The Bulwark Podcast XX
[0] Welcome to the Bull Work podcast.
[1] I'm Charlie Sykes.
[2] It is Friday, which means we have made it through another extraordinary week.
[3] Actually, this is my first five -day week since the summer.
[4] And, of course, we're sort of back to our normal rhythm, which means that I am lucky enough to be joined by New York Times bestselling author.
[5] You love that, don't you?
[6] Tim Miller.
[7] And Tim, you are actually on the East Coast today, right?
[8] You're doing your book tour.
[9] You're down in Florida.
[10] You were in Georgia.
[11] doing the whole south yeah i'm in tallahassee today um i'm at an undisclosed location i'm trying to keep a low profile as i travel to the state of florida every time i see a florida state policeman somewhere i start looking for potential exits i don't i don't want to be shuttled onto a plane against my will while while i'm in the state while i'm in desantis stand so i won't let anybody know but last night i was at stanley bradshaw's bookstore the midtown reader and it was so so great if you find yourself in tallahasse you do go go support it it was so fun.
[12] A lot of bulwark people there.
[13] There was one person actually double screening Thursday night bulwark while sitting at my book event, you know, trying to multitask.
[14] So the superfans are out there.
[15] And I do just want to say, because I did a drive, Charlie, from Atlanta to Tallahassee.
[16] And for some reason in my head, I don't know if I Googled this or I imagined it or hallucinated it, but I thought it was a three -hour drive when I decided to drive instead of fly.
[17] And after about six whiskies, after the Atlanta book event, one of my friends was like, well, when are you leaving tomorrow?
[18] And I told him, and I said, I think that's cutting it close.
[19] It's a five hour drive.
[20] So I had five hungover hours driving from Atlanta to Tallahassee, which allowed me to get fully caught up on my podcasts.
[21] And I'm a little, for the first time, since maybe the first time I was on with you, I'm a little intimidated because your last two podcasts, General Hurtling and Catherine Rampel, I mean, these people are bringing facts.
[22] I love learned a lot of things on the on this drive and you know today listeners are just going to get candy they're just going to get my bullshit you know what we need candy after the spinach i think of yourself not as candy but think of yourself as the well -earned dessert after a lot of heavy lifting and i mean you know i mean no i'm talking to you know general hurtling and to katherine rompelle you come away i come away uh smarter because i'm asking them to explain very complex things in the world.
[23] And they did a masterful job.
[24] They were really great.
[25] It is Friday.
[26] It is the weekend.
[27] We need dessert.
[28] So, okay, deep breath here.
[29] Since you are in Florida, we have to talk about the absolute real genius of Ron DeSantis, who has, who has, this isn't just an epic troll.
[30] It has triggered the libs.
[31] There are, you know, think of all the tears that you're getting.
[32] Martha's Vineyard.
[33] He is flying refugees slash migrants to Martha's Vineyard.
[34] It is, as I'm being told by right -wing media, including our friends at Commentary and even at the Daily Beasts, his chef's kiss just brilliant political theater because it exposes all of the hypocrisy in the North.
[35] So, Tim Miller, tell me about real man of political genius who is the governor of the state that you're hanging around in.
[36] I mean, maybe it's a political winner, but I do.
[37] find it very weird that you would write a column if you are you know a person of even a modicum of empathy that you would write a column talking about how it is a political winner to use refugees escaping Venezuelan communism as just pawns and a big fucking joke and and if you assess that that is a political winner which I would say aren't be right about that the the question then kind of becomes well what does that say about our fellow man that that that would be considered a political winner because this is not we haven't heard yeah exactly nothing good i mean it feels like that's something we should at least be reflecting upon if you're going to talk about how great it is uh here's the thing i would almost understand the argument if it was if this was a situation if ron desantis was a governor you could even have imagined this in the 90s you have a governor in a southern state it's like we have all these refugees coming in i'm going to call my buddy charlie baker up in massachusetts you know we are going to create a who's also a It's just, yeah, who's a Republican, by the way, we're going to create a transfer.
[38] You know, this happens all the time, right?
[39] When Afghanistan refugees, we're trying to move people to a state where maybe they have family or where there'd be more job opportunities, more housing.
[40] Like, okay, like that, there's nothing, and this is kind of underlying the argument about the people who are defending this.
[41] Like, there's nothing inherently wrong about moving to a different state.
[42] It's not like they're sending them back to Venezuela or whatever, but it's the way in which he goes about it.
[43] It's like a purposefully, purposefully cruel, like, troll.
[44] And they're treating these humans, you know, to this big troll that is also, by the way, totally unnecessary.
[45] Totally unnecessary.
[46] I mean, at least in Greg Abbott's situation and screw that guy forever.
[47] But at least Greg Abbott is having to manage, like, a challenging border situation.
[48] And, you know, I wish, again, that he was in good faith, like, looking for help from other states, which he's not.
[49] But Ronda Santis isn't even in that situation.
[50] You know, I don't know, for those of us, our readers up north in Canada, or people who haven't spent any time down here in Florida, you might only consult a map, but we're not even fucking close to the border here.
[51] You go through multiple states.
[52] Ron DeSantis is not managing an influx.
[53] He had deported people from San Antonio.
[54] Here's an interesting detail.
[55] He's using Florida tax dollars to fly Venezuelan refugees fleeing communism from Texas.
[56] to Massachusetts.
[57] That may be somewhat, you know, complicated there.
[58] But, again, they're, yeah, they're not even, they're not even Florida migrants.
[59] It is interesting that he chose the Venezuelans.
[60] But again, you know, let's not get hung up on the details because this is just brilliant political theater because it owns the libs.
[61] I mean, their tears are the sweet, sweet, aphrodisiac for the base.
[62] So this is working, look, you're a former, you know, political consultant slash hatchet man. And this part of you that goes, oh, man, I wish I could have pulled off this kind of shit.
[63] I mean, this is, this is better than coming down a golden escalator and blaming Mexican rapist.
[64] I mean, okay, so Trump did that, you know, these guys are actually putting them on buses and sending them to Chicago and Washington, D .C. I mean, I really don't, are the libs owned?
[65] This is the other thing.
[66] It's like, now the part of the owning the libs, I don't think you even have to actually own them.
[67] You just have to imagine that you are.
[68] And consider that you're being clever, right?
[69] Like, I saw this, you know, just doing a quick scroll through Twitter before we got on this morning.
[70] Make sure I didn't miss anything overnight.
[71] And, you know, I saw Guy Benson.
[72] He's another one of these on the more conservative, on the more normal side.
[73] If you have to do, you know, he'd be a team normal person of the Fox pundit crowd.
[74] Like not the most obnoxious, not on the Tucker side of things.
[75] And he's like, you know, doing this tweet, making.
[76] fun of the Martha's Vineyard people, acting like they're not welcoming the refugees and that the liberals are now getting a taste of their own medicine.
[77] And it's like, what the fuck are you talking about?
[78] Like, the people in Martha's Vineyard seem to be very welcoming to these 50 refugees.
[79] And, like, the complaints about how absurdly pernicious this was, like, to send these people to somewhere where they don't know where they're going, you know, with no plan in place, just dumping them off here.
[80] Like, that is what people are complaining about.
[81] You know, there was.
[82] are plenty of videos you can go see online of how welcoming the folks are in Martha's tenure they're welcoming people everywhere in the country actually they don't look triggered they don't look on no it's only on Twitter well this is the difference between you know actually you know consummating and act and simply masturbating fantasizing about it right well yeah I was just kind of contemplating you know that that imagery and just decided to to you know move on so give people a little bit of of insight and sort of behind the scenes.
[83] We're doing this just a little bit earlier because you have to get on the road.
[84] Usually I've sent out my newsletter of morning shots by now and you've had a chance to see what I'm ranting and raving about.
[85] In this particular case, though, I wrote it this morning, but as you and I are speaking, are brilliant and incredibly talented art director, Hannah Yos, you know, comes up with, comes up with art. And so I do wait for her to come up with the art. And it just came through in the last like 60 seconds.
[86] And so I'm going to, you know, going to press send on this okay okay and the title is the cruelty and the crazy migrant airlifts and the unabomber candidate we'll get to that second one and i hope people don't misunderstand my my slightly sarcastic tone here but i start off by saying you know sorry but shipping migrants to martha's vineyard is brilliant a political masterstroke an effect troll and above all hilarious you can tell because of all the reactions on the right you know the l -o -l's the triggering the lib hazzas right um you You know, and sending, I mean, a busload of migrants to Vice President Harris's residence.
[87] I mean, I mean, right -wing Twitter needs to catch its breath.
[88] It's laughing so hard.
[89] And now, guess what?
[90] They're going to send them to Delaware.
[91] This is just, I mean, and then you see all these folks on the right, including the normies.
[92] You see people like, you know, Matt Lewis and the Daily Beast.
[93] And you see, you know, Rathman in commentary saying, you know, this is pretty good stuff.
[94] It's a political coup, you know, blue states finally getting a taste of what red border states have had to deal with every day.
[95] And the cruelty is sort of like a side show.
[96] or it's a bonus.
[97] And I think, you know, part of this, and I think this comes back to the world that you have escaped from, that you are a refugee from, is the narrative more important than all these cuckish concerns about morality because I'm willing to stipulate there's a real problem at the border.
[98] There's a legitimate debate over how migrants should be handled, right?
[99] And there's a legitimate case to be made about, you know, we should share the burden of all of this.
[100] And so Abbott and DeSantis, I think, have every right to raise questions about the border policies.
[101] They could do all kinds of things about it.
[102] They can make speeches.
[103] They can whole press conference.
[104] They can run ads.
[105] They can raise money off any immigrant outrage.
[106] They can even stage political events, right?
[107] I mean, and there's nothing inherently awful about a stunt, except this one is fundamentally different.
[108] And so this is why you and I are out of step here because this one is different because they chose to use people, including very vulnerable children, as their pawns and props.
[109] I thought JVL made a great point yesterday.
[110] He said those planes were filled with actual human beings, people with dignity, people with hopes and dreams, problems and challenges, people with names and families.
[111] But again, DeSantis knows what he's doing.
[112] He's doing it in a way to create as much confusion and cruelty as possible.
[113] And for a lot of the fan, and of course, now it turns out they lied to these people.
[114] They told them that they were going to Boston for expedited work papers.
[115] So, I mean, the whole thing is a scam.
[116] I think what's revealing is for the fanboys, people like hardcore bigots like Kurt Schlichter.
[117] I mean, the deception is, is like a bonus because it's just like an extra, you know, extra dose of cruelty.
[118] And he loves it.
[119] He, he tweeted out, good, I hope it's true that they lied to these people.
[120] I'm utterly indifferent to what happens to a bunch of people who shouldn't be here anyway and who disrespected us by breaking our laws.
[121] So if they got screwed over, I think it's funny.
[122] See, and I think this, the way our right -wing politics has become the cruelty is the point, but also, and this is the point I make in my newsletter.
[123] The laughter is the point.
[124] This spectacle of cruel laughter that has become like this animating juice for, I'm sorry to say, millions of people.
[125] And even the people who ought to know better look at this and go, well, if they're jazz, then it must be a good tactic, right?
[126] You know, whether or not it is just inherently unchristian and fundamentally inhuman and cruel, oh, come on.
[127] Oh, come on.
[128] There's a lot there, Charlie, and so I have two kind of separate thoughts.
[129] The dehumanization element of this, though, and that's really the word, right?
[130] It's just they're not treating these people that they are individuals that have human dignity, right?
[131] And it ties into what we've been discussing every week almost when I'm on here about this pro -life question and what does it mean to be pro -life and, you know, is it about more than just having the most restrictive abortion policy imaginable and imaginable?
[132] And this is, you know, in the book, I kind of categorized all the different enablers of Trump.
[133] And one of the categories was this LOL, Nothing Matters, Republican, which was coined by Ben Dominic over at the Federalist.
[134] And I said in the book that in a lot of ways, even though it's kind of the most banal, it's the most pernicious.
[135] Because what I had observed over the past, you know, decade was that among the people that staffed Republican campaigns, like, this.
[136] This was the most common actual rationalization.
[137] It was becoming more and more popular.
[138] And as younger people come out of college, I spoke at FSU yesterday.
[139] I was talking to the kids about this, actually.
[140] The types of people that are drawn to want to go work for somebody like Ron DeSantis are the ones that get the biggest laughs out of stunts like this, right?
[141] And so it's like a magnet for more and more of this kind of nihilist, people that have this nihilist viewpoint into Republican campaigns, which, you know, that becomes a self -fulfilling prophecy.
[142] then there's more candidates that are acting like this.
[143] And, you know, that is just the way now that they avoid having to deal with the moral ramifications of Trump's party, right, that they no longer even have to justify, right?
[144] And it's not as if there wasn't cruel policies from Republicans in the past or any political party, for that matter, or things that ended up hurting people, policies that ended up hurting people.
[145] But, you know, there was always this feeling that, okay, we had to justify why we did this, right?
[146] It was maybe it was better, you know, we thought that this policy would be better for certain people, or we reject the critics who say that this policy is going to hurt immigrants, or, you know, we think on balance we need a rule of it, right?
[147] You have to come up with some policy justification for this.
[148] That is not the case anymore.
[149] Now these Stanford's protection against having to deal with the moral questions of our time are LOL, nothing matters, owning the libs is all that matters, trolling them is all that matters.
[150] They're so evil.
[151] There are our enemy in this war that we can do whatever we want.
[152] and if they're complaining about it, then that's an end into itself.
[153] And the war also, I think the other thing about JVL's newsletter, just one other comment on this, what you went through, that I think that he hit on very well yesterday in the triad, was this, you know, for certain types, like for that D .C. crowd, it isn't really a Christian nationalist war.
[154] It's kind of this kind of cultural war against people they resent.
[155] But out here in the provinces where I am right now, there is this element of Christian nationalism.
[156] And thinking about what DeSanta said, and I pulled this up, you know, in his speech at Hillsdale, about putting on the full armor of God, stand firm against the left schemes, you'll face the flaming arrows.
[157] But if you have the shield of faith, you'll overcome them.
[158] Again, now, that is even more pernicious, right?
[159] Because he's giving these folks the cover of, like, there is a religious crusade here, right?
[160] That you can dehumanize these people.
[161] You can be cruel to them.
[162] You can troll them.
[163] And that is all, part of our, you know, onward Christian soldiers battle, which you don't need a religious scholar to talk about the flaws of that mindset.
[164] Well, apparently you do.
[165] Yeah, because apparently you do.
[166] But, right, I mean, so now you can see if you are part of this ecosystem and you've accepted the, oh, we're in a religious war, well, then who cares?
[167] Fuck these 50 people.
[168] If you're part of this ecosystem and you've decided that LOL nothing matters, the Lib's pain is all that matters and like winning today's one hour Twitter fight is all that matters, then who cares?
[169] Fuck these people, right?
[170] And then you don't have to treat everybody like, you know, like they are humans with dignity.
[171] Okay, so I think this is related to it.
[172] The number of political pundits who in theory don't think necessarily as partisan activists, and in theory don't think like political consultants, you know, from, from this world, have now seemed to have internalized this idea that you evaluate something.
[173] thing just based on does it work or does it not work?
[174] Does it win or does it not win?
[175] As opposed to, wait, is it fundamentally wrong?
[176] How people, we have gotten so into this mentality that we judge everything by the needle as opposed to, wait, you understand you lied to a child who is vulnerable, who just come from another country.
[177] You can imagine the fear and the dislocation.
[178] You put them on a plane.
[179] You drop them off as part of a political stunt.
[180] You have used people who have been lied to who are, you know, really at probably one of the most perilous moments of their life, you've used them as pawns.
[181] Yes, it's going to play well in the media.
[182] You might actually score points in the polls.
[183] It might help you win a primary, but it's wrong.
[184] And it's sort of interesting.
[185] It's like there's this whole world of punterry that goes, well, yes, it may be wrong.
[186] But the most important thing is, does it work?
[187] Does it affect it?
[188] And this seems like this.
[189] It's, it's, it's like, part of this disease that we've gotten into that the media that people who ought to be have some arms length from this sort of thing have internalized you know basically you know hatchet man war room activist troll thinking yeah the game right so i was about it's right this is the game like we're in the game winning the game is what matters not anything else not the merits not what the actual impact on people are right you can just imagine it's not as if this is a new thing but it's just completely on steroids that there is this this ecosystem has developed where where that is the prime interest right and you can just imagine going through history like when loving versus virginia was passed you know saying that was wrong saying that was bad trying to come with some troll that would have kept interracial couples from getting married in your state would have been a political winner right you know that was not a pop yeah interracial marriage was not popular when loving passed but it's hard to imagine you know like the local newspaper praising writing a headline, praising the politician that did that, right, with like, well, this was a savvy move here by the local, you know, whatever, governor of Florida who passed some thing that made it harder for interracial couples to get married or bust them to Martha's Vineyard or whatever, right?
[190] Because we didn't have this, like, this whole mindset hadn't developed, right?
[191] And so, you know, I do, I totally agree that that is, that's part of what is kind of allowing this to happen.
[192] Yeah, but I mean, I think it's important to point out that we understand this because we've been there, okay?
[193] You were part of the game.
[194] I look back on some of the things that I said and didn't say and things that I did, you know, particularly in the first decade of, this first and second decade of this century.
[195] And you do get caught up in the game, in the fight, us versus them.
[196] And therefore, all information is evaluated by the simple standard, not whether it's right or wrong, but whether it works or it doesn't work, right?
[197] Whether it wins or it loses.
[198] And so you are looking for cudgels.
[199] You are looking for weapons.
[200] You ignore things that might hurt your case.
[201] You will find a way to spin something that helps your case.
[202] You know, after you've been in it, you can step back and you're like, wow, I really got caught up in that.
[203] And that's basically the theme of your book.
[204] You get caught up in it.
[205] But it's easy to get caught up in it.
[206] And I watch the spread of this.
[207] And you wonder, because it feels this morning.
[208] as if to take, you know, the normals out there who are praising this as a smart political move and to say, okay, wait, but it's fundamentally inhuman, immoral, and cruel, that that feels like there's an irrelevance in the current dialogue.
[209] Do you understand what I mean here that you're really out of step if you even raise these questions any longer?
[210] Yeah, you're the wrong one.
[211] You're the ridiculous one.
[212] I wrote about this anecdote about how in politics there's this notion of the guy that literally taught me campaign school, said that the highest compliment that you can get as a political stepper is that is for somebody to say, that guy gets it.
[213] And what they get it means doesn't mean that you got to do your best for people.
[214] What they get it means is that they get that winning is what matters.
[215] And they get, you know, how to play the game.
[216] And that if you are a person right now who's saying, this is crazy, like this is wrong.
[217] Like, think about these kids in Republican world and conservative world, even in pundit world, you know, that's kind of like, all right.
[218] get off your high horse i mean that's right you're a scold yeah you're a scold that the lindsay grant the saddest thing i think it was in leibovitch's book for me one of the saddest quotes was lindsay graham interviewing with them and talking about how he looks back on the mccane his time with mccain is saying that you know sometimes me and john we'd get on our high horse too much and it was like no that's when you and john were right actually like when you and john were on your high horse were the times that you were doing the most good uh and and so you know in addition to all the stuff that we've all I've been talking about, you know, about how inhuman it is.
[219] The other thing, just on the fundamental merits, you would think that there would be someone in conservative world left who would be like, you know, welcoming people who are fleeing communism is good, actually.
[220] It's like a fundamental tenet of the Republican Party for, you know, most of my life was that fleeing, you know, people fleeing communism was something we should welcome as part of our broader world war against this ideology.
[221] But that, yeah, no, that's a stupid detail.
[222] And, of course, one of the great inversions of the Trump era has been this notion that concerned about things like a character or right and wrong are signs of weakness that cruelty is a marker of courage.
[223] Does someone have the courage to do something illegal, something horrible, something cruel?
[224] All right.
[225] So speaking of the culture wars, let's talk about what's going on with gay marriage and whether or not the Senate is going to have a vote before the midterms on.
[226] codifying Obergefell, and of course the reason we're all talking about this, I think the podcast listeners know, is because after the Dobbs decision, no precedent seems absolute any longer.
[227] The court has signaled the willingness to overturn settled law, even if it has massive social disruption.
[228] And of course, Justice Clarence Thomas very helpfully kind of like waved the red flag and it said, you know, based on the kind of thing that we just did here in Dobbs and the logic in saying that there is no right to privacy in the Constitution, then we need to revisit all these other decisions.
[229] We need to revisit the Griswold decision that legalized contraception.
[230] We need to revisit Obergefell, gay marriage.
[231] We need to revisit the Texas decision that actually said, no, you can't criminalize same -sex sex.
[232] So what's going to happen?
[233] Initially, it looked like you're going to have a bipartisan compromise.
[234] You might get 10 Republican votes.
[235] What are you seeing?
[236] What do you think is going to happen?
[237] Yeah, a disappointing, you know, in the broadest scale, number of Republicans that, you know, did not want to protect my marriage in the House of Representatives when they voted on this, but also kind of a surprising amount who did.
[238] I think it was 47, I think.
[239] So, you know, that, I think gave people a sense that this was going to pass, right?
[240] That it was going to pass the Senate.
[241] If you get that many in the House, you get the 10 needed in the Senate, that Biden would be able to sign this and codify it.
[242] And what it is just, this is, conifying Obergefell is kind of in the shorthand for this.
[243] But what it really is, because of the nature of some arcane legal stuff is the codification of Windsor, which was the case before Obergefell that said that DOMA was unconstitutional.
[244] So this would, you know, essentially ensure that, you know, that all the things for the defense of marriage acts about the federal government, you know, the federal government would have to recognize marriages, existing marriages, et cetera, rather than new marriages.
[245] So that might have to be a separate law.
[246] But, but codifying Windsor is also is still very important.
[247] And, you know, you would think that that that would, be something that Schumer would want to put up for a vote here before the midterms.
[248] Now, but here's the political question.
[249] The Republicans, and just another astounding example of cynicism, behind the scenes, apparently, based on reporting, it seems as if they're saying to the Democrats, you know, if we just table this till the lame duck section, and the lame duck session of Congress is the session of Congress that happens after the elections before the next Congress comes in in January.
[250] If we table this to the lame duck session, we got the votes, you know, basically.
[251] And there's sort of this little handshake deal happening behind the scenes.
[252] But, yeah, if you put it up before the election, I don't know, right?
[253] And so a little bit of cynical gamesmanship, it seems like, for the Republicans, and the Democrats in the Senate, who I think, I'm of two minds about this.
[254] Baldwin, who's really putting in the work on this, Tammy Baldwin.
[255] There's some people in the Senate on the Democratic side who are like, Let's just get this done.
[256] Like, like, codifying this and protecting gay couples is the most important thing.
[257] But there's another view.
[258] You know, I think it was the head of the D -Triple C. Sean Patrick Maloney, he was gay and married as a Democrat, tweeted yesterday.
[259] Like, no, fuck this.
[260] Like, we got 47 Republicans in the House.
[261] Like, let's not be held hot.
[262] He didn't say the F word, but this was his general tone of the tweet if you go read it.
[263] Like, let's not be held hostage by these Republicans.
[264] Put it on the floor and make them vote.
[265] Like, put up or shut up.
[266] Are you really going to vote against?
[267] you know, protecting existing gay marriages in the year 2022, like that is a political loser and called their bluff.
[268] And, you know, part of me leans that way, really, with Maloney.
[269] Like, I think that's right.
[270] I think it's a political winner.
[271] I kind of think they get the 10 votes anyway.
[272] You know, if you just sort of look at the 17 they got of the gun vote or however many it was, you know, there's even some buffer if you just take the people that voted for the gun compromise.
[273] So, you know, when I was with Chris Murphy, we talked with this, I interviewed Chris Murphy for Not My Party this week.
[274] And he said that I asked him who his Desert Island Republican was, and he said it was Tom Tillis, which is kind of a surprising answer.
[275] I was like, well, I was like, if that's your Desert Island Republican, is he at least going to do the right thing on gay marriage.
[276] And he said, I think he is.
[277] So, you know, so if you got somebody like Tillis there, you know, it just feels like that's, that's a vote that they're going to get.
[278] So this is sort of a little intra -democratic debate.
[279] And I think that the Democrats really have done well over the summer and the fall this year, putting popular things up for a vote and forcing the Republicans to have to, you know, deal with their own internal divisions.
[280] And so I think they should do it.
[281] Well, and also, I mean, you can see from the political dynamic here, including, you know, my state's senior senator Ron Johnson, who's been flip -flopping on this issue.
[282] His initial reaction was, well, I see no reason not to codify.
[283] I mean, it is the law of the land.
[284] You don't want to disrupt the lives of millions of Americans.
[285] And conservatives generally don't want to have that kind of radical change.
[286] And then, of course, he gets squeezed by social conservatives, and now he's flip -flopped and said it's all about religious liberty.
[287] But here's the interesting thing.
[288] And our colleague, Will Salatin.
[289] I just, let's just put a finer point on this.
[290] Flip -flopping back against gay marriage in 2022 is, like, pretty hilariously bad.
[291] Sorry, God.
[292] Well, it is.
[293] That's an important point.
[294] It's flip -flopping toward a position that is toxicly unpopular.
[295] Normally, when politicians in a general light and a tough.
[296] re -election fight.
[297] And by the way, I still think the Ron Johnson's likely to win that race.
[298] But in a tough re -election fight in a very evenly divided state, normally you flip -flop toward a position that is popular, not away from a position that's popular.
[299] So in Wisconsin, 72 % of voters favor legalized same -sex marriage.
[300] Now, here's what makes it more interesting that when you break it down, there was a poll, the Marquette University Law poll back in April.
[301] April, asked people, you know, broke it down by party.
[302] And they found that, again, you know, overwhelming support for legalized same -sex marriage among Democrats, among independents, but also among Republicans.
[303] In April this year, 58 % of Republicans said they favored legal gay marriage.
[304] Only 31 % were against it.
[305] And, you know, as our colleague Will Salatin wrote, I mean, this has been the pattern all around the country, you know, since 2004, there's a lot of it.
[306] been a kind of a collapse of opposition to same -sex marriage.
[307] You know, in the latest NBC news poll, which was taken in May, the opposition among Republicans is down to 31 percent.
[308] And again, there was a Pew poll found 56 percent of Republican leaners favored sex marriage.
[309] So I guess my point is that Republicans absolutely do not want to have this vote in the Senate, because with the exception of just the most deplorables, they know where their constituents are.
[310] This is not a vote want to have to take.
[311] And if they voted down, it will once again clarify what's at stake in the elections.
[312] I mean, sorry to go back to, you know, what works politically, what doesn't work politically.
[313] But I mean, this would definitely, either way, it works politically.
[314] On the merits, obviously, look, this is the law of the land.
[315] You've had millions of people, including you, who have relied upon it.
[316] It is a deeply unconservative thing to do to say, okay, we've now changed our mind.
[317] We've changed the number of justices on the court, and therefore we're just simply going to renege on the promise the country made to you.
[318] So I think this is a disaster.
[319] Like the abortion issue, this unites Democrats and divides Republicans.
[320] This should be very clear.
[321] Yeah, two things.
[322] One, the first one, I'm just going to whisper because I don't like a Charlie is right thing, but I did, on my travels this week, I did have somebody tip me off to some internal numbers about the Wisconsin Senate race, or maybe a little more Charlie is always right than Tim is always right as I've been a little bit more of a Mandela partisan.
[323] So anyway, a little bit of a concerning thing about what people are saying on the internal side of the Wisconsin Center rate versus what the public polling looks like.
[324] But when the ads are just brutal.
[325] Yeah, yeah.
[326] On the gay marriage thing, we've been talking about this, don't treat it like a game, you know, don't care just about the polls.
[327] But like politics still is a competition, right?
[328] And so this is always about like finding a balance in all things, right?
[329] Like, how can you act with integrity, with earnestness, and good faith to, like, advance what is best, you know, for the people that you're serving, you know, for your political interests, right?
[330] Like, how can you unite those two things, right?
[331] And so, you know, the Republicans on this are acting completely cynical, as I said, they're holding this vote hostage, basically, because they don't want to deal with the political ramifications of having to vote on it.
[332] So then the Democratic question is, okay, well, do we let them play the game and just be hostage to their political interests or do we try to push an advantage for ourselves?
[333] And I think that on an issue that we care about, that we genuinely want to pass, you know, we're not like putting, you know, Tim and Tyler on a plane to Kansas or whatever, the inverse of this would be.
[334] And so I think that it makes total sense to try to push the little advantage.
[335] It's one thing if it's like the gay couples are really in an acute threat to lose gay marriage.
[336] And that could happen any day.
[337] And if you just suck it up and deal with the Republicans, we could protect it and save it, and we can be assured of that.
[338] But that's, like, not the situation we're at.
[339] Like, the threat is not acute right now.
[340] It's potential in the medium term.
[341] We don't really know that the Republicans would come through in the lame duck.
[342] Who the hell knows?
[343] They could end up screwing the Democrats over and maybe 10 votes don't materialize.
[344] Maybe it's only eight or nine.
[345] I was talking to somebody who knows Schelling Moore Capito staff and, like, that's a person that might be getable.
[346] And I was like, could we get Capito for this?
[347] I was asking them.
[348] And they're like, you know, maybe it depends on how many Republicans are.
[349] She doesn't like to be the 60th vote on things, right?
[350] She doesn't like to be the 60th vote.
[351] So who the hell knows?
[352] Maybe it doesn't materialize.
[353] Maybe there's a bunch people who don't want to be the 60th vote.
[354] So if you consider all of the different contingencies here, it seems to me that the right play to do is put the damn thing up to vote and let the Republicans put up or shut up.
[355] And Republicans really want to deny gay married couples protections in the year of our Lord 2022, then let them deal with the consequences of that action.
[356] And that's kind of where I land on this.
[357] Now, speaking of these culture wars, I want to get your thoughts about Lindsay Graham earlier this week, because the other day, was it, I've lost track of days, was it Wednesday that was Joe Biden's really horrifically bad day, or was that Tuesday?
[358] Yeah, Tuesday, I think.
[359] When these terrible inflation numbers came, the Dow Jones, you know, completely collapsed.
[360] The juxtaposition with his celebration was, was cringeworthy.
[361] And then along comes Lindsey Graham and kind of bailes out the Biden's.
[362] by saying, yes, absolutely, I am going to propose a nationwide ban on abortion.
[363] Now, what makes this, there's several interesting twists there because his proposal is not the most radical out there.
[364] In fact, his proposal was 15 weeks, which polls much better than absolute ban, and includes exemptions for exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.
[365] But other Republicans reacted like, oh, my God, Lindsay, you have just dropped the biggest possible turd into our punchball because i think again they recognized that this was a political distraction but also once again clarifying that the stakes of the midterms and what the stakes of the midterms are that republicans in fact have completely pivoted away from let's leave it up to the states to we want a federal ban so yeah and then by the way lindsay got got the shit beat out of him on fox news for doing that too so i mean i think lindsay was being too clever by half it's unclear why he didn't like run it by other people i don't i don't have any insight into that um but i understand i think where his head is at right which is just like okay if we can get the republican position to be 15 weeks with exceptions you know then you know that can maybe even the playing field on this a little bit more rather than the democrats position being you know the status quo and republican's position being like the most insane thing being proposed by dog rastriano or whatever and i think that was what his mindset was but it was a total backfire the execution of it was terrible, in large part because his proposed ban didn't supersede the crazy bills in the states.
[366] And this is why Republicans are stuck between Iraq and a hard place on this issue, because, you know, there is not majority Republican support for a 15 -week ban in the Senate because there's a significant number of Republican senators who represent states that either already have or are aspiring to have much more restrictive laws than that.
[367] And so they don't want the blowback of some federal ban, you know, overriding their five -week dog the bounty hunter ban or whatever the hell they have in all these states, right?
[368] And so, yeah, for that reason, you can't unite your own party and you continue to give the Democrats their biggest political advantage here, which is the fact that they can focus on these absolutely mind -bogglingly extreme laws that are being advanced in certain Republicans.
[369] States.
[370] No, I agree with you again.
[371] I think Josh Barrow had a really good piece where he said, why this won't work.
[372] And he talks about the dynamics here that even though you can be very clever and parse out the polls and say, well, you know, take this nuanced position.
[373] That's just not the way it plays out in real life because what happens is that people are now going through thinking about various circumstances about when do we want to ban abortions, when do we not ban abortions.
[374] And of course, whatever Lindsey Graham says, whatever moderate, quote unquote moderate position he takes, then, you know, along comes the Republican legislature in West Virginia saying, you know, hold my beer, you know, no acceptance, complete ban.
[375] So there we have.
[376] So you've had an interesting week.
[377] I'm interested in hearing a couple of things.
[378] You actually talked with, you talked with the governor of Georgia the other day, Governor Kemp, and you confronted him with a very, very interesting question.
[379] I know you're going to write it up for Monday, but we've already posted some of the video of that.
[380] So tell us about your chat.
[381] I got to say first, it's just so fun to be on the other side of the mic now on this.
[382] I was just having a blast watching the Brian Kemp, you know, the nerdy Tim Millers from 15 years ago, standing next to him, giving me the evil eye, you know, getting nervous, not wanting me to ask a question trying to get someone else to ask a more boring question you know and i was like no i just talked right over them jumping in in the in the press conference i guess i guess some credit to kemp a lot of republicans are hiding from the media right now altogether because they can just talk in their own echo chamber at least kemp was willing to talk to the assembled press there he had an event about an hour and a half north of where my book event was in Atlanta and so i drove up there to see him in person i wanted to ask him a couple of questions after the first one they didn't that which they didn't like too much.
[383] I didn't get a chance to follow up with anymore, unfortunately.
[384] But I did get one.
[385] And the one key question was on this, the fact that he has this lieutenant governor candidate, Bert Jones, who is the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor.
[386] Kemp didn't support him in the primary, but he won, obviously.
[387] And Jones was like a literal plotter for this alternate false slate of electors and has spread a lot of election conspiracies.
[388] And, you know, Kemp's unique advantage or unique qualification right now is that he's the only Republican governor in one of these states who passed this minimum bar of just saying, I'm going to certify the votes, I guess Doug Ducey, too.
[389] I'm going to certify the votes in my state and not play ball with the crack in, you know, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani nonsense.
[390] And so, and he talks about this.
[391] And in his stump speech, and when I went to see him in Calhoun, he talks about the voter integrity bill that he passed, quote unquote, voter integrity bill.
[392] So on the left called a voter suppression.
[393] bill.
[394] And he talks about how voter integrity is important.
[395] And, you know, he wanted to certify the election.
[396] He passed the most sweeping voter integrity bill in the state.
[397] And so I asked him about this, if you really care about voter integrity, which, you know, you said you did on the stump speech, you did the right thing in 2020.
[398] Like, it must make you uncomfortable to be running with somebody that literally tried to undermine the voters of the state.
[399] And, you know, if something happened to you, would be the governor in 2024.
[400] And it didn't make him uncomfortable, Charlie.
[401] I mean, it made him uncomfortable that I was asking the question, but it didn't make him uncomfortable to have Bert Jones on the on the ticket.
[402] He basically said that he supports the ticket.
[403] People can see the video up on the Bullwarks Twitter feed.
[404] And, you know, then he tries to pass it off by saying essentially, oh, well, people can disagree and agree on various things.
[405] And it's like, you know, I don't know.
[406] Whether or not Donald Trump should be an unelected autocrat is kind of a pretty serious disagreement.
[407] You know, it's not as if you have like a little minor disagreement on you wanted a 15 -week ban and he won the 12 -week ban.
[408] And this is a pretty fundamental thing, but he didn't do that.
[409] And so I asked him that, and it's part of this broader thing, which I want to write about on Monday is, which is he, you know, there is not much split -ticket voting anymore, not much crossover voting.
[410] But Georgia might be this rare state where there's an exception, where there's some of these former Republican expats are very conservative Southern Democrats who look at Kemp, think he's done a good job, think he did the right thing in 2020, he's standing up to Trump, but look at Walker, and it's like, that is an insane person, and so they're going to vote for a war knock instead, and so I interviewed a bunch of people who fit that bill, and I think that, you know, this, the Burt Jones thing kind of complicates Kemp's ability to speak to that voter.
[411] Yeah, I think that you might have some of that ticket splitting in Georgia and in Wisconsin, speaking of Wisconsin.
[412] I think you could possibly have a Democratic governor winning and a senator losing.
[413] So there's a footnote to your conversation with Brian Kemp, which is that our brilliant colleague here at the bulwark Amanda Carpenter had written a piece about Kemp's running mate.
[414] And interestingly enough, all the smart kids in the room came forward and said, oh, this is terribly unfair.
[415] They're not running mates.
[416] They're not actually together.
[417] Why would you try to smear Brian Kemp?
[418] And so here you have Brian Kemp saying, yeah, he's on the ticket.
[419] I'm going to support him on all of that.
[420] But it was interesting, the need for even some of the normie conservatives to rush forward and say, you know, don't say anything mean about Brian.
[421] Ryan Kemp, who's running for governor and linking him to his lieutenant governor nominee, it's like, okay, whatever.
[422] They aren't really running mates.
[423] And they literally ran with this.
[424] The National Review tried to wrote a hit piece on Amanda over there.
[425] I know, yeah.
[426] It's sick.
[427] And it's just like, oh, oh, she's overstating whether it.
[428] It's like he's running to be their lieutenant governor.
[429] Like, it's not as if we are picking, you know, some random city council person in Cobb County or something.
[430] And this is the person that Brian Kemp's a young man. I don't, you know, you don't expect that anything will happen to him, but who the hell knows?
[431] There's a scandal or a heart attack, and, like, this person is the governor of the state in 2024, and he was a coup plotter.
[432] So, like, this is not a gotcha.
[433] You know, this is a question of where are your, where is your red line?
[434] Do you have a red line?
[435] And Brian Kemp, it was one of the few people, to his credit, that for whom, you know, actually trying to overturn the election last time was a red line.
[436] But it seems as if having lieutenant governor that wanted to do that isn't.
[437] It's pretty, you know, you're slicing that line pretty thin, but that's where we're at.
[438] So, you know what's a problem?
[439] What's that?
[440] It's keeping up with all the craziness, all the lunacy.
[441] I was just actually scrolling through some of your older articles, and, you know, you did a big piece about Herschel Walker, you know.
[442] And, you know, we've written about Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Carrie Lake in Arizona.
[443] I mean, it's just like we literally could spend all of the space in the bulwark all of the time on our podcast talking about lunatic Republican nominees around the country.
[444] And this may be one of the great teams.
[445] John Bulldoch.
[446] I just wrote my last one.
[447] General in New Hampshire.
[448] But, you know, Blake Masters in Arizona.
[449] And I wrote about him in my newsletter today.
[450] Can we just take a breath and we understand there's all of this crazy.
[451] It does feel like there's a temptation to become completely numbed by it.
[452] But I don't know.
[453] I hadn't seen it originally when it appeared.
[454] This AP story that talks about an interview that he gave, where, again, Blake Masters is the Peter Thiel bankrolled candidate.
[455] So an interviewer asked Blake Masters, who is the Republican nominee for U .S. Senate, to pick a subversive thinker who he thought that people should know more about, and Masters thought about it, and then picked, and I am not shitting you, the Unabomber.
[456] I'll probably get into trouble for saying this, Master's responder, but hey, how about, like, Theodore Kaczynski?
[457] Now, Theodore Kaczynski was a domestic terrorist and murderer who killed three people, injured dozens between 1978 and 1995 until he was arrested.
[458] And, you know, Masters said, well, I don't endorse all of Kaczynski's views.
[459] He thinks there's a lot of insight there.
[460] He had a lot to say about the political left, about how they have inferiority complexes and fundamentally hate everything like goodness, truth, beauty, justice.
[461] Okay, so here you have a candidate for the United States Senate who, And by the way, this is not a one -offer masters.
[462] You know, he said all kinds of crazy things.
[463] I mean, he's a provenly quoted a Nazi war criminal.
[464] And yet, I guess the big question is, how many times do these people have to tell us who they are before other Republicans will say, yeah, I'm sorry, that's nuts.
[465] I mean, in a normal universe, Tim, this guy would get nowhere near the ballot.
[466] And yet, Republicans, establishment Republicans, in Arizona around the country are rallying around this guy wanting to put him in the United States Senate next to Herschel Walker, Dr. Oz, and J .D. Vance and other folks like that.
[467] He is so weird.
[468] Masters is so weird.
[469] I mean, in addition to being crazy, I watched, I don't know why I punish myself with this, but, you know, sometimes I like to make sure I know what's going on out there with the people.
[470] And someone sent this to me. It was like a video of a conversation he had with Madison Cothorn.
[471] They did like an hour long YouTube.
[472] Don't YouTube this.
[473] Like, Sue, don't do what I did, listeners and punish yourself with this.
[474] But he just, it feels like he has some sort of anti -social disorder.
[475] And he's just a very awkward person.
[476] He does have very strange views.
[477] He's attracted to these types of views.
[478] He was like a classic message board poster.
[479] I was always a message board poster as well.
[480] So, you know, maybe I feel like I know the type.
[481] On the message board, there's always the people that are the most attracted to the weirdest conspiracies.
[482] I forget he was on a vegan something message board and he was also on like a cross -fit message board and then some far right -wing stuff too.
[483] And he's, you know, can you question the official story of the September terrorist attacks and, you know, offered a lot of other very odd opinions?
[484] You know, it's hard to like, how do you focus on this, right?
[485] When you have so many other lunatics on the ballot.
[486] I do think this becomes a question.
[487] It's something that worked to Trump's favor, you know, like this notion of if you just, if it's just all crazy all the time, like we don't have the infrastructure and the capacity and to know how to deal with it.
[488] Speaking of the opposite, though, I urge listeners of the podcast to check out your latest not my party.
[489] You sat down with Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, who does feel sometimes like he is the last adult in Washington.
[490] It was an interesting, Chad.
[491] He's an interesting guy.
[492] It was a great interview.
[493] I really enjoyed talking to him.
[494] And, you know, The Not My Party is only four minutes and has the memes and stuff.
[495] And so, but it was such a good discussion that we posted the whole transcript on the website.
[496] So go check it out because we talked about a lot of stuff that didn't make it into the Not My Party.
[497] And I just, I was so impressed with him on the gun thing.
[498] It would have been so easy after Evaldi for somebody like Chris Murphy, who cares about this issue, who represents Connecticut where Sandy Hook was, which happened right after he was elected, which we talk about.
[499] And to do the, I'm going to go to the Senate floor and do viral speeches and do tweets dunking on Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott and like, you know, get as much MSNBC time as possible.
[500] And he did the opposite.
[501] Like he went and actually fucking punished himself by spending time with Tom Tillis and all these guys and tried to figure out what kind of bill they could get past, what we could do to get things done.
[502] and he actually was even criticized about it on MSNBC in other places, you know, saying that it was kind of a sellout.
[503] So he had to tea, he did the, instead of taking the cheap calories, he took heat for, you know, what ended up doing being the right thing.
[504] First good piece of gun legislation, you know, reasonable, incremental gun legislation that had been passed since the assault weapons ban.
[505] And so we talked about that, like the incentive structures that disincentivized doing exactly what he did.
[506] But, you know, why he feels like it's good and it's the first step towards progress.
[507] I challenged him with some of the lefty and righty critiques.
[508] And, you know, I don't agree with everything he said.
[509] I asked him by the best and worst thing Biden did.
[510] We agreed on the worst.
[511] He said that the kind of Saudi suck up was something that he wasn't comfortable with.
[512] That's not a direct quote.
[513] But he thought the best was Afghanistan.
[514] Okay.
[515] So we're not looking at that.
[516] We're not looking at that one.
[517] I see an eye to eye on that one.
[518] But that's part of this.
[519] Okay.
[520] It's okay to be, you know, in a coalition with somebody that you have genuine policy disagreements.
[521] That's how things used to be.
[522] That's how things used to go.
[523] So we disagreed on that one.
[524] But I thought he gave some really thoughtful answers about the culture of Washington and why what's broken about it and why the gun bill was so important and what more can be done on that front.
[525] So, yeah, it was I thought it was a cool conversation.
[526] Well, Tim, I know you need to hit the road today.
[527] And just a heads up for folks next Friday.
[528] we're actually going to see one another in person, which is an exceedingly rare event.
[529] You, me, Amanda Carpenter, live at Trib Fest in Austin, Texas, next Friday afternoon.
[530] That is true.
[531] Come by and see us.
[532] And here's the other thing that I just found out yesterday, Charlie, which I can let people know if you do happen to be in Tribfest.
[533] And I don't know if Charlie if you're staying Friday night, but I have been added as the MC for the Trump.
[534] trivia night after our pundit.
[535] The college, you know, Republicans and Democrats of the UT have a trivia night that they sponsor.
[536] Can I get a ticket to that?
[537] You can.
[538] Yeah, maybe we can get a little bowlwork table going and I won't feed you all the answers, but I might feed you one or two just to give a little head, just to do a little heads up on the competition.
[539] I just want to see the MC stylings of Tim Miller.
[540] Tim, something to do.
[541] You have a great weekend and looking forward to seeing you and Amanda next Friday.
[542] Have a great weekend.
[543] I can't wait.
[544] We'll see you, Charlie.
[545] The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio production by Jonathan Siri.
[546] I'm Charlie Sykes.
[547] Thank you for listening to today's Bull Work podcast, and we'll be back tomorrow and do this all over again.