1028: MAGA’s Tough-Guy Civil War

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Next Level

Episode 1028: MAGA’s Tough-Guy Civil War
Date: October 29, 2025
Hosts: Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller, Jonathan V. Last (JVL)
Podcast: The Bulwark

---

Episode Overview

This episode explores escalating chaos and power struggles within Trump-era federal agencies, notably ICE and HHS, and examines the political motivations and consequences of tough-guy posturing in MAGA and Trump-aligned circles. The hosts also discuss current U.S. military actions in Venezuela, the ongoing fracturing within both major parties, and dissect a widely debated “Deciding to Win” memo advising Democrats on how to regain lost voters. The episode’s tone is a blend of incisive political analysis and signature Bulwark banter, peppered with frank assessments and gallows humor.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. ICE Purge and the ‘Tough Guy’ Ascendancy

Starting ~01:00

• ICE Leadership Shakeup: The show opens with the dramatic “purge” of ICE, where so-called “woke DEI leadership” is being pushed aside for hardliner, mission-focused actors.
• Night of the Long Knives Analogy: JVL likens the reshuffle to historical purges, hinting at internal consolidation of power by more extreme elements (03:00).
• Border Patrol vs. ICE Friction: The hosts distinguish between ICE’s previous focus on “criminals” (Tom Homan’s legacy) and the Border Patrol's more aggressive, numbers-driven tactics, favored by Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski (06:07).
• Political Motivation: Sarah speculates this “numbers obsession” may be part of Kristi Noem’s presidential ambitions, to be able to tout high deportation numbers for GOP primary appeal (07:00).
• Stephen Miller's Influence: Multiple times, the hosts underscore Stephen Miller as an ideological driver pushing for maximalist deportations, driven by nativist goals (08:53).

Notable Quote:
“Stephen Miller just wants all these people out of the country. He wants a white country. That’s why Stephen Miller does this.” — Tim Miller (08:53)

---

2. The Rise of Greg Bavino and Performative Authoritarianism

~02:36 and 09:45

• Bavino’s Persona: The hosts discuss Greg Bavino, the newly prominent ICE figure, whose performative command gestures and “warlord” imagery on video are described as “propagandistic,” with clear intimidation and public relations objectives.
• Spectacle vs. Strategy: Tim deconstructs a widely circulated video of Bavino, arguing the whole presentation is about posturing—camo-clad federal agents acting as soldiers, staging an “anonymous, local strongman” narrative rather than efficient police work (10:06).

Notable Quote:
“The entire purpose of this is propagandistic. It is to show that the CBP folks...are soldiers, not police officers; portray them as anonymous, and project this guy as the local strongman, the local warlord.” — Tim Miller (11:31)

---

3. White Nationalist Imagery & Agitprop

~13:49

• “Whites Only” Policy: JVL bluntly calls out what he sees as an unabashed white nationalist orientation in current immigration policy—“a whites-only refugee policy” and retro, 1950s-style government propaganda.
• Trolling the Left: The administration is intentionally provoking outrage, couching exclusionary policies in “jokey stuff” to make critics seem hysterical or out of touch.

Notable Quote:
“There are people in the administration that just fundamentally want the country to be whiter. That is the objective...and they’re not really hiding it.” — JVL (14:16)

---

4. HHS Power Struggle: The Stephen Hatfill Saga

~15:21

• Who is Stephen Hatfill?: A walk through Hatfill’s history, from “anthrax inquiry” scapegoat post-9/11 to COVID-skeptic Trump influencer, now ousted from a senior advisor role at RFK’s HHS.
• Conspiracy & Paranoia: Hatfill claims he was removed as part of an internal coup to undermine Kennedy, exemplifying the kind of erratic infighting that’s become routine in this administration (19:00).
• Weirdness of RFK World: The episode’s aside on Hatfill underscores how fringe and ideologically fragmented the universe around RFK’s administration has become (20:34).

---

5. Metaphorical and Literal Demolition: The White House Ballroom

~22:01

• Ballroom Debates: The hosts debate the fate of Trump’s controversial White House ballroom, oscillating between “burn it down” sentiment and practical indifference (“Most people do not care!”—Tim), using it as a metaphor for deeper anxieties about symbolic destruction of democracy.
• Political (In)Significance: Tim notes, “Any candidate who won’t just push the button to get rid of this ballroom doesn’t have the stones to do the hard stuff” (24:29), but they ultimately conclude this is a sideshow issue for the highly engaged, not average voters.

---

6. U.S. Military Escalation in Venezuela

~30:38

• Summary Executions & Oil Speculation: The administration has sunk multiple Venezuelan ships “with tremendous firepower,” allegedly targeting drug boats, but with little evidence or transparency. Fifty-seven deaths, no investigations, and “summary executions” at sea spark alarm.
• Motivation Questions:
  • Is military aggression popular with the MAGA base? “Yes, it is relatively popular right now,” notes Sarah (33:22).
  • Is regime change the ultimate goal? The hosts speculate the U.S. wants to pressure or topple Maduro, and Trump may want to use such an event for global intimidation or domestic clout (39:42).
• Indifference & Lack of Oversight: All agree it’s “absolutely insane” how little criticism or scrutiny these actions have received (36:32).

Notable Quote:
“We’re killing unnamed people at sea for no reason. Like literally no stated reason, except, ‘Oh, they’re drug dealers.’... And they haven’t provided any information.” — JVL (38:51)

---

7. Deciding to Win: The Democratic Popularism Memo

~45:55–74:00

What the Memo Asserts:

• Democrats are losing key voters (white, over-50, non-college-educated, working-class) because they focus on issues (abortion, climate, identity) that are not those voters’ priorities. Voters want jobs, immigration control, and safe communities.
• Moderation and heterodox, anti-establishment messaging are needed. The “first, decide to win” mentality means focusing relentlessly on what works for the coalition, not activist wishlists.
• Effective politics means “defining yourself” with a strong core message (“three things” voters associate you with).

Sarah’s Perspective:

• The memo resonates because it mirrors what she hears in focus groups: “The average voter is white, not college educated, and over 50...They care about immigration. They care about crime. The voters are saying…the things that you focus on—abortion, climate, identity—are not important to me.” (49:59)
• Democrats must “fiercely reckon with the world as it is, not as you want it.”

Tim’s Perspective:

• The problem isn’t just left vs. moderate, but lack of definition: “Kamala [Harris] was seen as too corporate by some, but far-left by swing voters, defined by her cultural views and identity—not by economic policy or moderation” (55:15).
• Heterodoxy—not conventional moderation—is the path; voters want figures who transcend or break with party lines.

JVL’s Perspective:

• Skeptical that “just do what I like” is a real solution: “What this memo triggers in me is skepticism… I have no confidence this is the path back to winning” (46:35).
• Calls for “economic populism” and a clear identity, but warns against mere defense of the status quo.

Notable Quotes:

• “Voters...see the Democratic Party as out of touch. The percentage who see the Republican Party as out of touch has decreased slightly because they see [GOP] as more economically populist... It is 100% the takeaway from my focus groups.” — Sarah Longwell (59:31)
• “Being a moderate...is being heterodox. And that is why the response you get from left-wing people is: ‘What worked for Trump…won’t work for Democrats’...because the coalition is different.” — Tim Miller (63:15)

---

8. How Should Democrats Respond?

~67:02–74:00

• Sarah: Proposes making “jobs, hiring, helping people” the only Democratic brand. More teachers, cops, nurses, focus on building—“Don’t call it human infrastructure. Call it what it is” (71:15).
• Tim: Pushes back, asking for practical policy translation and wonders if “whiteboard” proposals like “Medicare for All” or “20 million new houses” are enough (70:12).
• JVL: The challenge is clear, simple messaging: “What are the two or three things they need to know about you? …I care about you having access to work...And the other thing is, what makes you different from the Democratic Party” (68:48).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On White Nationalism & Performative Politics:

  • “There are people in the administration that just fundamentally want the country to be whiter. That is the objective.” — JVL (14:16)
  • “This is all just an attempt to create CPB local warlords.” — Tim Miller (11:31)

• On Popularism & Democrats’ Struggles:

  • “The extent to which I am willing to subvert my personal policy preferences for electing Democrats over this insane group of MAGAs cannot be overstated.” — Sarah Longwell (65:43)
  • “First you decide to win, and then every single thing you do is in service to that act. And that is how I think about politics now.” — Sarah Longwell (66:56)

• On American (In)Attention:

  • “Most people have no idea about the White House ballroom, the East Wing. You are smart, you are plugged in, you are not like regular people out there.” — Tim Miller (25:01)

• On Democratic Messaging:

  • “If the answer is: moderates who are responsible are going to do good government things, that’s great. I’d be so happy.” — Tim Miller (74:43)

• On the Future of American Politics:

  • “It’ll just be a famous person…like John Cena, and he has no opinions on anything…and the whole country is like, ‘Yeah, I kind of like that guy.’ That’s what will really happen.” — Tim Miller (75:29)

---

Key Timestamps

• 01:00 — Introduction to ICE purge and power struggle
• 03:00 — “Night of the Long Knives” analogy, Bavino discussion
• 06:07 — ICE vs. Border Patrol strategies; Kristi Noem’s ambitions
• 08:53 — “Stephen Miller wants a white country”
• 09:45 — Bavino video breakdown, authoritarian optics
• 13:49 — White nationalist imagery in government messaging
• 15:21 — HHS chaos, Stephen Hatfill saga
• 19:00 — Paranoia and coup claims in HHS
• 22:01 — Ballroom/endless White House debate
• 30:38 — U.S. military strikes in Venezuela, MAGA “peacetime” hypocrisy
• 33:22 — Is Venezuela adventure MAGA-popular?
• 36:32 — Lack of scrutiny over military killings
• 38:51 — “Killing unnamed people at sea for no reason”
• 45:55 — “Deciding to Win” memo debate begins
• 49:59 — Focus group insights into real voter priorities
• 59:31 — Perceptions of Democrats as “out of touch”
• 65:43 — Sarah’s “willing to subvert for the coalition” monologue
• 71:15 — Jobs/“people who help” as key Democratic frame
• 74:00 — Wrapping up, what actually works

---

Episode Takeaways

• The Trump world is purging moderates in favor of performative, ideologically maximalist “strongmen” — and using media spectacle to sell it.
• Policy—especially on immigration and law enforcement—is being shaped by presidential ambitions and the “white nationalist” priorities of ideological influencers like Stephen Miller.
• The left is at risk of being permanently defined by “out of touch” issues unless it re-narrates itself as the champion of jobs, safety, and everyday worries.
• Democratic leadership, policy, and messaging must break through with a simple, heterodox identity—rooted in helping working people and targeted at the true median voter.
• Ordinary voters are far more practical and less focused on elite/activist issues than D.C. or Twitter-centric narratives admit.
• In the narrative of 2020s American politics, spectacle and surface-level “tough guy” branding—to both left and right—are outpacing substance, but winning (even by accident) trumps all for the survival of small-l liberal democracy.

---

End of Episode Summary

Transcript

[JVL]

You want Black Friday prices without the Black Friday crowds. Lowes gets it. We check the calendar and Christmas is coming early. $99 is all you need to grab your favorite select 7 foot pre lit artificial Christmas tree for the holiday season.

[Sarah Longwell]

And don't sweat what gifts to get.

[JVL]

Dad because we've got up to 40% off select tools and accessories. That's how low celebrates Black Friday. Early selection varies by location while supplies last. Mint is still $15 a month for premium wireless. And if you haven't made the switch yet, here are 15 reasons why you should. One, it's $15 a month. Two, seriously, it's $15 a month. Three, no big contracts.

[Tim Miller]

Four, I use it.

[JVL]

Five, my mom uses it.

[Tim Miller]

Are you playing me off?

[JVL]

That's what's happening, right? Okay, give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront.

[Sarah Longwell]

Payment of $45 for 3 month plan. $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first 3 months price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra.

[Tim Miller]

C mintmobile.com the real answer is it's going to be just a famous person. It'll be like John Cena and he comes out and he has no opinions on anything and we tear our hair out and the whole country is just like, yeah, I kind of like that guy. He's famous. Hello everyone. This is JVL here with my best friends Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of the Bulwark. There is so much coming going on. I, I feel like we, we are going to lead this show with a topic that in our show notes is just all the crazy stuff happening. Little, little peek behind the the curtain here. Let's start with the ICE reassignments. So we have purge happening at ICE with all of the woke DEI ICE leadership being pushed to the side. And I mean some might call it a night of the long knives and in favor of the real hardcore ICE people who are fully on board with the mission and don't care about any of the professional stuff. That's fascinating to me.

[JVL]

Tim.

[Tim Miller]

Is this a good thing?

[JVL]

And the CBP people, the border patrol. I think this is important. Yeah. Where they've sort of had this testing ground in Los Angeles and Chicago as essentially we've had like a squid game in the cities and you've kind of seen who the toughest, most brutal actors are and they've settled on this guy who like Greg Bovino.

[Tim Miller]

Greg Bevino. I'm writing about him as we speak.

[JVL]

Oh, are we? Great. Have you seen the. So I'm sure you've seen the little Video of him where he's like standing on a car doing, you know, I don't want to over interpret but he is doing some Nazi ish type fist.

[Tim Miller]

It's a close salute first and then it becomes a military salute and then he does all of the command gestures. Yeah, like he's about to steal third base. No, it's like he's about to take dog Green beach. You know, like he's got his platoon and he's moving the angle like what the fuck are you doing?

[JVL]

You know who he really reminds me of? Like just. I don't know if he's a short man. He looks very short. Now I'm sounding like AOC where she was like, people can be short on the inside even if they aren't short on the outside. He just appears short to me. He reminds me of the guy from Inglourious Basterds. The German, the little German and Inglourious Basterds. He just gives off that energy.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, not the Brad Pitt character. Interesting.

[JVL]

Not the Brad Pitt character. No, the little German Nazi character. And so I guess he is one of power struggle in which Tom Homan has been cucked. Tom Homan's been cucked. They're like the dog killing. DHS Secretary Stankbreath, Corey Lewandowski and little Inglourious Basterds guy have united and like Tom. And been like Tom Homan. Some of these tactics you've been using. I've been a little too focused on the criminals and we want to spend more time going after old ladies have been in the country for 50 years or people that are 22 now and, and you know, trying to get jobs who are brought here as kids who are daca. Like we need to focus on them and we need to be more aggressive and, and it's, it is, it's extremely alarming. And I have to say I talked about this a little Sam yesterday. Like to me, I actually was thinking about this about a week ago. I was like, you know, all of the worst images have really kind of come out of the same cities, you know, and it's like we're going to get to a pretty bad place if they ramp this bad boy up and are able to identify enough Little Bavinos in 12 cities, 20 cities. So where it's all happening rather than what we've really had is a big concentration of this in LA and Chicago and some isolated incidents in other places. Not like it hasn't been happening in other places, but some pretty isolated incidents elsewhere. If they refigure that, you know, I mean, that definitely takes us to a new phase.

[Sarah Longwell]

So what's interesting to me, right, is that there's two teams. There's the. Right. So there's this Border Patrol team and then there's sort of the Tom Homan team, right. Whereas Tim says he's the normal one.

[JVL]

And normal moderating force, let's say, I.

[Sarah Longwell]

Don'T know, he is the in group moderate in this. But. But you know, who's sanctioning all of it is an in group. Moderates are always relative, right? Because you are moderate relative to the person pushing the boundaries. It's like me with jvl, right? I come off as far more moderate because I'm saying, no, jvl, we shouldn't throw everyone in jail who was in the Trump administration, whatever.

[JVL]

But then you go to a democracy panel, you know, with a bunch of people who are concerned about norms, and people are like, whoa, Sarah's the radical.

[Sarah Longwell]

Sarah's lost it. That's right. It's always. It's always relative. But, but wait, jvl, I'm sorry, I went off on an attack on you and I shouldn't have because what I really want to attack is Kristi Noemi.

[JVL]

An attack.

[Sarah Longwell]

And Corey Lewandowski. Right. And so what's interesting to me is that the reason so. So ICE has been trying to focus on criminals. That's what they would say. That's been Tom Homan's bag, so to speak, going after the criminals. Whereas, yeah, whereas the Border Patrol are the ones who go to Home Depot. They're the ones who go, you know, to a car. Like, they're out there looking for the workers to, like, scoop up. And the reason that Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski are endorsing that Border Patrol mech like, method is because they want to get the numbers up of how many people they've deported. And so I was also thinking about this. Like, why are they so obsessed with these numbers like, that it has to. They have to hit certain numbers. Like, don't they just need to demonstrate that they're taking it seriously? People who are here illegally who are also committing crimes, but no, they have, like, quotas they want to hit. And my only thoughts is that Lewandowski and Noem think that this number of illegals deported, and I use the legals in their term, but is about her running for president and in a primary, wanting to have a high number of, like, look how many people we deported. Because otherwise I sort of can't figure out like, why the obsession with the.

[JVL]

Numbers keeping Stephen Miller happy? Maybe. Maybe keeping Steven Miller happy. They're concerned because he was throwing out there. I think he had thrown out. Gosh, I'm going from memory, so I apologize. This is not quite right, but I think he had thrown out 3,000 deportations a day was his goal.

[Sarah Longwell]

That is right.

[JVL]

And that is right. Yeah. They had hit a peak of like 2000 and then. But now it's been, you know, the numbers have been going back down to like, 900 or something like that a day over the last couple weeks. And that, I guess, is the impetus for this again. Maybe it's Christie's ambitions. Maybe they're, like, scared that, you know, Stephen Miller will replace them with somebody who's, like, killed more dogs.

[Sarah Longwell]

That's true, although it's not helping Trump. Like, his numbers in April on immigration was plus 6.8, and it is now minus 3.1. It is still his best issue. I mean, his inflation number is like minus 27.6. But it's the excesses. Right. He has a mandate, I think, including from Hispanics, Close the border and to deport criminals. The, the, this, this, like, rounding up everybody at Home Depot is not something that he quite has the mandate for. And so I don't understand why Stephen Miller's pushing it when it's making Trump's immigration policies less popular.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, oh, I understand.

[JVL]

Okay.

[Sarah Longwell]

Do tell.

[JVL]

I mean, Dickie Bevino needs, needs to get his rocks off.

[Tim Miller]

No, Steve, I mean, Stephen Miller. Miller just wants all these people out of the country. He wants a white country. That's why Steven motors. I. So here I would just frame to you. I, I made a Night of the Long Knives joke, but I. Why not stick with the analogy? The Night of the Long Knives wasn't really about, like, the brown shirts are too moderate, the SS are too hardcore. It was, it was actually about loyalty and power centers. And so I wonder if, if this is less about questions about Tom Homan's loyalty or belief that he might have an independent power center, independent of Kristi Noem and so wanting to shore him up and elevate a guy like Bavino, who is smaller. Although I think Bavino honestly straight out of central casting, and I bet his thing played very well with the President.

[JVL]

He also kind of has the haircut that the Sean Penn white nationalist did and the. What's the movie?

[Tim Miller]

One battle after another out is, you know, his profile pic is him carrying a rifle. Everything about. I mean, I don't know. I don't Know how closely you guys watched the video. Maybe we can run some video of this.

[JVL]

We should run the video. We should run the video. The people should see it.

[Tim Miller]

This is. So here's what you're seeing. I want you to note how totally performative this is. You have the Chicago police there. They are wearing police outfits. They are not masked. They're not wearing combat helmets. They have bikes. They're on bikes. Bikes are actually quite, quite effective when you're working in urban settings. They don't have long guns. They don't attack vests. They have firearms. And you know, I'm sure a baton is a pepper spray or something. And, and they're just like doing their job. And then you have the federales and those guys are in cam. Why are they in camouflage? Is camouflage and a mission oriented thing to wear in an urban environment? No, they're wearing.

[JVL]

You're gonna blend in along the running trail along Lake Michigan.

[Tim Miller]

They're, they're wearing hide behind a tree, full tack, as if battle rattle. Like they're going into Fallujah with body armor and like actual combat helmets and comms gear strapped in every. In spare magazines. And they are, with one or two exceptions, or one or two guys whose faces you can see, but everybody else full concealment. And you can even see around the. I think it's around the 18 second mark in the video. You can see one of these guys fully tacked out, but he's carrying a camera rig and he's, he's doing like full documentary propaganda style. Like it isn't that they. This isn't body cam. This isn't like, hey, we're trying to keep everybody honest because there are a thousand cameras in this, in this particular scene. And then when the, the, the vehicle pulls up to take Bavino, it's not just like a Crown Vic, it's a pickup truck. It's a big Ford pickup truck. And he, again, the regional commander, Bavino gets into the driver's side to drive himself off. Again, all of this is exactly wrong. If, if it was all mission oriented, right? If it was mission oriented, you would actually bring him out the back door or something. You'd put him in the back of a Town Car or a Caprice and you would have a junior staffer driving him so that he could work in the back se. Because his job is organization and he should have emails to get through and reports to look at and stuff like that. It is a waste of his time to be driving through the streets of Chicago in a pickup truck. Except that you have to understand that the entire purpose of this is propagandistic. And it is to show that the CPB folks is to portray them as soldiers and not police officers, portray them as anonymous and to predict this guy as like the, the local strongman, the, the local warlord.

[JVL]

Yeah, I want to go, I agree with all that. I want to go back to something I especially agree with at the beginning of your answer in response to Sarah and like, what the motivation is on this because it's hurting Trump politically. This, it's, this is something that I think sometimes people are hesitant to say for a variety of reasons. Like, I think that this is probably a politically ineffective argument for Democrats to make because it seems hysterical. And it is probably. And it's also an ineffective argument because it's probably what the administration wants us to be talking about because they like this. They're like trolling people. They want people on YouTube to like, clutch their pearls about this. But I just like to be blunt, like, there is not a other way to interpret the combination of. We're going to have a whites only refugee policy, we have a quota for the number of brown people we're going to deport, and we're going to be every day putting out cartoons about how we're going to make America look like 1950 again without.

[Sarah Longwell]

Oh, you're talking about the HHS, the.

[JVL]

Department of labor and DHS. Maybe HSS does this too, but I've seen it from DHS and the Department of Labor putting out these, like, cartoons of like, different types of white people in different bucolic settings in the country or like on an oil rig or whatever. And which is like, it's like a.

[Sarah Longwell]

Muscly blonde guy every time. Time.

[JVL]

Yeah. American jobs for Americans. And it's like, it's not like it's just one. There are 20 of them. There's, it's always been very white people. The, the, the vibe is 1950s intentionally. It's like kind of these throwback type.

[Sarah Longwell]

It's all. And it's all men. That's all white people.

[JVL]

Yeah. Occasionally there'll be a woman in a wife role, like looking at the man, or there'll be kids. There'll be kids on her lap or something. But yeah. There's never a working woman. No. And so again, sure, it's a troll. Yeah. They want people to be upset about it. But if you combine it with the policies, the agitprop. Right. Of what they're doing on who's coming into the country and what they're doing on quotas, who's going out of the country. There are people in the administration that just fundamentally want the country to be whiter. That is the objective, and that is their objective. And, and that is what they're trying to do. And they're not really hiding it, but they're like kind of couching it in jokey stuff so that, so that when people complain about it, they seem hysterical and they can point fingers at them and say, look at this. Look at the left has lost their mind. You know, but like it just is what it is. Like they're, they're doing white nationalist stuff.

[Tim Miller]

No other explanation. Can we talk briefly about the HHS chaos? So we also have a little bit of purging happening at HHS where Stephen Hatfill is being pushed out. Are you guys old enough to remember Stephen Hatfill from his first appearance in American Life? Oh, no.

[Sarah Longwell]

First appearance.

[JVL]

Refresh my memory.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, so in the aftermath of 9 11, we had definitely don't remember in America two big semi terrorist related moments, the first of which was we had the Capitol shooter. So we had the Capitol sniper. We had a sniper team going around Washington D.C. shooting people and killing them. And this was, of course, I was.

[JVL]

A GW at the time. There's a guy on the street, I always remember selling the Virginia's for lovers shirt, but it was Virginia's for snipers and it had like a thing on it. And I just remember seeing that. I was like, that's an interesting, that's an interesting street shirt. Interesting capitalism.

[Tim Miller]

So we had that. And then we had the anthrax scare. And so we had samples of anthrax being mailed to various government and media places. And the FBI. The, the sniper thing we cracked, they, they actually arrested the, the pair of people who did.

[Sarah Longwell]

Father and son.

[Tim Miller]

I don't remember if father and son or a father in a ward. But yes, the answer is it was a young kid and the guy who's doing the shooting, Teenage kid, Not a young kid, not like a five year old. And the FBI went after this guy, Steven Hatfill for the, for the anthrax. And this happened for, I mean this was, this went on for forever. And the, the government absolutely botched it. He said, this is very.

[Sarah Longwell]

I'm sorry, what do you mean they went after him?

[Tim Miller]

They, they believed that he was the.

[Sarah Longwell]

Guy sending, he was the guy nailing anthrax.

[Tim Miller]

And I don't know if they ever brought a case against him or if he was just a publicly identified person of interest. But he was clearly identified by the government as the anthrax guy. We think he's the anthrax guy. And he wasn't. Again, very clearly state he was not the guy sending anthrax the government wrongfully.

[JVL]

Anyway, I'm not saying it like that. You're making me think. You're making it sound like maybe he was.

[Tim Miller]

No, no, no. Because again, he got a huge million dollar payout from the government for. It's like the Richard Jewell thing.

[JVL]

It was, it was like, oh, yeah, okay.

[Tim Miller]

But the reason that the government thought he was the anthrax guy, I would say it isn't like he was this totally normal dude. You know, it's not like he was. He was like the Jimmy Stewart character, North by Northwest.

[JVL]

What are you talking about? I'm just a.

[Tim Miller]

You know, like he was a crank in a weirdo and a guy who came up through places where he might have had access to those things. And so we see him in 2001 or 2002, I forget. And he's part of American life, a big part of American life then. And then he pops up again during the pandemic as one of these Covid skeptics and he's a hydroxychloroquine guy and he becomes sort of one of the Trumpy Covid influencers. And then here he is again, his third act in American life as part of the Kennedy HHS program. And now he's been drummed out for reasons that aren't exactly clear. Did you guys have thoughts about this? No. Am I the only one who's fascinated?

[JVL]

Because I want to hear more.

[Tim Miller]

I've been on a 25 year journey with Stephen Hatfill.

[JVL]

I'm increasingly interested and is there a parallel to the first segment where he's the moderate and he's the Tom Homan? He's being pushed out because he's not quite radical enough?

[Sarah Longwell]

No, I don't think so. I. I think. I think what is happening is that there is. You know, and now that I'm thinking about it in the context of the Kristi Noem thing, I do think that whoever, whichever one of you just made the point that there is power struggles going on in these agencies, I think that's a good thought. I think that is like things that we wouldn't possibly understand internally. But the. When I went and read about this, this Hatfield guy is basically saying they're trying to do a coup on rfk, right? That there's. Because what did he say? He said. He said that he was ousted as part of a coup to overthrow Mr. Kennedy and that this coup is being organized by RFK's chief of staff. He's also claiming that the protest against RFK by his own advisors at HHS has been breeding for some time. He didn't elaborate on that, but it. It just.

[JVL]

It just.

[Sarah Longwell]

It seems like, yeah, he's like, paranoid, right? Like that there's people trying to. That they're coming for me because they're trying to get to him.

[JVL]

I'm sorry. I'm just like. I'm going through the Wikipedia here, and there's a headline that says, subject of anthrax inquiry tied to anti germ training. This person has had an interesting life. He's had a germ set about that.

[Tim Miller]

Everything is. Is the death of Stalin. Right, Sarah?

[Sarah Longwell]

But just. Just know he is currently, or I guess not currently, because now he's being ousted, but he is in a senior advisor role at hhs. Like, this is the kind of absolute weirdo that RFK has in there. And so I think what's happening is he's saying there's a plot from the inside because they're trying to get Kennedy because the normie scientists, you know, want us out. Is, I think, where this is landing. I'm on the side of the crew.

[JVL]

In this case, when they were chasing him down. Had a foot injury. We never found out who did the anthrax. I'm sorry, we're way off course here, but I did not know that. It's one of the great. We never found out who the perp was of the anthrax.

[Sarah Longwell]

I don't know, but my first job in dc, Somebody there was like an anthrax scare where we all had to hide in the conference room while guys in hazmat suits came in and locked in.

[JVL]

How could we not have figured that out? I'm going into Tucker Carlson territory now. How could the government not have figured out who is sending anthrax to people? That feels like a. I mean, I.

[Tim Miller]

Mean, we used to have this, like, you know, nobody knew who the unaBomber was for 20 years. Right? I mean, these things. We used to have mysteries in the world. All right, final bit of chaos. The Arts Commission. The White House is firing people from the Arts Commission that reviews construction projects. I mean, I'm shocked. I would like to defend myself one more time on the ballroom.

[Sarah Longwell]

Oh, God.

[Tim Miller]

May I?

[Sarah Longwell]

Yes.

[Tim Miller]

May I defend myself one more time?

[Sarah Longwell]

Burn it down.

[JVL]

Salt the earth. Salt. J.D. you know what?

[Sarah Longwell]

You make fun of him, Tim, but the people are with jbl.

[JVL]

I know the people are with jbl. I am aware who the people are with. I love and I love JBL's vigor. This is what I keep saying. I will just. Before you defend yourself, I just. I've been on several texts about this. I'm like, I wasn't. You know how some people are house nostalgia. I am aware that I might be the outlier here, you know, And I remember. I forget the situation. I was with someone, we're in a neighborhood. They're like, I want to go see my childhood home. Like, drove by it. And like, we're walking around and we're getting emotion, feeling, feelings. And I'm like, this does nothing. I don't have building nostalgia or feelings. This is. Maybe my mother threw away everything all the time. She was not a saver, you know, she was just like, this was not. We don't have trinkets around the house. So I didn't have any emotional connection to my childhood home or to the East Wing or to anything. And I think it's turning out I might be the outlier. People have emotional connections to this stuff.

[Tim Miller]

I don't give a shit about the East Wing. And if. If the United States government underwent a normal planning process and execution process and funding process because it decided it wanted to build an annex to the White House and this was, you know, funded by Congress.

[JVL]

And what if they did that, but they wanted to replace the entire White House with the Obama library structure, I'd be fine with that.

[Tim Miller]

I care about the process. But here's what I say. I do not maintain the Democrats should campaign on this. Here is, in fact, an answer every Democrat should give when asked. A lot of people are very angry about Trump's ballroom and think it was paid for by friends of Jeffrey Epstein. They think it's an outrage that Trump spent hundreds of millions of dollars on it when he couldn't even fund the government. Many people say that you could actually make money by tearing it down and auctioning off the pieces. We're gonna look into this very strongly. When we come to a decision, it's gonna be one that you like.

[JVL]

I don't like this change from Eugeo. I preferred it when you were on the Maximus milieu. That was like, I'm going to give my inauguration speech and then I'm gon the excavator myself down Pennsylvania Avenue.

[Tim Miller]

That's what you do.

[JVL]

And we are going to turn it into rubble.

[Tim Miller]

That's what you do after sworn in.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. Because any candidate, any candidate who won't just push the button to get rid of this ballroom doesn't have the stones to do the hard stuff. This is the litmus test for all things. Yeah, can I just. I would like to. Since you defended yourself and your position is well stated, I actually quite like where you've landed newly. Which is. Which is to. To utilize the ballroom. I think this provides tremendous opportunity for latent humiliations of Donald Trump in a post Trump world, I think. But. But here, here me out for a second because I took. I took the brunt. Once again, I was here to say that I feel emotionally about the East Wing, watching the metaphor of them physically tear down symbols of our democracy while they actually tear down our democracy. I was ready to be livid with JBL on the. On the secret pod until he went into anybody who's unwilling to tear it down on day one because it costs nothing. You know, my, My rational brain kicks in and says, well, a demolition like that obviously doesn't cost nothing. Jbl, I meant to run number two. Maybe they. Maybe they actually find that it has some utility. And that's not an. But my biggest thing, for the love of God, all I want for anything is I have two buckets for how I think about any particular issue. Does it help Democrats win or doesn't it help Democrats win? And in this case, I don't think anything about the ballroom, which the average American and people in there were. Like Sarah says, people don't care, but I care. Yes. Sickos, the ones who listen to every podcast we do. We know you care. You are deeply tapped in. You are not like regular people out there who have no idea there's a ballroom, who have no idea that there was an eastern East Wing on the White House. Most people don't know that. You are smart. You are plugged in. Most people are not. And they will not care about this. And you would sound deranged as a candidate who got up there and said, priority number one, priority number one to.

[Tim Miller]

The base that you understand where they're at and you're going to act. And that's the way to do it.

[JVL]

Sarah, I do want to give one counter, the only counter I've heard that it was compelling to me, to your point, came from RJ Layman, who tweeted this.

[Sarah Longwell]

Oh, rj.

[JVL]

Yeah, Our boy rj. Yeah, good point. He writes this. Why are people freaking out about the White House? And then he replies to that hypothetical. To that hypothetical. I invite you to go on nextdoor and see how people typically respond to Minor architectural changes to random homes in their neighborhood. You think it'd be different for the one they see on the $20 bill? Yeah, I was compelled by that, actually. I was like, maybe people are up. Maybe people will get upset by the images of our democracy being torn down. People don't like change.

[Sarah Longwell]

That's true. I think. I think if you tie it to a bigger story of like, this is good, he both literally and metaphorically is tearing down the structures of our democracy. Like, you can do it. I just, I don't think it is the essential litmus test for every candidate.

[JVL]

I still love a good night out. I don't know about you guys, but I can't always drink anymore on the weeknights, you know, especially. I got a podcast the next day. I got to be sharp. And so we've turned to a different alternative. It's our sponsor, Souls out of Office Gummies and Beverages. I'm more of a beverage band myself. They give a light happy buzz without the hangover, sugar or awkward next morning. These are federally legal, in case anybody was wondering. Federally legal. Tom Homan, what you did in the kava bag, not legal. Drinking an out of office beverage, legal. So you can come and take them if you want to. Sol is a wellness brand that believes feeling good should be fun and easy. Sol specializes in delicious hemp derived THC and CBD products designed to boost your mood and help you unwind. Their bestselling out of Office Gummies were designed to provide a mild relaxing buzz, boost your mood and enhance creativity and relaxation. With five different strengths, you can tailor the dose to fit your vibe. From a gentle 1.5 microdose to their newest Sarah Longwell approved 15 milligram gummy.

[Sarah Longwell]

I do that joke about you on min.

[JVL]

But it's true about you. You are more of a gummy woman than me.

[Sarah Longwell]

I am. But I would never take a 15.

[JVL]

Keep the 15. We honor all of our sponsors and all of their products, but personally, the 15 is really more of a Tyler. All of Sol's products are made from organically farmed USA grown hemp. And if you like their out of Office gummies, as mentioned, try their out of Office Beverages, a refreshing, alcohol free alternative that's perfect for winding down on the couch while watching below deck. Bring on the good vibes and treat yourself to soul today. Right now, Soul's offering our audience 30 off your entire order. Go to getsoul.com and use the code. The next level. That's getsoul.com promo code. The next level for 30% off.

[Sarah Longwell]

The reason that I like Soul is because they make, like, threes. They make, like, the low, really low ones.

[Tim Miller]

Guys, I got a business idea for us, okay? For champagne tier members of the Bulwark community, we will do a focus group where I take a gummy for the first time in my life.

[Sarah Longwell]

I love this idea.

[Tim Miller]

And we just get me reacting in real time to the focus group as it's happening.

[Sarah Longwell]

Do you know what I love about this idea is for the first time, you'd get JBL being like, this dude's all right. That guy's not so stupid. He seems okay. Yeah, man. It will chill you out.

[JVL]

Or. Or it might be like, is this I real? Is this real? Am I. Am I on Earth right now? The looking glass situation.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, I feel like I could touch the moon. Okay. Hey, we're going to war. Maybe in Venezuela. Maybe we'll take the oil. I don't know. We've blown up some more boats this week. Donald Trump has said land is next. We had a report from Venezuela and Maduro. So not. Not a reliable report that he had apprehended CIA teams, which, of course, is meaningless. It could mean that either he apprehended people who work for the CIA or contractors or Venezuelan rebel units which had had contact with CIA or could all be a lie, because, again, the Maduro regime is terrible. We do have an enormous flotilla of firepower hanging out down there right now at tremendous cost. Why? We have deployed more forces than we're at the Battle of Midway to. To knock out a couple speedboats in Venezuela. Not really clear to me. Do you guys have thoughts on this?

[Sarah Longwell]

Is this a problem?

[Tim Miller]

Is it all going to be cool just like everything else?

[Sarah Longwell]

I got a bunch of thoughts. I'll just toss out a couple. I'll just toss out a couple to start one. You know, because Trump ran as this, like, peacetime president, right? Like, no, I'm sorry.

[JVL]

I had a brief imagination that Sarah's like. And my thought is, I want to take Venezuela. We are invading, getting rid of the commies. I went full 1988 Sarah out here.

[Sarah Longwell]

So, anyway, well, it is interesting that he. Well, I have a bunch of. They're. They're thoughts that. That maybe beg some questions. Although one I'm going to answer, and the first one is, why is it that Mr. Peacetime President, Mr. No Forever wars, is getting away with the MAGA base, with the Venezuela stuff in a way that they don't even sort of on Israel support, certainly not on Ukraine. And I think It's a matter of when people think of America First. Right? America first isn't just a slogan. It is a prioritization, like announcement. Right? Anything that takes resources from America and puts it somewhere else is bad under America first policy, which is why they don't like sending resources to Ukraine. And if, but like generally Americans are cool, especially MAGA school. If we're just bombing things over here, there's no boots on the ground, there's no wars and there's no resource allocation that they can see that takes something away from Americans. That was one thought I had about why I just feel like this one is more popular also. People tend to.

[JVL]

Is it popular? I, I, that's a genuine question, not a troll. I haven't looked at the polling.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yes, it is popular. That is, yes, it is. It is, it is relatively popular right now. Now people haven't been making, except in elite circles, I think, an argument against this because in part in the beginning you're sort of like, what is happening here, right? What is, are these, are they drug boats? How do we know? And only now that they've dropped five like, and killed over 50 people does it seem like people are finally saying, and also, you know, and this was my sort of second thought is for a long time there's been a bit of Congress being like, what is the President's power when it comes to war? Like the War Powers act has become a controversial and we don't have Congress anymore. Not only is it shut down, but it's also completely supine when it comes to Trump. And so I think suddenly people are like, huh, can the President, are they just going to wage war against Venezuela maybe? And no one else is going to weigh in on that. Possibly. And Trump hates Maduro because the other thing is like, Trump loves a dictator. Why does he hate Maduro?

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Sarah Longwell]

He loves him because he is a socialist dictator. He is not a right wing fascist.

[Tim Miller]

Dictator like Putin, unlike G. Oh, wait a minute, no, G is also a socialist dictator.

[Sarah Longwell]

Oh yeah, that's true. But he does hate Maduro. He hates, I think because, I think because he's genuinely impressed and in a negative way at the extent to which Venezuela crashed its own economy.

[Tim Miller]

Well, I think it's in part because Venezuela, so, so Chavez and Maduro have achieved power in part by positioning themselves against the United as, as the Great Satan, which was going to invade any minute. This was like a big component of Chavez's rise, is like, ah, the Americans are about to invade any second. And, and so Trump couldn't In the way that, like, Bukele is just a guy running around doing extra, extrajudicial killings on gang members and people he says are gang members and people he says Trump loves drugs, which Trump loves. Right. And it was. Was America neutral? Because Maduro, for internal reasons, has been. I mean, this is really Maduro's.

[JVL]

Well, Trump's negative. I mean, it's really about Trump. And if Maduro was like, America is a great Satan, but they're being saved by the brilliance of Mr. Trump. Right. Then it would be different.

[Tim Miller]

Then it would have been fine.

[Sarah Longwell]

Sure.

[JVL]

Yeah. Right, right, yeah. I mean, Trump wants to. Trump has always wanted to kill drug dealers. And I think that we have a confluence of things where, like, Marco. This is a personal pet project for Marco Rubio, who's gained a lot of power because he has ideological, anti commie, Latin latam views. And then I think you combine that with. Trump has always really wanted to kill the drug dealers. Duterte, he was really impressed with Duterte that he killed drug dealers. Trump is a teetotaler. He's always felt like he could kind of, you know, get his, like, in a rage out on against drug dealers. He can't do that in America so far. You can't do summary executions on people selling drugs. America. But maybe you can't.

[Tim Miller]

Drug dealers have a certain pigmentation.

[JVL]

Yeah, maybe you can. It turns out, if it's on sea. Can I do killings if it's on C and nobody's stopping me? Okay. So I think it's a combination with Trump liking the idea of killing drug dealers and being able to, in this case at least so far politically, because there's no constraints on him, Congressional or legal or otherwise, with Marco's more ideological move. And then maybe there's a dabbling of taking the oil, and he did in 2024, talk about taking the Venezuelan oil. So maybe that's sort of floating around in his little brain too. It's a little. Flies are buzzing around up there, but I don't. I think that is, like, what's happening. I don't. It is. To me, I find it, like, absolutely insane that there's been not just like a total apoplectic pushback on this. And we've killed 57 people. Like, we don't know who they are. We don't know what drugs they were carrying. They haven't provided any information.

[Tim Miller]

We captured a couple people and instead of treating them like prisoners of war, we just like, you know, gave them.

[JVL]

Back, sent them back. There's no Credible threat. And it's one thing, I guess a comparison I could imagine somebody making that isn't watching this that closely is like, how is this that different than the droning campaigns that was happening basically from Obama all the way through Trump won? And it's like, well, sure, I mean, we definitely killed some innocent people in those drone strikes and, and people should have kind of, you know, policy disagreements and critiques of that for sure. But like, at least there was a rationale of like, we're going after people that are terrorists or that are involved in terrorist organizations that are at some level at least quasi plotting to go after U.S. or U.S. interests or allies. And you could name them. So, right. I mean, you would say, like you could name the leaders of the organization.

[Tim Miller]

This is the person who was killed in the drone strike. We can tell you who they were, we can tell you why we targeted.

[JVL]

Them, et cetera, et cetera. And there were fuck up. They killed family members of people and they did the wedding. So there were fuck ups and those were criticized and there were investigations and there was Hill oversight. That isn't really analogous to this. We're killing unnamed people at sea for no reason. Like literally no stated reason, except, oh, well, they're drug dealers. It's like, okay, but they're not real. And they're going to, the boats are going to Trinidad. They're not coming to America.

[Tim Miller]

Tim. Each one of those boats, if they made landfall, would kill 25,000Americans.

[Sarah Longwell]

Well, that's, he keeps, well he keeps saying, he keeps tagging them with fentanyl, like that actually isn't true. The fentanyl is coming across the southern border, like, that's where.

[JVL]

Or through ships, through China. It's like China and Mexico.

[Sarah Longwell]

That's right.

[JVL]

Fentanyl's coming from. No, the thing is great, and it's totally, it's totally insane. Like the drug, we don't even really get drugs from Venice and some of it goes from Colombia through Venezuela. It's like. But the whole, the whole thing is insane. I mean, it's like, well, could we kill? Like, what if there was somebody that was bringing drugs like a cr. Like that was just bringing like, I don't know, a couple ounces of cocaine across the border from Mexico at Tijuana. Can we drone them? Can we. Is that, is that a summary? Because like, yes, I think under this policy.

[Tim Miller]

So here is my, my question for you guys because I think there may be an ulterior motive here, okay, which is that Maduro is one of the very Very few world leaders who is explicitly anti Trump. Again, not saying he's one of us. He is not. He's not a never Trumper. He's just a bad guy who is, who's positioned internally as right, not a member of the resistance. I wonder if Trump doesn't in his lizard brain understand that if he can get Maduro toppled and claim that scalp, that becomes a very powerful thing for him to brandish around the rest of the world stage. You think you want to cross me, I got Nicolas Maduro killed.

[JVL]

Well, so here's the thing, jvl, that is like, okay, I mean, I think that's a very separate conversation. And because I don't want Trump to have any additional power to be in power, to be emboldened, like I would not be for this. But you could make a rational case for. I guess there's a report that we're trying to bribe the pilot that again, I don't know if this is true, but that there was an intelligence operation. They went to Majora's pilot. They're like, if you either turn them, I forget if it was turn them over or kill them or something, then you'll have generational wealth. And the pilot said no. But it's like, okay, that's at least there's a rationale for that. Right. Like, I mean, I don't, I wouldn't necessarily. Not that great of one, but like, okay, you know, he lost an election, he's a legal dictator, he's in our hemisphere, etc. Etc. But like that's, that's a separate operation than yeeting boats out of the Caribbean.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Can I just say very quickly on the, the trying to bribe a pilot, do you know what hampers your ability to make deals like that?

[Sarah Longwell]

When you having a president who's a welcher who doesn't keep any of his.

[Tim Miller]

Deals, when you in fact go to a bunch of criminals with whom you made deals to, to turn over people so that you could prosecute Venezuelan drug and then you invalidate their deals and send them back, that tells anybody who's in Venezuela, oh, I can't trust the Yankees. The Yankee tells me he's going to give me generational wealth. No fucking way. He's never going to do that. Right.

[JVL]

I'm going to be, I'm going to be in the El Salvador Gulag and Sukkot like these other guys that we did that the NS13 is MS.13.

[Sarah Longwell]

In that case, yeah, I sort of agree with you, jbl. I mean, I think there's no doubt Trump and Rubio would like to see regime. Regime change in Venezuela. They would. And so like if the bombing of these boats somehow kind of rolls into giving them a pretext to do that in some way, I think that's a chance. I think that's a shot they might take.

[JVL]

How? Like, I don't understand the connection between the boat operation and regime change in Venezuela. It's not like we're killing generals or like, or Maduro, a park apparatchiks, because it's escalating pressure.

[Tim Miller]

So, right. You start by killing boats. The implicit, you hope that you're hoping.

[JVL]

That Venezuela kills one of our guys then. And then we can go in and do regime change. Like that's the.

[Tim Miller]

No, I think what you're hoping for is internal regime change. You're hoping to destabilize things, that some general kills Maduro. And I mean, this is, you know, our friends on children public made this point. If you get regime change in Venezuela, Venezuela is not going to become a liberal democracy. You're just going to get the next dictator up. Right? But I don't think Trump cares about that at all. He doesn't want, like, liberal democracy. He just wants this one guy dead so he can say, hey, look, look, I killed that guy.

[Sarah Longwell]

Here, I'll just read this quickly from Politico. Just maybe to answer Tim's question, when somebody asked, would everyone like Maduro to go yes, A Trump administration official said of the US President and his aides, we're going to put a tremendous amount of pressure on him. He's weak. It's quite possible he'll fall from this pressure alone without us having to do anything more direct.

[JVL]

Well, we've killed 57 people at sea.

[Tim Miller]

But yeah, sure, our next sponsor is Rocket Money. Ever feel like your money just disappears each month? It's easier than ever to overspend from subscriptions piling up, which you should keep, obviously. Don't. Don't stop yourself.

[Sarah Longwell]

Just ours.

[Tim Miller]

Not everybody's to impulse buys.

[JVL]

I can do this for you, actually, if you want me to review your subscriptions as well. A one off for Bulwark plus members. That could be a champagne tier. I've got some thoughts on some of the other substacks you might want to cut.

[Tim Miller]

You get ads on your phone, you order takeout a couple times a month. Rocket Money helps you rein it in by showing you where your money is going and helping you make better decisions so you can keep more money in your pocket. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps Find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. I, for one, did not realize how long I've been paying for streaming services like Peacock or Paramount plus. And I have to get rid of the MLB TV once season's over. I'm sorry, that's not true. I'm never going to get rid of MLB tv. But Rocket Money has helped me sort all these things out. It shows you all your expenses in one place, including subscriptions you forgot about, which is a thing that I have because I have hundreds of subscriptions. If you see a subscription that you no longer want, Rocket Money will help you cancel it even bigger. Bigger help. Rocket Money will even try to negotiate lower bills for you. The app automatically scans your bills to find opportunities to save and then goes to work. Gets you better deals. They'll even talk to customer service so you don't have to. Which is amazing because you guys know how much I like talking to human beings. Rocket Money has saved users over $2.5 billion, including over 880 million in canceled subscriptions alone. Their 10 million members save up to $740 a year when they use all the app's premium features. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com TheNextLevel today. That's RocketMoney.com TheNextLevel RocketMoney.com TheNextLevel now we gotta talk about the big part of the show. We had a report deciding to win. A big memo coming out from Simon Bazelon and his team saying that the real problem is that Democrats are captured by the left and they don't talk about economics and they just have to do popular things. It's a popularism thing. And. And then everything will be fine. I imagine you guys have a great many thoughts, and I am here for them. Who wants to go first?

[JVL]

I wanted to hear Sarah go first.

[Sarah Longwell]

Did you. Do you hate this jbl? Like, did you. Does this. Does this report make you angry?

[Tim Miller]

No, I. What this report triggers in me is the same skepticism I always have whenever somebody says, hey, jvl, that thing that you really like, that will be popular. Just do that and everything will be fine. Because I like most of the things in this. I think most of the things in this report that it says Democrats should do are great and would be good for democracy. And therefore I have absolutely no confidence that they are the path back to winning. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. But I, again, I Get very nervous whenever somebody says, ah, jvl the stuff you like, if only we did that, everything would be fine. So that's, that's where I start in this.

[Sarah Longwell]

I see. Okay. Well, I would like to say as a disclaimer just out front of this, I was consulted on this particular thing. I'm in the acknowledgments. And so I did several.

[JVL]

What kind of consulting?

[Sarah Longwell]

Like, I talked like I was consulted, like I did a sit down with them. And they, you know.

[JVL]

They interviewed you.

[Sarah Longwell]

They interviewed me, yeah. So I'm in the acknowledgments of somebody that they interviewed. And so maybe I shouldn't be shocked that this more or less was made in a lab. For me, this does include a great many things that I think need to be done. And here's the, here's the biggest thing I want to push on. And this is why jbl, I thought maybe you might not like it because I think a lot of the people who listen to us might not like it as a, as a framework for how the, the party gets back. And I think that anybody who looks at this and thinks that it is a conversation or is an addendum to the conversation of should we be more progressive or should we be more moderate? Ends up missing what's really in here. Because it's not necessarily. I do think it comes away broadly as a moderate people and policies do better, but it's not exclusively that. And I think that what.

[JVL]

Which is true.

[Sarah Longwell]

It is true. I mean, it's 100% true. But the thing that I love about this report is it gives voice to something that I know to be true from listening to voters. And the one thing I would challenge our listeners to do is ask yourself if you are in a containment bubble of your own. I realized that I was in a bubble of my own when Donald Trump happened because I had no idea that Republicans could be like this, like 2016, 2015. Sarah was like, but they believe in all these other things. Character matters.

[Tim Miller]

I read the Weekly Standard. I know what Republicans believe in.

[Sarah Longwell]

That's right. And I know how angry people get at having or trying to listen to the focus group podcast because you have to listen to regular people. But the thing that I'm desperate, the reason that I make the focus group podcast is I know it's painful to listen to, but there are some truths, some fundamental truths that I think it's tough for Democrats to believe are true. But here are some of them. The average voter is white, is not college educated, and is like, over 50. Okay, so just in your head, picture a white guy over 50 without a college degree.

[JVL]

We could picture a white woman, because you can picture a white woman.

[Sarah Longwell]

But I'm just saying, just hold them and let me tell you, like, that is the average voter. So start there and then think about the things that that person thinks. So one of the things that Democrats who listen to this show often say to me is like, Sarah, you go on and on about immigration and like, that mattered, but Biden put up a bill or whatever. Let me tell you what, I listen to Democrats to swing voters all the time. They care a lot about immigration. They care a lot about crime. People don't want it to be true, but it is. And they want us to have an immigration policy. And it's not. They're not insane. They want our immigration policy to be very much like, let have people come here. They just want them to do it. And this is the term they use, the right way, which they mean legally. Now, do Americans not know what it means to come legally, how difficult that is, how we don't have a particularly good system for it? That is true. But the average American absolutely wants people like, they want immigrants to come here legally and anybody who comes here illegally, including a lot of Democrats. And this is a thing, I think there's a. A certain type of Democrat that doesn't realize who's in the coalition with them. And it is a lot of people who care about crime. They think crime is a huge problem. They want Democrats to address it. And this is, this is really what's in the report that I think makes a lot of sense is that the voters are saying to the Democrats, the things that you focus on, abortion, climate, identity, those are not important to me. And I want you to focus on the things that are important to me, which are the economy, immigration, crime. And so that's it. Like, that is. That is what. That is what the takeaway from this is. And it is 100% the takeaway that I have from listening to voters for the last eight years. Yes. JBL question.

[Tim Miller]

So Twitter focuses a lot on climate and identity and abortion.

[JVL]

But.

[Tim Miller]

But I feel like the last Democratic administration that did, like, laws and governing focused mostly on economics, right? I mean, like, did a lot of economic stuff. And when it, like, touched gun reform, it did it in a way that was incredibly moderate and not extremist. I don't think there was a lot of. I mean, to the extent that there was climate stuff in it, it was mostly around creating jobs in red states. And building infrastructure. I don't remember any, like, big gender stuff out of the Biden administration. It doesn't seem to have been.

[Sarah Longwell]

Are you serious right now?

[Tim Miller]

I mean, a thousand percent. I mean, what, what were the pieces of legislation that the, the one, the one big legislation, legislative initiative Biden did was codifying same sex marriage. Right. It passed a bill to. That was the big thing it did on, on gender stuff.

[Sarah Longwell]

So this, this, actually, this is a good point. Actually, this is. Or this is an interesting distinction. It is a question of what voters think Democrats focus on because it is what they hear Democrats talk about.

[Tim Miller]

Now, Joe Biden, people on Twitter. Right? I mean, this is.

[Sarah Longwell]

No, no, no, no, no. I think no Democrats, Democratic politicians. So. And this is a really good example. I understand we all, I think we all, the three of us agree that Joe Biden did some things that were good and earnest and needed to be done, like the infrastructure bill. But that is a political matter. It was basically malfeasance to put all of that money right. To charge the bill. He charged the bill for the infrastructure bill. And all the things that are getting built right now, they're happening now and Donald Trump's putting his name on them. And so the question is, what do people hear? Not what is actually, actually true. But this is why I scream and yell about the communications piece, because what people. And you can't say that when you say, I mean, abortion. Like one of the things that's in this report that is very clear is that people think the Democrats only talk about abortion. Why did they think that? Because that was one of the only issues they had that was popular that they wanted to run on and that. And so, and why, why do Democrats, why are they using health care right now as the thing for the shutdown? That is one of the few things that they are popular on. Go ahead, Tim.

[JVL]

Yeah, sure. I mean, I think that, and this kind of speaks to kind of what my commentary on the commentary about this memo is. To your point, jbl Like, I think what's frustrating for people is that a lot of the stuff is in the eye of the beholder. Right? And like, if you are the type of person that is like, I'm really focused on what legislative acts are being signed. Like, you might have a different perspective on the Biden administration than if you're a person who's just casually receiving information.

[Sarah Longwell]

Which is all of them, right. Which is 90% of people who are.

[JVL]

Just casually receiving information in front of your eyeballs. You also might have a different perception if you, you know, like, I mean, the way in which Biden talked about, the way in which Democrats talk about stuff they do, it is true. They do still couch it in, you know, a lot of times in equity and, you know, versus how you would hear Trump talk about a similar, like they could both pass infrastructure bills. Think about the ways that they would talk about them. The way that they would talk about them would different. So if so you, so if you're sensitive to that, like, you might notice that. And, and I think that like, to me the takeaway from this is, is, is how do you define yourself as a Democrat, right? And I think that maybe if Biden was younger and spryer and was Scranton Joe, he could have successfully defined himself as a guy that was fighting for working Joes and working stiffs. But he didn't. Like, he just didn't in a way that Bernie does kind of successfully define himself as somebody that's fighting the oligarchs for working people. He just does like, that's just, that's a definition of people. And I see this same kind of analytical error in the comments from my Twitter feed about the Kamala race, right? Whereas like some people, through the eyes of like a left wing progressive, they look at the common race and they say, well, you ran, she ran as a centrist. She had Liz Cheney at an event and she talked about, you know, whatever killing lethality in her convention speech, which I liked. And like, she did all stuff but like, if you look at the polls, I people thought Trump was more moderate than her. Why was that? Right, because they, because to a lot of swing voters, Kamala was defined not by, you know, like her corporate corporatist centrism or whatever the progressives will smear with, but she was defined by her cultural views, right? Like that she was had left wing cultural views. And being a black woman certainly contributed to that. Right. And so like, to analyze why Kamala lost, you have to like see both of those things, right? Like simultaneously, she lost some progressive people, young people, black voters. You know, she didn't do quite as well with them in part because there was some faction of them that thought that she seemed like a corporate establishment moderate shill. And then she also lost another group of people that looked at her and saw her as a far left progressive San Francisco progressive and that Donald Trump was more moderate because he took heterodox views on various things. And there are these two factions in this debate on the Democratic Party right now and they refuse to see what the other side of the faction is saying, right? Like, they're like, no, what are you talking about? She was a corporate shill. She ran as a Liz Cheney Democrat. And then the Matt Iglesia side would be like, no, what are you talking about? Like, she was a left wing culture warrior who cared about trans surgeries, like, whatever. And it's like, no, like, she. Both, she lost both. And to me, like, the interesting thing in the memo is that like, being a moderate is not actually what I would like, maybe is not like, about moderate temperament, about gradual change, about, you know, protecting institutions and like, whatever. It is about being heterodox. It's about being different.

[Sarah Longwell]

On, it's about transcending political parties. This is the thing people say about Trump all the time is they're like, he's not really a Republican. He kind of like transcends politics or he hangs. And I'm like, yeah, true, true. But that's, but that's what they like about him. And this is where, just to put a finer point on something Tim is saying, and this is, this is the thing, I'm sort of desperate for people to understand about the broader perception because people are like, how can you look at Donald Trump and say like, he's not radical, he's what? The fact is, because people view him in this heterodox, you know, hanging above the political parties. The share of voters who think the Democratic Party is Too liberal, just 54%, remains substantially higher than the share of voters who think the Republican Party is too conservative. And that is because. Why is that? It is because Donald Trump was a moderating force in their minds on the Republican Party, that he made it less like Mike Obama with liberals, yes.

[JVL]

Better with moderates and conservatives running against John McCain and Mitt Romney.

[Sarah Longwell]

And voters, yeah, voters do see the Democratic Party as out of touch. The percentage of people who see the Democratic Party as out of touch has increased dramatically. And the, the, the percentage of voters that see the Republican Party is out of touch has decreased slightly because they see them as being more economically populous than they used to. And so, like, this is, I understand it makes you mad, jbl, but this is the difference. I would just say again, going back to everything I do is like, how do you win? And that requires a fierce reckoning with the state of things. Not the world as, as you want it, not as the world as you perceive it from your particular bubble, but like the world as it is. And if you just look at the stats and I, not one bad poll or whatever, I'm like, the ones that go over and over and over again. A 50 year old or above white person, okay, without a college degree is the median voter. And they care about the economy and they care about immigration and they care about crime and they want their health care to be cheaper. They care about affordability and inflation.

[Tim Miller]

But like, so is a bird answer.

[JVL]

So I want to come to this. This is the thing that worries me the most. And I think that honestly the most likely path, like, I just think it's important. Like, I say this all the time, but it's important to set the table. The most likely path out of this is that Donald Trump instigates a great Depression and that the Democrats learn nothing and put up a terrible person who wins by accident. Like, that's like the most likely path out.

[Tim Miller]

Sounds great to me.

[JVL]

I take that in the heartbeat. Of course.

[Sarah Longwell]

We should be so lucky. That's not ideal.

[JVL]

Yeah, yeah, we take it. We should be so lucky. But anyway, but if you're trying to be strategic, this is the thing for the memo. And like, regardless. And I particularly want progressive folks to hear this. No, actually I want people on both sides, like people who are sympathetic to the memo arguers, which I am because it has a hard truth for both factions in the Democratic Party. Right. One is being moderate does not mean running on a defense of the establishment elites. Status quo.

[Sarah Longwell]

That's right.

[JVL]

That's what I would like. And what.

[Tim Miller]

That's what I would like.

[JVL]

Right. Me too. And that's what Kamala did. Let's just like she might not have intended to, but that was the perception. She didn't. She was. People saw her as the status quo candidate and like. And so that is where moderation fails. And you see this in lots of the types of candidates that I like. Aren't the times to be like, we need to really tear down whatever we direct everything. Yeah, they might throw some lip service into we need to go after the billionaire class. But like there's no, you can sense. You can just smell it on somebody if they're like a status quo type candidate. And so that's the biggest risk for moderates. People don't want a status quo type candidate. And that's not what moderation is. Also two, people do not want an anti establishment candidate that has all kinds of unpopular views and baggage. And like, this is the issue on the left. And like they'll look at Zoran or look at whoever and be like, well, it works there. And it's like, well, that isn't working for Sarah's median voter in Harrisburg who didn't go to college and is 52. Right. Like you cannot, you, you don't just get to solve the problem of being anti establishment by saying, okay, I'm going to be anti establishment, anti status quo and I'm going to be a, whatever left wing populist. And also I'm kind of for the, actually the cultural establishment. And I think that I have the same exact views as the most lib person on, in Hollywood when it comes to gays and guns and, and every immigration and every other issue. Like your people are, you're. That is not going to work either. Like, that is not popular either. Like being, like being moderate is, is, is being heterodox. And that is why the response to that you get from left wing people is what worked for Trump. Trump went to the right and, and took all kinds of unpopular views. And like in part that's true, but the Republican base is different. It's more homogenous, number one. And again the median voter is an over 50 non college white person. So they're more amenable to Trump's unpopular views. So in part it's true, but in a big part it's not true. Trump looked at unpopular views of the Republican establishment on fucking Social Security and entitlements, on foreign wars. Foreign wars, and he said immigration, I'm against the party on that. Well, immigration, he moved to the right on the other two. He moved at the center on wars and on entitlements he moved to the center. He did so aggressively. And so if you're a Democratic left wing populist and you want this to work, what are the two issues where you are going to say the Democratic establishment is wrong and I'm going to move to the center on them. There's nobody doing that. There's nobody doing that. Like every once in a while you'll get a Graham Platner or whatever. He'll be like, well I like guns. It's like, okay, but I want like, but Trump didn't just like throw around from time to time. I like whatever he made going against the neocons in the wars like central to his campaign. And I just think it's hard for people to like really let that lesson sink in.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. And when you say so, so you're right to the right, I guess. But the re he ran against Republican, like on immigration, he was basically saying they won't do anything about this. They're beholden to the, the corporate interests who want us to have a lot of legal Immorance. Who does, but not me. So it's not even like. Right. It's like he ran against his own party on that stuff and like they were too squishy. I mean, look, a super majority of Americans, 71% identify as moderate or conservative. And that includes a majority of swing voters, non voters, working class voters and minority voters. And like, I just think that the left, the left, big, big picture left and the whole pro democracy coalition has to grapple with some of this. And one of the reasons that I think I get a little bit bugged on this somewhat is that not that I read your comments, but there's a lot of people who's like, Sarah's still such.

[JVL]

You do read the comments. Because this is a community.

[Sarah Longwell]

No, it is a community.

[JVL]

We love hearing from you.

[Sarah Longwell]

Of course I read the comments and. But there's a lot of like, Sarah's just wants us to be like Republicans. Sarah's still a Republican at heart. Let me tell you something, guys. The extent to which I am willing to subvert my personal policy preferences for electing Democrats over this insane group of MAGAs cannot be overstated. And so what I am asking for, right? And I subvert it out of the desire to win and to beat them. What I like about this report, deciding to win, and this is a Nancy Pelosi quotation. Nancy Pelosi was like, first you decide to win and then every single thing you do is in service to that act. And that is how I think about politics now. It's not because I want the Democratic Party to be more like Republicans. I am, trust me, I have left all of my personal policy preferences aside. I think the reason I do the focus groups is I want to know what will allow Democrats to beat back the dangerous forces of maga. And the fact is some of those answers are things like you got to focus more on immigration and crime and you got to focus more on jobs and you got to stop focusing on all the social issues.

[Tim Miller]

All right, well, so talk to me a little bit. Like, what does that actually look like?

[JVL]

It's a really good question. It's really hard. I want to throw out one other thing. You mentioned the.

[Tim Miller]

Tim, I always ask the big questions two minutes before the show is over.

[JVL]

I know, I know. That's okay. I took. I ate a snack before the show today so I wouldn't be grumpy at you when you did the inevitable JVL thing. I'm starting to prepare. You know, that's important. You know, you got to prepare for challenges in life so you can overcome them. It's not just that. The other thing in the memo is that they also lost ground in like the precincts where it has the lowest number of white people and they're the poorest. Right. It's like they went over a couple of precincts and I was like, there's one precinct that's like, it's like just an apartment complex of poor Chinese Americans apparently. And like in that precinct, the Democrats like tanked. And then a couple of precincts with like where it's just black, extremely low income, government housing type view, like the Democrats tanked. Now they still won those voters but like from where they were at Obama times till like now. And so it's like, what are those people mad about? Like, in addition to, like, why are you losing ground with that voter in addition to with the kind of white non college voters that we're talking about. And to me it's just like I go back to the Carville thing. I don't think there's an easy answer, but I always come back to like before the election when I think about when I kind of suspected that things would go bad until an seltzer changed, you know, gave me false hope, which I'll never forgive her for. Was when I asked Carville on the show, I forgot it was like a week two for the election and he was promoting the documentary about him and they had his famous like, what are the three things on the whiteboard for the Clinton? I was like, what are Kamala's three things? And he just couldn't answer it because nobody could. There was no answer. Kamala Harris says for a lot of things she did well in the campaign, but she just didn't have like three things. And I just think it's like politics. The types of people that we're talking about, the Democrats are struggling with just don't know what is in the infrastructure bill and aren't going to. And we should just be eyes wide open about that. And they need to know two or three things about you. And what are the two or three things they need to know? And it needs to be like I. And this is where the lefty should like me because like the number one thing is good to be like, I care about you having access to work, having, you know, having, having access to healthcare, food and like I want to. And I care mostly about working people that are struggling. And that's the number one thing. And that's all I talk about. And it's on my hat and it's my brand, it's my identity. And then the other thing they have to know about you is something that's like, where you're different from the Democratic Party. And you talk about that all the time. And if a Democrat called me in 2028, I'd be like, that's what I would do. I'd pick the one thing you're mad at the party about and I would talk about. And I just hang out with poor people all the time and talk about working class stuff and then maybe that'll break through and then you'll be defined that way. Now you then have to deal with the counter definition where the Republicans will try to define you for, for whatever the craziest thing you said, you know, about prisoners, you know, or whatever. But, but maybe that, that, that you get a shield from that if you're defined yourself better.

[Tim Miller]

So let me just try this on for, for size. So a Democrat whose whiteboard issues are Medicare for all and we're going to build 20 million housing. That's it. That's all they talk about. No, it's not gonna do it for you.

[JVL]

Jobs work, I think.

[Sarah Longwell]

No, they have to. This is where you need Democrats to say, we're gonna hire a million nurses, a million cops, a million new teachers, and we are gonna have a bull.

[Tim Miller]

How does that work? The federal government doesn't employ teachers. The federal government doesn't employ cops. Like how. I don't understand how that promise.

[Sarah Longwell]

Of course they do. They can, of course they can have initiatives that focuses on hiring these people. They just, I mean, of course they can.

[JVL]

To the states and cities.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah, they give. This is not. That's. And, and a bold thing that both has people working and says, these are the people who help. We are the Democratic Party. Because I ask people this all the time in focus groups and I say, what do you think? Like, the point of Democrats is like, I asked both parties, like, what is the main thrust of your political party? And the Democrats sort of were like, well, first of all, they have super hard time answering it. But the ones who do usually land on something like, well, we're the party that helps people. And so if I were constructing a. A platform, it would involve hiring a lot of people focusing on jobs. The people who help, we need more social workers, we need more cops, we need more nurses, we need more doctors, we need more teachers. We're going to focus on building. And this is where Democrats would call that human infrastructure. Don't call it human infrastructure. Cops, nurses, doctors, teachers, social workers, people who Help all of us make a country better. Okay. That is it. And I also want to. I want to pull out something else from the report because I think it's really instructive. So one of the charts that they have in there is the. They call it an electability index from the 2028 Democratic hopefuls, and they rank them in their performance relative to their most recent election.

[JVL]

This one get bought.

[Sarah Longwell]

I sure wasn't. I sure wasn't. So from top to bottom, I can't read you all of them, but I'm just going to say his name.

[JVL]

Say his name. Sarah, who's the top?

[Sarah Longwell]

Actually, I'm glad to go ahead. Who do you think is the number one?

[JVL]

Josh. Josh. Josh. Josh.

[Sarah Longwell]

No, he's number two. He's number two. Number one is Andy Beshear, because he's in Kentucky. So this is relative to expectations. Right. So it's Andy Beshear, Josh Shapiro, Amy Klobuchar, Ruben Gallego, Mark Kelly, Raphael Warnock, John Ossoff, and then Westmore, Gretchen Whitmer and Pete Buttigieg. Is your, like, break even. Okay, so like Mark Cuban, which I don't even know how they did Cuban because I don't think he's been elected to anything. Oh, maybe that's why they have an N A. Because they haven't been elected to anything. Okay, so they have some NAs in the middle and then people who performed relative to expert. Now we get into the red zone. The worst performance, people who underperformed the most, their expectations. Who do you think is the biggest underperformer?

[Tim Miller]

Sure, it's Gavin.

[Sarah Longwell]

It is Gavin Newsom. It is Gavin Newsom. Then Ro Khanna, then Jamie all figured.

[Tim Miller]

Out they've identified the one Democrat who's doing something useful.

[Sarah Longwell]

And then.

[JVL]

Sarcastic, though can I say directly, I think this is actually more instructive for House and Senate races and stuff than it is for a presidential race, because I agree with you. They really aren't comparable. And I think it's kind of silly to compare the Kentucky governor's race to how you would perform in a presidential race. But it is very useful for House and Senate races, and people should learn some lessons from it.

[Sarah Longwell]

I just think it's useful for how to think. I don't. I wouldn't actually use it for. Because presidents have, like, the bigness of the country and charisma and all the other things that, that, that play into this. But just thinking about who does best in electoral performances in states that are geared either for or against them, that is it is very instructive.

[Tim Miller]

All right.

[JVL]

What a show.

[Tim Miller]

What a show. Good show. Long show. I'm always happy when the things that I want turn out to be the solutions that everybo needs. That's. That's excellent. Oh, boy.

[JVL]

That's nice. What's wrong, J. Be happy. Happiness is nice.

[Tim Miller]

I am. I again. I just. I look at these things and I'm like, look, if the answer is like, moderates who are responsible are going to do good government things, that's great. I'm into it. I'd be so happy.

[JVL]

We're to test the limits of Sarah's commitment to the coalition as she stated, because she's made a lot of sacrifices. We all have. I agree with that, and I hope that the progressives will join us. I'm skeptical, but I want to test it. We could really test my theory of how you could be popular through economic populism, but also leaving the party on cultural issues by running a socialist who wants to repeal gay marriage. A socialist that wants to repeal gay marriage is the heterodox candidate to that we might need. Who knows?

[Tim Miller]

The real answer is it's, I think you'd lose me. Just a famous person. It'll be. It'll be like, John Cena, and he comes out and he has no opinions on anything, and we tear our hair out, and the whole country is just like, yeah, I kind of like that guy. That's what will really happen. We will have all these like, well, if we titrate the policy metrics, and we'll just be like, hey, there's this new famous person who everybody just kind of likes for reasons. There's your next president. Good show. Long show. Good luck, America.