Sam Stein Used to Be a Thief

0:00Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. We have a managing under Sam Stein back in the show and here's why. I'm going to tell you what. We're still at the end of the August Dull Drums. Okay. With the end of August Dull Drums, I don't know what Trump is doing if he's getting a face lift. He's just bleeding all day. But he has been a little less on the crazy lately as far as the new news is concerned. That's one thing where everybody's getting back in the school. They want a little fun. So I was like, what can we do this week to loosen it up a little bit? Sam's laugh is one thing. People have been counting that as new beard and they're a little worried about him. I received some tax for concerns that Sam has been on. I was on vacation getting into the hard drugs. And so what we're going to do here is we have a mailbag for you and the cabinet rankings.

1:02We're doing, we're just going to have fun. And we might dabble in some conspiracies because it's important to have fun and dabble in conspiracies because I was looking at the YouTube rankings. And the shit that is still in front of us, Sam, there is lefty conspiracy theories. Jimmy Dore is beating me. Do you know Jimmy Dore? He was doing a segment about whether Charlie Kirk was hit with a drone this week. That's beating me. Okay. The right wing nonsense. I once again was a segment that Charlie Kirk this week was hit with a drone. No, no, the death. But the assassination wasn't really a gunshot. It was a drone. And it was a pretty precise drone. I got to say, like just just the neck. Okay, didn't hit anybody else there at Utah University. How big was this drone? Small. And so you know, and then you got all the right wing losers beating us, Candice, Megan. And so I'm just like, this is not be the path, Sam, begging people to subscribe if you're watching on YouTube, click to subscribe. And also doing the types of content that people want, which is Natalie

2:06Harp conspiracies. Yeah, I don't want to be, I don't want to like beg people because that looks a little desperate. But like you guys should be out there. You guys should be subscribing as a way to bolster the idea that you don't have to dive so deep into the conspiracy land in order to be a success in this industry. Like help us prove the premise that you can be sane and still attracted audience. Just some like thoughts about I am traveling in some like thoughts about whether Natalie Harp is Russian or about her health, history, her story, her brother, the communist. I've got I have a lot of thought. Anyway, we'll get into all that at the end. Okay. Serious news first. Yes. Almost like 15 minutes of seriousness, 40 minutes of Sam interrupting me and laughing. New York Times this morning has done the analysis on the soaring number of arrests that ICE has done for non-criminals. It's been happening this summer. Thousands of people who had not previously been the focus of the mass deportation campaign have gotten rounded up.

3:06They included people married to US citizens, who we won the we sent to Central African Republic. People who had entered legally and were pursuing an asylum claim and then obviously the Haitians and others with temporary legal status that the administration pushed to revoke. We have a chart will put up for the video folks right now. And you can just see it's just like hockey stick go up of people who are being detained who have no criminal history, no issues at all. And that's what they're doing to get their numbers. Why do you think they're doing this? I mean, that was a question I was kind of asking. I had a couple theories. What's your theory? Well, one is that Mark Wayne Mullin had this brief period of time where people were mad at him. There was those two deaths and then they made some sort of policy change where they weren't going to do the traffic stop arrests and then everyone freaked out on the right about Mark Wayne. And so I think he recalibrated. That's one theory. The other is that Trump's got nothing else really going on and all the foreign policy stuff is distracting and so he's going back to his bread and butter. But those are the only ones I have and I don't know if you have any

4:12other profound thoughts. I would add to that. I mean, look, this is basically immigration and trade or the two things where there's any ideological coherence at all. They're very committed to a white-sownly immigration policy and they're very committed to deporting people. I do think that there's a genuine ideological effort and this is the easiest way to do it. I mean, if you want to get people out of the country, the easiest way to do it is to go, nab the people that you have in the system already. If you are a TPS, like you filed for TPS, we have your address. If you have a job, you're paying taxes. The government can find you very easily. I think they can find worse criminals too because that you went into jail. But there's that gray area of trying to find people who's stuck in the right like who that's not hard. That's a good point. So you start with the people who are in jail already and you ask the states for the records so you can go and get them thrown out. Loading in the group. You go after people who have work visas or who are here with some documentation, TPS status, and you go after them because you contract them down. Then it becomes

5:18a little harder and you can't just use the vehicle stops. You can, I guess, but it's going to backfire. But then you start looking for different ways to nab them. One story in particular stood out to me, like literally yesterday, and I guess it's that to me because my home state can advocate. But Senator Chris Murphy tweeted that there were ice arrests happening. Parents at school bus stops. Like that seems both sick and cruel and awful and inhumane. But to your point, it's like if you are trying just simply to get numbers and you know you've got to find people and you can't just knock on the door and enter. But like you start looking for places like bus stops at school districts that have a lot of immigrant kids. And it's awful. I mean what they're doing is a collective trauma and the idea that a parent has to wake up, you know, your parent, I'm parent, getting your kid ready for school is a pain in the fucking ass and it's chaos every morning. Imagine adding to that

6:22the additional moment of whether or not you're going to ever see your kid again. And just think about that. Second, the other people have been showing up for ice check ins, you know, the Asylees, right? Racial targeting, Kavanaugh stops. Like that's it. So that's what they're doing. Like they're doing less of like the ASMR porn of like, hey, we have these people in chains or putting out social media. They are doing less of that. But like they killed two people this summer. Right? I think it's just that like because of some of the circumstances, they're immigrants, you know, you're going to have more outrage and backlash if it's white American citizens that have been killed, which is be honest, right? And the video element, like the videos of good and pretty, we're just so there's so many angles. So striking and those summary execution in the streets. But like there are still continuing on with the other parts of this too. And with Maine, Houston, we've seen the other thing is they haven't like seemingly unlimited funds to do this, right? It would be one. And this is why it was so pernicious to give them all this money. Because if you have,

7:23if you have like a resource check on you, you start prioritizing, you do the things that actually matter and you don't just like, it's brand pride. But they have so much money to spend. You know, it was a story yesterday that kind of got under the radar, but Kimura, a regular Garcia, the sort of original big immigration story, you know, he's still not deported. Like his case is 16 months in. It's still going on. And it really comes down to this, which is the government wants to send to Liberia. His lawyer says he has no attachment to Liberia Liberia. Oh, Liberia might as well. Just keep going. Keep going. He wants to go to Costa Rica. Costa Rica, so they tell, take him. Literally, the government can just say cool. We'll send you to Costa Rica and be done with it. But because they can spend unlimited money, they're just willing to incur the cost of litigating this thing for, I don't even know what the reason is at this juncture, but they can

8:25just take the lieu of cost and eat him. And so you have stupid shit like this happening all over the place. Yeah. A little rumor, those flights for this morning that, you know, we know this have service happening, but like whether it's actually happening on Friday, but some immigration advocates had reached out and said the government has a flight for Afghans and Iranians that are going to the Central African Republic on Friday, including Afghans that helped us. Why are we sending them all to these African countries? We have some sort of mineral deal that, like, you know, we're getting exchanged. I feel like that's probably the other side of it. Yeah. I mean, look, well, part of it is like they avoid any issues to trumpet. In all these places, a few human rights violations. I incentive African public like the story of the man that that as Afram mentioned, like has a US citizen wife, Cuban immigrant. This was like these times people I thought that the Republicans were four, like the people fleeing communism and they didn't

9:26send them to Cuba. They sent them there. He doesn't know he has no money. He said in the middle of the Central African Republic, you can't get work there. Like what is what are you supposed to do? I think it's fucking insane. We're doing it. It's wild. Okay. So rumors that's happening on Friday. And I do think this is, again, we've seen, you know, this is a whack-a-mull thing, but we do see reactions to this when there is public outrage. So I do encourage people to continue writing their representatives about this. You know, we got Katie Ritt actually, we got her to put out a statement, baby. You did. Well, I know. And thank God I was on vacation when you were doing this whole thing, but I noticed and I was very happy. And honestly, and I don't mean this in like a shallow way. I was proud like that you were doing this shit because Katie Ritt, like it bothers me that she glossed on to this poor kid in Texas as like something she was crying about and couldn't stop thinking about. And then she stopped thinking about it. Did a whole New York Times take out? I'm thinking about this guy until Friday when I'm going to stop thinking about this guy.

10:28The beautiful, the classic New York Times picture of the, you know, person looking longingly at the window. They love that picture. It's like a pin-up picture of her. Is she like what? She had the, I think she had the state of the union response or, or I forget what, she had some speech or something like that. She had a horrible state of union response during the Biden era where she was in the kitchen. And it was like scream to, it was like scream to, they're the knives. There were some other, there were some other speech she gave her. I was thinking about that one. But there's some of the speech she gave her. She was like, didn't mention this kid who she apparently couldn't stop thinking about. She deserves all of it. The knives in the kitchen with the state of the union response. That was one of the weirder things that will stick with me from the 2020s. I deserve texting my friends being like, do I have Trump's arrangement syndrome or is this the weirdest shit you've ever seen in your life? And everybody like, it's so weird. Yeah, it was the airy voice. Yeah. I want to talk about the midterms a little bit. There's this report in the Atlantic. It really tickles me. Trump had novel office meeting about how to spend their super-packed money. What have kind of the less covered elements of the corruption of this administration

11:33is how they're driving people, corporations, but also rich people to just give huge amounts of money to their super-pack. And in part because it's like, administration's always did this kind of on a small level, which like, well, you know, one good way to get response back from the candidate is to donate to the super-pack. So this isn't so different. Like, some a lot of the other stuff that Trump is doing is like, unprecedented corruption. But Ikea is doing it on just a high-pressure scale. Like the reports I hear of people, you know, like Brian Ballard, like the close lobbyists, like clients call them, be like, can we hire you to lobby? And it's like, yeah, the entry fee is whatever, 50 grand a month or whatever, but also you got to give a million dollars to Maggie, and I'm like, Maggie, and super-packed, and then we'll take you. I'd go, just crazy levels of credit. So they have all this money, they just, they, one, unprecedented part of this is just how much money is in their super-pack right now. For the midterms, a lot of Democratic strategists have talked to or worried about this. And we have maybe a silver lining,

12:34because Trump called all the strategists in the Oval Office, according to three people familiar with the meeting, according to Atlantic. He told them he thinks that they should spend the money on ads that focus on him. The president wants a series of ads focused on his own record. He suggested the ad makers mine his own on-camera statements as the building blocks. Quote, go look at the clips the president told the team. I cite accomplishments all the time. You're in comms, refer to this, like, come on, how many times have you been with the cany? Who's like, we just need to advertise better about me, right? Like, it's like a classic. That's the problem. We're not doing the ads about how great I am. He's got like 400-minute effort. I don't want to get the figure. 400 million, I think, is it? Yeah. It's something crazy. I've been wondering why he hasn't spent this. We're what? 68 days away. He spent, I think, 800 grand to help Darlene Graham. 800 grand. He spent some money to be Thomas Massey. Not even one hundredth of the total. He's spent some money to be Thomas Massey, I think. So he spent a little bit in the primary.

13:37He's got a little late in the game. I mean, what are they waiting for? I found a Republican, I'd be a little bit upset. You're sitting on all this money and it's like, you're going to let us just get killed here. The strategy I was talking to was, I'm thinking of one conversation ahead in Iowa in particular. I'm talking to the Iowa Democratic Party folks. And they're like, look, we feel pretty good about sand. Obviously, we're on a good race. I've had the polls we talked about that was near yesterday. Torek, kind of a coin flip, good candidate, bad year. The thing that they're the most worried about though is like, Iowa still went to Trump by 11 or 12 last time. And they're worried that they have this huge, you know, war chest that it's hard and advertising to like convince people in farm country that things are great when they're shitty. But it's kind of easy and advertising to go talk to Republicans about how the Democrat is crazy. Right. And so that's what they were worried about. They'll just be able to keep a lid on the Democratic ability to win over Trump voters because there'll just be so much advertising, you know, talking about how there's Sharia Law communists that you don't want to seize their farmland and give it to China

14:39or whatever that they do. And if they don't use the money for that and they use it instead for these ads that could maybe even backfire that are just like Mr. Trump and like, things are great. Well, imagine the best economy ever, golden age. That would be a dream come true, really. I would love to see the ad that Trump, if like Trump actually got into the business of making the ad himself and picking the accomplishments. I mean, you said early up top that it's been like less than crazy week for Trump. And I guess so. But I was also sort of perusing his true social feed yesterday. He put up five posts in an hour about how clean the waterfall is at Meridian Hill Park in DC. I was just like, whoa, this is what I think is happening. I think he's getting the hair transplant. He's sitting around, you know, you can't go out and so he's just bleeding. Sure. Well, my point is would he would an ad that he crafted for the midterms include a lot of footage of Meridian Hill Park. And the eye winds being like, what the fuck is this park? Why,

15:44this is not this is not an look at the big beautiful fountain. Look at the beautiful fountain. It used to be homeless people and drugs and they called it Malcolm X Park. Obviously, if it's a bunch of ads focused on Trump and that's how they spend their money, Democrats would be positively thrilled. Both because they want to make the election about Trump. And then to your larger point, which is more interesting is that I think the only way Republicans do pull this thing out is to figure out a way to somehow both depressed Democratic votes, which I don't think is going to happen because I think Democrats are at this point willing to just absolutely do anything. But to more or less compel those fence hitters to just say, I'd rather not vote than vote Democrat. I don't think they're going to be able to juice turn out that much on their side of the aisle. If I had to get... I look at Trump one. If you look at this, Sarah was really good on this 2024 talking about the double haters. Not to trigger everybody by going back to 2024 or one happened. But basically what happened is like Trump won in

16:4516 and 24 because he won the double haters in Biden one in 20 because Biden won them like essentially is like what happened. And obviously it's more complicated than that, but that is true. The thing here is there's not a second person to hate. I guess the point is that if you get these Republicans that are unhappy with Trump that also don't like the Democrats, if you can get them to turn out anyway and hold their nose for Trump. And in a place like I... Well, I think that's a tougher sell in some of these states. In a place like Iowa, even older electorate, they're used to voting. I mean, I could vote anyway. And it's like, okay, well, I'm unhappy with Trump, but I'm not going to vote for two Democrats. Maybe I'll vote for Rob Sand. I just think that that's the best case that they have. What Sand Seltzer poll in this rate? Two soon. Two soon. Two soon. Two soon. Two soon. Sorry. Sorry. I almost had a stroke right there. Hold on. What am I supposed to talk about next? Oh, I don't know the thing. Yeah. Fucking Seltzer, dude. Honestly. I'm going to be an old old man. I remember exactly where I was when that poll came out. And I remember slacking with you and Sarah and we did a take right away.

17:48And we were just like, the vibes were so great. Yeah. The take only is my picture in the thumbnail. It's a good sent to me about once a month by Maga people. Not upset at all about that. Okay. Other bleat, the Trump sent. This is hilarious. I love Trump is so mad at Congress. He simultaneously thinks he's done all these things. He's not getting credit for and that the Republicans in Congress are cucks, right? And so Trump doesn't realize like how this looks, I guess, but he rebleets whatever you want to call it. A post from a guy who writes the foul. This is on Trump social media. Matt is the guy's name. Right wing, that job. And he wrote this. I don't think the GOP fully grasped how badly they're fucking up right now. I'm talking to people who normally have zero interest in politics who are legitimately pissed off. They're not seeing the major reform. They thought what happened and they're really mad about it. No true accountability, no true mass deportations. Okay. No meaningful decrease in the deficit. Lots of very long

18:49vacations and no work. People are pissed. They voted Trump into office and the GOP continues to slow off every reform people want. Where are the doge cuts or is the save act? People are looking up. They're not happy about it. People believe they're voting for the Trump agenda instead. Then he feel like they're getting the same old Washington. If Republicans in Congress don't start producing results, they're going to discover that frustration has consequences. And the time they realize that it might be too late. Trump posted that. Do you see these that as an attack on Congress? Yeah. I mean, so the most predictable thing is what happens when if and when they lose in November, Trump's not going to be like, yeah, that was on me. I shouldn't have done that. It's going to be like John Thune fucked up and should have passed the save act and we would have won. And like everyone can see this one coming a million miles away, I think. And so it should be fun. It's pretty encouraging actually because if Trump has already accepted that it's a loss and he's just going to blame John Thune and Mike Johnson. He doesn't even care about Congress anyway, because he does whatever he wants on the things that he cares about or the ballroom via

19:50executive order. And that is kind of disincentivizes the cheating process. And I do think that, sure, they're already trying to cheat with Jerry Mandering and they'll keep trying to cheat. But like to have the will to really create problems, like you need Trump to be fully locked in on that. Like he was fully locked in on the stop the steal, right? And it kind of seems like he's like pretty locked in on the East way. Well, let's be clear by that though, because the fully locked in on stop the steal came after the election. Right. Right. Like so we don't know. Like it's possible that it's possible we wake up on November 4th or whatever. And it's relatively close. And Trump's like, Oh man, I could really fuck with this shit. That's true. You know, for sure. I've been more worried about the post a pretty for a while. Yeah, this is just a story I just want to cover briefly, because we haven't talked about it. And I guess you did an interview. Was it you? The other reason, yeah, I relistened to it. It was gone. So go this story's been kind of on the

20:53low simmer for months. It's about around the Santa's. I guess people just don't care about around the Santa's anymore. He's on his way out. He has no hope to run for president anymore. You know, it's kind of like, okay, so it's hard to give and get people to dandruff about outrage. But it's a free shocking story. A state grand jury found that the Santa's administration quote, misappropriated taxpayer money when it diverted 10 million from a Medicaid settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation from the Hope Florida Foundation. They had a sophisticated scheme where they passed that money through multiple organizations before landing the bank accounts of two packs and the Republican Party of Florida. Those funds were then used to defeat a legalized marijuana ballot initiative. So to sum up like the grand jury found basically that they took Medicaid money should be going to healthcare for poor people and use it instead to give to the Santa's friends political consultants to do ads against a legalized marijuana ballot initiative. To which I ask, where is Nick Shirley? Where's Nick Shirley? Where's Nick?

21:55Where's my man? He's got to get on this one. It's such a convoluted story and that pretty much summarizes it. But there are a few components. I re-listen to the, so I re-listen to the interview I did with the reporter who broke this story. And it's even crazier in a way. So basically this Medicaid settlement happened with this company that overcharged states for prescription drugs. And a lot of states trumpeted the fact that they had this settlement. Once they did not trump at the fact that they had this settlement was Florida. They kept it very quiet. No one knew that Florida had gotten $67 million in this settlement. It was just not there. And then they were talking about separately this Hope Florida initiative, which to summarize more or less is like we are going to use state administrators to take people who would normally be on food stamps or whatever government assistance programs and send them to churches. That's what Hope Florida does. It was a casey de-Santis initiative. Some of Hope Florida got a $10 million infusion and no one really knew where it

23:00came from. Well, if you dug into it, what happened was that they took $10 million from the 67 million dollar settlement that they never announced, sent it to Hope Florida. But then they didn't just keep it in Hope Florida. They took that $10 million as you know and put it to these anti-Merawan initiatives that they were trying to defeat in the state of Florida. And all this, which is crazy, and undocumented and done basically by executive fiat, had the sign off of really big players in the DeSantis orbit, including the current state of attorney general, apparently, and then Ashley Moody, who was now now a senator. The attorney general is just like basically a grog- I had some random guy that was like, you know, one of these, you know, that person people who wants me to be to call more balls and strikes be like, why aren't you going to the Democrats more like, Trump's going to be gone in two years. What kind of Republicans are coming behind? And I was like, you have no idea the type of Republicans that are in these ways. Yeah, that are in the wings. Yeah, go look at the New York Republican party. Yeah, and I enjoy James W. Bush as the attorney general

24:04of Florida. Let me tell you. I look at this stuff and it's like so transparently corrupt and it's unbelievable. And they're all like, well, I don't remember ever signing someone obviously fucking remembers it. It's like, the Fluteans look at this stuff and say, man, maybe we should try something new, right? Like, I guess I know I understand the Florida Democratic Party is in shambles and the people that they're putting up are quacks and crazies too, not all of them. But like, do you look at it and you're like, oh, you know, like, do we want this? Is this right? Like, maybe we should like dabble in something new. I don't think David Jollyland, that governor is racist crazy. Like, what does that like, what has happened inside his brain? It's just like, they're out of the day he was talking about how people who moved to Florida from blue states were stupid. And yesterday as a clip of him, where he's talking about how they're going to one thing is going to work on is the roads and make sure there's no potholes so that the ladies have a nice smooth drive when they go to get their hair done. I'm like, what? I'll vote for that. Hell yeah. Okay.

25:04No one wants to have their hair poppin. Anyway, I don't know. I think he's got a chance. All right. We're about to get to the fun part. But before we do, tomorrow's pod. I'm like obsessed with what's happening in Russia right now. The Russians and the Iranians are having a meeting. Trump might have stumbled into world with three. We sent our CIA director to Russia. I guess to warn them not to invade NATO, but simultaneously reports seem like Russia is indicating that that since we're running out of material, maybe they are going to try and get serious form policy matters tomorrow. So do you have any other serious matters before we get to the cabinet rankings? No, I've been waiting for to do this, the fun shape for a while. This is too much serious shit already. Yeah. Do you need a shot or something? You're a little, you're a little low energy jab right now. I'm not. I am not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I will start with this before we get to the counter rankings. Boy, do we love our fans in Canada. You know, Sam came with me and Sarah, the three of us had those live shows trying to

26:05communicate with Canada. That's true. Canadians to get madty. I want to go back in 2027. I want to go back to Canada. We love all the listeners we have up there. See it in the numbers. And I don't know for sure if this reporter is a listener of the show, but they were at the Doug Ford press conference yesterday. And it seems like they probably listened to us just based on context clues. Let's listen. You talked yesterday in your interviews about your confidence that a deal can be reached. But today you were talking about the problems that people like Howard not look. Howard let Nick and other members of the administration present. Not like as you can. You've got international. I believe. I love that. Howard not like scuttle to deal. We'll see if he makes it a counter rankings. If you have missed it, Sam and I've been doing this for a while now. Every quarter or so. We update our rankings of the worst members of the Trumps cabinet. Very competitive category. It's really tough to

27:11narrow it down to the top five. You know, you got to do a lot of pruning. The April rankings. I just want to remind people of this kind of set of baseline. Sam had worst cabinet member Pete Hegseth, second worst RFK junior, third, best end, fourth, Chris Wright, sleeper, fifth, Marco Rubio. In April, I also had Hegseth first. We had the same there. I had Rubio to Todd Blanch, three, RFK four, and Brooke Rollins was my sleeper in the fifth slot. Secretary of Agriculture who is bankrupting farm country and telling all of us that we should grow chickens in our backyard. So you don't grow chickens, mother fucker. I don't like plant them in the ground. They don't grow. You get a chicken. You feed it. It grows. You grow a chicken. Is that not right? Like a fucking bush. Okay. So, cabinet ranking said, I'm going to give you the members of the cabinet that kind of made my consideration list. So these are like, there's no way. These are the nominees. There's some not there who we just

28:14would never put in the five. Yeah, well, it's just Marco Rubio, Bessent, Hegseth, and Blanch, and the four power ministries. Obviously, we're going to consider all them. Rollins isn't going to make the cut this time. So I didn't want to mention her. Okay. Nut lick, of course, RFK Jr. Sean Duffy has really been making an ass out of himself lately. Linda McMahon at education. I felt like she had to be nominated because just yesterday, did you see this? No. The Department of Education posted a video comparing Trump to Hitler. I did see that. Yeah. And then deleted it. So, you know, that's where Linda McMahon is right now. We're doing Trump, Trump Hitler videos. Russ Vogue, I want to throw in there. And I did want to mention she's never made a top five. I don't know if she will this time, but small business administration administrator Kelly left. Just because that's did. Did put out a video. She did put out a video where she, I believe that she's not a human. I think I'm now increasingly thinking the aliens exist. I think that they're throwing us off the scent by releasing

29:17somebody supposed alien files. And I think the Kelly left and Jared Kushner are non-human beings. They don't look comfortable at all in their old own skin. They could be from men and black. And I think having an alien in the cabinet is concerning. So those are kind of the nominees. Do you want to start with your fifth or first? You're going to go first to fifth or fifth to first. You didn't listen to who I have in my top five. Oh, really? Who's that? Mark Wayne. Oh, Mark Wayne Mullin. Yes, he should have been in the nominee list. You're right. Yeah, it was an oversight. Okay. So one more time with the possibilities. Kelly left a rest vote. Mark Wayne Mullin, Linda McMahon, Sean Duffy, RFK Jr., Nutlic Blanche, Hegseth, Bessent, Rubio. Right. He's not in my top five. I do, I think he could have maybe cracked your, we should consider him rotation. Bergen, for all the reflecting pull nonsense and how shady the America 250 thing was. Thank you for bringing that up because he also has been managing the Department of Interior horribly. They're firing all kinds of people randomly.

30:18Like, both in Texas in this in around the big band. Yeah, big Ben. He was defending the big band wall. Yes, it is despicable actually what he was doing to that man, the Olympian, that did nothing. And after he was, it was announced that they weren't going to investigate him anymore, Bergen publicize that they still want to go after him more and that he did it. He's just just aligning this guy. So, but yet he's not in my top five. I would put him six. So just putting it out there. All right, you want my five? Well, I think we'll just go one at a time here. Well, what are we going five to one as in like the least worse to the worst? Let's do that. Yeah, okay, sure. Who's your number five choice? Blanche. Blanche. Number five. Boy, that's tough. That shows you how competitive the category is. It's a great field when Blanche is number five. There's a lot going wrong, but Blanche, you know, he sucks. What can you say? The weaponization shit, the fact that he wouldn't back away from it, the settlement on IRS auditing with Trump,

31:18just the way he kind of bulldozed the senators and in the confirmation. And then of course, obviously DOJ is just, isn't that even like hiding the ball that the DOJ is an arm for Trump? In fact, he's embracing it. So like, yeah, he probably could have been four or three, but there's just, there's just real stuff coming. It's hard. I mean, it's just really hard. The people, I had to cut. All right. Let's hear your number four. Duffy. He makes his debut. Duffy makes his top five. He makes his debut. I can't swallow this dumbass series that he put up about him vacationing across the country, not because the content's so shitty, which it is. And the way he's like, you know what? Like he's like, he's dropping infomercials in for like credit cards and stupid shit like that. And then on top of that, the way he's treating his daughter who wants just wants to like be able to say, hey, can I apply to Harvard? Harvard? No. No, they're going to indoctrinate you. Like it's just, it's corrupt. It's just so corrupt. He's just taking bribes. So yeah, he cracks my top fork. And also it's personal. It's personal. It's personal. I've flown a couple times this summer.

32:21It fucking sucks. I'm sorry to curse so much for those in the car, but I've had horrible experiences. And I know that's not necessarily just his fault, but I blame them. I thought you were to say it's personal because you're still mending fences with the Canadians. And you know, like his smearing of them is not having a military when that dead Canadians, you know, were buried because they came to our defense after we were attacked in 9-11. We did nothing except try to steal their land and make fun of their beauty little eyes. Horrible. Yeah, that was bad. I didn't like that. I should have put that in there too. Thank you for okay. All right, you own my three. I do. Mark Wayne. For all the reasons we are articulated. Yeah, I mean, I see his record setting or us in terrorizing parents and rumors of them like going now into, you know, Springfield or how with the Haitians there. And it's like, no, not good, buddy. Not great. Obviously, we led the segment with ice. I did a whole video at this morning over on YouTube. You can watch about like just some specific horrifying stories. And spite of all that, Mark Wayne doesn't make my list because the cabin

33:23is so bad. And I really, and it's really Stephen Miller. Like this is Stephen Miller. Mark Wayne is a vessel for Stephen Miller. And that is the reason that why I don't use them. Duffy also didn't make my list. So we have two different memories. And my top two are the same as last time. I got RFK at two. My brother, we got measles deaths in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And he's talking about natural measles being. I want to pause here because I feel like as just going to self-assessment of my work on this podcast, the RFK beat is the one that's the toughest for me to follow. I'm not only am I not one sixteenth of a scientist like JVL. My ACT score was brought down by like three points just based on my science category. I was at the top of the chip pops on math and all the other stuff. Science, I was like down at forest gump levels. So it's hard for me to understand this stuff. And so I don't cover it as much. And so I'm as and you do you and cone. This is kind of your you know among the things you're

34:27really locked in on. If you're going to put RFK at number two, I want like a two minute RFK hate where you explain what's been happening with them. I don't know if two minutes is going to suffice. But there has been 2,800 cases of measles this year. That's the most in three decades. And this man has the audacity to say that's because of Joe Biden. Okay. He won't take ownership for the fact that he spreads nauseous, problematic, anti-vaccine nonsense across the country. And when kids die, which is happening, he then has the gall to go out there and tell the governor of Pennsylvania, you know what natural measles may actually be the way to do it. On top of that, he oversees a bureaucracy that's tasked with making sure that our food supply is protected. In fact, this is a big feature of his political appeal. I'm going to make food great. And I can't buy a bag of fucking lettuce without worrying I'm going to have explosive diarrhea. So if food's not particularly

35:29great, on top of that, beef's not particularly great. On top of that, food prices aren't particularly great. We don't know if we have proper food inspectors. If that was it, that would be enough. But it goes so far beyond there because we're standing on the cusp of incredible breakthroughs in cancer treatments. mRNA technology could make us have personalized immunotherapies for cancers if all goes according to plan. And RFK Jr. hates mRNA and is launched to campaign against it and is sat on top of a bureaucracy that is systematically gutted the federal investments in groundbreaking research, including into cancer research. And he has the audacity to say he wants to make America healthy again. That to me is an abdication of leadership. It's an indication that he is not fit for this role. And it's a sad, sad commentary that he somehow has stayed not just in the cabinet, but atop our healthcare bureaucracy. So he is number two.

36:32A number one for your speed, Higgseth. Great job on that on RFK. Andy is a fucking brain worm. Andy has seen his diary and went to his life. Okay, never mind. On the, that's your top five. Sam, Higgseth, RFK, Mullen, Duffy, Blanche. Wow, we're going to have some divergence. So we're going to get to see some comments and let people know who's, who they think is more in touch with the incompetence in this administration and who's doing the most damage. You do not even list my number one. Come on. You didn't even list my number one. I'll just leave it like that. I'm going number five, RFK. Junior, you covered it. I kind of didn't want to include them. I wanted to include Bessent. We discussed Bessent a lot on Tuesday. I've got some more Bessent material coming in the mail bag. The two measles deaths this week pushed RFK over Bessent. You know, once you start causing actual deaths, you got to make the top five. Number four is the aforementioned Howard Nutlick. I mean, he created a trade war single handedly. I mean, I

37:34think it's too handedly with Trump. There's also this insane Vandy Ferris story. People should read this week, which is like, he has gotten himself in the Department of Commerce involved in this like real estate deal with the Pietta tear issue and he's kicking Tory birch out of her house. He's wrecking havoc everywhere he goes and his kids are corrupt and Howard Nutlick is number four. He's back in the ranking. I think it's in my very first ranking he was in it. It hasn't been in for a while. Number three is Todd Blanche. You kind of covered this. I'd be like having the Department of Justice be an arm of the president's vengeance. It's extremely bad. Any other administration, Todd Blanche would be far and away the worst attorney general option. And all we can do is hope that he suffers the same fate that Nixon's attorney general suffered. Number two is Pete Higgs. Which we didn't really cover that much in years, but like we both have him in the top two. He changed the name of the Vardo Defense Department of War, started one war lost.

38:42That way, yeah. I don't know what else to do really with him. He was in Iowa. He's doing push-ups. He's like, has this new thing where he keeps saying, trainees, like you think that's going to help. He's like, oh, if I use a pejorative about trans people and talk about how tough our military is and how we have real men, real fighters. And it's just like, man, maybe you'd be better off if you had trans people running the military because what's going on right now is a fucking disaster. People are jumping off ships. So Pete exists too. And as you mentioned, my number one is root. You love shit. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. He is the national security advisor. Like Marco Rubio is the secretary of state and the national security advisor. I think you might also be like the grand marshal of the spring court, like the auditor of the post office or something. You're not talking about two. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I don't know what's happening with the archives. I'm sure it's not going well because nothing he's doing is going well. Everyone just kind of wants to like, oh, he's the fixer in here. He's the serious one. Marco's one people turn to.

39:44Based on what? Like the job of the secretary of state is to be the chief diplomat. How are we doing in diplomacy right now with our allies? Has Marco done really a great job of navigating diplomacy with our NATO allies? No, they all hate us. How about our Middle Eastern allies? They're all begging Trump not to continue escalating the war that he started. The Kuwaitis are like, what the fuck is happening? We had thought we were close allies and now like the Iranians are bombing our infrastructure. We might have to kick your military bases out of our country. That Kuwait started talking about that this week. They might kick our soldiers out of the country. And then how are things going in Central America? Well, we're doing coups. Most of all the governments besides El Salvador, hate us and Argentina will see what happens there. We're bombing things in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Caribbean. What are the points to point to from the diplomacy side of things where he is improving things? I guess we're improving my citizenship from North Korea that that seems to be a one to one Trump to Kim Jong-un thing. South Korea, they hate us. Like so Marco has totally failed

40:47as chief diplomat at Secretary of State. National security adviser, I would think would be the main adviser for the stupidest war that I've ever thought of. I went back and relisted this morning to our podcast from before the war started. I had Jonathan Chaiton before it started. I was literally on the show being like, I don't understand this. There's no objective. This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. What are these guys doing? Marco Rubio was the national security adviser that advised Trump. You would think to get us into this war that had no objective and that's been a total disaster. At least JD Vance has been leaking that he was against it privately. Marco, I kind of half-ass leaked that he was worried about this, but that it seems like he didn't do anything to stand in the way of it. He's still the national security adviser. Do we feel more secure right now? Is he doing a good job at that? Like Marco has been just an utter catastrophe. I guess the only thing people would point to is that the coup in Venezuela was like successful for a military standpoint, but we'll see how that goes long-term. I don't think things are going that great in

41:48Venezuela right now. For me, it's not like a mark of a good thing that we did a coup and now we're stealing oil from another country. Okay, that's the feather in his cap that he's going to run for. Everybody's like JD, such a clown. Marco is really the guy to watch out for. What record is Marco running on? The worst foreign policy since the Iraq war? Sorry, though. Yeah, but the national archives has never been been- Marco. That's where we're at. He's doing a horrible job. Marco, Hegseth, Blanche, Nutlic, RFK, Jr. I'd have to check the archives, but I think that's the first time we've had Rubio as your one. So this is new ground here. Welcome to the list, Marco. Welcome to the top of the list. So people can vote in the comments and who's who made a more compelling case for their list? Jiminy critiques of mine? Anything? No, those are solid. You're making me reconsider, Marco. That's a very bad case. Thank you. It was tough not to put Kelly left for on the list. I mean, if you can't walk like a human, it's pretty concerning about what's happening inside the cabinet. Honestly, if you hadn't seen it in your audio listener, go watch it. Please, please watch. Please

42:50do. Please come to the video and watch us. And then we get- and then we get double counted. You know that's nice. All right. We're on to the mail back. Yeah. Are you ready? I'm ready. Pod's already been long. It's going to be a good show long show. You got anywhere to be? Probably. You are the managing editor of the site, right? Well, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Pulling up the calendar. Yeah, I got an 11, but I'll push it back, though. Okay. You're the Camarco of the of the website. I guess Jared Polind is really the Marco of the board. Jared is- I want to start with number one just because it kind of it's a little it just kind of gets as ready for all this. Sarah had a very innocent question, which is what's your go-to morning routine, coffee, Twitter, sunshine, best wishes, Sarah. I thought it was interesting because Sam asked me to provide him the questions last night, but my morning routine is like this. I get up, usually on 630, sometimes 7, and I don't leave the bed. Okay. I don't leave the bed. I have a great life. Listen to how amazing my life is. My husband who gets up like the crack of dongs he doesn't

43:52sleep brings me an iced coffee. Oh, come on. Yeah. And then I sit in the bed and I go, what are we going to talk about today? I'm reading the news. I'm reading all the newsletters. I'm creating an outline. And I sit there for two hours and then I take the podcast at nine. And during that time, you know, I'm thinking about what you all are going to like. I'm having two ice coffees. I go and brush my teeth and put on a shirt like this y'all can do a shirt and then I come upstairs. And that's it. That's my morning routine. Sam must be much busier than me. Because last night, like 11 o'clock, he's like, where's my, where are my questions? And I'm like, you're going to get them in the morning when I do the outline, but you must have had a lot of things going on because you didn't, you didn't review the outline until like five minutes before we started. So what's happening for you? Slowly different morning routine. I get up, I go downstairs, like cook my kids breakfast. I horrible. That's not horrible. Yeah, I got a dog. Let the dog out. Make sure dog peas. Discover that because the dog's urine is absolutely destroying my

44:54lawn. I often then have to take a hose pocket hose and spray the lawn like just to wash out the urine. This is all in the morning. Then, you know, get my coffee, sit down, make sure that with my wife, my loving wife, make sure that the kids' lunches are prepped for school. Jump into morning shop. It seems like she does the lunches and you're just kind of, you're just there for quality control. No. Okay. The way you said, make sure the lunches are done. It kind of, just the way you phrased it. There's a couple of implications there that my life is absolutely burning. I should add kids' lunches and I got to make sure. That's not true. Then I get on the computer. I got to make sure the morning shots is decent or at least I hope it's these. Our morning newsletter sign up for the board. Yeah, I'm just signing up. It's great newsletter. We spend a lot of time working on the headlines as Tim is aware and then I drive into work and make a couple phone calls to reporters to talk about what they're working on on the way into work, get into work and do my 10 a.m. call. Oh, sorry. I forgot. I also walk the kids to school. So I got

45:58a late show of a 10 a.m. Yeah, I got you. I show up for the 10 a.m. call. That sounds like a peaceful morning. One thing I forgot to mention just because I don't want to, it feels rude because I don't leave the bed right. So it's like you hard to nitpick my husband when he's doing all those things that you do. But there's a lot of yelling like between two of them as your shoes on. Brush your teeth. And I'm like, I'm doing my outline. Shut up. They're blaring, Dally Parton this morning. You know, Keshe offense. So is yours peaceful or is yours? Do you have yelling also? No, and it's not peaceful ever. And usually it's sort of just falls all apart about 10 minutes before they need to get out the door. One of them does not socks. And the other one has to go poop. They start screaming at each other. The dog's getting a little antsy. I forgot to feed the dog. So I got to feed the dog. You know, there's always like chaos right there. And then you start getting anxious like, okay, we got to get out the door. Can I get out the door? What a pleasant morning. One thing that doesn't happen is drinking. I had some people that have been suggesting for time to time that I'm

47:02drunk on the podcast or that a guest is. There's never a drunk guest. We taped this podcast at 9am central time. Okay. Everyone suggests if we're if we're getting a little loose, it's just because we're creating fun content for you guys. Okay. Question two. That was from Sarah. Thank you, Sarah. Thanks. Thanks for caring about our lives. We're getting sillier from here. This is Nick and Erie Pennsylvania. It was this email from Nick that prompted me to say we've got to do another mail back just so you know it's such a good email. So we'll start with him. Shout out Nick. Not sure why Scott Besson can be so triggering. Obviously there's the smugness and smariness. But also he sounds like his mouth is full of saliva when he talks. I think there might also be something about someone who either thinks they're good on TV or just likes being on TV but isn't good at all. Can't put my finger on it. Also, I have an indelicate follow-up question. Could you give special dispensation to the Straits to use the F slur for Besson? I think you have the authority to do that Nick and Erie. I do have the authority and I will feel that in a second Sam. What

48:03do you have any thoughts? He raises an interesting question about who does he sound? I can't tell if he sounds like he's got his mouth filled with saliva. Kind of does. Kind of yeah. But like who are other people who like think they're good on TV but are not good on TV? Sam. And I noticed yeah, I noticed in the Google Doc. No, he said me. So thank you for that. You're so much better on YouTube than on TV and it's a compliment. That's why people come here to the borough.com. I guess I feel like I'm good on TV. You're pretty good. Like a B on TV but you're an A here, you know? I'm gonna have to. Okay. I thought the audience who fuck off. I thought the obvious answer here was JD Vance. Yeah. Like JD is someone who has supreme confidence. There is a JD and Besson parallel across all of those things. Like they're both extremely smug and smarmy and condescending. Yeah. They both think that they're way better than they are. You know, and you can kind of see them laughing at their own jokes and like let and for JD

49:06it's one of the laughing in his own jokes for Besson. It's like you can see him kind of smirk at how clever his little maneuver is. Like he thinks he's come up with a clever little spin on whatever terrible economic news there is when he goes on TV. He thinks he's got one over on Kristen Welker and that is off putting. I would also I'd also put Stephen Miller in carry but I don't think Stephen Miller thinks he's good. I don't think he thinks he's good. Yeah. Yeah. And he's just mean. He's kind of sending it away but it's kind of in a there's something about the smarliness that he doesn't have. He can't even get that. He can't even reach that register. You know. Yeah. I got you. Like Scott and JD think they're pulling one over on you. Yeah. Stephen does him. He's just like he's just like he's just like sending rounds back. Okay. Yeah. To the question of whether I can give dispensation of the straights to use the F-slur I do have that power. Congrats. And I take it seriously. And I thought about this I laughed because if there ever was somebody that deserves the F-slur it's really Scott that sense. I mean he encapsulates the word

50:12in every possible manner like the way that he carries himself he used to live in a Barbie house. He's almost like a stereotype of like in a different era he would have been on the TV show is like the rich uncle that is always a confirmed bachelor that they don't ever say that he's gay but he has all of the gay stereotypes traits. So like you want to say it so bad and I have bad news for you Nick only I get to do it. Sorry. Sorry. Only other guys get to do it. It's close. I thought you were going to give him. I know. I wanted to give it to him. But unfortunately we got to protect our ability to say the F-slur. And yeah I was in the LSU tailgate once a couple of years ago and that's kind of in a little small group of like my closest friends and then a couple of their friends and one of them dropped the F-slur to make fun of I think the opposing teams coach or player. And I looked at him and I was like and you know he looks back at me and it's like well I thought we were cool though. And I was like you know Blake and Grant could do it. Like they're in the

51:16inner circle but like you're not there yet you know you got to really protect it. So Nick maybe you can grow into it. Sam the next two questions are for you. But I'm going to weigh in on the first one. You had a show this is from Joe and Casper. You had a show called Candidate Confessionals. He's a big fan. I talked to losing candidates and staffers about their races. Talk to me once actually about the John Huntsman race. I believe. No we talked about jab. We do we do jab. And there are two questions you have. Because I talked to Huntsman. Oh that's right. Yeah that's right. I think I'm going to connect to you with Huntsman and did Joe. I think that's what happened. Yeah. Two questions from Joe. Which of those losers ran the worst campaign? As in they may have been able to win. They had a better strategy. And number two as a Jew you've never experienced a joy of a real confessional and he's wondering if you want to confess to your Catholic priest Tim. So it's hard to say who ran the worst campaign because they all lost.

52:19Right. Like the most torturous there's different variations of this as I was thinking about it. One of my favorite episodes is and this is actually appropriate because we talked about Doug Ford. His brother Rob Ford famously was caught buying or taking crack and it was a remarkable scandal. And yet somehow managed to win the mayor's ship of Toronto even with that happening. And we interviewed the guy he beat. Like how do you lose to Rob Ford? And you like got caught with crack. But that wasn't even like the guy had a compelling reason for why he lost which is that you know it was very hard to actually tack Rob Ford for the crack because people were like yeah you know you fucked up but we all fuck up. So I would just say yeah. So I would just say in terms of like looking back at all the interviews we did for that series and I love that series and I'm kind of want to bring it back. The obvious answer is when we interviewed Ron Clayton about Al Gore.

53:22That is a race where it feels like if you did two things better you're really good. It's exactly. There's like there's like a very like it's not just a butterfly effect. It's like 50 butterfly effects. Right. It's like there's just little things here and there and if we had just filed it this day and like done this and and he thinks about it all the time. He's like of course I think about this stuff and that of course obviously the consequences of that are profound. Yeah. Since I'm going to do my answer to this too just so that's all the races I was in since I did a new convention. Fred Thompson is the answer. The O8 primary was so like he had he really could have won. Nobody liked any of the candidates. The Republicans in the field. The Democrats this was kind of proto T party Democrats conceivably could run up against this next time. But it's like McCain it's mitz first time. It's Rudy is still pro choice Rudy and then the conservatives like Huckabee is just like you're not gonna make Huckabee your nominee. There wasn't anybody that was like the perfect fit to get the kind of populist or the Christian voters or the Chamber of Commerce voters and get them all together. Fred Thompson comes in the late and kind of

54:23like has it like he's celebrity. Like can he done some culture war stuff and like really tried. I think he could have he could have been the nominee. But he ends up like wearing $400 floor shim shoes to the Iowa State Fair and like riding around in a golf cart and he doesn't even try and like he doesn't learn anything on the debate stage. He looks like Admiral Stockdale. So I'd be him. If you enjoyed this, want more flashbacks me and Bill have decided we are going to do the 1994 2006 retrospective episode for the Labor Day podcast. So we're gonna do a midterm preview looking back at past waves. People wanted it. For many people. Question two is you've never experienced a driver real confessional. What would you like to confess to father Tim? There I think the question is that what what's sin or what I confess to and it is something that's kind of haunted me a little bit and it's a crime and it's not like I wouldn't say it's totally victimless but it's some of victimless and it's a great shame in fact in my family that I got caught

55:24doing this. But back when I was in DC when I was very young and I was not making much money in this industry and I was obviously in the news occasionally every now and then I would go into a bodega on Sunday and I would steal the Sunday New York Times. It was very expensive and I didn't and I was like I can't spend this money but I also need this information. So I was like that guy and layman has taken bread. We're known to writer. I mean I was bad. You're stealing the New York Times. You asked me for a confessional and that is the nerdiest confession I've ever had in my life. You didn't steal any sigs or a forwarding. No I didn't. If I wanted sigs I'd have a friend an older person buy them for me. But I got caught by my parents doing it once so they saw me steal. Did you pay for that? I was like no. I was like new should be free right? I was working for half post. Maybe like some intellectual argument about it. Anyways I'm embarrassed by it. You should not be free. Subscribe to the board.com today. You're a grown up when you're doing that.

56:30What a bad boy. I confessed. I've been having some wrong thoughts. Everyone says confessional makes you feel good. I just feel worse now. No I feel much worse now. I wish we could edit that out. You should feel good now that it's off your chest. You're going to feel good later. There's a period of time where you're embarrassed that you get over the embarrassment and you're like that was freeing. I know what I'm going to say. I'm like moving guilt and shame. This is awful. It's horrible. Yeah. You're right. I don't know why I'm spending it. It's terrible. I've had some wrong thoughts about Nikki Haley's son lately. Okay. Moving on. We'll save the last one directed just in Sam for the for the very end. Two more fun ones. I like to shout out the people that send creative emails. This is Earl. Earl says this in an alternate universe Natalie Harp would have made an incredible kindergarten teacher. Her devotion. Her devotion to the children would be unmatched. She would constantly have a positive attitude. She also has experience dealing with a man with the mentality of a five year old. Plus she probably has experience with the occasional

57:30potty in the pants situation. What are other jobs for people in the cabinet and extended universe? It's a brilliant email. And it's great email. Thank you. I'm just going to talk to you. I want to do a jack. It's funny. It's a funny email. The premise is funny. But like if Natalie Harp was my kids teacher, we would be transferring school's minutes a semester. I'd go, who this is too creepy? I'm well knowing what you know about her now. Yeah. But if you just happen to stumble upon her, you'd be like, oh my god, she's so caring. And she's caring this printer. She's caring this portable printer for the little Johnny's printer. Yeah. No, a little Johnny gets a printout every day. I have one. I have a. Okay. So I thought about this a little bit. You know, I could have done like stupid, spooky stuff like, oh, Steven Miller should be a Rogan spokesman. But the real one is Hexath. I think you'd be fantastic as a gym teacher who like sells Coke on the side. You know, right? Like you could see it too. Like he's like telling if he's getting your kids to climb the rope and then he's selling weed to like the seniors in

58:34the parking lot, he would have been great at that. Yeah. White school though. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. That's why my personalized experience. Oh, white public school. Yeah. I think that's right. That's a good one. Pete Hexath is a gym teacher. I have three. Okay. I think that the one's most obvious. Howard Lutnik is just to use car salesman. And you can see him on the TV with the ads. Lutnik doing the ads as a regional car dealer. Perfect. Was meant to be a regional car dealer. What would his tag on be? Come get your nuts licked with Lutnik. It'd be some federal aid into the truck nuts. Sure. Yeah. You know, truck nuts, nut lick. Someone come up with something good. Sknot Bessent and Tick Deal. God Bessent is an antique dealer. Not just any antique dealer. He'd be the best. And he got him. He'd go on those shows where they're like, you know, all these great discoveries. He'd be so fantastic at that. Yeah. You'd feel really good if you went to an antique shop and

59:36you saw Scott Bessent. Lastly, RFK Jr. Boyz actor. Boyz actor. He's really too much. He's very unique. You need a bad guy. He needs a very unique voice. I mean, that was good dude. RFK Jr. Voice. Yeah. Hollywood's like, I guess we got a good RFK again. He's got that one voice. Great jobs. All right. We've also got here. This is from Clayton. If all members of the Bullwork were arrested by the administration and you can only get one of them pardoned, who would you pardon and how much Trump coin would you buy to make it happen? I thought a lot about this. I have three criteria. Wow. Three criteria to determine who deserves all the Trump coin in the realm for their pardon. Okay. Okay. Do they have a lengthish life ahead of them if they get pardoned? Oh, no. No more boomers. It works. It works. It works. On this podcast, we honor. You can take you can take your turn. But like Bill,

1:00:42if Bill got a pardon, he's not as much time as Andrew. Oh, come on. We honor every day equally. Disagree with you. Second criteria. Could they handle being in prison or not? Do they have a steely resolve or do you need to get them out of there? Like that's not obvious criteria. And third is would they make a profound post pardon contribution to society? Wow. And I went through everyone on the list and it was very clear. I went through the entire staff. I went through the mast. It was very clear who hits all these criteria and who would be the best to receive the pardon. There's no runner up. I just because you took this so seriously. I do want to just I'll just do you want to know who it is? It's I'm wondering if there was a runner up. No, it's it's it's it's far and away obvious to me. Again, do they have a semi decent life ahead of them for the pardon? Could they handle being in prison or not? And would they make found post pardon contribution? I deserve the pardon. I'd send it all on myself. I hit all the

1:01:48criteria. What what contribution would you be making in the post pardon world? We're already at an hour and five minutes. There's no need to list all that. Take you long. I have two criteria. One Catholic guilt and two would that person be able to get me out? Because I didn't consider myself. You know, would they have the skills and the wherewithal to get to be able to get me out? And that left me with two candidates. Producer Anzli Skipper who I brought here. Smart. And I was like I would feel really bad if she was still in the detention camp. I mean, she had a good life young person life ahead of them. I feel bad. Then I was like, oh, lawyer Heather. Also good opportunity because she would really make it her life's duty to get me out after I saved her, I think. Yeah, she wouldn't just be in. Lies being are very resourceful. So so both

1:02:49would be interesting choices. Your second category could they survive in prison though? Lies being to do well in prison. So that makes me think maybe I should also pick. He picked ourselves. No. All right. Rapid fire. This question is how about Roder Clemens not being in the national baseball hall of fame and museum and Cooperstown New York all because a bunch of jealous people. It's far less talent voted that he shouldn't be there. He was also not convicted or admitted to taking drugs. Rodger is one of the greatest pictures of all time. No wonder baseball is in trouble. That came from Donnie and Queens. Oh, Donnie. First time long time. No. Do we have to engage that Roger Clemens? Donald Trump. He played a bad yesterday. I was trying to figure why? Like was Roger on TV or something like that. Rodger is probably a man. Now Roger fucking sucks. I would trade any person that was not a violent criminal who is currently in a detention center for Roger Clemens and a heartbeat just snapped my fingers. I would send Roger to Dilly and take out a gariana. Very easy choice for me. All right. The final question is about you in particular. Actually,

1:03:57we never get life advice. So I'm going to do the one life advice question really fast. Mike and Nebraska. This 100 year old Omaha house I'm in is a big old money pit. This week it's the water heater. Last month it was the kids bathroom toilet leaking to the bathroom below. I'm tempted to just move and go rent. But we got that sweet 2.75 COVID finance rate. A bigger city like Chicago or the Twin Cities during downtown for a few years so the kids go to college could be great if we can find high schools. I don't know AI in our future jobs and economy. It's all scary out there. You asked for life advice and I just rambled. Love the show is Mike and Nebraska. That's tough. You want me to handle this in rapid fire? What would you tell Mike and Nebraska if he asked you for your advice on that? I guess the only thing I would say is that the grass isn't always greener. That that rate is fucking dope. I'm at 3.25. It's awesome. And yeah, houses are money pits and I'm dealing with the leaky roof right now myself, which is annoying. But you have to understand that comes with a biz and you just salvage it until you get to the next problem. So, you know, stay put for a little bit.

1:05:01Let's hope that things get a little better. But I don't know anything else other than what you send me about your shopping stances. I have a couple thoughts. A lot of people are in this circumstance. It's an underrated reason why people hate the economy right now. People feel very stuck. The interest rate situation is so bad. And Trump could have gotten what he fucking wanted, which was lower interest rates if he had just done nothing except golf. And instead, every decision he's made has made has put more pressure on the bond markets and interest rates are higher. Now everybody's stuck and he's going to get punished for politically. And that is a silver lining that you should think about Mike when you have a leaky bathroom. The Donald Trump has been punished at scale for other people suffering like you. But I don't know. You live in Nebraska. I don't know. I might sell that fucking mouse. Moved to the south. Slender. Get to the house. Rent. You know, we get a great rental out here and like canner and met you. Yeah, I got a real estate at Nebraska is much cheaper than anything. Yeah, Baton Rouge.

1:06:02They come to Baton Rouge. Rent. Go to LSU games with me on the weekend. It's something to think about Mike. Yeah. All right. Final question is just for Sam and it's from a former employee in the Valley. Why does Sam have a Labradorodle? No offense to Martha who is very cute, but why is it now a right of passage for bougie podcasters to get a Labradorodle? It was odd enough when John Favreaux, Tommy Vittor and John Loveett all decided simultaneously that they should get the exact same kind of dog a Labradorodle. But I thought we'd moved on from that. Why not a nice ugly mutt from the pound. Genetic attributes not bespoke enough for you. You know who I bet as a Labradorodle. Steven Miller. Oh, hang up in Western. Wow, that last one was harsh. Really wind up. Long story short. Well, long story. We had a we had a beagle mutt beagle, another pure bread for 14 12 years. He was 14 when he died, rest in peace, Bennett. He sucked. I loved him to death, but he was just awful. He

1:07:02bade. He was food obsessive. He towards the end of his life was peeing all over the floor. And he shed. And the shedding part was the key. That's kind of like Trump really. We needed a net of the time for him. And we didn't have an elderly heart, but we gave him a lot of love and care. And I loved the little guy so much. And when he passed, I didn't really want to get another dog for a while because it tore my heart out. I just lost my buddy and my kids were really upset. And then for a couple of weeks, it felt really good to not have a dog. And then my wife was like, you know, I said it would be a couple of years, but what about like six months? I was like, oh, really? And then the next day she came and she was like, you know, I said six months, but what about six weeks? I was like, what the hell? And then she's like, what about six days? And so eventually I was like, look, fine, we can get a dog, but she's like, actually, there needs to be condition. I can't deal with all the hair. It's causing like, you know, my throat to clench up and it's just everywhere. Labraturedls don't shed. It's like the one breed that really doesn't shed. And so we decided that we are going to get a dog and we decided to do a Labraturedl.

1:08:05And we have Martha now. Martha is the best. And I love her to death. And I have no qualms or regrets. whatsoever about getting the dog of the podcasts. I gotta tell you, I think you're gonna be sleeping in the guest room tonight because I think the person who's caught the most straights of this podcast is your life. You're making breakfast. You're walking the kids to school. It's her fault that you couldn't get the dog you wanted. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, my wife is unbelievable. wife. And I love her to death. And I'm so glad she made us get that dog. I love the dog. It was one of the great decisions we made. And I am so grateful that she walks the kids to school, including this morning, which I didn't do. I do supervise lunchbaking. I'm not gonna lie about that. That's Sam Stein. He's a managing editor. He's former New York Times thief thief. I will pay them back. I'm a subscriber now. So we'll be back tomorrow. We'll have a laugh or two. But we'll have some more serious fare. But it's it's it's going to be good. So please come back for tomorrow's weekend

1:09:07podcast. We'll see you all then. Peace. Thanks Sam. Bye. Well, I was walking out with me. We're gonna have a thing. We're gonna think of a guy. Maybe I should go in. He should go behind. We could be bars and fries. Yeah. And I think I'm trying to make devil laugh. He's telling me I'm not gonna say. I'm gonna talk to them. I want to get it. Let's do the devil again. The Bullwork Daily brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzali Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.