Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller.

We might be a little tight today because I think there's a bonus pod coming tonight. So keep an eye on

your feed for a second entry. We'll be maybe a little more prurient than this morning's entry.

We'll see how it goes. But I'm excited to welcome to this show, formerly at the Bullwark.

She's now a writer and editor at Protect Democracy. Their sub-sec is if you can keep it. It's all caps Amanda Carpenter. What's up, girl? Happy Thanksgiving. Hey, good morning, Tim. You have been killing it lately. I am so, I'm just so happy to see all the Bullwark's success. And this second interview sounds pretty juicy. What's going on well we'll see what's that goes we'll see how

it goes keeping eye on the feed you know we miss you it's good to see you it's been a minute you're doing

the lord's work it's like right there in the name protect democracy it's kind of important

important job so happy you're doing that but we do miss you I want to do big picture because like I think

since the last time we talked obviously the,

you know, Project 2025 has rolled down the tracks further, but they've also had some spokes

in their tires a little bit. I was on with your boss, Ian Bassett on Nicole last week. And Ian,

for people who don't know him, like me, it's a little dower. You know, he's a little

bit of a rain cloud at times. And he was like, he was, he was sounding optimistic, it kind of

felt like about our trajectory. So I'm just wondering what you think kind of biggest picture in the,

just from the democracy perspective. And we'll get into the other stuff, like what kind of

where we are right now, what the threats are, what may be some positive developments have been. You know, we get this question a lot. And in my head, I always have this kind of like scorecard of where we are on the matrix of all the categories, like when it comes to military deployments and pardons and quashing dissent, campaigns against the press and weaponizing the Department of

Justice. So like, that's always into account. There's never like, yes, it's going great.

Or we're at this part on the map kind of answer. But I think the biggest reason for optimism at

this particular point in time is that Donald Trump's policies are incredibly unpopular. I mean, his job approval

rating right now is at 36%. And the key to defeating authoritarian, you know, these populist policies,

is to make them unpopular so that they are unable to entrench themselves and their faction in power.

And we did have successful elections.

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