I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the To the Contrary Podcast. A lot going on. Texas Democrats decide they actually want to win an election. The Trump administration is going back and forth about whether or not to blame Israel for going to war with Iran. And the AI wars apparently have just begun. A lot to dive into today.

And joining us on today's podcast is Josh Barrow, who is the co-host of the Central Air podcast

and the author of the very serious substack newsletter, Josh.

Hi, Charlie. Thanks for coming on today.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Can we do this as a little bit of a, can we start with a little bit of a palette cleanser before we get into the really the heavy stuff like war and artificial intelligence?

Would you mind?

I want to start by, in case anybody missed this rather extraordinary moment in the United States Senate where the newly liberated Senator Tom Tillis is,

we know, with questioning Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem.

Actually, he's kind of connecting the dots, reminding people that she got the job because she shot a puppy.

Let me just play. Let's just play a little bit of this. And then I want to comment on the other side.

This is Senator Tom Tillis, who is giving a, this is kind of an epic smackdown of Cristino,

who took time out, by the way, from making her coast playing videos and quality time with

Cory Lewandowski and hunting down migrants to come and sit and listen to this.

Secretary, I read your book last week.

And honestly, some of the parts of it impress me, but some of it distresses me.

And I'll give you a good example of one that does.

The passage where you talk about killing a dog that was 14 months old. I train dogs, all right?

And you are a farmer. You should know better. You should know that if you're going out to a

hunting lodge and you're putting pheasants out and you're putting dogs out, you don't take a puppy out

there. A 14-month-old dog is basically a teenager in dog years. You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time and training,

and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it's a leadership lesson about tough choices.

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