The Bulwark Podcast XX
[0] Hello, welcome to the Bullwark podcast.
[1] I'm your host, Tim Miller.
[2] We got a double header for you today.
[3] Up first, Joe Pertico and our man on Capitol Hill, he was hanging out outside the D .C. prison.
[4] You know, listening to that January 6th prison choir.
[5] They're beautiful tones last night.
[6] So I want to ask him about that.
[7] After that on the other side, we got Isaac Arnsdorf, Washington Post reporter, has got a new book out.
[8] He was on the ground in Arizona.
[9] So we've got some Arizona talk.
[10] He's got some new reporting about what the Trump team is thinking their plans are for Ukraine.
[11] So big show.
[12] Joey P. Thanks for getting on the pod, bro.
[13] Glad to be on again.
[14] So talk to us last night.
[15] Was there singing?
[16] Was there a choir?
[17] There were like five people there.
[18] Why were you one of the five people outside the D .C. prison?
[19] They are there every single night.
[20] Been there every single night since August 2022.
[21] And I was like, I've been meaning to go.
[22] The weather's been bad in D .C. And I was like, so might as well pop down once it gets nice.
[23] It was nice last night.
[24] There were a handful of them.
[25] They have the inmates call in, and they have a phone held up to the mic, and then the inmates talked to the attendees.
[26] And then at one point, like the call dropped, which was blamed on the FBI and the eclipse.
[27] The FBI and the eclipse?
[28] Yeah, it's kind of a real -life manifestation of all the weird things that you see online.
[29] A lot of these people spend all their time online.
[30] one of the guys who organizes the live streams told me that he's in an Airbnb right now, but he was camping like in the woods near D .C. from April to November and kind of lives off of donations or little things he sells from his merch store, which is like January 6th attire.
[31] And this guy's a January 6th, he was there, but he just wasn't imprisoned?
[32] No, he's just a support.
[33] No. He had no connection to them until, couple years ago, he was like, I used to pass out constitutions and camped out on the national mall.
[34] He's like, and then I met these folks.
[35] He's like, and now I do this.
[36] He's like, I've never met any one of the inmates.
[37] And so it was kind of eye -opening in that like the way people find their little online communities where they are repeatedly told things they want to hear and they become like these January 6ers, despite having no connection to it, that happens in real life too.
[38] But a much smaller scale, but like this guy was not involved and just now lives it and lives in the woods or in an Airbnb, depending on how many donations he gets a month.
[39] I always had a soft spot in my heart for the pocket constitution people.
[40] And so it makes me a little sad to see somebody slip down the slope from being a pocket constitution person to being a, I want to overthrow the government person.
[41] That makes me a little sad.
[42] Yeah, it was quite sad.
[43] Usually you see this kind of behavior online and you're like, wow, that's crazy.
[44] But being able to put faces to all these people was, it's just shocking.
[45] Like, I've met a million people at the hundreds of Trump rallies that I've attended as a reporter, but the ones who are out there every single night.
[46] And, like, it was, you know, 75 degrees last night.
[47] They're out there when it's 25 degrees.
[48] Why do they get to call every night, the prisoners?
[49] I mean, my only experience being in a prison, I was in the Vale County Jail for about three hours for a minor possession of alcohol ticket.
[50] It wasn't exactly very strict, you know, high security there in Eagle County.
[51] But I don't think that, you know, generally speaking, prisoners get to have nightly calls out to protests.
[52] How does that work?
[53] I guess they do.
[54] They, because at one point when one of the inmates was talking, there was a, you have one minute remaining over what he was saying.
[55] And he was like, damn it.
[56] And then, you know, then they go on to the next person.
[57] Each person waiting in there, I guess, gets an allotment of time to do a call, and they're doing it to this vigil instead of presumably to their families.
[58] But there were some family members there.
[59] Like, there are wives of the J -6ers out there.
[60] And then they're doing it to the live stream, too.
[61] There were about a thousand people on the live stream, but it seems to be obviously the same people every night.
[62] Well, that's an interesting depressing bonus.
[63] I asked you to be on the pod today not to talk about the January 6th prisoners, not hostages, prisoners.
[64] who attacked the Capitol.
[65] I wanted to talk to you about a record that was set.
[66] Mike Johnson as speaker here, this Congress, it was, I think, the seventh time that they tried to bring up a rule to have a vote, that it was voted down.
[67] This has not happened since the 1970s.
[68] These guys can't, not only can they not pass anything, they can't even bring anything up to vote.
[69] In this case, it was on the FISA bill.
[70] We haven't talked about the FISA kind of debate on the podcast yet.
[71] So I just wonder if you can kind of brief us on what the hell is happening with regards to the FISA reauthorization and the continued dysfunction of the House Republicans.
[72] So the rule votes failed would have been more than seven in this Congress, but during the debt limit deal, Dems bailed out Republicans on one of them, which at the time, like, and you keep seeing it, and I think you're seeing it less, is like when the rule votes fail that you don't see the typical horse race covering outlets go, you know, this is embarrassing for McCarthy, or embarrassing for Mike Johnson.
[73] It's like, well, you need to be capable of shame for it to be embarrassing.
[74] It is now a tactic.
[75] And it's interesting because the Freedom Caucus was founded in 2015 when Boehner was speaker for the purpose of being allowed to vote on things that they thought deserved to votes.
[76] Just for context, for people who don't kind of remember that.
[77] The complaint was the speakership, the leadership, was not bringing up like amendments or not bringing up legislation to a vote.
[78] Yeah, it was a very closed process.
[79] and it was like that under Paul Ryan too and McCarthy to his credit allowed this more open process because they exacted all these demands from him but that's what the Freedom Caucus wanted but now the Freedom Caucus functions to block votes from happening they do not want the FISA vote and they say well we need to add these amendments or we need to do these things they want to block existing things from happening they don't want to vote on Ukraine they don't want to vote on debt deals they don't want to vote on all these things.
[80] Yeah, they're nihilists.
[81] You know, say what you want about the tenets of Tea Party, Tea Party Republicans, but at least they had an ethos kind of thing.
[82] These guys are nihilists.
[83] Yeah.
[84] Well, and it's now just like they've been revealed to not be like these principled conservatives fighting for an open process.
[85] They're literally just trying to exact what they want on the entire Congress, even when the majority wants to do everything else.
[86] And the FISA bill itself, the function of this debate is essentially, this is a reauthorization of, The Pfizer toolage allows government to spy on terrorists.
[87] And there is a process.
[88] There's a separate FISA court.
[89] You've got to get a warrant to be able to do this.
[90] There's a certain brand of, I guess you can explain to me if I'm wrong about expressing this, but there's a certain brand of Matt Gates, Freedom Caucus types that are under the impression that this is being used to spy on conservatives, you know, who post wrong thoughts on X. And so they want to block this for that reason.
[91] Is that basically the gist of it?
[92] Yeah.
[93] The opposition isn't some principled libertarian one.
[94] It is they're using government to target conservatives, which usually doesn't hold the same way to as, you know, the purpose of this, which is to stop 9 -11s from happening.
[95] There was one example of FISA abuse, I guess, which was regard to Carter Page, you know, in 2016.
[96] That's what these guys all point back to.
[97] But Carter Page was a spy.
[98] I mean, Carter Page did work with the wrong.
[99] Russians.
[100] It just was that the way that they went about that, getting that warrant on him.
[101] And then Carter Page ends up being an advisor to Trump, there's some misrepresentations on the application for the warrant, but that there was accountability for that.
[102] So, you know, there are, there are principled legitimate calls for Pfizer reform, you know, by certain libertarian -type Republicans.
[103] But most of the gibronies that are doing this now is it's just all part of it.
[104] It's the culture war thing.
[105] The government's coming for us.
[106] Yeah, the real critics were like Justin Amash when he was in the house.
[107] And then a lot of them, members on the left who have opposed this since its creation.
[108] Yeah.
[109] Okay.
[110] I want to talk about status with Mike Johnson here.
[111] He's heading down to Maralago tomorrow.
[112] I want to get that before I lose you.
[113] But Mona Sharon wrote today in the bulwark, the GOP is the party of Putin.
[114] Mike Johnson is a congressional chief of a party that contains a passionate Putin wing.
[115] And so he did.
[116] There's this week, Zelensky has warned that Ukraine will lose the war if the aid is not approved yet Johnson is headed not to Kiv, but to Maralago.
[117] We've been having to our periodic updates on this.
[118] There was some, I guess it was Ryan Fitzpatrick that was like, there's going to be a Ukraine vote.
[119] There was some glimmers of hope, you know, little tiny glimmers since we last spoke.
[120] Are you seeing any glimmers?
[121] Well, Scalia said he was not aware of what Fitzpatrick said.
[122] So I don't know.
[123] If there's going to be a vote, it's highly unlikely it would be on the standalone foreign aid package that's already passed the Senate, which if there was a stand -a -load on vote on that, it would pass, and then it would go right to Biden's desk.
[124] That's not going to happen.
[125] There's going to be conditions.
[126] What that looks like, we have no idea.
[127] Mike Johnson's been all over the place.
[128] He doesn't really know what he's doing.
[129] So he says, oh, there's got to be a border component.
[130] Or sometimes he'll say, you know, we're looking at our options.
[131] Other ideas might be that they will condition it on a pause to Biden's pause on the liquefied natural gas ban.
[132] Great.
[133] We love that.
[134] let's do it I mean they're so directionless and it's so like any any idea of voting on something will require a heavy lift in some other unrelated category which as we've seen with the border is not going to happen even if they keep insisting that it could it won't and so they're going to have to figure out some kind of deal and I don't think they can do that I've said for months that I think that Ukraine is the Scalia seat of this cycle that it won't be decided until after the election.
[135] Yeah, nothing would make me feel more like a 90s college Republican again.
[136] I guess I wasn't in college in the 90s college Republican again, then the Republicans cutting a deal where we're exporting natural gas and given weapons to Ukraine.
[137] I mean, that would make me feel great.
[138] But it just doesn't really seem like that's the actual concern here.
[139] So the actual concern is as Mona points out, there's a Putin wing in the party.
[140] Marjorie Taylor Green has this Jewish space laser of Damocles hanging over his head, if he wants to, if he wants to bring up Ukraine aid and FISA, it's kind of, it's the same people.
[141] It's a little bit of an overlapping group of people, I guess.
[142] And even some of the more normal people like Chip Roy, we're like, if he brings up Ukraine and FISA back to back, then, you know, his speakership is in threat.
[143] Thus takes us to his pilgrimage to Marlago.
[144] Playbooks take on this, Politico Playbooks take, is that the trip to Mara Lago is a good thing for Mike Johnson because Trump is giving him cover.
[145] And, uh, Maybe Trump will give him the air cover to bring up these bills.
[146] I'm pretty skeptical of that.
[147] Punch Bull's take is that Trump is blocking, essentially, and is hampering Johnson by blocking the ability to bring these things up.
[148] How do you kind of see that and see Mike's trip down to South Florida?
[149] I think that it's a huge waste of time.
[150] If Mike Johnson thinks he's going to, like, get cover from Trump in this respect, that's what Kevin McCarthy did.
[151] when Kevin McCarthy prematurely launched an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, he thought that was an appeasement, and it did not work.
[152] And so if Mike Johnson goes and does some kooky, lies -ridden press conference, or likely not a press conference, but in a veil with Trump, that's not going to matter if he still pursues FISA and Ukraine.
[153] Yeah, because that's what they've said they're going to talk about, the election integrity.
[154] You can do that all you want, but if you move forward with FISA or Ukraine, you're going to create a handful of enemies and he can only lose a handful.
[155] He can only lose a handful.
[156] I think a lot of Dems will back him up, but they can't hash that deal out ahead of time because working with Democrats is the ultimate sin.
[157] Democrats, if they're going to say we'll save Mike Johnson if he puts Ukraine on the floor, they have to proactively say it on their own.
[158] They can't have that agreement in secret because then that that's, you know, Johnson cutting a deal with Dems.
[159] And that's even worse for him.
[160] The best potential outcome here, we're on the darkest timeline that this is the best potential outcome, is that Trump actually doesn't care about policy.
[161] You saw this a little bit in the early Paul Ryan era, or kind of Trump let Paul Ryan do what he wants.
[162] And what he would say on Twitter was different things, but he wouldn't actually work anything.
[163] And so maybe the theory of the case is that Trump gives Johnson enough cover to protect him from Maga Marjorie, you know, doing a motion to vacate.
[164] Johnson brings up a couple of these things.
[165] Trump bleats out about how, oh, we shouldn't do FISA and the rhinos are folding and the rhinos working at Democrats, he doesn't actually stop it.
[166] And he kind of gives Mike a little bit of a sheen of protection to pass this stuff.
[167] And then eventually, this has an end date, right?
[168] Like Mike is just playing with fire and his whole existence then rests on Daddy Trump protecting him.
[169] But I guess his whole existence already kind of rests on Daddy Trump protecting him.
[170] So why not give this a try?
[171] I think Trump kind of stepping back would be a miscalculation on his part because from what we saw in the primaries, like even when he was basically running uncontested after Nikki dropped out, is there's the lack of enthusiasm.
[172] There are a lot of people still voting for Nikki, still voting for DeSantis.
[173] And I think it hurts his enthusiasm when on top of this you have him being soft on abortion.
[174] Let's say he lets Ukraine happen.
[175] He has the power to intervene.
[176] I think that that only adds to the waning enthusiasm that he's dealing with, and I think is a very undercover component of this race.
[177] The people that are voting for Nicky were never enthusiastic about him.
[178] They were always the noseholders.
[179] I mean, you think that he has potential base concerns?
[180] I don't know.
[181] I'm a little skeptical of that.
[182] I would say that there's a sliver of the base.
[183] And, like, enthusiasm matters.
[184] And I don't think that Biden creates the same kind of rage enthusiasm that Obama did.
[185] at all, or Hillary did.
[186] No doubt.
[187] Well, Joe, you've been the merchant of death on predictions, so I've got a final one for you.
[188] Johnson says that he still thinks we can get FISA done by the end of the week.
[189] It's Thursday at 949 a .m. in New Orleans as we're taping this.
[190] What do we think?
[191] What kind of odds do you give Mike on that prediction?
[192] Maybe.
[193] This might be a Monday night or a Tuesday night thing.
[194] I forget which day they're slated to come back.
[195] A huge motivating factor for members of Congress is the idea of working on a weekend, that gets stuff done is when they're like, oh, no, we'll have to be here on the weekend.
[196] So that could be a motivating factor.
[197] But clock's ticking.
[198] We'll keep an eye out.
[199] I mean, it's going to be kind of challenging for him to be in Marilago talking about election integrity, keeping Daddy Trump happy, and also, you know, reauthorizing our national security services, different functions that they used to keep us safe.
[200] Joe Perdicone, we're going to keep, you know, having you on, keep us updated on what there's going to be so much not happening on the hill, and we're going to need you to explain to us in what manner it's not happening over the course of the year.
[201] There's the most happening when nothing's happening.
[202] Exactly.
[203] Thank you, Joe Partico.
[204] Back on the other side with Isaac Arnsdorf.
[205] All right, we are back with Isaac Arnsdorf, national political reporter at the Washington Post, author of the brand new book, finish what we started, the MAGA movement's ground war to end democracy.
[206] Since the last segment, we have news that O .J. Simpson has died of cancer or murdered by cancer, as the Drudge report put it.
[207] Isaac, I don't know, you're younger than me. Do you have a formative memory of the OJ.
[208] Chase or were you, like, were you a toddler?
[209] My version of the OJ.
[210] Chase is watching Trump's motorcade go to court to turn himself in in Manhattan.
[211] Okay.
[212] Or balloon boy?
[213] Were you old enough for balloon boy?
[214] Okay.
[215] Man, I hate this.
[216] Boy, this is making me feel middle -aged.
[217] I was pretty young for O .J. But I have two formative memories.
[218] One was, I was my cousin was in my house.
[219] We were in our basement watching the car chase.
[220] I cut out of a basketball game.
[221] I must have been in a middle school or elementary school.
[222] And we thought it was really cool.
[223] We had no idea about the context, but it was our first car chase.
[224] And then during the trial, my parents, my parents who never did this.
[225] Mom, if you're listening, I know, you were in my life constantly 24 hours a day.
[226] But they took like one vacation during my childhood without the kids.
[227] Everything else was kids' vacations.
[228] and it happened during the OJ trial, and the woman the babysat us was like obsessed with it and watched court TV all day, reported back to mom when she got back.
[229] I was like, I don't know about this lady.
[230] She just watched court road TV and smoke cigarettes all day long.
[231] Anyway, RIP, OJ Simpson.
[232] Isaac, thanks for being on the podcast.
[233] Thanks so much for having me, Tim.
[234] For people that don't know you, you've written this book, finish what we started, the MAGA movement's ground war to end democracy.
[235] There was a lot of time on the ground at Arizona in other places.
[236] we overlapped in Arizona a couple times.
[237] And so I'd like for you to just start.
[238] We'll get into the kind of book and the themes, but just talk about your time and of reporting out in the MAGA movement in Arizona and around the country and kind of some big picture takeaways.
[239] Yeah, I mean, this reporting really started in early mid -2020 when Trump himself was really out of the picture.
[240] But there was a lot of action going on on the ground among Trump supporters that we didn't know how it was going to turn out at the time.
[241] But in hindsight, and through the story as it shaped up for this book, really paved the way for his comeback and the way that the party has consolidated around election denial in the last several years.
[242] And so I was just out meeting so many people who were not famous names and were never going to be headline makers in a newspaper article, but struck me as being kind of the most meaningful and interesting conversations that I was having.
[243] And so the book just kind of became an outlet to share that experience of, you know, again, things that aren't ever going to be headline news, but are a different way of thinking about the story of what we've all lived through over the past few years.
[244] Yeah, I think it's just so important.
[245] You're on Bannon's podcast earlier talking about this.
[246] That's always a strange experience.
[247] You're walking on a tightrope, you know, you don't, you hate to be complimented by Steve Bannon, but like every once It's right.
[248] It's a very annoying, you know, situation that you have to deal with.
[249] I've had to deal with it many times.
[250] The one thing that I think that he saw in this book that is like maybe one of three things in life that I agree on with him is just you recognize when you're actually with the grassroots Republicans is when you can really understand where the power is with the party.
[251] You know, we have a mutual, I guess, friend in my case, source and yours Kathy Petzis, who is in Maricopa County, who you write about in the book.
[252] And she used this kind of long time traditional elephant brooch type Republican woman who's been a part of the party, her family, I forgive us, uncle or dad, there was a party chair in Arizona.
[253] And like seeing this through her eyes and she's like going to the meetings, going to the door knocking, you can see the change in the party from the bottom up, right?
[254] So anyway, talk about, you know, Kathy and talk about what you saw, you know, at a precinct level happening with the party and how it was changing and what the kind of old time activists thought about the new crowd.
[255] Well, I mean, one of the most interesting parts of reporting this over the years and developing this relationship with Kathy were the times when we sort of had those different perspectives, like when I first met her and she was encountering all these new people coming into the party who were motivated by Steve Vanden's show and the stolen election myth and explicitly with a purpose of getting rid of people like her.
[256] and she was sure that this was not going to last, that these people were going to get frustrated and disappear.
[257] And she knew from all of her door knocking and electioneering, she was very sure that she represented the party, not these people.
[258] And I remember thinking like, you know, like Kathy, these people are coming for you.
[259] Like, I wish I could warn you.
[260] You know, and then the primaries was with her in that moment of devastation when the more moderate gubernatorial candidate who she was hoping for lost to Carrie Lake.
[261] Yeah, Karen Taylor Robson.
[262] Exactly.
[263] And Kathy is confronting with like, how can I belong to this party that nominates Carrie Lake?
[264] But then again in November when I, like I think probably you and most everyone else, was expecting a red wave and expecting Republicans to dominate.
[265] And Kathy, from knowing her district and knowing her people, thought they were going to face plant.
[266] And she was absolutely right.
[267] That is what happened.
[268] It's like being at the eye of the storm, Kathy, right?
[269] Because it's like these are the people that, you know, when I talk about the red dogs and in this reorientation, it's like you have to be in the eye on the storm.
[270] And there are two places where this is happening.
[271] And they're going opposite directions, right?
[272] It kind of depends who you're spending time with.
[273] If you're spending time in Maricopa County with, let's just be honest, wealthy, upper middle class, Republican, types who had moderate social views, you thought that was the party.
[274] And so then you got surprised by the primary.
[275] But then the general, you're like, well, all these Republicans in my life are voting for the Democrats.
[276] So I think the Democrats are probably going to win.
[277] So you're seeing that firsthand in your community.
[278] Then on the flip side of that, this is why I missed 2016, right?
[279] Because that was my community, was those people that weren't going to vote for Trump.
[280] But there was this other group of people out in the country, the MAGA crowd that listened to Steve Bannon that hadn't previously voted for Republicans that were.
[281] And so that I'm like, these are the real people where you can see what's happening in our politics.
[282] Yeah, and actually, I remember reading your book when I was reporting mine and thinking about them very much as like companion parallel pieces of the same story, right?
[283] Because yours was about professionals and how they all went down different paths of, you know, of election denial and Trumpism or getting off the train.
[284] And this is sort of like that same tension, but it's happening with regular people out in the country who are not professionals who are just.
[285] party volunteers or, you know, people who became active in the party after 2020.
[286] Yeah, for sure.
[287] I want to talk a little bit more about some of the characters in your book, but while we're in Arizona, the real life consequences is this, right?
[288] Sometimes you're talking about this and it feels academic political sciencey, realignment, you know, what's happening.
[289] We're seeing the real life consequences of this in Arizona.
[290] Obviously, we talked to, on yesterday's podcast about the implementation of the 1864 territorial abortion ban, House Democrats and one Republican in the legislature tried to repeal the 1864 ban yesterday.
[291] That has no exceptions for rape or incest, zero weeks.
[292] GOP leaders, though, commanded the majority cut off that attempt to vote.
[293] They quickly adjourned, outraged Democrats, started shouting shame, shame.
[294] This is the outgrowth of kind of what you're talking about, right?
[295] I mean, it's happened slowly, but the Kathy Petzis type Republicans, that used to be in the Arizona legislature, they're getting pushed out.
[296] They're getting replaced with radicals who are happy to have an 1864 abortion regime.
[297] Right.
[298] It's a form of this like democratic disequilibrium where the party in power is out of step with the majority of the electorate.
[299] And, you know, there are kind of complex mechanical reasons why that happens through the imperfect political institutions that we have.
[300] But that's what you get.
[301] Those are the kinds of distorted outcomes that you get when, by all measures, you know, this is not what the majority of Arizona voters want, but they'll get to speak for themselves in November.
[302] When you're doing that reporting, you're thinking about the legislature.
[303] I don't want to pretend like there weren't extreme Republicans in these state legislatures before.
[304] They've always been.
[305] But there's like more of a balance.
[306] Like what we're sense like for the main kind of motivating factors of like the maga types that are, and a big part of this book, right is people that are getting involved in politics, the Magmovement's Ground War.
[307] A lot of that is the precinct captains.
[308] A lot of that is people that are taking over the parties.
[309] But a lot of it also are the people that are entering these state legislatures and running for these offices and red districts.
[310] Kind of talk about that.
[311] Well, it's about how the purification of the party leads to nominees, leads to candidates who reflect that wing of the party rather than Kathy's wing of the party, right?
[312] There's another character in the book that I'd like to hear a little bit more about.
[313] Sally Grubbs in Marietta, Georgia.
[314] I just want to let you cook on that story.
[315] Tell us about Sally Grubbs.
[316] Yeah, Sally is kind of the foil to Kathy, who we were just talking about.
[317] She is the example of the Republican who was kind of a casual keyboard warrior, Rush Limbaugh Watcher, and it wasn't until 2020 and an experience that she personally had that made her think that there was fraud going on, that motivated her to get involved in local party politics.
[318] And in the past several years, she's become kind of a rising star in the state GOP to the point that, you know, there are now hardliners who think that she's an establishment rhino.
[319] Wait, why do they think she's an establishment right now?
[320] Well, she's developed an appreciation for, you know, when you're in the conversation, when you're in the room, when you're at the table, things are more complicated.
[321] So what happened was there was someone sniping at the state party chair who's under some pressure because the party is paying for the legal defense for the fake electors from 2020.
[322] And there was some criticism of him that she pushed back on in a signal chat.
[323] And then they called her a rhino and kicked her out of the chat.
[324] Maybe they found out that she went to the January 6th rally, but just hung out on the ellipse.
[325] If he didn't actually go into the Capitol and to storm the capital, that I guess that's what makes you a rhino now in a new MAGA world.
[326] I wanted to get your take.
[327] I thought you were very insightful on kind of the parallels, looking back from a philosophical standpoint at Eric Hoffer, who's written a lot about these sorts of movements, author of The True Believer.
[328] Here's a quote from Hoffer.
[329] I think it's worth reading the whole thing.
[330] The true believers were seeking not self -advancement, but rather self -renunciation, swapping out their individual identities with all their personal disappointments for a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose and worth by identification with a holy cause.
[331] I mean, like, this is just right on the nose for what is happening with a lot of people that you meet when you go to MAGA rallies when, you know, I have gone to Steve's podcast live and talk to people standing outside afterwards.
[332] There is a lot of this, like that they are sort of letting their own resentments, you know, their own personal identity wash away and kind of get caught up in this holy movement.
[333] Yeah, exactly.
[334] And Bannon is very intentional about how he is deploying that and understanding, and again, particularly in the moment where this exploded coming out of the pandemic, that that need for belonging is really what's driving this in a like, it's not as much about the content or the ideology as much as it is about that identification with the cause.
[335] And part of what happens over the course of the story is that Democrats and anti -Trump Republicans figure that out too and figure out that I think you were with Liz Cheney when she went and made that speech, figuring out the power of building community around these Republicans who are still Republicans but feel so alienated from how their party has changed and where that leaves them.
[336] I was.
[337] Liz is so good at this.
[338] And this is part of what is the idea behind the Republican voters against.
[339] Trump program that I was part of in 2020, which was we want to give people who feel politically homeless this sense of community, right, the sense of home that there are other people out there like them and try to channel that in a positive way, unlike what's happened over in the war room.
[340] I want to get on some of your reporting of some more recent stories.
[341] How do you think about elevating people like this, like Sally, going into Bannon's war room and talking about them?
[342] There is a debate that I think with well -intentioned people on both sides, some that say, the right thing to do is ignore these people, don't give them the attention that they want.
[343] I think the other side of that argument is, I mean, they're important.
[344] They're taking over these state parties.
[345] Like, they're a big reason why there's an 1864 abortion ban in Arizona now and why our capital got stormed.
[346] And so we need to know what's happening and we need to monitor and we need to understand.
[347] Maybe you can pull people away from the brink a little bit if you understand what their complaints and what their resentments are.
[348] Some of them might be getable.
[349] I don't know.
[350] Where do you kind of fall in that discussion about, I don't know if you had any criticism of the book from that standpoint or, you know, the question of how much attention we should be giving these folks?
[351] Well, I mean, I wanted to go on War Room because the idea that like a single one of Bannon's listeners might pick up the book and critically engage with it, you know, would mean the world to me. And I just think that if you're presenting things with context, then, you know, people, people are smart.
[352] The messages can be dangerous when they spread in a vacuum, but when you're giving people context and treating people respectfully, I think that people can be responsible.
[353] And, you know, Sally, I hope that readers learn to love Sally the way that I did.
[354] I mean, she's a lot of fun.
[355] She's really smart.
[356] She's got great personality.
[357] And, you know, she believes things that aren't true, but she is a very reliable narrator of her own.
[358] story and her own life.
[359] And I think that there's a lot of value in that.
[360] Do you grapple at all with the more you get to know these folks, the more you kind of develop a human connection with them, you start to paper over the threat a little bit?
[361] I grapple with that.
[362] I'm not trying to put you outside.
[363] I grapple with it.
[364] I think it's important to be in this world, to monitor it.
[365] But humans are complicated, right?
[366] Humans are not, are not two -dimensional.
[367] It's not like everybody that listens to Bannon's war room is evil, right?
[368] Like, they have desires that want their lives in the country to improve in certain ways.
[369] I want it to look differently in certain ways.
[370] I want it to look differently in ways that I find very troubling sometimes, right?
[371] But sometimes, you know, if you get to know somebody, right, like you think about the personal traits that you like about them and you start to push down, like being clear -eyed about their flaws and about the very real threats that this movement poses.
[372] Do you worry about that at all?
[373] Well, people are complicated.
[374] And, you know, there's a quote in the book from Thomas Dewey, like, democracy is not just a system of government.
[375] It's a form of associated living.
[376] And so, like, actually forcing ourselves to, to interact on that human level is really healthy.
[377] And it helps to avoid getting so dug in and viewing each other as enemies.
[378] I want to get two recent stories you've written in the post.
[379] One, inside Donald Trump's secret long shot plan to end the war in Ukraine.
[380] It seems to me that the TLDR of this is that Donald Trump wants to, you know, give to put in some territory and hopefully he'll behave, he'll be happy knowing that he'll have a friend in the White House.
[381] And so that'll end the war.
[382] But maybe you maybe it's a little more complex than that.
[383] So why don't you talk to us about the reporting and what you've uncovered there?
[384] Well, I don't know that it's a ton more complex than that.
[385] I mean, you know, Trump sees two countries that want the same territory, and so he sees an opportunity to make a deal, that he can get them in a room and on the strength of his charisma and his prowess, he can, you know, pressure them to come to a compromise where both of them can save face.
[386] I think that's a great theory, actually.
[387] That's a thought about in that frame.
[388] Donald Trump sees two countries that want the same territory, and so maybe we should just get, maybe we should just give South Florida to Cuba.
[389] that would be awesome.
[390] Donald Trump lives there and then he can have his own little island.
[391] You know, that could be an idea, right?
[392] There's some little discreements.
[393] Well, right.
[394] Like, why didn't anyone else think of this first?
[395] Yeah, why don't we give Mexico some of those border towns that Donald Trump thinks have so much carnage in him?
[396] Okay.
[397] Anyway, so he wants to just give some of the territory over to Russia.
[398] Where do we go from there then?
[399] Well, obviously, you know, Zelensky has said under no circumstances, is he going to recognize ceding any territory?
[400] And Putin has claimed to annex, which is an annexation that the U .S. and European allies consider illegal, but he's staked a territorial claim to much more land than his troops currently occupy and that Trump is talking about giving.
[401] So it's not like he would be satisfied with that either necessarily.
[402] So it's just, again, a lot more complicated.
[403] Even if you were to just have everyone put their arms down where they are, it's just not as simple as drawing it.
[404] the armistice line and everyone going home.
[405] I mean, to me, the next step of that is in the horror world where Donald Trump wins the next election and Donald Trump is the president and he actually tries something like this and he basically puts America in a position where America supports Putin's annexation at some level or another.
[406] And obviously the Europeans would be opposed to that.
[407] Like, what did the foreign policy, I don't know if you talk to Rick Grunel or the other foreign policy advisors around him, like if they thought one step, perhaps, let's just give Putin the land, or not really?
[408] So I think the high -minded foreign policy big think that gets superimposed onto Trump's individual impulse is that China's a bigger problem than Russia and that the U .S. can't get so committed in Ukraine that it takes its eye off the ball in China.
[409] And actually the connection is between Russia and China with Russia becoming so, reliant on China.
[410] And the thinking is that you could actually kind of draw Russia away from China if you improved Russian relations with the U .S. and that that would end up hurting China.
[411] Now, I talk to a lot of other foreign policy experts who think that that's incredibly dumb and would never work.
[412] Yeah, that's about a lot of cope, I think.
[413] That idea, there are these people around Trump that want to still flex some of their hawkish muscles.
[414] And I just think that they refuse to accept the reality that for Donald Trump, Taiwan is not going to be any different than Ukraine.
[415] And, like, they might, there might be lip service to that now, but, like, there's no rational through line to anything Donald Trump has ever said over the last 10 years.
[416] So it'd make you think that he would look at Taiwan any differently.
[417] They look at Ukraine.
[418] Isaac, final thing, I'm glad you pointed this out.
[419] Trump has made no public statements about Evan Gerskowitz, who is still imprisoned in Russia.
[420] I feel sometimes remiss we're not talking enough about Evan on this podcast.
[421] Talk about the state of play there and what you heard from Trump World when asked about why he wasn't advocating for Evans release.
[422] Well, I heard absolutely nothing.
[423] And that was the point is I, the, the journal had an editorial ahead of the one year anniversary saying, you know, why haven't we heard anything from Trump?
[424] And so I, I asked the campaign point blank, did I miss something?
[425] Has he said anything?
[426] And would he take this opportunity?
[427] And absolute radio silence.
[428] And, you know, it's part of a long pattern of Trump going out of his way to avoid criticizing Putin.
[429] And, you know, the previous recent example was him comparing himself to Navalny, the Putin critic who was imprisoned and died.
[430] Sick stuff.
[431] Isaac Aronsorff.
[432] Thank you so much.
[433] Author of the new book.
[434] Finish what we started.
[435] The MAGA movement's ground war to end democracy.
[436] He was actually out there with the MAGA grassroots and knows what's really happening on the ground.
[437] I appreciate you being on this podcast.
[438] We'll see out on the campaign trail, I bet, this year.
[439] Absolutely.
[440] Thanks, Tim.
[441] Thanks, Isaac.
[442] We'll be back tomorrow with the weekend edition of the Bullwark podcast.
[443] I'm pumped about the guest.
[444] We'll see all that.
[445] You're about to bring it to your kid like we never ever did.
[446] See you, your career is done like Johnny Carson's.
[447] Get me vicks.
[448] I do like left, I'm starting arson.
[449] Now that I got that out my system, watch me stab up the track as if my name was O .J. Van Haley, I work for mine.
[450] You're free -loading like Cato Cielin.
[451] I'm representing with my crew.
[452] Mess around, bite my rhymes.
[453] I'll beat that ass with my shoe.
[454] Come on, you know I'm crazy, nice.
[455] Now this can't deal with the shorty named Fife.
[456] You must be mad in the hay.
[457] I bust his ass and leaving blood clot for dead.
[458] Tiggins sound like DOS effects.
[459] If it ain't DOSAX, then they sound like meth.
[460] You might as well do Megadeth.
[461] Your punk MCs better save your friggin' breath.
[462] The Bullwark, you don't stop.
[463] Come on, everybody do the hop.
[464] Even if you cop, you got to come back to pop.
[465] You know, we come back, we do the hop.
[466] The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brow.