Raging Moderates: Trump Blinks on China

26:08for sure. Then you look at the policy side of things, talk about leverage and weakness. I mean, we completely fold on the Liberation Day tariffs. Meanwhile, we also completely fold when it comes to TikTok. And the US government puts into law a TikTok ban, but Donald Trump and this administration won't enforce it because they're afraid of the backlash from the American population. So like China has been so successful in infiltrating American culture through TikTok that and the power of that is so great that like the US government is scared. Let's just be honest, scared to enforce its own laws when it comes to banning TikTok.

26:53You know, China State TV this morning, I saw this, they put this out, the outcome of trade talks with Trump team shows China's firm countermeasures and resolute stance have been highly effective. China gets nearly We all tear us off for doing very little other than agreeing to talk. That's their spin this morning. So I just think across every metric, we have made China stronger over the past five months in ways that, as you say, are going to be hard to unravel. And there isn't really any evidence that we are trying to win a great power struggle with them. And I guess I would add just the last thing I'd say on it is if you're China, it's hard for me to get inside the head of Xi Jinping.

27:31And I don't know what their plans are with regards to Taiwan or their timing. But I just do not think they could look at America right now and think that we would put up any real resistance to their efforts to overtake Taiwan if they wanted to do it based on how we've acted with regards to Ukraine, how we've acted with regards to this trade war. So I just think that we've weakened ourselves pretty noticeably across a variety of different metrics vis-a-vis China. Yeah, I think the short-term winner is Europe because China wants to keep these factories humming. So they'll have a lot of excess supply that they'll be willing to sell at a discounted rate.

28:06And I think the EU is about to get a massive amount kind of for sale on a ton of products. The medium and the long-term winner, I actually think I agree with you, is China. I know firsthand that their commerce executives and business people are roaming around Europe and Latin America saying, hey, you may not like us, but you can trust us. We do what we say we're going to do. And I was actually at dinner with the CEO of one of the largest companies in China. And he said, yeah, for the first time, we're talking to European companies about providing cloud services. And the general reaction was always, we don't trust China to store our data in the Chinese cloud.

28:40And now the question is, OK, we don't trust you, but we don't necessarily trust American companies now either. Look at the Elon Musk Starlink. They're like, you know, are we going to trust Elon Musk with the Internet access? Obviously, I think that there are going to be some countries that are going to look at that both ways now. Some will want to do that deal because they feel like it might be a way to get good favor of the Trump administration. But I think others are going to feel about that the way they might have felt about China a couple of years ago. You also have to do a better job as Democrats.

29:08I think of who has been good at pushing back on autocrats. I learned this. I did an interview with Anna Applebaum. And she said, if you take Alexander Navalny as an example of someone who was able to push back on an emerging kleptocracy or an autocrat, it was because he was able to connect it to people's lives, that he had this sort of motto when he was running against Putin that, okay, they're getting rich and there's still potholes in Moscow. And Elizabeth Warren or Senator Warren kind of summarized it nicely by saying, they're getting rich and you're getting your healthcare taken away. And I don't think we've done a really good job of explaining to the American people that a kleptocracy creates a small number of very rich people, whether it's the people who are tipped off to the launch of the Trump coin the Friday night before inauguration, small number of wallets, like 30 wallets made $800 million, thing spikes, they dumped the bag.

29:58And then over the course of the next several weeks, 800 ,000 smaller investors lost billions. And we haven't done a good enough job connecting that, okay, when Elon Musk, as part of our negotiation with UK around tariffs, gets a Starlink deal, that means every other American tech company, every other small business, and by the way, 98 % of the companies that make their living from import and export in the United States are small and medium-sized businesses who create two-thirds of the jobs in America, but don't have lobbyists. And they don't have enough money to get on Trump's lunch calendar or be part of Eric's executive$500 ,000 a year kind of fraternity, if you will.

30:37Those are the people that get hurt the most. And I don't think we as Democrats have done a good of job connecting the dots there. Or they'd say, look, a kleptocracy is a small tax and then a medium tax on everyone such that we can funnel a massive amount of money to a small number of people. All right, let's move on here. We'll take one quick break. Stay with us.

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32:12We connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe, expose corruption wherever we find it, and give fresh perspective on everything from wellness and soccer to culture, the climate and more. Read, watch and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com. Welcome back. On the immigration front, a federal judge has blocked what may be one of the Trump administration's most extreme efforts yet, the planned deportation of detainees to Libya. ISIS detained Asian nationals in Texas and allegedly pressured them to voluntarily agree to be transferred to prisons controlled by armed militia in eastern Libya, despite widespread reports of torture and human rights abuses in those facilities.

32:55At the same time, Trump is touting a 95 % drop in illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border compared to last year. Tim, is this a fear tactic designed to intimidate future migrants into staying away or self-deporting? What do you think is going on here? There definitely is a desire to try to intimidate people into self-deporting, and they're actively doing this. They're running ads calling on people to self-deport right now throughout the country. So there is that. I think there is a little bit of a sadism to the Stephen Miller wing of the Trump administration. I think some of them like the idea of doing these kind of outlandish types of deportation plans because, A, it's intimidating.

33:39B, I think they get some kind of pleasure out of it, maybe erotic pleasure. I don't know. But, you know, it's hard to keep track of all this stuff, but the Libya thing is the latest. There's another story, I guess a week or two ago, of a guy, Omar Amin, who got deported to Rwanda. He was from Iraq and had been pretty thinly, and I think quite clearly falsely, accused of being part of ISIS when he was in Iraq. He'd come to America, brought his whole family here, went through the refugee vetting process, was living in Sacramento, was working, did not have any crimes in America. But, you know, there was some cable where he's on a list of people that were ISIS members.

34:24You know, him and his lawyer says that's false. Anyway, he gets jailed during the first Trump administration, has been jailed since then, and we just sent him to Rwanda, you know, where he's not from. And, you know, we have the – there's another situation I was just reading this morning in New York with these two guys who are 19 and 20, graduated high school, were from El Salvador. You know, their parents brought them here when they were kids. They hadn't broken any laws, were good students, spoke English, and they went to their immigration checkup. They ended up getting shackled, sent to Louisiana, and now are about to be sent back to El Salvador where they, you know, they don't remember or know anybody in El Salvador.

35:00So like all of this, you know, is part of the broader effort to, yes, intimidate and to send a signal to the world that people aren't welcome here anymore. And that's what they want, right? I mean, look, the only people they're going to welcome into this country are white Afrikaners from South Africa. I don't think you've got to, you know, read between the lines too much on that. And it's outrageous. And I think that, you know, part of this stuff, to your point in the last thing about Democrats, I think that the more Democrats can just speak, whether it's about the economy or whether it's about this stuff, in normal language and focus on things that people understand, people really don't want kids that were brought here where they were four to be sent back to El Salvador.

35:42Like that is not a popular policy. They don't want people to be grabbed off the street by masked agents and sent to a prison camp in El Salvador or a prison camp in Libya. Like those are not popular things. And I think that you can talk about those things in regular language that speak to American values while also, you know, not going down crazy lefty open borders like territory. And I think that it's important to be able to do both. Yeah, I feel I'm of two minds on this. The first is this is still his most popular policy. And there's just no getting around. I feel a lot of this was the Democrats sticking their chin out and just waiting to get tagged hard.

36:20A quarter of a million people crossed the border in December of 23. We were just sort of asking for it. And then they see, OK, them getting Trump, you know, or Biden-Harris hats and free phone cards and hotel rooms and Americans saying, OK, there's something wrong here. But I've never understood about this whole argument or where I feel Americans fail to see what's going on is that immigration is obviously the secret sauce of America. But I've always thought I'm kind of a freedom was on this. And that is the most profitable part of immigration is illegal immigration because they're essentially the most flexible, inexpensive workforce in history.

36:55When there's crops to be picked or old people to be taken care of or dishes to be washed and we can't afford or find domestic workers. The reason why it's fairly inexpensive to eat out is because of illegal immigration. And in some cities, somewhere between 15-25 % of fast food workers are undocumented workers. And in addition, they generate a surplus of$100 billion in the Social Security program because most of them are younger and they don't stick around for Social Security. They pay their taxes and then they go back. A mass deportation effort, some estimates, put at 4-7 % loss or reduction in GDP.

37:31and also they're 90 % of undocumented, of the undocumented population is working age. About a third of agricultural workers, a quarter of ground maintenance workers and about a quarter of all food service workers are undocumented. So, I mean, you're just, your prices are gonna go up folks and there's this trope and there are some very bad people. I do not believe in open borders. I believe you have to have a country. But the question I would have for you, because I don't feel as if I am very knowledgeable or have a deep domain expertise around immigration is that we want to demonize immigrants, but wouldn't the fastest way to solve this problem to be to go to the demand side?

38:07And that is say to Chipotle or lawn care companies, we're doing random audits. And based on the percentage of people who are clearly undocumented, we're going to find you$10 ,000 a day because they don't come here to rape. These immigrants don't come here to commit crimes or to start gang warfare. They come here for jobs. And if you went on the demand side and basically hit those nice American people with real fines such that they started implementing, and they could do this with biometrics or just simple documentation, verification. If there's no jobs, if it's like, okay, I'm sorry, I can't hire you, they melt back to where they came from.

38:47But we don't want to do that, do we? No. Yeah, two thoughts on this. One is, and I think that it reveals a lot about why they're targeting, who they're targeting, what the motivations are. This administration doesn't want to go after business owners directly, right? And if they get hurt by the tariffs because Trump's obsessed with tariffs, that's one thing. But they're not trying to make enemies of people that they think voted for them or possibly voted for them, small business owners. Plus, on top of that, Donald Trump is an employer of illegal immigrants who worked at his hotels and golf courses, which he knows.

39:18So they don't have any interest in doing that. You're exactly right. There's e-verification. And this has been something that like border hawks, immigration hawks have been proposing ever since I've been in politics. Many of the candidates I worked for supported that as something that's on your policy agenda in the campaign, but then you don't actually put into place in government E-Verify because you don't want to actually punish the small business owners that are likely Republican voters. So what they're doing now is they feel like low risk, right? Like who is sure? There are probably some working class Hispanic voters that moved over to Trump that are starting to have a maybe a change of heart because they had a cousin or a friend or something who is not a criminal, who's been deported, or they know somebody who has.

40:00So there's maybe a little bit of a risk there. But broadly speaking, if you take an 18 and 19-year-old El Salvador kid that was brought here that can't vote, brought here illegally by their parents, and you send them back to El Salvador, you're not paying a political price for that in any meaningful way. And it is immoral. It's an affront to what the country is supposed to be about, and it's affront to the very American ethos of people wanting to come here and have an opportunity. But you're not paying a political price there. So I just think that they're doing it. there's obviously some racial elements to it as referenced earlier with the white africaners but it's also just they feel like it's much more politically palatable to go after 18 and 19 year old kids that are would have been you know dreamers or whatever um than it is to go after american business owners and and just just one really quick thing on the economy i agree this this all takes time like this is going to happen now but just adding on to what we talked about earlier with tariffs okay you add on to that we're deporting a bunch of people that are working doing cheap work.

41:00We're not bringing in nearly as many people as we were. So the shutting down of the border is good in that it's shutting down some of the fentanyl traffic and some of the gang labor, but it's also shutting down people that were coming here to work. And then on top of that, we're firing a lot of people in the federal workforce or putting them on the sidelines. They're probably going to end up getting paid anyway. So we're going to be paying them to do nothing while that goes through the courts. And it's harder for recent college grads to get jobs in a lot of these areas because people don't know what's going to be happening with the government.

41:28I just think that there are a lot of economic factors there that are pointing to a pretty bad situation, you know, once it all, you know, starts to hum through the economy. Let me put forward a thesis. I want to get your response to it. So I have a 17-year-old son, and there's been reports in verification of actual people who aren't criminals, people who are brought here, grew up here, being deported, some ending up in these hellscapes prisons, and also reports of U.S. citizens. And my view is, unfortunately, that a lot of Democrats who are very wealthy clutch their pearls and say at dinner parties how outraged they are.

42:08But they don't really do a fucking thing about it. Because there's this emerging what I'll call transnational oligarchy, togarks. And that's if you're in the 1%, A, you have a disproportionate amount of power. And without you, it's very hard to get anything done without your support. And so it's easy to complain about it at dinner parties. But the reality is in America that your rights have become a function of your wealth. My kid is not going to be sequestered by ICE and sent to El Salvador. There's just zero chance that could happen. I will not be silenced because I have the money to lawyer up.

42:44Anyone in my life that becomes pregnant, I don't care if I'm in deepest, reddest Mississippi, I can get access to family planning because I have money. And if shit really gets real and on the unlikely chance we start rounding up Jews and I got on the wrong list, well before that, I have the money to peace out to Milan or Dubai. And what that creates is this lack of incentive or this divesting of the most powerful interests in America. And that is, whereas before, I think the really wealthy thought, I'm going to stay here. If this could happen to them, it could happen to us. But now there's a feeling amongst me, well, I always turn this back to me, but among the really wealthy, they were insulated from some of this, that it really doesn't impact us.

43:33So we have our own schools. We have our own security. We have our own health care. We have our own legal rights. We're protected by the law, but we're not bound by it. and it creates this really unhealthy ecosystem where the most powerful in our nation, even who claim to have progressive values, really don't feel that same sense of vested interest in the maintenance and fidelity to American values. Because at the end of the day, we're kind of global citizens, and our governance is the dollar, or basically how much money we have. And we can find those rights somewhere else, even if they're violated here.

44:08Your thoughts? I think that there's some of that. I mean, look, you're always going to paint with a broad brush in these sort of situations. Like there are certainly rich liberals that are out there doing what they can and others that feel like how you did. And I hear from Bulwark listeners, like upper middle class people that will come up to me and say that they're thinking of leaving. I had a woman just over the weekend that was like, I'm thinking about moving to Australia. My husband is a citizen or something. And I was like, don't leave. I'm not going anywhere. You're fine here. You actually, because of what you just laid out, Scott, if you're a citizen of this country that has enough money for a lawyer, you're in pretty good shape right now.

44:45We'll see how things look when Donald Trump is deteriorating at age 81 in 2027. Maybe my assessment will change on that. But as of right now, you're fine and you should be staying here and should be fighting. So I do. I think there's a little bit of that. I also think the Democratic Party, and this is going to go against what my policy preferences is probably, but I think that from a political standpoint, this is important. The Democratic Party has not done a particularly great job of recruiting people that are from the working class, that are from the non-globalist parts of America to be spokespersons for the party.

45:20A lot of times those people are probably going to have different views from me on social and economic issues, right? Like I'm kind of a fiscally conservative, socially liberal, whatever cliche. OK, the Democrats should probably be recruiting people that are more that are more fiscally left than me and have some maybe contrarian social views, because that is like the most popular, you know, combination of political views for people for working class people. and I think the Democrats have done a lot of recruiting of people that like are maybe from somewhere in America and then were the valedictorian and then went to a fancy school and then worked at McKinsey and then went back to where they came from or you know and and nothing against any of those people but they're going to have a set of views that are closer to what you just lined out that have a more of a globalist kind of mindset and I do think it would help the Democrats to have people that like authentically sound like they are from the communities that are going to be hurt by this.

46:17Yeah, they claim to represent. Yeah, it's just if they're starting to the kind of the purity test. And we're going off script here, but I can't help it. It shocked me a couple days ago, there was a new poll showing that if the election were held again today, that Harris would still lose or that Trump would win. And my sense is... I'm not shocked by that i was shocked by that especially when you see the swing among young people but i mean it is what it is and as unpopular as trump is the democratic party is less popular and i think as we sit again crying into tiktok the reality is where the the analogy i used to use was that the panzer tanks come rolling into poland and we're fighting democrats whereas democrats were fighting them on horseback and then someone reminded me actually that was a successful military operation i should stop disparaging the heroes of the Polish army in World War II.

47:04So, but my point is, the only thing that feels more corrupt than the Trump administration or kind of coarse and cruel right now is just how weak the Democratic Party is. Yeah. Well, it's not more corrupt, but it's sadder and it has more impact. No, no, no. More weak. Yeah, more weak for sure. Well, isn't America basically saying they'd rather have a corrupt autocrat than a weak Democratic Party? A lot of Americans are. And here's the problem. This goes to your screaming the TikTok thing, which I do a lot. So I'll defend it. I'll defend the honor of it. But I do think it has its limitations, which is this.

47:34And this is why I bet you get pushback sometimes from people when you say this, because there is not nothing, there's 40 % of the country, maybe 33 % of the country who are super engaged in politics, are decently well off, middle class to upper middle class, went to college, read the news, listen to podcasts or watch cable or read the newspaper or read magazines, whatever, engaged, know who their representative is, and are mad about what's happening, are legitimately mad about it, and are trying to figure out what to do about it. And the good news for Democrats is those people show up in these special elections and local elections.

48:09That's why Democrats are trying to do better in those than in the national elections. The problem is there's just another huge part of the country that are less informed. And I don't really even say that as a pejorative. It's just like they don't engage in political news, maybe for some of them it's because they're working too damn hard and don't have time. Maybe for others, it's because they'd rather play video games for eight hours a day. But either way, like that is happening. And the Democrats have been, like to that demographic, the Democrats feel very weak and they feel very disconnected and out of touch and not fighting for them.

48:40And it is just an absolute necessity that Democrats figure out how to find a voice that can connect with people that don't read the New York Times. And part of that, I think, is, as I just mentioned in the last answer, is like recruiting people, you know, not who play video games eight hours a day, but who like look and sound and feel more like folks that are not part of that class of the one third of the country that's super engaged. Well, let me ask you that. Right now, if you had to say who are the leaders of the Democratic Party, you would point to minority leader Jeffries and Senate minority leader Schumer.

49:14And I'm a fan of leader Jeffries. I don't think he is the leader we need right now. And I think Senator Schumer is a fucking disaster. Who do you think, in your view, who are some of those emerging boys? Everyone keeps saying we have such a strong bench, and then they point to Westmore and the list runs shallow. And then everyone was getting excited about John Fetterman, and there's all these stories coming out saying that he's struggling. Who do you see as kind of the up-and-coming draft choices in the Democratic Party? I am on the weak bench side of this. Me and Carville argue about this. Carville feels like the bench is really good.

49:47I don't really think so. But I do like Westmore. I think that you've seen like the AOC and Bernie are actually channeling something. I don't obviously Bernie's really old. Let me just push a pause there. My thesis is they're great. They're inspiring. There's no fucking way America is going to elect either of them. Yeah, it's funny. I was at a panel and this is part of like getting again outside of these pockets of. Republicans are praying that Bernie or AOC are the nominee. I was on a panel here in Louisiana and I got the same question. I was giving the same answer I'm giving right now. and then i mentioned aoc and a guy who's a do i know who's an older guy who's a democrat louisiana democrat came up to me and he's just like my party is more insane than i even thought it was if they think that aoc can win this country it's just like people that are outside of certain worlds just don't see things differently that said they've showed leadership and i just wanted to mention it they're inspiring yeah but i look here's what i think man i i look Like, if this is May, where it's May 12th, 2025, if you took us to May 12th, 2013, and said Donald Trump is going to be the Republican Party leader, everybody would say you're insane.

50:53If you took us to May 12th, 2005, and said that Barack Hussein Obama is going to be the Democratic Party leader, everybody would say you'd be insane. And I think a lot of times people have limits on their imagination. Same with Clinton. Nobody knew who Clinton was. Yeah. And I think that you look at, like, the two names, two examples I've come up with that are just totally different. Neither of these guys are going to be the leader of the Democratic Party. But Dan Osborne ran for Senate in Nebraska, way overperformed as kind of a working class, socially conservative, fiscally liberal guy. And like Democrats should recruit guys like that to run the midterms.

51:24Mark Cuban is like the inverse of him. There's like a business guy. And you could tell me that like either of those types of people could be the Democratic nominee in three years. I would believe you. And so I don't know. I like Westmore fine. I like Josh Shapiro fine. You know, I mean, there are other Pete I hate, you know, I think that I don't compete like as a seven language speaking grad student grad who worked at McKinsey really like reached the working class people I've been talking about. I don't know, but he did pretty damn well on that bro podcast that Andrew Schultz podcast the other day.

51:57So maybe he can do better than I think. So there are people out there, but it's going to take, you know, real work. Scott Galloway, if he didn't live in London, might be an example. Yeah, that's that that shows just how desperate we are. Well, let me ask you this, just so we can fill the comment section up with people calling me names. I think America is ready for a gay president. I don't know if the Democratic Party is. I think the way the Democratic primaries are held, that there's certain elements of the Democratic Party that would have an issue with Secretary Buttigieg as evidenced by his poor performance.

52:27You're talking about black voters? Thank you. This is just a truth. I'm just going to say this. Like I have plenty of friends at the Pete campaign and like Pete had some of his own issues with black voters in South Bend that might be totally unrelated to gay issues. But like they did focus groups with black voters. And in all those focus groups, there were some black voters that weren't cool with it. And that's just like, that's just a fact. That's just reality. There are more white people that hate gays than black, you know what I mean? So I'm not like trying to make it a racial thing. That's just kind of a fact.

52:53And that would be a challenge for him. Is that going to be still the true in three years? I don't know. Is it something about Pete himself? Well, again, like Carville's line is always like the person that wins the Democratic primary is the one that can win the black church. And it's like I could maybe imagine a gay candidate that would be able to do better in a black church than Pete. It's just like is that like his natural space? Like probably not. But maybe so, by the way. I don't know. Like maybe he could really surprise and improve himself. I didn't think he'd do that well in that podcast.

53:22Pete has surprised at every turn. So, you know, I don't know. I think that broadly speaking, even outside of black voters, Democrats are like, what's the fucking old saying? Twice bit, thrice bits, once, whatever. Just about, I think that they'll probably want to go for a straight white guy, just or a straight black guy, just because like after Hillary and Kamala experienced, I think that a lot of Democrats are just gonna be freaked out about nominating somebody. And I don't know if that's true or right. I think there are other issues there. But I do think that there will be some some of that.

53:53Yeah, I think the Democratic Party at this point is like, OK, we absolutely need a female president. And we will have a female president. She'll be a Republican who has a reputation for likely drone striking your entire family if you run a stop sign. That's who's going to be the first female president. Chris, do you know she'll have a whole new face, you know, and she'll have murdered a dog and have a pinup photo shoot in front of El Salvador torture prison. Well, I hope and trust that she'll be out of government soon, but she's going to slipstream right into some sort of Cinemax prison film. I mean, that picture of her where it looked like a Sephora had exploded on her face and she was in front of a bunch of half-naked dudes.

54:32It literally felt like those prison films I used to watch in the 90s after my parents had gone to sleep on Cinemax. Okay, let's take a quick break. Stay with us.

54:44From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and Heavyweight is back. The new season is bigger than ever. Bigger hopes. I keep waiting for this moment when he says, Mom, I get it. I'm sorry. Bigger dreams. Tom Hanks wants to meet with you. This is a real chance. And bigger heartbreaks. I thought it would be my movie moment. And maybe he would even whisper in my ear, I've always been in love with you. Check out new episodes of Heavyweight on Apple Podcasts.

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57:10Welcome back. History was made last week as Cardinal Robert Previce became Pope Leo XIV, the first American to lead the Catholic Church. born in Chicago and shaped by decades of missionary work in Peru, Leo stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica Sunday to deliver his first blessing. He called for peace in Ukraine and Gaza, urged leaders to reject war, and emphasized caring for young people and the vulnerable. His message and background signal a potentially progressive path forward. Tim, what does the new Pope's background and his first public message tell you about the direction that he may take the church.

57:44I've got to tell you, my mother couldn't be more thrilled. I'm a little bit of a lapsed Catholic myself. We were just talking about the gay stuff, but there were some jokes on the internet that he was the bulwark pope, and it was like right in my mom's lane because he was, you know, he voted in Republican primaries, I guess, in 2012, up until 2016, and then he stopped, and then he had multiple tweets criticizing Trump and Vance. It's pretty wild that we can go through the pope's tweet history now. We are in a different world. He also is a graduate of Villanova, where my little brother went. So like touching a lot of bases for my daily churchgoing mother.

58:17Very thrilled. That's huge. Yeah, very thrilled. Good for the Miller family. Big weekend for the Miller family. The broader thing, I don't know. You know, I think that the College of Cardinals probably had a lot of things in their minds, not just the fact that this person was American or our domestic political concerns. And frankly, he hasn't even been in America that much. He was in Peru and then Italy for most of his service to the church. And so I don't know. I will say this, whether they intended this or not. I do think it is nice to have an American on the world stage that is offering a counter view about what it means to be a person and a human than our president.

58:55And, you know, I don't know that he's going to be like the woke pope of every lefty's dreams on a variety of issues. You know, like the Catholic Church still has the Catholic Church's views on gender and sexuality and abortion and women priests and all that. I think that he is someone that is just, it's very clear that he actually cares about his fellow humans. He cares about humanity. And that is in direct contrast to the president who only cares about himself. And so I don't, you know, we'll see what exactly it means for the Catholic Church. I think probably a continuation of Francis more than any big, massive changes based on the Catholics in good standing in my life, TBD, a little bit on all that.

59:40But just from a, as a former PS2 PR, marketing and PR people, like it's nice PR for America at a time where our PR is pretty shitty. Yeah. My thesis is that this is the third world leader that got elected by Trump. Anthony Albanese, Mark Carney were both supposed to lose, especially Carney overcame a 25 point deficit. And I think there is such a gag reflex globally around Donald Trump that he is electing world leaders, just not the world leaders that he's hoping would be elected. And I think this is another example. I think the papacy is really strategic and says, where can we have the most impact?

1:00:16And part of that is which region is struggling and would benefit most and get the most attention around these very humanistic values and code of decency. And when the Eastern Bloc was struggling. They'd pick someone from Poland. And I don't think it's any accident that they picked an American pope, that they said, if we are really troubled by what this lack of humanity, the call sign, or I think the statement that literally identifies America right now is the following. It was made by Bill Gates, and I'm paraphrasing, but it's thematically the same. The world's richest man is killing the world's poorest people.

1:00:53And that to me, like when Bill Bill Gates said that. It was one of those moments where I thought it just hit me so hard in the gut. I thought, wow, that's what we've become? Literally, that's us now? And so I think they see an opportunity, not only for attention, but a chance to restore and have influence on Americans who obviously disproportionately carry weight and gravity and influence around the world. I think more Americans and more elected officials will pay closer attention to what this pope says, and that a restoration, a rejuvenation, an EpiPen, a Narcan to the American value system is really needed right now.

1:01:34And this guy, in addition to understanding technology and referencing AI, he is unafraid. He's called Putin's actions wicked. Which is an upgrade from Francis, worth mentioning. There you go. But I think, again, Trump has gotten another world leader elected. And I think they see a big opportunity here to have an American pope who will, again, get probably greater sort of bandwidth or airtime because of his origins. And that America is really in need of sort of a values upgrade, if you will. Gotts? Bad, but true. It's hard to argue. Again, I don't claim to, you know, I could give you a lot better analysis of the Electoral College than the College of Cardinals.

1:02:13And so it's hard for me to get inside there. They do get branding, though, don't they? White smoke. Yeah, maybe it's more interpersonal. You know what I mean? I don't really know, but I think that the impact of what you're saying, whether or not the intention was there, is definitely correct. I agree with the analysis, and I'm sure that for certain members of the college it was part of it. And Francis, to my understanding, did put in a lot more people in his mold into that college. And so I wouldn't be surprised if at least among some of them they thought that this was a nice contrast to the American president, particularly at a time of where America is struggling.

1:02:50And I'm glad you mentioned that Bill Gates quote because that also hit me like a ton of bricks. It's just – it's terrible. The USAID thing is so unimaginably terrible. And it's like you run out of reasons to talk about it on shows like this, right? Because there's no like new news about it. But it is truly abhorrent that we took something that was a tenth of a penny in our federal budget that was giving HIV medicines to people in Africa and feeding the poor. and we've cut it because Elon Musk broke his brain by reading too many tweets. It's a truly deplorable state of affairs. Well, we've spent 80 years developing an expensive and worthwhile brand association that in the short term, we make a lot of mistakes, but it's mostly out of stupidity or naivete.

1:03:39This brand association is real, though. So I worked for McCain, and I talked to Mark Salters as a ghostwriter and longtime speechwriter and traveled the whole world with him. And Salter said, like, the American brand, you would go with McCain to these random corners where people were fighting against autocrats or where there had been a big natural disaster. And he would travel there. And he's like, you know, people in random villages and small towns and remote corners of the world would be like, America, John McCain, John McCain. Like, that brand was that strong. And I do think that we've essentially just ruined it forever, certainly tarnished it in a matter of five months.

1:04:20We've said it back decades, but that association, one of the core associations on a very basic level is I've always felt like we're the good guys. Yeah, do we make dumb mistakes? Are we gluttonous? Are we obnoxious? Yeah, but we're the good guys. Our heart's in the right place. And I think in just probably in three and a half months, we're no longer the good guys. And there's this notion that in regions where there's no investment, you get just such an enormous return on investment. It's basic economic theory. We were getting such enormous ROI on these small investments in terms of preventing kids from getting infected, having AIDS transmitted from their mothers to them, which is very inexpensive, wiping out malaria, toilets such that thousands, even millions of young boys and girls didn't die of dysentery.

1:05:07And we've taken what is probably the greatest ROI investment because there's so little investment in these regions. No other nation would make those investments. And we decided those are the investments that we're going to pull back. It really is depraved. But circling back, I do think that the papacy recognized this and decided that they could have the most impact with a pope that more Americans would listen to. So, Tim, I want to go off script for a minute. I'm fascinated by Tim Miller. I have found myself just so drawn to your content and how you bring this strength and fearlessness and real emotion and real empathy.

1:05:42What's your origin story? I don't know that much about you. Like where, how did you get, how did Tim Miller get to here right now? I appreciate that. I find it, I don't know about you, but this is not false modesty because I can be a narcissist like any other content creator, but I do find it weird to like process people consuming my stuff all the time, right? Because when I try to just emote and be authentic and just say what I really think and not actually think about the audience like as much as possible. And so I do, sometimes it makes me uncomfortable when I start hearing about, you know, thinking about Scott Galloway consuming my rants.

1:06:15But so I was Republican operative. I was just a PR flack, essentially, for Republicans, usually moderate Republicans, but I was also a hired gun. So I have some shameful Republicans on my resume as well. And, you know, I came out of the closet during that process. And so I was probably like the most, there have been a lot of prominent Republicans who like were either outed or became gay after, like when they retired, like Ken Melman or Larry Craig or like, you know, whatever. But as an active person in the party, like right around all the time of the gay marriage stuff, I was like the most visible.

1:06:48And so I do think that gave me just kind of a relationship with all of it that was maybe a little bit different than other hired guns. Like I had dealt with like being separate from the party on something that was very core to me, you know, throughout this process. And so when Trump came along, I don't know. I just part of that, I think it was made it easier for me just to say, no, fuck this. And as part of my hired gun process, a bunch of rich guys hired me in 2016 to be the point, like the face of a basically Republicans against Trump effort. Like anybody, like it's like whoever it is. So I just went on cable and argued with Trumpers and pitched negative stories about Trump to people.

1:07:24And then when Trump won, I went through a massive midlife crisis about what the hell to do with my life. Pretty early midlife. Yeah, early midlife crisis. I had a very early midlife crisis, an extended one. And I started doing some of these podcast stuff on the side, literally. And I was lost. I was like, should I do corporate PR? We adopted a kid at that time. I was like, should I just be a nine to five guy and do PR for Clorox bleach or something and have a regular job and coach the kids sports teams and forget all this? Should I, whatever, figure out, try to fight within the party against Trump?

1:08:01And I was totally lost. and my colleague, Sarah Longwell, who was an old friend of mine, started the Bulwark and I started kind of doing Bulwark stuff for fun. And I don't know, man, I just, I think that people were, there's something about the fact that I think that I was lost and did not have like a little birdie in the back of my head saying, Hey, you know, think about your career and like what other job, you know, you might be white house press secretary in the future. You might want, you know, who knows what will happen after Trump ends. Like, I just didn't have that. I was a little bit unfettered, I think.

1:08:33And, um, and so we created at the Bulwark with Sarah and JVL and others, like a community of people who really liked that. And I think that was important to them, like the ROGs, cause they were also kind of lost. Um, and so I don't know, man, that's how I ended up doing this. And I think there is something freeing about being a former Republican versus being somebody who comes up as a Democrat in their background, because, you know, I just don't, A, I have some of the Republican traits of aggressiveness. I've not been beaten down by the Democratic traits of community building. So I think that has helped.

1:09:09And also, I'm not plotting who might hire me for the 2028 primary in the way that maybe some Democratic commentators are. So I don't know. Is that good? Was that a good backstory for me? I'm curious if you, I have trouble. I would say that from zero to 30, I didn't have enough stress. I almost failed out of UCLA a couple of times. Didn't bother me. I was on the verge of being kicked out of UCLA, which would have been really bad for me. I didn't really care. Almost lost a couple of businesses. Was very reckless with my relationships. Just didn't have as much anxiety, quite frankly, as I should.

1:09:42I think from 30 to 40, I had the perfect amount of anxiety. Worried enough to be successful, but not worried enough where I couldn't sleep. And now I have too much anxiety. I worry about everything. And you have a kid. If I'm not anxious about one of my kids during the day, something's wrong. That makes me anxious. I feel like I'm missing something. And I've had trouble disassociating from what is going on with America and our government right now. For the first time, politics is really sort of rattling me and taking a toll on me emotionally. Do you struggle with the same thing? Sometimes when I watch your content, I get the sense.

1:10:14I can hear it in your voice. Like, this shit really upsets you. Like, it really rattles you. One is, am I sensing that correctly? And two, how do you attempt to disassociate and or keep things in perspective and get about your day and focus on your family and progress at the Bulwark? I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing, which got me into trouble in that past life that I talked about earlier. Like, I probably shouldn't have compartmentalized with the fact that I was gay with the fact that I was a spokesman for Republicans, but I was able to do it then. It's serving me a little bit now because I do get – I get rattled emotional and very mad.

1:10:50And like probably three times during the day, I get very mad. And when I get actually mad, I try to channel that into the content because – I said this after the election. I was like, I'm not going to do the fake mad. thing like i'm not i'm not going to pretend to care about things i don't care about and like sometimes there's trump stuff that makes other people really mad that i just either don't talk about or we'll talk about a little bit just because i'm like i just i can't i can't i don't have any room in my body for the anger over this thing because in part because i'm so mad about the immigration stuff and and some and in particular the immigration stuff but also other other things they're doing the trans military band is one that got me recently I try to just have my honest emotions with people.

1:11:32Outside of that, A, I'm drinking too much. But I'm trying to go. I live in New Orleans. I knew we were brothers from another mother. Yeah. I'm trying to go to, and I live in New Orleans. So I'm going to show. I'm going to see music. And when I'm there, I'm drinking too much bourbon. But it is allowing me, and I'm enjoying my time there. And I'm being with Roma. I have a lot of buddies here who don't stress me out about politics. And I appreciate all of them. and that is good. I have a couple hours a day where I take on the parenting and I just try to parent. And I'm like, I'm here, we're going to play, we're going to go to the basketball court, we're going to whatever, do your homework, we're going to be silly.

1:12:10And I try to do that and not think about it. Every once in a while, bad thoughts come through when I'm parenting or drinking, but usually not. I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing it. A therapist might tell me that this strategy is eventually going to fail and those three parts of my brain are going to collide in a way that will create crippling anxiety. But that hasn't happened so far. Most importantly, what'd you do for Mother's Day yesterday? Nothing. One of the great joys of being gay is that we don't have to do Mother's Day. I mean, I sent my mother a gift and we did a FaceTime with her.

1:12:42She lives in Colorado and I have a great mother. Yeah, it's nice. I feel like we get a little bit freed from the conventions. So, you know, some people trying to be nice and woke, like, will wish us a happy Mother's Day. and I'm like, no, it's cool. No worries. And by the way, I don't even have to do a Happy Father's Day. It's fine. We have a little different family style. We went and had crawfish at Klessis, which if you find yourself in New Orleans during crawfish season, I got to shout out Klessis. It's the best spot. I watched the Nuggets game. It was a loss, unfortunately. And, you know, I yelled at the YouTube camera, took the kid to the park.

1:13:16It was great. It was a wonderful day. What about you? I had a wonderful Mother's Day. I did nothing. I'm here in New York on my own and I walked around Soho. I went to Jack's wife Frida. I went to San Vicente Bungalows for brunch. It was, you know, just— You weren't guilt-trapped by the mothers in your life over that? My mom is gone. The mother of my children is—I don't want to say it's Mother's Day every day, but we're pretty much in awe of her, and we plan a lot of stuff and do a lot of stuff, but we had some stuff planned for her to make sure that she felt loved. And quite frankly, she said that she just wanted to be alone, that that was her Mother's Day gift.

1:13:49She just wanted at all. She has three kids. But look, one of the really wonderful things about getting older as a man is you develop these really nice kind of paternal instincts or fraternal instincts where you're happy for people, you're happy for younger men. I have gotten real reward. I don't know you that well, but I've gotten real reward from watching you in this moment. I think you are so authentic and so courageous and have such great command of the medium. I get reward from watching your success. I'm really happy for you. I think you're doing a great job and your voice is really important.

1:14:24And I just, I hope that you take time with your husband and your kid to pause and recognize how successful you are and what a difference you're making. And it's just fun to just observe it and watch it. Really appreciate all that you do and very much appreciate you coming on the show today. Thank you, Scott. I genuinely appreciate that. It means a lot. I'm getting tingly. I also, it sucks. I don't know about you. I get, I do get uncomfortable with compliments, especially when so much shit is happening. And I'm like, I don't know. I'm doing the best I can. But I do appreciate it very much. It means a lot.

1:14:54All right. That's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates. Our producers are David Toledo and Chinenye Onike, our technical directors, Drew Burrows. You can now find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday and Friday. That's right, its own feed. That means exclusive interviews with sharp political minds, including this one who joined us today that you won't hear anywhere else. This week, we have another anti-Trump Republican. Jess is talking with former Congressman Charlie Dent. Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss an episode.

1:15:24And Tim, where can they find more, Tim? I'm everywhere. The Bulwark YouTube. You're everywhere. To resist its futile. Yeah. The Bulwark YouTube. Nicole Wallace's show sometimes at MSNBC and some others. And Twitter, TimODC. I'm still suffering through X. I think you left. Instagram. Everywhere. I'm Everywhere, baby. Get off of X. Get off of X. Trust me on this. The most accretive thing you can do for your mental health is to get off of X. That's good advice. All right. Thanks again, Tim. Thanks, man. The pumpkin spice latte is back at Starbucks. Crafted with our signature espresso and real pumpkin sauce.

1:16:01Then topped with whipped cream, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The PSL. Get it while it's hot or iced. Only at Starbucks. Thanks to Smartsheet for their support.

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