Jim Messina and Michael Weiss: Midwestern Nice
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Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We've got a double header today up in segment two. It's Michael Weiss talking about the flare up in the Middle East. Also, remember, it's Wednesday, so I'm over on the Next Level Podcast where Sarah and JVL and I are rending our garments about the state of affairs. But not here on today's daily podcast. We've got Jim Messina, campaign manager for Barack Obama's 2012 re-election. He's the chair of a new PAC, Democracy Defenders. He's the chair of a new PAC, Democracy Defenders.

and democracy is going to need defending in the last month. How are you doing, Jim? Thanks for coming on the pod. My pleasure. Big fan. First-time caller, long-time listener.

First time, first time. It's a first time week. I think we've got all first times coming up the rest of this week. We've got some folks that I really respect, like yourself, who I'm hoping will calm me down and calm the listeners down. We'll see if that actually happens. I want to start with last night on the positive side. I want to talk a little bit about what you thought Walls did well, what was the objective, and what, you know, if the campaign, if you were back in your campaign manager chair, what are you guys pushing today? Yeah.

Look, what I'd be pushing today is the last five minutes of that debate where he refused to acknowledge that Trump had lost the election. He went right back to the election denier thing. And I think there's already an ad from Team Harris out there on this. And it's exactly right. Like over and over and over in 2022. And Tim, you've been a hero on this, pushing back on these people who are election deniers. And they all lost in the 2022 elections because the country wants to move on.

And the only person who didn't seem to understand that on that debate stage last night was J.D. Vance. Now, look, you know, I think J.D. Vance did himself some good last night, clearly helped the reputation of the Yale debate program. And if I'm working for the J.D. Vance for president campaign in 2028, I'm feeling better about things.

But I don't think he did his boss any favors because the story is back to January 6th. And that's just a place where the Trump campaign cannot have it. And you saw that, Tim, from the snap polls with independent voters. Waltz won 58-42. And when you asked them why, they said abortion on January 6th. And so that's kind of exactly what David Plouffe wanted out of last night. Let's actually listen to the ad that you just referenced that the campaign put out this morning.

It's really rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power. He is still saying he didn't lose the election. I would just ask that. Did he lose the 2020 election? Tim, I'm focused on the future. That is a damning non-answer. America, I think you've got a really clear choice of who's going to honor that democracy and who's going to honor Donald Trump.

Okay, that's good. The ad part of this is good. Messina, your old buddy David Plouffe got what he wanted. It was also 96 minutes into the debate. All right. So like for the Walls actual performance and you know, for people that, you know, maybe tuned in for a little while then flipped over to WNBA or baseball playoffs. Like what was your, you know, broader thoughts about how Tim Walls did last time?

I think that, you know, he did fine. He kind of grew into it. His best answers, and you could tell where he was most comfortable, were on abortion, you know, kind of pushing back on healthcare. Yeah, healthcare did a great job. Kind of his record did a fine job. He totally understood the goal. And the goal was to tie everything to Donald Trump. And so I think that's exactly what he did.

And I think that's good. You know, J.D. Vance is a better debater. Let's just be honest about it. I mean, he went to the fucking Yale debate school like, you know. And the other thing is, like, I think Waltz was really disadvantaged by the rules. No fact checking made it really, really hard. And I think, you know, if you could have gone back and waved your magic wand, you would have had CBS do anything to be helpful there.

I want to talk about my major complaint with Tim Walls last night with you. And I want to play a little clip from The Daily Show post-debate that I think does a good job of summarizing the thing that frustrated me.

You're going to hear a lot from Tim Walz this evening, and you just heard it in the answer. A lot of what Kamala Harris proposes to do, and some of it, I'll be honest with you, it even sounds pretty good. So the rhetoric is good. Much of what the senator said right there, I'm in agreement with him on this. Governor Walz and I actually probably agree that we need to do better on this. I believe Senator Vance wants to solve this. I agree with you. I think you want to solve this problem. I agree with a lot of what Senator Vance said. I actually agree with Tim Walz.

I don't agree that J.D. Vance wants to solve anything. No. I don't think that J.D. Vance's intentions are good. And I don't understand how you can run a campaign where you're saying that the other side is going to be a dictator on day one and where J.D. Vance is this henchman that is going to institute all these horrific Project 2025 plans and

And also be the sitcom dad. That was tough for me. Yeah, I get it. And, you know, I think in the end they decided that he's not the attack dog, that he's not the, he is Midwestern nice and they wanted him to connect and the numbers show that the independent voters liked it.

You and I are used to a different deal when I ran President Obama's campaign and we lost the first debate. Worse than anyone had ever lost a debate. I literally said to Joe Biden, I need you to go fucking kill Paul Ryan. And that's exactly what he did. And so that's what you and I were, you know, we're kind of expecting. I think they had a different theory of the case last night.

The theory of the case, and so I guess this is really what I want to spend the most time with you on, since you've been in these rooms and you know...

you know, kind of how you're strategizing, you know, looking at the maps, looking at the data. I'm a little worried their theory of the case last night was based on a race that they think is moving their direction and is close, but favorable for Harris walls. And I think in that context, it's like, okay, maybe last night's strategy makes sense. But to me, like this is a margin of error race. It's a coin toss. Um,

And I think that my frustration stems like a little bit from the fact that like Tim Walls is sort of brand of politics. It's just not not what you and me and Messina would maybe hope for as far as the as far as the crush, crush, crush. I also worry that it is a sign of like a little bit of complacency. And and I wonder what you think about how your old friend David and the rest of them think about the state of the race right now.

Oh, I don't think David Plouffe thinks anything other than this is a coin flip race, right? I mean, every night my company, Tim, does 66,000 simulations of the election. We have last night Harris winning 51.7, Trump winning 48.3 or whatever the other number is. And so this thing, to Tim's point, is a coin flip election. I think that's exactly the race they think they are in.

And their view of this is a little different than yours. Their view is these women voters don't want to be bludgeoned. They want to be talked to. They want to be explained. And this is about abortion. And their view was, let's go make it about abortion. And, you know, his highlight moment, and you saw this because Plouffe tweeted out,

the highlight moment of the debate on the dial test was abortion. That's their theory of the case, and they don't think the Miller-Messina bludgeoning is how you talk to these swing voters, and they're probably right. All right, I'm hearing that. I just want to just assess myself. If you want to say that

that it's possible that I am blinded by my just rage and hatred of JD Vance. I am guilty. You know, I mean, like JD Vance is literally me. He was a never Trump blogger who sucked up to the worst person in the world. And his payoff was the vice presidential ticket. And he like reminds me of Lyle Menendez. And I like, I just, I would like to have seen him knock down a peg. So I, it's possible that this is more about me than the strategy. On the other hand,

Like there are also some other gettable voters out there. You know, there are center, right? Nikki Haley voters. There are younger men who aren't paying attention that closely. And I just do wonder if part of the objective is to make these guys seem really extreme. Like if you look back at 2020, 22, what worked against Carrie? Like, like it was one part abortion, one part, this is an extreme crazy person that you don't want in charge. And I feel like the abortion part they're doing well, uh,

Isn't that other element needed to talk to that other group of people who aren't quite as engaged as Bulwark podcast listeners? Wait, everyone does listen to Bulwark? Come on, people. No, we're doing pretty well. Our numbers are up, but I do think that 99.9% of listeners...

I don't think you're speaking to swing voters this morning, Jim. No, that's right. And I think a little bit there's two campaigns going on here. There's one campaign about being nice and being Midwestern nice. And there's one campaign about what they're doing in the battleground states where they're ripping Donald Trump's fucking head off on TV every night and digital.

And I think that's a big piece of this. So first of all, let's step back. The majority of swing voters who are undecided, we're down to 4% of voters who are undecided, aren't watching this debate. Right.

And they're going to get the coverage on tech talk and YouTube. Yep, exactly right. And the coverage this morning is about abortion and January 6th. And if that was the goal, then Governor Walz gets an A. If the goal was what you and I expected the goal to be, which is to rip his fucking head off, then then, you know, someone forgot to tell the candidate.

The grade's a little different. Yeah, I guess there's a middle ground, though, right? I guess is my point, right? Like, I do think that there is a middle ground between, you know, just total evisceration of J.D. Vance that would have been emotionally satisfying and kind of allowing him. And again, this is part of the moderators, part of everybody. There's there's everyone is playing a role here. It's part of walls, part of the prep, like moderators.

allowing him to kind of position himself as sort of a softer, compassionate MAGA. That's the part that worries me a little bit.

But since J.D. Vance has been picked, I actually think he's done real damage to Trump in the way that like it has helped solidify the idea that Trump is an extremist. Right. Like Trump is not the New York playboy guy that you think. Like he's having he has these guys around him that are extreme. And I think the J.D., if I was going to give him one piece of credit, succeeded a little bit in like kind of sanding down those edges last night. Even if I think you're probably right that the big clip today is that is the January 6th one.

Yeah, I think a couple of things. One, I totally agree with you. I think they told him this race is not about J.D. Vance. It's about Donald Trump and let J.D. Vance say whatever he wants. And you just stick to Donald Trump. And I think that was the strategy. And that's what they did. I do wonder a little bit. And I just came up with this, Tim. But let's talk about it for a second. Whether Democrats are a little bit sort of have a little PTSD from 2016 and Tim Kaine's performance.

where, you know, the view was Tim Kaine, they tried to turn Tim Kaine into a frothing attack dog, and it didn't work, and it wasn't who he was. And he did a really poor job. And so last night, they said to Waltz, be who you are, and just say the word Donald Trump as many times. And Tim and Messina will have a drinking game later about how many times he said the words Donald Trump. Going back to kind of the strategy from here on out.

Are they in a persuasion game the last month of this thing? Or is this just trying to maximize the vote share among the anti-Trump coalition? And that's the phase of the race that we're in. No, no, no. No, we are in a persuasion game. And the reason I can tell you we're in a persuasion game is who's still left out there, right? I build what Tim and I call message grids or message blocks. And

What each side's saying to their base, what each side's saying to the swing voters and who the other side is trying to peel from each other's base. Clearly, Trump believes that there is African-American and Latino voters out there who should vote for the Democrats who are for him.

Tim and I believe there are some Nikki Haley conservatives out there that she can talk to. But who really is in the middle and the big number of votes here are older white seniors who supported Joe Biden and a bunch of kind of lower educated white voters. And those are all persuasion targets. And I think the one thing that.

Kamala Harris has done right in this campaign so far that Joe Biden didn't because the Biden campaign seemed to believe there weren't any swing voters and they were just going to go turn out their base. And I think the Harris campaign understands very clearly there are these voters and you see them in the morning polls. You see she's not getting the senior number she's got to get in Pennsylvania. Yeah.

And those are all persuasion targets, and they've got to run a persuasion thing. That said, they've got to do turnout, too. They can do both. We're Democrats. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Yeah. So let's talk about the persuasion groups. Is it your sense at this point that they still need to get there on Kamala Harris and that the persuasion is kind of about just –

still, I mean, just because of the weird nature of this race, like almost still introducing her, giving new information to them about her, making sure they're comfortable with her, or is the persuasion like reminding them what they hate the most about Donald Trump? I mean, it's probably both, but like, what, like what was your sense looking at the data from like, what is the big task for the campaign in the last five weeks? Yeah.

It's both. They don't like Donald Trump. They don't want to vote for Donald Trump, but they don't know enough about her. 30% of these undecided voters say they don't have an opinion of Kamala Harris. So you got to continue to do that. And you know, the Harris campaign believes it because that's why you sent her to the southern border on Friday, right? That's exactly why you do that.

Because you need to tell them that it's okay. She gets it. She knows you're scared on immigration. It's okay. And then you rip Donald Trump's head off and remind them why they can't vote for him and why they all walked away from his party. So it really is both. And in 34 days, Tim, that's hard. Usually by now you're not there. But this is what happens when your candidate gets in the race in August. Yeah.

Yeah. On the immigration point, I shouldn't just go to the border, but there's a new ad the campaign has out today featuring my friend, Olivia Troy, who's a star of Republican voters against Trump in 2020, former Trump administration official. Let's just listen to the ad real quick.

I served in Donald Trump's administration, but I know Kamala Harris is the leader we need to keep our country safe and strong. Throughout her career, she's gotten drug traffickers off the streets and protected vulnerable people from fraud. And as a Homeland Security expert, I trust her to protect the border. Kamala Harris's plan will strengthen our border security and crack down on drug smuggling and human trafficking.

We need a president who's tough, who cares about the American people, and who puts the country first. That's Kamala Harris. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. It tells me everything you need to know about where they think they need to gain, right? It's like we have a Trump administration official, Olivia Troy, who's a woman.

Like delivering a message about her strength. Like, I mean, doesn't that check all the boxes you're talking about? Oh my God, I want to hug that ad. I love that ad so much. And it's exactly the right thing. You know, Tim, I'm doing all these international elections all over the world. And after one of them, I flew last summer to the Biden White House and said, look,

Immigration is killing incumbents all over the world. And if you guys don't start dealing with this, you're toast next year. And they patted me on the head and said, every day we're talking about immigration, we're losing. We're not going to talk about it. And I think the Harris campaign knows that was exactly wrong. And they've got to persuade these voters. She gets it on immigration so they can go back to doing what they really want to do, which is vote against Donald Trump.

All right, my final nitpick of the campaign that you get to give me the spin on or the positive view of is I could use a little more of the VP.

And I'm wondering what you think about that. I mean, I guess there's always this balance, right? That if you have her out there doing a bunch of stuff, there could be a gaffe, there could be negative piece of feedback. But I mean, her favorability has just improved so much that I think they've done an amazing job since she took over. Like, this is like, I'm grading you as an A minus, but like my thing that's leaving me a little wanting is just a little bit of caution on kind of her public side.

I'm just wondering what you think about that. My own sense is that's all going to stop on Sunday. I mean, she's due in 60 minutes. She's announced a big swing afterwards.

You know, we're now under five weeks. We're a month out here. It's time to kill the candidate. I remember Obama calling me at one point and saying, are you trying to kill me out there? Like, how many events a day do you have me doing? And I literally said to him, your health is not my goal. My goal is 270 electoral votes. And so I think you're going to see both. And I think it's going to kick off with 60 Minutes thing this weekend.

If you don't pass out from exhaustion on the Wednesday after the election, then Jim Messina, Jen O'Malley, Dylan, David Bluff didn't do their job. Exactly right. All right, let's do the states really quick. How do you kind of judge everything? I mean, obviously, the upper Midwest states are the places where she's doing the best. If one of them falls off, how do you kind of assess the Sunbelt states where the most value is and the state of play?

Yeah. In our simulations of the election, Tim, Pennsylvania is a tipping point state in 70% of the simulations. It is the closest of the Midwestern states. I feel great about Michigan. Wisconsin drives me crazy and used to be the tipping point state. And I think still will be a battle the whole way. And you know that's true because the Senate race is tightened up too. So both those states make me nervous. But

I'd rather be Kamala in all three of those states, you pair that with the Nebraska 2 seat and she's over and she wins the election. If she were to lose Pennsylvania, she's got to replace it. And the place they think you replace it with is Georgia combined with Nevada. Georgia is a state that Barack Obama didn't

play in either time and has come on to the thing. I think Georgia is the hardest of the seven swing states, but lines up the best in some way for her with 30% of African-American votes. And you know they think that's it.

North Carolina is interesting. It was the only 2012 state Barack Obama didn't win, Tim, so I'm still bitchy about it and I'm still angry. What happened? How did you fail on that one? Yeah, I sucked. You did not do the right number of ads, percentage in a couple markets. Was it the Wilmington market? You should have spent a little more.

Yeah, I think it was just campaign manager incompetence, really, probably. But, you know, then you have the storm in all of this and what that does and can people actually vote. And obviously the president's going there. It sounds like the vice president may be going there. So those are big. You know, you could replace Pennsylvania with either Georgia or North Carolina if you add Nevada to that.

Nevada is the weirdest state of all of them. It looked over for Joe Biden, and it looked like the Republicans were going to win the Senate seat. Then Kamala gets in the race, Jackie Rosen's pulled away, and now there's thinking the Democrats can win in Nevada. So that's kind of how I view the map sitting here 30-some days out. All right. The PAC that you're working on, Democracy Defenders, let's talk about that. Obviously, that's going to be related to the Republican efforts to

create problems with the counting of the vote, to challenge the vote, to do voter suppression in various places. So talk about what the group is doing. And then I also want to talk about kind of the counting of the vote and the timing around all that. Yep. So turns out, weirdly, because you and I grew up in a democracy, that we thought the election was on the first Tuesday in November. Turns out we may have been incorrect.

And you know we may have been incorrect because Donald Trump's campaign manager said two or three weeks ago, you know, this really is not over on election day. We're going to fight every single ballot all the way until January 3rd. And that's certainly what they did last time.

And I think it's clear Donald Trump's going to go to jail if he loses this election for one of his many, many court cases. And so they will do whatever it takes. They have filed, as of this morning, 100 lawsuits in the battleground states, contesting everything from whether RFK should be on the ballot in some of these places, to early voting, to whether or not they can kick voters off who didn't vote in midterm elections, which is, you know,

I think the political science term is fucking insane to early vote stations, to all this stuff. You know, there's a huge need out there. So we formed this PAC about a month ago and are kind of trying to rain money upon lawyers, which is one of my least favorite things to do. But it's just incredibly important to do it because we're going to be, you know, between now and election day, fighting every single day to make sure everyone has the right to vote.

And then post-election day, I think there's going to be huge problems on election night because the Trump campaign has already announced they're going to try to stop some of the counting. They're going to do this election monitoring thing where they give shit to all the poor volunteers who are trying to count the ballots. And they already have Republican election officials, county election officials in Michigan and Nevada saying they won't certify their county elections if Donald Trump doesn't win.

And the question there is you might have to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get the state to certify because the state could say, look, we don't have all the counties. How can we certify? And so all of these things are – Thank God we beat Kerry Lake and Josh Shapiro one. I mean, the fact there's only Republican governors and Brian Kemp's quote-unquote good one, at least on this issue, that have been a lifesaver on this stuff. You're exactly right. That's exactly right. And it's so much easier than it was four years ago.

but also the Trump campaign is so much better than they were four years ago. And they understand that, you know, this isn't just about election day. And, and so democracy defenders is making sure that we are ready and fighting all these things. I was up till two o'clock this morning working, working,

working with the lawyers on an emergency filing in Georgia. And so we're literally just going to war every single day to make sure these people can vote. And for your listeners, you know, who used to be Republicans or independents, you know, like, it doesn't matter who you're going to vote for on election day. I think every single person watching this and listening to this

knows that we should have a democratic election where we let people vote. And the fact that we have to now contest this in the courts just drives me fucking insane. God, Tim, I hope I can cuss on your podcast. We love cussing here. My father doesn't like it, and I call him Mona Charon, doesn't like it. So I've tried to cut it down a little bit, but certainly not when we're discussing these fucking assholes. We're not going to cut it down.

You told Politico that this is all driving you to drink. I'm curious, the number one thing that's driving you to drink in this context, and I'm going to tell you the thing that's driving me to drink is thinking about, I think we're gonna have a slow count in North Carolina. We're gonna have a slow count in Pennsylvania. I don't know so much about the other states, but those are two important ones. What's your sentence of the counting? And like, you know, is this gonna, are we gonna be waiting till Saturday again this year? Because I just don't know if my heart can take it. I

I think it's a really good question. It really kind of affects, you know, how much booze we get for election night, whether we start, what time we started drinking. Like these are important Miller Messina concerns, you know, and the bad news is I think we're going to Saturday again. And, you know, to your point, just look at the storm in North Carolina, like, wow.

We're not going to know. Like, you know, one of the things that makes me drink is now the election boards in Georgia can change the rules all the way up to election day. Like, we're just, these guys are just screwing with the election in ways we haven't seen before. So I think it's very unlikely we're going to know who won. So it means pacing, Tim. It means maybe starting with white wine and not going straight into the brown stuff. Yeah.

Yeah, maybe nothing. I told you my favorite tweet from the 2016 campaign, or like this was the beginning of the end for me, but it just resonated with me the most, was a fellow Never Trumper tweeted out after Florida was called for Trump, things have gotten so serious that I stopped drinking.

And like, that's kind of how I feel just thinking ahead to election night this year. Things might be too serious to drink. Actually, I have one flashback. I want to do one memory lane for you before we do it. Just bottom line, where do you think things stand right now? Like how much you'd rather be Kamala, but how much, how much more would you rather be Kamala? I think Kamala Harris is going to win the election, but I, but I think it's close. I think it's, you know, 52, 48. I think it's,

I think it's hers to win, mostly because the Midwestern states are easier for her. Are you worried about herding at all? I'm starting to get worried about herding in the Pennsylvania polling. I guess you're seeing private data, so there shouldn't be any herding in private data. Do you have anything that would assuage my concerns on that? Because when 10 straight public polls show the state between two points...

That makes me think that some of these pollsters are cooking the books because they don't want to have an outlier. So I'm just wondering if that's what you're saying privately. Oh, thousand percent. Thousand percent. That's what's happening. Like, you know, I have my own personal jihad for your listeners against Nate Silver because he's usually wrong in all these elections. And it's because he puts all these shitty polls that we all know are bullshit. And I think there's absolutely hurting going on. Yeah, it's why I've threatened to fire my staff when we look at the daily polls because

because it does make them want to drink. And at 9 a.m., if my team is drinking, Tim, we got problems. Lastly, I just want to go back to 2012 for fun because this was actually, I think, the beginning moment of our alignment, you and me being on the same side. It was coming.

The beginning moment was when Karl Rove went on TV to start talking about how Mitt Romney was really winning that election in 2012 and that they shouldn't be calling it for Barack Obama. I was a young comms person for the Republican National Committee at the time. And I was like, Karl is being insane. I had started drinking. I was like, I've seen the numbers. This race is over. And I was like, I'm not going to go on lockdowns.

TV or whatever fucking thing they wanted me to do and tell them that I think that we should keep counting. I was like, I refuse to do that because this race is over and I have like a little bit of dignity. And I think that was like a kernel towards the future. But like throughout those final, that final month, I,

I just didn't see it. Like I didn't see the unskewing of the polls. Like I felt like you guys were going to win the whole time. What was that experience like for you inside? Were you confident? Were you more confident than you are this year? Like what was it like watching all the crazy Republicans do skew unpoling? What did Obama think about it? Just like paint me a flashback picture for kicks. Definitely the worst month of my life. It, not kidding. It sucked. I had PTSD for October of 2012 for a very long time.

because Barack Obama lost the first debate so badly and we just gave back our lead. But then, you know, I remember the morning after the debate, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid calling me and saying, get your ass on a plane and come calm the caucuses down because they're losing their minds.

And then Joe Biden thrashed Paul Ryan into the debate, and you could see the numbers getting better. And I remember the weekend before the election, by 10 days out, I was convinced the data was clear we were going to win. But it wasn't like a breakaway. And I remember the weekend before the election, Barack Obama called me and said, hey, I want you to fly to Milwaukee tomorrow. I want to have a private conversation with you.

And part of what was freaking everyone out is the Gallup poll was really wrong the whole way. And the Gallup poll had Romney up the final weekend. And so Katy Perry was introducing and playing for Barack Obama in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And I'm trying to watch Katy Perry and Obama comes and says, come here, I want to talk to you. And we go back and he's like literally recited me the polls and said, Gallup has me down.

AP has me up one, New York Times has me up one. What's your model say? And I said, look, I send you the model every night. You know what I think. The election's been over early votes. We have the we have the votes locked up. This thing's over. I slept eight hours last night. You should, too.

And I remember him saying to me, Tim, look, if we lose on Tuesday, the world's going to blame two people, Messina, you and me. And he's like, I'll be fine. I can write books. I'll be fine. You, my young friend, will never work again. And he's like, see, you better be right. And I looked at him and said, I'll see you on Tuesday night. And I was that convinced we were going to be okay.

It's good. We're equally aligned. I was kicked out of the early vote meeting. There was like the RNC and you have a comms meeting to talk about the early vote numbers every day you come in and how you're going to talk about them. And I was like, I was looking at your buddy, Jeremy Bird and Mitch Stewart's memos. And I was taking them into the meeting. And I was like, we're losing. I was like, I don't know what you guys are talking about. This is that we're going to lose. And they're all like, no, we're winning. We're winning. Our models are consistent. I was like, that's crazy. And finally, they kicked me out of the meetings.

We don't need somebody being an app. We don't need the fucking deputy comms director salting the vibes. So you and I were aligned. That is a wonderful story. Well, I'm happy that you and you and Barack Obama both turned out okay. Hopefully the country turns out okay. Will you check in with me 10 days before this election and let me know what you think? I'd love to. It'd be my pleasure.

I'd appreciate that. Thanks so much to Jim Messina. Up next, Michael Weiss. ♪♪♪

All right, we are back with Michael Weiss, editor of The Insider. He's also a host of the Foreign Office podcast, former investigative reporter for CNN. It's a forthcoming book about the GRU, Russia's intel agency. Thanks for coming back, Michael. Obviously, I want to talk about the situation with Israel and Iran, but just briefly, I feel obligated to touch on the foreign policy elements of the debate last night with you. Ukraine is not mentioned, not asked about, or it's mentioned, I guess, by Walt Betwals, but it's not asked about.

by the moderators. There's no meaningful exchange on it. I don't know how that's possible. And I was just wondering what your kind of observations were and, and also, you know, on, on JD Vance, given his, his,

isolationism and how he kind of presented that last night. Yeah, I think it was a colossally bad move on the part of CBS not to ask about it because, look, Trump is, I think, a disaster on foreign policy. We've discussed this before. I think he has a weird Jones for autocrats and strongmen, particularly Vladimir Putin. But weirdly, the Ukrainians seem to think that he's malleable on this issue.

for whatever reason, I happen to disagree with them. I think they're being naive. I think he's going to sell them down the river. There's a kind of congealing wisdom among pro-Ukraine Republicans that, well, you know, what'll happen is Trump will try to strike a deal with Putin.

Putin will rat fuck him and then Trump will be so angry he'll give Ukraine everything except nuclear weapons and maybe even those two. And I just think that's too clever by half. I don't see it going that way. Vance, however, is outspokenly anti-Ukraine. And what I mean by this is he has trafficked in conspiracy theories and disinformation that are

amplified wholeheartedly by the Kremlin and its agents of influence and surrogates in the media, from David Sachs to Elon Musk to, you know, you name it. What do I mean by this? Vance has gone around saying that U.S. taxpayer money is going to finance yachts

purchased by Zelensky. This is just false. It's been debunked. Also, Vance is, you know, sort of posturing as this Appalachian good old boy who's done well for himself, but who came from real poverty. And, you know, he cares about the working class, particularly the white working class in America. The Washington Post had a very, very good story the other day on how

Security assistance for Ukraine, all the money we've spent, presidential drawdowns, congressional supplementals, the vast majority of it is being spent in the United States to create jobs at weapons manufacturing plants, including in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which is where

Zelensky went rather controversially to some, not to me. So Josh Shapiro signing the missiles? Yeah. That was well received. That was received at Bulwark HQ. But yeah, I did notice some negative feedback on that on social media. Good on him. Nobody complained when Zelensky went to Utah and met with the Republican governor there. I mean, the idea that this is politicized somehow, I don't get it. This should be a bipartisan issue. And in many respects, it is a bipartisan issue, but for the MAGA cult, which wants to basically...

sort of cleave Ukraine away from America's foreign policy interests. But look, regardless, the money, U.S. taxpayer money is being spent in America to help Ukraine, because what we're doing is we're giving sort of our hand-me-down weapons to

platforms and ammunition to the Ukrainians. And we're simply investing in building better, newer stuff for our own purposes. And this is something I think the Biden administration has failed in terms of strategic communications to convey to the American electorate. They should have been out front from the beginning to say, not only are we doing this because it's morally imperative to help an ally and a friend and the victim of the largest land war in Europe since World War II. But by the way, we're getting a lot out of it too.

So there's a utilitarian motive baked into this cake. And unfortunately, MAGA, I think, has been successful in convincing, well, certainly its own constituents, but then again, they'll believe anything and everything. But it's convinced ordinary people who might be on the fence about Ukraine that actually that this is, you know, this is sort of the welfare queen of Europe and they're, you know, they're draining our coffers. And it's just nonsense. It doesn't work that way. Yeah.

Yeah, that was my main frustration with the debate last night. Is that JD is so extreme on this stuff and he's literally said he doesn't care about the Ukrainians. As you said, he's advanced all these conspiracy theories and he's kind of able to present his

I think, much more mainstream than he is on a range of issues, but on foreign policy as well. That was frustrating. Okay, let's move on to why I asked you to do an emergency bonus substitute here. We had coordinated attacks in Israel yesterday. Obviously, the Iranian missiles targeting Israel, largely unsuccessful. There's also a mass shooting in Tel Aviv. I talk about what you see

as what happened, and then we'll talk about what's going forward. Yeah, so this, I think people are getting it a bit wrong when they say that this is largely a replay of the salvo, missile salvo the Iranians fired at Israel in April. They fired, at that point, 130 ballistic missiles plus cruise missiles plus drones. This time it was 180 ballistic missiles, but of a higher grade of sophistication than the ones that they used initially.

in April. And I mean, we all saw the footage of the incoming and sometimes it's hard to tell what's a rocket or a missile impacting and what's debris from an interception. But suffice to say, some of these things did get through and Israel's got the best integrated air defense system

In the Middle East, they were not using Iron Dome. I see a lot of people saying, oh, Iron Dome was working. Iron Dome has no capability against ballistic missiles. They were using the aero system and other platforms to take down these missiles. But look, the targets are interesting. So Iran clearly targeted Mossad headquarters. They targeted Nevatim and Tel Naf air bases. Nevatim is the home to Israel's S-35 fleet.

So they were looking to degrade Israel's military and intelligence capability. And I mean, by all the sort of day after battle damage assessment that I'm seeing, including from comments that the White House has made, is that they failed. They didn't take out planes. They didn't damage or destroy any critical strategic infrastructure. So in a sense, this is a win for Israel. I mean, the only fatality in a sort of grim twist of fate was a Palestinian originally from Gaza who,

who had the rocket booster, one of these things, fall on his head in Jenin in the West Bank. There's actually footage of this guy getting beamed by a giant piece of a missile falling on him. So yeah, I mean, Iran is killing Palestinians now when they're aiming at Israel. But, you know, the question I have now, and I think it's one that we all have, is what's going to happen?

And here's where I think it gets a little bit interesting and provocative. So just really quick before this happened, I just do like just on what happened. I just have one other element I just want to get from you. Yeah, there's pretty significant U.S., I guess, Navy involvement in helping with those. Jake Sullivan said yesterday, we're proud of the actions we've taken alongside Israel to protect and defend. I do have a sense for the extent of U.S. kind of involvement there. And then just to clarify, like the mass shooting side of this was...

coordinated, right? I haven't seen the full data on the mass shooting. I mean, this is the real problem, though, that Israel faces and is going to face. And by the way, also, we as Americans will face is asymmetric warfare. You

Iran's proxies, I think they've been badly battered in the region insofar as they are paramilitary or organizations or militias. But as terrorist entities, they're still very capable. And so, yeah, I think what you're going to see is

these kinds of gun, knife, bomb attacks. I mean, the kinds of things that Israel's been putting up with for decades in terms of intifadas and whatnot. But in terms of what the United States and also other countries, I mean, the UK evidently had a role in shooting stuff down. The Jordanians either shot stuff down themselves or allowed America to use their airspace to intercept things. But we had carriers and battleships in the

It didn't seem, though, that this was as kind of coordinated. And there certainly didn't seem to be as much of a preemptive PR campaign waged by the White House to show that, you know, this coalition of nations, including pro-American Arab countries, were sort of quick on the trigger to take down drones, cruise missiles and other things. I mean, in this case, the Iranians fired pretty quickly after both the Israeli and American governments said that something is going to happen as soon as this evening.

It was much more accelerated this time than last. The other thing Jake said, which takes us back to your moving forward, is he said, we have made clear that there will be consequences, severe consequences for this attack. Yeah. And we'll work with Israel to make that the case. I mean, you know, and I guess just in a vacuum, you can see this as an escalating or de-escalating moment just because of the failure. But clearly it seems like an escalating one. I don't know what's your sense. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, for years, I've watched as a consortium of enemies of the United States took us less and less seriously at, you know, in terms of our threats of deterrence, so-called red lines in Syria. These things were violated serially, and the consequences were we are gravely concerned, sanctions here, maybe, you know, anti-tank missiles there. But it took a while for America to kind of

do something actually substantive, if not kinetic.

What I'm noticing now is our allies increasingly are also not taking us as seriously, or we don't wield the kind of leverage we would like to think we can. We see this in Ukraine. We tell Ukrainians, please don't hit Russian oil infrastructure because we're worried about the price of gas at the pump. And the Ukrainians say, thank you very much for your counsel. And they hit them anyway. The Ukrainians are now saying they want to do deep strikes. They're already doing deep strikes into Russia with their own homemade missile and drone systems. They want to

fire attack them and storm shadows. We continued to say no. The Israelis, look, we told them don't go into Rafah. And they said, where are we going? I said, well, you

You can only send a division in. And they said, oh, okay, great. So they sent a division and they kept stacking it with additional brigades such that it became the size of two divisions. We told Netanyahu, don't assassinate Nasrallah, which evidently was in the planning stages, if not in the offing, right? Not long after October 7th. Remember, Hezbollah started firing rockets into northern Israel on October 8th before Israel invaded Israel.

So they made Lebanon and certainly themselves party to this war. And obviously now Netanyahu has killed Nasrallah, not just killed him. Frikazid, the genitals of middle-ranking

Hezbollah operatives using a rather spectacular infiltration of a supply chain of pagers, walkie-talkies. They have decimated Hezbollah's upper echelon. I mean, the entire command structure has taken out in the space of nine or 10 days. I was making this point earlier. I mean, Hezbollah as a military force on the ground has never been weaker or certainly hasn't been this weak in a very, very long time. The other sort of dog that hasn't barked yet is

For years, for almost 20 years since the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, Hezbollah has been rearming to such a degree that they had over 100,000 missiles that they were going to fire at Israel. They haven't fired them. Is that because they're keeping their powder dry for later? Or is it because Israel's done a pretty good job of taking out

this arsenal. The IDF released footage of cross-border raids that they had conducted already prior to the ground invasion earlier this week into southern Lebanon, where they've been uncovering vast tunnel networks, stockpiles of ammunition, weapons, command and control centers, etc., all in violation of the UN resolution that followed the 2006 war. So it looks like strategically Hezbollah is

on the back foot is probably never going to be the same organization again. And I think what's happening, interestingly, is the United States is instinct for de-escalation is now people are getting interested and intrigued by what has happened largely as a result of Israel, defying all of our winning begets desire for more winning. Yes. Nothing succeeds like success, right? And we want to always take credit for things that we not only have no business taking credit for, but said, don't do it. You mustn't do it. And by the way, you won't be able to do it. And that was all done anyway.

So Brett McGurk, the Middle East coordinator, I think Jake Sullivan, Hochstein, all of these guys seem to now suddenly see a changing dynamic in the region. And I think, you know, not to be well, you know, I am going to be very cynical for them. It's sort of win-win in the sense that if Israel does manage to

neuter or badly weaken Iranian hegemony in this neck of the woods without a direct American intervention, well, that's just good for America's interests, right? And so the question I have is Israel has yet to retaliate for this fusillade of missiles that happened yesterday. That means they're coordinating the response with the Americans. Well, what are they going to do?

Well, they relate evidently, and I've seen the reporting on this, to the Iranians by intermediaries that no matter what the Iranians do, no matter how many things they fire at us, and no matter how many casualties we sustain, the response is going to be targeting Iran's oil infrastructure and or its nuclear weapons program.

Now, I have a hard time seeing how the Americans get behind either of those things. The nuke program, clearly, it's always been a diplomatic solution for Barack Obama. This was Obamacare for the second term, according to his strategic communications advisor, Ben Rhodes, at the time.

Biden wants to resolve this thing diplomatically. Oil, I mean, global oil prices continue to be a major concern for the United States. I mean, see under what I was describing earlier about Ukraine's deep strike capability and the reason, the logic behind why the United States is against hitting Russia's energy infrastructure. But there is going to be a military response. And what would I envisage seeing go up in flames or get targeted anyway? IRGC, HQ, Iranian military sites. There was a good piece in the Atlantic recently

today where the correspondent querying his Iranian sources said, you know, we don't have an air force. I think they've got like, you know, seven NACRD MiGs. The Israelis could probably take those out as a show of force. I mean, the idea is to hammer home that Iran does not have a conventional capability that can match Israel alone, much less can it risk all-out war, which would pull in the United States and which would probably be the end of its regime. And

And, you know, the Ayatollah Khamenei is 85 years old. So he's older than Biden. A war could likely kill him. Yeah. And also, does he want his legacy to be the end of Khameneism and the end of the Islamic Republic? I don't see it. He seems to be risk averse in that sense. There's a good side of success begets success as far as taking out some people like Nasrallah. So he's, you know, horrible, horrible.

you know, terrorists have committed these atrocities and sort of positive momentum in the region. The other side of those, we got success for Bibi also, who's pretty awful. And it seems to me that he's in a stronger position as he's ever been. I mean, it seemed like Bibi's

was politically dead in the months after October 7th. And that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. I don't know if you have a sense for that. His polling is up. I mean, keep in mind, you know, his political fortune is also inextricably linked to his personal freedom. I mean, this is somebody who could very easily wind up in jail for corruption and criminality. So he has to stay in power. But don't discount the Israeli electorate and what they think. In the West, we love to do this. We love to say, oh, you know, you're just

replace Netanyahu and they'll do America's bidding. No. I mean, since October 7, the vast majority of Israelis, left, right, center, have basically rallied around the country and been largely in favor of going after Hamas and Gaza. Nobody is shedding tears to see Hezbollah defanged and to see Hassan Nasrallah having a bunker collapse on his head. And yeah, I mean, Netanyahu's polling is up. So he's in a pretty strong position. Also,

So there was a good piece by David Sanger in the Times today that said, look, from his perspective, you've got a lame duck democratic administration with which he's been at daggers drawn since a year ago, knowing, though, that he has serially defied American diktats and got away with it and now is seeming to be strategically successful in Lebanon. Keep in mind, you know, one of the reasons that Israel was caught completely off guard by Hamas is they'd spent decades

the better part of two decades with an overwhelming intelligence interest in Hezbollah, which was their most formidable threat in the neighborhood. They saw Hamas as something that could be managed and that was not going to pose any kind of military or terroristic threat to them. So with Hezbollah,

They have incredible insight. Clearly, they have infiltrated the organization, which is how they did Beepergate. And now they seem to be winning that campaign. So he also looks and says, meaning Netanyahu, if Donald Trump wins, well, great, because they have a sort of bestie relationship and they see eye to eye on a lot of things. I think they share a lot of personal characteristics, to be honest.

And Trump is not going to object in any way. In fact, he'll be cheerleading to see Israel strike at Iran and would probably be all too willing to get the United States. I'm sorry, no, I'm told on the left that Donald Trump is the peace candidate. Yeah, right. That's not correct? That's right. Yeah. I mean, he's the guy who's going to be more pro-Palestinian than Joe Biden. I've heard this line too. The guy who dropped the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan, the

whose son, I think, posted on Twitter not long after October 7th, a cartoon. And the caption that Donald Trump Jr. said is, this is how you solve the Middle East. And it was a very stereotypical Arab caricature with a nuclear bomb shoved up the anus of a goat. So the idea, I'll leave it to your readers to divine how that conflict will get sorted. So this is the peace candidate, right, Donald Trump,

He doesn't care about Ukraine, but he does care about Israel or pretends to care about Israel and says he does. And I think would line up behind whatever Netanyahu wants to do. So then the last thing is the momentum is positive for Israel on the military side of things, which it clearly is. How does that interplay with the remaining hostages, the humanitarian side of this? Do you have any open thoughts on that? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, the biggest domestic pushback Netanyahu has faced is his failure to bring the hostages home. And whether or not that would be predicated on a ceasefire with Hamas or some kind of

resolution to the war in Gaza, or simply, you know, why haven't we done more special forces raids and rescued them like we've done with with a handful? I think, though, and you know, I don't I don't want to sound heartless and cruel here. I think that the Israeli security establishment is of the opinion that it's going to be very, very difficult to get these people back, at least most of them, and many may well already be dead.

So I think, in a sense, their portfolio has moved on. Not that they don't want to have their people back. We've seen the lengths to which the Israelis go to. I mean, they've traded hundreds of terrorists to get, you know, one IDF soldier who was kidnapped back. However, again, they're now...

They find themselves fighting in two different fronts and now opening a third campaign directly against Iran. So this has expanded. We're not quite at the region-wide war that has been ominously foretold. It's not all-out war yet, but...

But we are creeping ever closer to that point. Yet, I mean, what is your sense? I guess on the one hand, like when the news broke yesterday that the Iranian missiles were coming, like the initial instinct or wisdom of people was, man, we're really headed towards reaching a war here. After the failure of it, maybe, I don't know. How do you assess it now?

Yeah, and also the Iranians have telegraphed, you know, I mean, and they're not going to get their their wish on this, but they said, for our purposes, this is the end of it. We want no further escalation. So they're advertising the fact that they don't want to go to war.

What can they withstand in terms of Israel's response? That's another question. And as I say, I mean, a lot is going to depend on what targets are selected. I mean, I could well see if Israel does decide, let's go for the nuclear program, which they might not be successful in doing because the conventional wisdom is that's going to require a lot of American assistance, including, by the way, assets on the ground. If they do that, Iran will probably have to

escalate much further. But, you know, a lot also will depend on what Israel chooses to do in Lebanon. So, you know, the Latani River is sort of the cutoff point. I think what the United States has said was, okay, if you're going to go in, it has to be a limited incursion, but please do not

attempt to replay of 2006. And I think, to be honest, it would be incredibly strategically stupid for Israel to try to do that now. I mean, their biggest weapon in Lebanon at this moment is psychological. They have so demoralized Hezbollah. They have so kind of set the cat amongst the pigeons in Lebanese society, because unlike 2006 and 2024, a lot of Lebanese are not rallying around the

Hezbollah and seeing Hezbollah as the savior and defender of the nation. There's a lot of recrimination and anger. Why did you bring us into this thing? Nobody asked us to go to war with Israel this time around. And also Hezbollah are moving their constituents and refugees into the houses of ordinary Lebanese. So there's a real authoritarian aspect to what they're doing in terms of

domestic calculations as a result of this kind of campaign against Israel that's rubbing a lot of people the wrong way. Thank you so much, Michael. And there's much more to do. So I appreciate you being our emergency global flare-up correspondent. I should get that printed on a business card. Unfortunately, I think that you'll probably be back soon. Yeah, well, you know, it's always a little light reading when I come on, right? We

We should do like a comedy hour or something at some point. We should do a comedy hour. I'm very much open to that. Tomorrow actually might be a little bit more of a comedy hour because we have a first-time guest coming on who made an appearance-ish on Saturday Night Live recently. So I'm looking forward to having her. We'll see you all back then. Thanks to Michael Weiss. Thanks to Jim Messina. We'll see you all tomorrow. Peace.

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