Reince Priebus on taking over a broke RNC, party politics, the Trump White House & more

all right good thursday morning uh this is the first time that i've had a guest who was my boss uh reince priebus is our guest today he was chairman of the rnc uh my boss for six years and then obviously white house chief of staff he is now chairing the host committee in wisconsin he's bringing the next convention in 2024 to milwaukee but how did all this happen we delve into his past um how that whole evolution happened how an early state senate loss helped shape the career trajectory that he has now um so much that if you are a political junkie you are going to love this conversation because we get into a lot of the minutia of what really happens on a campaign how the rnc and how political parties really work how decisions get made we talk a little bit about the state of the rnc not too many years ago uh financially and some of the sacrifices that reince and the team made at that time um but if you love politics are you gonna love this and we're what 80 no not shoot we're less than 80 days from the campaign right now so we're in this we're in a season man so this is this is if you're gearing up for the midterm elections this is a conversation that you are going to want to hear so without further ado ladies and gentlemen reince priebus [Music] all right folks this is the first uh i'm actually this is uh this is we've had a lot of great folks on on the show a lot of former colleagues but this is the first time i've had my former boss on the show reince priebus welcome to the podcast um you know it's it's odd i've prepped you for a lot of interviews and now this is the first time i'm interviewing you yeah i had to i had to prep myself for this one sean so i mean don't take advantage of all of this but um it's good to be on and obviously you've you've gone to bigger and better places no i well and a lot of it is because of you so let's just get that out of the way early uh you took a chance of me a young kid from rhode island that that just was looking for a chance and and you saw that hope and that promise and so uh well i you know what i i did we came into the rnc all right we're gonna get to that i want to save the stories because i want to get to that all right all right go ahead i i appreciate that i want to start though with i and and i think that the thing that's interesting about this this episode is i i hope to bring a lot to the listeners um that that in a weird way i know a lot because i've worked with you i've staffed you and i've had to get a lot of the answers but i think that the fun i've always you know when when i started with you um you know we we um we're doing these speeches and we're going out on the road and trying to introduce people to this new chairman and of course what's the elephant in the room whose rights and what's a right so i mean i you've had to deal with this your whole life like let's start with with that like talk to me about growing up with a name like reince because you talked about it all the time in your speeches at the rnc so you're growing up as a kid and i know you joke about this you know your wife is sally your kids are jacking grace but you grew up as a rights and and what was that like growing up with a name i mean look you're making sound bites you're making sound bites i can hear it now you grew up as a right um well um my my mom was born in sudan in a in a way it's not a strange uh story but you know the greeks and italians back in the 60s and 50s northern africa was sort of the new frontier and so in a greek family it is very very common to name your kids after the father's father which is why in my big fat greek wedding when when if you recall the portacollis family the father who was meeting eon miller uh introduced all the greeks to eon miller and lo and behold it was nick nicki nick nick nick nick and this is nico and i am gus well that is very common so okay so i'm born in this greek family that moved from northern africa to new york new jersey eventually wisconsin and what do you name the child well turns out that my father's father is german and that was his name so there was really no thought about it no like hey you know i wonder how this is going to play out um you know but it is one of these names that is you know i'm i'm happy i have it now but i can assure you well i was gonna say on the first day of school it was always like terror and i would be thinking to myself you know oh my gosh i gotta meet all these new people i got to start over and it's the name and but you know what now it is a good thing because there are no there's just no one with this name i mean i got my own how many people have their first name as their twitter handle i was gonna say i mean that's the thing as you get older it becomes a very distinctive it's like there's no one goes which lines are you talking about that's right right um all right so let's see so the kids like so i killed off this tradition you understand i mean so like you said it's jack and grace you know and that's it so it's over now and um but i'm happy i have it now and yes it has been very your kids troublesome thing when you went to name your kids were your parents sort of like what do you mean you're killing this off like you have an obligation they're like hey we got it no no no they've heard enough whining and complaining over the years from me about it all that they've sort of just there was no expectation whatsoever right they were like okay sorry about that um i want to fast forward i want to fast forward because because you know we'll we'll just let that go on you you know you you you go on to law school um you get a great job you become a partner at a very i probably the prestigious firm in in wisconsin and then you go on to run for the wisconsin state senate um you lose that race but i think that the thing that i always find so fascinating when looking at people's lives is so many times it's those moments that are the the pivotal moments in their life like had you won that state senate race you wouldn't be where you are today i don't think what what did you take from that loss um well first of all you're right so i ran for state senate in 2004 in a presidential year in kenosha wisconsin which for the listeners is at the time was pretty democratic and in fact never did not have a republican representing that area for 30 40 years so i was kind of honestly looking back now maybe dreaming a little bit but not knowing what i know now about all these things that at the time i thought i was going to be taking on the world i was going to shock everyone and win this thing it came really close in fact the milwaukee radi tv station had me down as the winner i knew better even with the check mark next to my name knowing where the numbers were coming in and i said to paul ryan at the time who was still the congressman there we were close friends like that's not going to hold so that's not going to happen but you know you're right i would have lost even if i won an 04 it's a four-year seat i would have lost four years later because barack obama came into wisconsin and blew the doors off and there was just no way i was going to go against that grain so i would have certainly lost four years later uh but between the time he became chair of the that's just going to be wisconsin but but that's the thing is that you went from wanting to run for elective office where you would have been dealing with policy to saying let me focus on party politics what why what was that what was the turn well i always um i always loved party politics you know it was really what drives me and you know me i love the politics of campaigning and and finding the right candidate in the right message but just to go back sean i was involved in the republican party in wisconsin and the kenosha county republican party when i was in high school and i was kind of like a nerd alert i did other fun things i wasn't like a complete nerd i was a fun person to be with but honestly um i loved it and i loved that part of politics i was the i was involved there i was in the i was the congressional chairman for the party and then i ran for state senate and then i got back into the state but but you're right i mean god opens up these doors and takes at the time this horrible disappointment you know i was very young embarrassed that i lost and i thought i was going to be like this next person that was going to be elected and i was gonna change things and do good by my community and you know raised a lot of money felt guilty that i didn't win because i felt like i took a lot of money from people and i promised things that i was gonna win it didn't happen so i went from being really sort of devastated by it all and feeling like i failed to this other world that really i'm grateful that god opened a door for because i loved it i felt like i was really good at it i think i'm good at party politics and all of a sudden i became general counsel of the rnc well yeah i wanna i wanna explain that to explain people that so so the rnc is made up of 168 members the state party chairman of all the states and territories and then a national committee man and national committee woman of each of the states so that that when you do the math on that including the territories and just colombia comes up to 168 so everyone that's involved in rnc effectively calls it the 168. so when you became chairman of the r of the wisconsin state party you by default become a member of the rnc the 168 recognizing your legal background they tap you as the uh as the general counsel which is you know kind of the head of the legal wing of the party right so right walk us through that well it it also put you in the position to interact with all the members so it's sort of a general counsel is a huge title and it is important at the rnc it is a job that puts you like you say into the legal department but there's also a chief counsel there but really what the general counsel ends up becoming is sort of the interface of everything going on legally the convention resolutions the rules committee the rnc and and that exposes you to the entire as you say 168 168 members of the rnc and i did that and i loved it and um and i thought i did a good job and obviously you know that a couple years later there was an election for chair right so that's that's what i want to get to the interesting thing is so the general counsel is appointed by the chairman who at that time was michael steele and he appoints you that because you obviously had been a very successful lawyer you had been a successful state party chairman in wisconsin you had actually flipped wisconsin um from from blue to red uh so i think there was this this like hey this guy knows the law he knows politics let's make him the general counsel and and steele obviously has some trouble and leading the rnc there's then you know his term is up but he's the incumbent he's running for another term you then challenge him why well i thought sean that number one i i knew the votes i knew that at the time he wasn't going to be successful in re-election lots of folks tried to talk to michael about not running knowing where things were going to go almost his entire team walked them through that and knowing where that was going to head and knowing where we needed to go on the rnc and knowing what we'd just done in wisconsin in taking a state that had nothing when it came to republicans other than our rising star at the time paul ryan um it really was something that was remarkable and a very large group of people came to me and said look we can win this thing it's really the only road i think that that is going to be successful so i took a risk and it was a huge risk and you know i i think i was a much bigger risk taker then than i am now but i did it and exposed myself to that and literally spent uh two months traveling i want to get to how many ballots did it take for you to win well it wasn't i could i couldn't call it a landslide sean i won on the seventh ballast after like i don't know how many hours it took certainly again you know a guy named reince priebus from wisconsin you know it's gonna take a while and it did take a while but i said listen i went from i didn't know what a a combi plane was uh but i on on the 26th of december i took a combi 747 to fairbanks alaska to go eat moose steaks with members of the rnc traveling every corner of this country and i i still took me seven ballots to do it but i did it and i was um honestly i was just grateful for the opportunity so that's when that's when you and i cross paths you get elected um you tortured me by going through multiple interview processes i think i had to go through as many interviews as you went through ballots i don't remember that i remember getting that was the only one i was in no no i'm kidding i'm kidding it was it was actually a pretty painless process but uh so i we walk in the door and and it's funny because to me i always tell people like the rnc was sort of like one of those jobs i never thought i'd get but it was always like a dream job to me like you i've always loved party politics i've loved just this is like you know i love the ups and downs and the ins and outs of of campaigns and races and and um and the minutia of this and so i'm like wow i get this huge opportunity i remember walking in the door and i put together this plan for you and your chief of staff and and i finally get hired and then um i'll never forget this i tell this story all the time i i go up and i talk to your chief of staff at the time and i'm like after you had decided to hire me and uh and i'm like talking to him about implementing my plan and he's like what do you you know i i what do you mean and i'm like well i you i presented this plan to me you hired me and so like i kind of want to execute it so how do we go about doing this and he's like i don't think you get it like we're in massive debt like like we like your plan but this isn't gonna you know we're we're getting get by so walk me through walk everyone through where you walked into the rnc what was the environment there um and and kind of how you had to dig your stuff out of what you had to dig yourself out of yeah so first of all let me just emphasize one thing and then i want to get to that that i i learned a lesson about taking risks and i think back to running for chair as a good lesson that when when it doesn't really look like you're going to be able to win and it doesn't feel like it's for sure and in politics people are oftentimes afraid of taking risks when things are like that i think i would just encourage people that taking risks can change your life and and that was certainly the case for me so as far as like the situation yeah i did win on the seventh ballot but i walked into a party that was 26 million in debt both credit cards were suspended for non-payment and i had to figure out how to bring donors back to the rnc when they were already inclined and they were they were ingrained to give all their money to the congressional committee and the senate committee and at the time people forget there was a aggregate federal limit meaning there was only so much money federally an individual could give to a committee so if they gave maxed out donations to the two other committees i would call them and they say ryan's i think it's great what you're doing first of all they say like renis or rincey or something like that but renee i think it's great what you're doing at the rnc but hey i'm already maxed out over here i'm sorry you know i can send you like five thousand dollars but there's not so we had a total mess on top of it you know the mail wasn't coming in because the postage wasn't paid so i mean we it was very difficult digging out but i think the greatest achievement in that first year was being debt-free so not only paying all the debt paying her operating budget getting everything straightened out i mean we had 80 employees total oh rnc i don't even think it was that many but well it was yeah it was like 70 something but we had very few employees total for the entire country the biggest political party in the world barack obama had 800 employees in florida alone and but by the time we got ready for the presidential we were a solid organization we had grown out of our debt we had put money in the bank we fully funded the presidential trust which is the money that gets shared with the presidential nominee and we were off to the races and so yeah we were pretty lean so we would by the way we played a game remember the game we were well i was going to ask so so i was going to say you and you you had you had brought in this guy named ron weiser who had been a long time fundraiser and you you had sold him on your plan to to revitalize it but then you and him and and ron weiser is a rich guy and but you guys both sort of started to make it fun to figure out how cheap you could be when you went and met with donors give me a give me an example or sort of the the the best way that you guys like went tit for tat to save money well we would go we had a bunch of people play this game called living off the land and we would send each other pictures to show how long i could go in the day without spending any money so it would be like i got a free beer at this airport lounge and take a picture of it i would get a piles of pretzels in a freeze salad we would go to 7-eleven and say 1.79 a diet coke and a and a hot dog living off the land or we would eat two lunches or uh you know two desserts at a dinner that we would be speaking at and then take pictures of each other so we would literally and ron weiser had a cabinet if you recall on the third floor of the rnc because he would stay at a hotel next to the rnc but he would take little boxes of cereal from the hotel and put it in his cabinet and we would they would i mean i know it sounds nuts now but at the time it was kind of funny we would eat these free boxes of cereal at the rnc now granted i mean we were not poor we were not starving but it was more of a fun game to show well it's a respect for the donor's money too yeah i mean how we were saving money but and we did it and you know the other thing we did is on a serious note the other thing we did was we opened up the entire financial system at the rnc to all of the former finance chairs of the rnc so like sam fox al hubbard mel sembler howard leach i mean all these famous finance chairs of the rnc would come to the rnc once a quarter they would have full access to all of the accounting and and that i would be no hiding anything they hear from cereal help me fix this and you know what when you open yourself up and you allow all of the big dogs from the past that come around the former chairs ed gillespie haley barber jim nicholson you come in you i want you to see everything going on and they all talk to other people that they knew and they said okay this guy here is really doing a pretty good job and he's trying to fix it there's nothing for you to be worried about that really helped the credibility of the rnc so so interestingly you you right the ship you raise the money you fund all this stuff 2012 election comes along romney loses the election um the interesting thing to me historically speaking the rnc doesn't really shoulder a lot of the blame um but we go on to do this post-mortem i hate the word autopsy i hate it i hate it i hate it but it's been one that the media has picked up on we called it the growth and opportunity project i still think to this day it was one of the greatest things ever because it was the first time a national party to my knowledge looked back on what it was doing right and how the party writ large not the rnc the party writ large could improve how it did business and it looked um and i i still think uh it'll go down in history as one of the greatest things done the big takeaways i think i'm not understanding this from from critics and from the media were immigration reform data and digital outreach to under under performing communities that they aren't see it and then the party had done in the past and the primary process what what are your takeaways from that effort the takeaway for me was number one the national party wasn't uh effective and as as as effective as it needed to be in the mechanics and all the boring stuff that parties do it was not where eric schmidt and google's people and barack obama's people built and what i really tried to model our efforts after in building the biggest digital and data voter identification voter turnout um consumer data modeling that just takes years and years to create and when you're sitting at a at a federal dollar limit at the rnc on 26 million in debt there is just no a possibility of matching what barack obama's team put together and they were good they were really good and i never will say anything differently about their team but over time i'm i changed this environment at the rnc but i also knew that we couldn't be a party that showed up in black and hispanic communities two months ahead of time it just wasn't working and by the way our people don't aren't elected that way i mean if you you have to actually be in the district full-time and if you're not then there's no one going to be there because the congressman is not republican the state senator is not republican the state assembly person is not republican so unless you put people on the ground on a full-time basis you're just not going to improve yourself so that was the biggest those things data driven being in the communities being a part of things speaking about what you believe in and actually going on cnn msnbc all the networks fighting about what you believe in those are the things that i think are needed they're still needed today now now granted the party is doing it now but that at the time well it seems pretty normal and logical now at the time that was something that was new i mean the idea that the national party is going to be transferring 50 grand a month into a state party to go fund a a a center in black and hispanic communities full-time that was not that was not what was being done but we changed that so the thing that was fascinating to me is you know we we lose in 12 we look at ourselves very honestly i think make these changes and improvements and then go into the 14 midterm elections i always tell people that you know you go in and we weren't expected to do that well we end up taking back the senate winning more seats in the house since since 1918 and i tell people that you kind of look and say okay that's great but you know you haven't you haven't won the big game yet and in politics winning the white house is the big game and i think that you then that's kind of what drove you to want to run for a third term um but you you run and i and i i always talked about this for the when when i looked at the field and you you you looked at this field you had marco rubio ted cruz uh ben carson and chris christie uh you know jeb bush and from a political person standpoint if this was if you put it in like a sports analogy you would be talking about some of the great players of the day right those the people who had won racist who could raise money who had put operations together in terms of get out the vote and fundraising and i i you know i think through any analysis you look at that and say okay we're going to be running a great a great primary process we made all these reforms and then you got this outsider businessman guy and and i i think it was fascinating what was your take as you looked at all of the reforms that have been made the sort of that you had done the test in 14 you had new at work all of this data now proved that we knew what voters were we could touch them we could mobilize them but then we suddenly found ourselves with this candidate that nobody was respect that nobody expected that didn't have a a political background and and sort of i always tell people it's like the reese's peanut butter cup ad where the peanut butter falls in the chocolate and the rnc and the campaign are like uh maybe we could work together yeah uh that's a huge question i mean it it was definitely something that i don't think anyone expected certainly i didn't but at the time i just wasn't sure where it was going to go and it was it by the way the trump phenomenon started strong and it actually never ended i mean there was never like a point to where i mean occasionally like ben carson came up a little bit and then popped back down occasionally someone showed up and then they got knocked down but it was always there it wasn't like it was some sneak attack and suddenly like oh my gosh this is to happen no it was more like well i don't know if this is going to last is he really going to be the nominees and people were saying you know he's never you know candidates always come and go and someone's going to rise up but what's funny about with trump was he just kept getting stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger and it wasn't fading away um and i remember in the summer at 20 late summer of 2015 maybe august because you know i used to go to wisconsin for the month of august at my house there and and i liked that and both of my neighbors one was a union democrat and one was a republican but kind of like a very establishment kind of republican and i asked him you know what do you think on my democrat neighbor i'm i love trump i'm going to trump i said you're kidding me jeff the god this guy's great you know everyone at the office everyone at the office loves them like wow okay then go to my other neighbor me and sandy we love trump can you get me a trump hat like oh my gosh here we go this is where we're going so it it wasn't a shock to me um and here's the other thing just to get all this real quick in the one i think back on this issue with the rnc and people like to talk about this but in many ways president trump actually empowered us at the rnc that i don't think a lot of the establishment people would have done and when mitt romney was the nominee i mean they had people at our office they're like no we got to do this this is how the convention's going to go this is what video we're going to play and you need to listen to us like a lot of times the nominees sort of partially take over the rnc but trump didn't i mean in many ways what they sort of didn't know was sort of like they didn't really push us around they actually empowered us which is why i think the programs that we set up the data things that we did and i think that kellyanne and steve bannon and david bossie and all the people on the campaign side would say the same thing that it was granted trump at the trump was the probably the one candidate that could that would have beaten hillary clinton in spite of all the analysis i i don't know if some of our other establishment people would have won i think because trump was breaking glass and disrupting and he was his first house he was the one that we had in the 16 that could have won but they also would say that without the rnc that combination made all the difference in the world i don't know if another candidate would have allowed the rnc to do all that we did um that allowed the combination of the two forces to come together after all the years of work at the rnc to come together with this candidate that was this massive disrupter that was just the right person at the right time i honestly think it was it was a it was a combination that i don't know could have happened with anyone else i i i think you're absolutely right there's no i i can answer that for you i i don't think anybody would have i think they would have to some degree tried to they they they have to they think that anyway and i think that was the beauty of this they they needed us and you know you you were able to explain to them the resources that the rnc had in the operation that you had built up so i i want to fast forward obviously trump wins we all know that um you become chief of staff i always tell people the funny thing is you know you're mentioning this that i just told you the rnc when the president wins is the jv team you get something you know it's like you get to go to hud you get to become the work of the agency for the such and such but you never get the the starting lineup jobs you know you get invited to the christmas party but it was odd it was i mean you you become white house chief of staff um and and the thing that i thought was interesting is you know to your point trump needed us the rnc we needed him but we get to the we we had put together this thing you had six years at the rnc we had a well-oiled machine like you knew the people you knew the 168 you knew you stayed parties you had hired a good group of folks um but we get to the white house and it's one thing after another it's russian narrative leaks palace entry you know reporters in and out and it's it was an environment that we had not dealt with in six years and i think it was a completely different environment than we had been dealt with for six years of you know knowing who was who was on our six knowing who we had on our right and our left and and it was it was just it was a very different way of doing business it was um yeah i mean i'm i was used to and i still am to this day i'm used to everything being buckled down knowing everything that's happening who's where what we're gonna say how's it gonna go um you know the whole day mapped out and you know i mean we had uh you know uh the second day hey by the way the fbi is interviewing you know the national security but what oh sally yates resigned she's not going to enforce the executive order what do you mean she resigned okay so now i need to go find an acting attorney general and we're you know imagine you're the you know the u.s attorney in the northern district of virginia and the chief of staff of the rnc is calling and saying hey um i'd like you to become the acting attorney general um then you have this whole month-long michael flynn fiasco then you have this article that says that the trump campaign was colluding with the russians you've got comey and mccabe running around i mean honestly the president was under full blown assault day one and it never ended i mean it was just unbelievable and to have that on top of everything that you're trying to do and all the things that actually good happened in spite of all of these challenges i think it was a remarkable situation now let me just say one thing about being the first chief of staff that other people this might be interesting for everybody the one thing that's tough for the first guy is you're sort of like the person of a lot of disappointment for people i mean first of all you have the rnc and the trump campaign coming together and everyone knows that that has its own sort of mixture of difficulty just because you know hey we're the campaign we did this hey we're the rnc we're you know we're pretty smart you know everyone's kind of you know how that goes so the first thing you do is all these folks that are coming into the white house they've for the most part they've spent their entire lives getting here now granted some of them are in their 20s and 30s but some of them are in their 40s and 50s and older than that and they're finally here and they're being hired and they're telling their relatives and their parents i'm going to work in the white house i'm going to have this unbelievable opportunity and they're you know they're talking to the president-elect and this amazing thing's happening the first thing that happens is the chief of staff or his people sit down with the person that's going to the white house and the first thing he says oh um you know there's only like 10 offices in the in the west wing you're actually not going to be in what you think the white house is you're gonna be across the street in this building with like 3 000 people oh and by the way um next time you think you're going to talk to the president go check in with molly here that you've never met and she'll let you know whether you can go in and talk to the president so oh and you're not going to be an assistant to the president you're going to be a special assistant to the president which i know is kind of a disappointment so i mean you start with everyone like that and then you're off to the raves as well it's um but you know what in spite of it all it was an honor and i'm grateful to the president uh he gave me that opportunity um and i i'm i'm grateful for it and i'm i know that's very fond of it all right last substantive question key key phrase there what's next for reince priebus you you um i know you're involved in uh in the host committee there in wisconsin bringing the rnc to milwaukee but but you know you've we've been talking about this you've been involved in politics to your kid uh there's got to be an itch that you want to keep scratching or yeah it is it is it's called dancing with the stars oh there you go i've been chris careful we haven't done the lightning round yet i've been uh oh lightning round okay i've been preparing in the basin for this no uh yeah next you know i i'm happy you know i've got such a peaceful existence right now i like to keep it that way but yeah i'm going to be chair of the host committee i love that we're going to wisconsin i think it's the perfect place battleground state good people summer on the list that's going to be weird for you by the way ryan so you think that's going to be weird being the the chair of the host committee you know what it's like to to sort of be that because because you and i both know the host committee wants to be the big dog the rnc comes in and says thanks for raising the money but you know yeah but you so you've seen it from both sides but now you've got to be the guy that's saying okay rnc you go put it on i did all the hard work you've seen that and now you're gonna no it's i they're i i think it's gonna be great sean now that's true what you're saying there is inherent tension between the host committee and the rnc but i i know i i know this convention business inside now i was doing the council for tampa i was chair for two other conventions i think that we're gonna have a great working relationship i get it i understand the the problems that the rnc has that they need to make sure don't become a bigger problem so i think it's gonna work just fine and i'm excited about it and i think ronna and i are going to be a great team i think that's that's the probably their biggest fear though is that you know everything you want to know i wrote a host committee chairman that's like is that really how it's supposed to work you actually know it from inside out all right rights previous we end the podcast with a rapid fire you ready oh boy okay i gotta think go this is it no thinking all right when you travel are you do you arrive early or just in time really how long how low can you let your phone battery go like 50 i'm going to panic uh no i'm with you you know okay how many unread emails do you have at this time um over seven thousand good uh how clean do you keep your house clean i don't like messes if you had 48 hours to binge a show what would it be oh boy uh bates motel the prequel to psycho okay least favorite shore i don't like folding and putting away the laundry i don't mind putting it in but i don't like the rest of it i yeah i agree with that if you could have a drink with anyone who would it be paul hogan coolest celebrity that you've ever met uh hulk hogan okay biggest pet peeve i don't like it when politicians say we started this campaign we're gonna lower the we're gonna we you know listen you're the one running just say i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do that it drives me bananas i get it all right what's something that reince priebus won't go cheap on um [Music] ties i don't like cheap ties all right and then you may have answered this but i did my reality tv stint if you got to go on any reality television show which one would it be do i actually have to have the talent to be good at it or can we pretend that i would have the time i don't you you just have to go on it you you can you can flail i don't care you just which one would it be um i think i think last comic standing because i think i could surprise some people okay all right we're gonna do a quick pronounce round that's it and then it's over data or data data gala or gala gala iran or iran iran caramel or caramel uh caramel and finally ant or aunt no caramel cam caramel caramel i think caramel i think i'm going to go back to caramel and ann okay all right reince priebus thank you for your time this has been a pleasure getting to catch up and uh a lot of things that i'd know i just had like a picture fall off the wall if anyone's wondering who was the picture of it was a picture of nothing it's like a blue glass thing with silver on it that's like in like 10 pounds at least it wasn't it wasn't like the the hopefully the big frame picture of you and i that's sitting in your arm yes no you and i just you i'm not in the picture okay i'm gonna i'll send you a signed one though i'll do that anyway thank you for your time having worried these crazy outfits on from uh from dancing with the stars it was just one crazy outfit anyway thank you for your time it's been a pleasure we'll catch up soon [Music] all right i hope you enjoyed that conversation it's funny i mean i it is interesting i mean i definitely sean is not by any means the same as reince i mean the way i spell at sea and but i'll tell you as a kid it was always like cnc and definitely not in reince territory but it was just funny to hear how that's evolved uh growing up to now or is very distinctive and you know there's definitely not more than one rights at least that i'm ever aware of um so it's it was good to hear the personal stuff and then obviously a lot of the political stuff this close to a midterm how it's all going down um and what's happening um it's just to me like i said if at the beginning of this if you're a political junkie it's it's just i love the minutia i love to understand what's happening and it was great to be able to hear um his explanation of how this all evolved over the last almost decade now anyway um thank you for listening please share please uh review and subscribe that uh that is so important for these podcasts uh for my well not these me i mean let's be honest it's all about me right now let's do this let's do this for the team as you know as reince said there it's it's not about we it's about i anyway thanks a lot i'll see you back here monday take care have a great weekend [Music] you