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Foreign. Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. We are going to get to my guy Justin Jones here in a minute and talk a lot about what's going on in Tennessee and across the Deep south really when it comes to the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. And we'll react to JD Vance's comments about the slush fund reparations that the administration is offering to MAGA insurrectionists and why he thinks that's important because nobody has any empathy for them and people have too much empathy for those black criminals. Anyway, we'll get into all that with Justin Jones. Great guy. But first, we pre taped that yesterday because I'm flying to San Diego for our event tonight today. And so I wanted to run down some thoughts on all of the political news we've had over the last 24 hours, which is a bunch. First and most noteworthy, I think, is the Thomas Massie loss in Kentucky. Four primary. I have a little bit of a different take on this than what I've seen out there. Massie ends up getting about 45% of the vote the time of this taping. There's about 4% more to trickle in, but he's going to be at about 45% of the vote. And that's not nothing and it's not that close to winning. But to think that 45% of Republican primary voters in a somewhat suburban, ex urban but somewhat rural district in Kentucky bucked Trump is a change. Like it is a sign that, like his grip is loosening somewhat on the party faithful. Like, we haven't had anything else like this. When Liz Cheney ran for reelection to her House seat after she had voted to impeach Trump, she got 28.9% of the vote. She was annihilated. Like this is meaningfully different than that. And it's meaningfully different because Massie went after Trump on a couple of issues that are core to the base and that Trump has betrayed either his promises or, you know, Republican Party thinking and rhetoric on those very issues. So like for example, with the Iran war vote, Massie I think now has gained a lot of credibility with people who were genuine in their belief that America should not be involved in stupid foreign wars in the Middle east. And he bucked Trump on that. Obviously the Epstein files and covering up for the elites that have access and wealth and were not being held accountable for their crimes. Massie was aggressive on that. And obviously Massie is strong on debt and spending. Another issue that I think is going to continue to plague Trump as interest rates increase. So, like, that is like a basket of issues that Massie has distinguished himself from Trump on that is different than. Than kind of like never. Trumper 1.0. Right? Like my people, like, we oppose Trump on some issues, sure. But it was mostly about his character, about whether he was qualified to lead the country. You know, his corruption, you know, like whether, you know, we would trust this person to be in charge of a fucking Dairy Queen. Forget the country. Like, we, like, we oppose Trump because of Trump. The man, like Massie opposed Trump because of Trump's failure on three issues where he perceives, and I think I agree with him, that he's closer to the Republican base than Trump is. And the result of that was getting 45% of the vote, not too far from 50%. I mean, I think that to me shows that there's a lane there. And I think that that lane could get bigger if Trump gets worse and worse. And I've said this a lot of times on tnl, talking with Sarah and jvl, I think for people who really locked into politics in 2016, this is an important kind of recent history lesson. Like George W. Bush, like, part of the reason why the Bush line that Sarah talks about matters like George W. Bush got so unpopular that he wasn't invited to another Republican convention ever again. He wasn't invited in 08 for McCain, 12 for Romney. Obviously, any of the Trump conventions, the party base decided they wanted to move on from him. That feels possible with Trump, right? And would I bet on it? Is that the most likely outcome? No, of course, the most likely outcome is that, you know, Trump is a kingmaker and that the cult sticks with him and that he, you know, anoints whoever he wants to be the next nominee, be that a family member or Marco or JD or someone else that emerges and that's the most likely outcome. But, like, that's not a guaranteed outcome. And this kind of reminds me a little bit of the Platner discourse that we had a couple weeks ago where JBL floated, like, I don't know, I mean, he overstated the case. I think he said like a 33% chance Platner is the nominee, but his range is like 5 to 33%. And everybody's like, crazy, crazy. This is crazy. It's like. Well, yeah, I mean, obviously it's crazy in a certain extent, but like in recent times in politics, like these successful two term presidents, Obama and Trump, like both ran against the party establishment because the prior party establishment wasn't popular. And like, right now, the Democratic Party establishment isn't popular. And I think Trump's popularity is on the wane. Like, is it going to fall enough that someone who challenged him as directly as Massie could, could be the nominee? I like, that's a crazy thing to say, right? But like, does, does the Massey result show, like, what a successful challenge to Trump could look like two years from now? If the war is an even greater catastrophe, if the economy is even worse, if, if the corruption and the COVID up of Epstein looks even worse once we learn new information, if the Democrats take control of the House and Robert Garcia and his crew are successful in uncovering more information that's possible and that is in the potential range of outcomes right now. And so when they were chanting Massie 2028 at his concession speech, I don't. That's a little bit intriguing to me. Again, I'm not saying Massey is going to be the 2028 nominee. That'd be a ridiculous thing to say. But like, he now has demonstrated that you can gain a base of support within the party, you can overcome the most amount of money ever spent against someone in a House primary, offer a clear issue set, offer a clear rationale for your candidacy and get 45%. And if that's a four way primary, he wins. So I don't know. I think that obviously, you know, the Trump team is going to crow. The, you know, political prognosticators and pundits are going to talk about how you can't betray Trump in the party. Look at Cassidy, look at Massey, look at the Indiana State House. And that's true. I like it's it happened, but there's something happening under the surface that I don't want to dismiss. And so it sucks that Thomas Massie lost. It sucks that there's going to be another mega AI chatbot in Congress. It sucks that Trump can crowd. It sucks that, you know, next year there'll be one less vote for, you know, potential bipartisanship on issues of, you know, war, Epstein, etc. But Massey gets to stay in there to the end of the year and I think he's going to continue to cause Trump trouble. And I think that his critiques of the administration are going to continue to be borne out. So I guess all I'm saying is let's see how it plays out. Let's maybe have a little bit of humility and predictions and the possible outcomes and in analysis about how things might develop in our politics, because things have changed really quick. It's in like the old days, man. Like these political tectonic plates are moving a lot quicker than they used to. So that's that. Speaking of Massie continuing to create trouble for Trump over the next few months as he is a lame duck member of the House, we're seeing that already in the Senate. Bill Cassidy on Tuesday said he was opposed to the ballroom funding and he supported the resolution that would end the Iran war without the Trump administration coming to Congress and getting a vote. So a war powers resolution vote, on the one hand, it's a little revealing. I mean, it's a little lame. It's kind of like the old line from football coach Dennis Green. They are what we thought they were. Cassidy is what they said. He was not a maga, a phony that was faking it to try to win reelection. And that is contemptible, honestly, and a little embarrassing. That said, we are. We are. And guess it's better to have him up there being the turd in Trump's punchbowl for a couple months than the alternative. And opposing the ballroom was good, but the war powers vote is pretty significant. So what happens here is you had Cassidy, Rand Paul, Susan Collins and Murkowski voting yes on the resident.