The tequila was real, the Wi-Fi was not, and somewhere over the Atlantic Delta Airlines scrambled Cliff’s computer so thoroughly that this week’s Tequila Talk opened in glorious technological chaos. It only got better from there. Cliff—fresh off a red-eye from Sicily—and our favorite recovering Republican Joe Walsh poured a couple of drinks and went somewhere real. It’s funny, it’s furious, and it’s the kind of unscripted cross-aisle conversation you don’t get anywhere else. A taste of where they went:
1. The night everything broke. Delta fried Cliff’s machine somewhere over the Atlantic, and the meltdown opened onto a question neither of them could shake.
2. The AI stat that should keep you up at night. There’s one number in Lawrence’s Blue Amp piece that’s enough to ruin your evening. Cliff says it out loud.
3. Bread, circuses, and a fight on the South Lawn. Why Cliff thinks the spectacle on the White House lawn is lifted straight from the last days of Rome.
4. The predator class, then and now. Gladiator, an emperor’s island, and a through-line to today’s headlines you won’t be able to unsee.
5. Empire on its last legs, or a wake-up call? Joe makes the case for why all of this might—somehow—be the good news.
6. Obama’s bad take. One quote set Cliff off, and it turned into a reckoning with the party’s own leadership.
7. The Democrats who actually fight. A short list of names Cliff will go to the mat for. Worth seeing whether yours made it.
8. The party’s “Tea Party moment.” Where the anger goes next, and the point at which it curdles into something darker.
9. Antisemitism, Israel, and the test of consistency. The most charged stretch of the night—the line Joe won’t cross, and the one “tell” Cliff watches for.
10. And a few things you’ll want to see to believe. A missing drug, a viral buffalo, an unlikely court brief, and Cliff’s flat-out prediction for Ohio.
Plus a look at the week ahead. Watch the full conversation, then come find us in the comments.
Cliff’s Note: Here’s the thing. We do this because the truth needs to be at least as loud as the lies—and that costs money the billionaires would love us not to have. If you get something out of these conversations, become a paid subscriber.
It’s five bucks a month, a single latte, and it buys you the new weekly strategy memo drawn straight from my years on presidential campaigns, the paid-subscriber Substack Live, the chat, and the satisfaction of funding media that nobody can buy off. If a paid subscription isn’t in the cards right now, drop something in our Ko-fi—every dollar keeps the lights on and the predators nervous.
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Free subscribers, paid subscribers, Ko-fi tippers, loudmouths in the comments—you are the whole operation. As the sun sets slowly in the west, my friends: come join us at blueamp.co.
