The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal
"Fiercely and unapologetically progressive, and definitely NSFW. 'The Professional Left' features award-winning bloggers Driftglass and Blue Gal as they skewer right-wing absurdities and dismantle mainstream media mealy-mouths with razor-sharp wit and zero filter. From mercilessly mocking partisan hacks to elevating stories the media ignores, it's the profane, unflinching political commentary you didn't know you needed. More at http://ProLeftPod.com."
The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal
Ep 1029: Elois And Morlocks and MAGAs, Oh My!
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Episode 1029 uses H.G. Wells’ Eloi and Morlocks from “The Time Machine” to explain how the Republican intellectual class spent decades designing policy in comfortable think tanks while ignoring the ugly, racist work being done below them to actually win elections. Driftglass and Blue Gal trace how Heritage Foundation types like Sarah Longwell claim total surprise at today’s GOP, despite living through Rush Limbaugh’s reign, the Tea Party’s open racism, and three Trump elections in a row. The episode argues that pride and professional self-interest explain why these former Republicans still insist there’s a hidden reservoir of decent GOP voters waiting to be enlightened, rather than admit they were catastrophically wrong about their own party for over twenty years. It’s about who does the dirty work of winning elections, who gets credit for the ideas, and what happens when the workers realize they never needed the thinkers at all.
Link for this episode: The New Yorker, "The Battle for the Post-Trump Right". https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/10/12/the-battle-for-the-post-trump-right
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SPEAKER_02This is the podcast for the week of October 9th, 2026. It's not safe for work.
SPEAKER_05Recorded live from the Cornfield Resistance, where today you're gonna get a little science fiction university with your political cornflakes. It's the professional left with Drift Glass and Bluegal.
SPEAKER_02Ooh, cornflakes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Oh, may I make a shout out to my little brother?
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_05You may happy birthday, little bro.
SPEAKER_02Happy birthday to Driftglass's brother.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Younger brother.
SPEAKER_05Younger brother.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And uh he is, it is kind of hilarious, the father of two girls who each had two boys.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So he has four grandsons. Yeah. As of as of like the past month, the fourth grandson was born.
SPEAKER_05A week and a half ago, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Like very recently.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So two girls and then four boys. And it couldn't happen to a better grandpa.
SPEAKER_05He's he's a great grandpa.
SPEAKER_02He's he's eaten it up. He's just eaten it up.
SPEAKER_05So my nieces are amazing. Their kids are wonderful. I couldn't have better, happier great uncle if you paid him.
SPEAKER_02So and we got to we got to spend some time in June with one of the the older brother of the new baby.
SPEAKER_05Yes, we did.
SPEAKER_02Who is uh about three and everything is uh-oh.
SPEAKER_05Uh-oh. He was having a ball. He was just having a ball.
SPEAKER_02So uh we we we kind of uh have kind of an uh oh theme tonight, but we're gonna have a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_05Yes, we will.
SPEAKER_02Uh today we are going to undertake one of the greatest questions in modern American culture, which is actually three questions. What the hell happened to the Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln? Yeah. Why the hell didn't anyone in that brain cast of the Republican Party see it coming?
SPEAKER_05Yep. And once the brain cast of the GOP were curbooted the hell out of the party by the MAGA mob and started calling themselves never Trumpers, why the hell are they still insisting that there are secret legions of Republican voters of good conscience still inside the GOP bubble because they have somehow no idea what they voted for or what's going on, or really anything?
SPEAKER_02Or more accurately, the insistence that there are scads of otherwise noble citizens inside the GOP bubble. Because even after a decade of Trump, they still believe all kinds of stupid, crazy, and often racist shit, of which never Trumpers insist they can be cured once they have been shown the truth. The fever will break, Driftglass. So I'm the fever will break.
SPEAKER_05So I've been told every week for the last decade.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_05And last three election cycles. And for the answer to all three of those vexing questions we know that are burning, burning in your mind, we're gonna have to go all the way back to the end of the 19th century to scare up the appropriate metaphor. It's from a serialized story that appeared in the National Observer between March and June of 1894, and was finally bound up into a book and published by William Heinemann in London and Henry Holt and Company in New York City in 1895. And this is the opening paragraph of chapter one entitled The Inventor. Quote: The man who made the time machine, the man I shall call the time traveler, was well known in scientific circles a few years since, and the fact of his disappearance is also well known. He was a mathematician of peculiar subtlety and one of our most conspicuous investigators in molecular physics. He did not confine himself to abstract science. Several ingenious and one or two profitable patents were his. Very profitable they were, these last, as his handsome house at Richmond testified. Unquote.
SPEAKER_02That is, of course, the time machine, written by H. G. Wells and first adapted for the movies in 1960. And because it was adapted for the screen during the Cold War, the explanation for how the Eloy and Morlocks came to exist was changed for the 1960 movie.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, pretty radically. The plot, if you don't already know briefly, is that a man from the 19th century builds a time machine and travels to a far distant future where the human race has split into two different species. This is from the movie trailer.
SPEAKER_00Is this the human race of the future? Or is this the Morlocks, fiendish creatures who live in a weird underground world? And the Eloy, the tranquil sunshine people. The Morlocks dominate and maintain like cattle, luring them below with the hypnotic wail of the sirens.
SPEAKER_05So so far, so good, right? Got the Eloy, got the Morlocks, and the Traveler. This all tracks more or less with the novel. Yes, and we know in the novel, Weena is a frightened child and not Yvet Mimu.
SPEAKER_02So Yvet Mimu. Yes.
SPEAKER_05So so yeah, you know, was not uh Rod Taylor's love interest in the novel. So just stop being pedantic. We're focusing on a single metaphor from the novel, not the entire thing.
SPEAKER_02But if you had a choice between a nine-year-old child and Yvette Mimu.
SPEAKER_05Nope, nope, nope, yep. For cinematic reasons, I think you I think you want to rephrase that, honey.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's true. Yeah. That's true. I'm not trying to I'm trying not trying to go full uh Epstein files here.
SPEAKER_05No.
SPEAKER_02But if you had to cinematic cinematic reasons as a director with a character, right, to draw people in the development of a movie and for thinking about marketing the movie. Yes. You'd pick Yvette Mimieu every time.
SPEAKER_05Every time. Every damn time.
SPEAKER_02Oh, but look, an hour into the movie, we find out how things got this way. Which is where the movie and the novel absolutely diverge.
SPEAKER_00The war between the East and West, which is now in 326 years, has a must come to an end. There is nothing left to fight with, and few of us left to fight with. The rest of us decided to take our chances in the sunlight. Small as those chances might.
SPEAKER_05In case you happen to miss our science fiction university episode 19, too much of a good thing, where we talked about this, in the novel, H. G. Wells' future aggressive underground machine using Morlocks and passive surface trolling Eloy, which the Morlocks harvest for food, wasn't created by a catastrophic global nuclear and biological war. Because in 1895, when the novel was published, there was no such thing. There was no such notion. You see, H. G. Wells, I'll whisper this to the microphone at Bluegill. I don't want everyone to hear this. H. G. Wells was a socialist. Which I'm giving to understand from J.D. Vance means he believed uh in trans athletes. I think. Is that right? I'm pretty sure.
SPEAKER_02That's it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02He believed in converting boys to girls at one afternoon at a school.
SPEAKER_05Right. And he called it the island of Dr. Moreau. So um and well, anyway, in the novel, the division of the human race was the result of the inequality and class divisions of Wells' own time, especially in London, going unchecked for thousands and thousands of years until eventually it gave rise to two separate human species.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And we're not gonna have time to go through the economics of 1895 in Europe, but suffice it to say there was income inequality. Yes. But in Cold War America, the message that class conflict and capitalism gone wild would destroy the human race was never going to make it onto the silver screen. What are you, a communist like Russia?
SPEAKER_05Are you insane? No, that yeah, absolutely. Absolutely right.
SPEAKER_02Uh and besides, explosions, sirens blaring, and molten lava flowing through the streets of London. Also, Yevte Memieux are so much more cinematic.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yeah. There are lots of the lots of the novel that just got lopped off or changed for perfectly understandable reasons. But as a metaphor, the speciation of the human race into Eloy and Morlock answers at least two of the three questions we promised to solve. What the hell happened to the Republican Party? And why the hell didn't anyone in the brain cast of the Republican Party see any of this coming? Well, here's a hint. The Eloy were the conservative intellectual class, all your favorite never Trumpers. And the Morlocks were the people doing all the ugly political work necessary to get that intellectual class into power.
SPEAKER_02You mean like jeb exclamation point?
SPEAKER_05Like that was the end of the uh that was that marked the end of the reign of the Eloy, I believe, Lou Gal.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_05Now they're food. Now they're now they're food.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh. On topic, we now turn to this very long article in The New Yorker. Quote, the battle for the post-Trump right. For decades, the Heritage Foundation was a conservative powerhouse. Can it stay relevant in the influencer age? Unquote. This article is from October 6th, 2026. It's about the Heritage Foundation's little Nazi problem.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, they got a little Nazi problem over there, don't they?
SPEAKER_02Quote, as one former Heritage executive put it, the young people who came to DC used to be the good kids, teachers' pets, class presidents, suck-ups. Now the right-wing dreamers deride their elders as Reagan zombies and boomer cons. They're sick of the establishment program of forever wars and free trade, open borders, and kowtowing to China. Their movement, known as the New Right, or sometimes as the realignment, is virulently anti-war, eager for mass deportations, and less interested in lowering corporate taxes than in helping families afford houses, and we should say white families, by the way.
SPEAKER_05Let's be real clear with that.
SPEAKER_02Let's be real specific about it. Families afford houses and cars and kids. It's Elizabeth Warren in the streets, economic nationalism and strong Christianity in the sheets. One DC think tanker told me. I just threw up just a little bit. The kids these days don't watch Hannity. They follow Tucker or maybe Nick Fuentes, the young white nationalist who mocks women and calls Hitler cool. Everyone in the mainstream on the right is puzzled about what to do about the angry young men. Yeah. A former heritage scholar told me. It creates nasty fractures in the coalition.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Unquote.
SPEAKER_05The cure for angry young men used to be have a war and send them off to war.
SPEAKER_02That's right, and send them all off to war. Yep.
SPEAKER_05The New Yorker article, which is very, very long, by the way, this is just a very little bit of it. Uh, continues, quote, when Donald Trump gained political prominence in 2016, the heritage leaders recognized his potential, yet the organization slumped during his first term. Kay uh Coles James, who took over the foundation in 2018, was an uninspiring fundraiser, and her politics were, as one senior think tank leader put it, bog standard Republican establishment. During the protests of 2020, James, who is black, called racism a fatal wound in America's history. Tucker Carlson helped lead a push for her ouster. Surprise, surprise.
SPEAKER_02Because of course he did. Yes.
SPEAKER_05Of course he did. The Board of Trustees wanted her to be relevant again. And Kevin Roberts seemed to offer MAGA credibility. Oh, Jesus. And that there we go. He had been the president of a Catholic college in Wyoming and the head of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an America First Guy who understood the grassroots. He came up in the populist wing of the Republican Party. As a young man in Louisiana, he organized a rally for Pat Goddamn Buchanan, the nationalist presidential candidate. For a time, Roberts changed course, cheering for the Iraq war, but now he describes himself as a recovering neocon. When everyone is screaming at you, you're all Nazis, you don't look around at the people in the building who you don't know very well and be like, So, what do you think of Nick Fuentes? A former policy staffer told me. It turns out maybe we should have. Unquote. Yeah. You know what? When there's one roach, there's a whole fucking nest of them. And maybe you should investigate. Maybe you should have investigated that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. And this is the Bulwarks owner publisher Sarah Longwell reacting to the Heritage Foundation's little Nazi problem on her podcast a few days ago. Quote. And this is where, you know, when people say one of the people's big gripes with us former Republicans is they're kind of like, you built this, you saw it, you were around. I spent some time around the Heritage Foundation in my 20s. And like it was all front-of-the-class nerds talking about education policy. This was not what people did. And this is why I understand how somebody could talk about like there being a through line that leads us here. Like you could find those tendrils. But like if you were living in it and nobody talked like this, I'm not saying you would have liked their ideas or their tax policy or their international policy. Like you might have liked what they were saying, but they did not go around saying, yeah, man, we've got to welcome all these little Nazis in. They're the future, unquote.
SPEAKER_05So, with that out of the way, we have Sarah Longwell in her 20s at the Heritage Foundation. So let's ask ourselves a provocative question. Other than a bunch of nerds at the Heritage Foundation reading God and Man at Yale, during this time, do you suppose there was anything else going on on the right? Anything at all going on on the right, Blue Gal?
SPEAKER_02Well, for example, were there any popular radio or television programs that Republican voters were watching regularly, and perhaps people in Washington were buying ads on for their candidates? Were there any political events of interest at that time?
SPEAKER_05Who knows? I mean, it's all lost to history, except that the professional podcast, where we remember that in 2004, when Ms. Longwell was 24 years old, Matthew Dowd and Carl Rove engineered the re-election of the then worst president in modern history, George W. Bush, using a campaign of terror alert, fear-mongering, liberal bashing, appeals to right-wing evangelicals, and of course, the anti-gay ballot initiatives they put on ballots in swing states where they needed to make sure the wing nuts voters came out in force.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And black evangelical voters came out in force too. Carl Rove was very interested in getting black evangelicals to come out and vote against, vote in favor of anti-gay legislation.
SPEAKER_05That was the outreach to the African-American voters.
SPEAKER_02That was the outreach to black voters that Carl Rove did.
SPEAKER_05We all hate the same people. We all hate the same folks. So let's let's all vote for George Bush again.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_02From 2004 through 2017, if you turned on conservative talk radio anywhere in America, you were living in Rush Limbaugh's world. He had the largest audience, the most influential personality, and the model that much of the rest of the industry followed.
SPEAKER_05Mm-hmm. And I'll remind everybody that uh we talked about 20, 2004, a decade before that, in 1994, when Republicans swept to power in the House and the Senate, it was Rush Limbaugh who was given credit for that by Republican leadership.
SPEAKER_02Yes, they were aware.
SPEAKER_05They were aware that it was in the fucking New York Times, and they called him the majority maker. They made him an honorary member of the House, and he gave a rousing speech condemning feminazis and saying that maybe we once we get rid of all the liberals, we should keep a few around, you know, as specimens in the future. Right. Yeah, right. So that is the world that Ms. Longwell grew up in. And despite hanging out with the nerds at the Heritage Foundation, she came of age politically during a period when Rush Limbaugh was the single most influential voice in the Republican media by a mile, and not the sainted memory of Ronald Wilson Reagan. From the time she entered high school through the George W. Bush years, the dominant personality in Republican talk radio was Limbaugh, whose audience was measured in the tens of millions every fucking week. Now, during those years, Sean Hannity was the second guy who was most highly rated until 2018 when he pulled ahead of Limbaugh.
SPEAKER_02You mean is this when Hannity's radio show pulled ahead of Limbaugh?
SPEAKER_05His radio show got a little rocket fuel from his TV appearances.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_05And his radio show jumped ahead of Limbaugh's.
SPEAKER_03Huh. Okay.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, but they were but it was conservative voices all over the top. I mean, the top people were all right-wing assholes.
SPEAKER_02But but it's not just Sarah Longwell who kind of ignored Rush Limbaugh as a cultural force to pretend that the Republican Party was something that it clearly wasn't. David Brooks was doing that all over the place.
SPEAKER_05And basically the entire pundit class.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05All of them just pretended that didn't exist. And the Heritage Foundation was somehow the Republican Party or the Conservative Movement.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_05And we and everything's under control.
SPEAKER_02Don't forget the project for the New American Century, too. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And you know, they were all just saying everything's fine. There was a little hiccup when Sarah Palin came along and scared the crap out of everybody. But it's fine now. It's fine. Everything's under control. Yeah. And we were the ones outside banging on their windows, going, it's not fine. It's not fine. Have you checked the base? Have you talked to the base recently? But of course, you know, they don't, they didn't because they didn't want to know.
SPEAKER_02No, right. They didn't want to know what the Republican base was doing. They figured they could control them. Um, this was the age of radio being dominated by Limbaugh, Hannity, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, and Mark Michael Savage. And on cable news, quote unquote, Fox News and Bill O'Reilly were beating everyone. And hate speech was always on the menu.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. This was just the water they swam in. And the Heritage Foundation and the Sarah Longwells just ignored it. Just pretended it wasn't happening. And after the Bush administration shit the bed hard enough to alienate even some of its most dog-loyal supporters, those supporters didn't become Democrats. They burned their Bush Cheney 2004 bumper stickers, they put on tri-corn hats, they rebranded themselves as the Tea Party, and they spent the entire Obama administration roaring out one long racist primal scream.
SPEAKER_02And how did the chair of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, cope with the now open snarling racism of the GOP base under the Tea Party banner? Did he run from it? Did he declare that, you know, we're the party of Lincoln, goddammit, and we are not going to welcome all these shrieking bigots into our party. They're not the future. Did you do that, Driftglass?
SPEAKER_05The answer is, of course, oh, hell no. Hell no. Because he knows why he was hired by the RNC. This is from Breitbart.com, which we don't very rare don't very often quote on this podcast. November 20th, 2010, quote, RNC Chair Steele tries to take credit for the 2010 Tea Party success. If nothing else is proven that Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele is not in tune with the GOP today, his recent statements on the Tea Party movement should serve as exhibit number one, showing that he has no clue the effect that the Tea Party movement had on the 2010 elections. In a five-page memo to committee members last week, Steele said that the GOP saved the day by stopping Tea Partiers from going third party in 2010. Daily Caller Excerpt, Steele's comments on November 20th. The RNC, Steele told members, welcomed the energy and limited government principles of the Tea Party voters and grassroots conservatives. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know? They give good envelope. They knock good door, bluegill, you know? And worked hard to ensure that their views found expression within the Republican Party. Boy, did they.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_05And not in a potentially ruinous third party movement. The article goes on. In fact, it was the other way around, Mr. Steele. It was the Tea Party that forced the GOP to take notice, to heed policy ideas, and to glom onto the Tea Party's support to win in 2010. Unquote.
SPEAKER_02And Glenn Beck was the reason the Tea Party existed. Yeah. It was a project of Glenn Beck who was paid a million dollars to promote it on his show. Fox News had tea parties with Hannity and I think Hannity was in Atlanta. But but they sent Fox News employees around the country to do Tea Party rallies. Yeah. And Glenn Beck, who was at this time on Fox and also on radio, was paid a million dollars, I think, by um The Koch brothers. The Koch brothers and and the guy in Texas to do promos. Oh, Dick Army.
SPEAKER_05Dick Army was one of them. Dick Army was a completely artificial movement. It was a rebranding of the Republican base.
SPEAKER_02Republican base. Who had changed? And this idea of, oh, we don't want it to become a ruinous third party movement.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, it took the media about two and a half years to admit that, oh, these are all Republican voters. These are all Bush voters.
SPEAKER_05And you know who was writing about that from day one, Blue Gal? Driftglass was. This guy. And a handful of other liberals saying, God, for fuck's sake, wake up. These are just Republican voters.
SPEAKER_02Yes, these people knew.
SPEAKER_05They're just Republican voters. No, Stephen Gilliard, I believe, had passed away.
SPEAKER_02Was he dead by that time?
SPEAKER_05I believe he had passed away by the body.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05But it's all fake. It's all fake. And it's just a rebranding scam, and they're going to get away with it. Oh my God, they're going to get because the media is saying, look at all these brand new people in politics who never got involved before. And the whole Bush administration was fucking memory-holed. And the Tea Party came roaring out, and you know, and they they did great in 2010.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05They scored huge victories in 2010 because the conservative media, the legacy media, the Republican Party, and outfits like the Heritage Foundation were all complicit in pretending the Bush administration had just vanished like a fart in a firestorm. Right. And these new energetic voters were just revitalizing the party with some good old grassroots energy.
SPEAKER_02Right. And it was invented. Yeah. Absolutely. With money.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02All right. And I'm start- I'm sorry I didn't mean to bring up Steve Gilliard, but we were talking about Steve Gilliard earlier this week when the Yankees were eliminated from uh World Series contention. And what is it that Steve Gilliard always said about the Yankees? Fuck the fucking Yankees.
SPEAKER_05Fuck the fucking Yankees. By the way, when when uh I went to the first um uh Netroots Nation in Chicago.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um, and we there people wanted to meet me, I wanted to meet them. We had a meetup. I to gather the Gilliard people around, I brought my laptop in giant font, I typed on the screen, F T F Y, held it up and like, oh, there we are.
SPEAKER_02There we are.
SPEAKER_05We all we all knew what we were talking about. We all knew what we were saying. Anyway.
SPEAKER_02Anyway, we I'm not I'm not into baseball that much. We have podcast listeners who are very sad that the Cubs didn't make it. And and I agree with them. We're sad about that.
SPEAKER_05I have an entire family who live in Arizona, who are all I'm sure heartbroken the cubbies didn't make it this year.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's right. That's right. All right. So now for your word of the day, and that word is instantiate.
SPEAKER_05It's a good word, it's a mixture word.
SPEAKER_02Is it one of those $10 words? Uh it means to represent an abstract idea, concept, or blueprint with a concrete real-world example or specific instance. Or if you're of a more legislative mind, you could use the word enact. In this case, they both mean the sort of the same thing: taking an abstract concept, something you're blue skying in, like a think tank like the Heritage Foundation about foreign policy or tax policy, housing policy, something else, making into something that actually has real-world effects and is in a bill somewhere to make it happen concretely. Right. Uh, but to do that, you have to have people who will write that law, pass that law, frame that law, and will put it up for debate and know how to do all of that. Have a funding thing in their bill, etc. And other words, you have to have uh political knowledge and political power.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, you need a delivery system, a political delivery system for your abstract notions of this and that. If you want to enact or instantiate your abstract ideas that you're kicking around at the Heritage Foundation, you have to get voters to vote for people who will support those ideas. So while you're busy kicking around those abstract notions in the Edmund Burke reading room at the Heritage Foundation, somebody has to be out there getting tens of millions of idiots to vote for it. And those tens of millions of idiots, as Trump has proven decisively, do not give a shit about your Heritage Foundation agenda at all.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05They don't care about foreign policy, they don't care about debts and deficits, they don't care about freedom or free trade. In fact, they hate fucking free trade. They don't want to go with and go to war with anybody under any circumstances.
SPEAKER_02Well, and you and I you have talked about this, and I know that's what we're getting into is the disconnect between the Heritage Foundation and and the Republican base. The Republican base genuinely thought they were voting for culture wars. Right. That's what they were promised. Every time they were promised that, they were led to the polls with that, and what they have continually gotten from the Republican Party, even under Trump, is tax cuts for billionaires and fuck you.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And that's that was back in Reagan, that was with Bush, and that was with Trump. It's not, you know, you uh you gotta hand it to Nixon for creating the EPA. I mean, he had He had to, but yeah. Yeah, he had to because you know, rivers were catching on fire. But, you know, he had some policies he wanted to enact. Right. Uh, but I think he was the last Republican who actually had that kind of idea behind him a little bit. He also had a lot of racism and of course megalomania and a lot of other bad things.
SPEAKER_05The thing is to keep those people coming to the polls and voting for tax cuts for billionaires and tax cuts for rich people, you had to keep cranking up the heat under the boiling water. It had to boil harder and harder and faster and faster. So you had to keep increasing the number of enemies, the number of number of conspiracies, the number of terrors and the bikes. You had to scare the crap out of the people harder and harder. And as they got crazier and crazier and more conspiracy-minded, more racist and more open about it, the more the gap between what they were told the Republican Party believed in and hated just as much as they did. They they hated all the same people. By God, we're gonna we're gonna ban abortion and we're gonna kick people out of this country, and we're gonna we're gonna make liberals cry. The more the gap between that and what Republicans actually delivered became unsustainable.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, right. And so eventually Republicans lying in the war and cutting taxes for billionaires, and that was it. Right.
SPEAKER_05And and then it got so bad the Democrats got got away with electing a Muslim sleeper cell, for God's sakes.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. So instead, they would like their cultural hatreds and biases and prejudices represented in government and enacted into law. They want to see liberals cry. That will get them to the polls.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, you know, and and seeing brown people hurt in some way, kicked off of welfare, demonized, slandered, that gets them out to the polls, man, every time.
SPEAKER_02Well, and and I wanted to ask you about that with the Purting Brown people.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02Um, because someone decided at the 2024 Republican National Convention to have everyone hold up signs that said mass deportation now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06It was simple.
SPEAKER_02That is as close to a Nazi rally as you can get.
SPEAKER_05It's very clear what they were going to do. It's abundantly clear, but that's the point. They were very clear about what they were going to do and what they wanted, which means this whole fantasy about this undiscovered uh uh cave full of Republican voters who never knew nothing and never knew what they were voting for, three fucking elections in a row is ludicrous. It's fucking ludicrous. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. What else do they what else do Republicans hate to see here? Baseball.
SPEAKER_02Well, they don't want to see gays get married. They don't want gays or women to have any rights. No. And that gets them to the polls.
SPEAKER_05And and these people, they think trans kids in sports, you know, all 13 of them, whatever it is, are a thousand times more dangerous than a measle plague unleashed by RFK Jr. And that trans hatred gets them to the goddamn poles.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Yep. And it's I I I want to say something. It's just sad.
SPEAKER_05Of course it's sad, but it's also sad.
SPEAKER_02It's also beating up on the on some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
SPEAKER_05Well, it's not just sad, it's dangerous, it's evil, it's tragic. You know, if they were angry at puppets or the moon, I wouldn't care. But they're angry at kids, vulnerable kids, which makes them, in my mind, despicable people. Yep. Evil people.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Exactly. So you have to feed these morons, and they're hateful morons. Bigots and imbeciles and xenophobes and homophobes and gun nuts. And you have to feed them what they want. Republicans have to feed them what they want to get their votes.
SPEAKER_05And what they want is crazy shit, hateful shit. All the stuff that you don't want to touch at the Heritage Foundation.
SPEAKER_02So while you are up in the sunny uplands of think tank land, all of these awful, racist, horrible, ugly, misogynist people, and all of the awful people who write the ads to get those other awful people to the polls, they're down below doing the hard work. You're up there in Think Tank Land and they're down below doing all of that work. They're down working the machines, they're down below making sure that you get what you want in terms of electoral outcomes. Huh. Which makes you the Eloy and makes them the Morlocks. And you thought it was the other way around, didn't you?
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And eventually, guess what happens? Yeah. And you just forgot about the fact, or you just ignored the fact that there are all these horrible people doing all this awful shit to get you the votes you need to enact the policies you want. Even though all of you, all you ever had to do, all you ever had to do was turn on a radio or turn on a television anywhere in America, or just leave your think tank for a day or two and go visit real America out here in the place we call flyover country, where they don't talk about free trade. They talk about trans kids and migrant caravans and DEI and communists, shit like that. And where do they get those ideas? That's what gets those fucking people to the polls.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So while you were enjoying your time kicking around ideas at the Heritage Foundation, you know, Rush Limbaugh was kicking women on his show by calling them Feminazis. And the ugly work of getting people to the polls, of working the machinery of the electorate, you left to other people.
SPEAKER_05Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02Because you didn't want to know how the sausage got made.
SPEAKER_05No. You didn't want to know what sorts of appeals had to be made to awful people, what sorts of cultural bribes had to be offered to the worst people in America to get them to the polls to vote for your people. Then one day the Morlocks started to notice that you were rather helpless without them, that you couldn't survive without them, that they needed you way less than you needed them. In fact, here's a fun fact: I wrote a whole thing about this. It was entitled Little Red State Fundy Says. And it details exactly how the racist base of the party had finally realized that it was the creature that held all the cards. They were in charge.
SPEAKER_02And you know, you wrote that right as Trump was getting elected, right?
SPEAKER_05No, honey. I published that post on August 24th, 2005. 21 years ago. Back when Sarah Longwell was an ambitious 25-year-old Republican working at a right-wing PR firm that is less than four miles from the White House. And presumably hanging out with all those rabid Russell Kirk fans at the Heritage Foundation, HQ, which was less than two miles away, but apparently paying no attention whatsoever to what was going on in Republican politics in Washington, or what was being served up on conservative radio every single goddamn day, or what was on Fox every single goddamn day.
SPEAKER_02Which is kind of weird because the people who did know what was on Fox and what was on Rush were Republican members of Congress. Yeah. And you would think Sarah Longwell and the Heritage Foundation would talk to those people.
SPEAKER_05Maybe they're lying, Blue Gal.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Or maybe, maybe they just are in a think tank bubble and are oblivious to anything going on in the rest of the world, you know, which is why they think there must be millions of Republicans out there who are equally oblivious and have no idea what's going on in the world. We can just reach those people.
SPEAKER_02Anyway. Instead, as a member of the Eloy, she paid no attention to the Morlocks who were making it possible for the conservative elite to enjoy the sunny uplands of think tank life, eating giant strawberries and musing about marginal tax rates and free trade. Which we believe also answers the third question we posed at the top of the show. After three consecutive election cycles with Trump on the ballot, why the hell do so many of these former think tank Republicans still insist that there are scads of Republican-based voters of good conscience still inside the GOP bubble? Because somehow they still have no idea what they voted for or what's going on, or anything.
SPEAKER_05Or anything.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And the answer we came up with with was pride and pride, pride and economics.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Because there is no other field of professional endeavor that we can think of where so many people could have been so catastrophically wrong for so damn long about the one thing they were paid to know. Yeah. Yeah. And still not only have jobs in that profession, but be regarded now as leading experts whose opinions are worth a daily national spotlight. And yet, in the field of political opinion having, it doesn't matter how wrong you were. All that matters is that you have a patron like a cable news outlet with sufficient clout to make your past irrelevant, to launder your past away. And that's the economics of it.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Yep. The pride of it is that deep down they simply cannot comprehend the idea of having been so very, very wrong about the profession they poured all their energy and ambition into. To them, it is, to coin a phrase, is inconceivable.
SPEAKER_05Inconceivable. Inconceivable. So we end up with this ridiculous syllogism, which is very hard to pronounce.
SPEAKER_02Since it is inconceivable for them to have been this completely wrong.
SPEAKER_05Ergo, there must be some hitherto unsuspected stash of decent, honorable Republican voters somewhere who just happen to have voted for Trump over and over again for some inscrutable reasons.
SPEAKER_02Ergo, since these voters are otherwise decent and honorable, all they need is the light of truth to break on their dark and dreary world, which is why you need to subscribe to our media corporation. And buy my book! As I said in my book, buy my book. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And that's and and we should say at the end of a syllogism say QED. Thus it is demonstrated.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_05Yep.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Now well, I wanted to point out one other thing about this. Sure. Um someone I can't, and I'm so sorry, I can't remember who it was, if it was Krugman or some other substack, but somebody was looking at polls in these swing states where uh we have all of a sudden competitive democratic races for the Senate to flip some Senate seats. Yeah. Like Ohio and Texas. I mean, those are the big ones. Alaska's another. Uh we we have some opportunities to flip Senate seats to the Democratic side. And the person that was writing about this was saying, you know, the many of these states are places where Donald Trump lost the Republican primary in 2016.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02And so Trump doesn't necessarily have the hold on the Republican voter in those states that he thinks he does. Because in the primary in 2016, they voted against him.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I thought about it for a minute. I went, wait, who did they vote for instead? They voted for Ted Cruz.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Yeah. Come on. Come on.
SPEAKER_02That's not exactly the lift that you think it is.
SPEAKER_03No, oh.
SPEAKER_02They're still morally superior to Trump voters at one time. And in Ohio, they voted for John Kasich because hometown boy.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yeah. But you know what? What? As we know, it's going to be Rubio Bluegale. You know, Cruz and Trump are going to fight it out to the bitter end.
SPEAKER_02It's going to be Rubio. Rubio is going to sit stand uh uh across the ashes, gonna stride across the ashes and grab that nomination.
SPEAKER_05Save the Republican Party in 2016. Okay. All right. Well, let's round up some news. I want to tell you about Donald Trump. Here he is screaming into the void on Truth Social yesterday. Quote, Mohammed El Saed, I remind you his name is not Mohammed Al-Said, it's Abdul al-Sayed, but Donald Trump is now just flat out racism all the time. And because that's what the morons want to hear and see. That's what gets him in the polls. Mohammed Al-Said is a terrible candidate for the Democrats, while his opponent, Mike Rogers, is an extremely good one. Mohammed goes back to the days of the Jihad. He is a Wait a minute.
SPEAKER_02Read that sentence again.
SPEAKER_05Mohammed goes back to the days of the jihad.
SPEAKER_02He wrote that down.
SPEAKER_05He did.
SPEAKER_02Or had somebody type it for him.
SPEAKER_05He did. Well, you know, let's all let's all now get over being surprised that Donald Trump is a completely awful, despicable person who says the worst thing you can think of.
SPEAKER_02And if you can tell nobody is controlling him at the White House in this area.
SPEAKER_0530% of this country want to hear this.
SPEAKER_02Yes. That's why he is 30% now.
SPEAKER_05Well we'll see. He's a radical extremist terrorist sympathizer, with no different from his best friend America hating Hassan Piker.
unknownWho?
SPEAKER_05Yeah. I would like to thank the bulwark for bringing Hassan Piker to the attention of the Trump administration. Yeah. Way to go, guys. How's France doing? Mohammed's values are not exactly those of Michiganders or those of our great United States of America. He is wrong for Michigan and wrong for America. Vote for Mike Rogers, all caps. He has my complete and total endorsement, all caps, and will never let you down, all caps. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump, unquote. Meanwhile, Mike Rogers throws Trump under a northbound bus. This is from CNN, quote, Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers called for an end to Trump tariff war with Canada, saying, here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy, unquote.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Good luck with that, man. Good luck.
SPEAKER_02Good luck with that. Even People Magazine is taking shots now. Yeah. This is People Magazine, the dentist office, People Magazine. Yep. Quote, the New York Times report on Sunday, October 4th included crowd data and photos showing empty seats at recent rallies in Ohio and Alabama. In his latest attack on the country's independent news media, Trump said the Times and many other artificial media outlets should be arrested for their dishonesty and disservice to our country. In actuality, thousands of people were unable to get in. The arena was totally maxed out, including all upper sections, Trump wrote in the True Social Post on Monday, October 5th. One of at least seven posts he dedicated to the subject on Monday and Tuesday, October 6th. There are no empty seats. There haven't been for years, and there never will be.
SPEAKER_05You know what? He's right. In one respect.
SPEAKER_02There will be lots of people cheering. Standing room. The rallies are hotter, all caps, than ever, the president continued. In a separate post on Tuesday morning, Trump wrote that his quote, crowds and enthusiasm are unbelievable, and that nobody has ever seen anything like it.
SPEAKER_05Both of those are literally true. If you take it the other way.
SPEAKER_02All caps, my rallies are saving the Republican Party again. He added in another post an hour later. The president claimed that 50,000 people attempted to attend his rally at a 4,500-seat high school student center in Vandalia, Ohio. I I have been to Vandalia, Ohio. It is not a populous community where there are 50,000 people to come to your rally. Anyway, and on Saturday, October 3rd, an alleged thousands were turned away. The Times White House reporter Katie Rogers analyzed Trump's rallies on Sunday. In Alabama, the same state where 30,000 people attended a Trump rally in a 30,000 people stadium in August of 2015, there were swathes of empty seats at the 10,000 capacity athletic center where Mr. Trump spoke on Friday. Rogers wrote, in Ohio, a day later, several areas of an upper deck were empty by the time Mr. Trump finished speaking at a 4,500 capacity high school student activity center. That's the one in Vandalia. Trump also bemoaned the lack of television news conference of his rallies and said, excuse me, coverage of his rallies and said they weren't broadcast in full as he travels from state to state to support Republican candidates in this November's midterm elections. You know, I don't think they're showing the empty Trump lectern for an hour ahead ahead of the speech anymore either. I don't
SPEAKER_05Think so. I think you're right.
SPEAKER_02They're all happenings. And they never happened before. And will never be duplicated again, Trump wrote on Monday. The networks refuse, however, under any circumstances to show the crowds, but you can hear the thunderous applause and know that it represents thousands and thousands of people.
SPEAKER_05Maybe millions, maybe billions.
SPEAKER_02Maybe maybe billions.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02On Tuesday, Trump added that Fox News have totally lost their way because the network doesn't show my record-breaking rallies the morning after. Unquote.
SPEAKER_05They'd really rather you not mention that. Thank you very much. We have other things to talk about. Yeah. Um, now follow this.
SPEAKER_02I I will say it was very funny to see on Media Matters that Fox News spent like five and a half seconds on the job numbers this week and switched to how woke Nike is.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And now another business news.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, the job numbers are bad. Nike is so woke.
SPEAKER_02Woke.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. But but to repeat for the thousandth time, that's what gets the morons to the polls. Yes. That's what gets the bigots to the polls.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um, this you can file under oh my god, it's nothing sacred. It's nothing sacred. This is from NBC Channel 5 Chicago this week, quote, can one billion dollars buy victory in the midterm elections? Some Republicans fear the answer is no. The 2026 campaign is shaping up as a referendum on the power of money in American politics. Republicans are entering the final month of the midterm campaign, increasingly anxious that the $1 billion at their disposal may not be enough to fend off sweeping losses as the party reckons with President Donald Trump's unpopularity, persistent cost concerns, and the fallout from the war in Iran. The cash advantage spread across a half a dozen groups is driven largely by the Trump-aligned MAGA Incorporated, which had nearly $416 million in cash on hand at the end of August and began stepping up its spending on critical races in September. But that money may have come too late, forcing the president's group to pay much higher rates because of the shrinking availability of airtime. Oh my God, how does supply and demand work, Blue Gal?
SPEAKER_02How does planning for a campaign when you know when election day is, how does that work?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, apparently it's all a big mystery on the right. Four Republican Senate campaign officials said groups that reserved advertising time last spring paid much lower rates than MAGA Incorporated and its affiliated groups. Instead, by waiting until September, Trump connected organizations are sometimes paying more than five times what they would have spent if they'd acted earlier. Dum dum dum dum. A representative of MAGA Incorporated, familiar with the group's strategy, said its spending has allowed Republicans to keep races more competitive than they would have been otherwise. They're not going to lose as badly, Blue Gal. Isn't that exciting? In some cases, the group had been the only one on the air criticizing Democratic candidates. The MAGA Incorporated representative and the Republican Senate campaign officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy, unquote.
SPEAKER_02Their internal strategy of working for another campaign ever.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02This is from Raw Story October 6th. Quote, U.S. Attorney Janine Pierrot faces calls for a watchdog probe into whether her office recalled a grand jury witness to manufacture a felony charge against an Olympian later cleared. Lawyers for three-time Olympian David Hearn, including former Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich, made the request Tuesday in a letter to the Inspectors General at the Justice and Interior Departments. Pierrot's office indicted Hearn in July after he touched a loose piece of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's new coating. It later moved to drop the case, conceding a botched installation caused the damage, the letter says. Unquote.
SPEAKER_05I'm wondering when investigators, congressional investigators, come for Janine Pirot, and they're going to come for Janine Pierrot.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05If she flips on Trump and says he threatened to withhold wine from me if I didn't do what he said, or she's going to go true believer and just go completely like, fuck you, communist bastards, I blah blah blah. And throw up and fall face first into her own sick. But um I'm looking forward to that trial more than more than I thought I would, because she's such a despicable person, and she is in charge of the policing power.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Of DC.
SPEAKER_05Of DC, which is an incredibly dangerous thing to put in the hands of someone as awful as her.
SPEAKER_02As incompetent as well. Yeah. But you know, Donald Trump has over 40 former Fox News employees in official positions in the White House. Yes, he does. It's not just Hegseth and Janine Biro.
SPEAKER_05Who who knew we'd look back to the good old days of the Bush administration when those people, those positions were filled by oil executives?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So well, oil executives who knew how to run a company at least had some executive ability. And we're not going to just willy-nilly fire anyone who Pete Hegseth thinks doesn't have enough testosterone.
SPEAKER_05Uh, okay. Onward. Uh, Ken Paxton, never heard of him, is now blaming everyone but himself for his flailing campaign. This is from Axios, quote, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton privately blamed the Iran war and high fuel prices for his struggling Senate campaign. It's the war, it's gas prices, it's diesel. He told donors and lobbyists at a closed-door fundraiser, calling affordability by far our biggest problem. Paxton also complained that Washington was controlling his campaign messaging. Who's this Washington fella? I'd like to have words with him. I I don't know who that person might be. Washington.
SPEAKER_02This is the thing, though. It's what he's saying is MAGA, MAGA Inc. is the only one able to buy me ads these days.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And they're the ones who are doing my ad, my campaign for me. Yeah. But back to Ken Paxton, blaming everyone else. I've never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and like what issues are going to matter because it's all coming, you know, from DC. So there's two people. One's named DC and one's named Washington, and they're controlling his campaign. Paxton said, adding, I don't control message or what we're doing, unquote. I don't control message or what we're doing. I'm a puppet with a big hand up my back.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I don't have any ability to determine what issues are facing Texans and be able to respond to that.
SPEAKER_05That's so sad. Yeah, I feel so sad. Sad for that man. Uh, and also this is from the Associated Press, sort of in the same universe. Quote, the primary Senate Republican Super PAC plans to spend $5 million to defend Senator Darlene Graham in South Carolina. Trump won the state by about 18 points in 2024. Graham, appointed after her brother Lindsey Graham died in July, faces Democrat Annie Andrews in a race. Recent polls show is close.
SPEAKER_02Trump Carolina.
SPEAKER_05In South Goddamn Carolina, running against Lindsey Graham's sister, who is in every respect wildly unqualified to hold any position of power anywhere. Anyway, Trump, meanwhile, according to the Associated Press, used an anti-trans slur three times to attack Andrews, who is not a transgender, while urging South Carolina voters to elect Graham, unquote, because he's a pig.
SPEAKER_02He's a fucking how he thinks this is the winning message, and it's evil. It's all right. This is from the Wall Street fucking journal. Who owns that paper?
SPEAKER_05Oh, I forget. Is it like a public trust? It's Rupert. It's the Murdochs. That's right. It's the Murdochs.
SPEAKER_02Just like they own Fox. All right. Quote, Kimberly Gilfoil reportedly urged a Trump donor to pay her $100,000 American Express bill. It won't show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express. Trump Jr.'s former fiance texted Eric Dieters days before her Senate confirmation hearing as ambassador to Greece. Honey, please, I need you to get this done for me today, she added.
SPEAKER_05Perfect.
SPEAKER_02She just gets to boss around a Trump donor.
SPEAKER_05Sure.
SPEAKER_02And this is not the only case of her and and and anyone, and there are many people in MAGA world denying this, claiming it didn't happen. And then it's Rupert Murdoch's newspaper that has the text messages.
SPEAKER_05So, so they move on to the next slide. So they move on to the next lie. And the next line.
SPEAKER_02But but we have we kind of have to talk about this for just a second because for a couple reasons. One is who dropped a dime on her?
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And we we don't know, but I imagine that somebody doesn't want her talking about Trump Jr. and his businesses and his money.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Yep.
SPEAKER_02You know, Don Jr. married younger, prettier, and richer by a lot. Yeah. And and money. I mean, she's she's a billionaire's sister. Mrs. Mrs. Don Jr. now.
SPEAKER_05And they sent his former girlfriend halfway around the world.
SPEAKER_02I think as a as a reward.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Consolation prize. She gets to be ambassador to Greece. And I I said at the time, and for her confirmation hearings, of it was interesting to me. I mean, she is a lawyer. I I thought at the time she did look like she wanted to be prepared for that hearing. And she was respectful of everyone at the hearing answering questions about how much she wanted to represent Greece. Okay. Little did we know how much preparation she was doing. And of course she was. I mean. If you're in that circle and you're not taking bribes, then you're not part of advantage of everything that you can. Right.
SPEAKER_05Well, it reminds me a little bit of the first Batman movie where um the fleiß, fleish, flece, flash, the his uh Jim Gordon's partner keeps offering him bribe money.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And and says, if you don't take a taste, people are gonna start to suspect. You know, if you if you're not taking bribes, then we then then no one knows who you're really whose side you're on. Then we're how can we trust you if you're not taking bribes? And and I think Jim Gordon comes back with in a town this bent, who is there to who would there to rat who would there be to rat to anyway?
SPEAKER_02To rat me out. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And so if you're not taking bribes in the Trump universe, people are gonna look sideways at you like, is this is it an arc? Is he wearing a wire? You know, because everybody's a crook. They're all crooks. Again, yeah, it and and you know what? A bunch of them are like really awful Nazi people. And the fact that you filled the universe up with scumbags and reprobates and degenerates and Nazis, and some of them are now leaking into the Heritage Foundation. Right. Is shocking to the people there. Like, dude, this is the this is the water in which you swim. This is the water on which your boats float. How can we be surprised that?
SPEAKER_02Well, but but here again, I'm gonna go back to this because somebody squealed on her.
SPEAKER_06Yes, they did.
SPEAKER_02And I think, or I think it was Eric Dieters, frankly. Somebody found these texts or somebody leaked these texts. I think it were er it was Eric Dieters who leaked these texts. For whom is it's hard to tell. But as the SS Trump continues to sink, and it becomes clear that Donald Trump is losing them elections and access to power, right? Trump world is going to start eating each other. My bet is I told you the other day, Susie Wiles is gonna be the uh, you know, Donald Rumsfeld of oh, she has my 100% support in the day after the new winters. She's quit.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, where'd she go? Susie Who? Never heard of her.
SPEAKER_02Well, she wants a few if she wants a future in Republican politics.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, she has to get off that ship.
SPEAKER_02She's gotta leave. She should have left already.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, gotta get off that ship.
SPEAKER_02So you know, go spend more time with my cats.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Oh, your cats are all dead? What?
SPEAKER_02And of course, you know, uh the revolving door back to Fox is gonna be closed to some of these people.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because they don't want to talk about Trump anymore.
SPEAKER_05But you know, you know whose doors are gonna be open to these people? Never Trump media.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Watch, you think rehabbing people after Bush was profitable?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Look, just they're gonna line up, they're gonna have like a tin bay car wash for absolving a bunch of people who are coming out of there and who have to do a token like Ben and admit, oh, Sarah Peel and you and they write their tell-all book, right? And they confess, they get a little slap on the wrist. A little slap on the wrist. They they go and they kneel before Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller say, Oh, you were right, I was wrong. Let us all work together for the future of a great party, or whatever. And but the absolution industry is absolutely gonna be and rebranding. And the thing is, the only people who have any right to absolve these fuckers are liberals.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And we aren't in the giving vein. Well, and we're not we're not allowed to.
SPEAKER_05We're not giving it away. No, we're not allowed to.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05The entire absolution market's been cornered by former Republicans.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, which is absurd.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, which is again another thing that I hate to say it, and I I wish I could say read my book, buy my book, but I don't have one, which is something I was warning about since day one. They're gonna start, they're gonna start an absolution factory. Yeah. And they're gonna go into the business of deciding who gets whitewashed and who doesn't, and it's gonna be very profitable, and it's gonna be a media uh uh bonanza because they're gonna be the go-to people, because they're gonna be the experts and the folks you can trust. And the all the liberal critique of the Republican Party and the conservative movement going back 50 years is just gonna disappear.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, as if it never happened. Well, and and speaking of books, and then and then we'll close. Yeah, um, there were several people on Blue Sky this week, and you and I don't watch MS Now. No, but uh complaining that MS Now, over and over again this week, apparently was promoting Tom Tillis's book. Yeah. And having Tom Tillis on. Yeah. And there was a, you know, the the peak of that was um Luke Russard.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Having a a slap to say, I'm done, because he has a 10-week-old baby who cannot get a measles vaccine until he's one. Right. And Tom Tillis saying, You mean you can't, it's is it against the law for you to get a measles vaccine? Why don't you go out and get him vaccinated now that you know there's measles out there? And and this father of a 10-week old is like, I'm done. I can't talk to you anymore because my pediatrician says it's unsafe for my baby to get a measles vaccine before age one. That's why. And you know, and unlike you, I listened to my pediatrician, not to J RFK Jr.
SPEAKER_05It used to be safe to wait until your child was one because there was no fucking measles. There's no measles, yes. But now there is.
SPEAKER_02So um I I stole a page out of your quote unquote book, Driftglass, because people were asking how dare MSN, how dare my liberal TV be promoting this former Republicans senator, his book about making presidents angry and making Trump angry. Uh and I just pointed out to them, it's a club.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's a club. By the way, yeah. Um, a mutual friend of ours named Steve.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh. It's a club. Oh, MSN. MS Now is not our friend.
SPEAKER_05MS Now is not our friend. It's not our friend.
SPEAKER_02What I wrote was MS Now is promoting Tom Tillis' book, which is published by Harper Collins, which is owned by News Corp, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch and the Murdoch boys. But MS Now hosts get their books published and promoted there too.
SPEAKER_05Yes, they do.
SPEAKER_02It's a club.
SPEAKER_05It's a club, boys and girls.
SPEAKER_02Tillis has the right publisher and the right agent. It is not complicated. It's a club.
SPEAKER_06It's a club.
SPEAKER_02Ari Melbourne, the host of The Beat with Ari Melbourne, is a HarperCollins author. Katie Tour, the MSNBC anchor and NBC News correspondent, published her best-selling memoir, Unbelievable, My Front Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American history with HarperCollins. Steve Kornaki, the national political correspondent and host, signed a deal to publish his political history books through Echo, an imprint of HarperCollins publishers. Lawrence O'Donnell, the host of The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, is a featured author under the HarperCollins catalog. Luke Russert, the host and commentator, published his memoir, Look For Me There, via HarperCollins Horizon, a HarperCollins imprint. Joy Ann Reed, the former host of The Readout, and A.M. Joy, published her best-selling books, including Medgar and Medgar and Merley and The Man Who Sold America through HarperCollins. They all work for Ruper Murdoch.
SPEAKER_05One way or another.
SPEAKER_02You know, it is. It's New York, it's money, it's publishing, it's agents, it's having the right book agent, it's having the right book publisher to put together a package deal for you, to give you an advance, etc., etc.
SPEAKER_05That's why we don't do any of that. Because then it's such a headache, Blue Cow. Such a headache.
SPEAKER_02Mika Brzezinski uh hostessing Donald Trump fashion shows in the 80s. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. No, it's a club.
SPEAKER_02It's a it's a it's the center of the universe where they all are.
SPEAKER_05And you know, there's a name for those people. The Eloy.
SPEAKER_02He bringed it all, he brings it all home, folks.
SPEAKER_05I try to bring it home. I try to bring it home.
SPEAKER_02Well, each week we post to our Patreon page and website an internet kitty sent in by you, the listeners. This week's internet kitty is Miwa. I heard they were looking for an internet kitty of the week, and I came in and sat on the royal blue velvet chair. Can you guess what I'm looking for? Thought so. Start pouring, and I'll start purring. But a handsome cat, by the way.
SPEAKER_05Very handsome.
SPEAKER_02I thought I looked at this cat and I thought, is that an AI cat? No, it is not. Miwa is 100% real kitty.
SPEAKER_05Is this a commercial photo for it's a commercial photo?
SPEAKER_02The blue velvet, everything. Yeah. I mean, come on. And posing.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And Mia, of course, Miwa, of course, eats freshly poured cat food, our fake sponsor. Whether you serve Pet Store Perfection or Dollar Store Dreck, your cat will sit on that blue velvet and demand that the food they eat is only freshly poured.
SPEAKER_07Oh my lord, it's freshly poured. That's the flavor they adore. Once my scoop and hearts of sore. Oh my lord, it's freshly poured. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02And you can visit me, what a gorgeous cat, at our Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash prolef pod or our website, prolefpod.com. And you can send your internet kitty, dog, fish. We have a fish coming up at some point, by the way. Uh other pet, any pet to us at our email address, prolefpodcast at gmail.com. Please put subject line internet kitty. Uh and prolefpodcast at gmail.com is also where you can write to both of us. Feel free to write us. We do love hearing from you. We read every email that comes in from you. Be aware that if you write to us at any of our addresses, we reserve the right to read your email or US Postal Service Go Postal Unions letter on the air unless you say otherwise.
SPEAKER_05And don't forget our gourmet coffee guidelines. If you can afford an espresso-based beverage for yourself, buy one for us at patreon.com forward slash proleft pod. This isn't charity. This is in fact the job that we do every week with your help and support. And you can also help us continue to grow by sharing our show on social media. If you know somebody who might love this podcast, introduce us to them. We're sure we'll hit it off. And thank you so much for helping us spread the word.
SPEAKER_02Hey Driftglass, how are the Internet Kitties doing this week?
SPEAKER_05Well, Blue Girl, the Internet Kitties have sent us an email urging us to pay their exorbitant catnip bill, adding, it won't show up anywhere if you wire money to freshly poured honey, please.