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- [00:01]
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- [00:28]
Stuart Stevens
Refreshers contain caffeine.
- [00:43]
Tim Miller
Hello, and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show a former Republican media consultant. It's been a minute, though. He worked on five presidential campaigns, including his chief strategist for Mitt Romney. He's a senior advisor to the Lincoln Project. His books include the Conspiracy to End America and It Was All a Lie. It's my buddy, Stuart Stevens. What is up?
- [01:02]
Stuart Stevens
Hey, Tim. Great to see you, man.
- [01:03]
Tim Miller
Good to see you, too. I was kind of in my head over the last month or two. I was like, I'm going to wait until fall to have Stuart back on. I was thinking maybe, I don't know, I might have him on, like, September 18th. I don't know if you have any plans on September 19th.
- [01:18]
Stuart Stevens
You know, the 20th would be better because, you know, it's a gloat. But that's okay.
- [01:25]
Tim Miller
You know, we'll get to the end. That will be the payback game of Lane Kiffin, lsu going to Ole Miss. We'll discuss that at the end. But I just. I couldn't wait till the fall. So we. We'll meet again in September. I want to start with you with this ICE killing in Houston because I think that this is getting a little less attention than the Pretty and Good Killings for a couple reasons. Number one, we kind of don't treat illegal immigrants as humans, even subconsciously. People are like, it's not as big of a outrage or whatever than killing a white American citizen. I think that's part of it. And also just we've had less footage. There were just so many angles of the Pretty and Goode shootings that was clear for everybody. Everybody with eyes to see that the administration was lying. But, I mean, I don't know how close you've been following this case, but this is crazy. I mean, the guy was killed by ICE in Houston. He had three other people in the car. He had kids that he'd raised in America. He'd been here 35 years. No criminal record. DHS said that they opened fire after he ignored commands and attempted to ram the officer. But there are three other witnesses in the car. They all Say that the officer fired at them immediately after exiting his vehicle. Driver didn't veer in that direction. One of the other guys in the car from jail, they're all, they're all still in detention center right now being pressured to self deport one of them. Jose Rojas wrote it's impossible for them to say they were going to get run over. There were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides. Photos show no damage to the van. I mean, this just seems like Renee Goode all over again.
- [02:58]
Stuart Stevens
Well, look, you know, we have a name for this. We call it death squads. And that's what these ICE agents are. They're just roaming death squads to feel that they have. And so far it's been proven right. If they shoot somebody, fine, there's not gonna be any prosecution. One of my pet things here is how the Democrats have to erect a structure. The whole illegality of the Trump administration, the criminality across the board. And it's going to be up to the state attorney generals, I think because Trump will pardon everybody. And my model is like the tobacco twerk. When attorney generals got together, they picked it up and you know, if It's January and 29 and early into that year and Stephen Miller isn't on trial or living in a non extradition country, something will have failed. And that's what you have to go after. You have to go after Stephen Miller, have to go after Christine Ohm. You have to go after these people at the very top.
- [03:55]
Tim Miller
Yeah, maybe Steve Miller can go to El Salvador. He was excited to send people, people there. I'm sure they'd house them.
- [04:00]
Stuart Stevens
I'll just say, Tim, when occasionally I get depressed, but what consistently cheers me up is to think that Stephen Miller's kids are going to grow up in a minority majority country and there's nothing he can do about it except maybe like found a new Rhodesia and move there or maybe Iceland, I don't know. You can move there with Tim Paxton.
- [04:17]
Tim Miller
He's doing his best to. Don't lump Ken Paxton in with me. That's a Ken Paxton, sir. He's trying to stall it a year or two with immigration coming in. We're only letting in the Afrikaners. But I don't know that it's going to, it's going to hold.
- [04:31]
Stuart Stevens
You know, he's trying to make America safe for white people again. You know, I mean, it's really been such a, you know, burden that we've carried as white people.
- [04:39]
Tim Miller
I agree with your point that the Democrats are the next administrative, next administration, really, and state attorneys generally going to have to go after the people at the top. And I think that was an obvious mistake from the Biden administration. Also, though, like, there needs to be accountability for the people that perpetrated these murders in the street. So, for example, we still don't know who the anonymous masked agent was that shot and killed this man, which is crazy. Like, in a free country, we should at least know who killed Lorenzo Araujo, and we don't. And because these guys, as you mentioned, get to roam the streets, they get to act with impunity. After the killing of Preddy, the people that killed him got redeployed eventually after weeks and months of pressure. It was publicized, but that's why it's important to talk about these things. They wanna sweep it under the rug. They want to get these other three men that were in the car to self deport. They're pressuring them to self deport. And they want the media and the Democrats to move on from this because the media gets bored and the Democrats think this is a winning issue for them. And we saw in Minnesota that the only way to get any accountability is maximum pressure.
- [05:52]
Stuart Stevens
Yeah, couldn't agree more. I refer you to the above. They're death squads. Death squads rarely have body cams. Death squads rarely go unmasked. This is the template that's being used. And you know, one of the things, it just goes back to the inability to imagine Trump. If, you know, you and I sat here two years ago and said, look, there's going to be an army of masked men with a budget larger than the Marines, chasing brown people across the country and shooting them and killing protesters. We'd say, I don't know, man, maybe we've gone a little too far. That's not gonna happen. Except, yep, here we are.
- [06:25]
Tim Miller
Here we are.
- [06:26]
Stuart Stevens
And I think that's a good lesson when you look at the elections, inability to imagine what Trump can do in the elections.
- [06:32]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [06:32]
Stuart Stevens
You know, consistently, you and I know a lot of these people, as bad as you think they are, they're worse. They're horrible human beings.
- [06:39]
Tim Miller
You're right. And we know that. I mean, this is what a lot of people that voted for Trump would have said to us if we told them this is what was gonna be happening with isis. Because they say it. I mean, a lot of the manosphere guys, this is. I didn't see this coming. It's like, well, they held the signs, they had the placards, like, what you think mass Deportations now was, you know, letters, postcards, one other thing on ice. And then I want to get to the election stuff you mentioned is this is a new report out of Politico. Cal Cheney was working on this. And in the one year since ICE adopted the massive expansion of their detention policy, which as we know is aiming at people in the interior of the country that don't have criminal records because they're just trying to reach the quotas that aforementioned Stephen Miller wanted. There's been challenges to all these. Sometimes it's hard to get these people that are being detained lawyers and it's a big endeavor. So shout out to all the immigration lawyers out there that have been working on this. The federal courts have overruled these detentions 15,000 times. DHS has only had a ruling in their favor about 2,000. So that's the ratio, 2,000 in their favor to 15,000 against. A lot of these are Republican judges, Trump judges. Some of them are. That shows you the degree of lawlessness of this operation.
- [07:52]
Stuart Stevens
Yeah, I mean, gee, maybe habeas corpus isn't like a partisan issue. How about that? You know? You know, I have a little insight into this, if that's the right word, because the Lincoln Project lawyer who lives in Denver spends a lot of time pro bono representing people, young people who are in ICE detention. And he was working on one case of a 19 year old who lived all his life in America, who had been in detention for 18 months. He finally got him out on bail. But just listening to the process, how you have to go and you have to wait hours and hours in court because you don't know when it's going to come up and you have one shot and if you're not there, you know, it's extraordinary. I mean, I think this guy's a hero and there's others like him. The idea that we're going to be locking up these people, I mean, look, say what you will about Ronald Reagan, he announced in front of the Statue of Liberty because he was celebrating immigrants. His last speech was an ode to immigrants. And now we're into this anti immigrant. And it's just extraordinary. I mean, J.D. vance is against the 15th amendment and a 14th amendment and his wife is a citizen because of the 14th amendment. So, you know, if they were going to reject that, I just wanted him to make it proactive so we could deport his family, you know, get these dangerous people out of the country.
- [09:13]
Tim Miller
I agree with you. I never thought I'd be. There's a lot of things I Never thought I'd be doing in 2026, but odes to lawyers is one of them. But you're right, The Lincoln Project lawyer, Lindsey Tozlowski, immigrant defenders, people that are doing this work, that's hard work.
- [09:24]
Stuart Stevens
Look who's also. The Lias firm is another Lincoln Project law firm. It's absolutely critical to fight it at that level. You have to fight this stuff at all levels.
- [09:37]
Tim Miller
So the housing bill news this morning is kind of related to your concerns about the election. For folks who haven't been following this, it's like the one bipartisan thing that Congress did all year was this housing bill that's actually pretty good. There's some things in it that I quibble with. On balance, it's just trying to incentivize more house building and home building in the country to help lower costs for people. Basic Adam Smith stuff. Supply and demand. And this passes. Trump decides he doesn't want to sign it because he's having a temper tantrum. Because they haven't passed the Save America act yet. And tonight we reach the kind of 10 day moment we're going to do like the when a bill becomes a law thing. I was like, I had to call in the parliamentarian this morning and I was like, so at the end of the 10 days, if he doesn't sign it, what happens if it comes a law? If Congress is in session, but Congress isn't in session right now, but they're in a pro forma session. So long story short, if he doesn't sign it by midnight, it becomes law. Anyway, here's the bleep that he sent this morning. I will not sign the housing bill which has been fully approved by Congress in protest. All caps over the fact that US Senate is not capable of passing the Save America Act. The act states quite simply that to vote, a person must show photo id, proof of citizenship. That there'll be no more crooked, corrupt and destabilizing mail in ballots. I love this in parentheses, exceptions, military, disabled, illness and travel. I wonder why he mentioned travel. Oh, it's because that's how he votes. It's like there's also a carve out one carve out for me. Then he says they gotta terminate the filibuster to do this. I mean, it's a pretty stunning thing. Like the Trump is just basically like, I want help stealing the election this year or else I'm gonna have a temper tantrum and not sign any bills, even things that would help people.
- [11:19]
Stuart Stevens
Yeah, he's abstaining from being President. You know, look, no one has ever in the history of sport changed the rules of a game they're winning. No one who had Tom Brady as a quarterback said, look, this whole forward pass thing, it's like going too far. We gotta cut this shit out. And look, you know, Republicans know that we're becoming a minority majority country despite all this stuff that, you know, 24 was some sort of watershed elections. Total bullshit. Trump's coalition in 20 was 85% white. He did a little better. 24 was 84% white in a country that's, what, 59% white and less. So after we finish this podcast and all the Stephen Millers in the world can't change that. And it is the great failure of our former party, too. I mean, in Bush world, we failed at this, but at least Ken Mehlman, chairman of the party in 2005, went in front of the NAACP and gave a speech apologizing for the Southern Strategy. Does that matter? Yeah, I think it matters better than just digging in and saying, giving permission for people to be their worst racist self. And it was so clear that this sort of Faberge Egg coalition that Trump put together in 24, you had the MAGA people who were going to insist you have this army of masked men chasing gardeners through Brentwood, or you're going to have Hispanics. These two were not going to exist together. So you look at the Virginia governor's race and New Jersey governor's race, it all kind of reset to what it was. And I don't think we talk enough about race in our politics, Tim. I think it's lazy. We talk about how Trump does well with evangelical voters. Black evangelical voters vote against him 97%. It's his worst group, actually. We talk about how Trump does well with working class voters. Only white working class voters, for some reason, this sort of reluctance to talk about this. But I think, you know, in our party, race is the original sin. Since 1964, Goldwater got 7% of the black vote. You go back to 56, Ike got 39%. And look at the Virginia governor's race. They nominate an African American woman on the Republican side, she gets 7%.
- [13:28]
Tim Miller
Right.
- [13:28]
Stuart Stevens
So you go 64 to the recent election. That's pretty much a flat line. Yeah.
- [13:35]
Tim Miller
I agree with your umbrella point on principle about what's happening with race and how it doesn't get talked about enough in the context of what is happening in the country. There's motivated reasoning for why people want to sweep it under the rug, simultaneously do that I do think that I'm curious, just kind of putting on your strategist hat since you won a lot of races. I think that the Democrats don't have
- [13:58]
Stuart Stevens
to rub it in.
- [13:59]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Also times they used it as a crutch, they looked at the stats that you said and they're like, okay, we don't have to try that hard. I always come back to Bobby Polito, who's just this great example. He's running in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas as kind of a Tejano singer, moderate left Democrat. And he's just like, you know, they took us for granted. They didn't listen to our concerns. Like, we don't want the mask men's in the street. But there were legitimate concerns about some of the stuff happening in the border and the communities. Right. And so it's kind of like both of those things are true. Kind of. Right. Like that. That race is the fundamental sin of what's happening with maga. And that Democrats almost thought that they could just use like, you're racist as the only message to these voters. And obviously that's not it.
- [14:40]
Stuart Stevens
Look, I think you can hold two things in your head at the same time. You can say it's bad when Stacey Abrams says she won an election that she didn't win, but it's a lot worse when you have people storming through the Capitol trying to hang the Vice President. So both of those can be true. And I think that the Democrats are often shamed and not used talking about racism enough. And you should be out there. You should be talking about the Voting Rights act, which was a bipartisan act, and you should be talking about these fundamental principles of America as a melting pot and defending America as an ideal. Because I mean, look at J.D. vance. He's just one of the weirder guys on the planet. He talks about these heritage Americans and look at his kids. No one's gonna think they're like Kentucky coal miners. And I think that, you know, it's true that Democrats, look, we won a lot of races. We had no business winning because they screwed things up and they would do this kind of stuff.
- [15:36]
Tim Miller
Sure.
- [15:37]
Stuart Stevens
But I still think that it's proven over and over and over again that they are a party that aspires to something that is non racist. And the Republican Party has become really, to the large degree, it's painful to say, I mean, I hope to elect a lot of these guys a white extremist movement. And, you know, it's not operating and functioning as a normal political American party. It's an extremist movement. And what do we know about extremist movements? They demand higher and higher purity tests. So Trump announces, and he's attacking Mexicans as rapists. Okay, so just imagine this. You've been a staffer, you're sitting around J.D. vance's office, and they hear about, like, there's thousands of these Republicans on the younger side, but they're not kids who are defending Hitler, talking about Nazis, how great it is. And he goes, you know, guys, I'm gonna defend that.
- [16:27]
Tim Miller
Yeah, well, going after Indians, too, going after how the Indians are taking our jobs, that's a very common trope in this. In that world.
- [16:35]
Stuart Stevens
And so J.D. vance is so, you know, like, I don't know, boss, like, defending Nazis. Is that right? Can we maybe just let this one lie? But why does he do it? He does it because he believes, and I think he's right. And you had a great segment of like, why is JD Vance such a weird guy? And he's done as well as he did, but he believes that the way you advance in the party is to be the most transgressive. So now, I mean, we have an army of masked men going around chasing brown people and shooting them and killing them, saying Mexicans are rapists. That's old hat. That doesn't get you anywhere. So it's like, okay, I'm going to defend Nazis. How about you, Marco? Marco, you're going to defend Nazis? I don't think so.
- [17:13]
Tim Miller
Or he goes on Laura Ingraham and he's like, I'm going to defend the worst of what we're doing in these mass deportations as, like, the Catholic thing to do. He literally is on Laura Ingraham saying, part of my faith is that we have to make sure that the normal Americans get a good wage, and normal Americans can't get a good wage unless we do mass deportation. So that's right there. It's in the catechism.
- [17:35]
Stuart Stevens
And as an Ivy League hedge fund manager, I'm sure he falls in that category. One of the more sort of amusing things in life, if it wasn't so tragic and existentially threatening, is the way that Donald Trump tortures J.D. vance. So J.D. vance's thing is no foreign wars. So, okay, we're gonna have a foreign war. Go defend it, jd. So JD does and goes, all right, how about this? I'm going to attack the Pope. You going to say anything about that? The Pope? JD? JD's like, Nah, that's cool, dude. The Pope. Who the hell's the Pope, you know, go at it. Which is why JD Vance is going to be the nominee, mark my words. And he's going to pick a Trump on the ticket.
- [18:17]
Tim Miller
A Trump family member.
- [18:18]
Stuart Stevens
A Trump family member. Either Ivanka or, you know, depending on who's in and out of rehab, one of the sons.
- [18:24]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I think Eric's a sleeper on that front. I love that prediction. Stuart Stevens. That's good podcasting. Okay. That's good podcasting. Jade, Advance Trump ticket. That feels right.
- [18:34]
Stuart Stevens
It's the only way that Trump will support the ticket.
- [18:36]
Tim Miller
Yeah, that feels right.
- [18:38]
Stuart Stevens
And I think, you know, you could say last time they needed Elon Musk's millions. So now the kids are making, you know, billions. So we don't need, we don't need that weirdo Elon. We can just, you know, do it ourselves.
- [18:54]
Tim Miller
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- [20:40]
Stuart Stevens
And they surely thought that because they were told that.
- [20:42]
Tim Miller
Yeah, exactly. So this was blessed. It gets passed, big bipartisan bill, then all of a sudden Donald Trump has a temper tantrum, decides he's not gonna sign it. And what happens? What's gonna happen tonight at midnight, the bill is going to become a law. Donald Trump's going to be bleeding into the ether about, you know, whatever fucking Venezuelans tampering with the voting machines and how we got to pass the Save America act now and there's not going to be any harm done to any of those Republicans that kind of accidentally showed that they could stand up to Trump in plain sight. Now we can see that over the last 10 years, these guys have just been utterly cowardly, you know? You know it. You hear from all your old friends still, the ones that still talk to you that are just like, well, Stuart, Tim, like they can't, they can't to survive, Thom Tillis to survive, can't oppose Trump on tariffs or on Ukraine, you know, because, because then what would you do? You get Mark Robinson, you get the pizza Nazi in there. You have to, you have to just go along to get along. And it turns out you don't actually. Donald Trump can just bleed and life moves on.
- [21:40]
Stuart Stevens
That's exact Vichy French quizzly Norwegians. That's exactly their arm. And if I don't do it, like you're gonna have somebody else who's gonna be worse, you know, o I'll be in the Vichy government, I'll help deport Jews. But I mean, if I didn't do it, it'd be worse. Look, the thing that I think angers me the most and I find myself a lot more angry than I'd like to be, is that these Republicans are heir to the greatest generation and people like my father, my uncle, and they are not being asked to do like charge a beat, take a machine gun nest. After the 20 election, all they do is get their comm shop put out a statement congratulating the President of the United States. Pretty low bar compared to what's like the legacy they've been handed. And they don't have the courage to do it. And I have this theory, and it's unprovable, but that's why it's a good theory. You can't argue that it's not true. That in the party, we developed unknowingly, to a large degree, without thinking about it, a culture that rewarded compliance, that if you were a Republican and you went along, you waited your turn, you were rewarded. And it's like a genetic experiment. You do that 30, 40 years, what do you get? You get these Republicans in the Senate. I mean, you know what a pain in the ass it is to get elected to the Senate. So you finally do it and to do what Donald Trump tells you to do, really. But that's because they are the product of a system that rewarded compliance. And look, I knew John Thune when he was executive director of the South Dakota Republican Party. Great guy, good baseball player. Everybody loved John. Never in a million years.
- [23:19]
Tim Miller
Yeah, when would that have been?
- [23:20]
Stuart Stevens
Oh, that would have been when Bill Jaynko was governor and it was back like in the late 80s, I guess.
- [23:26]
Tim Miller
You know, he must have been a handsome young man. As an executive director, I loved working for Bill Jienkl.
- [23:31]
Stuart Stevens
He was governor for 16 years and had this tragic end when he actually killed someone.
- [23:35]
Tim Miller
But anyway, wait a minute, wait a minute. How did he kill you? Can't just leave us hanging on it.
- [23:40]
Stuart Stevens
Bill Gianckel, we used to do a whole podcast on Bill Jericho, do a whole series. But he was elected governor at a very young age. Served for eight years, set out four, got reelected for another eight years, got out, was bored, ran for Congress, got elected, and home during a break. He was always a terrible driver. Terrible. He collected cars, like old muscle cars and particularly Cadillacs. And the first thing he did as governor was to put lights on the top of all of them. And he would drive himself. And he was driving and not paying attention. Ran a stop line and a bunch of cornfields and hit a motorcyclist and killed him and went to prison. So tragic. Tragic on so many levels.
- [24:19]
Tim Miller
I'm also a terrible driver. This is why I love living in New Orleans. I don't ever go more than 12 miles an hour on this note, and I can't kill anybody that way. Anyway, sorry, back to John Thune. That was just a teaser. I needed the payoff of what happened to him. That is tragic. But so you knew Thune.
- [24:33]
Stuart Stevens
I mean, everybody knew he was just a good guy. And he probably still is a good guy. It's just this sort of definition of cowardice. I go back to how do you have these people who spend their careers standing for one thing, saying they believe in all this, and then go and do the exact opposite. Roger Wicker, I mean, we were pages in Washington, our dads were friends. I worked for his campaign in the Senate. Spent most of his very honorable career focused on building, like, NATO and alliances.
- [25:09]
Tim Miller
He still wears a Ukraine pin on his. On a suit sometimes.
- [25:11]
Stuart Stevens
Yeah. So all his life, Rogers wanted to be chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the way most of us wanted to be like athletes or rock stars. He wanted to be chairman, Armed Services Committee. So now he is. What does he do? He ushers in Pete Hexit, who literally, I don't think this is exaggerated. I don't think he let Pete Hexa cut his lawn. Like, you want this drunk with tattoos, this weird stuff about women, what they got around the house. No. And he could have very easily told Donald trump, look, there's 317 million Americans. Pick a nice conservative, we'll confirm. And we're not going to confirm disposal, but nope. And with tragic results. Donald Trump is going to lose two wars. Most presidents only get to lose one war.
- [25:51]
Tim Miller
And Pete wants to take all the troops out of Europe. Like all the stuff Wicker worked for, like, all of it.
- [25:56]
Stuart Stevens
Yeah, that Pax Americana, it's so old hat. And, you know, we're losing the Iran war over and over again and America's going to lose the Ukraine war. Ukraine's going to win, but America will emerge a loser because we, for the most part, spent too much time supporting Putin and not enough time supporting Ukraine. Unbelievable tragedy.
- [26:18]
Tim Miller
Wicker, Thune Collins, it's all the same type of character. John Crook, where they are personally nice. And when you say they're still a good guy, it means like, I'm sure that they're personally nice. I'm sure they do nice things for people in their life and are generous. Right.
- [26:33]
Stuart Stevens
They'd be good neighbors.
- [26:34]
Tim Miller
But it's like in the biggest picture, they don't have the gumption to stand up to this and they're going along with this. And I mean, it's just the banality of evil is all it is. I mean, it's just. Hannah Arendt, it's not the first time of this. You mentioned the Ukraine thing. I have a category of topics here I wanted for you, which is traditional Republican stuff I wanted to talk to you about. Ukraine was one of them. You're still really rabidly posting and commenting on Ukraine. And so I just kind of wanted to let you cook on the State of play.
- [27:07]
Stuart Stevens
Yeah. Look, I think Ukraine is the defining moment of our time. And if you live in a world in which Ukraine loses this war, it will be a generational change. This thing that we've accepted that you can get in the car. Well, you can get in the car in London now and drive to Prague and drive to anywhere you want. That's going to be over. You're not going to have Western Europe like that. And these border countries of Russia know it. This is as clear a good versus evil test as we're going to have in our lifetime, probably. And I mean, it's the smallest of things. But I work with this Ukrainian aid group and one of the things they do is they acquire vehicles, particularly around Scandinavia, because there's a Finnish element to this. Fill it full of aid of various sorts, nonlethal aid because it's a 501C3. And then we drive it down to Kyiv and convoys, distribute the supplies, leave the vehicles, give them to brigades and then take the train back to Poland. And look, I mean, you spend any time in Ukraine, it's just so obvious they're going to win. They know what happens if they lose. And I think that they're winning at an accelerating rate, which will continue to accelerate because the technological innovations that they have are particularly involving AI and drones. 80% of the casualties now are drones. You have these situations now for the first time, these battles that are all robotic, ground and air, and they're losing 30,000 troops a month. Russians are, for the first time since really the Civil War. I think they are more dead than wounded on the side of a battle that just doesn't happen anymore, except the Russians don't give a fuck about their people. So I think about this, Tim. To grow up as a kid in Ukraine now, you could look at your leaders, not just Zelensky, but across the board, and admire them. What is it now to grow up as a kid in America? Who do you admire?
- [29:11]
Tim Miller
Forget growing up as a kid. What's it like to be 25 in America? Honestly, how old were you during the 08 campaign? You were young.
- [29:21]
Stuart Stevens
I'll give you a perfect example. There's this woman that I've gotten to know in Kyiv who the day before the full scale invasion was the queen of Kyiv nightlife. She ran the biggest club. She's like, you know, the star. Next day she enrolled in a medics course. Today she has this flourishing charity that fills individual medical kits for soldiers.
- [29:41]
Tim Miller
Wow.
- [29:41]
Stuart Stevens
You know, she still has, like, you walk into where they are and it's like walking into a club. She still has purple hair. She's still blasting rock music. But this is what they do. And there is no element of Ukrainian society that is not involved in this war on some level, and that is extraordinarily difficult to defeat. We should talk about Ukraine. More people should go to Ukraine. You go to Kyiv. It looks like a big, normal European city. I mean, terrible things will happen, but it's a lot safer than a lot of American cities. And everything kind of looks different once you go there.
- [30:16]
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- [30:43]
Stuart Stevens
Refreshers contain caffeine.
- [30:46]
Tim Miller
The other Republican stuff topic I want to talk to you about is have you been following the Freedom Fuel story? Donald Trump and his administration is promoting a new, we think, privately owned network of gas stations in Philly and New Jersey that are called Freedom Fuel. There's flags everywhere. They're doing propaganda where they fly. They get, I assume, supporters to go fill up gas and talk about how cheap it is, even though even at the Freedom Fuel station, it's more expensive than it was before the war started. Significantly, the only question I think about the Freedom Fuel stations is whether this is like corruption or socialism or both.
- [31:24]
Stuart Stevens
I mean, is that the corruption thing? Can we really doubt that? And look, as a Mississippian, I'm pro socialism, pro communism. We get 40% of our state budget from the feds. So if it wasn't for that, I mean, you know, I wait for more.
- [31:39]
Tim Miller
I just feel like I have to bring this up because I did ding Zoran several times on the grocery stores. The city run grocery stores, which I still think is a pretty stupid idea in the grand scheme of things. I don't think is that important, but it's not a smart idea. But I feel like just to be an honorable podcaster, I should mention that now they're chewing gas stations at a much higher rate. Also coming from the feds, Your government
- [32:02]
Stuart Stevens
owns 10% of Intel. So five shitty home grocery stores, 10% of Intel. I don't know. I think maybe, like the real Stuart,
- [32:10]
Tim Miller
it's the only good stock purchase I've ever made. I'm a bad gambler, and my dad was the stock man in the family. But as soon as I saw the reports that we might buy some intel. I went ahead and bought some stock in there. So I'm getting some trickle down. It's trickle down socialism.
- [32:24]
Stuart Stevens
There you go, man. And you know, if you know Tim Cook well, now he's, you know, left. Thank God. You know, an Auburn guy running Apple is really troubling. But if these people think they're going to stop with intel, they're crazy. And there is no conservative party in America. We're the pro tariff party. We're the pro nationalized intel party. We're the pro Putin party. There's no conservative party. We need a conservative party.
- [32:49]
Tim Miller
Freedom Fuel.
- [32:53]
Stuart Stevens
Listen, I preferred when it was French fries because at least then you could prove your patriotism by eating Freedom prize. Yes, that was funny.
- [33:03]
Tim Miller
That was tongue in cheek. This is like, this is. They take everything from us, you know, like you just little kind of tongue in cheek. South park style. Conservative humor was fine from time to time. This is North Korea. This is like dear, dear leader says, you get very good, very good gas, 347 a gallon.
- [33:22]
Stuart Stevens
And they'll probably have, you know, cameras that identify people and give you a special break on your taxes.
- [33:26]
Tim Miller
Yeah, they're fucking paying. Whoever's running this on the back end, it's all scam. Okay, during the Senate section, we talked about some of the alive and lucid senators. Wicker, Thune and Collins. What's going on with your man Mitch McConnell? You know, I don't know. He's been calling people. He's been called John Barrasso, apparently, and John Thune and Scott Jennings. All of them claim they talked to him for 20 minutes and that he was very interested in deep policy questions about what's happening in NATO. What do you think?
- [33:58]
Stuart Stevens
I have two thoughts on this. One, I hope Mitch McConnell's fine. I hope this guy is completely lucid. And Kendall Pine owned NATO. That's great. I hope he is. I also think he's one of the more despicable human beings walking around on the planet. A guy who can't even defend his wife when Trump attacks her with racial slurs. A guy who Donald Trump encourages a mob to come into his workplace and kill his colleagues. And he's like, no, I'm not going to vote to convict. I mean, the reason we have Donald Trump now is Mitch McConnell. And Mitch McConnell told senators vote to convict. They would have voted to convict. We wouldn't have Donald Trump. The country would be a lot better off. I think the Republican Party would be a lot better off. But no and, you know, Mitch McConnell, as he lies there in bed, thinks that all these things he's done are gonna be his legacy. And it's not gonna be that way. His legacy is Donald Trump, just as all the segregationist senators. You don't remember, like the bridge they got built or maybe, you know, like that's. You remember they were segregationists.
- [35:03]
Tim Miller
A couple people do. You know, there's a handful of people at, like at a fake library in Oxford that can remind, that will remind you the good things that those senators did, you know, so there's a handful of people that remember.
- [35:16]
Stuart Stevens
Yeah, well, it's, you know, and McConnell's a pathological liar as he lied about, you know, confirming Supreme Court justices, said we couldn't do it in an election year. And then Barrett was not confirmed in an election year. She was confirmed after people were voting in the middle of an election.
- [35:35]
Tim Miller
Well, that's also true. He also said that the court said to take care of Trump and then opposed the courts taking care of Trump. I mean, it was all fake. It was all power from the start. And then I just would add to your list of his crimes against his own self interest as very meek opposition to the anti vax takeover of the Republican Party, despite the fact that he had polio.
- [35:57]
Stuart Stevens
Yeah, he had polio. Yeah. One of the more telling, impactful books that I read when I was writing It Was All a Lie was a memoir to Fran von Papen, Franz von Papen, who was oppression aristocrat, who was more responsible for ushering Hitler than anybody. He wrote his memoir, which you can get on Kindle for some reason. I have no idea there's such a demand for it in 1953. Now, you could say things had gone a Little south in 1953. You know, World War II, 100 million dead, the Holocaust. He's still defending what they did. And there are lines in his memoir that are verbatim what Mitch McConnell said in 16, we will change him. We needed someone to be in touch with the working class, but we were confident we could control him. And that's what McConnell did. And it's so ironic. The guy got elected by running an ad that was against a longtime incumbent who had been in Washington too long. That's how he got elected. And here he is, you know, a century of service. I mean, come on.
- [37:03]
Tim Miller
It's sad. It's sad. I haven't spoken to him. I tried to get, tried to get him on the horn, but I haven't had a chance to have a 20 minute briefing. So we'll keep people posted. I want to do some politics stuff with you. The parallel I'm about to make is obviously not exact, so I just want everybody to stick with me. Sometimes people struggle with this, but the Democrats are dealing with a populist uprising of some kind within their own party. I think that there's a lot of differences to the Tea Party. Be interested in how you would assess the differences, but there are also some similarities. And on Monday's show, Bill and I were talking about kind of lessons that we could have learned from the Republicans to this. And one of the lessons that I was talking about was kind of like picking battles, you know, knowing who's worth fighting and who's not, and, you know, how to demonstrate that you're listening to the complaints of the people that are voting for the populist candidates. And so, anyway, one of the examples that I gave was the Mississippi Senate race that you're deeply involved in with Thad Cochran and Chris McDaniel. And then Chris McDaniel is just this totally racist radio host, completely beyond the pale. But it's like, okay, can we use this as an example in Mississippi that there is a red line, right? Turns out Donald Trump kind of breaks through that red line two years later. But still, I think it's a useful kind of lesson. And so since I've got you here, Bill and I kind of talked about it via how we kind of experienced it from our DC Perch. But you were involved in the race, so I just wonder if you have any thoughts on that race and broader lessons.
- [38:34]
Stuart Stevens
My firm was doing it. I mean, I went door to door for Thad when he ran for Congress for the first time. And he was the first Republican elected since Reconstruction to Congress. And he was a young, sort of Rotarian Kiwanis Club lawyer, very, very likable. And there really wasn't a Republican Party in Mississippi. And the Democrats were all like Stennis and Eastland. And unless you wanted to be, like, a county judge in Itawamba county, why do you want to be a Democrat? So he ran, got elected. I was a page for him. And that last race, I mean, he shouldn't have run. He did have health issues. My firm did the race. I went down to just check on how it was going. Thought I'd spend a weekend. I spent two months without leaving. It was one of the most bizarre, toughest races I've ever been involved in. And McDaniel was an example, basically, as Haley Barber said, of a hostile takeover of the Republican Party in Mississippi because he was largely funded by outside groups like Club for Growth that were attacking Cochran for being there too long, but also being a big spender. So rather than fight that, we ran right into it and we just made all these ads about, okay, Cochrane got you this, Cochran got you that, the same. When Haley ran, he was attacked as being a lobbyist. And we go, don't we need a lobbyist? This is what, yes, he'll be a really good lobbyist for Mississippi. And then when Katrina hit, it proved to be the case. And it was a very dramatic, tough race. It went into a runoff where McDaniel led the runoff. You have to get 50%, and only by a couple thousand votes did he not get 50%. And then this thing that is not supposed to happen in politics happened. More people voted in the runoff than in the first election. Part of that was that there were a lot of people who were Cochran supporters who didn't think he could lose. So they left a lot of votes on the table. Plus, Cochran had very good relationship with the African American community. And in Mississippi, there is no party registration. As we famously say, it's a state of mind. And legally, if you didn't vote in the Democratic primary in the first round, you could vote in the Republican primary in the second round. And we made an effort to get African American votes. And you can go through precinct by precinct and see where, you know, we managed to sort of ding him here enough, ding him there enough. And Cochran was able to win, which was a big win for Mississippi. McDaniel is just this, you know, he ran spots with the still then Mississippi state flag, which was the Confederate battle flag. I mean, yeah, so it was a real precursor of what happened with Trump.
- [41:19]
Tim Miller
So from that race, if you have Chuck Schumer call you or whoever call you and say, okay, how do I, you know, what are lessons that are valuable for the Democrats? Obviously, the Democrats don't have any Chris McDaniel style racist running.
- [41:32]
Stuart Stevens
But say I was running in Maine against Collins, I would attack her for not doing enough. I would say that you could do more, she should do more. And I think there's two elements here that you can say. I want to be an outsider, I want to change things, but I'm also going to really deliver for the district because this money is going somewhere. And I think McDonald's a good example of that. He can charm Trump. Everybody felt that Trump was going to be attacking him. No, the guy, he's an incredibly charismatic guy. If I was running the Democratic Party, I would say that These are the kind of problems you want to have. You want to have the question of, like, do we have too big of a tent? And I don't think it's an existential crisis that somebody like McDonough's getting elected. That's not a bad thing. People can vote for whoever they want. I mean, do we really think the Democratic Party would be better off if Cuomo was mayor of New York City, really?
- [42:28]
Tim Miller
So you don't have any worries. You just kind of like, you know, looking at what happened with Platner and like some of the DAC and some of these candidates in New York, you're not getting PTSD at all.
- [42:38]
Stuart Stevens
Well, AOC didn't endorse Platner, which as someone posted, I thought rather cleverly, maybe female bartenders know guys like Platner and can read them from a mile away.
- [42:51]
Tim Miller
AOC has been super savvy. There's just no other way around it.
- [42:54]
Stuart Stevens
The statement that Platner put out is one of the most offensive, despicable statements. I mean, here's a small little rich kid, father's Ivy Leaguer, grandfather and Ivy Leaguer flunked out of Hotchkiss. Hotchkiss and had a tough war. Okay? But he's not what he said he was. And he clearly has an issue with women. And this guy has one chance to not be the most hated man in America, and that is if a Democrat wins that Senate seat. If a Democrat loses, he will be blamed. He will be the. What's he going to write a book? I kept Donald Trump in Power, the
- [43:32]
Tim Miller
Grand Platinum Story, and he's got a campaign for him. The thing that, like, oh, these power. I don't have the quote in front of me, but it's something like these powers are trying to stop me and they're preventing me from getting office. It's like, man, take accountability for yourself. And if it's true that you were a people powered movement, I thought the whole point was you didn't want corporate money and national money. You can. So Donald Trump won a campaign without any corporate money or national money. So did aoc. Right. So the whole thing.
- [43:57]
Stuart Stevens
Well, Tim, Tim, there's a long documented history of the main state party getting women to accuse candidates of rap to get them out. You know, I mean, it's the most.
- [44:07]
Tim Miller
I was like, wait a minute, who is behind this conspiracy? Why haven't they found any women to accuse? Abdul El Sayed or Mamdani or whatever? Like, the whole thing is just ridiculous.
- [44:17]
Stuart Stevens
Yeah, this guy should shut the fuck up about himself. And he should say to the Democratic Party, I will do whatever helps you. If that means you want me to join Paxton and Iceland, I'll go, I'll leave the state. You'll never hear from me. If you want me to go door to door, I'll go door to door. But you know, and he ought to start apologizing to people.
- [44:37]
Tim Miller
One other thing on 26, I'm just curious, have you paid attention at all to that Senate race Scott column? How do you handicap it?
- [44:44]
Stuart Stevens
Well, people should vote for Scott column,
- [44:46]
Tim Miller
obviously, but is there hope there, is there any stretch of these stretch seats? Is there anything?
- [44:50]
Stuart Stevens
The only reason Sidney Hyde Smith is in the Senate is that she went to Southern. And all the US Senators from Mississippi had either gone to. Most of them had gone to Ole Miss. The governor had gone to Southern. He wanted a female who had gone to Southern. And there was Cindy Hud Smith. Okay, great. Israeli is sort of this local politics playing out. She's a do nothing senator, which is a real shame for a state like Mississippi that doesn't have a lot of congressmen but does have two senators just like California column would be much better. Can he win? Look, I think if somebody like column wins, it'll mean that a lot of people are winning. Talarico won the main Senate race, went Democratic.
- [45:28]
Tim Miller
Yeah, right.
- [45:28]
Stuart Stevens
But you know, it's harder than people think to elect a Republican in Mississippi. You've got to get depends on African American turnout. But I elected a lot of people down there. You got to get about 70% of the white vote. And you know, as Haley used to say, I can't get 70% at Thanksgiving dinner. And that's a lot harder than you think. And if you just go down a large African American turnout who. Which he should. I think that there are a lot of suburban voters in you know, Biloxi, Guffbert Jackson, Madison county who find Trump despicable and have no connection to Sydney Hyde Smith who you know, I mean she could walk down the street naked and people would say who's that naked woman? Not why is a US Senator walking down the street. So yeah, he could win. He could win. You ought to support him.
- [46:23]
Tim Miller
I have a 15 minute limit a week. I give myself for any 20, 28 hot stove talk and I've used zero minutes this week. So I want to close the pod with Lane Kiffin and I want to pick your brain on 20, 28 stuff because as mentioned, you did this a bunch. You were there with Bush, you were there with Romney Early.
- [46:40]
Stuart Stevens
We lost.
- [46:41]
Tim Miller
Yeah, well, okay.
- [46:42]
Stuart Stevens
By the way.
- [46:43]
Tim Miller
But, you know, that's true. But he was a moderate senator, or, excuse me, governor from Massachusetts, running against, like, two extremely famous American heroes at the time. American heroes. One of them ended up pissing his pants, literally, and becoming a traitor. But I don't know, you've kind of been in this moment, the summer, two years out, where people are starting to think about it. They call people like you to fly in, visit them at the state Capitol, chat about what it would look like. And so my question for you is, like, if you were in a different world, if you're a younger man still, and you'd been a Democrat and you're still an ad man, who would you be wanting to ring your phone?
- [47:23]
Stuart Stevens
I think that the Democratic primary is going to be determined by who best can articulate what is the process to hold the Trump administration accountable. I think that's where the energy of the party is. If you take Governor Newsom, not a bad politician, what was his immediate reaction to 24? To have Charlie Kirk on, have sort of attack, right. Democratic Party, threw up on his shoes. So he's like, okay, that's not working. I think I'll attack Donald Trump. And then he's rewarded for. He's praised for it. That's where the party is. It's not going to be about issues. It's going to be about who best can articulate and focus this criminality and anger toward Donald Trump. And this debate in the Democratic Party, should it be about gas prices or should it be about ice shooting people? The answer is yes, and you can make it both. And they are weirdly connected because this criminality of the Trump administration affects the entire government. It drives me absolutely batshit crazy that we have the president, who's a Republican, who's insane, pointing drunk stooges, Communist agents across the government, and we have a national debate about what's wrong with the Democratic Party. Are we really having this debate? I mean, I spent decades pointing out flaws in the Democratic Party, but it's still the only pro democracy party in America. So I think intensity and anger is going to drive that primary, and it's not going to be about ideology in a classic sense. So who's going to be best at that? One of the things we've learned many times is it's like sports. You never know till they get out there.
- [49:04]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I know, but who, if you saw their name on the caller id, would give you a little shoot up the leg, would give you a little. This could Be fun. This would be fun if you were going to do one more run around the bases. Who sounds fun?
- [49:15]
Stuart Stevens
You know, I'd work for Pritzer in a heartbeat.
- [49:17]
Tim Miller
Not a lot of people talk about him, but I agree with that.
- [49:20]
Stuart Stevens
Yeah, he has money.
- [49:20]
Tim Miller
Illinois's a little bit of baggage for him on that. But I don't know, the whole, like, oh, he's a billionaire. It's like, I don't know, man.
- [49:29]
Stuart Stevens
All these old rules. We elected a guy that talked in public about dating his daughter. I'm not sure these old rules still apply. Whose idea of church was, every 12 years you go to church to marry
- [49:40]
Tim Miller
a model, go to Springfield, start chatting them about what the strategies are going to be.
- [49:47]
Stuart Stevens
I think he could be a great candidate, but there are a lot more. I think Josh Shapiro. I'd love to work for Josh Shapiro. I would go door to door. If Josh Shapiro's a nominee, I will go door to door for him. Now, probably they might ask me to campaign for the Republican because I cost him votes. But I think Josh Shapiro would be a fantastic. I think he's immensely talented and would be a fantastic candidate. This whole idea, we're gonna elect a Jewish president. I mean, give me a break. We elected Donald Trump.
- [50:12]
Tim Miller
Yeah, the whole thing. I don't know. I mean, I do think that he's probably out of step with the base, is with intensity wise on Israel. How will that play out in a year? Hard to predict. But the Jewish thing is such a crazy smear. Like Bernie, who's Jewish. John Ossoff is a hot commodity right now. Jewish, you never heard anybody say that about him.
- [50:28]
Stuart Stevens
I think Ossoff could get elected president. There's just so much more. I think Newsom could get elected president. I would not downplay that guy. He is another tremendously talented athlete. And there is a very positive story to be told about California, despite all these sort of negatives.
- [50:45]
Tim Miller
Okay, well, he'd really need you to help with that positive story on California. He'd need some ad wizards to help.
- [50:52]
Stuart Stevens
I found myself in the car listening to this long interview with Scott Galloway with Newsom, and I have to say I was super impressed with Newsom. His ability to defend what he's doing.
- [51:03]
Tim Miller
He's good in that format.
- [51:04]
Stuart Stevens
Yeah, he's very good. His ability to say, okay, we didn't do enough here, we should have done more. You're absolutely right. Which is the right approach. That's the problem Republicans have. Now, Tim, as you know, there's a template to get out of the mess they're in. But it starts with saying, give us a second chance. We need to improve. And you can't do that in Republican Party now because you can't admit that you made a mistake. And that just sort of takes away one of the basic. It's like fighting in a boxing match with one hand. It just kind of takes away one of the basic moves in politics.
- [51:37]
Tim Miller
Totally agree on the Republicans, but I want to close some story time. What is that like? We went to Boston to meet with Mitt. McCain's going to be in. Rudy's going to be in. He doesn't have a national profile, but he thinks he has a message. What was that like? What happens in those meetings?
- [51:55]
Stuart Stevens
I had a very contrary pitch to candidates. I would always be asked, you know, not surprisingly, how do you think? How do we win? And my standard answer was, I have no idea. And anybody who tells you that now is going to be lying to you. But I know how to figure out how we can win as the race goes on. And I would always discourage candidates. I would say, as bad as you think this is going to be, it's going to be worse. So don't do this. If the day after the race when you lose, you're still glad you won, still glad you ran, because that's the test. Because most people who run lose. And, you know, the candidates I had found that appealing because it was honest and they, you know, it wasn't like a bunch of bullshit. And I think that the biggest trap as a consultant to fall into when you start winning races, and the secret to winning races as a consultant is to work for people who are going to win anyway and just don't fuck it up. It's like being a baseball coach or something, Baseball manager. Get good players. That helps. Which could lead us to Lane Kiffin. But you start winning races, you start to think that you figured things out. And that is a huge, huge trap, because no races are the same. And I will say this about Karl Rove, who I do think is a political genius. You know, Carl always stayed humble. And in Bushworld, we had a lot of flaws, but we stayed humble. And we used to joke. It seemed a little funny at the time. After the 2000 race, anybody can elect somebody president when you get more votes. It takes professionals. When you get half a million less. But then in 2004, we almost lost half of a home game at Ohio State. Gone the other way, we would have lost. So don't think that you figured it out. And I think that that ability to Stay humble. And to look at a candidate. I've always thought that the job of a consultant is look at a candidate and say, what is it that you do best? And I am going to help you do that better than anybody else. And I'm just going to take your flaws and make sure your flaws aren't so bad they defeat you. So with Romney in 2012, when he's running for the nomination, it was OK, you're going to beat Mitt Romney, you're going to beat him on the economy. That's a hill we're going to die on. We're not going to get into these social wars. He's the only guy on stage. When they asked if Obama was a socialist, he didn't raise his hand. And it's really amazing to think a party nominated Mitt Romney and then they nominated Donald Trump. And I don't know, certainly in modern political history there's ever been such a difference of a party. And you could see in the 12 primary, and I used to say this to Mitt all the time, look, man, if the party goes crazy, there's nothing we can do. We can't chase crazy. You just got to let them go crazy. They're going to nominate Newt Gingrich. It's crazy. You have to be what you're going to do. You have to say, yeah, the one
- [54:51]
Tim Miller
thing ducked in there, you were right, was the Met on the economy thing. And that's my message. It seems like the most basic advice ever, but it's pretty remarkable. If you go back to recent Democratic presidential campaigns, maybe the last 3, 16, and then you have a big primary in 20, and then, and then 24. How many of those candidates had here's the one or two things that they're going to own that's going to be their thing. And it's hard to think of too many. I mean, Bernie, Obviously, Biden in 20, kind of restore soul of America. Pete kind of. And it's like about it, right? And that's my big thing. It's just like the basics. A lot of these guys just don't do the basics on the front end. Jeb didn't do it, by the way. Hand up. That's just it.
- [55:34]
Stuart Stevens
Yeah. I would have voted for Jeb, by the way, and he would have been a good president. And it's a fascinating subject. What if Jeb had been president? The party would have been the same party, but it'd be a very different party. Which maybe goes back to that thing we used to learn. We still had civics classes that leaders matter. Look, I think that the key in these things is to accept what the race is about. So 16 was about change. And we're in a series of change elections. Trump was more of a change agent than Hillary Clinton. Okay. Biden was more of a change agent than Donald Trump. Donald Trump was more of a change agent. Even though he had an African American vice president, she still was the incumbent vice president's vice president. More of a change agent. And midterms are going to be a change election. Republicans are going to get slaughtered in 2018 is going to be a change election. So I think that the greatest danger if you're a Democrat is to run on the idea of trying to restore. It can't be about that. You could make a good case. I'm sure I did many times that if you elected a normal Democrat, there'd be such gratitude and appreciation, like, thank God we have a normal president and we can go back to that. That you would reward it. Well, that theory didn't prove to be true. Biden didn't win reelection. So again, I think that you have to go back to what is it you're going to. I would run on a platform the first day I was in. I would nationalize Starlink. I would nationalize SpaceX. I would pass a millionaires tax. I would erect a statue in the hall honoring those police officers who defended the Capitol. You had to go for big stuff.
- [57:13]
Tim Miller
I could hear you and JB Pritzker talking about this. Maybe you should fly to Springfield. That's good. That's a good platform.
- [57:18]
Stuart Stevens
You need national health insurance. Don't run away from it. And I've never seen a poll where if you're going to increase taxes over people who made over a million dollars, it didn't test like 90 10. And if you made that $5 million, it would test like 98, too. Don't be afraid of that stuff. Don't run away from being the party that is arguing that these people should pay more.
- [57:39]
Tim Miller
All right, two football hot takes. Do you have an nil hot take? And state of play college football.
- [57:45]
Stuart Stevens
It's a great time to be a player. I just find it fascinating that it sounds like the punchline to a joke. But you have guys playing who can't afford to turn pro because they're making more money. And look, I think it's crazy. My advice to somebody, if you're in a big college town with a big university, when there's a football practice owned, just drive by the parking lot. You'll see more Lamborghinis than you ever believed possible. You could drive in front of, like, you know, Apple. And you will see, you know, they all drive Priuses, but they have Lamborghinis in their garage that they hide. But I will say this about Lane Giffen. My favorite Lane Giffen story. When he went to, you know, he was a big, hot yoga guy.
- [58:32]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [58:33]
Stuart Stevens
And he constantly, you know, he goes there, he cleanses, everybody loves me. As soon as he left and he went to New Orleans, there was a series of women posting, like, on Instagram who went to hot yoga class. Like, thank God this creep is gone. I don't have to wake up at six in the morning and go to hot yoga and watch this guy, like, checking me out and hitting on me. It was so, so classic.
- [58:58]
Tim Miller
All right, well, there you go. I was going to give you a full minute of Lane Kiffin hate. You just use 30 seconds. You have 30 more seconds you want to throw at him.
- [59:04]
Stuart Stevens
Look, the problem with Lane Kiffin is he's good at what he does, and he's going to be a really good coach. I think he's fatally flawed. And the end character matters. And I think it's just so telling that all these star athletes didn't leave Ole Miss.
- [59:18]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [59:19]
Stuart Stevens
So Ole Miss has a leading quarterback in the country and the leading running back and a leading kicker. It's not a bad start.
- [59:24]
Tim Miller
It isn't a bad start. It's going to be a fun September. I just am happy it's having fun. My view on the nil thing is, yeah, they got to put some rules around it. It's gotten a little out of control. But they should be making money. They deserve it. We're all paying money. It's better that they're making some of the money than that the money's going into the pocket of the AD and just the head coach. It's fine. They got to put some rules on it, but I'm gl. They're making some money. We'll figure it out. And I'm just glad it's going to be fun again. My thing about the World cup is I don't even give a fuck about soccer. But watching that Mexico England game in Azteca just like this is amazing. Everyone's so excited. It's such a cultural movement. Everyone's coming together. Everyone's united. It's a healthy tribalism. You know, we need an outlet for healthy tribalism, to not do unhealthy tribalism. That's. That's SEC football. You can just throw in a game and everybody's very excited. And I think it's going to be fun this year. You need a bad guy. My team is going to be the bad guy this year. That's all right. And we'll see how it goes on September 19th. All right, Stuart.
- [60:22]
Stuart Stevens
All right, brother.
- [60:23]
Tim Miller
Put September. So the 20th will be a Sunday. 21st will be a Monday, because that's Mondays with bill crystal. Put September 22nd on your calendar. Okay. And September 22nd, if the Rebs win, I'll be in one of my buddies Ole Miss shirts. All right?
- [60:36]
Stuart Stevens
Okay, that's a deal. And if they lose, I, you know, probably could have received enough therapy by then that I'll be coherent and be able to talk about it.
- [60:46]
Tim Miller
Sounds good. We'll see you in September, man. Appreciate you so much. Everybody else will be back here on Monday with Bill Crystal. Have a great weekend. See you all then. Peace. Hey, Louisiana woman Mississippi man we get together every time we can the Mississippi river can't keep us apart there's too much love and it's Mississippi Harbor. The Bork 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.