The Bulwark Podcast XX
[0] Hi, Charlie Sykes here.
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[11] Welcome to The Bull Work Podcast.
[12] I'm Charlie Sykes.
[13] Happy Monday.
[14] Hey, before we get started with my colleague, Will Salatin, just a point of personal privilege.
[15] I want to tell you about an event that we have scheduled.
[16] I just get the sense that people are really ready.
[17] for in -person events after the long shutdown.
[18] So put this date on your calendar, October 20th, for an evening of politics, prognostication, maybe a few laughs, maybe a few tears.
[19] We are going to be holding an event in Washington, D .C., that will include not just a live taping of this podcast with a special guest, but also a special pre -election panel with Tim Miller, Sarah Longwell and Amanda Carpenter.
[20] Bullwork founder and MC Bill Crystal is going to kick off the evening around 7 .30.
[21] And then we will have the live taping of this podcast in person.
[22] And then Amanda Tim and Sarah will take the stage to hash out what we don't know about the races, the national and local races that are coming up in a couple of weeks.
[23] The doors will open at 7 o 'clock.
[24] Plan to stick around after the program to meet fellow bulwark members, staffers, and friends.
[25] I have to tell you, tickets are going very, very fast to this event.
[26] They are limited, so I would strongly urge the loyal listeners of this podcast to sign up today.
[27] So it is finally fall, Will Salatan.
[28] Welcome back.
[29] Thank you, Charlie.
[30] It is cold here, too, finally.
[31] I am glad to hear that.
[32] Okay, so I am obsessed about a number of things, including the useful idiots of CPAC, which normally would lead off my newslet and my podcast.
[33] except I think you just need to take a deep breath and talk about that moronic, semi -literate, bigoted, truth social post from the president.
[34] And I know this seems like same old, same old.
[35] And I do struggle with it.
[36] I mean, I know a lot of people go, oh, come on, another Trump tweet.
[37] Are you really going to be talking about that?
[38] I mean, really, same old, same old.
[39] This is old news.
[40] But I do think that given the fact that we're talking about the former president of the United States who is, and you could disagree with me, the prohibitive favorite to be the Republican nominee for president in 2024, it's worth noting that you have Trump from Mara Lago putting out a statement that can certainly be interpreted as a death threat against Mitch McConnell, and there's no ambiguity about the racist slur against his wife, Elaine Chow, who he calls Coco Chow.
[41] So what are your thoughts about this, Will?
[42] I mean, I understand people are going to go, you know, you guys, you have Trump derangement syndrome, when the only derangement is the inability to call him out and the belief that, yeah, but, you know, at least we got tax cuts and judges from this guy.
[43] Yeah, I mean, the numbing is a problem, but the numbing, it's not, it's not that we should ignore this because it's the hundredth time he did it.
[44] It's that we should pay more attention because it's the hundredth, it's the thousandth time he did it.
[45] Let's be honest.
[46] And because his party won't stand up to it.
[47] It's the fact that Republican elites ignore this is, in my opinion, actually, a bigger issue than the fact that Trump is a racist, which we have known for some time.
[48] I mean, let's be super clear about Donald Trump.
[49] Donald Trump is a racist.
[50] It's not a racist in some sort of fancy Berkeley, Harvard, you know, hyper definition of racism.
[51] This is old -fashioned racism.
[52] So in this, I don't know, what do you call it, a tweet, a non -tweet, a truth social post.
[53] he he calls elaine chow uh miss mcconnell's wife donald trump's former cabinet secretary his china loving wife cocoa chow spelled c h o w in case that was and by the way this is the second time last week that he referred to words cocoa he put out a people didn't notice when he actually linked to this screed from the federalist implying you know Mitch mccanel and elaine chow china etc and he pushes this out earlier in the week and called her cocoa so he'd felt the need, apparently didn't get enough buzz out of that, that attack.
[54] So he had to do the, you know, death wish.
[55] You have a death wish and your China -loving Cocoa -Chao wife, you know, and here we are.
[56] Yeah.
[57] I mean, this would be the equivalent.
[58] Just for folks who are not Asian -American and maybe don't identify with this, I'm Jewish.
[59] This is the equivalent of, would be the equivalent of Trump, you know, saying about Jared Kushner, you know, Jaime Kushner and his Israel -loving, whatever.
[60] I mean, that's that level of ethnic bigotry.
[61] It is.
[62] But your other point I think is important.
[63] There's a certain point in which you go, okay, Trump is Trump and he's been Trump for 20, 30 years.
[64] We know all of that.
[65] The more extraordinary thing is the complete unwillingness slash inability of Republicans to push back against them.
[66] So can we just talk about the, and this was on display yesterday, the unbearable lightness of Rick Scott, who is important to put him in some context.
[67] He's actually heading up the Senate Republican campaign committee.
[68] So in theory, he is an ally of Mitch McConnell.
[69] They're in the middle of this tensely fought fight over control of the Senate.
[70] He is the guy in charge of the Republican Senate campaign committee.
[71] And he was on multiple shows yesterday.
[72] And he was given numerous opportunities to push back against this, to distance himself against it.
[73] and he whiffed every single time.
[74] Margaret Bren did an absolutely outstanding job on Face the Nation.
[75] He was also on CNN with Dana Bash.
[76] And here's a little bit of his ducking and dodging.
[77] Senator, I know you're understandably very focused on what is happening in your state of Florida.
[78] But I have to ask you about what appears to be a threat by former President Trump against your colleague, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.
[79] Trump said, quote, he has a death wish for supporting Democratic -sponsored bills.
[80] He also mocked McConnell's wife and his own former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chow as, quote, China -loving and Cocoa Chow.
[81] You're a member of the Senate GOP leadership.
[82] Are you okay with this?
[83] Well, I can never talk about, respond to why anybody else says what they said.
[84] But here's what is the way I looked at it is.
[85] I think, you know, what the president is saying is, you know, we've.
[86] There's been a lot of money spent over the last two years.
[87] We've got to make sure we don't keep caving to Democrats.
[88] This is causing an unbelievable inflation and causing more and more debt.
[89] As you know, the president likes to get people nicknames.
[90] You can ask him how he came up with the nickname.
[91] I'm sure he has a nickname for me. And this goes on.
[92] And again, when he's on with Margaret Brendan, you know, he gives the same speech, you know, well, you know, it's all about, you know, spending and everything.
[93] And then Brennan pushes back on him, you know, pointing out the very specific, very racist term that Trump had used.
[94] He said, okay, that's not what the former president said, Brennan said.
[95] And Coco Chow was the phrase he used to refer to the former cabinet secretary Elaine Chow.
[96] And then, of course, he gave the same bullshit answer about nickname.
[97] I mean, this is one of those extraordinary moments where in any other political time would have been an easy lob.
[98] They just won't do it, will they?
[99] They just will not push back.
[100] They will not denounce this.
[101] No, they won't.
[102] And look, Charlie, we talk about a lot of issues on this podcast.
[103] In my this is at the top of the list.
[104] That's how important this is.
[105] My wife and I were with some friends this weekend who are Jewish like us.
[106] And they were asking, you know, should Jews worry about what's going on in this country?
[107] Like all minorities, you know, is there sort of a rise of, you know, bigotry of fascist movement.
[108] And I said no. I said, no, we're not at the level of Weimar, German, or anything like, let's not get hysterical.
[109] Which is true.
[110] We're not at that level.
[111] But, but we are seeing something extremely, extremely dangerous.
[112] And that is we have very overt racism, very overt bigotry from Donald Trump, and we see Republican elites unwilling to stand up to it.
[113] Rick Scott calling this a nickname, like it's something, you know, kids say about each other.
[114] That is a warning that if somebody comes along like Donald Trump and starts to implement policy, like, say, banning Muslims from entering the United States per se, you know, you need to have elites who will stand up to that.
[115] If you don't have that, if you don't have that, have an entire political party who says it's fine to go around calling Asian Americans, Cocoa Chow, accusing them of being China -loving.
[116] That is a major, major red flag about the danger that this country is in, particularly if that party becomes the ruling party.
[117] Which it certainly may do.
[118] Interestingly enough, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which has been more than willing in the past to carry water for Trump, although they broke with him on January 6th, They focused them on the death wish rhetoric.
[119] Let me just read you what they wrote.
[120] The death wish rhetoric is ugly even by Mr. Trump's standards and deserves to be condemned.
[121] Mr. Trump's apologists claim he merely met Mr. McConnell has a political death wish, but that is not what he wrote.
[122] It's all too easy to imagine some fanatic taking Mr. Trump seriously and literally in attempting to kill Mr. McConnell.
[123] Many supporters took Mr. Trump's rhetoric about former Vice President Mike Pence all too seriously on January in case you forgot about that.
[124] Main Senator Susan Collins was not excessive when she said recently that she would not be surprised if a member of Congress is shot in this hot house political environment.
[125] A left -wing follower of Vermont, Senator Bernie Sanders, opened fire on Republican members of Congress in 2017 and came close to killing Representative Steve Scalise.
[126] And then there's obviously a lot of other examples as well.
[127] So interestingly enough that even the Wall Street Journal editorial board is saying this is really dangerous, leaving aside the overt racism.
[128] And I have to tell you, once again, and this has become a very, very old story, and I'm sorry if I bore people, because you've heard this before, but we'd just get crickets from the, you know, political universe.
[129] When he lashed out at the FBI agents, nothing much, when he made veiled threats of violence and chaos and insurrection.
[130] If he was against the Department of Justice, if he's ever indicted absolutely nothing so i mean i guess at at this point you know this is the story i mean republicans long ago accepted all the insults the racism the threats i mean look they they swallowed charlottesville the muslim band bertherism you know they were okay with it when he you know mocked disabled when he when he said that ted cruz's wife was ugly ted cruz was okay with that when he talked about shithole countries i mean he swallowed every bit of it why would they stop now And what line can you possibly imagine?
[131] So I'll be the skeptic on this one.
[132] All right.
[133] So I think this particular post of Trump's about death wish.
[134] I actually don't think Trump meant literally death wish about McConnell.
[135] What's interesting to me about it is that, you know, it's one thing to use this kind of language before January 6th.
[136] After January 6th, everybody has notice that this kind of language leads to violence.
[137] So what I see from Trump is indifference.
[138] He's going to use this language about fighting and combat and death wish and all this stuff, even when people actually, even after people have actually died and piled on top of Trump's indifference, the indifference of Republican elites to Trump's indifference, to the use of this language.
[139] Everyone is on notice, has been on notice for a couple of years that this is extremely dangerous, and yet it persists.
[140] Well, I'm going to be less skeptical because I don't think that it's a mistake that Donald Trump and his acolytes continue to words like death and killing and violence, that they are.
[141] using the terms very intentionally, not just indifferently to it.
[142] They are doing it for a purpose.
[143] And let me give you an example of this.
[144] Over the weekend, Marjorie Taylor Green is an invited, featured speaker at a Trump rally.
[145] I just want to think about that, that you have one of the most deranged Christian nationalist conspiracy theorist, Q &N, adjacent members of Congress, who is selected by the former president to be one of your featured speakers at a rally.
[146] Okay.
[147] And she's also talking about killing, but defensively, like the other people are coming for you.
[148] Those Democrats want to kill you.
[149] And again, there's a long history of this kind of rhetoric as well, in case you missed it, because Rick Scott was asked about this on television.
[150] He said, oh, he didn't know anything about it.
[151] So this is what Rick Scott missed.
[152] I'm not going to win immense words with you all.
[153] Democrats want Republicans dead.
[154] And they've already started the killings.
[155] An 18 -year -old boy was run down by a Democrat driver who confessed to killing the teenager simply because he was a Republican.
[156] We've been right here in Michigan just last week.
[157] An 83 -year -old woman was shot in the back for advocating for the unborn.
[158] Joe Biden has declared every freedom -loving American and enemy of the state.
[159] But under Republicans, we will take back our country from the communists who have stolen it and want us to disappear, we will expose the unelected bureaucrats, the real enemies within, who have abused their power and declared political warfare on the greatest president this country has ever had.
[160] Will, I'm sorry, I just don't detect a lot of subtlety there.
[161] No, no, I will.
[162] It's just me, right?
[163] I'm going to draw a distinction between what Trump Post and what Marjorie Taylor Green just said.
[164] I completely agree with you in her case.
[165] Look, history shows if you want to ensure.
[166] cite people to kill, to kill other people.
[167] You, one of the first things you tell them is those other people are going to kill you.
[168] Those other people are trying to kill you.
[169] I'm thinking of Rwanda.
[170] Absolutely.
[171] The Hutus and the Tutsis, a great example.
[172] And so that's what's going on here.
[173] The other thing I want to point out about what she's saying there is, for all of you folks who don't watch Trump rallies, and God bless you, you have better things to do, This is this kind of language Donald Trump has been using for years about illegal immigrants, right?
[174] He'll go through the newspaper.
[175] They'll find stories of some illegal immigrant who committed a rape or murder, and then they'll use this language to get you to hate all illegal immigrants.
[176] Now, in that case, there's the question of whether people are in this country legally.
[177] Here we're talking about Democrats, everybody in America who's here legally, who, you know, is on the left side of the political spectrum.
[178] Marjorie Taylor Green's language is very explicit.
[179] Democrats per se want Republicans dead.
[180] They are killing you.
[181] That is absolutely incitement to go out and murder the Democrats before they murder you.
[182] And again, you don't need a large number of deranged people to take that seriously and literally.
[183] You only need a handful.
[184] And this is something that every sane grown -up understands.
[185] And clearly, the people within MAGA world, at best, don't give a shit.
[186] at worst, want to use the threat of menace in order to get their way in order to intimidate their opponents.
[187] Okay, so speaking of other deplorable things over the weekend, I was actually planning on writing about this before the whole Coco Chow thing, but the useful idiots of CPAC posted a tweet and their timing was interesting.
[188] I mean, they waited until after Vladimir Putin gave that weird in the bunker rant about holy wars and everything, and we're getting more and more.
[189] evidence of war crimes, of mass graves, of the bombing of civilians in a caravan.
[190] And so CPAC posts Friday, I think, Vladimir Putin announces the annexation of four Ukrainian -occupied territories.
[191] Really?
[192] When you think about that, that's Putin's line.
[193] That's Russian propaganda that these are Ukrainian -occupied territories.
[194] It's fucking Ukraine.
[195] Okay.
[196] Then the second sentence is Biden and the Dems continue to send Ukraine billions of taxpayer dollars.
[197] Meanwhile, we are under attack at our southern border.
[198] When will Democrats put hashtag America first and end of the gift giving to Ukraine?
[199] Now, they deleted that and Matt Schlapp came up with some bullshit about, you know, being on the road and something.
[200] But, you know, that, once again, this is a reflection of what I think is going on in the MAGA right.
[201] The id of the right has become incredibly hostile to Ukraine.
[202] And even with all the evidence of what the Russians have done and even with the war changing hands, they are pushing for, I don't know, they're pushing out pro -Pooten propaganda and encouraging us to bug out.
[203] Yeah.
[204] Okay.
[205] So what CPAC is doing here and what's going on on on Fox News, what's going on with J .D. Vance and Donald Trump Jr. and a lot of the right is they're finding propaganda.
[206] They're finding spin that happens to coincide with the interest of Russia of Vladimir Putin.
[207] That CPAC tweet is the kind of thing, if you had political consultants, you know, who said, here's how you can frame what's going on in Ukraine in a way that will serve the Republican Party.
[208] You would come up with language, you know, that happens to coincide with your interests.
[209] They're doing the same thing here, but they're doing it in a way that have, like gift giving.
[210] Okay.
[211] Really, it's, we're giving a gift to Ukraine to give them weapons to save their lives, to fight off the Russians.
[212] But that's the kind of spin, a political consultant would tell you to put in your, tweet if you are serving not the Republican Party, but Vladimir Putin.
[213] What will induce people to be less willing to support Ukraine?
[214] Well, let's call it gift -giving, right?
[215] What language will make them less willing to defend those Ukrainian territories?
[216] Let's call them Ukrainian occupied.
[217] It's highly mysterious, highly intriguing to me that this is what's going on on the right, serving the interests of Vladimir Putin.
[218] I don't know why they're doing it, but they're clearly doing it.
[219] Yeah, let's acknowledge that there is something almost mysterious about it.
[220] And yet there's something very transparent about it, which is that anything that Joe Biden does, they are against.
[221] And so therefore, their hostility to the Biden regime is so intense that they are willing to side with our enemies.
[222] And we've seen this again, of course, we have this long history of Donald Trump's bromance with Vladimir Putin, which is also in many levels incomprehensible.
[223] So speaking of Ukraine, I can get your sense of what's going on here.
[224] I mean, talk about whiplash.
[225] you have Vladimir Putin announcing the annexation of these Ukrainian territories.
[226] And the same day, the Ukrainians take back one of the key cities that Vladimir Putin annexed.
[227] Former General David Petraeus had some thoughts.
[228] Actually, there's a lot of good sound we could have on this, but this is General David Petraeus about what's happening right now in this war.
[229] And again, they're losing on the battlefield, and it's going to continue.
[230] The only question, really, is when do you start to see not just individual soldiers or small units surrender, but when you start to see larger units crumble, crack, and perhaps actually collapse?
[231] So give me your sense of this, Will.
[232] Where we're at, it does seem possible and not wishcasting that you might see a wholesale collapse of the Russian army in this area at a time when Vladimir Putin is calling up reservists and rather explicitly threatening the use of nuclear.
[233] clear weapons.
[234] First of all, Putin is losing, and the loss is bigger than it appears at first glance.
[235] So he's losing militarily.
[236] We've seen Ukraine retake territory, not just retake it, but retake a lot of it rapidly, which indicates not just that the Ukrainians are good at this, but that the Russian army is not particularly willing to fight to defend that territory.
[237] It's not their territory to begin with, right?
[238] So they've retreated, they've collapsed in places, highly suggestive.
[239] I mean, you can speculate that that's likely to continue to happen in a lot of the country.
[240] Secondly, there's a political problem for Russia, which is when Putin calls up 300 ,000 people.
[241] First of all, I believe more young men left Russia, fled Russia than when they're getting called up.
[242] And he's now taken what was officially in Russia, not really, of course, a special military operation and made it a war.
[243] We're going to draft your kids, your husbands, to go fight in this war.
[244] Now he's imposed a real cost at home.
[245] That raises the stakes for him because it increases the risk of a genuine uprising in Russia.
[246] People say, oh, there won't be an uprising in Russia.
[247] If they start to conscript every man in the country into a war that everybody's getting the message is not going well and where you're likely to die, that's going to create a serious threat to his regime.
[248] So he has multiple problems.
[249] It's no wonder that he's playing the nuclear card.
[250] Well, and he's also making them worse because there's a history in Russia of emperors who lost wars and then just simply pretended they won, you know, just declare victory.
[251] And you have essentially state -controlled media.
[252] And, you know, they could have pushed the narrative that things are actually fine, but, you know, facts and truth have broken through.
[253] And what I find interesting is the depression, you know, near despair of some of the pro -war commentators on state television.
[254] And again, it's beyond denial.
[255] And these pictures you see of all these young men in the cars leaving the country, you know, it's too big to ignore anymore.
[256] Now it's a reality for every family, every community, every business in Russia.
[257] And so Vladimir Putin has decided that what, he's going to escalate all of this and he's going to hold those big rallies and he's going to turn it into a holy war.
[258] You know, he's pressing every button and they get more extreme.
[259] The question is how far he's going to go on, you know, pressing those buttons.
[260] But it hasn't worked for him so far.
[261] No, it hasn't.
[262] And can let me pick up on that excellent point you made about past, about the Russian tradition of declaring victory when you, when you haven't actually won.
[263] That was a way out for Putin, right?
[264] He could say, we did the special military operation.
[265] We cleaned house.
[266] We got rid of the Nazis or whatever his fabrication is.
[267] And then you withdraw.
[268] He just cut off that exit for himself, right?
[269] When he annexed, so he annexed, this is why I'm really worried about the annexation.
[270] That's a very interesting point.
[271] Yes.
[272] Okay.
[273] Yeah.
[274] So the annexation, is BS.
[275] We know this, right?
[276] It's a fake, these are fake sham elections.
[277] People are quote voting at gunpoint.
[278] But, but it's very serious in what it locks Putin into because I believe under Russian law, you cannot legally withdraw from the territory once you've said, this is Russian territory.
[279] So now Putin can't go home.
[280] If he goes home, you know, he's at great risk of having betrayed the country because of what he just did.
[281] So I'm very worried about the fact that not only is he going to lose this territory, Charlie?
[282] He's already lost it, right?
[283] He lost Lehman, the city in Northeastern Ukraine a day after he annexed it.
[284] So that is officially Russian territory that the Ukrainians took back.
[285] What is Putin going to do about that?
[286] Is he just going to suffer it?
[287] Or is he going to have to do something scary to claim that he's still fighting for it?
[288] Well, he's hanging on to two threads of hope.
[289] Number one, and the most realistic, is that this winter is going to be very, very brutal.
[290] It's going to have a tremendous effect on the economies of Western Europe, which might shake their support for Ukraine, right?
[291] I mean, he's thinking that I've got them by the pipelines and I'm going to squeeze.
[292] That's number one.
[293] Number two has got to be his hope watching Maga World that if he just can hang on long enough, that the United States will flip and that he will have an ally back in the White House and control of Congress.
[294] And I do not think that that's far -fetched that he's thinking that.
[295] I hope it's far -fits that it actually happens.
[296] But those two things, I think, give him aid and comfort and support to continue doing this.
[297] And I think that going back to the CPAC tweet and the things that Tucker Carlson is doing, you know, on the air and, you know, other other hosts, you know, urging NATO appeasement, et cetera, is actually has real world consequences by giving him the hope that, you know, if he just keeps killing people.
[298] and hanging on and sending Russian troops into the meat grinder that somehow this will all work out for.
[299] Yeah, okay, let me draw a distinction, though, in the timeline, I think your point about Trump is a serious worry, right?
[300] If Trump gets back in, Putin knows he has an ally there who could help him.
[301] But that's a couple of years off.
[302] The bigger fight, to me, is the one this year.
[303] So if Republicans take back the House, it is very, very important that the pro -Puton caucus in the House Republican Party, which is now significant.
[304] I mean, we had like more than 60 House Republicans voted, I believe, against a NATO resolution a few months ago.
[305] If that grows to a point where House Republicans get in the way of funding the weapons to Ukraine, that is a major, major problem.
[306] So that could happen this fall.
[307] It's another reason to keep Republicans out of power.
[308] And then in two years, if Trump gets in, all bets are off.
[309] So should we turn to domestic politics for a moment?
[310] Sure.
[311] We have this midterm election.
[312] I have to say that I find a lot of it to be very, very confusing.
[313] As you know, I have repeatedly expressed my skepticism about the polling, the shifting in the polling, the danger of wishcasting.
[314] I am very tempted to go back to all the things that were being written in 20.
[315] 2018 and elsewhere about what was going on, you know, how Democrats were going to win the governorship of Florida and Georgia.
[316] And yes, it was a good year for Democrats, but they got way out over their skis or the wishcasting about Senate races that turned out not to be close at all.
[317] So you want to just weigh in on what you think of as the state of play right now?
[318] Well, it's like three layers deep.
[319] It's a bad year for Democrats, right?
[320] Biden's numbers bad, inflation environment, crime, yada, yada.
[321] given that, on the other side, the Republican candidates in a lot of these races are not good because it's a sick party, and that's helping Democrats do better in the Senate races at least than they would otherwise.
[322] However, third layer of the analysis, it's absolutely true that over the last month, the numbers have moved in a Republican direction.
[323] Probably what we're seeing is that the national environment is starting to have more of an effect, even in races where you have a bad candidate.
[324] So even Herschel Walker is doing better because he's a Republican and people are voting a Republican.
[325] What do you think?
[326] I agree with you.
[327] And I think that I'm resisting saying something if only you had been warned.
[328] But I'm looking at Josh Crashauer's latest posting in Axios that Democrats are facing fresh problems in two pivotal Senate battlegrounds in which their members are facing attacks for being too progressive.
[329] What's happening in Wisconsin, a Republican Ron Johnson has pulled ahead of Democrat Mandela Barnes and latest ways.
[330] of public polls.
[331] In Pennsylvania, recent polling suggests that Democrat John Fetterman's double -digit advantage over Dr. Oz has shrunk to a statistical tie.
[332] Obviously, this is huge because if Republicans hold Wisconsin in Pennsylvania, Republicans would need to unseat just one Democratic incumbent.
[333] Now, this piece talks about facing attacks for being too progressive.
[334] I think it's more specific than that.
[335] Here in Wisconsin, there is an absolute avalanche of ads on the issue of crime, defunding the police, ending cash bail, paroling criminals.
[336] It's happening in the Senate race and the governor's race.
[337] In Pennsylvania, my understanding is that that's also the focus, crime all the time, focusing on positions that both Federman and Barnes have taken multiple times in the past that make them look weak on those issues.
[338] And frankly, it's killing them.
[339] It's, But again, this was completely predictable, especially when Democrats chose somebody like Vandela Barnes, who is, as I've said, and I can't speak to Federman in the same way, but Mandela Barnes is an Apo researcher's dream.
[340] And there was just a huge amount of denial about that.
[341] And I'm sorry, you know, when people were saying, well, look, he's competitive or he's ahead and say, well, wait until they drop the $10, $20 million worth of Apo research and all the things he's said in the past.
[342] And that's happening now.
[343] So surprise, surprise, he's fallen.
[344] behind in a race that Democrats should win.
[345] But go ahead.
[346] Okay, so let me back off and concede to the Wisconsin expert.
[347] You were right about this race and I was wrong.
[348] Maybe not yet.
[349] It's not over yet, but it's not over, but it's already worse than I thought.
[350] You know, I was looking at a Trafalgar poll from like a couple of months ago that, you know, the poll that is designed to unscue the election, right?
[351] And that even that poll showed Mandela Barnes ahead.
[352] Since then, underlying factors, the national environment, crime, his apo -researcher's dream background, as you're pointing out, those factors have come into play.
[353] And those are also coming into play in other races.
[354] I think that there is a distinction.
[355] I was looking at the NBC polling state by state.
[356] Wisconsin was the worst of the three, Pennsylvania, Federman's still up, Georgia, Warnock, still up.
[357] So it matters who your candidate is.
[358] It matters how bad the other candidate is.
[359] You can be doing badly in a national environment, still have a good enough candidate relative to their candidate, that when the water comes up, Europe's still above water.
[360] And that's still true in Pennsylvania, I think still true in Georgia, not true anymore in Wisconsin.
[361] But secondly, Charlie, you know, there was a thing called the Bill Clinton Democratic Party that where Bill Clinton went out of his way to own the middle, right?
[362] And he would say things like, we're not for defunding police.
[363] We're for funding police.
[364] By the way, Joe Biden has said this, but he doesn't say it loudly enough, persistently enough, strongly enough, and maybe he needs to do some triangulation about it.
[365] But Democrats need to be in the middle of the spectrum saying, we are for the police, we are for protecting you.
[366] That is not a compromise of our values.
[367] And that would save you Senate seats and you would be able to do the rest of your agenda.
[368] Okay.
[369] Well, this is something that we've been arguing for some time.
[370] And read to Chera has been writing about this again and again.
[371] And by the way, just a little quick preview.
[372] I'm having him on the podcast on Wednesday.
[373] One of the questions I want to ask him is, why is it so hard for Democrats to come up with an effective message on a crime and be the border, immigration?
[374] Because I think they're being hurt on both of those, leaving aside the whole Ron DeSantis, you know, cruelty is the point stunt.
[375] But his point has been that, you know, your average swing voter is sort of, you know, a 50 -year -old, you know, white working class voter in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
[376] And you've been losing them.
[377] And you've been losing them at a fairly steady rate for a very long time now, and yet rather than adjusting the message on some of those issues that are killing you, Democrats, I think, have retreated into their alternative reality bubble.
[378] Do you disagree with me on that?
[379] I mean, it's a, I just don't sense that they are willing to engage on some of the issues that Republicans are just hatcheting them on at the moment.
[380] No, I agree with you on this.
[381] I think that Democrats have decided that they can get away with being the party of rights.
[382] like the rights of immigrants, the rights of the criminal justice system, criminal justice reform, they think there's been a sea change in public opinion about crime.
[383] I think that's wrong.
[384] People always want security.
[385] People always want police.
[386] And if you don't establish yourself as a party that also cares about security, that will also protect ordinary people from crime, if you were not tough on crime, as Democrats many were 30 years ago, you will pay a political price.
[387] and you will lose not just on that issue, but multiple other issues.
[388] Okay, so you came up with a soundbite that I want to play here.
[389] I don't watch Fox News at all, I will admit it now.
[390] But they have a reporter, an immigration reporter named Bill Malugan.
[391] And he was on over the weekend talking with Shannon Bream about the Biden administration and the border.
[392] And I want to play that and get your thoughts on it.
[393] Again, this is one of those rare moments where we have a Fox News clip that is not Tucker Carlson.
[394] This is a reporter named, again, Bill Malugan talking with host Shannon Breen.
[395] One of the Democrats who did talk to you is Congressman Henry Quayar, because he is a Democrat down there in Texas.
[396] He is seeing this firsthand.
[397] Here's a bit of your exchange.
[398] This is our administration.
[399] I'm a Democrat.
[400] And, you know, they need to understand they own it now.
[401] They own it now.
[402] And they have to take the steps to correct this.
[403] Otherwise, you know, when are we going to see an end to this?
[404] And one of the things that you talked to him, about is the DHS secretary's response in public versus maybe what he's saying in private or how he feels about this.
[405] What can you tell us about that conversation?
[406] Some really interesting comments that Henry Quair made.
[407] Essentially, he said he has had conversations with Secretary Mayorkas, where the secretary has told him, look, I know what's happening down there is out of control.
[408] It's getting worse.
[409] It's not okay.
[410] But there's not a whole lot I can do about it because immigration activists have kind of been in the White House and they're the ones calling the shots right now.
[411] So Henry Quayar essentially says Majorcas feels like he's got to kind of zip it and just deal with it as the White House moves forward with their plan.
[412] And remember, last year we got leaked audio of Mayorkas.
[413] He was talking to Border Patrol agents in McAllen in private, behind closed doors.
[414] What did he tell them when he thought nobody was listening?
[415] We're losing.
[416] This is unsustainable.
[417] If the border is our first line of defense, we are going to lose.
[418] The numbers have gotten worse since those comments, but he goes out to the American public and says, the border is secure, and he testifies under oath, that we have operational security of the border.
[419] Those are two separate things.
[420] Will, what do you make of that?
[421] Well, he's right.
[422] And, you know, Charlie, you were talking about not watching a lot of Fox News.
[423] You shouldn't have to watch Fox News to hear about this issue, and yet you do.
[424] That's really a good point, because my sense is that if you watch certain other cable channels, it never comes up, ever.
[425] it's like invisible, right?
[426] Yes, and this is, look, this for folks who don't know, this is how a lot of politics works.
[427] Politicians decide, you know, they own that issue.
[428] This is our issue.
[429] Like, that's a bad issue to talk about it.
[430] You watch Republicans on abortion right now.
[431] They've clearly decided not to talk about abortion because that's going to hurt them.
[432] So Democrats have decided we're not going to talk about the border.
[433] That's a bad issue for us.
[434] Charlie, I just think that's a fundamental mistake because when you back off, I mean, I love the language that Henry Quayar used.
[435] Henry Quayar, a Democrat, a Latino.
[436] representing a border district says, we own it, right, own the issue.
[437] If you don't own the issue, look, one of the basic rules in life is, if you don't take control of a problem, someone else will take control of it, and you may not like what they do.
[438] Democrats absolutely need to take control of the problem of border security, a real problem.
[439] How do they do that?
[440] Well, look, there's a large conversation that we need to have about the asylum system and whether we have the resources to cope with the number of people who are coming in at the rate they're coming in, right?
[441] Trump's solution was remain in Mexico.
[442] If we're not going to do that, if we're not going to hold them out, we're going to have to figure out how we can staff a system and supply the resources to have people in places where they will show up again for a hearing.
[443] Maybe, I don't know if we need to have quicker hearings, whether we need to have them.
[444] But clearly, if people have to wait months for their asylum hearing, that is not a system that is managing folks.
[445] I don't know.
[446] What is the current rate of people showing up for their hearing.
[447] It's not great.
[448] No, it's become a joke.
[449] And I think as David Fromm, who wrote basically making the same point saying, hey, listen, progressives, if the public thinks that you will not control the border, they will turn to the fascists.
[450] I mean, they will, at a certain point, if you do feel that something is not being dealt with, people will go for the other side.
[451] And I think that that's a problem on crime as well as immigration.
[452] You know, that quote of Quayar, was he paraphrasing it, saying that, the reason that the administration can't speak out more forcefully about controlling the border is that they are listening to the activists.
[453] And I sense the same sort of thing that you have activists who have a veto power or at least the ability to mute or muffle the message, not just about protecting the border, but also on crime.
[454] And right now, in real time, you're seeing the price that Democrats are paying for that.
[455] Yeah, Bill Clinton just said something about this.
[456] I hate to come back to Clinton, but I wish there were more people talking about this.
[457] I mean, clearly we have people flowing to our border and claiming asylum at a rate.
[458] It's like what, two million people coming to the border across the border in the last year.
[459] It's beyond what we can handle in an organized way.
[460] So we need to have a conversation about our system and whether we need to hold people off, not let them into the country before that process or something.
[461] But the rate is not sustainable and the flow of people in is just illustrate, and it just makes everyone feel insecure, and that lends support to right -wing solutions.
[462] Yes, and I do think that there's, there is a target out there that Democrats could use, but they've been reluctant to do it.
[463] The hypocrisy of Republicans on backing the blue and yet the way they've treated the Capitol police officers and their attitude towards law enforcement, etc but again it's just it's not in their DNA or something so the reason i was thinking about this was this amazing piece in rolling stone magazine uh the interview with michael fanone of the capital cop who is uh not all out of f's to give i mean i described it as pure poetry on twitter yesterday have you seen this thing i mean language warning for snowflakes he goes through and he just has this this epic sort of f bomb rant about all of the republicans and their hypocrisy and their cowardice and their support for sedition.
[464] And it goes on and on and on.
[465] And yet here you have right now Republicans owning the law and order issue, is anybody running ads around the country talking about Republicans and of the way they turn their back on cops like Michael Fanon and Harry Dunn on January 6th?
[466] I don't think so.
[467] No, I don't think so.
[468] And that is, you know, that's another example of issue ownership where Republicans claimed to the issue of law and order, and they've got it locked into the public's mind that that's their brand, even when, as you're pointing out, they absolutely betray law and order.
[469] I mean, just to be clear for everybody about what the truth is, Republicans have not been, for some years, the party of law and order.
[470] They have been the party that's tough when the people who are objecting to the behavior of police are black or just non -white, right?
[471] They've been all the riots of 2020, the George Floyd situation, and they were for law and order then.
[472] Then when the nice white people, the nice white insurrectionists of January 6th that attack the Capitol and law enforcement stood up them, suddenly not just the cops, but the prosecutors, the FBI, everybody who's investing in it, are evil.
[473] And Marjorie Taylor Green in that clip you played, Charlie, she says, you know, it's a weaponized legal system, the FBI, right?
[474] She said she literally posted defund the FBI.
[475] So Republicans are for law in order when the non -white people are in the other end of it and when our white people are facing the long arm of the law suddenly we're all about criminal justice reform and protecting the rights of defendants yes uh and again not terribly settled okay so will what are you working on this week what are you keeping an eye on that we should be watching too so i'm i'm looking at exactly what you're not paying attention to charlie i will watch fox news in fact i have so you don't have to thank you so i'm totally well i'm totally into the fox news spin the not everyone on Fox News, but a lot of Fox News, the prime time lineup, is purveying a message that's not explicitly pro -Putin, but is Putin gets to impose the consequences.
[476] Putin is threatening nuclear war.
[477] Therefore, we need to find out how we can, you know, as Will Kane puts it, turn down the temperature.
[478] You know, you've heard this from Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram, Glenn Greenwald.
[479] There's a lot of people on Fox News.
[480] Dan Bongino was just doing this.
[481] It's that the minute Putin threatens nuclear war, we have to figure out how to calm him down, which is Charlie, that's appeasement.
[482] And that's what we're hearing from Fox News.
[483] And sometime over the next couple of weeks, we'll have to have a conversation about the new Supreme Court term, which began this week.
[484] Looks like it's going to be another extraordinary term of the Supreme Court.
[485] Lots of interesting commentary about how shaken some of the justices were by the blowback against some of their decisions last time.
[486] But there's no indication that the new majority is going to moderate its ambitions in any.
[487] anyway, so strap in because we're about to have another ride, another ride on the SCOTUS train.
[488] Yeah, well, I'm sure they're concerned about that, I mean, they were obviously surprised by the impact of the Dobbs ruling by how that's received.
[489] And I've been watching, you know, Supreme Court justices are out there holding, doing their panel discussions and saying that they're surprised at the attacks on the legitimacy of the court.
[490] Well, you know, when you try to, you know, execute a U -turn at 90 miles an hour, as they just did on.
[491] an abortion, that'll happen to you.
[492] You know, just before we end this, in the back of my mind, there's something I keep meaning to say, and I haven't gotten around to talking about it.
[493] We have talked extensively about the Senate race in Georgia, in Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin.
[494] We've talked about Missouri.
[495] We've talked about Arizona.
[496] And yet I'm looking at a Robert Costa tweet that went out a few hours ago about what's happening in Utah right now, which is really an amazing story.
[497] He quotes a story from the Salt Lake Tribune with.
[498] Just over a month to the midterm elections, Evan McMullen's unprecedented independent challenge to Senator Mike Lee has drawn national attention and made for the most fascinating statewide race in decades, potentially the closest in 48 years.
[499] You know, and again, if you didn't have Utah on your bingo card for being an interesting race, there's one of the surprise of 2022.
[500] I'm not predicting, you know, the outcome of that race, but it's certainly interesting.
[501] and particularly for centrists who are looking for some sort of alternative to the duopoly, keep an eye on what's going on because one of the most interesting things about Utah is the Democratic Party there was so pragmatic that they decided to stand down.
[502] They knew they could not elect a Democratic U .S. senator, so they backed off and allowed center -right candidate, anti -Trump candidate like Evan McMullen to stand up against Mike Lee, who's gone totally MAGA.
[503] I love this case.
[504] I love that you brought this up because we need to see test cases.
[505] We need to see what happens experimentally when Democrats are pragmatic and when many Republicans are principled.
[506] That's part of what's happening in Utah, right?
[507] There's look, Utah's a Mormon state.
[508] A lot of Mormons take character seriously.
[509] They are not Trumpers.
[510] If you give them an alternative that is conservative as they are but isn't Trumpy, a lot of them will go for it.
[511] And if Democrats are smart and say, you know what, we'll go with this guy who doesn't agree with us about other things, but we take seriously that democracy is the most important thing, and he's on our side on that issue, Utah will be a test case of how far they can go with that.
[512] Extraordinarily interesting.
[513] Will Salatin, thank you once again for joining me on this Monday podcast.
[514] We'll talk again next week.
[515] Thanks, Charlie.
[516] And thanks for listening to today's bulwark podcast.
[517] By the way, we have a bonus for you this week.
[518] We have added the focus group to our feed.
[519] And this week we focus on where else?
[520] America's dairy land, which is becoming America's election land.
[521] We talk about Wisconsin's races.
[522] We talk with focus group members about the race for governor and U .S. Senate.
[523] And I join Sarah to talk about Wisconsin politics and to react to some of the, shall we say, unexpected comments from members of her focus group.
[524] Check it out.
[525] The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper.
[526] with audio production by Jonathan Siri.
[527] I'm Charlie Sykes.
[528] Thank you for listening to today's Bowlerk podcast, and we'll be back tomorrow and do this all over again.