Transcript of Nick Wright & Anderson Clayton: Did the Fever Break?

Hey everybody, it's Tim. Uh, we have an awesome double-header for you today. In segment two it is Anderson Clayton, chairwoman of the North Carolina Democratic Party, doing a victory lap. She's fighting through a cold and, uh, you know, I interviewed her right before the election and wanted to circle back with an update. It is a glorious, glorious valedictory and celebration, and so do make sure you stick around for that. Uh, so just goes up first, we've got Nick Wright, who I've been trying to get on the show for about a year now, who is, for people who are not into sports ball, a sports commentator.

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. As mentioned in segment two, it's Anderson Clayton. Can't wait to talk to her, but first, he's a host of the show What's Right with Nick Wright and co-host of First Things First on Fox Sports One. It is Nick Wright. Welcome to the show, man.

Tim, thank you for having me on. Thank you for cajoling me into doing this. I have wanted to do more things like this for quite some time, but for the better part of a decade, my spirit has been chipped away at. And I was a little invigorated eight days ago, and I decided this would be the perfect time. So thank you for having me.

I love that. I think I originally reached out in January because you were maybe invigorated, that was not the right word, but you were outraged and spurred into commentary about the killings of Rene Good and Alex Pretty. And you'd written that after the tragedy, you asked a very simple question to your audience, what are we okay with? And did a long YouTube on that. And I was like, this is an oasis in the sports world, the sports commentary world. I felt like we'd gone through this period where all of these guys who were MAGA or Trump friendly, you know, felt emboldened to be able to talk.

No problem.

Why don't you just give people who don't know you just like a little bit of like a first date kind of backstory, like your politics and, you know, so why you wanted to talk.

Yeah, so my father was a Kansas City firefighter after being like barely graduated high school that, you know, his bio is insane. He hasn't, at this, he doesn't have a college degree, but he has a master's from Harvard and a law degree. He might be the only, but no one.

It's like a goodwill hunting situation.

Yeah, and so, but it all, he was, he was also, you know, kind of a street kid, got on the fire department and they struck before I was born. And when they struck, he and union leadership got sent to jail multiple times and got pardoned by the governor multiple times. And that spurred him into my entire childhood. He was the president of the Kansas City Firefighters Union. And he was, he ran for an international position in DC.

You picketed ESPN's firefighters?

You kind of picketed it. I again, I, so I remember that. I remember as a kid, I remember when my parents got divorced and I went with my dad to try to set up his new apartment. We spent like seven hours because he was like, I'm only buying a TV made in America. And I'm like, I don't know, pops. Like that might not exist. Like, and so like I am, I am like a union Democrat as a kid.

Yeah.

I also have always felt the otherization, if you will, of black people in particular, but, you know, in the last, since 9/11, it was Middle Eastern people. And then in the last decade, it's really been Latino people by very loud voices in the conservative wing of the Republican Party was so anathema to what America was. And it was, it was so rallying for me that my career strategy was, I want to one day be a political commentator.

That's so funny. And I wanted. I did the GW basketball play-by-play in college. And I was like, I don't know if I want to do sports. I flipped on you.

And so I, I mean, listen, I always wanted to do sports talk. Don't get me wrong. This is what I wanted to do as a little kid was sports talk. But I became so into politics and I saw what Keith Oberman did. And I was like, he got famous enough in sports that people like cared about Keith Oberman and he then just went to stuff that was more important. And so I said forever, like I'm going to, nobody's going to listen to a 24-year-old, a 26-year-old's takes on politics.

I hope I'm not sending you fully down the KO pipeline right now.

No, I mean, we'll see. And 2016 kind of like broke me. And I know that sounds so soft, but it's just the truth. And I just, I.

Bro, I like didn't leave my room for two months. I watched, I watched Manchester by the Sea like three times. I read A Little Life. I just like kind of just got sad.

Right. And so I then, I then kind of reoriented and I was like, you know what? I don't know if that's, if that's for me. And I'll just parachute in on things that are really stirring to me. Like violence or social justice related things is where I'll pop in. Because the other thing I thought I was like, man, the anti-Trump beat is well covered. Like there's, there's not going to be a lot that I have to say that no one said yet. I was like, guys, got that covered.

Do you have anybody in mind, like Bravis or Burb Street or anybody you're thinking about in particular?

I mean, listen, I, I think that, you know, one of my first TV things ever was with Clay. And then we went, we went to dinner after and he told me, he was like, you know, I worked for Obama and like I just, you know, I just do this or whatever. And I told him, and luckily there was a third person at this dinner, so if he disputes it, I have a witness. I told him, I was like, I want to be very clear. If what you're saying is true, that you don't really believe what you're saying, it's just for audience and enrichment.

Face Trump, do you mean? That he's like basically.

Yeah. I mean, pretty obviously.

Yeah. I mean, dinner with Trump.

And so pretending like, oh, I'm just calling balls and strikes. Like, no, you're not. Like in my field, it's not, the job is not to be unbiased. The job, however, is to be honest with your audience about your biases and then let them call it how they see it. So that's a little bit about me.

How many of those guys do you think are faking it? Because I, and this is another thing that's been, you know, something that I've been monitoring and trying to figure out how to navigate over the last 10 years is, you know, like right after Trump won in '16, there wasn't like a huge circling behind him. Like there were a few people like Clay who like grabbed on to opportunistically to want to talk about it. But it was really this last time, you know, that you saw after he won again, that you saw a lot of people in sports, a lot of people in kind of the man culture MMA world, you know, start to either performatively, you know, in their content and their social media posts like signal that they were at least Trump friendly or interested in it.

So listen, I think it was a combination of, this is not for, I'm not painting everyone with this brush. But it is so much easier to get an audience and make money appealing to the lowest common denominator of the MAGA sphere than it is to do it in sports. Like I'm going to sound like an asshole here, but like actually like achieving at a high level in daily sports talk is.

It's a competitive space.

It's a very competitive space. And you, and you really, really, you have to get lucky, but you also really got to be on it. And so I think it's a lot of folks who are like, I wasn't good enough to do, I wanted to do commentary about X, pop culture, entertainment, sports. I'm not good enough at that. But I know I'm comfortable talking into a camera or a microphone and I can con these people.

How old is your oldest child?

28. I'm a grandfather, Tim. I have a, I have a complicated backstory there, but that's near her age.

Are you using one skin?

No, I'm 40, I'm 42. My wife's 45. But that's neither here nor there.

I'm doing some quick math in my head. I kind of want to be like, hell yeah, Nick Wright, but we'll do that another time. I wasn't, I wasn't, you know, in that world at 14.

And so she, but my middle daughter, when she was finishing high school, starting college, would tell me about how these boys she would go on dates with would like bring up how they love Trump. And it felt like, and I'm not, again, I think some people like love him earnestly for reasons that they believe in like principle, whatever. I'll disagree with them, but I think that, but these were 17-year-old idiots. They did a good job of saying, we're the men, we're the masculine party.

It was tied into crypto. It was, and they did well with young kids of all races, but for white guys in particular, I think there was a little bit of backlash to kind of like BLM, like that stuff like was really in their face. I think that there was some, you know, for good reason in a lot of places, but I just think that it also, you have to be honest, like led to some backlash to that. You know, I think that that like was part of it. So what, taking us up to the midterms, and you talked about this a little bit in your video, but like, what do you think like caused the flip, right? Because the cultural stuff, you know, I mean, Trump was still kind of culturally in vogue through most of the year.

So I think there were a lot of young men that again, weren't dialed into politics and just thought, I want to be on the winning team two years ago and I want to be macho. And so that's, they were like, hey, I guess that means I'm Trump. And I think that they then felt the culture shifting a bit. There was enough of things aren't going the way they said it would go. And enough of, I think, I do think even the social issues are probably the ones that I am the most left wing on, that those are also the ones that I think can turn off a lot of like my audience, like sports talk audience.

You mean the progressive views on social issues like trans or whatever is what turns off the sports talk audience?

I think sometimes, yeah. I think, and, and so I think that had to go to the background because we're at war and things are not going well. And so I think there was a little fickleness for the young people. The point that I made in my post-election commentary was the things that bother me the most about our current government is not why I think they lost this election, but I hope because they lost this election, we can re-center.

You're a soyboy.

Yeah. I mean, it's like hard. People aren't like, they're not going to say, oh, you want, you want high taxes because you don't make money. Like, no, I make, make a lot of money. Like I, I'm in sports. I'm, you know, a semi-professional high stakes gambler. Like a lot of the things that like are not, but, but despite all that, I think it's abhorrent when people are like, hey, you're a retard. Like, what? Are you an adult? Like, I don't like it. And it bothers me at my core. And I do think it's important for men in my position to signal to other men like, hey, it doesn't make you weak to say to people like, don't act like a juvenile and don't be mean for no reason.

Yeah. You said something that I've been very, a phrase that you hear that I've been very hesitant to use myself because I don't, you know, I'm tormented. I have PTSD, but you said you think the fever might've broken on all of that. Yeah. And the fever does extend to just like this acceptance of a bunch of stuff that was not culturally acceptable before. And I look at, you know, you mentioned your video, the, you know, the president and the senator for South Carolina calling Annie Andrews Trani Andrews and just like having that be okay in politics.

And by the way, you said one of the two, is the other one Bo French?

Oh, I don't really care about railroad commissioner, but sure, it would be him. I was going to say Mike Rogers.

No, I just didn't know if there was a, oh Mike Rogers.

I mean, who just, who basically made a campaign like my opponent is a terrorist jihadist. Like that was his campaign.

So here is something that I would like.

Yeah.

And this is about the media. Because one of the things that, and I'm not the first person to make this point, but I really think the media needs to hone in on this, especially over these next couple of years and into the next election. I found, like I said, I'm a 42 year old grandfather, so I don't watch any of the streamers. So I'm, you know, I'm an old, an old man.

You're not in Osmond Gold? You're not.

Right. So I don't, yeah, I'm not into, I don't follow Osmond Gold. I don't follow, like, I don't, I haven't watched Piker. I don't know, I know who they are obviously because I'm politically aware, but I've never, I don't, I don't have Twitch on my phone. I don't really know how I'd watch it. I did once play cards with IShowSpeed, if that counts. Neither here nor there.

That's pretty cool.

I was appalled by the media's flat acceptance and decision that Democrat candidates must answer for and disavow the extreme or ridiculous or in some cases awful things that people who support them in the media said and elected Republican officials have no responsibility whatsoever to disavow awful things that other elected Republican officials said.

Or I don't know, the vice president of the United States.

Or the vice president or any like these, I know everyone says that's a liberal media and I do, yes, I do think most of the people on news television probably vote Democrat, but the way they overcorrect that is they grade what is expected of MAGA Republicans on such a curve. It's like, well, we can't ask them to disavow the crazy shit because there's so much of it. And I, and I think that is hugely problematic.

I endorsed it.

Yeah.

Yeah. I fully endorsed it. And he said that he was upset that the Republicans that were distancing from it.

Right.

And, you know, said he believed the mother and, yeah, I just, she was a homeless lady with her cats in a car that had facilitated the rape of her own daughter. And JD was like, I'm on her side. It's crazy.

It's just so, when you say it, when you actually, like if you were, because there's, God bless them, there's obviously a lot of people that are not dialed in to, you know, to polish like the Ohio gubernatorial race. And I, one of them happens to be my son who I host the podcast with during my political thing. I told the story of Vivek's ad and he had never heard of Amy Acton. I don't know if he's ever heard of Vivek. He's a new father. He's waiting for GTA to come out. He's just living his life in Southern California. And the look on his face as I'm explaining what happened, it was like, what?

Yeah. Here's my media take on you. And this is maybe a strange metaphor, but the problem with the bias in the kind of mainstream media is that, you know, basically MAGA and Trump have been like working the refs for 10 years. And it's kind of like one of these, you know, I remember, I'm not really into hockey anymore, growing up, I was an Avs guy and like the Devils, like there's always things where like the Devils defense is like, we're going to hack them on every play, you know, like we're going to do.

The Legion of Boom Seahawks defense.

Exactly.

Illegal contact every play. You can't call it every time.

You can't call it every play, right? And, and I think that the media, if every day the beginning of the ABC nightly news was Donald Trump lied again today, a Republican said a racist thing today, you know, like then people would be like, well, people would feel like they weren't getting fair news, even though they were, like even though it was true. Like you could start the nightly news every night with whatever the president's lies were or whatever their smears were of other people. And so in order to kind of create this even perception of balance, you know, that is how you get the Piker discourse where like every interview Abdul does, he has to get asked about this when no Republican ever gets asked about Laura Loomer, you know, who is like an advisor to the president and an overt Islamophobe.

To, you know, torture the sports analogy further.

Sure.

Coach Eric Mangini is a, you know, a day one regular on the TV show. And one of his phrases about what Bela check would always say when he was decoordinator for the Pats was once a game gets going and you see other refs are calling it, we're going to do business as business is being done. Meaning if they're calling it tight, we got to be real careful. And if they're letting us play, then we're going to be more physical.

Yeah.

My request to the media would be like everybody's okay with that. What nobody likes in sports is it's called super tight for one team and the other team gets to do whatever they want. That's the complaint about the Oklahoma City Thunder. They hack on every play and then they get every flop call. And that's what it feels to me.

A legit complaint.

Right. Absolutely right. Legit. It is a fair ass.

So Shai is Shai is JD Vance. Shai is JD Vance and this tortured analogy.

That's the meanest thing I ever said about Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. So my, my point would be if the media has decided, listen, we can't start the nightly news every night with some outrageous thing, JD Vance or Laura Loomer or the president said, then those same rules must apply to Hassan Piker or I don't know if we have an official Democrat politician or office holder similar to Laura Loomer. I don't even know who that would be, but, but it can't just be here are the rules over here and here are the rules over here.

Which doesn't exist anymore.

It's kind of what you guys are, right?

Not really. I mean, I guess, you know, now you're kind of asking me to like dive deep into. No, no, it's okay. We're going to do, you know, kind of scientific analysis of the different filum of conservatives, but I guess that was probably like the dispatch or the national review, which is those guys like don't like Trump, but, but have stayed functionally conservative. And I think that what a lot of, I mean, essentially, you know, we are the home of Trump derangement syndrome. And I feel that Trump is so bad that anyone that supported him, even like, even if I would prefer their views on like regulation, I'm kind of like, like the top marginal tax rate being, you know, low thirties or high thirties, like it's not that important to me when, you know, the entire democracy is in threat, right?

That is a very succinct and fancy way of saying you're a good person.

Okay.

And I mean, like, you know. And that to me, that also distilled a lot of how I feel about this, which is the nuanced details about a, about policy that is actually what politicians are supposed to be doing have now been become so secondary for me to a recapture of, you know, sanity, adults in the room and decency that I can't.

I'm not sure that that's going to be the case because I think that that conversation is still going to be happening within the Democratic coalition. I think that's going to happen the next two years, right? Like if a Democrat could win in 29, what, you know, does that look like? Is that Medicare for all or is it some more incremental change to healthcare, like all these kinds of stuff? I think that the way that we had seen right, left before, you know, in the construct where the right was kind of this classically liberal Reagan three-legged stool, which is like strong military, low taxes, family values, and the left is, you know, like more, less involvement in the world and more social services and more progressivism.

Yeah. It's, I mean, it's probably right.

Unfortunately.

It's probably right.

Please support our show and tell them we sent you. One more optimistic thing and then I want to do a little sports stuff with you. I do think another really uplifting thing from Tuesday that you had talked about that I think is relevant to what you said you wanted to engage in when you were going to pick your spots in politics is the backlash that we saw to the way that ICE carried out the deportations and to the Khalil ruling and the attempt to undermine the Voting Rights Act. And I think that the opposition to the Iran war and the backlash against the Iran war, I think, is the big story and the big reason why the blue tsunami was so big.

I think that is totally correct. With that said, one of the things that I struggled with before I started executing people in the street was, man, they did say this was what they wanted to do and they won. And I understand people don't really do like the back of the napkin math. But when they say we are going to deport 20 million people, it's like, okay, let's do the math on that and how long that would take.

We're going to do Melania Coin rug pulls.

Right. We're not right. They didn't campaign, but they did campaign on the deportation stuff.

Yeah.

It was like one of their strongest.

It was right there on the sign.

It was one of their strongest issues in the last election. And then they started doing it. And I think there was a level of denialism from the generic American of like, well, I didn't think they were like serious, serious. It's like, no, they were serious. But the logistics of it made it to where the only way they were going to be able to achieve 10% of that goal was through not just wanton cruelty, but you had to bring in totally inept, incompetent enforcers because there's just not enough, you know, quality candidates or whatever.

Yeah. I mean, both. The answer is both. I mean, Scott Colum was an unbelievable candidate and I, I still thought he was going to come up short. I was a miss on that one, but even while thinking that during the show, I was talking about the ways that he was running a good race and Cindy Hyde Smith was off, I could barely talk. So it is true that there was a big candidate gap, but also like, you know, if you look at Louisiana where that was, you know, less the case, I mean, Julia Lowell wasn't exactly a great candidate. Jamie Davis is, you know, has a good profile, but if black voters had turned out on election day, like at the same level they had an early vote, Jamie Davis would have won.

And this is where I get really, and I usually, it was a little bit of it yesterday. I get my, my back up a bit with some of the super centrist Democrat consultant class types. You know, I got in a little Tet-a-tet, not even Tet-a-tet. I just pointed out how hollow Iglesias is, one of his many ludicrous tweets was yesterday.

Yeah, you were coming to the defense of Abdul's honor. Are you more of an Abdul Democrat? I guess I never really asked you that. Because you said on the thing on Tuesday that like there were, you had some complaints about the Democratic Party the last few years. Like was that, is that because you're more of kind of a populist lefty or were there other things, cultural issues?

So let me answer all those questions at once. I like a lot about Abdul because I really care about, for my politicians' raw intelligence. I think it's very important. I think he's very smart. I care about the fact that I find him genuine. I kind of like that he's a bit, I think he's probably a bit of an asshole. Like not in a bad way, but like the, hey Ellie, you know what? Don't show up. Like that, I don't know if that's great politics, but it kind of reminds me of how I would act.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so, and that really, people were like, that was mean. So like that, the American public reacts to that. The other thing that I feel like the American public reacts to is, wait a minute, I'm struggling to pay for groceries. Are you making hundreds of millions of dollars corruptly with regularity while I'm struggling? And I thought there should have been a far bigger by smart, you know, able to think on their feet, quick Democrats of like, guys, they're stealing.

Yeah.

And they're laughing at you. They are, they are laughing at you and stealing from you. So that's where I wanted a little more of a fight. And I don't even know, I was talking about Iglesias, but then I forgot what I was saying. But so like, I don't, oh, I do want to say this because of the tweet I sent. I don't know actually if I am more Medicare for all or public option. I haven't spent enough time really investigating the details on it.

Sure.

I do know that I find it repugnant that someone who does politics for a living would earnestly have the opinion that anyone who ran for office and won that one week after winning should abandon the things they ran on for political expediency. You, there is nothing inherently valuable about winning. What is valuable is what you are able to do if you win.

I'm with you on this. I got in a fight with another, with my guy Josh Barrow. I'll just out them. It's fine because we're big boys. I had Josh meeting the other day. Yeah, I do too. I'm with you. Medicare for all, the healthcare is not my hobby horse. I'm not trying to pretend like I know the best way to fix our broken healthcare system. Like immigration is my hobby horse. Like I think what we're doing is absolutely disgusting. I was horrified by the meekness of the Democrats after Trump won that they weren't fighting it tooth and nail. And there was just this kind of conventional wisdom that like, oh, Trump won on immigration. That's a winner for him. We should not talk about that.

There also is a level of, I think, on the things that you truly believe are moral imperatives or are things that you campaigned black and white on, that you have to be willing at times to say, you know what, fulfilling this promise or attempting to actually, it's the right thing to do. It will, you know, on the long spectrum of history, it will be looked at fondly.

To navigate it.

I'm going to find other ways to win those people back. I thought the Democrats allowing trans issues to be center point of a presidential election was such an own goal in that I don't think, and maybe this is, you know, cost me some of my lefty bona fides. I don't know why people care about it so much because it's such a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage. But I do think as someone in sports that if somebody wants to say, hey, I stand for your rights to dignity and everything in life.

We're way over. We're doing rapid-fire sports. Are you ready? Are you capable of rapid-fire?

Oh, I told you I'll do it.

But whatever. I mean, I got nowhere to be. So just let you know. One bridge sports politics question. My guy Kyle Kuzma, who, you know, I have a little bit of a crush on. He's been tweeting some bad tweets lately. Saddam Hussein kept Christians as his personal staff.

It's not lately. It's for years. He used to have AI write his tweets, I think. And they were long. And no, he's.

He was impressed with Donald Trump's 60 Minutes interview. How is this like, what do people think about this in the locker room? I guess my question, if you have pro and pro-Trump tweets all the time when your team is one and nine.

I think in major league baseball locker rooms, it probably does well. I think in NFL locker rooms, it does a little better than you would expect. And I think in NBA locker rooms, it does terribly. And I also think Kyle Kuzma is, I don't think people around the NBA look at him as a thought leader, but I think he looks at himself as a thought leader. But I think he is, I think he's a bit of a doofus is how I would say it kindly.

Yeah. I mean, he's bringing the podcast equipment on the road. It's like my guy, dude, make some jumpers.

No, no. And the team's terrible. He is a champion, won a championship.

You can do the crossover, Nick, right? Because you're succeeding in your role as the Fox Sports One co-host. You know what I mean? Like you got to get the first part right. Okay. Give me an NBA and NFL Mississippi. Like do we have a surprising success? I'm looking, maybe my Bengals, Joe Burrow and the Bengals.

I don't know. Yeah. If they qualify as surprising, definitely.

I mean, were they to win, make the Super Bowl, that would be.

Yeah. I mean, listen, I think they are, I think the Bengals are crazy dangerous. And listen, I'm a die-hard, born and bred Kansas City Chiefs fan.

We're getting to that next.

And, but, so I said on the show yesterday that of all the AFC playoff teams, the worst matchup for my Chiefs is your Bengals because of if you can't get to Burrow, like he's just, they're going to throw the ball 50 times a game. NBA surprise, I don't know if right now it would still qualify as surprise, but the Rockets can win the championship and it would be wild for Durant to do that in year 20 or whatever it is, but the Rockets can win the whole thing. Are you a Spurs fan?

No, no, no. I'm Nuggets. I grew up in Denver and I live in Louisiana. Yeah. So we're about to get there. So I'm Broncos and Nuggets. Burrow is via LSU.

Your Broncos are such, such luck boxes. Make me so mad.

Dude, it's unbelievable. Let's pay back. I was going to tell you, one of my core lost childhood memory is we're about the same age. You probably remember this. 94. I was there for Monday Night Football when Montana, you know, had come to the Chiefs late career and he leads the comeback to defeat the Broncos. I walked out of there sad. People in Chiefs jerseys were rude to me as a middle school child.

You guys in the '90s kind of got over on us a bit.

We did.

You guys kind of owned that matchup and you, and your LA ripped our hearts out repeatedly. So I don't have a lot of sympathy for one Monday Night Football game, the one year. How about this? So that year you're talking about with Joe Montana.

Yeah.

Was the Chiefs between that year and Patrick Mahomes' first season, won one playoff game.

That's your entire, like, coming of age, high school, you know, it's like my high school buddies were winning the championship. I was at the parade during high school.

In that time period, you guys went to four Super Bowls and won three of them.

Yeah. Two. Well, three.

No, you won three.

The Peyton one was before your next.

Yes, exactly.

Shit. That was a long fucking time. I was working for Jeb during the Peyton one. That's my whole life. Yeah. I do, my other Chiefs trauma memory is the, is, it was right after that is during the Monday Night Football game where Mahomes beats us with the side pass.

Oh, the left-handed, the left-handed pass.

Yeah. I remember messaging my brother. I was like, we're going to lose to these fucking guys for 15 years. And it was basically what happened until the, until the luck box this year. So I do think, I guess we are going to have to close with the Jokic though, because you first came into my worldview, not with your kind of bold, principled, inspiring takes on the.

When I called Jokic the worst MVP of the last 40 years.

Yeah. On my Nuggets text chain here on the WhatsApp, you were exclusively Nick Wrong up until about two years ago.

Yeah.

You had been blocked. Several people, I think, blocked you on social media because of your anti-Jokic takes. I'm in my, I'm in my fat, fat Jokic shirt right now as a troll. That was a big miss for you on the, on the sports, on the sports.

One of my big, one of my biggest ever.

What was that? Was that, you know, reverse racism, anti-Serbia bias?

No.

We just kind of so blinded.

It wasn't any of those things, but I will say when at its peak, I got some of, like, I think sports folks who are like, I get death threats. I'm like, ah, was it delivered to your house in scary letters? Then sure, call it a death threat. Was it an anonymous account sending a DM, pipe down? I think you're okay. With that said, I got a few DMs that I had to click the translate now button and I, and I was like, these are not anonymous folks and I don't think they're joking.

Have you been to the, have you been to Denver? I was about to call it the Pepsi Center.

I've been to Denver. I've never been to Ball Arena or whatever.

You can probably come down. We can probably go do a game together. I don't think you'd be booed anymore. A couple, you get some jeers. I think people are over it.

People in general are pretty nice in person. Like I, I get a lot of, yo.

I was pretty bitter during that Nuggets run. I was there at the championship game one. I forget who it was, but I did kind of get in the grill of a sports guy, of a sports commentator who'd been wrong about the Nuggets. I was just like, what do you think about this?

Do you know who it was?

Who was it? God, I'm having a blank. He lives in, he lives in Oakland. He lives in the Bay. I'd met him before because he lives in the Bay.

Was it Marcus Thompson? Oh, it was Mark Spears.

Mark Spears.

It was Mark Spears.

It was a good nature of the game.

But like, I just, he was like, we were walking past each other with the thing. I was like, how are we looking now, Mark Spears? How's he looking now? How's Jokic looking now?

That's awesome. I'd had a couple pops. You know, this game one is, I mean, it's our only, it's probably the only NBA finals I'll get to go to, right? Is it over? Is our peak over? It's over, right? Is there any path back?

I don't think so. I mean, with a player as great as you, here's the other, the sneaky thing. And again, now I'm going to get back on those bad text chains. Even if this happens, you probably don't have the pieces, but something that has to happen is Joker has to get back to, right now he's like the fifth best player in the league. For there to be a path, he has to be the best. Like it has to be that he is back to being the best. But I still think team got a little overloaded.

They need more athleticism, man. They just have looked so unathletic the last few playoffs.

Just can't rely on Aaron Gordon's hamstrings and he can't be running.

I was probably so mad we lost Piwatt. I mean, Piwatt's nothing special, but he just was at least athletic. I was like, we need more athletic dudes around Jokic.

Yeah, that's right.

Anyway. All right. You got anything for me? Anything, any final? This is your chance to become KO. Do you have any one last hot take or political question or anything?

No, listen, thank you first of all for having me on.

Dude, thanks for doing it.

I just want to say this to my friends and not friends in sports media that dabble or do politics. Because this I think is important and real and leave it on this. In sports, I try to be very, like actually know what I'm talking about, watch the games, be educated. With that said, if you're not and you're talking about the NFL trade deadline or who's going to win the fucking NBA finals, it's really, if you're just bullshitting, it's really no harm.

Nick, right? It's been such a pleasure. Come on back anytime. Educated. Not, you know, football season, you got to lock in now.

It got a lot going on, man. Football season's going on. Yeah. There's a lot going on.

Next year in All-Star Break. Maybe an All-Star Break check-in.

Would love to. Thank you, Tim.

All right, brother. We'll see you soon.

Appreciate it.

Thanks so much to Nick Wright, man. That was a delight. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, but we got a firecracker coming next. It's Anderson Clayton. Stick around. And we're back. She's chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, elected three years ago at age 25. She's the youngest chair of a state Democratic Party.

What's up, Tim Miller?

What is wrong?

Holy shit.

I know, I know.

Can you believe it? I think we're going to close the congressional race again yesterday. We still have a couple more to go.

Do you? I mean, it's going to be 11 to 3, is it not?

It's going to be 11 to 3. There's still, I had a couple people that's still not calling Chuck's race in NCO5 yet. And so a lot of folks are like, Anderson, is it going to, is it not? And I'm like, no, Virginia Fox is done for in Congress right now. Let me assure you. But I get that folks are watching recounts and everything like that that are going to be potentially happening in North Carolina. So people are anxious a little bit in the state.

The joy of retirement, Virginia Fox. Well, I do have to tease you. You know, obviously I have to tease you at the start because we had you on the YouTube before the election and I was feeling sleepers. I had so much faith in you. I had more faith in you than you had in you. And I was like, I think you're going to win North Carolina six. I was like, it might be nine to five. And you were like, Tim Miller. You were like, Tim Miller, nine to five? Cyril Jefferson? No way. I was like, I'll bet you. I'll bet you. And so you're going to owe me a drink when you get down to North, when you get down to New Orleans or in Denver this week.

I owe a lot of people drinks, I feel like, about congressional races this year, but it was, it was inspiring because I got to hear a lot of our congressional candidates talk about how much the county parties and their backyards really believed in them. And I was like, look, I was watching a lot of, I guess, a lot of polls, which, you know, not necessarily the best thing for, I think, a state party chair to get caught up in sometimes, but it's kind of hard not to when every donor apparatus is around you and also when everybody else is. And so it was interesting to me to see the surprises on Tuesday because I was like, God, it gave me a renewed faith in people on the ground in North Carolina too.

All right. Well, I had to tease you first. We didn't really start at the start, but, you know, when I, when I have one over you, I had to tease you. So let's just back it up. For people that don't know your story, I mean, one of the main things that you were working on when you got in there at 25 was Democrats got to go talk to people everywhere, all over the state. You know, it just can't be in the research triangle and Charlotte and the burbs and, you know, the other little pockets. And, and like that work is what really pays off here on election day last week.

Yeah, I think it goes back to 2022 in North Carolina. We've been known federally as the great white whale for a long time because we could not win a federal election since Obama won us in 2008. And in 2022, North Carolina left 44 state legislative seats uncontested. It was the most we had ever left uncontested in state history. And that was sort of how you got the insurgent party chair candidate, Anderson Clayton, because I got really pissed off after 2022's election cycle because we had left almost 3 million people across North Carolina without somebody on the ballot to vote for.

You're out there. You are rural. You live in like, what's it called? Human County? Where do you live?

Person County. Come on, Tim.

I'm sorry. Chuck Person. I should remember that. That's my basketball.

But Human County. I like that. It's a person, you know.

Person County. What is that? Roxboro though? Do I have that right? Roxboro, right?

Come on.

All right. I'm doing pretty good.

Look at the memory. Look at the memory.

Roxboro. I mean, you're out there. We were talking about this. You're like, your neighbors are MAGA. You know, you guys were organizing in these towns or all these, you know, some of them are listening to this. So these little blue humans in these red parts of the country, you talk to them and organize them. Like what do you think was it that resonated with people? Like was it, I mean, obviously getting the candidates on the ballot, like that was step one. Okay. Like after that, is it turning out all the little blue dots? Was it persuasion? If it was persuasion, like what were the, you know, things you were winning people over on?

I mean, I don't think you can deny that this election was also a referendum on the White House in every way. And that, you know, something that I think Republicans have actually made possible is that folks are looking more local to elections right now. And honestly, that are more pissed off. And Republicans to me have really driven up Democratic turnout in down ballot elections because of the fact that Democrats are looking at everywhere as a line of defense against Donald Trump, or at least trying to. And so for us, it's been about how do we engage in communities year round? How do we show up and shake everybody's hand?

Congressman elect.

Congressman elect. But one thing that I heard from folks afterwards is that they were like, look, I'm a Republican, but I've known, like I've known Cyril, like for a long time. And he's been somebody that's been in the community. He stood up for not just Democrats and not just independents and not just Republicans, but everybody. And I think that a lot of people knew who they were voting for on a ballot this year because they'd shaken their hand and met them. And I don't think that we can negate the power of person-to-person contact, especially when you're looking at districts where you had to win over Republican voters in order to be able to win them because they were on nobody's radar on election night.

Yeah. I talked to Lakesha Womack.

I know you did, Tim Miller. One of my favorite interviews. Come on. My queen.

I was like, she didn't even have a staff. You know, that race, like there was, forget national money. You know, there's all the, in the DCs, there's always like these stories in the week after the election of, oh, the DNC didn't do this. So the DSCC didn't do that. It's like she won with nothing, but nobody was occurring to her kid, volunteers. She had a plan. I mean, that is, that's pretty wild experience.

No, it has to be. And now she's the fifth member of Congress or black woman from Congress for North Carolina that's ever been elected. And when you think about it, it's the, it's a huge, I think, showcase to power for people on the ground and also what a good election cycle and a good candidate at the top of the ballot can turn out to be. Because I think that Lakesha made her way. I was out there with her in Polk County and Burke County and Rutherford County. Tim Miller, I wish you could, this woman stood toe to toe with people who looked at her and said, you shouldn't put your face on your yard signs.

Like they were for her and they said that they were trying to, like that was good.

Yes. Like they were, like that's how, I mean, that's how people felt.

Maybe she would just have to put, we can just say it, say this. It's okay. We're on a podcast, but like, I mean, she, what is she just going to do her last name? Like, I don't know. I mean, maybe Lakesha in like really small letters.

No.

How are you going to trick people?

Well, that's what she said. She was like, my name is Lakesha Womack. I'm not going to hide from anybody about who I am. And it just, to me, it showcased even to our own party about who is electable, who can get in office. And it challenged people's narratives, especially in communities that like oftentimes we think we have to have a cookie-cutter type of candidate to be able to run in certain types of districts. And I'm like, actually, you need a candidate that wants to work hard. Find somebody who wants to visit all of your counties. Find somebody who doesn't have, who wants to talk to everybody and isn't afraid of what type of party affiliation somebody has.

I mean, a lot of this is the work on the ground. We should also mention, I mean, having Roy Cooper at the top of the ticket definitely made a difference. And I think that he, when I had him on, we kind of talked about this. It's like, no, there's, because of, you know, the nature of who he is and he's been around for a while, there's nobody that's like, we really should look to the Roy Cooper model for 2028. You know, everybody's trying to look to John Ossoff or Abdul or Chalerico or one of the younger people, right? But like Roy Cooper showed how to reach. I mean, this is a story that it's both turnout and persuasion. I mean, he reached out and Jamie Eggert too, like, they created this permission structure, I do think, for a lot of people in North Carolina to feel like the Democrats aren't scary.

No, but I think what's, what people miss about Roy Cooper a lot of times is the fact that he has been a 40-year public servant in the state of North Carolina. So yes, rural people, my best friend looked at me the day and he said, oh, my dad voted for Roy. And like, my dad, his dad is not a Democrat by any circumstance, right? He's a Republican in Roxboro and somebody that to me is like, he voted for someone who he had known throughout North Carolina politics. And what I think people miss is that Roy Cooper started in the state legislature. And when we're looking at what the future of the buildback for the Democratic Party is, it's got to be looking at uplifting those bottom-level legislators right now who are going to be the future U.S.

Yeah. For people, I mentioned a few times, if people don't know, he's the farmer out in like, in Western North Carolina.

Fairview, baby. Come on. Fairview, North Carolina.

I can't get all your counties. All right.

Jamie Eggert represents. But no, I think it's incredible.

Can we do some Schadenfreude? You're closer to this than me. So I really need you to, I need the, I need bad Anderson to come out just for like two minutes. Okay. Just, just, just, just for a second. Because you had these Republicans in your state that put in one of the nastiest Jerry Manders in the whole country. And we're going to get to the state Senate in a second. But this is, you know, you guys hadn't won a state ride since 2008, but like all these races are close. You know, any fair look at North Carolina, you know, would think this should be maybe an eight-six Republican map as like the starting point, you know, based on what the results have been.

Oh, you got two people to blame. And honestly, one of them already found their exit this cycle with Phil Berger and Destin Hall. So Destin Hall being my two, my two-year, my one-term House Speaker, Speaker of the House because of the fact that he decided to get really greedy and actually put up a tweet back in 2025 about how good of a map redrawer he actually was. He said, I'm quite something at redistricting myself. And I was like, well, I bet you are. Because you just lost quite a bit in North Carolina.

All right, Destin. You are such a good map drawer. We appreciate it. Thank you. The Democrats couldn't have even drawn themselves an 11 to 3 map.

And no.

I get only to, like the only way to get here was through a greedy Republican trying to gerrymander. And that's pretty enjoyable.

I will say though, Tim Miller, you never met Colton Browder. Colton Browder could draw, Colton Browder could draw the Democrats at 11 to 3 map in North Carolina. That man could figure it out if he needed to.

Are there any other people you want to introduce me to? We've talked about Cyril, Lakesha, and Jamie Eggert. Do you have any other, you know, bullwork faves, incoming bullwork faves in the delegation?

You're going to love Paul Berringer if you've not already interviewed him. That's going to be someone.

I need to.

No former.

Tell us about him.

Former Republican lawyer, someone who also won Johnston County this year, which if anyone's listening to this knows North Carolina or knows Johnston County, you know that that in and of itself is a fucking miracle, to be honest with you. Because that county is one of the faster growing and reddest counties that used to be in the state. And Johnston County has really, because of the population increases and sort of people moving out from Wake County, has gotten more and more. But I think about it all the time of just Paul Berringer ran and he said, Anderson, look, I'm going to give it all I've got this year.

Did he beat Brad Knot, right?

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And then I'm sure y'all have already interviewed Richard Ojeda. That man is becoming, I saw a tweet the other day that said, we're all living in Ojeda the movie and we're just background characters. And I feel that way too. But he is.

I haven't talked to either of them yet. I have to. I have both of them on the list. Richard Ojeda is the guy who ran in West Virginia, where my husband's from, kind of his populist left campaign. And he's told us just an amazing story about how his dad passed away.

I have Parkinson's.

Yeah. But like after he got to see him win the congressional race, really moving. So we'll have him on too. All right. Let's get down to business. When we talked last, you know, you were like, it's going to take, you know, we got to win two straight cycles to fix the mess. Because we have to win all the Supreme Court justices in 2028. Looking ahead to 2028 now, you guys are going to have another Senate seat up. So, you know, we can talk about that. The state Senate was the one place where their gerrymander still worked. It's insane.

Look, I'm looking at the state Senate where Phil Berger, again, who was the Senate majority leader, got ousted in this cycle to Sam Page, who was a Republican that ran on helping make sure that public education had school funding. So we're looking at private school vouchers in North Carolina this year and ensuring that we can reverse the amount of money that Republicans have dumped into unaccountable private school vouchers in the state. I believe we will have some of those Republicans in the state Senate who ran on at least fully funding public schools. And if they're not interested in a bipartisan effort to do that, I'm going to be excited to be out in their districts in 2028, Tim Miller.

All right. So the other big one, as I mentioned, you've got a Senate race. Who knows? You got a lot. You got 11 House members now. So who knows? Could be a big primary. You got Jeff Jackson. You've got a lot of stars now. So we'll see. You know, I was pushing it to be you, Anderson Clayton, in 2028, but it seems like you got a big, you got a big bench that you can be the coach for, for that Senate race. And then the presidential, of course. And so, you know, thinking back to like what we learned from this time, obviously it's a midterm that is going to be a little bit more beneficial to the Democrats, you would think, just by the nature of the coalitions right now.

I mean, I want them to show up in places that are not just Raleigh and Charlotte, to be honest with you, in this state. And I think that it's important to listen to people on the ground about where you need to be and where the energy that you carry is best placed. Because I think a lot of people do surrogate trips to North Carolina. And sometimes they're sitting in a room of 15 people. And I'm like, look, if you're not in a crowd of at least 100 to 150 to maybe 1,000, I've not done my job right. And we've not put you in the right places. And I think that that's also a reflective point of just sometimes how people get connected into the state of North Carolina.

All right. Final question. I'm going to ask you to rank your favorite Democratic Congress members one to 11 and then your favorite presidential contenders one to 20. You can do that for me, right?

Yeah. Tim Miller, Tim Miller, Tim Miller.

Come on. You know, you're not going to do, you're not going to rank your favorite children for me, Anderson Clayton?

I'm hoping all my children are going to work real hard for me this year, you know, because I've got to, I got to take my 11 members of Congress and get them all call time lists for their local municipal offices in 2027 in North Carolina so they can go help me recruit people to be in their own backyard. So if you're listening to this and you're in North Carolina and you want to be the change in your own backyard, go to ncdp.org/runforoffice because we want to recruit you.

That is Anderson Clayton. We just need 49 more of you. We'll be in good shape. All right, girl. I'll see you out in Denver and let's stay in touch. Okay.

Thanks, Tim Miller.

Thanks, Nick Wright and Anderson Clayton. Boy, howdy. We are rolling, huh? We are rolling. We got another good one coming for you tomorrow and another good one Friday. It is a murderer's road this week. So make sure you're catching all the shows. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Peace.