BREAKING: Jack Smith Comes Out Swinging in Hearing | Morning Shots

0:00The kids really love that playhouse, huh? Yeah, it's not just a child's playhouse. It's a rental property. Kids, off-carries roof! Someone lives in there? Lives, works, and thrives. Your wife reaches all the way to the playhouse? We're good gaily nairs. It reaches everywhere. Can I check it out? Sorry. Booked solid, but the treehouse just opened up. Live without limits. Get home internet from AT&T and cover your whole house. Even your playhouse turned rental property. AT&T Extended Wifi Coverage Service Required, limited availability. Visit AT&T.com-forwardslash-internet to learn more. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Hi, I'm Sean Evans from Hot Ones, and I want to tell you about YouTube Premium. It has offline downloads, so you can watch without Wifi. Background Play. So you can lock your phone, and it still plays, baby. Oh, and it is completely ad-free. Yes, I said it ad-free. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com-slash-premium. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime.

1:00Hello, everybody. Welcome to Morning Shots Live. I am Andrew Eger, White House correspondent for the Bullwork, joined as always on a Tuesday morning by Bullwork Editor at Large Bill Crystal. My co-author on the Morning Shots newsletter. We are coming to you live here on Tuesday at exactly the moment that former special counsel, Jack Smith, is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. This has been a long time coming. This testimony has been one of the running subplots of the aftermath of Donald Trump's criminal prosecutions. In his interregnum between his first and second terms in office, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have been in part because of Donald Trump's own revenge campaign, and in part because of some grievances of their own that they have against Jack Smith's investigation. They have had him in their crosshairs for a long time. He is there testifying under oath this morning. We were expecting going in that this would be a relatively... I don't know if boring is exactly the right hearing.

2:02It's insane that this hearing is happening at all, but not a lot of fireworks necessarily. The expectation is that Republicans are kind of trying to lay some sort of perjury trap for Smith, try to find something to trip him up in that they could then prosecute him with criminally. We were expecting, and perhaps still are, expecting Smith to be pretty understated, pretty careful in the things that he's saying. At the same time, he has kind of come out swinging so far in this hearing just this morning. We have some clips of... Let's just start out with the way they laid this out this morning. Here is the chair of the committee, Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Just talking for a little bit here about some of the malfeasants. They are accusing Jack Smith of in his investigations into President Trump. I need some examples. Mr. Smith subpoenaed and obtained information on Republican groups as early as 2019 and as late as 2023.

3:04You see, that's what you must do if your case is designed to map out and target the entire Republican party. There's a lot of different things that Grassley gets into here. He's mad that Smith subpoenaed various congressional records, congressional communications that he subpoenaed information from various Republican groups. Jack Smith's contention is he did all this because he was investigating crimes. He was investigating Donald Trump's crimes. He was investigating the people Donald Trump was in contact with. Let's hear a little bit from Jack Smith's own opening. Like I said, we were expecting him to be conservative here. Maybe he will be about specific stuff later, but he really comes out swinging in this opening statement. I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump. I made those decisions without regard to President Trump's political association,

4:08activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation. If asked whether to prosecute a former president today, based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat. The charges against President Trump were the result of the evidence. Grand juries and two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions as alleged in the indictments they returned. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power. After leaving office in January of 2021,

5:09President Trump illegally kept classified documents at his Marolago Social Club and repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents. Just to reiterate, this is all stuff that's happening just this morning. You know, a few minutes ago, these committee was gabbled in. We got these opening statements from the chair and the ranking member and from Jacksonet himself. Let's just do one more real quick of Occative Exchange. Again, there's a lot of hearing left to go. We're not going to cover that now. We'll cover that for morning shots tomorrow. But just to give you kind of a sense of how this is going, a lot of grassly on one side, sort of piling up grievances and a lot of Jacksonet on the other side, returning to the main question of these were serious crimes that was investigating. So let's get that exchange here real quick. Let me ask the question again. Did your special counsel operation obtain possession of donor data to include financial information? Yes or no?

6:10Yes, we acquired financial information. As I sit here right now, I cannot recite to you every subpoena we issued. I can tell you why we issued subpoenas. And it was to conduct a criminal investigation of one of the most serious crimes that's ever happened in our nation's history. I had a duty to collect facts. Let me say indeed you did. Yeah, so there you go. I mean, Bill, let me just turn it over to you. I think that gives kind of a good flavor of what's going on over there this morning. It's sort of astonishing that Republicans are, this is like they're closing arguments. Senate Republicans ahead of these midterms is this rehearsal of Trump's crimes and more stuff in favor of, in favor of, you know, Trump's attempt to prosecute this guy. What's your reaction just kind of at first, first blush here to what we're seeing out of this hearing this morning? Yeah, well, it's not new. The Senate Republicans are Trump's cat paws and he wants this done. So they're doing it regardless of whether it helps or hurts. Maybe most people are paying that much attention.

7:12I will think to the testimony of a special counsel about something that happened a few years ago. I mean, just to be clear, if something, if Jackson is something wrong, the Trump administration could chose the Justice Department. He can be prosecuted. They can try to disbar him. They can discipline him. They've tried to be disciplined in proceedings all kinds of ways. He was a special counsel at that Justice Department. They fired him, of course. He resigned and then they fired his entire team, many of whom, most of whom were career prosecutors, who had done nothing wrong. They fired the FBI agents who had worked on the investigation, who had done nothing wrong. So they've done their bit. So what's the point of this hearing? I mean, Congress has no, doesn't do oversight of individual criminal cases. The point of this hearing is a perjury trap, not that he would really purge himself, but they've done this, they tried to do this without you, right? They get you up there. You say something that's arguably slightly imprecise or qualify quite right. And then I, he's lying. And then you have a, then you refer to the Justice Department for investigation. In other words, it's a show trial. It's a collusion between the Senate judiciary, the majority Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee,

8:14and the Trump Justice Department. They're hoping to get something they can, quote, refer for criminal investigation. They'll refer something, you know? If a criminal investigation to the Justice Department, then it doesn't get prosecuted. Maybe six months from now or maybe they try to. The grand jury won't die, but, you know, they can say, hey, we've referred it to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. So they're continued in covering up Trump's crimes. Jackson Smith, but actually was pretty careful. I would say, from my point of view, and I was following that pretty closely in 2023, 2024, then over backwards actually to play by the rules. For example, there are two different crimes, right? There's the January 6th insurrection inciting that. And then there's the taking the classified documents to our logo, lying about it, and trying to cover that up. He could have brought that second case in DC as well, because it originated in DC. The documents were literally put on the plane and DC and so forth. And you would get a friendlier jury in Judge Frowley in DC. But he thought, no, this mostly took place at the Barra Lago. I'll file it in Florida. They drew Eileen Cannon as the judge. She stalled it and invented various reasons.

9:15Why couldn't we have had? Which then allowed the Supreme Court to decide the whole thing was moved because Trump has a mutiny. So there were many people I knew in sort of former prosecutor world at the Trump world, to be sure. But serious people who said he should have brought in DC. He's being too careful of most by going to Florida. Anyway, I admire Jack Smith. He's going to defend himself very well. I'm sure Chuck Grassley, if I could just say a word, I'd do Chuck Grassley pretty well. Weed so well. Well, my boy, he's been a senator as long as he was a senator. I think when I came to Washington, wasn't he? I think he's the one Republican senator elected in 74. Am I right about this? Against the massive Democratic wave. It's always a good reminder. There's always one exception to a wave. And he has been a senator ever since. He's not anyone years old. He was once a sort of not too partisan kind of bulldog. He was a pain if you were an executive branch, versus he was really into investigating all kinds of things, some of which were honestly just normal, normal investments, confusions in the executive branch in the education department or something. I remember this, but whatever.

10:16But he was good to have oversight. And he did that. And now to see him reading haltingly, honestly, but you prepared statements by his staff, which were undoubtedly prepared and collusion with the Trump administration is a little sad. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I remember, obviously, I've been around a lot less for a lot less of Grassley's career. But I remember even just in Trump one, the his sort of reputation as even handed, courteous to Democrats on his committees and running a tight ship as far as all the proceduralism was concerned. And in some ways, even, as you say, sort of annoying to the White House, even though the White House was controlled by a Republican at that time by Donald Trump. And yeah, to see it now where he seems to have so little interest in doing any actual investigative work into the current White House. But in fact, to do these sorts of sham hearings on the White House's behalf.

11:17I do think there's, it's not purely at the White House's be hasten on their behalf. I mean, I really think Grassley has his own being his bonnet about Jackson Smith. He has for a while because of the way that Smith's investigation looked into the communications, donations, as was mentioned there to various, you know, Republicans on the Hill. They just think they should be not included in that stuff. But I'm sorry, if the president of the United States is trying to commit crimes and he, part of his attempt to commit crimes includes him beaten down your door constantly for weeks to try to enlist you to help him commit these crimes. You're gonna get a glance. You're gonna get a glance from the investigators. There's, Jack Smith never alleged any wrongdoing on the part of any of these house or senate members. He never, you know, tried to bring charges against any of them for anything. It's the simple fact that, you know, there was evidence gathering in their offices at all that has Grassley so hot and bothered. And I just think it is, it is just ridiculous. It is just ridiculous. Anything else on, like I said,

12:18we're gonna keep following this hearing. It's ongoing right now. Obviously, we're not watching it. We're here talking to you. So whatever's happened in the last 15 minutes with it, we have no knowledge of. We will, we will cover it more fully in tomorrow's morning shots. Anything else, Bill, before we turn away from Jack Smith here? Well, just the obvious point. There's so many things to deserve oversight. In the Trump administration, we'll probably get to one or two on this show. But God knows how many there are in terms of the kleptocracy and the theft and the lying and the lawlessness. And this is the one thing they're focusing on. An investigation that ended, it was short-circuited by the courts basically in 2024. And by people who are no longer employed at the justice department. Yeah, yeah. All right, so much for Jack Smith. Good luck out there, Jack. Keep throwing the haymakers. I just think it's crazy. I mean, I don't know why Republicans would want him up there. Like you say, it's not gonna be a cycle defining news story or anything, but just to have him up there saying, no, yeah, the president, we're pretty sure he committed these big time crimes. And you should have gone to trial for them. And they should have been investigated in court.

13:19That's pretty striking. That's pretty striking to get, you know, six weeks before the election or however long it is. Okay, let's throw to a quick ad here. And when we come back, we'll talk about morning shots today. This message is brought to you by Tempo Meals. So the hot is have a way of completely swallowing my calendar. And cooking is always one of the first things that goes. Treat work, everything going on at this time of year. And now Thanksgiving creeping up. I'm just not trying to spend an hour figuring out what's for dinner. And that's where Tempo has been really helping me. I've been getting their meals delivered. And the thing I love the most is just how easy they are. You take one out of the fridge and then two minutes later, you've got an actual meal. And you don't even have to think about it. And that's the best part. Tempo delivers fresh, chef crafted, dietitian-approved meals right to your door. The meals are perfectly portioned for lunch or dinner. And they're ready in just two minutes. So instead of grabbing whatever is around or just ordering takeout for the 21st time in four weeks, I can actually eat something that feels like it's a real meal.

14:21And there are more than 20 recipes every week. So there's a lot of variety. I've especially liked being able to have different meals throughout the week without having to do all the meal planning and grocery shopping myself. They also have options based on how you eat. Protein packed meals with over 30 grams of protein, fiber rich meals, calorie conscious meals, gut support, and the GLP-1 smart meals. So you can find something that fits your routine without having to completely reorganize your life around eating better. For a limited time tempo is offering our listeners 60% off your first box. Go to TempoMeals.com slash Bullwork Takes. That's TempoMeals.com slash Bullwork Takes for 60-60% off your first box. TempoMeals.com slash Bullwork Takes. Rules and restrictions may apply. All right, Bill, I got kind of a hot take for you here. There is this conventional wisdom among Democrats right now that they're likely to retake power. These midterms are looking really good.

15:21They're were were staring down this this likelihood of a blue wave. There are some in the party. I would say a lot of voices in the party that think that the one thing Democrats ought not do once they retake power. They should they should put back push back on Trump in all kinds of ways. But the one thing they shouldn't do is is try to impeach him again. Right, that that that didn't go well in the first term. They tried it twice already. It's been done. I I'm I'm I'm leaning more and more on the opposite side of this thing. I wrote about this in morning shots this morning and peach him again. That's the headline from morning shots today. We're throwing down a gauntlet. We think we think the president. I think the president should in fact face yet another one of these suckers. Whether or not it whether or not it works. And I think you know, it's likely likely not to work no matter how many seats, repellared Democrats take in the Senate next year. But the thing that I have a be in my bonnet about it's not the worst thing the president's ever done. Surely, but but it is pretty astonishing. It's these ads. You've seen these ads bill. You guys have probably seen some of these ads by now out there.

16:23They are these PSAs these public service announcements that the White House has been putting out on national TV out over the airwaves the last couple of weeks. About $1.7 million of some unspecified pot of government money has gone to airing these so far. Let's just watch a couple of them real quick to give people a sense of what we're talking about. Because after two and a half centuries, we know that this is not an ending. This is only the beginning of the golden age of America. So when that one came out, people sort of complained. They were saying, hey, what's going on with this?

17:24What's this paid for by the US government business? Isn't this basically a campaign ad for Donald Trump? Who is the figure that these entire midterms are essentially referendum on? At the same time, I guess there was a little bit of plausible deniability, a little bit of, well, you know, that's just patriotic talk from the president on the 4th of July. I'm out rush more. Let's play the second ad, the one that played on Saturday during college football in a couple of other times this weekend. We will liberate America from these villains once and for all. So there's a lot of amazing things about this one. One of the amazing things about it is that it is a Trump campaign ad. It was in fact aired in 2024, created by his campaign, aired for the explicit purpose of getting him elected. Here it is again, but it's no longer the campaign arm that is paying to put it on the air.

18:26It is now the US government itself. So I want to lay out my case a little bit here, Bill, but just the ads themselves. And when you see these ads, there's a pretty strong case we made. This is just straightforwardly illegal. Right? I mean, do they have any kind of plausible deniability, any leg to stand on here when it comes to whether they should be allowed to do this at all? So it just is the federal government do public service announcements that they're set aside in their budget. Congress is probably a smartie for it. I remember when I was at the Education Department many decades ago, we did advertisements telling people, if you need help going to college, see whether you can be your eligible for a student loan. That was that kind of thing. Right? Obviously, the famous, I think they started very early when I was a kid. This was Lady Bird Johnson's priority. Don't litter. They were cleaning up the roads. They've been smoking as dangerous as, I mean, that's what, and they were during the pandemic. There were ads about getting vaccinated and so forth.

19:27I remember that you wouldn't steal a car, anti-piracy ones, from the days of my youth. Okay, right. Yeah, so they were sort of, you know, and so that's kind of that's what they're supposed to be, whether the federal, whether these are very effective ads, I don't know whether Congress should save a few hundred million dollars by not authorizing that money. But they were appropriated, authorized and appropriated by Congress. There was no, who wasn't people doing it on their own. And secondly, those ads typically would say paid for by the US Department of Education, paid for by the US Department of Health and Human Services, paid for by the Justice Department because that was part of their appropriations. That's how kind of the government works. There are these agencies. They get money appropriated for them by the US Congress. Somebody has to be accounted for each year and you explain how you spent it and so forth. This is paid for by the US government. What is that? Where's the money coming from? So right away, I think this, and it sounds trivial in a way, but it's not. I mean, who's, we need to, you're supposed to make clear what part of money this is coming from. Of course, Trump in a way likes A, who knows where it's really coming from. What they're taking it from the Defense Department? Defense Department has all that money. It doesn't need to

20:29help the sales on the USS Lincoln. Are they taking it from the Education Report from HHS, whether they're cutting back on support for rural health care? I mean, what would like to know where that money is coming from? And secondly, obviously, yes. The fact that the second in the particular is literally a campaign ad that's been repurposed is pretty horrifying. And there are laws against using government resources for political reasons. That's why even when Air Force One, when the president flies to a political event, the campaign, whether the Republican party reimburses the government, they don't really reimburs the full cost because it's Air Force One, and the president has to be protected as a whole complicated legal thing that goes there. But in principle, you're not supposed to use government funds for political purposes. And obviously, they're stressing that way beyond the normal limits, and they won't be held accountable by the Trump Justice Department. And so there we are, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to me, it is, again, like this is not, this is far from the worst single thing that this White House has done. But it's something about the combination of the open lawlessness and the fact that the Lawless Act is the thing that is being

21:35broadcast out there to millions and millions of people. I mean, they're flaunting it in front of the entire country that they have deputized the US government to run this propaganda. Now, there's no reason why Trump's campaign accounts couldn't pay for this. They have, you know, they're richer than Cresus out there. The MAGA Inc has an extraordinary sums of money, far dwarfed, anything else in US politics right now. And yet, they can't dip into that for the million dollars and change so far. Again, there's going to be more one one assumes, but the 1.7 million so far can't come out of MAGA Inc budgets. They can't they can't spend there. They need to use the US government to endorse this obvious propaganda messaging about going after the Marxists and the war mongers and the deep stators and the fake news media. So again, for me, this was an avenue back into talking about the possibility of impeachment in the future. And I guess there's really two questions when it comes

22:38to impeachment. The question is, first, what did ever work? Could you ever peel off enough Republicans, no matter whether Democrats win 51 seats or in their miracle scenario 54 seats or something like this? You still need some Republican buy-in if you were ever to to get this guy out of here. And the second thing is, is it politically useful? Even if you don't get the conviction, is it part of prosecuting in the public sphere the the the case against the president? And to be clear, I don't necessarily think this is like that they should build an impeachment on this exact thing specifically and nothing else. I just think that there is increasingly a case to be made that the president is running the federal government like a personal piggy bank, like a campaign arm, like a propaganda arm, all for his own whims. You could build something around all of these things. So first of all, Bill, I guess I should just get your take. I'll lay out my argument, but but where are you on the possibility of impeachment? There's a lot of smart people who completely disagree with me on this probably think I'm crazy, but where are you on on the question of whether

23:41Democrats should consider impeaching the president if they take a lot of power back next year? Hey, what's up guys? It's Hayley Bailey. Okay, I need to tell you about something. I just got YouTube Premium. It's got tons of awesome features like offline downloads so I can download my favorite videos before I travel and watch them whenever I don't have Wi-Fi because we all know airplane Wi-Fi is the worst. I get ad free, I get back room play and there's like a ton more in there. You should try it. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Try it now for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Hi, I'm Sean Evans from Hot Ones and I want to tell you about YouTube Premium. It has offline downloads so you can watch without Wi-Fi. Background play so you can lock your phone and it still plays baby. Oh, and it is completely ad free. Yes, I said it ad free. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime.

24:46This is Matt Rodgers from Lost Culture East. This is Matt Rodgers in Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Lost Culture East. This is Matt Rodgers in Bowen Yang. Okay, we've been talking about Cupid male for a minute now, Bowen. Wow, the feedback we're getting. I mean, so many of you all love this stuff. You're stopping us in the street going, I love Cupid. And if you're thinking, wait, what is Cupid? Do you not have the internet? It's the OG Japanese mayonnaise. The one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. Once you know what, you start seeing it everywhere. People ask what makes it different from basic mayo? Will the answer? Egg yolks. Cupid is made with egg yolks only giving it this incredibly rich umami flavor that elevates everything. Burgers, fries, sandwiches, chicken, noodles, chefs use it, restaurants use it, people who really love food and flavor use it. Whatever you're eating, Cupid hit. So if you haven't tried Cupid yet, find the bottle with the red cap and see what everyone's talking about. You'll understand

25:47Cupid, the original Japanese mayonnaise. They should certainly consider it at least. I mean, you know, he deserves to be in peace. He's done so many things for which that would be the correct remedy, the only remedy, really. The Justice Department is not going to prosecute him, right? So there's some things they can do to hold people accountable. I've been slightly open to the argument that it's a political matter. Maybe it's better to impeach Pete Hankseth for very concrete things he's done at the Defense Department and a couple of other people like cabinet officers and just leave Trump aside for a bit. I've also been open to the argument that that's a little too clever by half and Trump deserves to be impeached. So impeached him. The one thing I would say, all these Democrats who are so kind, I've heard this myself some donors from everybody, oh, what we can't do is the impeachment. Two points with that. First of all, we don't know what the world will look like in January, right? I mean, you make this clear in the morning shots. This is your serious consideration of this and you're inclined to think it's a good idea. You're not saying we know on September 28th that this is going to be the right thing to do in January 28th. We don't, we don't, you know, no one knows that. So people should be a much more given how wrong everyone's

26:48been, including all those people, the same people telling me eight to you months ago, Trump, you can't touch Trump on immigration, the border blah, blah, blah, you can't criticize ice. Oh my god, how could you say that? Right? I mean, so I feel like people should be a little more open minded about this. Andy deserves it. And so yeah, I think I like your, I like the argument and it's worth just remind, we do need to remind people over and over of the massive illegality, whether or not it literally results in the House of Representatives having hearings and then voting on a impeachment. But the last point I make is everyone is, oh my god, 2019, can you believe that impeachment? You make this point. But I'll stick to, I'll steal a few. I'll give you, give you a running start on explaining your case of 2019 is such a, you know, how can they do that? What did disaster? It wasn't, not clear. It was a disaster politically. I look quickly at Trump's numbers and I guess September's when it really got go, August September of 2019. And it's an umpire in January of 2020. That's all pre-everything getting distorted, absolutely by the pandemic.

27:48They don't change much. It didn't destroy Trump. It didn't damage him that much. It didn't, it wasn't like Clinton in 1998 where it's very clear and I was around then and we were advocating for it. But very clear, he looked like an overreatured, helped Clinton. That wasn't the case with Trump. It was an obscure Ukraine, Rudy Giuliani, Zelensky. People didn't quite get their heads around it. That would pass maybe, could have explained it better. This is a little different actually, I think, and argues that it could be more effective this time. But anyway, people have this, have bought into this notion that this was all a disaster. It's not like who won the 2020 election. I mean, the one time Trump asked, one election that was conducted after Trump was impeached, which Trump was a candidate he lost. So I'm not so sure about the politics of it even for now. But as I say, this is a decision people should make. This should be open minded about it and make that decision three months for now. Yeah, yeah. This is really all I'm all I was trying to say with the piece this morning is that I do think Republic, I'm sorry, that Democrats ought to not get stuck in their ways and start treating it as dogma. Like, well, the one thing we won't do is impeach the president. And I do want to make a couple of comparisons with the 2019 impeachment. One of what you

28:53gestured out there, it was it was a little hard to get your head around. You had to be kind of motivated to do it. Nobody, nobody came into that impeachment hearing with strong views about the importance of, you know, a particular US policy toward Ukraine. This was pre the war in Ukraine. You know, this was this was when Ukraine was just sort of one more country on a map. You know, you had to learn about bereasmun. You had to learn who, you know, Fiona Hill was and you had to learn what quid pro quo means maybe or what charge affairs means maybe. And you had to, you know, you had to take their word for it rather than Trump's word for it that the phone call was was bad. And, and, you know, over and over and over again, there are like moment after moment after moment here where Trump all Trump has to do in that impeachment is say, well, they say it was a bad phone call, but I say it was a perfect phone call. So who are you going to believe? It becomes this sort of Rorschach and ultimately everybody just sort of goes back to their corners. And I think that would be very different today. I think that the political corruption stuff, the overreach, the illegality is so naked. It's so glaring now. People don't like to hear that the president is

29:57enriching himself while in office. They don't like to see the they recoil from concepts like government propaganda and state run TV and the prosecution of political enemies. None of this is stuff that people like. They know they don't like it. And they not all of them agree that Trump has been engaged in it, but putting that stuff in front of people cannot help him right now. We've already seen that it has pushed him down. Democrats, I think, would have the ability to push it down even further if they were to opt for impeachment. The other big difference between 2019 and today is the material conditions, right? I mean, people had pretty good vibes economically under Trump 1.0 up until the pandemic. Things were looking pretty good. The tariff actions he was taking were relatively contained. They were hitting certain sectors pretty hard. Farmers were not very happy. But overall, the economy was good. Interest rates were low. Growth was happening. And so that led a lot of people to essentially say, whatever I feel about this guy, his outbursts and his self-serving stuff

31:00and his mean tweets and his bullying Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden, all of that ultimately gets outweighed for a lot of people by decent economic vibes. And I think you saw that during during Trump's first term. It's completely different today. It's completely different today. The vibes are so bad economically. There's so much anger. There's so much rage at the president. Democrats have wanted to sort of just lean into this and coast on this. This case makes itself in a lot of ways. Democrats should talk about it. Democrats should try to address it. If and when they take power, they should try to rein in the stuff that Trump is doing on affordability, they should trumpet that work to the rooftops. That's all great. But additionally to that, a public that is seeing all this stuff happening, a public that is angry about the material conditions on the ground and blaming Donald Trump for that, is a public that is in a very different headspace when it comes to talking about his overreaches and his self enrichment and his corruption. Because they don't think there's like an on the one hand on the other hand side of

32:01this anymore. They don't see a sort of Donald Trump made the trains run on time argument to be made here. They think that there's a strong receptivity now to the notion that they're already mad about this other stuff. And so pound the corruption, pound the self-dealing, pound the authoritarian stuff, because they go together. People see Trump as focusing on wanting to punish his enemies and focusing on wanting to put money in his own pocket and focusing on wanting to put his names on buildings and build himself monuments and things like that. Instead of focusing on solving the problems that he himself has caused here. And so I just think it's a very different political environment. We should not prejudge the idea that this would go badly for Democrats if they were to try it again. But also put pressure on Senate Republicans who have a large and growing stack of reasons why they should not necessarily remain all in on this very unpopular lame duck president

33:02who has who is at the dead end of his own movement, the dead end of his own political career and who has treated them like shit for two years now. So that's my soapbox. Sorry for going on and on there Bill. But I don't know. I just think we shouldn't rule it out. I think it's too early to early to take that page out of the playbook. Well said totally. We did the same we did in morning shots and you can hear it here. Listen to it here. And one reason we exist, I think at the ball work, morning shots is to be a little contrary and sometimes and say, wait a second, you have once settled to a sort of lazy conventional wisdom on this, but maybe you shouldn't. And it's not only maybe that you decide to do hexet first and something while you investigate Trump, there's so many stages of these impeachment. People forget the war to gate impeachment. A successful one, if you want to call it, about what successful it forced to decide obviously had a long investigative stage, a lot of hearings. Obviously the Trump impeachment said some of that, but they tended to be a little bit a bridge. And so it's not as if you're deciding on day one. I mean,

34:04a more partisan congress these days and speaker and speaker's more power. So in a way, it would be, that Kim Jeffries would be sort of deciding on day one, are we going down this path and not, but he could explicitly say, look, we're going to have hearings and you know, I'm not making this a matter of party loyalty that we necessarily are all going to vote for this at the end of the day, or even decide to go ahead with it. That'll be up to chairman Raskin or whatever of the relevant committee. You know, so there are many ways to explore this and highlight what Trump has done. Even if you decide at the end of the day that maybe you're not going to actually go ahead and impeach into the House to try to compete in the Senate. Yeah, yeah. Well, we can put a pin in this. This one in particular, you know, I feel like we've been inching more and more toward basically accepting that there is really this strong likelihood of a blue wave. It does look sort of baked in, but you never know. This show in particular, maybe we'll look back on with a little bit of sheepishness. If it turns out that's all a mirage and Republicans do fine, and Republicans or Democrats retake the House, but not the Senate, still very possible.

35:07Everybody should take this in the spirit of wild speculation in which it is intended, but I do think that if as is seeming likely Democrats retake the Senate, it's something they should keep an eye on. Okay. They'll on that note, actually. I am interested in discussing with you. You've talked to it a little bit about, sorry, you've talked with Tim a little bit about it already, but you're in kind of a spirit of wild hopeium these days. Hopeium is not even the right word, because hopeium is unfounded. But your imagination is in sunny pastures about the map for Democrats. Right now, what are, I mean, you keep mentioning states like Kansas and states like Idaho and states that I didn't even know were on the Senate map this year because it just seems so pro forma that Republicans will carry them, but I don't know. Can you just walk me through why you're turning in your imagination toward some of these pretty, pretty red Senate contests and why you think, you know, as opposed to past contests, past contests where some of these turned out to be fools gold. Why is

36:11this your different? Hey, what's up guys? It's Hayley Bailey. Okay. I need to tell you about something. I just got YouTube premium. It's got tons of awesome features like offline downloads, so I can download my favorite videos before I travel and watch them whenever I don't have Wi-Fi, because we all know airplane Wi-Fi is the worst. I get ad free, I get back room play, and there's like a ton more in there. You should try it. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube premium. Try it now for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube premium. Hi, I'm Sean Evans from Hot Ones, and I want to tell you about YouTube premium. It has offline downloads, so you can watch without Wi-Fi, background play, so you can lock your phone, and it still plays baby. Oh, and it is completely ad free. Yes, I said it ad free. Try YouTube premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime. This is Matt Rogers from Lost

37:14Cultures with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Lost Cultures with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. Okay, we've been talking about Cupid male for a minute now, Bowen. Wow, the feedback we're getting. I mean, so many of y'all love this stuff. You're stopping us in the street going, I love Cupid. And if you're thinking, wait, what is Cupid? Do you not have the internet? It's the OG Japanese mayonnaise. The one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. Once you know what, you start seeing it everywhere. People ask what makes it different from basic mayo? Will the answer egg yolks? Cupid is made with egg yolks only, giving it this incredibly rich umami flavor that elevates everything. Burgers, fries, sandwiches, chicken, noodles, chefs use it, restaurants use it, people who really love food and flavor use it. Whatever you're eating, Cupid hit. So if you haven't tried Cupid yet, find the bottle with the red cap and see what everyone's talking about. You'll understand Cupid, the original Japanese mayonnaise. Yeah, I mean, so first of all, I've been bullish on

38:202026 for quite a while and have sort of down argued with people, oh, the Democrats don't have a good message. Democratic brand is wounded. Those are all true, but midterms really are a referendum on the president when his he and his party of control congress. And especially when that that party in congress has been so closely linked with that president, right? So the fact that and the approval numbers are pretty questionable and they're pretty consistent, full to poll and they've just gone down from 48 to 50, where in what Trump started to what 35 to 38, maybe 40, let's just say 37, 38, 40, but that's a big, big drop. It's below Trump's numbers are lower than they were in 2018. They're lower than Obama's were in 2010. The lower than Clinton's were in 1994. So, A, I just think empirically, you have to expect pretty big waves. D, we do ask, posters ask about the congressional generic ballot, who do you intend to vote for in November for the House is the word for Congress, as if it was put that way. That number is in shop. It's been a little slower, but it was around six percentage points two months ago. It's about just approaching eight right now. So it's trending in

39:24the direction of a as should happen if you're in a wave election. If you think of the imagery of the wave right in the undertow also, it should be trending against Republicans and for Democrats. It is, there may be a little bit, I've had a couple of, I remember this for a couple of other waves, there's a little bit of a bear market rally. I call it right around now, often of the kind of little, the party that's the victim of the wave gets appointed to back for a week or two and that usually goes away. And the wave usually continues till the end. I mean, whatever's driving it, Trump's low approval, the bad economy, gas prices, the war, those things aren't going away, right? So it maybe goes to plus nine at the end. So I think that's very reasonable for the Sharic ballot this year. B, C, third point, I guess, a little bit in the weed, zero of election, poll interpretation, which is important. Well, it's not an interpretation as a fact. Republicans won the generic vote for the House by two points in 2024, Trump won by one and a half points, right? So the plus eight that everyone's looking at is really a ten point swing in 2024, right? It was

40:25minus two to plus eight. So leave aside your district thing, a district that was won by a Republican by eight points in 2024. If it is correlating with the generic ballot, I'm not talking about your Trump approval. Now we're on the actual Sharic ballot. If that's being accurately reported, and who is the thing it isn't, is even. So people are like, oh my god, that's a plus eight. Well, you know, what a way of plus eight should be about even now. And final point, I'll just make it a general level. When you get a wave and this big sense, when you think about it for a second, I'll explain. It has more effect in red states and red districts than in blue districts. If you're in a Massachusetts district, it's already 75 to 25. What's going to happen? The wave's not going to have a huge effect. It wasn't already five in the Democratic except for the diehard Republicans and Trump. It might knock three or four points off. If you're in a red district, especially a swingish red district that's a plus eight, a swingish red state that was once maybe blue or purple like Ohio or one that's been close, come a little close in the past like Texas,

41:26that's exactly where the wave has an effect. And that would also be in states like Kansas. And I would say even further out into South Dakota and Nebraska and those states where, you know, they're there were bigger Trump margins, but where there have been in all these states, Democratic governors, Democratic senators, not so long ago. So if John Tester, I mean, looked up to Montana numbers here or or Heidi Kamp, Heidi K, Heidi Kamp, the kind of Democratic senators who lost in 2018 in those western states, they lost by 10 points roughly probably. So I don't know if things are 10 points better than they might have been in 2018 or at least five points better, you're getting into a really competitive race. And finally in those states, I was in Iowa a couple of weeks ago, you know, that state well, the combination of gas prices and the war really done more damage and terrorists have done more damage there. I would say then maybe in here in North Virginia where we drive, you know, 10 miles to work and not 100 miles for routine, you know, things that we don't use diesel fuel the way tractors do on farmers and so forth. So

42:27all that together makes me think that that area, especially, there are two areas where the wave could really go beyond the obvious states that are I think could well tip over or expected to tip over. And that's sort of the what you call the Midwest stretching out into great planes and even mountain states on the one hand and the sort of more competitive states in the south, which would be the maybe Florida and South Carolina, which have never come through as you say in recent years. But you know, but where there are particular reasons why the democratic candidates look to be to be weak. So I do think those states are many of them are in place. Some of the final point, final, final point, they're independent. The Democrats have not, the democratic candidate has withdrawn, leaving an independent to oppose the Republican in Nebraska, in South Dakota, and in Idaho. Those independence are all moderates, Osborne's run before the other two or veterans who are running as flat out. I'm an independent. I'm not sure I'm not going to caucus with either party. I know that in Idaho, at least, Todd Achilles has said that. You know, and they're

43:29they're they're they're a profile. They're not the typical democratic profile. They can't be attacked as being lifelong Democrats. And in some particular cases, the reason I'm so intrigued by Idaho, which is the longest, the toughest, the biggest stretch maybe of all of them, but it was Trump with plus 36 Jim Richards running for reelection as an 83 year old incumbent senator. And it hasn't done much in Idaho in the past couple of terms that he's been in the Senate. He's interested in foreign relations and so forth. Todd Achilles very attractive running as a quote in independent independent website, an independent veteran for the United States Senate. And that's true of very characteristic of these campaigns in the other states. So I think you put all that together. And not all of them are going to come through. Most of them probably won't come through. Could a couple, I think so. I mean, that's what happens. And some say that people are more optimistic about could go the other way. Right. These things, final, final, final point. I've just noticed this so by people. I mean, people have this kind of, we've gotten so into the demography and so into the, you know, modeling and basing everything on the glass. Right. We sort of assume this is rank order of states. And they're all going to topple like dominoes in a very predictable order.

44:31Right. First, there's no line on the, it doesn't really work that way. There are individual factors to come into play, especially at the end. Strong candidates, weak candidates, you know, scandals, weird things happen. And so there will be a couple that surprise one way. There might be one or two that surprised the other way, but you add it all up. And it does feel to me like it's not crazy. It's probably still the safer bet to think you're at a 50 50 51 49, maybe 52 48 Senate, but it's not crazy to think you could be a little higher than that for the Democrats. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, from your lips to the electorate's years, I, that doesn't happen. Yeah. That's a nice sentiment though. I share the sentiment. You don't, you don't, you're not voxed popularly up here on the, on, on morning shots live. The shocking, this is shocking thing to discover over the years. Yes, that's not always the case. Yeah. Well, well, that's probably enough election prognosticating. We can leave it right there. Obviously, we're all going to find out. You know, it's only a few weeks away. Five or four. The other thing which we're not going to get into right now, but, but which we have talked about a

45:33lot in the past and we'll talk about in the future is there could be malfeasance, right? I mean, who knows, who knows what the president has a store for these elections that could also very well end up bearing on the impeachment case that I laid out before. Nobody was expecting to impeach Donald Trump a second time going into the 2020 election and look where we got. But, but I feel like that's a pretty good place to wrap it up. The very last thing I will leave people with in terms of content here is like, like I said before, we started with the Jack Smith hearing. Jack Smith hearing is ongoing. The Jack Smith hearing is going very seriously. It seems like a very important stuff under discussion. Let's just check in real quick on the Jack Smith hearing, shall we? Anything about that. Do you believe in the two ferry? I do not. How about the Easter Bunny? I no longer believe in the Easter Bunny. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, important stuff happening up on Capitol Hill at the Senate Judiciary Committee. I should leave us with a couple things here. I don't even have my document up. That's

46:38my big problem right now. That's all for the show. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Bill, for coming on. I'm Andrea Gratheboelwork. That's Bill Christo with the Bullwork. Thank you all for watching. We hope you will subscribe to the feed. Hope you'll subscribe to the channel. It really matters a lot to us. And I have one piece of bookkeeping I should throw in as well, which is that we are going on to our next month. Tickets for our good fight to our are available now at the Bullwork.com slash events. Bill and I will be joining the crew in Atlanta, Georgia on October 20th, along with Sarah, Sam, JVL, Tim and other special guests. All those guys are also going to Columbia, South Carolina on October 16th and Charlotte on October 18th. There's different Bullwork people here and there. Bill and I won't be there though. We'll just be in Atlanta. So come see us. Check out the Bullwork.com slash events to see the other Bullwork friends coming to your city. Be sure to grab your tickets. Thanks, everybody. And we will see you all next time. Hi, it's Marcus Allen, throw football Hall of Famer NFL MVP and Super Bowl champion. I played football for a long time. One thing I've learned is nobody really knows what's going to happen next. Before the snap, you can study the defense. You can know the play and you can see the opening.

47:43But eventually, you have to make a decision and go. For me, that was the fun of football. The moment between getting the ball and finding out whether you made the right read, I loved it. And it's why I understand what Underdog brings the sports fans. Because once you make your pick, you're not just watching anymore. Every snap matters, every yard matters, every decision matters. Everybody thinks they know what's coming next. Well, Underdog gives you somewhere to put that opinion into play. Pick them, money lines, totals, spreads, games and more across your favorite sports. So trust to read, make your call and see what happens. Download Underdog and get in on the action today. Underdog, unleash your dog. Trading and false risk including total loss on positions, content is promotion only not a recommendation to trade, terms apply. Kitchen and bathroom professionals know what goes behind the tile matters. That's why trade pros trust fiber cement, party backer board to keep tile firmly in place, resist cracking and help block moisture. Chosen in over 40 million kitchens and bathrooms, party backer board,

48:46what the best build on. Shop now at participating home depot, lows and floor into core stores. For more information, visit jameshardy.com slashhardybacker. You fell in love at first crunch and now the crispy chicken crunch wrap slider is back at Taco Bell, but with a twist, it's crispy all white meat chicken nuggets inside a slider sized crunch wrap. But now you can enjoy them with the kick of Hidden Valley Diablo Ranch or try the tortilla chip coated nuggets on their own. They're waiting for you. The crispy chicken crunch wrap slider, a brand new classic is back, only at Taco Bell.