S2 Ep1058: Matt Yglesias: Elon's Smash and Grab

Summary

Summary of The Bulwark Podcast – S2 Ep1058: Matt Iglesias: Elon's Smash and Grab

Release Date: June 5, 2025

In this episode of The Bulwark Podcast, host Tim Miller engages in a comprehensive discussion with Matt Iglesias, a columnist for Bloomberg and co-host of the Politics with an X at the End podcast. The conversation delves into critical political developments of 2025, focusing on the failure of Elon Musk's initiative, the implications of the contentious federal bill, Democratic strategies for Senate races, cultural issues, and immigration policies.

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1. Introduction and Upcoming Events

• Tim Miller begins by reminding listeners of an upcoming rally supporting the legal team fighting for Andre Hernandez Romero and other Venezuelans. He also mentions a fundraiser event.
• Matt Iglesias is introduced as a guest, highlighting his work on Substack and his podcast collaboration with Brian Beutler.

2. The Failure of Doge and Government Efficiency

• Tim Miller [03:26] raises the topic of Doge's failure, an initiative led by Elon Musk aimed at identifying and eliminating government waste.
• Matt Iglesias [03:26] explains that Doge failed to uncover the vast amounts of fraud and waste it promised. Instead, only minor cuts were made, which inadvertently caused significant harm to vulnerable populations, primarily foreigners.
• Notable Quote:
  • "Millions of people are going to lose their health care when this bill goes through just as Doge." — Matt Iglesias [05:30]

3. Implications of the "Big Fugly Bill"

• Tim Miller [10:47] transitions to discussing the major federal bill, referred to colloquially as the "big fugly bill."
• Matt Iglesias [13:23] outlines the bill's adverse effects: increasing the budget deficit, stripping health insurance from 8 to 13 million Americans, and crippling renewable energy and other critical industries.
• Notable Quote:
  • "It's not just that they aren't really making things more efficient. They also are doing material harm." — Matt Iglesias [10:47]

4. Democratic Strategies and Senate Race Prospects

• The conversation shifts to the Democratic Party's challenges in Senate races, particularly in traditionally conservative states like Ohio, Iowa, Florida, and Texas.
• Tim Miller [32:37] and Matt Iglesias [33:07] discuss the difficulty Democrats face in these states, emphasizing the need for candidates who can differentiate themselves from the national party and resonate with local voters.
• Notable Quote:
  • "If you can get people to only talk about those questions, that would be advantageous to Democrats." — Matt Iglesias [54:02]

5. Cultural Issues: "Don't Say Gay" and Education Policies

• The hosts touch upon cultural controversies, such as Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill and broader educational policies.
• Matt Iglesias [50:59] criticizes the Biden administration for focusing on divisive cultural issues at the expense of substantive educational reforms.
• Notable Quote:
  • "It's tough to do." — Matt Iglesias [53:11]

6. Immigration Policies and Concerns Over Kidnapping Allegations

• A significant portion of the discussion centers on immigration, highlighting concerns over alleged human rights abuses, including the kidnapping of individuals based on traits like tattoos.
• Tim Miller [62:18] expresses frustration with how immigration issues are being handled, advocating for Democrats to focus on the moral outrage of such actions.
• Matt Iglesias [65:30] agrees, suggesting that Democrats need to clearly articulate their stance against the administration's harsh immigration tactics.
• Notable Quote:
  • "I think that we should get out criminals and it's concerning that the administration is focusing on kidnapping people over their tattoos." — Tim Miller [66:05]

7. Jeffrey Epstein and Political Connections

• The hosts briefly discuss Jeffrey Epstein's financial ties, particularly his investments in Peter Thiel's funds, and raise questions about connections to political figures.
• Matt Iglesias [21:40] mentions that Epstein was a math teacher at his high school and highlights the depth of Epstein's connections, including ties to Bill Barr's father.
• Notable Quote:
  • "It's concerning that the administration is focusing on kidnapping people over their tattoos and taking police resources away from finding criminals." — Matt Iglesias [22:36]

8. Closing Remarks and Light-Hearted Banter

• The episode concludes with lighter topics, including housework and parenting, showcasing the rapport between Tim Miller and Matt Iglesias.
• Matt Iglesias [66:36] humorously describes his housework as "egregious" and touches upon the challenges of balancing parenting with professional responsibilities.

9. Advertisements Skipped

• Advertisements for platforms like Wix and American Giant were present at various points in the transcript but were omitted from this summary as per instructions.

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Conclusion: This episode provides a critical examination of recent political initiatives and their broader implications. Matt Iglesias offers insightful analysis on the shortcomings of government efficiency projects like Doge, the detrimental effects of major legislative bills, and the strategic challenges facing the Democratic Party in upcoming Senate races. Additionally, the hosts address pressing cultural and immigration issues, advocating for a more focused and morally grounded Democratic response. The conversation is enriched with notable quotes that underscore the severity of the discussed topics, offering listeners a thorough understanding of the current political landscape.

Transcript

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[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Just one more reminder. We're doing the rally tomorrow, Friday, June 6th 6th at 5 o' clock in front of the Supreme Court in support of the legal team that is fighting for Andre Hernandez Romero as well as the other Venezuelans that have been disappeared. Disakote. My guest today might think I'm raising the salience of that incorrectly, but I. I disagree with him and we can hash that out over the course of the podcast. So come hang out with us at 5 o' clock. We have a fundraiser at 8 o' clock in a live show. I think there are like three tickets left for it, so you better get it if you want to come onto the guest. He writes slow, boring on Substack. He co hosts the Politics with an X at the End podcast with Brian Beutler. He's a columnist for Bloomberg. It's Matt Iglesias. What's up man?

[Matt Iglesias]

Hello. What's going on?

[Tim Miller]

Good to see you. Yesterday you attended the welcome Fest, a forum for Centra's Dems, which I was not invited to participate in or moderate despite my status as the podcast home of this faction. So I don't know if I've gone too woke for welcome Fest or what happened there. Maybe invite was lost in the mail. I don't actually like going to these, so I don't know why I'm complaining.

[Matt Iglesias]

Why you weren't there. It was good. I read in the New York Times today that I was greeted like a rock star there.

[Tim Miller]

So was that true? Were you greeted?

[Matt Iglesias]

That was not my Actual experience, but, you know, it was in the New York Times.

[Tim Miller]

Did you sign anybody? Did you sign any ladies cleavage? No.

[Matt Iglesias]

A number of people, men gave me their business cards. So, you know, that's conference going. But, you know, we had some good people there talking, some frontline members of Congress. That's good.

[Tim Miller]

We're gonna get into that. I wanna get into what's happened with the Democrats, what they should do, how they can welcome people that voted for Donald Trump appropriately and strategically. But first, I wanna do a little bit of what's actually happening this year in 2025 in the news. You wrote, I don't know, maybe earlier this week about how Doge failed and why it matters. I think that is interesting, particularly also in the context of the Elon Musk and Trump breakup, ongoing breakup over, over the big fugly bill. So why don't we do Doge first and then the bill? Why do you say it failed and why does it matter?

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think a lot of people, sensible people, when Doge was rolled out, were like, this is stupid, right? Like, this is. This is bs. This is just about Trump and power and whatever. But I think it's just important to remember that lots of people, people who I know, like technology industry, people who are just not super political, like, they, like, love and worship Elon Musk, who's a very successful, very smart businessman. And when he started saying, you know, we are going to find hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars of waste and fraud in the federal government, there was real belief that he was going to do that. The President of the United States said in his pseudo State of the Union that. That there were millions of dead people on the Social Security numident, which is true, in fact. And then he suggested that this meant huge sums of money were going out, being paid out in checks to dead people. And so he was going to be able to massively reduce government spending without, you know, harming any kind of legitimate claims. That's not true. We've now seen that Musk has wrapped up, they cut some spending, fairly minor amount. The cuts that they have done have inflicted some really big harms on people, although often foreigners. But they're now saying, right, if you listen to Mike Johnson, you listen to anybody about this bill, they're claiming that they are going to take $800 billion out of Medicaid, but, like, somehow it's all going to be fine. That there's just like illegal immigrants and fraudulent claims. I think Doge is important context for that. Like, you must have seen Dave, right?

[Tim Miller]

The movie Dave?

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Oh y elder millennial.

[Matt Iglesias]

Right. I mean, this is like an incredible trope in American culture that if you just like brought a couple smart guys in to kind of go over the books.

[Tim Miller]

I gotta tell you, I loved that scene from Dave as at the time I was, you know, probably a high school Republican excited about the Bob Dole campaign. And I was like, hell yeah, let's. Let's cut the fucking red tape. Let's cut the waste and abuse out of this government. Everybody tighten their belts a little bit.

[Matt Iglesias]

This is how a lot of people see things. And you know, it's not true. And not to say you couldn't cut government spending if you wanted to in the spirit of shared sacrifice or whatever else it is, but like, millions of people are going to lose their health care when this bill goes through just as doge. You know, ultimately all they could do is like, cut scientific research and foreign aid programs. They just like did not find these, quote unquote, fraudulent claims. So I don't know, I was like looking at the news this morning and the headlines about this legislation which has passed the House and is pending in the Senate. They're like way down the page, you know, compared to other stuff. Cuz Trump is such a volume player in terms of like scandals and outrages and other different kinds of things. But I would like to get more attention to this.

[Tim Miller]

Thank you for not saying volume shooter. So I'm with you on getting attention for the bill. That's why it's gonna be in the B block of this very important podcast. By the way, we're one slot behind Megyn Kelly on the new YouTube ratings. So tell your fucking friends so we can pass Megyn Kelly.

[Matt Iglesias]

Incredible.

[Tim Miller]

We gotta do it and raise the salience of these issues. Just really quick on the Doge stuff first, because there's one part before we get to the reconciliation bill, because one part of what you said is important. And I was glad that you wrote the article because you, I think, have readers in this world there. Maintains like, people use the manosphere as a shorthand for like a bunch of different stuff, right? Like it's everything from like, you know, Charlie Kirk and you know, partisan MAGA blogs, you know, to like bro podcasts where they, you know, talk about boobs, to like, very nerdy tech podcast. And it's like kind of all out to comedy pockets all lifted together. But there's a group of that, a subsection of that that still just kind of maintains this, like, Idea that, oh, like, this was good. Like, the Doge part was good. Right. Like, that it was important that they took a chainsaw to the government and they're going to modernize some things. And, you know, you know, there. It's going to be just like, you know, when a private equity firm comes into a dying business and we're going to refresh it and. And like, and Elon, you know, like, all that, like, myth, I do think persists.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yes.

[Tim Miller]

And, like, it is important to just be blunt about, like, what actually happened with Doge.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah. And there was a good blog post written by one of the Doge volunteers who seems like a guy who went into this in fairly good faith and came in and he, you know, he talks about, like, it seems like he did, like, improve one software thing at the Veterans Administration, but he also said that he found out that a lot of things that it seemed to him are not being done there correctly is just, like, because they're following the law, not because people are being inept or anything like that. And also just that there was much less waste than he had anticipated. And so what happened is because he wrote some blogs about this, he got fired from Doge, which, you know, I sympathize with on some level. You don't want people just, just blogging about their secret government work.

[Tim Miller]

I would sympathize that if it wasn't for, like, in the context of, oh, they also fired the DNI person that just put out the accurate memo about whether Venezuela's invading us and also fired the person that just accurately said the Kilmar. Right. Like, within the broader context, it looks bad.

[Matt Iglesias]

I think that if you look at this and people should look at it, that, like, there's just, you know, not much that has been achieved here in terms of any kind of real efficiency. And, you know, Trump has this total disregard for the legislative process. I have known people forever who are very critical of how sort of IT procurement is done at the federal government.

[Tim Miller]

This was a big thing in Obama era. Like, there was a lot of folks.

[Matt Iglesias]

It's something he talked about several times. It should be fixed. The idea of bringing some outside people from business to look at it is, like, seems reasonable, but you would have to, like, propose a law and work with members of Congress and do it. And, you know, I kind of wish Obama had taken this on in a more serious way than just kind of talking about it. I wish Joe Biden had, I guess I wish Donald Trump would, but it's, like, so inconceivable. That Trump would engage in like an earnest, good faith, bipartisan, good government initiative around contracting processes. And the idea that what everything requires is this kind of like, more like smash and grab. I guess it resonates with some people, but, like, all you're actually getting is this incredibly corrupt, incredibly lawless gang of people who just, they want to be able to operate without constraint and they have no interest in fixing things. Dealing with politics is frustrating. Like, that's a true fact about Congress. But it just means, like, if you want to solve problems, you have to engage with the process, which, which they're not doing. They have legislation to, to cut Medicaid and do a tax cut and some, some zany other stuff. So it's not like they can't write bills, but like, this is what they have chosen to focus on. And Doge is like a power grab and an ego trip and whatever, but there's no efficiencies forthcoming.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And as you mentioned before, but just put a finer point on it, it's not just that they aren't really making things more efficient. They also are doing material harm. Yeah, there's some overlap in the Venn diagram between the effective altruist types, Remember when that was in vogue. And the people who thought it was great that Elon was going to bring in his tech guys to help make government more efficiency. And what they actually did was cause horrific outcomes for the poorest people throughout the world to no actual end.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah, I mean, incredible chaos unleashed on usaid, which, you know, USAID runs a fairly mixed bag of programs, but is some of the most cost effective public health interventions in the world. You know, I think credible estimates say tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of some of the poorest people in the world are going to die as a result of these disruptions in medical care.

[Tim Miller]

Which also goes against the Elon natalism a little bit. Like, I'm not as good at math as elon, but having 10 Musk babies while killing 20,000 African babies, the math didn't seem to net out there on our demographic.

[Matt Iglesias]

It's not a great ratio. And this was also an area where the Biden administration had in fact brought in a first ever Chief Economist office. They were doing more cost benefit analysis on the USAID programming. They were in the shifting funding to the sort of highest bang for the buck kinds of things. And, you know, they just direct it all on the basis, it seems, initially of some kind of conspiracy theories about USAID and Ukraine or I don't totally understand what they were saying, and then stubbornness, like they just didn't want to admit that they had this wrong and they plowed ahead because, you know, Trump is a little bit cautious about political blowback, but these are things that impact foreigners. Foreign aid is not a super popular cause. I watched a focus group of like, crossover voters who, you know, Trump voters who voted for Democrats down ballot. And, you know, some of the guys in that group just had a, I think, a very callous attitude toward this. I mean, they were not in denial about the fact that this was, this was bad for the global poor. They just did. But I care, and I think there's a lot of people who at least profess to care about these kinds of things. And it's worth understanding the big level of damage that has been done while under delivering on savings by 90 to 95%.

[Tim Miller]

All right, back to the bill. The big fugly slut. The main takeaways for you is what I'll just let you cook.

[Matt Iglesias]

Well, it seems like the budget deficit will get bigger, that somewhere between 8 and 13 million people are going to lose health insurance, depending on how you count it. We're going to cripple renewable energy deployment as well as the nuclear and geothermal industries in the United States. And in exchange, I've been doing pretty well for myself, so I'm going to get a hefty tax cut. So that's nice, you know. Yeah, I'm excited.

[Tim Miller]

You're kind of in the best spot here because you're salaried, you know, so, like, really, the people that are gonna do the very best are people at the top of the tax bracket who are salaried. Maybe this is how we can get the negatively polarized, these guys against it. It's like professional athletes are gonna be the people that do the best.

[Matt Iglesias]

Doing well.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, the guys kneeling during the anthem are gonna do the best. Maybe we can negatively polarize some Republican salt cat.

[Matt Iglesias]

No, but I mean, you know, it's very bad. And we are at a time when the budget deficit has started to have a meaningful impact on the economy, on mortgage rates, building, things like that. You keep seeing different things in the bond market, in the dollar, et cetera, et cetera. You know, Trump has backed off a little bit from the craziest aspects of his trade policy, although he keeps. Then I don't know what, what's the reverse of backing down? It's always two steps forward to reverse.

[Tim Miller]

Taco.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah, I don't know. Right, exactly. So we don't know where that's going to Land. But we're piling on, you know, very fiscally irresponsible and yet also very cruel. I mean, I'm talking about the deficit here. And, you know, if you want to reduce the deficit, you have to cut some programs. It takes some political courage, etc. But I think to do that by targeting the poorest people in the country for cuts in their programs, like, that's really awful. That's not how, you know, serious budget wonks, whatever it is, think about the world. And yeah, it gets bad.

[Tim Miller]

This is something I've been struggling with all week. So back in the glory days of the blogosphere, when you were on wonk blog and you guys, you and Ezra and others would hash out debates with nerdy Republicans and you guys would talk, go back and forth on the merits of Obamacare implementation and various legislation. And like, this time, I don't even know who's for this. It feels totally like inertia that Donald Trump just wants something and so they have to give something to him like a Christmas present. On the merits of the bill, it's very challenging to find somebody who is like, I'm very excited about this on the merits. I think it will be good for people.

[Matt Iglesias]

That is true. There's also been, I mean, as you know, a lot of transition in and out of the party coalitions. I think the kinds of people who are capable of doing writing and math.

[Tim Miller]

The one guy inherited me putting out white papers about how great this is. Does that exist? I don't feel like I've even seen that. I put out a tweet asking about this yesterday and somebody's like, the gun guys are very happy because one of the crazy things tucked into the bill is like, they're getting rid of the excess taxes on various types of firearms.

[Matt Iglesias]

They're taxed on silencers, right? So you're gonna be able to. I mean, that'll be good. You know, nobody wants loud noises as people shoot at each other.

[Tim Miller]

We want to make sure we're incentivizing silencer purchases.

[Matt Iglesias]

But, you know, I mean, it's true. I mean, I'm looking at like heritage, right? And like, what, what are their, what are their top videos that they're pushing out? Ending birthright citizenship. America's on track to lose a nuclear war with China, the truth about Trump's new self deportation application, and time to shut down the Department of Education. They don't seem to have that much interest in discussing this tax secret Chinese links behind anti Israel groups.

[Tim Miller]

I just pulled up National Review. They do have an editorial from the editors endorsing the modest Medicaid changes. So there you go. It doesn't feel full throated, but there's something there.

[Matt Iglesias]

Trump as art czar. You know, I mean, I think the most partisan Republicans aren't aware, I think, that this is not a strong topic for them and they simply have material on other subjects, you know, but it's.

[Tim Miller]

The only thing they're doing.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yes.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, it's literally like they did the Lake and Riley Act. So that would be within the Glacius mode of passing something that is, that is good for them from a salient standpoint. Not that you're necessarily supportive of the specifics, but like, strategically speaking. But like, then they decided this is the only thing they're gonna do this year. Right. That's crazy, right?

[Matt Iglesias]

I mean, Trump in his first term, he tried and failed to do a giant health care cut and then he moved on to just a deficit finance tax cut. And so now they are stapling those two ideas together into a bill. But the difference is, is that, you know, that fight over ACA repeal in 2017, that was like a huge deal. Like I remember Jimmy Kimmel talking about it. There were protesters going. It was like a big focal point of discourse and it was very bad for Trump and Republicans. And they seem to me to have succeeded in kind of pushing a multi trillion dollar piece of legislation into this kind of stealth mode. You know, some of this is just like Democrats are incredibly demoralized compared to where they were in 2017. There's just not the same level of resistance, energy and vibes.

[Tim Miller]

This might be a gift from Musk, but this might be changing. I think it might be too early to render a verdict on whether this breaks through to the Jimmy Kimmel level of attention because, well, a, the Senate hasn't passed. Right. Like, I think that there's still some hurdles ahead. I hear you.

[Matt Iglesias]

No, I agree. I mean, it's not a done deal. It's just we have gotten potentially close to the finish line without a lot of attention on, as you say, like this is their legislative agenda. I mean, they do other things, obviously, but like, this is what Congress is doing.

[Tim Miller]

Well, I mean, that's what Congress is doing. Yeah, right. Hey, y' all, with the uncertainty in tariffs, sometimes you just don't know what's going to happen, what the prices of things you're importing, things that you're buying on the Internet. So at times it might make sense right now to look to some American made products and that's why I'm happy to endorse our advertiser today. American Giant. American Giant is about keeping things simple and close to home. They aren't affected by tariffs because their products never left the US of A. Buying American Giant supports American manufacturers. And the clothes, they're great. They're really in vogue right now. It's the basics. I don't know if you notice these days, but the kids are into the norm core, you know, that's okay for me. I'm doing my best to try to fit in. And the basic American Giants long sleeves, the tees, got a couple of them. They're sturdy, they're well made, they're going to stand the test of time. I think I mentioned before my husband's American Giant hoodie was his favorite. He had for years, since back when we lived in California. So he's as thrilled as anybody when we got the American Giant sponsorship and got some new hoodies and tees for us to wear and share the best part of a gay marriage. So support American made tariff free clothing with American Giant. Get 20% off your first order when you use promo code [e-mail]. that's 20% off when you use code [e-mail]. okay, I want to get into kind of deeper on that and how to fight that, how to increase the salience and the strategy and democratic factional infighting. But I have two funny stories I want to talk to you about. First, can we just do two funny bits? Because the first one is one that I think is a shared interest of ours and that is this Jeffrey Epstein, major investor in Peter Thiel story from the New York Times yesterday. In 2015 and 2016, Mr. Epstein put 40 million into two funds managed by a firm co founded by Mr. Thiel. That investment is worth nearly 170 million now. 2015 and 16. That was well after everybody knew he was a pedo, that Peter Thiel was involved with him. It's one of the important things for me and I think for you as well that we reorient the Jeffrey Epstein killed himself conspiracy theories towards Trump. You know, now we have cash and Dan Bongino. Oh yeah, it was really a suicide. Yeah. They're part of the COVID up it seems like to me. I don't know what you think Jeffrey.

[Matt Iglesias]

Epstein was, this was before my time but he was a math teacher at the high school that I attended.

[Tim Miller]

Really?

[Matt Iglesias]

Yes. And the head of school at the time who hired him was Bill Barr's Dad. Okay, so it goes really deep.

[Tim Miller]

It's interesting that Bill Barr's dad placed Jeffrey Epstein into a school where there would be underaged boys and girls.

[Matt Iglesias]

It is interesting. I have a lot of interest in this and. Yeah. So Bongino in on the COVID up now. And I have a lot of questions. I mean, in all seriousness, the. Who was he? He was the labor secretary in Trump's first term.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Matt Iglesias]

Was the U.S. attorney who cut the mysterious sweetheart plea deal with Epstein. And then as soon as that became a big news story, he resigned from the cabinet and went somewhere. And then we just like, never, never heard from him again.

[Tim Miller]

Maybe he's on an island.

[Matt Iglesias]

Maybe. Yeah, I've got a lot of questions about that.

[Tim Miller]

I do too. I mean, the death did happen while Donald Trump was president.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yes.

[Tim Miller]

In a federal prison.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yes.

[Tim Miller]

And, you know, one of the biggest acolytes now of his vice president, we've learned, has had a big financial dealing with him. I don't know. It's just something worth continuing to look into. Another in the fun story category, I don't know if you saw this. This morning, Meghan McCain is selling a bottle of COVID Shot Detox for $89.99. You know, so if you got the shot and you regret it, you can pay Megan and her partner 89.99, and you'll get this kind of bottle of sludge that you can drink. And I'm just wondering if that. If you have any interest in that, if you have any partnerships that you want to promote right now.

[Matt Iglesias]

I'm open to it. You know, I mean, I've got. It seems to me, I mean, you would understand this better than I do, but conservative media has a lot of questionable product hawking as part of its core.

[Tim Miller]

Do you feel like you're missing out on this model?

[Matt Iglesias]

I mean, I do. I mean, back. Back when I was at Vox and hosted a podcast there, we had ads for like, mattresses and home security systems. They seem like pretty normal products. And I was always thinking, like, can't we be selling some gold bars and like, survival seed kits like this? This could. This good stuff out there that people might need.

[Tim Miller]

I do wonder kind of how that would work. Like that. You took the COVID shot in 2021. Everything turned out fine. You're fine. You're alive now, unlike the million people that died of COVID And you now you drink something and you like, that's gonna cleanse your system of stuff that was in the shot you took a half decade ago.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah. It's gonna, like, unvaccinate you. It's. I mean, I don't know. You know, I'd like to learn more. This was Trump's vaccine in the first place, so, you know, I would like.

[Tim Miller]

To learn a little bit more from vaccines. Anyway, maybe Megan will talk about it. One last kind of hot button story. Do you see that? She'll transition us nicely into the Democrats. The president's press secretary, the former president press secretary, Karine Jean Pierre, she's announced that she has a book she's coming out with. She's no longer a Democrat. She's an independent.

[Matt Iglesias]

She is.

[Tim Miller]

The reason for that is because people were too mean to Joe Biden. And so she doesn't feel at home in the Democratic Party anymore. And I gotta tell you, my contempt for these people grows astronomic, like, every day. It's like an exponential growth of my contempt for the people that were around Joe Biden. What are you doing?

[Matt Iglesias]

It's a bad.

[Tim Miller]

What is this person doing situation.

[Matt Iglesias]

You know, this is ridiculous, the whole situation with her. I have no real opinion about her conduct as press secretary.

[Tim Miller]

It wasn't that clear, but it was clear it can just be canned. It wasn't that great.

[Matt Iglesias]

It was clear that the president and the rest of his team did not have confidence in her performance. She was not being used the way that a normal press secretary is. And yet they did not want to fire her and replace her with somebody who they did have confidence in.

[Tim Miller]

Why do you think they're this.

[Matt Iglesias]

I don't know. I mean, they were incredibly averse to making any kind of personnel changes. Right. I mean, the only cabinet change that happened across those four years was the Secretary of labor left to run the hockey players union. And so then the Deputy Secretary of Labor was put in as acting Secretary of Labor. I'm not like, continuity. I'm not like, you got to fire this guy, you got to fire that guy. But, like, there's.

[Tim Miller]

There were some mistakes. They could have moved.

[Matt Iglesias]

Nobody does it right. I mean, I was in a management role once in my life, hired a bunch of people. I would say 90, 95% of them worked out great, but that still leaves you with 5 or 10% that didn't. It's awkward and annoying to get rid of people who are bad fits for the roles that they're in. But, you know, you just. You had an administration that, for whatever reason, was incredibly averse to moving people around, to firing people, to bringing new people in. And, you know, they clearly had developed a lot of Groupthink and insularity around what they were doing.

[Tim Miller]

There are two things I want to throw out there. Two things you got to throw out there. One is Joe Biden was not making really controversial decisions internally. And I think he was long time not a particularly great decision maker. I think that you can ask any of the Obama people from when he was much younger, that is what they said about how he's kind of all over the map sometimes on stuff. And they did a lot of stuff where there was consensus and there's no doubt they achieved a lot. But on things like this, you need the boss to be like, we gotta get rid of this person. He's not really that big of a decider. And as he aged, he probably. He seemed to be even less interested in making those kinds of decisions. That's one and two over concerned about identity, stuff like if we fire a black woman press secretary, even though we have plenty of black people in this administration. Obviously Joe Biden wants to have a representative staff and Cabinet. He spent a lot of time on that. But even still, I don't want to deal with one day of people on Twitter saying that we did something inappropriate.

[Matt Iglesias]

Well, the dynamic that you had, right? I mean, Biden was an old white guy, and his key team of advisors is also a bunch of old white guys. And they were clearly very sensitive about that. And so they went forward. They really went hard on diversity in hiring for other kinds of things, in part because they believe that's important and in part to shield themselves from criticism, you know, from the fact that the President and his core team actually had very little diversity. Some of that meant that, you know, they hired people who sometimes people who weren't good, but sometimes, like. Javier Becerra wanted to be Attorney General, right? He was the Attorney General of California. Making him Attorney General of the United States would have been super duper reasonable. But for whatever reason, Biden fell in love with the idea of Merrick Garland as Attorney General. So then they, like, wanted to have real original sin. Well, they wanted to have a Latino person in a prominent cabinet role. So they offered Becerra Health and Human Services. It's a worse, less prestigious job than Attorney General, but also one that Becerra wasn't as well qualified for. And then they didn't have confidence in him in that role. So the relationship between HHS and the White House became. Became very, very kind of toxic. And in that case, it's not even like, well, they were like, too eager to elevate black and Hispanic people because they wouldn't give him the job he wanted and he was well suited to, he was just being handled in this very sloppy kind of way. And, and it's true, I mean if you go back and talk to people who I know from the Obama years, I mean their critique of Joe Biden was always that he is not a crisp decision maker who thinks things through in a kind of well ordered sort of way. But you know Democrats, I mean this is a podcast of its own. But like Democrats as a whole have a lot of hang ups about identity that make it challenging I think to make clear decisions about different things and particularly personnel in different areas. And I know like my, my father in law's old like you know, George W. Bush Republican, really didn't like Trump kind of reluctant Biden Harris voter listening right now.

[Tim Miller]

I just want to shout out your.

[Matt Iglesias]

Father, well fine him if you're, if you're out there, Doug. But like this stuff drives him crazy. Like I like grew up in like progressive right. So you get circles. So it's like normal to me. And it's, this is like one of these things I think like rightly I.

[Tim Miller]

Assume Doug isn't a fan of the alternate which is the reverse identity type of politics where you're hiring wrestling executives to run the secretary of the Department of Education.

[Matt Iglesias]

This is like an old fashioned guy wants you to say you're hiring good people for things, you know, and I.

[Tim Miller]

Mean weekend talk show us.

[Matt Iglesias]

It makes a lot of sense, right? And so yeah now I mean we have have just an administration run by like B tier Fox News hosts. But you know, Biden was not doing the best with this kind of stuff. And you know Jean Pierre's attitude toward this. I guess she thinks this will sell books but I don't think it will. I don't think anybody's coming out.

[Tim Miller]

Just as likely she cancels her book tour. And who would want to talk to her about this? Oh, I'm a principled independent because people are mean to like what, what's the.

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[Tim Miller]

Go to wix.com there's an article you wrote recently, which is why I initially reached out to you that I could not be more full throated on your side of. And I think it's just important to talk about which is the Democratic Senate.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah, it's not good.

[Tim Miller]

And Lauren Egan wrote about this for us in the Bullock on Sunday, if you want to check out her reporting.

[Matt Iglesias]

Very good piece.

[Tim Miller]

And it does seem like at least there's some thinking happening about this, which is good because I think there was a period of time where there really wasn't that much thinking about it. And I think the Democrats put up a lot of like generic Democrats in places where generic Democrats have no chance of winning just because of inertia. And if the Democrats are ever going to induct the Senate, as your article lays out, they need to win in places like Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Texas, where Kamala Harris lost by quite a bit and where Democrats haven't won statewide in a while.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

And so that means doing something like not a little different on the edges, but like trying some things quite different. So anyway, talk about that.

[Matt Iglesias]

Right. So I mean, you know, Kamala Harris lost the election to Donald Trump. That is a really big deal. And for people's emotional state, Trump being president, you know, is what at the.

[Tim Miller]

End going through a lot.

[Matt Iglesias]

It was the change it would have taken for her to win. Right. To narrowly win was pretty modest. It's modest. So you could say, you know, if the message had been a little different, if events in the world had been a little different, it's just, it's easy to.

[Tim Miller]

She had been a little bit stronger. Right. Like they're very. I thought she'd run a good campaign, but. Right. Like you could imagine a pretty modest change in events on an earth two where we are where she would have walked discussing the Kamala Harris agenda right now and with too much, a lot fewer listeners.

[Matt Iglesias]

But Democrats in the Senate who ran ahead of Harris. Right. I mean we had a number of people, Gallego and Slotkin in particular, like won seats in states where she lost.

[Tim Miller]

Gallego really particular was the one that like won actually more votes than her a lot. The Slotkin and Baldwin won a lot.

[Matt Iglesias]

Because of dropout with undervotes. Right. But Democrats were nowhere close to winning a Senate majority. You know that, that Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester are good candidates who ran well ahead of Kamala Harris but didn't come close to winning those races in Montana and Ohio because Harris lost those states by a huge amount. And if you look back to 2020. Right. I mean Joe Biden won the popular vote by a large amount in 2020, but he carried 25 states. Exactly. If you held every single seat from a state that Biden won in 2020, you get a 50. 50 Senate. That's hard to do because Susan Collins, for example, is incredibly difficult to defeat.

[Tim Miller]

Fucking Davos. Dave McCormick just won. So that can't happen for six years. You can't win penaling.

[Matt Iglesias]

And there's McCormick. And you want to win those 25 bluest states, but you also have to be having viable campaigns in Florida, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, and Alaska. Those are the next six states. Now, you know, those are conservative states, but if you can win three or four out of those 12 Senate seats, you're in the game. You're also putting pressure on senators. Like, you want to be in a situation where if Ken Paxton defeats John Cornyn in a primary, that should endanger the seat. Right. Where you can, like, punish the Republican Party for putting forward corrupt people and psychopaths and stuff like that. Even if, like, a nice guy who's doing an okay job can win. And the difference between Harris winning and losing would be small. We have factional arguments in the Democratic Party because, you know, people care about things. But if you're saying we have to do X to win the presidential election, like, that's not true. Like, small changes could turn defeat into victory there. But in the Senate, we're very far. Like, something has to be done that is a lot different, and some of that is the recruiting of the candidates. But I think that it is hard to be relying so much on people running against the national party. And I think that the leadership, whether that continues to be Chuck Schumer or becomes Brian Schatz or. Or Chris Murphy in the future, needs to, like, move the caucus in a direction where you're not running with, like, a backpack full of lead against you. Because, you know, Sherrod Brown and John Tester, like, those are good politicians, guys like Colin Allred, Tim Ryan, who've lost badly in recent cycles. Those are good politicians. They're. They're smart guys. They. They know what they're doing. They run ahead. Head of the national ticket. But there's only. Particularly if you're not an incumbent. Right? Because if you. If you are Susan Collins, you can do things to sort of credibly commit yourself to differentiating. But it's. It's hard for a challenger to just be like, oh, I'm so different. And your opponent is like, well, no, he isn't.

[Tim Miller]

I don't think that there's an easy answer to this. I think it's the important thing to say.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah, it's a good question.

[Tim Miller]

So, like, I have my opinion right now. I'm about to share, but I don't think it's. My opinion's a silver bullet. I agree with you that it would help for Democrats not to be, you know, running these states, not to be so burdened by having like, whatever the backpack full of lead by the. By the party brand issues. I think changing the party brand is probably tougher than what I'm about to suggest. I don't think the Democrats should try. Should not try to do it because it's hard, but I think it's a little tougher. Here's my thing with Jon Tester and with all of them. I love Claire McCaskill. She's my BFF on the MSNBC set. I love Heidi Heitkamp. I've had her on this pod before. My husband worked for her. But all of these people went down the same path, basically, which was they ran as kind of conservative Democrats. And then over time, because of national pressure or whatever, they really started to seem much more like regular Democrats than they thought. They could differentiate themselves by talking about local stuff. And that really worked in the 90s and 2000s. I took a very important position on the drilling in this random part of North Dakota, you know, whatever. Whatever it is that doesn't really work now. And like, to me, I think that Jon Tester would have been much better suited to win, and maybe he still couldn't have. But in the future, if the voters who don't pay that close of attention to Senate and Congressional races like they do presidential races, just know one thing about you. And the one thing they know about you is that it's different from the Democrats. And I literally don't care what it is. Like, I have candidates try to call me. And that is my advice for you. I was like, I want you to pick one thing and have it not just be like, kind of a thing. You mention sometimes that you run ads about the last three months. I want it to be the one thing that people know about you. Like if they ask you one thing about candidate X running in Iowa, J.D. scholten, I guess, just got in. I want the one thing people to know is that you think the Democrats are really stupid when it comes to ethanol, guns, whatever. I don't know. You pick it like some cultural issue. And I just think that a lot of these candidates are reluctant to do that. And I've talked to one of them who tried this at a very local level, and he was like, tim, it's annoying. I go to the county meetings and people yell at me about this. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's right. People are going to yell. And that's good, because that's. The people are going to only know that one thing about you. And you can still be a Democrat on the other issue. I'm not asking you to, like, you know, be a troll who pokes Democrats in the eyes all the time. Right. It's tough to do. I don't even know if that'll work well.

[Matt Iglesias]

And I think that these things have a feedback mechanism to them. Right. So that it would be good to have people who are more strongly differentiated. I think it would be good for the national party leadership, though, to address itself to the more progressive donors and. And say, look, the amount of squeezing that we did on these people was a mistake that, like, you wanted us to get Claire McCaskill and Heidi Highkamp and all these people to, like, walk the line for us.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Matt Iglesias]

And we did it. And, like, the upshot is that now we don't have those seats. Right. Joe Manchin was constantly being set up to be this, like, huge villain, which maybe helped him in some ways, but it ultimately just got him to quit.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Matt Iglesias]

You know what I mean? Like, he didn't feel like he was a valued and welcomed member of the Senate caucus, whereas Tester had a much happier time. But I remember, you know, 2009, 2010, I was super frustrated with all these conservative Democrats who were out there, and I was like, oh, my God, John Tester won't even vote for the goddamn Dream Act. Like, what is going on? But that was the version of, this.

[Tim Miller]

Is a good time to go back. It's complicated, though. Probably would have been better for them to just jam through, like, Medicare, whatever the public option was.

[Matt Iglesias]

Some health care stuff. Yes, yes. But the version of Jon Tester who had me tearing my hair out was the version who got reelected in 2012 and 2018. Because as much as people on the Internet may find that, like, I'm some incredible villain, like, I voted for Kamala Harris. I voted for Hillary Clinton. I voted for Joe Biden. John Tester's constituents did not do that. Right. Like, you gotta not just take, like, some, like, dipshit, centrist, substat guy like me and be like, well, we need people like that. Like, you gotta be more conservative than that, at least on something. Right. In some key way. And like maybe it's immigration, maybe it's, you know, like me, if it was me, like we could have English gun laws, French gun laws. But you know, I live in a city like I'm a politically moderate person, but I'm not interested in owning assault.

[Tim Miller]

Rifles or silencers with non tax or.

[Matt Iglesias]

Having shootouts on the street, things like that. But you know, the politics of national gun control have not gone anywhere for Democrats. Right. So it's like you have like Biden and Schumer and others like talking about assault weapons bans and then there's no way to like win in the states that you're trying to target. It's not progressives number one or number two or number three or number four or number five actual priority. And like you just gonna have to have, as you were saying, a bigger tent in which a lot of the candidates have one or two things that they are like clearly broken from the party with and where the party leadership is saying. And that's fine. They're saying, I disagree with Governor Bashir Senate recruit Bashir about X. But we, we want him in the caucus. Like we, we want a bigger tent party that has more heterodoxy around cultural issues that reflects the breadth and diversity of the United States of America. We expect our Senate candidates in Kentucky and Louisiana and Montana and Texas to reflect the values of the people in those states which are not the values of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries constituents. And you know, it's, it's tough.

[Tim Miller]

Some of the people that hate you on the Internet would say this, and I think that they might have a point. The problem is I just don't know that this person exists, that the way to do it is not to do what Matt Iglesias is suggesting, but to run a candidate in Montana or one of these places, Alaska, who hates companies and wants to arrest bankers that did bad things and who wants socialized health care, but who also likes guns and is maybe a little bit more moderate on immigration and guns, but that the great differentiation is away from the Democratic establishment on their corporate shilling.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

What do you make about that idea?

[Matt Iglesias]

I actually think that as sort of narrowly phrased, I mean, I think it is true that in rural America, if you can position yourself as antagonistic to Wall street, say. Right. Which is like a foreign kind of thing, that there is some real juice in that. At the same time, I mean, I was moderating a panel that Jared golden was on and he's got some of that like populist vibe to him on economics, he's very pro labor guy, but he was like talking about some regulations that the Biden administration tried to put on the lobstering industry in Maine related to saving right. Whales. And he was like very opposed to that. That was like part of his like local shtick. And I mean, I don't fucking care. But like, I think politicians, particularly politicians who are, you know, facing some, some natural skepticism from the voters, have to be supportive of their local businesses and local economic interests. Which means, you know, if you're talking about Alaska, there's a really big oil and gas in Alaska.

[Tim Miller]

And do you think that your reply, guys would really like a candidate that was about drill, baby, drill in Alaska and also was, you know, against the gun bill that Biden passed?

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

But also as a socialist, I just like, I think that that is like a white whale that should be tried maybe in some of these states. But I don't know that any of the people on the Internet that hate Matt Iglesias would really like that candidate that much.

[Matt Iglesias]

That's my question about the economic populist strategy is like, how does it intersect not to the kind of like Internet villain businesses, but to the businesses that like actually exist in, in the places where we're talking about running candidates. Right. You know, whether that's agriculture in Iowa, you know, other kinds of things there. Because it seems to me that the relationship to the fossil fuel industry that the Democratic Party has is just really tough. Like we know that Pennsylvania is a state that Biden won, that Harris needed to win to become president. And you know, we know like John Fetterman, Bob Casey, none of those guys are for fracking ban kind of stuff. And Ohio is an even more important industry there. Texas, Alaska, it's a more important industry there. So you can work that into an abundance framework that we're going to have an abundance of natural gas or you can work it into a populist framework where it's like, I'm going to get you cheap gas.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And fight for the workers there at the Landmen.

[Matt Iglesias]

It's just a tough one. I mean like the climate movement has a lot of clout inside the Democratic Party, but I think does not have a realistic path to majorities in Congress. But to me that's like a much more concrete and like actionable question than this sort of like vague anti monopoly kind of stuff.

[Tim Miller]

I want to be clear. I think that the Democrats should try a fucking Landman who likes oil but is also a socialist and hates bankers in one of these states. And See if it works and I think they should try a Mark Cuban type candidate and see if it works. And I think that it needs to be something different.

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[Tim Miller]

Of overlays a little bit with welcome fest. Yeah, a couple of things I saw, I did not watch all the panels once again wasn't invited so I didn't get to see all of it. A couple of things I saw that, that caught my eye that are Matt Iglesias coded. One was some guy was talking about how Democrats in Florida really fucked up by fighting the don't say gay bills. Yeah, I don't know. Reagan opposed the Briggs Initiative in 1978. So I think Democrats opposing it 47 years later, a version of it being the thing that constant in Florida. I'm not sure that's quite right. This kind of goes though to your, your theory, your unifying theory of the case about salience of issues. And, and maybe there's some of these issues that shouldn't become as salient as they are and Democrats shouldn't fight about them. And I guess my issue with that is I don't share your view that like random mid bench congresspeople's tweets like matter at all as far as what the salience of issues are with people. And I think that the salience of issues is like driven a lot by the President, which at this point we can' and driven a lot by what people are actually interested in. Like one example in addition the don't say gay bill and then I'll let you respond was Rahm yesterday was like Democrats shouldn't talk about the trans sports thing because it's not a winner for us and there's only 11 trans. And this is a popular opinion among Democratic politicians. But my point is like people like talking about the transports thing and why do people like talking about it? Because it's something everybody can touch. Like everybody can grasp and understand that there's a girl, you know who transitioned, who you know is born a male who's in A shot put competition and wins the medal. And like, that's an interesting thing for people to talk about it, whether we like it or not. And some people that are talking about it are going to be bigots. And some people are talking about it are just kind of trying to understand and think through it. And like, that is just something people naturally talk about more than like Medicaid work requirement, because people don't understand Medicaid worker requirements. And not a lot of people experience it. A small group of people, it's really important to. So like, that's like my main issue with all this. I think that ignoring this stuff is not really the right strategy. But why don't you go away?

[Matt Iglesias]

I agree particularly on the, on the trans issues. You, you can't just tell people, no, you're wrong to think that this is important. People feel how they feel about things. I also did not see Andy Rotherham's talk. I just saw Dave Weigel tweet his don't say gay take, quoting this one thing. But I do know Andy and like, I think this is steel man version of this is that Biden era Democrats, from the president to the Secretary of Education on down, seem to me to completely lose focus on the question of school quality and like actual education in the schools. And if I ask them about stuff like what about this city in California that's like getting rid of advanced algebra, or what about this idea that like we need to ban cell phones in schools or something, the answer that they would give would be, well, you know, like, this is not really a federal policy issue. Like we don't want to wade into it, but they would wade very aggressively into some of these like Southern library shenanigans and other kinds of things or.

[Tim Miller]

The renaming of a school.

[Matt Iglesias]

Right. Because what they were doing, I mean, this goes back to what your criticism of Biden's management at the top is. If there was something that just, just united all Democrats, they would talk about it. But if it was something that was divisive amongst Democrats, they didn't want to take a position on it. And Democrats have always been the party that is more trusted on education. Like Democrats fucking love education, love teachers, love schools. It's like, like to spend money on things, you know, et cetera. And between Covid school closures, then all the problems that were happening once kids went back to school, a lot of these kind of culture war controversies that started coming out, the Biden administration was not like conveying that it cared about whether kids were learning in school and that this Was like a point of focus for them.

[Tim Miller]

I totally agree with this. And so I guess maybe my issue is I think sometimes there's like this idea that like, oh, focus on this, on these like boring, substantive things instead of these other things everybody's talking about. And I just don't think that's possible in this world. And so like, for example, on the school stuff, like you mentioned the phone saying everybody has an opinion on this. Right. So like Democrats really leaning in on that and being like, I'm going to be the guy or the woman that's like, we shouldn't have phones in schools for people under 8th grade or whatever it is. And I'm going to talk about that. I'm going to go on podcast about that. Like, that's interesting. People will talk about that. That's interesting. Or on the don't say gay thing, like maybe rather than not talking about it or rather than calling them all bigots or whatever, you can just say, do you really want the most racist mom in your community determining what books are in your kids schools? I don't. I'd rather the principal do it. Right. Like, I just think that there are ways like, and like there was this time about, oh, Greenland's a distraction. And I'm kind of like, why don't you make it their distraction? Like you are having issues right now and Donald Trump is sending spies into nuke. I don't think that's a good idea. I just think that like Democrats should actually play the game and find ways to engage on cultural stuff that is more broadly popular. And like that's Trump's secret sauce. He's tabloid, like play the tabloid game back at him, I guess is my point.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah, it is just true, right, that like Democrats strongest hand is on relatively boring, slightly technical stuff related to health care and taxes. And that's a problem for them because you can't like for force people to decide that Medicaid true though? I think so. Well, I mean it's true that like if you could get people to only talk about those questions, that would be advantageous to Democrats. But as you say, you can't do that. Right. I do think though that you can try to tie things back to make sure that you are mentioning. Right. Like as these things go on, because if you're trying to get a bigger tent of people, you're trying to try more things. Things you're trying to shake things up, you're gonna get the question. Those candidates are gonna get the question. So like, so why are you a Democrat, like, what's going on, Tim?

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Matt Iglesias]

And if it's you, the answer might be like, Donald Trump sucks. This guy's a dictator, et cetera, et cetera. But that's not a good message if you're running in a state where Trump won 56, 57% of the vote running.

[Tim Miller]

For Senate and Louisiana.

[Matt Iglesias]

No, no, absolutely, absolutely. But I do think the most natural touchstone to be like, why am I a Democrat running in a red state with some more heterodox hands and cultural issues is this stuff that goes back to health care, social, Social Security, tax fairness, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That is the connective tissue that, you know, amidst different kinds of factional controversies and like, different opinions about guns and library books and all kinds of other things.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. If the Louisiana person called me and said, how should I answer that question? I'd say, well, Jeff Landry just increased the sales tax here while cutting the tax on the richest. And do you want to pay more money at the fucking grocery store and the gas station? Working people are getting fucked. He says he's for the. That's what I would say here. So you're right. That's how you kind of. You can kind of make that into a more cultural thing by being like working folks like me. Ideally, you would find somebody in Louisiana that.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah. Who's credible and authentic and in that.

[Tim Miller]

Way and can just be like, I don't want to fucking pay more money at the gas station. Because Jeff Landry wants to give a tax cut to his pals. Right. Like, that's good. That could probably isn't going to get you elected, but that's plausible. It's something.

[Matt Iglesias]

It's something. Right. I mean, because you want people to think of the Democratic Party as the party that looks out for the little guy. Right. And I think most of the positions the Democrats have on culture, cultural issues are ultimately downstream of that. People may lose sight of that. Right. But the reason Democrats became the party of civil rights, the party of feminists, the party of environmental protection, the party of gay rights, etc, is downstream of an earlier identity as the party of the little guy. And so, like, socio cultural minority groups are little guys like vis a vis mainstream society, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But it always works best when you can, like emotionally, intellectually and coalition politics wise, like, foreground this kind of general commitment to, like, the people versus the powerful, something. Something of that nature, rather than coming across as obsessed with micro identities as kind of individual considerations or as like an elite diversity.

[Tim Miller]

We're caring about elite interests. Right. And this is the issue of the democracies. Yeah, I agree with that.

[Matt Iglesias]

But also, I mean, I think we often get, like, diversity as an elite interest. Right. As, like, we're really obsessed with gender dynamics on the corporate board of directors.

[Tim Miller]

Right. Yeah. Well, this goes to the student loan thing. Like, the student loan bailout was like, again, I mean, you could frame that as helping the little guy, but it was easily reframed as not helping people that didn't go to college.

[Matt Iglesias]

Well, you would have to follow it up with some kind of discussion of what is higher education for us? Why is this good? What are we trying to do? And then the student loans can fit into that or not, depending on what it is you're saying. And look, I mean, we had a president who, who could not communicate on his own behalf and had a team that didn't. But, you know, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer don't have that excuse. And it's not like they're doing light years better in terms of explaining, like, how do these positions that they've taken relate to, like, our society and how they think it should work.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Okay, this takes us back to the immigration thing, which is my final. Well, we have one fun topic at the end, but which is my final point. Once again, come to our rally tomorrow at 5 o' clock at the Supreme Court. And maybe Democrats just aren't capable of doing this like the actual candidates. So this might be my version of the far leftists. Like, if we only had an anti Wall street candidate that also was a gun owner, then we could really win back the working vote. I just think about the Joe Rogan thing and I think about this in the trans context. Right. Where it's like in the same way that, oh, it's only 11 people who. Only 11 trans athletes in college who are competing in the same way. That argument doesn't really work because some people out there care about the 11 people in college that are trans athletes. Can't you flip it on this thing and be like, I'm focusing just on the 11 people they kidnapped? There's a makeup artist, there's a guy who has an autism awareness tattoo. You know, there is whatever you find eight other people they kidnapped 11 fucking people. And guess what? They might come kidnap you next time. You don't know. If they can kidnap somebody and send them to a foreign prison, they could kidnap anybody. That resonated with Joe Rogan. And I think that that is a way into the issue that conceivably Democrats could win if they were disciplined about it. And I don't know that. Just like, because immigration, generally speaking, is a better issue for Trump, I don't know if it means that that's smart to not engage on that. In addition to the obvious moral principle that this is, this is outrageous, which I know you share. But just on the strategic point, what do you think?

[Matt Iglesias]

I mean, look, I think the Romero case that you are focused on has to be the single weakest ground for Trump in the whole immigration firmament. I find the facts of the Garcia case are, are just not quite as favorable as I think Democrats sort of want them to be at times. But, you know, I don't object.

[Tim Miller]

You don't object to our rally tomorrow. Will you attend? You're not going to attend, but you're not going to object?

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah, no, but listen, I wish that some of the creative flying to El Salvador is a stunt, right? Which is not in a bad way. Part of politics is stunts. Right. I wish that we had some of the creativity around stunt generation that was put into that. Like, what is the flying to El Salvador of Medicaid cuts, of the impact on electricity prices that the energy provisions of this bill are going to have. Because, you know, like, it just, it matters, you know, like, you have to come up with way, try to come up with ways to, to drive attention to stuff and not just be purely sort of position takers. Because I do think it is clear that, like, Trump and J.D. vance are eager to fight about immigration. And part of their eagerness to fight about immigration is that I'm not 100% sure that Democrats know what the answer, what their answer is to the question of what do they think should be done vis a vision. The couple million people who entered the country during the Biden years. And I would feel more confident about picking on these most egregious abuses that Trump is doing if I understood, like, what Democrats bottom line was on this question.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, there are a lot of issues that Republicans don't have a solution to that they fucking demagogue on. Because it's interesting. My argument is that in this particular case, you're overlapping something that's interesting that people can talk about and just chat about. Be like, do you think that it's really a gay makeup artist that we put into a foreign hole? And like, it's a, it's a fucking horror movie, you know, imagine like getting grabbed off the street. It's like, oh, we don't like your tattoos. We're going to send you to El Salvador and put you in a RoboCop prison. Right. Like, so I don't, I mean, there are other examples about this. I'm just honing in on this because when I'm focused on. But, like, I don't know. I mean, there are, there are a decent number of things that the Republicans like, lean in on that are, that are niche issues that they don't have a solution to. The fact that the Disney movies had lesbian kisses in them and they don't like it. They didn't, like, have a policy, like a global policy solution to that. They just were like, I'm fucking pissed that Buzz Lightyear had a lesbian kiss in it. And, and I don't, you know, I.

[Matt Iglesias]

Don'T know that complaining about Buzz Lightyear was a great winner for them, though. You know, I mean, look, immigration, though, has become like a huge bleeding sore for Democrats vis a vis public opinion. And it makes me a little bit queasy when I see elected officials now. Look, if you can get Joe Rogan interested in this, which it seems like people did for a while, like, that's amazing, you know, and if Chris Van Hollen was on the Joe Rogan show to talk about this, maybe not, I think that would be great.

[Tim Miller]

But okay, it's whatever.

[Matt Iglesias]

Well, whoever it is, you know what I mean, whoever's interested in.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Matt Iglesias]

Like, I think that would be great because you're reaching an audience of people who Democrats don't have. But vis a vis somebody who is sympathetic to your point on here, you could make like, big new ground, et cetera, et cetera. But it seemed to me that, you know, Democrats got their asses handed to them on the immigration issue in 2024. And then there was a lot of eagerness to be like, ah, Trump's gone too far. Like, we're going to, we're going to nail him here. And Trump has gone too far, too far. And that is an important point to make. But we have some work to do amongst ourselves in terms of articulating, like, what is the position that we have now. I think, I kind of think we were talking about, you know, things that would have made a difference. I mean, I think if Kamala Harris, when she was asked on the View about disagreements with Joe Biden, I think if she'd said, like, look, obviously he was too slow to take these actions on border security. And, like, once he did it, it started working.

[Tim Miller]

And by the way, in my fantasy world, when people are like, why are you so mad at Joe Biden. One of the things that I would fly back in my DeLorean to do, which I said at the time, was that Joe Biden should bring Kamala in to the White House and say, hey, kid, put you in a tough spot here. Here's what we're going to do. You're going to go say this on the View, and then when people ask me about it in the next press conference, I'm going to say, you know, I should have listened to her. I don't know if that would have worked, but it would have been preferable to what happened, which was like pressuring her to like, run cover for it to.

[Matt Iglesias]

Not. Right? Exactly. Exactly. So if you had to pick like one thing that could have been done differently, like, I think that's, that would be the thing. But now I hear a lot of Democrats who are like, well, I'm, I'm for being tough on the border. I'm for borders, which is good. But like, Trump has secured the border, right. So we're like now moving on to this secondary question where like, he is trying to get rid of this large population of. It's some long time undocumented people. It is some people who had pending asylum claims. It's some people who had temporary protective status or parole. You know, this is like a very miscellaneous bag, but it's millions and millions of people and they would like to get them all, all to leave the country. And Democrats need to think about what they want to say about that. I think, like in a, in a big picture way. Right. And the closest I saw was Chuck Schumer saying, well, you know, like, our goal is to get a path to citizenship for all of these, however many million people it is. And I'm not sure that's a great take.

[Tim Miller]

That's much more complicated than opposing the kidnapping.

[Matt Iglesias]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

I concur with you that it's much more positive complicated than opposing the kidnapping. I don't know, man. I just think that they don't actually have any pressure. My advice on this would be to say, hey, I don't think the government should be able to kidnap people because of their tattoos. And I think that, and I agree with this administration that we should get out criminals. And it seems concerning to me that the administration is focusing on kidnapping people over their tattoos and taking police resources away from finding criminals and using it instead on raiding quinceaneras. Like, I don't think, you know, like, that's, that would be my message if.

[Matt Iglesias]

We can talk about crime, you know, and I saw Kelly and Gallego had a letter about this today or yesterday. And you know, I mean, I think that's good. I don't have any tattoos, so, you know, it's of. No.

[Tim Miller]

All right, we've gone way over, but your article today was on daddy blogs, and so people should go check that out. But on slow boring. But I guess I have just two follow ups. One, how much of the housework do you do around your home? And do you have any daddy blog? If you did start a daddy blog, is there any topics you'd like to see explored?

[Matt Iglesias]

My. My housework is, is egregious.

[Tim Miller]

What about, what about the parenting?

[Matt Iglesias]

What about I'm like a filthy person. I like to think I'm like an okay parent, you know, how much, how.

[Tim Miller]

Many hours a week do you think you're spending parenting versus podcasting?

[Matt Iglesias]

Parenting? It's, it's, it's too many.

[Tim Miller]

Too many parenting, too many podcasts.

[Matt Iglesias]

I mean, I mean, I mean, you know, parenting is a joy and a delight. I spend many hours attending swim practices, which is one of the most boring sports for a person's child to take up as a hobby. But it's a good time to get some reading in, et cetera. So, I mean, my, my daddy blog would be just like, mostly about youth sports, like 10 year old soccer teams. You know, I've got a lot of questions about the coaches lineup, you and.

[Tim Miller]

JVL strategies that could be a mutual thing. JVL loves writing. He does. Well, I quote one try out a quarter about youth sports. So maybe you guys can have a joint substack on that. All right, that's Matt Iglesias. His substack is slow boring. You should check it out, especially if, you know, you find him annoying on Twitter because sometimes he's better in long form than he is on Twitter and.

[Matt Iglesias]

It'S much more reasonable there.

[Tim Miller]

And I hope to see some of you out tomorrow in D.C. and for the rest of you, we'll be back here for a Friday podcast, which I'll be doing from our offices in D.C. we'll see you all then. Peace.

[Unknown Artist]

This is your station, baby look inside these walls and you see them having withdrawals of a prisoner home his way trapped inside your desire to fire bullets that straight track a tire Just tell you I'm tired and ran away I should ask a choir what do you require to sing a song that acquired me to have faith that's the record spin I should pray for the record I recognize that I'm easily pray I got ate alive yesterday I got animosity building it's probably big it's a building Me jumping off of the roof it's me just playing this safe but what am I supposed to do when the topic is red or blue and you understand that I ain't but no I'm accustomed to just a couple that look for trouble and live in the street with rank no better picture to paint than me walking from bible studying calling homies because yes said he noticed my face from a function that took in place they was wondering if I bang step on my neck and get blood on your Nike checks I don't mind cause one day you respect the good kid Mad city massination baby education baby want to reconnect with your elation.

[Matt Iglesias]

This.

[Tim Miller]

Is your station baby The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

[Unknown Artist]

Honesty I got time to be copacetic until you have finally made decisions.