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- [00:01]
Tim Miller
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- [00:28]
Maggie Haberman
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- [01:11]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We got a double header for you today in segment two. It's the podcast favorite, Gen Z, bisexual, quasi communist. We're assessing what's been happening with the DSA in the primaries. That's my man. Cameron Caskey, of course. But first, she's a New York Times White House correspondent, author of Confidence man, and co author of Jonathan Swan. Of the new book Regime Change Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. It's of course, Maggie Haberman. What's up, girl?
- [01:39]
Maggie Haberman
How are you? Thanks for having me.
- [01:40]
Tim Miller
I'm doing great. It's been a minute and it seems, it's like you guys have sold so many of these books. Can I just say. I'm just gonna say it. We have this relationship. I can just be blunt. I don't get it. I mean, people wanna relive the first year of the Donald Trump presidency in written long form. I mean, I understand wanting to watch Yellowstone reruns, you know, or the World cup, but it's your magic.
- [02:06]
Maggie Haberman
I appreciate you talk having me on to talk about a book that you say you don't understand why people want to read, but I am grateful that
- [02:13]
Tim Miller
a lot of people do. I understand. After reading it, I understand it.
- [02:16]
Maggie Haberman
I appreciate that there are very long queues at libraries, which is great. In all seriousness, there's a very long audible cue. I don't think think it's about reliving it, Tim, honestly, because this book nearly killed us. And I know you know Jonathan's line, my co author's line is always, we're not in Fallujah, and we're not. And that's correct. But this was incredibly hard to do because this is not term one. This is not, you know, walking around with what Swan would call the slop bucket, and you're waiting for, you know, your scoop to just drop into it, because everybody was fighting and everybody was leaking and. And, you know, half of that government, if not more, half of that White House, if not more, viewed Trump as dangerous or at least unmoored for some of them, and were concerned about his behaviors. This is a group of people who are relatively tight knit. They really believe in Trump. They want to see him succeed. If they are concerned about some things that they see, they believe in his worldview and they want to see his agenda implemented. So this took us a really long time, but this was, for us, this wasn't reliving last year. This was trying to understand much more about last year, and it took a really long time. And we focused on various aspects of how Trump has transformed. You know, we'll see what aspects of it are permanent. But I think more than people realize, he has transformed the US Presidency into something very different than we've ever seen in our lifetimes, and that that was the impetus for the title regime change, because we are witnessing a form of it in our own country.
- [03:49]
Tim Miller
Yeah, well, with the Supreme Court news yesterday, I mean, that's a good place to start about the way that he is changing the nature of the presidency. You have a scene in the book where he is walking around saying, I'm immune, I'm immune. And it does. That is another element of this, right? Absolutely. It's not only that he has a different staff, but it's this idea that he feels like he has carte blanche to do whatever he wants, that there's no consequences for what he wants. He doesn't have to follow the laws. He can just make declarations by fiat, and there isn't any. Anybody that can stop him.
- [04:19]
Maggie Haberman
Well, there's a couple of aspects, and you're right that it is not just one thing. There are many, many factors as to why this presidency has been the way it has and why he has expanded executive power to a degree that I think it was foreseeable that there would be an expansion. Exactly how it has gone has been at rapid speed and as maximalist as they've been able to do. You know, this. Every, every president for decades now has incrementally expanded executive power. Sometimes it's Bigger increments than others. But obviously the. The biggest was right after 911 during the Bush presidency. Bush, second Bush presidency. This is just, you know, orders of magnitude different. And it's a combination of factors. It's the fact that he became much stronger in, you know, within his own party during the years out of power. The fact that being banned off of social media really did help him, frankly, because he was relegated to truth social. A lot of people were not seeing his most caustic social media declarations. The whole premise of our case, and I frankly think it's hard to argue otherwise, is that he is. He is in a much better position than he would have been with two consecutive terms because he would have been dealing with post pandemic inflation. He would have been dealing with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which may not have gone exactly the way it did under Biden, but there's no reason to think that it would have been easy or smooth. He became something of a mystical figure within his party and certainly for his staff. And because of all of these things that he went through, you know, indictments, a conviction, criminal conviction, civil suits, two assassination attempts, and onward. So many of the Congressional Republicans are both in awe of him and in fear of him. And so he could not have accomplished a lot of what he has so far, at least in terms of keeping his party in line, had he not been wielding them with what he and his team proudly describe as an iron fist. And so various factors have led to why we are where we are.
- [06:30]
Tim Miller
Let's go to the start. This stuff, like the difference of the term and the immunity that he feels for himself and the immunity that he feels for his criminal fans was evident, as you're reporting. I think the first time, like from day one, he was contemplating, I guess, putting the J6 pardons in the inaugural address of the second term.
- [06:50]
Maggie Haberman
We have this remarkable scene early on in the book, actually, where they were preparing for his inaugural address, which, you know, is obviously a very different inauguration than had been planned. It was in the Capitol Rotunda, notable because this was where there was this riot on January 6, 2021, in this effort to stop an Electoral College certification of Joe Biden's victory. So they had been discussing what to do about pardons with people who were convicted in connection with the JSX riot for some time. And they had done this big evaluation led by Dave Warrington, now the White House counsel, on different groups. Most people around Trump did not think that there were going to be pardons of people who had, say, attacked police officers. But that did end up happening and Trump was planning to include a line saying that, you know, he was going to do sweeping pardons for what he calls the J6 hostages. And an aide said to him, you know, and there were these, these sessions preparing for the speech and one of the aides said, you know, this is going to be a bipartisan crowd and if you do that a bunch of the Democrats are going to get up and walk out and it just may not be the visual you want. And so Trump said, okay, fine, good call. And as we said, this was essentially his last concession to decorum because he goes on and pardons them all later that day. But it was remarkable that he even wanted to put this in the speech. And that one of his first acts as president was issuing this roughly 1500 grants of clemency remains astonishing. And exactly how he was thinking about doing it and how these discussions went gets almost lost in all of the activity of the first three months.
- [08:29]
Tim Miller
So that ties kind of what JD was saying this week about Nixon for me, how JD's talking about how there's a Nixon renaissance and Watergate would only be a 12 hour story. I thought that was just very instructive of their mindset. We're talking about this like Trump's walking around saying I'm immune day one. He's pardoning the violent criminals who are his supporters. Now they're like, eh, Watergate's not that big of a deal. I mean just kind of the unapologetic, we can do what we want, laws don't apply to us. As I mean I think pretty plain throughout the book.
- [09:00]
Maggie Haberman
What I do think Vance was right about is that it would have been a 12 hour story essentially or multi days. That is true in this news environment. There's no question.
- [09:08]
Tim Miller
I mean it would have come out in your book though it would have been another 12 hours that you.
- [09:12]
Maggie Haberman
But look at, you know, what happened yesterday was also that, you know, President Trump filed his financial disclosures and that was actually on paper how much money he has made off this presidency while in office, which is, it's breathtaking. We haven't seen anything like it. But to your question about pardons and the mindset, you're right that Trump goes into this term with a presidential immunity ruling that came out of one of his indictments where they were, his team was took it all the way up to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court rules that all presidents have immunity for presidential acts, you know, official acts in office. Exactly what that means. We still don't know Tim, because that hasn't been tested. But the belief is it will be pretty broad for this president.
- [09:53]
Tim Miller
You know what he thinks it means, though?
- [09:55]
Maggie Haberman
Well, he's quite clear. We report on that in the book. You know, I'm immune is what he says. And he has said that he is going to pardon, and we report this. You know, many, many times he has said to people that he is going to issue a preemptive pardon to anyone who's come within 250ft of the Oval Office. Sometimes he says 200, sometimes he says 25. But what's clear is there's like a pardon radius right around the Oval Office. And we spoke to several people who have said to us, you know, they're counting on their own pardon. They expect that they will get one. And so it does create a certain mindset.
- [10:31]
Tim Miller
Good thing for state attorneys general. A couple of the other early things that you get through in the book that I think it's worth just touching on again is Musk feels so long ago. So we're coming about a year now of the USAID getting shuttered, and it almost feels like from a totally different era. But when we're going through the book, the Musk stuff is still, like, in the top five of the most astonishing things that has happened and the things that will have the most consequences. And you paint the scene. I had not had this mental image in my head of Musk, I guess, took up an office residence in the EEOB Secretary of War suite, and he had, like, big video game screens, and he'd sit up all night playing video games and he'd call Trump and be like, hey, I have a new thing for us to cut from the government.
- [11:15]
Maggie Haberman
You're right that that entire period of time where Musk essentially was a co president, with Trump officially a co president, but was basically a co president because he was just making these decisions by fiat. And often Trump's own staff would learn about it later. But it was really important for us to get inside these discussions and describe what was happening, in part because when you look back on it, Tim, it really did essentially divert or distract, at minimum, a lot of Trump's own staff, actual staff, from what they wanted to do in the first several months. And there might have been some overlap between, say, Elon Musk and Stephen Miller, but there was not always, you know, clear lockstep. There might have been overlap between Elon Musk and Russ Vote, but there was not always clear lockstep on how they wanted to do things and how they wanted to get to these ends. And so Musk really was just sort of roaming free. He had an office in the West Wing that he would describe as a hovel, that's a quote. And so he moved to the Grand Secretary of War Suites in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. And it's really, they're remarkable rooms. But yes, this became his space. He would sometimes man then right with a few others and he would look at aspects of the federal government according to our reporting. And again, according to our reporting, you know, he would call Trump and they would have these late night discussions and it would be about various entities that Musk wanted to get rid of. You know, one, according to what we were told in our reporting was, you know, getting rid of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. So that that obviously can't just be eradicated. He focused very aggressively on ending usaid, a congressionally established agency and an agency that, you know, yes, there have been many complaints about it, particularly from the conservative spectrum of politics. But even if you got rid of certain pieces of it, it also delivered vital aid to a lot of countries and just, just got rid of it, just gone or, you know, created so much chaos that it became impossible to even continue with its mission. That gets sort of lost in the shovel too. And the person who was left holding the bag on that, and we, you know, describe this in the book from our reporting was Marco Rubio, who was the Secretary of State at the time. Only he wasn't dual hatted at that point as the national Security advisor as well. But he wasn't especially thrilled to have to be doing this mop up after Musk. And it is really easy to track how there was this blitz of activity and I shouldn't say easy, but we can track, and we did in our book, this blitz of activity and just overwhelming Washington. And some of it was stuff that Trump wanted and some of it he would then later not be so thrilled had happened. But the Musk era seems like a distant memory and it was so dominant for the first several months of this presidency.
- [14:16]
Tim Miller
So you said Marco is left holding the bag there on usaid. The other reporting for the book, something I've been obsessed with on the show is what was happening in the original decision making around SICOT and the El Salvador prison. And you have a couple of scenes of Marco basically directly doing this deal with Bukele. And it's pretty relevant I think, obviously from the standpoint of they end up sending innocent people to a foreign gulag, number one. And it's maybe the biggest human rights violation of the administration. But also number two of kind of the, what Marco's role is going to be in the administration.
- [14:54]
Maggie Haberman
So it's interesting because I agree with you that I think that that's gotten much less attention than I expected it would, only because for people who know of Marco Rubio from, you know, a decade and a half ago, he was a senator who, you know, very young senator elected during that Tea Party wave, as, you know, who had been part of the efforts to do some kind of a comprehensive immigration reform bill. And to be clear, he didn't have this conversion on foreign policy the year Trump was elected. Again, I mean, if you look at his speeches between 2020 and 2024, he'd actually been taking a much more intervention, skeptic, hemisphere specific approach to foreign policy. But it was still remarkable to us getting inside this scene where he's in, you know, Bukele's palace, essentially, and they are with a handful of aides around them and they're hashing out this proposal, which was initially supposed to be about some form of a safe third agreement. I'm, I'm using the description for how these, these deals worked in Trump won. But instead, you know, Bukele offers up sicot, which is this gulag that is known as, you know, essentially a horror show for, for people who are there as an option for sending. The worst of the worst is what this was supposed to be. And you can see how this all gets set up now. Seacot then ends up playing a very significant role in the first major effort to do some kind of mass deportation, even though it was, you know, relatively small in terms of who were on these migrant flights, but people who were rounded up, who were supposed to be, you know, according to the government, proven members of gangs because they had vetted these people very rigorously and that rigor of vetting proved not to be the case. But, you know, these men get sent to, to seacot. And so much attention was placed on SEAGOD because one of the people who was sent there had a no deportation order to El Salvador. And the administration then found itself wrapped up in this, you know, controversy for weeks and weeks and weeks last year. But I did find this image of Rubio sitting with Bukele, who is, you know, a notorious dictator, and hashing out this plan to be emblematic of, of what this administration was going to look like.
- [17:28]
Tim Miller
And I think that's noteworthy because sometimes people try to use Marco as an exception of somebody that's not always emblematic of the administration like that he is the grown up in there. And for him to be the point person, this, I think, is particularly noteworthy. And, I mean, he had a lot of Venezuelan representatives, you know, constituents in Florida.
- [17:45]
Cameron Caskey
Yes.
- [17:45]
Tim Miller
And it's like he's sending innocent Venezuelans to a foreign prison. I mean, it's kind of unimaginable.
- [17:51]
Maggie Haberman
Rubio has really thrown himself into the. And this was our reporting in the book. And again, it's. It's just all laid out there. He has really thrown himself into the Trump plan and, and, you know, the Trump foreign policy approach. And so are there individual conversations? It's not all binary and it's not all black and white. Are there individual conversations where Rubio is, you know, more vocal about concerns on one aspect of foreign policy or national security than another? Absolutely. But is he somebody who is blocking and tackling from some imagined, you know, version of what this would all look like, especially based on people's understandings of term one? No, he's not. I mean, again, this, this presidency, Tim, and this was really one of the things that became clear to us as Jonathan and I were working on the book. It is unrecognizable to term one. And so there is, I think, this desire in the commentary around it, not the book, around the presidency, the current presidency, to say, you know, it's like those memes of Rubio sitting on the couch. Right.
- [18:56]
Tim Miller
It could have been like the John Kelly or Jim Mattis role from the first.
- [19:00]
Maggie Haberman
Correct.
- [19:00]
Tim Miller
Which is like, just not what's happening.
- [19:02]
Maggie Haberman
Yeah. There is a big desire for people who are watching this administration who don't like Trump and who are hoping that there will be some kind of a constraint on him internally to treat Rubio as if he is, you know. Yes. John Kelly or Jim Mattis, both of whom consider Trump dangerous and both of whom believed that the country needed to be protected from him, and they found his worldview detestable. There is just nothing about Marco Rubio and our reporting to indicate that that is where he is at all. And I'll tell you, Tim, just having been in the White House on upper press, which is where the press secretary's office is prior to them deciding that reporters could not walk around there without appointments. Rubio is just. He's in and out of Caroline Levitt's office all the time. You know, he looks like he is having the time of his life. I mean, he is enjoying being in this role. He rarely travels. He is almost always in the West Wing and often in the Oval Office because. And this is something else that we describe in the book. These decisions in this government are being made by about a half a dozen people. Depending on the issue, it's maybe eight people. But there are senior ranks of major significant agencies, the State Department, the Pentagon, the CIA, where if you're not in the room with Trump, you have no idea what's going on. And so Rubio does not travel the way we are used to seeing Secretaries of State do, because he is both the national security adviser and the Secretary of State, and he believes he needs to be near Trump.
- [20:47]
Tim Miller
Well, I'm glad he's having the time of his life. That's nice. The innocent Venezuelans got sent to the Gulag. Not as much, but glad Marco's having fun. Your point about the six to eight people to make the decisions? One of the things that struck me about the book is there are a couple exceptions to that, which is random people come up with some of their cockamamie plans. I was reading through this is not as important of one as Sakat, for example, but Lindsey Halligan, I guess, got upset about, you know, one of the exhibits at the portrait gallery. And this leads to some of the drama over fighting people at the portrait gallery. You know, Boris Epstein comes up with a random idea like the arch. Some of these ideas are just coming from random people, and then Trump is running with them. That's how the government's running now, basically.
- [21:34]
Maggie Haberman
I would cast it slightly differently, which is. I mean, look, to be clear, Trump has always been someone who, you know, if his official staff doesn't agree with something he wants to do, he'll go call people outside, right, and ask their opinion. But one of the things that's remarkable this time is that his information flow is it's. It's much more bubbled than it was last time. He's not on Twitter anymore. He used to scroll Twitter a lot, and he would look at the trending topics and he would look at the replies, and he would get a little bit more of a sense of what a broader conversation was. And now he just looks at Truth Social. He gets this constant stream of positive news from his. His aide, Natalie Harp, who we also talk about in the book, who is about as pure an example of a Trump devotee in this term as you will find. She's in almost every meeting, sitting on the side of the Oval Office with her laptop open. And she's known as the human printer because she used to carry this portable print her around with her battery charge to print. I mean, she would literally follow him around on the golf course, sometimes on foot, running after the cart, and be able to, you know, give him information. Lindsay Halligan was actually an official government employee. She worked in the staff secretary's office. She was one of his lawyers when he was in the interregnum period. And he likes her a lot. He would often comment on her looks, but she was, I believe, an insurance lawyer. I think that was her specialty. She was not a criminal defense lawyer, and she was not a prosecutor. She'd gone to one of the Smithsonian's institutions, museums. She had seen something she didn't like, and she flagged it internally. And we describe in a chapter in the book that I do find pretty remarkable in terms of where the country is right now, on the verge of celebrating a 250th anniversary. This chapter really lays out how Trump has tried to leave an imprint on every aspect of American life and has used this sort of bullying campaign, whether it's the media, whether it's law firms who hired people who went after him or worked on cases against him, education, Harvard museums and descriptions of US History. He was open that he thinks there's too much focus on slavery. I think that was an interest social post. So after Lindsey Halligan has this discussion about the National Portrait Gallery, Trump starts insisting, and he has already done an executive order or a presidential memorandum about getting control of what is shown in these museums, at the Smithsonian institutions, museums and research centers. The Smithsonian is currently led by its first ever black secretary, Lonnie Bunch. Lonnie Bunch was a founder of the first national African American History Museum. He is also a lifelong researcher, historian, has worked for the Smithsonian for a very long time, on and off. And so it's really been his identity. And Trump already was not thrilled with Lonnie Bunch because Lonnie Bunch had written a chapter in his own book in 2019 about taking Trump to the African American Museum and taking him early on in Trump's first term to look at an exhibition about the slave trade. And when they got to a portion about the Dutch role in the slave trade, the president's response, according to Bunch, was, you know, you know, they love. They love me in the Netherlands. And Bunch was very jarred by this response. Trump got obsessed with firing the head of the National Portrait Gallery. Kim Sadjit was demanding she be fired. The Smithsonians were set up to be structured so that it would really be out of the direct reach of the White House. It had always been that way. Now the vice president gets a role on the Board of Regents, Board of Regents is always led by the Chief justice of the Supreme Court, currently John Roberts. There are senators who serve on it. It is supposed to be very balanced in this term. Vance and a far more aggressive appointee, Congressman Jimenez from South Florida, made all kinds of demands on Sadjit being fired, the head of the National Portrait Gallery, on what kind of art was being shown. We have a remarkable scene in the book on June 9th at their seasonal meeting where as they were arguing again about Kim Sadget being fired, Vance steps out of the room. And it's this 30 something, eight of Vance's named Ben Moss sits in in Vance's seat and takes out an iPad and flips through it and shows this, this image of the artist Amy Sherrill's trans woman as the Statue of Liberty. It was a based on a trans model and that show was supposed to be coming from the Whitney Museum in New York to the Smithsonians. Amy Sherrill is a very, very celebrated artist. She did a portrait of Michelle Obama, among other things, which really put her on the map in a broader way. And Ben Moss sits there and says in front of this room, including John Roberts, you know, this is going to be a problem. This is not what Americans want to see. And there's this whole debate about what kind of art can be shown and politicizing art. And it was, you know, look, it's not the first time in American history there's been a conversation about politicizing art. But I can't think of a directive like this coming from the White House ever before. And so all of this is indicative to us anyway. Yes. Of how one person can get in Trump's ear, as you say and say, go focus on that. And we have seen lots of examples of that. In that case, it was somebody part of his government. I mean, again, I can't express to you how different this term is than last time. Bill Pulte, who features in the book pretty extensively too, is now the Director of National Intelligence. So this is a government that just looks fundamentally different than term one.
- [27:29]
Tim Miller
All right, we're taking back the Fourth of July at the Bulwark. Donald Trump and MAGA is trying to own July 4th and patriotism in general. And that's fucking stupid. We shouldn't let them do that. Right? It's our country. It's here. We're here, we're queer, we're Americans, we love it. We're patriotic, we can wave the flag. And that is about the values that we all share as fellow Americans. It is about that creed. J.D. vance and Donald Trump want to pretend like we're not a nation based on a creed or a nation based on, like, their whiteness and orangeness. And that just ain't true. And so we're gonna take back the holiday. I hope you join us and do it along with us. If you've been thinking about becoming a member in the Bulwark community, right now is the moment. This week only 4th of July week, we've got a deal for you. A full Bulwark membership for everything we offer on our website. 86 bucks a year. That's 14% off. So come on, do it. This is your moment. TheBullWork.com July 4th Again, TheBullWork.com July4. We'll put a link in the show, not become a board plus member. Come hang, yell at me at the comments. It'll be great. Usa. You mentioned Natalie Harp, the printer. I do have to ask about this. You also have in the book that she leaves little mash notes for Trump around. I was kind of the view that Trump is probably impotent now because he just doesn't talk about sex as much as he used to. But I don't know, it was eyebrow raising. The love notes that you included that.
- [29:04]
Maggie Haberman
What we found in our reporting for the book is we got these, these, these letters that, that she had been leaving in his, in his private spaces. And they were, they were very raw. They were very emotional. In one, she said, you are all that matters to me. And Natalie Harp used to work for the far right OAN network, spoke at the 2020 convention, started working for him in, I think it was late 2021 or 2022, and became this constant supplier of good news. But these notes that she was leaving alarmed the Secret Service, who were concerned about it, who raised issues about it at the time. Trump has been open with people that, you know, she's the person who loves him on staff as much as his, you know, wife and children. And he'll say things like, you know, the rest of you will go off and make money. She will never leave me. So without commenting on your first lead in there, you know, she is, you
- [30:04]
Tim Miller
don't have any reporting on the impotence.
- [30:06]
Maggie Haberman
She is very, very focused on, on him and on being in his world. And I will just tell you that, you know, when he, every day that he was going to court, for instance, when he was on trial in 2024 in Manhattan, Natalie Harp was always, always, always with him. She was among a very small group of people who would go with him. In this interview, when Jonathan and I went in, when our reporting was basically done for the book, to fact check specific pieces with Trump, there were very few aides in this meeting, which is unlike him, because normally he rolls very, very deep and brings a lot of, like, half the government in. And it's like you and one other reporter. But in this case, it was just, you know, Caroline Levitt, Stephen Chong and Natalie against the wall.
- [30:48]
Tim Miller
So it's unusual, I will say, but I don't know, we'll see what more we learn about that you mentioned soon. You go back to, I believe if I'm right, that's what it was like two or three weeks after the Iran war started. When you went back to see Trump for the fact check.
- [31:04]
Maggie Haberman
Yeah, it was day 17 of the war.
- [31:06]
Tim Miller
I was interested when I was listening to your other interviews, obviously there was all the discussion and conversation around the BB meeting in the Situation Room. It's just so shocking. It was the first excerpt from your book. But another thing that you talk about a lot is just that Trump himself was actually much more adamant about going into Iran and much more hawkish on Iran even before that. And maybe people didn't kind of realize that based on your reporting from private conversations. And I'm interested in that reporting from the first year and how that squares with what we're seeing right now, which is him so desperate to get out.
- [31:38]
Maggie Haberman
It's a great question. And one of the things that we really did see in our reporting and we document in the book is Trump has always been more hawkish on Iran than his own. Now, obviously, Trump had spent two campaigns, 2016, 2024, saying, no, no new foreign wars. So there's clearly a reason why people expected he would not then go get into a war in Iran. But. But it was very clear. If people were actually looking at what he was saying, looking at his conversations with Netanyahu, he was much more open. And we have this remarkable scene where Netanyahu goes right after Trump is shot at Butler, and Netanyahu goes to Mar a Lago to make peace with Trump because Trump had been furious with Netanyahu for years because Trump believed that Netanyahu had committed a sin by congratulating Joe Biden on winning the election in 2020. So Netanyahu goes to try to make up for this. And during one of their conversations, Trump makes very clear that he is, if he comes back, he is going to be much more aggressive. He. Trump will against Iran. And Trump already was more aggressive against Iran than some of his own Advisors wanted in term one taking out, you know, General Soleimani was not looked on favorably by some of Trump's own advisors at the time. They believed it was risky. You know, he, he wanted to do it. There was never a question and he was fairly cold, as cold blooded as he, he went to do it. The campaign was hacked by Iran. Ever since the Soleimani killing, Iran has targeted Trump. Iran has targeted several aides around Trump. Now there's obviously a whole other side issue where Trump pulls the security from some of the people who were carrying out Trump's Iran policy in the first term. But beside that, Trump has a very, very dated view of Iran which goes back to, you know, his formative years in the 1980s when Iran was the biggest threat, when Jimmy Carter was embarrassed during the hostage crisis, so forth. Okay, so it was quite clear to Netanyahu's team that Trump was going to be much more on board with this than Trump's own aides believe. Trump was fascinated by the pager attacks against Hezbollah. Trump is very capable, as you know, of telling different people what he thinks they want to hear. But he was very intrigued by the capability of the Israeli military. But Trump believed this was going to be a quick war this time. He believed this would be over in a few days. He was flush off of what had happened in Venezuela, going into Caracas and snatching a foreign head of state, you know, in his pajamas and bringing him to the US for trial where no American lives were lost, where it was pretty. Whatever anyone thinks about what Trump did as a military operation, it went pretty smoothly. Sure, Trump believed this would be something similar. He had a gut feeling and he is operating on pure gut in, in a, a way that he would have liked to in term one for various reasons didn't. One of which was that he was under investigation by special counsel. And I think that gets underlooked a lot as a factor. But it obviously was not a quick war and it's not. Tim, one thing that's really important to remember, he constantly says things like no one, you know, he wasn't warned about this. He didn't, he was told what the risks were. Now the only one who really emphatically went at this with Trump in these meetings was J.D. vance. But Dan Cain, who is his top civilian, well, his top military advisor I shouldn't say was very clear. You know, munitions could be really depleted straight of hormones could be closed. Trump went anyway and yes, now he would like a way out.
- [35:25]
Tim Miller
The form of years thing is interesting about Iran because that's maybe kind of explains the now too. Like he kind of remembers how much this was hungover Carter and he's like, I don't want that. I don't want to deal with this. The JD Thing you mentioned, since the book has come out, I know that you have an extensive sourcing explanation in here and people can look at that, but I just have to ask. Since the book came out, the vice president said that he thinks that you have tapes from inside the Situation Room and there's a lot of things that are sourced that give JD Vance's private views in the book. We should say so. I don't know. I felt like that was maybe a lady doth protest too much type comment from the vice president. But I was wondering what you thought when he said that.
- [36:09]
Maggie Haberman
Just not going to discuss sourcing at all, Tim. But one thing that I will say about our reporting process is we went to extensive lengths to check on conversations with a long sourcing note at the start of the book about not just how many interviews we did, which was more than a thousand, but how we went about what we put in direct quotes, what we did not. And for many of these scenes, we're describing, you know, expansive conversations among the top levels of government. But I'm just not going to discuss sourcing beyond that.
- [36:45]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I was going to ask about sourcing. I'm just. I mean, the vice president accused you of like publishing information that was classified via tape. I mean, that was a pretty serious accusation from the vice president.
- [36:56]
Maggie Haberman
They can say what they want and we're just not going to discuss it.
- [37:00]
Tim Miller
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- [37:31]
Maggie Haberman
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- [38:02]
Tim Miller
Let's do more fun stuff. I don't know if people think this is fun. I'll think it's fun.
- [38:06]
Maggie Haberman
You look like you're having fun? I am, yes.
- [38:08]
Tim Miller
Good. I'm having the time of my life. Not as much as Marco, but I'm trying. I'm enjoying myself. You say he's getting old. He seems to be getting old. People are noticing the aging. He fell asleep standing up on the campaign, is that right?
- [38:24]
Maggie Haberman
I mean, not in front of a crowd. He fell asleep after some event. But yes. But that actually I think is sort of understandable. That was in the context of how he had been running non stop at the end of that campaign. And he was. What you're asking about in terms of the health piece, and I want to be clear, if there's an area where we really just failed in our reporting efforts to try to learn more. It was on the health front and it was not for lack of trying. You know, his health is one of the black box secrets of this administration. And it is an administration that is very good at keeping secrets when it wants to. Despite, you know, all protestations about, you know, the most transparent administration ever. Some of it is visible. You know, he falls asleep or closes his eyes and does transcendental meditation or whatever you want to call it at 4 o' clock in the afternoon. Many of these events. He was outright falling asleep at his trial. And we, we reported that at the time, too, in 2024, his sleeping habits have gotten stranger. We describe an episode where he had not been heard from by about 10am and so a trusted aide went up to the residence to see what was going on and Trump was still asleep. And what they surmised was, according to our reporting, was that he had just been, you know, up either watching television or posting or doing whatever, and that, you know, he fell back asleep late in the morning. He's got this chronic venous insufficiency condition which only got addressed because photographers started taking pictures of his swollen ankles. And it raised questions. And he directed the press secretary, Caroline Levitt, to go out and talk about this because he didn't like the coverage of it. And there were a number of people in the White House who thought that talking about cankles from the podium was an unusual choice. But, you know, he is very, very vain and concerned about his appearance. You know, I can't speak to the bruises on the hand. You know, we like everybody else, were told many, many months ago this is from handshaking, which seemed hard to understand. But, you know, they have released less and less information about his health as he is taking more frequent visits to Walter Reed. Beyond the fact that he's an 80 year old man, you know, and he looks 80. We don't know more than you do.
- [40:46]
Tim Miller
Cankles. That's an interesting development. The cankles in his room, this was quite the picture. There are, like, empty ice cream tins and Starbucks wrappers everywhere. He's hoarding papers. Like, what's happening in his bedroom? That's disgusting.
- [41:01]
Maggie Haberman
So I just want to make one thing clear. It was Starbursts, and that was a typo, and that has been fixed. But so when they came back to the White House, the Trumps wanted everything the way it was before and as if he hadn't left. And the Bidens actually, on the decor front, didn't really change a ton of what the Trumps did. But Melania Trump was not there for the first several months. And so Trump was picking items from the center hall in the residence that the staff believed she wanted where they were. And he was putting some in his own bedroom, some in the Oval Office at the start of this sort of gilding of the Oval Office, where now there's really not a square inch that is not covered in something that is gold colored. And he would point to these, what he calls the urns on the mantel, and he would say, you know, see that? When people see that, they see cash. To people who worked at the White House, it seemed like he was competing to have a better bedroom than his wife. And they don't have the same bedroom. In his bedroom, he, among other things, had a carpeted bathroom. For whatever reason, he was a late night snacker. Potato chip bags, ice cream cartons, Starburst wrappers. Staff started monitoring the. The silverware because some was disappearing into the trash. He lives how he lives. And he would have those bankers boxes that they would refer to as the Beautiful Mind boxes, and they were stacked, which, you know, became a fixture of the Mar A Lago documents indictment. And they were stacked so high that there would be impressions left in the carpet when they were moved.
- [42:38]
Tim Miller
For some reason. It makes me feel a little better, since you asked. Yeah, it makes me feel a little better that it's Starburst wrappers. For some reason, I don't know, I was picturing those disgusting Starbucks morning sandwiches or something. So just kind of candy ice cream chips, still yucky.
- [42:52]
Maggie Haberman
Don't knock Starbucks morning sandwiches.
- [42:55]
Tim Miller
You know, the criticism that you get from regular people, not that much criticism since you sold so many bucks that they're like, hey, why do you save this stuff for a book? Why don't you just report it as you get it? I'm not particularly sympathetic to that. I think maybe there's some exceptions to it, maybe in a campaign setting, which this is not. But I just wanted to give you an opportunity to kind of address that, and then I'll let you get back on your way.
- [43:18]
Maggie Haberman
I appreciate you, Tim. So a couple of things. This is a book on the first 14 months of this presidency that was published in month 17, which is. And you know this because you do understand how books work. It's an extraordinary fast publication schedule. It was supposed to be published in the fall. Instead it is, was out last week. So we published the Iran war reporting immediately in the newspaper. It was five weeks into the war, I think, and it still remains the most comprehensive look at how Trump took the country to war, because it was, it was a vital public interest. We reported on in the paper again on Trump's efforts to possibly suspend habeas corpus for undocumented migrants, which was known publicly that he had been talking about this. But we wanted to understand more about that episode. And so it became something of a white whale. And it took months and months and months. And we got these secret memos that the staff secretary had written to the White House chief of staff that really reflected both the level of discussion and also the level of concern. But again, this was reporting that took months to get done. And, you know, I think that not everything. There are, there are magazine pieces for newspapers that take longer. There are investigative pieces for newspapers that take longer. Jonathan took a ten month leave from the newspaper. I took five and a half. You know, this, this work is hard. And it took a, it was incredibly hard confirming this material. So I know there is this misconception about how this works. And I think people think that, you know, the phone, the hotline rings and you just put it in your, your file and then it goes in a book a year later. But not for us. That is not the case.
- [45:17]
Tim Miller
All right. Do you dream about these people? Like, are these people haunting your nightmares?
- [45:21]
Maggie Haberman
Oh, for God's. I don't dream any. I don't dream. I don't dream no dreams. I don't. I don't. I don't sleep enough to dream. I don't. I don't. I don't hit a REM cycle. I don't. But it, but if that changes, I will tell you. I promise. I will text you.
- [45:34]
Tim Miller
That sounds right. I appreciate that. Maggie Haverman, you're the best. Thanks so much. The book is Regime Change. I got it right here. It's got, got the pretty gold cover and we'll be talking to you soon. All right, thanks Tim.
- [45:59]
Cameron Caskey
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- [46:32]
Tim Miller
all right, we are back. He is the former co host of Fypod, a podcast that was taking the nation by storm until he decided to run for Congress on success successfully. And now he is advising somebody named Ro Khanna and he is a favorite of the pod, the person that we go to, the correspondent that we go to for all things communism, socialism, bisexuality and clavicular. It's Cameron Caskey. What's up?
- [46:58]
Cameron Caskey
I don't think there's any daylight between those four things. I think you could have said any one of them and it covered the whole spectrum.
- [47:04]
Tim Miller
I wanted to grab you because there's a lot of conversation happening out there about what's happening with the dsa. Are they the Tea Party? Are they taking over the Democratic Party? These are your people. You are of them. Ish. And you've also been on the road a bunch with Roe, you're in Maine, St. Klattner in Michigan with Saeed. You live in New York. And so I feel like you're, you're pretty up to speed on what's happening. And so I want to hear about all of your travels, but first, can we just do Colorado? Last night we had a three old timers up in the Democratic establishment. Michael Bennett ran for governor. He lost to Scott Weiner, who's like a more progressive challenger, not really dsa.
- [47:43]
Cameron Caskey
Pause.
- [47:44]
Tim Miller
What?
- [47:45]
Cameron Caskey
Scott Wiener.
- [47:46]
Tim Miller
Oh, thank you. Phil Weiser. Phil Weiser. Thank you. Sorry. Weiser, Wiener. That's kind of close.
- [47:55]
Cameron Caskey
I can see that. I can see that.
- [47:57]
Tim Miller
Attorney General, he lost to Phil Weiser. Thank you. Cameron lost to Phil Weiser. Attorney General, more progressive, not Scott Wiener. And then in the Senate race, John Hickenlooper beat kind of a DSA state senator, but not really overwhelmingly. And then in the house, Diana DeGette who's been the Denver's representative in Congress since I was like eight, she lost to Milat Kiros, a DSA barista who seems like she's Kind of your type, both politically and otherwise. I don't know if you've. If you've got a chance to meet
- [48:33]
Cameron Caskey
that young lady, but I can't speak to that matter. It's a very interesting result, and I'm sure, given your history with the state of Colorado, it's specifically interesting for you. And then there's the. Wait, there's the really hot guy. Is that Manny?
- [48:48]
Tim Miller
Yeah, Manny won in Colorado 8. He's handsome.
- [48:51]
Cameron Caskey
He mogs like all of Congress.
- [48:53]
Tim Miller
Yeah, he's naturally looks maxing. Yeah, yeah.
- [48:55]
Cameron Caskey
I remember I texted a friend of mine who's a pollster, Adam Carlson, and I was like, hey, I know you're following this race. I know this guy is hot, like 1 to 10. How good are his politics? Because that I have been able to follow. But no, it's definitely interesting what happened specifically with Milott's race, because, you know, the immediate response after the, you know, DSA Kami corridor takeover in New York City was, okay, well, this is a New York City thing. You know, you guys, the socialists around the country could get all hopped up on this adrenaline. That's fine. But this is not replicable elsewhere. And immediately after that, you have a DSA victory over an incumbent. So that was very interesting to me. And obviously, these races, be it Melat's race or the ones in New York City, Israel, has just been such a polarizing issue. And there are certain circumstances where that is definitely, I think, the defining issue that is the difference between the two candidates. And then there's other situations where it's being brought up a lot. But there's other factors at play. So, for example, Darieliza, who's a famous Twitter user and is now a congresswoman or will be a congresswoman, she unseated Sbiot. And it's my personal belief that Sbayat probably would have been able to squeeze through a victory had he taken the more what is now considered to be progressive position on Israel Palestine. But there's also something that isn't really being talked about as much in the more national side of this conversation, which is that Espayat neglected a lot of groups in his district because he was just skating through with his very robust Dominican base that black people in Harlem and, you know, the white voters in the district, he wasn't really giving them any time. And between the labor groups and the tenants associations and everything, he was on certain things a little bit on autopilot. So I do think had he adjusted on Israel stuff, that could have made the difference. But you know, there was, there was more to it than that now.
- [51:05]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [51:06]
Cameron Caskey
You know, then there's the question of Goldman versus Lander.
- [51:09]
Tim Miller
Let's come back to Goldman and Lander because I want to stick on Espiat and I think him and Deget I think are an interesting case if you put them together. I'm just going to put a pin in that for one second and note in segment one, I asked Maggie Haverman if Donald Trump is impotent or if he's having an affair with the human printer. And she wouldn't quite answer that question. I thought her answer was interesting, but because she's Maggie Haverman, I couldn't really press her on it. But you're my former podcast co host, so I noticed that you kind of, Maggie Haverman stiff armed me when I asked if you and Milat like were kind of flirting at all. And so I just wanted to follow up on that.
- [51:42]
Cameron Caskey
Yeah, Malat and I are both flirting with something called generational change. And I think that that's a good
- [51:49]
Tim Miller
transition to what I wanted to talk about, about the generational change. Israel. To me, I think about this like I'm watching this from the outside. Like you're of the movement. So tell me what you think, how close I am on this. I see the Israel question as kind of like a table stakes thing. It's like in poker. It's like the anti, like if you were critical of Israel's actions in Gaza, then the progressive voters are going to at least listen to you. The door is open, be listened to. From there though, we've seen some success and from left challenges and some failures. And what I see as most of the examples of the failures are just kind of old decrepit establishment candidates that did not offer anything to voters. And like that's what you talk about about Espiat. He was only offering people to his Dominican base. Diana DeGette has been there forever. Like what has she done? Kick and Looper won last night. But again, for an incumbent senator pretty a pretty strong protest vote against him. Like to me a lot of this is like there's like this thing happening on the left, but there is also the establishment, like not offering exciting candidates to voters. And I feel like it would have gone differently in Colorado if there was maybe a more dynamic candidate running against your girl Milad.
- [53:05]
Cameron Caskey
Yeah, well, you know, Milad is, is, is the movement's girl.
- [53:09]
Tim Miller
Sure.
- [53:09]
Cameron Caskey
You know, I think, I think two things can be true. I do think Gaza is the sort of initial talking point. The other thing I'LL say is like, you know, Zoran won the mayoral race because he was able to build a coalition by offering this vision of New York City where there was a mayor who was putting every atom of his body into the job. And I think that that's probably the thing that's been most successful of him so far in office is the fact that even his biggest critics see him as this person who wakes up early, works all day, takes few breaks and goes to sleep late. I think that that speaks to what a lot of people see in the dsa. Challengers are people who want to use every lever of power they can find and then if they can't find one, find new ones. So I definitely think that the kind of like old flaccid candidates who aren't offering anything. I think that's a very good point because the thing about the DSA challengers is due to the fact that they are movement powered, often for better, sometimes maybe for more complicated, but because of the fact that they are energized like activists, they come off as people who are simply not going to rest and who are going to put in a lot of work. But the truth is like the Israel issue, it really becomes a question of credibility for certain politicians because just real quick, back to the Lander and Goldman thing. The Israel situation dealt a critical blow to Goldman, who was already vulnerable even without the Israel stuff, because he was only able to get that seat by exploiting a split progressive field and a 2024 where there wasn't a big challenger. And Brad Lander is somebody that every.
- [54:48]
Tim Miller
He had like 24% of the vote
- [54:50]
Cameron Caskey
or something like that.
- [54:52]
Tim Miller
It was like a huge field.
- [54:54]
Cameron Caskey
And I don't really know why there wasn't a serious challenger for him in 2024, but he's just not a good fit for the district. I mean, if you had run him in the greatest congressional district in the country, New York 12, where there have been multiple bulwark contributors running for Congress within the past, I mean, seven months. But if you had run Dan Goldman In New York 12, Dan Goldman would have won 99% of the vote. You know, even with people like Michael Asher and Alex Borres who have good systems of support on the west side and the east side in general, like Goldman is a perfect fit for New York 12. He's not the right fit for New York 10, and that's with or without the question of Israel and Palestine. But it was a serious issue for him, the, the broader Israel topic, because ultimately the issue of that Was, I mean, Occam's razor. What motivated him not to endorse Mehrma, and him not endorsing mehrmamdani really, really bit him in the ass. And it's also true that Brad Lander is an extremely familiar face in Brooklyn. He's been an elected official in the area for a very long time. It's not like Brad Lander is this guy who came out of nowhere the way that certain DSA challengers. I mean, Lander is not dsa. He's part of Zoran's cadre. So people talk about him like he's dsa. He's not dsa. If you called him DSA to a member of the dsa, I think they would kill you. But so that's. That was one issue. But the reason that I bring this up is Dan Goldman is very clearly, ideologically, possibly religiously, I don't know, but ideologically a Zionist. So letting this Israel issue cause that problem for him makes a lot of sense because even his biggest haters don't doubt that's what he believes. That's something he believes in. So I don't agree with him on that ideology, but I don't call into question the fact that it's what he considers to be the best thing. Sbiot is a different story because I. I have no reason to believe that Espayat is religiously or personally tied to the Zionist movement. Politicians like him and certain people around the country, you see, who are kind of inexplicably just so dedicated to the Israel thing. And, and there's just certain politicians who are just extra pro Israel. Like there's politics
- [57:07]
Tim Miller
and the inverse. I think that there are a couple politicians who are concerningly extra a million percent.
- [57:13]
Cameron Caskey
Basically. What I'm saying is I think there's a bunch of politicians who, back in the days where Israel was just very simply surface level, looked at as just like our democratic ally and our friend in the Middle east. And they deal with a lot of problems and we have to go out and support them. They started getting money from the pro Israel lobby. They started meeting with different people who were making very good arguments for the partnership between America and Israel. And I think a lot of politicians just got so used to it that they didn't want to even slightly rhetorically bend and they didn't want to abandon a PAC. Think about it like in. In New York's 12th district, Alex Borres and Michael Lasher were running either where Nadler was on Israel, Palestine, or a step to the Right. On Israel, Palestine. They are fundamentally pro Israel candidates. Now. They're more critical of Israel than somebody. Richie Torres. And they, you know, support conditioning certain types of military aids, sure. But generally speaking, they're fundamentally pro Israel and they had all of the support, both of them from different pro Israel groups.
- [58:18]
Maggie Haberman
But.
- [58:18]
Cameron Caskey
But again, both of them. And I think that this is really important. Both of them rejected a relationship with APAC because AIPAC's brand has become so toxic that even pro Israel candidates are saying, guys, I got you, but please, so I don't lose my election, don't give me money.
- [58:38]
Tim Miller
Even under those kind of like, just to get our facts right, I'm really good. Daniel Goldman in 2022 won with 26% of the vote in a huge primary. Our guy Mondaire Jones finished third in that one. 18%. Here's the thing that some people have concerns about this. I mean, there are a million of them, but I think it was most visibly apparent, like, how some folks feel like maybe things are getting a little out of hand when it comes to the anti Israel, anti Zionist movement with what happened to Scott Wiener, aforementioned in California. I'm going to play this video for you of Scott Weiner being dequeered by some people. Looks like kind of in the Mission in San Francisco. Scott, I want to support someone who's so positive on trans rights, but you're a piece of shit on Gaza. How could you do that? How could you betray queers? How could you oppress people? You stopped being queer the moment you started supporting Israel, you piece of shit. Okay, yeah. So if you missed that at the end, you stopped being queer the moment you supported Israel, you piece of shit. Couple thoughts from me and then I'm interested in your take. Number one. Scott Wieners looks amazing. 56 years old. Unbelievable. Like, what?
- [59:53]
Cameron Caskey
It's just a testament to what being gay could do for you.
- [59:56]
Tim Miller
Amen. And moisturizing. Thanks to our friends at One Skin. So that's one. Number two, you don't. Just as a general manner, setting aside the Israel part for a second, you don't get to de queer somebody because you don't like their position on a foreign policy issue. That's just not how things work. We've learned subsequently that one of the guys yelling at him isn't even really gay. He sounds like he's a straight guy that likes to do kinky sex stuff. And. Okay. And like that's fine. You know, we. We keep adding letters to the LGBTQIA community to us, and that's okay. I Guess. But like, technically speaking, if you're just a straight guy that has weird kinks and likes anime, like, you're really on the edge of the coalition. And so you really shouldn't probably be telling people, you know, who are actually gay, who had friends that died of AIDS that they aren't welcome anymore. So that's just a quick aside by me. But you see why people get worried about this. This feels like this is the movement getting out of hand. I mean, Scott Wiener is like a progressive, obviously pro gay, has pretty left views on Israel. You need to kind of monitor yourself a little bit, do some self policing on what's happening.
- [61:11]
Cameron Caskey
I think we should abolish the self police. But you know, there's a couple things obviously I'm very upset about, about seeing that. It's, it's a very unfortunate circumstance to see, especially given that this, you know, this was something that was supposed to be in support of the trans community. And that's, you know, there's a time and place to do certain things. But there's two things I want to bring up. Number one, he's moved on the issue
- [61:35]
Tim Miller
and there's a little bit of the old line, yeah, this like, take yes for an answer kind of line. Like, this is the thing about Scott Wiener, like Scott Weiner is coming around to the position that activists have been asking for. And now you're like trying to do homophobic slurs and shout them down on the street and menace them. And it's like, okay, guys, that's not really kind of how you win friends and influence people.
- [61:55]
Cameron Caskey
So I can't speak to the individuals who were involved in that bird dog. I don't know anything about them as human beings. But what I can say is there's a lot of people in the larger anti Zionist movement who talk a lot more about how much they hate Israel than about supporting the people who are currently being killed by Israel. You know, when I talk to other Jewish anti Zionists, there's a lot of talk about their own Judaism and there's a lot of talk about Israel and the greater Zionist apparatus. And a lot of them I'm like, hey, what about the human beings who are losing their lives right now? Like, what about the people, I don't think the people who are like bird dogging Scott Wiener who literally calls it a genocide. I don't think they're thinking right now, how is this going to improve the material conditions of the actual human beings on the ground. I think it's a lot more about anger towards Scott than it is sympathy towards people on the ground.
- [62:52]
Tim Miller
Last thing, I want to hear more. Putting aside what we've been talking about and just thinking more on the campaign focus and moving ahead to November. As mentioned, you've been with Abdul campaigning and Platner and there is this energy that is happening there in those campaigns and there's some that's happening from folks that might not fit that same portfolio or that might not fit that same rather ideological frame or faction. If you look at Tal, Rico or whatever, Democrats are trying to figure out how to do two things. How do you channel the energy and also how do you win? Right. And if you got Platner right now there's Polt has him down three to Collins. And so Platner figured out the energy part for the primary. Now he's got to figure out the wind part. And having been on the ground, I'm just kind of wondering, kind of how you assess how those guys are trying to do that.
- [63:52]
Cameron Caskey
I would say the first important thing to recognize is just like D.C. and New York's relationship with these races and Twitter's relationship with these races, you have to understand that every state is its own thing and we look a lot at the media's relationship with certain candidates and I think that there's a lack of understanding of some of the more state specific elements. So, for example, when I went to Maine, you buried the lead a little bit. I was in Maine the day after the newest New York Times story dropped. And because of an insurance issue, I did not have my anxiety medication. So I was with Graham Platner the day after the new New York Times story. Basically feral. I mean, I was having a hard time sleeping. It was really tough. But the energy on the ground, if you were there and I was with hundreds of Mainers that day, interacting with the people who were at these events, you wouldn't have had any idea that there was just a scandal. Like everybody was just in a very positive mindset. And that was interesting to me because I thought I was going to go there and there was just going to be utter chaos. But there's this guy who said to me, like, you know, there's the six degrees of separation in Maine. There's one or two degrees of separation. You either know the candidate or you know someone who knows them. And all of these things that have come out about Graham are things that everyone I know has known for years. So that was an interesting situation for me. The Abdul situation is, is very different. I mean, I think the interesting case in that Race is sort of the face plant that the McMurray campaign saw, but just in general, in Maine, it really reminded me that the only things I truly knew about Maine were fish and. And Stephen King. Other than that, I mean, they. They have.
- [65:41]
Tim Miller
I think fish is Vermont, actually, so I don't know that you knew anything.
- [65:43]
Cameron Caskey
I know, but. I know. But my dad has a T shirt that's a guy saying fish, Maine.
- [65:48]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [65:48]
Cameron Caskey
So that's what I associate with it. But, yeah, you know, and then in Michigan. The interesting thing about Abdul's campaign to me is that I think it was a lot more combative in the beginning in terms of messaging, and there's been this crescendo of just kind of positivity and sort of this aspirational quality that they're going for, and I am interested sort of in how organic that was, et cetera. And lately there's been a lot of positivity and a lot of sort of the. Of aspect, this aspirational message. And it was fun. Both Graham and Abdul said to me, like, oh, man, I hoped you were going to win. And I was like, well, I'm technically undefeated.
- [66:29]
Tim Miller
Yeah, you quit. I feel like Abdul's actually doing this better than Graham at this point, so tbd. But having lived through this on the Tea Party side, it's like sometimes that combative part, that factional fighting part, is what motivates people at the beginning, and it's a little hard to deprogram themselves. And it's like, time to. To program forward, like, channeling the energy of the base and then using it towards Susan Collins rather than, like, the oligarchy and neoliberals. Anyway, to be continued. Cameron, thank you for coming to see me in New Orleans, by the way. You got a guy's po. Boy. You know, I felt like we gave you the whole experience, you know, I
- [67:06]
Cameron Caskey
mean, if I lived in New Orleans, I would need to really restructure my exercise routine, because the flavor. The flavor in that city is just unbelievable. Like. Like, the food was just so great. Even. Even the stuff we went to that was sort of just like this mid thing we were doing, just because it was convenient with timing. I was. It was so good. And we had a. Was it.
- [67:29]
Maggie Haberman
Was.
- [67:30]
Cameron Caskey
It. It was Popeyes, right?
- [67:31]
Tim Miller
Oh, we had some Popeyes. I mean, that's not. I mean, Popeyes is based in Louisiana. You can. You can get Popeyes in New York, though, But we took you to some other places, but I. It was. It was nice having you here. Come see me again soon. And we're going to keep using you as the correspondent for all things DSA bisexuality and looks maxing DS Slay.
- [67:53]
Cameron Caskey
Am I right?
- [67:54]
Tim Miller
DSLay, that's Cameron Caskey. Thank you so much. What a show. I don't know if anybody noticed, but, you know, if you're getting this podcast right now and you're hearing it, you just got to thank Jason Brown, Katie Cooper, and Katie Lutz and Ansley Skipper, because both guests are in New York City. And one thing that Zoran has to fucking fix after the potholes is the WI fi. All right, Zoran. So get out there. 100,000 holes filled and now we need some WI fi.
- [68:22]
Cameron Caskey
I'm in the mountains in North Carolina right now, to be honest.
- [68:25]
Tim Miller
Okay, well, Maggie was in New York. It makes sense why you don't have WI fi. Zoran. Get on it. Everybody, I appreciate you all very much. We'll be back here tomorrow with another edition of the show. See you all then. Miss you, Cam. See you guys. She knows why we felt so flat we're in for distribution like whining cats we found a piper but we lost the rat but the kids all clam why did fall on that? That why did you fall? The Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. Identity theft can cost more than you think. Drained investment accounts, stolen tax returns, lost wages, expenses for lawyers. It's a lot. That's why Lifelock is backed by the million dollar protection package, which covers up to $1 million each for stolen funds, fees for experts and lawyers, and out of pocket expenses. Don't face the burden of identity theft alone. Protect your future insure and finances with LifeLock. Join now and save up to 30% your first year at LifeLock.com iHeart terms apply.