Dems Spending Millions to Learn How to Talk To Men
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I shouldn't be doing this, but I'm going to tell the Democrats how to win and why they lost. Okay? And it's nothing to do with...

syntax or messaging or how to speak with the American male. This is not a communications issue. This is a policy issue because what you've done is you have told half this country we want nothing to do with you. You're the bad guy. You're the problem. Every single one of your policies is designed to hurt half this country, the men.

He's Donald Trump's number one enemy in Congress, Chicago Senator Dick Durbin. And now Dick Durbin has a new scheme, a government takeover of your credit card. Today, consumers have thousands of choices in credit cards, all with equal, strong security. But Durbin's plan is less competition and less security.

And that means more risk for your credit and your identity. Tell Republicans in Congress, stop Dick Durbin's takeover of your credit card before it's too late. Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. Keep the faith, hold the line and own the lips. It's time for our main event.

Welcome to the Ruthless Variety Program. I am Josh Holmes, along with Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, and John Ashbrook. Left or right across your radio dial, as always, we got an absolute banger. Yes. There are a lot of reasons why you subscribe to the Ruthless Variety Program. Remember, you like and subscribe. Yeah. Like and subscribe while you're doing it. Like and subscribe if you haven't already. But there is a lot of reasons that you do that. You get some information. We call it candy and vegetables. Yeah.

Every once in a while you get a news cycle that provides an over-index of candy. It's just a bounty of riches. Yeah, you're going to get diabetes on this episode. Or depending on where you're from in the country, sugar foot. Yeah. Sugar foot. You could get some sugar foot listening to this.

Because it turns out, you know, look, Congress is out of town. The president's doing what he's doing. They passed a big, beautiful bill last week. We covered that on Tuesday. So there's like this gap in the armor where people just start like looking inward for political coverage. And they're like, where are the Democrats? It turns out not good. Not a good place. And we've covered this all along. But they've put a finer point.

They put a finer point on just how bad everything is. The man problem, it turns out they've recognized that they have a man problem. Because for like 10 years, they were like, no, we can over-index with women. We hate men. We hate men. Let's do everything to hate men because it over-indexes with women. Well, they've seen the upper echelons of what that can get them from an electoral standpoint, and now it's a real problem. Yeah.

So they've tried to put things together, and we're going to cover all that. You will absolutely love what it is that they've done and the reaction that you're about to get from the Ruthless Variety program and all that. Journo's gone wild. We can't get enough of this stuff either. Yeah.

It turns out like some household names in the journalistic community. People would previously done like admirable work. People like generational names have become absolutely insane. Trump derangement syndrome and everything else. We're going to have some yucks on this, too, because you will not believe it.

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I'm not sick of winning. It might be. So we've got all of that coming up, but we are not going to start in any other place than what we have led with here. And I think the reason, like all of you have sort of been waiting since this story broke for us to cover this. Yes. Don't you think? I saw it online. Like as soon as the chatter about this situation of Democrats being like, we have a problem with male voters and men want nothing to do with our party. How are we going to tackle this?

Instantly you saw on X the replies have been like, ruthless. You got to cover this. Are you seeing this? You got to cover it. Dude, I couldn't – I can't count the number of menchies that I got from people being like, dude, please, please, please, please. You guys cover this because it's RMO. I mean this is the thing that we do the best, the thing that we've talked about from the very beginning, the revolution of the Republican Party that we saw in 2024. We were on to this in like 2021 saying like –

Democrats have a real problem with a normal dude. Yep. Yeah. It's one of the reasons we started this show. Yeah. Like think about it. Yeah. It's one of the reasons why the show exists. And so now they've put it in writing and I'll preface this by saying there are many places that you can go to get under the hood of

of what it is the Democrats are thinking, because they're like universally sourced because they're basically stenographers. But there's no place that is the actual ethos of the Democratic Party. Like the message delivery system, you know. This is their bat signal. Yeah. There's like one place and one place only that is like everything

everyone read every word of this because this is what we're thinking and it's the New York Times. That's right. So if they do a big spread, like a big sort of like – A rollout. Internal dialogue, it's going to be in the New York Times. Like occasionally you get this in newsletters, but if you want to really make an imprint, they know that every one of their voters –

Every one of their high net worth individuals who can give money for such a project. Even more important. That's right. Even more importantly. This is what they wake up every morning reading, right? Where the rest of America could give two shits. Right. But they're like, no, we read the New York Times. Anyway, they come up with a story this week called Six Months Later. Democrats are still searching for the path forward.

Interesting. Interesting. I mean, something we've covered. That's not breaking news. What is breaking news is how they're searching for it. The subtitle is the party standing is startlingly low after a defeat that felt like a cultural rejection. What comes next? Well, it was a cultural rejection. I mean, that part I don't think is...

It doesn't seem like anything. It was like an amazing, startling rejection of what it is that they have in mind for the American people. But then they go through, they've got like a whole bunch of research. And the whole point of all this, the backdrop to the article is that Democrats are like basically going from one high-end hotel to another in cities across this country presenting PowerPoint.

That's the thing. When this story first came out in the New York Times and you saw the headlines discussing it where they were like,

Democrat Party operatives and their major donors are meeting in luxury hotels, giving PowerPoint presentations on how do we speak to men. It's like, man. I know how to solve our problem with your average voter. A donor retreat. Yeah. Where they make a pitch. And we have long been critiqued of the way they go about doing this, right? Which is exactly as has been laid out. This paragraph sort of sums it up and then I'll get back to the larger picture. Yeah.

For now, Democratic donors and strategists have been gathering at luxury hotels to discuss how to win back working class voters. Just take that sentence. So, like, look, I know that we maybe foremost amongst people have been critical of corporate media, of legacy media in the way that they are stenographers for Democrats and they're being stenographers for Democrats here.

But that little sentence should give you... They're revealing something. They're revealing something. Even they are like... Because they're laughing. Yeah. If you're reading between the lines, the reporter who actually wrote this is sort of laughing at them. Like the idea that between a bottle of Caymus and a tomahawk steak, they're somehow going to...

They're going to divine what your working class American thinks. It's sort of funny, right? Why I wonder what the poor people are doing today. Yeah. I have pickleball at two and then we'll figure it out. Right, right. So commissioning, hold on, let me finish the sentence and then I'll let you go, Smash. Commissioning new projects that can read like anthropological studies of people from far away places. We've described it as zoo animals. Right.

Right. And here's just another thing, just another observation.

Democrats hate America. OK, they hate the people who are voting every two years. And their whole strategy is how do we trick voters into also hating America like the rest of us? It's not the way to actually attract voters because voters are like, wait a minute, I do like this place. I like where I live. I'm pretty proud of it.

And they're like, no, no, no. You should hate it because of the climate. You should hate it because it's a hateful country. And they're like they're at a loss because fundamentally their ideology is broken. It's the political equivalent of the banana pool that you talk about.

Exactly. Right? Where it's like, let's lure the monkeys in with the bananas. They get in the pool. They can't swim and that'll be the end of it. They'll drown in the end. So which is what they're trying to do. That's what they're trying to do to us. Yeah. But anthropological studies of people from faraway places is such, like that paragraph, like the rest of the article is basically like stenography. Okay.

But this paragraph is like their element of, as you said, Duncan, they're laughing at this. Yeah, they're laughing at this. I would also note what I found particularly interesting here was the $20 million effort aimed to reverse the erosion of democratic support among young men, codenamed SAM, short for Speaking with American Men.

And what code name I point out here, quote, not for nothing quoted throughout here as the person who led all of these 250 focus groups of swing voters.

Miss Anant Shankar Osorio. I got tip number one. Stop hyphenating your names if you want to appeal to your average man. Miss Shankar Osorio has done a lot of things, 250 swing voter focus groups that she's done. But the fascinating thing in here is, to quote from the article again, is that they're going to study the syntax of

Right. And content that gains attention and virality in these spaces. Dude, it sounds like they're trying to learn how to teach sign language to the apes.

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Put simply, manufacturing depends on rail. Freight rail is America's engine built on private investment driving the nation forward. Learn more at AAR.org. Let's take a step back for a minute. Look, political parties, their success or failure in large part is based on their ability to resonate with the American people, both in terms of an agenda, the personality of your candidate. It's like a resonance type thing.

And like if you look at what it is that this entire project is prefaced upon, it's that they know that they underperformed with a group and they're basically just trying to figure out like how do we say the words they say? And that's the thing. So I probably shouldn't be doing this, but I shouldn't be doing this. But I'm going to tell the Democrats how to win and why they lost. OK. And it's nothing to do with.

syntax or messaging or how to speak with the American male. This is not a communications issue. This is a policy issue. Because what you've done is you have told half this country, we want nothing to do with you. You're the bad guy. You're the problem. Every single one of your policies is designed to

to hurt half this country, the men. You look at the statistical evidence on what we got out of DEI programs, and the craziest thing about DEI is...

It was more helpful to women and undermined men more than any other group. I was surprised by that. You look at these DEI programs, they were over 85% administered by women. And their job, number one, was to eliminate all men from the workplace. So if as a party, your platform is, we will make it so that getting a job for you is more difficult.

We will make it so that having any role in the community for you is more difficult. We will demonize you. We will tell everyone that you're a predator, that you should apologize, that every problem that we have in this country is because you're a racist, you're a bigot. If you tell half the country that, you think they want to vote for you? Well, I think the one mistake you're making there, Smug, is the idea that any of this is outcome-based, that they actually want to succeed. And in reality...

What this story reads to me as somebody who's worked in politics for 15 years, this is a grant request. That's what it is. Like you're using the language. You're using the linguistic puffery of academia to,

to sell some rich person on funding your bullshit. You get a whiz-bang presentation. Like, none of this is actually fucking real. Well, they haven't changed a single thing. It's just about selling the idea, using this language of academia to basically get money to convince people you're going to do something you're incapable of. And you know something else, fellas? Um...

Men have changed through the years, but one thing that has never changed and will never change is that men will never apologize for who they are. It's just who you are. And I think, I always think about... Well, unless you're a lib, in which case you apologize every day. This is true, but I always think about, like, what would my grandfather say about these things? I've told you guys stories about my grandfather, how he... He was the man. He'd wake... For folks who haven't heard it, he was the man. He would wake my grandmother up in the middle of the night and ask her to make him a sandwich. LAUGHTER

And my mom told me a story over Memorial Day weekend. You guys are going to love this. He would literally sit at the dining room table. They didn't live in a big house, a small house. He would sit at his dining room table and over his head was a clock. So his back was to the wall and his back was to the clock.

And he would ask, he would say, hey, Jen, that's my grandmother. Her name was Virginia. Hey, Jen, what time is it? Amazing. He wouldn't look. Wouldn't turn around. He wouldn't turn around and look. Amazing. He would ask her.

Because he knew it got under her skin. You know what I mean? And the man would never apologize for that because it was just fun. He's not doing it in a mean way. This is injecting personality into a household.

And men are capable of so much, and the Democrats just shit all over us every single day. And I think they're going to continue to lose until they figure out that that's what they're doing. So I think there's one other component to this which is very interesting, and that is, like, the Democrats are having this come-to-Jesus moment on young men. They had a candidate who appealed to young men back in 2016. His name was Bernie Sanders. And anyone who supported them, you know, supported him or the movement—

Was a misogynist. Yeah. Right? They called him Bernie Bros. Bernie Bros. Which I find fascinating because I think there's a parallel in when we launched this show. Right? It was...

Right-wing frat bros. That's what they called us. It was a way of basically mocking and making a caricature of what men did. And we found it endearing. I found it endearing because it was an attack coming from childless cat ladies and guys with architecture glasses who live by themselves in Dumbo. Talking about what men are. Not us. We all are sitting here at this table and we're all half

happily married and we have seven children between all of us. But like, we don't understand the male experience in America. Those fucking people do. Well, you know what I mean? Just wait till you see the PowerPoint.

You haven't given the PowerPoint a chance yet. It's just insane to me. It's insane to me. I don't know. Like if you want to have a conversation with American men, maybe like have real American men have those conversations. And not paid actors because y'all remember that ad that was like last second trying to support Kamala Harris? They were all paid actors. Yeah. And this is – if you don't recall, we made a lot of fun on the program about this. They had dudes who were supposed to be in authentic settings.

basically saying, like, I'm a man for Kamala. And it was like a dude in the back of a pickup or whatever who was sitting like... Yeah. He was like, I'm a man for Kamala. You know what I mean? And it was like, dude, I just don't... That's not it. But they did all these series of vignettes with these dudes who were for Kamala, and then they hired...

Tim Walls is a VP candidate to correct some of this problem because he like, I don't know, wasn't a woman, I guess. But like other than that,

I didn't see any appeal to American men whatsoever. I mean, this is a guy who is one of his signature accomplishments was putting tampons in boys' high school bathrooms. Like, that's not something that resonates with the American men at all. But, like, that was their version. And it goes to the point that you guys were making, which is, like, let's put a PowerPoint together on how to talk. What's the syntax? Well, how do you observe the zoo animals? Yeah, like, you can walk into a gym and be like...

You know, I just PR'd on my bench press, but what really gets me mad is in the locker room, there's no tampons. I just PR'd. You know? Like, they just don't live in that culture, and so they can't actually understand it to your whole point, and you've made this a thousand times.

Times, Holmes, is they study us like zoo animals. This is like an alien who came to Earth, and it's like, how can I understand these people? Can I read real quick just the segment from the New York Times article about what one of these focus groups went like? Oh yeah, please. Okay, so the lady who runs the focus groups for them, Anat Shankarosorio. Shankarosorio. Drop the fucking hyphen if you want to understand men. Free advice. Drop the hyphen. Free advice. She asks these focus groups

to describe what animals Republicans seem like and what animals Democrats seem like. Oh, boy. And so for Republicans, they're seen as, quote, apex predators, like lions, tigers, and sharks, beasts that take what they want when they want it. Hey, I don't mind that description. I know. It's great. I mean, they're not wrong. Democrats are typically tagged as tortoises, slugs or sloth, slow, plodding, passive, and

And so her ears perked up earlier this year when a Democrat man in Georgia suggested a very different kind of animal symbolized their party. A deer, he said, in headlights. Hilarious. It doesn't know which way to jump, but it knows it has to. But they never learn. Remember in 2004 on the Bush reelect when there was this spoof video where Bush was –

He was the Texas tiger and John Kerry was the liberal wiener. Like it hasn't changed in 20 years because all they want to do is change the way men think and it's never going to happen. They have to change their policies. To add one thing is also without having to worry about how you speak to men or the syntax that you're using with young men, they've kind of – it's hard not to notice that.

just the actual behavior of the Democrat party at the highest possible level. You saw, just like Duncan described in 2016, when Hillary was supposed to be the chosen one, they steamrolled Bernie. All the supporters are like, you're misogynist, you're misogynist, get out of here. And then you saw after Joe Biden, Joe Biden had to

agreed to have a black woman as his vice president. That's the only way they allowed him to have it, right? And then when it was time for the old switcheroo, it was like, get the old guy out of here. It's Kamala's turn. The ultimate, just like DEI pick, has never won a competitive race, has never been able to appeal to voters, had under 1% of support of voters in the primary when she had to drop out before Iowa. She's given...

Okay, now you're going to be the top of the ticket. Just hand it to her. And they're like, all right, bring in another – just bring in a token dude. I mean maybe they had a grander plan. Who can just trick some guys into voting for us being like, yeah, he's a dude. I mean they knew at some level during that selection process that the old man was going to be an absentee president. Clearly. They could get the Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders people to run the joint. Clearly. But look, if you take a step back and you just look at the way the Democrats have handled –

culturally speaking, men in this country. I mean, we go back far enough to remember, like, the war on women. Mm-hmm. That was, like, their big talking point. Started with Mitt Romney's binders full of women. Yeah. Because he was hiring women. They're like, you misogynist. I mean, just... Which was, like... It's just so ridiculous. Well, I mean, but, like, the whole point of it was to suggest to 51% of the electorate women in this country that, um...

Republicans commoditize women. They don't value women. That unless you vote liberal and sort of have a different view of like a next-gen family structure that you like don't value women, period. And then we got into the Me Too movement. And I think this is like

Look, I've told a lot of people about my theory on why it is that they've landed where they've landed. Because, you know, like the early 2000s, it wasn't like the gender mix was what it was, but it wasn't, you know, maybe abortion over indexed on on Democrat side. But it wasn't like you just made a straight gender play as a political party or another. This changed with the whole.

idea that uh men were just guilty yep believe all women right and what you did is simultaneously a couple of things one you made every generation of americans think back to like you know before they were family people and their their like encounters that they had men and women as as one does when they're an adolescent or college student or whatever and like feel guilty about

Right. And it wasn't like we're not talking about sexual assault, which is obvious. And we predated the nefarious nature of that in like the total condemnation. Doesn't matter your political affiliation of that for generations. But they they did something different in the Me Too movement. Yeah, I agree. I think it's actually more than that as well, though, is.

They told young American males, like, subordinate your own well-being and your interests for a woman. And what they would say is, and they said this throughout the campaign in 2024, and frankly, they said it when Hillary Clinton was the nominee, too. Like, it's her turn. Like, it's her time. And what they said about men in 2024 was, like, a real man supports women.

Yeah. About abortion, right? Yeah. And it's like, think about that as a young man, like somebody who's just graduated college or like you just finished trade school and you're just starting out in your career and you are filled. Maybe if you're a woman, you understand this, but like if you're a young man, you're filled with like

immense economic anxiety. Totally. You absolutely are because you're thinking about like how much money you have to make and not only just make for yourself, but like, how am I going to support a family? How am I going to raise children? Like, where can I buy a house? But also the whole courting process of getting married or dating in the first place is entirely defined if you're a man by your ability to do it. Right. So if you're a young man and there's a political party who's saying you only matter

in the context that you are supporting a woman, how the fuck would anybody ever vote for that party? Like, you don't matter on your own merits and what you do and what you provide. None of that matters. So, but then think about... And you're told the future is female. There's no role for you here. Just your vote. They straight said that. Unless...

It's Trendo Raghu raping one of those women. Then they're allowed to stay. This is this is exactly what Democrats want. There is a dichotomy on their side where they where they treat some men some way and other men the other way.

And I'm telling you. Right up until the point where they thought that 25 percent of black American men were going to support Donald Trump, in which case they're the misogynist. Yeah, right. They're the problem. They're the problem. And it's all of this is political is my point. And they thought they made a calculation somewhere in the mid 20 teens that whatever problem that they had and they bled out with white people.

men. Like there were 60% plus that were gone from the Democratic Party and their solution to it wasn't, all right, let's figure out

How to position policies that benefit everybody like the Republicans, the way we think about this is like you don't deal with silos of people. You deal with people who are economic classes or whatever, and you try to provide solutions that would benefit more than just like one thing. The way Democrats think about it is that they're like siloing off women.

siloing off Hispanics. Dividing conqueror. Siloing off. They've always been dividing conqueror. Yeah, but then they deposit little chits into each bucket and pretend like that's the way to build a coalition.

So like they made a decision in the mid-20 teens where it was like if we just over index, if we can bring women to 60, it negates men because as a percent of the voting population, they are the majority population and we can actually win all these elections. And it almost doesn't matter by state. Like if you look at swing states, it's very, very similar in that regard and that you have majority women who vote.

As compared to men. And so like their theory was a theory. But then they executed upon it, whether it was the whole Me Too movement. Remember, they ran Al Franken out for taking a picture of a woman 20 years prior where he had hands not even on a woman, but like hovering, hovering over her breasts. They made him resign as a senator.

As a result in the height of the Me Too movement. So they were like committed to the bit. They were ready to get rid of like a rising star in their party, a Saturday Night Live character who had real media star power in order to execute upon this mission that men are a lower class. They're a second class. They're not somebody who we need to make a political case to.

In an effort to try to consolidate as many women as you possibly can. What they didn't, I think, understand is that like, I don't know, there's an awful lot of married women out there. It's an awful lot of well-adjusted women, if you're married or not, who interact with men on a pretty frequent basis, whether in a corporate culture and like a

you know, a YMCA. Yeah. Like they just understand men and women. They're different, but they understand and appreciate the differences and know that you kind of need both in order to have a civilization. I mean, there's a lot of them. We managed to find four of them. Right. You know, right. There's a lot of them. Yeah. There's a lot of them out there. And then if you look at where they took that to, they were willing to run it to the end of the earth before, before,

The politics overwhelmed them and there was a whole new generation of young men who I guarantee as like 17-year-olds in the mid-20-teens had to have a conversation with mom and dad.

about what it's like going to college and that you are not afforded the benefit of the doubt. Don't do anything stupid, they had to say to them. Like, don't hook up with random girls. Don't do... Because the likelihood of somebody... If somebody says...

that you were aggressive or you were a rapist or you were a sexual assaulter or you were all of these things, your life is over whether it happened or not. And they were aided and abetted every fucking second of that. And like you can't get out from underneath that is my point. You can't. I don't care how many focus groups or 20 million or $120 million you spend doing it.

That conversation happened to an entire generation of young men where they were not afforded the benefit. There is no justice for them is what they were told. And they were told rightly if you had good parents at that time, they were told you can't do it, dude. There is no justice.

In this country. For you. There is, you know, and it goes beyond, like, it goes even younger than, like, college guys and hookups and everything. It's like in high school, these guys would go to school every single day and be told, you are the bad guy. Yep. You are the worst thing on this planet. You need to apologize because you walked into this classroom this morning and you...

You are who you are. And that has turned off so many dudes in this country. And they're like, wait a minute. What did I do? I didn't do anything. Like, OK, they were shown. Did I get here like a minute late? No, no. I was on time. Like, what did I do wrong? And and like I've talked to buddies who have sons in high school over the last, you know, during the Biden years. And they're like, you know, he comes home and he's like, Dad,

I just... Everybody sort of attacks me. It's like, I don't think I really did anything. I'm not... Like...

I sat in the back of the classroom and made jokes. I'm pretty sure Smug did the exact same thing. And I think both of you guys probably did something similar, although I wonder. I think Duncan may have sat in the front row. I mean, I went to Arizona State, Johnny. You know what the answer is. I know the answer to this. And we made jokes, and it was part of the thing. But these guys were scared silent because they were told they're nothing.

And they're like, wait a minute, not nothing. That's the thing is... Like an American, part of this. They were told that they're the problem and to stay silent. Right. They were told, don't speak up. I mean, the way that they just attacked men for a decade of being like, you are the problem. You're the cause of slavery in this country. You're the cause of inequality in this country. You've had everything handed to you. You could be a guy who's grown up in poverty...

In the middle of this country like J.D. Vance and you were told, well, you're a Nazi and you caused all the problems that our society faces and you should get nothing and we will give every possible opportunity and leg up to everyone to compete against you. Vote for us. It makes no sense. But at the same time, it's just as a political professional, this isn't a value statement at all. But like the largest segment is still straight white men. It just is. So if – like they were begging for this problem.

They were begging for it. They thought that they could commoditize a message in trying to run up the score with certain segments. And by the way, also just assuming monolithic support out of the African-American community. Right, exactly. It's not just straight white men. It's like regular old dudes. There are a lot of black guys who are in this exact same boat. And Hispanic guys and whatever guys. That's the thing. When all these Latino men came out for Trump, they're like,

So Latino men are white supremacists. Oh, my God. That's the way that they rolled. But so as a political thing, like it was it was begging to happen. Like they were at some point going to feel the backlash of everything that they created in the teens. And then they moved to DEI. And as you mentioned, it was a predominantly women run experiment.

It was like the next gen of what they established in Me Too after everybody found out that it was a corporate run, corrupt, Hollywood made organization that basically paid themselves for trying to like point the finger at a whole bunch of people who weren't guilty of the crimes that they were committing.

They had committed and they like hold up Harvey Weinstein as if that like, like ground beef penis motherfucker was like, you know, some, no, if you actually cared about women knowing where the me too movement came for derived from,

by a publicity outfit in Hollywood, you'd have blown the whistle on that asshole 25 years ago. But you didn't. You didn't. Where were all the stories about the agents who sent those women to his hotel room? Yeah, and they didn't care a little bit about anything. We didn't actually cover any of that. We just decided that men were evil. And like the thing that I keep stumbling upon when you get back to when you read shit like this is like, you know what the biggest thing that would help Democrats is?

Meeting a real man. Meeting a real man, right? Somebody who takes care of their family. Somebody who thinks every day about how to protect their friends and family. To earn a living. To try to give back to their community. To be a real man. The kind of person that our fathers taught us to be. They haven't done that, right? And so many people...

And look, this isn't a critique of everybody who was involved in the Democratic Party. I don't want to be a blanket thing, but so many pieces of the Democratic Party just haven't experienced that. They don't have it. You know, I mean, you can see it. I know it because we deal with it. And you know it because you see their names in the paper and you realize, you know, they're they're difficult stories that they've why they've landed where they are. But like maybe just spend a little bit of time with a real dude.

To understand what it is that they care about. But the problem with the Democratic Party is the people in the Democratic Party who are the most normal are the most quiet. Yeah. Ultimately, that's the problem. I know them. You know them. We've met these people who are Democrats. They're afraid. Who are very fucking normal. Because they know the base of the party is a bunch of activists who hate men. Right. And so they just go along to get along and they shut up. Yep. I mean, that is the reality. Yeah.

that we live under with this democratic party there's not a fucking powerpoint in the world or 20 million dollars that can reverse any of that no keep doing it more powerpoints more money more grant requests spend it all that's the right conclusion i just keep thinking in my head like what does it do look like that presented this oh you know you know like you know you know you know the dark rimmed glasses yep

Yeah, he's like the caricature of the Obama boy. I don't think he's a football fan. He doesn't know ball. No, no ball. He doesn't know ball. Does not know ball. Anyway, as Democrats' problems pile up, the solutions get worse and worse. When we come back, we're going to tell you about an idea so bad it could only come from the libs. And at Politico, the shadow government. I can't wait for this. This is another one we got tagged in a lot. The shadow government. Politico has taken it upon themselves to...

to identify who a shadow democratic government would be if they ever had the opportunity to get power. You're not going to believe this. You can't wait to hear what the fellas say right after this.

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Okay, so as we mentioned before the break, Politico took it upon themselves, very helpful. Just they always provide. And they thought, well, there's not a lot going on this week, so we might as well provide what we feel like would be the next Democratic cabinet.

I remember when Trump supporters ahead of his reelection in 2024 would like post who who's our favorite option for his cabinet. And I feel like this is what the Democrat supporters of Politico are doing right now. It's a very cringe version of like the Avengers. If it was clickbait.

Like it was just a generate. It's genius stuff. And like, you know, there is an element of that. They do have that capability at Politico. So this, this could be that, but it is, I mean, strategically, absolutely brilliant. Uh,

So let me just read a couple of different intros and then we'll get into the cast of characters. We've selected some that we'd like to highlight. As Democrats cast about for a strategy to thwart President Donald Trump's agenda, rebrand their party and take back power. Senator Alyssa Slotkin recently offered one intriguing idea. Build a shadow cabinet.

Oh, well. It's nice that a woman who's been in the Senate for all of six minutes has got the solutions to their party's problems. But here she goes. But also, to pause for one second, Democrat senators are now assignment editors for Politico. Yeah, they're totally hilarious. Hilarious.

They're like, you know the article I want you to write at Politico? Here you go. And they're like, done. Like, you know what? Great idea. Smug they always have been. That's the funny thing. Always has been. Anyway, the shadow cabinet is a vision by the Michigan Democrat in an interview with Politico.

could be composed of the ranking members of congressional committees who could take on the lead in challenging the Trump administration. It's a common feature of opposition politics abroad that could be a way for Democrats to flood the media zone and deliver coordinated responses to Trump's most wild maneuvers. I love it. Wild maneuvers.

Right? They're like, somehow the Democrats are the ones that have like the between the 40s deal. It's like forcing you all to get rid of your gas powered car is somehow the...

kind of the 50-yard line. And, like, what Trump has proposed about, like, I don't know, giving Americans tax breaks and evening trade deals and stuff, that's wild. Yeah, Republicans are the wild ones. Now, listen, for 800 more words as I describe a fantasy. You know, like...

Ranking members have their uses. They're good at reclaiming their time and making motions to recommit. But they're not fresh faces who can give Democratic Party a sleek new look. And then they go on. Yeah. Not exactly Hemingway, but it'll do for today. All right. So we've picked a few that we find absolutely fascinating. The first one, Secretary of Homeland Security. Recall, this is a principal...

outfit that is designed to keep our borders secure, American homeland safe. It was created after 9-11 to ensure that there was continuity in both the intel agencies and in law enforcement to make sure that anybody who is domestic within this country is

didn't pose this country a threat. You can go as far back as like Oklahoma City, not just 9-11, it's Oklahoma City. And then now the recent border crisis, like that's the whole idea for the Department of Homeland Security. Yeah, I mean, and you know, a lot of libertarians don't love

The Department of Homeland Security because the general deal is that we normies are like, okay, I'll give up a few of my personal liberties because the government is going to – Well, listen to me. Because the government is going to try to keep us safe. And now Democrats have an idea of who the best person to keep us safe would be. It's an illegal immigrant, Gisele Fetterman. No way.

So this is the wife of Senator John Fetterman, who's become highly controversial figure, as Politico describes it. And I should just say the reason he's become highly controversial is because he didn't support Hamas. And that's it. They don't like that. If you look at the voting record.

Of John Fetterman, it is indistinguishable from Chuck Schumer. Yeah, straight left. And like the distinction is he speaks out in saying that like, I don't know, October 7 was a pretty bad idea. Israel is a...

generation-wide ally in a very dangerous place, and terrorism isn't something we support. Controversial. Very controversial. Anyway, his wife, less controversial because she is, in fact, an illegal immigrant to this country. And that's the thing. This is at the beating heart of the Democrat Party is they see every function of government

As a way to just subvert law and order and instill their ideology. They're like, hmm, who controls the border? How about an illegal immigrant? Like, that's actually their thinking. That's insane. Right, right. She's going to give a pilot's license to every Saudi like you get a toy and a Happy Meal. Oh, my God. A pilot's license. Yeah.

I love that. So they go on to explain how his support for Israel has raised concerns about whether he's fit to serve within the Democratic Party. But they...

acquittal of that by saying his wife has no such baggage. No such baggage. And a compelling figure in her own right. An undocumented immigrant who came from Brazil when she was a child, Gisele married John soon after he became mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania. So obviously, obviously, very qualified to serve as the secretary of home. Yeah, that's your first thought. You know, you think Michael Cheritoff,

Giselle Fetterman. You know, the chain of custody there is... Tom Ridge, Chertoff, Giselle Fetterman. It makes total sense if you think about it. It's just funny to me that, like, they're outside the box thinking in all this, in this shadow cabinet. It's like, you know, how are we going to, like, expand the tent? And it's like, well, we're going to... There's this senator...

who's being real uppity about Hamas. We don't like that. So we're his wife. So his wife, his wife is going to be DHS secretary in our shadow cabinet like that. Like that is their way of like expanding the tent. This Democratic senator's wife, like that's how far they're willing to go beyond their own biases. And like, what do you what do you think? I don't know. What are her liabilities? I don't know. She is an illegal immigrant. Yeah. So naturally, we'll put her in charge of the board. Yeah.

It's just so fucking crazy. But it gets worse. That was like the cherry on top of the sundae. Yeah, there's other ones.

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This is my favorite. Letitia James. Oh, boy. Attorney General. Amazing. And listen to how they describe all of this. I can't wait. Perhaps the most effective Democrats in the country now are the 22 Democratic state attorneys general candidates.

tying up Trump's executive orders in court, but only one of them can say she won a civil fraud case against Trump family business with a $450 million judgment. And that's New York's Letitia James.

That makes James uniquely qualified to argue that Trump is abusing the office of president to enrich himself while destabilizing the global economy for everyone else. Holy shit. She was so successful, he became president of the United States. But they...

They put her on a pedestal like it's the New Deal. Yeah. You know, like she's FDR. She won a civil case with a stilted jury against Donald Trump. They took a misdemeanor and they chopped it up into like 31 felony charges. And she like had lawfare against Donald Trump. And then had a banana republic court convicted. And then he still becomes president. And they're like, yes, she's successful. Yeah, she's it.

And not for nothing, but this is the woman who wants illegals to be able to vote in New York. The New York court, I'm full of libs, the New York court struck her down, but on the heels of an illegal immigrant as our Department of Homeland Security secretary and a

attorney general who wants to let illegals vote, you understand the conspiracy theories. It's like what Smug was saying earlier. It's like key part of the job is being unwilling to enforce the law. Yep. Yeah.

Yeah, well, I mean, this is, but she's not without her own legal challenges. The way that they frame it is hysterical. The Trump administration has responded in seeming retaliatory fashion. Oh, no. You mean there's politicizing? Are they doing the law fair? Oh, my God. Opening up a federal Bureau of Investigation probe into James for suspicion of mortgage fraud, which is precisely...

what she did to the Trump administration. I mean, this is... Look, if you were going to try to create in another world a Democratic administration that was worth a shit, she'd be the single last person that you would ever... Because this is a person who, by virtue of even mentioning her as associated with the attorney general job, would lose confidence in more than half of the country that justice will ever be done and that targeting of...

who you are based on your political affiliation was not only coming, but was like pre-baked into the nomination itself. Well, there was this whole thing in the first Trump administration that he was violating my norms, my norms, my norms were being violated. Right. And, and so when Trump geared up to run again in 2024, the Dems sort of like did a preemptive strike of violating every norm possible. And now,

Boy, golly, they're shocked. They're shocked that the norms are still being violated. Shocked. It's like, how does that medicine taste? Your own flavor? So what does Yoni take on the tissue? Well, that's the thing is, so like Duncan said, they try to roll this out to make sure he couldn't be president. He wins anyways. Number one, that shows you that this is a loser, that they're not the one. Second of all, their own corruption is...

was the reason why people rejected it. After the fact is when we learn about this case against her for mortgage fraud. At the time, the banks, everyone says like, no, Trump paid everything on top. We don't know why we're here today. Literally, JP Morgan was in that courtroom being like, no, Trump paid everything. There's no problem here. We don't know why we're here today. And still she gets a kangaroo court willing to convict her.

President Trump. Everyone, all the voters saw the corruption that was there. That's part of the reason why they voted for Trump. This just goes again with their fantasy that the Dems have of like, no, we weren't wrong. People are just dumb. Just more lawfare is what's necessary. The next one, I love EPA administrator. Yes.

Bill Nye the science guy. Hell yeah. Yeah, because, you know, I mean, the lesson of all this is you just need a little star power. Somebody who's shown up on TV despite the fact that they know fucking nothing. Here is this guy. How to convey the urgency of the climate crisis to the average American? Stop. Full stop. What? What?

How to convey the climate. I mean, you got a lot of problems in this world. The climate crisis is not one of them. Yeah. And like we've gone to show, like Al Gore. We saw him on the scissor stairs. Wrote an entire book about how the planet would be done. The whole documentary. Yeah, didn't they give him an Oscar for that? Yeah, No Snow on Mount Kilimanjaro. You're breathing air right now. I mean, for those of us who are a little bit older, we've lived through global cooling.

acid rain. Ozone layer. Ozone layer. And now this. And it's like, I don't know, the temperatures have changed like less than a degree in our entire lifetimes. And they're telling me that like, I don't know, we need to do this. Yeah, they said it would be dead like 10 times over by now. It is perfect though. It's sort of West Wing brain on the left to be like, I know what we need for EPA. We need a TV guy. He can relate to people with comedy.

Yeah. Neither Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize winning wonky earnestness nor AOC's energetic utopianism. And that's the way that they like. It's not there's not a quote. There's not a quote. It's very funny. This is just the way it's been characterized. It's not it's not a quote unquote utopianism. It's actual just utopianism. So AOC's world, that's utopia utopia.

as far as Politico is concerned, has done the trick. Why not give Bill Nye the Science Guy a try? The bow-tied engineer turned comedy writer turned children's TV host has a long-married science...

Here's where I'd like to stop you. Because why I would like Bill Nye to be nominated for AOC's EPA administrator is so that the United States Senate can have all of his files. No! So we can learn exactly who this guy is. Wait, hold on. What are you suggesting? I think we need to learn who this science man actually is. Oh, you've got your thoughts?

I do. This is on a left field. I think that after paying his paycheck to PBS for all of these years, the American people deserve to know exactly what's behind the curtain on Bill Nye. And we won't know unless AOC has the courage to nominate him as her EPA administrator.

I can't wait to find out off air what he's talking about. Yeah, I know. He's being very vague. He is. It's like a smug thing. Yeah, it is. And his jaw was open. He was like, I don't know where he's going with this. He's doing that? Was Bill Nye on the island? When you're shocking smug, you know it's good. There's only one way to learn, and that's a thorough investigation brought forth by the United States Senate. Wow. This one I feel a little bit conflicted about because I absolutely love her.

And although I assume she's a Democrat, like I don't feel like in this day and age even she would admit she could make a living saying the things that she says in a Democratic administration because, you know, like you tell one dick joke.

Well, that's... It's over. It's cancelable material. They say Nikki Glaser for Small Business Administration Administrator. So Nikki Glaser, as you recall, she did the Tom Brady roast. Yeah. Probably the highlight act. Good content. It was great content. If you watched it, you laughed your asses off. If you have a little bit of a sensitivity to like, I don't know.

Put the kids to bed first. The more blue humor, like you're not going to find it that funny. But for those of us who live in this world, like we think it's absolutely hysterical. I think she's very funny. Almost everything she does is completely hilarious. But they've all of a sudden commandeered her. And she said they say, hear me out on this one.

what is a comedian but a small business entrepreneur and a traveling content salesperson? Of course, Nikki Glaser's value to the Democratic shadow cabinet is not her deep knowledge of how government regulations impact small businesses. Of course not, because you wouldn't want to actually look at that that do affect small

I mean, that's just what they've done for years. So, like, that's a prerequisite at some level. Not knowing what you're talking about is actually a prerequisite. It's just funny that you'd pick a comedian to lead the Small Business Administration. Like, it's just objectively funny. And, like...

I wonder if maybe the author of this piece just likes Nikki Glaser as a comedian. Just tossed it in. Just tossed it in. What it reminds me of is, do you know that Dave Chappelle thing? The 9-11 Dave Chappelle thing where they're like, I was watching CNN on 9-11. I was watching CNN on 9-11 and suddenly they're like,

Next, we have Ja Rule. Ja Rule, what are your thoughts? It's like, bro, we don't need Ja. Get somebody serious on here. It's completely hilarious. But the whole thing, it goes to show just how unmoored these people. They are. Segment one, segment two. You take the both of them. They're doing PowerPoint presentations in luxury hotels with a $20 million bounty, trying to get more to figure out how to talk to men as if they're like zebras.

And then in the second piece is like, I know. Let's get a bunch of TV people, names you've recognized, and then a politician's wife, a politician who we deem incapable of doing the job because he disagrees with us on one issue. His wife, because she's an illegal immigrant, should do the border policy. I mean, dude, this is the modern-day Democratic Party. I mean, what more needs to be said? Nothing. Nothing.

It just is what it is. Give us $20 million. We'll give you advice every week. That's it. Fail son situation. And there are so many others. I encourage everybody to read this article. They got Katie Hobbs, the governor of Arizona in there for Department of Education. Arizona is like 45th in all these rankings. My God.

We've got a whole host of insane takes. You've got to read the article. Please do not miss it. Here's the thing, though. As smug as you always say, a conspiracy theory, it's just... Spoiler alert. It's a spoiler. That's all it is. It's a spoiler. So, like, you look at this and we laugh and we laugh. Except if they ever got their hands on power. You'd know what they would do. In which case, you know, Letitia James, she's coming for you. It's brutal, but it's true. Listen, our question of the day...

encapsulates all of this. And the question of the day is, what does the PowerPoint say in the Dem pitch meeting on how to appeal to men? Like, what is...

And add some color because you people are the most creative people on the planet. The way you do this, it improves our week immensely by reading the prose, like reading how you've crafted. I want to know what the dude or woman looks like who's presenting the PowerPoint presentation to a bunch of rich liberals.

on how to talk to American men. Like, who is it? What do they look like? What are they saying? What does it say in the charts? Like, I want to know all of it. I want all of it. Honestly, whenever we do these...

When I wake up in the morning and I'm still in bed, I'll open the YouTube and I'll start reading them and it just brightens my day. Yeah, put your back into this one. Put your back into this one because this is the one that actually fuels us for what to come. Very thought, I can't wait. Oh, I love it. Okay, so everybody's favorite segment here on the Ruthless Variety Program, your comments from the last episode. We asked a question about the big, beautiful bill when you thought you...

could see it come to fruition when Congress could actually get this thing done. We laid out all the various metrics that you could base a decision on, and this is what you've come up with. To do this, we always start with the voice. First comment comes from Dr. Thunder.

Dr. Thunder writes, I believe there will be intense pressure to have it signed by July the 4th. Makes sense. Well, if you talk to House Republicans, this is what they say. They want an independent state signing. If you talk to Senate Republicans, they have a different view. So, Dr. Thunder, very well educated on that. Comment two, please, Drunks.

Comment two gives us the Senate side of this. This is from Biggest, Biggest Rights. The Senate will do its usual who's your daddy, who's your daddy, who's your daddy chant and get it done at the last possible microsecond. President Trump will sign around Labor Day. That sounds like a source from House leadership or maybe just somebody who spent a little time in government.

Biggest good comment. Comment three, Smuggles. This comment is from Helene L. She writes, I predict the wee hours after adjournment in August after Jim Jordan, Mark Wayne Mullen, and Nancy Mace crush Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters, and Tim Peters in an Anacostia River mud wrestling contest. Oh, my God. That's a prediction. Alas, I predict any tax deduction against Social Security will be stripped from the final bill. Princey's infuriating because I've been paying taxes on my earnings for over half a century.

J.D. will have to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate. Good episode, guys. Another banger of a show. Man, I love her. Did you guys notice we didn't plan on this, but I got to pose the question. The week before they broke, Mace was doing this big hearing on, I don't know exactly what the topic was. It was basically like people try to sexually exploit people.

And she, for like 24 hours in the run-up to a hearing, she was like, I'm going to show a naked picture of myself as evidence as to how this is such a problem. And everybody was like, no way. Like, this is really going to happen. And then they got to the hearing and like, it was just like...

a blurred out distant like a like a ring camera inside a house or something yeah i think she has some dispute with a ex-boyfriend or an ex-fiancee or something like that i mean she's been on the show before and like we talked to her from time to time and uh had our disagreements had our agreements and like i find her to be like a colorful figure in politics no question about it but i saw this big push to like get everybody to sort of tune in to what she was doing by

She was like, I'm going to have naked pictures of me. And then like, well, she didn't have naked pictures of her. And I was like, is that genius? I think it's genius. I think she brought attention to the issue. Yeah? I mean, pretty smart.

I mean, it's smart from a marketing standpoint. Right. For sure. Right. Can't go back to the well, though. But it's par for the course in South Carolina. You've got Dabo Swinney, who's always like, yeah, watch the Clemson Tigers football team this season. We're going to win. And then they don't win. So I think that this is what you get in South Carolina. Yeah. Needs to get more active in the transfer portal. A shot at our South Carolina listener. Listen, we love you a lot, despite what it is that Smash just had to say.

One thing that we have to cover because this has been a big discussion on the online right that I think we can probably clarify a few things. We'll do it fairly quickly. Elon Musk had a comment on the big beautiful bill, says he's disappointed. And you had a reaction from President Trump that said, I have a lot of reactions. I'm not going to. He basically like withdrew what would be a point of criticism of the criticism. And because that's, you know, that's what he does. He's a pro.

But we've got all of that, and we're going to cover it very, very quickly, if you don't mind, Spaghetts. Do we have that clip? So, you know, I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and it reminds the work that the Doge team is doing. I actually thought that when this big, beautiful bill came along. I mean, like, everything he's done on Doge gets wiped out in the first year.

I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful. But I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion. Okay. Interesting. So listen, it's a valid comment. And I understand why the American people are adhering to his concern. But there are some things that you need to understand. And that's the vegetable part of the program that you need to understand about Trump.

A, how government works. B, what you're looking at with a big, beautiful bill and doge cuts and everything else and how they work together. So what happens during a big, beautiful bill is something called reconciliation. Reconciliation allows you to pass fundamental changes to spending and taxing at a maximum level.

On a majority basis, you get around the whole Senate 60-vote filibuster situation. Republicans have used it incredibly effectively over the last 20 years to reduce taxes, reduce your burden as an American taxpayer. What he's talking about is his disappointment in the deficits situation.

that CBO and everything else has projected. Now, Stephen Miller at the White House has tried to reset an awful lot of this, but I just want you to hear from us. Stephen Miller did a great job explaining it. He did, actually. It was very good. He did. First of all, in the context of the bill that you're doing with reconciliation, I understand this is like arcane procedural issues, right?

But you can't have a change in discretionary spending. Discretionary spending is anything that's not Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, entitlement programs, interest in our national debt, which as we've discussed is like 75% of the budget. It's a massive, like completely ridiculous part that people who say that they're interested in cutting their deficits and don't talk about that are not serious people.

So if you're a deficit hawk and you haven't mentioned that component, like you're not a serious person. You can't discuss that seriously.

What Elon is talking about is entirely in the discretionary spending, and that's what Congress appropriates annually in our budget bills, appropriations process, as they call it, that's done at the end of September. Now, that is subjected to a 60-vote threshold. And so the balance there is always trying to figure out how many Democrats it takes to get to 60 to try to pass something over the finish line. Now, I...

I think he's made a very persuasive case to the American people like trans studies in Tanzania ought to be defunded. We're going to see that play out if Democrats want to make that the hill to die on. Like there's a political ramification that comes in. But you can't.

codify the things that he found in Doge in the context of the big, beautiful bill, because it's actually not possible. There is no discretionary spending reduction in a reconciliation process. Now, if you're worried about deficits, I'll say two things. Talk about the entitlement programs. You do something like chain CPI. I'll explain that another day.

It reduces like 10, 15 percent of your long term 10 year window deal. You do you make changes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, maybe raise the age by a year, maybe do some means testing in that regard. Like there's many things that you could do to fundamentally change what it is that we're looking at from a deficit standpoint. This administration in this House Republican conference decided they don't want to talk about that.

They want to talk about Medicaid to a certain extent, and I think they made a very good case. Chip Roy probably foremost amongst them talking about how – I don't know. Does it make a lot of sense that you have millions of illegal immigrants on the Medicaid program? No. It doesn't. And so that, because it's a –

non-discretionary expenditure fits in the category of things that we're talking about. And they made a real reduction in that. We'll see how it plays out in the Senate. But like ultimately that is the, this is what they can talk about on that. Secondly, if you're worried about the deficit number,

that like the Congressional Budget Office came up with in the context of maintaining your current tax rates, you're fucking nuts. You're accepting the Democratic premise. Right, you are. This is the leftist argument that has been happening since the beginning of time that somehow economic growth...

As a result of lower tax rates is somehow not a relevant part of the topic of discussion in terms of ultimately what the federal revenue comes in. Right. You're just you're you're stealing money. The government deserves. Yeah. Right. No, that's what they believe. There's an entire industry in this town dedicated to taking your money and explaining why the government deserves it first.

And foremost amongst them, the Congressional Budget Office, who can tell you like super dynamic scoring and a whole bunch of range of issues, except they can't take the 30-year history of tax reduction in America and extrapolate out what happens in the economy as a result of it.

They can't do it. They're like money in, money out, money in, money out. They were like $3.5 trillion debt is the 2017 tax cuts, except for in 2018 and 19, you had actually more revenue to the federal government as a result of the tax cuts that you did in 2017. Don't tell them that. They hate when you tell that. You point that out. People get very mad. They get mad. I mean, they call it like the Laffer curve is –

you know, colloquially for those of us who've done this for a living, what it is, but it's, it's a management fact.

Like it just is what it is. So don't accept that. Like if you're concerned about deficits, don't be concerned about this bill because that is not – this is not the deficit issue. If you're concerned about deficits in perpetuity, well, then have a conversation with the president. Have a conversation with everybody else. About 75 percent of the budget that you said was off limits here because that is the driver of deficits. It's not like the –

You can do everything that Elon is talking about. And we should. We should make that statutory law. And we should. Right. But that isn't Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare. Right. So it's two different things is the point. And I think that you as a listener deserve that explanation because it helps clarify. I saw a lot of traffic this week who were like, how did they not codify the doge cuts? Well, they should have. Here's my argument. One pushback I'll give you.

is you can't spend the first hundred days of the Trump administration talking about the stuff that we pointed out and not make that statutory law. Like, like you should have done that before you did the rest of it and just made that thing fucking happen. Because what it feels like is a bait and switch on your own voters. I think they should have just done it and made it law and cut these programs. And I understand the trans studies in Tanzania doesn't bend the cost curve of our long, long-term deficits, but,

but just do it first as a good faith exercise with the American people and the taxpayers of this country. Like that's what they should have done. I think if you're, but I agree with that, except the point is as a, the question was posed to,

it was entirely related to the big beautiful. No, I, yeah, correct. And it never could have been part of that. But, but, but from a messaging standpoint and from a public relations standpoint of what you're trying to communicate to the voters, it just looks bad to point all this stuff out and then be like, we're going to have this huge, beautiful bill and it's not a part of it. Like education of the electorate aside from,

From an optics standpoint, like make good on those things that you found and then let's get to the rest of it. That's my opinion. I'm very sympathetic to that point. Scott Pelley, noted CBS journalist, somebody that many of us grew up with, maybe not like the Mike Wallace territory or the Harry Reisner territory of like –

Hall of Fame. Charles Kuralt. Yeah. Not exactly living up to those guys, but his voice is good. It'll fool you. Yeah. So let's play this clip that he had at a commencement speech. But in this moment, this moment, this morning, our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack.

Freedom of speech is under attack and insidious fear is reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts. Oh, really? Is he describing DEI? The fear to speak. That's right. In America.

CRT. George Floyd. The police. Cops. Men and women. This is amazing. It's amazing.

Oh, here we go. This is the turn. He's Hitler! What a novel concept.

What a newsman. You know what? It's in the fall usually that I hear his voice on a Sunday night and I think, oh, NFL is over for the weekend. We've got to get back to work on Monday. But now it's the springtime. We don't even get the NFL and we still have to listen to his bullshit.

You know what's so crazy to me, and I think this goes to the point that we've talked about with the journo community all along, which is there are people with great talents. Scott Pelley is one of them that have done incredible stories. They've done incredible acts of journalism. They've been a part of a growth of like magazine style, 60 minutes journalism and doing important stories and a whole range of things.

But then when you take the mask off in this current day and age, they tell you who they are. And everything that they've said before, it becomes a question mark for me. You know, like if this is the, if the point of view of Scott Pelley

is that America is under attack because we don't have DEI, which, by the way, if you weren't following along closely, what he spelled out there in his critiques was DEI. Right. And saying that a rejection of DEI was somehow anti-American and an attack on our way of life. That is...

the furthest thing from journalism that I can ever imagine. Well, it's also the upside down because it's what infected, as he said, like our schools and our businesses and our society is this DEI, is this thinking, this pressuring of people to stay silent, you know, because they were going to upset somebody who's in this hierarchy, this ecosystem that controls our way of life. Like, that's the thing that I find most funny about it is like,

That entire speech could have been given by some conservative politician during the Biden era. And now he's going to claim, he is claiming free speech is dead in America. And he says that proudly into a microphone. It's amazing. Think about how fucking insane that is. So ridiculous. Yeah.

As a guy who's got a show. Yeah. Where he can say whatever the fuck he wants. It's under attack. No, it's under attack, Josh. I say into this microphone. Because I am under critique for what it is that I've done. Right. Means that the First Amendment in and of itself is gone. I'm being held accountable and I hate that.

I feel so bad for those kids at Wake Forest. Four years of getting their asses kicked by NC State and then Scott Pally rolls up and gives you this. It's like, when does it end? Get them. A wolf pack take. A hard wolf pack take. I like that smug. It's pretty good. But listen, that's not all. You also had Jonathan Capehart. Now, recall that our good friend Hugh Hewitt

who'd been a longtime contributor to the Washington Post, finally had it last fall. So good. They were doing one of those bizarre Zoom things where they're trying to have the editorial board of the Washington Post talk about a range of issues. And then anytime you brought up anything, the least bit center right was

shouted him down and pretended like he was like an animal. And he was like, I've had it. Do you realize how hard it is to push Hugh Hewitt to a point where he's like, I've had it? This man has made a living dealing with leftists.

He's like the nicest man in politics. It's like MSNBC. He's done it. NBC. He's done it. Washington Post. He's the most honest broker dude. Yeah. But also like there are many things that he disagrees with the Trump administration about and he's never been afraid to discuss it. Like he is just an honest broker. You get what you get with Hugh Hewitt. Couldn't take it anymore.

walked off set, in large part because Jonathan Capehart, who was managing the conversation, wouldn't let him get a word in edgewise. Well, it turns out it came for Jonathan Capehart. Oh, no. But it was in a sort of disguise because one of his colleagues, Karen Tumulty, could never, ever be confused as a conservative columnist. I mean, this is sort of a run-of-the-mill leftist...

Right. She wrote a column last week in support of California controlling American EV regulations. Right, right, right. I mean, this is somebody who's just – anyway, he quits the Washington Post over frustrations about his inability – No, he quit that editorial board. He's still with the Washington Post. He'll still take their money. Oh, okay.

Oh, is that right? It was just the editorial board? He's made the courageous decision to do less work. Oh, my God. He's like, you're all terrible people and will continue paying me. She either... This is the quote that he's got here, which I find absolutely fantastic. I think this is the jump, right? Because it was all about Joe Biden calling the Georgia Voting Rights Act Jim Crow 2.0. Right. And like the post...

Look, left is all can get out. But I don't think there's any denying at this point that that was like an overwrought ridiculous. Yeah. They moved the All-Star game out of Atlanta as a result. Ridiculous. Insane. So this guy has a problem with all of that. And his quote is she either couldn't. And he's talking about Karen here. She either couldn't or wouldn't see that I was black.

That I came to the conversation with knowledge and history she could never have. Unbelievable. That my worldview, albeit different from hers, was equally valid. And it was also completely fucking wrong as proven out by election turnout after that law passed.

It went up. So he was fucking wrong. And that's the funniest thing I think in all of this is like, I quit and also I was owned and I was wrong. Like, that's the funniest thing. It's like Jonathan Capehart thinks this is some like, you know, big moral stand he made. But it also in this, he's pointing out,

I decided to quit something over a disagreement I had in which I was wrong. Can we lay down the facts of this disagreement? The disagreement was that the Washington Post called Biden's description of Jim Crow 2.0 as hyperbolic. They used the word hyperbolic. He couldn't have it. And in his book, Capehart was incensed when she didn't apologize to him for using the word hyperbolic. Yeah. Yeah.

They made her meet with Reverend Al Sharpton.

Like, think about how fucking insane that is. The fact that she did it. Like, she had to do sensitivity training because she thought Jim Crow 2.0 being hyperbolic was maybe, maybe she went too far. What do you think the check was that they paid? That's what I'm saying. This guy, Al Sharpton, has such an amazing business model that he's been running where like, companies will be like, okay, we have employees fighting each other over some shit. What do we do?

You call him in. Reverend Al will show up. He'll listen, everybody. He'll say a couple words. He'll cash the check and leave. And then, like, you know, corporate can be like, all right, we've done it. We've done it.

But that's the situation. But I think it ties everything that we talked about together perfectly before we get into variety in that you're dealing with a leftist mentality that is a socially acquired mental disease. It genuinely is. In this case, you're talking about somebody who fundamentally believes that voter I.D.,

The idea that you have to have a personal identification when you vote is a racist thing and prevents African-Americans from participating in the process, belied by the fact that.

that since they passed this law, you had record African-American turnout, not one, not two, but three cycles in a row. It is a social disease because you got a guy, Jonathan Capehart, who is one of the most privileged people in America

who resides at the Washington Post, has every right in the world that most Americans would love to have. Yeah. Right. You have a direct conduit to the American people. You can say whatever you want. And he says that Karen stripped him of his humanity. Like he's fucking Kunta Kinte. Yeah. You know, like, like it's absurd, you know, to have an African-American in this country compare a voting reform bill to Jim Crow 2.0. No, no.

It's their views of it. It's fucking offensive to the people who actually lived through that. It's their views of it. It's not even subjected to a policy that you have sort of first person view of one way or another. It's his views of somebody else's experience of which there was record African-American turnout.

that he thinks he is, in fact, enslaved by. That is the most amazing sickness and indicative of the Democratic Party today that I could, anything I could, it's just unbelievable. It's just ridiculous. The guy is so rich and every time he ties a tie around his neck, it's got a full Windsor.

You know what I mean? Like the idea that he's this like hard scrabble upstart because he's at the Washington Post and Karen Tummel to use the wrong adjective to describe something. Get out of here, dude. Amazing. Come on. All right. Let's play a game, fellas. We've got King of the Hill coming at us. I'm the defending champion. Yeah, I'm back in the game today. I'm going to take Jennifer Rubin. Of course you are. He always does. Well, not always. She hasn't played in a long time. Well, it's just, you know.

critique. Holmes always takes Sherry, my Sherry or Jen Rubin. He takes the all-stars. It's all he does. It's unbelievable. And I've got defending champion, George Conway. I believe you're bailiff and you're judge, right? Ashbrook. Let's go ringside.

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. Once again, it's time for King of the Hill in the blue corner fighting from her office that used to be the Washington Post among the cats and the hare.

Former champion Jennifer Bahrain worms a Reuben. And now, in the red corner, fighting from a Democrat's dream and current champion of the world overweight and of council, George Conway. Wonderful. Great ringside announcement.

Well, I have to go first. And so spaghetti, I'd like exhibit number 11, please. All right. So this is George Conway quote tweeting Russia today. Oh, boy. Yeah. Russia today is I'll describe it. And basically they're shitting all over Donald Trump. Russia today is because Donald Trump is.

you know, pissed off that Putin won't accept a deal with Ukraine and all that sort of stuff. State-run media. It's a state-run media. It's funded by the Russian government. George Conway quote tweets it and says, it's weirdly reassuring to know the Russians think he's as idiotic as we do. Now, why this is so funny, why it's funny to all of us and should be funny to all of you is we've spent the last eight years saying Donald Trump is a Russian agent. Yeah. That's what all of these people believe.

But it kind of belies the grift that is their entire business. And that is the second that Russian Today, again, as you pointed out, Holmes, state-run media, says something against Donald Trump. They're like, now they must be believed. Russia Today is correct. These people believe in nothing. But they believe in fucking nothing, dude. And it's indicative there in that tweet. Okay, Ruben. You're the judge? Okay. I'm going to just address the man in the robe directly.

So Jen Rubin, who hasn't been played for a long time, finds herself on Blue Sky. She no longer recalls. Now admissible. Now admissible. That was a landmark decision on the Ruthless Variety Program. Yeah. She's re-Blue Skied. I don't know why they... They skeet over there. That's what it's called. Are you for real? Yeah, it's a skeet. Are you kidding? You have so... God, you're culturally... I've been in deep, dude. I've been behind enemy lines. Yeah. So anyway, there was an article about...

accepting migrants in Europe, basically. Okay. Which anybody who's had even a remote remedial interest in following the recent history of

You're a... You know you've got a real problem. Counsel, are we going to show the tweet? Bailiff, where are you? Wait, hold on. Co-counsel is intervening? I mean, he's not wrong. This is unbelievable. Quite the wind-up here. It's like a Norm MacDonald joke. Let me just tell you, I'm not pleased at all by the... You've got to run some order in this. Let's show the tweet. Or a blue sky scheme, whatever it is. I'll get to it as soon as you silence co-counsel over there. Anyway, she says...

What's the exhibit? This is exhibit number four. Only if we focus on ripping out the MAGA menace, root and branch, will we spare ourselves the horrors that Europeans have experienced over millennia. Perhaps that is why EU countries have consistently chosen center-left leaders...

In the Trump era, they know exactly what is at stake. So here's what makes this thing so brilliant. If you go to the article and you look at it, the argument is that you ought to just open arm, open border everyone.

And what we know is a tangible result of what's happened in Germany and in northern Europe and Ireland and Norway and Sweden and all those places is they're having like this massive revolt. They have huge crime increases and all of this as a result of like open immigration. What she is arguing is that the center left, as she calls it, that has ushered in all of that is the way.

And that the idea that you actually have provincial borders, that you have sovereignty in your country is the problem. I don't know. That is a wild, wild take. Thank you. Thank you, counsel. George Conway, Russia spokesperson.

or it's political scientist Jen Rubin. No, it's kind of trite. This is like a global phenomenon. Like that is like, oh, we do Russia. Now I believe Russia. Now I don't. This is like- It took up four years of the Trump administration. She's arguing straight faced that all of the problems that have tangentially happened as a result of open border policy is something that we ought to replicate if we don't want to be

We have to remember that both of these contestants are former Republicans who are now LARPing as libs. And I will tell you that as offensive as George Conway's hypocrisy is on Russia Today...

Council understands the way to this court's heart, which is through the open border. Long, boring. Oh, okay. Listen to what he's doing. I want this court to know that I won't stand for it. I'm playing the rest of this in protest. I won't stand for it. Jen Rubin wins round one. Gross. And probably round two. All right, round two. Let's go to Challenger. I fell asleep during that. Maybe that's why he liked it so much. This is unbelievable.

This court, it will not be disrespected. I'm going to go to Exhibit 1. The Dems' Civil War or Directionalist stories are crap. They are united versus Trump and heading for successful midterms.

After that, the 2028 primaries, the party will chart course. This is non-news hysterical analysis is why the corporate media is failing. I love that. The reason the corporate media is failing is because they're examining the directionalist Democratic Party. Well, that is a take. Amazing. Okay. They're united. I do think since she's lost her position...

the tweets have gotten longer and more analysis focused. It's like she needs an outlet. You know what I mean? Because she doesn't have column inches. George Conway. Okay. Exhibit number 15, please, spaghetti. I feel like I'm being put on an unfair clock that doesn't apply to my co-counsel, but that's fine. Oh, jeez. I mean... George Conway quote tweets breaking news about...

and, you know, his new order on education, you know,

Basically, this is the foreign visas into our universities. He quote tweets and says, look, it's all good as long as we keep the visa program for Slovenian nude models. Oh, God. I just love that. Like an attack on the first lady. He like knows like six languages. He's going to do the misogyny. I can't imagine why he got divorced. I can't imagine.

Tough deal. Nice message to the daughter. Jen Rubin's ridiculous take was...

It's offensive. It's dishonest. She knows exactly what she's writing. She's someone who used to pretend like she was a Republican. But nudity is your thing. But the short bite from George Conway, I think, wins this round. If you get border policy or nudity in, this judge is going to rule in your favor. And for that, I just...

I respect the consistency and thank you. Pandering. He's pandering is what he's doing. Well, you're being an asshole. We're going to skip right to round three. Exhibit number 14. Permission to treat counsel as a hostile counsel. I am hostile. I'm proudly hostile. Conway. 14, please, Spaghetti.

The misogyny is not over from George Conway here. We have him, quote, tweeting or posting an article here about Trump press secretary Caroline Leavitt.

He writes, White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt, who has been nicknamed Bullshit Barbie, is at it again. On Thursday, Leavitt, who has been caught lying countless times, was nailed again and again and again during a press briefing on Thursday. I think he's working out some weird sexual thing, if I'm being quite honest with you. Counsel, what is he quote tweeting? It's an article from NewJersey.com.

Can you describe? The worst website on the internet. Can you describe the nature of the article? Well, I think it was, it's a website or a newspaper that was founded by Christopher Columbus and some Italian, I'm sure. But yeah, it says, aka BS Barbie. I didn't want to read the entire thing because that's against the rules. No, I appreciate your commitment. I believe the rules. When like everyone has been, like the only thing you're hearing from credible media, even like,

left-wing media people is...

She's incredibly good at it. The way she dunked on Yamiche last week, everyone knows she's great at it. It's very funny, dude. There is definitely misogyny in this country when it applies to conservative women. What they actually face in media is incredible. For the same reason that racism exists almost fundamentally on the left when any person of color speaks up against liberal and democratic. It's always a controlling mechanism. A woman who happens to be

little easy on the eyes if they happen to be conservative is suddenly like you know a bimbo a dummy something like that and they did that to megan kelly all those years ago oh yeah they still do it they still do it okay ruben listen um there is an account that no one has ever heard of boy ever in the history of politics that she's very familiar with that is this leftist account and

in Exhibit 3 that she has tweeted out under her own volition, the Borowitz Report. And I did a little research here. This is just like left-wing propaganda. What she says is the best that Andy has ever done. And she's with Andy...

familiarized herself with like the author because it Borowitz report at no point. Do you understand like who Andy is? The report in and of itself is that, uh,

I'll just read the headline and then we'll go into it. Man feared to be cognitively slipping after writing book about the wrong president. And the entire... So this is like hitting Jake Tapper. It's his own website that nobody's ever visited. Nice. In left-wing, like, I mean, deep, dark, like you mine the surfaces of the dark web to try to find this, where he's discussed Jake Tapper...

and how he's cognitively slipping because he has written a book about Joe Biden's cognitive ability when really he should have been discussing Donald Trump's. I get it. So it's sort of like turning it on its head. It's like an Onion article, sort of. But the kicker of the best that Andy has ever done is

I think goes twofold. One, this is insane. Two, Andy. It's like nobody knows who Andy Borowitz or anybody... Like, this is not... Not only in a household... Like, I bet you could walk over to the DNC and not find four people who know the fuck this guy is. Yeah. I will tell you, this round is very easy to decide. You know, like, I...

think that the George Conway take against Caroline Leavitt is offensive. I think he's jealous. I think he wishes he was as smart as she was, and he's not. And that's reflected in his tweet today.

But this, you know, like obscure left-wing blogger who is writing about how Jake Tapper is the one who has the mental breakdown as opposed to Biden having the mental breakdown. And all of a sudden, this former conservative columnist... The best he's ever done. ...who is now turned into a partisan enforcement mechanism, I think, is the reason why Jen Rubin wins round three and she...

brings her crown back where it belongs. I'm more than happy to take the crown. I appreciate it. I'll mention to Caroline you didn't defend her. Well, we're playing. I mean, this is a game. This is a game you dick. This is the next thing I'm going to say to her.

You let Ashbrook in the room, he doesn't even defend you. Amazing. Unbelievable. This guy, he plays dirty as hell. Well, you've got to work the refs. All right, so one thing we have to get to. Trudeau. Hannah Trudeau is somebody who's appeared not one, not two, but three different episodes because she kept coming at us and pretending as though we were having a conversation, but not denying any of the allegations of the things that we were sent. The Ferrari. And then... The purses. The house. But it all was...

It was all precipitated by the fact that she was like, let me come on and talk about it. And we offered her not one, not two, but three. And then she would try to snipe back. She would be like, just because I'm fabulous, fellas, doesn't mean I'm not a champion for the working class. And then we're like, also, she's got like $10 million in purses. Right. So listen, we have a long history of taking scalps.

In this particular program. Yeah. I mean, it's a long and distinguished list, some of whom are still power brokers in the Democratic Party. Neera Tanden, for example. You know, like we took that scalp. Hannah's going to add her name to the list. She decided that she was no longer seeking elected office in graphic font. But she's also done a couple of things that I find fascinating.

Fascinating. So we always joked early on in our public relations world, and we came of age in an era where Republicans were particularly terrible. A lot of scandals. Scandalville, whatever. And anything that popped up, it was like, okay, you either have to...

Say you're a drunk and you now have sobriety, or two, you found God, or in best case scenario, a combination of the both, which means you have to be left alone. Or if you're a Larry Craig, you just said he had a wide stance. Yeah. Fine.

It's right. But like it's not to minimize either of those things because look, I mean, look, that happens in the world and we all do things. You know, there are many of us who've gotten involved in substance abuse and you've had to like try to resurrect your life when we get it. People who found Jesus and like seen a different light and different path and

in life and you want to reject the things that you've done before, like that's not to minimize that. I'm just saying it's the most convenient thing that you can do other than get on that website and try to find a sugar daddy.

Right? Which in and of itself was pretty convenient. Full disclosure, the website has not been designed for sugar daddies. The website definitively said that definitively it's not a sugar daddy website. They said that. I just want to be clear. They were very clear. Yeah, it's a vital proviso. Yeah, they very clearly said that. So what she has done is say that she's A, she's not running, but B, that she's been sober for three –

hats off. Good for you. The sobriety, fantastic. I love that. She's also said that her sobriety and mental health come first. Look, no arguments at all. I would suggest that if you had an issue for multiple years with all of that and your mental health, maybe public office is not the way to resurrect all of that. And the idea that after you

float your name for public office and then it's been shot down by the Ruthless Variety Program, surfacing it afterwards as an excuse not to do it is pretty convenient.

Now, I'm not saying, again, I'm not minimizing all of it. I think, look, good for her. I hope she gets what she needs. I hope she lives a wonderful life. But don't go journo to Dem politician to tell us as of six days ago that you're a working class champion. Right.

Only for us to undermine that and then to come back the next week and be like, well... My mental health's at stake, so now I can't run. It's my mental health and my substance abuse and all that that I'm working to get under. And so therefore, you can't talk about any of that. I mean, I wouldn't know...

But, man, you know, I don't blame her. I have a feeling that it would make your mental health feel terrific if you had a drop-top Ferrari. You know, I think you just push that. You got wind in your hair. You feel great. I don't blame her.

So anyway, we bid you adieu, Hannah. You're no longer a public figure, no longer running for office. Simply add your scalp to the rest of them that we've had here at the Ruthless Variety Program. We wish you the best of luck, and I genuinely mean it. If you're struggling with all that stuff, believe me, you could actually show up here at the Ruthless Variety Program. You will not find four individuals who are more willing to personally help you.

in a real way than the ones that you're looking at here because that's the way we operate. It's real. It's not political bullshit, which is why you tune into the Ruthless Variety program. Remember our question of the day. What's that PowerPoint say? What's that damn PowerPoint say? I can't wait for that. How do you speak to men? If you're sitting down in front of a bunch of people who are going to stroke million-dollar checks and you're like, hey, we have a real problem with men. Here's how we get them back.

Use your imagination and tell us what it is that it says on that PowerPoint. More Carhartt jackets. Break action shotguns in football. Camo hat.

I love it. You got to like and subscribe in order to opine, as you always say, Smash. I think you coined that. You coined it. I did. You invented it. I did. Very important right here on the Ruthless Variety Program. That's exactly right. And when you do, we'll read your responses. Check out our merch while you're there. We got some good offerings. We're going to have some more. We're going to have a bunch of new stuff coming at you here in the next month. Anyway.

With that, fellas, I think we did it. I think so. Absolute banger of an episode. Gentlemen, thank you so much to our dear listeners. Like Holmes said, if you have not yet, go to the YouTube, hit that like and subscribe. It's more fun in video. So until next time, minions, keep the faith, hold the line, and own the libs. We'll see you Tuesday. Stay ruthless.