Adam Kinzinger: All the Little Bros
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Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. Happy Halloween. I'm your host Orville Peck and I'm here with my partner, contributor to the Bulwark. He's a former Republican congressman, a veteran, founder of Country First, which packs pro-democracy candidates. It's Adam Kinzinger. How you doing, partner? Hey, good, man. My Halloween costume is a washed up has-been. How does it look? A washed up hack?

Has been. It's not really working for you. I don't know. You're filling out that shirt with those muscles. And I don't know. You look like you have a second wind in you to me, brother. Well, thank you for joining the podcast. Donald Trump got into costume last night, so I figured I had to. So I wanted to start there.

Have you had a chance to look at it? I mean, he is wearing this like triple XL dump truck driver costume that doesn't fit. So he looks like kind of a small Oompa Loompa in a big costume. And then he didn't do his makeup right. So there's like a big hole right around his mouth. So he kind of looks like a sex doll. Yeah.

What'd you think about his closing kind of visual? It was amazing. It was amazing because of two reasons. So number one, yeah, he didn't do his makeup right. He's been doing his makeup wrong lately. It's like worse. Like he, you now see that like pale wine, you know, now around the side and...

I don't know what's going on. Yeah. Maybe his skin's just so old that he needs to like change his makeup, you know, to, to match it. But the best part is like, you know, Maga is so obsessed with like visuals, right? They don't care who this guy is as long as the visual is good. And so him going up looking, you know, overweight, unhealthy, and then reaching twice for that doorknob and then like kind of tripping when he grabbed the doorknob to the garbage truck, like that's,

You know that drives him nuts and that drives his supporters nuts. And so it was like his little McDonald's thing, which was actually smarter, where he was just trying to, at the moment, make something. But I think it just makes him look dumb and it's not going to change it. Nobody's going to be like, gosh, I was going to vote for Kamala. But Donald Trump awkwardly got in a garbage truck. I just can't help it. I have to vote for him now. Also, I touched on this a little bit with Sam Stein last night. Like the metaphor doesn't work for me because it's like –

I thought they were supposed to be offended that they were called garbage, but so he's taking out the trash. But meanwhile, Donald Trump's been saying on the campaign trail multiple times that America is a trash can for migrants. Yeah.

So wouldn't the metaphor have worked better if he was saying, I'm taking out the migrants, I'm taking out the trash? It just didn't work for me. I didn't understand what they were going for. No, and it was probably his idea, to be honest with you, because he's like, that is one thing that Donald Trump is good at, is like, I'm going to come up with a visual, and sometimes he gets it wrong. And I think this was a case of that. And plus, again, to them, it's...

I think we have to get in their mind and understand that it's not about doing something that is going to win an election. They've already been convinced they're going to win. It is about how do I needle the other side? What is it that I can do to just tweak it and make them even more angry? And like the garbage truck metaphor they thought would do it. And, you know, it just it's again, it's unfortunate that the whole thing happened because, you

We were coming off a pretty good news cycle, Kamala's speech, and then, you know, frankly, the Madison Square Garden. And this kind of blunted some of that. But yeah, I don't think it's going to be quite the panacea they say it is. Yeah, thanks for nothing, Mr. President. All right. Well, I guess you mentioned Madison Square Garden, so we'll put this wrong. We have a segment that I used to do, man. I used to do a lot, but then...

Then the political news cycle got kind of crazy. You know, there was a debate, a couple assassination attempts, and, you know, our little gimmicks. We didn't have enough room. You know, we had to do real business on this podcast. But now we're in the homestretch.

For the OGs, I want to bring back one of my favorite segments. And it's where we talked about a guy named Johnny McEntee, who was Trump's deputy president. And he was in charge of staffing at the White House. He left the White House. He started up a dating site for incels called Right Stuff that has kind of failed as a dating site, but has succeeded as a place for offensive media.

conservative TikTok memes. And so I want to get to the segment here, but today it's a bonus. I want to play for you not just Johnny McEntee, but also clips from Charlie Kirk and Jesse Waters. So let's take a listen to our old news segment, The Right Stuff. So I guess they misunderstood. When we said we wanted male-only voting, we meant male M-A-L-E.

This wife is wearing the American hat. She's coming in with her sweet husband who probably works his tail off to make sure that she can go and have a nice life and provide for the family. And then she lies to him saying, oh yeah, I'm going to vote for Trump. And then she votes for Kamala Harris as her little secret in the voting booth. Kamala Harris and her team believe that there will be millions of women that undermine their husbands. If I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that's the same thing as having an affair.

That to me... Oh my God. Let him finish. Go, Jesse. That violates the sanctity of our marriage. Yes.

I mean, Adam, what is that? What are they doing here? This is what we're we're closing the deal with the bro fest in Madison Square Garden that the surrogates out here trying to shame women for they want to vote for Trump at the rally last night said, I'll be your protector, whether you like it or not. They want all male voting. I guess at some level, there's a serious element to it, but it also very pathetic and sad.

Yeah, I mean, look, here's what this is. It really is in, you know, Nikki Haley, I hate to give her credit for anything, but she called it right with the bro culture, and you've talked about this too.

There is a massive gender split, obviously. There always kind of has been. But, you know, Democrats are going to crush it with women and Republicans are going to do really well with men. And part of this and this is a whole hour long conversation in and of itself. But, you know, I've said for the last 10 years, like we were kind of in this moment where everything masculine was called toxic sex.

And that went way too far. And so there were these young men particularly that felt like they didn't really have a place. What is my role? And Donald Trump comes along with actual real toxic masculinity. And in the absence of another version of masculinity, men just kind of gravitated to that. And so that's what you're seeing here is an extension of this like

angry, you know, I'm in charge of the house type masculinity. And I think they're just doubling down on saying, we're going to win men. We're going to win them big outside of the morals of it politically, because it's kind of dumb because women tend to turn out in much higher numbers than men do, but that's what you have. It's again, it's, it's the Joe Rogan slash Andrew Tate bro culture, and they can't go back on that. So, you know, does, does,

You know, Johnny McEntee really believed that he wants to repeal the amendment for women to vote. Probably not. Although maybe he would if he could, honestly. But for him, it's all about like, I'm so anti-PC. I'll so say what's on the edge that I can win these folks. And that's kind of been the new Republican Party is just how much can we trigger the left? And the more we trigger it, the more popular we become within our own little movement. Yeah, I mean...

Regardless of whether it's clearly not a serious proposal to repeal the 19th Amendment, but putting it all together, you have within Project 2025 and some of these guys, they've re-brought up the fact that we should re-look at no-fault divorce. J.D. Vance even mentioned that in one of the million podcasts he did. Shouldn't be letting people... Women should stay in these sorts of marriages. Obviously, the abortion issue, birth control. They're talking about how...

It's undermining of the man of the house to vote against them. Regardless of which of those particular things you think is doable in a Trump term, the fact that you're going to have all these little bros running around who have not yet matured into men and that they will...

wield the power of government. That's got to be pretty alarming to any on the fence women. It does have to be. And I can't, here's the thing. Like I can think of times in this country's history, obviously when races have been pitted against each other. Um, obviously there were times when women didn't have equal rights as men, but I can't necessarily look back and figure a time when actual genders have been pitted against each other. I mean,

And maybe I'm wrong. I'm no clear historian, but I can't think of a time when other political leaders have so openly tried to turn men against women. I mean, it's wrong to say like we're going to turn blacks against whites or use race, but that's happened before. The fact that you are within each home now trying to pit men against women, you think what this is doing to relationships, by the way, if there's a dude that's in a marriage and he thinks this kind of stuff's funny and his wife is feeling very minimized because of this,

You know, we've had trouble with marriages staying together anyway, particularly in the pandemic era, the post-pandemic era. Think of what Donald Trump, Johnny McAtee, and others, Tucker Carlson, are happily doing to marriages now, creating a real stress point. I mean, look, I actually think that, you know, somebody that votes Republican and Democrat should be able to be married together. But the reality is that is a stressor in marriages. And all these guys are doing is inflaming that further. This is not...

the pro-marriage, pro-family party anymore. It really isn't. This is the trolling party. And literally, that's all it is. My colleague Kathy Young sent a tweet about this, which I liked, which was like, you know, all these guys do the lip service to...

Raising children and being a homemaker is so important and valuable. And the left wants to take that from you. And the feminists and third-wave feminism, and they want to put you out in the workplace for something that's less fulfilling. And the real fulfilling work is being a mom. And they say that and say that. And then the minute it becomes convenient, it's like, oh, what? You're ungrateful?

You're so ungrateful sitting around at home eating your bonbons. You're not going to vote for Mr. Trump like the man of the house who's providing for you does. It reveals just the hollowness of the whole endeavor. You're right, because what you see is, and this has kind of been something I've been on a little bit lately, which is like,

you know, there's this kind of belief that the 1950s was really like what you see on leave it to beaver, right? It was just this amazing time. Mom loved being at home. She loved, you know, not having a microwave and having to cook everything in the oven for seven hours. Like that's what, that's what this view is. And the kids just go outside and play. Now,

You don't think about like, you know, back to the future with Biff the bully and how, you know, everything, if you were slightly different, you literally would get assaulted back in the day. And, you know, all the sexual abuse that happened that you couldn't report because police wouldn't take you seriously or racial violence that would happen. And the police would always take the side of the white guy. Like, no, you think back to the 50s. And the thing is, is we're getting a bit of a preview now.

That the 1950s weren't quite this idyllic time where everybody was happy. I bet in the 50s, there was a lot of things where men are like coming home drunk at 9 p.m. from the bar after being at work and the wife wanted him home with the kids. And he strikes her because she's not grateful enough for all the hard work he's doing. We're seeing a little preview of that now. This is what these guys want. And honestly, I think that's a miserable life, to be honest with you.

We're not going back. You know, you'd think maybe, whatever, maybe we're just cucks. Maybe we're soy boys that don't understand, right? We've turned on Mr. Trump. We don't understand how it goes. So I was interested to hear Megyn Kelly's take, not those particular clips, but on just the general culture at Madison Square Garden and the various speakers and what she noticed from the Madison Square Garden event. Let's listen to Megyn Kelly.

But I'm telling you, even for me, and I voted for Donald Trump last week, it was too bro-tastic. Okay? It was. You're trying to win an election in which you're hemorrhaging female voters.

Maybe when you present in front of hundreds, thousands at least, at Madison Square Garden, you clean up the bro talk just a little so you don't alienate women in the middle of America who are already on the fence about Republicans. Do they have no women advising their campaign? Is there no actual woman sitting behind the scenes coming up with the guest lineup and saying, let's just have a word?

with the guys who are going to be speaking about this isn't the bar. This isn't their living room. This is a campaign. This is politics. We're trying to get him elected. We don't need to rally the base or guys anymore. And it's not helpful, even if we do want to rally the base or guys to go full off color insults to different racial groups and so on.

Worst person in the world makes a great point. Dot meme. That was great. Oh, man. Megyn Kelly. There was something I liked about Megyn Kelly at one point deep in the recesses of my brain, and I haven't seen it lately. And there it was. That's pretty good.

So I'm going to give Megan Kelly a reverse compliment sandwich. Great. She's insane. That was a good point. I don't know what happened to her. Okay. And, uh, cause she, remember she's the one that was taken out Trump, like in 2016, like, you know, you said women, blah, blah, blah. But, uh,

I mean, she's right here, which is there really is no campaign strategy behind it. Again, it's like how much more, how much over the edge, how intense can we get? How much can we troll the left? And at some point, while that may feel good, that comes into conflict with we actually need to win this election.

And, you know, if we don't win this election, all this will have just been a good time and not worth anything. And so, yeah, I mean, if Megyn Kelly is ringing the alarm bells, if I were the Trump people, I'd actually listen. The problem is the Trump people are probably actually listening. It's Donald Trump that isn't. And every speaker knows that if they can go there and say extreme stuff, that Donald Trump will love it. And look, look, look.

Let's be very clear. Maybe this guy was a comedian. Maybe he shouldn't have said it. Maybe everybody was disgusted by it. They knew what the reaction was to it prior to Donald Trump going up and speaking. And if he'd have gone up and simply said, look, we had a speaker here prior, I totally disagree with him. I disavow that.

He would have probably jumped 20 points in the polls because the first time he would have seen contrition from Donald Trump. And this wouldn't be an issue we're talking about, but they can't bring themselves to do it because at the depth of their heart, this stuff really is funny to them.

Yeah, they agree. I mean, Donald Trump can't say that doesn't represent me because it does. It's a stated talking points that there are shithole countries out there and that they're garbage and that other countries are sending us their garbage. So, you know, the joke is right in line with Donald Trump's actual views. And I went off on this actually on Twitter. I put out a video, a little two minute video, just like, listen, spare me. And I think I put a, yeah, I did. I put an article on Substack about it, which is like, spare me your indignation, Trump people.

When you sit here and you say, you know, that Joe Biden's called you trash and you're like, oh my God, I'm so aghast. Spare us your indignation because you are worshiping a man who's

who basically says that on a Tuesday, who divides genders against each other, who divides race against each other, who divides socioeconomic status against each other, who divides nations against each other, who divides neighborhoods against each other. All he does is divide, stir divisions, stomp on heads, punch down. That's what he makes his money on. That's what he basically is known for. And yet you're outraged that the current president of

honestly misspoke but let's even say he didn't misspoke he said something you didn't like guess what he's not even running for president but quit being outraged when your guy has spent eons dividing and destroying people against each other like i have no room for your outrage i'm sorry

Zero. Back to your point about how you mentioned Nikki Haley earlier and how there's no strategy there. I guess the one thing I disagree with on your point is that the strategists are on to something and it's Trump that's not. I don't know. I mean, Trump's speech at Madison Square Garden was way less offensive on its face. I mean, it was baseline Trump offensiveness, but it was way less offensive on its face than a lot of the warm-ups and Stephen Miller's Nazi comments. Stephen Miller's one of his advisers.

And it was his advisers that decided they needed to have 18 fucking dude bros doing, you know, insult comedy before him. They didn't have to do that. It's the advisers that also made this mistake. As far as I can tell. Let's listen to Nikki Haley. The Associated Press says as Democrats court Haley supporters, the former U.N. ambassador is still waiting to hear from Trump. When was the last time you talked to the former president? Last time I talked to him was back in June.

So are you surprised that you haven't been deployed out to campaign or have you volunteered to go out and campaign for him directly? They're very aware that we're on standby. They know that we would be there to help. I've helped with some fundraising letters and text messages and those types of things. So we've done that. But look, we're on the same team. It is their campaign's decision on what he needs.

in these last final days, it does not bother me at all. I think they need to do what they need to do to get across the finish line. I just think that they need to focus primarily on who it is they're talking to. You've got Americans who are absolutely gonna vote for Trump. You've got Americans who are absolutely not gonna vote for Trump. And then you've got a percentage in the middle

who like Trump policies but don't like his style. That is what they need to focus on. So when you look at these things, it has got to be a story of addition. This is not a time to have anyone criticize Puerto Rico or Latinos. This is not a time for them to get overly masculine with this bromance thing that they've got going. 53% of the electorate are women. Women will vote. They care about how they're being talked to.

I haven't talked to him since June. Susie Wiles can't set up a phone call? That is crazy. I mean, A, it goes to show you that you get nothing for sucking up to Trump. You get nothing. He just takes your soul and you get nothing in exchange for the deal. But just as a strategic matter, I mean, wow.

I think it's first off, I just, I can't stop laughing that she called it this bromance culture. Cause it's true, but it is like, you know, like they pride themselves on being so manly, but yet they are just literally sitting around like googly eyed at each other, all these men, right? Like if Andrew Tate walked in or if Joe Rogan walked in, it's like this male worship culture, which to me is, I don't

I don't know. It doesn't seem very masculine, to be honest with you. A little gay? Yeah. You're saying that feels a little gay to you? Yeah, maybe I'm wrong. I'm not sure if Donald Trump's feeling very gay, but he is giving out in the first round of RuPaul's Drag Race with the amount of makeup that he's putting on right now. He's giving full last place in RuPaul's Drag Race energy over the last few weeks, which is kind of gay in its own sense. Yeah, well, that's Trump for you. But the Haley thing, look.

There is nothing more pathetic to me than Nikki Haley clearly wanting to be used by Donald Trump, clearly wanting to be out there on the trail, clearly with her feelings hurt.

And clearly probably sitting around going, gee, did I actually do the right thing by coming out and supporting him? Because her assumption was, which happens to so many others, it's why Trump is a good cult leader. If you ask for forgiveness, he'll forgive you and usually bring you back into the cult and you learn not to do that again.

miscalculated that. And like from a Trump perspective, I think it's really bad politics. If he'd had Haley out there pretty hard, I mean, she would have been a pretty serious contender against those of us in the Republicans for Harris coalition because she's, you know, she was kind of the meme of the Republicans for Harris. But,

Her feelings are hurt. And you know what? And I don't care because if you're going to turn against everything you said in the primary because you want to still be in the in club, then you deserve to be ignored. Honestly, it is pretty crazy when you think about it, how much more effort the Harris campaign is putting into reaching Haley voters than the Trump campaign. Yeah. And it's pretty wild. The Harris campaign is.

Like has made a real concerted effort that through what you're doing with Republicans for Harris, the little tour she did with Liz through, I, we could go down the whole list, like the ads, her rhetoric, freedom signs. And it's like the Trump campaign is just not even trying. It does feel a little bit though, like,

Like there's some Stockholm syndrome with some of the Haley voters. So they're not, the message isn't getting through to them that they're not invited to the party, that it's a no homers club, you know, but. And given that there are probably some listening to this now, I think it's important to say this, which is look, the party that you think is,

You still have affection for that party that believes in a strong national defense, a smaller government, you know, the one that we all remember. I know it's hard to come to grips to this, but it doesn't exist anywhere.

It literally, if you're going to put policies up against each other, you are closer to the Democrats, even in their most liberal form, than you are the current Republican Party. It doesn't mean you're close to Democrats, but on a spectrum, you're closer to Democrats because you believe in kind of the liberal small L order out there.

And the Republicans don't anymore. And look, I know it feels like it happened extremely suddenly, too. It didn't. This has actually been in the works for about 20 years, maybe longer. But really, the last eight years since Donald Trump came down that escalator on the scene, the last nine years.

it's gone from being the party you remember to what it is today. That's not a quick happening. Nine years is a decade. Like you can change the tone of a party in a decade. You don't have a place in that Republican party anymore. And I know it hurts because our political identity is tattooed on our foreheads and we never want to get rid of it. But you are the outsider now. It's not that there's outsiders in the party. Yeah. Over a decade, your little kindergartner started to drive the car.

You know, I know it happens fast. You know, the days are long and the years are short. But like, you know, that's that's what's been happening. All right. One last thing on the Nikki Haley voters. I've said this a couple of times, but I've received several texts. This is not a fake sir story. I've received several texts and DMs from people that shared my pitch to Nikki Haley voters that said they sent it to their dad or their friend in Pennsylvania. And it helped. It worked. It nudged them over into Kamlo's camp. So we'll put the link in the show notes again.

You should be out there knocking on doors or doing whatever, you know, post guarding. But send this article around. You have somebody in your life. You have a Wall Street Journal reading Brett Bear Watcher in your life. Send it to him. Maybe we can maybe we can nudge him over. OK, here's one last point that I think should maybe be relevant for them that I don't feel like I've spent enough time talking about on the on on the podcast because there's just so much shit going on. RFK said this in an interview a couple of days ago, and it's pretty alarming. Let's listen. They

The key that I think, you know, that President Trump has promised me is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others, and then also the USDA, which is, you know, is key to making America healthy because we've got to get off of

seed oils and we've got to get off of pesticide intensive agriculture. Talk about spooky. There's my Halloween fright for you. RFK has been promised the head of HHS and NIH and USDA.

That's alarming. Can they do something about his cough? But look, I... Dude, it's crazy. That audio isn't giving health to you. That's not giving Making America Healthy Again to you. It's not helping. It's like, he ate glass. Yeah, exactly. But listen, man, like...

The seed oils and the fluoride and the electromagnetic frequency that's coming off of your Wi-Fi and the 5G towers, this is all in the same thing. And by the way, the Earth's flat. We never went to the moon. And Fahrenheit is just a construct. I mean, and honest to God, if you have a Republican Senate,

And you can imagine the pressure coming on the Republican Senate to allow this RFK appointment to go through because all of a sudden RFK's people are going to be going crazy. You very well may end up with this. And you could imagine a Surgeon General warning against seed oils, for God's sakes, or a Surgeon General warning against –

just virgin olive oil and not extra virgin olive oil whatever it is but it's this is just crazy stuff you know and it's not based on science it's based on somebody that wrote an internet article i think with what we know about rfk he'd be he's he's into extra virgin olive oil but probably so i don't know if it matters if the republican senate would confirm him right like they could just make him the czar and the people around you know andrew eggo wrote about this in the newsletter this morning

That guy that spoke at MSG, Howard Licknick, the CEO, his employees died during 9-11. He's supposed to be one of the business guys, the practical guys around Trump. He's on CNN last night with Caitlin Collins.

Do you see this? And he's like, RFK was convinced me he's making some good points about autism and all this stuff. And we should maybe be relooking at vaccines. In a worst case scenario, I don't think it's just Surgeon General warnings. I think that vaccine mandates for kids, bringing back smallpox, measles, rubella, all that stuff is potentially in play because there are no normals around.

And like the people that are around are going to be pliant to this crazy stuff. I mean, look, Tim, I've said this and I kind of jokingly, but kind of serious, which is like the dark ages would be looking at us going, holy shit, you guys need to just start paying attention to some science. Right. And these are the people that would like burn everybody as a witch because I mean, like the seed oil thing, maybe their seed oils aren't healthy. I don't know. But I also know that like two years ago,

Everybody was on this kick called the croissant diet because it didn't have some ingredient in there and croissants don't have that. And so you can eat like crap as long as it's not. And then that was found to be crap. Is that real? The croissant diet? Did you just make that up? That was a real thing. And, uh, yeah, I know, dude, look it up and you can find, you can find anything to support. Like there's an ice cream diet out there somewhere. I'm sure. But like, it's all,

It's always like, you know, one month eggs are bad for you and one month they're good for you. Right. Like, but the seed oil thing is when, when he said that, I'm like, okay, we're, we're in cuckoo territory now. Completely, completely cloud cuckoo land.

Let's stay in cloud cuckoo land for a while. I want to talk about Elon Musk. Eventually we're going to get to the election, but this is the election. I think that this is, it can get flattened, you know, in the final days people, and we did a little bit of this yesterday, my buddy Lakshya, I'm like, you can get focused on, Oh, what's the early vote showing and what's the showing that it's like,

a lot of that is a lot of smoke and mirrors, frankly, a lot of worry about things that are out of control. And what is in our control is making sure people understand just the degree of fucking lunacy that is going to be around Donald Trump if he gets in there. And so I want to talk about Elon Musk, who was

That seems to be going to be his closest advisor in the White House, going to be in charge of cutting things. He said he was going to cut the military-industrial complex yesterday on Twitter. He said that there is going to be some short-term economic hardship while they right-size government and start terrifying a bunch of people. And then yesterday...

I saw you tweeting about this in Michigan. Canvassers and paid door knockers for Musk's America pack have been subjected to being driven around at the back of a seatless U-Haul van and threatened that their lodging in a local motel wouldn't be paid for if they didn't meet canvassing quotas. One canvasser says that they didn't even know they were signing up for anything having to do with Musk or Trump.

This is a totally unhinged man, oligarch with unbelievable powers that they just want to unleash on the government if he gets in there. So I'm curious your thoughts on the domestic side. And then I want to talk about Russia.

Yeah, so this is truly like what you see oligarchs do in countries like in the Russian sphere. You know, the country of Georgia, by the way, just had an election, totally fraudulent. So there's a lot of unsteadiness there. But their party is basically run by an Elon Musk in that area. And he would do the same thing, pay people, you know, like threaten people. And this is a huge problem. I mean, this whole million dollar lottery thing is clearly corrupt and clearly illegal.

the fact that they are basically using slave labor and then the better is maybe indentured servitude because they're threatening their lodging and stuff for them to go do this. Like,

If we really want this, and by the way, let me just say too, you know, they talk about right-sizing government and putting tariffs on everything. I'm going to tell you what industry will not have tariffs. Probably the Tesla electric car industry because Elon Musk will not tariff to his own detriment. And, you know, we can get into the whole security clearance thing and maybe that's coming up with Russia, but that's a huge issue with me too. So we cannot, we cannot as a country do this.

I mean, it's crazy that they're planning for the tariffs. And it ties to the Nikki Haley discussion. Because to me, in addition to the article I mentioned to send to the Brett Baier person in your life, to the person that's in the stock market in your life, to the dad that just cares about their 401k, trying to shake them and being like, this is their plan. It is not the 2017 Paul Ryan tax cut plan that is coming.

Like it is putting Elon Musk in charge of indiscriminately cutting things in the government, including from the Defense Department, and then tariffing all foreign goods. Well, not all foreign goods indiscriminately tariffing foreign goods and making it especially high on companies or CEOs they don't like.

Like that is turning this country into Hungary and the Hungary economy is not humming. Okay. Like this is not, this is not your daddy's. We're going to cut some red tape. Kamala Harris talks more about cutting red tape than these guys do. Like they want to slash huge segments of the government and,

and reorient the taxation system to tariffs in a way that will totally disrupt things that they admit will cause short-term pain. That is a crazy pitch, and the only reason people are going along with it is because they don't believe that it will happen. They believe that it will be 2017, and it's not fucking 2017. So there's this belief that globalism in and of itself is really bad and evil, and you have to think as an evangelical to understand this. But I'll give you the 12-second overview, which is...

We were taught growing up as evangelicals that we were always on the edge of the apocalypse and the one world government, right? The Antichrist, this one world government. The thing that we were constantly told was leading to the one world government is globalization. So to many of these people, anything that reverses globalization, including destroying trade routes, including big tariffs, is a good thing because of the whole one world government situation and the Antichrist. And obviously, that's all evil, right?

in cashless society and whatever else you can throw out there to you. People that think that the old Republican party is going to come back just soon. And, you know, but it's not, it's gone. Maybe it'll come back someday, but it ain't here right now. The old Republican party is coming back. The Lindbergh Republican party. That's what we're coming back to. Yeah. That's a Reagan Republican party. We're going way back. All right. So he's talking to Russia.

So I guess I'm interested in your take on, you mentioned the security clearances. So open floor to just kind of riff on both of these things. But I think it's kind of crazy how little attention it's gotten. I mean, it's gotten some attention, but like the fact that the biggest government contractor and the biggest donor to one candidate is having back-channel conversations with an adversary and apparently being asked to do favors for that adversary, including looting.

Wi-Fi access to another independent ally, quasi-ally in Taiwan. It's a scandal without precedent. And it's just kind of like, oh, well, Elon's being crazy. So anyway, I'm curious your thought on that and then we can get into the security clearance stuff too. Yeah, it's absolutely a scandal without precedence. Like, here's the problem with Elon Musk. He has done so well with SpaceX and boom,

And Boeing has crapped the bed so hard on literally everything. If you're a Boeing executive listening to this, get your shit right, okay? Because Boeing has been trying to, in essence, compete with SpaceX. And as you know, they put that rocket up. They ended up stranding these frigging astronauts in space.

Whatever is going on at Boeing, it has led to SpaceX being really the only way to get astronauts in and out of space that's not Russia, as well as satellites and stuff like that. So the government utterly needs Elon Musk. The problem is Elon Musk knows that, and he can go and do whatever he wants. If it was me, as a government contractor, let's say I was selling, I don't know, Coca-Cola cans to the U.S. military, but I was also having back channels with Russia, I

would lose my contract because there would be other people that could go out and provide Coca-Cola cans. But for some reason, Elon Musk is exempt from that. And he is in essence doing more damage to U.S. foreign policy than anything. And I got to tell you, I don't understand. I don't understand. You know, I've been I've been holding back certain criticisms of the Biden administration until the election's over. But I don't understand where the Biden administration is on this. I've not heard a word out of them.

I see weak actions in Ukraine continuing to deny Ukraine the opportunity to strike long into Russia despite North Korean troops now in Russia. It's like they are asleep at the wheel right now. And this Elon Musk thing is a huge deal. What's also going on with TikTok? TikTok has been banned. It's supposed to be sold off to a different company.

I don't know what's going on with that. Are they pursuing the sale? Because we all want to keep TikTok here. We just want to get it out of the purview of the CCP. And so I am angry at Elon Musk, and I'm also angry at the lack of action. Now, before somebody uses my words to say, see, vote for Trump, it would be way different under Trump. Let's just be very clear. Trump would be embracing this garbage. Biden's just kind of asleep at the wheel at it. When I interviewed Walter Isaacson about his Elon book,

I got to tell you, I mean, you can hate Elon and despise him and loathe him and think he's pernicious and all this. And also maintain the correct thought in your head that it hasn't just been the Biden administration, but the last Trump administration also apparently and the Obama administration has totally abdicated this space.

Pun intended. It's unbelievable that Elon filled this gap. And with all of the resources of federal government, that Elon is the only person, and not Elon himself because he's not the technologist, but that SpaceX and Starlink are the only people that are able to do this. That should be a crisis. And it's a crisis that we've known about for years now. For years. And Walter was writing about this in the book when he was interviewing Elon two, three years ago.

And smart people who are paying attention to this industry obviously were aware of this before that. And so it's like it is totally unacceptable that the government has just completely abdicated this arena. Yeah. And look, here's the thing. 1960s, we send men to the moon. Okay.

We are trying to recreate that now in the, in the year of our Lord, 2024, we had an Artemis one mission where rocket basically went around the moon. That was basically like Apollo two or three or whatever. Now Artemis two is supposed to be next year. And that's where we actually have a manned mission around the moon, not landing yet because God forbid we do that. It's only been 70 years. We got to reinvent the wheel, but,

And probably Artemis 2 is not going to go in 2025 like they say it is. That is way behind schedule. How is it that we have abdicated this so badly? I mean, again, we are basically redoing what we did in the 60s. But yet, just like what happens with every new Air Force airplane that comes in, instead of relying on pilots, you have to load it with so much technology that doesn't work or like these new electromagnetic catapults.

on aircraft carriers because we just can't use an old mechanical catapult anymore. And instead of having, you know, Buzz Aldrin piloting his aircraft or having an astronaut, Neil Armstrong, fly it to the moon, you have to have some technology and it puts everything way back. Like I could go on an hour about how we've screwed this up. But the fact is we're just trying to land a man on the moon again and we can't do it.

The story, I think it was Maggie Haberman and John Swan at the New York Times, if I have that right. I apologize to the reporter who had this, if it was not them. Reported that the Trump administration is already looking at workarounds for not having to go through the normal security clearance process. If there's to be another Trump administration, they're going to hire some private vendor, I guess, and change the rules. Talk about all the implications of that.

Yeah, I mean, they can do it. Look, keep in mind, when you're president, you're the head of the executive branch. So everything that falls under the purview of the executive branch that's not explicitly in law, like you can just do it. And even if it is in law and you do it, what are you going to do? Is the Congress going to sue you? What if they win? How are they going to force you to change that? So these are the kinds of questions we're going to have to think about now.

But yeah, you look at all the garbage folks like, and I'm not talking about the supporters. I'm talking about the people that actually worked for Donald Trump, right? I'm talking about the Stephen Millers. I'm talking about the whatever. These awful people that would never get a security clearance because they've had contacts with foreign agents. They have debts. They have domestic assault charges. I'm thinking of Washington.

what was his name? Parscale. Yeah, Brad Parscale. There were two of them. Parscale. Parscale and then another one. But anyway, yeah, but Parscale. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. See, this is like, I hope we don't have to remember all these fucking characters from the universe again. He was the staff secretary. Yep.

I can picture him. Oh, he's such a douche. Anyway, that guy, the staff secretary guy. So you think about anybody that's got arrested on domestic violence, domestic assault, who got convicted on it, can't get a security clearance. But if you change that, you can. Or if somebody has a gun charge or somebody has anything. And again, even just things like too much debt, too much debt to income ratio denies you of a top secret security clearance. And let's take Elon Musk for a second. Again, if I would have reached out

To Vladimir Putin. Now, I'm talking about my not my congressional security clearance, my clearance that I got cleared for in the military. If I would have reached out to Vladimir Putin and tried to negotiate things with him, honest to God, if the government found out about it, I mean, if you even like if I would have even dated a Russian girl, I could have lost my top secret security clearance for that and probably would have.

Now, calling Vladimir Putin and negotiating things that affect U.S. policy, your security clearance would be stripped faster than you can even say the word security clearance. Why is nobody doing that with Elon Musk? He is in a unique place of his own that he can somehow engage in diplomacy against the wishes of the United States government with our chief enemy, but they won't take the fact that he has a security clearance or he's the number one contractor to the federal government. To me, again, it's muddled.

mind blowing. It goes to show the vulnerabilities that we have. And I'm not here to be like doomsday naysayer. But like, if we don't recognize this stuff, we can't fight back against it. Because the fact that we haven't talked about this, the last 10 years is how we got to this moment we're in. No doubt. All right. I want to close with some Kamala stuff. Arnold got off the couch, said he was endorsing Kamala yesterday, the governator. Thank you.

Could have used it a little bit ago. Could have used a couple interviews. Whatever. We'll take it, though. We'll take it. Water's warm. Come on in. Chris Christie, you're still out there. You're still out there on the beach, you know, laying in that beach chair like you were. You can do it. You're welcome to get off the beach chair, off the Barka lounger, off the couch, take the double M&M box. You can just come on in. We're going to welcome you with open arms.

Very open arms. Yeah. Widely open. So anyway, I'm wondering your thoughts on Arnold. And then I got one more thing for you.

Yeah, I mean, look, it's good. And I think, again, you know, what we're up against, what we're competing against is, first off, if there's a so-called Democrat for Trump, it's really people that basically used to be Democrats that became hardcore Trumpers. And now they're pretending to be Democrats for Trump. They're not. What you're seeing among our uneasy alliance to support democracy, to defend democracy, are people that still kind of hold their, not really Republican values, because Republican values are no longer that, but like old school Republican values are.

and recognize that Kamala is the best. And obviously Arnold is one of those. And I think the more that these happen, the more it gives those, because there are still people out there that are just like, I can't vote for Kamala. It's a Democrat. My whole identity is wrapped in my politics. But the more and more people that do this, give them permission to say, okay, my dad for the first time voted for a Democrat, you know, and I don't think he liked doing it. Much love, Mr. Kinzinger. Yeah.

And part of it was probably to support me, I'm sure, and the things I've been through. But the fact that there are more and more people make it easier for somebody like him. And so I think it's great that Arnold's done this. I concur. Rob Porter was the guy's name. So, you know, I don't want you to feel like you can just disappear into obscurity. Rob Porter was the staff secretary guy that did add some domestic abuse issues in the Trump administration. All right. Lastly,

Let's end on a positive. You saw Kamala. We saw Kamala at the Ellipse earlier this week. I just want to have an updated temperature check for you on the type of campaign she's been running, what you're hearing from her, particularly on the kind of national security stuff that you really care about and how you're feeling in the last few days. Well, I'll start with the only negative thing I can say, which is, look, Democrats, it's not going to happen in the next five days, but you need to look longer term at this.

You need to start being part of defining, and this is what I want to be part of too, defining for America's young men, what is healthy masculinity versus unhealthy masculinity, you know, defending the defenseless stuff like that. You do have a problem with men. You know, I get it that, you know, it's great to have these events where it's all women and all women in the background, but

I think Democrats need to actually do some more events where it's all men and all men in the background. It's tough for them, I think, to get past that old muscle memory where everything is identity politics. So that's my only negative thing. The fact that Kamala has only been in the race for three months, that she basically came in six points down where Biden was to where we are today, is I think you could have run this scenario 100 times and 99 out of 100 would not have ended as good as this one had.

I think she has done literally everything right. I can't think of a massive mistake, and any mistakes I find are just small ones that can happen with any campaign. I think it has been a master class in how to run a positive campaign. I say that Democrats kind of feel a little addicted to identity politics.

I exempt Kamala from that because she's the opposite of that. She doesn't talk about the fact that she's a minority. She doesn't talk about the fact that she's a woman. And frankly, when I was at the DNC and hearing USA chants and I heard and I saw this at the Ellipse again, Kamala saying we need a lethal U.S. military. Democrats never uttered that word. And it is brilliant. And if you're a Democrat like worried about that, listen,

The Republican Party has become what you guys were in the 80s, the blame America crowd, the ho-hum, everything's awful crowd. That is now the Republicans. You can be the optimistic, proud American crowd and take that real estate back. So my view is this.

this. This has been probably one of the most flawlessly run campaigns that we possibly could have. There's still five days left. So God knock on wood, please. But my feeling is last week, I was basically saying, I think she's going to lose today. I feel much, much more confident that she can win, but there is no doubt it's a dead tie. It's a dead tie, but it feels like there is a little momentum on her side and in a tie that matters. That matters a lot.

All right. I agree. You know, it's, we have the men that like know how to cry, you know, and I love those kinds of men. I'm one of those, but, uh, we can expand, we can expand out. We can expand out from there, hopefully enough to get across the finish line. Adam Kinzinger, I appreciate you so much. I appreciate your service to the country, your clear eyed nature on this. And, uh, the next time I see you, we'll have a president elect God willing. It's president Kamala Harris.

You bet. Great to see you, buddy. Good hanging out. Thanks so much to Adam Kinzinger. We'll be back tomorrow. We're going to do something a little different tomorrow. It's Friday. It's before the election. We're going to have all your faves next week for election week. Starting to bring a new voice into the Borg podcast tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. We'll see you all then. Peace. Some men only ride alone. I only ride in the night.

Some drown in the warmth of home But nothing fades like the light Blackened houses, morning skies On my mind April showers, June is the same And you're up, something tells me

The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.