And now for a moment of clarity.

Michael Steele is here.

Michael, you may know, and I think the audience knows.

Sometimes I go long.

Sometimes you get a long lead.

Other times, that happens.

Other times you have a special guest.

You say, Michael Steele's here,

I got a bunch of different stuff that's happening right now that I want to get to. So rather than go

too long, I want to bring you in here one month in, I was careful to say, and I think it's true

and fair to say that part of this Trump crusade overlaps with things that are not all bad ideas out of bounds.

There's been a rich, long debate about the Pentagon and whether it is too bloated.

There have been other examples.

And yet all of it is being delivered through the battering ram and the trolling,

and in Elon Musk's case, the outright lying.

He was caught lying in a major way about these so-called cuts this week.

And so it taints things that otherwise might have been a chance to sit down with Bernie Sanders

and AOC and say, hey, you guys have had bills for a decade about where we could trim the Pentagon.

Why don't we do this with Congress in a serious way?

So let's start there, again, me being trying to be as open mind as possible.

What about that tension tonight?

I appreciate your open up-mindedness, and it's an important feature to have.

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