Dana Milbank: It’s the Trump Show Again

[0] Welcome to the Bull Work podcast.

[1] I'm Charlie Sykes.

[2] It is March 21st, 2003, and today is not the day you're going to be seeing a mugshot of Donald Trump.

[3] We're going to have to talk about other things like recognizing that none of this is remotely normal.

[4] Joining me on today's podcast, Dana Milbank from the Washington Post nationally syndicated columnist and author of The Destructionists, the 25 -year crack -up of the Republican Party.

[5] Good morning, Dana.

[6] It is great to be with you to discuss the abnormal, Charlie.

[7] Well, you know, I was calculating this morning that we are in year eight of the GOP hostage crisis.

[8] That's true.

[9] They continue to, you know, be obsessed with, well, how far do we have to go to defend him?

[10] But this is the eighth year.

[11] I mean, just run it out, you know, 2016, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, we are in 2023, and they are still held hostage.

[12] You're old enough to remember, right, during the Iran hostage crisis, they used to run, a little graphic on the screen.

[13] Day 452.

[14] That's right.

[15] That's right.

[16] I would stand out on street corners telling motorists to, you know, put on their lights or hunk their horn or whatever it is.

[17] So maybe we should be doing this on Capitol Hill and trying to get some support for them.

[18] But this is a different hostage crisis because the hostage taker had actually let them go in a way, you know, he was sort of caught napping and they were free.

[19] And now they've sort of voluntarily come back into it.

[20] And they keep re -upping.

[21] Like, okay, no, that, was good.

[22] Let's do this again.

[23] I mean, there's a certain irony of the fact that they're all down at that retreat in Florida, the House GOP, because they want to talk about their legislative, their non -existent legislative agenda and move forward.

[24] And all they can talk about, of course, is that what are we going to do with Donald Trump?

[25] How far do we go?

[26] What do we say?

[27] What is acceptable?

[28] You know, how much suckage is required for us not to be dinged by, you know, the Magaverse?

[29] Right.

[30] I was actually listening to Kevin McCarthy go on and on about the achievement.

[31] So I was kind of compressed.

[32] So I actually went to Congress .gov to look it up.

[33] And there are a total of two, two bills have become enacted into law so far in this Congress.

[34] Three months, two bills.

[35] But okay.

[36] You know, as I was saying a moment ago, they were virtually free of Trump.

[37] They're voluntarily going back into this.

[38] Now, we don't know what's going to become of Trump.

[39] But it seems to me that They've fallen into the classic of, you know, Trump's got his back to the wall, puts out something that will return the attention to him.

[40] Now, maybe this is true and maybe an indictment will be forthcoming.

[41] But he's done this play over and over again.

[42] You know, I used to tease long before he actually got into politics.

[43] He would tease presidential runs at the time when he'd need to renegotiate the apprentice.

[44] So it's just sort of an artificial way of getting himself back in the news.

[45] Now, we don't know if this is artificial.

[46] or if it's genuine, but it clearly has gotten himself back in the news.

[47] It is astonishing the extent to which they've wrapped themselves around him again, turning against DeSantis.

[48] Like, you know, he was dead to rights.

[49] And suddenly he's back, the standard bearer of the Republican Party.

[50] This debate about whether it's going to help or hurt him, I think, is somewhat interesting, although I just remind people that, you know, this is going to be a long story at this point.

[51] And Republicans are trying to figure out, you know, how tightly do we wrap ourselves around the Trumpian axle here?

[52] And they're trying to come up with the template, which is you attack the prosecutors, you invoke George, you know, Soros's name as many times as possible.

[53] You use the word weaponization.

[54] But you're going to have to use that same playbook, not just after the New York indictments, but potentially after what's going to happen in Georgia and then perhaps what happens with the Department of Justice of how long does this go on.

[55] So I was going to wait a little bit later to pop this question on you.

[56] But, you know, there is this debate, which is interesting, I think.

[57] I mean, you know, all the cool kid pundits are saying this indictment is going to boost Donald Trump.

[58] I don't know whether you read Alex Burns's piece in Politico.

[59] And he says, no, actually it's not because for all of his usual strengths, Trump right now is defined more by his weakness, personal and political deficiencies that have grown with time and now figure to undermine any attempt to exploit the criminal case against him.

[60] And his point is that when politicians in the past have survived these scandals, it's because they say this is a distraction from all of these other.

[61] important things I want to do in the country.

[62] But Donald Trump is all about Donald Trump.

[63] Donald Trump's entire campaign is about Donald Trump and about his grievances.

[64] So it's not a distraction.

[65] It's the whole show.

[66] And even if he gets 98 percent of the MAGA voters rallying around him, if he loses 2 percent, he can't afford to lose any percentage.

[67] What do you think?

[68] Strengthen, weakness, long term, short term?

[69] Gosh, Charlie, every time, you know, over this eight -year hostage crisis in which I've said something is going to weaken Donald Trump.

[70] I'm hoping you don't have all of those sound bites lined up there to play back at me because there are many of them.

[71] The walls are closing in.

[72] The walls have in fact closed against each other and still he's the last man standing.

[73] So it's kind of in a way of fools errand to try to game out what will happen here.

[74] So, you know, just my instinct, he was in a really rough shape within the party.

[75] They were beginning to move on.

[76] This returns him to the center of the.

[77] the party.

[78] So, you know, just as a political matter for the left or for the never Trump crowd, I think that's a bad thing because anything that gives him more attention, that's his fuel.

[79] Attention of any sort is his fuel.

[80] And without question, he's the main thing people are talking about in the United States of America right now.

[81] So, you know, yeah, I can see how you could, you could game it out.

[82] And, you know, if there's this indictment, if there's another indictment in Georgia, will people continue to peel away?

[83] But just the, I mean, I mean, the reaction by the House Republicans in particular is really disconcerting.

[84] I mean, three committee chairs send this letter, you know, sort of nakedly attempting to interfere in a non -federal criminal probe.

[85] Each time we say we're in, you know, unprecedented territory here, but I'm pretty sure we haven't seen that before.

[86] No, we haven't seen it before.

[87] And, you know, it's another indication of how, you know, Kevin McCarthy is just willing to do anything in return for the support that he got.

[88] He continues to be held hostage, obviously, by the crazy caucus and the fact that he would unleash committee chairs to engage in really what is tacitly obstruction of justice is rather extraordinary.

[89] I attempt to intimidate the local prosecutor without knowing what the local prosecutor is going to do.

[90] I think it's worth reminding people that as of this moment, nothing has happened.

[91] We don't know what the grand jury is going to do.

[92] We don't know whether they're going to be charges, whether they're going to be felony, whether they're going to be misdemeanor.

[93] I mean, we can make, I suppose, educated guesses, but none of them felt the need to keep their powder dry until something actually happened.

[94] And so that's probably a tell about how tight that string is.

[95] I mean, how tight the leash is on people like Kevin McCarthy.

[96] Yes, as we were discussing, first is the question of what actually comes out of this thing in New York, and is it a brilliant Trump ploy to regain the spotlight?

[97] But in this reflexive way in which they've come to him.

[98] I mean, I was listening to Mark Green.

[99] I think it was yesterday, the new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and he said this about the potential indictment.

[100] Daniel Ortega arrested his opposition in Nicaragua, and we called that a horrible thing.

[101] Mr. Biden, Mr. President, think about that.

[102] So none of the left to Trump's events, this poor man seems to think that Alvin Bragg is a member of the Biden administration and is mounting a federal prosecution.

[103] This sort of cognitive dissonance, et cetera, is not really a problem for a lot of these folks.

[104] Okay, so we know what the playbook has been, which is, you know, to attack the prosecutor, you know, to talk about, you know, Soros prosecutors, to talk about the weaponization, et cetera.

[105] But then we had the DeSantis straddle yesterday, which is interesting.

[106] So Ron DeSantis comes out, and now this is after days of intense pressure from Mago World.

[107] Mara Lago is absolutely obsessed with getting every Republican to bow the knee.

[108] You know, he has his focus on bullying Ron DeSantis or Haley as any other issue out there.

[109] So, you know, the Flying Monkeys were released on Ron DeSandis.

[110] When are you going to speak out?

[111] When are you going to break your silence?

[112] And DeSantis comes out.

[113] He hits all the right notes, right?

[114] He, you know, he says weaponization about, you know, 50 times, says George Soros, I think, about 150 times.

[115] And then he says this.

[116] I don't know what goes into paying husband.

[117] money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair.

[118] I just, I can't speak to that.

[119] And he later comes back to porn star hush money payments.

[120] So Dana, your paper of the Washington Post said the response Monday was also one of many subtler shots to Sanders is taken at Trump while refraining from direct criticism.

[121] It wasn't really subtle at all.

[122] I didn't think there was anything subtle about it.

[123] And, you know, we don't get to, at least I don't get to say this very often.

[124] But, man, it seems Ron DeSantis was pitch perfect with that one.

[125] And, of course, it, you know, antagonized Trump world.

[126] But, okay, he said the requisite lines about Soros.

[127] But he also said, wait a second.

[128] What are we talking about here?

[129] And, of course, Donald Trump responds by essentially suggesting that Ron DeSantis has been grooming underage children.

[130] Oh, my God.

[131] So it's a delicious sort of taste of what that primary could be.

[132] You've heard the reporters down in Orlando this week trying to get McCarthy and others to say something about the substance of the matter, about, you know, illegal, hush money, porn star.

[133] And it's just sort of the constant resistance that the answer is just Soros, political prosecution.

[134] So they have their talking point and they're going to stick with it.

[135] But, you know, to your point about Trump's response, I mean, he's sitting down there in the bunker in Mara Lago.

[136] And he really hit the kind of the equivalent of the nuclear button, which is you go to Groomer right away.

[137] I mean, it's March of 2023, and he's already there.

[138] Ron De Sanctimonious, which is a terrible name, we'll probably find out about all caps, false accusations and fake stories sometime in the future as he gets older, wiser, and better known, when he's unfairly and illegally attacked by a woman, even classmates that are underage or possibly a man, exclamation.

[139] Trump wrote, I'm sure he will want to fight these misfits just like I do.

[140] Like, I'm not saying these things, but other people might say these terms.

[141] terrible things, and I'm going to include the picture here.

[142] So clearly, you have this fight engaged.

[143] Look, I know that DeSantis is trying to, you know, thread the needle, lock the tight robe, whatever, you know, overused analogy you want here.

[144] But at least in Trump world, you cannot suck up hard enough if you don't bow the knee.

[145] Now, on the other hand, maybe he sort of put the signal out there.

[146] I'm not the guy that pays off porn stars without antagonizing the Trump base.

[147] But this is going to be, boy, he's going to have to do some fancy footwork.

[148] work, isn't he?

[149] Yeah, I mean, just it's immediately isolated him, and it shows you what they're up against.

[150] Now, you say Trump has, you know, immediately gone to Groomer, but that implies that this is already the bottom.

[151] But, you know, of course, there are so many allegations that you and I, if we were sitting here brainstorming, we couldn't come up with the sorts of things that Donald Trump is ready to throw at DeSantis.

[152] Well, he's already throwing in the possibly a man thing, which is, I mean, I mean, he's really out there.

[153] Right.

[154] And it's fair to say how much further, how much lower could it go?

[155] And I'm just saying there are depths to which you and I and other mortals cannot conceive when we think about where this is going.

[156] You know, if you think about the way Trump has mowed down his opponents previously, many of them have wavered and fallen after a few shots like that.

[157] We're expecting this battle of Titans here.

[158] Yeah.

[159] I don't know if Ron DeSantis is up for it.

[160] I mean, he's very good at whining about woe corporations, but just the mono a mono with a guy who will go absolutely anywhere.

[161] You know, say what you will about Ron DeSantis.

[162] I'm not a fan.

[163] I think he's doing lots of irresponsible things.

[164] It seems to me he's got some sort of an internal framework of, you know, playing roughly within the rules or what he thinks the rules should be.

[165] I don't know if he's able to compete with somebody for whom there are no. rules.

[166] I mean, it's one thing to beat up Mickey Mouse.

[167] It's another thing to go head to head with Donald Trump, who has no rules, no sense of decency.

[168] There's nothing he's not willing to do or to countenance.

[169] I mean, we know that.

[170] I mean, think about in terms of the bottom, you know, the fact that he went off on Joe Scarborough implying that he had murdered a young woman years ago when, you know, that's clearly a complete lie.

[171] If you're willing to go to murder, then really, I think you've already established that there's nothing you're not willing to say.

[172] The real tension for Ron DeSantis is there's two things on his brand, right, that he is, you know, he's Trumpian, you know, without the court dates coming.

[173] He's Trump.

[174] He's, you know, as close as possible.

[175] On the other hand, he's also, you know, a fighter.

[176] And he's, you know, he's a counterpuncher.

[177] And so at some point, those are intention because is he going to counterpunch and punch back at Donald Trump himself?

[178] And if he doesn't counterpunch, will he look weak?

[179] Will he look like a cuck?

[180] Which he can't afford to do because that's.

[181] destroys his brand.

[182] We're seeing other signs of weakness, too.

[183] I mean, the earlier, the Ukraine response, Trump can get away with that.

[184] You saw a lot of the sort of establishment or what was left of the Republican establishment in Congress pushing back against DeSantis in a way you don't hear them necessarily pushing back against Trump.

[185] So it's still that Trump can get away with things that even Ron DeSantis, who has been the rising star and the great hope for many Republicans, just can't get away with those same things.

[186] It sort of indicates what we may be looking at over the next year.

[187] And that is, it's not a fair fight.

[188] No, life is not fair.

[189] Hey, folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bullwork podcast.

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[197] We're going to get through this together, I promise.

[198] So let's go through some soundbites.

[199] What's going on over at Fox News, where there seems to be a rolling meltdown freak out about all of this.

[200] Let's start with, of course, with Tucker Carlson, who is suggesting, guys, we all pay off porn stars or something like this.

[201] Let's play Tucker.

[202] And in fact, settlements like this, whatever you think of them, are common, both among famous people, celebrities, and in corporate America.

[203] The results is usually known as an NDA, a non -disclosure agreement.

[204] In this case, you can believe, whatever side you want to believe, but paying people not to talk about things, hush money is ordinary in modern America.

[205] Yeah, tons of people do this sort of thing, Dana.

[206] I thought I was the only one, but now I'm realizing that these hush money payments are more widespread than that.

[207] Well, at Fox News, it probably is pretty routine, right?

[208] Yeah.

[209] You know, I don't want to, you know, spread innuendo about Tucker Carlson, but he has been exposing his private parts to those you know, blue lights or red lights or whatever they were.

[210] And it's possible that over some period of time, this has, you know, had a cumulative effect on his judgment and his view of the number of American males who have paid off porn stars using illegal campaign cash.

[211] I've just admitted to it.

[212] I don't know if you're a man enough to.

[213] I'm going to pass for at least for now.

[214] You have a reputation to uphold.

[215] No, I have the glow light on order.

[216] I haven't actually started using it yet.

[217] But the thing about Tucker's point, you know, that, you know, there are a lot of NDAs.

[218] This is not an NDA situation.

[219] This is a case involving, you know, the intentional falsification of business records to cover up potential other crime.

[220] So let's just leave that there.

[221] Okay.

[222] In the category of whatever happened to blank, Alan Dershowitz was on with Gene Piro last night.

[223] And essentially comparing Donald Trump, if I follow the logic, Donald Trump to civil rights workers in the 1960s, and Alvin Bragg, who is progressive African -American district attorney, to southern segregationists.

[224] This is where Alan Dershowitz has gone.

[225] I'm reminded when I was a young civil rights worker and I trained to go down south in the 1960s, our trainers taught us one thing.

[226] Don't spit on the floor.

[227] Don't put out your cigarettes because they're targeting you.

[228] They're looking for you as civil rights workers.

[229] They will indict you for a felony, if you put out a cigarette on the floor.

[230] And we all learned that lesson because we knew we were being targeted.

[231] And now DA Bragg is following the absolute lead of the segregationist South prosecutors and police by targeting somebody who was unpopular, just like the civil rights workers were.

[232] It's a terrible, terrible precedent to follow.

[233] And it will establish a terrible precedent that can again be used as it was used against civil rights.

[234] Exactly.

[235] All right.

[236] We shall overcome.

[237] I just had the imagery of the fire hoses and the dogs in the back of this poor Donald Trump there, you know, cowering in the corner.

[238] And Gene Piro saying, all right, all right.

[239] Even she is trying to back away.

[240] Yeah, this is getting a little bit rich and woolly.

[241] So I won't even ask, you know, what's happened to Alan Dershowitz.

[242] But, I mean, that's a stretch.

[243] That's a stretch of a stretch.

[244] Look, I think he's enjoyed representing Trump in the past.

[245] Maybe we have a new audition here, but is paying hush money to a porn star with illegal campaign cash, the equivalent of putting out your cigarette on the floor?

[246] Well, this is what I'm looking forward to with Alan Dershowitz, you know, when and if he is indicted down in Georgia for attempting to overturn the election there, engaging in election fraud, will he compare that to snuffing out a cigarette on the floor?

[247] Or if he is indicted for taking, you know, classified documents, will that be the equivalent of just putting out of just putting out of.

[248] not your cigarette.

[249] Or if he's indicted for inciting a riot, an attack on the Capitol, is that the same thing?

[250] You know, he's going to have a little bit of work to do.

[251] I mean, when you think about it, it is, you know, you're snuffing a cigarette out, you're snuffing democracy out on the floor.

[252] I think it's, you know, in my legal judgment, that's a, that's a fair case to me. Pretty much the same thing.

[253] Okay, so another sound bite here, Gene Piro, who was on, who she was sitting in for, you know, Hannity.

[254] Wow, that's, but she has a Trump lawyer named Hubba, I think Alina Hubba on.

[255] She's asking, is America going to tolerate this, this terrible thing?

[256] And by the way, how many lawyers are there?

[257] Because it seems like every time you turn on cable television, there's another lawyer you've never seen, never heard of, nobody in the legal professions ever heard of.

[258] So here is Attorney Hubba on with Gene Pirro.

[259] The fact that this case is relying on the testimony of a perjurer, of a liar, of a Trump hater, and that is Michael Cohen.

[260] By another Trump hater, Alvin.

[261] and bragg and by a whole series of people like mark pomerance the guy who wrote the book i mean will america tolerate this in the end if there is a trial i don't think so i don't think they're going to tolerate if there's an indictment frankly jean i think that if you have anybody watching the news both liberal and uh republican news you can see that we have balloons coming over from china we've got hunter biden smoking crack and he's not getting you know any penalty if it was eric trump We all know he'd be arrested in front of his children in two minutes.

[262] In front of his children.

[263] Well, when they're working in the Chinese balloon, you know, they're kind of reaching for stuff.

[264] I don't know.

[265] It just seems like kind of random there.

[266] Well, if counselor Hubba says so, who are we to disagree with her?

[267] You're right.

[268] There probably is a whole Murdoch -owned law school that is generating new legal minds to the cause.

[269] So what do you make of the former president calling for protests, take back our country?

[270] I got some pushback from some folks yesterday.

[271] He said, look, this is not the same as January 6th.

[272] You know, he's just, you know, he's putting out this vague, you know, statement that, you know, people should protest.

[273] He's not calling for peaceful protest, but there's nothing violent about it.

[274] My take on this is wait because it's going to be a long summer.

[275] We're not talking about this coming to fruition necessarily this week.

[276] I don't think that people ought to get cocky if people do not show up in downtown Manhattan over the next three days.

[277] days because this is going to stretch out.

[278] And again, you have multiple potential indictments.

[279] And so once Trump has laid out the predicate that this is intolerable, that America should not tolerate it, that people should take to the streets, that this is the time, I think it would be incredibly naive to think that we're not laying the groundwork for something that is potentially quite dangerous, especially in light of what's already happened in this country.

[280] Well, right.

[281] Now, okay, if January 6 never happened and Trump said these words, you'd say, oh, well, he thinks people should protest.

[282] But January 6 happened.

[283] We know what Trump means when he says people should go out and protest.

[284] So there's a precedent here.

[285] There's a reason why people are concerned about this.

[286] There's a reason why even Kevin McCarthy for all his devotion to Donald Trump was saying, I don't think people should go down that road.

[287] Luckily, it appears, you know, outside of, you know, people matter.

[288] at Mara Lago, I guess they're going to form a flotilla on the intercoastal there.

[289] But there's not a whole lot of activity going on so far.

[290] But I think you're right that, of course, nothing has happened yet.

[291] So the very notion that he's essentially summoning his troops at this early stage when we don't even know what's going to happen, that's the ominous thing.

[292] We know about his peaceful protest calls.

[293] Well, exactly.

[294] But this is also the crucial context, because Donald Trump, along with Kevin McCarthy and Tucker Carlson, are busy right now doing revisionist history of January 6th, rewriting that story to make it, you know, either a peaceful protest or a completely justifiable protest.

[295] And Trump himself has embraced the protesters, has endorsed them, has, you know, sing songs with them, has promised them pardon.

[296] So right now, I think you need to think about January 6th is something that happened in the past, but ongoing the attempt to, revised that is this is completely legitimate.

[297] This is what we expect.

[298] This is what America should do.

[299] And if I'm elected president, I'm going to make sure that you don't get any punishment in light of his call for more protests.

[300] I think we'll have to see all of this as an ongoing process.

[301] These are not just discrete events here.

[302] There's a reason why they are investing so much energy, including Kevin McCarthy, giving out those tapes in this attempt to somehow whitewash Donald Trump's, you know, instigation of the first instirection.

[303] Yeah, I look, I think the whitewashing that's been going on here is not just to appease and to placate Trump.

[304] I think, you know, McCarthy is doing it because that's where his membership is.

[305] That's where the Republican caucus is.

[306] He can't go back from where he is right now because he's got a four -seat majority and they would very quickly turn against him.

[307] So I think this is an area in which it's the trumpification of the party.

[308] So I don't think they're specifically concerned about Trump during the revisionism.

[309] But this has just become an article of faith within the party now, that the insurrectionists are being poorly treated, that it was a mostly peaceful protest.

[310] That is now an article of faith in the mainstream Republicans, even those who aren't MAGA Republicans, can't vary from that.

[311] So let's talk about Kevin McCarthy.

[312] You had a recent column where you sort of joked that no one since the No Nothing Party has boasted having so much ignorance is Kevin McCarthy.

[313] It doesn't matter what you ask the Speaker of the House.

[314] He hasn't read it, seen it, or heard about it.

[315] You know, and you go through some of the example, you know, the Dominion documents where Fox House, you know, privately said they thought that Trump's 2020 election lies were bunk.

[316] Didn't read that at all.

[317] I didn't see that at all.

[318] Or about the way that Tucker Carlson has manipulated the 40 ,000 hours of video.

[319] This again is Kevin McCarthy's playbook, right?

[320] Is to do these.

[321] reckless things, and then to pretend that he never doesn't know what happens to them, doesn't hear any of this.

[322] It's a, no, it's a mystery.

[323] And of course, the alternative would be to acknowledge the ruin that he is bringing about.

[324] So, of course, he can't acknowledge it.

[325] But we're seeing this play out over and over again.

[326] Now, I think this week starting to see more, in a more consequential way, what's going to happen with the budget showdown.

[327] He's completely gotten himself into a box there, holding spending to 22 levels, not touching social security and Medicare, not touching defense spending, and not raising taxes, because he has promised those various things across the board.

[328] And what he's going to be left with is defunding essentially the entire federal government.

[329] I mean, forget about defunding the police.

[330] We're defunding everybody now.

[331] So I think the IOUs that he put out during his Kinsayayana in January are now, are now coming due.

[332] So I don't think he can keep this ball in the air for a whole lot longer.

[333] It's just not going to work.

[334] You hear them now saying, well, maybe the balanced budget is aspirational and not something we were actually thinking of doing.

[335] That's new.

[336] Or, you know, a little more of how the default isn't going to happen.

[337] That's entirely up to Joe Biden.

[338] It's a figment of his imagination.

[339] You know, we're deep into denial and silliness here and ticking now just, what, three months away from this crisis.

[340] And I just don't see the way out.

[341] I don't either.

[342] I have to admit that I've gotten kind of bored with the budget wonkery after all of these decades of falling.

[343] But I'm very interested to see what the Republicans come up with in their budget document.

[344] Because as you point out, you know, talk about, you know, trying to shove a square into a, you know, round hole here.

[345] It's going to be extremely difficult.

[346] And so, you know, they're going to come out with this budget that's going to cut everything.

[347] I was going to cut, you know, border guards?

[348] Are they going to cut air traffic controllers?

[349] I mean, they have to cut pretty much everything.

[350] But the one thing that we've learned, and again, the one through line of all of this is how weak Kevin McCarthy is and how he is unable, incapable of standing up to the crazies in his caucus.

[351] And I think, you know, to go back to this, giving out that surveillance footage was an indication of just how short a leash he is on here.

[352] You know, I mean, that's his see no evil approach.

[353] But as you point out, you know, given a choice between fact and fiction between law and anarchy, between democracy and thuggery, the Speaker of the House proclaimed his agnosticism.

[354] And in doing so, he threw the power of the speakership behind the insurrectionist and against the constitutional order he swore to uphold.

[355] I mean, this is not just a one -off.

[356] This is a guy who is willing to do and say anything in order to hold on to that speaker's gavel.

[357] And I think this was a pretty good example of it.

[358] And I think it's going to have consequences going forward as well as just as backward -looking.

[359] Oh, my goodness.

[360] Yeah.

[361] I mean, I think most of the consequences are going forward.

[362] Now, that great statesman, Matt Gates, I think, had it exactly right at the, you know, the beginning of the whole speakership battle when he said, Kevin McCarthy does not believe in anything.

[363] And that's absolutely true.

[364] If you go back to his time, he is a fairly liberal voting record, you know, just, you know, bringing pork home to his district.

[365] He's not ideological.

[366] He doesn't care.

[367] But what he does care, and this is how he is different from Paul Ryan and John Boehner, is whatever it is, he will do it, whether that's the security tapes to Tucker Carlson, whether that's whitewashing the insurrection, whether that's walking the plank on the debt, whether that's making these ridiculous defenses of Donald Trump in the Stormy Daniels case for the very simple reason that, you know, I, Kevin McCarthy, will not be speaker if more than four people walk away from me. And on any one of these things, many more than four people will walk away from him.

[368] It'll repeat itself every time.

[369] I have to confess that I'm a little bit jealous of you, Dana, because you got a full Dan Bongino rant directed at you.

[370] Dan Bongino, who is, how do we describe him as an exponentially dumber Rush Limbaugh, who's got a podcast, and he went after you for criticizing the decision to release that footage to Tucker Carlson.

[371] Yes.

[372] And you pointed out that this raised, you know, security concerns, which, by the way, is exactly what, you know, other security officials have said, you know, including the Capitol Police.

[373] What do you think triggered Dan Bongino, who is sort of a, you know, the dumber id of the Magaverse?

[374] Why was he so triggered by you calling McCarthy out on the security issue?

[375] I don't know, but he was calling me a clown, and he was calling me pretty dumb.

[376] So I don't know if you're called dumb by Don Fungina.

[377] You must be doing something right.

[378] Glenn Greenwald and others reacted to this.

[379] I don't really understand.

[380] Like, I'm all for, you know, if the Capitol Police, the other people responsible for security of the Capitol, our national security say, this isn't a danger to release this.

[381] well, by all means, release it, release it to everybody.

[382] You know, the point I was making there and that I believe in is you don't release things.

[383] This isn't, you know, the free flow of information to the media.

[384] It's not a First Amendment right to print things that are going to endanger the lives of other people.

[385] There's always a balance involved in these things.

[386] You know, the Washington Post and others all the time get leaked information that could compromise the national security.

[387] And what happens in virtually all these cases, is there's a negotiation with the government to say, all right, well, this is what we want to publish.

[388] What are your concerns?

[389] And, you know, you can't always meet them, but there's a back and forth there.

[390] In this case, we know the lawyers for the Capitol Police file an affidavit saying they wanted to be able to say what would be dangerous in this release.

[391] And they were denied that by the House Republican leadership.

[392] So it's not just that they neglected to ask them.

[393] they actively refuse to deal with the Capitol Police, which was only trying to protect the security of the Capitol and of the members, the Republican leadership included.

[394] I think part of this is that they sense a certain amount of vulnerability with their, you know, we back the blue.

[395] We are the party of law and order in contrast to the way they're handling all of this.

[396] You know, I'd make a deep dive into the various all caps rants from Trump last couple of days, which are bizarre, all of them.

[397] I mean, they are, you know, ferret -level crazy.

[398] But the one that really kind of struck me was when he seemed to be appealing to the New York Police Department not to protect the prosecutors against the protesters, and he said, you know, I am your favorite president, I am your champion, that he's actually trying to influence the New York Police Department to side with him and any protesters.

[399] You know, we're in a very strange period here.

[400] And I guess, I'm sorry to keep repeating this because every couple of days we have to stand and say, this is really not normal.

[401] People, do you see what's right in front of you?

[402] I love Kevin Williamson's piece in his newsletter, you know, who looked at these truth social statements and said, you know, this is not the kind of thing you'd expect from a man who was until five minutes ago, the president of the United States.

[403] It is precisely the sort of thing.

[404] One would expect from a delusional bedlamite who invented imaginary friend a lie to the New York Post about his sex life, then named him.

[405] his youngest son after said imaginary friend.

[406] I don't know whether he's mentally ill in a mental sense, but I do know that in the colloquial sense of crazy, he is as crazy as a sack of ferrets.

[407] And I mean, this is the moment, I know you've been, like you and I both been wrestling with the last eight years.

[408] This is a guy who is so unhinged, who is, you know, has called for the termination of the Constitution of Restormant Power, and you have an entire political party that looks at him and go, yeah, maybe, maybe.

[409] Maybe we'll go with this guy again.

[410] Maybe we'll support him because, you know, party loyalty is way more important than keeping this craziest sack of ferrets nut job out of the Oval Office.

[411] What do you think of his statement about the police, basically, you know, trying to tell the police, you know, you should be siding with me. You shouldn't be siding with these communist thugs.

[412] You shouldn't be protecting the officers of the duly elected government.

[413] I mean, you know, it's not a whole lot different from when he was suggesting that.

[414] that Hillary Clinton should be denied her Secret Service Protection, and then we'll see what happens.

[415] Or, you know, we can't do much about the Obama judges, except if you want to exercise your Second Amendment remedies.

[416] So subtle.

[417] Yeah, they're not terribly.

[418] I mean, you know, in the context of, you know, as we were talking earlier, about the calls to protest, this is why when Trump makes calls to protest, he is not, in fact, Alan Dershowitz talking about.

[419] We shall overcome and sit -ins in the south.

[420] This man is not Rosa Parks.

[421] He is not Rosa Parks, who has actually, unfortunately, been written out now, apparently, of some Florida textbook.

[422] So future generations of Floridians may indeed think that Donald Trump is very much like Rosa Parks.

[423] You know, none of this is normal, as we've said a million times, Charlie.

[424] But the other thing that is, I think, for a large number of the people now leading the country, it is normal.

[425] You know, I was just looking at the Congressional Research Service, the average tenure in the house.

[426] house eight years.

[427] And, you know, that includes, you know, some of the guys, you know, around 30, 40 years.

[428] I think McCarthy was just saying this morning that, you know, half of his caucus has never been in the majority before.

[429] So half of his caucus has no idea what the world was like before Donald Trump.

[430] So this is normal for them.

[431] And that's the real alarm is that, you know, you and I who have a bit more of institutional memory can say this is not normal.

[432] But unfortunately, for these guys, it is.

[433] And also the constant escalation of all of this, you know, and it's hard not to make this sound like a parody, but, you know, after January 6th, you know, there were critics, you know, us who would say, you know, this was a coup attempt.

[434] It was an attempt to subvert the Constitution.

[435] And, of course, you know, the immediate response from Republicans was, no, no, it's not.

[436] And then Donald Trump goes, yeah, actually it was.

[437] We should terminate the Constitution to put me back into power.

[438] And everybody goes, well, okay.

[439] And they just move on from this, where he's, He stands up and says, damn right, I tried to terminate the Constitution, and I will do it again.

[440] And everybody sort of shuffles their feet and goes, well, you know, at least we'll keep out, you know, Antifa, BLM and the other, you know, communist atheists, you know, from the Democratic Party, really.

[441] Right.

[442] Yeah, the answer is George Soros and ESG.

[443] Dana Milbank, thank you so much.

[444] Dana Milbank is a nationally syndicated op -ed, Ed columnist for The Washington Post.

[445] His latest book is The Deconstructionist, the 25 -year crackup of the Republican Party.

[446] I think you'll have to add on another eight years to that.

[447] So the next edition when it comes out in paperback, the 40 -year crack -up of the Republican Party.

[448] Dana, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast.

[449] It's my pleasure, Charlie, thanks.

[450] And thank you all for listening to today's bulwark podcast.

[451] I'm Charlie Sykes.

[452] We will be back tomorrow.

[453] We'll do this all over again.

[454] The Bullwork podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.