I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the To the Contrary podcast. Not been a good week for the Trump-Epstein cover-up.

And of course, the president gives his state of the union address, which apparently is not polling all that well.

But one thing seems to be relatively clear that while the nation is souring on Donald Trump, they're still not necessarily trusting Democrats. So we have a lot to

dive into this week. And to talk about all of this, we're very fortunate to be joined by

Adam Gentleson, who is a longtime Democratic strategist, longtime Senate aide, and the president of the Searchlight Institute.

First of all, Adam, thanks for coming back on the podcast.

Love to be here again, Charlie. Good to see you.

I have to give a little bit of your background so people know that you spent your formative years as speechwriter for presidential candidates, John Kerry, John Edwards, but mainly you cut your teeth

with Harry Reid, you know, the late Take No Prisoner Senate Majority Leader who actually

thought it was more important to win elections than to be ideologically pure. Then, according to this

one account, you veered left, helping run Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign, and you were the chief of

staff to John Federman, worked on his campaign as well, and now are heading up. I don't want to put words

in your mouth. Would you say the think tank designed to make the Democrats more independent

from the ideological elites, more pragmatic, more focusing on actually winning elections

than scratching your ideological id? Would that be a fair? That's fair. Our whole thing is

breaking free of rigidity and drawing from the best ideas from wherever they come from on the ideological

spectrum. So being results driven, focused on policy outcomes,

and reflecting the will of American people, not being locked into any ideological point of view.

Yeah, I mean, after the 2024 election, you wrote a widely discussed op-ed piece in the New York Times,

talking about what had happened with

the Kamala Harris campaign and the capture by the elites. Now, other people have made this point

as well, but my sense is that Democrats really are resisting, engaging in the kind of autopsy

...