireworks, more so in the past five years. So we'll get to that in a minute.
- [00:56]
Tim Miller
But first up, let's.
- [00:57]
Dan Bongino
Let's test your theory that Pangino is one of the more clownish Trumpists and listen to a clip from his. His podcast.
- [01:03]
Bill Kristol
The thing that matters is what, Chad? What matters? Anyone?
- [01:09]
Tim Miller
Power. Power.
- [01:12]
Bill Kristol
You can see what. I'm out.
- [01:14]
Jared Polis
Power.
- [01:16]
Bill Kristol
That is all that matters. No, it doesn't. Damn. We have a system of checks and balances. That's a good one. That's really funny.
- [01:26]
Dan Bongino
That is really funny, having checks and balances. And then I've got another tweet for you that he sent recently. The irony about this for the scumbag commie libs is that the cold civil war they're pushing for will end really badly for them. Libs are the biggest pussies I've ever seen, and they use others to do their dirty work, but they're not ready for what comes next. They never have been. You wanted it, now you've got it. Good luck. Does that seem like the temperament for somebody that we want for the number two slot at the Federal Bureau of Investigation?
- [02:01]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, it's wonderful. I hadn't heard that clip. That's pretty amazing, actually. Yeah, I mean, checks and balances, all that stuff. Law, rule of law. So yesterday, really, you know, for Dan there, I mean, I say in the words as he's clownish, not know much about him. But I will defend myself in a sense by saying that. I also mentioned the Charlie Sykes used to love to say that. Still says that clowns with flamethrowers can do A lot of damage. And that's the situation we're in. Right. Some of them are more purposeful. Some of them are more just loud mouths and clownish. And they're all committed to doing a huge amount of damage to our institutions and to our system.
- [02:37]
Dan Bongino
Yeah, I mean, Dan is clownish and dumb. You know, when I do my MAGA research for all of you and, like, listen to MAGA shows, I tried to listen to his and I couldn't because. And it's literally like listening to somebody with a fourth grade reading level doing the news. And so I just, you know, I needed to at least be challenged, have my brain be moving a little bit, which every once in a while, Bannon or Candace or one of the Patrick Betday, one of these other people will at least get my brain waves moving a little bit. Dan Bungino was unable to do that, so I didn't listen to a lot of him. But no, he's a total hack. He seems unstable emotionally. One of the reporters tweeted, like an email that he had sent him recently, calling him a dipshit and making fun of the shape of his head. You know, I mean, like this kind of really, really childish stuff. You can see just like when you watch him, like, his temperament is just the opposite of even keel. He doesn't know his way around the building. I received a text this morning, somebody that said that the top two people now have no idea how the FBI works. They don't know the rules and the policies that make the place work. They fired and forced to retire people one to two levels down. So all of that, you know, combined makes for a pretty, I think, ominous setup. And I think like, the best case scenario is that they are, you know, that it's just like a comedy of errors. But that's probably Hopium at this point.
- [04:04]
Bill Kristol
It could be. I fight these two different interpretations in my own mind. One, there's such clowns. It's all going to blow up and they'll do some damage. But its institutions are somewhat deep. They may not have enough time to do huge amounts of damage in a way that, that Trump will be suffered when they all make obvious mistakes and do things that even the Republicans who so desperately want to get along with Trump can't quite defend. You know, that's. Part of me thinks that and part of me thinks what are you kidding yourself, Bill? I mean, it just go to everything. Republicans will stick with the whole of them. They confirmed. Patel, I haven't heard you've been following this more closely. This morning than I have. I haven't heard a whole lot of complaints about Dan Bongino being the deputy director of the FBI from a party that once claimed to care about law enforcement and so forth. And again, having people who are unqualified, inexperienced, don't know what, what they're doing is in a way a feature, not a bug. Right. If you're an autocrat, you want people who are totally dependent on you, who have no independent standing, who have no stature. Because if they have standing and stature, they might resist a couple of things and they might get some of their colleagues to resist. And if General Milley, I remember this from 2020, if he had, when he threatened to resist Trump, you know, basically all the other chiefs said, well, we're quitting if he quits. Because you know what, they knew, General, they'd known Milley for 20 years, right? He was a four star. They were four stars. Similarly with sort of the senior law enforcement types and senior people in every area, obviously. And that's why they want people like Patel and Hegseth and Bongino.
- [05:30]
Dan Bongino
The only pushback I've seen, and it's TBD and whether this was actually pushback, there's some reporting this morning on this, but the FBI Agents association, the union, had put out a statement about an hour before Bongino was made public. And so I don't know if it's known at this stage whether this is an intentional leak or just very bad timing and bad luck for them. It's a long statement, but it was talking about Patel and it was a message to agents. And they said that they had brought two main concerns to Cash back in January when he was the nominee, had not yet been confirmed. The first was they said that they want the deputy director to continue to be an onboard active special agent, as has been the case for 117 years, for many compelling reasons, including expertise and trust. The other thing was they wanted all the agents to be given due process if there's going to be firings over the Trump investigations. They write this on both points. Director Patel agreed. So noteworthy, I think that Trump announced this, not Patel. Here we are just again with Cash having, I think pretty clearly it's alleged, it's reports, etc. But seems to have lied during his confirmation hearing about his involvement in the firings and now seems to have either lied or been unable to follow up on his promise to the people that are going to work for him about having a competent active agent as his deputy.
- [07:01]
Bill Kristol
That competent active agent probably was not pro January 6th insurrection and probably not pro would not defend the truth of the big lie about the 2020 election. And therefore Trump and some of his people there insist on those two things, I think for any senior post. So it trumps, so to speak, everything.
- [07:20]
Dan Bongino
Else I guess you'd mentioned, Millie, and that just reminded me the news is happening so fast. I guess I don't even know if we got to this on Friday because it might have been after we taped the pod. But there also was the purge of generals over at the dod. We now have a new chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It was a three star general with the nickname Raisin Keynes who seems to have been a big Trump fluffer. And then there are a couple of other changes made. There's not been at least that I've seen yet any actual rationale for the firings and the changes. I don't know. I wonder if you have any thoughts on the purging over at the dod?
- [08:01]
Bill Kristol
No, I mean, I talked to a couple of defense types. When it happened, it happened around 7pm Friday night. I was actually at the principal's first reception and chatting, as it happened, with a military officer who was there in his personal capacity in civilian clothes. But he introduced himself and he was chatting and he was being pretty discreet. And I remember as I left him, we talked for five minutes and I said, well, it's about 7pm Friday. Don't you think this is probably when they fire, you know, Brown and everyone else? Right? I mean, this is like, aren't they big on Friday night firings? And he, he laughed sort of nervously and we agreed, well, yeah, I guess nothing had happened at this moment. As we were talking, we didn't think. And I actually ended up leaving the reception about 20 minutes later and looked at my phone and there it was. As Bob Kagan said when I talked to him yesterday on the Sunday Bulwark podcast, it's about the firings, not about the hirings. You know, I don't know much about General Kane. Maybe he'll be fine, maybe not. There are a couple questionable things. The main thing is he has no independent standing. He was in the Guard after he'd been in the Air Force, he went back into active duty. He worked in the Biden administration kind of amazingly as the main military contact at the CIA. But he's not a four star. He's not someone who's had a combatant command or been chief of staff of one of the services. Those are the two things that the legislation says the chairman should have been One of the. One or the other. Now the second provision of the legislation is the president can waive this when it's in the national interest. But why there was. Was there no one who had been a combatant commander or chief of one of the services who could have replaced General Brown? Why are we replacing General Brown anyway? Trump said nice things about him in his statement. So it's all inexplicable unless you assume that they want someone who is much more beholden to them than any of the actual generals who'd been around for a while, who'd served under administrations of both parties, who had a say, kind of independent standing would be. And then of course they fired the J jags, which I think people who followed this stuff more closely than I do thought was maybe even more striking. Startling. Never happened. Never has happened. You just wipe out the jags for each service. So you then are going to be interviewing and appointing jags whose guidance is going to be presumably. But I think I can say this with some confidence. Whatever Trump orders is lawful. So none of that kind of complicated. Gee, I have a question about this. You got to be a little careful the way you formulate this here at the White House. I think we need to go back, Mr. Secretary, to the White House and say this isn't an appropriate way to formulate an order to the military. None of that. None of that.
- [10:21]
Dan Bongino
Well, just think about the type of resumes you're going to get for the JAG job. I mean, you know, like this is not my area of expertise, but just like using common sense, it's like you have the new Secretary of Defense that has called them JAG offs, that has, you know, impugned their integrity and modems, that said that, that these legal officers were hurting our, our war fighters fighting capability. And then it's just kind of a mass firing of all of them. And now it's like, okay, now we're going to be interviewing people to replace them. The types of person that is going to want that job at this point, I would assume is going to be people that are on board with anything goes.
- [11:02]
Bill Kristol
This is one of the hidden costs in a way. Second order costs. What the right way to say it is consequences of Trump and Trumpism here is that the kind of people who are going to be staying in the government, some will stay as patriots, I think, and try their best to mitigate the damage. Others will stay just. They'll stay. But people who can leave may well leave. I've heard personally about two mid career youngish mid career officers, they don't want to serve. I mean, they may stay because they're patriots and they've risen pretty far in their respective services, but they don't want to be in some chain of command. They're not, they're not high up enough to be directly dealing with Hegseth, but with Pete Hegseth and with the kinds of quality of officers and civilian types who are coming in to the Pentagon, the military is going to be a little harder to simply reduced to loyalists than the civilian types. But they're going to work pretty hard at it. And it may not it's not going to happen overnight, but two, three years from now, the people who will have been promoted, the people who will have acted in such a way so they can get promoted, I mean, I think it's very damaging. And this is true not just in the military, obviously, I think the brain drain from the government, but also the character drain. I don't know if that's not a word, I guess, term, but if you know what I mean by that, the quality of people leaving or not coming in is really going to affect just the quality of our governing institutions and the personnel in them for quite a while, I'm afraid.
- [12:23]
Dan Bongino
No doubt you mentioned your conversation from yesterday with Bob Kagan. We'll put it in the show notes here. We're doing kind of the Sunday substack conversations for folks that don't want the two days off, need something every day. I haven't had a chance to watch the whole thing yet, but some pretty, I think, alarming warnings, to put it mildly from Kagan about the path we're on. Just wondering what struck you the most from the conversation.
- [12:48]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, just what you say that. I mean, we all want to believe it can't happen here. We want to say, oh gee, it's worse than I expected. But there's still these guardrails ahead and there are and we shouldn't exaggerate it, I guess, but boy, I mean, if you had said five weeks ago, was it five weeks now, I can't even keep track, less than five weeks. Right. That all the guardrails that have been trampled would have been trampled and the Republicans and the Senate would have got along with these nominees and the kinds of things that these nominees have said didn't come back to bite them. And the lying, as is the case, I think with Patel. But everything, just everything and everything Trump is doing. Then of course, the betrayal of Ukraine. If you had said all of this within five weeks, I mean Maybe that's it. Maybe there's, maybe everything else now sort of stabilizes at this level. But why not? Isn't the safer assumption to assume that the pattern continues and goes ahead? And that's Bob's main point. If you think 3, 6, 9, 12 months out, unless we can really reverse that, stop this and then reverse it, we are looking at a very bad situation.
- [13:48]
Dan Bongino
Did he have any tangible recommendations on.
- [13:51]
Tim Miller
Things in the meantime?
- [13:52]
Bill Kristol
He just was struck, and I say this in the morning shots this morning, that I mean, it's so on the one hand, they're very strong, Trump and Mosque causing wreaking havoc. He did win the election. Not by, but they've got control of Congress. Nothing can be done. On the other hand, they have control of Congress by four votes in the Senate and two at the current moment. I think in the House, I think it's be three. When they have a special election, is it that impossible for four Republican senators to step up and stop autocracy in the United States? Is it impossible for three House members, some of whom care a lot about just take Ukraine as one issue, to say, I'm sorry, I'm not voting for an appropriations bill that doesn't fund Ukraine. That's it. I'm Mr. I'm for Fitzpatrick from Pennsylvania. I'm Mike Turner from Ohio. I'm someone serious who cares a lot about Ukraine, I think sincerely, and is really invested in it in terms of learning about it and so forth. I don't know, is it that much for them to do? So in a way, part of me thinks, I don't know, it's a big steamroller, but it's a fragile. This isn't a good metaphor, but you know what I mean, it's a fragile steamroller somehow.
- [14:48]
Dan Bongino
Yeah, I do want, I mean, at some level, if we get into the real dark place, there's some tension between the fact that the Congress can't do anything or won't in the case of the Republican Congress. Does that impede Trump or just kind of actually allow him to further consolidate power? There's some discussions already this morning about the budget. Mike Johnson was supposed to pass a budget today. We'll see if it happens. But I don't think that they're going to be able to pass anything. I'm going to have to believe it when I see it. I don't think that these guys can pass anything. I don't think they have the votes for anything. And maybe I'll be proven wrong on that. But if that does come to pass. And it's just chaos on the Hill, obviously, that slows down Trump's agenda at some level. But maybe not in these power ministries, right? Maybe not on the democracy, rule of law side of things.
- [15:43]
Bill Kristol
No, that's a good point. I mean, the chaos is better than submission, sure, but there's a limit to what it can do and what it can accomplish. And what can accomplish more of is in some of the programs that it can keep current budget levels, presumably, or prevent Trump from institutionalizing some of the changes he wants to make. But I agree in the power ministries, he has so much more power because, you know, in foreign policy and defense, he has an awful lot of ability to make stuff happen. And in immigration and law enforcement to a slightly lesser degree. Ultimately, we can't depend on simple chaos and pebbles in the road and molehills ahead of them. There needs to be an actual willingness to stand up to Trump at some point and sooner rather than later.
- [16:27]
Dan Bongino
Y'all, our ads today are all about preparation. When you got Bill Kristol talking to Bob Kagan about the risks of autocracy in our country and how it's important to sound the alarm early and to prepare early, well, that makes everybody think a little bit. You know, it makes all of us make sure that we're prepared and that we have our affairs in order in our own life. As such. Our first ad is from Selectquote. Selectquote is one of America's leading insurance brokers with nearly 40 years of experience helping over 2 million customers find over $700 billion in coverage since 1985. Other life insurance brokers offer impersonal one size fits all policies that may cost you more and cover you less well. Select Quotes licensed insurance agents work for you to tailor a life insurance policy for your individual needs in as little as 15 minutes. Have you ever worried about getting coverage with a pre existing health condition? Select Quote partners with carriers that provide policies for a variety of health conditions, high blood pressure, diabetes, even if you have heart disease. No problem. Selectquote partners with carriers that can cover those conditions and others. Head to selectquote.com and a licensed insurance agent will call you right away with the right policy for your life and your budget. Get the right life insurance for you for less@SelectQuote.com Bulwark Go to SelectQuote.com Bulwark today to get started. That's SelectQuote.com Bulwark so speaking of which, back to the aforementioned Principals first conference. Folks that were not on the Internet didn't see the news over the weekend, the proud boys showed up, Enrique Tarrio showed up, and Ivan Raiklin, some others to the conference. Then the next day there was a bomb threat that was sent in by somebody that mentioned you by name, Bill. Actually, I didn't get mentioned, so I guess maybe not. They're not a podcast listener mentioned several other folks. Obviously it ended up being fake. The interesting thing about it for me, that I think is worth discussing, the January 6th cops were there. Akilah Ganel got the courage award, and they had a panel with Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone. And Fanon said this before the proud boys had shown up. This was him on stage just a little bit before he realized that these guys were going to show up and.
- [18:46]
Tim Miller
Try to create a start.
- [18:47]
Dan Bongino
Let's listen to Michael Finno.
- [18:49]
Michael Fanone
And then Donald Trump pardoned 1500 insurrectionists, hundreds of violent criminals, criminals who assaulted police officers at the Capitol on January 6th. Police officers like you see up here on stage today, but hundreds of other police officers who, regardless of their political ideology or doing their fucking job, Donald Trump sent them there to assault those individuals. And he pardoned them. He pardoned them. And I'll tell you why he pardoned them. He pardoned them because he wants people to know that if you commit crimes on his behalf, he's got your back. And so now what we have in this country is we have Donald Trump's personal brown shirt militia.
- [19:38]
Dan Bongino
It's pretty striking that he said that. And then Enrique Tarrio shows up like 30 minutes later, and then Cash Patel and Dan Panchino are in charge of the FBI 24 hours later. Pretty prescient observation by Michael Finnow.
- [19:50]
Bill Kristol
No, it's fantastic. And I wish more of our Democrats who were in politics would be as clear spoken and plain spoken and speak the truth as much as Fanow did. I was listening to that. So I was up on the next panel. Then you were up after us. I was waiting to go on. It was running a little late. And I was there with Gary Kasparov and Tom Nichols, which was our panel, which was kind of foreign policy. And I was struck when Fanon said it. I mean, I. We've said versions of that, but he said it so with such authority. And he has the kind of authority to say it, obviously.
- [20:19]
Cash Patel
Sure.
- [20:20]
Bill Kristol
And then when, I guess when I was on, when Gary and Tom and I were on stage is when Tario showed up. And I think it was sort of an accident that the Capitol Police guys were at that point were kind of leaving. So they had gone up to the lobby and these guys came in and they had their little showdown which did not get to violence, thankfully. But yeah, the degree to which, I mean, it's going to become normal. Don't you think that proud boys or just, let's just say pro Trump vigilante types, hopefully not indulging in violence, but a certain amount of intimidation and threatening and making life unpleasant. It's. They're going to start showing up at every anti Trump gathering. But not just anti Trump. Right. At the ACLU and the pro immigrants organizations and abortion rights. I mean, why not? Right? And this, they've sort of got a yellow light again. I was struck that it seemed like Tario was pretty careful not to, you know, break the law. He didn't hit anyone. So they can do an awful lot of making life unpleasant for people and deterring people therefore from exercising their rights of free speech and assembly and so forth by just showing up with that kind of implicit, Trump has your back behind them.
- [21:25]
Dan Bongino
Yeah, the menacing element of it. I have a little bit more coming after we finish on the intimidation side of things. But the free reign to menace people element of this is real. And again, it's almost, you roll your eyes to say it at this point, but it is just shocking that you do not have, even after, you know, something like this, where these guys, you know, get pardoned, show up, menace the cops that were injured at the Capitol, there's a bomb threat. Maybe we don't, we don't actually know who sent the bomb threat. And you know, I mean, like, there's not like the Thom Tillis's of the world, you know, who were up there on stage just like a month ago, you know, try mocking liberals or mocking anti Trumpers who are concerned that this might happen, who are concerned that Trump might pardon the violent criminals and like deriding them in the Senate. None of them have the integrity to like even send out a tweet that is like, this is bad. Like, you know, I might disagree with the folks in that room when it comes to the matter of Donald Trump, but like, whatever, I've worked with many of them, they're conservatives, like, they do not deserve to be menaced. They do not deserve to be threatened. And it was a mistake for Donald Trump to release the people from prison that would do this type of thing to police officers. That's a pretty simple statement to send. There are plenty of those statements that were sent by Democrats when it was, I think, a non political attack on Donald Trump at the crazy person in Pennsylvania. And like not only does it not.
- [23:02]
Tim Miller
Happen, there's just like not even any.
- [23:03]
Dan Bongino
Expectation that it'll happen. Right. Like people are like, they've been so beaten down by these guys cowardice that like, I doubt they will even get asked about it on the Hill today, you know.
- [23:13]
Bill Kristol
No, it's a good point. Yeah, people just assume they're. Well, they're not going to say anything.
- [23:16]
Dan Bongino
Weak. That's a bunch of weak, weak, weak individuals. So anyway, good on Heath and Heath Mayo who hosted that event and all the folks that continue to show up. It was good to see a bunch of people out there and these guys cannot, cannot be alone, allowed to silence us with their stupid troublemaking. Lastly, before we get to Morphin Principles first and I'll play some audio from my interview with Polis and my panelist, Sarah Longwell.
- [23:42]
Tim Miller
There was, I don't know to call.
- [23:44]
Dan Bongino
It positive news or not, but the.
- [23:45]
Tim Miller
German elections were over the weekend.
- [23:47]
Dan Bongino
I think it's worth kind of mentioning because it became relevant to domestic politics because Elon Musk and JD Vance is campaigning on behalf of AfD, the far right nationalist, German Nationalist party. They ended up getting just about 20% of the vote in whatever it is, six, seven way election. The CDU CSU led by Friedrich Merz won the election with the most votes, about 29%. SBD had 16, Greens had like 11 or 12. So on the one hand, not great that the AfD is now the second party there, the lead opposition party, if.
- [24:25]
Tim Miller
You will, in Germany.
- [24:26]
Dan Bongino
But I guess it's better than them.
- [24:28]
Tim Miller
Winning a lot better.
- [24:30]
Bill Kristol
No. And they went out. The bad news is the most votes they've gotten, it's maybe they've gotten 13% or something before the high water mark and they're getting 20, 21 almost. So that's not great. On the other hand, they'd been polling at around 20 for the entire election campaign, which there, I think it's about like two months. So they didn't go up. Even though there were terrorist attacks really and some very bad crimes in Germany the last two, three weeks, they got a ton of attention, understandably. And even though Musk and Vance weighed in for them. And so it turned out that actually the German voters, to their credit, were not particularly moved by Musk, you know, doing videos into the AFD conferences or Vance speaking in Munich and in effect endorsing the AfD. And so that's a good sign that there'll be a coalition government at the center like the current coalition government at the center, except for The Christian Democrats on top and the Social Democrats second, as opposed to the way it is now, a little bit glass half full and all that. But I think yes, the center held, you know, and actually in Europe this is the great irony, right. We're supposed to be the strong country, the bastion of the West. These other Europeans, God knows when I was a kid their communist parties were getting 30% of the vote there. And then they were all wusses and they didn't want to fight enough and they don't have, they don't spend money on defense and blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know what? Basically in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, a little complicated, but not as pro Putin Central and Eastern Europe, certainly the Scandinavian countries and the Baltic countries, the center is holding. I wish it were holding here.
- [25:56]
Dan Bongino
Yeah. And the other thing is to your point about Musk's campaigning there and we'll see, I mean these guys are going to use more nefarious methods to get involved in other countries elections going forward. They're going to do more of the what the Russians did in our election, to be honest, social media kind of campaigns, that sort of stuff. And this was, I think that I don't exactly know. People that are in Germany were saying that the X, you know, the for you page on X was pretty favorable to afd, you know, and so maybe there was some algorithmic monkeying around and maybe all that stuff will continue or grow. But in the meantime, these guys aren't popular in most other countries. They do not like Trump, they are growing to hate Musk. And J.D. vance is a zero. Right. And so you're seeing this a little bit in TBD in Canada. I've done several interviews with friend JJ McCullough and other and I was at a conference with some Canadian political experts recently and you know, a month ago the scene was that the conservative candidate Pierre was kind of a shoo in right. That like everybody's so upset with Trudeau and you know, inflation, a lot of the stuff that you know, impaired Biden but then also just he'd been in for so long and it's like time for a change. But like the Trump involvement in Canada, you've seen those polls start to narrow and now it's like a little less certain actually it's possible that Trump bullying of Canada might backfire. I don't know whether him and Musk actually really care that much about whether.
- [27:26]
Tim Miller
These other countries have right wing parties.
- [27:28]
Dan Bongino
Or if it's just like a big social media game. But it is noteworthy that now we've seen that the trend of them being unable to make a positive difference or maybe even harming the candidates of choice now in a couple places.
- [27:41]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, the way one, maybe I put it, if you include the US in this, is there's clearly a backlash against Trump, Musk, Vance and what they're doing and how they're doing it. It's not going that well for them. And as the results come in, I think it could get, the backlash could get stronger. So that's the good news. And it's a healthy backlash. It's not kind of idiotic or radical left wing backlash. It's just like we just have functioning government institutions and a decent liberal democracy here and support our friends and be hostile to people like Putin. So the good news is there is that movement, I think, here at home and maybe around the world actually. The bad news is how much damage can they do before that movement, you know, has political effect both internationally and at home. It's sort of a race between the increasing revulsion really against Musk and Trump and the, and the willingness to begin to abandon him, maybe by some of their voters and some even conceivably some Republican elected officials. But the damage is being done in real time, obviously, both internationally and at home. And that's the situation we face. And I do think I try to make this point in Morning Shots. Larry diamond, the Stanford political scientist, makes his way. It's kind of important to move earlier rather than later. The autocracy just becomes embedded too much at some point and people say, oh, 26 elections are going to be good. Well, I don't know. After 18 months of Musk, of Patel running the FBI and Bondi running the Justice Department and Kristi Noem running DHS and all kinds of information operations and other use of law enforcement to tilt the playing field, maybe calling in the military on some fake, you know, this domestic necess and so forth. I don't know. I think you can't just count on, don't worry, public opinion is going to ultimately move in the right direction and public opinion will be reflected, you know, 100%. That's not the institutionalization of the autocracy. This is the point Bob Kagan made is a real danger.
- [29:32]
Tim Miller
All right, well, that's an uplifting place for us to end. Bill Kristol, everybody else stick around. I'm going to do a little intro.
- [29:39]
Dan Bongino
About the polis interview and, and talk about my call to arms within the panel with Sarah Longwell. So everybody else stick around for that. Thanks so much, Bill Kristol, we'll see you back here next Monday. Creating a trust and will is a very slow and time consuming process, leaving you less time for more important tasks. But trust and will makes creating your will easy and time efficient, meaning you can focus on other important tasks. Get 10% off@trustandwill.com the Bulwark you know, when Dan Bungino, one of the stupidest MAGA podcasters in America, somebody that seems to have an issue with his temper once complained that he has a punchable face when he becomes the Deputy director of the FBI. Some of us might think, well, hey, maybe we should get our affairs in order. Maybe it's time to do a little work, all right? To just make sure that we're planning ahead. And that is where trust and will comes in. You can keep your family prepared and protected by managing your will or trust online. Each will or trust is state specific, legally valid and customized to your needs. Ensure your family and loved ones avoid lengthy, expensive legal proceedings or the state deciding what happens to your assets. Their simple step by step process guides you from start to finish, one question at a time. So uncomplicate the process with trust and will. Protect what matters most in minutes@trustandwill.com Bulwark and get 10% off plus free shipping. That's 10% off and free shipping@trustandwill.com BulWark.
- [31:35]
Tim Miller
All right everybody, I got two things.
- [31:37]
Dan Bongino
For you from the principal first conference.
- [31:39]
Tim Miller
Over the weekend I was on a.
- [31:40]
Dan Bongino
Panel with Sarah Longwell. Listen to all of that. If you are a Bullork member, go to theborg.com subscribe we posted that over the weekend on our substack, but I want to play a short bit from the very end. That was a rift that I was doing after Tarrio had shown up to the conference and we were discussing, like we did last week, Robert Garcia getting the letter from Ed Martin about his comments about Musk on CNN and all of these other examples of intimidation that we've seen. And I just wanted to offer everybody a reminder that at this point, to Bill's point, about how the autocracy may come, it hadn't come yet. We talked about this Adam Kinzinger on Friday and I want to continue to reiterate it. There is something to be said for speaking up and speaking out and doing so clearly and doing so without apology and not editing yourself or censoring yourself. It's important to do regardless of whether it has a political benefit because it has other benefits and has other societal Benefits, you know, it might be eye rolly cliche, but courage is contagious and we should all do our part in any way we can, either in our communities or on YouTube if you're me. So I'll play you a little bit of that clip from my conversation with Sarah Longwell and then the full interview with Jared Polis before he goes to Jared Polis interview, I gave him a homework assignment which was to read the principal's first principles, the declaration of Principles, because he was the only Democratic elected official to come, which I thought was really cool for him to come. But he took the homework assignment very literally, as a high achieving nerd that he is. And he had read all the principles and was ready to talk about them. And so if you're listening to the interview, I would assume 99.9% of you.
- [33:28]
Tim Miller
Have not read the principles first principles.
- [33:30]
Dan Bongino
So if you want to read them and see what he was talking about, I mean, they're all pretty good. Let's talk about how integrity matters. It's about the Constitution being paramount. It's the type of thing that you would expect a bunch of norms loving, never trump Republicans, former Republicans to put.
- [33:44]
Tim Miller
As their principles list.
- [33:45]
Dan Bongino
But to give you some context for the conversation, we'll put the link in the show notes or in the YouTube description so you guys can read those to give you a little bit of perspective on my conversation with Governor Polis. So I hope you enjoy these conversations.
- [34:00]
Tim Miller
From the principals first summit.
- [34:02]
Dan Bongino
And we'll be back here tomorrow for.
- [34:04]
Tim Miller
Another edition of the board podcast.
- [34:05]
Dan Bongino
See you all that people that are.
- [34:07]
Tim Miller
Supposed to be speaking out, people that are in the political fray, we cannot be made to be afraid of these fucking people, okay? We cannot. I know these people. I know these people. They are cowards. They are cowards, okay? Like Cash Patel would shit his pants if he was in Fallujah. Okay, so would I, by the way. But like, I know them. I know them. I know their type. And they are cowards. They are bullies and they are cowards and they are trying to intimidate us and they are trying to shut us up with their stupid letters that they're sending from Ed Martin and the DOJ or from Elon Musk's Twitter feed. He thinks that he can bully people and shut them up for his Twitter feed. No, none of these people are worth fearing, all right? And when I talked to Kinzinger about this yesterday and his message to them was, come and arrest me. All right? Come and arrest me. But until then, I'm going to say what I'm going to say. And I feel like people need to hear that because speaking out right now is a good in itself. A lot of times on our podcast, we talk about what's the strategic thing to do and what's the smart thing to do. And I just, as I think about this, if we are really going where I think all of us think we're going, towards an Orbanist type government, like nobody asked the dissidents in Hungary, like, do you think that it's going to help the polls if you speak your poll numbers, if you speak out against Orban? Nobody asks that. Right. Because everyone understands that in the face of an autocratic threat, just saying no is an end into itself. And so to me, we might all go through this principles list in 2029, God willing, with a new president, and discuss how many of them we still agree on. And in the public space, get to debate the policies and disagree on them. But in the meantime, our job is to say no to this, to stand up to them and to not be afraid, because they want you to be afraid. And you have no reason to be fearful of these little men. What's happening, everybody? As much as I like Heath's intro, I told him next year I want pyrotechnics like cpac. That's the only thing we'll steal from them. You know, just something with a little bit of a little heat. Get us going in the morning. How you doing, Governor? Good to see you again.
- [36:37]
Cash Patel
I was sold there to be pyrotechnics. I'm a little disappointed, frankly.
- [36:40]
Tim Miller
Well, this is your first one. Next year we're gonna make this happen. That's my home state, Governor. Not anymore. I'm in Louisiana now. I'd like to trade him for Jeff Landry, but I don't think that's gonna happen, unfortunately, unless you're interested. Are you interested in moving to Louisiana?
- [36:53]
Cash Patel
You know, we're interested in welcoming you back to Colorado.
- [36:56]
Tim Miller
Okay. You're gonna get me in trouble with my mother. I gave you some homework before we got here. Cause I believe you're the only elected Democrat here. Is that right? Was there any other elected Democrats? We had some candidates, maybe.
- [37:06]
Cash Patel
Sadly, there's not as many elected Democrats anymore.
- [37:09]
Tim Miller
Yeah, okay. It's hard to choose from, so I think you're the only one here. And so. So the homework I gave you was to look at Heath's 15 principles, or maybe there are 16 we don't know and see kind of where you think our alignment is. Where are we starting?
- [37:21]
Cash Patel
Well, first, I mean.
- [37:22]
Tim Miller
And you did your homework. You got it here.
- [37:24]
Cash Patel
Well, that's part of the problem. There's too many of them, and you guys gotta edit it a little bit.
- [37:29]
Tim Miller
Cut them down a little.
- [37:31]
Cash Patel
By the way, how great it would be if the folks here were the governing coalition of our country and how proud we would be as a nation to create prosperity and peace in the.
- [37:41]
Tim Miller
World would be nice.
- [37:43]
Cash Patel
Someday. Someday you'll be back.
- [37:46]
Tim Miller
We could argue about a couple things. You know, there's 15 or 16 of them.
- [37:49]
Cash Patel
So that was. We need EPA reform. My goodness. So epa, did you say?
- [37:54]
Tim Miller
We might be on the same page.
- [37:55]
Cash Patel
And nepa. We need NEPA reform, too. I mean, these are things where we hope the Trump administration gets it right.
- [38:01]
Tim Miller
We'll get to that.
- [38:02]
Cash Patel
We will. So there's too many. And they're all good, they're all wonderful. I look through them. I mean, we can go through them. But integrity, character, and virtue matters. That might be sort of a sad wish as opposed to kind of a value, because to the voters, they don't. Now, this is important because it's a value every person has dignity, quality, and worth. Yes, truth is important. I think you can combine that with. No one's entitled to their own facts. So, I mean, look, I mean, somehow Martin Luther did 95 theses, but generally speaking, in marketing and politics, you got to get it to three or four to kind of resonate, you know, And I think there's ways to kind of. Without sacrificing the value piece, kind of get this down to the three or four that you can put on a little card and you can put on a sign, and that can mean something to people. But I'm excited by them all. You know, free and functioning markets deliver prosperity. I mean. Absolutely. And I think that's been forgotten. I just heard the tale in the last discussion. The danger of the tariffs and taxes, on shutting down transactions between two people who are inherently better off because they make a transaction would be devastating not only to the global economy, but right here at home in our backyard.
- [39:10]
Tim Miller
Yeah, let's. And we also have a lot of policy overlap, you know, U.S. former U.S. exiled Republicans and you, you know, free markets, free people. Let's talk a little bit about what you've been doing in Colorado before. We might have to argue a little bit about politics, but our agreement is more about policy. And you've done, I mean, regulatory reforms. You did the chainsaw before. It was cool, I think, and cutting some red tape or before it was not cool. I guess we have another way to put it.
- [39:35]
Cash Patel
We got rid of 208 old executive orders. Now here is. So I had been working on this, by the way. You know, the proper way is you, you work on things and you plan them. You don't just go by the seat of your hands. So it took us about six months to figure out, you know, we were going to repeal these 208 orders. And then unfortunately, because of the time and it was during, after the election, people, you know, then thought somehow we got the idea from Doge. But I say no, no, they got the idea from us.
- [39:59]
Tim Miller
Okay.
- [39:59]
Cash Patel
We started earlier. But yeah, as a, as an executive, I can get rid. And I got rid of executive orders dated back to 1920 that were still in effect in our state, vast majority over the last 10, 20 years. So that was exciting. And I've challenged our legislature to do the same, to go through our rules, because again, unlike certain other executives, I don't think I have the power to single handedly nullify laws. So I challenge our legislature to go back and look at all of the laws that require different rules. Because sometimes an executive is required by a law to do rules and go back and eliminate some of that as well.
- [40:31]
Tim Miller
Yeah. And as Heath mentioned, we're like building houses. That's exciting. You know, market based on.
- [40:38]
Cash Patel
Get government out of the way. You know, the market and the price of housing is a function of supply and demand. The fact that demand is high in Colorado is wonderful. People want to live there, you want to live there, it's great, you all move out there. But we have artificial government imposed constraints on supply. That is a single reason why a home would cost a lot more than its replacement value, which they do in average home price in Denver is about 600,000, which is high. I mean, it's not California high, but it's high. And so we have basically allowed more housing to be built, whether it's townhomes, whether it's multifamily housing, the kinds of inherently more affordable housing, which ironically is often the most difficult kind of housing to get past your local planning board, the single family homes they let you build. But the more affordable kinds of homes are actually harder to approve. So we've made a lot of progress in that. We continue that work.
- [41:33]
Tim Miller
Yeah, you cut taxes.
- [41:35]
Cash Patel
We did when I. I'm just trying.
- [41:36]
Tim Miller
To warm up all the concerns.
- [41:37]
Cash Patel
When I became governor, our income tax rate was 4.63%. We cut it at the ballot box to 4.5. We cut at the ballot box to 4.4, and then we cut it through the legislature to 4.25%. So that's our income tax.
- [41:52]
Tim Miller
Okay. And. And you're not needlessly mean to transgender people or rejecting people from coming to your state? No.
- [42:00]
Cash Patel
This is where we say, I like this. It's what every person has, dignity, quality, and worth that needs to stay there. I mean, we value everybody based on the content of their character, their contributions and who they are. And, you know, there's good and bad people of all kinds.
- [42:19]
Tim Miller
You were. That's. There's no doubt about that. There's some bad gays out there. Not on this stage, but they exist. I could think of a couple. Speaking of that you were in the room yesterday with, was it yesterday or two days ago now, where the governor of Maine, your colleague, was kind of getting into it with the president. Janet Mills, what'd you think? What'd you make of that exchange?
- [42:42]
Cash Patel
Well, I don't, you know, none of us had the context going in because this was, until it was elevated by the president and the governor, it was an obscure thing going on with Maine. So we didn't really know what was going on at the time. But apparently it has to do with following the guidance around women's sports. And I mean, women's sports are obviously something like in any sports, we want to prevent cheating. I mean, everybody wants to prevent cheating in sports. And of course, steroids, hormones, they can all be used for cheating. And that has no place in sports. And of course, you know, at the same time, we want people to be able to participate. It's a really, it's a little bit. So, you know, my. We try, we have discussions around our dinner table. I have a 10 year old daughter and a 13 year old son and we were talking about this should, you know, where's the line and how do you make sure that you don't have boys sort of cheating to play in girls sports? And my daughter said, I don't understand. We beat the boys.
- [43:39]
Dan Bongino
Yeah.
- [43:40]
Cash Patel
And she did. They had basketball team, you know, it was your girl's basketball team and they beat the boys basketball team.
- [43:45]
Tim Miller
Yeah. No, my daughter beat her boy cousin in Colorado in basketball and that caused a meltdown over Christmas. So we're not gonna talk about it. Hopefully Louie's not listening. The other thing is just I think the capriciousness, regardless of what you think about, like where the line is when it comes to youth sports and gender capriciousness, of how Trump is acting. Right. About all this stuff.
- [44:08]
Cash Patel
Yeah, right. I mean, you just discuss it in a rational way. Of course, boys shouldn't be in girls sports. I mean, it's ob.
- [44:15]
Tim Miller
Nothing to do with cutting Medicaid funding from people in Lewiston.
- [44:18]
Cash Patel
Right. And it has nothing to do with people who were, you know, born of indeterminate or intermediate genders and where they play. I mean, you know, it's. You want fairness in sports, but you want participation in sports, but it's like, it's kind of. I think those are broad American values. You want fairness and you want to provide ways people can participate. But, yeah, very little of that is anything to do with, like, the cost of living and the real issues that matter. I mean, I think after talking to Janet Mills, she said there's like, one kid this even affects in their whole state.
- [44:47]
Dan Bongino
Yeah.
- [44:48]
Tim Miller
I'm curious if you got any clarity.
- [44:50]
Cash Patel
Obviously, on a human level, we gotta feel bad for that kid that they're in the center of all this stuff. I mean, my goodness.
- [44:54]
Tim Miller
So you were behind the scenes. You had to have dinner with Donald Trump last night. I was at the gay bar. So you guys can decide who had a more enjoyable evening. Do you get any clarity from the White House on the kind of random government workers that are being fired in your state?
- [45:09]
Cash Patel
No.
- [45:10]
Tim Miller
Whether you're gonna have any fleet funding for Medicaid?
- [45:12]
Cash Patel
There's no clarity from this. So that in my limited time, what I talked about, and I know you came off a conversation of tariffs, like you, I believe in free trade and open markets, and trade is inherently good.
- [45:24]
Tim Miller
You can see why he's my favorite Democrat there. We got one clap here, one clapper. Me and Jared are the only ones left.
- [45:30]
Cash Patel
But my concern was, and obviously we all, you know, we're hopeful that the president somehow has this master negotiating strategy. We're going to wind up with less tariffs rather than more. But, you know, I'm not holding my breath, but I did say, look, I mean, if you want. If there's less. Less tariffs, I'll be the first to praise that. But I said, whatever is happening here, please try to wrap this up in the next few months, because investment is frozen. Nobody can plan. The uncertainty is the enemy of prosperity and in the business. So we're at whatever level we're going to wind up at, we've got to figure this out. For Your own benefit, Mr. President, in the next few months. Because if this goes on for four years, the uncertainty alone will cause a recession.
- [46:14]
Tim Miller
We're not rooting for a recession, right? No, no, no.
- [46:17]
Cash Patel
As I said, I really I hope that somehow, if we come out of this with. I'm not holding my breath, but less tariffs, less restrictions on trade, that would be wonderful.
- [46:27]
Tim Miller
I was just speaking for myself. I know you're good, Jared. I'm the devil on your shoulder. What about the other uncertainty with regards to the cuts? And you had some controversy in your state about, I guess, what, forest rangers got fired, and who the hell knows are government workers that are in every state. Like, have you. Do you get any conversations about that?
- [46:43]
Cash Patel
As far as we can tell, there's no rhyme or reason to the cuts. Now, obviously, we want things that are wasteful to be cut. But an example of this sort of wrecking ball approach was they actually laid off a lot of the folks involved with fire prevention, park management in Colorado, which are incredibly important. So not the firefighters themselves, but the road maintenance, the road maintenance, how you get the fires to fight them, forest management. So these are folks that are, in our view, and I think the view of any rational government on the left or right, small government, big government. I mean, this is like a core function thing. Right. So we hope that they reverse that. No idea if they will.
- [47:25]
Tim Miller
Yeah. I saw a tweet as I was coming in, a rare good one from Jessica Riedel, who's a friend of Principals first, and she wrote this. If Mitch Daniels was running doge, I think we could replace his name with yours here. If Jared Polis was running doge, they'd have already begun implementing GAO wrecks to fix the billions in payment errors, consolidating duplicative programs, auditing thousands of programs for efficiencies legally, competently, and with minimal disruption. That's real money. That's not what they're doing.
- [47:52]
Cash Patel
That's right. For every government program, you should ask really two questions. First is, should we even be doing this? And there's absolutely things that are being done that are counterproductive that we should not do at every level of government. The second is, okay, we should do this. How can we do it more efficiently? Let's create a more efficient way of doing it. It's not just sort of like, huzzah, destroy it all. Like, okay, you know, should we be doing it? And if we should be doing it, how do we do it more efficiently?
- [48:19]
Dan Bongino
Yeah.
- [48:19]
Tim Miller
Yes.
- [48:20]
Cash Patel
Mitch Daniels, absolutely. Would have been wonderful.
- [48:22]
Tim Miller
Would have been much better. But we are where we are. And so I saw you on one of the Sunday shows over the weekend, and you seem to, like, give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe they will land in a place where they are going to actually care about efficiency. And I guess maybe that was one area where we part ways, a rare area where we part ways, because I don't think that they have any intention to do anything.
- [48:46]
Cash Patel
Give them the space to see if they hoist themself on their own petard here. Right. Like with trade, as I said, if somehow this leads. Somehow this leads to, like, lower tariffs and more free trade. That's wonderful. Yeah, that's wonderful.
- [48:59]
Tim Miller
Do you think that's going to happen?
- [49:01]
Cash Patel
I'm an eternal optimist.
- [49:03]
Tim Miller
You are an optimist. What about. I mean, what about when it comes to the Doge. And there's got to be. Do you have any. You still have even a hint of hope that this could end positively?
- [49:13]
Cash Patel
Well, I don't have much visibility into what's going on. Right. I mean, does anybody.
- [49:17]
Tim Miller
You're the governor of a state.
- [49:20]
Cash Patel
It's federal, not.
- [49:21]
Tim Miller
You know, there are people in your state that are losing their jobs.
- [49:24]
Cash Patel
They're gonna tear stuff down. And again, if there are things that we don't need to do, let's stop doing them. And then the question on if there's things that we agree we should do, how do we do it more efficiently? Doge doesn't seem to be answering that at this point. It seems to just be, you know, stopping the current way, fine. But then what replaces it is actually turns out to be very important.
- [49:43]
Tim Miller
I see that you're hopeful and optimistic.
- [49:45]
Cash Patel
No, there's another one. I'm getting rid of the penny. I'm all for that. Get rid of the penny. That's great.
- [49:49]
Tim Miller
I'm with you on the penny.
- [49:50]
Cash Patel
Yep.
- [49:51]
Dan Bongino
I'm.
- [49:51]
Tim Miller
I'm taxpayers.
- [49:52]
Cash Patel
A couple hundred million dollars a year, environmental costs, the mining of zinc and copper.
- [49:57]
Tim Miller
So, yeah, poor people at the penny plant, though, it's tough.
- [50:01]
Cash Patel
Oh, you know, we'll still make pennies for collectors. Some of those are in Denver, by the way. You know, we have the Denver Mint, but we still make nickels and dimes and quarters.
- [50:08]
Tim Miller
I had to go there as a kid. It's a really boring field trip.
- [50:11]
Cash Patel
We can't. We can't use the. We can't use the force, you know, force of government to preserve horse and buggy manufacturers. We. Once the car's invented.
- [50:17]
Dan Bongino
That's a good point.
- [50:18]
Tim Miller
I'm with you on that. So here's the thing, though. You're optimistic. You've heard some things that might sound nice that you could imagine you agree with. Have they actually done anything that materially would improve the welfare of a person in Colorado so far. I mean, it's only been a month. They being the Fed, Trump and Elon. Has there been anything that they've done that you're like, okay, Coloradans are gonna benefit from this Lean.
- [50:41]
Cash Patel
What have they done so far?
- [50:41]
Tim Miller
I mean, it's mostly 1,000 executive orders. They fired a lot of people. They renamed some things.
- [50:46]
Cash Patel
Yeah. A lot of them were held up in court. I mean, I can't think of one right now.
- [50:50]
Tim Miller
Me neither. That's discouraging, though.
- [50:52]
Cash Patel
I'm hopeful, Tim, on zoning and reform and permitting reform, if they get rid of the penny. But no, it's all if. If they do this. If they do this. If they do this. But no, I. I mean, nothing makes Colorado more prosperous that they've done yet, or America more prosperous, in my opinion. In fact, to the contrary, the threat of the tariffs, obviously, is a major drag on our economy.
- [51:13]
Tim Miller
Yeah, well, that's not good. If the only thing I can think of is the threat.
- [51:16]
Cash Patel
Those are not all threats at this point. Aren't some of them with China, they're actually in force, right?
- [51:20]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [51:20]
Cash Patel
The Canada and Mexico ones, thank God, are still a threat. I hope they go, that threat goes away. But some of those are actually already been implemented, so they're already causing harm.
- [51:28]
Tim Miller
That's a good reminder that the China once been enforced. All right. They've renamed the Gulf, though, so we have a new Gulf, the Gulf of Trump. I was wondering if we could Spitball. Do you want to rename anything? Like, you only got two years left in Colorado. You've updated a few things. I'm from Littleton. That's kind of like a beta name. Littleton. I was thinking maybe we could rename that after, like, maybe me or Nikola Yotic.
- [51:49]
Cash Patel
We should name it after. Yeah, somebody like that.
- [51:51]
Tim Miller
Millerton. Jokichton. Is there any other name?
- [51:55]
Cash Patel
Yokichten would be fun. I think Colorado would go for that. I think that'd be awesome.
- [51:58]
Tim Miller
Did you have any other renaming ideas?
- [52:00]
Cash Patel
Well, you know, I tweeted on this, but when the, you know, the whole trinity in the Gulf of Mexico, I said we could do a compromise. We have a place, you know, well, in Colorado, Casa Bonita. I said we should call it the Gulf of Casa Bonita because it's a little bit American, a little bit Mexican. It's good for business.
- [52:18]
Tim Miller
You could sell me on that. We could maybe sell the naming rights also.
- [52:22]
Cash Patel
Auction them off. That's what those should be doing, auctioning.
- [52:25]
Tim Miller
Off the naming rights. Close the national deficit okay, well, I'm interested.
- [52:29]
Cash Patel
You hit on something. Why not that. But let's auction off some other naming rights. Maybe we should do that in Colorado too. Auction off the naming rights for one of our towns or something.
- [52:37]
Tim Miller
I'm up for it. Maybe in Lauren Boebert's district. If we're gonna have to pick a place to auction off, I would probably start there. You mentioned the debt and the deficit. This is another thing I think that is important and I think you'd be a good messenger on this because some other Democrats don't care about this. They don't have any plans actually to cut the debt or deficit.
- [52:56]
Cash Patel
No. And we all look what Trump, what the President said during the campaign, the deficit would go up substantially. And all this talk of doge. And again, I hope they succeed. But, but this is like this much. I mean, you know, whether it's USAID and these other things, it's not.
- [53:11]
Tim Miller
We've got 5 trillion in tax.
- [53:13]
Cash Patel
It's not any material way closing the deficit. So we. Yeah, you know, I support. In Colorado we balance our budget every year. I think we need a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. constitution. And you know, not because it's good policy, but because it's better than the alternative of not having one, as we've learned. So I think we should have it.
- [53:34]
Tim Miller
I asked several people what I should ask you and everybody demanded that I ask you about rfk. So here we are. You had some nice things to say about rfk. He's just an okay. He's okay for me. He's bad to quite bad, I would say. But you, that's pretty good for the.
- [53:50]
Cash Patel
New administration, isn't it? I guess the bad to quite bad is like top of the.
- [53:54]
Tim Miller
What are you seeing? What was it about RFK that gave you a little interest that piqued your interest?
- [53:59]
Cash Patel
Well, I think he's interested in. Well, he is interested in health and prevention and reducing chronic disease. And that excites me. Colorado is a healthy state. We have one of the lowest obesity rates, healthy diet, we get one of the longest lifespans. So I'm excited to work with him, saw him yesterday and talked to him and I think there's a lot of ways we can work together. And to be clear, and it's a shame I have to say this every time. But of course I don't believe in the nutty anti science stuff. I'm pro vaccine, I'm for all that. And he's sad that he won't get in the way of that. So hopefully That'll be you take him in his word.
- [54:32]
Tim Miller
We come back to our fundamental disagreement.
- [54:35]
Dan Bongino
Your eternal optimism.
- [54:36]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I don't know. I'm not feeling that good about that. What about the other thing about making America healthy again? That gets me a little crossways, I think, with rfk, which is I don't know how cutting all research to any infectious diseases in the future is a very good idea. I think that's kind of a bad idea as far as on the health ledger.
- [54:57]
Cash Patel
We need more research. Absolutely.
- [54:59]
Tim Miller
But I mean, what do you like, do you feel like he's, he's serious about that, though? I mean, they're already, we're already seeing real ramifications to like, programs getting cut.
- [55:08]
Dan Bongino
Right.
- [55:08]
Cash Patel
Look, I mean, you look at the life saving research that's been done in our generation, the previous generation. We all have healthier, longer lives and we need more research.
- [55:19]
Tim Miller
Okay. I want to. I'm just doing my best to just poke your optimism here. I'm trying to do it like you're like an optimism balloon. And I'm just gonna keep pinning until I find a spot where we can let the air out.
- [55:29]
Cash Patel
What are you, the most likely voted for this guy? I mean, we're just saying like, we hope we are, you know, best wishes for the country here. I mean, he's got to get something right out of the 20 or 30 things he's.
- [55:39]
Tim Miller
Do you think, are we sure? Broken clocks. What. What worries you? And we've mentioned the tariffs. What else worries you the most? You know, like if he called you tomorrow, he's like, we had a great dinner. You seem like the only Democrat that is normal, you know, and he gives you a buzz and he's like, jared, what do you think I should. What do you think I should not do? What would you stop him from doing besides the tariffs? We mentioned the tariffs.
- [56:00]
Cash Patel
I'm obviously very concerned about abandoning our European allies and the fight for freedom and democracy. Again, don't know where that's headed, but very concerning remarks about the conflict. We cannot embolden Putin on the world stage, and I'm worried about that.
- [56:19]
Dan Bongino
Yeah.
- [56:20]
Tim Miller
Let's talk about the Dems for a minute. And just going forward, I'm wondering how you think the Democrats can try to recapture the mantle of appealing to working people, to people that don't really like the status quo, to the types of people that RFK appeal to. Let's just be honest. What are some ways that you think the party can kind of not have to sort of be the establishment? Right. How can the party embrace being reformed.
- [56:49]
Cash Patel
First of all, I think these principles that you have are a very good underpinning. Again, there's too many of them, but they're promising and really talking about prosperity, abundance, economy. I mean, you know, we are deeply concerned that this president's economic agenda could lead to less prosperity rather than more if he does what he's saying he's going to do. And I think we need to offer the alternative. And the Democrats have not always been, you know, pure on these issues. They've been pro trade. President Obama and President Clinton led us into many more trade agreements, brought down tariffs, brought down non tariff barriers to trade. We've, you know, large significant pro growth tax policies. But you know, these are, these are things that we should lean into because it makes a difference for people.
- [57:34]
Tim Miller
The Democrats did quite poorly in most blue states, like not swing states this past year. Lost a lot of ground in the Northeast and the West. Two places where the Democrats lost a little ground but not too much was Utah and Colorado. Is it just luck and the fact that there are a lot of Mormons there, you think? Or was there something that Mormons. Hell yeah. Or is there something that you did that you think might be worth looking at if you're a governor of an east coast state?
- [58:04]
Cash Patel
I mean, just trying to meet the needs of Colorado. So we've been focused on, we talked about reducing taxes, removing barriers to housing. We also eliminated sales tax on a number of products. We implemented free universal preschool, which I'm very excited, very big priority for us, preparing all kids for success. You know, it prepares kids for success. The long term longitudinal studies show that. And I love your, you know, your data point, that data is important. It also saves families, you know, $6,000 a year in the here and now, four year olds preschools, very expensive. So really just trying to meet the needs of folks where they're at and grow our economy and prosperity.
- [58:41]
Tim Miller
So do you not see that happening in the coastal states? Like what are you doing that they're not doing in California and New York? I mean, I mean The Democrats lost 10 points in New York like a ton. It was not just on the margins. Right.
- [58:53]
Cash Patel
It was not just. I'm not an expert in coastal politics, so I can't.
- [58:57]
Tim Miller
You got a sense.
- [58:58]
Cash Patel
I can't say all the factors.
- [58:59]
Tim Miller
You're not damn ga.
- [59:00]
Cash Patel
I could talk more about what we did do. Right. So I mean we also, in addition to cutting income tax, we cut property taxes too. And we capped any future property tax increases of 5%. So you know, really just trying to address people's costs and concerns. We've had a thriving economy in Colorado, and that's kind of, in fact, what led to the run up in housing prices. Right. Along with the artificial constraints on supply that we're trying to systemically disassemble and allow more housing to be built.
- [59:26]
Dan Bongino
Yeah.
- [59:27]
Tim Miller
Do you look back at Covid and feel like that, you know, there's like a lengthy backlash to kind of how that was, how that was managed at all. How do you reflect back on Covid? We first met actually, because I watched your press conference during COVID and it was around mask mandate and you said some reporters were giving you trouble and you were like, I sat and read the studies and I read the studies and I decided that we didn't need.
- [59:54]
Cash Patel
We should want to wear a mask. Wear a mask. I mean, please. I encourage you. Right? It's like. Right. We encourage. But we didn't have. We said the mandates didn't make sense and we did. We just looked at all the data and the studies, and people are perfectly able to be agents in determining their appropriate risk levels for themselves. And I was glad that, you know, my parents, who are now 80, you know, did stay home a lot and when they went out, wore a mask. And that was. That was very important.
- [60:18]
Tim Miller
Do you worry about that with regards to rfk if we have a bird flu outbreak and kind of how we are prepared to manage another pandemic? I just worry we don't have a lot. Jared Polis is reading the studies in charge.
- [60:29]
Cash Patel
I don't honestly remember what he was saying during COVID I don't remember if he was responsible or what he advocated during that. But as I said on reducing chronic disease, improving health, diet and nutrition. These are huge upside for the American people if that's what he focuses on. And there'd be downside if he were to focus on making vaccines harder to get or reducing our vaccination rate.
- [60:53]
Tim Miller
All right, final one next year. We don't want you to be alone as the Democratic elected here at Principals First. So could you nominate a few other Democrats you would like us to heath to recruit?
- [61:02]
Cash Patel
Yeah, I'd be happy to grab a few. We'll strategize.
- [61:06]
Tim Miller
We're going to strategize. You know, nobody come straight to mine.
- [61:08]
Cash Patel
I'm just worried that they're going to fall asleep before they make it through all 16 of your principals.
- [61:12]
Tim Miller
What about Wes Moore? Maybe he's just. Wes is terrific. Anybody else? Abigail Spamberger.
- [61:18]
Cash Patel
That would be great to get her. Absolutely. So we'll strategize. I think we. Absolutely. This is not partisan. We should have a lot of great folks. And whether they are Ds or Us or Rs, they ought to be part of this. Because, you know, this is just on the heels of another little conference called, you know, cpac, you may have heard of it. And I said, we want to be. You want to be bigger than cpac, so you got to grow next year. That's the goal. You got to be bigger. Bigger than CPAC.
- [61:45]
Tim Miller
Look at that. That's my man. It's Governor Jared Politz, everybody. If only we had 50 like him, we'd be in better shape. We'll see, y'all.
- [61:53]
Jared Polis
Well, I'm about to get sick from watching my TV Been checking out the.
- [62:02]
Cash Patel
News.
- [62:05]
Jared Polis
Till my eyeballs fail to see I mean to say that every day is just another rotten mess Showing up and when it's gonna change, my friend is anybody's guess Waiting I hoping for the best Even think I'll go to praying Every time I hear them say there's no way to delay that trouble coming every day there's no way to delay that trouble coming every day Wednesday I watched the riot I seen the cops out on the street I watched them throwing rocks and stuff and choking in the heat I listened to reports about the whiskey passing around I seen the smoke and fire and the market burning down I watch while everybody.
- [63:39]
Cash Patel
On.
- [63:39]
Jared Polis
The street will take a turn the stomp and smash and bash Crash and slash and bust and burn When I'm awake When I'm hoping for the Even think I'm old afraid Every time I.
- [64:03]
Cash Patel
Hear a.
- [64:13]
Jared Polis
Way to lay that trouble come and every day no way to delay that trouble come and every day.
- [64:29]
Tim Miller
The board podcast is produced by Katie.
- [64:32]
Dan Bongino
Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.