The Bulwark Podcast XX
[0] Welcome to The Bull Work podcast.
[1] I'm Charlie Sykes.
[2] We almost never do this.
[3] No, that's not true.
[4] We never have done this.
[5] We've never done a face -to -face live in -person podcast.
[6] I am here in Austin, Texas at the Texas Tribune Festival.
[7] With Tim Miller.
[8] I'm here.
[9] With Tim Miller.
[10] I'm not touching your bony knee right now.
[11] We're that close to each other.
[12] Okay.
[13] What's the with the bony knee thing?
[14] I thought you were going to give me shit for showing up wearing shorts and a teacher.
[15] But then you're rocking these Bermuda shorts or something?
[16] Yeah, I got them in Brazil.
[17] Remember I had a little vacation earlier this year for my age -redacted birthday.
[18] And so I got some Brazil shorts.
[19] And, you know, you look great.
[20] You're in an RVAT T -shirt.
[21] Rep, repping.
[22] I think you look fantastic.
[23] Okay, so just to put this into context, you know, I fly down here from the Midwest on the first day of autumn, thinking, hey, it's fall.
[24] I mean, how bad can it be?
[25] It was 98 fucking degrees when I get out of the airplane.
[26] It was hot.
[27] 98 degrees.
[28] But this is a great.
[29] event, and it's good talking with you, Tim.
[30] So last night, I don't know whether you caught it.
[31] They had the opening event.
[32] Evan Smith, who's the CEO and founder of Trib, who, by the way, is going to be doing our panel later day.
[33] Just for people who know, Amanda Carpenter, Tim and I will be doing a panel here at the Tribune Festival.
[34] I think it's described as bullshitting with the bulwark or something like that.
[35] I think they had a better name, but I think that's what it should have been called.
[36] Well, that's pretty much what it's going to be.
[37] Well, Evan sat down with Pete Buttigieg, and I have to I watched the guy before.
[38] He, you know, just bottom line, short take, gifted animal.
[39] I mean, it really is something watching.
[40] I've never seen him in person interact, and I got to say that the guys still got some stuff.
[41] He's got it.
[42] It's his wheelhouse.
[43] He's got it.
[44] He's good.
[45] He's sharp.
[46] I didn't get to watch him yesterday.
[47] You know, I just, I'm in Austin.
[48] I'm on a little holiday, so I availed myself to some Mexican Tex -Mex dinner instead of going to see Mayor Pete.
[49] Was that a mistake?
[50] No, no. I get to see him.
[51] You know, I get to see him a lot.
[52] But, you know, sometimes you do wonder the Democrats, and we have this discussion about how they're just like desperately searching, a nationwide search for somebody who has political talent to unite the country.
[53] And it's like, he kind of is just sitting right there in the transportation department.
[54] I don't know.
[55] Maybe, obviously there's some other political issues he would have, should he ever run again, and challenges.
[56] But he's pretty damn good.
[57] Well, I've always thought so.
[58] and I was actually kind of making mental notes because it's, look, you and I spend a lot of time around politicians, right?
[59] Or watching them or talking about them or thinking about them or, you know, cutting them off the knees or whatever.
[60] It's rare to find somebody who has the whole package.
[61] And I was watching him and he was talking about infrastructure and these wonky details which he was pulling out of some deep pocket where every question they asked him about some remote projects somewhere he knew it back and forth.
[62] And yet he does it in a way that's not pedantic.
[63] It's not the, okay, more, Harvard asshole.
[64] I know all this stuff.
[65] And also he resisted the temptation to go for the sort of the MSNBC red meat rhetoric on a lot of things.
[66] He does something that's interesting.
[67] I was going to bounce this off you.
[68] He seems like the only guy who has really thought about how do I talk to the middle in this country.
[69] I'm sorry, he's obviously not the only guy that's thought about it.
[70] But clearly he's thought about where we are in politics, why he needs to go on Fox News, and how you actually can change people's minds, which is vanishingly rare.
[71] The thing is that makes it so strange, why it's so rare, is it's not that hard, actually, to talk to.
[72] I mean, he's pretty liberal, okay?
[73] He's not, like, particularly center or left, squishy, moderate.
[74] But by going on Fox, like, this is just a signaling thing, which is, I'm going to talk to you.
[75] I'm going to talk down to you.
[76] I'm not going on Fox to troll you, right?
[77] When he's answering the questions, he thinks about, okay, how can I answer this question using normal person words, despite the fact that he's obviously smart, doing normal person words that normal people use in conversation rather than, you know, what Carville calls the faculty lounge bullshit, right?
[78] Like he talks like a normal person.
[79] This is the Kemp thing when I went down to Georgia.
[80] And I sort of, yeah, I sort of made fun of Brian Kemp about this in the article.
[81] But it's also true, which is he's signaling to Georgia moderates that he's.
[82] a moderate, by just stepping over the tiniest bar of being like, I'm not going to go along with the coup, right?
[83] By not going along with the coup and by not saying the most crazy rhetoric, all of a sudden, as I was interviewing voters, I'm kind of like, he's a mainstream guy.
[84] It's like, not really actually.
[85] Brian Kemp is pretty down the line conservative, right?
[86] Back in 2010, you know, back in the normal days in 2012, if you're judging Brian Kemp on a continuum with like Mitt Romney and John Huntsman, my old boss, you would have said, Brian Kemp's the hard line Tea Party guy, right?
[87] Not a moderate, but he projects his moderate.
[88] Pete has the inverse of this, right?
[89] He just doesn't step into the lefty stuff that for some reason a lot of other Democrats can't help to avoid.
[90] One other, just a little preview.
[91] One other guy who is good like this about Pete, who knows whether it will hold up.
[92] But Jim Swift and I interviewed Wes Moore, who's the Democratic nominee for governor of Maryland last week.
[93] We've got a profile on him coming next week.
[94] And he's really talented, too.
[95] And he is also very conscious of just, it's kind of like, it's kind of crazy to say this, like using Obama rhetoric, kind of put you in the middle now.
[96] But he does, he has this sort of going back to kind of progressive patriot.
[97] Yeah, yeah, patriotism, unity.
[98] We can all be, you know, I'm trying to talk to everybody even in red parts of Maryland.
[99] He talks about economic growth and entrepreneurship and innovation.
[100] You know, it's not just the class war, Elizabeth Warren stuff.
[101] So anyway, you can read more about that on Monday.
[102] But the fact that that stands out for people like Pete and West is notable.
[103] I'd like to kind of tell you where we are, that that is a rare thing when that was kind of like the standard democratic rhetoric for a while, not too long ago.
[104] So let's talk about all of the news of the day.
[105] And there were some good news and there were some just normally insane news.
[106] In other words, it was just a regular week.
[107] I have to tell you, I'm a little bit stuck on this whole Judge Deary story.
[108] The special master from New York who continues.
[109] remember, he was the guy that Trump chose to be the special master, and he keeps just slapping these guys down.
[110] And yesterday, he tells Trump's people, hey, basically put up or shut up.
[111] You know, you've been implying, you've been insinuating that the FBI agents planted the information, okay?
[112] I want you to now tell the court, the federal court, whether that this actually happened.
[113] Also, you've been implying that some of these records had been declassified.
[114] You've said this outside of court.
[115] Are you going to say this now to me?
[116] And a reminder that social media is different than being in a federal court.
[117] So I think this is kind of interesting the way it's...
[118] I mean, this has been...
[119] And look, I don't want to be part of another montage of, you know, the walls are closing it around Donald Trump thing.
[120] I mean, we've kind of been doing that, but this was a really bad week for Trump and the courts.
[121] It's pretty nice.
[122] I mean, he's getting sued by Tish James.
[123] Like, his little truths, do you watch his truths?
[124] They're pretty strange about...
[125] I mean, they're always strange, but he's, like, making up weird names about her.
[126] that aren't really landing.
[127] Gene Carroll, my friend Robbie Kaplan, is representing her, and that suit is coming back to a head.
[128] There's been a little kind of fake drama around Hannah's art this week.
[129] Can I just comment about this for a second?
[130] She's so great, Hannah Yost, our art director.
[131] But I have been disappointed about one thing, not the weird AI art, which I think has been cool.
[132] But the Trump having a special master and having the special master slap him down provides a lot of evocative images for me that I wish, you know, I wish we could go there.
[133] Okay, you have to, like, use the special master.
[134] I don't, I don't, I don't, I just, I don't, I just, okay, so we're like, 10 minutes into this and we're already talking about, you know, Tim Miller's kinks.
[135] I mean, I just, no, this was not the kind of master that I think that Donald Trump wanted.
[136] But he's kind of been that.
[137] But, but, you know, okay, so you have all these lawsuits.
[138] You have the various things that are going on.
[139] I think the Washington posted there are eight ongoing criminal or civil.
[140] investigations.
[141] And I was thinking, okay, if I sat here, how long would it take me to come up with all eight of them just to keep track?
[142] But the declassification drama continued.
[143] And so my second favorite story, after Judge Deary basically telling Trump's people to put up or shut up, is Trump kind of flailing around here on all of this?
[144] And this is my favorite soundbite of the week.
[145] The former president of the United States goes on Sean Hannity to explain that he can declassify things just with his mind.
[146] A president has the power to declassified.
[147] Correct.
[148] Okay.
[149] You had said on truth social a number of times, you did declassify.
[150] I did declassify, yes.
[151] Okay.
[152] Is there a process?
[153] What was your process to declassified?
[154] There doesn't have to be a process, as I understand it.
[155] You know, there's different people say different things.
[156] But as I understand, there doesn't have to be.
[157] If you're the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it's declassified, even by thinking about it.
[158] Because you're sending it tomorrow.
[159] or to wherever you're sending it.
[160] And there doesn't have to be a process.
[161] There can be a process, but there doesn't have to be.
[162] You're the president.
[163] You make that decision.
[164] So when you send it, it's declassified.
[165] We, I declassified everything.
[166] It's just like magic.
[167] You know, just a little.
[168] We just indict them with our minds.
[169] I wish.
[170] I was indicting him with my mind this week, actually.
[171] You know I've been trying so hard to not get hope about the indictment.
[172] But every time a new thing comes up, just I'm getting weak.
[173] I'm getting weaker.
[174] A little backstory on how these Hannity interviews go, someone who unfortunately has been in that seat of prepping.
[175] Hannity preps with you, right?
[176] Some of these other Fox shows, they might be propagandists, but they have their own agendas.
[177] You know, Hannity is a classic North Korea style, propagandist, right?
[178] Him and Trump sit together.
[179] I'm going to ask you this.
[180] He advises him, like, I think you should maybe say this, right?
[181] Like spitball stuff.
[182] I've been in the rooms with him when he does this, not with Trump, but with Hannity and other candidates.
[183] So that is just, I think, emphasizes how much he's flailing that it's like they prepped for this.
[184] And Hannity still asked him, do you have a process?
[185] And Trump's like, nah, no process.
[186] I just happened with my mind.
[187] The other, which wasn't included in this clip, my personal favorite, was a different answer, where he suggests that it's possible that they were searching for Hillary Clinton's emails in Mara Laco.
[188] Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a long interview.
[189] It's like, you didn't have to suffer through the whole thing.
[190] But yeah, Trump's like, well, you know, if FBI had to come down and why, who knows why they could have come down?
[191] I didn't think there was anything in there, but we never found those emails.
[192] Maybe they thought, I don't know why he thought that the emails might have been in Mar -a -law ago.
[193] But see, this is why, and again, I caution against irrational hope about any of these indictments and everything.
[194] But there is that moment where Donald Trump is in front of a judge or in front of a grand jury, and it's going to be very difficult to be Donald Trump because the guy lies and throws bullshit against the law so much.
[195] And here you have a federal judge saying you want to say that here in court where it might actually count.
[196] Do you really want to say this under oath?
[197] This is part of the problem is that at some point he says all of this stuff.
[198] If he's ever put on the record in a court proceeding, he either he can played the Fifth Amendment, he can repeat it under oath, or he can say, no, I was just bullshitting.
[199] Right.
[200] And I do think the civil courts, because we've gone around and around on this, which is like some of the problems of him actually getting indicted in criminal, criminally health.
[201] to account is you need to have juries and is there one person of the jury civil court's a different animal right like you get sued you get deposed you know we just saw this with our friends at uh project veritas right they just got taking the civil court this week's a nice another little piece of good news yeah sex figures we saw it with Alex Jones right so civil court is revealing right in a way that maybe we don't get the per block of our dreams but um that they start to get bled out a little bit yeah and for people who are you know thinking that there's there's this great nemesis coming and and maybe perhaps it is you mentioned a Alex Jones Alex Jones is having also a terrible week in court where he's again under oath he's he's on the stand making a complete ass of himself which he does on a regular basis he's being asked about things that he said are done in the past and they play the tape of him saying it it's it's bad and you know I think in part of our minds we're thinking okay well this is kind of going to be the end of Alex Jones because he's so completely discredited you know mocking these dead children at Sandy Hook.
[202] I see this week, the Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, who has really become central now in MAGA GOP world, is now featuring Alex Jones at TPUSA events.
[203] So in other words, rather than the right basically saying, hey, let's move on without these complete nut jobs, crazed, you know, bigots and everything, no, we're going to double down on them.
[204] This is important to bring up because just how.
[205] when you say central Charlie Kirk and TPSA is it really is the entire web of the kind of Republican Party, this new mega establishment, they're a central node in it, right?
[206] They're taking the place of what stuff that the parties used to do, right?
[207] Because the parties have been weekend.
[208] We've talked about this.
[209] There's a big event up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, just this last weekend where all the Republican candidates were there sponsored by TPSA, which again, to your point, they have really become the RNC.
[210] Yeah, and that's who was sponsoring the DeSantis events.
[211] So I just remember where DeSantis is traveling around the country, campaigning for Mastriano, I think.
[212] And I forget which there were like three or four of the gubernatorial candidates, including Mastriano.
[213] And they were sponsoring those events.
[214] So to have Alex Jones a special guest, and if you watch that video, Kirk is teasing, like an exciting guest to the crowd, right?
[215] You can see buzz building and then he says, oh, it's not going to be the big guy.
[216] You know, it's not going to be Donald.
[217] and you hear a little disappointment.
[218] He's like, it's going to be somebody that the media hates even more than Donald and they show Alex Jones and sometimes they show the video of these things and you're watching them and you're like, I don't know if that's really landing with the crowd.
[219] That wasn't the case this time.
[220] You can't see it because people start standing up.
[221] There's a standing ovation.
[222] Yeah, people take away.
[223] This is deeply concerning, right?
[224] Like the types of people A rare moment of understatement on the podcast.
[225] The types of people that are screaming, jeering for this lying pernicious ass pimple, like, are the same people that are there for, you know, your average Republican House candidate event, right?
[226] Like, that is the core of what's happening.
[227] Well, you know, I don't want to get too, you know, META here, but once you basically embrace, you know, the Orange God King and said, this is the guy we want to be our leader forever and back in the Oval Office, then basically all those other standards for everybody else kind of have to be scrapped.
[228] So speaking of trolling and Ron DeSantis, I don't know whether you caught it, but the governor of Florida shared some deep thoughts about American history.
[229] I mean, this guy is a thinkery.
[230] He has not merely an internet troll from Tallahassee.
[231] He also has some thoughts about the American Revolution.
[232] Harvard.
[233] Yes, he's from Harvard.
[234] Let's play that.
[235] For example, the 1619 project is a CRT version of history.
[236] It's supported by the New York Times.
[237] They want to teach our kids that the American Revolution was fought to protect slavery.
[238] And that's false.
[239] We know why the American Revolution was fought.
[240] They wrote pamphlets.
[241] We saw them dump tea into the Boston Harbor.
[242] We saw them meet in Philadelphia.
[243] And we have the records of why they revolted against King George III.
[244] And so it was the American Revolution that caused people to question.
[245] slavery.
[246] No one had questioned it before we decided as Americans that we are endowed by our creator with unalienable rights and that we are all created equal.
[247] Then that birth abolition movements.
[248] So you can't teach history that's being used to pursue an ideological agenda.
[249] You can't teach that the foundations of our country were somehow evil.
[250] Let's leave aside the 1619 project, which does have some, so we say problematic elements.
[251] I really like the part how no one questions slavery before 1776 No, uh -uh No issues You want to take the high law There?
[252] No one questioned it Worldwide I think we were the last Actually to get rid of slavery I don't know if we were the first I think it might have been the inverse to that I actually know some people They're no one but some people who might have questioned slavery Like the slaves But apparently they become sort of invisible In Ronda Sandus' world like, nobody thought this was wrong.
[253] Wait, there's like a million slaves going, we would like a word?
[254] We would like to talk about this?
[255] The slave owners were actually the first ones to determine that slavery was wrong.
[256] The Orwellian nature of the end of this, too, which is like we cannot let our children be taught in ideological history.
[257] They have to be taught real history, such as the great white American founders were the first ones to question slavery.
[258] It's like he's doing exactly the thing, that he is accusing the other side of doing in like the most ham -fisted way possible.
[259] It also makes me reflect back on the Common Core.
[260] You remember the Common Core controversy?
[261] Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[262] I had to deal with this as Jeb's spokesperson.
[263] There was this big complaint at Common Core, ostensibly, among the conservatives, was that, you know, we don't want government -setting curriculum standards, right?
[264] We don't want these top -down government curriculum standards.
[265] Now, that concern about government -setting curricular standards has been pushed aside, because we have a new thing, which is patriotic core.
[266] Patriot core, Patriot core is cool, okay?
[267] It's like America was wonderful from the start.
[268] It has no flaws.
[269] Our great patriotic leaders were the ones that ended slavery and started the abolition movement.
[270] And anyone that questions anything America that ever did, they are wrong.
[271] That's our new patriotic core history in Florida.
[272] It's not quite history, but it's something.
[273] Yeah, you actually have to work pretty hard to come up with the, you know, that no one had thought this was a problem.
[274] I mean, really, you do, and...
[275] We just went through the British, the queen.
[276] We were just talking about.
[277] We learned about all this on the news.
[278] So what was Wilberforce's first name?
[279] But, I mean, the great story of the abolitionist in England, what they did long before the American Civil War.
[280] So I'm sorry, I'm having this post -traumatic flashback when you're talking about the Common Core, because that was a very 1980s issue.
[281] And so here we're sitting in on, can I just have a digression here?
[282] Yeah, please, those digress.
[283] Okay, so we're sitting here in Austin, Texas, where it's 97 degrees, 90 degrees.
[284] I thought it was nice this morning.
[285] It was kind of balmy.
[286] Okay, well, yeah, since like 8 o 'clock in the morning here, you know, yeah.
[287] But the first time I was in Austin, Texas, was in January during an ice storm.
[288] And it must have been January of, like, 1997.
[289] I'm a little vague on all this, but George W. Bush was governor.
[290] And I was here to do some speaking events around the state, and the Texas Policy Institute or whatever, which is gone complete MAGA now.
[291] But at the time, they actually arranged a meeting in the government.
[292] office.
[293] But I had to walk over from my hotel to the state capitol, which we can see from where we're sitting right now.
[294] And everything was covered in ice.
[295] Absolutely covered in ice.
[296] I mean, because down here in Texas, unlike in Wisconsin, they do not have snow plows.
[297] They do not have salt.
[298] They don't know what to do in the middle of an ice storm.
[299] And it was the longest walk of my life because I'm wearing these sort of, you know, shoes and slipping, slipping, slipping, slipping, slipping.
[300] And I get there.
[301] And Bush is the only person in the capital.
[302] I mean, the place is completely.
[303] completely shut down.
[304] And so we had scheduled a 15 -minute talk about education policy, and it turned into an hour and a half to say, I had nothing else to do.
[305] And so we bullshitted about all kinds of things.
[306] But I remember we were talking about at that time, he was pushing education reforms, which we would think of as pretty moderate, pretty non -controversial.
[307] Like race to the top style.
[308] But there was this extreme sort of fundamentalist right that was shooting at him because of this, you know, the government should never tell us.
[309] us what we teach in our schools.
[310] We should all require McGuffey's reader and everything.
[311] And I remember he was sitting there, and this feels like a different, it was a different century, literally, where he's talking about, you know, these nut jobs, these extremists, you know, and fuck them.
[312] I'm still going to go ahead with what I'm going to do.
[313] So the common core, I mean, I'm having that Austin flashback here.
[314] Yeah, I'm sorry.
[315] No, I just have one other thing on DeSantis.
[316] I don't know if you're ready to move on.
[317] No, I'm not ready to move on.
[318] Okay, great.
[319] Did you see the Jared Kushner thing?
[320] I'm taking the host chair for a second.
[321] We're together, so we're sort of rotating.
[322] Did you see Jared Kushner's comment about DeSantis in the Martha Vineyard?
[323] I had my first moment of thinking, I'm pretty bearish on the idea that DeSantis could go head to head with Trump.
[324] We just listen to that video.
[325] He has an annoying voice.
[326] It feels very cruise and walkerish, you know, where he's going to try to suck up to Donald and then try to criticize him in his weird think I'm clever way.
[327] And then like Donald's going to call him like Fatty McFatface or something.
[328] And, you know, everybody would be like, ah, you did it.
[329] orange god king out of it that's always been my that that's kind of been my vision but then that little weasley jared was on fox this week and he was saying that he thought that rand de santis he just needs to tweet these people like humans like they aren't humans he's using them like pawns and he's like i really want to hear donald the donald pick that thing up and so i was watching that it was my first moment where i was like i don't know maybe ron santis has these guys flanked like if they They feel like they have to criticize them from the humanitarian perspective.
[330] And I got a kick out of, A, just Jared, all for six years, we had to listen to Jared through the reporters behind the scenes.
[331] It was like, Javanka is upset about this, right?
[332] But they never, but now that he's still in a book, he has to do it in public.
[333] And it just sounds so weak and pathetic, and you don't believe it.
[334] And he's like, now he's like this animatronic person pretending to have human feelings.
[335] So it's not like I really believe that Jared actually cares about the humanity of these people.
[336] I mean, he was in there during the child's separation.
[337] He's doing business with response.
[338] But it's interesting that they feel a little bit cornered on this one.
[339] Like, that DeSantis kind of has the nuts that the voters want the cruelty and dehumanization.
[340] That's what they want.
[341] Trump is not in the picture, right?
[342] He doesn't have, it's not like he's going to use his own money to start flying the Mar -a -Lago employees to Martha Vineyard.
[343] I guess there's a...
[344] He is not running that check.
[345] Undocumented Democrat employees.
[346] So they don't, like, have a way into the story.
[347] Now, Jared is obviously not his id. Don Jr. would be Trump's id. So maybe Don Jr. would have a better take on this.
[348] But I don't know.
[349] It was the first moment that I thought maybe, like, a hint of weakness with the case.
[350] Well, they're annoyed.
[351] You know they're annoyed because he's taking his issue.
[352] He can't say anything about it really publicly.
[353] He can't endorse it because then he looks kind of beta, right?
[354] Did you say that?
[355] Am I just repeating you from one of the secret podcast?
[356] I mean, and he's obviously not.
[357] He, it's hard for him, you know, to figure out to get to the right or the left of him.
[358] I'm not sure it's very on brand, you know, talk about using people as human pawns.
[359] I thought maybe he would say that, no, DeSantis is a cuck because we should have the death penalty for all illegal immigrants or something like that.
[360] But I guess the other vulnerability of DeSantis, and I, by the way, agree that this is electorally probably working for him because it's focusing on the border, etc. But the other weak spot is the flat -out fraud.
[361] I don't think Sunny Bunch has got enough credit for pointing out that in that brochure they gave to the migrants, they had a fake flag of Massachusetts that somebody Googled.
[362] And then they had all this information telling these people what they were going to do.
[363] And it seems increasingly likely every single day we get another indication that this is not like close to fraud or near fraud.
[364] This is just pure raw fraud.
[365] Yeah, and Miami Herald had a good report about a different group that they were going to.
[366] to try to draw to Delaware, I guess, and the Keystone Cops, a little secret plan sort of, yeah, yeah, fell apart, and they backed off on it.
[367] And so I think there could be some legal exposure here for sure.
[368] So, you know, we've talked about this on the other podcast, but I, you know, I'm not certain.
[369] You know, JBL compared this to Bridgegate, and I do think that's kind of an apt comparison that in that era, and Bridgegate era, like, Christy thought he was being clever and politically hard -hitting, but it didn't, you know, he's getting crushed every day.
[370] There's a new leak about how this was illegal and, you know, his own staff is turning on him and now we're foying the documents and that's a leak.
[371] And back then I think that really hurt him because there was this very large cloud around him.
[372] And now, I just don't know if that matters, right?
[373] Like if the Miami Herald is doing drip, drip, drip on this every day, does that even actually hurt DeSantis at all?
[374] I'm not sure.
[375] So I think that that same environment could surround him, but it's unclear to me whether it would actually matter to his baseball.
[376] You used a phrase, I think during that podcast that kind of stuck with me that this was in the era when the media could still hold Republicans accountable, right?
[377] And they're like, we don't live in that world anymore.
[378] And again, I've been pretty clear how I feel about Ronda Santis, you know, the cruelty being the point, you know, that it's all about, you know, the trolling lib.
[379] Well, let me just step back for a moment.
[380] And I think people need to understand why this is playing so strongly with the other side.
[381] yes there is the cruelty etc but as somebody said to me last night you know it would be interesting if we paid as much attention to what's happening in in el paso every single day as what's happening in mara lago the point being there's a there is a problem with the border it is not going well and you know every day that we now are talking about this we're talking about an issue the Republicans want to talk about as opposed to abortion.
[382] But we built a wall?
[383] Well, we know, no problem.
[384] Yeah, and Mexico paid for it.
[385] That didn't work.
[386] But we have a problem, right?
[387] I mean, I guess, I hear you, but I, DeSantis doesn't have a problem.
[388] No, no, no. And there's no, you know, DeSantis doesn't have any more of a migrant crisis problem than Delaware does or that Massachusetts does.
[389] This is why he looks so silly that he's, you know, going to get.
[390] people from Texas to fly there.
[391] That's what the attention is there, because there's been some attention on Greg Abbott's deal, which I also think is trolling and kind of pathetic.
[392] Again, it's one thing of Greg Abbott, not DeSantis.
[393] Desantis' this whole situation is ridiculous.
[394] But it's one thing of Greg Abbott said, okay, we can't handle this anymore, right?
[395] And we need help.
[396] And so I'm calling Charlie Baker, and I'm calling, you know, the governor of Delaware.
[397] And we're going to work with you to send some migrants up there.
[398] That's one thing.
[399] But that's not what he's doing.
[400] No, because he's not trying to solve the problem.
[401] He's not trying to help.
[402] Right.
[403] And so, I don't know.
[404] And then, yeah, the California, I think this bears mentioned, I've wanted to be wanting to mention this on a podcast.
[405] There is a blue state that actually has a border.
[406] My state.
[407] You know, it's a progressive healthcape.
[408] Yeah, it's a progressive hellscape.
[409] You don't see Gavin Newsom saying, we can't handle the Tijuana entrance, so we're going to send these, we're going to send these people into Arizona, right?
[410] Do you want to use California as a model of how it's working well?
[411] Well, I mean, I guess I'm just saying California as a state has plenty of problems, no doubt.
[412] But the California border situation is, again, not, we know border situation is ideal.
[413] Part of that is a global geopolitical economic problem.
[414] I don't know what Greg Abbott or Gavin Newsom or Joe Biden is supposed to do about the gangs in El Salvador and Guatemala or the communist dictator in Venezuela that is drawing these people here.
[415] But what my point is that there is a Democratic governor that is managing a border and doing so without, you know, to Fox News about how he needs to he needs help from you know the the the Republican elites so I was talking to some swing Republican voters about all of this and it was interesting how often the issue of sanctuary cities comes up like what in and this is something that that I do think we need to talk about you know what we keep because we all talk about the rule of law and we have to have the rule of law and then on the other hand but sanctuary cities which basically say we're going to ignore the law are and this is again part of what is going on right now you want to be a sanctuary city okay here sanctuary these people so you know coming to the immigration squish for this are you ready you're ready for my yeah i'm like the total immigration is my squishiest issue i'm like to the left of biden on it but here's the thing this annoys me this argument this rule of law argument about the undocumented immigrants because well i'm sorry okay so here's the thing excuse me after all of these years i finally come up with a question to annoy Tim Miller.
[416] Okay, so here's the problem.
[417] Okay, there can be plenty of legal remedies and issues to deal with people coming across the border.
[418] Part of the rule of law issue is that we aren't funding our courts enough to deal with all the assailies that are coming here.
[419] So we should be funding the border courts to be able to deal with these people.
[420] There can be punishments short of deportation that are here for the rule of law.
[421] This is my problem is the people who only say, well, why don't we have the rule of law for illegal immigrants?
[422] like, well, we need to deport them.
[423] Like, the deporting is the right solution.
[424] I mean, are we doing death penalty for Donald Trump and Javanka?
[425] I mean, right?
[426] Like, we can have a range of legal solutions here that isn't, you know, putting people on buses back to Mexico.
[427] But the whole sanctuary thing is we are carving out this part of the United States where we are not going to cooperate or enforce United States law.
[428] I mean, you understand how there are people.
[429] go, wait, this just sounds wrong to me. I mean, I guess.
[430] Why does it sound wrong to them now?
[431] What are they, they're upset?
[432] What did they want?
[433] I guess what I'm asking is, what do they want?
[434] They want the Oakland mayor to be giving undocumented immigrants living in Oakland to the Department of Homeland Security so they can bust them back to Mexico?
[435] Like, what I just don't understand what they want.
[436] Well, they want a lot of things.
[437] I mean, they pretty much probably want the same thing that you would want if Texas declares itself a sanctuary state for Donald Trump and Ivanka and Aaron.
[438] and Donald Jr. I mean, you know, when it comes to gun legislation or when it comes to felony convictions of the former president, if a locality or a state said, we are a sanctuary state, if Donald comes here, we will make sure that he is not arrested, that there are no legal consequences.
[439] Come on, I'm just saying.
[440] We don't like federalism anymore.
[441] I'm just saying that if you play, if you live by the sanctuary city thing, you might have to die by the sanctuary city thing.
[442] I do not share the concerns about this.
[443] Part of the reason is because the federal immigration laws aren't being enforced by anybody.
[444] We don't have a federal immigration law or federal immigration system.
[445] And so this is one city that's basically saying, okay, undocumented immigrants who are living here, who we don't really have a solution for, Congress is uninterested in solving the problem.
[446] They can live in our city and not have the fear of deportation.
[447] They can work here.
[448] They can be here with their families.
[449] you know, they're not all rapists and criminals with watermelon thighs or whatever Donald Trump used to say about them.
[450] You know, is that a Steve King thing?
[451] They're coming across the border.
[452] I'm sure he was thinking about it.
[453] He was thinking about their thighs.
[454] I think it was a Steve King thing.
[455] Many of them are just people that are trying to work and make a living for their family and I think that it's okay for them to live in Oakland and not be worried that ICE is going to come banging down their door.
[456] That's me. Can we talk about something that actually some good news and indications that perhaps the world is not totally falling apart.
[457] Yeah, where'd you get that from?
[458] What is that about?
[459] I'm living the writer's life in California right now.
[460] Type in my articles sitting out on the balcony.
[461] It's good.
[462] It's like we're in the summer.
[463] We have kind of a late summer.
[464] New York Times bestselling.
[465] Well, you have like three events today here in Texas in a book signing, right?
[466] And a trivia contest.
[467] Do you have to come up with the trivia stuff yourself?
[468] They've given me the questions.
[469] I'm kind of like Alex Trebek or an anchor man, really.
[470] They put the questions in the television.
[471] prompter and I read them and throw a couple jokes out there.
[472] I'm excited.
[473] I'm going to be working the room doing a little light crowd work.
[474] So while I was walking around last night, I was chatting with a guy who was one of our podcast listeners.
[475] And he said that he's looking forward to coming to your event tonight.
[476] And he said, I'm going to be wearing an LSU sweatshirt because I hope that that sort of biases to him in my favor.
[477] I said, I can't speak for him.
[478] So I don't know.
[479] So if you see a guy with an LSU, you just understand that that's a specific attempt to curry favor with the host i'm not giving out any i've already had some requests for the answers actually from people and i care about the rule of law and run in a tight ship when it comes to pub trivia okay so there's going to be no cheating well okay so there's some good news i want to there's some bad news as well but the electoral count act which we have been railing about for months that if there's one minimal thing that you could do to prevent the kind of coup that almost happened on January 6th, it's you change that incredibly stupid and equated 18 -whatever law.
[480] And finally, the House of Representatives did it, and they got nine Republican votes, nine whole freaking Republican votes.
[481] Let's talk to the bad.
[482] We got good news.
[483] I want to get to the good news on the back end.
[484] The bad news first, boy, Crystal, I think, put this best.
[485] There were zero Republicans who are up for election this November, who voted to reform the Electoral Count Act.
[486] I missed that.
[487] Zero.
[488] Eight.
[489] So it was the eight impeachers out of the ten who are already on their way out the door via retirement or primary loss.
[490] The two who won their primaries did not vote for it.
[491] And then one additional retiring House member.
[492] So no one who's up for re -election voted for it.
[493] Okay.
[494] So that is the bad news.
[495] So much for team normal.
[496] It's just, again, it's like, are you worried you're going to get primaries?
[497] What is even the fear?
[498] Just, okay, I'm going to rant about this for one second before we get to the good news.
[499] Sorry, we always do this.
[500] We're like, here's good news.
[501] Let me talk about the bad part.
[502] Okay, I'll make it worse.
[503] Just in case anybody has any doubt about what's going to happen with the Republican Congress next year, they will vote to impeach Joe Biden and every Republican that wants to stay a Republican in Congress will vote for it.
[504] Yeah, almost everyone at least, yeah.
[505] But meanwhile, every single one of them that just want to fix this long so we can just count the votes.
[506] I was always skeptical of the story.
[507] There are these leaks out of House Republicans that were like, I wanted to vote for impeachment.
[508] I think you should have been impeached, but I can't do it because I'm worried for my physical safety.
[509] I'm literally, I'm worried that the deplorables are going to come.
[510] with pitchforks to my house and burn it down and I'm worried about my family and my wife and I always felt like that was kind of it felt like the characters in why we did it kind of felt like an excuse like a very an excuse that makes you feel good like the junior Messiah sent that oh I would do the right thing but that we need good people like me here there is just no explanation for saying I wanted to impeached but I couldn't do it because we need good people in here and I'm worried about my safety to then two years later when they say okay we're going to just fix this arcane law to make sure that if this happens again you know if he wants to run again can run fair and square and win fair and square okay but but just to make sure we can't cheat it next time uh and then not vote for that right like to me that just reveals that all of those assholes were pretty much on the team coup right they wanted to pretend like they were on team normal and say things like that so they could hang out and collect company you know here in austin at the omni but they didn't actually want to do anything even the most minimal possible thing like reforming the Electoral Count Act to safeguard the elections.
[511] Okay.
[512] The good side, though.
[513] I think we have 10 senators.
[514] Pat Toomey signed on yesterday and indicated that they think that they have 10 senators.
[515] And so this is, I think, the fourth time, right, on a big thing, chips, guns, infrastructure that we've gotten senators.
[516] I want to just give a Sarah Longwell shout out.
[517] You know, you and me and Amanda getting all the love tonight, so we might as well give Sarah Longwell shout out.
[518] She was the most optimistic about this.
[519] All of us were pretty pessimistic about the notion that the Senate could actually do bipartisan stuff anymore.
[520] I was pretty pessimistic.
[521] You heard a lot of people on Lefty podcasts who are like, Joe Biden is evil for even trying to work with Republicans.
[522] How do you pick up the phone when a Republican calls?
[523] They'll never vote for anything.
[524] Well, they end up voting for four things, pretty meaningful things, I think important progress and legislation.
[525] Obviously, this electoral conduct would maybe be the biggest one.
[526] And to get 10 senators really did undermine that.
[527] Like, to Biden's credit, the theory of the case that you could work the Senate still and get over the filibuster, get to 60, and decent things passed, and it hasn't happened yet.
[528] So is Mitch McConnell on board with this?
[529] I think so.
[530] Okay, because this is, again, this is bare minimum fixing the Electoral Count Act.
[531] I mean, this should not be controversial.
[532] This should be as, this should be as bland as you possibly can get.
[533] And Mitch McConnell, who we're just reading in this new book that's coming out, you know, I mean, understood.
[534] that Trump should have been impeached.
[535] He should have been removed from office.
[536] He understands exactly what was it.
[537] The speech he gave about the attempts to overturn the election are crystal, crystal clear.
[538] Could have been on the bulwark.
[539] This should be, yeah.
[540] If he took his name off of it and put Mona Sharon's name on it, like you wouldn't have known the difference.
[541] No, absolutely.
[542] So this should get 78 or 80 votes.
[543] But to your point about the fact that there are no members of Team Normal who are actually in any more, this is the fundamental flaw of this.
[544] well, you have to stay relevant, you know, argument.
[545] This is the one I had with Rich Lowry a couple of months back, whereas criticism of Liz Cheney was, well, okay.
[546] But, you know, it was more important for her to keep a seat at the table.
[547] Because at some point, you need to be at the table in order to do the right thing.
[548] Therefore, you can never, ever, ever do the right thing that will justify.
[549] That's the problem with it.
[550] It becomes circular, you know?
[551] We need to vote this way so that we are here because worse people than us will be here.
[552] but then when it comes down to it, a vote like this, what do they do?
[553] Here's the thing about that, is that not only is that a morally empty posture that Rich Lowry's taken, but practically over the medium term, it's actually the wrong posture for staying relevant, too.
[554] And just look at what's happening, and the Republican caucus, looks what's happening to National Review.
[555] Like, let's be honest, national review is getting squeezed, right?
[556] The Magas don't like it.
[557] The remaining sane people are leaving the National Review.
[558] It's getting squeezed as far as being relevant.
[559] It's clearly not.
[560] If you're a Republican member of Congress and the National Review criticizes you, do you care?
[561] I think you kind of look at it like if the bulwark criticizes you.
[562] I don't think you care anymore, which was different back when I was working for campaigns.
[563] Meanwhile, if you look at Mitch, I think part of the reason Mitch can be going along with things like this is the writing is sort of on the wall for Mitch.
[564] You know, it's possible he can get to be Senate Majority Leader one more time, right?
[565] And if they pick up a seat this fall, which is, I think, a coin flip at this point.
[566] But then if Trump gets back in, you know, he's not going to be the Senate Majority Leader again, right?
[567] Like, over time, the Senate caucus, you know, who knows who comes in, the J .D. Vance is.
[568] This group isn't going to want Mitch to be in leadership.
[569] Mitch is the least popular politician in America.
[570] There was a list of favorability of things.
[571] I always use this as a running joke for my far -lefty friends.
[572] The only thing less popular than Mitch McConnell was to fund the police.
[573] So it was like they test them all.
[574] Mitch has like a 12 % approval reading.
[575] So this strategy of like kind of acknowledging that you know that the anti -democratic stuff is wrong, but not really doing anything about it, but not really cheering it on, that Rich Lowry is arguing, you know, keeps you in the mix, keeps you at the table, is really just a path to irrelevance, just a little longer one.
[576] You just get to hang on with your fingernails for a couple more weeks.
[577] Okay, see, here's an irony.
[578] If you're Mitch McConnell, though, you're looking back and you're going, okay, I've had a pretty good run.
[579] and what is he most proud of?
[580] What is he most proud of?
[581] He's most proud of the court, of the federal judiciary.
[582] And to the extent that MAGA World is willing to, you know, give some props to McConnell, it's because he did such a good job with the federal judges.
[583] Oh, wait.
[584] Because this federal judiciary thing might not play out for MAGA the way they had thought it was going to play out.
[585] See how he looped out all back together.
[586] Okay, so we had to get back to the bad news.
[587] You did, you're not my party.
[588] about the vote to codify same -sex marriage.
[589] This is the low -hanging fruit to basically say, Supreme Court is never going to overturn this.
[590] Let's make sure that millions of people who are married have legal status.
[591] Obviously, it's a personal issue for you.
[592] So what's going on with what should be a slam -dunk vote in the Senate on this?
[593] It's even because, you know, in the media, you're trying to explain things in the quickest way.
[594] It's even more of a low -hanging fruit than you think.
[595] Because this bill, the Respect for Marriage Act, doesn't actually protect Obergefeld because for some arcane legal reasons it kind of can't.
[596] It just reverses DOMA.
[597] So all this bill actually does is ensure that federal recognition on tax status and various things for existing marriages is protected, right?
[598] That you can't take it away.
[599] You can't annul.
[600] The government isn't going to annul my marriage, right?
[601] But what it doesn't do is, like, demand that Alabama in the future can't pass a law that we're going to ban gay marriage in Alabama if the Supreme Court were to overturn Obargarfell.
[602] So it's like literally just protecting existing marriages.
[603] It's not even a fetish.
[604] Yeah, yeah.
[605] Yeah, so it's the lowest -hanging fruit imaginable.
[606] So this should be a 100 -0 Senate vote.
[607] You know, there are a couple assholes over there.
[608] Ted Cruz isn't going to do it.
[609] We're here in Texas.
[610] Got to shout him out, so 98 to 2 or whatever.
[611] So it passed the House already.
[612] 47 Republican votes.
[613] Not bad, but not great.
[614] Better than 8.
[615] But, okay, yeah, better than 8.
[616] So we'll take it.
[617] They're saying that essentially behind the scenes, we're reading tea leaves here.
[618] I ask Chris Murphy about this.
[619] I'm trying to ask some friends who work in the Senate.
[620] The Republicans are signaling to Schumer and Baldwin.
[621] and, okay, we'll vote for this.
[622] But let's, like, let's put it in the lame duck.
[623] Let's not politicize this by having this vote, protecting marriage before the election.
[624] And after the election, there's this lame duck period where it's this existing Congress votes before the new Congress comes in, but it's after the midterms.
[625] And we'll vote for it then.
[626] And, like, I thought about that, and I had talked to some of my friends who were like, okay, well, that's maybe the right thing to do, just to, you know, better safe than sorry, why play politics with this?
[627] And the more I thought about it, I was like, actually, fuck that.
[628] Fuck these guys.
[629] They just don't want to go on record.
[630] Let's go for it now.
[631] I kind of think the 10 votes would appear.
[632] I really do.
[633] This is one of those history votes.
[634] All these retiring folks, you know, your Toomey's that we're talking about, you're Richard Burr's.
[635] They're really on the way out the door going to vote against this because of some petty procedural thing where they're annoyed that the vote habit in September, not December.
[636] Maybe, maybe.
[637] But then let them own that.
[638] Let them argue and say, oh, the Democrats are politicizing this.
[639] very obvious protecting gay marriage vote right before the midterms.
[640] I don't know.
[641] It just seems like a time for hardball.
[642] Um, hopefully, you know, it'll happen in the lame duck regardless, but you just never know who knows what happens, right?
[643] The election is weird.
[644] There's a, there's, you know, we have these claims that have fraud again.
[645] We saw it happen out of the 2020 election.
[646] The lame duck kind of doesn't really happen.
[647] You know, who the hell knows what could happen.
[648] Well, no, and you can see in my home state of Wisconsin, you know, what a tricky issue this is.
[649] I mean, Ron Johnson's been, you know, flipping around, like, you know, a trout out of, you know, on the bank of the river and on all of this.
[650] You know, when the polls are pretty clear, I think in Wisconsin, 72 % of voters, you know, support the legalized same -sex marriage.
[651] And that includes 58 % of Republicans.
[652] Right.
[653] So, really, this is one where.
[654] Flamed up.
[655] Yeah.
[656] And if you're going to politicize, do something that unites your own party and divides the opposition, right, which they need to understand on a variety of other issues as well.
[657] This would seem to be an easy one.
[658] But, I mean, it is, as you point out, and you're not my party, there's something weird about this moment to think of all the progress that had been made, the sense that you'd come to a different point in history, and now realize that there is this huge push to roll so much of it back.
[659] I mean, it feels like we've regressed decades in the last 12 months in terms of some things that we thought were, had been resolved.
[660] Yeah, probably not decades, but yeah, we're regressing.
[661] And this is why I think Ron Johnson's flopping around, you know, like the trout.
[662] Because for a while, I think he just assumed that there wasn't going to be any controversy in his own tent on this.
[663] He could just say that.
[664] He could just vote for the own thing.
[665] But the anti -gay, anti -LGB rights kind of element within the Republican Party feels resurgent right now because they saw that the don't say gay thing in Florida was a winner.
[666] You know, look at what Yonkin is doing.
[667] even the great Glenn Yonkin, you know, the moderate normal hope.
[668] Did you see this?
[669] What he passed?
[670] No, but they put in some, the Virginia Education Department, whatever it's called, sent to school some guidance on how to deal with the trans issue.
[671] And we could do a whole podcast on the trans issue, but there was one thing that really stood out to me. It said that people can only be called a nickname that is a commonly held nickname of their first name on their first name on their school registry.
[672] and so it's like this is good now we're starting back to the patriotic core so it's like the state of virginia wants to dictate what nickname a kid can be called because they're afraid that some of these kids are asking to be called either non -gendered names or you know names that are more commonly associated with a different gender regulating nicknames or regulating nicknames because that allows you to troll trans kids that's a whole point that's that's really the whole point of this and so I think that there's just this feeling of them being emboldened and to me well I don't like really think that the gay marriage thing would actually be overturned by the Supreme Court because of that I think it's prudent to just say let's stamp the shit out right now right like well you can see what's happening let's protect well I agree with you and I think it is in theory I don't think the court is going to overturn that near term however there is not a majority on the court that supports the reasoning behind Obergefeld there is not a majority on the court that recognizes is a constitutional right to privacy anymore.
[673] And if you basically say you have five or maybe six justices who do not believe that there is right to privacy in the Constitution, then what is the constitutional basis for decisions like, for example, Griswold with contraception or what was the case in Texas?
[674] Lawrence.
[675] Lawrence in Texas.
[676] All of those cases, I think, become more problematic.
[677] And by the way, Ron Johnson is going to win that election.
[678] I'm sorry.
[679] Despite the trial flipping around.
[680] Did we say this last week?
[681] I forget if I revealed it.
[682] I had a friend with an internal poll that showed me, and it's, it's concerning.
[683] This is the, it's such a lost opportunity.
[684] And now the reason to do the gay marriage thing, at least that would give, let Mandela be on offense.
[685] I'm not totally ready to throw in the towel yet, but it seems like in our little discussion, you, you have the edge.
[686] I'm just frustrated about it.
[687] Now, both parties have taken seats that were eminently winnable and decided to squander it.
[688] And it's just that, again, this is, you know, people ought to be cautioned in politics, not to engage in the rational fallacy with the rational fallacy being assuming that people behave in a rational manner or always in their self -interest.
[689] Tim, have a great day here in Austin.
[690] You have a busy day.
[691] I'm going to see you later this afternoon when we, you know, bullshitting with the, with the bulwark.
[692] And then Amanda and I are going to come hang with you at Trivia night, too.
[693] Awesome.
[694] All right.
[695] Sounds great.
[696] See you, Charlie.
[697] Good to do this in person.
[698] The Bullwork podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio production by Jonathan Siri.
[699] I'm Charlie Sykes.
[700] Thank you for listening to today's Bullwork podcast.
[701] and we'll be back tomorrow, do this all over again.