I Know Dark Secret Truth About Missing Mitch: Guru

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Daily Beast Podcast

Episode: "I Know Dark Secret Truth About Missing Mitch: Guru"

Host: Joanna Coles
Guest: Steve Schmidt (political strategist, host of The Warning)
Date: July 30, 2026

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Main Theme / Purpose

This episode dives into the swirling mystery—and widespread conspiracy theories—surrounding the continued absence of Senator Mitch McConnell from public life amid reports of severe health issues. Steve Schmidt, a prominent Republican strategist, joins Joanna Coles to discuss what the “Save America” movement is doing to pressure for clarity on McConnell’s status, the legal and constitutional implications for Kentucky, the broader decay of truth in American politics, explosive claims about Lindsey Graham's foreign policy legacy, and stark warnings for the Democratic Party ahead of the midterms.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “Missing Mitch” Mystery & What’s at Stake

• Save America’s Public Activation:

  • The group is handing out posters depicting Mitch McConnell as a “missing person,” highlighting the absurdity and opacity of his ongoing absence.
  • Posters list him as “84 years old, 5 foot 9, turtle-like.” (03:00)

• Wider Conspiracy and Media Failure:

  • Schmidt aggressively questions whether McConnell is even alive, or at least sentient—raising the real possibility that the Senator’s office is engaged in a fraud against the taxpayer:

    “I think this is a fraud that's being perpetrated upon the taxpayer ... I don't think that Mitch McConnell is alive. I don't think he's sentient. So long as Mitch McConnell is in the hospital room ... who's to know?”
    (00:30, 07:41)

  • He blames a culture of secrecy, the constraints of HIPAA, and the complicity of staffers for the uncertainty.

• Lack of Evidence and Deepening Distrust:

  • Despite reports of a 20-minute conversation with CNN’s Scott Jennings, Schmidt flat-out disbelieves it:

    “Scott Jennings did not have a 20 minute conversation with him. It's preposterous ... I think anybody who does is a fool.”
    (12:29, 12:44)

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2. Legal & Constitutional Quagmire in Kentucky

• Kentucky Law’s “Catch-22”:

  • The state legislature tried to restrict the governor’s power to appoint successors, in contradiction to the state constitution.
  • As long as McConnell’s condition remains unclear, the legal question remains hypothetical:

    “So long as the fiction is maintained...it's impossible to test this constitutional question right now.”
    (15:41–17:00)

  • Schmidt argues the state’s constitution gives the governor this power, not mere statute.

• The Governor’s Dilemma:

  • Andy Beshear, KY’s Democratic governor, can only do so much without clear evidence:

    “The burden is on the Mitch McConnell team. Is it possible ... that you have an entire office of young people who've been rendered so cynical that there's not one of them that understands what the right thing to do here is?”
    (19:10)

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3. Senate Culture, Political Cynicism, and Trust Collapse

• Decay of Institutional Trust:

  • Schmidt identifies the McConnell episode as emblematic of a political and cultural era where truth is strangled, and trust in institutions is in freefall:

    “Here at the end of Mitch McConnell's life, who's to know if he's dead or alive? And this is reality in Trump's America and it's sick.”
    (27:45)

• Press & Public Reaction:

  • Outside outlets (except The Daily Beast) have largely failed to interrogate the situation meaningfully, feeding the cycle of suspicion and rumor.

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4. Explosive Claims About Lindsey Graham’s Legacy

• Cinematic Funerals & Shallow Politics:

  • Schmidt, using black humor and pop culture (“Palm Royale”), labels the tributes to Graham as hollow:

    “A perfect tribute to a shallow and empty and hollow man. My primary thought was the Chattanooga Choo Choo song with Alison Janney. But my secondary thought was, how many young men and women are going to be alive because this guy’s out of business?”
    (29:39–30:58)

• Lindsey Graham as “Foreign Agent”:

  • Reveals that a British filmmaker, Alex Holder, has behind-the-scenes footage showing Graham acting as “a lobbyist for the head of the Israeli government ... functionally a foreign agent.”
    (32:13–33:00)
  • Schmidt suggests Graham’s actions and encouragements toward increased foreign entanglements sowed the seeds for current global conflicts (“laid the foundation for World War iii” (42:03)).

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5. Trump’s War With Iran & Prospect of Defeat

• No Easy Out for Trump:

  • Schmidt explains Trump’s misunderstanding of the difference between pain and cost in warfare, particularly regarding Iran and the Strait of Hormuz’s strategic importance.
  • The recent Ukrainian drone strike on an Iranian ship has entwined conflicts, making withdrawal or “victory” elusive:

    “There is a war raging ... All of these nations right now are involved ... If we focus on one story ... Ukraine hit an Iranian ship with a drone ... two theaters of two different wars combined into one.”
    (38:30–41:40)

• Political Consequences for Trump:

  • Hostility toward “forever wars” has boomeranged; the war is deeply unpopular and feeds into Trump’s possible electoral defeat.

• Prediction:

  • “It’s the beginning of his defenestration ... defeat will not be a moderating event ... it will be inciting for more vociferous extremism.”
    (43:00)

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6. Searing Critique of the Democratic Party’s Strategy

• Senate Races & Party Dysfunction:

  • The Democrats are warned they are poised to “throw away the chance to win the Senate” due to poor candidate selection and reluctance to support viable independents (notably in Montana).
  • Further criticism for under-supporting Black candidates in the South and mishandling the New Hampshire primary situation.

  “The greatest impediment to winning these seats is not the strength of MAGA, it's the complete incompetence of the Chuck Schumer political operation ... They're killing the country.”
  (51:31, 52:30)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On McConnell’s Absence:

  “Who's to know? How can you know? We live in an era that's so rotten and where the lie has so strangled the truth that ... whether he's alive or not ... is impossible to know.” — Steve Schmidt (04:02)

• On Lindsey Graham:

  “He was unread, unprepared, serially sloppy, and a vandal in the world.” (34:40)
  “He's the most easily manipulated senator in United States history.” (34:33)

• On the Political System:

  “Here at the end of Mitch McConnell's life, who's to know if he's dead or alive? ... Trust has so thoroughly collapsed.” (27:45)

• On the Democratic Party:

  “The greatest impediment to winning these seats is not the strength of MAGA ... it's the complete incompetence of ... the DNC and Ken Martin ... they're killing the country.” (52:30)

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Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:30 | Schmidt’s initial “get lawyers” comment about McConnell’s office | | 03:00 | Discussion of “missing person” poster and campaign | | 06:41 | Schmidt outlines crisis comms credentials and argument for legal accountability| | 12:29 | Debunking CNN’s reported McConnell “conversation” | | 14:35 | Constitutional implications in KY if McConnell is incapacitated | | 19:10 | Critique of office staff and burden of proof | | 22:59 | Oddities of the ambulance response and McConnell’s wife’s absence | | 27:45 | Trust collapse and comparisons to Terri Schiavo case | | 29:39 | Pop culture analogy for Lindsey Graham’s funeral | | 32:13 | The upcoming Alex Holder documentary and Graham’s foreign policy behavior | | 38:30 | Discussion of Trump’s war with Iran, strategic disasters | | 42:03 | Schmidt: “Absolutely” when asked if Graham laid foundation for WWIII | | 45:16 | Detailed breakdown of Democratic Senate races and party dysfunction | | 52:30 | Final critique of party leadership failures |

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Tone, Language, and Style

The tone is irreverent, direct, and at times darkly humorous, consistent with Schmidt’s reputation for vivid analogies and blunt assessments. Joanna Coles guides with curiosity, sometimes skepticism, always sharp. Schmidt offers unfiltered, jargon-free language, mixing historical references, pop culture, and personal anecdotes.

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Takeaways

• The absence of transparency about McConnell’s condition is fueling conspiracy, with real constitutional consequences.
• Cynicism and collapse of trust define the moment; institutional decay affects both parties.
• Lindsey Graham’s legacy is cast as dangerous, with “seeds of World War III.”
• Trump’s foreign policy is described as disastrous, escalating spiraling conflict in the Middle East.
• The Democratic Party is depicted as hobbled by incompetence, risking key Senate races needlessly.

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For listeners, this episode is a whirlwind of deep-dish political analysis, sharp cynicism, and unvarnished warnings—not merely about Mitch McConnell, but the very health of American democracy and its future.

Transcript

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[Steve Schmidt]

Here's my advice to the Mitch McMahon. Get lawyers. I think this is a fraud that's being perpetrated upon the taxpayer. I think there's a high likelihood that what they're doing here is illegal. I don't think that Mitch McConnell is alive. I don't think he's sentient. So long as Mitch McConnell is in the hospital room, protected by the Capitol Police, where the doctors and the nurses are governed by confidentiality provisions and HIPAA law. Who's to know?

[Joanna Coles]

I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. Where is Mitch McConnell? Have you seen him? Have you heard him speak? If you have, please let us know. Steve Schmidt of the Warning, who speaks in sort of biblical phraseology, is on the hunt for him, and he's going to be telling you about his Save America organization and what they're doing to find Mitch McConnell. Is he able to speak? Is he not? We just don't know. He's also livid about the hagiography of Lindsey Graham, who he says may well have sown the seeds for the Third World War. Super provocative. And it's a very lively conversation about the state of the Democratic Party, too. And if you think the Democrats are going to walk it in November, listen to Steve, because he's not so sure. Before we get into it, just a reminder, please subscribe to the Daily Bees podcast. We've just put on 5,000 subscribers this week. Thank you so much. And also we have a number for you to call and give us your comments, tell us what you think, ask us questions that any number of us can answer. David Rothkopf, Michael Wolff, Hugh Docherty, or myself. Okay, here's the number. 9292-7435-7792-9227-3577. And now let's get into it with Steve Schmidt. Steve Schmidt, I'm very glad we managed to talk to you this morning because your movement, the Save America movement, is actually doing an activation in D.C. this afternoon with these. Well, you're going to be handing out these incredible posters.

[Steve Schmidt]

Gotta find them.

[Joanna Coles]

Can you explain to us, first of all, let's just look at this, because it's so funny. He's a missing person. Let's look at this. 84 years old, 5 foot 9, turtle like turtle.

[Steve Schmidt]

Generous. I was feeling generous.

[Joanna Coles]

You were feeling generous because then you've got. If you have any information about his whereabouts, please keep it to yourself. He would. Whose idea was this and where are

[Steve Schmidt]

you going to be? This is, I don't know. We have a lot of like in any organization, we are, we are a lot of great young creative people that are really working hard and dedicated to the cause they're involved in. And so this is a really serious moment. I was, I, on the 0 to 1000 conspiracy theory disposition scale, I, I would put my dad, who's 80 years old, he's, he would rank as a zero.

[Joanna Coles]

Right?

[Steve Schmidt]

He is a rock ribbed Republican in the old school sense. He was the deputy majority leader of the New Hampshire legislature. And we're driving down a country road. I said, dad, I. All bullshit aside, do you think there's any chance that Mitch McConnell had a 20 minute conversation with any of these guys about Senate history? And he was driving, I was, he looked at me, he goes, of course not. And the issue around McConnell here is the incandescent of the corruption, if you think about it. And I think the issue is not, if you ask, is Mitch McConnell dead? And obviously for both of us, the response to it is, well, I don't know now. I think that's the wrong answer, though. I think the more precise answer is who's to know? How can you know? We live in an era that's so rotten and where the lie has so strangled the truth that whether a man who served in the United States Senate since 1985 and wrecked it, by the way, more than any other, the world's greatest deliberative body, turned it into a farce and a joke around the world, whether he's alive or not, after all the damage he did. This is like the penultimate episode of a writer's fantasy ending for Veep. And so who's to know? That's how rotten our country has become. It's impossible to know.

[Joanna Coles]

It's impossible to know. And Steve, I mean, you were famously a press Advisor for John McCain. What would you be advising Mitch McConnell's team to do? I mean, why haven't they just issued a 10 second video of, of the Senator saying, hey guys, thanks for all your good wishes. I'm working hard at rehab, I'll be back soon.

[Steve Schmidt]

Let me say more broadly, I did was involved in McCain's campaign and worked in the White House and for Bush and another presidential campaign. But I think more relevant is that for much of my career, I advise companies and CEOs and people that were involved in big time crises. The type of crises when there's a nuclear reactor meltdown. Well, hopefully you didn't deal with too many of those billions of dollars at stake. And I was involved in things from Tom Brady and Deflategate to the Fukushima nuclear meltdown to emissions scandals with giant AUT companies and on and on and on. Here's my advice to the Mitch McConnell team. Get lawyers.

[Joanna Coles]

Get lawyers? What do you mean, get lawyers?

[Steve Schmidt]

I think this is a fraud that's being perpetrated upon the taxpayer and whatever statute is applicable. I think there's a high likelihood that what they're doing here is illegal. I don't think that Mitch McConnell is alive.

[Joanna Coles]

You literally don't think he's alive or

[Steve Schmidt]

I think, I don't think he's sentient. I don't think that picture is real. I don't think Mitch McConnell's walking out of the, walking out of the hospital again. Maybe he cartwheels out tomorrow and I gotta come back and say, I didn't know he was such an accomplished gymnast. But I the reality of this, I had my great good friend Dean Blundell and I do two of these a week podcasts a week. And Dean was saying, well, why can't Bashir just walk in there and find out? Well, Andy Bashir can't show up at the hospital and declare it's I, Andy Beshear, Governor of the Commonwealth, let me into the room. Right? And by the way, by the way, Andy Beshear is not in that political party that wants to be in your hospital room with you at the moment of birth, at the moment of death. That's peering through the bedroom window, Right? Andy Beshear is in the party that believes in personal liberty and privacy. So so long as Mitch McConnell is in the hospital room protected by the Capitol Police, who don't necessarily know what's going on in the hospital room, where the doctors and the nurses are governed by confidentiality provisions and HIPAA law, who's to know?

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[Joanna Coles]

You don't think it's possible, Steve, that he's just had a stroke and he can't speak, which would still render him incapacitated in terms of being a senator because are his staff actually lying when they say that he's actually working on the affairs of state and he's very

[Steve Schmidt]

busy listening the whole pretense of that. Is that what we know? We don't know a lot.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Right.

[Steve Schmidt]

We do know that there was an ambulance call, that there's a Med Tech EMT in the ambulance, that they're performing CPR at an 84 year old man. Right. I think that's real. Now that 84 year old man, statistically you had CPR performed on him, he got put in an ambulance, has a 6% chance of ever walking out of the hospital. Was that, was that person engaged in a 20 minute conversation with CNN, Scott Jennings, about Senate history? He was not. And that will unravel. And when you consider the corruption of the corporate media and you look at the disgrace at a White House correspondence dinner, to me it's a very serious question. When that completely unravels, is CNN gonna toss Scott Jennings overboard? And the answer to that question is no. Scott Jennings did not have a 20 minute conversation with him. It's preposterous.

[Joanna Coles]

Well, who did he have a conversation with then?

[Steve Schmidt]

Didn't have a conversation with anyone.

[Joanna Coles]

So you think Scott Jennings is just completely making it up? I mean, we called CNN and CNN said that this was Scott Jennings Jennings's experience and they hadn't fact checked it. They, they distanced themselves from Scott on this.

[Steve Schmidt]

They could, they could ask Scott Jennings to provide his phone. They could ask Scott Jennings to show the phone number he was connected to. There's a number of different things that Scott Jennings could be, could be asked to narrow in but no, with the available facts and, and the fact that Scott Jennings has zero credibility, it doesn't reset every morning, you know, in the Apprentice. I appreciate that Meatloaf and Little John could be mortal enemies in one episode and then they'd be best friends in the next one without any explanation in between. But in real life, that's not how it works. So the people that have immolated their credibility. Have immolated their credibility. It's a giant smoking pit in the craters. And no, when Scott Jennings says, I Talked to Mitch McConnell for 20 minutes, I don't believe him. And I think anybody who does is a fool. That being said, the issue here is that who's to know? How can you know?

[Joanna Coles]

Just explain to us, and I know that you're talking to Governor Bashir later today, but just explain to us the political advantage of, of pretending, if that's what McConnell's team is doing, that the Senator is, it's business as usual, it's just taking place in a hospital room. Just remind us of the complexity around Kentucky law here and sort of how do we think that this is going to resolve if the senator, as you pointed out, very low chance of a, of someone who's 84 having CPR in an ambulance, actually unfortunately walking back out of the hospital.

[Steve Schmidt]

Right. So first off on this, Andy Beshear, two term governor of Kentucky, Republican state, Democratic governor, almost certainly a presidential candidate in 2028. And he's one of the people that I think that has an excellent chance of getting some lift. A very appealing Democratic candidate, that type of person who could, who could win a presidential race. So he's dealing with this and there's a lot of magical thinking on social media that in fact, that Andy Beshear is more like Merlin the Magician than he is the Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. And he has some power to define the life force of Mitch McConnell through the wall or some extra constitutional ability to repel through the window, get a listening device into the room. And he can't do any of those things. And what he's saying, and I think what he's doing is appropriate and I think he distilled it to its essence. Speaker, resign. What is the condition of the, of the Senator? And I think he's put a proposition on the table.

[Joanna Coles]

Now speak or resign.

[Steve Schmidt]

Speaker, resign. Now there is a deadline that is approaching and I don't want to muddle for your viewers what that, what that deadline is by being inaccurate around it. But in essence, the state of Kentucky has taken through legislative Action, they passed a law, Statute, right, A statutory law that took from the governor his ability to appoint the Republican senator's successor. So you have two Republican senators in the state. You have a Republican legislator with a Democratic governor. And the Kentucky Constitution says the governor appoints the senator if the senator dies. What the Kentucky legislature did is pass a law that says, in Kentucky, this law is a higher card than the Constitution, which it's not. If there is a constitutional question, in this case, the power of the governor, then it must be addressed as a constitutional matter, not as a statutory matter. So when the legislature did this, this was a theoretical proposition because there were no dead senators in Kentucky for the Democratic governor to replace. Or in this case, because who's to know? Try to figure out if they're alive so that they can make the decisions to replace the Kentucky senator so the people of the state, of the people of the commonwealth can have a U.S. senator representing them in Washington, D.C. so. So again, impossible to know if he's alive or dead. Right. So long as the fiction is maintained that it's all good to go, he's doing fine and hard at work. It's impossible to test this constitutional question right now. At the second it becomes clear, right, that Mitch McConnell's either out or whatever else. You now have a court case about the power of the governor and the power of the legislature that'll be decided by the Supreme Court of Kentucky. And the way that I look at it, if the decision is straight ahead, it follows the rule of law. It's not a very tough case to understand that the governor's ability to appoint a replacement to the dead senator is enshrined in the Kentucky Constitution and cannot be undone by a law passed by the Kentucky legislature.

[Joanna Coles]

So shouldn't Governor Beshear have raised this earlier? I mean, we're fast approaching the deadline. It's August 3rd, I believe we've had a ticker on the Daily Beast counting the number of days that it's been since anybody's seen Mitch McConnell say anything. Why is he leaving it this late?

[Steve Schmidt]

I don't. I don't. I. I don't think the criticism of his timeliness of action is. Is fair in the sense of I try to place myself in the room, and there is a room in Kentucky where the governor is meeting with his team. What's he supposed to do here? The burden is not on the governor. The burden is on the Mitch McConnell team. Is it possible, and this is the real question that stood in a culture of amorality that you have an entire office of young people who've been rendered so cynical that there's not one of them that understands what the right thing to do here is. And I think that's entirely possible. And I think that's what the issue is. And I think what the governor is saying is that he needs information and the office is refusing to give information. The conduct of the senator's wife is beyond bizarro.

[Joanna Coles]

You mean because she was in China and didn't come back after she heard her husband had been taken unconscious and having Syria and she stayed in China?

[Steve Schmidt]

Yeah.

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[Joanna Coles]

Tennessee 2012 and Steve, why isn't the President making more fuss about this? I mean, we know there's no love lost between him and McConnell. I mean, couldn't he have intervened here and has chosen not to?

[Steve Schmidt]

The silence indicates to me that they know what's going on. And if you knew what was going on, what would you do? You would not talk about it. And I truly believe that Trump at his core is sloppy and undisciplined, but he does think like a criminal, intuitively, in the way that a criminal would think. Yeah, right. Is that. Oh fuck, don't talk about it again. If we don't talk about it, he's doing fine. We don't want to get mixed up in this. Right. So this is, and there's a reason, there's, there's a saying like the elephant in the room, right? And all of these, all of these old sayings like about the COVID up being worse than the crime. And just to note, it did not look like the ambulance that went to perform CPR on the 84 year old guy whose wife thought there was nothing to worry about regarding her trip in China. And really no one knows why she's there as a former cabin secretary. But put that aside, the ambulance didn't look like it was in a big hurry to get to the hospital.

[Joanna Coles]

What do you mean the ambulance didn't look like it was in a big hurry.

[Steve Schmidt]

I think it's fair to say the crew had a lethargic disposition in the driveway. They were. They were not racing to get the patient who had CPR performed on him to the hospital in the manner that. I would hope that if we were out somewhere together having lunch and one of us went down, they would get us to the hospital. What I'm saying, I can only think of one reason why the ambulance was so slow. Just judging by the video of the contemporaneous events outside the house.

[Joanna Coles]

So you, Steve Schmidt, believe firmly that Mitch McConnell has already passed into that chamber in the sky.

[Steve Schmidt]

I don't know what the line is upon which legally one would say, you're gone. For example, I do know this. The modern Republican fascist party was born out of the Terri Schiavo decision, right? Which collapsed the Republican coalition in a. In a really fundamental way.

[Joanna Coles]

And Terry Schiavo was the. The young mother who. On life support. And it became a huge. It's a huge driver of JD Vance's new book, right?

[Steve Schmidt]

And this was Jeb Bush's most shameful moment. His brother, a big government conservative, coming home from Texas on Air Force One to intervene in a state court decision about the end of a young woman's life who is brain dead, right? To sign an act of Congress that intervened. And this was the limited government party. This was an epic moment in American politics and the collapse of one coalition and the rise of another. Because this was a moment of profound disequilibrium where the religious crackpots in the party finally jumped the electric fence like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park.

[Joanna Coles]

Oh, my goodness, you have such a cinematic way of speaking. But just to remind people, her husband wanted to let nature take its course and to switch off the machine. And the government came in over the top of the stage decision to allow him to do that, to essentially unplug the machine that was keeping her alive and insisted on keeping her alive.

[Steve Schmidt]

It was his decision to make.

[Joanna Coles]

But her parents wanted her kept alive.

[Steve Schmidt]

It wasn't their decision to make under Florida law. And what Jeb Bush did was reprehensible. And again, the jamming of your faith down my throat is antithetical to every conceivable precept of small C conservatism, which is built on a foundation of leave me the fuck alone, right? And you do your thing and I'll do my thing, and I won't judge your thing, and you don't judge my thing. And so in a system where you're supposed to believe in federalism and you're supposed to believe in the power of the state and have respect for the sovereignty of the state and the state court decision, because after all, you're a small C. Conservative Republican. Jeb Bush, right. That terrible decision obliterated the Republican coalition because for the moderate, for the limited government, conservative, right, what you understood was this was a big government looking in the window Republican Party. And there is some irony that Mitch McConnell is in this state stripped of his, of his dignity. But I don't know if he has brain activity. I don't believe he can speak. I think that's all a lie. And I don't think he's walking out of the hospital. And I think it's completely unacceptable that there's no statement. I think the governor's completely right to demand one. I think mostly outside the Daily Beast, the press coverage of this is appalling and anemic and. And it's not funny, it's not a joke. And when I say who's to know? It's a really tragic indictment of the reality that trust has so thoroughly collapsed that here at the end of Mitch McConnell's life, who's to know if he's dead or alive? And this is reality in Trump's America, and it's sick.

[Joanna Coles]

Right? And if you think about how much AI the President himself uses on truth social media, his own platform, it's impossible not to now apply the kind of question is this AI, what is actually going on here? We can no longer trust a photograph that we see, even when it's issued from an American senator's office. What did you think of the Lindsey Graham funeral yesterday? I know you must have come across Lindsey Graham many times.

[Steve Schmidt]

Oh, yeah.

[Joanna Coles]

What did you think of the president? First of all, he was struggling to stay awake. We've got some clips actually of him here.

[Steve Schmidt]

See, now he saw what was happening to you and your family as a grave injustice and the world.

[Joanna Coles]

Clearly the president struggling to stay awake at, in theory, one of his close friends funeral, the weird sort of patting of the coffin as he came back from his eulogy, the stopping in the middle of his eulogy as if to say, who wrote this rubbish? He wasn't like by everybody. He was a tough cookie. He was a tough cookie. Was that sort of peak Trump, what did you think of that?

[Steve Schmidt]

Do you watch Palm Royale?

[Joanna Coles]

I don't watch Palm Royale, so I

[Steve Schmidt]

love Palm Royale and I accidentally got into it because my wife is watching it and she's watching it on the computer and I just kind of drifted into it. The show's incredible. So, anyway, so I'm watching the Lindsey Graham funeral. All I can think about is the funeral scene where there's the main character, Maxine is in a coffin, Allison Janney is leading, is leading the mourners, and Maxine is alive in the casket. There's a whole plot going on, but Allison Janney is leading the crowd in a rendition of Chattanooga Choo Choo. And that was all I could think about as I was watching the Lindsey Graham funeral. The shallowness of it, the artifice of it. A perfect tribute to a shallow and empty and hollow man. And my primary thought was the Chattanooga Choo Choo song with Alison Janney. But my secondary thought was, how many young men and women are going to be alive because this guy's out of business?

[Joanna Coles]

And you mean because he will. There won't be as many hawks around Trump.

[Steve Schmidt]

And I want to. I want to say something. I wrote this this week and in case I get run over by a bus later today. Right. I just want to put myself on the record.

[Joanna Coles]

Well, hopefully if you do, the ambulance will take you very quickly to the hospital.

[Steve Schmidt]

I hope. I hope.

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[Steve Schmidt]

Listen, apparently there's a British filmmaker who's been with Lindsey Graham for the last couple of years with total access filming every phone call. And so Netanyahu has no idea that he was a star in, in Lindsay Graham's, in Lindsey Graham's documentary.

[Joanna Coles]

This is Alex Holder's film.

[Steve Schmidt]

And in literally, for the first time in the history of human civilization, you're going to get to see the development of a war from one man seed kernel through its embryonic stage, its zygote stage. And you're going to see something that's going to have a seismic impact on American politics. I'm not sure that the filmmaker appreciates the impact that this is going to have in 2028. There was a book, I always get the Lewis's mixed up. Sinclair Lewis or Upton Sinclair? Sinclair Lewis, the jungle that's about 100 years old that shocked the nation about its meat industry, the meatpacking industry. And this is going to shock the conscience. So Caitlin Collins has the filmmaker on last night, and she plays two clips. And the first clip is with Netanyahu. And it's shocking to watch, as is the cheerleading scene with Lindsey Graham. And what you realize about Lindsey Graham, and no one has said this out loud, I wrote this today. George Washington, when he left, gave basically two warnings. One was about foreign entanglements and dual loyalties. And the other, of course, was about the perils of partisanship against. Against patriotism. Lindsey Graham was functioning as a lobbyist in the Senate for the head of the Israeli government. Lindsey Graham was functionally a foreign agent. He was faithless to the US Constitution. And the reason he was was out of a deep neediness to be needed, to be seen, to be relevant. This was his life. This was his game. This was the plot. And so the filmmaker says, well, at the end, all of this outpouring from prime ministers and hear about Lindsey shows whatever you might say about him, the impact that he had on the. On the broader world that, that we live in. And he framed it through a prism of, well, these people respected Lindsay. These people did not respect Lindsay. Lindsey Graham. And the filmmaker doesn't understand this, doesn't understand what he's looking at in his own film right from the, from the clip. They were. Those people viewed Lindsey Graham as a mark. He's the most easily manipulated senator in United States history. He was unread, unprepared, serially sloppy, and a vandal in the world.

[Joanna Coles]

Steve, what about his insistence that America give aid to Ukraine? I mean, he died the day after he came back from his 10th visit to Ukraine. And Ukraine didn't invite the Russians in. The Russians invaded Ukraine. Wasn't he on the side of Reichnow?

[Steve Schmidt]

He was on. He was on the side of the man who has shattered the American military, its ethos and its honor. He is on the side of the man who abandoned Ukraine and humiliated Zelensky in the Oval Office. The greatest man of our age. He is on the side of a fascist cause that has started a war, that has replenished Vladimir Putin's treasury with petrodollars. The world is a complex place. This is a book written by William Shirer, who was an eyewitness and A famous CBS News correspondent, to the rise and the fall of the Third Reich. What emerged in the aftermath of that were the collective security agreements envisioned by a giant named Roosevelt that Lindsey Graham dared to compare to Donald Trump while comparing Netanyahu to Churchill. And they imagined a world that is being undone by Donald Trump. What Lindsey Graham was, was a flat Stanley, a Waldo, a peripatetic traveler who needed to be seen, who needed to go to Ukraine, that needed to be in the game. And the Ukrainians manipulated him to the best of their ability, to the best of their advantage for the cause of doing the right thing. But you can't be the fuel supplier, the match supplier, the driver, the golfing betty of the arsonist and say, but I'm a volunteer fireman when I'm not with him. Doesn't work.

[Joanna Coles]

So, Steve, how does Trump get out of the war with Iran?

[Steve Schmidt]

We've lost this war with Iran. And I think it's very important to understand in task and purpose. For example, when the great military writers of this era, Tom Rex, longtime Washington Post correspondent, Pulitzer Prize winning authority, makes the point that here's what Donald Trump fundamentally doesn't understand. He doesn't understand the difference between pain and cost. He thinks that by causing pain, I'll blow up your bridge, that that's an offset to the type of cost that Iran can impose. And Iran can impose tremendous cost because they control the Strait of Hormuz. And we talk about all of these things every day in our politics. But if we were just to slow down and to take a deep breath and focus on one story, one thing that happened in the last seven days that really, really, really matters, it's that Ukraine hit an Iranian ship with a drone in the Caspian Sea. And in the instant that that happened, two theaters of two different wars combined into one. There is a war raging that has these countries involved in it as combatants. The United States, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, North Korea, and there are more. All of these nations right now are involved in these wars fighting. We don't talk about it. The European sensibility is. And there'll be a big anniversary celebration, remembrance on the 1st of September in Poland, which marks the beginning of the Second World War. But did the Second World War really begin on September 1, 1939? Or did it begin at the Auschwass? Or did it begin in Czechoslovakia? Or did it begin in Ethiopia, or did it begin in Manchuria? Whenever it began, there's a body of evidence to suggest that it started many years before the Official date. And when we look at what's going on, what Lindsey Graham did you look at 100 years ago, 100 years ago right now, where the kids being born, who were the youngest guys who landed on the D Day beaches, that's what was being set in motion. That was the foundation that was being laid.

[Joanna Coles]

So are you saying that Lindsey Graham laid the foundation for World War iii?

[Steve Schmidt]

Absolutely. That's his legacy.

[Joanna Coles]

How does Donald Trump get out of this mess? I mean, it's clearly costing him at the pump. We know this war isn't popular. We know he campaigned against no forever war wars. He started something which he thought like Venezuela was going to be over quickly. He can't seem to understand that just bombing the hell out of somewhere doesn't mean that they're going to surrender. And now he's got himself in a terrible mess because the Iranians, as you say, control the Strait of Hormuz, which was not something they'd ever done before. In fact, it was something they weren't quite sure they would be able to do. And now it turns out that they can. He's got the midterms hurtling towards him. How does he get out of this mess?

[Steve Schmidt]

He doesn't.

[Joanna Coles]

Is this the end? Does this war bring about the end of Donald Trump? Is this his downfall?

[Steve Schmidt]

It's the beginning of his defenestration. But I think this is so important for everybody to understand. Eleven years in the far crazy left is as hostile to democracy as the far crazy right in this country. And Donald Trump has destabilized in the most profound ways our political system. And he's going to be defeated in this election. But MAGA, those smaller will come back in this next Congress 33% crazier. As bad as they are, as capitulant and appeasing as they are, the fanatics who are coming will make clear the physics of a collapsing political movement, which is like a white star collapsing as that star collapses into a black hole from a giant, gets smaller, it gets hotter, it gets denser, it gets smaller, it gets hotter, it gets denser until it finally implodes. And so the defeat will not be a moderating event, the defeat will not be a tempering event. The defeat will be an inciting event. The defeat will be a fueling event for more vociferous extremism as a primary process gets underway in a political party. Both political parties that are badly, badly broken, the Republican Party deeply at a moral level, at a patriotism level, at a constitutional level, and the Democratic Party just At a basic, functioning incompetency level.

[Joanna Coles]

Do you think the Democrats are going to win both the House and, and the Senate?

[Steve Schmidt]

I think it is possible. Well, Democrats will win the House. Their idiocy, their idiocy is throwing away the chance to win the Senate. And I'll give you a, I'll give you a perfect example. The state of Montana. You have three candidates in the, in the race. You have a Republican named Kurt Almi, you have a Democrat named Alani Bankhead, and you have an independent named Seth Bodnar. So Alani Bankhead, she's a life coach and a veteran, Right? But she's, you know, you can plainly look at her military record, right? Just a statement she makes. I don't find it credible when somebody says, I fought terrorism on all seven continents, you know, that person is exaggerating. So it's not true.

[Joanna Coles]

Right. Especially terrorism in Antarctica.

[Steve Schmidt]

Like, I have a keen eye for that. You have a keen eye for that. Right. For the puffer. She's a person who's promising 11,000% returns. Okay, so you have polling that's out there in the three way race.

[Joanna Coles]

And she's the Democrat. She's the Democrat.

[Steve Schmidt]

She's the Democrat. So she's a life coach. She's also a financial Advisor who's promising 11,000% returns to people. Okay, Let me tell you about the independent candidate. Independent candidate, graduated first in his class at West Point. He's a Rhodes Scholar. He was a Green Beret, he was a GE executive, he was the president of the University of Montana. He's a young father, his wife's a pediatrician. And in a two way race, he's in the even race. What is the Democratic Party going to do about their nominee in a state where because of the debacle in Maine and other places, there's a pickup opportunity when the consequence is that Mike Lee is going to be the chairman of the Judiciary Committee unless the Democrats take control of the Senate.

[Joanna Coles]

Mike Lee, of course, the senator from Utah. Republican senator from Utah.

[Steve Schmidt]

There are two black Democrats running in Mississippi and Louisiana. Scott Column is a prosecutor. Jamie Davis is a farmer in Louisiana. And when Medgar Evers was assassinated, John Kennedy insisted he be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. And Pete Hagseth removed the ability to find the grave site. But Megaravor's grave, he insisted, unlike most of the graves there, that the word Mississippi be spelled out fully. Such was his pride in his state, the state that killed him in many ways. Right. Believed in the place that hated him so much. That's what optimism in America is. That's what patriotism is. Fannie Lou Hamer, who put the civil rights plank in a Democratic platform, right? The challenge the segregationists in the Democratic Party. Why isn't a national party in a cycle where $6 billion is going to be spent by them? Why are they saying there's not enough money to support these black candidates in South Carolina and Mississippi? Some people say, right, that. Right, we have to move on. We can't talk about what happened in 2024. My problem with that has always been my fear of what was going to happen. And we're starting off 2028 in precisely the same way that we started off 2024, which is basically an announcement from Jamie Harrison that there's too many white people in New Hampshire for them to maintain their first in the nation status. And I could explain to Jamie Harrison and all the politicians from South Carolina why there aren't black people in New Hampshire, right? Because there wasn't slavery and there wasn't industry for the Great Migration when they were fleeing the apartheid South. And here's an important thing for Democrats to understand, right? Democrats are supposed to be the Rule of Law party. I think I read that somewhere, right, in the era of Todd Blanche. New Hampshire is the only state in the country that has a state law that says we go first. And the reason they have that state law is because they did go first about 106 years ago in 1920, in the progressive era of progressive era reform was that New Hampshire decided to give people an ability to vote for a presidential primary contestant as opposed to being done in the back room. And so what's the right of the Rules Committee of the DNC to take something from a state on the basis they're claiming to take it from against their state law, while saying, we're the Rule of Law party. Such arrogance and stupidity. So here we go again, right? Starting off 2028 exactly like we did 2024, because the great political achievement of the age, right, is the most prolific liar since Goebbels and Hitler. Trump, right? In two elections out of three, he was viewed as the more honest candidate by the American people against the Democratic nominees, which is quite a thing to be able to pull off, if you think about it.

[Joanna Coles]

Quite a thing to be able to pull off. Well, Steve Schmidt, it's always a thrill to talk to you because you come at things from a completely different perspective than anybody else. Are you thinking the independent candidate in Montana will win?

[Steve Schmidt]

He can win if the Democrat gets out of the race and he's the stronger candidate with the consequences being

[Ryan Reynolds]

the

[Steve Schmidt]

whack jobs that are going to be chairman of Senate committees, the corruption of the judiciary. Trump gets no more judicial nominees if we win these seats. And we have to win these seats. And the greatest impediment to winning these seats is not the strength of maga, is the complete incompetence of the Chuck Schumer political operation of the dscc, of the DNC and Ken Martin. And we have to talk about it because they're the principal officers in a country of 330 million people that control billions of dollars of expenditure. And they're the Bad News Bears. They're failures, they're losers, and they're killing the country.

[Joanna Coles]

Well, that's very sobering. That's very sobering. For any Democrat listening and certainly for anybody a functionary of the party, it's a bit of a wake up call. Steve, we expect nothing less from the host of the Warning, Your excellent, excellent YouTube and substack, Steve Schmidt, thank you so much.

[Steve Schmidt]

Great to be with you.

[Joanna Coles]

And good luck with finding Mitch McConnell with your first step. We've got to find Mitch McConnell.

[Steve Schmidt]

We've got to find him.

[Joanna Coles]

And we will look forward to. If you find him, can you please

[Steve Schmidt]

tell us we will call you immediately.

[Morgan and Morgan Advertiser]

Yep.

[Joanna Coles]

I want to be your first call if you find him. And we will look forward to talking to you again soon.

[Steve Schmidt]

Absolutely. Now, I will say just to close. Right. Again, little generous on the poster. I think he looks like five, six, but we put him five, nine there. So I don't want anyone to be disoriented.

[Joanna Coles]

Well, he's, he's got his lobster chic red gingham shirt on. I don't know if he was wearing that when he was last seen. I guess last seen in his blue shirt. Well, as I say, if you find him, let us know.

[Steve Schmidt]

Absolutely. See you, Joanna.

[Joanna Coles]

Okay, so I don't know what my favorite part of that conversation was. Was it him honing in on the damage he thinks Lindsey Graham did? Is it his deep suspicion of an American senator's office and his refusal to believe that Mitch McConnell is still with us? Write and tell us what you think. Call our number, 929-274-3577. That's 929-2744, 3577. Leave us a comment and let us know. Are you a conspiracy theorist on Mitch McConnell? Do you believe that he will be back in the Senate shortly? And do you believe he's doing the work of the Senate despite the fact, we have no evidence now for over 45 days that Senator can actually speak. Big thanks if you've joined us. Thank you so much. Much and big thanks to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, and Neil Rosenhaus. I'll be back tomorrow with Michael Wolff while we'll be going inside Trump's head. So the good news is we have so many Beast Tier members now, there are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support.