Amanda Carpenter

Yeah.

I'm hanging in there. How are you doing, Tim?

You know, I think the only goal of the responses, any of the responses to the speech last night had to be make it a bigger spectacle than the speech itself. And none of them really succeeded in doing that. So... A little F for you. Yeah.

You know, I think... You're probably right that there was nothing in the room or even online they could have done in the moment. But I kind of wish that if they were going to try something, they had made a bigger deal out of it or at least been more organized.

This one-off holding up the signs, the pink suits, the sort of boring speech after, which was so late at night that who watches that anyway? It was probably a lose-lose. But if they were going to try, I wanted them to go bigger.

The target audience for that was no one under the age of 48, 47.

A few Never Trumper elder millennials, and that's about it. Which is fine. That's an audience that needs pandering to, too. Not my cup of tea. And I think not quite speaking to a lot of the Democratic bases right now. But that's okay. Not everything has to be for everyone.

You know, I think it's good to give them credit for trying stuff. And I saw that like Elon and a bunch of the right wing influencers were lifting it up, which means they were all lifting up, you know, visual images that were like shit that ain't true about Trump and talking about prices. So in that sense, I think it's good to like farm a little outrage.

Is it the most effective social media content? Probably not. But baby steps in the right direction is better than like baby steps in the wrong direction.

I think AOC pretty typically is one of the better ones in which it seems so authentic. You know, I think Chris Murphy's stick is not always for me, but it does seem true to him. And I appreciate that. Like he seems genuinely furious and is communicating that in a way that really works.

Other than that, I think we've still got a lot of like wide open field for people to step up, which is again, chaos is a ladder. Climate Democrats, just fucking climate.

Well, it's because when they're not mad, it makes us feel like the crazy ones for being mad. I don't want to be gassed. My rage is not misplaced. It is not invalid. It is totally legitimate. And if my elected leaders aren't showing that, or if they're like, oh, calm down. We're going to talk about the price of eggs. There's not an election for this shit for another 18 months. Be mad right now.

And then channel my fury into something good. But be mad with me. It will make me feel better.

This is since Trump's first inauguration days. We've been on eight years.

I think that we have to, like, we Democrats have to mentally and practically prepare to win big in 2026, which feels like an insane thing to say right now. And the way we do that is by preparing to field as many candidates as possible for as many of these races as possible. And that recruitment work is happening now. Now. in a district that a Democrat had never competed in.

In the, like, 50 years since they had drawn these maps, there had never been a Democrat on the ballot there. She ran. She won. Because as it turns out, in a year where there is a wave election, giving people an alternative will allow someone else to show up and, like, actually take power. We have had this happen so many times over the years.

We'll have the first or only Democrat to run in that race ever. five years, 10 years ever, who will, if not win, come within a point or two. And all of a sudden in the next cycle, that district is a competitive race. It is like the most basic building block of actually party building and of competing in these elections is to get a good candidate on the ballot. And it's not that hard.

That's like the thing with running for office. It is hard work. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of effort, but it's actually not that difficult in terms of like logistics and communication. That's what we're in for something easier to do is we help people figure all of that out once they've decided this is a step I want to take.

I think that's absolutely right. I mean, especially when we're talking about state, local or even congressional races, like you've got to run for the place you're in. We should generally be aligned on values like run for something has an endorsement process. We want to make sure we're all generally aligned on what we believe.

But there's a lot of different ways to actually put those values into practice, depending on the community and what they want and what the mechanics of the office are. And that I think when we people are talking like no litmus test, that's the flexibility we need to be at right now.

You know, we have folks who really cross the spectrum. Basically, everyone we work with aligns as a Democrat or would align as a Democrat. A lot of these races are technically nonpartisan, but we've got folks ranging from like the most, you know, DSA types, New York City Council candidates to like pretty conservative school board candidates in places like Alaska or Kansas or, you know, in Texas.

As long as they're all on the same page about what we're trying to accomplish, which is really like a pro-democracy, pro-education, pro-working families, you know, pro... climate change is real and we have a responsibility to do something about it type approach, we can get behind them.

So we're thinking about state house, state Senate, city council, which especially when we're talking about housing, which I think is going to be one of the biggest issues in the next couple of years, city council or municipal offices, county commissions, which often in plenty of places actually oversee elections. So if we're looking ahead to 2028,

Those are the kinds of pro-democracy positions we need. Library boards, hospital boards, mosquito abatement districts, coroners, about 1,300 counties elect coroners. There's about a half a million elected offices in the United States. Most of them are not Congress, and most of them are totally winnable if someone is willing to put in the work and knock doors.

And they're way more interesting, I think, and more fun than being a member of Congress.

Yeah, so runforsomething has a site, runforwhat.net, you can go to. You can look up at your exact address what offices are up for you in 2025 or 2026. Fun fact, since election day, nearly 25,000 people alone have done that, gone and looked up what offices they might want to run for and started thinking about running for office. Our total pipeline is only about 200,000 or a little less.

huge number in just the last couple months once you do that you'll start getting materials from our team about how to figure out which office is right for you and how to raise the money but if you're able to identify like the problem you care about solving if you're able to point to how the office you run for will give you power to solve it and then why voters should want you to win which is different than why you want to win you want to win because winning is great and losing sucks voters want you to win because you're going to do something for them everything else we can teach you

So in 2017, and then again in 2018, we had about 15,000 people each year sign up to run for office. We're about to exceed both those years total in just the first quarter of this year. Wow. It is record numbers. And we're seeing actually most of that come in since inauguration. And basically every time Doge...

starts firing people or shutting down federal government offices, you see like another conversation or the terminations, we see hundreds and hundreds more people come into us. At the last couple of weeks, we've been averaging between five and 600 people a day thinking about running for office.

Runforsomething.net. You can learn more about us. You can give us money. You can volunteer. You can sign up to run and get all the information.

You want to feel my big rage today. I think this was one of those things yesterday. If you want to run against a octogenarian or septogenarian Democratic elected official, especially in a primary, I think this will be a really good year to do it.

Thanks, Dan.

I want to point out a few bright spots because it's important to show who is doing well versus, by the way, like you having George Conway on last week to talk about Paul White. That was great. Very informative. Glad that he really brought it to them. That was necessary. But we did see, you know, there is the Perkins Coie executive order.

There was a story in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about how it's fighting back. Great. You know, they're one of the good ones right now. And also, more importantly, its biggest clients are staying. That includes Boeing, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, NFL. Because, right, in order for these law firms to not only stay and fight, they have to not lose clients. So, like...

I want to say thank you, thank you, keep fighting. We need everyone to stick together on this because the whole point of using these orders is to divide and conquer people and pit these law firms against each other so they start stealing clients.

But there was like a sweet part of that Wall Street Journal story is that the day after they got the order, apparently this managing director, I think in Seattle, someone sent a bouquet of flowers to them just saying thank you, like for standing up. Und er hat ein Bild gemacht und es jeder 600 Personen in diesem Büro geliefert.

Ich weiß nicht, wer das geliefert hat, aber die Tatsache, dass sie es bemerkt haben. Diese sind reiche Menschen. Sie können ihre eigenen Blumen kaufen. Sie können sich Blumenpartys jeden Tag machen, wenn sie wollen. Sie gehen mit Lays herum. Aber sie wurden getäuscht, dass jemand das für sie gemacht hat. Sie haben ein Bild genommen und es umgebracht und es in einen Journalismus-Story gemacht.

Bitte finden Sie Wege, um zu feiern und kinderlich zu sein für die Leute, die das Richtige tun. Wir müssen viel Zeit über das Böse sprechen. Aber wenn Sie diese kleinen Schmerzen des Hoffnisses sehen, I hope they don't reverse stance. Celebrate that. And so then there was also an executive order that came down. Was this another one last night against another law firm? Wilmer Hale.

I'm not a big law person. They're pushing back. I saw a statement from Ryan Goodman, who tracks all this stuff. Where they issued a statement saying essentially like we're standing up for the rule of law, blah, blah, blah. Good. So we have two firms doing the right thing in light of the bad. Maybe that will encourage other people to stand together.

And I think these things do have a way of starting and having a line of separation between the cavers and these people who take an oath to uphold the rule of law actually doing it. is a pretty good stark dividing line and hopefully people want to be on the right side of the ledger.

Hey, I'm, you know, and it feels weird to say I'm doing great. I'm doing okay. We're here. It's Friday. I felt like I had to wake up and just like preparing for this, like just take a few deep cleansing breaths because there's so much going on. But I am, if there's anybody to get into it with.

Wait, that was on ABC News?

Okay, I didn't see that. I was highly entertained by the AP write-up of this visit coming to action. We'll get to the bad part, but can we just walk through some of the absurdity of it? Sure, let's do it. This is an AP story. It says, initially, Osha Vance had announced a solo trip. But then her husband had to join her. Then they had to change the itinerary.

Again, they're supposed to see dog sled racing. Apparently, they were not welcome at the dog sled race. So then they had to narrow the visit. She had to bring her husband. And then they could only go to the military space force base. So like...

I mean, don't you get the impression that they thought by sending her, they could send like the nice face as like to warm them up towards, I guess, JD and Walt's coming later.

How do you piss off Greenland and also Canada? I mean, this is kind of amazing.

Yeah, so that you can, they can only go to the Space Force base. They can't stay the long weekend. One day trip, in and out. And you have to stay in the base because otherwise you'll be protested anywhere else. Like they have to have a safe space. In order to make this visit. I find that hilarious. Can someone just slip Usha Vance, Karen Pence's phone number?

Because I feel like they might have some things in common. They might need to get together for a little wine night.

I don't know. I just have this vision of where JD is like, so Usha, maybe we'll just go to Greenland for the weekend. You can get a spa day, take some time off. And then Greenland's like, hell no, you're not coming here.

Of course they do.

I'm just picturing a nice little Cabin Chalet, do a cold plunge.

I don't know. I'm from Michigan. I think it's like the UP.

Well, they can invite me.

Listen, I can go to a Sephora in Altandu, cold plunge, and that works.

Okay, CVS.

I agree. I think that's the point of this weird visit, but I am going to find some joy in the fact that they're isolated to a one-day in-and-out trip and they're not welcome there.

Oder sie kaufen Real estate für Trumps nächstes was auch immer.

No, I don't know what part of my conservative background signed up for having an unvetted, unappointed, unstable person just come into the government without any of the proper security clearances, taking hold of private data, compromising it, and then just deciding to come up with a bunch of cuts while he's running like three other businesses. I mean, there's been plenty of work

Lots of good, smart people who have proposed plans to systematically cut the government with buy-in from Congress in an actual constitutional way. And they just said, oh, with that, we're going to come up with our little doge kids and do whatever we want. So, no, I didn't sign up for that. I didn't sign up for signing off all this power, which does belong to Congress, to some dude.

Ja, we get sometimes these tips at our work for like self-care, how to take care of yourself. You're such a lib now. You're getting self-care tips. Well, no, I took up running a couple years ago. It's like, you know, like that takes a lot of boxes off from me. You get out in the sunshine, you get time away from the screen. Like it takes care of a lot of things in one.

Yeah, I don't know. You get the feeling that Brett was trying to help him do some cleanup in there and he just refused to clean himself up. But just the whole outside of Elon's Work with Doge, work and question marks. I do really think the Tesla backlash has been underrated in the government's response to it and how deeply alarming that is.

Yes, it is terrible that he called Mark Kelly a traitor, obviously. But, you know, it kind of slipped under the radar that the FBI has established a task force to investigate terrorism against Tesla. Like, there's protests happening. Obviously, nobody burn up Tesla. Like, stop that. Nobody should do that. Nobody should condone it. People who are considering that, like, it will rebound against you.

Don't do that. The best thing that could happen is that all these beautiful, shining Teslas are sitting in lots unsold. Don't touch them. Let them sit there. And I feel bad for people who bought Teslas before, in the before times. Like, that does stink. But let everything after 2024 sit. Ich meine, das hat sich so weit sehr effektiv gemacht.

Actually, my husband does yoga. I don't do yoga. It's kind of funny. I'm like, that's your thing. I'm just going out on the trails. But, you know, everybody, everybody get outside is what I'm saying.

Und ich glaube, es gibt Proteste am Sonntag, Tesla-Takedowns. Ich denke, das kommt wirklich in Elon's Kopf. Und wenn du über den Terrorismus-Aspekt von diesem Thema reden willst, gab es jemanden, der in einem dieser Proteste in Florida fuhr. Not so long ago. So like, what about that?

I mean, we can push back against this because the violence has been going one way for a long time and they so want so desperately, so desperately to put it on their opponents. Don't let them. But, um, I do think the quickest way to get Elon out of the government is to make him focus on his businesses.

And there's so much Save Elon effort going on right now to rescue his Tesla business by Trump, by the DOJ, by the Commerce Secretary who's telling everybody to buy a Tesla, buy a Tesla. That's desperation. That's panic. And when you get to what else is going to happen with Trump and the jobs and everything, You know, bigger picture, I'm not an economist.

I don't see how there's not a recession from all this.

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I would say I don't want to speak for the group. I'm here speaking for myself. But right now, I mean, honestly, the most urgent thing that is in your face, on tape, easiest to see and understand are the people being nabbed out the streets without any due process. And thank Thank you, Tim.

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You have been on this in a way that, you know, you humanize it, put a lens on it, talk about this person that got shipped off to El Salvador. And this is deliberately a complex issue that Trump chose to divide the pro-democracy coalition. You know, like I see these many debates happening. You know, is this an immigration issue? Is it a speech issue? How about it's just a basic issue? Sure.

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No, he's already done it. He already does try to dictate what Fox puts on the air. I mean, Sean Hannity might be his closet middle-of-the-night phone advisor. But he got Megyn Kelly off the air. I mean, he already does exercise control. So that would only be true for a child.

So I think that is sort of interesting because where you see collective action work, I think in real ways that are very effective are usually with the press. Right? Like you see a lot of times when a spokesperson, well, this happened the other day with Marjorie Taylor Greene. There was a clip of her and there was, I think, a reporter from the BBC asking her about Signalgate.

And she said, are you an American citizen? I only take questions from American outlets. And just tried to sideline the question. And then she pointed to somebody else and said, do you represent an American outlet? I'll take your question. And that reporter said, no, I want you to answer hers. I have the same question. That is a nice little form, I think.

I think I didn't take the lib class on collective action. I think that's how it's supposed to work. So, more of that. No, it's spine stiffening.

But as a basic thing, we have to know the reason people are being picked up. And if Marco Rubio wants to get up and say, well, actually there's two with this one tough student. You know, I'm really lasered in on this because right now there's two different explanations coming from this administration, right? Like you had the spokesperson come out and say, well, something, something terrorism.

Legt den Bedürfnis auf sie.

Look at it.

I agree. I agree completely.

I mean, she's happy to do this for the president that she loves so much, right? Like, this isn't a problem. This shouldn't be a problem. She's happy to sacrifice to go back to the house, to have that little office, to not have all the security detail and trappings of being UN ambassador. I'm sure her reward is coming later, right?

Und dann hat Marco Rubio eine Kamera in seinem Gesicht und hat gesagt, wenn du ein Student-Aktivist-Lunatik bist, werden wir deine Visa überwachen und wir werden nach Hunderten von dir kommen. Was ist das? Ist es Terrorismus oder wir mögen nicht, was du sagst? Weil wenn es Terrorismus ist und das ist wirklich, worauf sie sich bewegen, um viele Dinge zu tun, erzähl mir, was sie getan hat.

You know, it is kind of interesting. So about that race. I mean, next Tuesday, you know, with the Wisconsin Supreme Court race and that one, I agree, Republican will probably pull it out. But if it can put some vulnerability into the system, you know, people are nervous. It should be a gimme win for Republicans and may not be. We have to be looking at these tea leaves.

You know, the Wisconsin race is really going to be a referendum on Elon Musk's influence. Wie das auf dem Boden spielt. Also wir haben viele gute Informationen, die von dem ausgeführt werden.

Und der Fakt, dass Elise, weil dieser dünnen Margin, weil der Umfeld, den Trump erschaffen hat, den größten Wettbewerb, Wettbewerb, aber sie muss zurückgezahlt werden, zurück in den Kongress und nicht diesen Job haben. Das klingt nicht wie ein Mann. Sie sprechen viel, aber das sind Fakten auf dem Boden, die sich ein paar Dinge ändern können. Kleine Kämpfe auf dem Weg.

They're going to have to spend money regardless. You might win, but it's going to be nasty.

Make him spend it everywhere.

And they all know it, too. If you read the news stories on them, they all know he's not a good candidate. He's not doing the work.

Or just anything that isn't close to Trump's margins. Trump blew the seed out. If this is less than 10 points, I think the Democrats should really shove it in their face.

If there is this terroristic threat on campuses, I need to know exactly what she did that you're tracking so that we can stop this from happening in other places. But if this is like you just don't like that she showed up at a protest, you didn't like her out bed, you didn't like the tattoo that somebody had, then say that. Because I need to know

No, just everybody take care of yourself. I think I've said this pretty consistently. It's always my mantra. This is going to be a long four years. I do think, because I am optimistic about our ability to overcome it, but I do think right now through summer, if things go well, will be the hardest time. This is Oh Gott, das ist Optimismus.

Ich fühle mich nicht so gut, aber großartig. Ich hoffe, du hast recht.

Wir alle haben das Recht zu wissen, welche Tattoos okay sind. Welche Wörter sind okay zu sagen, sonst wirst du aus Louisiana oder El Salvador oder irgendeinem anderen legalen Black Hole, wo niemand die Regeln kennt.

Und wir könnten eine Debatte darüber haben, was die Regeln für die Menschen hier in den Studentenvisas sind. In der Sonne, im Licht des Tages.

Well, if she is a threat, if there is a reason for them to hunt her down like this in the plainclothes, like, tell us, right? Like, this is where I think we need to put a little bit more of the burden on them.

To be like, what is the reason? Because we are going to have debates about whether, you know, what free speech, you know, what degree is it allowed or is this immigration? But where I think there is the strongest possible ground is like, tell us the reason, put it in writing. und zeigen uns, was die Anforderungen sind, weil sie es tun, ohne irgendwelche grundlegenden Schritte.

Und das ist wirklich unglaublich für mich, weil es wahr ist, wenn sie es diesen Menschen tun können, können sie es anderen Menschen tun. Sie können es den US-Bürgern tun. Also die US-Bürger sollten besser anfangen. Der beste Weg, um deine Rechte zu schützen, ist, sie im Moment zu trainieren. Und das ist einer dieser Zeiten.

We always knew that there was going to be mistakes made in any amount of deportation raids, things that they did. I think some of this is that they're just not getting the numbers they wanted, and so they need to go after easy targets.

But when you think about, I don't want to get super dark here, but what the possibility of AI being sicked on social media and tracking people's pictures and getting things wrong... Das ist wirklich ein Potenzial, um aus der Kontrolle zu springen. Und so, wie du weißt, nur das Ding mit den Tattoos, das scheint so offensichtlich. Viele Leute haben Tattoos, richtig? Was ist erlaubt?

Was wird jetzt als Gang-Sign verfehlt? Was ist die Liste der approved Content? Ja, genau.

Well, I do think she's easy. Like, I'm just gonna do this perspective as a woman here. Like, she's an easy person to pick up off the street, right? Unless you were prepared for that moment. And again, like, maybe she threw smoke bombs into a window. I don't know what she did, but this is part of the problem, is that they're keeping us in this, like, dark room with no facts, no information.

But she's an easy pickup, right? And they're gonna go after easy targets.

We saw this with some of the groups that were putting the names and faces of people engaged in DEI in the government before Trump came into office. There's lots of lists that have been made. And so just like people often ask, like, how bad is it? How close to authoritarianism are we? And you want to say like, OK, like we still have room to fight.

But like if you want to evaluate this question, if you were in this public political media space, think about the steps that you've probably already taken. um dich über ein paar Jahre zu verändern. Ich denke an meine Karriere. Ich habe meine Karriere völlig verändert, in Bezug auf das Adapten. Ich erzähle nicht meinen Kindern, Eltern, Freunden, was ich tue, ohne dass ich sie wirklich kenne.

Ich nehme ein paar persönliche Sicherheits- und Sicherheitsstrategien. Ich poste nicht mehr viel auf Instagram. Ich kensuriere mich selbst aus der Befreiung. but also to preserve my ability to fight. You know what I'm saying? I don't know if you've taken steps like that, but I think you have to.

Yeah, definitely.

Ja, im Minimum versucht jeder, vorsichtig zu denken über die Umgebung, zu wissen, was nach Januar 6 passiert ist, zu wissen, was die Bedrohungen sind, die einfach ständig da sind. Ich meine, es ist nur dieser Geräusch von der Exekutiven Ordnung jeden Tag. Haben wir Exekutiven Ordnungen jeden Abend, die Individuen auf einem persönlichen oder organisationalen Niveau konzentrieren?

Ich meine, sie fliegen runter. And using the executive orders to target individuals in this way or as a means of leverage to extract a political price is an insane new form of executive abuse. And we don't even have a terminology for it yet.

Wolfsbandas! Wolfsbandas!

I don't even know.

Transpenguins.

But this is where I think there is opportunity to shift the burden on them and also just make it absurd. Like, can someone ask, like, can you tell me what the penguins and pandas did wrong? Like, just can we start forcing these questions to be like, why? Why are we cracking down on the National Zoo? Maybe they're doing something insane.

Aber wiederum, wie diese randome Exekutive Ordnung, wir werden die Smithsonian anregen, wir werden den Zoo anregen, zusammen mit jedem anderen. Was ist da los? Weil wir müssen die Möglichkeit haben, zu lachen und ein bisschen Absurdität in diesem Thema zu haben.

Ja, also das ist eine Exekutive Ordnung. Like what are we supposed to do? Like shroud, mask it? Like what are we doing?

Your commenters can say that.

Yeah, he was my chief of staff in the cruise office. I worked very, very closely with him.

Well, holding the line always leads to discussions of government shutdown, which, you know, we've learned many times. And, you know, Donald Trump hasn't necessarily been hurt by government shutdown. So I don't think... I would rule that possibility out. That said, just for, you know, interesting political dynamics, where's Elon Musk and Vivek when you need them, right?

Like, weren't they supposed to be tasked with finding the spending cuts that we're going to need in the future? Like, this would be the time that they should be recommending them to Congress. And so if I were Chip Roy,

My question here, if I were Chip Roy, I would... I would be thinking about saying, well, hey, Elon Musk signed up to have spending cuts. And so I look forward to having a meeting with him and finding the biggest cuts possible to do this.

I would try to be enlisting him into this because the reality is they want to have this fake congressional committee spending commission to make cuts to programs they don't like to hurt people that challenge their interests, right? That's actually what Elon wants to do. But Bring them into the fold. Right. Like you signed up for this, Vivek. Like we need this many cuts to make this work.

Let's let's go. You know, the Democrats should be similarly like calling on them. Like, where is it? Where is it? Because. We do need to find a way to get to reality earlier on. And if this just becomes an endless process of kicking the can down the road, having a reconciliation bill where we don't pay for any tax cuts, which has happened numerous times before, it doesn't really get anywhere.

And this is the question of what actual policy wins do Republicans expect to achieve with Trump? And I think that's a very big, big, big open question. And what was funny to watch earlier this week, Trump went to the Hill to meet with Senate Republicans and people talked to the press after and said, oh, you know, the aides, I guess they were kind of upset.

Well, Donald Trump didn't give us any guidance about whether we should do one big, beautiful spending bill or a lot of different spending bills, which is the better policy and is more hard to do, but it actually does result in a better process. It's like because he doesn't care. He doesn't care. They would love if you listen to Larry Kudlow and the others.

They just want a big bill, just like the Republicans and Tea Party people have traditionally criticized the Democrats for doing, doing a big bill where everyone has a gun to their head, where they have to absolutely pass everything and a massive, reckless, unsustainable spending bill or get nothing at all. I mean, those dynamics have not changed.

And a bad Massey sometimes. And like, I still, I feel the same way about Rand Paul. Like Rand Paul pushes some really great policies sometimes, like with emergency use and abuse and that kind of stuff. But then, you know, we just got to find a way to keep them on that. Like, listen, like you believe the debt is out of control. You have to do something about it.

He's done it before. Chip has done it before. They've done it before.

It's just a licensing agreement.

Yeah, so this is something that I've been contemplating, and I expect to launch a newsletter through Protect Democracy. We have a free newsletter. Please subscribe. It's called If You Can Keep It. But the biggest challenge we have ahead is, number one, distinguishing between what are real threats and what's just noise, right? Like, you know, I wrote a book.

That's a great Bible verse. I like that one. I like that one a lot. You know, it's remarkable. I mean, Michelle Obama notably didn't show up at all. Apparently, she told the press that she had a scheduling conflict while she's on her extended vacation in Hawaii.

God, it was 2018, Gaslighting America, Why We Love It and Trump Lies. And we know, just because we've lived in Trump's America, how he deliberately manufactures chaos to create confusion, to polarize people, to give himself operating distance and create opacity between himself and the press. so that nobody can really understand what he's up to and that all accrues to his benefit.

So that's like the first layer task. But the second layer task is that He's going to have immense power. He expects to use it. So how do we focus on the things that really do matter in a productive way? And so what me and my colleagues at PD have been talking about is, okay, well, what is the most important thing that we can do going forward?

And we've sort of landed on the idea that it all revolves around protecting electoral competition in the future. Like we need the ability to compete. And I'm not talking about us as, you know, protect democracy, but the greater we, you know, everyone who engages in politics, how do we compete effectively in 26 and 28? And that really isn't a task that should be left to the candidates themselves.

at the last minute to organize campaigns per se. I think we can see that evidence by what happened with Kamala Harris, because you really need much more infrastructure at the front end. And the biggest threat that Trump poses is entrenching power, expanding reach to sideline opponents. That essentially is what everything... It's preventing urbanism.

The authoritarian playbook is all about sidelining opponents when you look at the end game of it. And that's all for the purpose of staying in power. This is why autocrats don't leave power. And this is probably one of the most you know, controversial things that we talk about, that JBL talks about, the idea that Trump will install himself into power and never leave. And that is a very real thing.

That is what autocrats do. He ran for three, for president in three consecutive elections and is back now. And maybe if he doesn't stay in power, he doesn't seek a third term, the odds are that he will play as kingmaker and call the shots behind the scenes and continue to play that role.

And so everything that we should be looking at should revolve around finding ways to maintain a level playing field. I think that is the biggest threat. It's Trump entrenching power. And so we have to find ways to fight for that level playing field. So what does that practically mean?

Number one above all, it's protecting the civic space, our free speech rights, the right to report, the right to speak about things. Because if you lose that, if they are successful in suing critics like Olivia Troy to bully her into silence, if they are able to shut down Liz Cheney because of what she did to speak out against January 6th,

you are not going to have the ability to organize a campaign.

And so this can take a lot of different forms, but protecting the space to speak is, wherever that comes, is critical. And next step to do that is protecting individuals and organizations who are targeted because they challenge the administration.

This is where the idea of you fight to protect Liz Cheney, not because she's Liz Cheney and you like her, but because if they realize they can take her down with these meritless prosecutions and such, they're going to go after other people. So you fight on the first ground. You fight to defend those first targets.

And I think along the way, that can have a unifying effect that helps the organization, that helps the campaigns, that helps the candidates refine these pro-democracy messages in a way that are relatable to the public and not just speaking about it in abstract terms. And that is how you get along to the business of winning elections and along the way, making sure that you are protecting elections.

the rights to free and fair elections, because electoral competition, this doesn't just mean, oh, we can go have a vote in November, 2028, because there's a lot of authoritarian regimes where people have the guise of elections. They're just meaningless because the public already lost the ability to muster any meaningful opposition in the buildup to them.

Yeah, but I mean, what Karen did there, I mean, it is pretty remarkable given the pressures in that room. I mean, obviously she knew every eye was trained on her, every camera, every photographer there. And she just sat there, which is, you know, it's a small act, but that is a major act of defiance, especially given the way her husband is.

Yeah, I mean, this gets into the question, which I think is important for everyone in this space. So knowing that, you know, if you agree with my thesis, if this thesis that is developing, that protecting electoral competition, all those things that go with it are the most important thing. How do you distinguish between what are just normal policy disputes that are politics as usual,

and things that actually fundamentally threaten the future of fair and free elections and electoral competition. So let's take Kash Patel, for example. It would be within the purview of a new FBI director to come in and say, the president campaigned on stepping up drug enforcement, and I have a plan to go after these drug cartels, and allocate a bunch more resources to do that.

Like, okay, that is a normal policy. They are entitled to advance that. You may have political disagreements with it, but that's within the bounds of what an administration is entitled to do in terms of like policies.

That is much different than Kash Patel coming in and saying, I have an enemy's list and I am going to essentially harass them, use taxpayer resources against them for the purposes of sidelining them as political opponents. and obstacles to our power, right? Like those are two different things.

And being able to tell the difference amid all the challenges that we have coming, I think is going to be absolutely critical in terms of maintaining a productive means of prioritizing the threats.

There's different roles for different organizations, different people, different sectors of civil society. A lot of this is silly, but yeah, like, should we let this go? But okay, part of maintaining that competitive electoral profile means not waiting until 26 and 28.

My sort of question, which is outside my lane at PD, is where are the platforms that the Democrats, because we only have a two-party system, we only have two options essentially in every ballot, right? What are they doing to foster and cultivate talent in order to be ready for that moment?

Mike Pence jumped up, shook his hand, you know, did the, you know, I'm a sober, responsible person thing.

And what that should mean is where are the events and things happening where people can have answers to this and say things like, okay, you want to go to Greenland? Like, show me how much it's going to cost. Like, come back and put the burden, the burden of Trump was sort of something I'm thinking about. Like, put the burden back on Trump. He throws all kinds of stuff back out there.

And I was inspired, you know, listening to you speak about this the other day. Say, okay, bring me the proposal. We have out-of-control debt. You can't pass a tax bill. You want to go buy Greenland? You think that's a great idea? But that isn't the ground we necessarily fight on. But I always look back to how did the Tea Party movement... gained such power. It did not happen overnight.

It happened over a long period of time with all these conferences and events where people were constantly testing out messages and giving speeches and testing their appeal, right? And I just don't see that happening. Why can't the Democratic primary for 2028 start to begin right now? We didn't have one last time because we waited, everyone waited to the last minute. What are you waiting for, guys?

Yeah, there was a... A lot of interesting body language there. What was it with George Bush tapping Obama on the belly? It's sort of like, thanks for taking one for the team guy. But you know, I've read there's a lot of people upset that Barack Obama and others didn't have more of a Karen Pence type act of defiance against Trump. I am not sure what the right thing to do

Here's how I see it. Protecting the civic space is a duty, you know, as you mentioned, the lawyers and things like that, but protecting that space also means taking it up, right? Like, you can maintain a level playing field, but if you don't have people on it as active participants in the game, what is the point?

Is there, I mean, are you really going to, like, stage a fight at Jimmy Carter's funeral? No.

And so this is something, you know, I am very delighted to see that Sarah is putting a big, bad, bold goal of getting a million subscribers on the free list for Bulwark, because that's sort of what it's going to take. Like, We all know traditional media is dead, right? Cable news ratings are absolutely dead. in the basement because nobody gets their stuff there.

So go to where the audience is, right? Take up that civic space to communicate with people. And like free media is the media, it's YouTube, it's TikTok, it's all those things. And I don't know why, like, it's just, it's so odd to see that people are still resisting what is so obviously happening. You know, you always find these like consultants and things like that. Well, we need new messengers.

We need new messages. No, like just go have conversations where people are at. Get on YouTube. And I, you know, it's hard to do. And I really commend Bulwark, especially for being so pioneering because it is hard to do and to show up. But a lot more people need to be getting into the free media space now.

And finding ways to, I mean, it's not going to be profitable to be able to pay to give people that information in that way.

Good. Do the work for him.

I mean, isn't it more likely that John Jr. is just scouting out properties for another Trump hotel? Like, isn't that the most probability?

But when it comes to, like, having a political answer to this sort of stuff, I mean, it is – I've got to say, watching – Watching Don Jr. go on this trip to Greenland while California is burning, right? California is burning to a crisp.

And we know that Donald Trump has explored the idea of withholding wildfire funding for previous California wildfires because he didn't think the voters there were sufficiently supportive. What in God's name? Like... This is where I'm talking about, like, why aren't the Democrats starting to campaign?

I don't say campaign now, but can't there be a big event to say, hey, guys, do you think climate change is real now? I mean, I know this is not the exact moment to do that. But someone isn't that like what is staring us in the face? And we don't have any answers, any solutions. Then maybe Don Jr. wants to build a new hotel in Greenland that he can flee to.

What, Elon's going to do to spaceship to Mars when the planet burns down? This kind of seems like obvious stuff. Maybe not right now because it is so horrific. But I am kind of, I am flabbergasted. That, you know, there's split screen coverage of everyone losing their home. And, you know, what's Trump going to do next? Is he going to buy Greenland?

It's just such a jarring thing where, you know, we are living in different realities and we need to fight to have some kind of shared vision of what is going on and what threatens us.

Yeah, I mean, the rush of anticipatory obedience from people, I mean, Elon was obviously first in line to place all his bets on Trump and get the biggest, fattest seat at the Mar-a-Lago table possible. You see that followed with Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and others. And maybe that's just more obvious in a way then we see the other people lining up behind Trump.

Like everyone's offering to get their hand in the till and pay for his inauguration. The ridiculous $15 million defamation suit, the ABC news settled while they're like, you know, laying off people left and right, no longer engaging in the news gathering business. That's all happening. And yeah, that is what you see in countries where you have to essentially be in with the leader and,

and engage in that form of corruption in order to preserve your business interests, right? Like it is in many ways an act of self-preservation. Some people are more eager to do it than others.

But aside from that, what you were talking about made me think about one of the other challenges is how do we do our job defending democracy, protecting spaces without defending or apologizing for the status quo? Right. I think that's the trap that Harris and Biden and others fell into.

And saying that you want to protect institutions doesn't mean that they're perfect in knowing and explaining and understanding the difference between what is real reform and what leads to ruin is complicated, but necessary.

Yeah, not with healthcare, not with education, not with climate, not with, it's a lot of things. Sure. And saying that, you know, everyone is fine and the economy is up, so therefore you have more money on your paychecks. It just, that doesn't translate to people without pensions, without the stock market, et cetera. So, yeah. Bad politics. That's like a whole other thing.

You should apologize for yourself.

It's going to be healthy to hang out on the MSNBC.

Yeah. I mean, it's going to be tough. No doubt. I don't expect I'm going to tune in to watch it live. I'll see the pictures. I do want to read the speech and, to see how he approaches the second term.

Yeah, this is part of it. Like he he gets his moment. He won. He gets to have the big ceremony. He gets to march down the avenues. All the pictures will be in Melania. All the media coverage is going to be glowing. Right. Because they want to give him that sort of sweetener coming in. I don't think I'm going to be able to watch it.

Yeah, I kind of felt like you could see the conflict in Trump's mind in that clip that he knows being buddy-buddy is bad for his street cred, right, with the MAGA base. But this is actually what he wants. He wants to be in the president's club. He wants to be the guy that is acknowledged and respected at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

You know, people who are in the political opposition, don't let them see your tears. Don't do it. Don't do it. Tune out, protect your mental health. This is going to be a long slug and you're going to have to have the energy. Don't burn it now. This is all, it's going to be a week of sugar cane coverage. Let it happen. You can't stop it. This is not something to stop.

It's not something to fight over. There are going to be big issues down the road. You know, that's why I've worked with my colleagues to develop a framework on distinguishing what really matters and what doesn't. And him getting his in the picture in the paper with his hand over the Bible and everyone smiling, isn't it?

And he kind of, in some of the pictures, really looked, I mean, honestly, for the first time in a long time, it looked like he was enjoying himself. Yeah. which is weird to have that amount of enjoyment at a funeral. But I do think this speaks to what really motivates Trump.

In the second, if Obama was ever going to put himself in this position, it seems like he's taken himself out of it for the indefinite time being. If Obama started giving speeches, started supporting candidates, started becoming active in public life in a way that posed a challenge to Trump's authority and power, Trump would flip like a dime again.

But the reason why I think he can be buddy-buddy with Obama, I'm not speaking to Obama's side of it, is that Obama is no longer an obstacle to him.

It should. It should.

It's uncomfortable to see them all getting along together. I probably would have done what Michelle Obama did is just not go at all. That's probably not the right thing. The right thing is probably what Karen Pence did. I mean, what do you do? Do you ask for separate seating arrangements? Sure. You know, Obama, Bush.

Yeah. Yes.

Thou shalt sit next to all former presidents according to... Anyway, these fuckers.

Yeah, here's my read of the situation. Number one, good ruling. Number two, bad that it's only 5-4. Number three, this is helpful in going forward if I'm looking for the silver lining, and that it further draws a line between immunity for official acts, which is broad and alarming, and and personal acts, right? Like this is a new world that we're in.

The Supreme Court has ruled that Trump and any other president has immunity for official acts. What this further clarifies is that he cannot get away with everything There is a line here. You can't pay a porn star to cover up information to further your campaign. That is not an official act. Okay. So now we do have some kind of line. Again, I'm looking for silver linings here.

Yes. And so while we are all rightly concerned about the broad immunity ruling... we also should be careful to cling to what constraints we can have. And we will need to further define what can be personal acts from official acts, but things to further his campaign and further his political interests I think we can feel comfortable drawing a line there and fighting for that.

And also, we should remember that this broad immunity does not extend to other people in the White House outside of the president who may carry out official unlawful orders. Now, this is somewhat nuanced because Trump does have the pardon power, which we fully expect him to exercise in pardoning January 6th rioters coming up here, but that would be another step there.

And so as he goes into his second term with all of these plans to expand his power and stamp out independence at federal agencies, that immunity does not apply to everyone at the Department of Justice, to everyone at the Department of Homeland Security, at the Department of Defense.

And we should be very clear about that and make that distinction known to everyone who is entering that administration.

Hey, Tim. Happy Friday.

It is.

Fake it till you make it.

I am inclined to think and I'm saying think because I don't have enough information to fully believe this is true. And maybe it's just kind of what I'm hoping. is that recognizing the fact that these judges are political actors, are they essentially sort of hiding behind Justice Barrett and allowing her to take the hit?

And I don't believe this extends really to Justice Thomas, but she forecasts that she believed in drawing this distinction earlier on. And so did they just have a pretty good understanding that Roberts and Coney Barrett will take the hit on this and they will make sure that it was a 5-4 decision. And we can essentially vote no and get all the kudos from MAGA from it that accrues, right?

Like this is like kind of, you know, voting no is always the safest thing if you can get other people to actually do the policy work that you know is better for the country. I'm wondering if, maybe I'm hoping, if that is actually true. part of the dynamic on the Supreme court, you know, there's a lot of five, four decisions that allow people to take the easy way out.

That's unexpected from you, Tim.

I mean, it's just that it's just hard to hear. Right. It's hard to sit with this stuff and find encouragement and motivation to keep going. But that is what we have to do. And I want to be clear, when I'm drawing these distinctions about the path that we can fight on going forward, I am certainly not happy that the path has become so narrow.

But I think we should be realistic about that is what it is. And we do have some footing to go forward on.

No, it needs to get out. I mean, we're going through these machinations now, but I cannot imagine that a document of this significance with all the people that have access to it, especially Biden with the, as JBL has pointed out, he enjoys the same kind of official immunity that Donald Trump will.

Put it out. Put it out. Or what? You're going to say because Judge Eileen Cannon said no? It is absurd. Put it out.

By the way, can I just say something? Liam Donovan was so good. He was so good at explaining reconciliation. People should save that. It should be taught to incoming Hill staffers. I just great, great guest. I really enjoyed it.

I hope you don't say that about me on future podcasts. She's really good at this subject, but she's actually super annoying.

protests over the last week where students broke into an engineering building, took it over, damaged equipment. And so now there's a task force investigation going from Trump into that university. So like there is stuff happening on that front.

But if you look at the letter that she wrote, she essentially outright accuses them of violating federal law, like barely obliquely references a congressional hearing about the anti-Semitism without even going into it. And so it's like

this is all pretext, like raising the idea that we're protecting Jewish students when there are things happening on these campuses, but just using that as like the big hammer to go after them with and sort of forgetting the plot and the process is something I'm watching.

That did happen again in Columbia this week. I took over a library and people had to come in again. So I just want to make sure I'm not like downplaying that. But, yeah, it's a mixed bag.

Hey, happy Friday. Are we all feeling a little Catholic this morning?

We had a trade surplus with them. That's an important point. Thank you for bringing that up. Okay. I really, I love this tariff issue. I just got to say, I love it. I think it's going to be super important for two reasons. It breaks the idea that Trump is some kind of economic genius that is going to lead the country into prosperity. Shatters that idea.

And we're going to see it this summer because he can't unwind the effects now. But also, you have the double bonus that it also shatters the idea that he's a good negotiator. Yes. Again, why are we negotiating with countries that we have a trade surplus with? That makes no flipping sense. His whole point is the deficit. Why are we doing any of this? And again, it goes back to like...

This idea, the reason why he's doing this, he said in an executive order, we have to have Liberation Day and tariffs because there's some national security issue. What are you talking about?

What is the national security issue that you had to revisit and negotiate the price of beef like some nanny state leader where you're just getting in there with your little ledger and be like, okay, Rolls Royce. You can have a waiver for airplane engines. I mean, just like it is bananas. It's not a good use of any president's time.

Although, you know, I don't mind Trump wasting some time not doing worse things. But it's just like, you know, the movie idea tariff. Like since when are foreign films part of a national security emergency? I mean, I know he gets ideas from the movies, but it's just the dumbest idea. Crap possible. And it's going to blow up in his face.

And people better be ready to explain why, you know, this is just not only bad policy, but it's bad autocratic policy. This kind of like autocratic bullshit policy. does not make anyone more prosperous or more free. People always give him the critique, well, he doesn't understand how tariffs work.

He absolutely understands tariffs in the context in that this is a mechanism I can use where everyone needs to grovel to me and I get to be in charge. That's why he likes the tariffs. But, you know, the idea that this is all done under the umbrella of a supposed national security emergency. I mean, I expect false flags to be better orchestrated, especially by a conspiracy theorist in chief.

I mean, this is just the flimsiest flim flam and it just deserves to be crushed and destroyed.

The dolls are going to attack us.

Yeah. And that's a nice position to be in.

Let's see it. So, like...

Yeah, but not only that, I mean, you couple in the education and the book bands and we want to get in and see what curriculum you are teaching and what is the, you know, makeup of your faculty in the, you know, the staff room. Yes. And we want to send your children to work in factories and that's how we'll make America great again. I mean, it is really just top to bottom garbage.

I'm not great at math. Is that a lot?

I know, I feel like I should congratulate you and JBL. Although I am sort of like trying to adjust to the idea that we have a Pope who tweets or X's or acts on social media. I mean, it's very cool. I think a lot of people are, you know,

Is that a big discount?

Okay.

145 to 80, because why? Part of the deal. Sounds good. That's a good number.

So what's kind of fun is kind of it's interesting to watch how he's setting up these guys to get fired and blamed when this blows up in his face predictably this summer. Well, like, you know, he didn't negotiate the right rate. I would have gone for, you know, insert 245, whatever it's going to be. He only got 70. That's why it didn't work. Bye bye.

And then who's the next best Fox News economic analyst? They'll be coming in next. He tried Stephen Moore for FedShare before, but that didn't work because he didn't pay all child support.

Payne?

There you go.

Get your slide decks ready.

I agree with you, but this one is so difficult just because there's so many countries and so many products and so many things to keep track of. And the system is so finely tuned when it comes to imports and shipping. I mean, this one is just too easy to screw up. And thinking this is like another issue where you can message your way out of it. The economy doesn't lie. His people will.

The economy does not lie. When things start getting jacked for back to school shopping, when people are looking for their back to school sneakers, you know, and things like that, if there is any kind of shortage on the shelves, I mean, people are tuned into it now. They know what to expect. Dang, I wish I wish Amazon would have stuck to that threat to start putting the tariffs on their prices.

But there's going to be other companies that do that. Because they're going to have to explain to consumers that this isn't their fault. And they may be happy to pass on the cost to customers and keep them later. But I think people will recognize what is happening this time around because there's been such a long warm-up. And it's going to be more than eggs.

Trickle down tariffs.

Well, I do because it is a birthday parade. You can see everybody getting warmed up like, oh, it's the 250th anniversary for the Army. No, it's a birthday parade. He's always wanted this thing. And I think... We will know whether it's a birthday parade or a military parade when you see who is front and center at the part of it. And like one big tell is that Trump is the one who's putting it on.

If it were a military celebration, Trump would be invited, not running it. I would say that's probably a key distinction. But I do want to like sort of tee up around this event that will be happening probably at some point.

I think we need a better way of explaining and understanding what is propaganda and what that looks like in America versus normal political persuasion, because like the president does have a lot of ability to persuade the public. But what Trump is doing is fundamentally different. And multiple levels. And I think if this does happen, this will be the purest expression of it.

And that, you know, political persuasion is meant to sort of bring people along. It's rooted in fact. But the propaganda that Trump engages in on a constant way, as well as all the people that are surrounding him in the cabinet, like it's really meant to divide people and polarize people and say, you are either with me or you are against me. That is not persuasion.

And that's what makes all of this so different in ways that are kind of like hard to analyze because we haven't seen it before. But leveraging the federal government for these propaganda purposes that are meant to split us apart. and make people choose between us and them.

The ads that Kristi Noem is putting out with taxpayer dollars to thank President Trump, that is not an exercise in political persuasion. That is propaganda designed to promote the idea that Donald Trump has gifted this border enforcement upon us or what have you. And I'm getting a lot of these ads on Hulu

weirdly in in part of the tell for me in a way that i think i can explain to other people is that if you see the other ads that are being putting out on the campaign side from chump aligned groups you know people like chris elizaveta running it etc you can't tell the difference you can't tell the difference between what's like a government psa and what is a campaign ad other than

if you would know that Kristi Noem is actually a cabinet secretary. And so I think we really need to have a discussion about how the communication tools are being exploited in ways that are really malicious and go beyond what should be acceptable.

Yeah, and hopefully we think this one will be around a while. I feel like we've been through quite a few popes, like more popes than normal. Like they shouldn't be turning over this quickly. So I'm hoping the American one stays.

Yeah, to say the least.

Well, here's I think any discussion about how this is getting bungled, because it is to start with the fact that, oh, wait, where's Elon Musk? I thought he had this handled, right? Like, that was the whole reason he came in to do the Doge rescission, send it to Congress and... We got the cuts. We're good. And somehow his 70 bazillion trillion in cuts dissipated to 1 billion to 150 to nothing.

To where is it? So, number one, I think we need to evaluate that the guy that Trump brought in to take care of this has failed. Otherwise, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. But also, it's an all Republican Congress. What's the problem there? These guys can't solve it.

There you go. That's what I was looking for.

And so I think that is also a mark against a key economic promise of the Trump 2.0 presidency, which was supposed to be so much better, so much more efficient. Isn't the Project 2025 thing rolling? No, it's not. It's not. And one thing I am in particular watching and think is extremely interesting, just as a baseline, the Trump budget cuts more than the Hill wants to. The Hill wants to spend more.

And the secret weapon that Russ Vogt and others have always wanted to deploy is something called impoundments, which I know you've talked about before, which is essentially Donald Trump unconstitutionally, unlawfully saying, you know, Congress, you can pass all the money you want, but I'll just cut where I want. This is how we held up the Ukraine funding in Trump 1.0.

But now Republican senators are sort of onto that fact, because I do think there is a contingent of people thinking, well, okay, the Hill can do what they want. We can let them pass the budget, but we can knife it later through impoundments. But there was an interesting story in Politico, I think published two days ago, where it quoted Republican appropriators.

Simpson of Idaho, I think, essentially said, you know, we see impoundments and we think it's illegal and there's going to be a challenge on that. Murkowski was weighing in. And so that to me is a very positive development when it comes to. to how the budget process will be used and how Trump could potentially be constrained on some level.

But one other really interesting development is that there's talks about cutting Medicaid funding. And Josh Hawley, who he has been out there, he's the number one mega populist, essentially, and I haven't really seen, maybe JD Vance got close to it, but making the case that the president, you can't cut this funding for our people.

You know, this recognition about how this would deeply impact the red states and impact Trump voters. So people are hearing about that.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, wait, so he's against crypto coins and meme stuff?

Yeah, if people want to see a sign of how badly is going, Kash Patel testifying on Capitol Hill this week. So he had to go to the Hill to talk about the FBI's budget.

Now, there's probably not any part of me that feels sorry for me about Kash Patel, but I would feel sorry for him in that moment if I... was not familiar with his record and had not like read his coloring books about Trump, but like just how uncomfortable was that?

I agree, but I'll keep watching it even though it was super cringe. And the Chris Murphy and Kristi Noem.

Now, those are fairly direct statements. I guess you can put it this way. They may not take into account America's politics in making that decision, but there's no way the decision makers were unaware of those tweets. Right. There's no way that they were unaware of the fact that Donald Trump was posting images of himself as the pope. Those things would be hard to miss.

Yeah, this is a long story, but a great story. Yeah, we had a lot of Protect Democracy folks working on this case, but long story short, there was a Republican candidate, a judge. He was actually a sitting judge named Jefferson Griffin, and he lost the election in November, but this thing has gone on since then. He fought it and fought it.

He lost the race by a little over 700 votes, but then tried to challenge and disqualify 65,000 votes. So they were really just kind of going after everything and like, okay, you know, there's jockeying, even a judge who should know the law shouldn't be doing this. But what was really concerning was that the North Carolina Supreme Court let it go on.

And one of the most outrageous things that he was doing is that he was trying to disqualify military ballots because they didn't have a photo ID, even though no photo ID was required. So, like, you know, the fact that it continued for so long, even on the basis of these just really ludicrous claims, was a big deal because it was essentially leaving this open. But great news.

We got a positive court decision and he finally, finally conceded this week. And, you know, I think this is especially important because this is the kind of like long term election subversion that a lot of us feared after the presidential election. It didn't happen because Donald Trump just won by so much. But this was a model, right?

Like this would this was the thing that we feared that you could like keep people out of the seat for so long and ultimately persevere permanently. by getting courts just to let it continue. And so this was a great win. And also, I think it's important to look in the context of how well the court system is continuing to hold.

Trump, he's been stopped a number of times, hundreds of times by a lot of lower level decisions. And so you do have to take some kind of heart in that, although there can still be big conflicts coming.

Yeah, one more thought. And the big thing that, you know, I think we're really monitoring and watching and trying to prepare for. But first, you know, if you want to stop authoritarianism, especially when it comes in the form of this populist style, which, you know, it often does, you have to make the autocrat less popular.

And even if they weren't on the ledger of pros or cons, they were certainly in the ether.

And the way you do that is by actually demonstrating that you can put cracks in his armor, that he is not inevitable, that he does lose in court, that yes, you know, this whole tariff thing that he's rolling out is actually kind of a disaster. They can't actually hold a budget. He can't actually get his most insane people nominated and put in position.

He does have people that he has to put out to pasture because of things like signal gates. It's important to demonstrate that they're not capable. They're not the all-knowing, all-encompassing leader of the world. Talk about his failings, because there are many. And then you have to be in a position to explain to people why he's not executing on the promises that did make him popular.

So I think there's a lot of opportunity to do that, a lot. And it's happening now. And so it's why I feel more helpful than I have been in a while, even though things are extremely rocky. And the biggest concern I have going forward are... Conflicts with the court, you know, defying court orders.

I think you see now that Trump and his people will maintain that they're complying with court orders while just not doing it. You know, you see the Supreme Court really doesn't want to have a confrontation with him. But I do worry that we're going to see something like that. And as a secondary layer to that conversation.

There is a lot of energy in the MAGA circles and even voiced by people like JD Vance and Elon Musk that you have to find a way to just terminate or get rid of district judges that you don't like. You know, this whole idea, this is a big mantra in MAGA world right now is that how can you allow district judges to issue nationwide injunctions against the president's agenda.

I mean, that's not what's happening when they stop the president with a TRO or something like that. They're just upholding the law. That's what they're doing. But they're setting up, again, this propaganda like us versus them battle where the judges are not with them, even though many times they're appointed by Trump.

And so, you know, the defiance of court orders and any kind of push to remake the federal judiciary, starting with places like the District of Columbia, impeaching judges, those are the big ones I'm concerned about.

We've got lawyers who are much smarter, who actually know this stuff, and I just get to hear about it and try to help along in the best I can. But it is not me. Yeah.

I mean, I didn't watch it.

I didn't watch it. I can't watch him. I'm happy to say that myself and be like, I didn't watch it because I can't watch him.

Oh, yeah. I thought you were going to say the view is a politics show.

Oh, there's going to be more laughs.

She was like, stop torturing me.

You know what? It sounds like a good coping mechanism to get out your true thoughts with a trusted friend before you have to go in public and maybe say something you regret. So maybe I'll borrow that sometime.

What's sort of amazing when you listen to him talk and other people, you know, they act like The new pope is going to lead some crusade against Trump just because he had the audacity to post online that J.D. Vance is wrong about something. That constitutes like the greatest attack on the American presidency that we've ever seen. God save the church. I just.

They're so up in their heads about everything. It's just it's unbelievable.

Okay, we got to start with the good news on this. We do not have Ed Martin as the D.C. U.S. attorney. We do not have you go, Ed Martin. That's the second big blow to MAGA this week. Hardest hit, Steve Bannon.

Yeah, and then ringleader when it comes to the January 6th defense of insurrectionists and fundraising for them on the ground. I mean, really a top organizer on that front. Defending white nationalists. I'm just sort of imagining Ed Martin is sitting somewhere, probably like McLean or something, and just wondering, why does Cash Patel get a position and I don't? I just wonder how that feels. Yeah.

Yeah, I know. Let me have it.

No.

You can't say better. You just have to soberly analyze what she does or does not bring to the table in terms of mechanically understanding today how the Department of Justice works.

She does sit in the leg chair a lot.

Fox News staple. You won't see it anywhere else.

No one else does that where a woman wears a skirt at the end of the table. And I haven't seen it done anywhere else.

The glass table. Megyn Kelly pioneered the glass table.

So you could see the legs. I'm not making that up.

Not Iraq's husband, who Trump pardoned. Definitely not him.

Actually, I think that might be the only thing she will focus on. So the reason why this position is so has outsized influence and has so much prominence when it comes to attorney generals is that. Naturally, because of the jurisdiction it is in, it has a lot of very complex national security cases, white collar crime, things that might have to do with government corruption.

I mean, these are big ticket items that you don't see in other places. The other comparable one might be New York. So what does she bring to the table here? She hasn't practiced law in, I think, 20 years because she's been commenting on the news, which I'm going to say I do disagree.

I do disagree with Damon a little bit on the idea that these Fox News hosts aren't useful in the way that I think Trump understands... Politics is media in this world, right? Like it is interchangeable. It is the job. You can't separate the two. And so sort of saying, well, they're just they're just Fox News hosts. How could they do this job?

Trump sees the job as that communicating to the public at all times because he is a propaganda president. So, you know, that's that's in one bucket. That's why she's there to do the messaging, which is why I think you could anticipate her doing a lot of things on the D.C. crime level because they want to crack down on crime. and be really seen as that law and order president.

And I think they have a lot of ambitions to use the District of Columbia as a test case for other things that they want to do on the policing front. And she, I think, is a contender to do that. But when it comes to the actual important things that someone in that role should be playing, when it comes to the national security cases, et cetera, et cetera, I don't think she's equipped at all.

Yeah. And definitely, you know, prosecuting terrorists and things like that, that actually, you know, are very quite serious. But one one note on that in terms of Trump looking for people who will do that kind of work for him. I really want to raise a flag on Linda McMahon. Have you been watching what she's been doing? She issued an insane letter to Harvard.

that sounded like some 22-year-old staffer wrote it after just imbibing on Pizzagate Jack for the last five years. I mean, it was really... I really urge people to go read that letter that essentially just accused them of harboring hate in every respect and how dare you let in... Where are these foreign students going from? It's just three pages of going on and on like that. And so...

she is someone I didn't really have on my bingo card of stepping into that role, but she's, she's all in.

One of the things that is really interesting about Linda's letter to Harvard is that, you know, the whole reason that Trump started going after these universities for anti-Semitism, right? This traces back to the executive order he issued in his early days. It's the reason why he's going after Columbia, now going after Washington University, who had some...