1066: How Much Pain Before MAGA Turns on Trump?

Summary

The Next Level – Episode 1066: “How Much Pain Before MAGA Turns on Trump?”
The Bulwark | March 24, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this week’s episode, hosts Jonathan V. Last (JVL), Tim Miller, and special guest Sam Stein (sitting in for Sarah Longwell) dissect the political and real-world consequences of Trump’s ongoing war with Iran. They delve into the administration’s lack of clear objectives, the economic pain being felt by ordinary Americans, and whether these mounting costs will finally cause Trump’s MAGA base to turn on him. The conversation weaves in and out of war strategy, economic stress, internal administration dysfunction, and the changing landscape of conservative politics. Along the way, the hosts touch on polling data, the role of conservative think tanks, and new faces in upcoming races.

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Major Discussion Points & Insights

1. Administration’s Miscalculation and Strategic Confusion

• Absence of Clear Goals: The hosts agree that the Trump administration entered the war with Iran without a coherent plan or endgame, resulting in shifting objectives and chaotic decision-making.

  • Sam Stein (04:07): “The administration wildly misjudged what would happen... they are now several weeks into this, still searching for some sort of coherent plan and rationalization for what they’re doing.”

• Objective Drift and Negotiation Dilemmas: Analysis of how previous decapitation strikes and back-channel diplomacy have made it even harder to achieve a diplomatic settlement with Iranian leaders, given their justified paranoia about negotiations being a trap.

  • JVL (16:02): “You’ve shown the Iranians that you will use negotiations as ways to kill their leadership. You need their leadership to get a negotiated settlement... it becomes hard to have these conversations..."

2. Military Tactics and Geopolitical Realities

• Escalation Without Endgame: The deployment of U.S. troops and fixation on degrading the Iranian navy is viewed as performative and disconnected from the really relevant threat—Iran’s drone capacity.

  • Tim Miller (05:52): “This fucking Middle East war for about nothing that he has. He can’t explain what it’s for... We're degrading Iran ships. Like that’s really the end goal? Who cares how many ships Iran has?”
  • JVL (08:11): “Why are we talking about the Iranian navy when what matters is their drone strike capability?”

• Iran’s Proof of Concept: The hosts echo the idea that Iran has now proven it can shut the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting global energy supplies and inflicting economic pain.

  • JVL (09:58): “This has been a proof of concept for Iranian strategic defense for 47 years... Well, now they can, right? They’ve demonstrated the proof of concept works.”

3. Economic Fallout and Political Consequences

• Gas Prices and Market Volatility: Gas and diesel prices have skyrocketed, the stock market is unstable, and the pain is starting to filter down to average Americans.

  • Sam Stein (14:36): “Our gas prices are astronomically higher than they were a month ago... The stock market [is] significantly lower. I mean, we are being... propped up by the tiniest of little stools by AI and five, seven AI companies.”

• Market and Political Resilience: Uncertainty persists about whether markets and political commentators are underestimating just how bad things could get, given Trump’s history of “wriggling out” of crises.

  • Tim Miller (13:32): "There’s the old tweet about how Donnie Trump will wriggle his way out of this one. And I think that the markets, political commentators... don’t want to bet against him because maybe he’ll taco tomorrow."

4. Will the MAGA Base Turn on Trump?

• Testing MAGA’s Pain Tolerance: Open debate on whether sustained economic pain (high gas prices, disrupted travel, prolonged war) will finally dent Trump’s core support, especially among non-diehard MAGA voters.

  • Tim Miller (21:07): “I don’t think the 90% of the MAGA folks are going to stay with him... Eventually that pain does matter. Like, eventually people will suffer enough...”
  • Sam Stein (25:27): “During the spring and summer of 2020... his approval rating in Wisconsin never dipped this low. I just want to be clear about that.”

• Polling Warnings: They reference the latest Marquette University Law poll showing Trump at -14 (the lowest in both his terms) in Wisconsin—possibly a sign of waning support, though not catastrophic yet.

  • Sam Stein (23:03): “Trump’s net approval rating is -14, which is, quote, the lowest net approval figure for him in his two terms as president.”

5. Functionality of MAGA Governance & Negotiation

• Trump’s Ability to Sell Any Deal: Trump could embrace an Obama-style deal with Iran, brand it as a “win,” and have MAGA supporters rally behind it—something Democrats could never get away with.

  • Sam Stein (19:30): “Trump benefits so much... he can just present his voters with Obama-on-steroids deal for the Iranians and tell them it’s a great deal and only he could cut it and MAGA would support it 95% across the board.”

• Chaotic Messaging & Internal Dysfunction: Referencing Trump’s public statements as evidence of a government in chaos: “The leaders left. We don’t know who the leaders are, but we’re talking to somebody.” (Tim Miller paraphrasing Trump at 46:09)

6. Conservative (MAGA) Think Tank Scene

• Misnomer of ‘MAGA Think Tank’: Lively commentary on the emergence of new MAGA think tanks and the disconnect between ideology and transactional politics.

  • JVL (49:43): “What we have is... people who saw Trump come in and decided, I can build an ideological framework around this. And 10 years in, they’re still trying to do that, even though Trumpism is whatever Trump says it is at any moment.”

• Think Tanks as Grift Machines: Extensive discussion of how ideological incoherence allows “MAGA think tanks” to act as pay-to-play outfits, adjusting their policy stances for donors.

  • Tim Miller (51:32): “Because there isn’t really a coherent policy worldview around MAGA... it leaves this huge opening for groups like this to be bought off.”

• Project 2025 – A (Partial) Success?: Mixed analysis of Project 2025 as a think tank led initiative, its effectiveness in kneecapping the administrative state, and the long-term impacts to the federal workforce.

  • Sam Stein (57:26): “As just a wrecking ball enterprise, not a deficit reduction enterprise, DOGE was remarkably successful... that’s 315,000 federal employees gone.”

7. Pop Culture, Campaigns, and Political Media

• Texas, Talarico, and Culture Wars: Reflection on the Talarico interview’s impact and whether Democrats can balance turnout-driving progressive messaging with the need to win over swing voters, especially in big states like Texas.

  • Tim Miller (61:41): “You have this tough balance... you got to, like, persuade some people and juice turnout. And that’s a challenging thing.”

• Right-Wing Media as Enabler of Conspiracies: The bizarre Joe Kent media tour and proliferation of conspiracy theories within the mainstream right, including outlandish claims around the Charlie Kirk case.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Dissecting the War Rationale
  • Tim Miller (05:52): “Could he do something dumb like that? Yeah, but like this fucking Middle East war for about nothing that he has… we're degrading Iran ships… Who cares how many ships Iran has?”
• Iran’s “Victory”
  • Sam Stein (11:06): “The Iranians have really benefited... they essentially, I mean early this week, called his bluff. They said if you attack our power plants, we’re going to attack desalination plants across the region. And Trump backed away. And I think for Iran that’s the victory…”
• Predicting Economic Pain
  • Sam Stein (14:36): “Our gas prices are astronomically higher than they were a month ago... The stock market significantly lower.”
• Polling Reality Check
  • Sam Stein (23:03): “Trump’s net approval rating is -14, which is, quote, the lowest net approval figure for him in his two terms as president.”
• On MAGA’s Loyalty
  • Tim Miller (21:07): “Eventually that pain does matter. Like, eventually people will suffer enough...”
• On MAGA Deal-Making
  • Sam Stein (19:30): “He can just present his voters with Obama-on-steroids deal for the Iranians and tell them it’s a great deal and only he could cut it and MAGA would support it 95% across the board.”
• Philosophy of MAGA Think Tanks
  • Tim Miller (51:32): “...it leaves this huge opening for groups like this to be bought off… these guys, like, they can’t be against immigration, deportations, right? Like now they can be on any side of the war... it’s a blank slate, baby.”
• War, Gas Prices, and Political Spin
  • JVL (48:11): “[Trump] sets their house on fire and then it burns for a year. And then he comes and he puts the fire out and says, ‘Hey, you want to give me a medal? I put that fire out for you.’”

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Key Timestamps

• 02:16 – Tim explains why writing a book is “fucking annoying” and why he wants Sarah focused on Bulwark work
• 03:39 – “War temperature check” and troop deployment rumors
• 05:16 – Tim and Sam rail against the war’s stupidity and lack of purpose
• 09:58 – Proof of concept: Iran can close the Strait of Hormuz
• 14:36 – Market shocks, economic damage, and underappreciated risks
• 16:02 – Logistical impossibility of a quick diplomatic resolution with Iran
• 19:30 – “Trump benefits so much … can just present his voters with Obama-on-steroids deal”
• 23:03 – New Wisconsin poll shows Trump at lowest ever approval
• 25:27 – Comparison to 2020 and COVID crisis, why this might hurt Trump more
• 32:11 – Mark Levin–Joe Kent interview and right-wing media’s conspiratorial spiral
• 36:43 – ICE, masks, and “test run” for use of government agencies on Election Day
• 41:07 – Satirical recap of Trump administration’s jumbled reports on Iran negotiations
• 45:31 – Trump’s “gift” from Iran: more meandering, incoherent messaging
• 49:43 – MAGA think tank ecosystem and why policy is for sale
• 54:19 – “Success” and limitations of Project 2025 and attempts to kneecap government
• 61:41 – Talarico interview fallout and implications for Texas’ political future
• 65:17 – Discussion of NYT’s Greg Bevino (former top immigration official) profile and the normalization of extremist language

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Tone & Style

• Bantering, sometimes snarky, but deeply informed; hosts combine gallows humor (“the funnniest and also worst timeline,” JBL at 34:11) with analytical rigor and personal frustration about the state of policy, politics, and media.
• Frequent callbacks to personal anecdotes, political history, and a meta-awareness about podcasting and media coverage.

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Conclusion

This episode offers an unvarnished, often bleak but lively glimpse into the costs and contradictions of Trump’s Iran war—militarily, economically, and politically. The hosts push back on magical thinking (both in the markets and in political circles) about Trump’s ability to deliver a costless win, warning that genuine pain may finally catch up with MAGA loyalty. Alongside, the team exposes the transactional nature of the “America First” policy world, all while keeping a sharp, riotously sardonic tone that makes the chaos of 2026 a little easier to swallow.

Transcript

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[Tim Miller]

Captain.

[JBL]

I'm the captain.

[Sam Stein]

I am the captain.

[JBL]

Who's the captain now?

[Tim Miller]

Hello everyone.

[JBL]

This is JBL here with one of my best friends, Tim Miller and my very good friend Sam Stein of the Bulwark.

[Tim Miller]

That's an upgrade. Upgrade from colleague.

[Sam Stein]

It started as acquaintance colleague.

[Tim Miller]

We've got valued colleague. Yeah.

[JBL]

I just feel like we're getting closer every. Every day that goes by. So Sarah is out today. She is doing more work on her book, which I know pleases Tim a very great deal.

[Tim Miller]

It's just unbelievable.

[Sam Stein]

Why is it unbelievable?

[Tim Miller]

People got mad at me. They thought there is. There's some chatter on this in the comments the next level a couple weeks ago. So I do just want to come clean. There's some people were upset because they were like they thought that I was negging Sarah, that there was professional jealousy at play.

[JBL]

Not being supportive because we were not

[Tim Miller]

being supportive because we were joking about how I didn't want to write the book. And the truth is, number one, me and Sarah love each other and we demonstrate our love via. Via playful teasing. So you don't have to worry about us. We go back a long way.

[JBL]

That's interesting. I demonstrate my love for people by giving them gifts.

[Tim Miller]

I know. Well. So it's different. We're all built different. And she knew me when I wore fake glasses and was heterosexual. So, you know, me and Sarah have been through some bumps and. And the other thing is I didn't want to write the book because it's fucking annoying to write books. And I knew. And we have a growing enterprise here that's very valuable to all of you, the listeners. I wanted Sarah's total focus on that and I wanted her to help. And what we have found is that she was able to somehow manage to steer this ship and help it grow with the help of Sam and JVL mostly. Well, you know, I just blab and, and write the book. And yet there are still moments where I think that my original point is validated, such as right now where we have to suffer Sam's company

[Sam Stein]

catching strays. Wait, you're not heterosexual any longer? Did I miss this?

[Tim Miller]

No longer. Yeah, it was a phase.

[JBL]

All right. We got to move this show along. War. We are still at war. Okay, so this is last week, I think the week before we went live because we were afraid that everything would change between when we taped and when the show came out. This week we're rolling the dice. We're actually taping on a Tuesday afternoon. The show won't come out for three, maybe even four hours. So it's possible everything could change. It's possible we should can have another big bit of insider trading. Who, who knows?

[Tim Miller]

The commander of the 82nd Airborne is being sent over there with a lot of troops. That's not nothing they could do.

[JBL]

That is, that is true. There are a couple things that that could mean. We'll talk about that in a minute. I just want to do a little temperature check here on you guys. What is your sense of the direction that things are moving right now?

[Sam Stein]

I. It's a good question. It depends on the moment. Right. So here we are, it's 2:08pm

[JBL]

you,

[Sam Stein]

you look at the news reports from this morning and you, you, you, you just kind of read into it and you're like, okay, Trump clearly is looking for an off ramp. They're having some sort of back channel negotiations. He touched the stove he want from this. And then you look at news that literally broke two minutes ago, which is again, as Tim said, the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division is heading overseas and you just don't know. I mean, I guess if past his prologue, Trump likes to ratchet things up and, and well, I guess pass it probably. He can write. He does this and then he tries to use it as a negotiating po. But then at the same time he's done this and he has then gone ahead with military action too. So it's really hard to tell. Honestly. It's really hard to tell. I just don't know if I have a good answer into how I feel things are going. I will say this, it's very clear the, that the administration wildly misjudged what would happen. Right? I mean, like they are now several weeks into this, still searching for some sort of coherent plan and rationalization for what they're doing. And I feel like that itself is a huge indictment. And the long term impacts are clear. Even if we were to get out tomorrow, the long term impacts are very, very evident.

[Tim Miller]

I'm just more apoplectic every day is what I guess I would say. JBL about this. It's the stupidest thing that I've ever seen, I think. And I just, I can't believe that, that he has managed to not meet my expectations, which were below the earth and that he managed to kind of burrow even further below them and do something that even I, who have like the most acute case of TDS in America would look at it and be like, that's fucking stupider than I thought.

[Sam Stein]

What were your low expectations?

[Tim Miller]

I just, I mean, like, sure, I expected him to totally screw up the economy. I expected him to have like a ham handed mass deportation campaign that, you know, ended up, you know, causing great harm to both American citizens and guests and immigrants. Like I expect him to do stupid shit. Like maybe I couldn't have predicted that he'd think about invading Greenland, but like, could he do something dumb like that? Yeah, but like this fucking Middle east war for about nothing that he has. He can't explain what it's for. It's like we're degrading Iran ships. Like that's really the end goal right now. We're degrading their ships. Who cares how many ships Iran has? Like, I understand that MBS and Bibi both really care about that. I don't see why Donald Trump should care about that. I certainly don't think any of the American people care about that. And I was talking this with to Bill yesterday. I met some guy over the weekend who's like really struggling with their finances, was asking me about this and it's like, how do you explain to somebody who can't afford to fill up their tank that they can't afford to kill up their tank because we're degrading Iran ships? Because for 47 years Iran's proxies have gone after people in the Middle East. It's just like, it has nothing to do with us. It's extremely stupid. I have no idea why he hasn't just declared victory and turned around. It doesn't seem to me like he's tackling. All the signs to me seem to be like he's escalating and he's just trying to stall and buy time with the markets. And I just. I am. I'm gobsmacked. And anytime I listen to somebody who gives, like, a defense of it, I become more and more incensed. Like Tom Tillis earlier this week. Thom Tillis is like the smart Republican, the normal one. He was giving this interview, was that on Sunday, on the Sunday show. And I didn't get to watch it till yesterday afternoon. And because I saw a clip and I was like, no way it was this bad. In context. I watched the whole thing, and Thom Tillis is basically like, we don't have a plan. We don't have an objective. We should come up with an objective. In the meantime, though, I support the mission. And I'm like, what mission? What do you support? Why do you support the mission? We don't. We don't have an objective. We don't have a plan. We're just gonna bomb Iran.

[JBL]

I don't know what the mission is,

[Tim Miller]

but I swear, until they call uncle. We're gonna call. Bomb Iran. Until they call Uncle, I guess, is the mission right now. It's crazy. I find it just totally crazy.

[JBL]

I mean, I. So when you talk about everything is stupider than you could have imagined, Even just as the most obvious, for instance, why are we talking about the Iranian navy when what matters is their drone strike capability?

[Sam Stein]

Right?

[JBL]

I mean, this is like, so does it matter if the Iranians have. Have capital ships? No, it doesn't matter if they have capital ships. Doesn't matter if they have fast attack boats. I mean, not really. The most dangerous thing is the drones. They are. They have demonstrated pretty sophisticated drone operations and the ability to strike at sea with drones. The drone range, I think it's a thousand kilometers. For the, for their main drone. I, I just.

[Tim Miller]

And look at Ukraine as an example of this. Look at Ukraine. So Russia, you could imagine Russia. So in this, in this analogy, Trump's Putin. So this shouldn't be that hard for people. You could imagine Putin saying that. And he has said this like, you know, Ukrainian, Ukraine has been weakened so such a degree. You know, like, we'll be able to, you know, take back The Rhineland or whatever the fuck, you know, whatever. Bomb.

[JBL]

Until they say uncle.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, okay. And it's true. And I get. In a lot of ways, Ukraine has been weakened economically. You know, the political system is weakened somewhat. Those unsuccess in power, what has it, Ukraine now has better drone capabilities and better capabilities on this front than they had before the war started.

[JBL]

Better than America.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, because they were forced into the situation where they had to to defend themselves. So I'm not saying that the Iranians will demonstrate the same level of ingenuity and whatever commitment that the Ukrainian does. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But, like, they probably will come out of this with like a better sense of actually what they can do to harm us. Right. Like, they know now that they can just throw a couple drones into the Strait of Hormuz, take out a couple oil tankers and they're emboldened kind of.

[JBL]

I mean, Bill made this point with you yesterday. This has been a proof of concept for Iranian strategic defense for, for 47 years, their strategic defense concept has been, well, worse comes to worse, we can close the Straight and cause enormous amounts of economic pain for the entire world, but mostly for America because they're so heavily reliant on oil and nobody ever really knew if they could close the Straight. Like, we did have a tanker war before. Like, you know, this has been an open question. Well, now they can, right? This is. They've demonstrated the proof of concept works. That increases their position.

[Sam Stein]

No, I mean, yes, for now. Yeah. But, like, let's just, let's just kind of tease it out. What is Trump's pain threshold here? So could Iran control the straits if, for instance, we put in 10,000 US troops? Obviously Trump's not going to do it. Right. But let's say we did. Or 20,000 maybe. Could we take over the Straits? I'm pretty sure we could.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Sam Stein]

We would suffer casualties for sure. It would be bad politically.

[Tim Miller]

Private tankers go through. Sure. Our ships could go through. The Navy, like. Right. The US Military ships.

[Sam Stein]

I'm just saying.

[Tim Miller]

I'm saying go through.

[Sam Stein]

I have, I've, I'm not like, as schooled in the military aspects of this as you guys are, but I have to imagine that we could, if we devoted whatever resources we could to the enterprise, that we could take over and run the Straits. We just. We're not going to do it because it would cause real harm, human harm, economic harm, political harm. That's the problem with what we've done, right, is that Trump has gone in with no clear objective. And he has a ever changing pain threshold here. So he's, you know, we're making all these plays. For instance, sending over, you know, troops to the region, the 82nd Airborne Division now. And it's not clear to me that he's ever intent on gun on using these, nor do I want him to. But this is where I think the Iranians have really benefited is that they essentially, I mean early this week called his bluff. They said if you attack our power plants, we're going to attack desalination plants across the region. And Trump backed away. And I think for Iran that's the victory is that they can call his bluff and then turn around and say look, we called his bluff.

[JBL]

I, I just want to put a point in this. So the Iranian's main drone is the Shahed and that has a 2,000 kilometer range. If you take a drop a pin in the straight of hormone moves and then just like swing it on, you know, on a compass to. We could not secure 2000 km in

[Sam Stein]

every direction from drone attacks, from drone

[JBL]

attacks in the street. So 20,000American troops would not solve that problem. Right. You could solve some close up problems, but it's a loitering munition. It is sort of a fire and forget.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And again, these are private boats. I guess this is my point. Like Sam, in the technical sense, could we technically do it probably like so that chips could go through. Could we do give it to with such a degree of confidence that if you're a, if you're a company and it's your ship and it's your tanker and it's your oil that you want to send it through and just kind of go, you know, Leroy Jenkins, we're going through the straight weeks. We trust Pete Hegseth, we trust Pete Hegseth will protect us. We're going to go through and we're going to duck again. I don't know, maybe some of them will do that, but there would still be huge disruption. And like this is the thing I don't get where I'm and JB I'm curious your take, I'm curious both of you guys take on this because me and Joe Weisenthal kind of had a heated agreement about this where I feel like the oil prices are under, it's under priced.

[JBL]

Underpriced.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. What the reality is and Joe says basically it is underpriced. What the reality is. If you're just talking about like discrete reality of like if you went to Oman right now and said I would like a barrel. It's costing more than what it's going to cost on the market because of the disruption. Right. So, but there is a sense, there's the old tweet about how Donnie Trump will wriggle his way out of this one. And I think that the markets, political commentators, I think a lot of people just continue to look at Trump and say, hey, I don't want to be that guy that's saying the doors are closed, the walls are closing in on him. I don't want to look like an idiot. I don't want to bet against him because maybe he'll taco tomorrow. And if you're a finance, I don't want to put my money on the line to bet against him because maybe he'll, you know, turn it around. A lot of people have lost money betting against him. And so I think that there is a lot of people right now that are kind of hedging in what they. In their analysis of this because of Trump's past many successes, wriggling his way out of jams. And I just don't see it on this one. Maybe I just am feeling great. Like I'm taking crazy pills, though, maybe.

[Sam Stein]

I guess it's really dependent on context, right? Like, I mean, there's been plenty of stories about airline industries, for instance, pricing in $170, aerodynamics, gas. I mean, they, they're not, they're not predicting that he's going to wiggle his way out of this. And then I, you know, I also, I think it's like, kind of. How do I articulate this? I feel like your analysis just now underestimates the damage that's already been done in a way. Okay, like, our gas prices are astronomically higher than they were a month ago. Astronomically higher. Okay. You know, crude. Astronomically higher. The stock market significantly. Sorry, Diesel. The stock market significantly, significantly lower. I mean, we are being. I was talking about, with Catherine Rampel about this. We are being propped up by the, like, the tiniest of little stools by AI and five, seven AI companies. Yeah. And it's like once one of those, or two of those emerge victorious, which will happen, and then all the others, one, all the others kind of collapse that is going to be catastrophic. And on top of that, there's these things called private capital markets or whatever the jargon she used, and she was just outlining it to me, I'm like, holy shit. Like, even in this optimistic analysis that you offer, things are not great. I mean, they're bad and, yeah, maybe they can get much, much worse. And we're hoping that it doesn't get

[Tim Miller]

there, but some of us are hoping it doesn't get there.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, it doesn't feel like we survived. It feels like we've gotten significantly worse.

[JBL]

This point I introduce a practical question. How do you get even if Trump wanted a settlement? So let's pretend Trump wants to get out. How does he get there? So I read a big OINT nerd this morning who, who made the very smart point that part of what got us to, like, the day one decapitation strike was the long negotiations that we were having, which were both a diplomatic negotiation that we were having with Iran, but also turn out to have been an intelligence gathering operation trying to identify how to get to their leadership. So you've shown the Iranians that you will use negotiations as ways to kill their leadership. You need their leadership to get a negotiated settlement. Because without leadership, there is nobody to negotiate. Right. You know, but there's nobody there to say, yes, we're going to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, yes, we're going to stop shipping. It becomes kind of hard to have, Like, I'm just. Logistically, it becomes hard to have these conversations because you're making the Iranians run a whole bunch of different traps in order to have conversations with you, because they're worried that you're going to be using that not as good faith negotiations, but as a way to identify their leadership and come and kill them.

[Tim Miller]

Again, I don't know my ass from my elbow when it comes to the internal machinations of, you know, the various factions inside, you know, the IRGC or the, you know, any, like the Iranian internal politics and don't want to pretend to, but just like, as an observer of, of how. Of politics and how political vaccinations work and how people elbow for power. Like in this moment, there's like a power vacuum kind of in Iran. Right. I mean, like, they have at Ayatollah Junior, you know, but that seems shaky.

[JBL]

Supreme leader.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, they have a new supreme leader, but. But certainly if you're internally trying to figure out who has the power center, that feels a little shaky. They have the. The person who is the. Whatever the speaker of the parliament, who was a real estate guy that I guess some people were saying Trump was trying to talk to. Do you want. If you're in your situation, if you're like, w. Yeah. And that guy posts on X in English like, no, I'm not talking to Trump because, like, you have to Imagine, like the worst thing you could be right now is, is to have the people with the guns be thinking that you're the one who's doing back channel negotiations with Trump. Right. And so, like, I just, even internally, even like, trying to identify who is the person to negotiate with, like, what is the deal we could get from them? Like, I'm not saying that's impossible, but like, all the stuff that became pretty challenging when you like, killed the people that you had previously identified as the successors.

[Sam Stein]

I think the. So, ironically, if you're playing this out, you would have to probably produce a deal for the Iranians that is more lenient than the JCPOA under Obama because you'd have to give them some sort of incentive to come to the table.

[JBL]

That's where this ends.

[Tim Miller]

And the good news is you don't have to give them the pallets of cash in that deal because you already desanction.

[Sam Stein]

You already did. Yeah, the 14 billion in oil relief sanctions we gave.

[JBL]

But you can say to voters in Pennsylvania that it's the best deal ever.

[Sam Stein]

So this is the other, this is what I was just going to say, man. This is the. I mean, Trump is. Trump benefits so much in ways that other politicians in America don't, which is that he can. And I mean, this is a great feature he has for his presidency. He can just present his voters with Obama on steroids deal for the Iranians and tell them it's a great deal and only he could cut it and Mag would support it. 95 across the board.

[JBL]

That.

[Sam Stein]

I don't, I don't think that gets you to a deal. But boy, like, that definitely wasn't the case with Obama. I, I covered the JCPOA negotiations. I covered them. It was fucking hard. Not just among Republicans, who all universally hated it among Democrats because they had to have that thing voted on. Schumer hated it. Menendez, who was ch. Chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, hated it.

[Tim Miller]

Well, he was taking bribes at the time.

[Sam Stein]

So, yeah, they turned out financially. He was incentivized to hate it. No, not. He was Turkey. Whatever.

[Tim Miller]

No, I don't think it was right. Still, I don't know if you can fully disentangle all the bribes. Just true of Trump too, by the way. Bribed right now, Trump.

[Sam Stein]

Trump has a good hand in that. He can get his base on board this thing. It's the Iranians who logically would say, why would we negotiate with you? You're probably, you know, about to bomb us.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Two thoughts on this. One, Phil Gordon, who I interviewed is going to be on the show tomorrow. The. He was Harris's national security adviser and. And just basically laid out the same thing as you did, Sam. It's like, like Democratic presidents and they have to figure out how to change this in the future. Maybe they need a cult leader of their own or something, but, like, totally hamstrung, you know, and panicked about like, their, you know, right wing criticism if they do one thing, left wing criticism if they do the other thing, establishment interest group criticism if they do another thing. And so, and that was very limiting when I asked about why Biden didn't try to kind of re. Engage these negotiations. And he did a little bit, but like, basically it was just like, the hassle's too big. Like the hassle's too big is what that comes down to. My question, though, is to your other point about whether MAGA will stay with him. And this is where I want to come back to get jbl. Your take on my. I don't know if it's an optimistic or pessimistic view that, like, things are way worse than they seem right now, because that's pessimistic for the country. But I think it's optimistic as far as the political ramifications for Trump because of everything we've been talking about and the fact that, like, the best case scenario economically is like, where we're at now, which is a real, which is real pain for people to experience. I don't think the 90% of the MAGA folks are going to stay with them. I really don't. We are. It's hard to tell in the polls right now because, you know, there's a lag and you know, if gas, if you're, if you're filling up, your tank's a little more expensive one time and you're a MAGA person, you know, you start to get your backup, you're like, oh, hey, all right, we gotta go kill the mullus. I'm happy to do it. Right, you get your backup. Okay, August, you're trying to go on your family road trip and you can't because fucking food is more expensive, gas is more expensive. And it's like the reason, again, is that we needed to bomb the Iran ships. I don't. Again, I'm not saying he's gonna go to zero, the wheels are gonna fall off. But I just, I think that things are gonna get a lot worse from where they are right now for people. And eventually that pain does. Does matter. Like, eventually people will suffer enough con. Right? No, there's no amount of consequences that people would suffer to say, I don't know, off the ship on this one, pun intended.

[JBL]

I mean, we'll find out.

[Tim Miller]

I think.

[Sam Stein]

So wait again, what are we talking about? People are off the ship. I mean, yes, self described MAGA folks, 90% of them are supportive of Iran, but that's just people who are self described MAGA folks. I mean, how many people in those polls don't self define as MAGA folks anymore because of what's happening as we are sitting here, literally as we are sitting here, the Marquette University Law poll, which is like the gold standard in Wisconsin, they put out a poll today. Trump's net Approval rating is -14, which is, quote, the lowest net approval figure for him in both of his terms as president. I mean, these numbers are, who knows? They're catastrophic. They are.

[JBL]

Minus 14. Doesn't sound all that bad. Like, what, what's the approved number on that?

[Sam Stein]

14 is not bad in Wisconsin. Oh, come on, come on.

[JBL]

Wisconsin. I'm sorry, I thought you said Wisconsin.

[Tim Miller]

What is that, 4256 or something like that?

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, in Wisconsin. It's the lowest they've ever recorded in both their terms. How is that not bad?

[JBL]

It's bad. But is it as bad as you'd expect, given the reality of everything that's happening? And that's where I kind of, you know, it's impossible to know, right? You're in, you're in uncharted territory. So you don't know. But it does feel like it should be a little bit worse. It's weird to me that 42% of the people are like, yeah, I approve of this.

[Tim Miller]

I think it's getting worse. I think it's getting worse. I guess my point, and I guess the point that I keep coming back to is I believe that because I believe that the actual environment, the people cannot accurately see the environment around them. And if you are just right, like, and if you're just living your life in Green Bay and the only real damage you've had to your life right now is that you filled your gas tank up one or two times, it's been more expensive, okay? Like some people, that's been enough for some people already, as Sam points out, if we're really going to put troops in there, and if, like, if it's true that, like, the price of oil right now is actually a little under market, because people are just assuming that Trump's going to wriggle his way out of this one, and it actually is going to go up to 150 or 170, which I kind of think. And so if you think that, then you think, man, -14 is really bad because he's at -14 and shit is about to really hit the fan for him. Think about how low he can go again.

[Sam Stein]

Let me just. Let me try this another way, if I may.

[Tim Miller]

What? What, are you not happy with that?

[Sam Stein]

During the spring and summer of 2020, when a pandemic was raging in this country and race riots were happening in cities across the country and 20 million people had lost their jobs in one month and the stock market was taking a fucking beating, his approval rating in Wisconsin never dipped this low. I just want to be clear about that. Okay?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, okay. But that was the libs fault. So the Chinese. So here's the difference. The China virus was the Chinese and the libs fault. Okay? The libs were making them stay at home and not go to church, and it got snuck out of China. Maybe, actually. Maybe it was a bioweapon. Donald Trump. Donald Trump bravely and heroically protected us from that. This isn't.

[Ryan Seacrest]

That.

[Tim Miller]

Yes. I really don't. I mean, are there going to be. Are you going to be able to convince some people? Is Will Summer going to find the group of people that really believe that, you know, the Iranians were about to, whatever, like, insert a bioweapon into the bloodstream of people in rural America maybe? Like, I think that most people are going to look at this and be like, bro, you did this. Like, you did this. What are you doing? Why did you do this? You told us you weren't going to do it, and you did it. Nothing happened. You told us you weren't going to do it. You bombed him anyway. Then you told them you had achieved unbelievable success, and he told us we didn't need to do it again. And then one day we woke up, I got home from my job, I pulled up my laptop, and AOL.com told me that we're going to war with Iran. And I'm like, why? I voted for Trump. He said we weren't going to go. He said we'd obliterated everything. And now my life is in shambles. The economy's in shambles. I don't know, man. I think that the China virus situation was an easier spin for him than this one. There's my rebound.

[JBL]

All right, very quickly, on troops. Do we. Do we think park island could. Okay, do we think that the deployment here means that Kharg island is happening? The other possibility of is that actually it's possible they can be trying to go to Isfahan, which is where Iran has stashed underground. There are 440 kilos of enriched uranium, which turns out is really important and wasn't totally obliterated, as some of us pointed out back when we were called anti American and troop haters. So it's possible they could try to go and, like, seize a facility and exfiltrate a bunch of. A bunch of enriched uranium. That's a thing they could do, maybe.

[Tim Miller]

Why? Why?

[Sam Stein]

Look, as we're speaking here, as we're speaking here, again, we have to. We have to say this is 2:22:30pm on Wednesday because things change every time. But Trump is speaking currently as we are recording here. And the signals. And again, the signals are just what they are. Like, it could change in any moment. But here's a quote, and you tell me how you read this. You tell me how you read this quote. This is Trump on Iran quote. I don't want to say in advance, of course, he now says in advance, but they've agreed they will never have a nuclear weapon. They've agreed to that. That's a Trump quote. All right. To me, that's him being like, I got a deal, folks. I got a deal. Of course, the Iranians are like, we're not even talking to this guy. But that's just Trump saying that that

[JBL]

has been the Iranian position for forever.

[Sam Stein]

I know, but the position for forever

[JBL]

has been, this is purely for internal energy production purposes. We're not going to build a new.

[Sam Stein]

Donnie got a deal. Donnie got a deal. Come on.

[JBL]

But this is why I think he can get out of this, right? If he can find somebody to make the deal with and he can give them enough sweeteners. That again, because Khamenei needs to be able to, in order to make it work on his end and not wind himself up dead, he needs to be able to show, like, a real victory to the people who run the Revolutionary Guard. And he needs to get enough from Trump that they can all be like, yes, this is good for us.

[Sam Stein]

That's why I loved when Trump proposed sharing control of the strait with the Ayatollah, where they would take a little bit of bitcoin each.

[Tim Miller]

Shout out to Lauren Windsor for the Ayatollah booth that they were going to put up there, the Trump Ayatoll booth, as a good coinage. I just want to say about the troops, like, for the reason that I've been laying out this whole podcast, I feel my head is spun. I cannot put myself in his position for once. I do not understand what they're doing. Every second that goes by I'm like, why hasn't he quit this? It's an obvious disaster. I think that in the end it's already going to become such a catastrophic disaster that it is like he will almost certainly now like there will be a faction running against him which, like, up until this war, like even on Epstein there are people that voted against him. But like, even if he continued to cover up the Epstein files, if he had stayed the course that he was on a month ago, there probably was not going to be like an anti irrelevant and there'll be some gadflies but like a relevant anti Trump America first faction challenging him. And I think that it is inevitable that will happen now that there'll be someone from the Joe Kent Tucker world that now like runs as an actual, you know, the only true Scotsman America first man. And so anyway, I say all that to say I think this is such a disaster. I cannot imagine. He puts more troops in, but he keeps doing shit I can't imagine. So I don't know. I guess they'll probably put more troops in. Who the fuck knows? I don't know. MBS wants him to. BB wants him to. Hagseth wants to. Hegseth wants to.

[JBL]

Maybe wants him to. All right, we got to take a pause here for a word from our first sponsor, Tim.

[Tim Miller]

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[JBL]

all right, before we leave this, this, this section of the show, Joe Kent been off doing a little media tour. Sat down with both Megyn Kelly and Mark Levin. Awkward.

[Tim Miller]

The Mark Levin interview is very awkward.

[Sam Stein]

I didn't see that one.

[JBL]

What happened?

[Tim Miller]

Okay, well, there's nothing to see. It was just on the radio show and just putting aside the merits of the arguments each side was making, Mark Levin is past his prime. He just, like, at one point, Joe Kent was talking too fast and Mark Levin was like, I need you to make your points more slowly one at a time, so he can address them one at a time. And then, and then he's like, I can't hear you. And then, then he has to inter. Interject and the music comes in and he puts on ads. He just, he wasn't up for. Up for it. I mean, I think Mark Levin's show is mostly just him ranting into the microphone. And I just don't know that he was ready for a tete. A tete. Joe Kent on that show and on all the other shows keeps doing Joe Kent things, which is like having some moments of lucidity about the problems with this war, like, intermixed with like, very strange conspiratorial thinking and like, like just asking questions. Comments about the Charlie Kirk murderer, even though he was the head of counterintelligence.

[Sam Stein]

We got to talk about that. We got to talk about that.

[JBL]

Oh, the pickleball stuff. Did the pickleball stuff.

[Sam Stein]

Not at the pickleball stuff. No, no, it's not that. He basically is saying that he's seen intel that Charlie Kirk was not, or, sorry, Tyler Robinson was not the assassin of Charlie Kirk or wasn't working alone. I mean, this has real. But it's crazy, but this is a foreign country.

[Tim Miller]

He throws out there that a foreign

[Sam Stein]

country, but it's not some gadfly. This has real potential to up the trial for the federal government. This is not like, not nobody. This is someone who had presumably access to intelligence. What is he doing?

[JBL]

I mean, if, if you're the defense attorneys there, what a gift. You gotta be thinking, what a gift. I, I have maintained all along that we are in the funniest and also worst timeline. But the funniest thing that could possibly happen in this timeline would be for Candace to be right about all of this and for it actually to be like an Israeli and a French team of assassins who were being.

[Sam Stein]

That is not funny.

[JBL]

It turns out that they were the ones who really, it really was some weird foreign op against Troy.

[Tim Miller]

That's not true. That's not going to happen. That is not true. It didn't happen that way. Him getting off, though, that could happen. And then the. And then the conspiracies proliferating. And then years down the line, you know, people talk about the Charlie Kirk murder the way they talk about the moon landing. I mean, like that Jimmy Hoffa, right? Yeah. That seems almost inevitable at this point. It's very strange. And then you have everybody like, did you see the joke, the other Jo Kent, Charlie Kirk thing where he said that about the last time he talked to Charlie and it's getting religious. It sounds like some of the stories that you hear from the saints talking about an apparition of Mary appeared to me very accurate. And I don't want to impugn anybody who said that an apparition of Mary appeared to them, but that was.

[JBL]

We weren't at Fatima. We weren't.

[Tim Miller]

We weren't. And that does feel more likely than an apparition of Charlie Kirk appearing for a variety of reasons. But Charlie, Joe Kent said, like, the last time you saw him, you, like, looked him in the eye and grabbed him by the shoulders and was like, you need to make sure they don't get us into the Iran war and joke. And he said, that is your job, Joe. And it's like, what. It's like what you have, like, random lizard people, Anti Semitic conspiracy theories are like the last thing Charlie Kirk said to you. And this was the guy Trump made the head of his counterterrorism unit.

[JBL]

And then 18 months later, a man is dead on a pickleball court.

[Sam Stein]

Oh, God. Come on.

[Tim Miller]

People die on pickleball court all the time. All the time.

[Sam Stein]

I'm not overwhelmed by this one. I gotta be honest.

[JBL]

Pickleball is the silent killer. Okay, let's talk a little bit about ice. So we have, I guess a conservative radio host joked that ICE should go to airports to help with TSA lines.

[Sam Stein]

No, it was a caller into a conservative radio.

[JBL]

It was a caller on a conservative. Okay. And so that's now the policy of the United States. Two things I want to talk about here are Trump saying that no masks at the airports. That interests me. Tim, you and Bill talked about this a little bit. And the second thing is Bannon saying that this is a perfect test run for. To see how we could use ice in 2026.

[Tim Miller]

I'll take the second one first. And I agree with Bannon, it's rare to say this. I do think it's a good test run for how they can use ICE at the midterms. I think what you'd end up seeing is, like, five dumbasses who were inspired by a Dean Cain segment on Newsmax, standing around in tactical gear, like, eating Krispy Kreme and looking at their phone, scrolling through, I don't know, white nationalist memes on TikTok and X and people walking by them and voting. I think that's what would happen if they put the ICE people outside the voting booths.

[Sam Stein]

That's generous.

[Tim Miller]

So I think what happened. I don't. Fingers crossed.

[Sam Stein]

That's, like, the most platonic outcome.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, there's an ominous possibility. But I'm just telling you what I see in my crystal ball, which is just what we're seeing now. The ICE agents have been deployed. Did you see when the Tom Homan is like, they can work the exits. They're highly trained. They can work the exits to make sure nobody goes in and exit. And I was like, great. Really?

[JBL]

There's always somebody, CSA agents sitting on a stool by the exit. You're leaving the secured area, and they're just there to make sure you don't walk backwards.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I guess.

[JBL]

These highly. It's a good thing we're paying these guys big signing bonuses, because otherwise you could never find somebody to do that work.

[Tim Miller]

Don't shoot anybody while you sit on the stool. Don't shoot.

[Sam Stein]

That was my question. I don't think anyone's really properly answered this. Where are these ICE agents coming from? Where they just kind of sitting around in, like, a warehouse. And we were just like, hey, go to the airport. Like, where do they come from?

[Tim Miller]

Well, in New Orleans, we got them because there are some leftovers. We had some leftovers that didn't get deployed to Minneapolis, and they've just been. They've been kind of roaming the French Quarter, and we just. We moved into the airport.

[Sam Stein]

What have they been doing?

[Tim Miller]

Well, they've been menacing people outside of quinceaneras, I think, for the most part.

[Sam Stein]

I know that. I know. But, like, so. But, like, do we have a strategic reserve that we're just tapping into? I just don't understand logistically how this is working.

[Tim Miller]

We've hired a lot of people. ISIS hired a ton of people. I mean, we. They had an unbelievably large budget. A significant portion did go to cowboy hats and other, you know, kind of set design for Kristi Nelm. But we also hired a lot of people.

[JBL]

We need a Department of Government efficiency to really suss out this stuff. If only we had.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, if only we had that hit the mask. Can we talk about the mask part, please? Well, I mean, it's like one of these things where Trump kind of blurts out how he feels politically. Right. It's like he knows that having masked agents terrorizing people at airports is obviously problematic. So it is kind of telling. I feel like Trump, Trump knows where things are going. I don't know if Stephen Miller cares or anything like that, but, you know, we've had enough leaks, strategic leaks, to, to at this point tell us that, you know, like the earlier one was that they are not. They're going to move away from mass deportations. They don't want to do mass deportations anymore. And like obviously firing Christine Ohm. So it's late. It's way too late, frankly, for him to get on the right side of this thing. But it is another indication that they know they fucked it up.

[Tim Miller]

Guys, can I bring some breaking news to you?

[Ryan Seacrest]

Sure.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

On two talks. Trump's talking right now. Trump's always talking.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

On ice. And the question about the deal, Katie Britt and Democrats working on a deal. He was asked, would you sign the deal to fund everything but ICE to get those TA TSA agents repaid Trump? Any deals. Deal Democrats make, I'm pretty much not happy with it.

[JBL]

Wow. So I don't know do this then.

[Tim Miller]

Don't know.

[JBL]

I guess by definition a deal that the Democrats will vote for, I won't sign. Okay.

[Tim Miller]

So I guess I'll, I guess they'll end the filibuster to try to jam through the Save America Act. And then on the negotiations, you're going to have to, you're going to have to stick with me here because we're going to go on a. We go on a journey.

[JBL]

Oh, I can't wait.

[Tim Miller]

The leaders left. Left is an interesting word. The leaders left. The leaders are all gone. Nobody knows who to talk to. But we are actually talking to the right people. And they want to make a deal so badly. You have no idea how badly they want to make a deal. And we'll see what happens. That's the status of the negotiations.

[Sam Stein]

Sorry, those are the Iran negotiations that, the DHS funding negotiations.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, those are the Iran. It was both. I was giving you the update on both.

[Sam Stein]

So we, we don't know. We don't know who we're talking to, but we know they're the right people.

[JBL]

Correct.

[Sam Stein]

Okay.

[JBL]

Americans have fallen for this shit for a decade. Like, I just, I don't.

[Tim Miller]

Can I Can I.

[JBL]

Nobody wants to hear about COVID masks, but can we do 90 seconds on Trump and masks? I mean, I remember the mask wars. I don't know if you guys have blocked that out of your consciousness.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, no, I remember them. I was a fighter. I was a. I was a freedom fighter in the mask wars.

[JBL]

You were. You were a face looker, and you were a conscientious face looker. You just think that it's important for humankind. And I was sort of in the middle.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[JBL]

I was not one of those people saying, you know, I. I believe in. You know, we ought to always recognize the abstinence fallacy. Just because you don't wear a mask once doesn't mean that, like, it's, a, it's not the end of the world, but B, it doesn't mean that, you know, it's useless to wear them and that there are certain settings, certain types of masks. Right. If you could get your hands on a KN95 respirator, those were.

[Tim Miller]

Those are pretty good.

[JBL]

There are certain situations in which they could be helpful. Other situations in which we. They weren't. Nobody needs to lose their minds in. In. In a grocery store because somebody isn't wearing a mask. Like, it's just, okay, it's fine. But there was a moment when there was this pandemic raging through the country, and it did wind up killing 1 million Americans. And the guy who was president then, like, refused to put a mask on and, like, made a big stink about, I don't think people should be wearing masks and whatnot. And that did result in some excess deaths. And he. He's against. You're a pussy if you're wearing a mask in order to try to not get people sick around you. But if you're using it because you want to be able to shoot people and not get identified, that's a tough guy. He's a big fan of that.

[Tim Miller]

You're a tough guy. Yeah. You're alpha. I not all respect for that.

[JBL]

It amazes me that that gets tolerated by half the country. Half the country looks at that and is like, yeah, sign me up. Nothing. Nobody else wants to. Okay, fine.

[Tim Miller]

I think you said your piece.

[JBL]

All right. Our next sponsor is Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard, it's terrifying. Believe me, we know so much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure it will work out, and it can be hard to make that leap of faith. When we started this podcast, I wasn't even sure what I was doing. What if no one's listening. What if I make a fool of myself? What if nobody buys the products and services that I pitch? Now I know that I was right in believing in myself and launching this whole thing of ours, despite all the fears and hesitations. It also helps when you have a partner like Shopify on your side to help. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names like Skims and Momofuku to brands just getting started. Get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style. Accelerate your efficiency. Whether you're uploading new products or trying to improve existing ones, Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. Best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert. With world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping, to processing returns and beyond, it's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. You sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com thenextlevel. Go to shopify.com thenextlevel. That's shopify.com thenextlevel.

[Tim Miller]

Got a new update for you. Oh, boy. Oh, yeah, from the President.

[Sam Stein]

This is. This makes me anxious when you keep saying this. Go ahead.

[Tim Miller]

This is great news. I don't know why you should be anxious. The people of Iran. Iran gave us a gift and the gift arrived today. Oh, it's worth a lot of money.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

I won't say what the gift was, but it showed me that we're talking to the right people. Wasn't related to nuclear matters, but totally on gas. So to sum up.

[Sam Stein]

Wait, sorry.

[Tim Miller]

Leaders left.

[JBL]

We should have done this show live.

[Tim Miller]

The leaders left. We don't know who the leaders are, but we're talking to somebody.

[Sam Stein]

They gave a gift.

[Tim Miller]

They gave a gift that made us think we're talking to the right people. The gift was something that was valuable, was not nuclear, but it was related to oil and gas.

[Sam Stein]

And here we think it is.

[JBL]

Is it a plane? Is it a gold bullion apple? Is it a peace prize? Is it larger than a bread box?

[Tim Miller]

We did not need any oil and gas related gifts from the Iranians until we started the stupid war that closed the Strait of Hormuz. This is like a fundamental. This is where, you know, I'll start to lose my mind if the people of Pennsylvania end up buying one of these deals which is like, gas prices were low. Everything was fine. We had energy independence. The Iranians were no threat to the Americans. And so we started a war. We created a crisis. And now the people that we started a war with apparently are giving us a gift to somewhat alleviate the crisis.

[Sam Stein]

You know what I've noticed, and I don't know if you guys have picked this up. It actually ties what JBL was saying about masks a little bit. He's talking about the Iran war in kind of the same way he talked or has talked about the COVID pandemic, like this little blip that he had no responsibility for. Everything was going great, and then we had to deal with this little thing. And we're going to make it great again. Don't worry. And it's just like, it's given me these very intense flashbacks to him talking about COVID And I do wonder if the people of Pennsylvania, to your point, are going to look when they get. When oil comes back down and suddenly gas is only 350 a gallon. And like, man, he's given us so much relief from when it was close to four. It's like, no.

[Tim Miller]

Yes.

[JBL]

That's what's going to happen now.

[Tim Miller]

No.

[JBL]

So I, I wrote a piece of Sam. I can't imagine I will be an

[Tim Miller]

individual person going gas station to gas station in rural Louisiana with a picture showing people in MAGA hats. The picture of what it cost before.

[JBL]

That's not how it works. You set the. He sets their house on fire and then it burns for a year. And then he comes and he puts the fire out and says, hey, you want to give me a medal? I put that fire out for you. And people say, yes, sure, but here's

[Sam Stein]

another thing, and I'm not trying to be overly crippled, but the opposition here is kind of weak, Right? You all remember the stickers all over the gas stations of Biden points into the price? Have you seen one Trump sticker on any gas? I haven't seen a single thing.

[Tim Miller]

It's just starting, baby.

[Sam Stein]

It's just starting.

[Tim Miller]

Just starting. We'll see.

[JBL]

I don't endorse vandalism of public property.

[Tim Miller]

That's not vandalism. It's.

[Sam Stein]

It's speech.

[JBL]

All right, we'll get to my full joker in a minute, but I wanted to talk a little bit about. There was a police, a piece in Polito. Maybe you guys don't care about this. There was a piece in Politico about conservative think tanks. And this is my sweet spot. This is what I, I grew up in conservative think tank world, I was, I was never really a Republican, but I did hang around like the American Enterprise Institute all the time. My office was in the same building as theirs. So this was about the new MAGA think tanks and they're jockeying with the old conservative think tanks, like heritage and how they're all gonna, how they're all getting ready for the post Trump future. One of them bought a 12, sorry, a 20 million dollar building, one of the new Maga think tanks, like two blocks from the White House. That's great. I, I found the entire thing fascinating.

[Tim Miller]

Isn't MAGA think tank kind of a misnomer?

[JBL]

That's why. Because what we have is we have this universe of people like Oren Cass and the guys at Claremont who saw Trump come in and decided, I can build an ideological framework around this. And 10 years in, they're still trying to do that, even though Trumpism is whatever Trump says it is at any moment. And like, you know, he creates the entire universe anew with his whims, and yet they're still all running around trying to act as though there's a coherent ideology in here somewhere. If only you could really tease it out. And I don't know, like, Tim, I don't know how close you were with conservative think tank world. And Sam, you must have seen it all from the outside, so it must

[Sam Stein]

be weird from the outside. Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Here's what explains this to me. I can explain this for you because I was never like inside the think tank world because I'm not a point Dexter, you know, but occasionally much too cool, I would be at meetings with them and such and understand how it works, you know, who's funding this stuff. Yeah, it's some big MAGA donors that like, want to feel fancy and smell their farts and like, you know, show off to their friends that they can get, you know, Susie Wiles or Russ Voach to show up to their house or their conference or whatever like there. So there's some of that. Right. Here's the other thing though, because MAGA has like, say no core is wrong, but because there isn't really a coherent policy worldview around maga, you know, except for in a few instances, it leaves this huge opening for groups like this to be bought off. Right? And so you have the crypto people, you have the AI people, other, you know, more social media tech folks, you've got the natural gas people, hell, you've got the wind. People probably pay these guys, right, because they want to, you know, put, get A white paper put out from the America First Institute. That's like wind is really America First. It's the only thing we're making here, right? Like every, every fucking industry around the sun pays these people. And it's not impossible, but it's harder to pay off think tanks that have a coherent ideology because you know, they're not going to just totally switch their view on something unless you're really signing a big check, you know. But these guys, like, they can't be against immigration, deportations, right? Like now they can be on any side of the war, you know, they, they, they have to be at least kind of pro tariffs, right? But like, besides that, it's like it's a blank slate, baby. You can pay. Kevin Roberts is like, go pay me. You know, big tech guy. I'll be for AI, I'll be against. I, I'll be pro crypto, whatever. You, whoever's writing the biggest check.

[Sam Stein]

Look, I'll just say this. I mean, I think my vantage point, I have not been involved in this. I have reported a little bit on it. I've observed it. The same problem does, to a much lesser degree, I think, exist on the left. Like, there's been some issues back in the day, for instance, around tech and, and how close some of these think tanks were to this. You know, for instance, Facebook now Meta and other places. And then on Israel too, this was a big thing in the left where it's like some of these think tanks had just problems around donors who were very pro Israeli. And people were internally at the think tanks wondering if that was affecting their policy output. But to me, and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, it does seem like it's more pervasive on the right. And it's not just think tanks. It's conservative press too. I mean, we just published last night this Will summer piece about this ridiculous payola scandal where it's just like these, these Conservative outlets for $500, like really Cheap money. We're just putting ghostwritten articles on being like, this Jack Abramoff crypto firm is like getting an unfair deal from the NFL. And it's like, is ev. Everyone is on the take, everyone on take, but it's not them. It's not just the lowest editor at a publication or think tank. It's the administration. I mean, like so much of what this administration does is just basically, oh, you gave enough money to my political action committee, I will give you this favor. That's it. It's just on the take. And I'VE been actually shocked by it. And I do think I'm trying to get Summer to write a piece on this too. I do think this is kind of a soft belly vulnerability for Trump because you do see it every now and then where people on the right are like, man, it's way more corrupt than I thought. Like, this pardon stuff is very corrupt. Some of the stuff happening here is grifty as hell. And I do think people are kind of grossed out by it.

[JBL]

On the other hand, okay, I think you could make the argument that Project 2025 was one of the most successful think tank led policy initiatives ever.

[Sam Stein]

Ever. Yeah, 100%. I wouldn't disagree with that.

[JBL]

I would say analyzing how that happened then becomes kind of interesting because what Project 2025 was, was largely, it was a vetting operation for apparatchiks. Right. And the actual goals for what you wanted to do were secondary. The first thing it was was we can vet a whole bunch of people because the executive branch needs bodies. And we will just turn into. We'll spend four years vetting bodies so that we can shove a list of resumes under the front door the minute Trump gets elected. And that. That's different. That's something like parties used to do, you know, and. And the parties can't really do that anymore. Not at. Or maybe they don't want to, I don't know. But. But Heritage was able to do that and Heritage under. And that is interesting to me. It's like that's what Kevin Roberts understands, that Oren Cass doesn't like Oren Cass thinks he's like, there to, you know, I'll make good faith arguments about policies that will be pro union and pro worker. I'm sorry. Get the fuck out of here.

[Tim Miller]

I want to quibble with the Project 2025 being the most successful project ever because. And this probably we're just spitballing here. We're at the end of the Next Level podcast. This probably requires a little bit more studiousness for me to come down with a very informed opinion, but Doge ends up being a total disaster.

[JBL]

Well, in. From whose perspective?

[Sam Stein]

Hold on one sec. Yeah, from what vantage point?

[Tim Miller]

The vantage point is they wanted to kneecap the administrative state. Right? That was the whole point of this, Right? Like they wanted to defang the administrative state and politicize it. Right. And they managed to kill usaid, which was like not the top thing on the list. The lawyers in the administrative state have so far pretty successfully pushed back on them through the courts. And a lot of pain has been caused. They've not done anything to rein in spending. And I don't think they've done a ton to limit the ability of a future Democratic administration to start using the administrative state again. I mean, like, they've got some people now embedded in there. There are going to be issues, right? No doubt. But did they create, do any structural change there? Another big part of what the Project 2025 was, was like putting people like Joe Kent inside the deep state to defang the deep state. And that didn't seem to work. The deep state seemed to win. And you know, whatever you want to explain what's happening in the Iran war, it's not the Tulsi and Joe Kent people that have won the election stuff they haven't figured out quite yet. Anyway, I just, I guess maybe I would say that the jury's still out on the six on whether there is sustainable success from that.

[Sam Stein]

Sustainable. I'll give you the sustainable success. I think, you know, when you're cutting federal jobs and changing regulations like inherently, if you believe in executive power to that degree, then next Democratic president can do the exact same thing and add jobs and reverse the regulations. I just think that as just a, like a wrecking ball enterprise, not a deficit reduction enterprise. DOGE was remarkably successful, I think. I mean, if you had to guess how many, what percentage of the federal workforce left or was fired in the past year, what would you guess?

[Tim Miller]

15%.

[Sam Stein]

You overestimated. It's 11%. That's 315,000 federal employees gone. Any environmental regulation that was ever on the books, basically gone. All the worker protection regulations, basically gone. CFPB is only hanging on because of some judicial interventions. Education departments completely undone. I mean, like if you look at the granular level, it is a remarkably damaging administration with respect to the federal bureaucracy. No. And the high picture stuff like the deep state and prosecuting your political opponents. No, they haven't gotten there. But I'm not sure that was ever Doge's sort of value proposition. I think they were there to just wreck the government.

[JBL]

Yeah, the, the saving the money was. Was the pretext. In the same way that, like free speech, maximalism is always the pretext for these fuckers.

[Sam Stein]

Yes. Yeah.

[JBL]

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[Sam Stein]

They.

[JBL]

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[Tim Miller]

a lot of interest in that race. He's very interesting. I think that the right wing media is very keen on crushing him. I think that I was impressed by Talarico and he's better than my expectations. I think we talked about this last week on Live Show. I also think that like, you know, some of the things that I asked him about that got a lot of news in right wing media are things that he was like saying and doing during peak woke that are polarizing and he was going to have to think about how to talk about them at some point. And I just happened to be the one that was there and was able to do it in a cheeky enough way that he was able to kind of explain his views. I think that his theory of the case now makes a lot of sense and the fact that he has an actual idea for what his message is for winning over Trump voters is a good start. And I asked him this literal question. Will those cultural cleavage points, though, be so great that it doesn't matter? They can't hear them because all they heard is all the other stuff that he posted, all just. He has six genders or whatever meet, you know, all those things. And so, you know, he had to talk about those. We talked about him. I thought I was impressed. I'm not surprised that the Breitbart was not impressed. But, you know, I think going forward, one of the things, like, if you asked me to kind of, like, rank which of the states were best suited for Democrats to win in November of the stretch, states, like, I would have said, like Alaska and maybe Nebraska over Texas in part because, like, the candidates are a little more low profile for those states. Right. Like, it's a little tough. And in Texas, like, you have this tough balance. We saw the Beto of, like, you got to be able to do both. You got to, like, persuade some people and juice turnout. And that's a challenging thing. Like, doing one or the other is a little easier. So, anyway, that's. That's kind of my feeling on it.

[JBL]

Sam, did you have thoughts?

[Sam Stein]

Well, it's like, I like Tim, I'm sort of curious how you balance those two needs. Right. I mean, I think the Beto experience and how Talarico looks back at it is going to be really interesting because my recollection of Beto was, you know, he was just, you know, constantly live streaming and doing things and then not unapologetically grasping onto sort of very progressive policies like gun control in Texas, which in retrospect, probably was not the smartest idea.

[Tim Miller]

That was more the second time.

[Sam Stein]

Okay. Well, either way, he was being unapologetically progressive about these things. I think he was like, pro kneeling, like Colin Kaepernick, if I'm remembering correctly. He's supportive of that. I think Talarika, and this is gets back to, in a way, to the sort of the group's answer and things like that. Talico understands that there's got to be more nuance there. That's clear to me just watching him watching the interview. He's not going to, you know, go, you know, absolutely balls to the wall, and maybe that will cost him a few million dollars and raise money and maybe it'll cost him a little bit in turnout. But I. I happen to think that Democrats are so desperate at this point and so anxious about the state of the country that there is a real appetite in A sort of sophisticated understanding, A more sophisticated understanding about some of the compromises, intellectual compromises that the candidates will have to make.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Sam Stein]

And that they're going to be willing to just say, sure, whatever. Like, just win. And I don't know if that gets Talarik over the hump. It's. It's so hard. It's such a big state. So much money has to be spent. So many different media environments. It's really, really expensive and hard. And I continue to think the other states are better, but, you know, I wouldn't totally rule it out either.

[Tim Miller]

Just win, baby. Al Davis. I just. I do think there's a lot of demand.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah. Is that Al Davis or Barry Switcher?

[Tim Miller]

Al Davis.

[JBL]

It's Al Davis.

[Sam Stein]

It was Davis. Okay. I just want to make sure.

[JBL]

All right. You know, I was going to say something about the people who are angry with me for being gleeful about consequences and stove touching, but I don't know. Did either of you read a newsletter that I put out today?

[Sam Stein]

Not yet.

[JBL]

Timmy. I can always count on you, Tim.

[Tim Miller]

Well, I got very excited about it and I saw the headline, I smiled, and I said to myself, I'm going to save this to really savor it this evening. At the end of the day, it just came out a little close to the table rather than kind of rush through it. So I want to savor it. So why don't we just. I think everyone should savor it with me, and we should just experience that together in reading, and then we'll talk about it next week.

[JBL]

All right. So Greg Bevino sat down with the New York Times for a very long, very glossy America's top Nazi profile. And it is crazy for lots of reasons. I just want to just read out two little things for. For you guys to react to. Previously unreported legal documents show that Mr. Bevino also admitted he had referred to undocumented people as, quote, scum, trash, and filth while giving a speech to his agents. He said at that time he had been referring to criminals such as child rapists. But also he refused to back down. All illegal aliens are criminals. So the. The tautology here being like, oh, I was only talking about criminals. But of course, all of these people are criminals, so therefore, they are all scum.

[Tim Miller]

Trashville.

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[JBL]

Mr. Bevino said he had a master plan that was in motion before his exile back to El Centro. It would have neutralized protesters, he said, and made it possible to deport 100 million people. That is a goal that the Department of Homeland Security has widely promoted. 100 million people is a third of

[Sam Stein]

the country, third of America.

[JBL]

We believe there might be as many as 20 million undocumented people in America. He would like to deport 5. He had a plan to deport 5x that. I don't know what you guys think of this. Part of me was a little bothered that the New York Times was willing to give him the glossy treatment.

[Tim Miller]

Was it glossy? Can we pull this up on the screen? Let's pull this up on the screen. It's a picture of him in the woods. He's looking like a lesbian Colonel Stephen Lockjaw looking off into the distance. Even if you say, look in this

[Sam Stein]

photo, if you want to say it's glossy, I still think it's fine. There's a distinction between giving glossy treatment to like a Richard Spencer, right? Who is, you know, I remember this was a big controversy. It's like, why give that guy glossy treatment? He's just a Nazi. And he. But Greg Bovino was the most powerful immigration official in the country for a period of time. I mean, he's significant. I want to know what he treats

[JBL]

him as a normal political figure.

[Sam Stein]

I mean, whether or not he's normal. He was official and he was powerful and he had. And I think there's a real value add to knowing how distorted his worldview was and the type of thoughts that went into the shit he did. I mean, there are some quotes in here that like, you. You kind of sit back and you're like, I can't believe this.

[JBL]

I just feel like the piece should have been more adversarial. I'm not saying, like, don't run the piece.

[Sam Stein]

Right, right, right.

[JBL]

But the piece reads. This reads the same as I would expect. Any piece about anybody who has ever been head of any federal agency ever.

[Tim Miller]

Like any other lesbian. Like, it could have been Jan Napolitano or I could have.

[JBL]

No, you know, like, this could be Janet Reno. It could be Greg Bevino. It could be the head of the fda. It could be the head of the National Park Service. Like, that's the, The. The tone of the piece.

[Tim Miller]

I hear you. It's just. That's pretty far down my list of. Of complaints.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, they have the set. They're like sitting down for eggs and bacon and hanging out at the bar and walking in the woods.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, it's. I mean, he comes off horrible. I don't know. I find it to be utterly appalling in every way. And I think. I don't know. I also think it's pretty revealing and newsworthy that like he was. He said what a lot of the private reporting said, which was that he was hardline and the rest of these guys were pansies that Tom Holman wasn't willing to go there. So I think it'll be interesting to see how that turns out.

[JBL]

Guys, good show. Incredibly long show. We'll be back next week. Hit like hit. Subscribe. Follow the channel. Good luck, America.

[Tim Miller]

Bye. Thanks, Sam.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. It's stock up savings time now through March 31st. Spring in for storewide deals and earn four times the points. Look for in store tags to earn on eligible items from hunts nerds, Pillsbury, Lowry's, Breyers, Quaker and culture pop. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Stack up those rewards to save even more. Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in store or online for easy drive up and go pick up or delivery restrictions apply. See website for full terms and conditions. It's tax season, and by now we're all a bit tired of numbers. But here's an important one you need to $16 billion. That's how much money in refunds the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud. But it's not all grim news. LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second and alerts you to threats you could easily miss on your own. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com iheart Terms apply.