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- [00:01]
A
Welcome, everyone, to Truth in the Barrel Unfiltered. This week I have a special co host, Rick Wilson. Rick is a longtime political strategist, former Republican author, very distinguished career working in and around the political arena. Welcome, Rick. Are you coming to us from Florida?
- [00:20]
B
I am coming to you from Florida today. We're about to get winter again here where it plunges down into the 50s.
- [00:28]
A
Into the 50s. Oh, my gosh. Everybody, everybody grabbed. Do you even have a coat in Florida?
- [00:33]
B
Oh, I have coats. I mean, I travel so much, I have to sort of like, be equipped for everything, unfortunately.
- [00:39]
A
So. Well, we have the big storm coming. We know that everybody's hunkering down, going to the grocery store and getting ready for it. Certainly here in Kentucky, we have all kinds of models that show us kind of smack dab in the middle of this thing.
- [00:53]
B
Right. You're going to get ice and everything else. My daughter lives in Nashville and she's like, she's like, we're gonna get two inches of ice. I'm like, run. Come here. Run. Now get out.
- [01:03]
A
People don't know how to drive. I mean.
- [01:05]
B
Oh, God, no.
- [01:08]
A
Well, thankfully, Rick, we did not go to World War Three this week while our president was in Europe. I first want to start out here. I'm laughing, but I'm sort of crying at the same time. I first want to start out here with your impressions of what happened at Davos. And Davos, by the way, for people listening, is the annual economic forum in which many world leaders attend. And there this week, our president gave a rambling speech, you know, but I feel like it was more damaging than his normal campaign speech in Pennsylvania. So, Rick, your thoughts on how our nation's leader handled himself overseas.
- [01:51]
B
It was a catastrophic speech for the Western alliance, catastrophic speech for American security, catastrophic speech for the dignity of the presidency. This is a very old, sick man who went out there and just started talking. If grandpa did this or dad did this, he'd say, okay, time to take the keys. Because it was chaotic and self referential and abusive to our allies. And Amy, I think one of the things that really struck me about it was just his contempt for the sacrifices of our allies. You know, you and I both know that, folks, the only time that Article 5 has been invoked was after 9, 11. And they came to fight by our sides. Yeah. Around the world. And I just, it was a real. I mean, it's hard to say, oh, Trump was disappointing. He's always disappointing. But this was a. This was a real low point for him and the country.
- [02:48]
A
And that, that was the thing that hit me, too. I mean, there's so much craziness about what he said and how he acted and what he was saying prior to the trip. But the attacks on our allies, Trump going there and saying that NATO never did anything for us. This is so offensive to the nations who fought with us after 9, 11. I did two tours in Afghanistan, Rick. I deployed to camps with troops in tents next to me from the uk, from Spain, from Denmark, from France, Germany. I flew missions alongside, you know, French fighter jets that were there with us, you know, as our, as our wingman. Denmark had one of the highest casualty rates of any of our partners over there per capita.
- [03:36]
B
They were the highest of any of our NATO partners.
- [03:39]
A
Yeah. And it's just such a slap in the face to them, but also to us, those of us that fought Americans who fought in those wars, because it shows that the President is either ignorant or doesn't give a shit about the sacrifices that were made for our country.
- [03:58]
B
Both can be true, unfortunately. Right.
- [04:00]
A
Yeah.
- [04:01]
B
He can be a callous, heartless asshole, but he can also be somebody who just has this, like, what I call the cinematic version of the American military in his head. It's battleships and big, strong men. And it's, you know, I, it's, it would be clownish if it wasn't so tragic.
- [04:21]
A
It is clownish. But what I'm interested. What do Reagan Republicans think right now? I mean, are they cool with this?
- [04:30]
B
I mean, I guess I kind of fall into that category. I was, I was. I came into politics after Reagan, just. But just at H.W. bush in 88. So I have enough of a foot in that world to know that the disappointment is extraordinary. There are a lot of older Republican, you know, activists and officials and, you know, former Cabinet members, former administration officials who are just like, their heads are in their hands. They're just, they can't believe how horrifying this is. And equally, most of them are too chicken shit to say anything. And, you know, I'm like the weird outlier where I can't shut my mouth about it. And I'll accept that role as their public conscience right now. Because, yes, the horrifying experience we had for the last three days of Trump, first in the Cabinet meeting, then at Davos, and now in the aftermath of lying about all these supposed deals, his Republican members of Congress and the Senate act like they work for him, not for their states or their districts. And it is just so disappointing and so, and so, so sad that they won't. Not only Take up their constitutional responsibilities, but their patriotic responsibilities to do something about this guy.
- [05:50]
A
The sort of national security Republicans who are out there, they know that we do not need Greenland for the defense of our country. I mean, this notion that, first of all, the leader of Greenland had to warn his people on Tuesday to prepare for a US Invasion, I mean, that should be just shameful to all of us. But this notion that this president says, oh, we need Greenland and only the United States can protect the Arctic, is not true. We have the basis.
- [06:26]
B
It's never been true. Yeah, I mean, I. The last time I was through that way was. It was still Tula. Not the pathetic. But, you know, we always had whatever access we wanted to Greenland. We always have whatever access we wanted any other part of the Arctic because of our close alliance with Canada. Yeah, we always had access to the Arctic because we have Alaska. None of this, none of this has ever been about Greenland, in my opinion. It's always been about breaking NATO and trying to get into this new world order where Putin gets Europe and Xi gets Asia and Trump gets the Western hemisphere. Africa's a jump ball. Right. And I think this whole thing is just a big. It's a big head fake of Trump's longtime goal to break NATO. He tried to do it in the first administration and got stopped.
- [07:16]
A
He tried.
- [07:16]
B
He tried to do it yesterday in Davos. And to their credit, the Europeans were like, nah, not this time, chief. Not gonna play that game.
- [07:28]
A
Yeah, well, there was a lot of pushback, but I do still hear from people because a lot of people believe what this president says. And I want to make sure people know we do not need Greenland for Arctic security. First of all, if you look at a map, when we make these threats, we're ticking off all these other countries with the exception of Russia, you know, Norway, Denmark, Canada, Finland, Sweden, go look at a map. They are the ones with us that handle Arctic security. The Chinese are not investing in Greenland. We do not need to buy it.
- [08:06]
B
Nor could the Chinese, even if they wanted to try to take Greenland, nor could they.
- [08:10]
A
Right. You know, we do not need to seize the minerals and resources that are in Greenland. We have, you know, rights there if we need them. By the way, ever try to mine in the Arctic, Rick?
- [08:23]
B
You know, I haven't personally, but I, I have a good friend who is a guy who has worked all over the world in super highly technical, complex mining and petro work all over the world. And as he's put it to me, he said if Greenland was the. Was chock Full of rare earths, it would still not be worth doing it because the difficulty of working there is like working on the damn moon.
- [08:52]
A
Yeah. I mean, it's crazy.
- [08:55]
B
And this is a guy who spent a lot of time in the North Sea, let's put it that way.
- [08:58]
A
Yeah.
- [08:59]
B
I mean, and on the north Slope of Alaska. He is not a guy who exaggerates. Like if he says it's difficult, it's difficult.
- [09:08]
A
Very, very difficult. I mean, you know, it's like we have these crazy ideas from this president. Oh, we're going to go in and snap my fingers and Venezuela is going to be a non failed state and a thriving state where we can get all this oil tomorrow. When they're failed, they have the highest violence rate. Oh, by the way, we're going to be able to mine in Greenland. I mean, it's just crazy. But your points about NATO are really the most important piece of all of this. And I'm very worried. I feel like me too with the comments that the, you know, Mr. Carney from, from Canada, the leader of Canada said, you know, we're, we're at a rupture point and can this be fixed? You know, is it going to take multiple administrations past Trump?
- [09:57]
B
You know, I have to tell you, I, I think NATO is a resilient alliance and there were a lot of people, and I was in government in the Bush administration when the wall came down and there were a lot of, there were a lot of strategic discussions like what does NATO do now? Is our purpose for being gone? And the answer quite quickly became, you know, NATO is a, is a stabilizing force because it's resilient, it can adjust its mission over time and it did and it has. And I believe that an America that comes back to NATO with some modesty and some self awareness that we really screwed this up and makes a real commitment that we could, we can repair these, these relationships. But I think Europe will be watching to see what we do in the aftermath of Trump. I think the world will be watching to see do we hold these people accountable? Do we take up again our role in the world not only as a big military power, but as a big global power, soft and hard power, a diplomatic leader, because the things that he's doing right now, like the Board of Peace, whatever, first off, the constitution does require Congress to senate to approve treaties. So this thing is just Donald Trump, another clubhouse for Donald Trump. But I think they're going to be watching to see if we hold these people accountable and if we purge this kind of tendency out of our government and out of our politics, because if we don't, we're going to become a global pariah.
- [11:36]
A
Yeah. They're not going to be able to trust us. I mean, when I think of where we were just a few years ago, when the last administration, whether you liked the last administration or not, you know, they were around when NATO expanded, when we got two very formidable countries to come into NATO in terms of Finland and Sweden, that was huge. You know, when I was in the military, those, Those nations were very neutral. They were.
- [12:04]
B
Right. Their famous neutrality.
- [12:07]
A
Yeah. And so this, that was a big deal. And I felt like NATO was really strong in standing up for Ukraine. And then all of a sudden, you know, now we're at the point where we're breaking. I mean, v. Putin couldn't, Couldn't have done it himself.
- [12:20]
B
This is the greatest triumph of Russian disinformation and intelligence in, in the entire history of, of communist and post Soviet and Soviet Russia. They have managed to take a president of the United States and manipulate him. And, folks, I don't think Trump's a Russian agent, blah, blah, blah. I think the theory of, you know, why buy the cow when the milk is free?
- [12:44]
A
Right.
- [12:44]
B
He has done everything they've ever dreamed of. He is nominated to be his chief ambassadors and negotiators to Russia. People like Steven Wykoff Witkoff's entire company is bankrolled by a. The guy who runs the Russian state sovereign wealth fund. This is not a, this is not a, A negotiation for Putin. It's. It's dictation. So I, I just think, I think that we have seen one of the things we could show as a country. Let's say Trump drops dead tomorrow. And, and I'm just going to hypothesize just any name out of the hat. Say it's. I'm not going to use the comp. Say it's. Say it's Gavin Newsomer's president, whoever, whoever it might be, John Smith, Jane Jones, whatever. And that person says, you know, America's commitment to Ukraine is absolute. Here's what we're going to do. And rolled out the tools and technologies that would help Ukraine defend itself and defeat Russia. You defeat Russia, Putin's dead in two days after Russia's defeated on the battlefield. Because there's already so much tension inside the Russian government. You want to make the world safer, you want to make our alliances stronger again? Go in and do the thing that would demonstrate to the world that we mean it. That does not Mean, American boots on the ground in Ukraine. They don't need or want American boots on the ground. They're doing pretty well. They need the gear and the ammo and the intelligence and the logistics stuff that, as you know, you know, that's the backbone of all this stuff. It's not. It. We don't need American soldiers to fight the Russians. We need to give the Ukrainians the tools to kill them on the battlefield at scale and defeat them.
- [14:29]
A
Yep. And a lot of those tools are manufactured right here in the United States. Yes.
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B
70% of the money we've spent on Ukraine has gone to US Defense contractors. Yeah.
- [14:39]
A
And here's the thing about what happened this week. We're all talking about Greenland, and what are we not talking about? We're not talking about Ukraine, which is part of the problem here. I do think a lot of people are breathing a sigh of relief that our president didn't start a war over Greenland. I mean, yesterday I heard a lot of people talking about, well, you know, he's backing down and there's going to be a deal, which, you know, we all know is. Is bullshit. But I think there's a tendency for people to come away and think, well, no real damage has been done, but a lot of damage has been done. Our reputation as an ally as. As you said, one of the developments that I think flew under the radar this week amid the chaos in Greenland was the fact that Canada, Canada, our second largest trading partner in the entire world after a year of the United States punishing Canada with these stupid tariffs. One of our closest allies, by the way, has just signed a trade deal with China, saying that China is more predictable than the United States. I mean, they're now calling China their strategic partner.
- [15:50]
B
Look, I don't think you can blame them. You've got Trump with these insane tariff restrictions because he doesn't like Mark Carney. You've got him threatening to, you know, to try to split Canada apart with. With Republicans and a lot of these conservatives pushing Alberta to secede and join the United States. And as I said to a MAGA person the other day, who I've known for a while, I said, so what if. What if. What if Quebec started to try to get Vermont and Massachusetts and Maine to join Canada? What would you feel then? Oh, that'd be an act of war. I see. And so the idea that America is such an economic superpower that we can piss off every one of our allies, we're an economic superpower in part because we have an unbelievable amount of trade With Mexico and Canada, we don't need to have them as a, as Trump says, have the title to them. What we needed was good neighbors.
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A
Yeah.
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B
That we were friendly with, that, that we had, that we had good relationships with. You know, he accused Canada this year or one of his minions did, actually. I'm sorry, it wasn't Trump directly that they were pumping billions of tons of fentanyl across the border. They're not, they're not. But it was their, it was their BS way of trying to, you know, make, make Canada pay a, a 50 tariff on auto parts, which for Americans, just so you all know, it only drove the price of the American made cars up higher, which made the foreign cars that you hate so much more competitive. Yeah.
- [17:37]
A
And that means jobs.
- [17:40]
B
Yep.
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A
Jobs here. Here in Kentucky.
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B
Yeah. I was saying absolutely. In Kentucky. You are taking the hit.
- [17:46]
A
Yeah. And I mean, it's just for nothing. For nothing. But, but this agreement here with China between Canada and China, now Canada apparently is, is going to allow, you know, 49,000 or 50,000 Chinese electric vehicles into their market with the potential for even higher over the next few years. And we're literally handing the future of electric vehicle manufacturing to China. And I really think the Chinese are just laughing their asses off right now. I mean, Trump is saying, well, this is a good thing. Look at what car, what Carney's doing with this deal with China is really good for them. Yeah, it may be good for Canada, it's not good for the United States. So he's the American President.
- [18:31]
B
Look, China is. China is going to benefit from Canadian. We talk about rare earths all the time from Canadian minerals and rare earths and timber and ag products and, and cattle. Guess where those cattle aren't going to be sold from guys to China? That'd be the American Midwest. I mean, it, it, the problem with the tariff thing that Trump has gotten into his brain, probably always had it in his brain and that Peter, like guys like Peter Navarro and, and others have sold him, is that tariffs are this like 17th, 18th century artifact that doesn't work in the modern world. We have a global supply chain and that global supply chain may be imperfect and we may not like some of the second order effects like reduced manufacturing in America, but it's been great for our economy and our, and a lot of our people. Should we have manufacturing in America? Of course we should. But the idea that tariffs are going to suddenly bring it all over, bring it back here, has not held up. It has not been the truth at all. All these Things Trump has tariff China on, we haven't built American ways of buying them. We've been, are building them. We've had to go out and buy them elsewhere in the world because building plants to do some of these things that China builds for us at low cost will take 10 or 15 or 20 years.
- [19:55]
A
It's crazy. I mean, Donald Trump has said the United States doesn't need anything from Canada in terms of exports. I mean, okay, the majority of our crude oil that comes into the United States comes from Canada. But, okay, Kentucky, my state, depends on world markets. We have, in Kentucky, we have the second largest dependency per capita on international trade. And a lot of it has to do with our bourbon industry, our aerospace industry, our farming. But our state's largest, largest market for exports was Canada. Kentucky exported like, you know, $9 billion in goods in 2024. So, you know, two years ago, that's, that's 20% of, of the goods that we export goes to Canada. And, you know, it's, it's, it's crazy and it just hurts our, our state. And then on top of it, there was a new study that came out just this past week that said that 96% of the burden of tariffs. So who pays for tariffs? 96% are paid by Americans.
- [21:04]
B
American consumers.
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A
American consumers.
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B
And look, in Kentucky, as you pointed out, you guys have a bunch of different industrial sectors and ag sectors and goods and services sectors that are being devastated. I mean, you've got, you got Jim Beam closing up. You've got everybody else who's making liquor, which, which once upon a time, Canada and Asia were two giant markets and they're being cut off for, for spite. Yeah, for spite. And, and, you know, this is one of another one of those things where you get back to looking at leadership, especially in the US Senate, if the US Senate had leaders in it that would stand up and say the Constitution does not allow the President to engage in these, in these tariffs, which they don't.
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A
He's.
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B
This, this emergency principle he's using is legally flawed and actually legally fake. And, and if they would go stand up and say, I'm going to stand up for the people of my state, rather than letting Trump have his way with his little, like, weird fantasy about these tariffs. I mean, look, nobody was going to ever expect Mitch Mc Connell to do that. But, but we were all hopeful. Yeah.
- [22:26]
A
Even myself included.
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B
Yeah. The fact of the matter is, you know, I, this is a longer, older Republican thing, but, you know, Mitch McConnell hates Donald Trump with the fire of a million Suns. But he's the one who let Trump back into the House because he wouldn't let his caucus vote on impeaching Trump. He wouldn't whip his caucus for it. He knew the right thing. He said it on the floor, and then he lied and said, oh, it's a political question, so I'm not gonna be. Yeah. Anyway. But, but you, you, you know how much your state has been hurt. He knows how much it's been hurt. And yet I don't hear elected officials out of Kentucky out there beating the drum every day saying, this has to stop. Mr. President, you're killing us.
- [23:13]
A
Well, I mean, Rand Paul has, has come out and said, tariffs are tax a bit. You're right, a bit. But, but the vast majority of, of Republicans here in Kentucky, I mean, they are, they are lockstep. They are just hugging on Mar a Lago. I mean, and, and every, people need to know every dollar of tariff revenue that they tout is extracted from American businesses, American households, everyday people. It's a tax. And you know, Donald Trump wants Republicans to run on this in 2026. They, they, I guess he brought them together for a retreat.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And said, this is, have you ever been to one of these retreats?
- [23:54]
B
Oh, yeah.
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A
Okay.
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B
Oh, yeah.
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A
And said, this is what you should run on with these tariffs. You got to be kidding me.
- [24:01]
B
There is not a single good news story of a tariff that you can have a member of Congress stand up and say, wow, I'm so happy how this worked out in my district. Not one. Amy, you know this. They're going to try to do culture war part two. It's going to be daycare fraud from Somali refugees or trans athletes or whatever garbage they scour up. You know, they scrape up off the bottom of the focus group barrel that day. And it's really important, I think, for Democrats and, and for people who give a damn about the future of the country to not take that bait. If they bring up trans athletes, the answer is, yeah, that's really interesting how fascinated you are about that. But you know What? We've had 36,000 people lose their jobs in my state because of bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.
- [24:46]
A
Right.
- [24:46]
B
We've had this amount of economic damage, you know, in terms of lost jobs and lost productivity and lost wages and small businesses having to close because of these tariffs. It just this. If you look at the overall national polling, there's a brand new Sienna New York Times poll out today. Trump is underwater on economic issues by an average of 23% depending on the issue Inflation, you know, taxes, jobs, all that stuff. He's the most unpopular president on economic matters since Jimmy Carter during the worst period of the stagflation that happened when I was a kid. This is poison. The tariffs are poison. The big bad bill is poison. And Democrats need to be on this, the affordability thing, and the fact that Donald Trump isn't a free market guy, he's a big government guy. He's not a guy who believes in free enterprise. He believes in who's gonna bribe him the most. And countries that have bribed him got out of the tariffs, the ones that didn't have not.
- [25:50]
A
Yeah, and businesses, American businesses, too. You know, I mean, he's, he's, he's carving out these, I don't know what you want to call it, these cars.
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B
I mean.
- [26:02]
A
Yeah, exemptions for, for businesses that he likes or that pay him money, that buy his Bitcoin. But, you know, the Supreme Court is set to rule on this any minute now. Yeah. So what, Rick, do you, what do you think the Supreme Court will do here?
- [26:17]
B
Yeah, you know, here's the thing. This is one of those black letter constitutional law questions about the power of tariffs. Only Congress can raise and impose taxes, and only Congress can levy tariffs. That's it. It's not like a, if the president kind of want to, sort of wants to have a vibe about raising tariffs, the emergency declarations that he's been using to do this are facially deficient, as one lawyer put it to me. So on that hand, I think any, any Supreme Court was going to go, come on, we can't do it this way. This is against the black letter law of the Constitution. However, this Supreme Court has bent itself in pretzels for, for a decade now to accommodate Donald Trump. So I, I, unfortunately, my gut tells me we're going to end up with some kind of Solomonic split the baby BS where Trump, they'll say he's wrong, but that the emergency declarations in this particular case are right. That's where I'm going to guess they go because they do not operate as an independent judiciary. They operate as a law firm for the President right now.
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A
Yeah, this Supreme Court has been so disappointing. I mean, the fact that they gave him immunity, or any president immunity is just, I just, I always thought Citizens United was the worst Supreme Court case in modern history, but now the whole presidential immunity thing, I think tops it.
- [27:56]
B
I mean, if you, if you go through at the end of the day and look, Citizens United was a, was A, well, the McCain Feingold campaign finance move ended up being a trap. They were right to want more transparency and accountability. The trap was once you got to the Supreme Court, you get Citizens United, which has F'd our politics top to bottom. And I live in that world. You lived in that world. We all understand how campaigns are run on money. They do not happen for free. Unfortunately, they're not, you know, just, you know, mom and dad in the barn putting up, you know, hand painted signs. The problem is you're and you're right. Amy. Citizens United, United States vs Trump, Dred Scott and Korematsu are probably the four worst cases in American Supreme Court history. There are a few more, but those decisions are decisions that will all that either had to be unwound, EG Korematsu and Dred Scott, or must soon be unwound, eg Trump, United States v. Trump and and Citizens, both of those cases that, that are, that have reshaped the landscape of America fundamentally. If you tell a president you can't commit a crime, you're innocent of anything, you can do whatever you want. Human nature is pretty predictable. Amy. I think it, you know, we, if somebody said to me, you can go out, walk into that bank, take everything out of the till and you can't be prosecuted for it, guess what? People are going to start robbing banks at scale.
- [29:33]
A
So it's human nature. I mean it's, it's more power and, and now absolute, I feel like it's absolute power.
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B
Yeah.
- [29:40]
A
I mean it's just un American and.
- [29:43]
B
And that the only, and the only people, you know, and it's funny because Congress blames the Supreme Court. Well, they give Trump immunity and the Supreme Court blames Congress. Well, that's political question. I'm not going to handle that. You the Congress's job. Nobody wants to take responsibility. It's like who will put the bell on the cat in the old children's fairy tale, right?
- [30:02]
A
Yeah, well, it was like, it's like McConnell when Trump's second impeachment came up and he said, well, we'll leave it to the courts.
- [30:09]
B
Leave it to the courts.
- [30:10]
A
Well, wait a second. No, no, no. Impeachment is a political thing.
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B
Yes, it is.
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A
You don't leave that to the court.
- [30:17]
B
Nope. You do that explicitly. That is meant to be a political sanction.
- [30:21]
A
You know, you either give it, give it an up or down, you know, vote. That is your duty as a sen. I mean like a Roman emperor. I wanted to ask you because you have such a long history as, you know, in Republican circles and in the world of conservative, I was an independent for most of my adult life. Certainly in the military. I didn't. I've always kind of felt like I was middle of the road, that I saw some things that were. I agreed with. On the conservative side. I'm not talking today. I'm talking like 20 years ago.
- [30:56]
B
Right, right.
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A
And that. But I also found some things on the. On the more liberal side also that I could get behind. And I hear Today, though, in 2026, I get. I talk to voters here who say to me, well, I always vote Republican because I'm conservative.
- [31:14]
B
Right.
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A
And then I asked them, is pardoning criminals conservative? Is having a federal government control prices and impose tariffs conservatives like I thought. I think of conservatives pretty socialist small government. And I feel like what's happening with the Republican Party right now is that they are the party of big government. They are the party of government overreach state.
- [31:38]
B
Yeah.
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A
Unleashing massed army armies of unmarked vehicles and masked men into our cities, intimidating American citizens. That, to me, doesn't sound conservative.
- [31:52]
B
No. You know, look, my parents were quite liberal Democrats. The day before I was born, my mom's pregnant, out to. Yay. Went to see John F. Kennedy and the big young Democrats thing that they were doing in Tampa, Florida, 1963. I was born one day before he was killed. I came from, like, a Southern, Southern, Democratic, conservative background in some ways. But things became, you know, when I was growing up, there was a perception that. That because of the way I was raised, the way I was brought up, that personal responsibility was a big thing and that the rule of law was a big thing, and that the Constitution was not a sort of set of helpful suggestions. It was the rules. What I saw coming up in the Republican world, as a foreign policy guy, primarily, I saw this tension with evangelicals coming into the party process who did not want a small government. They wanted a big government to impose values. While my. While I was the first, I don't know, major Republican political guy, whatever, strategist, what if you want to say that to break with Trump in 2015. I had already started to sort of get uncomfortable with where the party was headed. Well, before that, I sent a memo to my clients back in 202006 or 8, I can't remember which, saying, you got to get off this gay marriage thing. First off, you're wrong on it from a moral perspective. And. And second off, what business is it of the government to tell consenting adults who they can marry? And I was a little bit of a APOSTATE on that. I guess people weren't happy with it, but they also understood that I was right. And, you know, then we got into this moment where the Tea Party pretended to be one thing and then it got bought out by the Kochs very quickly and became this culture war, you know, conveyor belt. And, and I played in that space for a little bit and I was uncomfortable with it. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't think it was, I didn't think it was particularly conservative. I mean, I believe that there is a broader consensus value set in America about you follow the law, you, you work hard, and you should not be either over regulated or, or, or over taxed, but neither should you be able to dump toxic waste into the river. I came from this, this consensus world where a strong America in the world wasn't just because we had more nukes or a bigger military footprint, but it was also because people looked at America and said, man, they may not be perfect, but that's a pretty good system. Yeah, they may not be, they may be right, they may not be right about everything, but you've got the right to talk it through. And now we don't live in that country anymore. And again, you made a point. Trump is not a conservative. He's a big government guy. They want the power of the state to have mass men. If, let me just counterfactual it for my Republican friends. If, if President Gavin Newsom decided we're going to deploy the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Farms, we're going to expand them by a factor of 5,000, we're going to put them in the streets to look for illegal guns and kick down your door and stop you on the street without, without a warrant or try to come in your home without a warrant. How would you think about that? Because that's what's happening to Americans right now. Yeah, it's not about guns right now. It's about people who are protesting ice. And it's not small government, it's not conservative.
- [35:33]
A
It's far overreaching. How about this? Now, the AP is reporting last night that immigration officers are now asserting sweeping powers.
- [35:40]
B
Yes.
- [35:41]
A
To enter homes without a warrant. How is that conservative?
- [35:45]
B
This idea that the Fourth Amendment is just like an optional thing now? I mean, the founders very much wrote the Constitution based on things they saw had happened to them at the hands of an oppressive, tyrannical government. They knew you had to have freedom of speech. They knew that if anyone could enter your home for any reason, you didn't have Security. They knew that if you didn't have due process, you didn't have actual autonomy over your life. All these things that Trump has convinced Republicans are conservative, it is madness. And we have to have a reformation in this country at some point when he dies of whatever cause, whether it's a lightning bolt, a wild hog attack or a Big Mac. When he goes, this country has got to have a reformation that looks at where we have been and gets back to the values that are reflected in the Constitution and the rule of law. And I am not saying that this is some sort of wild haired progressive, because I'm not. I'm saying this because the whole system of Americans, freedoms and liberties is only protected if the Constitution and the rule of law are obeyed and applied equally every day to everybody, all the time.
- [37:06]
A
It's hard for me to even, you know, think about it because when I, when I hear people to say, well, I'm, I'm a conservative and that, that's why I vote for, for Trump. And you're just like, what? You know, and I often wonder like, do you, do you, do you know what that word means? Or is it just a cult? Or is it just the branding? We have a lot of work to do.
- [37:30]
B
Yeah, we have a lot of work to do. And look, a lot of it is because, and I've written a lot about this. I'm actually writing a new book about this now. Not a Trump book. Of all things, they built what I call the hate machine where they told people over and over again, particularly white, rural, 50 plus voters, you're being exploited by, by black people, you're being exploited by Hispanics, you're being hated on by liberal elites. All these things you, you lost your job because of a woman. All these things that, this, this, this constant cultural stew where they're winning elections not based on policy or ideology, they're winning elections based on culture war. And they're very, very, very, very, very good at it. And those rural voters who say, I vote Republican because I'm conservative, that's often coding for something else. Yeah, it's often coding for some other, other thing in their life. But look, he, you know, as an ex Republican, I've said this to many, many Republicans. He did not and is not a become a Republican. He is not a Republican. He's an authoritarian statist. And he took the branding of the old Republican Party and the old conservative movement. He took the logos and the flags in the office building, but he didn't take the values of conservatism.
- [38:50]
A
I Want to get to some quick takes from you, because a lot has happened this week that, you know, again, kind of fly through the radar here with everything going on. We had Martin Luther King Day on Monday. It's a federal holiday, something that used to be very important. You know, we had presidents go do events and that sort of thing. We, our current president didn't really even acknowledge the day at all until the end of the day when he received a bunch of criticism from the naacp. The national parks used to be free of charge on Martin Luther King Day, and that changed.
- [39:35]
B
Let's not be subtle about this. Donald Trump is not exactly a guy brimming with racial understanding. And he's a guy from Queens in a time and a place where the things he said about black people in the past when he was here, I let the Jews count the money. I don't want those blacks in my counting rooms at the casinos. It's a double whammy of racism. But he's a guy who also doesn't believe that the country should be about anything but him. He looks at himself and says, I'm more important than Martin Luther King was to this country. He may be more consequential in the end, which is a bad thing, but he's not. But the lessons of King should not fall to the selfishness of Trump. But he cannot also. He cannot relinquish the spotlight. He can never let it go. He can never wake up and say, oh, no, I'm not going to put myself in the middle of this. I'm going to honor one of the greatest civil rights and political leaders in our country's history. No, it's always got to be about him.
- [40:40]
A
Yeah. He wants a federal holiday for his birthday.
- [40:43]
B
Yeah.
- [40:43]
A
And he's puts his face on all these federal buildings in Washington, D.C. and, you know, takes the name down on the, on the Kennedy center and wants to. I mean, it is, it's, it's crazy. One thing that's happening, though, in Congress, when I want to get your take on, is this banning stock trading. I think it's long overdue. I think that what's happening right now with these wild craziness stuff that the President is doing with tariffs, which makes our, our stock market go up and down based on tweets and things like that, a lot of people are getting rich over that.
- [41:19]
B
Oh, yes.
- [41:20]
A
And a lot of people are on the inside. And those people who are on the inside, many of them are members of Congress. And I think this is a bipartisan thing that we should we should ban lawmakers and we should ban the President. We should ban all members of the Cabinet, in my belief and immediate families, from owning and buying and selling stocks. Because my, my feeling is, look, you either go into public service, you either want those positions of power or you want to go make money on Wall Street. Pick and choose.
- [41:54]
B
All in favor of people making money. God knows it is, it is a time honored American tradition, folks. Go, you want to go make money, go make money. But it is quite evident that there's a massive amount of insider trading going on on Capitol Hill. People are getting extraordinarily rich. They're going from having a net worth of nothing to 30, 40, $50 million net worth in a space of a few years working in Congress. And you see Mark Wayne Mullen the other day suddenly buys Raytheon just before the Venezuela invasion. What a striking coincidence. Yeah. All these people that are doing this, folks, this is absolutely bipartisan and it's, it's, it absolutely has to stop. There should be every member of Congress. I, I would go for a constitutional amendment on this, frankly. A, a, every member of Congress has to put their assets into a blind trust. That's it. No negotiation on it. Nobody can trade stocks based on the information they're getting as members of Congress. They, and they are doing it left, right and center and it is not cool.
- [43:02]
A
Yeah. To me this is a no brainer and I hope it goes through and I think it's expanded last.
- [43:08]
B
Absolutely.
- [43:09]
A
A few days ago, Elon Musk, our friend, dropped $10 million into the Senate race here in Kentucky, backing a guy by the name of Nate Morris, who's a fellow billionaire. And this is Musk's biggest single contribution to a Senate candidate so far. He, of course, was the biggest donor in the country during the 2024 campaign. He contributed 300 million to pro Republican causes. But $10 million into a Senate race in the primary, that's a big deal. And it is a big deal. Elon Musk likes this guy, Nate Morris. And Morris is presenting himself sort of anti McConnell, which is funny to me, Rick, because this Morris guy never actually ran against McConnell. He never had the guts to actually stand up against McConnell. McConnell was in power now, did he? But that's his, his thing now. So this is where we're at. We're buying elections. The richest man in the world is buying elections.
- [44:22]
B
Now, just so we're all clear, he's going to posture himself. Nate Morris is going to posture himself as a, as a working class guy, you know, MAGA Guy, he's married to Jane Mossbacher, who is the daughter of Robert Mossbacher and of Georgette Mossbacher. These people were Bush royalty, old school rhino republicans, etc. This guy, he may be a billionaire, but he's not a billionaire because he was a scrappy maga, whatever. He's a billionaire because he was, you know, he comes out of a world of insane amounts of wealth and privilege.
- [44:59]
A
It's so sad to see this. I mean, it's just so sad to see our democracy. Oh, we'll just go buy it.
- [45:06]
B
We'll just, you know, look, that is the only thing the Senate committee on the Republican side looks for now. Can you self fund? They don't want to mess around with having to go and ask people to support their campaigns. They want to just have somebody guy who can say, okay, I've got a bunch of rich friends and I'm a rich guy, so I'm gonna put X million on my own in. And my rich friends will put in, you know, X million of their own to the, to the Senate committee. It's why J.D. vance was senator in Ohio, because he bought it for it.
- [45:33]
A
Yeah, he bought it. They bought it in the primary. Yep.
- [45:36]
B
So.
- [45:36]
A
Yep. And let's be real, billionaires, they've rallied behind Trump's. They rallied behind his Republican Party. You know, more than. More than 80% of federal campaign spending is by the wealthiest 100Americans in 2024. That's. And that. That all went to Republicans.
- [45:56]
B
Yeah, you know, absolutely. The old Republican triple. George Soros is. George Soros peaked spending money for the Democrats in 2004. It's been 20 years.
- [46:08]
A
Yeah.
- [46:09]
B
And yeah. So money, money is the root of all evil.
- [46:13]
A
Well, and it's one of the reasons. And you know, we should have you back on because I really want to talk to you about Refor at some point. I'm somebody that believes in term limits. I know there are some pushback to that, but we have to. I think the system that we have right now is not working and broken at every junction. We have to do some of those things. We have to do things like getting rid of dark money. I know it's hard. I know we have the Supreme Court the way we do, but we've got to keep moving in that direction. We are spiraling this musk insertion into this $10 million into Kentucky Senate. Ra.
- [46:51]
B
That's real money. That's real money in Kentucky.
- [46:54]
A
100%.
- [46:55]
B
I mean, as a Florida guy, that's like table stakes because it's so Insane here. But. But, you know, we will have a race in Florida in my lifetime that costs a billion dollars, a statewide race. I promise you. Madness. Madness. Yeah.
- [47:12]
A
So. Well, I want to leave today. We had a great show. I want to leave today with a couple of shout outs. We had two inaugurations for governors this past week. Governor Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill are sworn in. So cheers to them and to all the voters in Virginia and New Jersey. I know both of these women personally. They are public servants. They are good people. Their hearts in the right place. They're smart, they're experienced, they have a background in national security, which I think we solely needed. And they're leaders, you know, And I just feel like, gosh, they're a breath, breath of fresh air for our country.
- [47:55]
B
I think they're going to both do. I think they're both going to really disrupt the narrative that MAGA wants to have about them because neither one of them is a. Is a pushover and they're not going to fall for the bait. Neither one of them took the bait of, you know, trans athletes or any garbage like that during the campaign. They stuck to affordability. They made promises about how they're going to deal with jobs in the economy and if they do that in their states, they're going to have unlimited ceiling.
- [48:21]
A
Yeah, they're fantastic. Well, it's really great to have you on and for those.
- [48:25]
B
Thanks, Amy. I appreciate it. Lovely to be with you.
- [48:28]
A
I have your book here. It's Running against the Devil. And I just want to say what's really cool about this. You have a blurb from Foreign Affairs.
- [48:36]
B
Yes.
- [48:37]
A
That is like. I've never even seen Foreign affairs do a blurb for anyone before.
- [48:43]
B
I have a lot of weird friends.
- [48:46]
A
This is a fantastic book and I would love everybody to go out there and get it. And it sounds like you're working on another one, so.
- [48:53]
B
I sure am. I've got a. I've got a book coming out called the Hate Machine, gonna be out sometime in early 27.
- [49:03]
A
Excellent. Well, thank you so much.
- [49:05]
B
Somewhere in there.
- [49:06]
A
Thanks so much, Rick, for. For coming on the show and co hosting with me today. This is awesome to be with you.
- [49:11]
B
It's really lovely. Thank you so much.
- [49:12]
A
All right, thanks everyone for listening. Until next week. Truth in the barrel.
- [49:22]
C
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