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- [00:02]
Tim Miller
You want Black Friday prices without the Black Friday crowds. Lowes gets it.
- [00:07]
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- [00:18]
Tim Miller
Dad because we've got up to 40% off select tools and accessories. That's how Low celebrates Black Friday. Early selection varies by location while supplies last. Happy Halloween. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Couldn't be more excited to welcome a former syndicated opinion columnist at the Washington Post, but she'll be joining us at the Bulwark next week is an economics editor and writing a weekly newsletter called Receipt. She's also a co host of MSNBC's the Weekend Primetime and a new mom. Lots happening for Katherine Rampel. Welcome aboard, Katherine.
- [01:07]
Katherine Rampell
Great to be here.
- [01:08]
Tim Miller
We're former Republicans, so we're working you before you're getting paid. You know, you start November 1st. I was like, I want, I'm sorry, it's a Saturday, so I'm making her work a day early off of maternity leave, the whole thing.
- [01:22]
Katherine Rampell
I'm very excited to start. So it's all right. I'll do some pro bono work for you.
- [01:27]
Tim Miller
We're pumped to have you. For the people who don't know Kathryn Rampel, can you give us a little just first date penny tour of your life?
- [01:36]
Katherine Rampell
Of my life.
- [01:37]
Tim Miller
Yeah, sure. Just hit a couple highlights. I don't know how did you become an economics editor?
- [01:43]
Katherine Rampell
So I knew I wanted to be a journalist from a very, very wee age, which turns out to be an advantage in a shrinking industry. So I did the journalism thing, internships and whatnot. Like starting in high school, I ended up in economics journalism because I worked for an economist in college, Alan Krueger, who passed away a few years ago. And when there was an opening at the New York Times in 2008 for someone to start an economics blog, there were not that many people in journalism who knew about econ. I was about a year out of school. I had done a, you know, a couple of different jobs in various internships prior to that. But somebody at the Times got my name from this guy I used to work for and said, you might want to check out my former ra. She knows something about econ. Which turned out to be really advantageous given that the sky was falling. 2008, for those who may not remember, was the middle of the financial crisis. So I was there. Yeah, good time to know about Economics, that's always the story with journalism. Right. That it's like when the world is going to hell on your beat, it's really good for your career. So it creates some perverse incentives. Probably if you had any control over the world.
- [03:04]
Tim Miller
And Alan Krueger, I take it, was a neoliberal shill.
- [03:07]
Katherine Rampell
I'm sure some people would refer to him that way. He worked for the Obama administration and the Clinton administration in various capacities. And he was a, you know, well known labor economist who studied the minimum wage among other things. So against or for, he did this landmark study, I want to say it was in the early 90s or late 80s with David Card, finding that raising the minimum wage actually did not reduce employment.
- [03:37]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [03:37]
Katherine Rampell
If you raised it by a little bit, it could actually result in basically more efficient allocation of workers.
- [03:44]
Tim Miller
Well, hot damn.
- [03:45]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah. If you.
- [03:45]
Tim Miller
Someone should send that study to Jeff Landry, probably the governor.
- [03:48]
Katherine Rampell
Basically it is taught in every introductory econ class. So although he was not working on that when I was working for him, he was like working on the economics of rock and roll and the economics of terrorism. So pretty different stuff. But he was a fun guy to work for.
- [04:01]
Tim Miller
The other kind of element of this, I mean, look, the bulwark is a great place to work. You come in, you're starting, it's hallo, I'm in a red beans hat. You know, it's a little silly.
- [04:11]
Katherine Rampell
We need to talk about that, by the way.
- [04:14]
Tim Miller
Yeah, no, I just got a hat. I wanted to be, you know, in spirit. My costume actually. Do you have a costume for tonight? Do you have a plan?
- [04:21]
Katherine Rampell
I am guest hosting a show on msnbc.
- [04:26]
Tim Miller
Are you gonna be in costume?
- [04:28]
Katherine Rampell
I don't know. I kind of want to get into the spirit, but I also don't want to look ridiculous on air.
- [04:34]
Tim Miller
I think you should just get some cat ears or devil ears or something.
- [04:37]
Katherine Rampell
And that's what I was thinking.
- [04:37]
Tim Miller
Just get some little ears.
- [04:38]
Katherine Rampell
That's what I was thinking. But if have other suggestions for me, let me know.
- [04:42]
Tim Miller
How's that plan? I'm geese for the Halloween. I'm multiple geese. There's a hot band right now called Geese and so I have a tutu and many geese on my body and also a guitar. It's an inside joke. My daughter's a pirate so we're thrilled. I had a couple of theme ideas for Halloween that she rejected. It sucks. I mean, just enjoy it while it lasts. When they're a baby and they do whatever you want, you know.
- [05:05]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah, I was gonna say my Daughter is three months old and cannot voice an objection. So she's gonna be a chicken.
- [05:12]
Tim Miller
I love that. Yeah, I love that. I think Toulouse's first one, Chua is a fox, but we are three Britneys one year, three different Britney Spears costumes, and it was the best. And I'm never gonna be able to recreate it until she just accepts that my theme ideas are better. Anywho, we got off track. You don't have that kind of conversation. The Washington Post, leaving the Post for the bulwark. You understand the benefits of here, but I think it does say something about the state of our affairs that you have, like, across the board. I'm going to get into this in other areas like these. Like, the richest people in the world that you would think would have the most fu money have decided in a lot of areas to at least publicly facing, suck up to Trump and do things to get a pat on the head from the aspiring autocrat. And to me, like, that is as much of the story about what happened as opposed to anything. Like, Jeff Bezos could have just turned it into a money sink and had it could have been something focused on investigations, et cetera. And he is, like, not alone here. Like, he's just one of a lot of these guys who decided, like, sidling up to Trump is the answer. I wonder what you make of that.
- [06:22]
Katherine Rampell
Look, I don't know anything more about what Bezos has in mind for the Post than what he said publicly. He says he thinks he's going to win back the trust of audiences by having more conservative voices or whatever they are on the op ed page. If that is his genuine plan, I don't think it's going to work, particularly since I don't think that they're not really conservative voices a lot of the time. Some of them are Trump administration officials, but I wish them well. So there are more charitable and more cynical ways to interpret what's going on over there. I still have colleagues who I really respect, both on the opinion side and on the new side. So it was not the right choice for me to stay for a host of reasons. But, you know, the Post has been a great institution for many, many years and still does great investigative reporting. They've lost a lot of talent, but they're still getting scoops these days. So, you know, for the sake of the people who work there, for the sake of the legacy of that institution, and for the sake of democracy, frankly, I hope that the Post continues to do great journalism.
- [07:35]
Tim Miller
I hope that as well. My optimism is maybe Waning. But it's nice. It's our gain is the way I'm going to look at it. So let's do what we're going to do with you periodically, from time to time here, talk about what's happening in the economy and how that's affecting our politics. Just at the biggest level, what is your take on the macro state of where we're at economically? Because I do think there's some mix kind of signals out there.
- [08:00]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah. So I would say the economy is chugging along. We haven't gone into, as far as we can tell, like the dreaded recession that may have come from a lot of the Trump actions, you know, sort of own goals so far this year. But it is fragile. And I'll give you a few examples of what I mean by that. I was talking with a guy who has run a business for about 20 years. It's like probably a 100 million, $200 million revenue business. He imports a lot of goods from China and he has basically spent the entirety of this year figuring out how to reduce his tariff burden. Like last year he paid about $1 million in tariffs. This year he's expecting to pay about $15 million in tariffs.
- [08:55]
Tim Miller
And he has said that's a big jump. I'm not a math major.
- [08:58]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah, well, it gets worse. He said that he's basically spent all of his time trying to make sure they didn't have $115 million tariff bill, which they very well could have if they had timed things wrong. Right. Because tariffs have gone up and down and up and down. And it's been really hard to know. Like if you relocate from one place to another, you go out of China to India or to Colombia or any other country, will it actually help you or not? And for the products that he makes, he makes, he sells artificial Christmas trees. This is not a business that can exist in the United States because it's very labor intensive because they're pre lit and they have like little light strings that go through them. Anyway, the company is called Balsam.
- [09:42]
Tim Miller
I don't know, Howard. Netflix has said. Well, he's dreaming of America where there's generations of people screwing in little screws on iPhones and you could screw in the little bulbs on the tree, on.
- [09:51]
Katherine Rampell
The fake trees, threading little lights on the tree.
- [09:53]
Tim Miller
Now, I'm not again, this is more your area of expertise than mine. But generally speaking, as a government, you don't want to set policy where like business owners spend all of their time trying to avoid the various bills that you're charging them.
- [10:08]
Katherine Rampell
Yes. This is one business, obviously. But I've talked with others that have kind of voiced similar concerns that companies should be spending their time thinking about new products or new customers. How do they get efficiencies? Where can they invest things like that and not make the guy who's in charge of, like, tariff reduction the main profit center of the company, which is sort of how it works at a lot of places right now because there's so much uncertainty and because it's just, it's really hard to plan. And I go back to thinking about if Trump had just come into office and done nothing, if he had just gone out and played golf every day rather than, you know, rage tweeting or truth posting or whatever, True social posting every three minutes about a new thing he was offended by. And therefore it was a national emergency requiring tariffs. The economy would probably be doing a lot better by now. And that's not just me speaking. Economists have said this, essentially, the Federal Reserve has said this. But the tariff stuff alone has been really damaging. It's not only tariffs, it's also immigration policies, which are creating uncertainty and potentially soon labor shortages in a fair number of industries. Again, not only me saying this, Trump's own Department of Agriculture has said that the fact that they've been going after immigrants in agricultural sites is likely to be raising food prices, produce prices. So we're like tariffing the tomatoes when they come over from Mexico, and then we're rounding up the immigrants who are out in the fields or whatever, getting tomatoes or processing chicken or what have you, and all that's going to contribute to higher prices. And one thing that I always like to emphasize when I'm talking about the consequences of these changing immigration policies is that it's not only people who are undocumented who are getting swept up in this dragnet. It's lots of people who have documents who are being effectively de documented in some cases. Like, they're people who have various kinds of legal status now, tps, or they're asylum seekers or they're on parole. Like, all of these things that Americans shouldn't have to care about because it's a really technical, opaque system. But the upshot is these are people who have legal ability to work, legal permits to work, and Trump is taking them away. And there have been a bunch of things, even just this week that will probably make it harder for, like, doctors to continue working legally in this country. Like, besides the humanitarian effects of all of this, there are a lot of disruptions to the economy. And I think some of the cracks are showing up from all of that.
- [12:53]
Tim Miller
Yeah, one of the areas there was cracks that's kind of related to all those things you just talked about, the labor shortages and tariffs, et cetera. There's a Times article earlier this week that said during the first quarter of 2025, Iowa's GDP contracted at a 1.2% annual rate. And that was kind of before like a lot of this stuff was happening. There are definitely some signs that particularly in rurals and red parts of the country, like things are worse on balance than it is in other places that are being kind of propped up by AI investment and data centers, et cetera. Like, what is your sense for that? Are people feeling the pain more at this point in certain pockets of the country?
- [13:30]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah, there are a bunch of things that are affecting people in more rural areas. And to be fair, rural areas have struggled well before Trump came into office.
- [13:40]
Tim Miller
But he also came into office promising to help them in particular.
- [13:44]
Katherine Rampell
Yes, exactly. They were his. They were more likely to be his people because they were more likely to vote Republican. So immigration snap benefits lapsing. There's a school nutrition program that was basically defunded that involved lots of food that came from farmers that were going to schools. The shutdown has resulted in problems for people trying to get farm loans. Then if you look at things like other shutdown consequences, head starts are today. We're talking on October 31st, Halloween, tomorrow is November 1st. A bunch of head starts around the country are going to have a lapse in funding. This is like a pre K program for low income families. A lot of like I was talking with the head start director for the state of Washington and he said that several of the head starts that were going to have a lapse in funding starting tomorrow are in rural areas where there are no other childcare options. So you'll have the kids who are enrolled in those programs not have care and then their parents won't have the care so that they can work. So there are all of these cascading effects. And like I said, some of these affect people in non rural areas too, for but it will be especially felt by those in rural areas. And then you have like, you know, I was talking about tariffs. It's not only that we have tariffs on the stuff that farmers buy, like equipment and fertilizer, for example. There are retaliatory actions like China has stopped buying American soybeans basically entirely. Whereas China was, was, I think still the biggest customer for American soybean farmers. Trump met with President Xi this week and said, oh, they're gonna start buying soybeans again. Big victory. Cuz Trump is great at like repackaging the prior status quo as victory, but the whole reason that they stopped buying was because of his trade wars. So it's, you know, it's again like the arsonist demanding they're buying less.
- [15:49]
Tim Miller
I saw actually we've gone from 27 million to 25 million metric tons. That's the art of the deal.
- [15:54]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah, yeah. Again it's the arsonist demanding praise for his firefighting so skills. That's the whole Trump mo.
- [16:02]
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- [17:03]
Tim Miller
I want to talk about the snap stuff more in a second. We're just closing the loop on the tariffs. I was reading a Wall Street Journal article that just kind of is an overview of where we're at because there's some new tariffs that come in in November. It's hard to keep track. It's all really such a whirlwind.
- [17:17]
Katherine Rampell
It is.
- [17:17]
Tim Miller
But there's a new round of tariffs that come in November 1st. In addition to some of this shutdown stuff we've been talking about, the tariffs on Canada is going to rise. Tariffs on China, it's going to come down a little bit. Still really high. You know, it's kind of funny. It's like if you would have told people, I think November of last year after he won that the, you know, tariffs on China were going to be whatever, 47%. I think people would have thought that was catastrophic. Right? And like now it's kind of pitched as, yeah, well, like he's easing his trade war on China when overall Window shifting.
- [17:56]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah, exactly.
- [17:57]
Tim Miller
Yeah. So the average rate is pretty high. So, anyway, like, what is your assessment of, like, where we're at? Just like on the tariffs, like, where things are getting worse or not?
- [18:05]
Katherine Rampell
Well, certainly the numbers are not good. And to your point, last year when Trump was still running for president, I believe he. I'm sure it's been so long. It feels so long. Anyway, what did he say?
- [18:17]
Tim Miller
He.
- [18:17]
Katherine Rampell
He was going to have, like, a 10% global tariff?
- [18:20]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I think so. I know somebody said to me yesterday, can you believe it was one year ago that we were in New York for the election? And I was like, that was only one year ago.
- [18:28]
Katherine Rampell
I know every day is a year. But anyway, it was like 10%. Markets did not believe was going to happen because it would be too crazy. And now we are way worse than that all around the world. So not good. Again, this comes back to this question of, like, why is the economy not in this dire recession that a lot of people had feared or forecast? And I think it's partly that companies planned for it to the extent that they could. So, like, Christmas tree guy that I mentioned, he, as soon as the election was determined last year, he placed an order for Christmas trees from China. So this is November of last year. He got the Christmas trees in hopes of getting a bunch of inventory in before Trump took office. And a lot of other companies did the same thing. Cars, auto companies, for example, basically companies that sell durable goods, things that are not going to perish. So a lot of companies had inventory that they've been working through, and now they're having to replace it. And they're having to spend all this time figuring out, okay, can we move this production from this country to this country? Do we have to have the boats, like, circle the port for a while? Do we have to have the things go into the warehouse? Like, all of this stuff? Again, that is just like a complete waste of time, effort, and money when they, they could be planning on doing more productive things. So some firms were able to, like, tread water for a while. And I think you're going to see some of that inventory run out. And so they're going to have to, they're going to have to deal with the new tariff environment. And then other places, like other companies, if you sell tomatoes, for example, again, we have like, a new tariff on Mexican tomatoes completely separate from all of these other tariffs that we're talking about. For some reason, you can't really stock up on those so easily because they go bad. So I think we are Starting to see some of the price consequences and you can see it in the data. Although I should say, like data is hard to come by right now because there's a shutdown. They did have one inflation report that they decided to do during the shutdown. But like, who knows how long the shutdown will go on and coincidentally it may continue while the numbers start. Would have gotten a lot worse. And it's not just in prices, it's also in other parts of the economy where you're seeing issues. So like data centers you mentioned are doing really well. This is like for AI. Big, big investment in data centers to support the AI industry that is largely keeping the economy afloat. But other kinds of investment not doing so well. Jobs are. We're not like seeing net losses yet and hopefully we won't. But there are some big companies that have announced layoffs. Target, Amazon, trying to. Who else announced just this week but a bunch of them? And like it's Paramount.
- [21:21]
Tim Miller
Paramount Airlines fired a lot of people. Ups.
- [21:24]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah. And so some of this is like, it may just be like one off things that are completely unrelated to the overall. Maybe they're related to AI, maybe they're related to like a company rearranging its business, who knows? But the more of those you see, that's more concerning. And I, I don't think at the very least that the trade wars are helping the job market.
- [21:49]
Tim Miller
So if the AI data sensors are holding this rickety deal up. Did you have any hot takes on the AI bubble talk?
- [21:56]
Katherine Rampell
I guess I would say what we're seeing right now is this huge arms race, right? Because like a lot of companies I think assume maybe correctly, maybe incorrectly, that it's going to be a winner take all situation that like they have to get the best possible AI because like a slight advantage in your software or whatever will confer like huge benefits. You're just going to take overtake the market kind of in the same way that like Google had a slightly better algorithm for search and just blew everyone else away. Like being second place didn't do you any good. And so you're seeing this huge arms race because everybody feels like there's.
- [22:34]
Tim Miller
I'm sorry, Bing did pretty good.
- [22:37]
Katherine Rampell
Okay.
- [22:40]
Tim Miller
It took me that long to come up with the joke. I was like, what was Microsoft search called? Bing. I don't know where it came from in my brain.
- [22:47]
Katherine Rampell
Yes. Speaks very highly of its customer loyalty right there. So anyway, so what might happen now? Like maybe there'll be a winner take all and everybody else is just going to like Pull out and say, screw it, cut our losses. Like we're done investing and we give up and we're going to pursue other things. In which case you would see potentially a big implosion in the economy or at least in that sector of the economy, which could have knock on effects because like not only is this AI investment keeping up, propping up hard investment in the economy, but also like the stock market.
- [23:22]
Tim Miller
Like stock market. Yeah.
- [23:24]
Katherine Rampell
So that would be bad. The question is, we don't really know, like maybe it's not a winner take all kind of market and maybe it just continues. Like it's definitely the case that I will transform large parts of the economy, including the labor market. And there are potentially a lot of gains to be had. A lot of people will get displaced too. And again, like that might be part of the reason we're seeing some of these white collar jobs getting cut recently. So there'll be some creative destruction, which is a callous way to say people are going to lose their jobs. But it will be pretty transformative and you'll potentially see big productivity gains in the economy. We'll see. So the question is just like, is the amount of gain that would be expected from whatever this arms race results in bigger or smaller than the amount of money that's being invested into it now? And right now it seems like there's a lot of money chasing after, maybe not as much gain, but it's.
- [24:29]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I don't know.
- [24:30]
Katherine Rampell
This is not really a hot take. This is like a hard to predict.
- [24:32]
Tim Miller
Yeah, this is like, that's a lukewarm take.
- [24:35]
Katherine Rampell
I think. It's really hard to know. But yeah, I think it's not great that this sector is like the only thing or not or one of the few things growing in this economy.
- [24:44]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I don't think that ChatGPT would be rolling out the sex bots if they thought that there were like gains. New business idea for you, productivity gains coming immediately. Like it doesn't seem like the activity of a company that thinks that it's going to totally disrupt the whole economy when they feel like we've got a, we need to roll out a couple new products, including AI Sex friends, you know.
- [25:07]
Katherine Rampell
Well, you know, there's maybe some big money there too. Who knows?
- [25:10]
Tim Miller
There is money to be made there, no doubt. But I just, you know, I mean, I think that that's also already baked into the market. I mean there's a lot of competitors in the space, et cetera.
- [25:22]
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- [26:22]
Tim Miller
Back to the SNAP stuff. So tomorrow is when the it's not actually legally, but like where essentially the Trump administration has said we're going to stop paying SNAP benefits even though there is a reserve in place.
- [26:36]
Katherine Rampell
Right.
- [26:36]
Tim Miller
They're interpreting that law incorrectly, purposefully, I guess, to try to put pressure on the Democrats, I think, to come to the table. It seems like something that's backfiring to me. There's a lawsuit out there, so this might get stopped. But in the meantime, you know, there are going to certainly be some people that are losing access to the cards that they use or, you know, it's going to hurt food banks. Like there's going to be big issues related to snap. Trump is now out this morning saying that he thinks that the Congress should just break the filibuster and just go through, which I think has some interesting potential implications. So I'm just wondering your view on the whole state of play.
- [27:14]
Katherine Rampell
Again, a lot of people are going to be hurt by this, including a lot of Trump voters in rural areas, among other places. And I would love if they were not pawns in all of these machinations. As you point out, it certainly looks like the administration has a way to help people without resorting to either breaking the filibuster or other laws being passed. Like there have been bills that have been proposed, including I think at least one sponsored by Republican, by a Republican, to like basically allow SNAP funding to go out as the rest of the government is shut down. But you don't need to pass a law.
- [28:02]
Tim Miller
Right.
- [28:02]
Katherine Rampell
Trump can do it on his own and he's electing not to. So it feels like this is all a little bit of a fig leaf. To do other kinds of institutional damage and maybe use hungry people as low income hungry people as a political football in all of this, which again is unfortunate.
- [28:21]
Tim Miller
But to me it seems like a huge political mistake. A lot of times. I understand what they're doing. I think that they're doing a lot of stuff on immigration and tariffs that are also politically harmful. But they're Trump hobby horses, so I can make sense why they're doing that. In this case. It's like in addition to a lot of red states using the SNAP program and MAGA voters, which is something people have discussed like, I think ad nauseam. Like, on top of that, though, a lot of people that just don't pay attention to the news and aren't like engaged that much, like low income folks who are like just trying to live their life and like parent and it's like, it's hard like if you're, if you're like in a situation where you're living paycheck to paycheck are less than that and like you're needing assistance. Trump did well with those that like, type of voter. One of the things that got missed, I think, from that deciding to win study that was out there this week about how the Democrats can do better was something I don't think has really sunk in with a lot of Democrats yet, because it's changed from how things used to be is like depending on whose data you look at, if there had been forcible voting, Trump would have won by more, potentially a lot more, again, depending on his data. But like somewhere between 4 and like 15 points or something, Trump would have won by a lot more. Because the types of folks who are displaced, not trusting the system, not engaging in a lot of news, they moved from being, if they voted likely Democratic voters to if they voted likely Trump voters. So there are a lot of people who have decently positive feelings of Trump who aren't following the news and are going to go to their grocery store and not be able to get the food that they need and they're going to be fucking pissed.
- [30:04]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah. And they're probably not aware of why, because most people who are not like you and me, paid to follow the news are not paying attention to all of this. And it is.
- [30:16]
Tim Miller
And they're not going to be like, oh, it's the Schumer shutdown, because they only have 53 votes and not 60. That's not how those, that's not how folks are going to interpret.
- [30:26]
Katherine Rampell
Understandably. Right. Like most people don't have the bandwidth for all of this. And I think what's going to happen is they're going to show up at the grocery store, they're going to try to swipe your EBT card and it's not going to have any money on it and they're not going to understand why. And the question is, how do they interpret that outcome? Like, to whom do they attribute blame? And I don't know what the answer to that is. It might just be like general ire at the system, at the government. And Trump is in, is the head of all of that, but he's also like running it. You know, he's always characterized as, like, he's not, he's not a politician, like, he's anti establishment, like he is the establishment now, but whatever. So I don't exactly know how that'll be mediated. I think this is definitely an opportunity for Democrats to try to message what's going on. But they have a difficult message to explain, too.
- [31:20]
Tim Miller
Not really on the SNAP thing, though. It's the other benefit. Like it's a little bit more challenging on the other stuff than it is on the snap.
- [31:27]
Katherine Rampell
Well, they'll say, I mean, they are the ones effectively preventing the, who have the additional votes that could get a CR passed. Right. And they are saying, we are not going to give those votes unless we get some other things in exchange, including an extension of the enhanced premium tax credits for people who are on Obamacare plans. And also some other language that would basically make it harder for Russell Vogt, the OMB director, to continue unilaterally impounding funds and like not spending money that Congress, that's even more complicated for them to message. And there's a reason why they're not running on it. They're running on healthcare. You know, they're messaging on healthcare.
- [32:08]
Tim Miller
Which is why, like, to me, the point is the SNAP thing, it's like they could be paying you, but they're not.
- [32:11]
Katherine Rampell
Yes, that seems like it should be a clear message, but how it'll be heard, I don't know, because Republicans are saying like, oh, it's Democrats who are keeping the government shut down. And then you have to explain, well, there are contingency funds. Like, I, I don't know. One of my most deeply held beliefs is that complexity rewards demagogues. And it's true. I mean, it's, it's why I have a job. There's a lot of complexity in the system and like, plenty of things for me to try to translate and explain. But it also means that the people who like have ill will, who want to exploit opacity in the system and complexity in the system and just give you their own narrative, like they have an advantage. So the question is like, again, how do normal people interpret all of this? Do they hear the Trump version of things, which is like, Democrats just won't open the government. Do they hear the Democratic narrative, which I think is closer to the truth, which is Trump doesn't need to, you know, we don't need to open the government in order for these, these payments to go out and I don't know.
- [33:18]
Tim Miller
Or do they hear none of it?
- [33:20]
Katherine Rampell
Or they hear none of it and.
- [33:21]
Tim Miller
Just blame and they're like, well, Trump is in charge. And this is potentially.
- [33:25]
Katherine Rampell
I don't know, I don't know. I mean, there are a lot of things like this where predicting where attribution is going to fall is hard. Like not just with these short term crises, but longer term things like if there's an investment in a new battery plant that was funded by the Inflation Reduction act or the infrastructure bill or whatever, but it doesn't happen for a few years and it happens when Trump is president. Like, who gets credit for the ribbon cutting?
- [33:53]
Tim Miller
That's easy one. Trump gets credit for that one. Yeah, that's just our terrible life. Imagine how happy like the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party will be if Trump breaks the filibuster over this. The activist left will be like, this has been the most effective shutdown in history if they end up getting the filibuster scalp out of it.
- [34:14]
Katherine Rampell
So I guess, well, this is always the reason why Republicans. The last reason why Republicans haven't killed it. Right. Because it's like they don't want the filibuster to be gone when Democrats are in charge and have a vote to make abortion legal or whatever.
- [34:32]
Tim Miller
So tbd. Okay, I want to ask you about some other stuff, like who are the socialists now? Socialism is in the news with your potential new mayor, Zoran Mandani being a Democratic socialist. But there's a news item here. The Trump officials unveiled a strategic partnership with Westinghouse and nuclear fuel provider can copy it, an investment giant anyway to spur new nuclear plants, which I support. But I was interested to note that the deal gives the US government a participation interest, entitling it to 20% and including a provision for potential future equity. They've done this several times. Intel Nvidia. We have golden share now in U.S. steel. I could go on and on. It all seems kind of China ish to me.
- [35:18]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah, well, that's because it is, I think of what's going on right now as Trump is basically privatizing the state and socializing the private sector. And the common link between those things is like he has a lot more control of money going into and out of the government and also into and out of private companies. It is hard to imagine how apoplectic Republicans would be right now if, like, a President Sanders or President AOC or somebody like that did these things.
- [35:53]
Tim Miller
Presumably they would reverse Zuccotti park at the Wall Street Journal offices, reverse Occupy Wall Street. There'd be men in suits living in a park outside the White House. I think.
- [36:07]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah, maybe. I don't know. It's hard for me to know if this is just like Republicans have decided that they actually don't care about this stuff anymore. They only care about interventions in the private sector, you know, command and control style economic policies when they're coming from Democrats. And Trump just gets a free pass on everything. Or if there actually is, I think, some growing support on the right for the, like, actual support independent of the Trump branding for some of these things. I think there is kind of a horseshoe theory happening here where you see the far right and the far left more interested in, like, a robust state power, but just used for presumably different ends. It's, like, hard to find a better example of seizing the means of production than what we're talking about here, which is like seizing a share of a.
- [37:09]
Tim Miller
Company and equity stakes going to produce energy.
- [37:13]
Katherine Rampell
Yes.
- [37:13]
Tim Miller
For the country. I mean, the Trumpism of it is a big part. Like, these folks don't want to fight it. But I do agree, I think that there's now a wing within the Republican Party that decides it's the way to compete with China. And the Democrats are going to be socialists anyway, so we might as well do this in a way that we can sell, as I don't know. Who the hell knows.
- [37:32]
Katherine Rampell
And again, like, there are going to be some unintended consequences from all of this, including, well, some of which could be more opportunities for corruption.
- [37:43]
Tim Miller
There's always 20 of those already, but.
- [37:45]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah, those are not in short supply. There are plenty of opportunities for corruption, you know, for members of Trump's family or close friends to, like, get in on these deals. If you're a competitor with one of these companies that is now partly owned and directed by the government, slash Trump, then you're at a huge disadvantage. And potentially, you know, you're going to have all sorts of distortions in markets and may end up with worse products and less competitive products as a result. Like I don't know that it's going to be good for the steel industry that the government has this golden share in US Steel.
- [38:30]
Tim Miller
All we can do to judge what is happening on the supposed free market right is look at what their public behavior is. And I follow a lot of those folks, a lot of my old friends. I kind of laugh thinking back to you were around us, our big fights in the 2010 early 2010s over the ex IM bank and how the Export Import bank was crony capitalism. I know and there were so many articles written about this on Breitbart and National Review just railing against this. I haven't seen a ton of railing against the government like actually owning companies instead of backstabbing investment. But I have seen yesterday the capitalists were mad about something. The traditional capitalist Republicans, they were very upset at my colleague Bill Kristol because he said that voting for Cuomo is ridiculous, which to me seems to be kind of like dog bites, man. Take it is ridiculous to vote for somebody that was run out of office, did a horrible job as a governor and was a Democrat if you're supposed Republican. But anyway he said that and he said I would have been for. I wouldn't have ranked Zoron even in the primary. But we are where we are and I probably would be for Zoron. That's what Bill Kristol said.
- [39:38]
Katherine Rampell
Woke Bill Kristol. There you go.
- [39:40]
Tim Miller
Woke Bill Kristol. The cons are very upset about that. They're not upset about the government taking stake in private businesses, but they are upset about the hypothetical socialist grocery store that might come in Queens. And so I'm wondering what you make of socialism in your city. Are you Zoran, meanwhile, it's kind of trying to steal some abundancy stuff. He ran a Fox News ad talking about cutting red tape. I was like, okay, buddy. So I don't know, are you buying abundance? Zoran, what is your socialism threat in New York?
- [40:09]
Katherine Rampell
I think it's really hard to predict how he's actually going to govern because he's kind of taken all sides. Well, not all sides on all issues, but he's depending on which audience he's speaking to. You get a very different tenor of what his governing philosopher and what his priorities will be, which is what we.
- [40:31]
Tim Miller
Call good politics, by the way.
- [40:33]
Katherine Rampell
Exactly. So it's not exactly that he's like contradicting himself and he's flip flopping. It's like he's very adept at reflecting back to People what they want to hear. In a way, he came on the.
- [40:45]
Tim Miller
Bulwark and he had a whole list of things he was ready to pitch about how to streamline things in the mayor's office.
- [40:52]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah. And that would be great. That would be great. And not at all sort of the tear it all down tenor that you've heard from other people in dsa, for example. So is he going to be a more traditional mayor? Is he going to be like a crazy, extreme socialist mayor? I don't know. I'm hopeful. Like, based on the fact that he has said he will reappoint, for example, the NYPD Commissioner, Jessica Tisch, who seems like she's done a pretty good job.
- [41:22]
Tim Miller
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The President says it's a zombie apocalypse in New York right now and that he's gonna have to send in the troops soon. Is that not right?
- [41:28]
Katherine Rampell
Well, he's gonna send in the troops no matter what I fear. But look, I am not a fan of a lot of Zoram Hamdani's policy proposals, not just the grocery store thing. But I think a lot of his other ideas are. Well, first of all, they're things that he can't control. Like, the mayor of New York City does not actually control the revenue base of New York City. And a lot of his plans are contingent on his being able to raise taxes. You know, corporate taxes and personal income taxes and things like that. And it's actually Albany that controls all of that for complicated historical reasons, including.
- [42:00]
Tim Miller
That Kathy's gonna throw him some bones.
- [42:02]
Katherine Rampell
I think maybe she has said she's not gonna raise taxes. She doesn't want everybody to move to Palm Beach. I think she has a quote almost exactly along those lines. So we'll see.
- [42:11]
Tim Miller
I don't know. There was like a mob when she spoke at the Zoran rally the other day. There was like everybody shouting tax the rich at her. And then she pretended like she couldn't hear them in the press conference.
- [42:22]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah.
- [42:22]
Tim Miller
Well.
- [42:22]
Katherine Rampell
What?
- [42:22]
Tim Miller
I don't know. I think that there's gonna be a lot of pressure to give them. To give them a little bit of rip.
- [42:28]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah. The question is the people who are chanting tax the rich. My guess is some of them are objectively rich.
- [42:36]
Tim Miller
Yeah. So maybe they were happy. Tax me, Daddy.
- [42:38]
Katherine Rampell
I don't think. I think this is the problem with the Democratic Party that they, you know, historically keep promising a sort of Scandinavian style welfare state without a Scandinavian style tax base, and that people always think they're happy to tax the rich. When they think rich people are people richer than they are. But then you actually look at the math and that's not how it's gonna work out. I mean, that's more of a national democratic critique, but it does apply to New York City probably too. In any event, look, I have not been a fan of Mamdani's policies and my most hopeful interpretation of how he might govern or that he may abandon those policies. And maybe he's like, he's incredibly charismatic and charming and maybe he's charismatic enough that people won't care if he doesn't deliver on like free buses or, or whatever. I don't know. You know, the main jobs of a mayor are not necessarily those big like transformative things. It's making sure the trash gets picked up and the streets get plowed and like the schools are running okay and people will start to notice lapses in those services well before they'll notice if like a government run grocery store appears somewhere in one of the outer boroughs. So I don't know. Again, not my first choice. But like.
- [43:55]
Tim Miller
So you're a Sliwa voter is what you're telling me on your first podcast.
- [43:58]
Katherine Rampell
I mean, I do have two cats.
- [44:00]
Tim Miller
So he likes cats. Maybe you should be in a beret on MSNBC tonight.
- [44:05]
Katherine Rampell
Yes, maybe. Maybe I'll dress up as Sliwa. It's bizarre to me that like, in a city of what, 8 million people, these are our choices, but such is life. So I think the writing is on the wall that Mamdani is going to win. And I am hoping for the sake of New York that he is a sort of more moderate, effective mayor and that he, what, what will matter is who he appoints to a lot of these important jobs. Right? Does he appoint like die hard DSA people who have no experience governing or does people who kind of know how to work the New York machinery and we don't know yet? Again, encouraging that Jessica Tisch is going to stick around, it looks like.
- [44:54]
Tim Miller
But yeah, I think what will help him is that Trump, as soon as he wins, is going to start trying to bully him. And again, maybe troops coming in and other side. And I think federal interventions will in a way help him because it will rally people against side and partisanship. I mean, Ted Cruz was calling him. No negative comments to Ted Cruz about our China style socialist federal government. But he did say that Bill Kristol was supporting a jihadist yesterday on Twitter. So I don't know. I think all that stuff helps him. Calling him a jihadist?
- [45:31]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah. Well, the Islamophobia stuff obviously bad and maybe it makes more people rally to his cause. But the idea that like having federal troops invade your city makes the city easier to run, not easier to run.
- [45:47]
Tim Miller
It's politically in polarizing times. I think it will maybe align some people who are hesitant towards him.
- [45:55]
Katherine Rampell
I think rhetoric directed against him will help him. But actually deploying troops to the city would be a challenge for any mayor. Right. No matter how experienced and adept at working the levers of power. I think that will be really hard.
- [46:13]
Tim Miller
And the immigration stuff will be tougher. The truth thing is a little easier. What happens when they really try to. And that is what's coming. I mean they're really going to try to turn up the ICE raids and that is going to yield, I think a lot of really intense showdowns in some ways. Again, Mike rally spiel to his side. But I think it's going to also give a sense of chaos. And I mean, I think that their plans for immigration are pretty scary.
- [46:38]
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- [47:38]
Tim Miller
Just really quick on immigration while we have it. A former Trump golf club worker. Ten years he worked there, he's 39. U.S. immigration officials shackled him, put him in restraints and sent him to Mexico.
- [47:51]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah, I mean, the real question is how many stories like this are there? And this was a story in the New York Times, right. How many stories are not getting caught by intrepid journalists? There are, as I mentioned before, like there are deliberate attempts to de document people who have their papers essentially. But taking the papers away, there is a lot of sloppiness. To use the most charitable explanation about ensuring that the people who are being rounded up are in fact undocumented. Not that like the way that they're treating people would be appropriate if in fact those who are being rounded up are undocumented. Just to be clear.
- [48:36]
Tim Miller
Like he was undocumented. He has family that isn't. His kid was a Marine, actually. And he was wrongly deported to Mexico because he did not have a deportation order. So he was sent to Mexico by mistake.
- [48:47]
Katherine Rampell
By accident. Yeah.
- [48:48]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Should bear mentioning that again. There was Donald Trump that was employing him while he was undocumented for 10 years. And I haven't noticed Tom Homan or Greg Bevino heading down to the Trump Organization to bring anybody away in shackles because they were also breaking the law, as best I could tell.
- [49:06]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah, well, there are lots of things that Trump himself has done that are at odds with his policies, including complaining about so called chain migration. Right. The idea that one immigrant comes here.
- [49:18]
Tim Miller
And then brings chain migrants.
- [49:20]
Katherine Rampell
Exactly. His current wife, there are lots of questions about whether she was working illegally when she was first in the United States as a model.
- [49:29]
Tim Miller
Is that gonna be your first receipts newsletter for us? Going back to the immigration filings of Melania? Cuz I'm curious. You've piqued my interest.
- [49:38]
Katherine Rampell
I'm very curious too. Well, I remember there were stories about this back in probably 2015 or 2016, and Trump said, don't worry, we'll have a press conference about it in two weeks.
- [49:47]
Tim Miller
Haven't heard of it.
- [49:48]
Katherine Rampell
And then nothing ever came of it. It's obviously hard to get that kind of documentation, but it certainly looks like it's possible that she was violating the terms of her visa by working. And nobody ever cares because I think this is a common issue.
- [50:03]
Tim Miller
She's white.
- [50:04]
Katherine Rampell
Well, and it's like she's a good immigrant. People separate in their mind.
- [50:08]
Tim Miller
I mean, she's the wife of a criminal, so in some ways she's a quote, unquote, good immigrant. But we have some other immigrants that came across the Rio Grande that aren't married, that don't have any other crimes besides the border crossing, whereas Trump family has several. On that front, I want to mention to bring up the crypto pardons to you, if you don't mind. Sure. Changpeng Zhao cz cz as they call him, he was running a crypto platform that had a lot of crimes on it. We have very few rules, actually the governing crypto, but even the few rules that we have, he was not following. Allowing a lot of illicit activity to come. There was fraud that he was engaged in he was in jail. I should mention one more time. Changpeng Zhao CZ is a Chinese national and he was in prison. And his company, Binance, what put a couple, Billy into the Trump Stablecoin. Great investment. All the investments you can make out there in the world, you had to grab the Trump Stablecoin.
- [51:08]
Katherine Rampell
It's just a coincidence.
- [51:10]
Tim Miller
Yeah. And again, the Chinese national that's in business with the Trump family got. Got pardoned. A lot of articles on that this.
- [51:17]
Katherine Rampell
Week, but yeah, he pled guilty. Yeah. To emphasize he pled guilty. And look, it's not like he was laundering money for Hamas. Oh, wait, he was.
- [51:25]
Tim Miller
Oh, really?
- [51:26]
Katherine Rampell
It's like. Yeah, yeah, this is what Binance got in trouble for was that they were basically allowing like Hamas and maybe ISIS and a bunch of other terrorist groups to use their platform to launder money.
- [51:38]
Tim Miller
Have we heard about Ted Cruz who's concerned about supposedly jihadist Mamdani weighing in on this actual the pardon of somebody that was actually funding real jihadists? I haven't seen anything.
- [51:49]
Katherine Rampell
I am not aware of it. I have not done a deep.
- [51:52]
Tim Miller
Senator Cruz, you're welcome to come on and we can chat about that if you want.
- [51:55]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah, I'll do a. I'll do a little LexisNexis search after this to see if he's expressed any reservations about this pardon. I'm not aware of any. I don't even know what to say about this. Again, the guy pled guilty. He was doing really, really bad things. Like the, this. All of the. The worst case scenario stuff that crypto can be used for. His company was enabling and I think that there are even like messages from inside the company, like, lol. I guess we're not going to follow the know your customer regs and you know, but yeah, they did bad stuff. They did bad stuff.
- [52:35]
Tim Miller
And it's just. It's the most blatant corruption in presidential history. And it's insane. It's not like, you know, somebody is paying the kid for this ugly art or, you know what I mean? Like Spiro, it was like a paper bag with money. It's a billion. They invested a billion.
- [52:49]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah, it's a lot of money. And it paid off. It definitely paid off.
- [52:54]
Tim Miller
Did pay off. Do you have a global crypto view? I'm just curious what your level of crypto hostility is if you're going to join my Barry band of bulwarkers.
- [53:05]
Katherine Rampell
I am not involved in either drug dealing or kidnapping, so I don't really have much of a use for crypto Personally, yeah. That's sort of my hot take.
- [53:15]
Tim Miller
You don't think that it's adding a lot of value, the fart coin and stuff? You don't think that those things are valued at Dogecoin, you don't feel like that's valued in accordance with what it's bringing to the economy.
- [53:28]
Katherine Rampell
There is no underlying value. The value is just what other greater fools will pay for it. And you can make money off of that in the near term. As long as there is somebody else willing to look at it, look at the speculative asset and buy it from you, you can make money. But I don't think that there's like any inherent functional value to it. At one point, the argument was like, oh, this will displace other forms of transactions and it'll be so much more convenient. And you don't have to carry cash or whatever. You don't have to worry about inflation risks. And in practice, what we see is that these are speculative assets and if they are used, it's for, like, trying to keep illegal activity less traceable.
- [54:10]
Tim Miller
Have you seen the stories that Barron Trump has made, like, 100 million on Insider crypto deals?
- [54:15]
Katherine Rampell
I have not seen this, but I'm not familiar.
- [54:16]
Tim Miller
I think we should check this out. Baron Trump is cashing in on crypto. I try my best. I have friends that invest in crypto. My brother's really into it. I've got friends who work in crypto and they've called me and I'm like, I try to listen to the bull case, and I think that there are some values to actual Bitcoin itself. And there are a couple of these stablecoins that have some actual value or use cases, I've heard. But you go into one of these things, it's like, well, Coinbase or whatever, one of the big platforms, it's like, well, you can't judge us by the worst product. I'm like, that's not really how things work. If you walked into Walmart and Walmart had one aisle where it was very useful products that are not scams, that you purchased something and got something of value back, then you walk down the next aisle and it was like a cutout for human traffickers. And then you walked down the next aisle and it was somebody just like, stealing your money. And then you walk on the next thing and they tell you it's one thing and it ends up being another, that store would be shut down. Like, we would investigate the store. Right. Just because there are some products that are not scams doesn't mean it's not a scam site, right.
- [55:26]
Katherine Rampell
Or you would have some kind of oversight and regulation to make sure that the human trafficking doesn't happen, for example. And this is a newish industry and it's hard for regulations, smart regulations, to catch up with a rapidly evolving sector. And the people who work in the private sector are always going to get paid more than the people who are paid to oversee them. So it's going to, you know, like they're always going to be outgunned. So I think it is like a genuinely hard problem to solve. However, I think there is no interest in solving it right now because they're bribing the government.
- [56:13]
Tim Miller
So.
- [56:14]
Katherine Rampell
Yeah, well, yes, it's not even like that they're trying to get the answer right, but it's just like they don't have a level of competence. But yeah, it's like they want to just let it rip. And again, more opportunities for corruption.
- [56:26]
Tim Miller
And it's like a lot of these other cases where you talk about special interests, it's like, yeah, there are ways that special interests, like whatever your hobby horse is, NRA or APAC or whatever, there are ways that they impact legislature. Sure. None of those cases are the industries literally bribing the president, the president's family are being bribed. Not like, oh, we're gonna put money in a super pac, we're gonna give you money and make you extremely, extremely wealthy. And you're selling us and you give us nothing and you're giving us the Melania Coin, Right?
- [57:01]
Katherine Rampell
Well, part of the challenge is you don't even know who's giving the money. Right? We don't know who's buying Trump Coin or Melania Coin or any of these other opportunities.
- [57:10]
Tim Miller
Yeah, they don't have to file with the Federal Election Committee like the other PACs do. It's truly insane.
- [57:18]
LifeLock Announcer
October is Cybersecurity awareness month. A reminder that your digital life is always at risk. Every day, hackers steal identities, drain bank accounts and open fraudulent accounts. LifeLock is here with tips to help prevent you from becoming a victim. Use strong passwords, set up multi factor authentication on your accounts, report scams and update the software on your devices. And for peace of mind, get LifeLock. LifeLock monitors millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a LifeLock US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Plus, LifeLock plans include the million dollar protection package, meaning LifeLock will reimburse you to your plan's limits. If you lose money due to identity theft. Stay smart, stay safe and stay protected. Get comprehensive identity protection with a 30 day free trial@lifelock.com. use promo code NEWS. That's lifelock.com promo code NEWS for 30 days. Free terms apply.
- [58:18]
Tim Miller
Okay, we're gonna close with some happiness. I hear a dog back there.
- [58:21]
Katherine Rampell
No, there's a cat.
- [58:23]
Tim Miller
That's a cat. Your cat has a bell on it.
- [58:25]
Katherine Rampell
Yes.
- [58:25]
Tim Miller
Cat, bell.
- [58:26]
Katherine Rampell
You've never seen a bell on a cat.
- [58:28]
Tim Miller
What's the cat's name?
- [58:30]
Katherine Rampell
I have two. I don't have as many as Curtis Lewa, who has like 16 or something, but I have two. It's Ernie and Dottie and they were really interested in getting their 15 minutes of fame before.
- [58:42]
Tim Miller
Ernie's a good cat name. Okay, well, that's good. People can now just keep an eye out out Fernie in the background. In the future, we do have positive viewers give positive feedback to the animals. They see listeners give negative feedback to Michael Weiss's birds the chirp the whole episode. But I kind of like it. I kind of like doing a podcast in an aviary. All right. The last thing for joy for everybody is we don't call him Howard Nutlik for nothing. The commerce Secretary was on Fox last night and we're just gonna listen and did he let you sleep on the ride home on Air Force One? I slept for an hour. I did. I slept for one. I slept for one hour. He is the strongest. He is the strongest human being that I know. I mean, you know, he can wear me out. Yuck.
- [59:37]
Katherine Rampell
Yucky ick. I haven't even started my job yet, so I am going to refrain from expressing.
- [59:44]
Tim Miller
No, this is the perfect time to express you're not hr. There's no HR oversight right now. You don't actually work for the company. Let it loose. We can talk about Howard Nutlich's gross fantasizing about the brawny president.
- [60:00]
Katherine Rampell
They're all kind of like this though, right? Like whenever they have these cabinet meetings, they go around and try to outgrovel themselves and compete for who can say the grossest, most suck up y thing. So in a way like this is not so outside the pale. Beyond the pale of what we've heard before. But it's.
- [60:24]
Tim Miller
I mean, we haven't heard any. We've heard from a lot of women that say Trump sexually assaulted them. We have not heard from any that said that he wore them out, though. I guess I would say so. That would be new. I guess that would be a new item. Catherine, that's your hazing That's a hazing finish to the podcast, everybody.
- [60:40]
Katherine Rampell
Appreciate it.
- [60:41]
Tim Miller
Happy Halloween. I'm gonna put in the show notes, the show playlist of songs, but I also have a great Halloween playlist that you can put on while kids are coming by and trick or treating tonight. So that's my gift to all of you. Kathryn, I'm so excited to have you on board.
- [60:56]
Katherine Rampell
You never explained the bean hat.
- [60:58]
Tim Miller
Oh, I didn't? Well, red beans are very popular here in Louisiana, and there is a parade that's like a red bean theme parade that happens during Mardi Gras season. So my husband made this. I don't do arts and crafts, so he made this bean hat. And I was looking for just kind of masks or something to wear for Halloween on the pod because my geese costume, the goose is too tall. It would go out of frame. The goose head is going to go up to the ceiling. And so that wouldn't work. And I was like, well, we have the bean poster. And so I thought I would do a bean thing. Okay, Halloween beans at all times.
- [61:35]
Katherine Rampell
Thank you.
- [61:36]
Tim Miller
There you go. I look forward to see what you're wearing on what you're wearing on TV tonight. Yeah, we'll see everybody else. We'll see you back here on Monday with Bill Crystal. Have a great weekend. Peace.
- [61:46]
Musical Guest or Performer
When I look out my window? Many sights to see? And when I look in my window?
- [61:58]
Tim Miller
Oh.
- [62:00]
Musical Guest or Performer
So many different people to be. That's strange, so strange. It's very strange to me? You got to pick up every st. You got to pick up every stitch? You got to pick up every stitch. Oh, no. Must be the season of the witch? Must be the season of the witch? Must be the season of the witch. When I look over my shoulder, what happens? What do you think? I see some other cat looking over, over a. And he's strange, so strange. He's very strange to me. You've got to pick up every stitch. You've got to pick up every stitch. Phoenix are out to make it rich. Must be the season of the witch. Must be the season of the whale. Must be the season of the witch.
- [64:01]
Tim Miller
The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Burn.
- [64:11]
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