Republicans are aiming to gut Medicaid to pay for trillions in tax cuts for the richest of Americans, and they're trying to hide it. The Dems need to bring the DC conversation home—hold town halls everywhere, tell voters what would happen, especially in rural MAGA areas where hospitals and trauma centers will close. Meanwhile, Trump is turning chaos at the border into chaos in the streets by having ICE grab people who haven't even committed crimes to pump up his deportation numbers. Plus, Elon's insatiable and scandalous quest for more money, the Dems' evolving media strategy, and how to help maintain mental health during these stressful times. Sen. Ruben Gallego and Zerlina Maxwell join Tim Miller. show notes Zerlina's show on SiriusXM Progress Channel 127 Zerlina's new Substack Will Selber's piece that Tim referenced
Chapter 1: Who is Senator Ruben Gallego and how did he defeat Carrie Lake?
Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We've got a double dose today. Up in segment two, it's my girl Zerlina Maxwell. But first, she's a U.S. Senator representing Arizona. He was previously a U.S. Congressman. He was deployed to Iraq in 2005 as a Marine infantryman. His name is Senator Ruben Gallego. How you doing, Senator? Hey, good morning. Good to see you.
We were talking a bit in the green room about my friend Carrie Lake. You defeated her in the election in 2024. Solidly, yeah. Yeah. Bad news for the voice of America. Maybe good news for the Senate. I wanted to ask you about that, your point about solidly, because there were several Democrats that won elections. in states where Trump won.
But if you look at the data, it was mostly because those people voted for Trump and then went home. They're Trump-only voters. Your state was the one example that was different. You had about 100,000 more votes than Kamala Harris. And so I do think that your case is kind of an interesting one to study. So I'm wondering if you've reflected on that, if you have any theories of the case.
Was it something about you, something about Kerry, something about Arizona? Yeah.
Chapter 2: What strategies did Ruben Gallego use in his campaign to win Arizona?
It was a combination of a lot of things. Like, look, we ran a very retail-oriented campaign to begin with. We literally were going to baseball games, putting together boxing watch parties, rodeos, reaching out to Latino men, talking to everyone, talking to Republicans, going to rural Arizona.
I also think we actually were talking about Arizona and the politics of Arizona, but what was happening there in a realistic manner. We were talking about the cost of everything going up and how we need to fix that. And that is a problem. And I think that was... something that a lot of Arizonans appreciated because I think they were hearing from some campaigns like, no, things are good.
I'm like, no, they're not. But we were also very serious about the border. And we talked about the border in a very serious Arizona way, right, where we want more border patrol. We want, you know, bad people to get deported. We want immigration reform. We want to protect DREAMers.
And we want trade to keep continuing because that's really important to our business in Arizona versus someone like Carrie Lake who just – talked about the border, what like an East Coast Republican conservative thinks the border is in Arizona, right? She would say that, you know, the cartels own the border, the Arizona border. Now, I'm sure on the Mexican side, that does happen.
But you're telling people, police chiefs in Nogales, in San Luis, US citizens, that they're essentially controlled by cartels when they're trying to bring in business or trying to start their families, everything else like that. And then she would go to the border, go to the border wall as if it was like the Great Wall in Jerusalem. And she put her hands up on the border wall.
While wearing a pistol, while packing a pistol, and put this on a commercial. In Arizona, we literally send our teenage kids to Mexico for spring break, right? We cross that border every day. So when people started seeing Kelly talking about the border while she was wearing a weapon on her hip, no one could understand what she was trying to do. It didn't really match reality.
And at the end of the day, that's why... You know, if you look at the exit polling, more people trusted me on the border than they trusted Carrie Lake. That didn't happen anywhere else in the country when it comes to Democrats running for Senate.
That's interesting. The immigration politics of this, there's a buzzy article in the New York Times by David Leonhardt this week where all of the, you know, all the coastal libs are like, whoa, this is interesting. like they're just learning about something you've been working on. And he wrote about Denmark and met Fredrickson, who's kind of the center-left, but pretty left, really.
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Chapter 3: How does Senator Gallego approach border and immigration issues?
It should be left-left for America, but center-left for Europe, leader in Denmark, and how the key difference between Denmark and these other countries in Europe is that they have... taking the immigration challenge very seriously and reduced immigration levels. I'm wondering what your kind of thoughts are. Are there any lessons from you and from her just broadly?
There are some lessons. I mean, we're not exactly analogous to Denmark. Our immigration is different. Our assimilation is different. There's a lot of things here. But the fact that Democrats didn't take – the border serious for, you know, enough in the eyes of voters deteriorated our ability to talk to working class people and work for working class people. We are now out of power.
And, you know, the fact that we hesitated shutting down the border as much as possible when we had hundreds of thousands of people coming to seek asylum. And, you know, when you talk to Democrats and it's unfortunate and some, not all Democrats, but because most Democrats actually have a very normal position in
On the border, it's actually our kind of thought leaders and liberal groups that actually are out of the norm with Democrats. Most Democrats, normal Democrats, especially Latino Democrats, would tell you, I want legal immigration. I want dreamers to be U.S. citizens. I want people that have been here forever that haven't committed a crime to have an opportunity to become U.S. citizens.
I don't want to see 100,000 people showing up at the border and demanding asylum. The thing that we messed up, and the Democrats, you understand, is that instead of saying that, when there was attempts to do that, there was huge pushback. I remember one thing. Do you remember when Kamala Harris said, don't come here? Don't come here?
Yeah, do not come.
Do not come. She got blasted by liberal groups for that. And that was the actual right attitude to have.
Yeah.
Because of that, what did we end up doing? We ended up losing. The Republicans have a trifecta. They're about to cut Medicaid.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the Republican budget and Medicaid cuts?
Well, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to do a save Medicaid town halls throughout Arizona, especially in rural Arizona, because 30% of Arizonans are on Medicaid. If Medicaid expansion goes away, the rural hospitals will shut down first. As a matter of fact, they most likely will shut down because the urban hospitals will find ways to save, to bring money in, whatever it is.
rural Arizona will be screwed the most. If you have an emergency, you're going to have to get key load to a trauma center. And I know this because when I originally wrote the Medicaid expansion law in Arizona back in 2013, the reason we were able to get Republicans to vote for in Arizona is because rural hospitals were about to shut down.
And the nearest hospitals for some places were going to be either three-hour drives or 45-minute flights. What we need to do is bring this D.C.-Medicaid conversation, and we need to bring it home, and we need to remind people what this means. They're not going after Medicaid because there's waste, fraud, and abuse.
They're going after Medicaid because it's the largest amount of money that they could get that's not Medicare so far. It doesn't mean they won't go after Medicare, and it's not military spending. But it's attacking poor people so Elon Musk and his buddies can have their tax cuts. That's what it is.
It's straight up wealth transfer from the poorest of Americans to the richest, richest of Americans who don't need it. But they're going to cover it up because they know they have so much shame about what they're doing. And again, this will cause problems. This will have hospitals closing down. This is doctors leaving rural communities.
These are people dying because you just don't have any kind of insurance. And we're all doing it because, again, somehow the ultra, ultra rich need another tax cut, I guess.
I hear you on getting out of D.C., but one D.C. process question. Should you guys even... entertain negotiations with these guys on the budget as long as Elon is illegally ransacking the government. I guess I don't even understand what the rationale would be for you guys to negotiate with them right now.
First of all, we shouldn't be negotiating yet because this is the Republicans' responsibility to keep the government open.
Right.
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Chapter 5: Why is the treatment of veterans under the current administration concerning?
We still have PTSD, a lot of us, and you could have a job just because I know there's a lot of stigma out there. You could have a job. You could be a really well-adjusted person. You could have a great career and still have PTSD. But again, it always helps to at least start somewhere. Now, what else are we seeing? Veteran crisis hotlines. were randomly fired, right?
This is something we've been working on as Democrats and Republicans for years. For people to know, if you call this number at any time, someone's going to talk to you so we can help you out. And Vapor and Big Butts and Big Balls Boys, all those Elon Musk guys, I don't know what their names are, arbitrarily fired these guys because they don't know any better.
Well, they're veterans of the meme wars. Yeah, I'm sure.
I'm sure they got carpal tunnel syndrome or whatever because they know nothing because they're little boys and they think they know everything because they worked in Silicon Valley. They probably just were looking at a line item and didn't actually look into what that line item actually means. That is someone who is on the phone at home. I'll give you another good example.
When it comes to remote working, a lot of veterans do remote work. Why? Well, some of them because they're married to other military personnel and it's easier for them to work remotely and find gainful employment where they are because a lot of times in these areas, there's not much employment for spouses. Some of them actually have disabilities.
By working from home, it allows them to actually be gainfully employed. Now, if they want to, this is another example from one of the guys I serve with, if he wants to get state employment and stay at home, now he has to go to his boss and not just say, hey, I have a disability, I have a disability rating. He has to explain to his boss exactly what his disability is, which is PTSD, unfortunately.
And he's going to have to go into detail with that. And every time he either gets a new boss or gets promoted, he's going to have to go through that again, telling a stranger his personal health issues. in order for him to get dispensation to be able to work from home. And the other funny part about that, it's actually not funny, is that I was talking to him.
He told me that even if he goes back to work, he doesn't have a desk because they're calling everybody back. And so he's in this catch-22. So he is actually now... going back to work. He is doing a 75-mile commute every day, there and back, in order for him to keep his job. And it's going to affect him mentally. And this is a man that served in combat, very difficult, very difficult combat.
And all he wants to do is continue working for the government. He's done great work for the government now for 10 years. And if he messes up, they're going to get rid of him because he's just a line item to these tech boys.
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Chapter 6: How should Democrats address media and communication challenges?
I need to talk to you briefly about crypto. You're the ranking member of the Digital Assets Committee. I think that you're, well, I guess I'll let you speak for yourself on your view on crypto. I'm like apoplectic about what's happening with crypto. And I think there's, I don't think people understand the degree to the scam that's being run, like between the Trump coin, Tether. Yeah.
Tether is this so-called stable coin that people use for money laundering, terror financing, sanctions of Asia, North Korea, etc.
is using it to get money howard lutnik our secretary of commerce is like a key player not anymore to divest but his kids are now in tether trump is this coin i mean like there's these scams are unbelievable we would not allow these skins in any other industries so like where are you at how do you balance like credible crypto with investigating these guys
yeah, there's no regulation. So what we need to do is regulate out these scams, right? Because these scams are problematic. They are used for, like you said, illegal transactions. A lot of them are just pump and dump scams or anything else like that. Versus there are some legal, and not legal because they're all legal until we put some regulations together, legitimate cryptocurrency, right? And
And we need to kind of set down the rules of the road so that way it's not abused. You're only bringing in and validating really the real crypto assets versus allowing anybody to put up a meme coin and then selling it and people being taken. Right.
But how are they going to regulate this when the fox is in charge of the henhouse here? I mean, Trump is running one of the biggest scams out there and like now he's appointing people.
Because there is no regulation. Yeah, yeah, that's a problem. Look, you have to regulate like you would regulate anything else you sell and trade, right? And you have to make sure that the people that are doing it, number one, aren't going to be able, again, to take advantage of consumers, that it will still allow companies to innovate. Tether's not even based in the United States, for example.
So we want to be able to bring this back. regulate it, make it transparent. And that way we're basically pushing out the bad scams and only regulating what we have here that is what we consider more legitimate and more transparent. Much like anything else, like how we regulate banks, right? You can't just start a bank
and start taking money in the United States without going through certain regulations. It's the same thing we should be doing with this type of crypto assets. Setting down the rules of the road so it's transparent. So when there are abuses, we actually have a way to actually go after the abusers and recover the money of the people that have been scammed.
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Chapter 7: What are the current challenges in regulating cryptocurrency?
Do you think that bros that want to have coffee flavored Zin, do you think they should be allowed to, or do you think that the government should regulate that?
I mean, like, we should regulate how we regulate, like, you know, spit tobacco. But other than that, no, I don't think we should be, like, banning people from having Zen, using Zen.
Finally, I just pulled up the Nelk Boys Twitter feed. Here's their most recent tweet. Aiden Ross goes in on Kendrick vs. Drake beef and reveals his relationship with Baron Trump. Baron misspelled. Can you translate that sentence? Do you know what happened in this? Aiden Ross goes in on Kendrick vs. Drake beef.
I don't know who Aiden Ross is, but, I mean, the Kendrick and Drake drama is awesome, by the way. And so his put down at the Super Bowl is probably the ultimate diss in the history of this country. You know, I'm on Team Kendrick, definitely. You have to be. Barron Trump, I'm assuming, took a side or probably tried to flip a freaking mean coin on it.
But if it's Barron Trump, I'm assuming he actually probably took Drake's side, which would be disgusting. Because I think Drake is the loser in this whole thing. And he is definitely not like us.
Senator Ruben Gallego, a wonderful way to end. Please come back to the podcast. Thank you for joining, and we'll be seeing you soon. Gracias. Bye. All right. Up next, Zelina Maxwell. All right, guys, we are back with Zerlina Maxwell. She's a political analyst, host of Mornings with Zerlina on SiriusXM.
She has a new subset called the Inner Work Dispatch, which is about working on your mental health. It's something that I'm working on and doing a poor job of. So we'll get to that at the end. But how are you doing, girl?
I'm all right. I'm hanging in there. Like I say to most people, I am trying to stay sane. That's it.
How's that going so far?
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Chapter 8: How does Ruben Gallego connect with 'bro culture' and popular trends?
Well, I think him wanting more money, taking away resources from people, I think that resonates. Yeah. But I also think you're right. I mean, he wants power. He wants to be a king. He wants to be in charge. I mean, he is in charge, right, of his companies. And so he's used to just dictating orders. I mean, similar.
I mean, he's in charge of huge parts of the government, too, apparently. I mean, like Trump is making these decisions. It's what him and Trump have in common. Yeah.
They like just barking orders at people and having people do what they say. And I think that one of the things that's really, really hard for people to really conceptualize in their brain is how much a billion dollars actually is and how much money Elon Musk actually has, or at least what he's valued at because of his ownership of Tesla stock. So I think for...
folks who rely upon government programs, these government agencies that are providing resources for regular folks, like it's hard for them to understand, I think, because it's happening so quickly, the consequences of what Elon Musk is doing.
And I think maybe if, you know, as the strategist, Democrats focused on the impact on people, as opposed to even he wants more money, that would help land the message more effectively.
Well, I'm excited to see how the cabinet meeting goes. You know, in the first one, it was everybody had to talk about how great Mr. Trump was, sir. Remember that in Trump 1? Yes, I'll never forget it. Do they go around and praise both of them this time? I don't know. I'm waiting with bated breath. Your point about the impact on actual people. On your show, you're doing Collins.
You're doing call-ins. You're hearing from people. You're hearing from real folks. I'm kind of curious what that's like. But as part of those conversations, you've been posting some clips of people that are suffering real consequences from this. Talk about what you think the opportunity is there and what the real-life impact is from folks you're hearing from.
Well, right after the election, it was almost like therapy because people were crying. And I'm not a therapist. My mother was. But I'm not a therapist, so I was trying— even though I'm also emotional and trying to process and I'm traumatized, I'm trying to create a space for people so that they can just like let it out. And it's really, really helpful.
And I think validating for people to hear from other people all over the country who are also feeling the same exact way. Cause a lot of people are like in their own homes, like I'm losing it. I'm am I going crazy? And then when they hear other people on the radio say exactly the same things they're thinking and feeling, it's,
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