Haley Barbour

Mm-hmm.

[laughs] And then, then Bevin said, "Well, if you're gonna say that, you gotta tell everybody the story about, um, Haley Barbour." And, uh, so Carl told this story about Haley Barbour, who apparently said once to Carl, um, "The public understands that as you as, uh, you, that you as a politician are out there all the time talking so much, every once in a while you're gonna step on your D." He said, "And they'll forgive you.

What they don't want is for you to take it out of your pocket [laughs] and jump up and down on it."

[laughs] Classic Haley Barbour.

[laughs]

So is that what the president [laughs] did here?

Like, I'm trying, like, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to use, I'm trying to check myself.

Am I, am I only seeing one set of results or one set of data? But this really looks to me as if, um, the old Haley Barbour-ism, "Good gets better, bad gets worse," and the Republican situation looks like it gets worse every single day.

That is a perfect segue-

I mean, every single day it looks worse

It's not getting better.

Speaking of Mississippi, what Haley Barbour says, right? What is it? Good gets better and bad gets worse? Yeah.

Good gets better and bad gets worse, yep.

[laughs]

When Kiffin left, Mississippi was about to take part in the college football playoffs.

Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is a bit more direct.

I, I think he's a narcissist.

And Ole Miss student Bailey Wood compares it to being dumped by a boyfriend.

Uh, you can build an eight-foot wall, but if you have a 10-foot wave, it's not doing you a whole lot of good.

And I, I just, I, I'm reminded of that, that great philosopher, we're here with Elise, from Mississippi, Haley Barbour, who's got one of my favorite lines in politics, especially in wave years, Joe.

Haley likes to say-

Yeah

It was like, "Hey, what is this, the Taylor Sheridan Democratic Party? You're all, you're fly fishing while you're talking, you know, about- Politics? That's really, really strange.

I did wanna point out that Eliana, you, uh, mentioned Trump coming in with a huge amount of money, and there is precedent for Republicans saving themselves in a bad year with a judicious application of late spent money, and I wanna quote a piece that I commissioned and published in 1996, uh, for the Weekly Standard from the, uh, now maybe the most famous magazine and repertorial journalist in America, Dave Gran, uh, then a young reporter in Washington, about Haley Barbour, [clears throat] then the head of the Republican National Committee.

We called it Haley Barbour, Riverboat Gambler.

Uh, the piece was about the strategy, which was, um, the Braveheart strategy as he and Barbour, uh, sort of characterized it, which is hold, hold, hold.

Don't spend the money too early.

And so, uh, if Trump and his people have a strategy, gra-granted that was a presidential year, but if Trump and his people have a strategy that isn't just throwing money at things and seeing if it'll stick, if they have a strategy for running against Talarico, if they have a strategy, uh, for dealing with, um, uh, sort of neg-negating the negatives of, of, uh, of Ken Paxton in Texas, uh, maybe they can spend that money wisely and well to shore up John Husted in, in Ohio to help, uh, in Iowa, to help Susan Collins in Maine and all of that.

But I don't trust that these guys are...

Uh, I knew Haley Barbour.

No.

But, but there used to be a road show with Haley Barbour-

Mm-hmm

...

the Republican, and Leon Panetta, the Democrat.

Mm-hmm.

And they would g- It wasn't a comedy show, but they had fun with it-

It's all, it's all-