1103: Michigan Senate Primary Becomes a Late-Night Nail-Biter

Summary

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The Next Level: Michigan Senate Primary Becomes a Late-Night Nail-Biter

Podcast: The Next Level by The Bulwark
Episode: 1103
Date: August 5, 2026
Hosts: Jonathan V. Last (JVL), Tim Miller, (with Sam Stein sitting in), Jonathan Cohn (guest from Michigan)

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the dramatic and closely contested Michigan Democratic Senate primary between Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed, with live results rolling in throughout the show. The hosts break down the dynamics of the race, the impact of outside money (especially from AIPAC), changing political coalitions, and national trends reflected in Michigan politics. The conversation also touches on broader themes: the influence of political PACs, left vs. moderate tensions in the Democratic Party, the fallout from controversial Trump-era behavior in Congress, and some lively pop culture and media commentary.

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Key Topics and Insights

1. The Michigan Senate Primary: Early Impressions

• Opening Numbers: With 17% of the vote in, El-Sayed leads Stevens by 9 points.

  • "He's overperforming. …We are looking at a record turnout… The numbers, they're talking well over a million, 40, 50% higher than the normal primary." (Jonathan Cohn, 04:54)
  • Enthusiasm is high for El-Sayed at rallies, compared to more tepid support for Stevens.

• AIPAC's Role and Backlash:

  • "Ultimately for me it's going to be a story of AIPAC backfiring spectacularly. They spent tens of millions of dollars for her and it probably hurt her, honestly, because it got her..." (Sam Stein, 04:39)
  • Tim Miller notes AIPAC is "the biggest loser of the primary cycle by a wide margin" (13:56), pointing to a trend where heavy outside spending, especially tied to Israel, has become toxic in Democratic primaries.

2. Analyzing the Demographics and Coalition Shifts

• Stevens's "Blue Wall" Not Holding?

  • Traditional moderate, suburban, and Black voter support for Stevens seems soft; Miller highlights a viral interview with a moderate suburban mom willing to vote "for a communist over someone who wanted to keep giving money to Israel" (06:57).
  • Sam Stein asks how El-Sayed might pivot to the general: "Can you speak a little bit...about whether he has the capacity to translate to both MAGA adjacent voters, but mostly people who are non political who he really does need to in the general get out and vote." (07:20)

• El-Sayed's Strengths:

  • Cohn calls him a "generational speaker" and "incredibly smart" (08:07), referencing Bill Clinton’s praise from El-Sayed’s commencement.
  • El-Sayed's campaign considered risky mainly for perceived general-election liabilities, not organizational weakness.

3. AIPAC, Israel, and Democratic Politics

• AIPAC’s Worsening Brand:

  • Hosts discuss how AIPAC’s investments now backfire and push centrist Democrats toward anti-AIPAC sentiment; El-Sayed’s Israel stances would have been more "potent" attacks four years ago, but now are fading in threat (09:26).
  • AIPAC’s association with Netanyahu and refusal to criticize his actions ties the PAC’s brand to the unpopular Israeli government rather than Israel itself (14:05).

• The Broader Realignment:

  • "Why can't AIPAC understand that Bibi Netanyahu has done for Israel what Donald Trump has done for America on the world stage? The parallels are almost identical." (16:29, JVL)

4. Max Miller Scandal: Trumpism and Political Survival

• Summary of the Max Miller Segment (24:00–35:30):
  • Congressman Max Miller gives a weak rebuttal to abuse allegations in a CNN interview with Jake Tapper; hosts are unconvinced about his innocence.
  • "If I was embroiled in a thing...where my daughter was being used to destroy my...career...I just fucking quit my career...Because that's what men do." (27:20, JVL)
  • Miller defends staying in the race by citing Trump’s "resilience": "In 2016, when President Donald J. Trump faced the most extreme allegations in the world...he stayed in and he was resilient..." (28:58, Max Miller)
  • The hosts lament how “Trumpism” created a permission structure for scandalized politicians to refuse to step aside, reshaping political incentives.

5. Media & Pop Culture: Sun Valley, Bari Weiss, and Elite Irony

• Media Irony at Sun Valley (38:49+):
  • Tim Miller shares a viral photo of Bari Weiss and Sheryl Sandberg, both wielding John Fetterman’s memoir—used as a symbol of how anti-establishment media figures now are the establishment.
  • JVL on Weiss: "She’s an idiot...not actually very smart...terrible at her job...And Cheryl sand, like, here, they’re like, oh, I’m here for the working man...Oh, but I only want to hang out with all of these people who were early at Facebook." (42:59)
  • The group lampoons the faux outsider ethos of media elites.

6. Legal Drama: Judge Jeanine & The Reflecting Pool Case

• Judge Jeanine folds on a high-profile Trump administration case; Trump says she “folded like an umbrella” (45:02+)
  • The hosts debate how legal risk and professional standards may have forced Jeanine Pirro’s hand, unlike other Trumpworld figures who defy accountability.
  • JVL proposes a hypothetical “Trump Act”—sworn statements for admin officials, enforceable by a special court—to address post-Trump transparency and legal reforms (51:18).

7. Late-Night Primary Results: The Michigan Nail-Biter

• As Results Come In (from ~65:55 onward):

  • Stevens narrows the gap, especially with strong Detroit (Wayne County) numbers. Panel rapidly recalibrates analysis.
    • Tim Miller: "Wayne county is 2%. And it was really close. And I was like, that’s not a good sign for her. So it was probably...the urban core has come in." (82:52)
  • "If she were to pull out a high turnout election that would tell me that the DSA stuff really freaked out the Democratic electorate." (80:29, JVL)
  • Stevens’s coalition seen as resting on Black voters, moderate suburbanites—Democratic voters are strategic, not radical en masse.

• The DSA/Lefty Discourse (71:19+):

  • JVL and Tim discuss the difference between "Democratic Socialists" and "Social Democrats," and why the latter is the real base for candidates like El-Sayed.
  • Miller: "There’s definitely a...small plus a medium light core of people that are really DSA...then there’s a bunch of other people...basically conventional Democrats, but they're like, fuck these guys. Trump has won twice. What have you done for me lately?" (73:52)
  • Tim’s broader rant: "All this is happening while Donald Trump is running the country as a MAGA socialist...manipulating the markets with his pronouncements, levying tariffs and bullying companies..." (76:26)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On AIPAC's Influence:
  “It is like an unbelievable self own...This whole program has been just a rake step after rake step.” (Tim Miller, 10:51)

• On Trumpism Normalizing Political Scandal:
  "The people that said Trump was disqualified and then came around are the ones actually that laid the ground for this...the unintended consequences of this are manifest.” (Tim Miller, 33:33)

• On the Left-Right Label Fight:
  “If someone else gave me an other option, maybe I’d look at that...the DSA right now is the stand in for my anger at the establishment.” (Tim Miller, 73:52)

• On Pragmatism in Democratic Primaries:
  "Democratic voters are very strategic, particularly in these swing states…they vote strategically.” (Tim Miller, 86:37)

• On Political Cynicism:
  “Just people, you know, stay tuned tomorrow. It’s gonna be great.” (Jonathan V. Last, 54:34—on their own reform proposals)

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Key Timestamps for Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | Key Discussion or Quote | |-----------|--------------|------------------------| | 03:07 | MI Senate Results Early Analysis | "Right now we've got only about 17% of the vote in..." | | 04:39 | AIPAC’s Influence Backfiring | “AIPAC backfiring spectacularly…” | | 06:57 | Suburban Voter Backlash | “I’d vote for a communist over somebody that wanted to keep giving money to Israel.” | | 07:20 | El-Sayed’s Political Skills | [Generational speaker, talent discussion] | | 13:56 | AIPAC Nationally | “They are the biggest losers of the primary cycle by a wide margin.” | | 28:58 | Max Miller’s Trump Defense | “In 2016, when President Donald J. Trump faced the most extreme allegations…” | | 42:59 | Bari Weiss/Sun Valley Irony | “She’s an idiot...not actually very smart...terrible at her job…” | | 45:02 | Judge Jeanine “Folds Like An Umbrella” | “She folded like an umbrella…” | | 65:55 | Late Michigan Vote Shift | “...we now have 28% of the vote in and things have tightened up…” | | 71:19 | DSA Rant/Discourse | “It was the Wilder Rule or whatever… No, the Bradley effect…” | | 73:52 | What “DSA” Really Means | “There’s like a Social Democrats...then there’s a group that’s like, the DSA right now is the stand in for my anger at the establishment.” | | 80:29 | If Stevens Wins: What it Means | “If she were to pull out a high turnout election that would tell me that the DSA stuff really freaked out the Democratic electorate.” | | 86:37 | Strategic Voting | “Democratic voters are very strategic, particularly in these swing states…” |

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Wrap-Up: Final Thoughts & Takeaways

• The Michigan Senate primary epitomizes the push and pull inside the Democratic Party—between the energized left and the still vital Black and suburban moderate coalitions, all heightened by enormous outside spending and negative partisanship.

• AIPAC’s influence is rapidly becoming a liability in Democratic circles, with hosts predicting further backlash and urging the organization to disentangle from Israeli government policy.

• Trumpism's impact on political culture endures, with scandal-plagued Republicans refusing to resign, using Trump as a template—while the institutional GOP remains paralyzed.

• The DSA “menace” is overstated online; real-world voters in swing states remain pragmatic and strategic, wary of excess, but open to genuine reformers.

• Final live results leave the Michigan race unresolved, but the night highlights deepening party fault lines—and the unpredictability of shifting electorates.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[A]

This is JBL here with my best friend, Tim Miller, and sitting in for my other best friend, my colleague, Sam Stein. Reduced that guy. I'm kidding. Because we, our other colleague Jonathan Cohn will be joining us from Michigan. Somewhere on the hand, I don't know which part of the hand he's in. Later on in the show. We have a lot going on tonight. We're going to be ping ponging between election results and news of the day and schadenfreude and some of the worst people in the world. And also there will be ads. I'm sorry, if you're a Bulwark plus subscriber or a YouTube Premium member, normally we don't have ads for you. We cut them out. Except for when we do these things live. There's no way to cut them because

[B]

it's live, but you still get the comment privileges. You still get the Tim emoji.

[C]

Oh, just worth it.

[A]

They're great. So we're going to start first with the big news today. Get all the primary stuff. The conscience of our nation was shocked when the CEO of My pillow, Mike Lindell, announced earlier today that he was stepping down in order to focus on his campaign for governor of Minnesota. I don't know how the pillows, whose pillows are they now if they're not his pillows, are they some dude's pillows?

[B]

Your pillows?

[A]

Their pillows?

[B]

What are we supposed to do? What are we supposed to call him if he's not a pillow man? The former pillow man? The erstwhile pillow man? Isn't, is it? Is not Michelle Tafoya, the former sideline reporter also in that race?

[C]

No, she's running.

[B]

She's running for the Senate. Okay. It's hard for me to keep track of what's happening over there. I don't, I don't think that the prospects are going to be that great for either the erstwhile Pillow man or Ms. Tafoya. But, you know, who knows? There was that big breaking news in Minnesota last week that the president himself announced, which is that Tim Walls in the state of Minnesota did a cyber attack on our own water supply. And so I guess we have to wait and see what kind of evidence that the President provides for that claim. It's a pretty shocking claim. It's pretty strange, actually. That hasn't led the nightly news and led the New York Times for the past few days because it's a pretty astonishing claim for the President of the United States. I think any past president who said that a governor was the point person for a cyber Attack on our water supply. I think that'd be.

[C]

On his own water supply.

[B]

I think that'd be a pretty big news story. But people are letting that go for now.

[A]

Many people are saying that Governor Waltz also launched an attack on alternative downfill and that he has tried to take over the global supplies of alternative downfill in order to, I mean, who can say, hurt his political opponents.

[B]

Yeah, you can't trust the polls with Mike Lindell. You know, as he said he was the point man for the. One of the point men for the insurrection. But I. You do look at that and you know, he's down by 20. Damie Klobuchar in the general election. Recent Mason Dixon Paul.

[C]

That's it.

[B]

Down by 22 in the Emerson College.

[A]

Well, I mean, you can't believe them.

[C]

You know, that was taken before he. He was. While he was splitting his time between the pillow.

[A]

He didn't know, they didn't know that he was locked and loaded, ready to go. Okay, let's go to real news. Tonight is primary night and the big one is Michigan Senate, where the blood feud between Haley Stevens and Abdul El Sayed is finally mercifully coming to a close. Polls are closed now. I believe we have Jonathan Cohen at the El Said event. He will come and talk to us when he can. Our producers will just ping us and let us know. Right now we've got only about 17% of the vote in, but I'll say it is leading by 9, 53, 44. He's up by about 20,000 votes so far. Gents, what do you think?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, Haley's Stevens. It's early, but like right now is only up by 3% in Detroit. That's not. That's not going to be enough for her. So, you know, I think we'll give kind of full analysis at the end and you know, the speculation here will have a pretty short shelf life, but I think all signs are pointing to an El Said win tonight and probably a pretty early one.

[C]

Yeah, it feels that way. We'll wait and see the results. I know Cohen's actually in a spot now where he can come on, but I will just say ultimately, you know, we'll have time to diagnose this, but ultimately for me it's going to be a story of APEC backfiring spectacularly. They spent tens of millions of dollars for her and it probably hurt her, honestly, because it got her.

[D]

Probably.

[C]

Yeah, definitely.

[B]

Definitely.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

What are you seeing in the early results? Because you know this stuff. Well, is Stevens Underperforming is El Said over performing.

[E]

He's overperforming. You know, we're seeing districts where Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders, where Gretchen Whitmer beat El Said back, you know, when they were in the 2000. And he's winning those districts. Now, a lot of this is early vote. Typically early vote, you would think older voters, you would think that would be more Haley Stevens voters. But, you know, we are looking at a record turnout in this. I mean, the numbers, they're talking well over a million 40, 50% higher than the normal primary. So, you know, I gotta think. I mean, again, this is speculative, but I gotta think a lot of that early vote is his vote. I mean, his vote is just really committed. And, you know, I look, I've said all along the eyeball test, if you've been attending the rallies, he pulls people, she does it, you know. You know, she would do rallies. She'd get, you know, she'd get into an event, she'd get 20, 40, 50 people. A union would bring in some people or she, you know, she'd go to a church on Sunday and there's, you know, there's some affection for her, but he was bringing out the people. I've been burned enough seeing enthusiasm that doesn't, you know, I remember Howard Dean back in, you know, 2000, whatever.

[B]

Nobody showed up to the. Nobody showed up to Joe Biden events in 2020, I gotta tell you.

[E]

Right. And. Well, right. And so. But I think what we were seeing on the ground, you know, was indicative. And the polls, you know, we were

[B]

like, well, maybe the polls are up.

[E]

It doesn't look like it, you know. And Tim, was that where you were saying her numbers in Detroit, she would have to really just run the table

[B]

for her using the Biden model is just a huge run up with black voters and then more kind of the moderate, like, kind of suburban voters. But I think this ties back to Sam's APAC point that I think that there are a lot of suburban kind of traditionally M. Normy Dem types that were really turned off by this. And there's a clip going around today. I forget. I think it was Ms. Now, but I forget who credit for it, where they're interviewing this mom, you know, this woman who's like, I'm a moderate. I liked Hillary, I liked Kamala, but I would, I'd vote for a communist over somebody that wanted to keep giving money to Israel. So, like, I just think that like to. Her path was really running up the score of black voters, really doing well, with kind of the former Republicans that vote in these primaries, Pete, Mayor Pete type voters and I and the Mallory voters, and I think that just didn't happen. I think that a lot of those voters ended up going for El Sayed.

[E]

Yeah, I mean, look, I mean. Oh, go ahead, Sam.

[C]

Yeah, I just wanted to know. I mean, look, obviously we're getting ahead of ourselves, but we're operating off the assumption that Else Said is going to win this thing and it looks like it's trending that direction. But I. With the caveat that things can change. Whatever. You've watched him in person multiple times and in your articles that I've read and, and luckily had the chance to edit, one of the things that you talk about repeatedly is that people kind of underestimate the type of political talent he is. Obviously there's a load of controversial stuff out there that is going to get resurfaced. Who knows what Republicans are sitting on. But can you speak a little bit to just sort of what you witnessed up close about whether he has the capacity to translate to both MAGA adjacent voters, but mostly people who are non political who he, he really does need to in the general get out and vote.

[E]

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, first of all, he is, he, I mean, people say he's this phrase generational speaker gets overused, but it's kind of true in his stamp. You know, I mean, he is a incredible speaker debater. I mean, the origin story of Abdul, also a lot of people know this is he gives the graduation speech at the University of Michigan and the invited commencement speaker is so blown away. He's like, kid, you got to go into politics. And of course, that's Bill Clinton is the entire, you know, the invited, you know, commencement speaker. He's, he's, he's, he's. I mean, he's a great, I mean even his critics would concede that he's incredibly smart.

[A]

All right, audios. Audio's rough. We're gonna let you go, John. Come on back later on if you have more, more to tell us. Very quickly, Tim. So I was sort of interacting with people in our community about this race today and people, some people were saying, like, well, you know, I'll say he's really risky and like, I don't know how risky he is because this is a Democratic seat in a state with a Democratic governor in a wave Democratic year. In order for him to lose this race, he would have to be worse than a replacement Democrat by probably like

[B]

three points, maybe five.

[A]

You have to. He'd have to be a lot worse than generic replacement Democrat.

[B]

Yeah, I feel that. I think. Yeah, no, I don't think so. I think he's the, the sense in which he's risky, I think are two moderate risks that I talked about this a little bit on Monday that I just would have taken into account if I was thinking about it as a voter. Like number one, you know, the people of Michigan in general elections during the Trump years have elected a lot of women with Haley Stevens profile. So it's just kind of like there wasn't really any reason to think that she would not win. And they liked it. Whitmer, Nestle, Slotkin, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think she was safer than him in that regard. It's a little bit of a wild card. I agree with Jonathan. I think he's really talented. I think a lot of the hits that they throw at him backfire. I think that a lot. And this goes to the APAC question. I think a lot of the attacks about him, about his positions about Israel, like might have been really potent attacks four years ago. I don't think they are now. And I think that he could lose certainly some potentially gettable voters for that. But I think that's offset like pretty significantly in other demos. So I just like, look, I mean, I think that, you know, him talking about the cost of living, talking about the Iran war, talking about, you know, these big corporate interests and big, you know, deep state and not deep state, but big kind of, you know, military interests that have pushed us into these

[A]

stupid wars and we should be $32 million from APAC.

[B]

Yeah, and so this goes to the apex thing. I mean, I just can't. Even if you were aligned with APAC's point of view and their mission, it is like an unbelievable self own. Like Sam, I mean it's, it's almost kind of undermining the stereotypes about your people, like how incompetent they've been in this. I like this whole program has been just a rape rake step after rake step. And look at this. I mean, if you just. I just pulled up. What are their big wins the last two cycles since they've started this? They've been putting huge, huge, huge, huge, huge dollars into these Democratic primaries for nothing. And they beat Wesley Bell against Cori Bush. They have a rematch tonight, so we'll see how that goes. What is that? Yeah, Bell's already won, so. Okay, so they got one and then they got Jamal Bowman in that New York seat. But like neither of Those were real. I mean those were self like, that was. Corey Bush and Jamal Bowman were both horrific candidates for a wide variety of reasons we don't need to kind of lay out. But like they did themselves in. It wasn't like the super PACs that were succeeded in that, like anybody could have beaten those two candidates with, with as with how horrible their campaigns were managed. So like they have no, no success. They have, I think, caused increased backlash and negative attitudes towards, you know, kind of their pro Israel worldview within the Democratic coalition. And I said this on Monday, like, I just think it's reasonable. If there was a Qatari American PAC that was putting $30 million in to a primary, I don't think that anybody would feel like it's anti Muslim or whatever to be like, I don't know if we want a, you know, even if it's American citizens that are like the cake claw pack, even it's American citizens, I don't think anybody would be like, we really want like the biggest donor in a primary to be, you know, Sharia law, dictatorship. Like nobody would be for that. And so anyway, I think the strategic

[A]

decision here would have been to sit this election out.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

I mean, the Netanyahu government has brought America into this war. It's an incredibly unpopular war. It is making America less safe and hurting America's interests in the world. So in this one particular cycle, you could have just said, you know what, we're just going to keep a powder dry. Seems to me, Sam, or tried to

[B]

convince Haley not to run because I think Mallory made some missteps. But I do think that she would have potentially been a stronger candidate. But this was again, when you add to the APAC missteps, they did this in New Jersey. Like they had Tom Malinowski who was like a quasi, you know, certainly at least open to arguments, but had been critical of Israel and have been critical of some of our policies as far as funding Israel. So they went and, you know, and engaged in that primary in a way that sunk him and there ended up being a squad, like a DSA squad member wins that seat. So it's just like just a total, like they are the biggest losers of the primary cycle by a wide margin.

[C]

Well, let me try to unpack my thoughts on this. And I'm just actually formulating them right now because I didn't expect that this is what we're going to be talking about. One is, I think that's right and I think the proof is in the pudding because Apex kind of Hiding their donations. Now they're setting up these front groups that they don't have, the APAC association. And so the money's not actually going to directly from apac, it's going to these cutouts. So they know that they're toxic and they're trying to get around that. The other side of this, though, that's really a little trickier to work through is this, which is APEX founded to ostensibly improve American Israeli relations. Right? Like that's the idea. It's like we want to keep America's support for Israel. What APEX become associated with is American support for the Netanyahu regime. And that's different. And APAC cannot, cannot sever itself from Netanyahu. And they really should, frankly, because there are other Jewish American political action groups that have been critical of Netanyahu, but APAC's not one of them. And I think APAC would do itself a lot of good if it were more open about having disagreements with the current Israeli government. Because the Israeli government's not Israel, it's just a government that runs Israel. And Israel is ostensibly democracy. And the government will change. I think that's the big problem is that they've basically said, no, you cannot countenance, we cannot countenance any criticism of Israel. And we will throw millions upon millions of dollars of people who will not offer a criticism of Israel. And candidates have for a while taken that exchange because the money's good and now even the good money doesn't get you very far. And I think, you know, ultimately, and you know, I'm not the only one who said this. Rahman Emanuel has said this. Others have said this. This falls at the feet of Netanyahu. He burned this bridge. And the longer he's there, the more this bridge is going to get burned. And it's just a shame, honestly.

[B]

Substance. People have legit reasons to be upset. Yeah, like sure. I mean, like, sure. Are there, is there anti Semitic comments and tropes from people who are anti, you know, apac, etc? Of course. But like, people have legitimate reasons to be upset. The popularity country has gone down substantially because of their actions. And like, you know, if you're going to be in a Democratic primary, like the idea, both morally, for the correct, you know, ideological reasons and strategically, like having their support is harmful, not helpful. And, you know, so why can't AIPAC

[A]

understand that Bibi Netanyahu has done for Israel what Donald Trump has done for America on the world stage? Like, it's a very simple, straightforward thing. The parallels are almost identical, right? Like Canada is having a wholesale realignment of its relationship with America because of the actions of the American president. The rest of the world is having a wholesale realignment of its relations with Israel because of the actions of the Israeli prime minister. Like, it's just, you know, it's not like there's something unique and different here at the same time. Last question then we're going to get out of here.

[B]

We are.

[A]

Is it possible.

[B]

Felt we had a long night ahead of us.

[A]

We're going to do that topic. Get out of this topic. We have so much else to talk about. Is it possible that Francesca Hong will be a human shield for. For the rest of this race? Because I look at this and I. I feel like, you know, America can only fixate on one, like, seemingly way out there. Dsa Tanky type. Not saying Francesca Hong is. She does not like holidays very much though. And it just seems like, I don't know, whenever somebody wants to reach for crazy, she's gonna be standing right there and next to her. We'll see. Ed's gonna look amazing.

[C]

100%. I can't believe how many holidays she doesn't like. Is there a hot. I mean someone was pointed out on Twitter, but she doesn't like Valentine's Day. Doesn't like. Thanks for giving.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. 100 JVL and by the way, I'll say it again, like, there's certain elements. How should I put this? I enjoy. I like the cut of Zoran's jib. He makes me laugh. We're on the podcast. He got into controversy. But he's a good hang with me. I'll say it's a little bit less for me as far as a hang is concerned. More lax bro.

[A]

Right, because he's a lax. And wrestling bro.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, whatever. And so. And I understand why some people like what con were saying might look at it and have it rubbed the wrong way a little bit. But like outside of that, he is super talented. And I gotta tell you, I watched him on. I believe it was over the weekend when he was on an MSNBC weekend show and they were asking him about these accusations of anti Semitism and his answer was so good and so compelling and well formulated and thoughtful and felt credible we could put up during the thing. But basically he was kind of doing a much more eloquent non podcasty version of what you were just saying about like the. The increase of anti Semitism is something that he's concerned about. He thinks that like the actions of the Bibi Netanyahu government are perpetrating a lot of it. He talked about the value of the Jewish people, used some language to kind of references, you know, I'm. This is, this is more your people, Sam. But, you know, some kind of chosen people, Land of milk. I don't know.

[A]

He used some kind of cosmopolitan, they're good with money.

[B]

He's flowerly biblical language about how much he values them, how many supporters he has on his campaign and how insulting it is to say that he's anti Semitic when all he's doing is making a critique on policy and that it was either in the same interview or in a different one that I watched of his, you know, prepping for this, where he was. He's also good on Ukraine. A lot of that other crowd who is in his kind of more lefty foreign policy world is less. Is not really that excited about the US Spending money on Ukraine, you know, and, and you can understand that as a coherent, if you're an isolationist, a coherent. But he was kind of tying more like Ukraine to Gaza and he was basically like, you know, Russia attacked Ukraine. They're a free country. We should be able to help them. We can't set aside. So I, I just, I think he's super skilled and I think that the p. I think that a lot of folks who have, who really have like a Twitter or like small short clips view of him misunderstand how deaf he might be at being able to handle this stuff in the general.

[C]

But to your point, jvl, I think there's always a limited capacity for national media attention. And if Franchesca Hong is going to win and it looks like it, we'll know next week. Obviously, I think there's going to be just a absolute sprint of fascination and coverage of every utterance she's ever made in her life. And people are going to obsess over it and El is going to benefit, obviously, because there's just not that much. There's a limit, let's say, on the Internet's ability to handle multiple things, conversations. And I think he's going to be more combed over and she's not. And she's just going to be the flavor of the month. So, yes, human shield.

[A]

All right, we're gonna move on to Max Miller in a moment. Max Miller, who went on the lead with Jake Tapper today. Boy, that was fun. But first, this show is sponsored by Casper. You know when you've had that long day and you can't wait to get into bed, no matter what happens, you can always go home to your Casper with snow technology to keep you cool no matter what. One of my kids was sent a Casper mattress and I had to choose which of the four children would get this luxury Casper mattress with all the cooling technology. You guys will never guess who I gave it to. That's right, favorite. And she loves it. She's like, dad, this is the greatest

[B]

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This thing is amazing. She could not all she's ever had are like normal kid mattresses.

[B]

Do the other children not listen to the podcast?

[A]

Her little. None of my children listen to any of the podcasts.

[B]

Really? Flashes Flash is a consumer of political mood.

[A]

He's a reader. More than a podcast, more than a podcast guy. Anyway, huge, huge hit. I cannot tell you how much she loves it. I will probably wind up having to buy these for the other three kids. And you know what? I won't even feel guilty about it because they're great. Casper makes reliable, high quality mattresses designed to deliver consistent, comfortable sleep night after night. That's why out of 99 mattresses, Consumer Reports named Casper's the 1 Mattress. Their top rated all foam mattress of 2026. That's a big deal. I actually also am a huge subscriber to and consumer of Consumer Reports and I noted this when they did their mattress rating this year. I, I was like, oh, look at that.

[B]

Our boys.

[A]

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[C]

Wait, are you supposed to replace your mattress every few years? Is that a thing?

[A]

I think typically it's like every 10 to 12 is recommendation. If you talk to the people at Sleepopolis. Whatever. You know what? Don't go dragging me down the mattress research rabbit hole because I have very strong feelings about all this.

[C]

Sure.

[B]

Before we get to Matt Smart, are we gonna wait for Abdul to win to do the socialism discourse? Because I do have. I do. I did promise the podcast listeners I had a socialism rant I wanted to do.

[A]

But we can play for let's win. I did a socialism thing today, Tim.

[B]

I know you read it. I did.

[A]

So Max Miller, his ex father in law, Senator Bernie Moreno spoke to TMZ about his situation in the hallway in the Capitol. And Miller was asked about that by Jake Tapper. Let's give a look.

[B]

Let's start there with your former father in law's story today about your daughter and the little blue bunny doll that she cannot sleep without. If it's true, that sounds like emotionally abusive behavior toward a toddler to refuse to give it to her when she can't sleep without it.

[D]

Jake, I would agree that if that were true, that would be incredibly disturbing and that the senator would be right. However, he has taken two years to publicly acknowledge for me to resign from my seat. Why is that, Jake? If he truly believes. Look, I'm a father to a two and a half year old daughter. I believe that you're also a father to children and I don't know if you're actually a father to a daughter daughter. But what I can tell you is. Well Jake, then what I can tell you is, is that if my daughter came to me and she said my ex husband did X, Y and Z and then I waited because I was nervous that a political live stream was going to expose a deeply impersonal, embarrassing matter to the senator for him to take that action. Sadly, this has nothing to do with my daughter, Jake. And that's what this entire thing is about.

[B]

Did he say no. That's a very weak rebuttal about.

[A]

It would have been terrible if it happened.

[B]

Yeah, that's kind of. I mean I don't know if someone told me that it was alleged that I denied my 2 year old. Be one thing if the child was like seven. Sometimes a seven year old needs to have their toy taken away from them. But that I denied my 2 year old her beloved bony after I allegedly injured her collarbone, abused the child and I think I would have been much more forceful, I guess I would say, in denying that had I had I not done it. Certainly a little clearer about how I would never take my child's bunny from her. So I don't know, Count me on the side of believing that he took the bunny.

[A]

Sam.

[C]

Yeah, none of this was particularly convincing.

[B]

Bold, bold.

[C]

Take their 10.

[A]

Thank you.

[C]

There was like a couple places though where he, he did that sort of song and dance where it's like, if I were guilty, X would have happened. So he's like, you know, if this really happened, I would be arrested. Or if, if I really like through scolding hot water on my ex wife, why would she cook me dinner in six days? And you know, if I really had done all this, why did Bernie Marino take two years to speak out? It's like none of that's a denial. Like just straight up. It's not denying anything. It's just saying, you know, I couldn't be that bad, otherwise I'd be behind bars. And it's just sort of a classic retort for someone who is in fact guilty of this stuff. Right. It's like, I know I couldn't possibly be the person, the demon that you're portraying me as. So I, I left this whole interview and I'm not the only one obviously, like more disturbed at his behavior. I thought his whole affect was weird. It's like, I don't know, he talked about like testosterone replacement therapies that he's getting. He looked incredibly broad shouldered and no jacket. It's just like if he was trying to come off looking psychotic, he did, he did a particularly good job in this interview. And I'm not really sure what the strategy is here.

[A]

I, I try to stay away from stuff like this because I get pretty hot about like, men who betray their families. And I gotta tell you, like, if I was embroiled in a thing with my, where my, my daughter was a, a pawn in, in something I felt like, and that she was being used to destroy my, my career at the Bulwark or something. I just fucking quit my career at the Bulwark. Yeah, right. Like, I mean, the, the weirdness of. Well, you know, I'm gonna sit here and fight this out because I gotta, gotta protect my job. Like. No, you have to protect your daughter and your family. And if that means you have to suck up something unfair, then that's what you, you do. Because that's what men do. You like, I, I just, I. Oh,

[B]

he doesn't care about his daughter, obviously. He probably abused her. It was, that's the allegation.

[A]

No, I mean, what I'm, what I'm trying to say is this man is psychotic.

[C]

Yeah. Like, this doesn't make sense. It doesn't compute to me. It's like, what, what kind of priorities do you actually have? Why is holding elected office in the House so important? Like, what exactly is he.

[A]

Leave and fix your family or just

[C]

fix yourself if, if you have to, like, just do anything other than this. And, and look, I'm not saying this. I'm not, I'm not going to read this quote, because I'm trying to say this is all about, I'm not trying to tie it to Trump. But there was a part of this interview that really jumped out at me where he starts talking.

[A]

Oh, I think we have it. I think we have the video.

[C]

If you have that video about him talking about how Trump is the template that he wants to follow here, I'd like to play that question is, are

[B]

all three of these women who don't

[A]

know each other, are all three of them lying?

[D]

Yes. It's very easy. And I can tell you why every single time. And people have asked me, you know, what are you going to do? Are you going to drop out of this race? Are you going to resign? You know, are you going to get out before the deadline? And my answer to you, Jake, is no. And I can tell you why. In 2016, when President Donald J. Trump faced the most extreme allegations in the world that hit him day after day after day. And people in the media, very much like yourself and others, said that he would have no shot at winning, that he should not be the President of the United States. But guess what? He stayed in and he was resilient. And what the American people can see is that they can see that somebody is fighting who is resilient. And that is a quality that the American people cherish.

[B]

Here's the thing. Besides the cherished part, he's not wrong. No.

[C]

But also, that wasn't sort of what I took away from it. My, my takeaway was how pernicious Trump has been on people just like this who look at that example and say, you know what? Like, it's more manly to stick it out and hold elected office than it is to take care of my right. Like how. And how also Trump winning and everyone rallying behind Trump in that moment gave every single psychopath or problematic person in politics a permission structure to say, you know what? Voters don't really give a. About this stuff. And I can basically my way through it. I'm, I'm struck by that. And in a, in a way that's like, kind of a little jarring for me, because that his, his North Star is Trump, and his ultimate objective is power. And he has his priorities all out of whack for the reasons that JVL articulated.

[A]

If, if Donald Trump wanted Max Miller out of the race, he could do it, right?

[D]

This is.

[A]

I mean, the holds, the hold Donald Trump has over Republican voters is such that if he came out tonight and said, you know what? Max Miller is a bum, he's terrible. I demand that he get out or we're going to send some people over to his house or something like that, Max Moore will get out of the fucking race. And the fact that Republicans are not going to clean up their mess here is just one more indictment of them as an institution and as a party. I mean, say what you will about the Democrats, right? How long was it from the. The story with the credible allegations of abuse with Graham Platner to him getting like, something clear was he was going to be out of the race was like 72 hours, I think. And, and this guy just been there. Everybody's known about this for, for forever, and he's just sitting there and I think he's gonna make it. Am I wrong? Do you guys think he. There's a chance that he actually gets pressured?

[B]

There continues to be a drip, drip, drip here. And I think that one thing that they do have that some of these other people who have had these allegations, like, we're able to blame, like the liberal media, etc. But because the accusers include Donald Trump's spokesperson and the daughter of a Republican senator, you're seeing the stuff come out in Daily Caller, Daily Mail. I do, you know, and so I do think that that is what makes him a little bit more vulnerable to this idea that, oh, these are left wing, paid for by Soros accusers or whatever. This is Kavanaugh part two. It's kind of hard to do that when it's Stephanie Grisham and the senator's daughter. And you can try. And I think that. I think he'll probably get away with it.

[A]

Is it dangerous for Moreno? But he becomes seen as like, what is he doing? You know, talking about these women and, you know, real men ought to be allowed to treat them.

[B]

I don't think so, but I think it's hard. It makes it hard for Trump, like, a little bit like Trump. Trump can't throw him over and he could, I guess he can do whatever he wants, but like that. It goes fundamentally against his ethos. Never apologize, never give in on anything, never give these people an inch. You know, it begins to open the Door to. What do you do about Corey Mills? What do you do about Chuck Edwards?

[C]

I have no. I have no. I'm no, no hopes that Trump or expectations Trump will do anything other than show empathy for the guy. And as for Marino, like, I'm not gonna weigh in too heavily on that. I have no earthly clue the extent of the pain and weirdness that he's going through, so I don't want to wait. The person who I think looks like a total doofus and the charlatan is Mike Johnson, the. The pious speaker of the House, a man of great character who can weigh in on anyone else's scandal if they got a D next to her name. This guy, this is in his caucus. This guy's in his caucus, and he's not going to do jack about it. I mean, spare me the, the piety. When any other moment, you can't speak out about him or Corey Mills. It's ridiculous.

[B]

I, I want to go back to the original point, though, because I agree with Sam about how Trump laid the ground for this, but I want to add another layer to it about the people that are complicit. The people that said that Trump was disqualified and then came around are the ones actually the laid the ground for this, you know, and. And I felt that way. I had a lot of negative feelings that I don't like to refresh on the night of 2016, November. But, like, one of those thoughts was just like, these people don't know what they've wrought. Not only just because whatever Trump does, but because this is now changed, how things work forever. Like, things don't exist in a vacuum like this. And, and like, the unintended consequences of this are manifest. We're seeing it throughout the Republican Party. And all these fucking people. Like, those people I have the most contempt for, like, three that come to mind were on Fox trying to get condescending about Graham Platner, Kevin McCarthy. We take care of our mess. Reince Prevost. We do stuff, you know, Kellyanne ranting. It's just like Reince Priebus and kellyanne and Kevin McCarthy did this to us, did this to the country. Like, they all could have tried. I mean, who knows? Trump could have gone on by. By himself and still won anyway. But, like, they all had agency and they all said Trump was disqualified and then got back on board, and then he won, and then they got big jobs and then they got speakerships and now they're rich and famous, and they tried to, like, make themselves feel better about their moral Failings like wagging their finger at the Democrats, and the Democrats maybe deserved a. A finger wag or two over Graham Platner. But, like, in the end, they. They did what was required, as you said, jvl. And these guys won't do it. And, and they said a single word. Two other House guys that have accusations.

[C]

Have any of those three people in the comments section, Please, if you can help us, search us. I know the answer. But have any of those three said a single damn word about Max Miller? Doubt it.

[A]

Can't imagine what a horrible human being. Well, you know, maybe someday we'll get to see bad things happen to him, because there's no delicacy in life like watching bad things happen to bad people. It's one of my mantras. I think it's pretty healthy. Tim, did you ever hear that in therapy? Should therapists ever say to you, you know, Tim, if you could just hold out to watch for bad things happening to bad people, that's how you find true peace?

[B]

No. You know, it's interesting. I spent a lot of my therapy time working on letting go and, and not letting my resentment at people who, who were rewarded after doing horrible things consume me. And so a little bit of a different approach.

[A]

Different approach.

[C]

Which is why you bring it up on the podcast today.

[B]

Yeah, well, I haven't fully succeeded, so. Sure, sure. But it's all, it's all, you know, we're all growing as humans. You know, we are going to.

[A]

We're going to talk about something very close in this. In a moment featuring one of my. One of my idols, one of the people I look to as an avatar of what I could be as a journalist, as a. As a leader, as a founder. We're going to talk about Bari Weiss in a minute, but first, Tim, a message from our sponsor.

[B]

Oh, no, Tim. Really?

[A]

Tim, this is.

[B]

Tim, a message from our sponsor. We should just vamp for a second while Tim gets the sponsor ad.

[A]

Tim, get his ad.

[B]

Is it Three Day Blinds?

[C]

Yes, you got it.

[B]

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[A]

Such a professional. All right, so as we were prepping for today's show, Tim slacked us a photo that he said he could not chase out of his brain. Tim, here's the photo. Can you, can you tell the people what it is we're looking at?

[B]

Okay. It's indescribable, but I'm gonna try. So we're in Sun Valley. Sun Valley is where the elites and tech and media hobnob. Was it Paul Allen that started Sun Valley? I don't, I don't get invited any of this. And I wouldn't go if I was invited. That's fine. Just a quick aside. Did you see the. The controversy on dialogue was something Peter Thiel, I guess, started. And then people met in the woods and went to a conference and they saw panels and then, then there was like outrage. The list leaked and there's outrage at the People who went. And I got some texts where I was proud of you to not be on that list. And I was like, you know what? It's the only one of these things I've ever been invited to was that stupid thing. And you can't think of a torture for me worse than sitting in the woods with other people sniffing their own farts, doing panels, talking about the future of tech, blah, blah, blah, like, it's horrible. So anyway, I'd never be caught dead at one of these things. But there are two interesting things about this photo I want to talk about. One is Bari Weiss is apparently in a Dr. Smock, which JVL, who's 1 16th of a doctor, could say something about that. But more importantly, Sheryl Sandberg, who she's with, had written the book Lean in, former Facebook executive. I don't know if you can zoom in there, but she's carrying two books, and if you look closely at the one closest to her breast there, it says unfettered. And that is John Fetterman's book. So that makes you wonder, what's the other book? And that's also John. She's carrying two copies of John Fetterman's memoir. John Fetterman can't talk like John Fetterman came on my podcast, and he can't enunciate complex thoughts if he isn't prepared for the question. And so why there is there ever been a good Senators book? When was the last good Senators book? Kennedy's like, there just aren't good Senators books ever. And so the idea that of all the Senators books that you'd want to grab two copies of is unfettered. I don't. I can't understand. I need an X. I need answers. I need someone who knows Sheryl Sandberg. I might know one listener who might know Sheryl Sandberg. So I'm calling on you to contact her and ask her why she was carrying two copies of his book. Was it a favor? Is she planning on reading them? Was she reading one for herself? Giving one to a niece or a friend?

[A]

Sam, what are your thoughts about this?

[C]

So I tried to. The first instinct was maybe Federman's in Aspen and he's handing out copies of signed books, but that's not the case at all.

[E]

Sun City.

[B]

They're in Sun City.

[C]

Are they in Sun City?

[B]

Maybe he's in Sun.

[C]

Sun City. I don't know. Let's see. Sun City.

[A]

Ansley, effort that for us or Sun Valley?

[B]

Sun Valley. Like I said, I don't get Invited to this?

[C]

Yeah. Okay. It's an odd choice for literature. I. I agree with you. 100. These books are about as.

[B]

Oh, yeah, he was there. Him and David McCormick. They did. They're doing their buddy tour together.

[C]

So this explains why. So he's there. He's doing his buddy tour with McCormick.

[B]

It does.

[C]

Well, explains why she has two of the books. Why would you need two?

[B]

I mean, if you were. If you attended a panel with Dave McCormick, John Fetterman, would you walk out with two copies of Unfettered, the John

[A]

Fetterman Story, moderated by Aaron Burnett. Thank you.

[C]

I'm more intrigued by Barry Weiss's outfit than this because I think she just got two signed copies of the Fetterman book, and she's. I don't know, is carrying them around. Barry's outfit is just unreal. Like, the doctor lab coat in the beach bag with the reflecting glasses is really a look. And I'm not sure if she's. If this is part of the panel experience or not. Maybe she was on some health panel. But the Fetterman book, it's a boring book. But I'm just assuming he. He signed it for her and she's now carrying it around.

[A]

I will just say that if you ever needed proof that all of these people are intellectual frauds, this is it right here in this photo. Like, Bari Weiss is somehow the premier public intellectual of her day, and she's an idiot. She's not actually very smart. She's very poorly read. She's fucking terrible at her job. She's driving CBS News into the ground. And Cheryl sand, like, here, they're like, oh, I'm here for the working man to really broaden up things. Oh, but I only want to hang out with all of these people who

[B]

were early at Facebook.

[A]

Oh, my God in heaven.

[B]

Do you see the other CBS story today? Speaking of Bari, Sharon Alfonso is working on a story about Epstein and banking. And. And they had interviewed Ron Wyden, and apparently that's information from. We don't know exactly the details from his bank accounts. And that story has been killed. I don't. I don't know what's happening behind the scenes at cbs. Maybe they're planning a big Epstein takedown. They have Ross theories. Yeah, they got Rossed out.

[A]

That is now heading.

[B]

They pass that on. I. I'm. I am suspect. But we can wait and see for the fall tour. And it's just, again, it's so telling. Like, the whole conceit of, like, that's funny. Like, remember the origin of the free press is like, the elites won't tell you that there's group think at the New York Times. And like, we're not, you know, we're going to be the ones that speak the truth and are unafraid. And it's like, yeah, well, we're going to kill the Epstein story and I'm going to hang out in Sun City with Sun Valley, Sun Valley with Sheryl Sandberg, and we're going to read Unfettered by John Fetter.

[C]

Is true that all these people who complain about the establishment are just now the establishment and they're never going to get over that.

[A]

But they were at the New York Times complaining about the establishment.

[C]

Yes, that's true, too.

[A]

She went to an Ivy League school.

[B]

Says, those are $228 sweatpants. I wish. That's nice.

[A]

Okay, moving on. Tim, while you were away, we had big movement in the Judge Janine reflecting pool case. You talked about that a little bit with Bill on Monday. Yesterday, the president said while in the Oval Office that Judge Deneen, Judge Deaneen folded like an umbrella. Do we have that clip, boys? Really disappointed with Jeanine Bureau.

[E]

She.

[B]

She folded like an umbrella.

[A]

And people get away with things and it's. It's a disgrace. Disgrace.

[B]

She choked.

[A]

Interesting.

[C]

Like a dog, Chief.

[B]

Umbrellas are kind of hard to fold. Just a minor nitpick there. No, like a cheap umbrella. Sometimes you get a cheap umbrella from the guy on the street and you're like trying to. Trying to close it up and it gets caught. It's not a great metaphor. I don't know.

[A]

I, I always go to Consumer Reports and buy the best reviewed umbrella. I don't do cheap umbrellas. So I, we haven't had a chance to talk about this. I, I wrote a little bit about this. There is a funny thing going on here, which is that Judge Janine plays by the rules of television most of the time, which is what Donald Trump plays by. Which is what Doug Burgum plays by. Except that every once in a while she has to play by the rule of law when she, like, submits something that's a sworn document to the court where if she's being untruthful, they can disbar her or put her in jail. And this is a real structural disadvantage she has relative to Doug Burgum because Doug Burgum just said whatever the fuck he wants. Like, Doug Bergen be like, yeah, now.

[B]

What are you talking about, man?

[A]

Yeah, we, we didn't say it was failure stuff. It was all vigilante. Talk with Tay Tay about that, you know, and I find it delicious and wonderful that Judge Jeanine was forced one time to be truthful because she was under the penalty of perjury. And, and that now may cost her everything.

[B]

About this, I like the idea. No bad ideas in a brainstorm. I like thinking outside the box. I think it's, you know, my issues with it are a couple. One is that people, like, lie under oath on the Hill all the time, and it doesn't really seem like we're enforcing that. So this administration's lied a lot during hearings on the Hill. So there's that people trying to get cabinet secretary positions have lied during those hearings. The judge mean thing, what I really can't figure is why not do Trump? Why not do Judge Jeanine? Why don't you judge box of wine, take your crap case, bring it to the judge, you know, give them some grainy video, and then when, when you fail, just be like the liberal judge appointed by Joe Biden. It's the, you know, we need, this is why we need to pack the D.C. circuit. That would, I think, would have been a better approach. But she said for some reason decided that she was like, I'm going to take a stand on the reflecting case.

[A]

I think she thought she could shift it to Burgum. I think she thought if I do that, I have to eat the sandwich. But if I do it this way in the motion and I bring all of my evidence about the, that the Interior Department told me, I can lay this at Burgum's feet and then he'll be the one in trouble with the bar.

[C]

Right. So I talked to Andrew Weissman about this for. On the Legal News. I don't think it's coming out tomorrow. I think, to your point, Tim, I think you're right. Like she could have done it. I think the issue here was pro, and this is Andrew speculating, was that there were probably some actual lawyers in that office who were worried about getting disbarred or some sort of professional consequence.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Because of how thin and obviously transparently political the case was and how ridiculous it was. At some point you face the music, right? You could get the case dismissed and you, you look embarrassed there, but you do risk professional repercussions and certain reputation damage. I will make a slight disagreement with JVL about Bergam, though, and Andrew kind of plopped the idea in my head. So hear me out. This filing that, the motion to dismiss that Piro puts out basically says I was misled by The Department of Interior, like, they just lied to us. They didn't tell us the full extent of the damage to the installation.

[B]

All right?

[C]

So she, the Justice Department is laying responsibility. The premier law enforcement agency company is laying responsibility for misleading the court at the feet of Doug Burgum. This guy David Hearn, the Olympian who was charged. Everyone's like, well, he should sue. He should sue for reputational damages. He should get his legal fees back. The question is, who do you sue? He has a case potentially against Bergam. He does. Because Burgum, according to Pierrot, misled the Justice Department into bringing charges against him. David Hearn. Hearn could turn around and say, you know what? I'm not going to sue Pira for putting this case together. I'm going to sue Bergam for slandering me and putting a fake case. I don't know if he'll do it,

[A]

but it's, this is why I thought the money quote in the motion to dismiss was the part where Judge Jeanine lays out the actual case and statute that the Department of Interior is violating. She's like, you know, we had an affirmative obligation pursuant to Brady v. Maryland to the Jenks act. And, you know, Rule 16 tells us we had to do this thing, but we couldn't because of what the department, Department of the Interior did. She's like, you could sue them with this.

[C]

Now, Andrew said, Andrew said under a normal, you know, universe, which never would happen, the Justice Department could, in theory, sue Bergam. The Justice Department. Yeah. Because they got misled by him. They're not going to do that, obviously. But I don't think there's anything stopping, you know, who's Norm Eisen representing? David Hearn. I don't know from them being like, hey, Judge, Janine has said the, vi, the, the statute that you violated, my client was harmed by that. Pay up.

[A]

We have a sworn, sworn statement in the motion to dismiss. So I, you know, I, I, I'm trying to be more of a solutions guy.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Instead of just a complaint guy. And so I, I wrote about this on, I think it was Monday. I proposed a law, something maybe for the Democratic caucus to think about come 2029 for the transparency requirements under Modern Presidents act, in which, because, you know, post Watergate, there are a bunch of post Watergate reforms to try to fix the system. I think we're gonna have to do that too here. And so in the post Trump reforms, the Trump act would take high ranking executive branch appointees, maybe even the president themselves. And when they are speaking under the aegis of their department, agency or whatnot. They have to be sworn in. And to your. To your question, we would have to set up a court to monitor this so there would, you know, you can. When people purge themselves, it's only. It's only a problem if there is a body there to. To bring those perjury charges. I feel like we could, you know, if we maybe part of the statute, name panels, the. An inspector general to bring. To bring suits for perjury against people violating the Trump act in, say, the D.C. district Court. I just feel like this is a thing we can. We could think our way around and we should make people like Judge Jeanine treat public statements when they're behind a podium like that, as if they are under oath, as if it's a sworn deposition.

[B]

I got crazy because I had already read your Triad. And so my pushback to this was what was previously offered about. I understand they're lying. They do lie under oath in already. And so it's not foolproof. Nothing's foolproof. I like the idea. You know, I. I would like to turn to Andrew Weissman. There could be some. Some free speech concerns here. You know, I don't know exactly the potential.

[C]

All free speech concerns.

[B]

Maybe the Supreme Court. I don't know. I don't know.

[A]

There could be free speech.

[C]

Maybe an avenue potentially for over litigation. A lot of lawsuits flying back, back and forth.

[B]

We probably have to expand the Supreme Court first before getting to the Trump act, because. I don't know.

[A]

You don't say.

[B]

I don't see the current Supreme Court upholding it. So there might be an order of operations.

[A]

You have to expand the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court before you can do anything. Because there is nothing that a Democratic president can do that this court wouldn't strike down.

[B]

There are a couple things.

[A]

Yeah. Anyway, just, you know, trying to think outside the box. This is why people subscribe to the Triad. You know, they want to. They want to have.

[B]

I'm surprised you haven't used. I had to push for trialifornia, which I think is funny you say that. Is that because tomorrow you're doing Trial of Ornia?

[A]

We have more states. That is the title.

[B]

Are you including trialifornia in the more states?

[A]

That's right.

[C]

How many more?

[A]

I mean, we should start with five.

[B]

Well, I had four. I had four. I had four. I had four. I had a net five. Because it'd be four. With adding D.C. and Puerto Rico, creating trialifornia and then merging Utah and Idaho into Utah So that would take away two. It's coming.

[A]

Just people, you know, stay tuned tomorrow. It's gonna be great.

[B]

We're gonna talk a little bit. Has the courage and wants to be a 2028 nominee.

[A]

His lap like he's got to do Trialifornia. If only Gavin Newsom has the courage.

[B]

You've got four months to get moving on Trialifornia.

[A]

All right, we're gonna talk about Todd Blanche, and then we're gonna go back to Michigan and break down the results there because we'll. We'll know a lot more. But first, a word from our final sponsor, Sam. Take it away.

[C]

All right, this segment is sponsored by. Drum roll, please, the New York Times. So we obviously are having this great conversation tonight as pundits, but we need to tip our cap to the shoe leather journalists who are breaking the stories that we are chewing over. One such story is, as we just mentioned, about Judge Jeanine Pirro and her falling stock inside the Trump administration. So after the president said she folded like an umbrella, which Tim rightfully points out, maybe he's not the best metaphor by dropping charges against the alleged vandals of the reflecting pool. That story we got courtesy of Tyler Pager, Glenn Thrush, and Katie Rogers, who had an account of the meeting between Trump, Pirro and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum inside the Oval Office. Now, there's a lot of background in that story on how Trump was angry at Pirro, about how Doug Burgum was trying to save face before Trump, and why Trump may not yet be moving to fire Pirro, and how Pirro herself doesn't think she's going to get fired anyway. These reporters spent a long time developing whatever sources they had for this story. And it's become clear that that in the second Trump White House, it is a large and harder endeavor to get scoops and good sources from inside the administration. Now, as a newsroom editor, I got to say I do respect, really respect how the Times has been able to maintain those contacts. I know there are a lot of people in our audience, and maybe even on this podcast, who can be tough on the mainstream reporting and even occasionally on the New York Times. Really not jbl. No, you've never said it.

[B]

And sometimes deserved, sometimes a lot of

[A]

addition by subtraction going on, honestly.

[D]

All right.

[C]

But in the end, and I do mean this sincerely, the truth, there's the

[B]

end of that sponsorship. Yeah, exactly.

[C]

I'm gonna save it. In the end, the truth is that the New York Times mission really, really, really does matter. I mean that sincerely. They are the gold standard of news. The foundation news commentary is fact based report reporting in this show and every other show with commentary on current events does depend on original fact based reporting like what they do at the New York Times and what many of our reporters do here at the block as well, shout out to them. So now you all get to decide what you think about Janine Piro's future and you do so with a bit of knowledge courtesy of the Times. Without fact based reporting like this, the rest of us are just guessing. So wherever you seek it out nationally, locally, Jonathan Cohn I have to read that again because that's the one line that demand I read perfectly and you interrupted it. So wherever you seek it out nationally, locally, support fact based reporting.

[B]

And Jonathan Cohen, while you're doing that, I was looking at some of these other races that are happening. Just a few interesting things on the flag. Maybe we can talk for a second about the Kansas Senate race I think is a little bit of a sleeper and it looks Roger Marshall is a totally worthless cuck. He won by 11.3 the last time. I think Trump's definitely more than 11% down from 2020 approval wise. And the Democrats look like, oh yeah, I think we have a call. Actually the Democrats are doing something I think is smart. At least it's unconventional. It's something people aren't talking about as much with all the DSA hysteria, but they're nominating a guy named Adam Hamilton who is a pastor of a megachurch. Actually he thought about running as an independent, decided to run as a Democrat. He's very, very moderate, you know, kind of doing a little bit of a Rob sand type approach in Kansas. I'm intrigued by that. I also was just kind of cruising through the Virginia results. Nothing really that interesting except I think it's kind of crazy. And this kind of also relates to the DSA discourse a little bit. It's kind of crazy that nobody primaried Mark Warner. Like Mark Warner has been in there forever and you know, relatively good sender, but relatively accommodating at times. And just again, it kind of shows the distinction between the Tea Party stuff, you know, where people were dropping like flies everywhere. And I kind of thought that was interesting, especially compared to what you saw from some of these other senators, Michael Bennett, etc.

[C]

Can't you say there's a weird thing happening in Kansas which we were kind of looking into, but it didn't get much attention, but they changed the laws of the state where if like Roger Marshall were to drop out at a certain point, they would just have a placeholder for the next two years, not a real. Not election this year. So there's like some weird speculation going on in Kansas that Marshall may just decide to hold on for until that deadline and then drop out. Something to keep your eye on. Okay.

[A]

In, in Missouri, the first district in Missouri, we, we had sort of an interesting race there with Wesley Bell and he was challenged by Corey Bush who He unseated in 2024. She came back for more. She. She gone with 41. And he's up by nearly 40 points. He's up by 38 points. Wow. Interesting. Is that interesting or no? Is that just totally expected?

[B]

I just, I think it's interesting just because it's kind of counter narrative but you know, these things are a little more complicated. One other thing I just want to mention happened today and then we can dublanche. But South Dakota again, this is like now we're in real stretch territory. But I just. You have to put as many chances on the board as possible in a wave year. You know, maybe, you know, surprising state hits. Seen that in the past many times. And South Dakota had kind of an independent guy named Brian Bangs. Interesting candidate. But they had a Democrat still on the ballot, Julian Bodion I think is how you pronounce the name. And today was the deadline for them to coalesce and Julian Bode and decide to drop out. Which shout out to them patriotic decision. I mean that would have been a hopeless race as a three way and it's still obviously a big long shot, but something to monitor. Brian Bangs, if you're in South Dakota.

[A]

We're gonna go back to Michigan. I think we're gonna wait and close that out with Michigan. And we will talk just very quickly about Todd Blanche. He's in. He's through. Well, and he's not through yet.

[C]

He's through the committee. He's got this.

[A]

Well, he's through the committee. But you know, Susan Collins knows that she can vote against him since he's going to be confirmed so she can show her independence so long as it doesn't matter. And Thom Tillis and John. John. Was it Corny?

[B]

No.

[A]

Who was, who was it?

[C]

Was Corning.

[A]

Yeah, Corning. Yeah, they just settled back down into the chair and held. Held out their little piece of paper that they got signed. And I, I just don't understand. I tried talking this through with Sarah on Friday and I have to circle back and do it again with you guys because I was unpersuaded by her. I don't understand. I would understand Cornyn Tillis saying, I'm too old for this. I don't care. Whatever you want. Todd Blanche. Have Todd Blanche. I would understand that. Wouldn't like it, but I'd understand it. I would understand them saying, this guy sucks. And you, Donald Trump, we don't care who you nominate. I'm not voting for him. I understand that too, and I'd like that. I don't understand them setting up a totally surmountable obstacle, making Trump mad at them, alibi Trump, and then folding so that Trump can get his way. That seems like a sour spot, which does. Like what? Just as a human psychology piece, why would they choose to do that?

[B]

I think I can answer. Okay. I think it's good old boy club situation. I think that they've gotten to know Todd Blanche. This is obviously preposterous to me. So, you know, putting myself in the head of John Cornyn, I'd rather rip my toenails off. But I think he sees Todd Blanche as somebody they can do business with. You know, somebody they can rub elbows with. Probably likes them at some level and feels like you deal with them. And these guys have spent 10 years rationalizing that, like, Trump can be managed and that, like, oh, the criticisms are overwrought and the, you know, the libs have Durant. The libs are the real danger. And remember Merrick Garland? Remember how Merrick Garland weaponized the Justice Department against Donald Trump? This isn't any worse than that. And so I just think they have all those rationalizations in their head and they. Good old boys club. Maybe they want to lobby again at the. At the end of this thing. They want to keep their financial. They think they won.

[A]

Like, do they walk out of this?

[B]

No, no. John said yesterday. Did you see that video? He looked so frustrated when he was like, it's not like we can control Trump.

[C]

He said that this morning. The quote is, there's nothing we can do to rein in the president.

[B]

I'm sure there is.

[A]

Don't. Don't vote for his.

[C]

Can I make. Can. Let me test run another theory first of free behind you guys by you guys. And you can tell me if I'm wrong. I never worked on the Senate. I don't know. Tim, did you ever work on the Senate or.

[B]

No.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Not a Hill guy.

[C]

Okay, so what if this is not about Trump or Corner or Tillis? What if this is about John Th. Okay, let me hear me out. Those guys, like, th. They know th is rational and they want him to stay in his position. And they know that th can only really stay in his his position if he can show that he can move some of Trump's agenda. Trump's flipping out over the SAVE Act. It's not going to pass. They need to get in line at some point and get th to show that he can succeed as majority leader. Because if he can't on this stuff, Trump will absolutely take him out. And that's what this is about.

[B]

I think that, that I. That relates to my theory too. And I just. Because it's good old boy theory. It's like it is want to still be in the club. So maybe it's less about Blanche than it is about Boone. And these guys don't have any. I mean, here's what it really comes down to. Sarah's not on the pod this week, so I can just do it. It's my one pass. They're pussies.

[A]

You can say that that word now

[B]

though, because it's hard. It's hard. Look, forget even the politics of it. It's hard. Like think about anything in your life. Like where there's a group of people fight isn't hard. Spite is like, sorry, jbl. It's hard that want something and they're your friends and you have to be the one that's like, nope, we shouldn't do this guys. Takes. I mean, you can do it. People out there have gumption. People have. People are anti social like you, jbl, or they have courage and backbone like Sarah. But for most people it's hard. And most people are the P word. And these guys especially.

[A]

All right, well, there it is. All right, so we're gonna go back to Missouri. We can bring up the video there. Michigan, Sorry, Michigan. It's a long night, we're way past my bedtime. And we now have 28 of the vote in and things have tightened up a little bit. This is John. John cone does not have the best audio right now, but he has been feeding us some intelligence and he says that heli has gotten slightly better results in some counties. And we have a tweet here from Jordan Schwartz who says the race will come down to Wayne county election day vote. Stevens is doing extremely well in rural Michigan relative to expectations and a good Wayne result could allow her to win this primary.

[B]

Wow. Boy. We're gonna have to Delete the first 20 minutes of the podcast if that they never happened.

[A]

Don't worry.

[B]

That's it. I mean, a big underperformance by Al Said and I guess I do would have to say if, if that's what happens. And maybe then we should just pause on this and finish our takes at the end once we learn more. But it would be worrying, like at some level, if he's going to win, I would kind of would have liked him to really run away with it. Run away, right. Yeah. Because, you know, there's some signal that he could underperform. Again, I think that the thing about Michigan and the Senate governor's races are different. I think that the Hong situation in Wisconsin is a whole nother bag of potatoes. But Senate races these days, like there's almost never cross party vote. Like the only Senate races that went opposite each other recently were Collins and Gideon and Maine. Collins, I think had a unique brand in Maine. You got to give it to her. Slotkin and Trump in Michigan. But that was like luck God levels of Slotkin. But like she got basically the same amount of votes as Kamala did and there were a bunch of Trump voters that went in there and we're just like, I don't care about the Senate race. Like that's why she won. And then Griego, you got to give credit to, he did much better with Hispanics and so is Gallego and Trump. Like that's basically it. So you don't see a ton of Senate races where, where the state goes kind of to the party. And I think, you know what we're going to get with Trumpet the Bush line, like El said, would have to like, not just underperform but like massively, massively Roy Moore style underperform to lose. But it would still be a little bit alarming if he underperformed the primary.

[A]

Well, so here's the question though. I mean, there's underperforming and then there's. There's something else. Right. So what Jonathan was saying was that it looked like the turnout level was overall very, very high.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I mean underperforming with a low turnout erection.

[B]

Sorry, Sarah,

[A]

is, is. Is one thing, but if you wind up with a lot of voters coming out and you know you're winning a close race, it says something different. Right. I mean, it says there are people that you're activating and you are bringing out people, but also you're polarizing people too. Right? I mean, is that a fair read of this?

[C]

Well, I was just curious and I was asking the Slack channel if independents and Republicans can vote in this primary. And Connor says that there's no party registration. Anyone can vote in either primary. I don't have anything other than that to speculate on. But it wouldn't necessarily shock me if there were some people who rushed into the Democratic primary to, you know, maybe cast vote in favor of Stevens because they're worried about else aid right. Like that wouldn't be shocking to me. I think turnout is, look, who knows what we're going to be like in a month. But I think one of the key takeaways from every one of these elections, not just this but the special elections and every polling data that you see is enthusiasm to vote. And by and large Democratic voters are really enthusiastic and Republicans aren't. And so to Tim's point, it's going to help across the ticket.

[B]

I guess I'll just say one other thing. The reason when I what I meant by underperform actually because I'll say in some ways this way overperformed but his expectations would have been going into this primary. What I meant is underperformed the polling and you know, and I just think that would be something to keep your eye on because for a while there was what was it called, the Wilder Rule or whatever. Doug Wilder in Virginia, where you know that he was black, was the first one to win but the polls showed him way ahead. He ended up barely winning and for a while black candidates underperformed their polls. Not that isn't really Bradley. It's called the Bradley Bradley effect, not Wilder. Fuck, you're right. But Bradley is, was also in Virginia. Thank you, Sam. God, this means, this is when you're starting to get old. You start to lose facts like that, they start to leak out the ears. That's I'm disappointed in myself. Chastise me chat. Trump then had this. He was being underperformed in the polls for kind of a different reason. And so I don't know, it just be something to monitor whether there are people that don't feel comfortable saying that they're going to vote, you know, particularly in a Democratic primary. Don't want to be like I'm against him, he's Muslim. They don't want to feel like they're being bigoted or whatever. That's, that's about as half baked a theory as Sam's people crossing over. But at this point, you know, he's pulling 12 to 16 plus and he's up 6. We'll see what Wayne county looks like some of these other votes.

[A]

So yeah, that, that means it's going to be pretty late. I mean it really does come down to Detroit and it turned the question is how much helly can win by in Detroit. That that's going to be a late night. So here, here, let's have our DSA colloquy. You promised a DSA rant. Tim I, I proposed another solution today in the triad because it's solutions week in the triad today. But I feel like people don't, they're really two DSAs and we ought to like split the Mensheviks from the, the Bolsheviks. And, and I feel like we should do that and we can do that pretty easily. We should have social Democrats, which is I would say probably like the majority of Bernie voters are not democratic socialists. They're social Democrats in the European tradition. But, but I want to hear what you have to say.

[B]

I liked that article, that newsletter a lot. And I think that there's a fact that I saw this week that bolstered it, which was, I think it was our friends at the argument did a poll about free trade and they asked, you know, like, what is your, are you pro or anti free trade? And the category that was the most pro free trade was people who said that they were DSA sympathetic, which is like, you know, in the traditional sense. The DSA types were like the protectionist, anti free trade parts of the party and the neoliberals and the centrists were the more free trade. And I think that what that says is that there is definitely a, I wouldn't even say small, like a, somewhere between small and medium. A small plus a medium light core of people that are really DSA and they're pat and that what their motivating issues are Medicare for All Israel, you know, anti corporate involvement in politics and they really workers and they really hate the center left. And that's, and that is a real existing demographic, the uniparty. Yeah, they hit the unit party. Right. And then I think that there's a bunch of other people and I have some of them in my life, so I know they exist who are like basically conventional Democrats, but they're like, fuck these guys. Trump has won twice. What have you done for me lately? Like, I'm going to take a flyer on these other guys. Maybe we need more. I'm kind of done with incremental change. We'll do some more radical change. And then if you read that group, the DSA Platform on the DSA website, they'd be like, I don't know about that. Radical. You know, I was thinking more like, like we're gonna tax the billionaires and we're gonna do Supreme Court expansion and whatever you Know, we're gonna do kind of Medicare for all who want it. Right.

[A]

Like ban on data centers.

[B]

Right. Ban on data centers. Right. And. And we want some more aggressive stuff. And, and they're saying their DSA by reflecting that, you know, kind of. That, that's a way to kind of register dislike with the Democratic Party and both those. And so I agreed. I thought your analysis was right. And I think there is basically. Basically, I think there's actually probably three groups. There's like a Social Democrats that want the party to be like Sweden. There's a kind of a DSA core, and then there's a group that's like, the DSA right now is the stand in for my anger at the establishment. And if someone else gave me an other option, maybe I'd look at that. So I think that's happening. My main thing that I just wanted to rant about, Sorry, Sam, just, you know, get comfy. You start looking at the poll numbers while I do a rant is I tried to bubble myself on vacation as much as possible. And I thought it was noteworthy that the thing that kept breaking through my bubble via texts or whatever I was on only Instagram was like, just, there's a lot of DSA discourse. There's a lot of consternation about it. It's being driven a lot by the Republicans, but there are a lot of moderate factionalists that love talking about this. And it's like the thing that they talk about the most, concerns about the dsa. And I just, I would like to, I want to help the Democrats help themselves a little bit on this. And Abdul said we should just say, does not say that he's a socialist. He's not saying that he's dsa.

[A]

I just want to throw this in there for people. So John Cohn, who's listening to us, slacked us and said very emphatically, Abdul said, is definitely a Social Democrat and not like a Democratic socialist within the

[B]

artificial Republicans are going to try to turn him into a socialist. Right. And they're going to use it as a boogeyman. And there's a lot of discourse about is this, should the Democrats be scared of this? Is this going to be a big problem? And I just, like, I find it very galling that all this is happening while Donald Trump is running the country as a MAGA socialist. And I think, and I do think that it's like incumbent upon Democrats and Democratic commentators, particularly those of us in the middle, to like, redirect this question and be like, particularly if this critique is coming from the Republicans. Like, you can stand down on talking about socialism unless you can show me that you've spoken out about Donald Trump's socialism. And when I talk about socialism, I don't just mean, I think there are two types. There's the government control of the economy. Shell Trump does completely. Jvl, you wrote about this. The national socialism. Yeah, the gas stations national socialism. The, you know, manipulating the markets with his pronouncements, levying tariffs and bullying companies,

[A]

taking stakes in companies.

[C]

We took a stake in Intel.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, forcing, yeah, forcing businesses to come kiss the ring of the king if they want to get certain stuff. I mean, literally illegally taxing businesses. And then when the Supreme Court says that the tax was illegal, threatening the business if they ask for a rebate, if they ask for their money back. Like, if Barack Obama had done that, it would be wall to wall socialism, red scare on Fox for the rest of the term. So Donald Trump is running as a national Socialist on the economic side, just like, but doing it kind of with favors for his corporate buddies. So, you know, this is the oligarchy side of the argument. But on top of that, like when people do the red scare part of socialism, you know, because the Menshevik and Bolshevik comparison also goes to like historical concerns about socialism. Right. Like I was watching some conservative thing the other day where the guy was like, people should read Hayek. Hayek talks about how state control of government always leads to fascism. And that's the real concern about socialism. Right. It's like not even just the economy. It's like what we saw from behind the Berlin Wall. And on that score, these guys are the fucking socialists. And they're the ones that have max masked men in the streets going after protesters. Like, they're the ones that have mass men shooting protesters with no accountability. They're the ones that created a gulag in El Salvador and sent people there without any due process rights. There's no concern that any of the DSA candidates, however crazy they are hong or even pick the craziest one, chevalier, none of them are planning on sending MAGA Americans to foreign gulags. So I just like, sometimes I feel like that folks are really taking the bait on this. And I think that they're definitely legit. Whatever policy discussions about, I have concerns about the debt, like, can we afford doing all these, like, there are a lot of legit conversations to have, but like letting the Republicans like turn this election into socialism and then not, I don't know, it reminds me A little bit of the trans ad where like the Democrats don't feel like they are prepared to respond to this with the aggression that I think that they should. So that's my rant.

[C]

Good rant.

[A]

What do you got for us before we, before we get to bed? Because you're, you're playing hurt here. You gotta be up at 3:45.

[B]

No, you're on way too early hosting tomorrow.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Dude, why'd you agree to this? You could have made Edgar do this or something.

[A]

It was my fault.

[C]

They didn't, they didn't ask. Sorry, Andrew.

[B]

No, you could have made Edgar do this show.

[C]

Do this.

[B]

Not way too early.

[C]

I don't, I don't, I don't mind. I love this. You know, I'm just trying to ingratiate myself with JVL so one time I could be called, oh my God, his best friend.

[B]

We've had a dump in Michigan. Someone has taken a dump. There's been a vote dump. And Haley Stevens is down behind by 800 votes. 840 votes.

[E]

No.

[C]

Come on.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Where do you see that?

[B]

New York Times, baby. Our friends at the New York Times sponsoring this episode trying to get back in their good graces after that raw. Stop. There you go.

[C]

Sponsored by the New York Times. Wait, what's that? Hold on one second. Hold on one second. Hold that thought. Because without fact based reporting like this, the rest of us are just guessing. So wherever you see get out nationally, locally, support back based reporting that this is crazy. I, I might just stay up and not sleep. You want. Guys, you guys want to go to 3:45am with me? Hard pass. Okay, let's just hold on for a second here because we did the takes of Saeed winning, El Said winning. I think we kind of owe it to do it takes of Stevens winning

[B]

or even, even a close loss, honestly.

[C]

Okay, let's do that. Let's do on your feet takes. I'm not going first because I haven't developed develop mine emotionally or philosophically. What's your take? Jbl?

[A]

If Stevens wins, pulls it out.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

If she were to pull out a high turnout election that would tell me that the DSA stuff really freaked out the Democratic electorate. Right. And, and again, I mean because he is not, you know, a tanky but you know like he played footsie with the tankies. He began taking off when he appeared with Hassan Piker and that was sort of the beginning of his, his rocket shot here. If he was ahead in the polling, if he was really ahead in the polling by as Much as we were seeing over the last three weeks. And he were to wind up losing this or it were to be very, very close. That would worry me a little bit going into the general because it would suggest to me that there was a real reticence bubbling around in the. In the electorate.

[C]

But what's your Steven's take?

[B]

Here's my. I got it. I have it. God, people are really motivated by the she's growing on me tweets. Just joking. Just a little joke, guys.

[E]

No one, they.

[C]

Yeah, the one you were paid to.

[B]

Yeah. No sitting at the Charlotte airport, just firing off hot takes.

[C]

The other thing was there's like two people. There's. The example is like two. There's like just two people and then people.

[B]

No, then the example is that like five other people making. Making fun of me. And I just kind of liked her little accent and she was just like, we gotta stick it to him. I think people like the accent. No, there's only one answer to this if she wins, and that's that there's a. It's. It's black voters. The base of the Democrat Democratic Party is still black voters. And James Carville, for whatever people's opinions are, are of him very polarized these days. One of the things he's absolutely right about is like every Democratic nomination goes through the black church at the presidential level. And he's like, if you can't win the black church, you're not going to be the nominee. And. And maybe that won't be true at some point in the future. You know, just get out of age demographics and things change. Younger black voters don't. Aren't as church as their parents and grandparents, maybe. But for now, that's not over yet. And if she's looking at. Look at this Wayne county number, she's up 63 to 33 now.

[C]

How much is in? And Wayne.

[A]

Wow,

[C]

that's amazing.

[B]

So parts of the bad take at the top, shout out bad takes. It was like Wayne county is 2%. And it was really close. And I was like, that's not a good sign for her. So it was probably. It's just like, you know, there's an urban core and then there's kind of the more wider parts of the district. And I assume what has happened here is that the urban core has come in and you know, and so. So even if she still loses, but it gets really close. Black voters went for Biden. Nobody showed up. Back to what I said the top of Cone. Nobody showed up to his events either. And if you can put together a coalition of the kind of high income, maybe even Mitt Romney voting, former Republican types or even, you know, Jewish voters, and, and you run up the score of black voters. Like that gets you close to the way there.

[C]

Here's my take.

[B]

And this one other thing I just want to say because I do want to shout out the Stevens people. Stevens was running a really bad campaign at the beginning and the campaign, I think seemed really bad when she was online. And I, you know, I, I think that I started talking to people in Michigan and like the ad campaign that she was running, I mean, some of stuff is the APEX stuff. So it cuts both ways. But like, I do think that after Mallory dropped out, there was, you know, some improvement in the campaign. So anyway, I don't, you know, who the hell knows how this thing shakes out?

[C]

A couple, A couple takes that are not intertwined but something to steal on One, Democratic voters are rational, pragmatic. Yes, they've elected a couple flaming DSA types, but those have been predominantly in New York City and elsewhere. They have acted rationally. Okay, that's one. Two, online culture remains not totally real. Like the discourse is just not necessarily what people feel on the ground. And retail politics can work to your point, Tim, especially in these churches and predominantly urban areas where she was just working. And cone wrote about this and he's in our Slack channel saying he was there, he said was with her in Detroit over the weekend. Lots of people coming up to give her hugs. People acted like she was this terrible candidate. No support wasn't true, except in the online world. Three, if she were to sneak this out, everything we said about apac, I don't think is no longer true. I think actually APEX still did hurt her. However, it will be used by the El Said fan base in really aggressive ways.

[B]

Like probably for good reason, by the way, I probably won't begrudge it to

[C]

him because again, yeah, 7 million, something insane.

[A]

She'll spend them 9 to 1.

[B]

I think massive, massive spending disparities on the Republican side, populous candidates that happened, Jeb really outspent Donald Trump. And you know how that went. So that money doesn't do everything, but it helps. And, and I do think that it will lead to more anger and kind of for good reason on the, not even kind of for good reason on the populist left that they're like, well, how is this really a democracy if there's that kind of much of a spending gap and the money is not coming from Michigan voters, but it's coming from outside interests, no matter what that interest is. So I think that, yes, we'll have to eat a little bit of a crow on Apex strategy if she wins, but I do think the backlash will continue to grow. What, Sorry, do we.

[A]

I mean, this is a real question. I mean, like, maybe the, like, money isn't always this positive. And it could, could very well be that the APAC money wasn't as positive here and that Apex still did more harm than good to her campaign.

[C]

I agree with that. But, yeah, I would say people won't use it.

[E]

Right.

[B]

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

[A]

Yeah. And I understand why they would. But I'm saying, just as a pure political science matter, yeah, I understood what

[B]

Sam was saying about rational, but I do, I do just want to kind of expand on a little bit, because I don't. I think that actually New York voters were making a rational decision for their interest in voting for leftists. I think that what you were trying to say, which I think is borne out, is that Democratic voters are very strategic, particularly in these swing states. And you saw this in the 2020 primary where it was like Warren was doing very well. And then a New York Times poll comes out that shows Trump beating Warren and Biden beating Trump. And it was like Warren's full numbers went down 30 points the next day, you know, and so Democratic voters, I do think, particularly in swing states are very high engagement. Read the news, watch our live streams, read the New York Times. And like they are that, you know, they vote strategically. I. One of the man on the street things I saw today was a guy who basically said he was making a strategic choice for, for her, for Stevens. So I think that that combined with black voters and, you know, again, I think the, particularly the older black voters have not shown a ton of interest in kind of the DSA stuff. Younger black voters, different.

[A]

All right, I'm going to send us out with, with, with a quick thought before we leave. The latest dump of numbers gives Abdul Al said a 16,000vote lead over Haley Stevens. Mallory McMorrow, who is not in this race, has 18,621votes.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Just something for people to keep in mind when they do their voting.

[B]

Here's another thing just to throw out really quick before they leave. Say it's winning big in Kent county, which is Grand Rapids. Decent chunk of votes left there, 60,000 or so. And he's doing okay in McComb. He's winning in McComb slightly and a decent chunk there, 92, 000. So we're doing quick math. I'm doing Kornacki here. 150. Kent. Excuse me, Wayne. Wayne has 239,000 remaining votes. Yeah. So, you know, it depends on, like, the breakdown of that. You know, does that look more like the first 2% or does that look more like the last 20%? And if that looks like the last 20%, that augurs well for her. So it just kind of depends on.

[A]

But also large, large Arab populations also in Wayne County. So there's a lot, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All right, boys, this was. This was lovely. It was grand. Sam, you are a good friend of mine. I cherish you.

[B]

I love you, buddy.

[A]

You, buddy.

[B]

Good to see you, too.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Everybody else hit like, hit. Subscribe, Follow the channel. Here we are, staying up way too late. Sam is going to be up way too early. And we do this for you. The people hit like hit. Subscribe, Follow the channel. Go to the bulwark.com subscribe to my newsletter because it's awesome.

[B]

I got a good Bulwark Daily coming for you tomorrow, too. It's going to be a banger.

[A]

Good luck, America.