Adam Kinzinger: The United States of Dystopia

I'm Keanu and I leveled up my business with Shopify. Once I figured out that Shopify was a thing, I never turned back. I can create a site with my eyes closed. Shopify thinks ahead of us, you know, and it thinks about the customer more than anything. Every day I'm thinking about some other new business. But Shopify is doing it to me because it's so easy to use. It's like I can't stop. I'm addicted. Start your free trial at Shopify.com. Welcome to the Bullwork Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm in D.C. delighted to do this in person with my buddy. He's a former congressman from Illinois. He was in the Air Force and the Air National Guard. He's got a substack. It's Adam Kinziger substack. He's doing the Adam Kinzinger report on there. It's Adam Kinziger. Hi. Hey. Hey, I was listening to yesterday and you were promising people this great guest today. It's not me. That wasn't who was promising. Yeah, we flipped. We did a little switcheroo. Okay. So you sent some mailbag questions. I made kind of a mistake. which is I asked for mailbag questions at the beginning of the podcast. And you know how podcasts are. People listen at the beginning and then they oftentimes will start to dose off for them to do errands. And so if you give a prompt like that at the end of the podcast, you get a manageable amount of responses. But I give it at the beginning. So my inbox is just overflowing. I appreciated everybody's notes. We'll do the mailbag on tomorrow's show with Sarah. So if you have a really, really, really good question for Sarah, email me. But otherwise... I've already got a lot of questions. It's good to see you, by the way. I have one of the two we might do for you at the end. We'll see. Oh, okay, cool. You know, we see each other renown again, but I don't know if people know that you and I kind of work together on the Jeb Bush campaign. Like, that's where we really met. You were on the road. This is, I guess maybe we can do a little Lindsey Graham Death Talk, which wasn't on my plan. Like, I say to people, like, you know, the Jeb campaign was a slog. Yeah. And me and Jim got along really well, personally. And so, like, I initially was going to be, like, the guy at the office, like, running the response. But, like, because the polls were so bad, and, like, we wanted good vibes on the road. Like, I ended up going on the road with him a lot because, you know, we just would drink scotch and have decent vibes. And I was always, like, give me Kinsinger and give me Graham. Yeah. Because sometimes they would have other people, like, Eric Cantor. I just remember one time I was in the car with Eric Cantor announcing a poll to us from... like elsewhere in the SUVs like guys you see you see sienna you're at 4% right now jab and i'm like what the fuck are you do i shut up why are you in the car yeah what are you doing here why are you talking business in the car yeah but we're always you're always fun and uh we did i have a funny memory and i think i think the people i think it was you that said this or it was jeb that said it and you responded but anyway we were having a glass of scotch at the hotel and i remember you jebs may have said I think we're going to get maybe 10, 15% in Iowa. And I would think that as a good staff, or you'd be like, well, maybe, you know, whatever. And you just go like, really? No, we're not getting anything. It was something like that. And I'm like, oh, man. And I can tell you had a good relationship with Jeb because he wasn't like hurt by it. No. People called me rain cloud. People called me rain cloud. But I was like, we're in last place. I'm reality cloud. I was like, I'm the weatherman telling you it's raining. I'm not like bringing the bat.

Anyway, we had a good time. It's good to see you. We're going to start with Dystopia Watch. It's the chapter here at the start of the show. Maybe I'm overreacting because, I don't know. It's like a non-military guy as like a libertarian, you know, somebody who has just a visceral version to fascist theater. Like the dudes in the fatigues. And the military trucks around town are freaking me out. Yeah. And I'm in my hotel, there's a lot of dudes staying there. And it's like, okay, I'm not, I'm not staying at the four seasons or anything, but I'm not at the embassy suites either. I'm like, this is expensive. I'm like, I'm paying for this. Like, are you getting room service on my tab right now? So, you know, there's the fiscal conservative side of me. But also it's just like, this feels crazy. We're in DuPont yesterday. And it's like, the guys are circling DuPont, marching around DuPont circle. And that's like, this is where I smoked pot and did hacky sack in college. I'm like, what the fuck is this? You were in the National Guard. Like, do you have a, like, what's your view on, like, seeing it? I think if, if guard goes somewhere, it needs to be, like, kind of break glass, you know, in case of emergency scenario. I don't think the guard should be out patrolling a common city. You know, look, I mean, crime in D.C. at one point was bad, and I have no issue with a temporary search guard. But, like... So some of these men and women want to be here because they're on active duty orders. They get paid pretty well. You think about it, they're staying in a nice hotel, and they get per diem on top of that. It's like a couple hundred bucks a day. And if you're like a newly enlisted person, that's fantastic. But we're also coming up on another school year. Some of them are going to be taking off a school. And ultimately... What are they doing besides making the president happy because they get to see the military? I don't think of school, right? Like, I don't know. What's happening if the other parent worked? Well, that's a huge deal. And even if the other parent doesn't work, I was, we may talk about it, but the, you know, the aircraft carrier story. Yeah. The one thing I was talking to somebody trying to explain is I said, look, when I deployed in the Middle East, it was like, since I was a pilot, there were like three month deployments because you would fly and then you'd have to. Rest, anyway. And I'm like, but even that three-month deployment, and I was single during the time, if that got extended a week or anything like that, it was morally, or my morale would get crushed because you feel like trapped, isolated alone, and the damage it was doing to marriages. You know, you imagine these army guys. They were there at one point for 18 months. This is a much milder version of that, but it's the same thing. If you're a married soldier here on active duty and your family's from, I don't know, Alabama or something like that, you're taken away from your time with your kids and everything else. It's fine if it's necessary, right?

Everybody knows that, but this is, it feels like theater. I think it's the best way to put it. I posted about this on social media and I got a lot of pushback. You know, Frank Luntz was like, there aren't tanks, it's other military vehicles. And I was like, it's an MRAP. Whatever. All right. I'm like, still it's weird a fucking military vehicle at the LaDroit Park circle. Well, let me say on that, there's no reason to have an armored military vehicle here. There's no reason. And the other thing people were saying is like, Okay, crime is down in D.C., it's working. And so I'm open to hearing that. But my reaction is like, crimes down a lot of places. Crime was up because of the pandemic. So I think there are a lot of different reasons that are happening there. But also, it's like... Couldn't the same thing be achieved cheaper, more efficiently, less fascist by just like giving more money to the MPD? Yeah, yeah. Yes, that is true. Also, you could surge, you know, I don't know, maybe the Virginia State Police want to send a battalion, you know, a small company out to help. Maybe, I mean, you can do anything like that. I just. When people use the crime has gone down argument, that to me is such a bad faith argument. Because, yeah, crime does go down. Guess what? If we had 10 million members of the U.S. military that we're deploying in every city in this country, we could probably get down to no crime, right? Crime's really down in El Salvador. Yeah. A lot of people are in prison who didn't do anything. Exactly. You know, you live in a military state. That's the question. I mean, literally, I could put somebody on every block in America, and there probably wouldn't be any crime. Right? That's not the point, though. Do you really want to live like that? And I think that's what we're wrestling with. The other big story in Dysopia Watch is... Electric shock gloves. Oh, yeah. This is kind of like, to me, it's like when you see these stories in social media, you're like, is this kind of like when Trump said he wanted alligators in the Rio Grande, or is this like a real story? It feels real. Ice officers will soon be outfitted with gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks intended to gain compliance from combative individuals. They plan to spend up to 20 million to purchase thousands of these, and they'll give them to agents by March. Shock, I'm going to shock you with something. Okay. A no-bid contract. It's another no-bid contract. Okay, keep the hand away. It's a no-bid contract. And, you know, ICE had something. It was either body cameras or like Mace or whatever they had that was another no-bid contract that just happened to be connected to somebody close to the administration. I mean, this feels robocop-ish to me. You know, it's one of these things where it's like, okay, I don't know. Is there a situation where electric gloves is appropriate? I don't think, and that's my libertarianism is coming out here. Like, I don't think so. I'm just thinking through it. Like, these guys have shown no discernment, no judgment. It's like we're going to give them.

other weapons to go after people and then lie about it. And there's the video I played on yesterday's show, the woman, yeah, who has a gun in her face, like gun barrel in the face of her at a traffic stop. Yeah. And it's just like, if these guys are pulling their guns on U.S. citizens, women driving around and screaming at them, what do you think that they're going to do with their fucking electric gloves? Did you see the, the, all of that video where she had like the... the dash cam at the beginning of it and stuff. And like, she literally did nothing but shit talk them, right? And they got mad and pointed a gun at her. And it's free country, by the way. Yeah, you can say whatever you want. You get to shit talk people. That's allowed. It's, it's, it's unreal. And there will be no accountability for this guy probably. But the electric gloves mean, I would encourage you all if you haven't looked up a demonstration of these gloves. I know CNN was playing them, but look it up. And I thought, when I read about this, I thought it was like, you know, when you touch an electric fence and you get a little e, right? Yeah. I thought it was like that. And I saw the demonstration. As a kid, you kind of did it just for fun after a while. You know, you're just like, come on. Or you actually zap yourself in the, you know, you put the fork in the thing or whatever. And, uh, but. I saw a demonstration. We were bored of your kids. My kid wouldn't do this because she's just on the iPad. Did you ever do the ants, like fry ants with a magnifying glass? Okay, no, I wasn't a, that was a sociopath. That was cool, though, man. You did? Yeah, oh, yeah. That's sadist. You're killed animals. You're killing little. Not animals. I wasn't like magnifying glasses, puppies. Okay. Those are, those are insect comrades, Adam. Yeah. You know what? Judge me. You know. Everybody listening to his fried ants with a magnifying glass. Except you. Little gay boy wasn't frying any ants. You were dressing him up. Where were we? Oh, yeah, you were watching the video of the electric shock. It's a big cop. And he's like, you know, he's doing the demonstration. And. They electric gloves him, and he, like, screams and just drops. This is not a small thing. It's like 330 volts. Your typical volts are 115. This is scary. And, like, what are they going to do? Run around and just zap an entire crowd down? And do you really need it? That's the point is this is just disgusting behavior. I think they've used those audio weapons before that screw up your inner ear. It's nonsense. It is the cruelty is the point thing. Like, they want this. Trump wants this. Like, you know, it goes back to. why he goes mad reportedly at Markwayne Mullin after they, you know, shot the person of Maine, killed the person of Maine. And then Mark Gwynne Mullen's like, well, we're to take a break on traffic stops. And Trump's like, no. Trump, they want it. Like, I mean, they're pussies. It's like they don't want. Like Trump wouldn't want to do it himself or see it or like he's scared of blood. He's hiding in the, he's hiding in a hot dog cart. But he likes the stories about it. Yeah. You know, he likes the perception that he's got other, there are other people out there doing violent stuff. I mean, it's like a problem you see on the right and like the alpha bro community is like the crueler you are, the more of a man you are. And that legitimately is toxic masculinity, by the way. I hate the term toxic masculinity. And I think it created a huge backlash, but that legitimately is. Remember, this is the same president that was asking, you know, I think Secretary Esper just to shoot the protesters in the legs. Right.

10-year-old boy, you know. So, yeah, I think it's disgusting. And... You know, the first person gets shocked by these electric gloves, I hope is a big story. I mean, but again, I wouldn't even be surprised, Tim, if they bought this and never used them because it's a no-bid contract. And it's probably Steve from down the block that has this. I mean, there's so much corruption. It's unreal. It's the guy that did the reflective pool. Oh, God. It's also doing the glove. You know, by the way, I have been thinking more and more about how Donald Trump said that somebody walked with a razor blade on the reflective pool and how. Absolutely bat shit insane that is. And one third of the country either chose to or actually believe that. Yeah. Well, it's kind of like a malicious version of when he drew the hurricane. You remember that for the first term where he was like, no, really the hurricane ran into Alabama? Look, here's proof. Yeah. And it was, it's like that. But instead of there like being no real consequences, they tried to ruin a guy's life over it. Yeah, yeah. Use the power of the state to ruin a guy's life. And they might do it again. This episode is brought to you by The New York Times. We're always discussing New York Times stories on here earlier this week with Amanda Carpenter. I was really focused on the story of Gurin Bobby, Bobby, Joe. This is the Chinese National. who put $100 million into the Trump family crypto. We don't know where he got it from. He previously had a failed flooring business. The UK was investing in for money laundering. He ended up in the Gulf states with all Trump's Sharia law friends. And now he's throwing nine figures into the Trump family crypto kitty. It's insane. It's the kind of story that needs to be covered, that we need to bring attention to, that I always try to bring attention to on this podcast. And you need people out there doing the reporting, doing the shoe leather of the reporting to find this stuff because, you know, they're not bragging about it. All right? You got to have a reporter out there, get the goods. And shout out to our friends of the New York Times who reported out that story. The reporting that you depend on, that this show depends on, started long before the headline comes out. It's not just the Times, the other great reporting, your local newspapers doing it. We've got people at the bulwark that are working on beats, whether that be Adrian on immigration, Jonathan Cohn on healthcare, and more. It takes time and hard work to cultivate sources, corroborate accounts, and gather all the facts that put together a story. That's what journalists do to keep us informed. Wherever you seek it out, nationally, locally, support fact-based reporting. Thanks to New York Times for sponsoring this app. The other Trump crazy thing, I mean, they're a million, but I want to talk about from this week is he's on with Wayne Allen Root, which itself is ludicrous. Do you or do you know the way now? I know. He ran for president, right? Yeah, he's an insane Nevada right-wing nut job, like proto-killian. It's like a free toot or whatever. Yeah, he was like the old, like the, um.

It's interesting, though. You're there now if people don't know. I'm worried almost a little bit that things are going too well right now for Tel Rico. Because Ken Paxton has been a disaster. I mean, Ken Paxton, during America 250, like, was with his mistress in Europe. The UK. Like what? And he was, like, yelling at people, videotaping him. There's a story I talked about this week about how I guess he is grifting off a hospital in Texas where he's on the board where he put a cell to have. on top of it, and he's cashing in. You know, he's just making a little profit off the roof of the hospital that he's on the board of. He's a nightmare. Nate Silver analysis this week, the most, I think, surprising number for everybody is that he had Tolerico's a 63-37 favorite, not expecting him to get 60% of vote, but, like, you know, basically two-thirds chance to win Ken Paxton one-third. I don't know. You're there. Like, what are the vibes like? Personally, I don't see a ton of enthusiasm for James Talarico, but that's because I live in a, I would call it kind of a probably Republican area of Houston in the woodlands. But I do not see it for Ken Paxton, which is. a big deal. Had a lot of Ken Paxton signs around the neighborhood? Yeah, none of them. Nothing. I haven't seen anything. And I think the Republicans there are embarrassed of Ken Paxton. They voted for him, but, you know, they're embarrassed of him. I legitimately think it is a, I would say a toss-up. I would say the thing I worry about if I'm being honest is, you know how this goes. You're always honest on the show. I try to be 50% of the time. 50% of the time I'm honest every time. The thing I worry about is, If this race gets nationalized, which they all are going to be, that at the end of everything, there's going to be Republicans that come home to the party because it's closed in the Senate and you always see this, right? There's like that false hope and then it breaks. At the same time, the independents are breaking so much for James Talarico that you could see the opposite. Taxon is just a uniquely bad candidate. Just terrible. And I think that this is, I'm stealing this point from somebody. I apologize I'm taking it from because I don't remember. But like. I think that a lot of Democrats, liberals, like, look, like, have a false memory of the Beto race. Yeah. Like, and that the memory is that Beto was winning, and we had all this hope, and the rug got pulled. And, like, the reality of that race is that Beto was down the whole time. He did build a lot of excitement. He ran a great campaign. His first campaign was really strong because he's, like, out there in rural Texas and kind of doing this sort of unifying one Texas campaign. He's running against Cruz, whoever in the left hates, right? But, like, Cruz in Texas, his favorability... that, like, you know, the month of the election was 51%. He had a 51% favorability in Texas. Ken Paxton's is like in the 30s. Yeah. Like, like, Ken Paxton got impeached by a Republican legislature, not a Democratic legislature. His own staff turned him into the FBI. It is a little hard for people to process. Yeah. It's a little bit hard for people to process that they're like, but like, Ken Paxton is actually like a meaningfully worse candidate than Cruz. Yeah. Even though they might.

might seem the same to some of the listeners, you know? I think if you're a typical Republican, you may not like Cruz because he's a smarmy. Personally, yeah. Piece of shit, ass hat, whatever. But in terms of his job, you're like, okay, he's probably not super corrupt. The guy does the job. He's done the stuff I thought he should do. The Cancun stuff was after the better. You know what I mean? Yeah. But he's like your cookie cutter. Ken Paxton is... Bad. And Ken Paxton is now going around complaining about the fact that he has less money than James Talarico, which can have anyway because, you know, James Talarico is kind of dynamic. But at the same time, he was in the UK having a vacation in the summer. I couldn't imagine Tim, you know, three months before a very serious election. My staff would literally. beat me up and leave me in an alley if I decided to take a vacation. With your mistress. Yeah, with my mistress, exactly. With your mistress. I mean, what would you have done that? He's like, I'm going to take a little, let me take a week off here. Yeah, the job worked harder than everybody. Yeah. That's just how it was supposed to be, you know. I was the one that felt bad as the staffer, like, you know, sneaking away for like a little weekend with my buddies. Yeah. It's like I'm taking two days. It took Sunday off. Oh, boy. Yeah, exactly. Doing conference calls hungover at my brother's bachelor party. I don't miss those days, man. I've thrown up before a few conference calls. Let me tell you. No one on mute. I've thrown up before a few candidate briefing calls. One of my hobby horses recently, it's not just Ken Paxton, is just focusing on how terrible the Republican nominees are a lot of these places. Because I do think, I don't know, there's something about, we've done a lot of Hong discourse this week. There certainly are some questions about some of the Democratic nominees, but I do feel like the media. feels like the Democratic infighting gives them an excuse to do some balance, right? It's like, okay, this way we don't have to talk about Trump crazy all the time. And so there's this like over emphasis on these random Democratic candidates. And the Republicans have insane people running everywhere that nobody even talks about. Like Mo Brooks organizing insurrection, he's the governor nominee in Arizona. They're examples such as this. In Florida next week. The Republicans have a primary. They have a Groyper, white nationalist candidates, James Fishback. He is likely to lose. The candidate's likely to win Byron Donalds's former congressman. Did you work with Byron? Were you guys over there? I don't know if we did one term. Yeah, we might have had one term together. Byron's not great. There was one clip of him I saw this week that made me chuckle that I would like to play for you. We're the reason why people are fleeing New York and California and Illinois because they are stupid and they needed a place to go and that place was Florida.

That's not, you know. The people who are moving to Florida are fucking stupid. And plus, the people that are moving there are probably Republicans, right? Like, what is he been doing? I think it's just Byron Donalds is really stupid. And he's also extreme. He's got a lot of terrible positions and all that. But it's like, man, across the board, it's not, it's a pretty motley crew. It is. I think, like, it's interesting because if you look at, like, bad or crazy Democratic candidates, it's kind of. of the exception. Yeah, right. And the GOP, it's the rule. I mean, I can't really think of many normal Republican candidates out there. And the normal ones are have their own side of terrible because the normal ones are like Mike Rogers. Yeah, yeah. There's like a normal person. A sellout though. Yeah. Totally thought. Completely knows the truth, but sell out. Yeah. And so it's like, okay. Well, so you might be normal and private if I had you. But like, what good is that if you're just going to go along with everything Trump says? And that's almost worse. Like to me, I mean, I, I. Obviously, I have huge disagreements with people that are like pro insurrection. Yeah, sure. But if they legitimately believe it, it's wrong. But I have a weird respect for that versus the ones that know better. Obviously. Donald, by the way, we should mention his running against our guy, David Jolly. Yeah, I think David could win that one. I did too. I think Vindman could win the Senate race there, too. Do you? I think it's possible. The Senate race, I do think it's tougher. I got nothing to respect for Alex. His opponent's a little bit stronger. And also, people just... There's some percentage of voters that, like, do look at governors' races differently than they look at national races. You know, like, for the national races, like, Teen Jersey, you know, I want somebody that's going to go there and, like, burn down my enemies in effigy. You know, like, I want somebody that is going to make my opponents cry on the Senate floor. But then for governor, you're kind of like, I need the schools to be good. Yeah, yeah. I need somebody that actually does a good job. And I do think that helps David a little bit, particularly with Byron Donalds's opponent calling people stupid. Guys, I am here in D.C. because... I mean, you don't even want to know what's happening in my house. Okay, it's like breaking bad down there. And that's just the thing about home ownership. Something always needs to be fixed. You start one project, all of a sudden there's a domino effect. You think you're adding something and then you realize, oh, wait, there's a shingle broken. I've got to deal with that first. Here's the thing about home disasters. They just sneak up and bite you. And they end up costing more than a car repair, more than you can afford sometimes. With our friends at HomeServe, you can take care of that. They offer plans starting at just $4.99 a month. With HomeServe, when something goes wrong, you're not scrambling. You're just making one call. Home serve is like a subscription service for your home. It's super simple. She's a plan for your needs and budget. When something on your plan goes wrong, just call their 24-7 hotline to start the repair process. Home serving something that's been good for us. We like to do little projects, little stuff around the house. But like, you know, look, I'm not Tim the Toolman Taylor here, okay? All right? I'm not, I'm not his neighbor over the fence. I don't know how to do any of this stuff. And having a little backstop helped take care of us, New Orleans.

God, you don't even know what kind of problems are happening in our house. So I appreciate that home service help in making it easier for us. Your next costly home repair is already coming. Act now and get protected with a plan through homeserve for 50% less for 50% less. Get protected with a plan.com slash bulwark for 50% less. Savings compared to renewal price void in Florida. Sorry, Florida. Speaking of idiots, we have... You could start every segment there. Yeah. Karoline Leavitt is out as the press secretary. She's leaving. She's not an idiot. Some of the people that will be discussing as possible replacements, on the other hand. She's just... Just a liar. I saw some people that I say that it was Eager actually. I said that he thought that she was the best of his press secretaries, which is like not necessarily a compliment. But I do think that she was pretty talented. I think so. I think she was. I mean, I it's weird because it's like, okay, I'll take the quality of the work versus like the morality. Quality of the work. I think she was actually pretty good. I mean, she had an ability to stand up there and lie to your face and look like she's telling the truth. And how often did she embarrass herself? And just thinking about like the clips, I played many, we don't play Trump's voice on here, but I talk about all the crazy things Trump says, many clips of the cabinet saying really stupid things. Everybody in the cabinet struggling to defend him. I didn't play a ton of Carolina. Yeah, and I don't think they have any SNL, you know, recurring skill like Sean Spicer. So she survived it. The replacement list, on the other hand, I mean, It's it's. cliche to say Star Wars Bar, and it's an ugly group. This is a list from the New York Post. I thought it would be fun that we did. You and I, we just do some brief word association with the characters that are being considered. I want to mention neither of us are the listeners probably don't know Anna Kelly. She is the deputy to Caroline. She's a person that will maybe get a try. Besides her, I think everybody's going to be familiar with all of the characters. So we'll start here with, I think, the frontrunner, Alina Hobb. What comes to mind when you think of Alina Habba? Shallow. Shallow. I think parking lot, because I understood that she was a parking lot attorney. And I also kind of see her maybe doing some other stuff in a parking lot. That's more than actually. I thought she went out on bad terms with the administration. I don't remember, but like every one of them, they always come back. They always come back. Okay. Katie Miller. Why don't you go first on that one? Katie Miller. Actually, I'd say mayonnaise. And the only reason I say that is because she made this big deal about how Stephen Miller loves mayonnaise and it made me sick. And I don't know why, but that's when I think of her. I think of her with a big jar of mayonnaise.

I was going less funny because I had Ava Braun. I don't know Himmler's wife's names. Janet Himmler. Karen Himmler. Okay. We've also got here Matt Boyle. I don't know Matt. Do you not know, Matt? We'll pull this up on the screen for the YouTube viewers. Matt, for me, always comes to mind is Ralph Wiggum. He looks and sounds like Ralph Liggen. He's a crayon of his nose. He's a bright part reporter. He doesn't really look at the part, so it's a confusing choice. But he's on the short of the screen of the New York Post. My favorite Matt Boyle story is I feel comfortable comparing him to Ralph Ligam here because I did so also in my book, Ding, Book Shout Out Why We Did It Travel for the Republican Road to Hell. And he... called me after the book came out and told me he appreciated that I wrote about him because I wrote about how Matt Boyle and Breitbart like they were the ones that were driving the ship, not the establishment. And so despite the fact that I called him a grown-up World Wolf Wigom that looks like he eats crayons, he still took it as a compliment. So. Hey. That's the type of person that might be the next five of total secretary. We've also got Stephen Chum, big Stephen. Odd job. Odd job. So you remember Bond, the big guy on Bond? Oh, I'm not a Bond man. All right, I'll show you here. You do yours and I'll have this up. Summo. Sumo. You'll recognize odd job, though. What's like a big wrinkly character? Who is like, wasn't there a movie of like a big like poop? A character, like a big... There's a odd job. That's pretty nice for Stephen, I think. Wasn't it like a Star Wars character? Jabba the Hut. Jabba? Yeah, he's maybe a Jabba. Yeah, I'd also say like, what is a word for somebody that is desperate to be liked but pretends like they aren't? Whatever that word is. There's a German word for that. The homeless wife could tell us. I think my pick for most likely person to get it is Rachel Campos Duffy, wife of Sean Duffy. So she's on the list. Another person, we've got three more. These are all long shots, but they were included in the New York Post list. Kari Lake, ambassador to Jamaica. What do you think of when you hear Gary Lake? That would be total. Clown, just clown. Clown, because she does put on clown makeup. Yeah. Don't touch me is what I think of with Kari Lake. Scott Jennings. Fraud. For some reason, the goatee is what he has a horrible goatee now. Why? I don't know, man. You know what? You've seen this. What's that? You've been debating him a couple times. Not really. A little bit. I mean, we've gone back and forth, but like. You know these people that like start to get famous and everything about them changes. Yeah. Right? Like there's an aura. Mm-hmm. And it's that's, I get that sense sometimes with them. Like there's a, oh my God, I'm on TV and people know me at the airport now. Yeah. I'm going to start wearing a goate and. Yeah, goate and GLP1s for Scott Jennings. That's what comes to mind for me. Okay, final person that they've thrown out there, Spence Pratt.

Isn't you the white nationalist or something? He was the reality TV guy that ran for mayor of L.A. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, third place in the mayor of L.A. Right. Fine. Good luck. Good luck to Spencer Pratt. Good luck. Good luck. Spencer Pratt, TRT, probably. Okay. Do you have a pick for you to think it's going to be the most? I actually think the most likely would be. I actually think Rachel Campo's Duffy maybe. I think she's the favorite. Molly Hemingway maybe throw her. She would love to be thrown in if she was not on the short list. Nobody loves attention more than her. She would love it. Did she use to be normal? I don't believe. I can't believe so. I don't know. We are never friends. I have the sense that she did. She's a federalist writer. She kind of tries to do the intellectual insurrectionism. Yeah. Doesn't really look the part, so to speak. It's okay. But lots of Fox time trying to look the part going on Fox a lot. I just, I don't see it for her. I don't think it's going to happen for. She did a tweet the other day. where she talked about how Uber drivers should have to speak English. It's just like, this is the type of shit. This is something that I've been stepping up on lately is just the amount of boomer rage that like Fox News and the Republicans do every day. So she's sitting around like, God, I haven't had a good tweet that's been retweeted in a while. Uber drivers should speak English and just like boomer rage. It's just, oh my God, it's fatiguing. It is fatiguing. Luckily, she blocked me like seven years ago, so I don't actually have to see most of her rage. I'll send it to me. I'll send your tweets. You know, I try to be just a regular guy, all right? I'm not that fancy. But I get a little picky about one thing. It's hotels. Before we went on a Europe trip, I went down a rabbit hole. I was picking the hotels. I was spending way too much time trying to figure out which one I wanted, what neighborhood, what had the fancy soaps. I don't spend that kind of time on other stuff, you know. I don't spend that kind of time on stuff that actually might have more of an impact. Things like life insurance.

You just, if you're thinking about life insurance, you're just like, whatever, whatever is the, you know, path of least resistance. There's another way to do it. Select quote's a life insurance broker that does all that homework for you. The licensed agent shop over 100 policies and find you a better rate for free. With select quote, getting life insurance is fast, free, and easy. The whole process takes about 15 minutes. After. You answer a few questions, their agents shopped the carriers for you, and you get your quote, tailored to your specific situation. Even if you got something like high blood pressure or diabetes, they'll still take care of you, and you'll save an average of 30%. I'm a procrastinator. I hate paperwork. I don't like thinking about stuff like life insurance. So it was great to turn to select quote because they made it really easy. They made it really simple for me. You should check it out as well. Get your free quote at selectquote.com slash bulwark. That's select quote.com slash bulwark. Select quote.com slash bulwark. They shop you save. All right. I want to do some serious military stuff. Well, I'm going to do some funny military stuff and then some serious military stuff. I feel like I have to get, you know, your take on what you think the smell was like on Trump after he got out of. The food cart. Like, imagine what's in the food cart for the airplane. It's probably like a hot chicken parm. Yeah. It's like a chicken parm hot dish that they're feeding to people. He's hiding underneath there. It's like broccoli. Yeah, some broccoli. He's hiding underneath there, whatever he's putting on his skin. Crying. His personal stink. The crying. I just kind of want you to paint a picture for us of what you think was happening when he got on the other fun. I've said that I consider his smell to be like a mix of armpits and butt with like, you know, a makeupy ketchup smell. Okay. What I kind of figure is like a little bit of soup. The waft, even though they probably didn't have soup on it. It's just, I think of like a soup smell. Yeah. So if you put together pits, but soup. Soup. With ketchup packet. Yeah, some ketchup smell. Yeah. Which is kind of like, you know, it hits you with that. Tangy, like, yeah, at first, right? And then the depth of the, of the aroma kind of rolls in. Can you imagine a situation where your security told you that you needed to hide underneath the, you know, the warm meals that are being served on the airplane? You've got to get on your hands that he's and hide under there to avoid potential Iranian airfire. Can you imagine doing that? No. No, and I can't imagine going, you know, how my wife would react if I'm like, I'm going to take me, Natalie, you're going to. Natalie. Right. Marco had to stay on the danger plane. Mm-hmm. The Secretary of State stayed on the danger plane. The caddy, the human printer, who leaves love notes for Trump everywhere. Yep. Yep. So it was catty, human printer, Pete Hegseth, and Trump. I think that's a crowded, it's a crowded catering cart. Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah.

Maybe I've sit on people's laps. I don't know. The whole idea of Trump going and being put on the other plane, like that's not my issue. My issue is the depth. of the lies from day one. You remember they brought the old Air Force one out and he's like, well, we have the old Air Force one because the new one, we want to show the troops, the new Air Force one. And everybody knows it's a lie, but we just are so numb to the constant lying. And Jabba the Chung was sending a tweet that day. Yeah, fighting with people. It was security reasons why Trump had to give him the other plane. So she didn't even have the depths of the story, like about just how much scared Trump was hiding from potential Iranian fire. And they stripped the old Air Force secretary of his security clearance, which they don't really do it. But anyway, because supposedly he talked about that Air Force One not having the right countermeasures, which everybody knew. Right. And then they sent FBI agents to, I don't know, Washington Post or some reporters. Yeah, New York Times. The Times, yeah. It was the Times. Like, this is insane. And it was all true. Donald Trump is delusional. He makes up things. His team does the same thing now to the point where when they're caught in the lie, they actually use the legal system to create a new reality. Yeah. I also just think that, like, it's important that I'm going to keep talking about it because... You know, the machismo with which they started the war, like this idea that's like, we decapitated them. We took out all their leaders. They can't even hide for us. Our intelligence is so great. We're going to overthrow the government in three days. Like, this was how we started the war. Like, we are so dominant. And it's like, that's how the war started. And how the war is going is Trump is like getting underneath the food cart inside the catering. Yeah, putting a tray. He's got a tray on top of him. Fessie guides from Iranian, I guess, missile, drones. I don't know. Probably drones and missiles. It's a pretty notable fall. It's kind of hard to say we're winning. It is hard to say we're winning. The more serious tragic story which you referenced earlier that I just didn't want to get your take on was this was military.com and what's happening in the USS Abraham Lincoln. Three sailors have tried to jump overboard. They've been saved by other crew members. The Lincoln's roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines have been on a deployment that began November 21st. The carrier has been deployed for more than eight months, so it's supposed to end in May. But even more than that, it's not just that they're being deployed. It's not coming in too short. The carrier has been at sea. 250 straight days. Yeah, no port call. No port call. Normally, it's like every 30 to 45 days, you at least get a port call. 250 days at sea. Three guys are trying to kill themselves. It's that bad. Yeah, I mean, this is tragic. And I think, you know, if we were in the middle of...

a war with China or a war with Russia or World War III, you know, you could look and be like, yeah, it's too bad. We are at war. We need this is a war of choice. Or something that was an acute threat to our country, right? Right. Right. It was just like, this is something that was absolutely necessary because of the scale of the threat to the country. And according to the president now, we're going to be doing this blockade situation for, in theory, ever now because, you know, that's our new brilliant plan. And it's interesting because during the initial strikes with. Iran when, you know, we were starting to realize that actually the counterattacks at Iran were actually having some impact. I'd have friends that were flying still. That would say, like, they were out of food at one point. They couldn't shower because the water facilities were hit. That was being hit from us. On the ships, it's even worse because they're ships that come out to supply them. One of the things I read says they're not even getting fresh fruit and vegetables because by the time the resupply ship can hit, it's basically... They're rod. And so they're eating like, you know, rice and boxed goods. You know, like I said, for what? This is the other thing like literally for what? Yeah. And by the way, we just recently, we may still, we had an aircraft carrier in the Caribbean. Right. Are we really prioritizing correctly? Should we be doing these anti-boat ops right now when you have this going on? It's really tragic. And I'm glad the information got out because it feels like the Pentagon has no interest in telling the American people the truth with this. No. Again, it's the machismo. It's like, the warfighters. The warfighters out there. You signed up for these. Yeah, what are we doing, though? It's like, it's like, so we need to keep this blockade going to get the Strait of Hormuz open? Like, the Strait of Hormuz was open. Yeah, yeah, it was. And imagine, Tim, living in a, basically the size of about two football fields for 200 some days. And then your bunk, I mean. Do you live literally a hot bunk or you have a literally about as it's about as big as you can stretch out and you have about a foot space in there? That's your own personal quarters. Like after 200 some days, you're going to start to get pretty damn depressed. 200 days? Three days. Yeah. That sounds horrible. Yeah. Three hours, man. Yeah. I mean, that's just like literally my hell. Yep. Like I'm on a fucking ship in a tiny space. And I thought I was going to be there for 30 days. And I'm now on 250 with no end in sight. And that's the other thing is if they said, we guarantee you September 15th, we're going to be home. That would be one thing. Yeah. Because you would have an end date. If right now it keeps getting extended. So you feel trapped. I feel trapped talking about it. I'm not even there. I know. And it's like, it does. It feels like Guantanamo kind of. So Pete talks about the war fighter. And, you know, and Pete acts like this tough guy. Here's how you take care of your people right here. You rotate them out. If we need an aircraft carrier, they're fine. But have that plan for. But when you have real mental health crisis in the military, it's not weakness. It's not weakness. You can break the strongest man on something like this.

There's some relation with what's happened in Iran now in Ukraine and a number of ways. Obviously, like Russia giving intel to Iran, Ukraine had to attack Iranian. Was it a boat? Yeah, a ship. Yeah. And the material issue is part of the problem, right? Like, I mean, some of it is just the will that we... have not been giving Ukraine what they need to win the war. But also some of it is like everything that's been wasted unnecessarily, you know, like could have been sold to Ukraine. I saw you posting and then Gary Kasparov and others posting about how. There have been recent Russian, you know, drones and attacks on Kiev on other cities in Ukraine and how, you know, Europe should be putting a no-fly zone up. Like, what's your sense on the kind of state of play there? So on day one of this war, I said NATO should put a no-fly zone at the invitation of Ukraine to defend its own skies. There's nothing of war about that. Ukraine's like, this is our skies. We'd like to have help. And... What was the story that came out a couple days ago was that Vice President JD Vance sat down with Zelenskyer called him and said, you need to stop these attacks on the oil tankers in the Black Sea and elsewhere. Because Ukraine was... taken out like 10 or 15 oil tankers of the Russians every few days and was having a massive impact. But they were worried about further destabilizing the oil market. Russian oil, by the way. And Volodymyr Zelensky, because they are so desperate for air defense to protect their people, did it even though that was a successful attack. It was being very successful. They are dangling. a little bit, a few Patriot missiles over Volodymyr Zelensky's head to control him. And it's working. And I guess I don't blame Volodymyr Zelensky because he's like, my number one priority is especially coming the winter to protect my people. But instead of us actually saying, okay, here's what you need, we'll send literally five Patriot missiles. And so you just keep them kind of dangling there. And it's really disgusting, especially when the guy calling him and asking for this is the guy that said his greatest achievement. in office has been to defund the Ukraine war effort. That's JD Vance. Look, if we would have given Ukraine everything they needed from day one, this war would have been over years ago. There's some blame for Biden for that, for sure. But this Trump administration has been disgusting. And by the way, Russia, Iran, China are in an alliance. And how many people know that North Korea has already sent 30,000 actual troops? into Russia to fight Ukraine, and they're supplying Russia every day with ballistic missiles. And yet South Korea does nothing. The rest of the world does nothing. And everybody just sits around like, we need to de-escalate. Yeah, we need to waste all of our weapons material at Iran for nothing. Our Middle East partners would fire four Patriot missiles to take down a drone.

That's like $10 million, a $20,000 drone. It wouldn't have been coming their way if we wouldn't have started a stupid war with no blam. Exactly, exactly. The whole thing is fucking infuriated. And by the way, just quickly, they, Volodymyr Zelensky has begged for the licenses to build a Patriot missile. So far it has been denied. We have, we have Japan that can build Patriot missiles. They're licensed to do it. We're going to help the Saudis get a nuke. Yeah, exactly. And we need more Patriot missiles. Give them the license. It's unreal. All right. You did a video the other day. I just want to let you cook on that. You're already cooking. So just keep you going, get in the kitchen about accountability, day one, some ideas for that. So I think this is so important for Democrats to talk about. And there should be day one for the new Congress and then day one for the new president. You get to ask all the time. I get asked all the time. Like, should we just move on? Should there be accountability? And I think accountability is essential. So I would do this from the perspective. Like, if I was president, here's what I would have done on day one or I would do on day one. I'd put together in the Department of Justice, a team that is going to search for every... corrupt deal that's happened in the United States, everywhere the president or his allies have profited off of the American people or off of corruption. The Department of State, I would put together a group to find every untoward deal with any other country. So the Qatar jet brings... Number one, right? What did Qatar get for that? What did they expect for that? And I would on day one, seize that jet from the Trump library. Seize it. And then either, you know, use it for something for America or drive it off a cliff. I don't care. But he does not get to keep that. And so I would do that. I would have a commission. Sell it. Sell it. Give the money. I would have a commission that would find everywhere that Trump's name was placed and I would remove it from everything. Take down Trump's picture on the walk of shame and put up Joe Biden's picture. All of this is about like we need accountability. And for anything, it's not like scratching the edge of I'm pissed at these people. It's like we need to make it clear to the next guy that comes along that wants to do this, that it doesn't end well for you. That's what I worry about. things I was thinking about, Trump compares himself, you know, to like Napoleon and Stalin and all those guys that was in the book. And obviously, like, the really dark way to think about that is who knows what he could do the next two years. I kind of think how Trump thinks about that is like those guys, they branded. And so if you look at Napoleon, for example, when I was in France, France, it kind of ruined my trip to the Arc de Triorff. Yeah, I would. Because I was looking at it and I was just like, this is Napoleon doing Trump's thing. Like, at Napoleon, there's this large effort, right? And it's not too different than the Confederates, right? And like the lost cause, right? Like this effort to memorialize things.

And I agree with your point for that reason that, like, it's important to stop it immediately, you know, because memories fade. And then people start to be like, what's the point of fighting about this? Who cares? His name's on the fucking airport. He's not president anymore. And then, like, 30 years for now and 40 years for now, like the brand persists. A continued fight to ensure that his brand is accurately portrayed by which, I mean, sullied, I think is a necessary effort. not just like sour grapes. Yeah, and how numb have we become to corruption? I mean, even me. Like, you know, we hear about a new corrupt thing or, you know, early access to truth social. And it's like, I'm outraged, but I'm also like, whatever. What can we do about it? That numbness is the thing that we have to be very clear. Like, we don't tolerate corruption in this country. We need to find it. All right. Really quick mailbag questions. Rapid Fire. We're going to do bigger mailbag tomorrow, but I promise people today, so here we are. There are two funny ones I wanted to give to you, which we can close with a little bit of some laughs. Some levity, if you will. This email from Tyler, people, this is how you do it. This is the type of email I'm asking for. It is, it's short, it's funny, it asks for advice, and it ties to a news item. Nice, Tyler. Good job. Tyler's doing it correctly. Here we go. Tim, if you happen to suspect you had psychosporiasis, cyclospiriasis, this is the diarrhea, right? That's the diarrhea. Okay. If you happen to suspect that you had the diarrhea for the last three months, and you had, quote, high-quality health care provided through your job, and you got a fecal test that came back negative, but it cost $543 bucks after insurance covered its share. And then you learned that apparently up to 50% of fecal exams for psychosololitis can be false negatives. And you coincidentally had a family member currently taking the suggested antibiotic, could enough extra for you to take a full course of it. Would you just take the antibiotic and see if it went away, or would you continue to take $543, 50% accurate fecal exams until there was a positive result?

So, Adam, what would you do if you were Tyler? Take the antibiotic, man. Take the antibiotic. Because if you've been having explosive diarrhea for three months, I don't care what it is. Take an antibiotic, man. I agree. Take the antibiotic. And please, let us know what happens here. I would like to follow up on this. Yes. Our health care system is also a disaster. Yeah. By the way, I read an argument. Somebody wrote, and I'm going to put it out at some point about the conservative case for single payer, and it was extremely compelling, by the way. I'm going to tell you even when back when Obamacare was happening, and the argument that I made to my friends in private, you know, because like what I was a spokesperson for candidates out, they had various positions. But like when we were just talking about this around D.C., because. We're dorks in D.C. You'd have a couple drinks and you start talking about stupid things like, what do you think about Obamacare? My case against it was that it was like the worst of both worlds. Like, you know, I wish that we lived in a world where there was like some kind of free market transparent system where there's catastrophic coverage for people. Like that, there are problems with that, but that would be my deal. Like the single payer system, though. would also be better than this? Yeah, this is bad. It's like, this is the worst of both worlds. It is. And so, you know, here we go. I'm becoming socialist. We have insurance men in the middle of this for no reason we're just taking profit. All right. Here's the other one. Blair Golden. Again, short, funny, relevant to the news. Good question. She asks, or he, I guess Blair could be either. They, them. Hello, my question from Wisconsin is what holiday should be canceled and why? I heard you kind of crapping on Thanksgiving yesterday. I understand your point a little bit. It's kind of like, yeah, but I don't know. I think Thanksgiving's okay. You think okay. Valentine's Day, buddy. Valentine's Day. I hope Sophia's not listening. Valentine's Day. Yeah, it's just you're stocking all these love holidays on top of each other. We do birthdays, we do it like, Valentine's. The gays don't do Valentine's. Well, some do, but I don't do it already in my house. Fantastic. That's fine. I cancel Father's Day. Mothers deserve a day. Mother's put in a lot of work. Father's golf all the time. Most Sundays are Father's days already. And it's like, I have to get a present for my dad again. Yeah, and he doesn't want anything. He doesn't care. I got to come up with something. You're going through the motions. I feel guilty. Yeah. Yeah. And so you end up getting him a $50 or $100 gift card to Amazon. For my dad, I'll get him another bag, seriously. Yeah. It's like he's got 13 of them already. Yeah. I get, my dad and I basically exchange the same Amazon gift card back and forth all the time. Like, here's a hundred bucks. Oh, thanks. It's the next time. Here's a hundred bucks, dad. Thanks. Like, let's just call it a day. Let's just, boop.

All right. That's Adam Kinsinger. Anything else? No, man. It was great to be with you. Good to be with you. I glad we could do this in person. Everybody else, both today and tomorrow. We're doing this in person. We don't want to talk about what's happening back in New Orleans. But we're taping it a little late. It's summer. It's August. Prod's coming out a little later than usual. It's okay. You know, please be generous to us. We'll be back on a good schedule again soon. Appreciate to you, Adam. Everybody else to see you back here tomorrow. Send good, funny questions like Blair and Tyler. Take the end of Bob. Take the Anna Bob. And I just want to say one thing. Happy Valentine's Day. The Bullwark Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeChico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brough.