Jon Favreau: Foundational Freedoms

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast

Guest: Jon Favreau – Foundational Freedoms

Release Date: October 22, 2025
Host: Tim Miller

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Episode Overview

In this engaging and wide-ranging episode, Tim Miller welcomes Jon Favreau—co-founder of Crooked Media and co-host of “Pod Save America”—to discuss the latest political news, the state of American democracy, and the core values that define citizenship and national identity. From White House aesthetics to the deep concerns over ICE and civil liberties, the conversation traverses the absurdities and dangers of contemporary politics with candor, humor, and a sense of urgency. The two also wrestle with intra-Democratic Party divisions, candidate strategies, and the shadow cast by the MAGA movement’s next generation.

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Key Discussion Points

1. White House Remodeling & Symbolism

[00:14–06:17]

• The conversation opens with banter about Tim recording at Crooked Media and a humorous exchange about paying for the studio.
• They discuss Donald Trump's controversial White House East Wing renovation:
  • Trump’s enigmatic plan to raze the East Wing for a new gilded ballroom is critiqued for both its lack of practicality and dubious priorities during a government shutdown.
  • Jon describes the East Wing as “very historic,” highlighting its role as home to the First Lady’s office, social office, and main area for public tours.
  • Both mock Trump’s taste, comparing the aesthetic choices unfavorably to “Saddam décor.”
  • Notable quote:

    “On the list of awful things that Trump is doing…if he called off the masked agents rounding people up in the streets, I would let him bulldoze the entire White House.” — Jon Favreau [03:56]

• The idea of Democrats running on restoring the White House is considered, though both agree it’s a trivial focus compared to larger clean-up tasks after Trump.

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2. ICE Operations and Foundational Freedoms

[06:17–18:26]

• Polling on Deportations & ICE Tactics:
  • Discussion of recent Puck polling about public support/opposition to ICE’s masked operations, with some surprisingly hopeful stats showing room for persuasion.
  • Notable quote:

    “To say [ICE is] mainly targeting peaceful people…you have to know, you’re following this somewhat closely and you’re seeing the images and you’re seeing the footage. So, I was like, that number surprised me in a positive way.” — Jon Favreau [07:06]

• Should Democrats Engage or Avoid the Issue?
  • Jon rejects advice like Matt Yglesias’s to avoid talking about immigration, arguing that silence creates a vacuum for Republican extremism:

    “The Trump Republican Party is always going make it an issue. It’s going to be the centerpiece of their agenda. So why are we just having their story out there and not telling ours?” — Jon Favreau [07:48]

• Personal Foundations for Outrage:
  • Both Tim and Jon reflect on why civil liberties, especially protections against government overreach and abuses like wrongful detainment, are so emotionally resonant.
  • Jon connects his passion to core American values, referencing Barack Obama’s 2004 speech and “foundational freedoms.”

    “If we can’t expect that our government won’t wrongfully detain us and potentially physically assault us...that’s like the most basic, basic freedoms. And so I think it really — that bothers me, like, more than anything.” — Jon Favreau [12:24]

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3. Democracy vs. Kitchen Table Issues: What Moves Voters?

[14:06–15:30]

• The tension between democracy messaging and bread-and-butter “kitchen table” issues:
  • Jon passionately argues civil liberties and freedom from government harassment are also pocketbook issues:

    “Do you want your family to be able to walk down the street without worrying that they’re going to be taken by masked agents? I think that resonates with people. I think that’s a kitchen table issue. Yeah, I do.” [14:50]

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4. ICE Expansion, Recruitment, and Underlying Motivations

[15:30–18:26]

• They joke darkly about ICE having trouble hiring 10,000 new officers because applicants can’t pass a basic fitness test, painting a picture of the kind of person attracted to the job.
  • Notable exchange:

    “You shoot. You’re watching the videos of the masked agents, like, harassing the old guy with the weed whacker outside of IHOP. … You’re picturing that person, you’re thinking, man, 10,000 of those guys can cause a lot of damage because they’ve got a lot of bitterness inside them.” — Tim Miller [18:26]

  • Serious concern: Lowering standards for ICE will lead to more dangerous, unqualified people wielding greater power.

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5. The Dangers of Political Pardons

[21:30–28:07]

• Tim and Jon discuss Trump’s pardoning of January 6th rioters, focusing on a man who, once released, threatened to assassinate Hakeem Jeffries.
  • Notable quote:

    “Are we surprised that the guy that Trump pardoned…wanted to cause harm to politicians? And then Trump said, ‘No, that’s okay. You’re free.’ And now he wants to kill a Democrat after hearing…Republican leaders call Democrats terrorists.” — Jon Favreau [22:33]

• Broader theme: Pardons undermine law and order rhetoric and foster real-world violence.

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6. Democratic Candidate Strategies: The Maine Senate Race

[29:12–44:36]

• The Graham Platner Tattoo Controversy:
  • They review the story about Platner’s skull-and-crossbones tattoo, which was rumored (incorrectly) to be a swastika but is based on a historical Nazi SS unit insignia.
  • Both urge a nuanced, case-by-case approach, weighing contrition and context:

    “If you have done or said something bad in the past and you show contrition… I’m more likely to buy [it]… If you have no contrition—not a lot of people in the Hitler group chat were apologizing.” — Jon Favreau [36:34]

• Broader Lessons on Candidate “Normalcy”:
  • Jon and Tim debate whether faultless, “normal people” can run for office in the social media era, with a call for more acceptance of personal history, provided there’s honesty and apology.
  • They discuss the challenge of winning key Senate races where the margin is razor-thin and victory is critical to protecting democracy; sometimes calculated risks and novel candidates are necessary.

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7. How Do Democrats Win Back Working-Class Voters?

[44:24–49:53]

• Jon and Tim survey Democratic approaches for appealing to working-class voters:
  • Is the answer left-wing populism, moderate vibes, or open criticism of the Democratic Party?
  • Jon praises issue-agnostic, honest, region-specific approaches rather than a “one size fits all.”
  • Tim argues for tangible separation from the party establishment to have a chance in red states:

    “Find whatever issue it is that you agree with the MAGA side…and criticize Democrats directly on it...that’s just the only way to get the other people in the state.” — Tim Miller [47:38]

  • Jon: Populism that focuses on “holding corporations accountable” resonates more than just taxing the rich.

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8. Assessing Democratic Leaders and the 2028 Bench

[50:15–52:05]

• Admitting there aren’t obvious “stars” navigating complex realities on the national stage while keeping it blunt and real.
  • He lists Jake Auchincloss, Sarah McBride, Ruben Gallego, Jon Ossoff, and Raphael Warnock as promising voices with authenticity and a helpful generational perspective.

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9. The MAGA Future: Charisma vs. Ideology

[52:17–57:59]

• J.D. Vance’s attempts at humor and relatability (with notorious “sir stories” and failed Marine jokes) are contrasted with Trump’s genuine comic timing and charisma—making a broader point about the right’s future.
  • Notable quote:

    “One sure sign someone is not funny is that they talk about humor more than actually tell funny jokes...He’s just painfully unfunny.” — Jon Favreau [53:41]

• Post-Trump Dangers:
  • Jon and Tim both express concern that the next wave of MAGA leaders, while less charismatic, are more ideologically extreme and disciplined—a dangerous combination.
  • Jon cites the “Nazi group chats” and the National Conservatism crowd:

    “When you don’t have a charismatic leader…movements become more ideological…The ideology is much more dangerous than Trump’s.” — Jon Favreau [56:00]

  • Still, lack of charisma may limit the movement’s mass appeal.

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10. The State of the American Experiment & Persuasion Fatigue

[60:04–63:28]

• Tim asks how Jon is holding up emotionally, ten months into Trump’s second term.
  • Jon expresses frustration over public apathy and disengagement, empathizing with people’s checked-out attitude while insisting it’s perilous if left unchecked:

    “We will lose the country if we all just turn away and stop paying attention. I genuinely believe that, which is why I’m still at this—which is why we just keep slinging takes.” — Jon Favreau [61:07]

  • Jon’s own drive comes less from sadness and more from anger at the situation—primarily aimed at his own party for failures in 2024, but also directed at Trump, ICE, and political opponents.

    “I can’t fucking believe we’re losing to these people.” — Jon Favreau [62:09]

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “Do you want your family to be able to walk down the street without worrying that they're going to be taken by masked agents? I think that resonates with people. I think that’s a kitchen table issue.” — Jon Favreau [14:50]
• “If we can't expect that our government won't wrongfully detain us…what else is the country for? …that's, like, the most basic, basic freedoms.” — Jon Favreau [12:24]
• “If you have done or said something bad in the past and you show contrition and…say I've grown… I am more likely to buy someone who has apologized and moved on.” — Jon Favreau [36:34]
• “We will lose the country if we just all turn away and stop paying attention. I genuinely believe that…” — Jon Favreau [61:07]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• White House Renovation & Symbolism: [00:14–06:17]
• ICE Tactics, Deportations & Foundational Freedoms: [06:17–18:26]
• Pardons, January 6th, and Political Violence: [21:30–28:07]
• Maine Senate Race / Democratic Candidate Debate: [29:12–44:36]
• Working-class Voters & Democratic Strategy: [44:24–49:53]
• The Future of the Right: Ideology vs. Charisma: [52:17–57:59]
• On Persuasion and Hope/Despair in America: [60:04–63:28]

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Tone & Style

The episode is candid, irreverent, and passionate, mixing earnest concern for the country’s future with sharp humor and inside-baseball knowledge of political strategy. Both hosts are critical, sometimes brutally, of their own side without lapsing into both-sides equivocation. Miller and Favreau deploy memorable quips and biting sarcasm, especially when discussing Trump, ICE, and MAGA figures, while still offering thoughtful, good-faith engagement on how to build a better Democratic coalition and defend liberal democracy.

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Summary

This episode is a characteristically lively and incisive look at the crises and absurdities of today’s political landscape. Tim Miller and Jon Favreau range from the trivial (Trump’s White House schemes) to the foundational (freedom from government harassment), refusing to paper over hard truths or indulge in easy answers. Their discussion illuminates the ongoing struggle to defend democracy’s core values against illiberalism—while wrestling with the failings, necessary tradeoffs, and real human emotions that come with being on the front lines of the “reality-based community.”

Transcript

[Unknown Singer]

Foreign.

[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We're in a different studio today. I'm in Los Angeles, and our friends at Crooked Media had allowed us to rent this out. We're paying union rates. They're gonna round up on the hours, which I appreciate. You know, we want to support everybody and kind of when in Rome kind of vibes is what I'm thinking about here. And I'm delighted to be joined by one of the founders, Crooked Media, host of Pod Save America, Jon Favreau. What's up, man?

[Jon Favreau]

Welcome. I heard that when we were setting this up, you actually asked if you needed to rent this space. I was like, what the is he talking about? That's really nice of you, but, like, it's you.

[Tim Miller]

It's the we.

[Jon Favreau]

We love.

[Tim Miller]

We're pal. We're pals. I know, but, you know, sort of.

[Jon Favreau]

Make sure that everybody's kind offer.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, everybody's. We want equity, you know, that's important. I agree. Not diversity, equity, and inclusion anymore. We're just the E. We're only doing the E now. We are taping this on Tuesday afternoon, I should say. I usually tape in the mornings, so by the time this actually comes out, who the hell knows, right? I mean, Donald Trump might have actually taken down his pants and shit on someone, like, in person instead of just an AI. And if so, I'll get to that on the Thursday show. So we're just gonna try to do the best we have with the information on the table. Now, you run into this on your show from time to time.

[Jon Favreau]

All the time. Especially since we recorded three on Mondays and Thursdays.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, it's brutal.

[Jon Favreau]

So we always have news, lots happening.

[Tim Miller]

I wanna start with you, since you actually won some campaigns and made it into the White House, which I never have, so I don't really know what it looks like in there. We're bulldozing the east wing now.

[Jon Favreau]

We sure are.

[Tim Miller]

It's just going straight to the ground. Trump said he was gonna add a new. It was like, at first, it was like, we're gonna add a new space.

[Jon Favreau]

It's a ballroom.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, a ballroom to host foreign dignitaries. It's not like, in my head, I'm imagining like, you kind of have a new room, right? You know, something that you can add or maybe rearranging a little bit. But no, it seems like they're, like, tearing down the east wing and building up a new gilded monstrosity.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I didn't understand that either, because it's Like, I could see adding a ballroom. I couldn't. You don't need a ballroom. You have state dinners at the White House all the time. Those are, like, the biggest events.

[Tim Miller]

And where would they be?

[Jon Favreau]

They'd be in the East Wing. Yeah, there's a large room in the East Wing where the President can do press conferences, hold big events, and then when it's a really big event, like sometimes first State dinner, you hold it outside and you tent it, and you have heaters if it's in the winter. And it's no problem.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

There's no reason to have a ballroom.

[Tim Miller]

Not an urgent matter.

[Jon Favreau]

No.

[Tim Miller]

So what else is in, like, walk us through the East Wing? I don't know. I'm seeing the images of people's mouths just being torn to shreds.

[Jon Favreau]

East Wing is where the First Lady's office is. It's where the social office is.

[Tim Miller]

So nothing happening there in the slight house.

[Jon Favreau]

Crucially, it's where a lot of the tours go, too. Cause you can get a West Wing tour, but you can all get an East Wing tour. Cause that's more of the, like, the history of the White House. And you see portraits of other presidents and first ladies and China and all that kind of stuff. So it's just very, like, historic, the East Wing. But it's kind of insane that they're doing it.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I mean, does it give you any emotional feelings, like, when you look at the images, or just. Do you laugh?

[Jon Favreau]

You know, I think it's dumb, and I think it's ridiculous that he's also, like, doing this in the midst of a government shutdown. Just like, we're going to just create a new ballroom.

[Tim Miller]

And I don't know, we're not paying the people doing tsa, for example. We're not paying government workers right now. Are we paying the guys that are bulldozing the East Wing? Question.

[Jon Favreau]

I guess we're contracting someone.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

But I have to say, I don't have a lot of faith in his taste either. So that's going to.

[Tim Miller]

You're not impressed with the kind of au bon pan patio?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, they were all out there today.

[Tim Miller]

The Rose Garden.

[Jon Favreau]

It was the. Yeah, the. But, like, it doesn't bug me as much. I mean, on the list of awful things that Trump is doing, like, if he, you know, called off the masked agents rounding people up in the streets, I would let him bulldoze the entire White House.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, good. That'd be a phrase.

[Jon Favreau]

You know what I'm saying? So it's very low on the list of things that get me.

[Tim Miller]

Are you with me secretly on liking the new Oval Office decor?

[Jon Favreau]

No.

[Tim Miller]

I could.

[Jon Favreau]

That's a crazy opinion.

[Tim Miller]

But the old one was pretty drab. Well, that's Protestant and drab.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, that's fine. But I don't think this was the answer.

[Tim Miller]

Me neither. I'm just saying I don't think the.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, Saddam corps.

[Tim Miller]

Is better.

[Jon Favreau]

And look, I thought that Obama had a coffee table in that White House. In our White House. That I thought was fucking weird.

[Tim Miller]

Did he?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, he was just a weird.

[Tim Miller]

Somebody had a blue carpet. One of the old presidents. I was watching some old videos and I kind of liked it.

[Jon Favreau]

It's w. Maybe.

[Tim Miller]

No, I think it was before.

[Jon Favreau]

Was it Bill? It was Clinton.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Little blue dark carpet. Jv One more thing on this. JVL has particularly strident.

[Jon Favreau]

I suck.

[Tim Miller]

I've seen this. Yeah, I'm a triad reader. Well, everyone should be a Triad reader. Thebullerk.com sign up. It's a great newsletter. Sometimes he lets it rip a little bit. You're writing a daily newsletter. A lot of A plus takes some A minus ones. And then you get into some weird territory. Maybe people like this. The stated policy of every Democrat seeking the presidency should be that the first thing they will do is demolish the Trump ballroom and restore the east wing of the White House to their pre Trump state. What do you think?

[Jon Favreau]

Here's what I think. If I was at a debate, a primary debate, and someone asked me if I would do that. Sure, fine. Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

I'm joking. Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

I have no problem with that position. I don't know that it's. Again, it's not high on my list of priorities. I think there's a lot of other things we're gonna have to clean up.

[Tim Miller]

Woof. I'm choking on that.

[Jon Favreau]

Gonna have to demolish most of the. Most of the appointments.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Yes. A lot of the people working in the ballroom probably wanna get rid of.

[Jon Favreau]

They can leave for sure.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I don't know. I'm kind of a. Count me as a maybe on that. I don't know that I'll be mad if a Democrat decides that they wanna demolish it. But also, I don't know. I don't think it'll be on my first day. No. You know, they ask you that thing, what are you gonna do day one. From day one.

[Jon Favreau]

Signing an eo.

[Tim Miller]

Demolishing. I'm gonna be out there fucking sledgehammer. Demolishing these, though. That might do. Well, I don't know. In A Democratic primary. We'll get to that in a second. We have some more serious matters. You mentioned the ice, the masked ICE thugs. Our friends at Puck have some new polling on this indies opposing the ICE efforts. Independence 49 to 40. Most Republicans are for it, unfortunately. You know, I was maybe you were hoping that. I wasn't really hoping but you know, there's 11 interest.

[Jon Favreau]

Honestly, 11%. To me it was like, that's pretty, that's, that's high.

[Tim Miller]

That's pretty good. Okay, 50 to 34. The numbers against masks again, pretty good. I guess 34 seems pretty high for secret police, but okay, 47, 42. So very small majority agree that they're mainly targeting peaceful people who are not a threat.

[Jon Favreau]

That to me was probably the most hopeful number in there because to say that mainly targeting peaceful people, which I agree with, you sort of have to know you're following this somewhat closely and you're seeing the images and you're seeing the footage. So I was like, that number surprised me in a positive way.

[Tim Miller]

Where are you at on the whole convo of like whether this is a political winner? You know, and there's me and the Matt Iglesias argue about this. Iglesias is in. The Democrats just shouldn't talk about this. It's a losing issue. Where are you?

[Jon Favreau]

I strongly disagree with that. I think we Democrats fucked up immigration under Biden for sure. I think that most people in the.

[Tim Miller]

Country want like policy wise or rhetoric?

[Jon Favreau]

Policy wise and rhetoric. Because I think that the idea there again was we're going to do all this stuff but we're not going to talk about immigration because that's not the best issue for us. So now we've. This is basically how Democrats have handled immigration for some time now, which is tough issue. So let's do the policy. Let's say that we're for a path to citizenship and then helping the dreamers and then, you know, make a nod to border security. But when immigration just happens or there's waves of new migration or an influx of migrants, we're just not going to talk about it because it's not a good issue for us. And I think that is a mistake because the Trump Republican Party is always going to make it an issue. It's going to be the centerpiece of their agenda. So why are we just having their story out there and not telling ours and just pretending that when they do really extreme things on immigration, we hit back with like, but cost of living. Like, I just don't think that works. Even though I agree that cost of living is a more favorable terrain for us than immigration, but I think that Trump's numbers on immigration and the change in his numbers on immigration since he took office the second time proves that it's not their best issue. And if you actually go make the case and share a lot of these videos and stories and images of ice, it's going to change people's minds. And I still think a lot of people would say we want a strong border, we want an immigration system that is fair, that people who've been standing in line and waiting, they should get precedent over people who illegally cross the border, for sure. Yeah. But they don't want ICE in the streets grabbing innocent people and American citizens and legal residents.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And the 50, 34 against masks. I think it's encouraging because it also shows there's room to grow there. Probably, like a lot of people probably don't know. I haven't been following that closely, don't know about it. I was talking on a different project to some MAGA folks who, like you, get a lot of the defense of this. It's actually not really on the merits, but it's a lot of, like, you know, a couple examples are falling through the cracks. Like that happens in any policy. Right. You know, and liberal media is obsessing over these outliers. And so to me, like, that is an argument for talking about this more and bringing up the examples more, because I think that the more examples there are, the harder it is to kind of get away with that.

[Jon Favreau]

I also find that, I mean, I've been angry about this for months now, and I know you have, and you interviewed George Reddes, US Citizen, who was detained for three days for no reason.

[Tim Miller]

Both of us were madder than he.

[Jon Favreau]

Was, I mean, which was also incredible to me. Just like, the grace that he has. And then I, you know, talked about it, too, and shared the story. And just the reaction from people who are like, I can't believe this is happening. I didn't know this. And these are people who, you know, pay attention to you and me and all the content we do, which means they're political judges.

[Tim Miller]

They're engaged.

[Jon Favreau]

They're engaged. And so just the number of people out there who probably don't realize this, I think there's huge room to persuade people on this.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, we gotta get George on, like, the Ovan show or something. You know what I mean? Like, one of those types of things. You mentioned this about how angry you are. I've talked about this a lot about what the origins are, like, why people might expect, on the surface that the thing that I would get the most upset would be about gay stuff or whatever. You know what I mean? I don't. I'm not an immigrant. My families aren't immigrants. But it's just been. It was very core to kind of why. You know, it's just so weird now, but, like, why I was attracted to Republicans in the first place. Like, the kind of, you know, shining city on the hill element of this is, like, part of my pride of being an American. What is it that, like, why are you so in your feelings on this? I feel like we're, like, extremely aligned.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it's a good question, I think. I mean, look, Barack obama in that 2004 convention speech that I didn't work on because I didn't know him yet. You know, one of the riffs at the beginning is one of the promises of this country is that you can walk down the street without being harassed by the government or you don't get a knock on the door in the middle of the night. I mean, these are, like, basic foundational freedoms in this country. And it is genuinely scary that there are federal agents on the streets now who will grab people. And your citizenship won't help you. Carrying an ID doesn't necessarily help you. Your fucking passport may not help you, because they're now saying that, like, they don't believe people who show them their passport. They have to go, like, run the Social Security number after they detain you for five hours. It's legitimately terrifying. And I'm like, if we can't expect that our government won't wrongfully detain us and potentially physically assault us and take us away from our families without being able to call a lawyer or. Or being able to, like, call our families, what else is the country for? What else is the government for? That's, like, the most basic, basic freedoms. And so I think it really. That bothers me, like, more than anything. And it's. And look, I know, you know, we did deportations in the Obama administration, and there were plenty of stories where someone gets deported, and you're like, you know what? That person has been here for 10 years. They've, like, done it all right? And, yes, they crossed illegally, but, like, you feel really bad, and that's gonna happen in a state, even in the best immigration system. So I get that sometimes that happens. But this is just. It's just another level when you talk.

[Tim Miller]

About how it's, like, one of the fundamental. Like, the fundamental elements of America. I mean, the immigrant story is a fundamental element of America. Right. But in addition to that, right, like this, the fact that this is not an authoritarian country, it's a free country, we all have basic fundamental freedoms. I do think like that maybe why this is an issue that kind of aligns people coming from my background and yours, is that you actually care about that and still believe in it. And I do think not to pick on anybody on the left in particular, but there is a category of left folks that are kind of like, I don't know, America's not that great actually. Right. And that we need to fundamentally change it in a way that there are elements of America that are good and that we like, but we should go a different route. And I think that this issue cleaves off people that just genuinely care about the foundational documents of the country and the points and then maybe have some disagreements on how to live up to those. Right. Is that a majority still in the country, do you think?

[Jon Favreau]

I think so. I think so. And it's one of the reasons the interminable debate within sort of our coalition about do we talk about democracy, democracy is a loser to talk about, or we talk about kitchen table issues drives me fucking insane because I agree that talking about democracy and the rule of.

[Tim Miller]

Law and using lock and detective and.

[Jon Favreau]

Using words like that is not going to land with people. I 100% agree with that. But I also think, do you want to be, do you want your family to be able to walk down the street without worrying that they're going to be taken by masked agents? I think that, I think that resonates with people. I think that's a kitchen table issue. Yeah, I do.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, good.

[Jon Favreau]

And I also think, like, as we're talking about. But the political prosecutions, like the political prosecutions right now are like up here and people who've pissed off Trump and who are on legal teams that went after him and stuff like that. And then the ICE stuff, the immigrant stuff is like, it's like down here it's people who, you know, maybe they crossed illegally. It's sort of getting to meet in the middle soon because like the political prosecutions, they're gonna go down the list and then on the ICE raids, they're grabbing American citizens, they're grabbing legal residents. And now with the, everyone who disagrees with the president is antifa.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And we're going to go after left leaning groups like it's, it's, it's broadening.

[Tim Miller]

Starting to touch a lot.

[Jon Favreau]

And we're only, you know, nine months in.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. To your point, on the broadening on the, on their bottom up attacks and what ICE is doing, they're trying to add 10,000 more deportation officers, which is alarming on the one hand. Something I'm very concerned about. I think this is going to get worse before it gets better. There's one little positive silver lining, though, on that front. I don't know if you saw in the Atlantic. I want to read a little bit from this. More than a third of those who have applied to join ICE have failed the fitness test so far, impeding the agency's plan to hire, train and deploy 10,000 deportation officers. That's a crazy sentence, by the way. We're trying to hire, train and deploy 10,000 deportation officers, but that plan is getting impeded by the fact that recruits are not able to do 15 push ups, 32 sit ups, and run one and a half miles in 14 minutes. So I'm just curious what you think about the fatties who not. Who are not able to get into ice, who just. They want to rough up. They want to rough up some Mexicans, but they're not able to do the 14 push ups. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, if you, if you looked at all the image, the pictures of the people who are in the Nazi group chat.

[Tim Miller]

Yep.

[Jon Favreau]

Those would be the kind of people who apply to ice and probably couldn't. Couldn't swing.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. 32 steps. They might not be able to do that in the full 14 minutes. And that's, that's, you know, if you're doing one sit up for 30 seconds, you know that's going to take up the whole time.

[Jon Favreau]

Look, I ran track in high school for three seasons and four years, and I was not the fastest.

[Tim Miller]

What was your mile time?

[Jon Favreau]

My mile time was like 5, 45 at the best, which is like middle of the pack. It's fine.

[Tim Miller]

All right, well, you've gotten older, so.

[Jon Favreau]

Let'S call it 14.

[Tim Miller]

Let's call it six minutes. Now you've gotten older. You've gotten older. So you've got eight minutes. That's what I'm saying, to do 15 push ups and 32 sit ups right now. Let's do it. Let's see. Can we scare down?

[Jon Favreau]

I can definitely do the push ups. I could definitely do the push ups. Here's the thing. My first reaction when I read that was that, oh, shit, they're just gonna lower the standards. They're just gonna get rid of the fitness standards at some point because they just want, they want the thugs they want anyone, and especially want people who want to rough people up, and the standards will be lower. It's always the concern about ice. You know, the guard, the military, they all have much higher standards anyway. And ICE's standards are lower. Most local police forces as well. So when you lower the standards because you want a lot more people, you're going to get a lot of unqualified people in. And their physical fitness to me, is the. The least of my concerns.

[Tim Miller]

It is the least of my concerns, but it does, it does paint a mental picture of the type of person that's coming. And at this point, you're like, I, you shoot. You're watching the videos of the masked agents, like, harassing the old guy with the weed whacker outside of ihop. And you're like, I want to be one of those guys, okay. And so you're driving the type of person who's into that, you know, who has, who's a little sadistic. And then they're also the type of person that can't do 32 sit ups.

[Jon Favreau]

It tracks.

[Tim Miller]

So, like, you're picturing that person, you're thinking, man, 10,000 of those guys can cause a lot of damage because they've got a lot of bitterness inside them. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And you know what? They're not going to have to chase people down because they have guns.

[Tim Miller]

Right. Well, there was the one video you saw the Chicago one of the ICE people chasing the guy around.

[Jon Favreau]

I did see that.

[Tim Miller]

Okay. Do you think Dean Cain made it? Could we foia for that to see if Dean was able to do it.

[Jon Favreau]

That was a tough video. Did you see the video of Dean Cain?

[Tim Miller]

Oh, my God. Yeah. I tried so hard. I literally started googling New Orleans, like dog training centers. And I was gonna go tape a video of myself doing, doing the Dean Cain, like, where he's like, can barely crawl through the tunnel. But I couldn't find any, any place to do it.

[Jon Favreau]

It's weird that he was doing that knowing that there were cameras on him and he didn't, he didn't even try.

[Tim Miller]

He barely made it through that course in 14 minutes. I don't know. Maybe Dean will make it. We'll see. I'll ask the Piers Morgan producers to follow up with him on that, see if he made it. All right. You know, we don't pick favorites with our ad sponsors. We don't rank them, you know, publicly at least. Kind of like your children, you know, you don't. I only have one child, so not a big deal. But I hear this from like my nephews and nieces. Maybe you don't want to, you don't want to rank them publicly. But here's one thing we know. I really love fish. I really love fresh fish and I really love services that make it easy to cook a healthy dinner for my family. And you know who does all those things? Wild Alaskan the Wild Alaskan Company is the best way to get wild caught. Perfectly portioned, nutrient dense seafood delivered directly to your door. Trust me, you haven't tasted fish this good. We've been inundated with fish from Wild Alaskan. So much so that not only have I been able to cook with it and feed my family, we had some friends come over, made some fish tacos. Also handed out some Wild Alaskan to some friends and neighbors so they could enjoy as well because you know, I've been on the road a lot so I've only got so much time to cook fish and rave reviews from everybody. Whether it's the Pacific halibut, Pacific cod, co host salmon, it's all wonderful. Couldn't recommend it more. If you're not completely satisfied with your first box, Wild Alaskan will give you a full refund. No questions asked, no risk, just high quality seafood. Not all fish are the same. Get seafood you can trust. Go to wild alaskan.com bulwark for 35 bucks off your first box of premium wild cut seafood. That's wildalaskin.com bulwark for $35 off your first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode. I want to do some part in news with you unless you had any other ICE talk. Do you have any other ICE thoughts? Couple pardon news items on the first one one of the January 6th rioters that was pardoned. He was arrested over the weekend for threatening to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Court documents said that Christopher Moynihan was arrested after saying in text messages that he planned to eliminate Jeffries when he was at an event in New York City on Monday. So I'm glad they got ahead of that. Thoughts?

[Jon Favreau]

He also said in a text message, this terrorist cannot live. Who's been calling Democrats terrorists? The Republican leaders, the White House, Republican speaker of the House, Republican speaker of the House, Hamas terrorists, antifa terrorists. It's been like this for now, several weeks since honestly, since Charlie Kirk's assassination, that she's been calling Democrats terrorists. And are we surprised that the guy that Trump pardoned, who was convicted of, you know, entering the Capitol building and threatening, I get apparently this was a guy who was on the. On the floor of the Senate when. During the 2020 certification and was opening the desks in the Senate saying, there's got to be something in here we can use against these assholes. So wanted to cause harm to politicians. And then Trump said, no, that's okay. You're. You're free. And now he wants to kill a Democrat after hearing Donald, that same man that pardoned him and all the people who are allied with him call Democrats terrorists. So that's where we are.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I don't like the whole discourse around. We've got to tone down the rhetoric. So we don't have assassinations, like, that much anyway. And I think everybody should be more responsible in their rhetoric. The idea that after the Charlie Kirk assassination, people are talking about the Democrats, Donald Trump a fascist, and that's why this guy killed Charlie Kirk. It's just like this guy was playing video games and he was mad about trans stuff, and this guy was not watching, like, faced the nation and was unhappy with the Democrats rhetoric. Right. So sometimes, like, that connection is kind of tenuous. Right.

[Jon Favreau]

But not so much in this case.

[Tim Miller]

Not in this case. And, you know, and it's particularly true when coming out of the no Kings protests. Right. Where, like, you had. Thank God we didn't have any violence. Like, thank God, like, you have gathering places. You have a point where, you know, people are gonna be. And you have leaders, like, essentially putting a target on their back. It is totally irresponsible. And it's coming from the same people who are like, anytime you call Stephen Miller a fascist, that means that the government should be able to go after you. And it's doublespeak. But it's also alarming.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. I think that they have broadened the aperture on what constitutes inciting violence, what speech constitutes inciting violence. To be like, you can't call them authoritarian anymore. Like, I saw them go back and forth on this on Fox Day, and they're like, well, if Donald Trump's an authoritarian, why shouldn't people try to, you know, resist him with violence? It's like, easy. I think he's. I think it's an authoritarian regime that we have to take down nonviolently.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Protest and oppose. That's.

[Jon Favreau]

They're, you know, that's happened throughout history.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, it's not. It doesn't. Not authoritarian does not mean or excuse violence against the regime.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Some other examples is gn sexers have gotten pardoned. There's at least double digits. Another guy got out and began soliciting a minor. Multiple people have done burglaries. Others have gotten arrested for past violent crimes. Carrying a weapon feels like they let loose some people that are violent criminals from the law and order regime.

[Jon Favreau]

And again, they Is the president of the United States personally did it. Even over the objections of people who are like, do you really want to. You really want to pardon and commute all of them, all the sentences, including the vice presidents? Yeah. And like, what about the ones who, like, really beat the shit out of cops in, like, a really violent way? Yeah, sure, let's do it. And when Trump talks about it among Democrats, it's like, oh, some judge had someone serve their sentence and then didn't keep them in jail.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

And they get blamed for that. Right. And this is just like, so much more direct.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And it's also. This is like, you know, is the hypocrisy thing is annoying to do after a while, but it's like, he doesn't care about crime.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

He cares about crime when it affects him and his supporters and people he's close to. And he doesn't care about crime when it's committed places he doesn't have to see.

[Tim Miller]

He cares about it kind of aesthetically, too.

[Jon Favreau]

He wants a clean city.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, he wants a clean city. He wants the buildings to look beautiful. He doesn't want people doing drugs on the street. He cares about that. Not really about the victims of crime.

[Jon Favreau]

Which is a very authoritarian thing. I'm thinking about the. The Washington Post story over the weekend about Rubio and Bukele. And, you know, it was talking about how Bukele made deals with MS.13 when he was coming to power and basically said, you can keep killing people, but just no more public executions. We need to be private because I want the crime stats to go down.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, right.

[Jon Favreau]

That is. That is Donald Trump. Yeah, right. It's the same idea. Like, I want the cities clean. I want it to look good. I want the crime stats to be down. I want to say that I solved the problem. If the murders keep happening, I don't want to hear about it.

[Tim Miller]

That Bukele story was crazy. It's insane that we gave them. And just to this point of hypocrisy is the wrong word for it, because it's like, if you actually took them at face value, took their argument at face value, which I do think that some MAGA people do, which is like, I care about drug trafficking. Fentanyl has affected my life. We should go after the gang members. So if you take that in good faith, like the fact that we traded to El Salvador people that were informants who were helping us get actual top level gang leaders and drug traffickers. We traded those informants to El Salvador in exchange for being able to use their prison to send these Venezuelans there, like the hairdresser and the guy with autism awareness tattoo. And it's like, and now the prison, we can't use it anymore. Cause they fucked that up so bad. So we essentially traded them MS.13 informants for nothing.

[Jon Favreau]

And for what purpose? Right. What was the purpose of sending them to the prison? It was for propaganda purposes, right? It was to send a message. There was no reason to put them in that jail. Could have put them anywhere else, could have deported them.

[Tim Miller]

We had already detained them, could have.

[Jon Favreau]

Sent them back to Venezuela where they ended up.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, they were already detained, actually, they weren't out on the streets. So we sent a bunch of people that are already detained to a meaner El Salvador gulag in exchange for giving them nine and foremost Ms. 13, which.

[Jon Favreau]

Hurt our efforts, law enforcement efforts that started even under that were happening under the first Trump administration to go after Ms. 13 gang members in our country.

[Tim Miller]

I'm glad I got you riled up on that. One other part. Piece of pardon news from tmz. Donald Trump is considering commuting Diddy's sentence, of course, as early as this week, according to a high ranking White House official. The White House is denying, but TMZ says they stand by their story and their sourcing. Good for them. And so who knows, the freak offs could be back any minute now.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, are we surprised by this?

[Tim Miller]

Trump and Diddy were pals, right?

[Jon Favreau]

Trump, adieu. Pals. Trump also likes having, you know, celebrity, especially like hip hop stars, like so he could be like, look, look at this, look at this rapper who's friends with me, you know, he likes me. I got a black friend here.

[Tim Miller]

The blacks love Diddy, right?

[Jon Favreau]

You know, so it's a, it's a little bit of that, right? And he's got a, he's got a history with him. He probably looked at the, what he was convicted of, right? Which is, you know, it was basically prostitution across state lines. That's all they could get him on. Even though there were these horrific videos of him beating the shit out of women. Just awful, awful stuff. And he's only, I think like two or three months, four months maybe into a like 50 month sentence. Yeah, and we're going to just spring them from. Spring him from jail for what?

[Tim Miller]

Well, that's not a real crime, I don't think violence against women. And there's certain crimes that he's focused on when it comes to law and order. And I don't, I don't think that that's one of them. He's worried about you guys. I guess Tommy handled the Graham Platner interview yesterday.

[Jon Favreau]

Sure did.

[Tim Miller]

I think folks should listen to the whole thing. It's interesting. There's one news item that I want to start by talking about, then we'll talk about the race more broadly. He had a tattoo. And I had mentioned on a podcast last week that, like, there's been a lot of little scuttlebutt going around about Platner in the political class. And I was like, I just, you know, I wasn't sure what was true or not. One of the piece of scuttlebutt was that he had a, a Nazi, like a swastika tattoo going on. I'd heard that from multiple people. And it turns out that was not it. What he had was like a skull and crossbones tattoo that I'm not deep on Nazi insignia, but that was like, I guess the symbol of some. One of the units of one of the Nazi units, I guess. And anyway, Tommy asked him about that. What was the takeaway?

[Jon Favreau]

So I would encourage everyone to listen to the entire interview Tommy did with Platner. And it is, it's a long one, but I thought it was fascinating, partly because of how he handled all the questions, which was very like, matter of fact, I don't know who the strongest candidate is in Maine, but I found him very believable in his interview with Tommy. And his, his story there is, he was in the Marines, 23. They were in Croatia and they all got really drunk and they went to the tattoo parlor and they all. There was a bunch of like skulls on the wall and they were like, oh, give us the scariest skull and crossbones you have. Cause they were marines who were drunk. So that's what he got.

[Tim Miller]

And he said, not that surprised that in Croatia there's some Nazi loving tattoo artists. That does. That feels right. That feels believable, I guess. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And then he said to Tom, he's like. And I, he's like, it's not like I've been trying to hide it my whole life. Like I have a shirt off at the pool and stuff like that. And he's like, no. And no one has said anything to me about it. And he didn't look it up. Now his, you know, his political director who left was like, he's a history buff. He should know. Like, maybe he didn't know at first, but he had to have known later. Jewish Insider has some story that I can't access because I'm not a subscriber that says that he. That there was some former acquaintance of his who said he used to call it his Totenkampf or whatever.

[Tim Miller]

Former acquaintance of the main Senate candidate. Somebody sent this to me, said that he called the tattoo my Totenkampf.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. But it's like, I don't know when that was.

[Tim Miller]

I don't know what that was.

[Jon Favreau]

To believe that this is nefarious, you would have to believe that he has all these Nazi beliefs that he has not expressed to anyone in all of his Reddit posts that have got him in trouble, some of which he said, I'm a communist. So it's like, is he a communist? Is he a Nazi? It just feels like a weird thing to be like, but this is me. This is my Nazi tattoo. And actually these are all the beliefs in this tattoo that I didn't know meant what it meant. Right.

[Tim Miller]

The Totenkampf is German for death's head. Yeah. I don't fucking know is what I guess I would say. Yeah, sure. It does feel strange. I mean, you know, to have it on his, like, right on his chest. It's not like, hidden. So anytime he would be going to the pool or the beach or whatever, people would see it. I definitely, if I saw it, wouldn't be like, oh, that's a Nazi tattoo.

[Jon Favreau]

I do feel like that's a test for people who might be critical of this. It's like, if you saw that, would you have known? Are you a buff on Nazi symbols?

[Tim Miller]

I definitely wouldn't have known, like, based on what I had heard about it once I saw. So then you guys played a video, I guess. He also was shirtless, singing Miley Cyrus, Wrecking Ball. The best part at his sibling's wedding.

[Jon Favreau]

At his sister in law's wedding.

[Tim Miller]

Sister in law's wedding, yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Who's Jewish.

[Tim Miller]

Great, great rendition of Wrecking Ball of a great song. I do recommend Anne Hathaway's version of Wrecking Ball on that lip syncing show.

[Jon Favreau]

That is a good show.

[Tim Miller]

It's really nice. The Lip Sync Battle. So, you know, he's doing. He's singing the Wrecking Ball and the picture is there. And like, when I saw it, I was like, okay. Based on what I'd heard, I expected that the skull would have like a little Swastika inside of it or something. But again, it's just like the symbol of this. Not just. I mean, it is the symbol, I guess with this Nazi military unit, I probably would have tattooed over it by now. I mean, for that reason. I guess so. I don't know.

[Jon Favreau]

If I had known, I guess I don't. I mean, there's no state of Maine. There's no universe where I'm getting a tattoo anyway.

[Tim Miller]

Me neither. I'm scared of needles.

[Unknown Singer]

What did you say?

[Tim Miller]

It's a great gift that the Lord gave me. I hate getting my blood drawn. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

It's like I've learned to live with needles, but I'm like, it seems unnecessary to get a whole bunch of them for a tattoo that would be hard to remove too now. So I'm all set with tattoos. So I can't really get inside of his head on that one. I think my broader issue with all of this is, like, I very much want and think it is super important for normal people to run in politics.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

I just do. And I think that part of the issue right now is we have very abnormal people in politics, obviously on the Republican side, but I think like, self.

[Tim Miller]

Selecting for deranged people, a lot of.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, front of the classroom call on me teacher people. And that's fine place for them. But I think we just need people to run who are normal human beings to get that to be a normal human being. You're gonna have plenty of faults, you're gonna have made plenty of mistakes. You're gonna have plenty skeletons in your closet. Particularly now that we're getting elder Millennials running. Pretty soon it's gonna be Gen Z running. And these people, their whole life is on the Internet. And I kind of thought that over the last year or so we were past the, like, you posted something or you have an association that's a problem, or you posted. I thought we were kind of past that in terms of like disqualifying people. So it's like, I agree with that.

[Tim Miller]

I guess my complaint about that is that, like, it feels like it's a lot of motivation reasoning all the time in this case, like in this story. Like, I see a lot of. Because Platner, for now at least, is sort of, I guess, somewhat from a policy standpoint, but also kind of from a vibe standpoint and from like, who his consultants are standpoint, has kind of aligned himself more with like the burn left populist wing. And so you see the types of people that are kind of in that wing online. Like Going full throated defending them. That you could imagine if like Josh Shapiro had done a Reddit post where he had said something sexist about a woman, you would imagine that what they would be saying about that and vice versa. Right. We don't even pick on that. And so that is, I guess my problem with that or my concern about that, which is like, it does feel like people want to have it both ways where like, if it's somebody that they like did something bad in the past, then it's like, whatever, no big deal. But then if it's someone that is on the other faction within the party, then it's like, oh, well, this is disqualifying now.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes, for sure. And where I am on this is my universal principle is if you have done or said something bad in the past and you show contrition and you talk about why you did it and you say I've grown and I've done this, I am in favor, I am more likely to buy someone who has done it, apologized and moved on if you have no contrition. Not a lot of people in the Hitler group chat were apologizing. A few were more apologetic than the Vice President United States talking about the Hitler group chat who said it was all pearl clutching. A few of them were like, I read these things.

[Tim Miller]

I took that personally.

[Jon Favreau]

Now do I really believe them? I don't know them. But at least on the Democratic side, let's say whether it's a, a centrist, a leftist, whoever it may be, if you've done something and you want to apologize and you are like, I am just more inclined to cut that person a break.

[Tim Miller]

Steve Shaley is a consultant from Florida. I like him a lot. Really smart. He was posting about this and it was one of the rare interesting posts I saw about the platinum race. A lot of bad posts out there on both sides of the Grand Platner discussion. But he wrote this. He goes, there are two separate conversations happening. Number one is we should create the space to allow people to grow from youthful mistakes as a part of an effort to build a broader coalition. That's what we're just talking about right now. Everybody agree that's not true? Not everybody agrees. You and me and Steve Shaley agree on that. Many people agree on that. The Democrats need to broaden their coalition and bring some people in who have some rougher edges, who can hang with non college voters, who are not as attuned to the most recent woke speak, who are not front of the classroom people. I think that that is really important. And I think that's important as a principle for Democratic candidates, no matter where they are ideologically. You agree we can move on from point 100%. Point one, we all agree. Point two is there's a separate conversation. What do we need to do to win in Maine? Because that's really important, and that is where I get a little bit more iffy. And I'm not really falling on one side of this at this point or not, but it's like, man, I would be more into the idea of we should try a wild card candidate in Texas, because we've tried a bunch of stuff in Texas or Florida. Right. In Florida. Try somebody down there. Democrats want to nominate a Florida man who's got some weird tattoos and has done some strange stuff with bath salts in the past or wears jean shorts. I'm interested in that because the Democrats haven't won in Florida in a while, and it feels unlikely they're gonna win anytime soon. And so it's like, why not try something new in Maine? Kamala just won in Maine, and if the Democrats have any chance to get even to parity in the Senate, they have to win this race. So is it, like a little bit of a risk in Maine that might be greater than in other states or not?

[Jon Favreau]

So what Steve said is absolutely right. In fact, I'm in the camp that winning is the only thing that matters in this environment right now. I truly believe we are facing an authoritarian threat, and therefore, yes, we have to win. This is why you and I were on the. On the. Joe Biden should not be running again.

[Tim Miller]

Don't bring that up early. Right. And it covered enough of that this week already on the pod. That was covered on yesterday's pod pretty thoroughly.

[Jon Favreau]

You know, the Biden defenders, you know, they.

[Tim Miller]

Off.

[Jon Favreau]

We were offered. It was, like, personal. It was this. No, it's not. I think Joe Biden, like. Like I said, he treated me well. My family well. I think it was really hard to do that.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

But it is about winning because we are in. We are facing a real threat emergency. So that is the most important thing in main. So if Graham Platner absolutely cannot win, and there's a lot of evidence of that, then fine, then, like, great candidate. I'm glad that we can, you know, that people can grow and learn from their mistakes. But no, my contention is I. And I'll tell you how this whole thing started before Mills, before Platner, I was looking at Maine and be like, okay, we have to win Maine.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And then I was like, I hope that the. I hope that this governor runs. I didn't know that Janet Mills might run because she's a governor. She's somewhat. She's won statewide twice. So that's a real. That's great. And then it's like, oh, well, did you know that she's 79? 77.

[Tim Miller]

77.

[Jon Favreau]

77.

[Tim Miller]

So she'll be. She does look great for 77.

[Jon Favreau]

It's not Biden.

[Tim Miller]

It's not to beat a dead horse on Biden, but there are 77 year olds and 77 year olds and we.

[Jon Favreau]

All age by all accounts. Every time I see what show I.

[Tim Miller]

Was on recently, I was like, Mitt Romney, for example, he looks better than Russ Vogt. Russ Vogt is, I think, our age somehow. I mean, he looks like he's on death's door. So, you know, everyone ages differently.

[Jon Favreau]

But I will say that wasn't. I was like, huh, interesting. Not a deal breaker for me. But that's a data point, you know. Then she's saying she has a quote about Susan Collins and is like, she's doing the best she can and I really appreciate everything she's doing. And I was like, that's also not very helpful in an environment. And then she said she wants to preserve the filibuster. Janet Mills. And I'm like, okay, that's another one where, you know, Ruben Gallego won. Arizona, very tough state. John Ossoff, Raphael Warnock, 1. Georgia, very tough state. None of them are talking about preserving the filibuster. So. And that's a pet peeve of mine, the filibuster. So I'm not really.

[Tim Miller]

I'm glad we got to that because my last topic, I don't know what time to get to is do John and Tim agree on everything now? Because I've been agreeing with you way too much lately. Now that you're coming to the filibuster, maybe, yeah, maybe we can disagree on.

[Jon Favreau]

The filibuster anyway, so I don't know if Janet Mills would be the strongest candidate against Susan Collins. If by June it seems like she will be, then I am happy to support Janet Mills. Yeah, I really am. And, but I don't think that any. I guess where I disagree is I don't think that anything we've learned about Graham Platner obviously makes him less competitive than Mills.

[Tim Miller]

One other thing, on Maine, you spend a little time up there.

[Jon Favreau]

My, my in laws live there full time now.

[Tim Miller]

Bain's weird and like has an independent senator and you know, obviously in Collins.

[Jon Favreau]

Jared golden got a Democrat winning one of the only Trump districts.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

With a Democrat now, see, and that's.

[Tim Miller]

Where I was hoping Jared was going to run for Senate. And so for that reason. But, you know, the other thing to think about is we have a long time to do this campaign, but maybe Maine is a place where you need a different type of candidate. And we were talking about this the other day where it's like, like Susan Collins beat last time. A pretty traditional style of Democrat, very close.

[Jon Favreau]

Sarah Gideon was the Democratic leader of the legislature, well known and very well funded. Known as a cautious campaigner at the time. So people thought, this is perfect. It's a Democrat who's just a little, you know, more mainstream Democrat, moderate Democrat, and then loses by nine points in a state that Kamala won by nine.

[Tim Miller]

I think seven.

[Jon Favreau]

Seven. Yeah, she won by seven.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, she won by 7.

[Jon Favreau]

That's a huge fail that. I don't think the party's reckoned with that. Our candidate in 2020, when Joe Biden won the national vote by four and a half points and won the Electoral College in Maine, who was one of the best funded candidates, lost by nine points and was just an establishment Dem in Maine. And Janet Mills, now, she's won twice statewide. She won in 18, and she won again in 22. In 22, she did win against Paul LePage, who's pretty extreme and crazy. Not Susan Collins.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Right.

[Jon Favreau]

But she also has one of the lower approval ratings of any governor right now. And so, like, these are. Yeah, these are just, like, flashing warning signs to me where I'm like, I still think solid candidate, but I don't think she's, like, bulletproof here. I don't think she's like the, you know, like Roy Cooper in North Carolina, I think is probably an even stronger candidate because he left office, like, very well liked.

[Tim Miller]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

And I think Janet Mills is sitting at, like, you know, 49, 50, 51% approval.

[Tim Miller]

And Roy's got some good old boy energy, which I like.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know. And I am very happy to, like, see how the race unfolds, but I don't. I very much disagree with the fact that he is obviously the weaker candidate.

[Tim Miller]

This is super interesting. Just as a politics dork, I wish we weren't, like, doing a political science experiment with the state of our democracy on the line. It's kind of like.

[Jon Favreau]

But that's.

[Tim Miller]

I would love to run. Run them both, see how it goes.

[Jon Favreau]

But this is why, like, luckily, we have till June.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

For this. I Mean, the idea that this is all coming out now and the primary's not until June, like, there's a lot of campaign left to run.

[Tim Miller]

What fundamentally underlines all this is that the Democrats have to do better with working class people.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Tim Miller]

And that's just like what it comes down to. And as like a former Republican and like a commentator now that doesn't have like a dog in the internal Democratic factional fights, really, I get to sort of observe it more as an anthropologist.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

And it's like a lot people are really certain what the right answer is. Right. Like, you have populist lefty types, like some of your favorites who I'm thinking of, who wrote for the Bulwark recently, are sure that the answer is we need kind of socialist left, populist left policies. And that is the answer. All the other stuff doesn't matter. The cultural issues, we just need a populist leftist. They also have to be on the right side of Israel, Palestine. And as long as they're right on both of those, then we can do better with working class people. Then you have some in more of the Iglesias camp, name checking him twice in this podcast who are like, you have to do cultural right, you have to do cultural right. You have to moderate on specific issues like energy guns, the trans. That argument. Some people kind of argue that it's more about vibes and having the types of candidates that are more able to sort of mix it up and go into those communities and give off the aesthetic. A working class aesthetic. Do you have a take on that or any thoughts?

[Jon Favreau]

I think it's very dependent on the region, the state, the district, the candidate, the race. Like, I just, I don't think there is one obvious formula. And I think that is evidenced by the fact that you have Democrats of all different stripes and backgrounds and beliefs winning all across the country in different places. I think you have. I think you have.

[Tim Miller]

We have Democrats losing in lots of places across the country.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm thinking about the House right now. Yeah. That's the only thing because we've had. Had a lot of experiments. If we're talking about political science experiments, we've had it in the House less so in other places. And some of them have not moderated on social and cultural issues at all. They've just not focused on them as much. And they are moderate Democrats. Some are more. You don't see a lot of like DSA types winning outside of cities or deep blue areas for sure. But you see candidates who emphasize more, I would say Populism, not just in the, we need Medicare for all, but populism in the, like, you know, running hard against corporate malfeasance or, you know.

[Tim Miller]

Corporations, they need the right to repair and like that kind of stuff. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And I actually think that that is, if you look at polling, that stance, let's call it like the Lena Khan stance, that is more popular with voters and especially working class voters than the type of populism that is like, let's just tax the rich a lot and spend it on government programs, which is something I like. But I realize that a lot of people in swingier districts might not care about that as much as they care about holding corporations accountable.

[Tim Miller]

I'm not satisfied by that answer. So we're gonna have to do a little more. I just think that the Democratic brand is so broken in blue and red and purple states that like, there actually is a table stakes part of this, that you have to be separate from them and separate from the Democratic establishment, the party brand, and you have to be opposed to them in tangible ways.

[Jon Favreau]

That's where people get in trouble.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. To even get people to listen to you. And it's hard. Part of it is gets people in trouble because Democratic activist types don't like this. I've talked to several candidates, more conservative type candidates will call me and be like, what do you think I should do as a Democrat? And I'm always like, I don't care what it is. Just find whatever issue it is that you agree with the MAGA side of the argument on and talk about it a lot. Actually talk about that one thing a lot. And criticize the Democrats directly on it. And they're like, ooh, but when I go to the Democratic county group meeting, they get mad at me about that. And I'm like, yeah, but that's just the only way to get the other people in the state. I'm talking again, not about Maine. I'm talking about red states, like winning back in Florida again, for example. This is what you'd have to do and people don't want to do that. And maybe you can do it from the left. I'm open to the fact that it's possible to do it from a populist, anti corporate left. I think that's probably less effective in red states, but that's worth a try. I guess it's kind of what Dan Osborne was trying to do a little bit in Nebraska, for example. I think that's worth a try, but I don't know. I think it has to be Tangible separation with the party to have a chance.

[Jon Favreau]

I think you can do a running against the establishment, the Democratic establishment in Washington. And now the problem is when you scratch the surface of that and then dig in a little bit like, oh, so what has the establishment done? Yeah, they'll be like, loose.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Right.

[Jon Favreau]

They don't fight hard enough.

[Tim Miller]

We need a fightier fighter. I was like, I agree. We need fightier fighters. I don't think that's, like, enough, though, to win over people that voted for Donald Trump and Matt Gates or whatever.

[Jon Favreau]

And the honest challenge here is even when you look back at the Biden's four years. Right. If you take the age thing out of it and you say, okay, well, everyone was pissed about inflation, so what did he do wrong? What should he have done differently to help fight inflation? And I haven't heard a lot of answers on that.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

From anyone.

[Tim Miller]

Was. There was one person kind of surprised me. Damn. I'm annoyed as I forget who it was. One person did say, maybe we went a little bit too hot on the second.

[Jon Favreau]

On the second stimulus. There's a little bit of that. But it's like, like a little too. Yeah, it's okay. We have a couple. Couple hundred billion dollars left. And then we would have Joe. Have Kamala Harris or Joe Biden as president. I think you just got to be honest if you're a candidate, you just got to be honest about what you believe.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And honest about, like, where you think the party is up and where you think it's not. And what do you think the establishment's done wrong? And you should have a whole story about it.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

That just actually comes from you and doesn't come from, like, whatever is going to pull well. But I do think that, that most voters, especially people in red states, appreciate that. And I think starting by being like, yeah, the national Democratic Party is outside.

[Tim Miller]

Of the 2028 context, just in. Just broader. Like you mentioned Rubin earlier. Is there anybody that you're like, they're doing a good job with navigating that line, just like, being candid, talking about things they believe in, being honest about the ways in which the Democrats have.

[Jon Favreau]

Fallen out for 2028.

[Tim Miller]

No, I meant even broader because I know what your answer was, 2028. And I don't want to depress people towards the end of the podcast. I just mean, like, in general, just as of, like, how to do this, how to talk about. How to talk about this stuff better.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. It is funny because I go to. I go to the House because I feel like by the time these candidates get statewide and then get national, they all start doing the cautious thing.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

But I interviewed Jake Auchincloss recently here, and I thought he was, like, really thoughtful. I think Sarah McBride is one of the more, like, thoughtful, strategic, pragmatic Democrats who also is, like, I don't know. I mean, it's funny that a lot of the people I like, unsurprisingly, are like, they around my age, around our age, and, like, grew up in the Obama era. So they have very Obama, like, politics, even in, like, you know, different iterations. Sarah's like that. Jake's like that. So those people I appreciate.

[Tim Miller]

Not Ruben. I gave you a T for Ruben. Like, I think he's been pretty good. Like, they're thinking, you know, I'm not saying, like, Ruben 20, 28. I just.

[Jon Favreau]

Because you mentioned him, I thought.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I just been. As long as you're learning from people who's like. Like, he's pretty blunt now, like, when he's talking.

[Jon Favreau]

I like him a lot. Like him a lot. I think Ossoff's been doing great. Good, strong, anti corruption message.

[Tim Miller]

Just waiting for the. Waiting for him to accept my invitation to come on the pod. I'm just like. I'm like, honestly, like, outside his house, shouting to the window, John, John, Mr. Senator Ossoff come to New Orleans.

[Jon Favreau]

He came here. Tommy interviewed him, and we realized we hadn't talked to him since, like, 2017, when the podcast first started. Warnock, too, is also. I really like Warnock.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, Warnock's great.

[Jon Favreau]

It's always good to have a pastor.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, we're running out of time, but we're getting kind of down about the Democratic future there. It was sort of a lukewarm answer, I think I would say, when I asked you who's doing it.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, like I said, it's important to just be honest.

[Tim Miller]

It is important to be candid. The MAGA future, though, I don't know, J.D. sometimes I worry that, like, I find him so loathsome and unappealing that maybe I'm not seeing things straight clearly. Sometimes I'm worried I'm not assessing him clearly because I just find him unappealing in every possible regard.

[Jon Favreau]

Another place where we strongly agree.

[Tim Miller]

Strong agree there, but I think I might be right about this. So anyway, he was speaking at Camp Pendleton. This was the speech where they shot off some cannons to welcome him, and they almost took out one of his Secret Service detail by accident, even though Gavin Newsom warned them not to do that.

[Jon Favreau]

That shrapnel flying down on our highways here.

[Tim Miller]

But in the speech, he was trying to. Let's just watch.

[Jon Favreau]

Over my four years in the United States Marine Corps, I probably learned about a hundred jokes about United States Marines. And every single one of them Marines would mean the end of my political career if I told it up here today. I sent a few of them last night to my communication staff and I said, can I tell this one? And they said, please, no, sir, please, please do not tell that one.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, that is good.

[Jon Favreau]

One sure sign that someone is not that funny is that they talk about humor more than they actually tell funny jokes.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, employ it.

[Jon Favreau]

And I have now heard many clips of J.D. vance talking about himself being funny, telling jokes and humor in general without ever hearing anything funny from him. He's talking. He's been on the Katie Miller podcast. Yeah, the in house podcast for the White House, talking about how Marco Rubio's a big jokester. Everyone just can't stop laughing at Marco Rubio. And then he told some story that Marco Rubio told with a joke that didn't even make sense.

[Tim Miller]

It was really lost.

[Jon Favreau]

It's just terrible, terrible joke. He's talked about him joking around with his friends in a group chat. He's just painfully unfunny.

[Tim Miller]

How'd you like my Tucker Carlson laugh there? I didn't know it was Tucker Carlson. I was trying to do Tucker. He's also, if you notice, he's telling sir stories now. So, you know, he's trying to do it all. He's doing sir stories and I don't know, say what you want about Trump. A couple people on the board, Radit, got mad at me the other week when I said this, but, like, Trump doesn't really make me laugh that much because I hate him so much. But objectively, he's funny sometimes.

[Jon Favreau]

Of course he's funny.

[Tim Miller]

I don't even know why.

[Jon Favreau]

That's like the controversial.

[Tim Miller]

I know it bugs people when you say that, but he was up there speaking with the troops. It was inappropriate. A lot of times it was gross. It was like, I can't believe this is our country. Scary a little bit at times. He's getting the troops to shout for his authoritarian desires. And yet some of the jokes make you chuckle.

[Jon Favreau]

Gross, scary people can be funny.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, right.

[Jon Favreau]

We contain multitudes.

[Tim Miller]

And the funniness, though, is a way in for him to a certain demo of people that I don't. I guess, I don't know, it might be limiting for JD as far as their future is concerned. That's one hopeful thing that I have.

[Jon Favreau]

I was reading a piece that Noah Smith wrote the other week in his substack, and it was about, like, what happens after Trump, and it's about the Nazi group chats. And he made the point that. That you cite the reason for optimism, which is post Trump cult of personality. It's gonna be much harder to find Republican candidates out there who are as charismatic, right? And so electorally, that's a good thing. But when you don't have a charismatic leader and you don't have the cult of personality, then movements become more ideological because you have ideology that substitutes for.

[Tim Miller]

Wow, you're doing bulwarky material for, you.

[Jon Favreau]

Know, for, like, cult of personality kind of stuff. And if you look at the young. These young Republicans in these group chats and JD Vance and that whole crew, the, you know, the National Conservatism crew, which, you know, when they had their conference, everyone was like, well, it's a lot more boring than cpac. And it's like, yeah, because they're all fucking nerds, but they're very dangerous. And the ideology is much more dangerous than Trump's ideology. Who you could say doesn't have an ideology. And that does worry me.

[Tim Miller]

I know the National Review crowd will get mad at me for saying this because they'll make fun of people that are like, like, have Trump tds like me. And then we'll say things like, well, in certain ways, J.D. vance is more dangerous because it's like, well, everybody, I thought Trump was the worst ever. And it's like, yeah, Trump is the most dangerous in the sense that he is a megalomaniac and he has mental health issues. And so the line I always use is, it's hard to imagine people storming the Capitol waving Ron desanctimonious flags or J.D. vance flags. Right? It's like Trump is the. The scariest because you kind of do need a cult leader to successfully do a full toppling of democracy. Right? But just purely on an ideological standpoint, Trump tamps down what a lot of these guys wanna do in various ways. And Trump was joking. What was it? He made a joke. Trump being funny again the other day. He made Stephen Miller. He's like, I kind of wanna hear what's inside Steven's darkest thoughts. He's like, it might be scary, actually.

[Jon Favreau]

Not the darkest thoughts. Maybe don't talk about everything. Yeah, we're just like, you know, that he, he. I mean, it's a failing of Trump, obviously, but he, he knows Right now that he has surrounding him a bunch of fucking lunatics.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, even Trump realizes that.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Especially with Miller and Rus Vaught and some of these people. So I worry about that. But I think electorally, that it's going to be trickier for them. But also, we're in a pretty divided country, so it's like, you don't. Yeah, there's no landslides here.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, J.D. vance is not going to be so uncharismatic that he loses in a landslide.

[Tim Miller]

And who the hell knows who the Democrats could put up? All right, final thing. Okay. The dark prospect of the young, The MAGA youth taking over. That's a pretty dark place to go. I think it was the last time you were on mypod was when I was at TPUSA last year, because I remember I was taping from Arizona. I go every year. I think I might skip this year. I just don't know if I'm gonna have it in me.

[Jon Favreau]

I think that's fair.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I think maybe next year I'll go back, but I try to go every year. Cause I think it's important to hear what the MAGA youth are saying and actually hear it, because there's some ways in which it gets caricatured by just seeing the worst quotes from every event on Twitter. And it's interesting to see the full speeches, the boring parts, the weird ideological niches they have. I knew in advance that they were gonna try to redesign all of Washington, D.C. because they're obsessed with AR architecture. And Tucker Carlson gives long speeches about how architecture.

[Jon Favreau]

Very fascy.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. About how it depresses the spirits to look at some of the buildings in Washington and all that.

[Jon Favreau]

I've heard that before.

[Tim Miller]

So anyway. Yeah, Mussolini. Ish. So anyway, I was there, and we were talking, and it was, I guess, a month after Trump had won again. And we were talking about what our thoughts were, about what it says, about what we think about the country. And I remember we were both talking about, you know, how it was hard on us to think about the fact that, like, for our kids when they go to the classroom, like, Trump's face is gonna be on the president's list twice. And, like, that's a weird thing. But, like, for whatever reason that affects me, I'm just like, I kind of want to go tear it down from the social studies classrooms in my kid's school, which is not the thing to do. Not a sane parent move. So I won't actually be doing that. Anyway, we talked about some other stuff. You know, there is a boiling frog element to all this. Like, it's a lot less raw than it was then last December. I'm just kind of wondering what you, 10 months in, how you're feeling about the American experiment.

[Jon Favreau]

I think the feeling I've been having lately is just this sort of extreme frustration with the fact that I think so many people in the country are just not paying close attention to what's happening. And I think the reasons for that are both understandable and varied. And some of it's just like, I tried to check in once, and now it's brutal. And I'm tired and I gotta live my life because it's too dark to pay attention to this all the time. And so it's like, on one hand, I understand that. On the other, I'm like, we will lose the country if we just all turn away and stop paying attention. I genuinely believe that, which is why I'm still at this, which is why we just keep slinging takes. One of these days, it's gonna break through and figure it out. So part of my thought process has.

[Tim Miller]

Been, are you slinging takes because you think it will break through? Are you slinging takes because there's nothing else to fucking you? You don't know what else to do. No, I, like, the only way.

[Jon Favreau]

This could be completely naive of me. I don't think that my takes are breaking through, but I think that I hopefully, in a small, small way, am trying to wake up every day and persuade people that things are bad. And we got to get involved and we got to fix it, and don't know if that will work, but it's, like, the only thing I know how to do.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And so I'm going to keep doing it and try to do it as effectively as I can and as persuasively as I can, because I take words and persuasion seriously. Part of just being in politics and also what I did in politics, and also a big part of that is figuring out, like, how to reach those people who aren't paying enough attention and convince them that it is worthwhile to do so.

[Tim Miller]

You seem like less of an emotional wreck than me in Lovett, but are you ever doing any, like, Sundays just in bed where you're like, I can't do the pod tomorrow. I don't want to do this.

[Jon Favreau]

No, fuck this. I get. And I'm not. I am. Anyone can tell you I am not an angry person.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't show a lot of anger, but internally, if I'm like, by Myself.

[Tim Miller]

It's.

[Jon Favreau]

It's anger that. In the rage that fuels me more so than I'm so sad and doomer and everything's going to hell. I'm just like, I can't fucking believe we're losing to these people.

[Unknown Singer]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

It's more of that.

[Tim Miller]

Who are you mad at? Are you mad at JD And Trump? Are you mad at the voters? Are you mad at the people working for ice? Are you mad? Who are you mad. You're mad at? Everybody. Fuck them all.

[Jon Favreau]

Democratic Party.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. You know, the most firing hot rage is for.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, what we went through in 2024.

[Unknown Singer]

That.

[Jon Favreau]

That would be up there. That would be up there. And I. You know, I'm also a. I was just talking about how angry I am, but I'm also, like, a very empathetic person, and I try to be as empathetic as possible with everyone. So I get mad at them, and then I put myself in their shoes, whether it's Democrats, whether it's voters, and I'm like, okay. I can see why they got to this.

[Tim Miller]

You're not getting Stephen Miller's shoes, though.

[Jon Favreau]

No. No, I'm not. No. There's some people's tiny shoes. I get where he's coming from.

[Tim Miller]

The pointy devil shoes.

[Jon Favreau]

You know what? I feel like I got it. I got where you're coming from, and I know where that. You know. Sorry. I get where he's coming from.

[Tim Miller]

It's not a good place.

[Jon Favreau]

No.

[Tim Miller]

Even Trump knows.

[Jon Favreau]

No, he just is. You know, he had a. He had a tough experience in Santa Monica in high school.

[Tim Miller]

Bully Luis or whoever he was told.

[Jon Favreau]

Told. Told his friend he wasn't gonna be friends with him anymore because he's Latina. I started screaming about janitors not picking up trash. I get it, you know.

[Tim Miller]

All right, Favs. I appreciate it. I appreciate you slinging takes with me anytime.

[Jon Favreau]

This is fun.

[Tim Miller]

Everybody else, hope you enjoyed that. Right here at the Crooked Media Studio. What is. What's happening here? What's the start?

[Jon Favreau]

You know what? You know who? You need to ask?

[Tim Miller]

Love it.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Because you know who doesn't like that?

[Tim Miller]

You.

[Jon Favreau]

Me, Tommy.

[Tim Miller]

Great.

[Jon Favreau]

Jane.

[Tim Miller]

All right. Next time, love. It's on the pod.

[Jon Favreau]

Most of the staff.

[Tim Miller]

First question is artistic Aesthet. Do you think this depresses the spirit? Crooked Con. Everybody go to Crooked Con by get your tickets.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm gonna bulldoze this.

[Tim Miller]

You're gonna get your tickets, okay? You're gonna get your tickets for Crooked Con, and Jon Favreau's gonna come out and do a Tucker Carlson US speech about how there's certain types of art that depresses the spirit and it's the shit that love it crooked. All right, everybody, come back. We'll see y' all tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast. Peace.

[Unknown Singer]

We clawed, we chained our hearts in vain we jumped never asking why we kissed I fell under your spell of love no one could deny don't you ever say I just walked away I will always want you I can live a lie running for my life I will always want you I came in like a wrecking ball I never hit so hard in love All I wanted was to break your walls all you ever did was wreck me yeah, you, you wreck me I put you high up in the sky and now you're not coming down it slowly turned you let me burn now we're ashes on the ground don't you ever say I just walked away I will always want you I can never lie running for my life I will always, always want you I came in like a wrecking ball I never hit so hard in love All I wanted was to break you out all you ever did was wreck me I came in like a wrecking ball yeah, I just closed my eyes as well Let me crouching in a blazing fire all you ever did was.

[Tim Miller]

The Borg podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.