It's going to be a very long road between the end of Trump himself and the end of trump Ism. The base of the party is very different from the leadership of the party, which McConnell doesn't believe in any of that garbage, but he does believe in power and he wants to keep it.
One thing I learned very.
Quickly in politics was that Rogerstone is ninety five percent bullshit about Roger Stone.
He's an evil piece of shit.
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry o'she.
I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover all around the world.
And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Although we don't usually look at it this way, we created conspiracies in our operations.
We got people to believe things that weren't true.
Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the news almost every day.
Will break them down for you to determine whether they could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Welcome to Mission Implausible.
All right, guys, Next week a big week. This is our last episode before the election, and we all know what we're doing right.
Well, I think we're kind of screwed anyway, because I mean, obviously Jerry and I are on the lists. You know they're gonna be coming at us. We could try to turn. I think Trump actually really likes it when people say bad things about him then come out and go the opposite way.
I think the golden rule of Trump is it's better to have said horrible things and then.
You sold your souls. What you're doing, you sold your.
Soul like those great Assyrian or other ancient Mesopotamian freezes, of like the leader sitting on top of all the slaughtered soldiers, like if you liked.
Him all along.
I think he thinks you're kind of a schmuck and a sucker. But if, like he doesn't respect Giuliani, he lets Juliani talk. But if everyone knows that you don't like him, but you're saying you like him, that is power in his mind.
Trump's fatal flaw here is that Jerry and I can't be humiliated, like we've humiliated ourselves so much over so long a period that there's nothing three daughters.
I've been through hemial like it right through.
Yeah, and as Deep State guys, John and I we have kissed a lot of asses in our time, right, so it's war criminals.
But Rick Wilson is he saw things early. He's been an outspoken and I think this is going to be a question for the rest of our lives. You know, what did you do daddy? What did you do mommy? During the And it is it's interesting how few have said, like, we're not doing this conspiracy theory thing. We're not doing this like truth doesn't matter approach to politics, even career Republicans, loyal, long term party people.
I think Rick is like some others. There was an up end Today's New York Times. I'm David French, who is their conservative columnist, and he, like Rick, said, they thought the Republican Party was a party of ideology, and they had certain beliefs. And what they've now learned is how long they were. And it's about violence as fault for one person, that's about all these other things. And they saw early on that he was going to destroy the Republican Party. And in fact, we probably shouldn't even
call it the Republican Party. If Trump does win, they should probably rebrand this thing.
Yeah, that's the Trump Party.
It takes one to no one for the Republican Party. He understands how it operates. I think it takes a lot of courage to like sort of turn on them and use the same taxics that the old Republican Party used against Democrats for the old Republican Party to use against the new trumpy whatever it is, the Trump sort of cult to personnel.
Yeah, it's courageous.
I have a question for both of you, or at least it's to come in so oftentimes fit very often, when an ideology gets going, it will be hijacked by a strong man. And I'm thinking, like sort of the Nazi Party started out, there was a guy, greg Or Strasser, right, who wanted to give it be the nice Nazi Party. We're going to focus on the socialist part. And of course all those guys were shot in the Night of the Long Lives. And the same with Lenin to a certain degree. You know, he his party and he was
pretty bad. But then Stalin came along. Cult to personality hit what cult a personality?
The Bath Party?
They had an ideology and then pretty soon Saddam hijacks and sod it and see it. So thoughts on like ideologies being taken over.
By Yeah, I mean the Bath Party processes. It stood for something like this kind of post Nasser in Egypt, pan Arabic socialists. I found it fascinating how Asad and Syria and Saddam in Iraq hated each other. You know, that's kind of emblematic of the transition from hey, we're all into in this international ideological approach to this is my stuff and I get to keep all the stuff. No, it's my stuff and I get to keep all the stuff. We used to have a saying in Iraq all the time.
It's like when you would meet people who hated Saddam, Iraqis, like new parties were forming, and the Iraqis would talk say they don't want to eliminate Saddam, they just want to replace Saddam themselves. And there were some people who wanted to eliminate the whole Sadamist approach and create a real democracy. But what's developed is pretty much just we just have different Saddams.
Well Victor Rick Wilson, so you know, all these guys. As soon as these strong men took power from an ideology, from a movement, one of the first things they did is they turned on their own supporters, right, you know, they turned on people who had supported them, but they worried about them, people who wouldn't bend a knee. So people like Rick Wilson is like, they're going to turn into the enemies, probably before we are right, because they're former insiders.
All right, Well, I can't wait to hear what he says.
For our listeners who follow election coverage closely, you certainly know our next guest, Rick Wilson. Rick is a political strategist and ad maker, writer, speaker, and commentator. He's the co founder of the Lincoln Project that has authored two New York Times bestsellers, and has his own podcast with Molly John Fast. For our purposes, we're especially interested in his experience as a former Republican political strategist. So for me,
I'm an arduent follower of excellent put down vocabulary. I learned the word chowed from him and WALLEYE chucklefuck, and today on Twitter, Trump a quivering mass of evil. Sue it.
What have you got against sue it?
Rick?
Listen, I pro sue it and I vote.
So Rick, can you talk about how political parties might use conspiracy theories? To help their candidates and did sure.
So when you were it wasn't really my flavor particularly, But there's been this evolution. I'm not going to say it's only in the Republican Party, because there are plenty of Democratic Party conspiracy theories over the years as well, but there has been this evolution as social media has convinced people that what they see online must be true, that became it became easier and easier to convince people that ludicrous things were actually happening behind the scenes, that
they were causing them. And as we've moved away from the traditional media structure of the country had for a long time, you know, three television networks and then for a while it was seeing in an MSNBC, in Fox.
But now it's a billion Facebook pages of the Patriotic Patriots egle Forum dot ru and these things that appear convincing and you can sell people on truly dumb and dangerous and pernicious ideas, and so it's really become a centerpiece of the way that particularly the Republican Party right now prosecutes its cases. You know, it's not enough that
Kamala Harris is a liberal. She's got to be a global plant by a Marxist super state hidden away somewhere in the world, secretly run by George Soros, out of the basement of a pizza restaurant, or whatever flavor of crazy you want to hit that day. They will always find a way to include it. Now inside the dialogue in the Republican Party, be a little bipartisan.
Here.
Democrats have occasionally gotten a little what we call blue Anon, where they believe some things that are not true to be true. And it is a sign not of any failing of any one party. It's just the capacity of these methods is so beyond what we've ever experienced before.
Why do people like tolerate and buy into this when I used to love the Republican Party parts of it in any case, And I don't get what happened to the party. Where are the rational people?
They mostly got pushed out guys like me. I'll give you a good example. The first sign of a crack between me and the Republican base was back in two thousand and eight, and some reporters said to me, what about this story, isn't it true? He was born in Kenya? And I said to political, I'm like, it's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard. What are you talking about? That's insanity? And they're like, no, no researchers. And so I literally called my opposition research guy. I'm like, hey,
do me a favorite check the hospital. There's a birth record in Hawaii. Of course there was, but all of them decided that this was true, and not the senior campaign people for McCaine. But I was hanging out there because people were really angry that I was trying to blow up this great narrative they thought was going to defeat Barack Obama, and I was working hard to defeat
Barack Obama at the time. You guys know, from the intelligence world, you're trying to sell someone a vision of something that they can or should be, and you frame up the world in a way that makes it compelling
for them to do that. And these conspiracy theories take people who are lower information voters, who are lower sometimes not always, but generally speaking of lower education levels, and gives them this cohesive vision of the world that makes sense, and it gives them a way to say, oh, that's why my life sucks, that's why these people don't treat me the way I want to be treated.
That's why I lost my job.
And it's convenient and it's comfortable, and man, it's just it's really unfortunately leads to some very dark outcomes.
Like you said, I think people it's about feelings. I feel like that's true.
Yeah, vibes based, all vibes based.
Exactly, and I can imagine why campaigns would want to weaponize that if they could. Do you think there are strategists around Trump who see these or try to to even create these things for their own purpose or are they just out there and they let them go.
I think for the most part inside the campaign, they depend on the existence of those things outside of the campaign, and they can nudge them, leverage them not and wink at them. I know, inside the right wing media infrastructure and the right wing political infrastructure, there are a lot of these guys. The Jack Posobiacs, the Steve Bannons, the
Dan Bongino's, the Roger Stones. They're personally too smart to believe this garbage, but they do recognize how much it motivates a lot of people inside the Republican base, and they really like that.
So your political strategy is not a neuroscientist, but people in their general lives. Even paultists, they know that if I don't put gas in my car, it's not going
to run forever. Right, But when it comes to their political philosophy, they throw basic rationality out, so, at least in my mind, in their minds, there's this dissonance that goes on where they accept fantasy in their political world and for their political leaders and people who you know, they want to represent them, but COVID vaccines, vaccines in general, but they don't accept it in their personals.
Right, Yeah, the delta between what they like as a political technique or a political angle. But most people who say, oh, they control the weather, they also if a hurricanes steaming right towards them, they're going to probably evacuate. They're not so irrational. But politics has made Americans less rational about their lives in ways that we haven't really fully reckoned
with yet. I think it's been difficult for Americans, more centrist Americans, more or less politically engaged Americans, to say, wow, they really do believe in like Hillary Clinton, a global pedophile conspiracy or whatever, all these crazy things that we all go, God, come on. There are a lot of people who are shocked how what their neighbors believe. They act normal during the day, and then it'll come up at barbecue. Somebody in a barbecue will suddenly said, what
about the Illuminati and the lizard people. It shocks people, it bothers them because it really has. It really does show how our culture has been rebuilt around the things that make us politically and socially comfortable.
I want to talk a little bit about Lincoln Projects. So in some ways it seems like we're in this secret Republican Civil War, right, so some people, but it's not so yeah, not so secret that some people want the Republicans to be maga and others want to be more kin to the traditional Republican party. I do personally think that there are generally two types of people in the world, right, some value strength and security and other
value fairness and inclusion. That's why sort of two parties in all sorts of countries.
Do you think we need.
A generally leftist party and a generally rightist party? And so what do you think is happening and what is your role in that? What are you guys trying to do? Well?
Look, I believe that one party states are always doomed I think they descend into authoritarianism and domestically one party states to send into corruption. And you look at Florida, my home state. It is one of the most lavishly corrupt places you can imagine. It's all pay to play. It is beyond what people even believe. And on the flip side, New Jersey is basically a state run by a political mob. And so you don't see I don't
see one party systems really benefiting the population. And so I think we need a center left and a center right party in this country. I mean, right now, I'm part of a weird coalition. It runs from Bernie Sanders and AOC to guys like me and Adam Kinsinger and Liz and Dick Cheney. If you can't find a place to live in that coalition, I don't know where you're at.
I don't know how I can help you.
The Republican Party of today is a different creature than the traditional Republican Party, which, at least aspirationally, at least on paper, believed in limited government and the rule of law and keeping the role of the state in check and the things that would be recognizable as traditional GOP. Those things are no longer a part of the Republican
Party because now it's about occult. Now it's about Donald Trump and his whims and his psychological quirks, and all the things that he represents are very distant from the old Reagan, Busch, Eisenhower, GOP. And look, a lot of people very much regret that, and they've been trapped in this idea, this very false dichotomy of well, oh, it's either Trump or communism. It's either Trump or George Soros
takes over the world. And those things depend on fantasies and conspiracies and imaginary demons that are out there in a way that it's been a long time in our politics, or actually never in our politics where we've seen that kind of nerve racking, constant revision of history about what
the party is and means. Because look, when the Republican Party was formed in eighteen fifty four, it came out of the Whig Parties collapse, and it had some the Whig Parties DNA in it, but it remained largely unaltered until nineteen sixty four, so almost one hundred year run, and then it transformed itself from nineteen sixty four through twenty fifteen into the sort of pro security, pro limited government, constitutional rule of law party, and now it's something very different.
So it's only had three iterations. Democratic parties had a few more iterations over the generations, but GEOP has really been only about three things. And now it feels much different than it did when it started.
It's dabbling with strongmanism, authoritarianism now called leaders.
One hundred percent.
Let's take a break, we'll be right back. All right, let's get back into it.
So I wonder if you'd run with me on a thought experiment that's just for the sake of argument. Trump loses or he has his last big man, what happens to the base and what it hapends to trump Ism once Trump is no longer like a viable lead.
Jerry, that's a That's an absolutely fantastic question. It is a question I think about every single day. I don't think trump Ism immediately disappears. I think it has some shelf life left to run because in part it's the product of this it's a product of this very effective media ecosystem. And it's not just Fox, it's Facebook, and it's Discord and Telegram and all these other channels that have become definitional to how the party indoctrinates its members
and communicates with its members. Those things are still going to exist. Rupert Murdoch is going to live at least four hundred years old, and he's going to run Fox as he runs Fox right now. He has no incentive or desire to change that. And I do think it's going to be a very long road between the end of Trump himself and the end of Trump. And again, the base of the party is very different from the
leadership of the party. Mitch McConnell doesn't believe in any of that garbage, but he does believe in power and he wants to keep it.
Did they need a pail it in? Do they need a leader? Can trump Ism survive as an ism without a leader?
Was different?
People vibe for it to take control of whatever it is, Like parna, isn't it?
You know? The terrific question? And well, pronism is actually a really good analogy to it too. I think there's a real problem inherent in this whole thing, and that Trump got away with things as a celebrity that an ordinary political leader could never get away with.
He got away with things as a.
TV personality, And I saw this in focus groups in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen. We were trying to beat the guy, and people were just Their image of Trump was locked in by fourteen years of The Apprentice on TV. He's the richest man in the world. He owns all of Manhattan, he builds everything, everything he touches turns to gold. And the entire appeal of Trump in that space came from lower middle class voters who are legitimately pissed off about a lot of things in our culture, our society,
and our economy. The economic anxiety thing was real in the beginning. We had gone through the two thousand and eight crisis, we had gone through a lot of other restructurings of our economy, and a lot of those working class folks saw him as like, he'll be the avatar of me, sticking it to the man. I'm going to use Trump as my weapons system to go after these people that treat me like crap. And for Trump, that
was a great image to build. It worked like magic to persuade a lot of the people in the Republican base that he needed. Those people are dying off. The demographics of that group are quite elderly, because a lot of them are earlier boomers, and for us late boomers, the most intense feelings about Trump are with people seventy and older. They really are pissed off about a lot of things, and he really channels that for them. That will be going away, that will be changing, but that's
going to take a while. That's a process, not a solution. And the other part of it is that there's only one thing in politics that teaches you anything, and it's pain. Pain is the only teacher in political life. If Republicans start losing races consistently because trump Ism doesn't sell and it doesn't scale, they will change.
They will not stick with a.
Poisoned chalice for very long. But the old Party's never coming back, Let's put it that way. That's a forlorn hope by a lot of my friends believe it. And I, however, have been around this block now with trump Ism for a little longer than I care to recount.
Nine years.
Jesus Christ, I don't have that same that sunny optimism I once had as a younger man.
Is there anything you can do? I mean, obviously, in twenty twelve, the thought was, Okay, we've been losing races. We need to expand the party, we need to bring new people. Turned out, that wasn't what happened, right Trump came along the opposite way. Is there anything that people like you or like whether that can do to Yeah, you can't recreate it, But do you have to destroy it the village in order to save it?
What are you gonna do?
I think the village is doing a pretty good job destroying itself right now. It feels like a suicide pack sometimes in the GOP that you look at these people who do things they know are politically destructive. Mitch McConnell right now could have come out of the Senate race this year with a five or six seat majority. But Donald Trump got to pick all of the nominees except one guy, Dave McCormick, who just had so much money he could do what he wanted. He is unlikely to
do that. He may get the majority, barely get the majority. But this is not an easy, an easy skate for McConnell. It's not going to be an easy win. And the reason it's not going to be easy is because in these swing states in particular, trump Ism does not sell and it does not scale.
So Trump ism is built on a lot of things. Essentral to it, I think are a set of conspiracy theories, or at least misconceptions.
About how the world works and government works.
And that to a certain extent, Okay, you know you're selling a product. I get that. But when you look at some of where these conspiracy theories go and when you take it to ultimate fool, it leads to violence or can lead to violence. We saw that on this.
Yes January sixth, a perfect example exactly.
If you claim elections are not the way to settle our political differences, there's really nothing left but violence as an obvious answer. And it's not of both siders. Only one side is doing this right.
There is only one side that believes that. And look, we saw this at a rally this weekend, the Rod of Iron rally, which combines Christian nationalism and gun fetishism and fund at parties. And they were talking this weekend a guy named Ivan Rylkin, who calls himself Trump's Secretary of Retribution. They're talking about when does the reign of fire begin? When do we get to start killing the liberal shills, When do we get to make our vengeance
on the people that have tried to hurt Trump. And the problem with rhetoric like that, and the problem with folks like that is if they're denied the ability to do that, if they're told no, this is up out of bounds, and they still feel frustrated, and their leaders still tell them, Oh, the other reason you can't do this is because those liberal elites don't want you to have power. They will start seeking that out. And we saw it on January sixth. We've seen the outliers of
it with the Omar Sayak. We saw it with the
Tree of Life synagogue attack. We saw it with the Walmart attack, where you've got these young kids who become politically involved in the alt right and they go out and they shoot people up because they believe that white people are being replaced or globalism is causing the America to fall apart, all of it based on lies and conspiracies, but for people who are not paying attention, cults have always been able to capture young men, particularly and activate
them for violence, and this behaves like a cult in a lot of ways.
In the nineteen sixties, of course, it was the left that was doing this, the weather men and bombings and so forth.
Look, we've seen the parties go through various phases like that. But all of this is juiced by the existence now of social media, of these online platforms, and that those things reduce the friction of the activation of extremists, and they feed them a curated version of the world that lets those extremists feel like they're on a mission, that they're doing the right thing, that without them playing the role that they're the people handling them want them to play,
that the world will end. It's a very dangerous and pernicious space. I worry a lot about our ability as a society and a country to manage that risk.
Jerry and I are both on Ivan Ranklin's list. I'm sure you are as well, and so it's really troubling. And Jerry and I lived around the world. We live for thirty some years overseas doing kind of things. And there are country where there's incredible poverty, incredible civil war, incredible oppression. But here we are the richest, most powerful country in the history of the world. Our economy is the best going on in the world right now, better
than China, better and everybody else. People aren't starving, but people are so angry they're willing to burn it down, like I don't get that piece of it again.
That is where I think the social media matrix grabs these people and will not let them go, and it tells them that we've reached the final extremity. Everything is falling apart. The elites are so powerful, except you, soldier of God, can go activate yourself and strike a blow against the people that are trying to poison our blood and soil, which I know, of course, sounds better in
the original German. But these techniques aren't new. The irony is that, as you point out, they're happening in a country that is profoundly wealthy, where we have the highest standard of living in the history of mankind, and yet people are told that their lives are a paragon of misery.
Is a really tough problem.
It's not just that we are coming up with these conspiracy theories ourselves. I think we are coming up mostly with them, but they're being amplified by our adversaries as a societal weakness, and mostly Russia, but around China and so forth. You are a message guy, right. Your whole thing is how to get to people and then get through to them and I'm wondering, you're also seeing what the Russians are doing. What grade would you give them?
I would say they are actually quite improved from twenty sixteen. A lot of the stuff in twenty sixteen was a little too lurid, a little too over the top, a little too provably fucked up. And now it feels like they're finding social divisions that they can exploit much more effectively, because a lot of us, if they're exploiting, is real. They're not just trying to tell Republicans, hey, you're being taken advantage of my liberals or whatever. They're also targeting
black communities. Who are They're saying, the Americans hate you, the police want.
To kill you. Why do you put up with this?
They're also targeting Hispanics now, saying that America wants to deport you, they hate you, Why do they disrespect you? They talk to them in the languages of their cultures. I think they've gotten better at it. Some of it's still pretty, you know, crude, but it's still it's just because it's crude doesn't mean it doesn't work. There are things about their communications apparatus that we don't understand the
scale of or how they're targeting. And we've got some evidence of how they did it post Hawk from twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, but not a ton and not as much as I'd like to know to be able to build a sort of profile of how to punch back on it and how to push back on it, because again, as a communicator, as a message guy, I can write a lot of smart, beautiful messaging, but I don't know that I'm hitting the targets with the ability to have a counter veiling impact for what the bad
guys from overseas are doing.
Speaking of punch back from your past world working as a strategist, why did Democrats seem so poor at developing their own effective avenues of attack? And the follow up is that do you think the Harris campaign is showing discipline? Are they doing what you'd want them?
They are doing what I thought would be the correct approach in this. They're quite assertively not taking Trump's bait. They are in fact laying down bait of their own, and He's taking it over and over again, which I think is unique for my lifetime. We have not seen that level of commitment by the Democrats to fighting the real fight the number one thing a Democratic campaign would have done prior to Biden. I think prior to Trump, their first thing is we're going to set up a
big policy team. We're going to write this policy. We're going to talk about all these things that are gonna help us sell to America. And they didn't understand that the elections in this country aren't about policy. They're about personality and culture and connection. And I think she's doing a much better job of being of being someone Americans
relate to and understand, of being someone Americans like. Those things are not trivial in a national campaign, and I have to salute her for very smartly handling a lot of the aspects that could have been a negative for her campaign if they'd follow the old rule book.
We'll be right back in a moment.
Now back to the conversation.
I have to say, some of the most effective messaging out there that I've seen is the stuff from the Lincoln Project. It's punchy when I watch these things. It's the old Batman comic books. It's like wow zowie, like the air bubble that comes in the speech bubble that comes around it. Sure, so it's wondering what's your what's the mission of the Lincoln Project? And where does it go once the election ends? It's great, I love it.
Sadly, I think we're going to end up with seventy six days between the election and certification that are as risky as anything we've ever faced in this country. And I wish I could tell everybody it's all going to be fine. But we watched January sixth happen, and I watched what they did last time, and this time they have actual lawyers, not the four seasons total landscaping jokers. They have real attorneys now, and that that should scare the shit out of people. That is not a great
place to be right now. One of the things we're useful as is one of somebody analogizes this once, so they're like, you guys are like a seal team. You're assholes, but sometimes we need the specific kind of asshole to glow blow something up behind the enemy lines or do something horrible. And I was like, yeah, I'll take it.
We're not the big army. We're not there to rebuild the cities, we're not there to do all the traditional stuff, but we are you know, we have a set of skills to pull over some of these Republican voters and convince them and some of these independent leaning conservatives and convince them that the system that they've been playing in is not a healthy one. Look, our goal is to defeat Trump and trump Ism and preserve the republic. I know that sounds high, Fallutin, but it has the advantage
or disadvantage of being true. We really believe the country's in quite grave peril, and so what happens after he's defeated, We'll see where it goes. But I think the preservation of democracy and a constitutional republic it's a big deal, because everything falls apart without that. Nothing works without having the institutional and political infrastructure of an actual republic. You can't pretend that in Russia people are billionaires because they
worked hard. They're billionaires because they played the ballgame and Putin gave them the money or made them part of his crime family. There are no situations and circumstances where authoritarian regimes allow free markets or free individual expression, or individual liberty or free expression. We see this risk is going to last for some period of time. I don't know how long. I would prefer it not be the rest of my life. I'd like to be done with
this mission at some point. I've been on it for nine years and I don't know how long you guys would spend under cover, but you reach a point where you're just like, my god, I'm exhausted.
I think you're trying to get people at the margins. That's what politics is about. But the future is about actually changing the minds of those people who are caught deep in this thing. And it is not a thing that's really important. Is Jerry and I grew up to institutions. We were professional public servants, and Americans have forgotten from one hundred and fifty years ago what the US government
was like. It was like these foreign governments was paid to play and had to just pay for things, and corruption and series of reforms over the years has created a system where they call it the deep state. Is a negative thing. But for most of this stuff, these institutions are professional. People take it seriously, are working on behalf of the state. They're trying to follow the rule of law. And you know, the notion that you should just throw these things away and life is going to
be good. I think a lot of people, if they get their way are going to be really sad.
I think, yeah, I think they would be shocked and appalled and horrified at what the world looks like if the Republican Party becomes the Bath Party. And think about it. You had Saddam he ran for election every couple of years and got one hundred and seventeen percent of the voter or whatever it was, and people say, well, they do have elections there. It may not be free, but that's not the world people in America I think, could
ever truly adjust to. I think it would be much more difficult than they believe to live in a world like that. And God knows, I don't want to live in a world like that. That's the last thing I want to see for this country.
Yeah, Rick, I want to run with a really bad Star Wars analogy. So I picture you as like Luke Skywalker, right, Darth Vader would be Roger Stone. And I was wondering, if you're standing across from Roger with a lightsaber, but what would.
You talk to Roger Stone about.
Roger's from a generation actually almost two generations prior to me in politics. But one thing I learned very quickly in politics was that Roger Stone is ninety five percent bush about Roger Stone. He's rarely actually involved in big races or big consequential issues. He's an evil piece of shit. He's a degenerate fop. He's a weirdo, bad actor, bad tattoo,
bad guy. But he has lived off of one small boar scam after another his entire career, and he never got big races and consequential assignments because he's just full of shit. And look, everybody in politics has a bullshitting gene in their body, but Roger is just bullshit. And people always ask me, like, he says these things about you, why don't you fight with him. I'm like, cause I don't give a fuck, because Roger is inconsequential to me.
And in politics a lot of times, the people who build up a legend, who build up their cover story about who they are, and Roger Stone tells people, oh, I aw, what dude, Nixon. Roger Stone was a fucking intern for Nixon in seventy two. He was a sign
boy in Connecticut. He wasn't like a key player. He like glombed on the Nixon much later in Nixon's life, and it's just like, I don't take people like that seriously because I come from a group and a world and a cohort of like people who are serious fucking guys. I don't look at people like Roger as somebody that I'm scared of, or I don't even think of him as like a serious person. He look, he's good at threatening people. He plays his little like fuck around games
from time to time with people. And is that a superpower?
Eh? Maybe, but it's not one I particularly respect. No.
But that's the danger is magaism has has empowered these kind of people. So this view that your enemy, your real enemy, not just your political and other is the other party, other American parties. Therefore, Russians are your friends because they're helping you against your real enemy. You have no soul and no values. Someone like Roger can be the go between Russians, go between the proud boys, go
between these very dangerous people. And then when President of the United States pardons him and has community now from the Supreme Court. As stupid and awful as he is, he could be a.
Real nasty one.
Look, I think as Steve Bannon as more of a threat because he's an organized He's an organized psychopath and Rogers a disorganized psychopath.
But yeah, the idea that.
These guys have in their heads is that the things they couldn't earn in this world they're going to take because they're going to be part of it. It's like a Middle Eastern strip in the seventeen hundreds. They're going to be with the guy, and they're going to be his viziers and his advisors, and they'll make a world on the back of having the ear of the king. That still happens in this world. But there's also the
good guys have another benefit of this fight. These guys are the most corrupt and backstabbing munch of people you'll ever meet. Sure they may hate all of us who believe in democracy and freedom, but they hate each other more.
It's fantastic.
That's what the Russians are trying to do is get us to fight each other. Sure, we can then use those skills to get them to fight each other inside mega world to maybe that maybe that's.
I for the just for the Ukraine war really got hot, or actually the day after they invaded, we ran an ad on Spotnik and we put it up in Rush in Moscow on a couple of digital platforms. It got taken down almost immediately, but it was in Russian and it was asking women in Russia are you going to send your young man to die for this old man?
Puci Muljils And we got a friend of ours from that, from y'all's former world who was like, please be fucking careful.
They'll kill you.
Luckily they have a lot of enemies before they get to you.
But yeah, yeah, that's that's the upside.
You've gotten a lot of headlines just off of what you're saying and how you say it, and some of the messages in there. I was wondering, do you have like a greatest hits, like the top one or two that the audience could go look.
At, here's the problem with this.
I've made something seven hundred ads in the last five years, and there are some absolute home runs that I think are super effective and that also have an emotional place for me personally that.
Spoke to me.
There's an ad at the very end of the campaign in twenty called One Day. Martin Sheen narrates it's about it's a final motivation at don't get you got to get out and vote.
Good morning today is the first day of the rest of America's life. One day, one day that will, one way or another, change how this country feels about itself. One last push to get the train back on its tracks. One day that cannot wipe out the last nine months or the last four years, but can clear a path for a thousand better days ahead. One day America on a tightrope.
Is that called girl in the mirror.
Imagine a young girl looking in the mirror, searching for role models in the world to give her hope that one day she too can make a difference. Now, imagine how she feels when she watches women being verbally attacked.
What a stupid question in it?
But I watch you a lot, You ask a lot.
Of stupid questions, and I've got that loser who doesn't have the energy.
Of a rabbit.
Blind.
There's something wrong with Kamala, and I just don't know what it.
Is, but there is definitely something.
Missing, belittled. I'm not thinking of it.
That's okay, I know you're not thinking.
You never do.
I'm sorry.
Now, imagine a different future for her, A future with a president who looks like her, who sounds like her, who shows her who she can grow up to be if only she believes in herself a strong woman.
There there is an ad called Fellow Traveler that talked about Trump and Russia.
Some of God Trump to these issues, not something God.
We had a series of ads about COVID that are heartbreakers.
Because of all we've done, the risk to the American people remains very low.
Fifteen within a couple of days is going to be down too close to zero.
One day it's like a miracle.
It will disappear.
And this is their new hopes this year.
We've had some stuff that I think we ran and now we just released the other day called Daisy, named after the famous ad. But it's a story about a girl who can't get care when she's pregnant, and it runs backward from her death to her birth and talks about why her father did this, chose Trump over her.
Just using your political sense of having been in this field for a long time, what do you think about November.
I think she's going to win.
There are three scenarios for November. She's going to win by a little She's going to win by an absolute landslide wipeout, which tells me that the polling is as wrong as we think it is, or he's going to he's going to surprise us in three or four states that we don't see coming. I think that's the lowest probability. I think a win is the highest. I think a big win is a higher probability than Trump winning. But again, as I said, my concern is not November fifth, it's
the seventy six days between November fifth and certification. That's where the world. I think it's scary and weird and dangerous. You must be right, because I agree with you. They're gonna have to carry me out feet first on this one. Apparently you know we hear these shows.
I say it's a privilege and a pleasure, but with you, it really is a privilege. I watched your stuff, and you're an impressive guy to an impressive one.
Thank you so much. I do appreciate that, I really do.
We'll see you next time on Mission implausible and who knows what the world will be like in a week. We'll leave you now with the full add called Daisy created by the Lincoln Project.
It didn't need to end this way, Dad, You were so excited to be a grandfather when you walked me down the aisle. Those were happy, tears, college, high school sports. I could always count on you.
You are my.
Protector, my hero. You always made me feel safe, loved, like I was the most important person in the world. But it turned out he was more important.
The fact that I was able to terminate Roe v.
Wade after fifty years of trying.
Each one of those abortion bands includes strict legal rules, rules that are designed to be impossible to comply with. How does a mother who is dying in a hospital bed get to a courthouse to prove to a judge that she's dying.
You will no longer be thinking about abortion.
You knew what he did. You knew his politics would end my freedom, my rights, my wife. You chose hate over me.
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'sha, John Cipher, and Jonathan Stern.
The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Mission Implausible is a production of Honorable Mention and Abominable Pictures for iHeart Podcasts.