The Bulwark Podcast XX
[0] Hello, welcome to the Bullard podcast.
[1] I'm your host Tim Miller.
[2] I wanted to say thanks for the kind words to everybody who saw me out at Jazz Fest this weekend.
[3] A lot of Bullwark folks out there.
[4] We were blessed with great weather, wonderful music.
[5] I loved Grace Potter with Galactic, Anderson Pack.
[6] And David Andrews, they were the highlights for me. So you'll probably be hearing those guys on the outroes this week.
[7] But if you weren't at Jazz Fest and you want to hear some Bullwark Talk live, we are in Philly on Wednesday.
[8] And I'll be there with Bill Crystal.
[9] So you might notice that Bill Crystal's not here today because that show will air on this feed later in the week.
[10] But if you're in Philly, New Jersey, Delaware, anywhere on Amtrak, be impulsive, come grab tickets, thebork .com slash events.
[11] We'd love to see you on Wednesday night in Philly.
[12] Okay, today's guest, somebody that I've been wanting to have for a while, one of my favorites when Charlie was in the chair, Peter Wainer, contributing writer at the Atlantic in the New York Times.
[13] His books include The Death of Politics, How to Heal Our Freed Republic After Trump.
[14] He's a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum and served in the Reagan and both books.
[15] administration.
[16] So he's got some bona fides.
[17] Mr. Wainer, thanks for doing this, brother.
[18] Great to be with you, Tim.
[19] Thanks for having me on.
[20] I'm excited.
[21] Okay.
[22] Well, I guess we got to talk about one of your colleagues first from those administrations.
[23] Bill Barr.
[24] This is the story of our life, right?
[25] Bill Barr, both him and Mitch McConnell over the weekend did the, I'm for the nominee two -step, but I don't really want to say his name.
[26] But Bill Barr was the most obnoxious of the two.
[27] So we're going to listen to him.
[28] It's kind of a long clip.
[29] I think it's important to hear his whole argument for why he is supporting Donald Trump and why he thinks Joe Biden is a greater threat to democracy.
[30] Let's listen to Bill Barr.
[31] How can you see that and say that Biden is a greater threat to democracy?
[32] Well, where are we losing our freedoms?
[33] How are our freedoms being constrained?
[34] They're being constrained by the progressive government.
[35] And, you know, democracy, especially, you know, from the anglosphere democracies, the five eyes and so forth, the threat.
[36] That's never been for autocratic government on the right.
[37] But how specifically is Biden threatening democracy?
[38] The threat to freedom and democracy has always been on the left.
[39] It's the collectivist, socialist agenda.
[40] And that is where we're losing our freedom.
[41] Parents are losing the freedom to control their children's education.
[42] And, you know, people can't speak their mind without losing their jobs and things like that.
[43] This is worse than the McCarthy era.
[44] Where is that coming from?
[45] It's not coming from the right.
[46] Those two things that you just noted there, you believe, are worse than a president of the United States trying to subvert the will of the people by overturning the results of the election?
[47] No, I think a country, all the things together, like we're not enforcing our borders, so we have open borders.
[48] We have lawlessness in our cities.
[49] We have regulations coming fast and fierce, so telling people what kind of stoves, they can use and what kinds of cars they have to drive and, you know, eliminating cars and so forth.
[50] Yeah, those are those are the threats to democracy.
[51] Eliminating cars is a threat to democracy, Peter.
[52] That's really something.
[53] You know, he's really churning himself up there trying to stick the landing.
[54] I don't know.
[55] What did you think about William Barr?
[56] Yeah, I thought it was disgraceful.
[57] I thought it was actually a very helpful insight into a ossified and deep ideological mind.
[58] I mean, this is a person who simply cannot vote Democratic under any circumstances.
[59] He basically admitted as much.
[60] I think part of that is, you know, the habits of a lifetime that he is so used to like a lot of Republicans having this sort of manician struggle.
[61] And they're on the right side and Democrats and liberals are on the wrong side.
[62] So I think to some extent he's reverting to form.
[63] But it was embarrassing.
[64] I'd say for a couple of reasons.
[65] I mean, let's just take some of the particulars that he mentioned, the open borders.
[66] It was a Republican Party, not the Democratic Party, this sabotaged the strongest border bill, probably in our lifetime that Joe Biden supported.
[67] And why did the Republicans sabotage the border security bill?
[68] Because Donald Trump told them, because they wanted chaos on the border.
[69] It talks about law and order crime in the streets.
[70] 2023, we're having a record drop in violent crime and murder rates after they went up under Trump.
[71] Now, that was in 2020 because of the pandemic, and that has to be taken into account.
[72] The reality is that this hellscape, this dystopia that people like Bill Barr describe America as being is contrary to the facts.
[73] But beyond that, you know, Barr in that interview and in other interviews has said that Trump was off the rails, that he lost his grip, that he was manic, that he was erratic, that he was unreasonable.
[74] He basically has described Donald Trump as a sociopath as psychologically, deeply unwell.
[75] Yet he cannot bring it within itself, even if he said, look, I can't vote for Biden out of a good conscience, but he says he's going to vote for Trump.
[76] The last thing I'll say is that this is a reflex that I see from a lot of people on the right, which is they try and portray Joe Biden as if he's AOC.
[77] I think in a lot of respects, Biden is something of a bulwark against the worst tendencies in the left, not in every respect, but in important respect.
[78] So look, I think the whole thing was jumbled, and I think it was an embarrassment, but it was helpful because it is a window into a mindset that's quite alarming.
[79] Yeah, it's a very good debunking of all of his arguments, though, it's funny, even if they were all true, it still feels like a pretty weak argument, right?
[80] Even if Joe Biden was for open borders, you know, and even if we're at risk of losing our freedom to bike the car of our choosing, that still would pale in comparison to what Trump did.
[81] The one thing I thought was interesting in the answer that was kind of revealing was the word anglosphere.
[82] You know, when he's talking about, where is the real threat?
[83] Right.
[84] And I think this is, you know, you can jump straight to racism or whatever, but there's certainly maybe some latent racially motivated thinking.
[85] But to me, it's just more that these guys really, I think, genuinely cannot imagine that this can happen here.
[86] Right.
[87] They truly do believe that in the anglosphere, in Australia, the United Kingdom, us, and maybe they don't even include Canada, like, we're just too strong.
[88] Like, the countries are just too, you know, we're too resilient and that it's not worth worrying about.
[89] We're not weak like Italy or Colombia or Africa, right?
[90] Like, I think that there's something to that, like, you can't imagine that Donald Trump could actually do the worst.
[91] I think that's probably right.
[92] Although I will say that of all the people in the country, Bill Barr, should be in that select handful that knows it could happen because he was there at the time.
[93] I mean, he was the one that was getting orders from Trump to try and overturn the election.
[94] He saw Trump up close, and we know that we were much closer to losing democracy than we may have thought of at the time, if not for a few key people, including Mike Pence and Barr, making the right decision.
[95] So he certainly should know better.
[96] And I'll tell you, in some ways, my contempt, I guess it's the word I would use for people like Barr and Chris Sununu is greater than other people, the true believers like Marjorie Taylor Green.
[97] I mean, I think they're nuts.
[98] They're lunatics.
[99] But I don't think that they actually are aware of that.
[100] I think that they're psychologically unmoored.
[101] The people like Sununu and Barr are not, they know better.
[102] And yet for a variety of reasons, some of it ambition, some of it fear and cowardice, some of it for this extreme tribalism, has led them to a position which, is a threat to the country.
[103] One other thing I just want to say about Bill Barr, just for the record, he's a liar.
[104] If you go back and read a case that Reggie Walton, who's a distinguished judge, conservative, appointed by George W. Bush, he made a ruling in the context of Barr's actions over the Mueller report and said that basically Bill Barr knowingly altered the facts and the storyline in order to protect Trump and to discredit the Mueller report.
[105] So we're dealing with a person who is not honest.
[106] Yeah.
[107] I haven't actually read that.
[108] So we'll grab that and put that in the show notes for other folks who've missed it.
[109] I mean, I think it's pretty obvious from the context of your answer.
[110] But how do you assess, you know, this election and Biden?
[111] And, you know, I mean, if you said that he's a little bit of a bulwark against the left, but are you gleefully voting for Biden, reluctantly, you know, weighing the options?
[112] Where are you on it?
[113] Yeah, you know, I've said that my 2020 vote for Biden was both a vote that I was least enthusiastic about and proudest of, least enthusiastic because I'm still conservative.
[114] And, you know, Joe Biden's never been my ideal candidate, my cup of tea as a candidate.
[115] And, you know, his age concerns me and other things concern me about him.
[116] On the other hand, I consider it the most important vote that I cast because of the nature of the threat from Donald Trump.
[117] And I'll feel that way in 2024.
[118] I will also say this, that if you had told me in mid -November 2020 that this is where we would be in April of 2024 in terms of Biden's stewardship of the country, I would have taken it.
[119] You know, I think he's made mistakes for sure.
[120] I think the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a huge mistake.
[121] There have been some, you know, some other errors that he's made.
[122] But overall, I think his stewardship has been pretty good.
[123] He's gotten some good legislation through.
[124] And the other thing is just the objective metrics of the country are in pretty good shape, whether you're talking about job growth, economic growth, inflation now is the lowest in the industrialized world.
[125] We've had more years of sub four percent unemployment, I think, in 60 years.
[126] So there are a whole number of metrics.
[127] Now, whether you ascribe all of that or none of it or some of it to Joe Biden, the reality is that America under his stewardship during the Biden years is not this dystopian world that I was describing earlier.
[128] But what's really interesting to me is that the American right has to hold on to that dystopian view, that notion of American carnage.
[129] In part, I think, because it's so hard for a lot of people to justify morally their support for Donald Trump because he's such an obviously morally depraity figure, the only way that they can mitigate the cognitive dissonance that that creates within them is to say the threat is horrifying on the other side that if Biden wins America dies, that's not going to happen, but they have to maintain that fiction to justify their stance?
[130] This is the, are we the crazy ones moment kind of thing?
[131] I'm listening to you say all that, though, which is, I agree with you.
[132] If you're just talking about the country and the metrics, you said, these are the legislation Biden would pass.
[133] You know, this is where the economy would be.
[134] This is, you know, of course I would have taken it in mid -November.
[135] But if then you would have said, and he'd be tied or losing to Donald Trump in the polls for re -election, you know, then I would have not taken that deal, of course.
[136] How do you assess that?
[137] And I just, I'm listening to you talking, it just seems obvious and plain to me. Is there something that we're missing that other people are seeing?
[138] Are we just, you know, I don't know, are we in some bubble of privilege?
[139] I honestly can't figure it.
[140] Yeah, that's a hard one.
[141] You know, some of it I imagine is an overhang from the pandemic, that there's just an attitude of a kind of depression in the country.
[142] And that's not unusual.
[143] I mean, when you have a pandemic of the size that we had, and the world had, that has ramifications, psychological, emotional ramifications.
[144] And so I think people are just looking out at things and seeing it through dark prism.
[145] So I think part of it is that.
[146] But look, it's a problem for the country.
[147] I've looked at this every way I can.
[148] And of course, it's possible that I'm missing things and that I'm blinded by certain things, too.
[149] But as best I can tell, this is not a close call for the reasons that we talked about.
[150] You know, Donald Trump is a unique threat to the country, and Liz Cheney's probably articulated that better than anybody else.
[151] The fact that the country is seriously entertaining him for another term is an indictment of much of the country, primarily the Republican Party, obviously primarily MAGA supporters, but it takes more than that if Trump is going to win.
[152] My hunches of Biden is still going to win, but the numbers don't look good.
[153] You know, you know more about that stuff than I do.
[154] Well, we had Simon Rosenberg with Hope you on Friday.
[155] my head, I still think that probably the fundamentals, you know, allow a squeak out of Biden right now.
[156] It's kind of what I feel for Biden right now.
[157] It's what I feel right now.
[158] But boy, it's way too close for comfort and definitely an indictment.
[159] How do you make sense of this?
[160] Assuming that your critique and my critique is generally correct.
[161] Yeah.
[162] What do you think explains the fact that this is a real race and that Trump is leading in a lot of polls?
[163] Yeah.
[164] Besides just casting judgment upon tens of millions of people.
[165] What else would I do in addition to that?
[166] Well, I kind of do do that.
[167] But in addition to that, sometimes we're very myopic in America.
[168] Around the world, incumbents' approval ratings are terrible.
[169] And this goes to the post -pandemic in the inflation.
[170] I think that there's something about inflation that is uniquely annoying, you know, and that even if the math, even if the math works, and I can just tell you that, look, I was with my friends all weekend who are non -political.
[171] and they're all pretty well off on balance and like hearing them just complain about hotel costs and flight costs and it's just more like they're all doing well but it's more it's the daily annoyance of having to worry about your financial status about having to go to the grocery store and buy the off brand thing and so these are people of privilege and then there are people that are really struggling paycheck to paycheck maybe they didn't get a raise and had to deal with inflation right who are they going to blame by them they look back and the pandemic itself feels like this exogenous event that Donald Trump is obviously not responsible for, but the response to it and right and like the fallout and the policies in the years after kind of do feel like they should be Biden's responsibility.
[172] That's unfair.
[173] I'm just trying to get inside the heads of some of these folks.
[174] And so I think that you just have a pretty depraved Republican Party that has rationalized everything about Donald Trump that's not looking at the facts.
[175] And then you add on to that, it doesn't take that many people, 3%, 4 % of the country that inflation is bothering them so much or Biden's age or whatever, you know, then all of a sudden it was a close race last time, right?
[176] And so that's that's kind of how I explain it, but it is flummoxing.
[177] Yeah, no, it makes sense.
[178] I mean, I guess if you grant that the Republican Party and MAGO world is with Trump, that just automatically gets them to some large number of people, whatever it is, 40, 41, 42, 43%.
[179] So after that, you're talking about the margins And within those margins, a lot of factors are going are going to go into it.
[180] It does return, really, to what you said, which is the depravity of the Republican Party.
[181] That's at the core of what's what's gone wrong.
[182] Some of those margins also on the left, I guess I should mention, Biden is not at 100 % with his own base.
[183] And some of that's over Gaza.
[184] I do want to, how do you kind of assess that?
[185] You've been a long, you know, supporter of Israel and seeing these kind of rhetoric.
[186] Obviously, there's been anti -Semitic rhetoric on the extremes on both sides.
[187] But about what's happening now, how do you kind of assess how?
[188] Biden's handled it and what we're seeing in the protests?
[189] Yeah, I agree by it relatively well on Israel.
[190] I mean, he was there when it mattered after October 7th.
[191] He went over there twice, some threat to his physical self too.
[192] And if you follow what was being said at Israel at the time, you know, he was being greeted as a champion and a great defender of Israel, which he has been his entire life.
[193] You know, trying to put pressure on Israel to get aid to Gaza strikes me as a humane thing and a wise thing and probably in Israel's interest.
[194] So I think Israel really was suffering from its position.
[195] So I think that he's been doing pretty well when the attacks from Iran came.
[196] You know, he obviously gave the green light for Israel to protect itself.
[197] So overall, I think he's done well.
[198] And he's suffering politically because the base of his party is pro -Palestinian and in some cases pro -Hamas.
[199] And again, you'll know this better than I. But in Michigan and other States.
[200] This could really cost him.
[201] So I think he's done reasonably well related to Israel.
[202] The campus protests are sickening.
[203] I think it's a distillation of what's gone wrong in the American Academy for a lot of years now, a lot of decades.
[204] You know, it's unavarnished anti -Semitism, which is grotesque.
[205] And it's spreading.
[206] And I guess it's an indication of the moral inversion that we're seeing in so many places that there's a rise of anti -Semitism after what they've had to experience.
[207] for sure i always want to do want to say like there's certainly earnest well -intentioned people that are part of these protests you know i get complaints from some people who i think are very rightly and very worried about the potential for a famine in gaza and like the very real humanitarian problems in gaza and i'm totally sympathetic to all that i know you are too the problem is when you're at these campus protests and there are signs that are on the same group as you and these signs say things like, you know, when people are occupied, resistance is justified and, you know, no Jews allowed on campus until Israelis move back to where they come from, Europe or America.
[208] And like, I guess that's not a direct quote, but that sign was on my alma mater's campus this weekend.
[209] You just can't associate yourself with that kind of thing.
[210] You know, like maybe there needs to be a splinter protest, right, where people are focused just on the plight of the Palestinian people.
[211] and it's not about at best anti -Zionism and certainly at worst, anti -Semitism in many of these cases on these campuses.
[212] Yeah, and it's really fused.
[213] I mean, one can obviously and rightly feel sympathy for the innocent Palestinians who are dying.
[214] The degree to which that movement has fused into pro -Hamas, any -Semitic movement against Israel, is really disquieting, and it's not helping the cause of the Palestinians.
[215] I also wonder, just more broadly back to Biden, all of this together, world events, Ukraine, Israel, and others, creates a sense of uncertainty in the world, disorder in the world, and chaos.
[216] And I think that Biden is paying for some of that, too.
[217] I don't blame him for these events.
[218] I actually think he deserves credit for it.
[219] But it's the ambiance.
[220] It's the frame that people are saying.
[221] One positive in that, that you mentioned Ukraine in the world chaos, is our friend Mike Johnson, who somehow has, you know, I think I said on a different podcast, is Saul in the Road to Damascus here.
[222] I think that there is potentially a religious underpinning here.
[223] I think that he was impressed upon by Ukrainian Christians, and I think that there was a genuine element of feeling like he had a religious obligation, a moral obligation, maybe a better word.
[224] to do the right thing here, which is refreshing.
[225] I mean, I guess should it be refreshing?
[226] It shouldn't all about our politicians feel more obligations to do things, but it's a change of pace for what we've seen in the MAGA party.
[227] How did you assess Mike Johnson's conversion?
[228] Yeah, I give him a lot of credit.
[229] He did something.
[230] He did the right thing, and he did the right thing at a cost.
[231] There was a threat to a speakership.
[232] Now, I think he wisely set this up that he was pretty confident that in moving forward with the aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, it wouldn't cost him a speakership.
[233] He wasn't sure about it.
[234] He wasn't sure about it.
[235] that.
[236] And he did change his mind.
[237] And he is pushing back against the MAGA wins on this.
[238] You know, my sense of Mike Johnson, I don't know him.
[239] I've read about him.
[240] I know people who know him.
[241] I think his faith is authentic.
[242] I have concerns about him.
[243] I wrote a piece when he became speaker called the political zealotry of Mike Johnson.
[244] And I'm familiar with the evangelical subculture that he comes from.
[245] So I do have some concerns about him.
[246] But I do think that he's honest in the depth of his faithfulness.
[247] I'm not sure it's always translated necessarily the right way.
[248] And I don't have much question that faith informed this decision.
[249] I think he's one of those people who tries to have faith inform virtually every decision that he makes.
[250] Now, all of us who are people of faith, struggle with whether we're just, in a sense, proof texting the Bible to validate what we already want to do or what we already believe.
[251] But I think he gets high marks.
[252] It tells us something about the times in which we live that he does something like this and he gets high marks.
[253] It should be a pretty straightforward thing.
[254] But you have to judge people in facts and circumstances.
[255] And I've been critical of them in the past.
[256] So I'm more than happy to say, well done.
[257] On that front, navigating all this area.
[258] So there's always something I'm interested in getting your view on kind of navigating faith in politics.
[259] So it was an interesting sermon that went viral on Twitter last week.
[260] I wanted to listen to a little bit of it.
[261] I know I sent it to you last week, but I was like, I want to know what Peter Wainer thinks about this.
[262] This pastor is Lauren Livingston.
[263] I know nothing about this pastor.
[264] So maybe this is normal for him.
[265] But he's in Charlotte, North Carolina.
[266] Well, let's just take a lesson to a little bit of his sermon from last week.
[267] When you don't read and pray, you say, wow, there's a Bible out now that includes the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
[268] Isn't that wonderful?
[269] No. No, it's disgusting.
[270] It's blasphemous.
[271] It's a ploy.
[272] Are you kidding me?
[273] Some of you are so encouraged by that?
[274] Let me tell you something.
[275] The gospel is not an American gospel.
[276] It is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
[277] But, Pastor, I bought the Bible.
[278] Really?
[279] You're telling me that you're encouraged because someone took a government, U .S. Constitution, a document that says we are of the people, by the people, and for the people, the people, the people.
[280] And you have put it right beside the word of God, which is eternal unchanging, which says of him, by him, through him.
[281] to him, from him are all things.
[282] And you're going to put those together and be happy about it.
[283] God forbid.
[284] Obviously, this stuff is just maybe refreshing, I think, always.
[285] That's why this goes viral now.
[286] This has gone about 10 years ago?
[287] Probably not.
[288] But people are like, oh, an evangelical -sounding Southern guy that is not doing Trump apologia from the pulpit.
[289] But anyway, what was your reaction to that?
[290] Yeah, I'll take it.
[291] I'll take it.
[292] It's not exactly my style.
[293] And, you know, that's an evangelical southern North Carolina pastor.
[294] And I bet my bottom dollar he's pastor of the non -denominational church down in North Carolina.
[295] But look, I think what he was saying was at its core basically right.
[296] I mean, he's certainly right when he said it's not an American gospel.
[297] And this is a lot of the confusion with Christian nationalism, which is the fusing of nation and Bible and Christianity.
[298] Christianity.
[299] And I give a guy like him a lot of credit because I'm guessing his congregation is predominantly Republican and conservative.
[300] And he's pushing back really hard about this fusion of church and state.
[301] So, you know, my own view in terms of as a person of Christian faith and my journey was a long one was that there is an intersection between faith and politics.
[302] And people of faith should care about politics because politics, well, it's about a lot of things is ultimately about job.
[303] justice and the human good and human flourishing.
[304] And you can't be indifferent to that.
[305] For Christian, it's the whole idea of the incarnation of God coming to earth and being part of the human story, the human drama.
[306] And that has all sorts of manifestations and ramifications.
[307] So, you know, I don't know exactly where he is on those questions, but there's no doubt in my mind, given the context in which we're in now, where you have people like Franklin Graham and Eric of Taxis and Robert Jeffers and Terry Falwell Jr. and on and on, Al Moeller.
[308] And they're not only voting for Trump, but they're champions for Trump, who is a man of extraordinary moral corruption.
[309] You know, I give credit to Livingston for pushing back against that.
[310] It's the right thing to say.
[311] Curious how you think about this now, kind of looking back on whatever, what has it been 40 years or so, give or take of the moral majority.
[312] And is there maybe just something that is fundamentally corrupting about fusing religion with politics in such a way?
[313] Is there a way to draw lines, right?
[314] Because I hear you.
[315] I don't, it seems kind of silly to be like, oh, you should totally divorce your religion from politics in all ways.
[316] But what we've seen in practice has just been, you know, how do you kind of think about that now with the benefit of a little bit of hindsight?
[317] I mean, I've long had concerns about that.
[318] You know, Jacques -Aluo, Lue, the French philosopher, once said that politics was the great threat to the church, its corrupting effects.
[319] And the reality is if you look through Christian history, it's checker, but there's a lot that's disturbing.
[320] I mean, you look at the German National Church in the 1930s, you know, with Hitler.
[321] You look at the Dutch Reformed Church with apartheid in South Africa in the 80s.
[322] You look at the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
[323] In America, you know, it's complicated with the abolition and civil rights movement, but there were people on both sides of that, that the main proponents, many of the main proponents in any event of slavery were ministers in the American South.
[324] And then you go back further than that.
[325] So power has always been a trap for Christians and for the Christian Church.
[326] And I'd say as a general matter, that power changes the church more than the church changes those in power.
[327] And we're certainly seeing that in this country.
[328] It's not the worst manifestation we've seen in history for sure.
[329] But if you go back to the start of the religious right, which is really the late 70s, early 80s, Jerry Falwell and the moral majority, Pat Robertson, the 700 Club, and their involvement, while there have been moments, I think, that were praiseworthy, and I think they stood for some helpful things.
[330] And they even at various times saw things that were of concern.
[331] I'd say overall, net net, the effect has been negative and that they had brought a temperament and a disposition to politics, which has really hurt politics.
[332] It It's taken the pre -existing passions that exist in politics, understandably exist, and added a kind of jet fuel to it.
[333] Because if you take politics and then you escalate it and say, well, what we're really talking about is the children of light against the children of darkness.
[334] This is God against Satan.
[335] And we're on the side of God.
[336] And that becomes a context in which politics is played out.
[337] It can get really ugly, really fast.
[338] So I think it's been a problem, and I think Jesus warned that it was a problem, and Christians and his followers have not done as good a job taking to heart his warnings.
[339] You know, so I had Rob Reiner on.
[340] They did a documentary about the threat of Christian nationalism, which interviewed a lot of genuine Christians, and I did a panel with him about it with William Barber.
[341] It was super interesting.
[342] Obviously, it comes from a different perspective from the Black Church.
[343] I never feel like I got a great answer from him on one question about it all, which is, where do we tip this over into a place that is dangerous?
[344] You know, I mean, I sometimes feel like you get finger waggy at all people of Christian faith that want to advocate for, you know, things that I disagree with, frankly, even on gay marriage or whatever, but it comes from a genuine place.
[345] Right.
[346] How do we, you know, define that?
[347] How do we allow, give people an off -ramp to feel like they can express their evangelical faith or their Christian faith in a way that is, you know, nurturing in a way that is in balance with a democratic, multiracial country where people have freedom of religion.
[348] Like, you know, like that's the part.
[349] So rather than just being like bad, we got to throw this all out with the trash.
[350] Yeah.
[351] Well, I think that's impressive.
[352] Your perspective, I think it's a fair one.
[353] And I think the fact that you can hold that perspective, even if you disagree with them, on some of the particulars, you know, is doubly, doubly impressive.
[354] And there is a reflex on the left.
[355] I think it tends to be, if not anti -religious, exactly.
[356] In some cases, it is.
[357] in some cases, it's not.
[358] But it's a world that a lot of people on the left are just not familiar with.
[359] And it's an alien world.
[360] And in many ways, I think they feel like it's a hostile world.
[361] So they don't give them the benefit of the doubt.
[362] You know, somebody like me who spent my life within Christian circles.
[363] I mean, I know a lot of these folks have spent a lot of time with them, been in Bible studies with them.
[364] And they tend to be really good and decent people who are trying to make their way through.
[365] And they have certain beliefs and convictions that they're trying to translate into politics, just like Rob Reiner does.
[366] and just like a lot of a lot of other people do.
[367] I do think that where it crosses a line and where it gets dangerous is in several respects.
[368] One is this Christian nationalist movement, and that's not a majority of, I would say, of Christians.
[369] But that's the view that it's not just Christian participation, but as a kind of Christian primacy that they're expecting and the fusion of church and state.
[370] So that is a problem.
[371] But beyond that, I would say that the main problem now is that virtually the entire, white evangelical world has rallied around Donald Trump.
[372] And you know, if you went into a basement and you were an atheist and you decided, look, I want to create the perfect figure to try and discredit the evangelical world, I'll tell you what I'll come up with.
[373] I'll come up with a man of extraordinary moral depravity who will cross every moral and ethical and legal line you can imagine.
[374] And then I'm going to have the white evangelical world rally around him and defend him.
[375] And just to add on to that, I'm going to take many of the same people who took a two -by -four to a previous American president, let's say Bill Clinton, and hit him upside to head every other day for his moral failures.
[376] And then we're going to see that hypocrisy.
[377] My point is that I think the damage to the Christian witness of this political moment is extraordinary, particularly among younger people.
[378] We've gotten a window into some really troubling aspects of the evangelical and fundamental.
[379] the mentalist world.
[380] And it's a world that I think a lot of people actually don't understand unless you've been in it.
[381] I say this all the time of the Republican Party, but it's just so true about the Christian faith too, which is maybe a more important institution.
[382] And if somebody messages me and they are at college age, like nine times out of 10, it is a person that comes from a religious family that feels like some of the campus left stuff is alienating or hostile or to them, but is so turned off by Donald Trump, is so grossed out by Donald, doesn't understand it, doesn't understand why their family's for it, right?
[383] And they're trying to find a way through.
[384] How is that person, you know, who now, like, let's say Donald Trump wins, God forbid.
[385] In 2028, like, there'll be an entire generation of people that don't remember, you know, the Republican Party, evangelical right, as anything other than is totally associated with Donald Trump.
[386] And just like the long -term negative consequences are potentially essential.
[387] astounding.
[388] There are a few exceptions, obviously, Russell Moore, our friend, and, you know, others, but David French, but it just doesn't seem like anybody gives a, you know what, about that.
[389] You know, one thing that your listeners may not be aware of, at least if they don't travel in the evangelical world, there's an insight from a very good historian at Calvin University that I think has been on the podcast before Kristen DeMay.
[390] And she wrote a book called Jesus and John Wayne.
[391] And so she went through and she analyzed, studied the evangelical movement throughout the 20th, century.
[392] And basically what she discovers is, what she argues, is that in many ways, Donald Trump was a personification of something that they were looking for, so a perfect fighting machine.
[393] I think that helps to understand.
[394] It doesn't justify what they've done, but it helps people understand.
[395] Because there's this obvious question, which is, look, this guy is a moral rack.
[396] How can people who argued for the importance of virtue and moral values defend him?
[397] And I think the answer is the grievances and resentments and anger or just pulsating on the American right.
[398] And within evangelical circles, people felt dishonored and disrespected.
[399] And I think when Donald Trump came along, he gave voice to that anger.
[400] And he said in 2024, too, I'm your vengeance.
[401] I'm your retribution.
[402] And that, I think, emotionally resonated with a lot of people.
[403] They're really, really angry.
[404] There's a lot of hate out there.
[405] And they feel like this guy is going to do to them what deserves to be done to them.
[406] It's not a pretty side of the evangelical movement by any means.
[407] It's antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.
[408] But I think it's there.
[409] And I think Christians, if they're honest, have to name that and have to struggle with that.
[410] Since I'm now in charge, and I wasn't asking questions last three years, I get to ask you about one, about an article that you wrote four years ago, but it was one of my favorites, was your Christmas article 2020.
[411] So we're amidst all of the stop the steel nonsense.
[412] And you wrote, about the forgotten radicalism of Jesus Christ and first century Christians weren't prepared for what a truly inclusive figure he was.
[413] For people who may miss that or forgotten it, I'd love just kind of put a quarter in the machine and let you cook on that topic for a few minutes.
[414] Oh, thanks.
[415] Thanks.
[416] Yeah.
[417] The reason I wrote it is because I think that a lot of people's impressions of Jesus and the Christian faith have been distorted.
[418] And I think one of the aspects of Jesus that people don't fully appreciate is just how radical he was and that his entire ministry was almost his entire ministry was directed toward the outcasts, the people who were broken, the people who were wounded.
[419] And his main opposition, his main conflict were with religious and political authorities.
[420] And the things that he did and the time in which he did it, the way in which he reached out to women who were second and third class citizens, people who were dealing with leprosy, people who were viewed as unclean and unworthy and centered, and not just that he was with them, but he leaned into their life and that he brought healing to them and that he imparted dignity to them.
[421] It was just an astonishing thing.
[422] When you're familiar with this story, you just kind of read over it.
[423] But then you go back and you read the context in which these things took place and you say, you know, this really was a revolutionary figure, but he was a revolutionary for love.
[424] And we can all use that.
[425] Really good.
[426] Thank you for leaving us with that.
[427] Peter Wainer, please come back to the podcast.
[428] podcast.
[429] His book, The Death of Politics, How to Heel Our Freed Republic After Trump.
[430] Thanks so much to Peter Wainer.
[431] We'll be back tomorrow with a friend of mine who I'm excited to have on the podcast.
[432] We'll see you all then.
[433] Peace.
[434] Call it all the haters It's official California vacation Emphasis a baby Radio and the cable I got the dish too And on The board podcast is produced by Katie Cooper With audio engineering and editing By Jason Brett