Stuart Stevens: We've Got Death Squads on Our Streets

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast.

I'm your host Tim Miller. I'd like to welcome back to the show a former Republican media consultant's been a minute though. The Orton 5 presidential campaigns, including his chief strategist for Mitt Romney, the Senior Visitor of the Lincoln Project, his books include the conspiracy to end America and it was

all lie. It's my buddy Stuart Stevens. What is that? Hey Tim, great to see you man. Good to see you too.

I was kind of in my head over the last month or two, I was like, I'm going to wait until fall to have Stuart back on. I was thinking maybe, I don't know, I might have him on like September 18th.

I don't know if you have any plans on September 19th.

You know, the 20th would be better because you're not the glute, but that's okay. No, we'll get to it then, that will be the payback game of laying Kiffin, LSU going to Ole Miss. We'll discuss at the end, but I just, I couldn't wait till the fall. So we can, we'll, we'll meet again in September.

“I want to start with you with this ice killing in Houston, because I think that this”

is getting a little less attention than the predi and good killings for a couple of reasons. Number one, like we kind of don't treat illegal immigrants as humans, even subconsciously people are like, it's not as big of a outrage or whatever than killing a white American citizen. I think that's part of it.

And also, just, we've had less footage, like there are just so many angles of the predi and good shootings.

You know, that was clear for everybody with eyes to see that the administration was lying.

But I mean, I don't know how close you've been following this case, but it is crazy. I mean, the guy was killed by ice in Houston. You'd three other people in the car, he had kids that he'd raised in America, he'd been here 35 years, no criminal record. The DHS said that they opened fire after ignored commands and attempted to ram the officer,

but there are three other witnesses in the car. They all say that the officer fired at them immediately after exiting his vehicle, driver didn't view in that direction. One of the other guys in the car from jail, they're all still in tension, et cetera, now being pressured to self-deport.

One of them, Jose Rojas wrote, it's impossible for them to say they were going to get run over, there were no officers in front of her behind the vehicle, they were on the sides. Photos show no damage to the van, I mean, this just seems like Renee did all over again. Well, look, you know, we have a name for this.

“We call it death squads, and that's what these eyes say since are.”

They're just roaming death squads to feel that they have and so far it's been proven right. If they shoot somebody, fine, there's not clearly any prosecution. One of my pet things here is how the Democrats have to erect a structure, the whole illegality of the administration, the criminality, across the board, and it's going to be up to the state attorney generals, I think, because Trump will pardon everybody.

And my model is like the tobacco tour, when attorney generals got together, they picked it up. And, you know, if it's January and 29 and early into that year and Stephen Miller is an entrial or living in a non-extradition country, something will have failed. And that's what you have to go after.

You have to go after Stephen Miller. You have to go after Christina. You have to go after these people at the very top. Yeah. Ladies, Stephen Miller can go to El Salvador.

He was excited to send people there. I'm sure they'd house them. I would just say, when, occasionally, I get depressed, but what consistently cheers me up is to think that Stephen Miller's kids are going to grow up in a minority majority country. And there's nothing he can do about it except maybe, like, found a new road easier

and moves there. Or maybe Iceland. I don't know. You can move there with 10 packs. He's doing his best to don't want Ken Paxon and with me.

That's a Ken Paxon. Sir, he's trying to stall it a year or two with the immigration coming in, you know, we're only letting in the Africaners, but I don't know that it's going to hold.

“You know, he's trying to make America safe for white people again, you know?”

I mean, it's really been such a, you know, burden that we've carried as white people. I agree with your point that Democrats for the next administration, really, and say attorneys general, you're going to have to go after the people at the top. I think those are obviously mistakes in the Biden administration. Yep.

Also, though, like, there needs to be accountability for the people that perpetrated these murders in the street. I guess for some, for example, we still don't know who the anonymous masked agent was that shot and killed this man. I, which is crazy.

I mean, like, in a free country, we should at least know who killed Lorenzo Rao. And we don't. And because these guys, as you mentioned, get to Rome the streets, they get to act to the impunity after the killing of Freddie, the people that killed him got, got redeployed eventually after weeks and months of pressure, you know, that they were, it was publicized.

it under the rug, you know, like they want to get these other three men that were in the

car to self-deport, they're pressureing them to self-deport. And they want the media and the Democrats to move on from this, because the media gets bored and the Democrats think this is a winning issue for them.

“And we saw in Minnesota that the only way to get any accountability is maximum pressure.”

Yep. Couldn't agree more. I refer you to the above. Their desk watch, desk watch rarely have body count, desk watch rarely go unmasked. This is the, the, the template that's being used.

And, you know, one of the things, it just goes back to the inability to imagine Trump. If, you know, you and I had said here two years ago and said, look, this is going to be an army of mass media with the budget larger than the Marines, chasing brown people across the country and shooting them and killing protesters, we'd say, I don't know, maybe you've gone a little too far.

That's not going to happen. Yep. Here we are. Here we are. And I think that's a good lesson when you look at the elections, inability to imagine where Trump

can do any elections. Yeah. Well, consistently, you know, I know a lot of these people, as bad as you think they are, they're worse. They're horrible human beings.

You're right. And we know that, I mean, this is a lot of you on the voter for Trump would have said to us, if we told them, this is what was going to be happening with ICE because they say it. I mean, a lot of the Manchester guys are like, this is died and see this coming.

It's like, well, they held the signs. They had the placards. Like, would you think, mass deportations now was, you know, letters, postcards? What other thing in ICE? I don't get to the election stuff, you mentioned, is ICE is a new report out of political

calcinius working on this, and in the one year since ICE adopted the massive expansion of their detention policy, which, as we know, is aiming at people in the interior of the country that don't have criminal records, because they're just trying to reach the quotas that aforementioned Stephen Aller wanted, you know, there's been challenges to all these.

Sometimes it's hard to get these people that are being detained, lawyers, and it's a big endeavor. That's all the immigration lawyers out there that've been working on this. The federal courts have overruled these detentions, 15,000 times. You know, DHS has only had a ruling in their favor about 2,000, so that's the ratio.

2,000 in their favor to 15,000 against a lot of these are Republican judges, Trump judges, some of them are. I, that shows you the degree of lawlessness of this operation. Yeah, I mean, T, maybe habeas core persistent like a partisan issue about that, you know? You know, I have a little insight into this, that's the right word, because the Lincoln Project

Lawyer, who lives in Denver, spends a lot of time pro bono representing people, young people, who are in ICE detention, and he was working on one case of a 19-year-old who lived

all his life in America, who had been in detention for 18 months and he finally got him out

on bail.

“But just listening to the process, how you have to go, and you have to wait hours and”

hours in court, because you don't know when it's going to come up, and you have one shot, and if you're not there, you know, it's extraordinary. I mean, I think this guy's a hero, and there's others like him. The idea that we're going to be locking up these people, I mean, look, so what you will about Ronald Reagan, he announced in front of the statue of liberty, because he was celebrating

immigrants. Each was an old immigrants, and now we're into this Annie immigrant, and it's just extraordinary. I mean, jadi vances against the 15th Amendment, and a 14th Amendment, and his wife is a citizen because of a 14th Amendment.

So, you know, if they were going to reject that, I just wanted him to make it proactive, so we could deport his family, you know, get these dangerous people out of the country.

I agree with how you know, I never thought I, there's a lot of things that I never thought

I'd be doing in 2026, but Oads to lawyers is one of them, but you're right, points of project lawyer, Lindsey Tasselowski, immigrant defenders, people that are doing this work. Markets hard work. Yeah. Look, who's also, even the live firms and not only can project law firm, it's absolutely

“critical to fight at that level, you have to fight to stuff at all levels.”

So the housing bill news this morning is kind of related to your concerns about the election for folks who haven't been following this, it's like the one bipartisan thing the Congress did all year was this housing bill. That's actually pretty good. I know there's some things that I'd quibble with like on balance, you know, it's just

trying to, you know, incentivize more house building in the home building in the country to help lower costs for people, basic Adam Smith stuff supply and demand, and this pass is Trump decides doesn't want to sign it because he's having a temper tantrum because they haven't passed the Save America act yet and tonight we reach the kind of 10 day moment we're going to do like the, you know, when a bill becomes a law thing, I'm just like

I had to call in the parliamentarian this morning and I was like, so at the end of the 10 days, if he doesn't sign it, what happens, if it comes a law of Congress's in session, the Congress isn't in session right now, but they're in a pro-forma session. So long story short, if he doesn't sign it by midnight, it becomes law anyway.

I will not sign the housing bill, which has been fully approved by Congress in protest, all caps over the fact that U.S. Senate is not capable of passing the Save America act. The act states quite simply that to vote a person must show photo ID, prove citizenship that there'll be no more crooked corrupt and destabilizing mail and ballots. I love this in parentheses, exceptions, military disabled illness and travel.

Now, what do I mention travel?

“Oh, it's because he, that's how we, that's how he votes.”

It's like the way there's also a carve out one carve out for me. Then he says, they got to terminate the filibuster to do this. I mean, it's a pretty stunning thing.

Like the Trump is just basically like, I want help stealing the election this year or else,

I'm going to have a temper tantrum and not sign any bills, even things so it helped people. Yeah, he's abstaining from being president. You know, look, no one has ever, in a history of sport, changed the rules of a game they're winning. No one in that Tom Brady's a quarterback said, look, this whole forward pass thing.

It's like going too far. We got to cut this shit out. And look, you know, Republicans know that we're becoming an ordinary majority country. Despite all this stuff that, you know, 24 was some sort of watershed elections total bullshit. Trump's coalition in 20 was 85% white.

He did a little better, 24 was 84% white. And a country that's what, 59% white and less so after we finish this podcast. And all the Stephen Miller's in the world can't change that.

And it is the great failure of our former party, too.

I mean, in Bush world, we failed at this, but at least Ken Millman chairman of the party in 2005, went in front of the NAACP and gave us speech apologizing for the southern strategy. Does that matter? Yeah, I think it matters. It's better than just digging in and saying, you know, giving permission for people to be

their worst race to self. Yeah. And, you know, it was so clear that this, sort of, fabricated egg coalition that Trump put together in 24, you had to mag a people who are going to insist you have this army of mass man chasing gardeners for Brentwood, or, you know, you're going to have a spanish.

These two were not going to exist together. So, you know, you look at the Virginia governor's race and the Jersey governor's race. It all kind of reset to what it was and, you know, I don't think we talk enough about race in our politics, too. You know, I think it's lazy.

We talk about Trump, those well with evangelical voters. Black evangelical voters vote against him 97%. It's his worst group, actually. They talk about Trump as well as working class voters, only white working class voters. For some reason, this sort of reluctance to talk about this.

“But I think, you know, in our party, race is the original sin.”

Since 1964, go order, got 7% of the black vote, you go back to 56, I got 39%. And, look at the Virginia governor's race, they nominated an African American woman on her public inside. She gets 7%, right? So, you go 64 to recent election, it's pretty much a flat line.

Yeah. I agree with your umbrella point on principle about what's happening with race and how, you know, it doesn't get talked about enough in the context of what is happening in the country. There's motivated reasoning for why people want to sleep under the rug. Like simultaneously to that, I do think that I'm curious, just kind of putting on your

strategist hat, that you want a lot of races, like I think that the Democrats don't have to run. Yeah, also times the user is a crutch, they look at the stats that you said. And they're like, okay, we don't have to try that hard.

I always come back to Bobby Toledo, who's just a great example, he's running in the Rio

Grand Valley in Texas, is kind of a, you know, Tejano singer, moderate left Democrat. And he's just like, you know, they took us for granted, they didn't listen to our concerns. Like we don't want the mass spends in the street, but there were legitimate concerns about some of the stuff happening in the border in the communities, right? And so it's kind of like both of those things are true, kind of, right?

Like that that races the fundamental sin of what's happening with maga and the Democrats almost thought that they could just use, like, your racist is the only message to these voters. And obviously that's not it. Look, I think you can hold two things in your head at the same time. You can say it's bad when Stacey Abrams says she wanted election that she didn't win.

But it's a lot worse when you have people storming through the Capitol trying to hang the vice president. So both of those can be true. And I think that the Democrats are often shamed and not used talking about racism enough. And you should be out there.

“You should be talking about the voting rights act, which was a bipartisan act.”

And you should be talking about these fundamental principles of America as a melting-pocked and defending America as an ideal. Because I mean, look at J.D. Vance is just one of the weird guys on the planet. He talks about these heritage Americans and look at his kids. No one's going to think they're like Kentucky coal miners.

And I think, you know, it's true that Democrats, look, we want a lot of racism. We have no business waiting because they screwed things up.

But I still think that it's proven over and over and over again, that they are a party that

“aspires to something that is non-racist.”

And the Republican Party has become really, to the large degree, it's painful to say. I mean, I hope to elect all of these guys, a white extremist movement. And, you know, it's not operating and functioning as a normal political American party. It's an extremist movement. And what do we know about extremist movements?

They demand higher and higher purity tests. Yeah. So, you know, Trump announces and he's attacking Mexicans as rapists. Okay. So just imagine this, you've been a staffer.

You're sitting around JD Vets' office. And they hear about, like, there's thousands of these Republicans, only younger side, but they're not kids who are defending Hitler, talking about Nazis, how great it is. And he goes, you know, guys, I'm going to defend that. Yeah.

Oh, going after Indians, too, going after how the Indians are taking our jobs.

I guess it's a very common trope in this in that world. And so, JD Vets' is, like, so you know, like, I don't know, boss, like defending Nazis. Is that rapist? Can we maybe just let this one lie? Hi, maybe, you know.

But what does he do it?

“He does it because he believes, and I think he's right.”

And he had a great segment of, like, wise JD Vets, such a weird guy, and he's done as well as he did. But he believes that the way you advance in the party is to be the most transgressive. So now, I mean, we have an army of mass men going around chasing brown people and shooting them and killing them, saying Mexican to rapists, that's all it had, that doesn't get

you anywhere. So it's like, okay, I'm going to defend Nazis. How about you, Marco? Marco, you're going to defend Nazis. I don't think so.

Or he goes on lower ingrown and he's like, I'm going to defend the worst of what we're doing in these mass deportations as like the Catholic thing to do. He literally is on lower ingrown, saying part of my faith is that we have to make sure that the normal Americans get a good wage and normal Americans can't get a good wage unless we do mass deportations.

So it's, that's right there. It's in the cataclysm. And, you know, as an obviously catchman manager, I'm sure it falls in that category. One of the more sort of amusing things in life if it wasn't so sort of tragic and excessively threatening is the way the Donald Trump tortures J.D. Vance.

So J.D. Vance is the thing is no foreign wars. So, okay, we're going to perform or go defend the J.D., so J.D. does and goes, all right, how about this? I'm going to attack the Pope. You're going to, you're going to say anything about that?

You know, the Pope, J.D., J.D. is like, no, that's cool dude. The Pope, who the hell's the Pope? You know, go at it. There we go. Which is why J.D. Vance is going to be the nominee, mark my words, and he's going to pick

a Trump on the ticket. That's Trump family member. It's Trump family member. Either vodka or, you know, depending on who's in and out of rehab, one of the sons. Do you think Eric's asleep on that front?

I'd love that prediction, Stuart Stevens. That's good podcasting. Okay. That's good podcasting. J, advanced Trump ticket.

That feels right.

“It's the only way the Trump will support the ticket.”

Yeah. That feels right. And I think, you know, you could say, last time they needed Elon Musk millions. So now the kids are making billions. So we don't need, we don't need that weird or Elon.

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We're going to get to Mitch next. But the housing bill is funny. There's a funny little subplot to it because it's this accident where the kind of Republicans on the hill like accidentally showed that they could have been standing up to trump this whole time if they wanted to.

Because they thought that the White House was on board for this housing bill, right?

was blessed.

And they surely thought that because they were told that.

Yeah, exactly. So this was blessed. It gets passed big bipartisan bill, did all of a sudden Donald Trump has a temper tantrum decides he's not going to sign it. And what happens?

What's going to happen tonight of midnight? The bill's going to become a law. Donald Trump's going to be bleeding into the ether about whatever fucking Venezuelans tampering with the voting machines and how we got to pass the Save America act now. And there's not going to be any harm done to any of those Republicans that kind of accidentally

showed that they could stand up to Trump and play in sight now we can see that over the last 10 years, these guys have just been utterly cowardly, you know, you know, you hear from all your old friends still, the ones that still talk to you that are just like, well, still or Tim, like they can't, they can't, they can't survive. Tim, till us to survive can't oppose Trump on tearoffs or on Ukraine, you know, because

because then what would you do?

“You get Mark Robinson, you get the pizza Nazi in there, you have to, you have to just go”

along to get along. And it turns out you don't actually, but Donald Trump can just bleed and life moves on. That's exactly, V.C. for itch, quizzing the reasons. That's exactly the harm. And if I don't do it, like you're going to have somebody else who's going to be worth,

you know, okay, I'll be in the V.C. government. I'll help to port Jews, but I mean if I didn't do it, it'd be worse. Look, you know, the thing that I think angers me the most, and I find myself a lot more angry than I'd like to be, is that these Republicans are heir to the greatest generation. And people like my father, my uncle.

And they were not being asked to do like charge a beach, take a machine gun nest. After the 20 election, all they'd do is get their com-shop, put out a statement congratulating the president of the United States, pretty low bar, you know, compared to what's like, they have the legacy they've been handed, and they don't have the courage to do it. And you know, I have this theory, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's improvable, but that's

why it's a good theory. You can't argue that it's not true. That in the party, we developed a unknowingly to a large degree, without thinking about it. A culture that rewarded compliance, that if you were a Republican and you went along, you waited your turn, you were rewarded.

And it's like a genetic experiment. You do that 30, 40 years. What do you get? You get these Republicans in the Senate. I mean, you don't want to paint an ass in a seat of elected to the Senate, so you finally

“do it, and to do it Donald Trump tells you to do, really?”

But that's because they are the product of a system that rewarded compliance. And look, I knew John through when he was the executive director of the South Dakota Republican Party. Great, God. Good baseball play.

Everybody loved John.

Never in a million years.

Yeah. When would that have been? Well, I would have been when Bill Janko was governor, and it was back in the late 80s. I guess. You know, he must have been a handsome young man as an executive director.

I love working for Bill Janko, he's governor for 16 years and had this tragic end when he actually killed someone, but anyway, wait a minute, wait a minute, how did he kill? You can't just leave a thing on that. Bill Janko, we still hold podcast on Bill Janko, do a whole series, but he was elected governor to very young age, surf a year set out for, got re-elected for another eight

years, got out was board, ran for Congress, got elected, and home during a break, he was always

“a terrible driver, terrible, he collected cars, like old muscle cars, and particularly”

Cadillacs, and the first thing he did is governor was to put lights on the top of all of them. Anyway, drive himself, and he was driving, and not paying attention, ran a stop line in a bunch of cornfields, and hit a motorcycle, and killed him, and went to prison. So, tragic, tragic, and so many levels.

I'm also a terrible driver, this is why I love living in New Orleans. I don't ever go more than 12 miles an hour, I just can't kill anybody that way. Anyway, sorry, back to John Thin, that was just a teaser, I needed to pay off of what happened to him, that is tragic, so you knew Thin. I mean, everybody, you're just a good guy, and you know, he probably still is a good

guy, it's just this sort of definition of cowardness. I go back to, you know, how do you have these people who spend their careers standing for one thing? Saying they believe in all this, and then you know, go and do the exact opposite, Roger Wicker.

I mean, we were pages in Washington, I guess we're friends, I have worked for his campaign in the Senate, spent most of his very honorable career focused on building like NATO, and alliance. Yeah. He's still wears a Ukraine pin on his suit sometimes.

So, all his life, or I just wanted to be chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the way most of us wanted to be like athletes or rock stars. He wanted to be chairman of the Armed Services Committee. So now he is. What does he do?

He uschers and Pete Hexett, who literally, this is, I don't think he let Pete Hexett cut as long, like he wants this drunk with tattoos, it's weird stuff about women, what the guy around the house? No.

And he could have very easily told Donald Trump, look, there's 317 million Americans.

And we're not going to confirm this waso.

But no.

“And Wick tries to result, you know, Donald Trump is going to lose two wars.”

Most presidents only get to lose one war. And Pete wants to take all the troops out of Europe. I like all the stuff we're going to work for, like all of it. Yeah, you know, that packs of Americana, so it was had. And you know, we're losing Iran war over and over again.

And America is going to lose the Ukraine war. Ukraine is going to win. And America will emerge a loser because we, for the most part, too much time supporting Putin and not enough time supporting Ukraine on the level of trust. Wicker, Thune Collins, it's all the same type of character.

Don't worry. Don't worry. Yeah, well, they are personally nice. And when you say they're still good guy, I mean, it's like, I'm sure that they're personally nice.

I'm sure they do nice things for people in their life. And are generous. Right. It's like, maybe good neighbors. Yeah.

But it's like a big issue. They don't have the, they don't have the, they don't have the gumption. To stand up to this and they, they're going along with this. And I mean, it is, it's just the banality of evil as all of this.

And it's just, Hannah, I read like, you know, it's not the first time of this.

You mentioned the Ukraine thing. I have a category of topics here. I wanted for you, which is like traditional Republican stuff. I wanted to talk to you about Ukraine was one of them. You're still like really rapidly posting and commenting on Ukraine.

And so I just kind of wanted to let you cook on the state of play. Yeah, look.

“You know, I think Ukraine is the defining moment of our time.”

And if you live in a world in which Ukraine loses this war, it will be a generational change. This thing that we've accepted that you can get in the car, well, you get in the car and London there and drive to Prague and drive to, you know, anywhere you want. That's not good. That's going to be over.

You're not going to have Western Europe like that. And these border countries of Russia know it, this is, as clear a good versus evil test that we're going to have in our lifetime probably. And it's a smallest of things, but I work with this Ukrainian A group and one of the things they do is they acquire vehicles, particularly around Scandinavia, because there's a finished

element to this. So it follows A to various sorts, non-lethal A, because it's a 501c3. And then we drive it down to Kiev and convoys, distribute supplies, leave to vehicles, give them to brigades, and then take the train back to Poland. And look, I mean, you spend any time in Ukraine, it's just so obvious they're going to

win. I mean, you know what happens if they lose. And I think that they're winning at an accelerating rate, which will continue to accelerate because the technological innovations that they have are particularly involving AI and drones, 80% of the chaos in these narrow drones.

You have, you know, these situations now for the first time, these battles that are all robotic,

ground and air, and they're losing 30,000 troops a month. Russians are.

“For first time, since really the civil war, I think, they are more dead than wounded on”

the side of a battle. That just doesn't happen anymore except the Russians don't give a fuck about their people. So, you know, I think about this, to grow up as a kid in Ukraine now, you could look at your leaders, not just the ones who give it across the board, and admire them. What is it now to grow up as a kid in America?

Who do you admire? I forget grow up as a kid. What's it like to be 25 in America? There you go. Honestly.

I mean, you know, how old are you there in the O8 campaign? You're young. I'll give you a perfect example. This is woman that I've gotten known and cave, though the day before the full-scale invasion was the queen of cave night like she ran the biggest club just like, you know, the star.

Next day, she enrolled in a medic scores. Today, she has this flourishing charity that fills individual medical kids for soldiers. Wow. You know, she still has, like, you walk into where they are and it's like walking into a club. She still has purple hair.

She's a civil arts thing, rock music, but this is what they do. There is no element of Ukrainian society that is not involved in this war on some level. And that is extraordinarily difficult to defeat. We should talk about Ukraine more, people should go to Ukraine. You go to cave.

It looks like a big normal European city. I mean, terrible things will happen, but it's a lot safer than a lot of American cities. And everything kind of looks different once you go there. Another Republican stuff topic I want to talk to you about is if you've been following the Freedom Fuel story, Donald Trump is in his administration as promoting a new, we think

privately owned network of gas stations, been Philly and New Jersey that are called Freedom Fuel. There's flags everywhere. They're doing propaganda where they get, I assume, supporters to go fill up gas and talk about how cheap it is, even though even at the Freedom Fuel Station, it's part

the Freedom Fuel stations is whether this is corruption or socialism or both.

“I mean, is that the corruption thing can we really doubt that?”

And look, as a Mississippian, I'm pro-socialism pro-communism. We get 40% of our state votes from the fans. So you're one for that, I mean, you know, I'm right from Washington. I just feel like I have to bring this up because I did dings over on several times on the grocery stores.

The City Run grocery stores, which I still think is a pretty stupid idea. On the grand scheme of things, I don't think it's that important, but it's a down-of-grish smart idea. But I feel like just to be an honorable podcaster, I could mention that now they're chewing gas stations at a much higher rate.

Also, I'm just going from the feds. You're government owns 10% of intel. So 5% on grocery stores, 10% of intel. I don't know. I think maybe, like, the rules do it.

It's the only good stock part just I've ever made. I'm a bad gambler and my dad was the stock man in the family, but as soon as I saw the reports that we might buy some intel, I went ahead and bought some stock in there. So I'm getting some trickle down. It's trickle down socialism.

There you go, man.

“And, you know, Tim Cook will marry, you know, less than God, you know, an Auburn guy”

running apples really troubling. But if these people think they're going to stop with intel, they're crazy. And there is no conservative party in America where the pro-tariff party, where the pro-nationalize intel party, where the pro-button party, there's no conservative party. We need a conservative party.

Freedom fuel. Ah. Listen, I prefer when it was french fries, because at least then you could prove your patriotism by eating. Freedom fries.

Freedom fries. That was funny. That was tongue and cheek. This is like, this is it. They take everything from us.

You know, like, you just little kind of tongue and cheek, South Park style, conservative humor. It's fine. From time to time. This is North Korea.

This is like, dear, dear leader says you'll get very good gas, very good gas in a gallon. And they probably have, you know, cameras here to identify people, give your special break on your taxes. Yeah. They're fucking paying the numbers running this on the back end.

It's all scam. Okay. During the Senate section, we talked about some of the alive and lucid senators, Wicker, Thun, and Collins. What's going on with your man, Mitch McConnell?

You know, I don't know. And he's been calling.

People always would call John Barroso, apparently, and John Thun, and Scott Jennings.

All of them claim they talked some for 20 minutes. And that he was very interested in deep policy questions about what's happening in NATO. What do you think? I have two thoughts on this. Okay.

One. I hope Ms. McConnell's fine. I hope this guy is completely lucid, and Kenopan, on NATO. That's great. I hope he is.

I also think he's more and more despicable human beings walking around on the planet. A guy who can't even defend his wife when Trump attacks her with racial slurs. A guy who Donald Trump encourages a mob to come into its workplace and kill his colleagues. And he's like, nah, I'm not going to vote to convict. I mean, the reason we have Donald Trump now is Mitch McConnell.

And Mitch McConnell told senators, vote to convict. They would have voted to convict. We wouldn't have Donald Trump. The country would be a lot better off.

“I think the Republican Party would be a lot better off, but no.”

And, you know, Mitch McConnell, as you always say, aren't bad, thanks to all these things

he's done, are going to be his legacy. And it's not going to be that way. His legacy is Donald Trump. Just as all the segregationists senators, you don't remember like the brids they got built, or maybe, you know, like that's your memory of the segregationists.

A couple of people do. You know, there's a handful of people at like, uh, at a fake library in Oxford, the kid reminds that we'll remind you, the good things that those senators did. You know, there's a handful of people that remember. Yeah.

Well, it, you know, and McConnell's a pathological liar as he lied about, you know, confirming Supreme Court justices said we couldn't do it in an election year. And then Barrett was not, not confirmed in an election year. She was confirmed after people were voting in the middle of an election. Well, that's also true.

He also said that the court said to take care of Trump, and then then opposed the court taking care of Trump. And it's all, it was all fake. It was all power from the start. And then I just would add to your list of his crimes against his own self interest is very

weak opposition to the anti-vaxxed takeover of their Republican party despite the fact that he had polio. Yeah. He had polio. Yeah.

One of the more telling impactful books that I read when I was writing, it was all lie. Was a memoirs a friend on behalf of him, a friend's on behalf of him, who was the pressure and aristocratic was more responsible for us reading Hitler than anybody.

such as a demand for it. 1953.

Now, you could say things are going a little south in 1953, you know, where we're 200 million

dead, the Holocaust, he's still defending what they did. And there are lines in his memoir that are verbatim, what Mr. McConnell said in 16. We will change him. We needed someone to be in touch with the work in class, but we were confident we could control it.

And that's what McConnell did. And it's so ironic. And I got elected by running an ad that was against a long time in combat, who had been

“in Washington too long, that's how we got elected.”

And here he is, you know, a century of service, I mean, come on. It's sad. It's sad. Yeah. I've been spoken to him.

I tried to get him on the horn, but I haven't had a chance to have a 20-minute briefing, so we'll keep people posted. What are some politics stuff with you? The parallel I'm about to make is obviously not exact, so it's just when everybody stick with me.

You know, sometimes people struggle with this, but the Democrats are dealing with a potuous uprising of some kind of in their own party. I think that there's a lot of differences to the Tea Party, benched in how you had assessed the differences, but there are also some similarities. And on Monday's show, I built and I were talking about kind of lessons that we could have

learned from the Republicans to this, and one of the lessons that I was talking about was kind of like picking battles, you know, knowing who's worth fighting and who's not, and, you know, how to demonstrate that you're listening to the complaints of the people that are voting for the populist candidates. And so anyway, one of the examples that I gave was the Mississippi Center Race, that

you were deeply involved in with that cock and in Chris McDaniel, and then Chris McDaniel was just this totally racist radio host completely beyond the pale, but it's like, okay,

“can we use this as an example in Mississippi that there is a red line, right?”

Turns out Donald Trump kind of breaks through that red line two years later, but it's still, I think it's a useful kind of lesson. And so since I got you here, Bill and I kind of talked about it via how we kind of experienced it, you know, from our DC perch, but you're involved in the race. So this one of you have any thoughts on that race and broader lessons.

My firm was doing it. I mean, I, I was, I went door to door for Thad when he ran for Congress

for the first time, and he was the first Republican elected since Reconstruction to Congress.

And he was a young sort of Rotarian, Kwanis club lawyer, very, very likable, and there really wasn't a Republican party in Mississippi. And the Democrats were all like, you know, stintess in Eastland, unless you want to be like a county judge in it or all, but county, why do you want to be a Democrat? So he ran, got elected, I was a page for him.

And that last race, I mean, he shouldn't have run, you know, he did have health issues. My firm did the race. I went down to just check on how it was going, thought I'd spend a week in. I spent two months without leaving.

“It was one of the most bizarre toughest races that I've ever been involved in.”

And McDaniel was an example, basically, as Haley Barberset of a hostile takeover of the Republican party in Mississippi, because he was largely funded by outside groups like club for growth that were attacking Kalkrum for being there too long, but also being a big smender. So rather than fight that, we ran right into it.

And we just made all these ads about, okay, Kalkrum got you this. Kalkrum got you that. You know, the same when Haley ran, he was attacked as being a lobbyist and we go, don't we need a lobbyist. This is what's considered.

Yes, you'll be a really good lobbyist of Mississippi. And then we could train a hit, it proved to be the case. And it was a very dramatic tough race. It went into a runoff where McDaniel led the runoff. You have to get 50%.

And only by a couple of thousand votes did he not get 50%. And then this thing that is not supposed to happen in politics happened, more people voted

in the runoff than in the first election.

Part of that was that there were a lot of people who are Kalkrum supporters who didn't think he could lose, so they left a lot of votes on the table. Plus, Kalkrum had very good relationship with the African-American community. And in Mississippi, there is no party registration as we famously say it's a state of mind. And legally, if you didn't vote in the Democratic primary when they're in the first round,

you could vote in the Republican primary in the second round. And we made an effort to get African-American votes. And you can go through precinct by precinct and see where we manage to sort of ding him here enough, ding him there enough. And Kalkrum was able to win, which was a big win from Mississippi.

Big Daniel is just, you know, he ran spots with a still-than Mississippi state flag, which was the Confederate battle flag.

So from that race, if you have Chuck Schumer call you or whoever call you and say, okay,

“how do I, you know, what are lessons that are valuable for the Democrats?”

Obviously, the Democrats don't have any Chris McDaniel style racist running. But, say, I was running, I was running in Maine against Collins. I would attack her for not doing enough. I would say that you could do more. She should do more.

And I think there's two elements here that you can say, I want to be an outsider. I want to change things. But I'm also going to really deliver from the district, because this money is going somewhere.

And I think McDonald is a good example of that, you know, he can charm Trump. You know, everybody felt that Trump was going to be attacking him like, no, the guy's he's an incredibly charismatic guy. You know, if I was running a Democratic party, I would say that these are the kind of problems you want to have.

You want to have the question of like, do we have too big of a tent?

And I don't think it's an existential crisis that somebody like McDonald is getting elected. That's not a bad thing. People can vote for whoever they want. I mean, do we really think the Democratic party would be better off as Chris Pomo was mayor of New York City?

Really? So you don't have any worries. You're just kind of like, you know, looking at what happened with Platner and like some of the DAC and some of these candidates in New York, you're not, you're not getting PTSD at all.

Well, AOC didn't endorse Platner, which is someone that runs, you know. I said, I thought, rather cleverly, maybe female bartenders know guys like Platner. And can read them from a mile away. Yes. These have been super savvy.

There's just no other way around it. The statement to Platner put out is one of the most offensive, despicable statements. I mean, here's the small little rich kid, you know, fathers Ivy League or grandfather Ivy League or you know, flocked out of hotskis, hotskis, and had a tough four, okay. But he's not what he said he was and he clearly has an issue with women.

And you know, this guy is one chance to not be the most hated man in America and that is if a Democrat wins that Senate seat. If a Democrat loses, he will be blamed. He will be the what's he going to write a book? I kept Donald Trump and power.

The grand platinum story. And he's kind of campaigned for him. Yeah, no, the thing that like, oh, these power, I don't have to quote in front of you to something like these powers are trying to stop me and they're preventing me from getting an office.

It's like, man, take accountability for yourself. And if like, if it's true that you are a people-powered movement, I thought the whole point was you didn't want corporate money and national money. You can do Donald Trump want a campaign without any corporate money or national money. So the whole thing.

Well, in a term, there's a long documented history of the main state party getting women to accuse candidates of rape. To get them out, you know, I mean, it's the most of the time-

“Oh, you know, I was like, wait a minute, who is the who is behind this conspiracy?”

Why haven't they, why haven't they found any women to accuse Abdul al-Sayad or Mamdani or whatever? I don't think it's just ridiculous. Yeah, this guy should, this guy should shut the fuck up about himself. And he should say to the Democratic Party, I will do whatever helps you.

If that means you won't me to join Pakistan in Iceland, I'll go. I'll leave the state.

You'll never hear from me.

If you won't me to go door to door, I'll go. And I'll go door to door. But, exactly. Yeah. And you ought to start apologizing to people.

One other thing in 26, I'm just curious, if you pay attention to that, Senator, he's got column. Yeah. What's your, how do you handicap it? Well, people should both stop their scotties.

Obviously. But is there hope there? Is there any stretch of these stretch seats? Yes. The only reason Siniad Smith is in the Senate, is that she went to Southern and all the US senators

from Mississippi at either going to, most of them are going to own this, the governor going to Southern. He wanted a female who would go on the Southern and there was Siniad Smith. Okay. Great.

It's really just sort of this local politics playing out. She's a do nothing, Senator, which is a real shame for state-light Mississippi that

“doesn't have a lot of Congressman, but does have two senators just like California?”

Column would be much better. Can he win? Look, I think if somebody like column wins, it'll mean that a lot of people are waiting. Valerie Cohen, the main Senate race, went Democratic, but it's harder than people think to elect a Republican in Mississippi.

You've got to get, this is an African American turnout, but I liked a lot of people down there. You've got to get about 70% of the white vote, and you know, it's Hayley used to say, I can't get 70% at Thanksgiving dinner. And that's a lot harder than you think. And if you get --

He's going down there. A large African American turnout, which he should, I think that there are a lot of suburban voters in, you know, the Luxe, Guffford, Jackson, Madison County, who find Trump despicable, and have no connection to Siniad Smith, who, you know, I mean, she could walk down the street naked and people would say, who's that naked woman, not why as a U.S. Senator walking

So, yeah, he could win. He could win. He ought to support him.

I have a 15-minute limit a week. I give myself for any 28 hot stove talk, and I've used zero minutes this week. So, I want to close the pot with Lane Kiffin and I want to pick your brain on 28 stuff, because as mentioned, you did this a bunch. You're there with Bush. You're there with Romney early. We lost.

We lost. Yeah, well, okay, but, you know, that's true. But, he was a moderate Senator or Susan and Governor for Massachusetts running against like two extremely famous American heroes at the time American heroes, one of them ended up, you know, pissing his pants literally and becoming a trader. But, I don't know, you've

got to have been in this moment the summer two years out, where people are starting to think about it. They call people like you to fly in, visit them at the state capital, chat about what would look like. And so my question for you is, like, you know, if you're in a different world for a younger man still and, you know, you'd state you've been a Democrat

“and you're still an ad man, who would you be wanting to bring your phone?”

I think that the Democratic primary is going to be determined by who best can articulate what is the process to hold the Trump administration accountable. I think that's where the energy of the party is. If you take, you know, Governor News, not a bad politician. What was this as immediate reaction to 24 to have Charlie Kirkham have, you know, sort of tack right, Democratic Party threw up on his shoes. So he's like, "Okay, that's not working. I think

I'll attack Donald Trump." And it is rewarded for these praise for it. That's where the party is. It's not going to be about issues. It's going to be about who best can articulate and focus this criminality and anger toward Donald Trump. And you can, this debate in the Democratic Party should it be about gas prices or should it be about ice-shooting people? Bancers, yes. And you can make it both and they are weirdly connected because this

criminality of the Trump administration affects the entire government. It drives me absolutely bad, shit crazy, that we have, you know, the president, the Republican, who's insane, pointing drunk, studious, communist, you know, agents across the government. And we have a

“national debate about what's wrong with the Democratic Party. Are we really having this debate?”

I mean, you know, I spent, you know, decades pointing up false in the Democratic Party, but it's still the only pro-democracy party in America. So I think intensity and anger is going to drive that primary. And it's not going to be about ideology in a classic sense. So who's going to be best at that? You know, one of the things we've learned many times

is, it's like sports, you never know, do they get out there? Yeah, I know, but who if you saw

their name on the caller ID would give you a little shoot up the leg, would give you a little this could be fun. This would be fun. You know, if you were to do one more run around the basis, like who sounds fun? You know, I'd work for Prince certain heartbeat. A lot of people talk about him, but I agree with that. Yeah. He has money. Illinois's a little bit of baggage for him on that, but, uh, I don't know, the, the, the whole

like, oh, he's a little bit like, I don't know, man. All these, all these old rules, we elected a guy that talked in public about dating his daughter. I'm not sure that you know, these old rules still apply his idea of church was, you know, you every 12 years, you've got to church in my mom. Got a Springfield, you know, start chatting them. Well, what the

“strategies are going to be? I think he could be a great candidate, but there are a lot more,”

I think, Josh Shapiro. I'd love to work for Josh Shapiro. I would go door to door. Josh Shapiro's a nominee. I will go door to report. Now, probably they might ask me to campaign for their public in because I cost him votes, but I think Josh Shapiro would be a fence. I think he's immensely talented and would be a fantastic candidate. So idea we're going to elected Jewish president. I'll be giving a break. We're electing Donald

Trump. Yeah, the whole thing. I don't know. I mean, I do think that he's probably out of step where the, where the basis with intensity wise on Israel, how will that play out in a year, how to predict, but the Jewish thing is such a crazy smear, like Bernie is Jewish.

John Ossoff is a hot commodity right now. Jewish, you never heard anybody say that about

him. I think, also, I've got to get elected president. There's just so much more to, I didn't do some to get elected president. I would not downplay that guy. He is another tremendously talented athlete. And there is a very positive story that we told about California despite all these sort of, you know, negatives. He'd really need you to help with that positive story. He made some of his words to have. I found myself in the car listening

to this long interview with Scott Galway with Newsome. Okay. And I have to say I was super impressed with Newsome. His ability to defend what he's done for him. Yeah, he's very good. His ability to say, okay, we didn't do enough here. We should have done more. Yeah, absolutely right, which is the right approach. That's the problem Republicans have now, Tim, as you know, there's a, a template to get out of the mystery. But it starts with saying,

now, because you can't admit that you made a mistake. And that just sort of takes away one of the basic, it's like fighting and boxing master with one hand. It's just kind of takes away one of the basic moves and politics. Totally agree on the Republicans, but I want to close some story time. What, what is that like? You know, you go, we went to Boston to meet with met. McCain's going to be in Rudy's going to be in. He doesn't have a national

profile, but he thinks he has a message. Like, what was that, like, what happens in those

meetings? I had a very contrary pitch to candidates. I would always be asked, you know, not

surprisingly, how do you think how do we win? And my standard answer was I have no idea. And anybody who tells you that now is going to be lying to you. But I know how to figure out how we can win as the race goes on. And I would always discourage candidates. I would say, as bad as you think this is going to be, it's going to be worse. So don't do this if the day after the race when you lose, you're still glad you won. Still glad you ran. Because

that's a test because most people who run lose. And, you know, the candidates I had found that appealing because it was honest and they, you know, it wasn't like a bunch of bullshit,

“like. And I think that the biggest trap is a consultant to fall into when you start winning”

races. And the secret to winning races is consultant is to work for people who are going to win anyway. And just don't fuck it up. Mr. King of baseball codes yourself. Baseball man is you're, you know, good players. That helps. No, it's a good lead, it's the rain kiffin. But you start winning races. You start to think that you figure things out. And that is a huge, huge trap because no races are the same. And I would say this, you know,

about Carl Role who I do think is a political genius. You know, Carl always stayed humble.

And in Bushworld, we had a lot of flaws, but we stayed humble. And we used to joke, it seemed a little funny at the time after the 2000 race, you know, anybody can elect somebody president when you get more votes. He takes professionals when you get happened or you can less. But then in 2004, we almost lost, you know, half half of a home game at the highest stake on the other way. We would have lost. So don't think that you figured it out. And I think that that ability

to stay humble. And to look at a candidate, I've always thought that the job of consultant is looking at a candidate and say, what is it that you do best? And I am going to help you do that better than anybody else. And I'm just going to take your flaws and make sure your flaws are so bad they defeat you. So with Romney in 2012, when he's run for the nomination, it was okay, you're going to beat Mitt Romney, you're going to beat him on the economy. That's a heel,

we're going to die on. We're not going to get into these social wars, he's the only guy on states when ask if Obama was a socialist, he didn't raise his hand. And, you know, it's really

amazing to think a party nominated Mitt Romney and then they nominated Donald Trump.

And I don't know, certainly a modern political history that's ever been such a difference of a party. And you could see in the 12 primary, and I should say this to Mitt all the time. Look, man, if the party goes crazy, there's nothing we can do. We can't chase crazy. He's

“got to let him go crazy. They're going to nominate New Cambridge. You know, it's crazy. You have to be,”

what you're going to do, you have to say. Yeah, the one thing Dr. In the right was the net on the economy thing. And that's my message. It seems like the most basic advice ever. But it's pretty remarkable. If you go back to recent Democratic presidential campaigns, maybe the last three, cycle of 16, and then you have a big primary in 20, and then then 24, how many of those candidates had, like, here's the one or two things that they're going to own.

It's going to be their thing. And it's hard to think of too many. I mean, Bernie, obviously, but I have an in 20 kind of resource of America, Pete kind of, and it's like about it, right? And and that's my big thing. It's just like the basics. A lot of these guys just don't do the basics on the front end. Jeb didn't do it by the way, hand up, like it's just, that's just the way. Yeah, you know, I would have voted for you, by the way. And he would have been a good president. And,

you know, it's a fascinating subject. What if what if Jeb had been president? The party would have been the same party, but it'd be a very different party, which maybe goes back to that thing we used

“to learn, we used to like, certificates, classes or leaders matter. Look, I think that the key in these”

things is to accept what the race is about. So, 16 was about change, and we're in a series of change elections. Trump was more of a change agent than Hillary Clinton. Okay, Biden was more of a change agent than Donald Trump. Donald Trump was more of a change agent, even though we had an African American bus president, she said was the incumbent vice president, it's vice president. More of a change agent, and midterm to going to be a change election, or your

greatest danger, if you're a Democrat, is to run on the idea of trying to restore. It can't be about

that. You could make a good case, I'm sure I did many times, that if you elected a normal Democrat, there'd be such gratitude and appreciation, like thank God, we have a normal president, and we can go back to that, that you would reward it. Well, that theory didn't prove to be true.

“Biden didn't win in reelection. So, again, I think that you have to go back to what is it?”

I would want on a platform to first day I was in, I would nationalize Starlink, I would nationalize SpaceX, I would pass a millionaires tax, I would erect a statue in the hall honoring those police officers who defended the capital, you had to go for big stuff. I could hear you and JB Pritzker talking about this, maybe you should fight a Springfield, that's good, that's a good platform.

It ain't national health insurance, don't run away from it, and you know, I've never seen a poll

where if you're going to increase taxes over people who made over a million dollars, it didn't test like $90,000. And if you made that $5 million, it would test like $98, too. Don't be afraid of that stuff, don't run away from being the party that is arguing that these people should pay more. All right. Two football hottakes. Do you have an NIL hottake and state of play, college football? Um, it's great time to be a player. You know, you know, I just find it

fascinating that it sounds like the punchline to a joke, but you have guys playing who can't afford

“to turn pro because they're making more money. And look, I think it's crazy. My advice is somebody”

if you're in a big college town with a big town, uh, university, when there's a football practice zone, just drive by the parking lot. You'll see more Lamborghinis than you ever believed possible. You could drive in front of like, you know, Apple, and you will see, you know, they all drive Priests, but they have Lamborghinis in their garage, they hide. But I will say this about like my favorite lane gift and story when he went to, you know, he was a big hot yoga guy.

Yeah. And he constantly, you know, he goes there, he cleanses, everybody loves me. As soon as he left, he went New Orleans, there was a series of women posting like on Instagram who went to high yoga class, like, thank God this creep is gone. I don't have to wake up at six in the morning and go to high yoga and watch this guy like checking me out and hitting on me. Um, it was so so classic. All right. Well, there you go. I was going to give you a full minute of lane

kiffin. Hey, you just use 30 seconds. You have 30 more seconds. Oh, look, the problem with lane

“kiffin is he's good at what he does. And he's going to be a really good coach. I think he's”

fatally flawed in character matters. And I think it's just so telling that all these star athletes didn't leave Ole Miss. Yeah. So Ole Miss has a leading quarterback in the country and the leading running back in the leading kick or it's not a bad start. It didn't have that start. It's going to be a fun September. I just didn't have you to have him fun. I might be on the end. I out thing is, yeah, they got to put some rules around it. It's gotten a little out of control,

but they should be making money. They deserve it. We're all paying money. It's better that they're making some of the money than that the money's going into the pocket of the AD and, you know, just the head coach, it's fine. Yeah, but some rules on it. But I'm glad they're making some money. We'll figure it out. And I'm just glad it's going to be fun again. I mean, my thing about the world cup is I don't even give a fuck about soccer, but watching that next go England game in

Azteca, just like this is amazing. Everyone's so excited. It's such a cultural movement. Everyone's

coming together. Everyone's united. It's a healthy tribalism. You know, we need an outlet for healthy tribalism to not do unhealthy tribalism. That's, that's SEC football. You could just throw on a game and everybody's very excited. And I think it's going to be fun this year. You need a bad guy. My team's going to be the bad guy this year. That's all right. And we'll see how it goes in September 19th. All right, sir. All right, brother. Put September. So the 20th will be a Sunday, 21st will be a

Monday because that's Monday's the book. So put September 22 when you're calendar. Okay. And September 22, if the, if the Rebs win, I'll be in one of my buddies all miss shirts. All right. Okay. That's a deal. And if they lose, I, you know, probably could have received enough therapy back then that I'll be coherent being the trend. Sounds good. We'll see you in September, man. I appreciate you so much. Everybody else leave back here on Monday with Bill Crystal. Have a great weekend. See you all then.

The board podcast is brought to you. Thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper and with video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.